Middle East Analysis
+ Foreign Affairs magazine ++++ When the Shiites Rise
+ Women, Islam, and the New Iraq ++++ Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon
+ Why a Multinational Force is Essential in Lebanon ++++ North Africa studies
+ Hizballah Finances: Funding the Party of God ++++ Middle East ~ Wikipedia
+ Egypt studies: Washington Institute for Near East Policy ++++ Middle East Institute
+ The Israeli-Palestinian Dispute ~ A Century of Conflict ++++ Ansar Burney Trust
+ The Middle East and The West: A Troubled History ++++ Al Jazeera Online
+ BBC News: Middle East Section ++++ New York Times: Middle East section
+ Washinton Post: Middle East Section
Think there's a link I should post? Please leave a comment. Have an opinion on the Middle East? Please post a comment.
posted by FreeCyprus at 8:39 AM
17 Comments:
Hello there!Thank you for visitting Papelustro!Lots of information on your blog.You're reporter or something?I feel so misinformed nowadays!Of course I'll keep blogin' and I hope you'll keep visitting me!:-)
It's fair!I,ll keep picking your news!Yes, all these collages are mine.And Sketchadabadu features my digital work.I'm a sarter, really. I'm learning Corel and Photoshop and I make collage to relax from many hours clicking and looking at the computer.
This is a really impressive blog, very controlled, intelligent, objective and entertaining.
Days of darkness
By Gideon Levy
In war as in war: Israel is sinking into a strident, nationalistic atmosphere and darkness is beginning to cover everything. The brakes we still had are eroding, the insensitivity and blindness that characterized Israeli society in recent years is intensifying. The home front is cut in half: the north suffers and the center is serene. But both have been taken over by tones of jingoism, ruthlessness and vengeance, and the voices of extremism that previously characterized the camp's margins are now expressing its heart. The left has once again lost its way, wrapped in silence or "admitting mistakes." Israel is exposing a unified, nationalistic face.
The devastation we are sowing in Lebanon doesn't touch anyone here and most of it is not even shown to Israelis. Those who want to know what Tyre looks like now have to turn to foreign channels - the BBC reporter brings chilling images from there, the likes of which won't be seen here. How can one not be shocked by the suffering of the other, at our hands, even when our north suffers? The death we are sowing at the same time, right now in Gaza, with close to 120 dead since the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, 27 last Wednesday alone, touches us even less. The hospitals in Gaza are full of burned children, but who cares? The darkness of the war in the north covers them, too.
The real estate war
By Gideon Levy
This miserable war in Lebanon, which is just getting more and more complicated for no reason at all, was born in Israel's greed for land. Not that Israel is fighting this time to conquer more land, not at all, but ending the occupation could have prevented this unnecessary war. If Israel had returned the Golan Heights and signed a peace treaty with Syria in a timely fashion, presumably this war would not have broken out.
Peace with Syria would have guaranteed peace with Lebanon and peace with both would have prevented Hezbollah from fortifying on Israel's northern border. Peace with Syria would have also isolated Iran, Israel's true, dangerous enemy, and cut off Hezbollah from one of the two sources of its weapons and funding. It's so simple, and so removed from conventional Israeli thinking, which is subject to brainwashing.
For years, Israel has waged war against the Palestinians with the main motive of insistence on keeping the occupied territories. If not for the settlement enterprise, Israel would have long since retreated from the occupied territories and the struggle's engine would have been significant neutralized. Not that a non-occupying Israel would have turned into the darling of the Arab world, but the destructive fire aimed at Israel would have significantly lessened, and those who continued to fight Israel would have found themselves isolated.
It is not just Israel's fault..it is our fault as well, as Lebanese. As Lebanese. The best and brightest (and richest) of us have left Lebanon and left it for Hezbollah and for the Shia who support them.
We cannot continue to cry "Innocent!" each time there is bloodshed in Lebanon. We have to stand up and take responsibility for the past and take responsibility for the future. Why do we blame Israel? No jew stood up and said "Death to the Christians!" but Hezbollah has, many times. No jew strapped bombs to himself and blew up a Lebanese cafe but Hezbollah did that, many times. No jew threatens me and my family the way Hezbollah does...but alas, we were rich enough to leave Lebanon and now we are living somewhere else, sitting on our asses, and complaining about Israel.
Hezbollah HAD to kill those 8 Israeli soldiers, they had to kidnap the other two. What would my new country Germany do if Hezbollah killed 8 German soldiers and kidnapped 2 German soldiers or citizens? Just sit back and say "oh well" ????
Why they love to hate us
Some 1,500 years of anti-Semitism have taught us that there is something about us that annoys the world
One hundred years of conflict, 6.5 years of war, billions of wasted dollars, tens of thousands of people killed, not including the boy lying next to me on a rocky beach at Lake Karon in ’82, with his guts spilling out of his body. Both of us staring the wound until he was evacuated by helicopter. Until this day I do not know if he is alive or dead. All this, and it is still impossible to understand.
