the human province

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The Times has a article on a Jewish group that's doing its best to spotlight the plight of Jews forced from Arab countries after the war in 1948. Ordinarily, I'd applaud such an act, because it's always a good idea to shed light on lesser known historical events.

In this case, however, the entire enterprise seems possibly less interested in history than in using history as a rhetorical bludgeon to undermine the Palestinian refugees' internationally recognized right of return:

Another objective is to push for early passage of resolutions introduced in the United States Senate and House that say that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees in any official document must be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees.

The American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis is planned to take place before the end of the year to address core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like borders, the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.

"We want to have this meeting now, in advance of the Annapolis conference, to ensure that this issue is front and center in the international awareness as it should be," Mr. Urman said.

I've always maintained that both morally and politically speaking, the choice of countries like Libya, Iraq and Egypt to push out their Jewish citizens was a huge mistake. I also believe that Lebanon, for example, where the Jewish population actually increased after 1948 but all but disappeared during the civil war, should actively pursue the return of its Jewish citizens, most of whom seem to be in Paris and Montreal. This could be done with a law of return and an active rebuilding of the Jewish quarter, including the Synagogue downtown and the Jewish cemetery.

Today's article in the Times gives little nuance to the question and neglects to mention the principle difference between Palestinian refugees and Oriental Jews forced from Arab countries: many of the former remain stateless and continue to live in refugee camps, whereas the latter were successfully resettled and given citizenship in Israel or North America.

I came across another article in the Times, this time from 2003, that gives a much more nuanced discussion of the issue:

"This is not a campaign against Palestinian refugees," said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews From Arab Countries, a coalition of 27 groups that includes the powerful Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. "On the contrary, we believe the legitimate rights of the Palestinian refugees must be addressed in any peace process." He added, "We've got to make sure Palestinian refugees receive rights and redress, and Jewish refugees receive rights and redress."

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University, disagrees. "This is a bait-and-switch tactic that does not serve either Palestinians or Oriental Jews or a just peace," he said, using the umbrella term for Jews from Arab countries. "Leaving both of these groups aggrieved guarantees that whatever quote, unquote settlement results would be unstable. There are just claims here. They should be addressed by the Arab states. But it shouldn't be a bait-and-switch that will make Oriental Jews pay the price for Israel's confiscation of a very large amount of Palestinian property."

[...]To Professor Khalidi, the very notion of making Palestinians citizens of Arab countries ignores significant distinctions between the Jewish and the Palestinian refugee experiences. "The idea of comparing them to Palestinians isn't valid," he said of Jewish refugees. "In a Zionist narrative, they should've wanted to go to Israel in the first place. The Palestinians didn't want to leave and weren't going back to their homeland. But some people have tried to tell Arabs what their nationalism should be and have tried to tutor the Palestinians in the proper understanding of their own national identity."

Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland at College Park, said it was legitimate to consider the claims of both sets of refugees simultaneously in the peace process. But for Israel, he warned, the strategy might lead to unintended consequences.

"Putting the issue of Jews in the Arab world on the table helps in the compensation arena, but not the resettlement arena," he said. "In that arena, exposing the issues of Jewish refugees could be a kind of drawback. It can give the Arab countries a political edge, a rhetorical edge over Israel. They can say, instead of compensation, you're welcome to come back. Jews will always be a minority in those countries. And Jewish refugees won't want to come back to them. So it can be a negative by highlighting the fact that Israel will not accept Palestinian refugees."

Politically speaking, of course, Telhami is correct. The only way that Arab regimes are likely to invite their Jewish citizens back is as a political maneuver to morally outflank Israel on the refugee question.

This is unfortunate, because everyone I talk to in Lebanon who remembers a time when the Jewish population lived openly in Beirut, remembers the time and their connections to their Jewish neighbors very fondly.

This is probably so obvious that it doesn't need to be said, but then again, if it didn't need to be said the media wouldn't keep committing the petty sin of calling regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt "moderate." What about Riyadh makes it more moderate than Teheran? It's just as religious, human rights are just as bad (if not worse) and it's much less democratic. So why does the western media insist on calling regimes like that moderate?

What they seem to mean is allied regimes, not moderate regimes. There's nothing moderate about Saudi Arabia, so let's stop pretending there is and call a spade a spade. Riyadh is an American ally -- and probably not a very good one at that. As any number of the unsavory regimes the US is friendly with should tell us, moderation and good relations are not at all the same thing.

The US is finally realizing that Saudi Arabia is not helping things in Iraq, while Iraqi officials have openly accused Saudi Arabia of arming Sunni insurgents, the same, mind you, who have been attacking American forces in Iraq. So why, then, is it that the US is "set to offer huge arms deal" to the kingdom and its neighbors? 

