Friday, March 22, 2013

Gatestone Update :: Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: We Hate You, So Please Pay Us More, and more



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Palestinians: We Hate You, So Please Pay Us More

by Khaled Abu Toameh
March 22, 2013 at 5:00 am
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Many Arabs and Muslims hate the U.S. because it stands in the way of fulfilling their dream of destroying Israel. The strong sentiments against Israel and the U.S. are the direct result of decades of indoctrination and incitement.
The anti-US protests that erupted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before and during President Barack Obama's serve as a reminder that many Palestinians continue to loathe the U.S., primarily because of its support for Israel.
But U.S. support for Israel is not the only reason why such a large number of Palestinians -- as well as Arabs and Muslims -- hate the Americans with such intensity.
Palestinians who took to the streets during the week to protest against Obama's visit chanted slogans not only against him personally, but also in denunciation of U.S. policies and actions toward the Arabs and Muslims.
In Ramallah, for instance, hundreds of Muslim fundamentalists chanted slogans condemning the U.S. for "perpetrating massacres and atrocities" against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"America is the number one enemy of Islam and Muslims," speakers at the anti-U.S. rally in Ramallah declared.
Palestinian Authority policemen, who are trained and funded by the U.S. and other Western countries, did not intervene even as the extremists also started criticizing the leaders of the Palestinian Authority for agreeing to meet with the "infidel" Obama.
Palestinian demonstrators in Bethlehem, who trampled on Obama's pictures and sprayed Nazi swastikas over them before setting them on fire, also explained that they were protesting not only against U.S. support for Israel, but also Washington's general attitude toward Arabs and Muslims.
"The Americans are the enemies of the Arabs and Muslims," shouted a Palestinian activist standing near Manger Square. "The Americans do only what the Jews tell them to do and that is why they are against all Arabs and Muslims."
The strong sentiments against Israel and the U.S. expressed by Palestinians are the direct result of decades of indoctrination and incitement.
Like the rest of the Arab and Islamic countries, Palestinians have been told that the U.S. is the "Great Satan" and number one enemy of all Arabs and Muslims.
Palestinians have been told by their media, leaders and mosque preachers that the U.S. is "controlled by evil Jews" who seek to humiliate Arabs and Muslims on behalf of the "Zionist Project."
Many Arabs and Muslims hate the U.S. because it stands in the way of fulfilling their dream of destroying Israel. Without U.S. backing for Israel, they believe, the Israelis would not be able to survive for one day in the Middle East.
Today it is almost impossible to find one Palestinian who trusts the U.S. and believes it can act as an honest broker in the Middle East.
Even senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah said -- in private briefings this week -- that the U.S. has lost its credibility as an honest broker.
Still, much of the hate on the Palestinian street was also directed toward Obama personally. In this regard, Obama can only blame himself for the reason why he has become a hated figure in the Arab and Islamic countries.
Obama's famous Cairo speech at the beginning of his first term in office created the impression among many Arabs and Muslims that this U.S. president was "one of ours" and would do everything they expected from him -- including forcing Israel to make unimaginable concessions.
But as Obama has failed to rise to their expectations, Arabs and Muslims are condemning him as a Zionist agent and an enemy of Islam.
Now that Obama has chosen Israel as the first country to visit at the beginning of his second term, he should expect more anger and hatred from Arabs and Muslims. His statements upon his arrival, in which he repeated U.S. support for Israel, have already drawn strong condemnations from Palestinians.
But then one wonders: If Palestinians hate Obama and the U.S. so much, why not just boycott his visit and refrain from talking to any representative of the U.S. government?
The answer is simple. Palestinians badly need U.S. money. They know the U.S. will never endorse all of their demands or cut off its ties with Israel. Yet they will continue to ask for U.S. money, largely because their Arab brothers have turned their backs on them and are refusing to help.
The U.S., of course, will continue to shower hundreds of millions of dollars on the Palestinian Authority. In return, Palestinians will continue to harbor hatred for the U.S.
Related Topics:  Khaled Abu Toameh

