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Reporting on the Middle East, Science, and Education for October 5, 2008 - ו' תשרי תשס"ט
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What can save Israel and Iran from destroying each other? Only the seeds of peace lying dormant in both countries. These seeds lie in the Iranian and Israeli people. They need to be cultivated with civil society exchanges – between students and intellectuals, scientists, doctors, engineers, university professors, and even clerics – where both sides share their experiences in fighting common challenges.
WASHINGTON – On its 60th anniversary, Israel is still concerned about survival. Even with nuclear weapons and the strongest military in the Middle East, the Jewish state remains anxious. Iranian leaders are similarly concerned about the future of their administrations, even as the country approaches the 30th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution.Israel fears any potential threat, whether it comes from Hamas, Hezbollah, or political Islamic groups. Israel also has begun to fear its shifting demographics, where birth rates are significantly higher among Palestinians than Jews. But above all, Israel perceives a threat from Iran
In a similar vein, Iran is threatened by an outside force that would roll back its revolution. The religious conservatives in Iran are resistant to perceived reformists, which at various times have been supported by the United States, and stands alone as one of the only Shia majority countries in the region.
Yet the conservatives of Iran, heirs to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution, also face the possibility of seeing their regime replaced by the followers of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami.
Iran and Israel share a sense of isolation: Israel is comprised of an ethnic and religious minority (Jewish) in a largely Arab and Muslim Middle East. Likewise, Iran’s government is an ethno-religious minority (Shi’a Persians) surrounded by Sunni countries. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Islam, Judaism, Middle East, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts on October 5, 2008 - ו' תשרי תשס"ט at 10:39 am
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Amnesty’s Obsession with Israel
Amnesty persistently condemns Israel while ignoring suffering elsewhere
Even in a month when war raged in Georgia, Amnesty International continued to focus on the Gaza Strip, persistently blaming Israel for ongoing Palestinian hardship.
Amnesty, in fact, issued harsher condemnations of Israel than of any party to the Georgian conflict. With a ceasefire holding between Israel and Hamas, resulting in a period of calm, Amnesty stubbornly continued to spew hollow publications repeating outdated allegations.
Moreover, Amnesty took pride in its relentless criticism of Israel, while the rest of the world rightly concerned itself with the unfolding crisis in Georgia. In a press release, the organization boasted: “With the ceasefire holding, the suffering in Gaza has fallen off the international news agenda. However, Amnesty International members continue to campaign.” This “explanation” merely highlights Amnesty’s obsession with Israel, regardless of the reality on the ground. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on October 3, 2008 - ד' תשרי תשס"ט at 6:46 am
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By William R. Thomson, 321Gold, Oct 1, 2008
The United States prides itself on being the home of free market capitalism, governed by the rule of law. However, the rapidly developing capital market crisis demonstrates once again that, faced with a systemic crisis, rules and ideology take second place to pragmatism. A similar incident happened on 15 August 1971 when Nixon arbitrarily ditched the solemn US international pledge to honour the Bretton Woods Agreements making the dollar convertible into gold at US$35 an ounce. Cynics might say that the US lives by the Gold Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.
Hence, the unprecedented developments in which the free market took second place to untrammelled state socialism as the national debt was effectively doubled in the blink of an eye as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with their $5 trillion indebtedness were nationalised, to be followed in rapid succession by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the nationalisation of the world’s largest insurance company AIG at a cost of $85 billion. Merrill Lynch was forced into a shotgun marriage and the last two major investment banks were forced to convert to commercial banks to stay in business and get the support of the Federal Reserve Board. Then Washington Mutual, the fourth largest bank was closed down and Wachovia, that two weeks earlier was touted as the saviour of Merrill Lynch, was folded into Citicorp. Finally, in an effort to solve a systemic crisis, there is the unprecedented proposal to use $700 billion of taxpayer funds to buy the toxic debt of a banking system bordering on bankruptcy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Business and Commerce, Opinion, Recent Posts on October 2, 2008 - ג' תשרי תשס"ט at 7:03 am
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By Ali Sina, Faithfreedom.org, September 22, 2008
A cult of personality is excessive adulation, admiration and exaltation of a charismatic leader, often with unproven merits or achievements. It is similar to hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders.
I must confess I was not impressed by Sen. Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident – a wholesome presidential package. It is so instinctive for most people to want to see blacks succeed. It is as if all humanity is carrying a collective guilt for what the ancestors of blacks endured. However, despite my initial interest in him, I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words.
