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Middle East Tag

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 25, 2017 10 Comments
Last week, we blogged about today's Kuridsh Independence referendum.  Yesterday's Kurdish independence rally attracted an enormous crowd, perhaps foreshadowing nearly 80% of the reported 3.9 million registered voters turning out at the polls today. Jubilant Kurds described today as "the best day of their life" and some even took to flying the Brazilian flag because there were no Kurdish ones left.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 05, 2017 16 Comments
Officials in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have all announced the countries have severed diplomatic ties with Qatar due to terrorism and extremism. From The Guardian:
The official state news agency, citing an official source, said Saudi Arabia had decided to sever diplomatic and consular relations with Qatar “proceeding from the exercise of its sovereign right guaranteed by international law and the protection of national security from the dangers of terrorism and extremism”.

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 10, 2017 5 Comments
Donald Trump and First Lady Melania are set to visit Israel with Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner later this month as part of a three stop tour of the Middle East. A massive effort for increased security is already underway in Israel. The Times of Israel reports:
Frenetic preparations underway for Trump’s Israel visit A delegation from the White House and Central Intelligence Agency is heading to Israel to plan US President Donald Trump’s visit to Israel amid reports it plans to turn Jerusalem’s iconic King David hotel into a virtual fortress.

Posted by David Gerstman on May 04, 2017 10 Comments
President Donald Trump appeared to rebuke Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at least three times in their joint statement on Wednesday. First, at the beginning of his remarks, Trump recalled the Oslo Accords:
Almost 24 years ago, it was on these grounds that President Abbas stood with a courageous peacemaker, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Here at the White House, President Abbas signed a Declaration of Principles -- very important -- which laid the foundation for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 18, 2016 1 Comment
On December 4, 2016, I was a speaker at a national conference sponsored by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), held at Harvard Law School. The conference was co-hosted by HLS Alliance for Israel, and was titled "War By Other Means - BDS, Israel and the Campus." My presentation was on the history of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. While I have written hundreds of posts about the BDS movement, including its history, this presentation gave me an opportunity to pull it all together in one place, and to do more research to obtain documentation. BDS is a direct and provable continuation of the Arab anti-Jewish boycotts in the 1920s and 1930s and subsequent Arab League Boycott, restructured through non-governmental entities to evade U.S. anti-boycott legislation and repackaged in the language of "social justice" to appeal to Western liberals.

Posted by David Gerstman on November 21, 2016 11 Comments
Early on in his first term, President Barack Obama suggested that in order to achieve peace between Israeli and the Palestinians, there needed to be more "daylight" between the United States and Israel. Obama, according to a report on a meeting between the president and American Jewish leaders, said, referring to the Bush administration, "During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states." During Obama's two terms in office, he made efforts to put daylight between his administration and Israel, and not just in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: in 2010 the administration harangued Netanyahu over a plan to build apartments in Jerusalem, the administration pursued the nuclear deal with Iran over Israeli objections, senior administration officials, on and off the record, have disparaged Netanyahu, and Obama is said to be considering a move in the UN to support Palestinian statehood.

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 25, 2016 11 Comments
A prominent Jordanian writer named Nahed Hattar was facing charges in Amman for sharing a cartoon on Facebook which was deemed offensive to Islam. He was killed outside the courthouse this weekend. Al Jazeera reports:
Jordan: Nahed Hattar shot dead ahead of cartoon trial A gunman has shot dead prominent Jordanian writer Nahed Hattar outside a court where he was facing charges for sharing a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam.