The Global Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation Continues

by Irfan Al-Alawi
March 22, 2013 at 4:45 am
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Because FGM is perceived as an "Islamic" problem, the struggle against it must be led by Muslims, to remove the stain of this ongoing scandal from our religion. "There is no mention of it in the holy Quran." The suffering inflicted young girls has no religious or medical justification, and should be wiped out wherever it is encountered.
A global campaign to eradicate female genital mutilation [FGM], often misnamed "female circumcision," continues. While foreign NGOs have made Iraqi Kurdistan a center of the effort to do away with this practice, many observers have argued that it is not a "Kurdish" problem.
FGM is also not just a "Muslim" phenomenon. However widespread it may be among Iraqi Sunni Kurds, its acceptance in Islam is limited. According to the German relief organization WADI [The Association for Crisis Assistance and Development Co-operation], in the four provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan, only the farthest north, Dohuk, which borders on Turkey, shows little evidence of FGM at any age. Among the remaining three "governorates," in the province of Erbil, named for the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), 63% of women have undergone the atrocious custom; in Suleymaniya, 78%; and in Garmyan/New Kirkuk, the southernmost, 81%.
A WADI report on FGM in Iraqi Kurdistan, issued in 2010, stated that in the oldest age ranges – women between 50 and 80 years old – 80 to 95% of a statistical sample had been subjected to FGM.
FGM is also found in West African countries with non-Muslim majorities such as Benin (42% Christian, 24% Muslim, 17% "Voudoun"); Cameroon (40% "indigenous," or animist, in religion, 40% Christian, and 20% Muslim); and Ghana (71% Christian, only 17% Muslim, and 5% "traditional.") And in Africa they are not exceptions.
Nevertheless, because FGM is perceived as an "Islamic" problem, some responsibility for its abolition rests with the leaders of the worldwide Muslim community, or ummah. The struggle against FGM must be led by Muslims, to remove the stain of this ongoing scandal from our religion.
In Iraqi Kurdistan and elsewhere, Islamic scholars have argued over the legitimacy of FGM.
Even the notorious radical cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, although aligned with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is well known for his 2006 fatwa warning that hadiths (oral commentaries of Muhammad) cited to support FGM are weak in their transmission by witnesses – the basis of hadith studies. Qaradawi pointed out that "women in Islamic nations lived for centuries without circumcision being a concern, as it did not exist." He admitted, however, that "it is happening today in countries like Egypt and a few other countries in the Arab world."
In 2011, according to the internationally-distributed Kurdish-language newspaper Rudaw, a distinguished Kurdish expert on Islamic law, Dr. Mustafa Zalmi, declared without hesitation that FGM is prohibited in Islam.
Zalmi earned his degree in Islamic jurisprudence from the renowned theological university of Al-Azhar in Cairo. He argued that as FGM is absent from Mecca and Medina, where the Islamic revelation was received and the early Muslim community was organized, there is no justification for its existence either there or in remote places such as Iraqi Kurdistan. He was supported, if only in spirit, in his stand against FGM, by Mullah Ahmed Shafi'i, a member of the KRG's Fatwa Committee.
The KRG passed legislation banning FGM, as a form of family violence, in August 2011. That measure was answered by the objections of a radical cleric in Erbil, Ismail Sussai, in an incoherent sermon, which declared FGM "obligatory" and called on KRG president Massoud Barzani not to sign the law forbidding it. Barzani, indeed, did not sign the bill, but allowed it to be published as a new regulation in the KRG Official Gazette. This created an ambiguous situation. Barzani and his supporters could claim the law was in effect, but his opponents among the extremist clerics could ignore it.
WADI states that the anti-FGM law in Iraqi Kurdistan has had a visible effect, and that the incidence of the procedure is declining. But critics of Barzani's government say that it has lagged behind in suppressing FGM.
On February 6, 2013 – the "International Day for Zero Tolerance of FGM" – an anti-FGM law covering the whole of Iraq was presented to the country's parliament, but without further action. As a precedent, on December 20, 2012, the United Nations General Assembly adopted unanimously a resolution calling for all countries to ban FGM. But like most UN activities, the resolution, which is not legally binding, was an empty gesture.
In September 2012, a year after the KRG published its ban on FGM, Reuters news agency distributed a substantial report from Tutakal, an obscure Kurdish village in Iraq, where FGM had been established for generations. Last year, apparently, the residents of Tutakal agreed to end the abuse of young girls that had been imposed on the pretexts of tradition and faith. Enhanced government services and the erection of small classrooms provided helpful incentives to arrive at this decision.
The Reuters account quoted Golchen Aubed, aged 50, who admitted that she had allowed her four daughters to be genitally mutilated, because of what Westerners might call "peer pressure." She said that if she had not done it, her neighbors would have wanted to know why.
But her son Lukman, who has a daughter free from FGM, has pledged that if he hears of anybody in the village carrying out such acts, he will report them to the police. In addition, Aubed said, she has a second son, with two daughters, who have also not been victims of FGM.
The main lesson from the village of Tutakal must be that while NGOs and international rhetoric may publicize the crime of FGM, it must be stopped where it takes place: in homes and communities. Reuters quoted the headman of Tutakal, Sarhad Ajeb, as he sat in the small local mosque. "We now feel the pain of the woman," he said. "The woman feels incomplete because when they do this, they cut a piece of flesh from a woman." Perhaps most importantly, he affirmed, "There is no mention of this practice in the holy Quran."
For moderate, conventional, traditional, and spiritual Muslims, that should settle the question of FGM. The suffering inflicted on young girls has no religious or medical justification, and should be wiped out wherever it is encountered.
Related Topics:  Irfan Al-Alawi

