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In this mailing:
by Khaled Abu Toameh
• February 16, 2017 at 5:00 am
- The Palestinians
seem to be marching towards establishing a regime that is remarkably
reminiscent of the despotic and corrupt Arab and Islamic governments.
- By failing -- or,
more accurately, refusing -- to hold the PA accountable for its
crackdown on public freedoms, American and European taxpayers actively
contribute to the emergence of another Arab dictatorship in the Middle
East.
- Palestinian
professor Abdel Sattar Qassem, who teaches political science at
An-Najah University in Nablus, is facing trial for "extending his
tongue" against PA President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior PA
officials.
- Many Palestinians
used to say that their dream is that one day they would have a free
media and democracy like their neighbors in Israel. But thanks to the
apathy of the international community, Palestinians have come to learn
that if and when they ever have their own state, its role model will
not be Israel or any Western democracy, but the regimes of repression
that control the Arab and Muslim world.
Professor Abdul Sattar Qassem (left) is facing trial for
"extending his tongue" against Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas (right) and other senior PA officials.
A novelist, a journalist and a university professor walk into a bar.
Sounds like a joke, but it stops being funny when these three figures are
the latest victims of the Palestinian Authority's (PA) crackdown on public
freedoms, above all, freedom of expression.
The crackdown is yet more proof of the violent intolerance that the
Western-funded PA has long shown its critics.
It is also a sad reminder that more than two decades after the
foundation of the PA, Palestinians are as far from democracy as ever. In
fact, the Palestinians seem to be marching in the opposite direction --
towards establishing a regime that is remarkably reminiscent of the
despotic and corrupt Arab and Islamic governments.
by Robbie Travers
• February 16, 2017 at 4:30 am
- How come, then,
that John Bercow did not think it advisable to oppose the Emir of
Kuwait's visit due to its "sexism" and "immigration
ban"? No, Bercow granted the Emir a speech in the Queen's Robing
Room.
- It is evidently
acceptable to be a representative of some of the world's most repressive
dictatorships, with policies far worse than President Trump's, and yet
visit Parliament, but a democratically-elected leader in the free
world and a key ally, who may hold some views with which Bercow
disagrees, makes him unacceptable.
- What is it that
the people trying to keep Trump from speaking are afraid others might
hear?
UK Prime Minister Theresa May meets with US President
Donald Trump at the White House, January 27, 2017. (Image source: UK Prime
Minister's Office)
When Theresa May announced, to the gathered press at the White House,
an invitation for Donald Trump to make an official state visit to the
United Kingdom, there were some in Britain who apparently oppose his views
-- and, in a democratic and free society, express their opposition. There
also were, however, concerns that these critics may have been acting hypocritically,
as well as without considering due process.
House of Commons Speaker John Bercow declared that he would not invite
Trump to make a speech before Parliament due to the president's alleged
"sexism" and "racism," and the British Parliament's
opposition to those stances, as well as, further, due to Trump's temporary
restrictions on immigration until better procedures for vetting applicants
can be put in place .
Bercow, however, never adhered to due process: he should first have
consulted the Speaker of the House of Lords or the Lord Chamberlain.
by Burak Bekdil
• February 16, 2017 at 4:00 am
- Turkey suffered
the largest decline in freedoms among 195 countries over the past
year, according to Freedom House.
- Erdogan's
academic purge is 38 times bigger in size than the generals' after the
1980 military coup.
- According to data
compiled by Turkey Purge, PEN International, the Committee to Protect
Journalists and the Stockholm Center for Freedom, 128,398 people have
been sacked, while 91,658 are being detained.
- Worse, neither
the academics on the purge list nor their students were allowed to
protest peacefully. Their attempted protest on February 10 at the
School of Political Sciences in Ankara met a huge police force and was
crushed.
- You have all the
freedoms you want -- so long as you are a pro-Erdogan Islamist.
Professor Yuksel Taskin, who was recently purged from an
Istanbul department of journalism, tweeted: "This is a pure political
'cleansing'. But my conscience is clear. Let my students know that I shall
never, ever bow down!" (Image source: Hakan YÜCEL video screenshot)
Nearly three centuries later -- and slightly revising the historian Shelby
Foote's famous line -- "A Turkish university, these days, is a group
of buildings around a small library, a mosque and classrooms cleansed of
unwanted scholars."
The "Great Turkish Purge" launched by President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan's Islamist, autocratic government in the aftermath of a coup
attempt in July surprised many in its size. It should not have done. The
failed putsch gave Erdogan's government a golden opportunity to advance his
crackdown on dissent of every kind. No wonder Erdogan, on the night of the
attempt, said: "This [coup attempt] is a gift of God".
by Shoshana Bryen
• February 16, 2017 at 3:00 am
- What is commonly
called the "Palestinian-Israeli conflict" is, in fact, the
"Arab-Israel conflict."
- Jordan illegally
annexed the West Bank in 1950, and from that time Palestinian
nationalism has been deadly for the Kingdom.
- "I call on
the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised
by terror... to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and
liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals,
America and the world will actively support their efforts.... A
Palestinian state will never be created by terror -- it will be built
through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or
veiled attempts to preserve the status quo." — President George
W. Bush, 2002.
- "There's no
way a deal can be made if they're not ready to acknowledge a very,
very great and important country." — President Donald J. Trump,
2017.
- The burden, then,
is on the Arab states and the Palestinians.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu address a press conference at the White House, February
15, 2017. (Image source: White House video screenshot)
The optics, certainly, were fine. It was good to see an American
president and an Israeli prime minister standing together on the podium
with what appeared to be genuine good will. Most important, and promising
for the future, perhaps, was how they dealt with the "two state
solution" mantra. There was, for the first time in years, nuance in
both the American and the Israeli position toward what has become a slogan
without meaning.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated the possibility of two
states with caveats he noted:
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