Judeopundit

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Gitmo Poetry Preview!

Undoubtedly a number of bloggers have gone into action since news broke of the impending release of of a poetry anthology composed by Guantanamo Bay residents. It is hard to imagine that any of the more industrious bloggers have even gone to sleep now that the rush is on to get imaginary satiric examples into existence as quickly as possible. I'm not such a devoted or industrious blogger that I will pass up a good night's sleep, but I humbly offer the following:

Whenas in niqab Fullah goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
The Fard effacement
of her nose

When next I spy
th'accoutrement
All of a sudden bravely rent
I sigh, "Alas, work accident."

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

What's so funny . . .

As I walk through
The Dar al-Harb
Searchin' for an end to the Zionist entity
I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Are there only schemes and plots and conspiracies?
And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout Semtex, Qassams & Hudna?
What's so funny 'bout Semtex, Qassams & Hudna?
And as I walk on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the Unity?
Ummah Unity
'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry
What's so funny 'bout Semtex, Qassams & Hudna?
What's so funny 'bout Semtex, Qassams & Hudna?
So Hamas is strong
And Fatah is trusted
But where is the Unity?
Ummah Unity
'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry
What's so funny 'bout Semtex, Qassams & Hudna?
What's so funny 'bout Semtex, Qassams & Hudna?
What's so funny 'bout Semtex, Qassams & Hudna?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Fars News: "Britain's Efforts Incapable of Reviving Salman Rushdie"

There are so many ironies to this story. The Ayatollah's fatwa, we are told, turned Rushdie into a "disgusting corpse," but the worms have long since finished digesting Khomeini while Rushdie is not only still among the living, but likely to also outlive the current Ayatollah. From the Fars News site, which may pose security threats:

Vice-Speaker of the Iranian Parliament said the efforts made by Britain's Queen Elizabeth or other senior officials to revive Salman Rushdie would fail as the historical verdict issued by Imam Khomeini against him has already turned Rushdie into a disgusting corpse.

Addressing an open session of the Islamic Consultative Assembly here in Tehran on Tuesday, Mohammad Reza Bahonar lambasted Queen Elizabeth and described the knighting of Salman Rushdie as an unwise action.

"The United Kingdom has embarked on such an action because it imagines that it still enjoys a huge awe as a super power of the 19th century, thinking that the world still attaches importance to the titles granted by the British queen," he continued.

The Muslim part of the world is certainly taking knighthood seriously, isn't it?

"This is while all the world people, even Britons themselves, know very well that this country has now become a colony of the US administration," the prominent lawmaker added.

He reminded that the move has hurt the religious feelings and sentiments of the great Islamic Ummah (nation), and continued, "We don't know what interests and fruits such unwise moves of the United Kingdom have brought to the world and British people."

Bahonar warned that such moves intensify Muslims' anger and hatred for the British government.

He further condemned knighthood of Salman Rushdie as a hostile move against the great Islamic Ummah.

Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie insulted Muslims' beliefs and sparked protests in Muslim countries around the world with his book 'The Satanic Verses'. In 1989 the late Founder of the Islamic Republic Imam Khomeini issued a verdict of death sentence against him for blasphemy.

So much for Rushdie. Back to railing about Zionist plots.

Elsewhere, the legislator expressed regret over the bloody clashes among Palestinian groups, warning that such events would ruin the precious achievements of the national unity government which could end the domestic clashes among Palestinians.

"It is now over half a century that Zionists continued violation of all international rules and regulations mainly due to the overall supports the regime receives from the US," he mentioned.

The legislative official viewed Zionists as the enemy of Palestine and the world of Islam, and stressed, "The conflicts among Palestinians have undoubtedly been designed by the US and Zionist agents and these clashes are not acceptable at all."[...]

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Cause of Gaza crisis? "disrespect toward Muslim women wearing hijab"!

You can't make this stuff up. How did this apparently crucial factor escape all Western analysts? From Mehr News:

A Hamas spokesman said on Tuesday that the group is not seeking to monopolize power or to keep the Gaza Strip under its control.

Ismail Rezwan asked all Islamic countries, and especially those in the Arab world, to help end the conflict between Palestinian political factions.

He said “organized terrorist acts and disrespect toward Muslim women wearing hijab” were the main causes of the current crisis.