It is surreal to see the level of hysteria in his admirers. This phenomenon is unprecedented in American politics. Women scream and swoon during his speeches. They yell and shout to Obama, “I love you.” Never did George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. Martin Luther King Jr. or Ronald Reagan arouse so much raw emotion. Despite their achievements, none of them was raised to the rank of Messiah. The Illinois senator has no history of service to the country. He has done nothing outstanding except giving promises of change and hyping his audience with hope. It’s only his words, not his achievements that is causing this much uproar.
When cheering for someone turns into adulation, something is wrong. Excessive adulation is indicative of a personality cult. The cult of personality is often created when the general population is discontent. A charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and project himself as an agent of change and a revolutionary leader. Often, people, tired of the status quo, do not have the patience to examine the nature of the proposed change. All they want is change. During 1979, when the Iranians were tired of the dictatorial regime of the late Shah, they embraced Khomeini, not because they wanted Islam, but because he promised them change. The word in the street was, “anything is better than the Shah.” They found their error when it was too late. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Mental Health, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on September 28, 2008 - כ"ח אלול תשס"ח at 5:58 am
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See Also: Lesson From a Wagon Driver
By Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, September 22, 2008
The timeline for success would be measured in years, not months. The goal would not be a document that Livni and Abbas could sign but the construction of a healthy and vibrant Palestinian civil society — that is, independent media, courts, political parties and nongovernmental organizations that could stand behind a settlement with Israel.
Amid the din of the financial crisis and the presidential campaign, the Bush administration’s attempt to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal has quietly expired. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s 16 trips to the region over the past 21 months; last year’s Annapolis peace conference; months of meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams — all have sunk under the weight of the corruption charges against departing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the competition of crises from Georgia to Pakistan.
Nor is the peace process likely to revive anytime soon. The winner of last week’s party primary election to replace Olmert, Tzipi Livni, will probably be mired in efforts to form a new government for weeks or even months. To succeed she probably will have to make promises to coalition partners that would make a deal impossible. If she fails, Israel will have an election in which the favorite, for now, is hard-liner Binyamin Netanyahu.
Those are just Israel’s hurdles. The Palestinians are still split between Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. And if the presidential campaign is any indication, promoting a Middle East peace won’t crack the top 10 on the next administration’s list of priorities. How could it? With Wall Street’s meltdown, the failing Afghan war, the growing U.S. military engagement in Pakistan and Russia’s neo-imperialist eruption — not to mention the nuclear threats of Iran and North Korea — the perpetual headache of the West Bank and Gaza, where violence is at a relative low point, can barely be felt in Washington.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on September 22, 2008 - כ"ב אלול תשס"ח at 9:30 am
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by Bret Stephens, Commentary Magazine, September 2008
Effective policy depends above all on a correct understanding of the people, places, and things toward which it is being applied. To speak of an Islamic civilization is to speak in error. Rather, there is a Muslim world. It is fractured, and fractious.
“Islam has bloody borders.” So wrote Samuel Huntington in “The Clash of Civilizations?,” his 1993 Foreign Affairs article later expanded (minus the question mark) into a best-selling book. Huntington argued that, eclipsing past eras of national and ideological conflict, “the battle lines of the future” would be drawn along the “fault lines between civilizations.” Here, according to Huntington, was where current and coming generations would define the all-important “us” versus “them.”
At the time of its writing, “The Clash of Civilizations?” had, beyond the virtues of pithiness and historical sweep, something to recommend it on purely empirical grounds. It seemed especially plausible as applied to the “crescent-shaped Islamic bloc” from the Maghreb to the East Indies.
In the Balkans, for example, Orthodox Serbs were at the throats of Bosnian and later Kosovar Muslims. In Africa, Muslims were either skirmishing or at war with Christians in Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia. In the Caucasus, there was all-out war between Orthodox Russia and Muslim Chechnya, all-out war between Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan, and violent skirmishes between Orthodox Ossetia and Muslim Ingushetia.
In the Middle East, some 500,000 U.S. troops had intervened to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Israel had just endured several years of the first Palestinian intifada, soon to be followed by a fraudulent peace process leading, in turn, to a second and far bloodier intifada. Further to the east, Pakistan and India were at perpetual daggers drawn over Kashmir. There were tensions—sometimes violent—between the Hindu majority and the large Muslim minority in India, just as there were between the Christian minority and the Muslim majority in Indonesia.
