International condemnation of PA Mufti following PMW exposure of religious hate speech
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Jan. 25, 2012
International condemnation of PA Mufti
following PMW exposure
of religious hate speech
PA rejects condemnation as "incitement"

Palestinian Media Watch's exposure of the PA Mufti's speech citing the Islamic tradition (Hadith) that anticipates the killing of Jews by Muslims has brought Israeli and international condemnation of the Mufti and the Palestinian Authority.

Feb 3 2012
Venezuelan Supremo Hugo Chavez often accuses Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians.

And so voluminous is the Chavez definition of the term that it is a surprise he has failed to notice that half of his own country’s 200-year-old Jewish community has disappeared since he assumed power in 1998. But then the evaporation of this patriotic, productive, and loyal group is largely a consequence of Chavez’s hostile policies and rhetoric.

Interview with David Harris
February 3, 2012
Note:David Harris is an American - Jewish leader
LR: First of all I would like to ask you the purpose of your visit to Italy. You will be also in other capitals in Europe. What will you discuss with Minister for Foreign Affairs Terzi and Minister for International Cooperation Riccardi?

Why No Peace? Because the PA Tells Its People that Murdering Israeli Civilians Makes You a Hero
February 3, 2012
The trouble with the Palestinian Authority (PA) is that while in the Western mass media it is virtually always portrayed as moderate the PA simply doesn’t act that way. Its contrary behavior involves not keeping its commitments, daily incitement to kill Israelis and destroy Israel in its institutions, and refusal to negotiate seriously.

January 18, 2012
Mark Durie is a theologian, human rights activist and pastor of an Anglican church. He has published many articles and books on the language and culture of the Acehnese, Christian-Muslim relations and religious freedom. A graduate of the Australian National University and the Australian College of Theology, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992. On January 18, he spoke to the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia.

February 3, 2012
Fatah leaders in the West Bank announced this week that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is their only candidate for the presidential election expected to take place in May 2012.

The announcement enraged several disillusioned Fatah officials, some of whom called on the 76-year-old Abbas not to seek re-election so as to pave the way for the emergence of young and fresh faces.

The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey
Banu Eligür
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 317 pp. $85
Reviewed by Kemal Silay
Indiana University, Bloomington

In an era when an overwhelming majority of articles and books published on Islamism are apologetic in nature and often fall short in terms of academic and scholarly integrity, Eligür's study constitutes a shift in research design, data, analytical strength, and discursive qualities.

Feb 1 2012
An AFP report yesterday indicated that, as predicted, Hamas and Fatah are dragging their feet on actually implementing the latest reconciliation deal.

Both sides have stressed their desire to repair the rift, but Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a political scientist at Gaza's Al Azhar University, said little of the deal appeared to have been implemented.

"On political prisoners, we hear that they are close; that the issue of Palestinian passports, newspapers will be settled," he said. "Every day we hear new promises."

The Making of a Human Bomb
An Ethnography of Palestinian Resistance (The Culture and Practice of Violence)
Nasser Abufarha
Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. 277 pp. $84.95 ($23.95, paper)
Reviewed by Anat Berko
Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya and George Washington University

30 January 2012
Following the expiration of the 26 January deadline set by the International Quartet for the resumption of peace negotiations– as interpreted by the Palestinian leadership – the Palestinians have declared that the talks between senior Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, Itzhak Molcho and Saeb Erekat, had failed and future steps were now under consideration in Ramallah. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is not in a hurry to make any decisions regarding the future actions of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

January 31, 2012
The Palestinians' two most radical groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have launched talks aimed at merging under one organization.

This is, of course, bad news for moderate Palestinians who believe in the two-state solution and peace with Israel. It is also bad news for secular Palestinians, especially those living in the West Bank.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are the two dominant groups in the Gaza Strip, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians.

Jan.31 2012
Lebanese society has had a remarkable ability to overcome deep-rooted sectarian and religious divides that could readily have imploded less problematic countries. This has been largely due to its pragmatic political system, which avoids acting upon polarizing issues on principle, opting instead for pragmatic loopholes.

January 27, 2012
Freedom House released its "Freedom of the World Report" this week. The report, surveying political rights and civil liberties around the world, showed that the political uprisings that swept across the Arab world over the past year represent the most significant challenge to authoritarian and totalitarian rule since the collapse of Soviet Communism.

January 30, 2012
The Palestinians are today divided into two major camps, both physically and ideologically.

The first is a radical camp led by Hamas and other extremists. This camp does not recognize Israel's right to exist and seeks to replace the Jewish state with an Islamist emirate.

This camp believes that the whole land - from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River - is Muslim-owned territory and no one has the right to give up any part of it.

Jan 25 2012
When the third and final round of Egypt's parliamentary elections concluded on January 11, the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) cemented its dominance of the next legislature. Although the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces still holds executive power, the FJP's political victory promises radical changes for Egypt, including a theocratic domestic program and a confrontational foreign policy. Western states should have no illusions about the party's aims or ability to moderate.

Minority Interest

Lebanon’s Maronites, threatened by Sunni power, will be the bellwether of the Mideast’s Christians. Could they face the same fate as the region’s Jews?
January 4, 2012

Middle East ForumMiddle East Forum

Jan.27 2012
In July 2011, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed Maj. Gen. Rostam Qassemi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as oil minister,[1] bringing the number of former IRGC officers in his cabinet to twelve out of eighteen. Yet the IRGC's seizure of the Oil Ministry could have far reaching economic, political, and strategic implications.