Saudi Arabia is the ninth biggest spender on arms. Why do the Saudis need so many weapons? According to Ha'aretz, it could be part of a larger cold war in the Middle East, which also explains Russian arms deals to Iran and Syria, arms deals between Iran and Syria, and the 25% increase in American military aid to Israel agreed upon by Bush and Olmert, meaning an increase to $3 billion a year.

While this very well might be true, we can't forget that arms sales help out American armament companies with government contracts while giving Middle Eastern states the tools needed to oppress their peoples and arm their various proxies in the region. (I'm including Israel in this, although their weapons are used to oppress Palestinians in the occupied territories and not Israeli citizens.) Obviously, the same pattern of armament and oppression that we see in American allies holds true for Russian weapons sent to Damascus and Teheran.

The Daily Star Egypt reports on the commotion surrounding the hymen fatwa:

Reconstructive hymen surgery for women who lost their virginity before marriage is halal (religiously permissible), said to Aly Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt.

...Shiekh Khaled El Gindy, an Al-Azhar scholar and member of the Higher Council of Islamic Studies told The Daily Star Egypt that he agrees with the new fatwa.

"Islam never differentiates between men and women, so it is not rational for us to think that God has placed a sign to indicate the virginity of women without having a similar sign to indicate the virginity of men," El Gindy said.

"Any man who is concerned about his prospective wife's hymen should first provide a proof that he himself is virgin," he added.

El Gindy voiced his full support for Gomaa.

...In Upper Egypt honor crimes are still committed. If a woman loses her virginity out of wedlock, she is considered a big shame on everyone and deserves to die.

In response to such ideas, El Gindy told The Daily Star Egypt that, "Islam does not care for the feelings of ignorant people, just as the law does not protect the idiots."

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The Times has a article on a Jewish group that's doing its best to spotlight the plight of Jews forced from Arab countries after the war in 1948. Ordinarily, I'd applaud such an act, because it's always a good idea to shed light on lesser known historical events.

In this case, however, the entire enterprise seems possibly less interested in history than in using history as a rhetorical bludgeon to undermine the Palestinian refugees' internationally recognized right of return:

Another objective is to push for early passage of resolutions introduced in the United States Senate and House that say that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees in any official document must be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees.

The American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis is planned to take place before the end of the year to address core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like borders, the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.

"We want to have this meeting now, in advance of the Annapolis conference, to ensure that this issue is front and center in the international awareness as it should be," Mr. Urman said.

I've always maintained that both morally and politically speaking, the choice of countries like Libya, Iraq and Egypt to push out their Jewish citizens was a huge mistake. I also believe that Lebanon, for example, where the Jewish population actually increased after 1948 but all but disappeared during the civil war, should actively pursue the return of its Jewish citizens, most of whom seem to be in Paris and Montreal. This could be done with a law of return and an active rebuilding of the Jewish quarter, including the Synagogue downtown and the Jewish cemetery.

Today's article in the Times gives little nuance to the question and neglects to mention the principle difference between Palestinian refugees and Oriental Jews forced from Arab countries: many of the former remain stateless and continue to live in refugee camps, whereas the latter were successfully resettled and given citizenship in Israel or North America.

I came across another article in the Times, this time from 2003, that gives a much more nuanced discussion of the issue:

"This is not a campaign against Palestinian refugees," said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews From Arab Countries, a coalition of 27 groups that includes the powerful Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. "On the contrary, we believe the legitimate rights of the Palestinian refugees must be addressed in any peace process." He added, "We've got to make sure Palestinian refugees receive rights and redress, and Jewish refugees receive rights and redress."

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University, disagrees. "This is a bait-and-switch tactic that does not serve either Palestinians or Oriental Jews or a just peace," he said, using the umbrella term for Jews from Arab countries. "Leaving both of these groups aggrieved guarantees that whatever quote, unquote settlement results would be unstable. There are just claims here. They should be addressed by the Arab states. But it shouldn't be a bait-and-switch that will make Oriental Jews pay the price for Israel's confiscation of a very large amount of Palestinian property."

[...]To Professor Khalidi, the very notion of making Palestinians citizens of Arab countries ignores significant distinctions between the Jewish and the Palestinian refugee experiences. "The idea of comparing them to Palestinians isn't valid," he said of Jewish refugees. "In a Zionist narrative, they should've wanted to go to Israel in the first place. The Palestinians didn't want to leave and weren't going back to their homeland. But some people have tried to tell Arabs what their nationalism should be and have tried to tutor the Palestinians in the proper understanding of their own national identity."

Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland at College Park, said it was legitimate to consider the claims of both sets of refugees simultaneously in the peace process. But for Israel, he warned, the strategy might lead to unintended consequences.

"Putting the issue of Jews in the Arab world on the table helps in the compensation arena, but not the resettlement arena," he said. "In that arena, exposing the issues of Jewish refugees could be a kind of drawback. It can give the Arab countries a political edge, a rhetorical edge over Israel. They can say, instead of compensation, you're welcome to come back. Jews will always be a minority in those countries. And Jewish refugees won't want to come back to them. So it can be a negative by highlighting the fact that Israel will not accept Palestinian refugees."