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 28, 2016 11 Comments
Western feminists are happy to talk about the ever growing threat of the patriarchy and trivial issues like mansplaining, but are often curiously silent about the plight of women in Muslim countries. Author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has noticed this silence and has a few questions for feminists.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 14, 2016 8 Comments
Qatar has released a Dutch woman after holding her for three months because she had the nerve to be raped and report it. Blunt, but true. This is life for women who live under Sharia law. The woman only known as Laura reported her rape to officials, but they in turn arrested her for adultery because she had sex outside of marriage:
The woman, on a vacation with a friend, went out for drinks at a hotel bar in the Qatari capital in mid-March, lawyer Brian Lokollo previously told The Associated Press. While at the bar, she believes someone “messed with her drink” and her memory became hazy, Lokollo said. She later awoke alone, her clothes torn and the victim of a rape, he said. She was immediately detained after reporting the attack, Lokollo said. She previously appeared three times in court, he said.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 31, 2016 12 Comments
German police have arrested three Pakistani men who sought asylum in connection to numerous sexual assault complaints at a music festival. They are still looking for numerous other suspects. A spokesperson for the Schlossgrabenfest music festival said 26 women spoke with police about sexual assault. The police then said that 14 reports "involve several women and only after further investigations will it become clear how many of the women were victims of sexual assault." Three women told the cops the group of men "encircled" them and proceeded to harass and grope the women.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 22, 2016 3 Comments
The Afghanistan government confirmed a U.S. drone killed Taliban leader Mullah Mansoor in Pakistan. The U.S. Department of Defense said the government targeted the leader "while travelling in convoy near the town of Ahmad Wal." From The Guardian:
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, speaking in Myanmar on Sunday, said Mansoor “posed a continuing imminent threat to US personnel in Afghanistan, Afghan civilians, Afghan security forces” and members of the US and Nato coalition. He said the air strike on Mansoor sent “a clear message to the world that we will continue to stand with our Afghan partners”. “Peace is what we want. Mansoor was a threat to that effort,” Kerry said. “He also was directly opposed to peace negotiations and to the reconciliation process. It is time for Afghans to stop fighting and to start building a real future together.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 21, 2016 6 Comments
"Nakba Day" remembers Arab refugees created by the civil war and then invasion of the nascent Jewish state by Arab armies. It was held a week ago, the day after Israel Independence Day. The "Nakba" has been rewritten by the propagandists as something inflicted upon the Arabs, as opposed to a result of the Arabs refusal to accept the U.N. Partition proposal and the launch of warfare to crush the Jews. Had the Arabs won, there would have been a wholesale massacre of the Jews and complete ethnic cleansing. We don't have to speculate about that -- that's what happened when the Arab armies conquered Judea and Samaria. There were no Jews left, not even in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. And there was a massacre of Jews who surrendered:

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on May 19, 2016 5 Comments
China will play a greater geostrategic role in the Middle East and Africa thanks to the construction of the new transnational corridor. The 2,500 km-long network of highways, railways, pipelines and ports will connect the Western Chinese city of Kashgar with Pakistan's deep-sea port of Gwadar. China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), as the project is officially called, comes at an initial cost of $46 billion within the next 10-15 years. The corridor reduces China’s dependence on its main Malacca route. Presently 85 percent of the China's oil imports pass through the single chokepoint of the Strait of Malacca, located between Indonesia and Malaysia. With Pakistan's ports Gwadar and Karachi under control, Beijing would have direct access to resources and markets in Middle East and Africa. China already operates several ports in Africa, including its first overseas naval and military base near Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 16, 2016 5 Comments
At least 50 LGBT activists staged a protest outside the Hbeish police station in Beirut, Lebanon, to protest anti-homosexual law. The activists from the Helem Association demanded the government repeal article 534 of the penal code and release four transgender women. From The Jewish Press:
Helem leader Genwa Samhat told AFP that the sit-in, which took place two days before the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, “calls for the abolition of this section of law dating from the (1920-1943) French mandate in Lebanon.” She added: “Most people arrested under this law aren’t detained in the act but in the street because of their appearance.” Also, she said, people “continue to be fired if their boss finds out they’re gay. They’re made to say they quit voluntarily for fear of being outed.” According to Naharnet, Lebanese police are known to raid nightclubs serving homosexual patrons, and homosexuality is a frequent subject of ridicule on television.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 09, 2016 9 Comments
Iran's Tasnim agency reported the regime tested a ballistic missile, but the defense minister denied the claims.
“Two weeks ago, we test-fired a missile with a range of 2000 kilometers and a margin of error of eight meters,” declared Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi. "We can guide this ballistic missile."

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 05, 2016 2 Comments
NATO has accepted Israel's request to establish an office at the headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. The decision went through because Turkey decided to stop opposing Israel's attempts at opening an office at NATO. A non-NATO country needs unanimous consent from all NATO members in order to collaborate with the organization.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 04, 2016 8 Comments
Kuwait Airways has decided to stop all of their inter-European flights instead of accepting Israeli passengers. The Lawfare Project filed civil and criminal complaints against the airlines in Geneva, Switzerland, over their discrimination policies. They claimed the policy violated "the Swiss Penal Code as well as the Swiss constitution, which protects individuals from discrimination based on race, religion and ethnicity." "By cancelling these lucrative flight paths rather than admitting Israelis on KAC flights, the airline--a wholly owned instrumentality of the Kuwaiti government--is demonstrating its commitment to discrimination even while exposing itself to enormous pecuniary loss," wrote Lawfare Project in a statement.
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