Bangladesh's Show Trials

by Taylor Dinerman
March 22, 2013 at 4:30 am
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The trials, apparently intended to result in the execution of some of the government's political foes, have been so lacking in fairness, and so corrupt, that no one should accept them as legitimate.
Today in Bangladesh the Awami League government is conducting a series of show trials against its political foes. The men, all members of opposition political parties, are accused of war crimes committed during the War of Independence in 1971. These trials, conducted by a special court called the International Crimes Tribunal [ICT], are in some ways similar to those in the USSR during its Stalinist phase.
The accused in the Moscow trials were not innocent men. They were loyal communists who had helped Lenin to impose his tyranny on the people of Russia and its Empire. They were members of a government that, during the Russian Civil War, committed its full share of crimes and atrocities. Yet no one, least of all the accused, believed that they were on trial because of what they had done to impose the Gulag regime on Russia. They were on trial because Stalin was a paranoid dictator who governed through terror.
The Islamists of the Jamaat Party may or may not be any more innocent than the revolutionaries Stalin executed, but this does not mean they are guilty of the crimes of which the ICT has accused them. It also does not mean that they are innocent. The trials have been so lacking in fairness, and so corrupt, that no one should accept them as legitimate.
The accused have not been allowed full and unrestricted access to defense counsel. Witnesses have been intimidated and not allowed to present their full testimony. One witness was kidnapped, apparently by security forces, from outside the courthouse in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.
According to defense sources, the prosecution presented as if it were hard evidence multiple hearsay testimonies as well as newspaper reports and written statements of dubious origin. To say that the trial has not conformed to international standards is beyond an understatement.
The ICT, however, is not truly a totalitarian institution -- at least not yet. But it and the government it serves are headed in that direction. The Tribunal judges are all members in good standing of the Awami League; their loyalty to that party has been proven by the communications intercepted between one of the judges and an Awami legal advisor based in Belgium. In a small sign that all is not yet lost, the judge resigned. But instead of a mistrial being declared, he was replaced with another government loyalist, and the trial continued as if nothing had happened.
The verdicts have produced riots and demonstrations throughout Bangladesh. Contrary to some claims, these demonstrations began as an effort by Awami supporters to change the sentence of life imprisonment, handed down to one defendant, to the death penalty. Many pro-Awami protesters apparently fear that if their party loses the next election, the defendants who are sentenced to life in jail might be pardoned by the new government. This apprehension reveals just how political these trials really are. If the trials were legitimate, the overwhelming majority of the public would insist that the men who had been found guilty stay in jail, no matter who the Prime Minister was.
Bangladesh has a long history of political street violence: in recent days, more than 80 people have been killed, and opposition leaders are being arrested during street protests.
The Awami league originated as a Marxist-Leninist style of party; its conversion to the principles of democracy was never solid, and mostly in evidence when it was in opposition. Whatever Islamic principles the Jamaat stands for, the ICT has utterly failed to support any ideals of democracy or rule of law.
To punish the crimes of 1971 using a dubious and highly politicized legal process, apparently intended to result in the execution of some of the government's political foes, does nothing for the cause of justice or for the future of Bangladesh.
Related Topics:  Bangladesh  |  Taylor Dinerman