Politically speaking, of course, Telhami is correct. The only way that Arab regimes are likely to invite their Jewish citizens back is as a political maneuver to morally outflank Israel on the refugee question.

This is unfortunate, because everyone I talk to in Lebanon who remembers a time when the Jewish population lived openly in Beirut, remembers the time and their connections to their Jewish neighbors very fondly.

This is probably so obvious that it doesn't need to be said, but then again, if it didn't need to be said the media wouldn't keep committing the petty sin of calling regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt "moderate." What about Riyadh makes it more moderate than Teheran? It's just as religious, human rights are just as bad (if not worse) and it's much less democratic. So why does the western media insist on calling regimes like that moderate?

What they seem to mean is allied regimes, not moderate regimes. There's nothing moderate about Saudi Arabia, so let's stop pretending there is and call a spade a spade. Riyadh is an American ally -- and probably not a very good one at that. As any number of the unsavory regimes the US is friendly with should tell us, moderation and good relations are not at all the same thing.

The US is finally realizing that Saudi Arabia is not helping things in Iraq, while Iraqi officials have openly accused Saudi Arabia of arming Sunni insurgents, the same, mind you, who have been attacking American forces in Iraq. So why, then, is it that the US is "set to offer huge arms deal" to the kingdom and its neighbors? 

Saudi Arabia is the ninth biggest spender on arms. Why do the Saudis need so many weapons? According to Ha'aretz, it could be part of a larger cold war in the Middle East, which also explains Russian arms deals to Iran and Syria, arms deals between Iran and Syria, and the 25% increase in American military aid to Israel agreed upon by Bush and Olmert, meaning an increase to $3 billion a year.

While this very well might be true, we can't forget that arms sales help out American armament companies with government contracts while giving Middle Eastern states the tools needed to oppress their peoples and arm their various proxies in the region. (I'm including Israel in this, although their weapons are used to oppress Palestinians in the occupied territories and not Israeli citizens.) Obviously, the same pattern of armament and oppression that we see in American allies holds true for Russian weapons sent to Damascus and Teheran.

The Daily Star Egypt reports on the commotion surrounding the hymen fatwa:

Reconstructive hymen surgery for women who lost their virginity before marriage is halal (religiously permissible), said to Aly Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt.

...Shiekh Khaled El Gindy, an Al-Azhar scholar and member of the Higher Council of Islamic Studies told The Daily Star Egypt that he agrees with the new fatwa.

"Islam never differentiates between men and women, so it is not rational for us to think that God has placed a sign to indicate the virginity of women without having a similar sign to indicate the virginity of men," El Gindy said.

"Any man who is concerned about his prospective wife's hymen should first provide a proof that he himself is virgin," he added.

El Gindy voiced his full support for Gomaa.

...In Upper Egypt honor crimes are still committed. If a woman loses her virginity out of wedlock, she is considered a big shame on everyone and deserves to die.

In response to such ideas, El Gindy told The Daily Star Egypt that, "Islam does not care for the feelings of ignorant people, just as the law does not protect the idiots."

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The Times has a article on a Jewish group that's doing its best to spotlight the plight of Jews forced from Arab countries after the war in 1948. Ordinarily, I'd applaud such an act, because it's always a good idea to shed light on lesser known historical events.

In this case, however, the entire enterprise seems possibly less interested in history than in using history as a rhetorical bludgeon to undermine the Palestinian refugees' internationally recognized right of return:

Another objective is to push for early passage of resolutions introduced in the United States Senate and House that say that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees in any official document must be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees.

The American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis is planned to take place before the end of the year to address core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like borders, the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.

"We want to have this meeting now, in advance of the Annapolis conference, to ensure that this issue is front and center in the international awareness as it should be," Mr. Urman said.

I've always maintained that both morally and politically speaking, the choice of countries like Libya, Iraq and Egypt to push out their Jewish citizens was a huge mistake. I also believe that Lebanon, for example, where the Jewish population actually increased after 1948 but all but disappeared during the civil war, should actively pursue the return of its Jewish citizens, most of whom seem to be in Paris and Montreal. This could be done with a law of return and an active rebuilding of the Jewish quarter, including the Synagogue downtown and the Jewish cemetery.

Today's article in the Times gives little nuance to the question and neglects to mention the principle difference between Palestinian refugees and Oriental Jews forced from Arab countries: many of the former remain stateless and continue to live in refugee camps, whereas the latter were successfully resettled and given citizenship in Israel or North America.

