If we have to pretend states have birthdays, we have to take the metaphor to its logical conclusion…

Apparently, Israel is turning 60.

You know what that means? Israel is only two years away from reaching the legal retirement age!

That’s right, maybe when it turns 62, Israel will finally pack its bags, move to Florida, and let the Palestinians return to their homes and live in peace.

If you want to know what all the fanfare is about, why Israel out of all countries in the world is the only one that has to mobilize a multi-million dollar campaign to celebrate its “birthday” in places that are… not Israel… read up about some of complications that accompanied Israel’s birth: namely, a little problem called “the Palestinian people,” who were dispossessed of their lands, homes, rights, and security in 1947 and 1948, and continue to live mostly under military law (aka, brute force) in the West Bank and Gaza, thanks to billions of dollars of birthday gifts that the United States gives Israel every year.

Editorial in the SF Chronicle: Mayor Newsom’s Israel trip is ill-advised on the 60th anniversary of the Nakbah

On May 15, my family will commemorate an-Nakba, Arabic for “the catastrophe,” which is the dark underbelly of Israel’s foundation. Sixty years ago, Jewish militants and, later, the Israeli army, forced 2 out of every 3 Palestinians - more than 700,000 people - to flee their homes. Many Palestinians who resisted expulsion or were unable to leave were massacred in cold blood, as were those who returned to harvest food from their orchards or gather personal belongings left behind. The Palestinians who fled now constitute the oldest unresolved refugee population in the world, despite their internationally recognized right to return. Meanwhile, Israel permits any Jew from anywhere in the world to immigrate and obtain citizenship.

General Resources about the Nakbah: Electronic Intifada’s Nakbah page.

I’m afraid Israel can’t wish that problem away when it blows out the candles next week.

Tags: Current Events by yaman
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Playing off of a recent UC Berkeley marketing campaign, two students have commenced a tree-sit on campus, pictured to the left, asking: can UC change?

The answer to one variation of that question answers the second. If you can see change, UC can change.

While I doubt it will be longer than a few days before the obsessively “moderate” voices on campus begin to toss epithets at the tree-sitters for being “ineffective,” it should be asked: does anybody really think that those who took to the trees believe that their actions alone are going to change the UC?

I doubt it. Rather than paint out the obvious, other students on campus, in the ASUC, writing for the campus paper, and participating on campus in other ways, should take this opportunity to stand by the student activists in the trees and to support their message. UC won’t change as long as its greatest dreams–that the student body will itself abandon and isolate any effort to reform the UC–remain fulfilled. [Read more →]

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At Berkeley, there would probably be more kids registered to attend the conference than protesting outside of it. From the IndyBay report:

Speakers for the march made it clear that students support scientific research but when research is done for military paymasters it makes campus scientists into war accomplices at a time when the U.S. is occupying foreign lands in internationally condemned wars of aggression.

For example, A UCSB researcher worked on technology for a new type of bomb which was dropped on an Afghan wedding, killing 40 Afghanis gathered to celebrate the love between two people and their families.

U.S. officials denied responsibility for the bombing until camera footage made it impossible to deny. To the researcher’s horror, his teammates working on the bomb expressed no remorse for the innocents killed by their invention. Instead, they celebrated the news because the bomb worked as they intended it to.

Protesters reminded ICB attendees that scientists have moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions and when they work for the military, the consequence is that people die, many of them innocent civilians.

These students succeeded in shutting down the conference, which will not continue into its second day.

This is the kind of protest that this country needs right now–not the silly parades that are going on every month or so in the cities [Read more →]

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In this article about the topic of the hour in Britain, CNN writes:

Sharia law is a legal and social code designed to help Muslims in their daily lives. It has proved controversial, however, because of its use in some Muslim states to justify suppression of women’s rights and extremely brutal forms of punishment, including beheadings.

I thought this to be a rather uncharacteristic treatment of shari`ah in the press. Even though it’s not antagonistic, however, it thoroughly places shari`ah into the realm of liberalism, dressing it in the language of liberal revolution (”used… to justify suppression of women’s rights and [extreme brutality]”). That’s something.

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Hossam is posting frequent updates regarding a huge strike of over 15,000 textile workers at the Ghazl el-Mahallah textile factory in Egypt. According to him, this is the largest textile factory in the Middle East, with over 27,000 workers. The Egyptian government has declared the strike “illegal,” potentially opening the way for a police confrontation with the strikers. As far as I know, the Western media has yet to pick up on this story.

Factory workers, male and female, strike together as they occupy the factory compound. Image is from the Egyptian Workers blog. Click for more info.

Among other things, the strikers are asking for the union and factory leadership to be sacked and for increases in salaries and food allowances to match price inflation. Threatened with government interference, the strikers are looking for statements of support from international labor organizations, as well as coverage of their strike from international media. The state-owned company that owns the factory is the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company, which exports internationally. For more information, on labor activities at this factory, read this informative report in MERIP.

If anybody knows of any ways to determine who the clients of this factory/company are in the United States, now would be a good time to uncover them so that we can apply local pressure in support of the strikers.

Tags: Current Events by yaman
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Four and a half years and 75,000 Iraqi and 3,800 American deaths later, the best thing America has to show for the invasion and occupation of Iraq is this single story, which is turning out to be more about easing a guilty American conscience than it is about helping those whose lives have been irreversibly destroyed by a trigger-happy American president.