For Huntington, all this was of a piece with a pattern dating at least as far back as the battle of Poitiers in 732, when Charles Martel turned back the advancing Umayyads and saved Europe for Christianity. Nor was the pattern likely to end any time soon. “The centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline,” he wrote. To the contrary: “It could become more virulent.”
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on September 20, 2008 - כ' אלול תשס"ח at 8:57 pm
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By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, Asharq Alawsat, September 16, 2008
“It is not in Israel’s interest that a Palestinian state be established, nor is it in its interest that a million Palestinian refugees return to the West Bank and Gaza, as this would have an impact on the demographic balance of power across its borders.”
Talking to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz last week, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas admitted that the refugees represent the main obstacle preventing a peace agreement with Israel. He said that matters are not yet clear; every issue has complicated details for those who would return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip and those whom Israel would agree to return to their land which is today’s Israel. There are also the refugees who would remain in the Arab countries where they live at present and would become Egyptians, Yemenis, Saudis, Tunisians or Emirates citizens, and so forth, and whether Israel would agree to granting them dual nationality. In addition there is the issue of compensation. Would Israel pay compensation to all Palestinians in the diaspora or only those living in camps?
In brief, we are talking about a mountain of problems and a nation of five million refugees - a number far too big for the Palestinian territories [of 1967] to absorb and too difficult for any negotiator in the world to ignore, politically, economically, administratively, and from a humanitarian point of view. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on September 18, 2008 - י"ח אלול תשס"ח at 9:20 pm
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By Charles C. Haynes, Gazette Extra, Sept. 13, 2008
For Americans debating how to balance freedom and security in a post-9/11 world, Sderot–indeed all of Israel–offers a case study in how to combat terrorism while simultaneously maintaining a commitment to freedom of expression in Israeli society.
For a glimpse of life under constant threat of terrorist attack, travel to Sderot–the now-famous Israeli town that has endured thousands of rocket attacks from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip a few miles away.
During my brief visit there last month, Sderot was enjoying a rare period of relative calm thanks to a truce declared in late June. Nevertheless, the inhabitants stay on edge, wondering where the next indiscriminate projectile will land and whom it will kill or maim. Despite the ceasefire, a rocket exploded in the town a few days before my arrival.
What is remarkable, however, is the aura of normalcy in Sderot–a hard-fought mayoral contest, schools in session, shops open for business. Still, evidence of vigilance abounds. Bomb shelters dot the landscape at every bus stop and in every park. Kindergarten children don’t go outside for recess because the 15-second warning of incoming rockets wouldn’t give teachers enough time to get them back inside the fortified buildings.
When I asked Achlama Peretz, a college administrator and candidate for major, how the citizens of Sderot coped with the daily stress, she replied: “We have no choice but to keep living our lives as best we can. We must do so because Sderot has become a symbol of resilience and freedom for all Israelis.”
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on September 15, 2008 - ט"ו אלול תשס"ח at 8:27 am
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See Also: Lessons From a Wagon Driver
Current efforts to achieve a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are based on a number of deeply flawed assumptions. These have in turn produced an erroneous paradigm and a manifestly failed strategy for seeking peace and security which is preventing us from moving forward.
Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon,Former Chief of Staff, Israel Defense Forces
Reprinted from JCPA, September 2, 2008
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on September 2, 2008 - ב' אלול תשס"ח at 9:09 am
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by Jane Sasseen, Business Week, August 30, 2008
At his four-day fete in Denver, Democratic Presidential contender Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) sought to reframe the Presidential race (BusinessWeek.com, 8/29/08) around the lunch-bucket economic issues he thinks give him the strongest appeal to squeezed middle-class voters. Now, as the spotlight turns to the Republican convention in St. Paul-Minneapolis, rival Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) takes his turn at trying to define the race around the issues on which he hopes he has a winning hand.
Much of McCain’s campaign, of course, is based on his record on national security issues. But with the economy in the tank, he knows he has to make the sale on the economic front, as well. So at the top of the Arizona Senator’s Twin Cities To-Do List will be heightened efforts to convince working-class and independent voters that the Republican alternative he’s offering—low taxes, less government, and aggressive energy drilling—will do more to improve the economy and their lives than the spate of initiatives offered up by his rival.
With his surprise pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain may just have made that task a good deal easier. Soaring oil prices have caused energy to emerge as a central issue in the race.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Opinion, Recent Posts on August 30, 2008 - כ"ט אב תשס"ח at 9:55 pm
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