I came across another article in the Times, this time from 2003, that gives a much more nuanced discussion of the issue:

"This is not a campaign against Palestinian refugees," said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews From Arab Countries, a coalition of 27 groups that includes the powerful Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. "On the contrary, we believe the legitimate rights of the Palestinian refugees must be addressed in any peace process." He added, "We've got to make sure Palestinian refugees receive rights and redress, and Jewish refugees receive rights and redress."

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University, disagrees. "This is a bait-and-switch tactic that does not serve either Palestinians or Oriental Jews or a just peace," he said, using the umbrella term for Jews from Arab countries. "Leaving both of these groups aggrieved guarantees that whatever quote, unquote settlement results would be unstable. There are just claims here. They should be addressed by the Arab states. But it shouldn't be a bait-and-switch that will make Oriental Jews pay the price for Israel's confiscation of a very large amount of Palestinian property."

[...]To Professor Khalidi, the very notion of making Palestinians citizens of Arab countries ignores significant distinctions between the Jewish and the Palestinian refugee experiences. "The idea of comparing them to Palestinians isn't valid," he said of Jewish refugees. "In a Zionist narrative, they should've wanted to go to Israel in the first place. The Palestinians didn't want to leave and weren't going back to their homeland. But some people have tried to tell Arabs what their nationalism should be and have tried to tutor the Palestinians in the proper understanding of their own national identity."

Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland at College Park, said it was legitimate to consider the claims of both sets of refugees simultaneously in the peace process. But for Israel, he warned, the strategy might lead to unintended consequences.

"Putting the issue of Jews in the Arab world on the table helps in the compensation arena, but not the resettlement arena," he said. "In that arena, exposing the issues of Jewish refugees could be a kind of drawback. It can give the Arab countries a political edge, a rhetorical edge over Israel. They can say, instead of compensation, you're welcome to come back. Jews will always be a minority in those countries. And Jewish refugees won't want to come back to them. So it can be a negative by highlighting the fact that Israel will not accept Palestinian refugees."

Politically speaking, of course, Telhami is correct. The only way that Arab regimes are likely to invite their Jewish citizens back is as a political maneuver to morally outflank Israel on the refugee question.

This is unfortunate, because everyone I talk to in Lebanon who remembers a time when the Jewish population lived openly in Beirut, remembers the time and their connections to their Jewish neighbors very fondly.

This is probably so obvious that it doesn't need to be said, but then again, if it didn't need to be said the media wouldn't keep committing the petty sin of calling regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt "moderate." What about Riyadh makes it more moderate than Teheran? It's just as religious, human rights are just as bad (if not worse) and it's much less democratic. So why does the western media insist on calling regimes like that moderate?

What they seem to mean is allied regimes, not moderate regimes. There's nothing moderate about Saudi Arabia, so let's stop pretending there is and call a spade a spade. Riyadh is an American ally -- and probably not a very good one at that. As any number of the unsavory regimes the US is friendly with should tell us, moderation and good relations are not at all the same thing.

The US is finally realizing that Saudi Arabia is not helping things in Iraq, while Iraqi officials have openly accused Saudi Arabia of arming Sunni insurgents, the same, mind you, who have been attacking American forces in Iraq. So why, then, is it that the US is "set to offer huge arms deal" to the kingdom and its neighbors? 

Saudi Arabia is the ninth biggest spender on arms. Why do the Saudis need so many weapons? According to Ha'aretz, it could be part of a larger cold war in the Middle East, which also explains Russian arms deals to Iran and Syria, arms deals between Iran and Syria, and the 25% increase in American military aid to Israel agreed upon by Bush and Olmert, meaning an increase to $3 billion a year.

While this very well might be true, we can't forget that arms sales help out American armament companies with government contracts while giving Middle Eastern states the tools needed to oppress their peoples and arm their various proxies in the region. (I'm including Israel in this, although their weapons are used to oppress Palestinians in the occupied territories and not Israeli citizens.) Obviously, the same pattern of armament and oppression that we see in American allies holds true for Russian weapons sent to Damascus and Teheran.

The Daily Star Egypt reports on the commotion surrounding the hymen fatwa:

Reconstructive hymen surgery for women who lost their virginity before marriage is halal (religiously permissible), said to Aly Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt.

...Shiekh Khaled El Gindy, an Al-Azhar scholar and member of the Higher Council of Islamic Studies told The Daily Star Egypt that he agrees with the new fatwa.

"Islam never differentiates between men and women, so it is not rational for us to think that God has placed a sign to indicate the virginity of women without having a similar sign to indicate the virginity of men," El Gindy said.

"Any man who is concerned about his prospective wife's hymen should first provide a proof that he himself is virgin," he added.

El Gindy voiced his full support for Gomaa.

...In Upper Egypt honor crimes are still committed. If a woman loses her virginity out of wedlock, she is considered a big shame on everyone and deserves to die.

In response to such ideas, El Gindy told The Daily Star Egypt that, "Islam does not care for the feelings of ignorant people, just as the law does not protect the idiots."