Follow that? The reference is to hijab disrespect in general, not particularly in Gaza.

“Organized operations meant to destroy headquarters and centers affiliated to Hamas provoked our reaction,” Rezvan told the Mehr News Agency.

Even the intelligent members of the Palestine Liberation Organization did not approve of some of the actions of PLO loyalists and condemned them, he added.

“We (Hamas) announce that we are committed to all agreements signed between Hamas and Fatah.”

“We are committed to negotiations” to resolve the current crisis, he said, adding, “Dialogue is the only way to resolve the current problem.”

“A serious and sincere dialogue should start within the framework of support for the Palestinian nation.”

Fatah and Hamas should implement the previously agreed documents and start dialogue on reforming the Palestinian security services, he said.

He suggested that the Palestinian Authority should have a national army that would only take national interests into consideration and would avoid being influenced by political factionalism.

Hamas and Fatah held talks and reached some agreements, but the problem was that these agreements were not implemented, he explained.

In line with the Mecca Agreement, the cabinet of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya resigned to pave the way for the formation of a national unity government, but no actions were taken by the Fatah movement, the Hamas official complained.

It is probably a matter of days before we see that "national unity government." They just have to implement some hijab respect.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Monday, June 18, 2007

Gimmel Tammuz Round-up

Aussie Echo

Chabad.org

Mystical Paths

CrownHeights.info

Shaarei Tzedek

Questing

Arutz Sheva

Torah Quiz Blog

Life-of-Rubin

Fars News: "Hamas Warns Occupiers in West Bank"

(Fars News resizes your browser window and may present a security threat.) The threatening tone of this item is a departure from some of the bland articles that have appeared recently in the English versions of Iranian Press sites. Notice the reference to Jimmy Carter:

Representative of the Palestinian Hamas Movement to Tehran warned that in case occupiers invade the West Bank, the Qassam battalions of his movement will give a crushing response to such invaders as it did in Gaza.

Speaking in a press conference at FNA here in Tehran on Sunday, Abu Osameh al-Mo'tee noted the recent incidents in Gaza and assured that the Ezzeddin Qassam battalions of Hamas are now in full control in the region.

"This war is not against Fattah or its members, rather it is a fight against a few number of individuals from Fattah movement who have misused their security posts and embarked on taking aggressive measures, including massacre of a large number of people," he stressed.

The Hamas official also added that the said rebels who have formed a grouplet are in contact with the Zionist regime of Israel and the US, and continued, "The grouplet has received weapons and military equipment from Israel and huge financial aids from the US and this is an established fact known by everyone."

He further reminded that General Keith Dayton, the US military coordinator in occupied Palestine, has recently demanded the US congress to provide the said grouplet with a $60 million aid while Israel rushed to equip the agents of the coup de tat with weapons and arsenals.

"And all these aids are aimed to smash democracy in Palestine," the Hamas official underscored.

Reminding that Hamas succeeded in wining over 60% of the seats in the parliamentary elections in Palestine last year, he said, "And the US was displeased with the results of the elections. Since then, the US cooperated with Israel and strove to topple the Palestinian government while many world officials and figures, including the former US President Jimmy Carter, approved the healthy nature and transparency of the said parliamentary elections in Palestine."

Reminding US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's call on the United States' internal agents to force Hamas to give up power, he said, "These events made us adopt a decisive decision to draw a rapid Strike plan to end activities of this grouplet which had irritated and tortured people and troubled their everyday life through continued crimes."

Al-Mo'tee said that the leaders of the grouplet left for the West Bank of the Jordan River three to four days after the start of the clashes, and warned, "They intend to implement their predefined missions in the West Bank, which includes sabotage operations and criminal acts."

"In the last three days a number of 300 cases of aggressions against the civil bodies, schools and parliament as well as abductions by these agents have been reported which have all been carried out under the cover of the security services affiliated to the Self-Rule authorities operating under Mahmoud Abbas," he continued.

He also stated that the presence of the occupying troops in the West Bank facilitates such criminal acts and operations of sabotage by the said group, and underlined, "We take the US, the Zionist regime and international community which supported this aggressive grouplet fully responsible for the recent incidents in Palestine and similar incidents in future."

