rolling middle east 2013 thread

Lol at "inadvertantly picked it up from" the site they linked to in the original fucking article.

it's nice that alternet is running a breakdown of how the 'hoax' happened, but would be nicer if they had verified the story before running it - new media i guess :/

But one would imagine that if a similar story emerged about a Christian cleric or a Rabbi, someone, somewhere would have paused before posting it. Sadly, in the case of stories about Muslim clerics or Islamists the same red flags don't seem to apply.

Also this is so disingenuous since Alternet was surely the most major propagator of this story into reputable media outlets.

Salon doesn't appear to have retracted it yet.

Salon was just running it from Alternet tho, unedited. Really Alternet needs to write a serious mea culpa, or if they're going to talk about Islamophobia do so in the context of their own writers and editors.

Absolutely right.

My experience with Alternet and Salon are that they are fairly skeptical left-wing media outlets so I assumed that if they were running the story they probably had good sources for it. I tried to follow up with the original sources (and found I guess the original youtube video in Arabic w/ translations of the story) but couldn't get anything from a different 'reputable' source. But I figured there's no way Alternet would run the story without being sure of it.

Looks like Al-Jazeera is buying Current TV!

Brotherhood official urges Egypt's Jews to return

Jews ordered back to Egypt for pyramid duty.

Egyptians slamming MB leader for offering to allow Jews to return to Egypt

In response, Hafez Abu Saada, head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, called Erian's remarks "catastrophic" because it would allow Egyptian Jews to sue for the properties that were stolen from them when they were forced out of Egypt.

And Morsi's backing away from Erian's "personal opinions".

Were they forced or did they, like most Sephardim, sell out and leave?

Btw, Mordy, did you read that article (where?) about Israel's medical marijuana lab?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Egyptian_Jews_(1956)

lol yes, I did. I posted it to Rolling Cannabis Politics Thread

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/israeli-library-unveils-ancient-afghan-manuscripts-18123987#.UOYANaWmDzK

one of the complications in israeli politics is that left-right axis most often refers to a stance on the peace process and not to socialism/capitalism*. for example, the lone kibbutz member of the new knesset is likely to be zvulun kalfa, a member of naftali bennett's right-wing nationalist religious habayit hayehudi party:

"There are many members of neighboring kibbutzim who say they'll vote for Habayit Hayehudi this time, some of them due to our personal acquaintance, and others because they share the same views on settlement issues," he says.

*although Labour famously was very involved in the peace process. as another example tho how the two don't necessarily align - labour has moved sharply away from the peace process during this election and focused exclusively on social justice issues. on a related note, under Bibi the number of Palestinians from the West Bank working in Israel has doubled and he partially campaigned last election on economic, though not nationalist, justice for the West Bank.

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-racism-of-leftist-nationalism.premium-1.492109

at least gideon levy is making it explicit - he's ready to sell out the jewish state to combat the right.

So it looks like Obama's nominating Hagel for Defense. I wonder if there's any element of payback there for Netanyahu's dalliance with Romney during the campaign.

It's a weird thing. I assume Obama can get Hagel - between Republicans burning their 'veto' on Rice and Hagel being an R I think he can push it through. But why push through a Republican that the Republicans don't like? It's not like his opinions are unique and he'll be taking policy from Obama anyway. Plus there are ppl on the left (like Barney Frank) who don't like him either. I can't figure out what Obama stands to gain from either a) pushing Hagel through or b) pushing Hagel hard and then ultimately backing down and picking someone else. Both seem like high risk low reward moves.

A friend suggested that he wants to force Republicans to oppose a Republican - maybe start to delineate a 'centrist republican' position that he can try to corral the party into. Seems too multidimensional chess to me. Maybe he just likes the guy.

There's always that last possibility. I guess they were friendly when Obama was in the Senate.

Hagel was/is known as a foreign policy realist and a no-nonsense guy. This bolsters Obama on the FP front, shows he's bi-partisan, and puts the Senate Republicans in a bind.