It’s not only what has happened. It is also what did not occur – the hospitals that were never built, the universities that never opened, the roads that were never paved, three years stolen from the lives of millions of young people in uniform. Despite everything, we are still clueless as to the core of the riddle.
Why do they hate us so much?
Dr. Wafa Sultan on the problem with Muslims
Wonderfull blog!
...
If one starts looking for whose fault it is, he will never end in a clear conclusion.
All that matters is that we see dead people, including children, and that seems it won't reach to an end...
War must end.
It's not that simple, I know.
I've been in Palestine, and I've experienced from close enough hate, fear, war.
But, to me, nothing is impossible...
Bravo Sofi-K..wonderful comment.
Hopefully the bloodshed will end soon, God willing.
War ain't gonna end. Much like McDonalds serving healthy food, never gonna happen.
I found you via a comment you left on another's blog....
Just wanted to say you have a great site, and keep up the fight!!
Stop by The Sappho Manifesto anytime!!!
--Sappho
In the name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate(???)
Go Out and Kill Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus!
INFILTRATE, OVERWHELM, SUBJUGATE AND THEN DEVOUR
Today It's the Gun and the Qur'an (Koran)...
Tomorrow It Will Be Nukes and the Qur'an
ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION?
What an oxymoron! Since when IS barbarism called civilization?
Islam is an anti-civilization cult par excellence. It destroyed every civilization it touched
and brought misery, poverty, ignorance and war in every country that it invaded!
FACT:
90%-95% OF ALL THE CONFLICTS ON THIS PLANET TODAY
INVOLVE MUSLIMS FIGHTING NON-MUSLIMS OR EACH OTHER!
There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants:
Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine,"
Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir,
Muslims vs. Christians in Africa,
Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand,
Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, etc...
ISLAM: "Religion of Peace?"
FACT:
1.4 BILLION Muslims in the World
280 Million Americans
5½ Million Israelis Surrounded by 350 Million Arab Muslims!!!
What does the Arabic word jihad mean?
One answer came last week, when Saddam Hussein had his Islamic leaders appeal to Muslims worldwide to join his jihad to defeat the "wicked Americans" should they attack Iraq; then he himself threatened the United States with jihad.
As this suggests, jihad is "holy war." Or, more precisely: It means the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims.
The purpose of jihad, in other words, is not directly to spread the Islamic faith but to extend sovereign Muslim power (faith, of course, often follows the flag). Jihad is thus unabashedly offensive in nature, with the eventual goal of achieving Muslim dominion over the entire globe.
Jihad did have two variant meanings through the centuries, one more radical, one less so. The first holds that Muslims who interpret their faith differently are infidels and therefore legitimate targets of jihad. (This is why Algerians, Egyptians and Afghans have found themselves, like Americans and Israelis, so often the victims of jihadist aggression.) The second meaning, associated with mystics, rejects the legal definition of jihad as armed conflict and tells Muslims to withdraw from the worldly concerns to achieve spiritual depth.
Jihad in the sense of territorial expansion has always been a central aspect of Muslim life. That's how Muslims came to rule much of the Arabian Peninsula by the time of the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632. It's how, a century later, Muslims had conquered a region from Afghanistan to Spain. Subsequently, jihad spurred and justified Muslim conquests of such territories as India, Sudan, Anatolia, and the Balkans.
Today, jihad is the world's foremost source of terrorism, inspiring a worldwide campaign of violence by self-proclaimed jihadist groups:
The International Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders: Osama bin Laden's organization;
Laskar Jihad: responsible for the murder of more than 10,000 Christians in Indonesia;
Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami: a leading cause of violence in Kashmir;
Palestinian Islamic Jihad: the most vicious anti-Israel terrorist group of them all;
Egyptian Islamic Jihad: killed Anwar El-Sadat in 1981, many others since, and
Yemeni Islamic Jihad: killed three American missionaries on Monday.
But jihad's most ghastly present reality is in Sudan, where until recently the ruling party bore the slogan "Jihad, Victory and Martyrdom." For two decades, under government auspices, jihadists there have physically attacked non-Muslims, looted their belongings and killed their males.
Jihadists then enslaved tens of thousands of females and children, forced them to convert to Islam, sent them on forced marches, beat them and set them to hard labor. The women and older girls also suffered ritual gang-rape, genital mutilation and a life of sexual servitude.
Sudan's state-sponsored jihad has caused about 2 million deaths and the displacement of another 4 million - making it the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our era.
sappho, thanks for the compliment and I have visited your site and loved it
woozie, agreed (and there's a better chance of mcdonalds serving healthier food than seeing then end to war)
Ergo te Lina, thanks for your posts. As always they are controversial, but thought-provoking as well.
Kroline, thanks for the compliment.
Keep fighting the good fight you two.
Free Cyprus,
Thank you for stopping by my site. I really appreciate that link. I posted the information at an article further down--"Shining."
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