A condemnation of the "international community." Interesting.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Maan News: "PFLP radio station in Gaza City is robbed"

Don't they have any respect for Carlos the Jackal?

The PFLP-affiliated Ash Sha'b radio station in Gaza City was burgled on Friday evening.

The station's board of directors issued a statement saying that an unidentified mob ransacked the station's headquarters on Jamal Abd An Nasser street in Gaza City and stole the contents of the building, which are estimated to mount to $70,000.

The chair of the board of directors, Tho il Faqar Swear, condemned the assault and held the "parties in charge" responsible for the robbery.

Among the stolen items was the real name of Tho il Faqar Swear, who now has to use a silly back-up name.

Source of Israel's technological success? Availability of Palestinians to test weapons on!

A recent Thomas Friedman article, available for only $4.95, makes some admiring observations about Israeli technological success. Naomi Klein writing in (you guessed it) the Guardian, responds, speaking truth to Israeli technological power:

[...] Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of 24-hour-a-day showroom, a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world . . .

And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn't threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror" . . .

Since Israel began its policy of sealing off the occupied territories with checkpoints and walls, human rights activists have often compared Gaza and the West Bank to open-air prisons. But in researching the explosion of Israel's homeland security sector, a topic explored in greater detail in my forthcoming book, it strikes me that they are something else too: laboratories where the terrifying tools of our security states are being field-tested. Palestinians - whether living in the West Bank or what the Israeli politicians are already calling Hamastan - are no longer just targets. They are guinea pigs. [...]

I think we're going to be seeing a lot of that small rodent meme.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Linkim 6/17/07

Haveil Havalim 121 is up! Carnival of the Insanities is up!

Smooth Stone gives reasons for continued blogging.

Israel Matzav reports on "4 Katyusha's shot at Kiryat Shmona"--from Lebanon, of course.

Reuters: "British body backs inter-species clones"

Martin Kramer describes Rashid Khalidi as a "Gaza blame-thrower."

Dar Al-Hayat: "Palestine's Knights"

Big Pharaoh defines irony.

Solomonia examines "Gaza Chaos and Consequences"

Tim Blair reports on "Tiles Stolen."

Der Spiegel: "Hope Running Out for Colombian Captives"

IRIB: "Knighthood for Rushdie, clear Islamophobia"

This is not a bad time to remember that Rushdie is a walking audio-visual aid refuting the "handful of extremists" theory of Radical Islam. It took more than a few people on the fringe to force an author into hiding in a Western Country.

The Islamic Republic of Iran on Sunday said knighting Indian-born author Salman Rushdie, one of the most disgusted persons in the Islamic societies, was a clear proof of Islamophobia among high-ranking British officials.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Sayed Mohammad-Ali Hosseini made the remark at his weekly press conference in a reaction to knighting Rushdie by British Queen Elizabeth II on Saturday.

Rushdie, 59, was issued with an irrevocable death Fatwa (religious ruling) by Father of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the late Imam Khomeini in 1989.

"The move showed violating the sanctities of Islamic holy sites is not accidental but organized and is conducted with the support and under the guidance of certain western states," Hosseini said.

"Honoring a hated apostate will definitely put the British statesmen against the Islamic societies because it has once again hurt their (Muslims') feelings," the Spokesman added.

Imam Khomeini issued a death sentence against Rushdie 18 years ago over his book "the satanic verses," which insulted Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)

Raise the goal: a rare Judeopundit sports post

When I was in my early teens in the early 70's, the slam dunk replaced the accurate shot as the cool thing to do with a basketball. From then on, all schoolyard basketball goals were inevitably ruined, bent-down by inept would-be slam-dunkers. So I think the 11-foot (rather than 10-foot) high rims used in a recent exhibition game are a great idea. From the AP via Seattle P-I:

[...] Organized by former NBA assistant Tom Newell -- son of former coach and acclaimed big-man instructor Pete Newell -- the exhibition surely won't be remembered for the quality of play, but perhaps for sparking a change.

"I think this will open the professional league's eyes, where they may experiment with it, give it a serious look," said Jim Harrick, the former UCLA coach who was coaching one of the teams.

For the record, Saturday's exhibition ended with a 90-60 victory for the "gold" team. Billbe, a 6-foot-11 center who played at American University, scored a game-high 20 points and grabbed 14 rebounds.