Jan 27 2012
To its great discredit, the Melbourne Age has republished a Guardian newspaper feature that alleges mistreatment by the Israeli judicial system of West Bank Palestinian youths detained on suspicion of terrorism.

As a previous AIJAC blog post revealed, many allegations of Palestinian children being tortured, kept in solitary confinement, denied legal representation, and forced to confess to crimes they didn’t commit, rely on half-truths, manipulation of facts and figures and unsubstantiated claims by anti-Israel organisations.

Israel Is Not About to Attack Iran and Neither is the United States: Get Used To It
26 Jan 2012
The radio superhero, The Shadow, had the power to “cloud men’s minds.” But nothing clouds men’s minds like anything that has to do with Jews or Israel. This year’s variation on that theme is the idea that Israel is about to attack Iran. Such a claim repeatedly appears in the media. Some have criticized Israel for attacking Iran and turning the Middle East into a cauldron of turmoil (not as if the region needs any help in that department) despite the fact that it hasn’t happened.

We’ve talked in the past about the tragic joke that is Durban, the United Nations World Conferences Against Racism. Given that the three Durban conferences held over the past ten years have been marked by rampant anti-Semitism, it might seem strange that CAMERA’s Dexter Van Zile is calling for another Durban conference.

But what he wants, he writes, is “a human rights conference worthy of the name.” Here are a few of the issues he’d like to see addressed:

January 26, 2012
The Obama administration supports "democracy" and "self determination" in the Middle East—two euphemisms that, in the real world, refer to "mob-rule" and "Islamic radicalization," respectively. Yet, as Jimmy Carter recently put it: "I don't have any problem with that [an "Islamist victory" in Egypt], and the U.S. government doesn't have any problem with that either. We want the will of the Egyptian people to be expressed."

January 1 ,2012
For some time now Switzerland has been at the forefront of the European debate on Islam, Islamism, and Islamization. The country is thereby abandoning its traditional approach of safeguarding its neutrality, staying on the sidelines of any major European conflict, and keeping out of the respective great debates of the time.

Today: UN Watch Exposes Shocking UNESCO Election of Assad Regime

in New York Times, Reuters, AP, Le Figaro, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal

GENEVA, Jan. 25 - UN Watch released diplomatic documents today revealing that its campaign to expel Syria from two UNESCO human rights committees has clinched support from a key group of 25 nations led by the U.S. government, and will come to a vote at a meeting next month in Paris.

January 25, 2012
The Palestinian Authority has expressed outrage over the arrest of Hamas officials in the West Bank by the Israel Defense Forces -- even though the Palestinian Authority itself has also been arresting Hamas supporters in the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority claims that the Israeli arrests are aimed at sabotaging the "reconciliation" process between Fatah and Hamas. But the truth is that the Israeli clampdown on Hamas in the West Bank is first and foremost designed to help Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Daniel Pipes
updated Jan 21, 2012
That's the thesis implicit to David Goldman's analysis at "Recall notice for the Turkish model." After dubbing the Turkish economy a bubble that "is bursting, starting with the stock market and national currency," he makes this observation about the prime minister:

Where the “Counter-Obama” View of the Middle East is Right and Where It’s Wrong
January 24, 2012
Jackson Diehl is by far the best journalist writing in the mass media about the Middle East. In a recent column, he tries to find some middle ground between the dominant ideas — that Islamist regimes are no problem at all and that the Muslim Brotherhood is really moderate — and what he defines as an excessively extreme conservative and Republican analysis.

24 January 2012
The wave of protest in Syria has put to the test the strategic alliance between Iran (and Hizbullah) and Bashar Assad's regime. Syria is the main state component of the "resistance camp" and serves as a logistical hinterland for Hizbullah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Iran sees its unequivocal backing for Syria as a demonstration of its ability to stay loyal to its allies despite the regional turmoil.

January 23, 2012
On January 24, during his State of the Union Address, the president of the United States has a chance to expose the plight of religious minorities living in Muslim majority nations. Doing so would not merely shed light on one of the most ignored humanitarian crises of the 21st century; it would help alleviate it.

Why should the president speak up on the oppression of religious minorities? For starters, because it is the right thing to do, and reflects American values and principles.

January 24, 2012
When Egypt's Lower House convened on Jan. 23, Islamists held 360 out of its 498 seats, or 72 percent. This astounding figure, however, reflects less the country's public opinion than it does a ploy by the ruling military leadership to remain in power.

In a recent article ("Egypt's Sham Election," Dec. 6) we argued that just as Anwar El-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak in the past "tactically empowered Islamists as a foil to gain Western support, arms, and money," so do Mohamed Tantawi and his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) "still play this tired old game."

Egypt-Israel Peace Agreement is Dead Even if Treaty Still Exists
January 23, 2012

We’re starting to get a good picture of what the lower house of Egypt’s parliament will be like, though it will take another month to be certain. Close to 50 percent of the seats will be held by the Muslim Brotherhood. Another 25 percent will be held by the al-Nour party of Salafists. With 75 percent, the two Islamist parties will be able to do as they please.