How many of those now driven to “support” Youssif will mobilize to stop the war? Withdrawal comes first, then reparations.

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Sasa has posted a link to a very interesting article about Syria’s disenfranchised and repressed Kurdish population. Besides my concern about the article’s failure to note that the Kurdish issue is a regional one and not one exclusive to Syria, I think it is a good opportunity to comment on the way the Syrian government, among others in the area, frames its national identity.

Identity cannot be imposed from the top-down–this strategy invariably leads to resistance, violence, and injustice. The regime has always stated that erasing sectarianism has been one of its goals, and it frequently accuses opposition activists of stirring sectarian sentiments in order to justify silencing them. But we should not feel that it is necessary to have a single identity to have a strong, inclusive, and successful political system in Syria. The only way to achieve any form of workable unity is to start with disunity; every minority group must be recognized and respected according to its own identity, not the one that we wish to identify it by. Diversity of identity as well as political affiliation must be embraced, not denied. Homogeneity, when imposed, can only produce discord, as it is inherently imaginary and will inevitably lead to conflict. It is better to facilitate these differences in the national identity and culture than to exclude them, because they are going to be there and will remain there, accepted or not.

Edit: Upon rereading this I noticed that I used the phrase “disenfranchised Kurdish population.” This implies that the rest of the population is not also disenfranchised. That was a mistake, but the rest of the population does seem to have better access to power and influence and greater mobility.

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Chancellor Robert Birgeneau issued a statement in which he says that the British boycott of Israeli universities “violates the fundamental principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech that are the hallmarks of great universities” and that those who “seek to isolate Israeli universities… must also include Berkeley… in [the] boycott.” Putting aside the question of whether or not the Chancellor would have shown such enthusiastic opposition to the academic boycott of apartheid South Africa in the 1960s, we should examine the Chancellor’s focus.

On the heels of the 40th anniversary of Israeli hegemony and control over the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza, and during a time when the University of California directly invests in a number of companies which do significant business supporting Israeli war crimes, the Chancellor was alarmed not by his passive role in promoting Israel’s flagrant disregard for Palestinian lives and welfare, but by the idea that Israeli universities–which some have argued play a significant role in creating institutional support for the occupation–should be boycotted until these crimes end. This would have been crossing the line.

Forget that Palestinian children are frequently prevented from going to school by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints, or by laws that prohibit students from Gaza to go to universities in the West Bank, or by the disproportionately low number of Arabs in Israel who are able to attend Israeli universities, or by the fact that the Israeli parallel of the CIA, the Shin Bet, often is in control of who does and does not teach Arab children in Israel.

The Chancellor, after all, must take a stand for academic freedom.

Tags: Current Events by yaman
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The House of Representatives is preparing a bill that will cut US aid to Egypt, which is the second largest recipient of US money next to Israel.

“The $200 million cut is substantial,” said Rep. James Moran, a Virginia Democrat on the House panel. “Our ally is not upholding the principles that define us.”

Taken to its logical conclusion, Rep. Moran’s comment means that what Israel did to Lebanon last summer and continues to do to the Palestinians is indeed in line with “the principles that define us.” Says a lot.

But wait:

The House Appropriations Committee approved a wide-ranging foreign aid bill for next year that would hold back $200 million in military funds for Egypt until the close U.S. ally takes steps to curb police abuses, reform its judicial system and stop weapons smuggling from Egypt to Gaza.

Oh. Looking out for Israel, no matter what it is doing. That principle. How could I have forgotten?

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This time, Laurence Thomas of Syracuse University has written a post called “Angry Muslim Arabs and the Black Man” (as if the response he got to his earlier post about there being no Muslim marches for peace was based on the fact he is black). In it he talks about “so-called oppressed groups” (what, you think oppression still exists in America?), and mentions a link to his blog from The Angry Arab News Service:

However, at the site

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/,

my claim of 1 billion Muslims was viciously slammed.

If the name of the blog is any indication, then the author is a Muslim
Arab. I, on the other hand, am neither Muslim nor Arabic. From this
it is supposed to follow that anything I say that is at odds with what
the author of the site claims can be roundly dismissed.

Now, I think this is pretty funny. In his first post, the headline originally claimed that there were 1 billion Arabs. He later changed the title without leaving a notice, but talks about it as if it always read “1 billion Muslims.” Then, to prove his point that he never thought that Arabs and Muslims were the same, he looks at the title of the Angry Arab blog (”The Angry Arab News Service”) and concludes that…. the author must be a Muslim. Funny, since anybody who spends more than 30 seconds looking through the front page of this website immediately knows that the author is areligious and staunchly secular.

Yes, here is a scholar qualified to talk intelligently about Muslims and Arabs. After all:

This is why I own and have read such works about Islam as Le licite et l’illicite en Islam by Youssef Qaradhawi and L’Ethique du Musulman: Les fondements de la morale by Mohammad Al Ghazali. This is why I own and have read Les Nouveaux Martyrs d’Allah by Farhad Khosrokhavar, as well as many books regarding the issue of the veil for Muslim Arabic women.

Because nowadays Qaradhawi and Ghazali are representative of what all Muslims around the world believe and perform. And if you want to know Muslims, all you have to do is read those 3 books.

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