Calling for Protests in Israel

by Shoshana Bryen
March 22, 2013 at 3:30 am
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After years of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic indoctrination, in the schools and general media, it is not realistic to believe that the Palestinians desire what the President told the Israelis to desire: "A future in which Jews, Muslim and Christians can all live in peace and greater prosperity in this Holy Land." And maybe that is why the President did not say it to the Palestinians.
President Obama's visit to Israel, and particularly his speech to 500 university students, was a winner at many levels including one he probably had not even considered. In how many countries can the President of the United States call forth the passions of the local people and have confidence that he is calling forth the "better angels"? He did it in Israel.
The President touched on deeply felt emotions for Israelis, worked hard at erasing the faux pas of relating Israel's national origins to the Holocaust, twice declined to call Israeli settlements "illegal" while standing next to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, and he praised Israeli technology, ingenuity, democracy and culture. Remarking on the upheaval in the Arab world he said, "So much of what people in the region are seeking is happening here (Israel)."
Yes, that is something he should have said in Cairo or Ramallah. And yes, he called for a "two state solution" that has little chance of success. And yes, yes, he made false analogies between Palestinians and Israelis. And yes, yes, yes, he called Abbas, whose single elected term expired in 2009 and who has been increasingly repressive and willing to incite against Israel and the U.S., a "partner." And no, Israel cannot "reverse an undertow of isolation," that is generated by other people in other lands who do not accept that, at the end of any "peace process," Israel will still exist.
But okay. Those are things that should have been and were expected from President Obama. It was also expected that he would encourage his youthful, carefully selected, leftish college student audience to push the rightish government of Israel to do what he could not convince Prime Minister Netanyahu to do. He directly asked the audience to pressure its government.
In full campaign mode, Mr. Obama told them, "Speaking as a politician, I can promise you this: political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the change that you want to see. (People can) overcome a legacy of mistrust that they inherited from their parents… Your voices must be louder than the extremists who would drown them out. Your hopes must light the way forward."
That is a call to protest, to political insurrection. The interesting part is that he assumed igniting a political firestorm in Israel would have a positive effect.
Unspoken -- maybe because the President had not expressly thought it -- was that if young Israelis "do it," if they "create the change they want to see," what they create will be a force for good. He assumed without saying it that the voices they would raise would be voices for peace. He assumed without saying it that Israeli hopes are hopes for peace. And he is right, although it should be said that hopes for peace reside all along the Israeli political spectrum. Those of the right want peace no less than those of the left; they just have different levels of skepticism.
But what if it is not peace in the hearts of the people, but something malign?
Mr. Obama referenced his Cairo speech to the Israelis. "Four years ago, I stood in Cairo in front of an audience of young people. Politically, religiously, they must seem a world away. But the things they want -- they're not so different from you. The ability to make their own decisions; to get an education and a good job; to worship God in their own way; to get married and have a family. The same is true of the young Palestinians that I met in Ramallah this morning, and of young Palestinians who yearn for a better life in Gaza. That is where peace begins -- not just in the plans of leaders, but in the hearts of people."
Certainly the beginning of the Arab uprising in Tunis and in Tahrir Square was focused on jobs and justice (although not on "peace" with Israel or anyone else). But the result was not the flowering of education, work and peaceful relations. It was the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, violence and the collapse of the Egyptian economy. And clearly many of the Brotherhood's supporters are young Egyptians. Intolerance for Egypt's Coptic citizens and the increasing violence in several cities attest to the dangers of calling for changes in or of government. Without wanting a return to the repression of the old government, it is safe to say that the revolution did not bring forth a better one.
Calling for an uprising in Pakistan does not seem like a great idea.
If the President told young Palestinians in Ramallah to demand that the PA "take risks" in "voices louder than" the opposition, it is likely that the Fatah government of Mahmoud Abbas would fall to the more radical and more popular Hamas. After years of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic indoctrination in the schools and the general media, it is not realistic to believe that Palestinians desire what the President told Israelis to desire: "A future in which Jews, Muslims and Christians can all live in peace and greater prosperity in this Holy Land." And maybe that is why the President did not say it to the Palestinians.
President Obama, perhaps inadvertently, made the case for U.S.-Israel relations grounded in the most fundamental shared values. Israel -- like the United States -- is that rare country in which the government does not fear the protest of the people, and the people do not fear protesting.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center.
Related Topics:  Israel  |  Shoshana Bryen

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