But the goal for Newell was to examine how the game was different with the taller rims. Was there more passing and spacing? Was teamwork at more of a premium and less of a focus on individual play? Was a challenge presented to the players, all of which had some college experience, and could they adapt?

The answer seemed to be a resounding yes. [...]

Another good current article at Seattle P-I deals largely with sports and intellectual property lawsuit "madness."

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Guardian wise to plots of the Big Satan

Peter Beaumont, "foreign affairs editor" of the Guardian, explains in a current article that the only problem with electing Hamas was that "it didn't quite reflect the wishes of Washington and the international community." He concludes:

[...] The reality is that the only people who are really behind Salam Fayyad are the European and US diplomats who have long sung his praises behind the scenes to any journalist prepared to listen. So yesterday President Bush and the other members of the Quartet got what they wanted. Abbas trooped dutifully in to see the US consul-general in Jerusalem with Mohammed Dahlan, the man widely credited with beginning the cycle of violence in Gaza, in tow. And when they emerged, the boycott of US monies to the Palestinian government had been lifted.

It is hard not to be cynical. Palestinian society was squeezed until it hurt - punished as a whole for voting for the wrong party. And when the inevitable explosion occurred last week, Abbas finally fired Hamas, as the US has been encouraging him to do amid his months of dithering.

So which was the real coup? Hamas's bloody attack on the violent gangsters allied to Fatah who have terrorised Gaza for a year? Or Abbas's unconstitutional moves yesterday with America's backing? [...]

Beaumont would actually benefit from some cynicism about Hamas.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Update: Opinion Journal has a good antidote to this sort of thinking.

Maan News: "Fatah spokesperson alleges that Hamas is armed and funded by Israel"

From our friends the moderates of Fatah:

The spokesperson of the Fatah movement in Tulkarem, Samir Nayfa, on Friday warned Hamas against continuing its "conspiracies against the Palestinian people and neglecting Palestinian unchangeable principles."

Nayfa said "in the absence of the siege on the Palestinian people, Hamas would have been unable to smuggle millions of US dollars into the Gaza Strip, through tunnels. The money which flowed into Hamas' treasury was spent on buying arms and favour."

He continued, "The Hamas leadership betrayed the people and instead of paying the employees' salaries, the money was spent on the death brigades of Qassam and the Executive Force, who mutinied against the Palestinian Authority and planted death and destruction on the streets of the Gaza Strip."

Nayfa warned of an expected deal between Hamas and the Israeli Olmert government to release the captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and BBC reporter, Alan Johnston. He said "Hamas might announce that Shalit disappeared amidst the state of chaos in Gaza Strip, or they might announce that he ran away." He added "Hamas might go to the extreme of announcing that Fatah people helped Shalit run away."

Nayfa said that all these expected Hamas plans have one goal; to reward Israel for supporting Hamas to smuggle weapons and millions of US dollars into the Gaza Strip.

"while Hamas and its leadership called for help due to lack of funding; they were preparing themselves with arms and supplies"

Tariq Alhomayed, Editor-in-Chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, is one author who does not see any silver linings in current events in Gaza. The closing paragraphs of a current article make an important point about funding:

. . . while Hamas and its leadership called for help due to lack of funding; they were preparing themselves with arms and supplies. This means that there are those who fund Hamas incessantly since it was more prepared than the legitimate authority itself. Undoubtedly, the financier is Iran.

Today, no one in our region has control over Hamas except Iran, the financial sponsor, and Syria, where Khaled Meshaal [the political chief of Hamas] lives. This means that this entangled web leads back to two states, namely Syria and Iran.

After all this, we can safely say that the biggest loser will be the Palestinian cause and the disappearance of the dream of a Palestinian state for an entire generation at best. We must be ready for the upcoming earthquake in our Arab world, intellectually, militarily and politically.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Friday, June 15, 2007

The Clearance Sale on Silver Linings

Optimism is a good character trait. Martin Indyk, for instance, writing in the Washington Post, sees the following possibilities in recent events in Gaza:

As chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and president of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas is empowered to negotiate with Israel over the disposition of the West Bank. Once he controls the territory, he could make a peace deal with Israel that establishes a Palestinian state with provisional borders in the West Bank and the Arab suburbs of East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza could compare their fate under Hamas's rule with the fate of their West Bank cousins under Abbas -- which might then force Hamas to come to terms with Israel, making it eventually possible to reunite Gaza and the West Bank as one political entity living in peace with the Jewish state.