Senate Republicans may not be in a bind if some of the Senate Dems who don't like him for various reasons also oppose him (but the Senate Dems may choose when it comes time to vote, to say that Hagel regrets past statements, and then vote for him )

Obama hardly needs to be bolstered on the FP front!

jeff goldberg (who i find i have less + less time for every day) writes:

Discussions inside [AIPAC] -- and what the group is hearing from its friends on the Hill, and in the Administration -- is that the President very much wants Hagel at Defense, and would be very upset if a group whose agenda he has more-or-less supported (a strong no to containment of Iran, maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge, siding with Israel at the United nations) tries to deny him the defense secretary he wants, and who is a personal friend.

if the cw that obama trusts next to nobody in his life is true, that would explain quite a lot of it.

what hagel and brennan as picks 'say' to the rest of the world is important too

That's the weirdest part to me. I don't think Obama needs to rush out and bomb, bomb Iran but he should definitely be signaling aggression and willingness to intervene militarily. Hagel undermines that to some extent.

yeah but doesn't brennan indicate that while we may not start any new wars, we sure will kill anyone anywhere if we want to i.e what everyone already knows?

he should definitely be signaling aggression and willingness to intervene militarily.

why do this if nobody believes it.

The way you get ppl to believe it is by signaling it.

yeah idk man

it's a meme now: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/120807/the-new-one-state-solution

Essam el-Erian, a top advisor to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, has resigned from his position, Egyptian media reported Sunday. "Although the report said that el-Arian had willingly made the decision because he was “occupied with other work,” analysts said that there was no doubt that he was pressure to quit – after inviting back to Egypt the descendants of Jews who were thrown out of the country, or who fled due to anti-Semitic violence."

Some 5,000 Hezbollah fighters crossed from Lebanon into Syria last month to fight on the side of Bashar al-Assad’s forces the Al Watan newspaper reported on Monday. According to the paper, nearly 300 of those fighters have been killed in the last several days.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/05/david-frum-where-is-the-palestinian-state-in-embryo/

From that Tablemag article:

...concluded that the Jews, as the indigenous people of the biblical land of Israel, have clear historical rights there...

This argument has always amused me since it kinda fails to take the Canaanites into account

The way you get ppl to believe it is by signaling it.

Empty threats are especially pernicious

That's silly. It's not self-evidently empty.

I don't think Obama needs to really signal any more than he already has. He has clearly stated that he does not believe in Iranian nuclear containment and will intervene before Iran gets nuclear weapons. He has also facilitated a huge military buildup in the gulf and the strait of hormuz. So I don't see it as an empty threat - but I think picking Hagel might suggest that it's an empty threat.

The biblical story of the biblical exodus & conquest of the Canaanites is pretty suspect, as well. The archaeological evidence, as I understand it, is that with the invasion of the Sea Peoples, coastal Caananites were displaced to agriculturally poor central highlands, where there were a few hundred hilltop villages of Habiru, herders & raiders that had practiced a kosher diet excluding pork for centuries. Myths were adapted from Canaanite/Ugarit predecessors, a merged pantheon of El, Yahweh, Asherah, and Ba'al emerged, which was whittled down during temple/dynastic disputes from 1100-600 BCE, and we're left with a fragmentary record of the polemic.

Genetic markers generally show that while there is evidence of Y-chromosome/patrilineal continuity of Ashkenazim, there's no evidence of a geneic purity/isolation in matrilineal mitochondrial DNA or the rest of the genome - ie, through the centuries Jewish men married and converted enough shiksas that there's no "genetically" Jewish people aside from the patrilineal Y chromosome. And the population of Jewish Y-chromosomes are indistinguishable from those of Palestinian Arabs. So, in a sense, the population of biblical Israel has remained in Palestine for thousands of years, its only in the last century they've been displaced off their land by miscegenated populations that are fractionally similar to the original biblical population.

lol sea peoples are everywhere these days

there are no valid historical claims to land imo

^^^

It's odd that a ppl w/matrilineal self-identity has more genetic coherence on the patrilineal side...