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The Times has a article on a Jewish group that's doing its best to spotlight the plight of Jews forced from Arab countries after the war in 1948. Ordinarily, I'd applaud such an act, because it's always a good idea to shed light on lesser known historical events.

In this case, however, the entire enterprise seems possibly less interested in history than in using history as a rhetorical bludgeon to undermine the Palestinian refugees' internationally recognized right of return:

Another objective is to push for early passage of resolutions introduced in the United States Senate and House that say that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees in any official document must be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees.

The American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis is planned to take place before the end of the year to address core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like borders, the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.

"We want to have this meeting now, in advance of the Annapolis conference, to ensure that this issue is front and center in the international awareness as it should be," Mr. Urman said.

I've always maintained that both morally and politically speaking, the choice of countries like Libya, Iraq and Egypt to push out their Jewish citizens was a huge mistake. I also believe that Lebanon, for example, where the Jewish population actually increased after 1948 but all but disappeared during the civil war, should actively pursue the return of its Jewish citizens, most of whom seem to be in Paris and Montreal. This could be done with a law of return and an active rebuilding of the Jewish quarter, including the Synagogue downtown and the Jewish cemetery.

Today's article in the Times gives little nuance to the question and neglects to mention the principle difference between Palestinian refugees and Oriental Jews forced from Arab countries: many of the former remain stateless and continue to live in refugee camps, whereas the latter were successfully resettled and given citizenship in Israel or North America.

I came across another article in the Times, this time from 2003, that gives a much more nuanced discussion of the issue:

"This is not a campaign against Palestinian refugees," said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews From Arab Countries, a coalition of 27 groups that includes the powerful Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. "On the contrary, we believe the legitimate rights of the Palestinian refugees must be addressed in any peace process." He added, "We've got to make sure Palestinian refugees receive rights and redress, and Jewish refugees receive rights and redress."

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University, disagrees. "This is a bait-and-switch tactic that does not serve either Palestinians or Oriental Jews or a just peace," he said, using the umbrella term for Jews from Arab countries. "Leaving both of these groups aggrieved guarantees that whatever quote, unquote settlement results would be unstable. There are just claims here. They should be addressed by the Arab states. But it shouldn't be a bait-and-switch that will make Oriental Jews pay the price for Israel's confiscation of a very large amount of Palestinian property."

[...]To Professor Khalidi, the very notion of making Palestinians citizens of Arab countries ignores significant distinctions between the Jewish and the Palestinian refugee experiences. "The idea of comparing them to Palestinians isn't valid," he said of Jewish refugees. "In a Zionist narrative, they should've wanted to go to Israel in the first place. The Palestinians didn't want to leave and weren't going back to their homeland. But some people have tried to tell Arabs what their nationalism should be and have tried to tutor the Palestinians in the proper understanding of their own national identity."

Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland at College Park, said it was legitimate to consider the claims of both sets of refugees simultaneously in the peace process. But for Israel, he warned, the strategy might lead to unintended consequences.

"Putting the issue of Jews in the Arab world on the table helps in the compensation arena, but not the resettlement arena," he said. "In that arena, exposing the issues of Jewish refugees could be a kind of drawback. It can give the Arab countries a political edge, a rhetorical edge over Israel. They can say, instead of compensation, you're welcome to come back. Jews will always be a minority in those countries. And Jewish refugees won't want to come back to them. So it can be a negative by highlighting the fact that Israel will not accept Palestinian refugees."

Politically speaking, of course, Telhami is correct. The only way that Arab regimes are likely to invite their Jewish citizens back is as a political maneuver to morally outflank Israel on the refugee question.

This is unfortunate, because everyone I talk to in Lebanon who remembers a time when the Jewish population lived openly in Beirut, remembers the time and their connections to their Jewish neighbors very fondly.

This is probably so obvious that it doesn't need to be said, but then again, if it didn't need to be said the media wouldn't keep committing the petty sin of calling regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt "moderate." What about Riyadh makes it more moderate than Teheran? It's just as religious, human rights are just as bad (if not worse) and it's much less democratic. So why does the western media insist on calling regimes like that moderate?

What they seem to mean is allied regimes, not moderate regimes. There's nothing moderate about Saudi Arabia, so let's stop pretending there is and call a spade a spade. Riyadh is an American ally -- and probably not a very good one at that. As any number of the unsavory regimes the US is friendly with should tell us, moderation and good relations are not at all the same thing.

The US is finally realizing that Saudi Arabia is not helping things in Iraq, while Iraqi officials have openly accused Saudi Arabia of arming Sunni insurgents, the same, mind you, who have been attacking American forces in Iraq. So why, then, is it that the US is "set to offer huge arms deal" to the kingdom and its neighbors? 