Yehuda Litani, writing at Ynetnews.com, concludes

. . . the new signals from the Gaza Strip constitute a clear message to all of us; a message that should be examined.

What is almost certain is that Gaza residents are sick and tired of their current leaders of all camps, and maybe, just maybe, they seek to turn a new leaf in their relationship with us.

Another author also sees promise in "decoupling" the West Bank and Gaza. He suggests:

. . . if there is a silver-lining to the current Hamas-Fatah fighting, it is that this conflict has put into the open the reality that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are truly two distinct entities.

We should probably be skeptical of silver linings that involve the idea of clarifying or simplifying victories for the bad guys, realities at long lost coming out into the open. By withdrawing from Lebanon under Barak, Israel was supposed to gain the right to unambiguously fight its enemies from behind recognized borders. We recently saw how much recognition Israel got for its supposedly disambiguated rights. So just as there was no clarifying and simplifying silver lining in the withdrawal from Gaza and the election of Hamas, there is no real reason to look for one here.

Fatah will probably resign itself to a Hamas monopoly on "security" in Gaza and a new "unity government" will probably be declared, accompanied by demands for legitimacy and requests for money. The apologists for the Palestinians will quickly forget the appalling brutality that we all witnessed in recent days, and we will be back to a more dangerous version of business as usual. Optimism is a good character trait anyway, but the buyer should be beware of the current clearance sale on silver linings.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Update: Someone at Daily Kos writes that "The Hamas victory in Gaza represents a victory for Palestinian democracy over the proxy forces of the occupation, the Palestinian Contras."

Thursday, June 14, 2007

IRNA: "Zionists, occupiers behind Samarra crime, says Leader"

The Tunguska Event is more our style:

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Thursday expressed condolences on the occasion of Wednesday's sacrilege to the holy shrines in Iraq and considered the occupiers and Zionists the main masterminds behind this 'big crime.'

The holy shrines of Shiite Imams, Ali al-Naqi (AS) and Hassan al-Askariya (AS) in the Iraqi city of Samarra were attacked Wednesday morning for the second time by terrorists. The holy shrines were first attacked on February 22, 2006.

"While being vigilant in the face of dangerous divisive policies of enemies, the ulema and dignitaries in the world of Islam and all Muslims, particularly the Iraqi people – Shia and Sunni - should maintain self-restraint and amity with their Muslim brethren more than ever," the Supreme Leader said in a message issued on the tragic event.

The criminal seditionists once against committed another crime, said the Leader adding the explosion at the holy shrines and the sacrilege to the Askari shrines have pit the world of Islam against a horrible conspiracy aimed at fanning the flames of a civil war in Iraq and engaging Muslim states in bloody religious and sectarian events.

The Leader said, "The disgraceful and blind-hearted agents behind this big crime, whether they are remaining stooges of Saddam's Baathist regime or the beguiled Wahhabi and Salafi fanatics, it cannot be doubted that the intelligence services of the occupiers and Zionists are the main masterminds of these heinous schemes. [...]

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Linguistic Juche character protected from annoying phrases

We have noted previously that the North Koreans are very keen on a linguistic purity. (North) Korean News again reminds us to smash the linguistic plots of the Imperialists in an article entitled "All Koreans Called upon to Preserve Their Mother Tongue":

It is an urgent requirement for protecting and strengthening the national character to preserve the national language and make an effective use of it at present.

Rodong Sinmun today says this in a signed article . . .

A nation can develop independently only when it preserves the purity of its language. The commonness of the language along with one and the same blood makes it possible to preserve the homogeneity of the nation. To preserve the purity of the language is, therefore, of weighty importance in protecting the national language and achieving national unity and development.

Preserving the national language and making an effective use of it present themselves as an urgent issue at present in view of the reckless and crafty moves of the imperialists to obliterate national languages, the article says, and goes on:

The imperialists are now working hard to obliterate the national character as well as Juche character of other countries and nations under the brigandish signboard of "globalization".

Their loudmouthed "globalization" of language is aimed at integrating diverse national languages into Western languages and assimilating and subordinating all nations to them in a bid to realize their hegemonic ambition with ease.