Also, wasn't Canaan a pretty broad area comprised of quite a few ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, inlcuding the Israelites, the Moabites, etc...? Canaan and Phonecia were interchangeable for some ancients, iIrc,

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/world/middleeast/chemical-weapons-showdown-with-syria-led-to-rare-accord.html

WASHINGTON — In the last days of November, Israel’s top military commanders called the Pentagon to discuss troubling intelligence that was showing up on satellite imagery: Syrian troops appeared to be mixing chemicals at two storage sites, probably the deadly nerve gas sarin, and filling dozens of 500-pounds bombs that could be loaded on airplanes... What followed next, officials said, was a remarkable show of international cooperation over a civil war in which the United States, Arab states, Russia and China have almost never agreed on a common course of action.

Canaan is the geographical area, Canaanites usually referring to the pre-Israelite city-states subject to Egypt. Phoenicians were the richer coastal city states, invaded in the 13th century BCE by Sea Peoples but retaining Canaanite language and culture. "Canaan" is analogous to the geographical extent of England, with its several regional kingdoms, and "Phoenecia" with England's eastern extent controlled by 9th century Danish/Viking invaders, and known by the the 11th century as the Danelaw.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/israel-vows-to-use-veto-power-if-chuck-hagel-confi,30824/

Syrian rebels consider joining forces with regime troops to fight al-Qa’ida

One senior Western intelligence official stressed that the Syrian regime’s forces must be preserved for the battles ahead against the Islamists and the need to avoid the mistakes made in Iraq and Libya, where the army and police were disbanded with the fall of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, allowing terrorist groups to rise in a security vacuum.

The official held that talks between the regime and rebels set to take place in Geneva in January could be the beginning of the formation of an anti-al-Qa’ida front in Syria, along with a negotiated settlement to end the conflict which has claimed more than 117,000 lives so far and made millions refugees inside and outside the country.

http://poy.time.com/2013/12/06/how-egypts-gen-al-sisi-won-times-person-of-the-year-poll/

remember when the US was just about to start arming the rebels w/ weapons?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/world/middleeast/us-suspends-nonlethal-aid-to-syrian-rebels-in-north.html

very interesting: http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/names-of-the-revolution/

Too many options for a poll, I suppose...

Washington Post's neo-con op-ed page editor Fred Hyatt today asserts that the Syrian humanitarian food crisis is just about the same as the Darfur one from awhile back, and that there's no reason why the Obama administration can't solve it. Not even gonna link to that overly simplistic take from a guy who's itching to get the US active in Syria and Iran

how the kurds are beating al-q in syrian northeast:
http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/syrias-kurds-beating-al-qaeda-balint-szlanko/

Western nations have indicated to the Syrian opposition that peace next month talks may not lead to the removal of President Bashar al-Assad and that his Alawite minority will remain key in any transitional administration, opposition sources said.

The message, delivered to senior members of the Syrian National Coalition at a meeting of the anti-Assad Friends of Syria alliance in London last week, was prompted by rise of al-Qaeda and other militant groups, and their takeover of a border crossing and arms depots near Turkey belonging to the moderate Free Syrian Army, the sources told Reuters.

“Our Western friends made it clear in London that Assad cannot be allowed to go now because they think chaos and an Islamist militant takeover would ensue,” said one senior member of the Coalition who is close to officials from Saudi Arabia.

Noting the possibility of Assad holding a presidential election when his term formally ends next year, the Coalition member added: “Some do not even seem to mind if he runs again next year, forgetting he gassed his own people.”

The shift in Western priorities, particularly the United States and Britain, from removing Assad towards combating Islamist militants is causing divisions within international powers backing the nearly three-year-old revolt, according to diplomats and senior members of the coalition.

surely the point of representative democracy is you can gas your own people but they'll remember it next election?

i'm sure the next elections will be free + fair!

we can't allow free and fair elections to endanger democracy, tho

boom

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/18/israel_s_demographic_time_bomb_is_a_dud_israel_arab_two_state_solution

There are countless reasons for Israelis and Palestinians to seek peace, but a false demographic panic should not be one of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/world/europe/turkey-jailing-the-most-journalists.html

For the second consecutive year, Turkey is imprisoning more journalists than any other country, according to a report from the Committee to Protect Journalists released Wednesday. Turkey was followed by Iran and China; the three countries account for more than half of the 211 journalists jailed worldwide as of Dec. 1. The number of journalists killed and imprisoned fell in 2013, but the year was the second worst for the number of imprisoned since record keeping began in 1990; the worst was last year, when 232 were held. The report said 52 journalists were killed so far this year. The largest number, 21, were killed in Syria’s civil war. The second largest number of fatalities was in Egypt, with six dead.

good piece: http://pando.com/2013/12/19/the-war-nerd-saudis-syria-and-blowback/

i doubt we'll see a large aliyah movement from the US in the near future, but a little over a half million french jews - maybe:
http://www.jta.org/2013/12/15/news-opinion/world/from-anti-semitism-to-recession-french-jews-find-wealth-of-reasons-to-leave-for-israel

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egypts-military-backed-government-declares-muslim-brotherhood-a-terrorist-organization/2013/12/25/7cf075ca-6da0-11e3-aecc-85cb037b7236_story.html

http://ottomansandzionists.com/2013/12/26/this-is-what-a-panicked-erdogan-looks-like/

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304361604579288430866906254

Saudi Arabia pledged $3 billion to bolster Lebanon's armed forces, in a challenge to the Iranian-allied Hezbollah militia's decadeslong status as Lebanon's main power broker and security force.

Lebanese President Michel Sleiman revealed the Saudi gift on Lebanese national television Sunday, calling it the largest aid package ever to the country's defense bodies. The Saudi pledge compares with Lebanon's 2012 defense budget, which the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute put at $1.7 billion.

Lebanon would use the Saudi grant to buy "newer and more modern weapons," from France, said Mr. Sleiman, an independent who has become increasingly critical of Hezbollah. It followed what he called "decades of unsuccessful efforts" to build a credible Lebanese national defense force.

As a direct challenge to Hezbollah, the Saudi gift—and the Lebanese president's acceptance—has potential to change the balance of power in Lebanon and the region. It also threatens to raise sectarian and political tensions further in a region already made volatile by the three-year, heavily sectarian civil war next door in Syria.

new middle east thread here:
Rolling MENA 2014

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-txz4VCoikbU/UKpkcjK2PHI/AAAAAAAAGKw/esADD4Qj-QU/s320/Tayyip+Erdogan.jpg

NAME recep tayyip erdogan
TITLE turkish pm
INTERESTS supressing restive minorities, european integration, containing syriafalse flag sarin attacks in syria, sinister sub rosa manipulations
SPECIAL POWERS n/a
ZIONIST RATING b-

― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Tuesday, 1 January 2013 18:51 (1 year ago)

EDIT

SPECIAL POWERS dispensing advice to suicidal people prevented from jumping off the bosphorus bridge by his bodyguards

http://i.imgur.com/Kv4MHk4.jpg

Turkish-president-Erdogan-stops-motorcade-talk-man-trying-jump-Bosphorus-Bridge.html

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s latest comments in favour of greater executive powers are unlikely to help him bring those critics round. On Friday he was quoted by Turkish media as citing a striking example of an effective presidential system – Germany under Adolf Hitler.

Asked on his return from a visit to Saudi Arabia whether an executive presidential system was possible while maintaining the unitary structure of the state, he said: “There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Hitler’s Germany.

“There are later examples in various other countries,” he told reporters, according to a recording broadcast by the Dogan news agency and reported by Reuters.

A Turkish official sought to clarify Erdoğan’s remark. “There are good and poor examples of presidential systems and the important thing is to put checks and balances in place,” he said.

Rated by Recep

lol even if he was "putting aside the invasions and the genocide" he's still offering up an autocratic usurpation of the democratic process as an example of an effective presidential system. well i guess effective might still be in play but only a presidential system in that it very briefly flirted w/ democratic legitimacy b4 jettisoning the entire thing.

Asked on his return from a visit to Hitler whether an autocratic system was possible while maintaining the unitary structure of the state, he said: “There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Saudi Arabia, though you need to make sure the autocrat isn't old, senile, bellicose and causing huge budget deficits."