Saudi Arabia is the ninth biggest spender on arms. Why do the Saudis need so many weapons? According to Ha'aretz, it could be part of a larger cold war in the Middle East, which also explains Russian arms deals to Iran and Syria, arms deals between Iran and Syria, and the 25% increase in American military aid to Israel agreed upon by Bush and Olmert, meaning an increase to $3 billion a year.

While this very well might be true, we can't forget that arms sales help out American armament companies with government contracts while giving Middle Eastern states the tools needed to oppress their peoples and arm their various proxies in the region. (I'm including Israel in this, although their weapons are used to oppress Palestinians in the occupied territories and not Israeli citizens.) Obviously, the same pattern of armament and oppression that we see in American allies holds true for Russian weapons sent to Damascus and Teheran.

The Daily Star Egypt reports on the commotion surrounding the hymen fatwa:

Reconstructive hymen surgery for women who lost their virginity before marriage is halal (religiously permissible), said to Aly Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt.

...Shiekh Khaled El Gindy, an Al-Azhar scholar and member of the Higher Council of Islamic Studies told The Daily Star Egypt that he agrees with the new fatwa.

"Islam never differentiates between men and women, so it is not rational for us to think that God has placed a sign to indicate the virginity of women without having a similar sign to indicate the virginity of men," El Gindy said.

"Any man who is concerned about his prospective wife's hymen should first provide a proof that he himself is virgin," he added.

El Gindy voiced his full support for Gomaa.

...In Upper Egypt honor crimes are still committed. If a woman loses her virginity out of wedlock, she is considered a big shame on everyone and deserves to die.

In response to such ideas, El Gindy told The Daily Star Egypt that, "Islam does not care for the feelings of ignorant people, just as the law does not protect the idiots."

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The Times has a article on a Jewish group that's doing its best to spotlight the plight of Jews forced from Arab countries after the war in 1948. Ordinarily, I'd applaud such an act, because it's always a good idea to shed light on lesser known historical events.

In this case, however, the entire enterprise seems possibly less interested in history than in using history as a rhetorical bludgeon to undermine the Palestinian refugees' internationally recognized right of return:

Another objective is to push for early passage of resolutions introduced in the United States Senate and House that say that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees in any official document must be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees.

The American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis is planned to take place before the end of the year to address core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like borders, the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.

"We want to have this meeting now, in advance of the Annapolis conference, to ensure that this issue is front and center in the international awareness as it should be," Mr. Urman said.

I've always maintained that both morally and politically speaking, the choice of countries like Libya, Iraq and Egypt to push out their Jewish citizens was a huge mistake. I also believe that Lebanon, for example, where the Jewish population actually increased after 1948 but all but disappeared during the civil war, should actively pursue the return of its Jewish citizens, most of whom seem to be in Paris and Montreal. This could be done with a law of return and an active rebuilding of the Jewish quarter, including the Synagogue downtown and the Jewish cemetery.

Today's article in the Times gives little nuance to the question and neglects to mention the principle difference between Palestinian refugees and Oriental Jews forced from Arab countries: many of the former remain stateless and continue to live in refugee camps, whereas the latter were successfully resettled and given citizenship in Israel or North America.

I came across another article in the Times, this time from 2003, that gives a much more nuanced discussion of the issue:

"This is not a campaign against Palestinian refugees," said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews From Arab Countries, a coalition of 27 groups that includes the powerful Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. "On the contrary, we believe the legitimate rights of the Palestinian refugees must be addressed in any peace process." He added, "We've got to make sure Palestinian refugees receive rights and redress, and Jewish refugees receive rights and redress."

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University, disagrees. "This is a bait-and-switch tactic that does not serve either Palestinians or Oriental Jews or a just peace," he said, using the umbrella term for Jews from Arab countries. "Leaving both of these groups aggrieved guarantees that whatever quote, unquote settlement results would be unstable. There are just claims here. They should be addressed by the Arab states. But it shouldn't be a bait-and-switch that will make Oriental Jews pay the price for Israel's confiscation of a very large amount of Palestinian property."

[...]To Professor Khalidi, the very notion of making Palestinians citizens of Arab countries ignores significant distinctions between the Jewish and the Palestinian refugee experiences. "The idea of comparing them to Palestinians isn't valid," he said of Jewish refugees. "In a Zionist narrative, they should've wanted to go to Israel in the first place. The Palestinians didn't want to leave and weren't going back to their homeland. But some people have tried to tell Arabs what their nationalism should be and have tried to tutor the Palestinians in the proper understanding of their own national identity."

Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland at College Park, said it was legitimate to consider the claims of both sets of refugees simultaneously in the peace process. But for Israel, he warned, the strategy might lead to unintended consequences.

"Putting the issue of Jews in the Arab world on the table helps in the compensation arena, but not the resettlement arena," he said. "In that arena, exposing the issues of Jewish refugees could be a kind of drawback. It can give the Arab countries a political edge, a rhetorical edge over Israel. They can say, instead of compensation, you're welcome to come back. Jews will always be a minority in those countries. And Jewish refugees won't want to come back to them. So it can be a negative by highlighting the fact that Israel will not accept Palestinian refugees."