The moves of the imperialists to "globalize" languages are part of their operations to obliterate other nations. Recent years witnessed the disappearance of various kinds of languages from the earth. This requires each country and nation to protect their own mother tongues and make the best use of them.

This article undoubtedly inspired the Infuriating Phrase Competition at the Daily Telegraph. Readers were ask to submit samples of writing containing phrases that threatened the Juche character of English. Here is one of the winners:

Let’s stop obsessing and get down to the nitty gritty of fleshing out the gender issues. John. I’m wanting to hear inclusiveness and ethnicity here. A raft of blue sky thinking to challenge accepted orthodoxies. The bottom line is about empowerment and at the end of the day getting up to speed working 24/7 towards a coalition of understanding through best practice. This can only be fully achieved if the glass ceiling, in inverted commas, is transformed into a level playing field where the goal posts cannot be moved without leaving a substantial carbon footprint which inevitably would consign us all to the expediency of existing between a rock and a hard place. We must pick up the ball and run because we can no longer wait for the smoking gun of the next denial of service attack to consign us all to the wheely bin of history.

More in this vein here.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

JTA: French town names Barghouti honorary citizen

Well, throw me out the window and shoot my kneecaps if those French aren't just the most annoyingest things, the non-Sarkozy-voting ones anyway:

A French town reportedly has extended honorary citizenship to a jailed Palestinian terrorist leader.

Pierrefitte, a district north of Paris, decided last month to make Marwan Barghouti an honorary citizen, Ma'ariv reported Wednesday. Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences for masterminding Al-Aksa Brigade attacks against Israel.

The newspaper quoted Mayor Catherine Hanriot, a member of the French Communist Party, as saying that Barghouti "pays day after day for his political commitment."

French Jewish groups have contested the decision.

Palestinian Chronicle: Palestinians as Hamsters

One often despairs of seeing truly scientific coverage of current events in Gaza. Many of the most valuable insights into human behavior were actually obtained by doing experiments on rats and other small rodents, but what author has applied such insights to the current situation? Now, at last, the value of rodent-derived studies has been affirmed. And this, perhaps, is the silver lining in the current infighting between Fatah and Hamas: the horizons of scientific knowledge are being expanded:

One law of nature is that if organisms are crowded together in a confined area with limited freedom to move or expand, they will inevitably turn on each other. This is already happening with our hamsters, which continue to reproduce in exponential numbers. Now, with ten furry rodents in a cage designed for two, the critters are constantly flipping over each other, biting one another and pushing each other off the treadmill in a territorial bid to claim their own slice of space in their cramped quarters.

At the risk of oversimplifying the otherwise complex situation, the Gaza Strip is more or less a huge hamster cage, its inhabitants viciously vying over exaggerated seats of power and positions, each side ready and willing to spill the blood of their neighbors in the name of their distorted cause.

The clashes between Hamas and Fatah in the Gaza Strip, which witnessed a brief lull in the past few weeks when Israel pounded the Strip instead, have resurfaced with a vengeance. According to Palestinian media sources, nearly 40 people have been killed in the clashes since Monday morning alone. Scores more have been injured, many of them seriously. Hospital sources in Khan Younis and Gaza City have reported that a number of injuries have been to the lower extremities, namely the knee area, which has resulted in many amputations given the extent of damage. [...]

Here, perhaps, we also see the limitations of the scientific method: no scientist has yet devised a method for inducing hamsters to shoot other hamsters in the kneecaps.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Monday, June 11, 2007

AP: "Hamas is taking control of Palestinian schools"

The Palestinians are becoming more Islamist, which we've known since Hamas was voted in. The mainstream press timidly hints that this is bad from time to time. How bad is it? Is it Al-Qaeda bad? Is it Islamic Brotherhood bad? Is there a difference? This story won't inform you very much about how to make an overall assessment of what this means, but it contains many interesting and useful facts:

Palestinian children spend more of their school day studying Islam. Critical jobs in public education are filled by Islamic stalwarts. A once-banned social studies reader, crammed with hard-line rhetoric, is now in classrooms.

During a year in power, the Islamic Hamas movement has begun taking control of Palestinian schools and is making changes.

Hamas leaders insist they are not trying to indoctrinate children. But moderate Palestinians say Hamas' goal is nothing less than shaping the political views of future generations.

