Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

i'm curious who the mysterious confidante is -- i assume not erekat

Except no special UN org and I haven't petitioned Poland for right of return

― Mordy, Tuesday, November 25, 2014 1:40 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually a lot of European counties do offer a sort of "right of return" for descendants of holocaust survivors, and your point is fatuous anyway because ex-european jews and their descendants fought for and received reparations

some have received reparations for the shoah. my family which escaped the pale near the turn of the century after suffering through multiple pogroms do not qualify for any reparations. i kinda feel like in terms of historical irony the ukrainian ppl did me a solid tho since when 1936 rolled around we were safely in philadelphia, not still sitting around in smila.

i do support reparations for victims of the nakba so i agree w/ that point

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30258537

All charges against Mubarak dropped.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/?single_page=true

Oh good, finally someone to tell us what the media gets wrong about Israel

very cool lady, i'm glad she's safe: http://globalnews.ca/news/1700257/canadian-israeli-woman-reportedly-captured-by-isis/

The ruling Likud faction has formally decided to vote in favor of opposition-proposed bills on the Knesset docket that would dissolve the Knesset and bring about early elections, party sources told The Times of Israel Tuesday

from Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group founder Bassem Eid:
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Proud-Palestinians-must-lead-the-fight-to-reform-UNRWA-383366

UNRWA, to continue its operation, depends on death and the visual suffering of five million Palestinians who continue to wallow in and around UNRWA facilities.

The more Palestinians suffer, the more power goes to UNRWA, which allows it to raise unchecked humanitarian funds and purchase munitions. People ask: Why not abolish UNRWA? Well, this cannot be done.

The only agency that can abolish UNRWA is the UN General Assembly, which has never had the interests of the Palestinian people at heart. After all, the UN rakes in more than $1.2 billion a year as an “incentive” to continue our status as refugees.

People ask: Why not ask the donor nations to defund UNRWA? Do they not realize that a Western defunding of UNRWA would allow nations like Qatar to enter the vacuum, leaving the West with no leverage over UNRWA policy? The point is to influence donor nations to reform UNRWA and predicate future aid to UNRWA on reasonable conditions:

1. Audit all funds allocated to UNRWA, which operates with a $1.2b. budget.

2. Introduce UN High Commissioner for Refugees standards to UNRWA, to encourage permanent refugee settlement.

3. Cancel the UNRWA war curriculum, based on principles of jihad, martyrdom and right of return by force of arms.

4. Demand that UNRWA schools conform to the UNRWA slogan: “Peace Starts Here.”

5. Dismiss UNRWA employees affiliated with Hamas, defined by the donor nations to UNRWA as a terrorist entity.

It is therefore the responsibility of the Palestinian people to rebel against the arbitrary administration of UNRWA, which seeks to perpetuate our refugee status instead of helping our people to strive for a better future.

Lapid and Livni sacked. Elections presumably not far away.

shas, lieberman + lapid are gonna lose seats, bibi and bennett are going to gain -- idk if this means bibi stays in charge in the next admin or what

oh cool now Israeli govt will be even MORE right-wing

Don't worry then we'll finally get Mordy's annexationist utopia where all citizens are equal and Jews are more equal. Only Nixon could go to China.

maybe... i don't think bibi will implement the annexation plan. and i don't think bennett will win enough seats to implement it himself so... idk.

but shakey otm, government most likely will be even more right-wing

Maybe finally they will lower these goddam taxes!!!!

Wait, which country are we talking about again?

the racist one

so all of them

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120506/study-israels-home-demolitions-policy-works-it-moral

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/world/asia/taliban-attack-pakistani-school.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

“These terrorists are enemies of Pakistan, enemies of Islam and enemies of humanity,” the statement said.

p much

No doubt, as usual, the Pakistan secret service will have been involved.

not sure if that's a homeland joke or if you have some reason to think that pakistani intelligence is both on good enough terms with the taliban to conduct proxy attacks through them, and has some reason to attack a pakistani school

Both

Well maybe not attacking a school, but it's an army school, so....

What makes you think that the Pakistani Secret Service would be involved (sorry if I'm being naive).

OK, 'would be' is a bit much, 'wouldn't be surprised' is better.

Play with fire, you might get burned though.

enemies of Pakistan, enemies of Islam and enemies of humanity

Saying that your opponents are shitheels doesn't mean you aren't a shitheel yourself. It's strange how many people fall into that fallacy.

since when is Pakistan in the Middle East?

haha that occurred to me too but figured it wasn't worth arguing about

Same here

idk, seems at least doubtful to me that the ISI decided it would be a good idea to assist the taliban with a revenge attack against them by killing over a hundred of its own citizens

xxp i've always included pakistan in this thread since MENA is obv a term of art and there are many reasons to include pakistan in it - i guess the en vogue name now is MENAP to include afghanistan + pakistan. i didn't see anyone discussing it elsewhere tho, so i'm not sure why it would be a problem to bring it up here.

imago bumped the mumbai attack thread

Yes, highly unlikely they were involved, which is not to say they have always been unsympathetic to militancy. Akhtar is seen as a shift away from that, though, and there is no love lost between them and internal militant opposition.

killing over a hundred of its own citizens

But the Taliban have killed thousands over their fellow Pakistanis over the years?

of not over!

MENA is obv a term of art and there are many reasons to include pakistan in it
I have literally no idea what this sentence means, or why Pakistan would fit better with the Middle East than, idk, the rest of South Asia. Americans.

xp that's about the ISI, there is no motive for them to attack their own citizens, this is baseless speculation about a horrific attack

for the same reason that the IMF has included it? persian, turkish + arab language relationships, religious affinities, political + economic dependence

like, i think it makes at least as much sense to discuss it in this thread as it does in a mumbai thread!

this is really smart:
http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/legal-foundations-islamic-state-mara-revkin/

I always thought the word "terrorists" was kind of meaningless or at best incomplete as applied to IS. They're more like a nascent mini-empire, like the mongols or something. I wonder when the last time this happened was historically - an army sort of spawning out of nowhere and conquering significant territory.

This reads like an episode of Homeland or something:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/18/-sp-the-race-to-save-peter-kassig

Suppose it's not new, but I stumbled upon the latest issue of 'Dabiq', a sort of glossy magazine for Al'Qaida/IS sympathizers. PDF here.

It's such a surreal read. There's a foreword in which the man who held people hostage in the Sydney cafe is lauded. Then there's a lengthy piece of advice for 'soldiers of Islamic State'. A section called 'Words of the Enemy' (featuring Bibi etc). And a section called 'Meltdown', about the financial markets, currency, an almost marxist anti-capitalist manifesto yet justifying IS introducing their own curreny, supposedly written by John Cantlie, who's held hostage and has featured in the most recent IS videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUST-Wdqn80

New video by John Cantlie. Getting ever more surreal. Can't help but look or listen for hints or nods, but that would probably be too dangerous. One odd thing around the six minute mark is that his notebook is consistently blurred out.

excited for hurting's superior MENA titled thread for the new year