Politically speaking, of course, Telhami is correct. The only way that Arab regimes are likely to invite their Jewish citizens back is as a political maneuver to morally outflank Israel on the refugee question.

This is unfortunate, because everyone I talk to in Lebanon who remembers a time when the Jewish population lived openly in Beirut, remembers the time and their connections to their Jewish neighbors very fondly.

This is probably so obvious that it doesn't need to be said, but then again, if it didn't need to be said the media wouldn't keep committing the petty sin of calling regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt "moderate." What about Riyadh makes it more moderate than Teheran? It's just as religious, human rights are just as bad (if not worse) and it's much less democratic. So why does the western media insist on calling regimes like that moderate?

What they seem to mean is allied regimes, not moderate regimes. There's nothing moderate about Saudi Arabia, so let's stop pretending there is and call a spade a spade. Riyadh is an American ally -- and probably not a very good one at that. As any number of the unsavory regimes the US is friendly with should tell us, moderation and good relations are not at all the same thing.

The US is finally realizing that Saudi Arabia is not helping things in Iraq, while Iraqi officials have openly accused Saudi Arabia of arming Sunni insurgents, the same, mind you, who have been attacking American forces in Iraq. So why, then, is it that the US is "set to offer huge arms deal" to the kingdom and its neighbors? 

Saudi Arabia is the ninth biggest spender on arms. Why do the Saudis need so many weapons? According to Ha'aretz, it could be part of a larger cold war in the Middle East, which also explains Russian arms deals to Iran and Syria, arms deals between Iran and Syria, and the 25% increase in American military aid to Israel agreed upon by Bush and Olmert, meaning an increase to $3 billion a year.

While this very well might be true, we can't forget that arms sales help out American armament companies with government contracts while giving Middle Eastern states the tools needed to oppress their peoples and arm their various proxies in the region. (I'm including Israel in this, although their weapons are used to oppress Palestinians in the occupied territories and not Israeli citizens.) Obviously, the same pattern of armament and oppression that we see in American allies holds true for Russian weapons sent to Damascus and Teheran.

The Daily Star Egypt reports on the commotion surrounding the hymen fatwa:

Reconstructive hymen surgery for women who lost their virginity before marriage is halal (religiously permissible), said to Aly Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt.

...Shiekh Khaled El Gindy, an Al-Azhar scholar and member of the Higher Council of Islamic Studies told The Daily Star Egypt that he agrees with the new fatwa.

"Islam never differentiates between men and women, so it is not rational for us to think that God has placed a sign to indicate the virginity of women without having a similar sign to indicate the virginity of men," El Gindy said.

"Any man who is concerned about his prospective wife's hymen should first provide a proof that he himself is virgin," he added.

El Gindy voiced his full support for Gomaa.

...In Upper Egypt honor crimes are still committed. If a woman loses her virginity out of wedlock, she is considered a big shame on everyone and deserves to die.

In response to such ideas, El Gindy told The Daily Star Egypt that, "Islam does not care for the feelings of ignorant people, just as the law does not protect the idiots."

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The Times has a article on a Jewish group that's doing its best to spotlight the plight of Jews forced from Arab countries after the war in 1948. Ordinarily, I'd applaud such an act, because it's always a good idea to shed light on lesser known historical events.

In this case, however, the entire enterprise seems possibly less interested in history than in using history as a rhetorical bludgeon to undermine the Palestinian refugees' internationally recognized right of return:

Another objective is to push for early passage of resolutions introduced in the United States Senate and House that say that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees in any official document must be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees.

The American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis is planned to take place before the end of the year to address core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like borders, the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.

"We want to have this meeting now, in advance of the Annapolis conference, to ensure that this issue is front and center in the international awareness as it should be," Mr. Urman said.

I've always maintained that both morally and politically speaking, the choice of countries like Libya, Iraq and Egypt to push out their Jewish citizens was a huge mistake. I also believe that Lebanon, for example, where the Jewish population actually increased after 1948 but all but disappeared during the civil war, should actively pursue the return of its Jewish citizens, most of whom seem to be in Paris and Montreal. This could be done with a law of return and an active rebuilding of the Jewish quarter, including the Synagogue downtown and the Jewish cemetery.

Today's article in the Times gives little nuance to the question and neglects to mention the principle difference between Palestinian refugees and Oriental Jews forced from Arab countries: many of the former remain stateless and continue to live in refugee camps, whereas the latter were successfully resettled and given citizenship in Israel or North America.

I came across another article in the Times, this time from 2003, that gives a much more nuanced discussion of the issue:

"This is not a campaign against Palestinian refugees," said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews From Arab Countries, a coalition of 27 groups that includes the powerful Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. "On the contrary, we believe the legitimate rights of the Palestinian refugees must be addressed in any peace process." He added, "We've got to make sure Palestinian refugees receive rights and redress, and Jewish refugees receive rights and redress."

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University, disagrees. "This is a bait-and-switch tactic that does not serve either Palestinians or Oriental Jews or a just peace," he said, using the umbrella term for Jews from Arab countries. "Leaving both of these groups aggrieved guarantees that whatever quote, unquote settlement results would be unstable. There are just claims here. They should be addressed by the Arab states. But it shouldn't be a bait-and-switch that will make Oriental Jews pay the price for Israel's confiscation of a very large amount of Palestinian property."

[...]To Professor Khalidi, the very notion of making Palestinians citizens of Arab countries ignores significant distinctions between the Jewish and the Palestinian refugee experiences. "The idea of comparing them to Palestinians isn't valid," he said of Jewish refugees. "In a Zionist narrative, they should've wanted to go to Israel in the first place. The Palestinians didn't want to leave and weren't going back to their homeland. But some people have tried to tell Arabs what their nationalism should be and have tried to tutor the Palestinians in the proper understanding of their own national identity."

Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland at College Park, said it was legitimate to consider the claims of both sets of refugees simultaneously in the peace process. But for Israel, he warned, the strategy might lead to unintended consequences.

"Putting the issue of Jews in the Arab world on the table helps in the compensation arena, but not the resettlement arena," he said. "In that arena, exposing the issues of Jewish refugees could be a kind of drawback. It can give the Arab countries a political edge, a rhetorical edge over Israel. They can say, instead of compensation, you're welcome to come back. Jews will always be a minority in those countries. And Jewish refugees won't want to come back to them. So it can be a negative by highlighting the fact that Israel will not accept Palestinian refugees."

Politically speaking, of course, Telhami is correct. The only way that Arab regimes are likely to invite their Jewish citizens back is as a political maneuver to morally outflank Israel on the refugee question.

This is unfortunate, because everyone I talk to in Lebanon who remembers a time when the Jewish population lived openly in Beirut, remembers the time and their connections to their Jewish neighbors very fondly.

This is probably so obvious that it doesn't need to be said, but then again, if it didn't need to be said the media wouldn't keep committing the petty sin of calling regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt "moderate." What about Riyadh makes it more moderate than Teheran? It's just as religious, human rights are just as bad (if not worse) and it's much less democratic. So why does the western media insist on calling regimes like that moderate?

What they seem to mean is allied regimes, not moderate regimes. There's nothing moderate about Saudi Arabia, so let's stop pretending there is and call a spade a spade. Riyadh is an American ally -- and probably not a very good one at that. As any number of the unsavory regimes the US is friendly with should tell us, moderation and good relations are not at all the same thing.

The US is finally realizing that Saudi Arabia is not helping things in Iraq, while Iraqi officials have openly accused Saudi Arabia of arming Sunni insurgents, the same, mind you, who have been attacking American forces in Iraq. So why, then, is it that the US is "set to offer huge arms deal" to the kingdom and its neighbors? 

Saudi Arabia is the ninth biggest spender on arms. Why do the Saudis need so many weapons? According to Ha'aretz, it could be part of a larger cold war in the Middle East, which also explains Russian arms deals to Iran and Syria, arms deals between Iran and Syria, and the 25% increase in American military aid to Israel agreed upon by Bush and Olmert, meaning an increase to $3 billion a year.

While this very well might be true, we can't forget that arms sales help out American armament companies with government contracts while giving Middle Eastern states the tools needed to oppress their peoples and arm their various proxies in the region. (I'm including Israel in this, although their weapons are used to oppress Palestinians in the occupied territories and not Israeli citizens.) Obviously, the same pattern of armament and oppression that we see in American allies holds true for Russian weapons sent to Damascus and Teheran.

The Daily Star Egypt reports on the commotion surrounding the hymen fatwa:

Reconstructive hymen surgery for women who lost their virginity before marriage is halal (religiously permissible), said to Aly Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt.

...Shiekh Khaled El Gindy, an Al-Azhar scholar and member of the Higher Council of Islamic Studies told The Daily Star Egypt that he agrees with the new fatwa.

"Islam never differentiates between men and women, so it is not rational for us to think that God has placed a sign to indicate the virginity of women without having a similar sign to indicate the virginity of men," El Gindy said.

"Any man who is concerned about his prospective wife's hymen should first provide a proof that he himself is virgin," he added.

El Gindy voiced his full support for Gomaa.

...In Upper Egypt honor crimes are still committed. If a woman loses her virginity out of wedlock, she is considered a big shame on everyone and deserves to die.

In response to such ideas, El Gindy told The Daily Star Egypt that, "Islam does not care for the feelings of ignorant people, just as the law does not protect the idiots."

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003