It's a battle for the Palestinian soul, part of a wider Hamas campaign to expand its influence in all spheres of public life, also including newspapers to unions, said Hanan Ashrawi, a secular former minister of higher education.

"You are seeing the gradual transformation of a largely secular national ... education system and curriculum into a more ideological, closed system," said Ashrawi.

Hamas shares power with the moderate Fatah movement it defeated in last year's election, and the terms of that coalition will keep it in control of the Education Ministry for three more years.

Hamas doesn't have completely free rein in the schools. It's being scrutinized by Fatah and by the largely secular Palestinian intelligentsia. Ashrawi, now an independent legislator, says she has asked Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate who heads Fatah, to hand control of the curriculum to an independent commission of experts, but has gotten no commitment.

It is in Abbas's contract, I understand, that he has to be called "moderate" once per article. Fatah includes something called, I think, the Al-Aqsa Moderate Brigades. Maybe it was Martyrs Brigades. Anyway, it just conducted an elaborate joint operation with Islamic Jihad.

"We are not making education more Islamic," Education Minister Nasser Shaer said before he was arrested by Israel in an anti-Hamas sweep last month. But he is also under pressure within his movement to apply a clearly Islamic, non-Western curriculum. For example: Hamas firebrands want to eliminate U.S. history from a textbook.

So far, Shaer has made only a few changes. He has increased religion classes from three to four a week and allowed a social studies reader with a strong Islamic bent to be used in the classroom.

That pressure is having results.

He has focused mostly on moving Hamas loyalists into key positions in the education system, presumably preparing the ground for tighter control in the future.

When a high-level education job opens up, it goes to a Hamas supporter, with appointees often leapfrogging over other candidates with stronger credentials. Eight of 14 West Bank school districts are now controlled by Hamas, from none a year ago, and the new religion requirement meant hiring some 300 graduates of Islamic teachers' colleges that are Hamas strongholds, Fatah educators say.

Hamas created another power base in education by forming its own teachers' union to compete with the one controlled by Fatah. It claims to have signed up some 18,000 teachers, including those in private schools, but also many of the 40,000 teaching in public schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hamas teachers, many sporting the movement's trademark beards, recently marched through Ramallah, chanting, "Let's restore glory to religion and dignity to the teacher."

Marching and chanting is good exercise.

In some cases, girls are pushed by pro-Hamas teachers to pray and wear head scarves, although no law requires it. Hala Barghouti, 11, from the village of Deir Yassin, said she is transferring from a public school to a private Christian one next year to escape the nagging.

Political tension inside the schools is rising, others say.

Tenth-grader Sumara Awaiseh, a Fatah supporter in a Ramallah school, said he gets into fights with pro-Hamas classmates. "They'll chant something against Fatah and that's how fights get started," he said.

While Fatah supports a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Hamas refuses to recognize the Jewish state and renounce violence.

Don't sentences like this drive you nuts? Fatah refuses to recognize the Jewish state and renounce violence. Hamas would like the world to become a sort-of Islamic Über-Cambodia. Some Hamasniks would, anyway. Others are more extreme.

One of Hamas' first acts after taking control was to lift a ban on private teaching materials, including one that adopts a tough Islamic approach to the conflict with Israel.

That booklet was written by al-Buraq, a Hamas-allied education center shut down by Israel several months ago. The preface says it seeks to "emphasize the Arab and Islamic identity" of the Palestinians, highlight the "brutality of the occupier" and "to create the energy to get rid of all types of occupation."

During the second Palestinian uprising, it says, American cease-fire initiatives "ignored the political rights of the Palestinian people and did not recognize the Palestinian people's right to resistance to regain its rights." In contrast, the draft of a textbook for grades 8-10 on modern Palestinian history, written when Fatah controlled the schools, is a largely matter-of-fact description of events. Fatah educators claim Hamas held up its printing because it's too neutral. Hamas denies it.

Shaer, while removing the ban, hasn't explicitly recommended the al-Buraq booklet to the students -- to the disappointment of the Islamic center which had presumed it now had a sympathetic ear in the ministry. And some Hamas ideologues are getting impatient with the slow pace of change.[...]

Politics, politics--it's the same no matter where you are, right?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad