Palestinian officials, citing an autopsy, said Arafat Jaradat was tortured during Israeli interrogation. Israeli officials said more tests are needed to determine the cause of death, and Israel’s public security minister said he would allow an international expert to review the autopsy results.

The weekend death of the 30-year-old gas station attendant and father of two comes amid rising West Bank tensions that have prompted talk in Israel about the possibility of a new Palestinian uprising.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Monday he was consulting with security officials, while U.N. envoy Robert Serry warned that “mounting tensions present a real risk of destabilization.”

Mounting tensions present a real risk of destabilization

In recent days, there have been frequent Palestinian protests in support of some 4,600 Palestinians held by Israel, particularly four inmates who’ve staged extended hunger strikes.

In a clash Monday, Palestinian medical officials said two Palestinian youths, one 13 years old and one 16, were seriously wounded by live fire. An Israeli military spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military policy, said the military was looking into the claim. He said protesters hurled “improvised hand grenades” towards a holy site in the Bethlehem area, endangering the worshippers inside, at which point soldiers fired at the legs of one Palestinian, lightly injuring him.

Israel’s military has said it typically uses non-lethal means to disperse violent protests, but occasionally uses live fire when soldiers feel they are in a life-threatening situation. In recent weeks, Palestinians have increasingly complained of the military’s use of live fire at protests.

The fate of the prisoners is sensitive in Palestinian society, where virtually every family has had a member imprisoned by Israel. Detainees are held on a range of charges, from stone-throwing to deadly attacks, and are seen as heroes resisting occupation. Israelis tend to view them as terrorists.

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Palestinian and Israeli officials traded accusations Monday, each saying the other was trying to exploit the latest unrest for political gains.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel is trying to provoke the Palestinians with what he said are increasingly lethal methods by Israeli security forces clamping down on Palestinian protests.

“However they try to drag us to that place, we won’t be dragged,” said Abbas. “We won’t be dragged, but they (Israelis) have to bear the responsibility.”

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev alleged that Abbas’ self-rule government in the West Bank is inciting violence against Israel. Palestinian officials have called for more solidarity rallies for the prisoners.

Abbas, a critic of violence, has said he would not allow an armed uprising on his watch.

MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images

But tensions have been rising in recent days with a number of protests in solidarity with prisoners held by Israel, and then the death of Jaradat over the weekend.

At Monday’s funeral, thousands marched behind Jaradat’s body, draped in a Palestinian flag, as the procession snaked through his home town of Saeer, near the West Bank city of Hebron.

Palestinian police maintained order, and seven officers fired a 21-gun salute near the gravesite.

Abbas Zaki, a senior member of Abbas’ Fatah movement, called Jaradat’s death an Israeli crime.

I am telling Fatah members that our enemy only understands the language of force

“I am telling Fatah members that our enemy only understands the language of force,” he told the crowd in what appeared to be a call to violence.

Jaradat was arrested on Feb. 18 on suspicion that he had thrown stones at Israelis. He died Saturday at Israel’s Megiddo prison after several days of interrogation by the Shin Bet security service.

Israel’s forensics institute performed an autopsy Sunday, in the presence of a physician from the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian minister of prisoner affairs, Issa Karake, said after being briefed by the Palestinian doctor that Jaradat was tortured. He said Jaradat was bruised over his body and suffered two broken ribs.

Jaradat’s brother, Mohammed, said he saw the body Sunday and believed his brother was severely beaten.

There is a clear political purpose to stir things up

Israel’s Health Ministry said the autopsy did not conclusively determine the cause of death, but that the bruising and broken ribs were likely the result of attempts to revive the detainee. It said more testing was needed.

Amos Gilad, an Israeli defense official, alleged that Palestinian officials were jumping to conclusions. “It’s intended to incite,” Gilad told Israel Army Radio on Monday. “There is a clear political purpose to stir things up.”

The Shin Bet initially said Jaradat apparently died of a heart attack, though the Palestinian physician attending the autopsy was quoted as saying he did not find any evidence of that.

An agency official has denied Jaradat was beaten.

Detainees have filed some 700 complaints about mistreatment by Shin Bet agents in the past decade, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

Reports of physical mistreatment have dropped sharply in recent years but have not disappeared, said B’Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli.

Serry said Israel must respect its obligations toward all Palestinians in custody, adding that the U.N. is concerned about the deteriorating health of Palestinian detainees on hunger strike.

Thomas Wright, Fellow, Foreign Policy, Managing Global Order, The Brookings Institution

Hillary Clinton’s first overseas trip as Secretary of State was to Asia. There have been reports that White House officials asked Kerry to do the same. But, he is on his way to the Middle East and Europe. The destination is very much his choice and tells us something about where his priorities lie.

Kerry’s top priority on this trip is to make progress on Syria. This is a ticking time bomb. If Syria collapses, it could be extremely destabilizing for the region. The big prize is to negotiate the exit of Assad and a stable transition. If Kerry can pull this off, he will establish himself as one of the most successful secretaries of state in recent times. But, the odds are against him. The U.S. has little leverage. Tragedy looms larger with every passing day.

Jack Goldstone, Professor, Director, Center for Global Policy, George Mason University

Normally, a new Secretary of State’s first trip is all about getting personally acquainted and reinforcing key relationships — that means listening and learning. But Kerry is already well-acquainted with other leaders and the world is facing a major crisis in the imminent collapse of Syria. So I expect Kerry’s top priority will be to gain support in Europe, the Middle East, and with Russia (he is meeting Russia’s foreign minister in Berlin) for talks on how to stop the violence, and to plan for a transition to a new government in Syria. I expect he will also be trying to find ways the US can play a constructive role in supporting pluralist, democratic progress in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.

David Mislan, Assistant Professor, School of International Service, American University

In a time when U.S. foreign policy and American leaders are criticized for talking too much and listening too little, calling a trip like Secretary Kerry’s a listening tour is more symbolic than practical.  In reality, however, he will be conferring with America’s Western partners with the hope that the NATO states will present a united front in Rome regarding Syria’s civil war and on Egypt’s recent struggles.

I applaud the organizers and, of course, the two young Iraqi adults for standing up and sharing with us how they experienced the beginning of the war, telling us details of the  consequent drastic changes  for their families and the very special gift of hearing how they felt and feel.  I could not help but be reminded of what I was reading in the book ”Rooftops of Tehran” as they described, in part, moments of recognizing beauty, nature, happiness in their daily life and how it came to a sudden, horrifying end. Both guests are from Baghdad and live now in Portland Maine. Just think about THAT.

Love you all,

Wolfgang

Initial criticism of the sale focused on the hypocrisy of Gore, who owes much of his considerable wealth and fame to his high-profile role as globe-trotting environmental campaigner, selling out to a broadcaster controlled by the government of Qatar, an oil-rich country run by an absolute monarchy that gets its wealth from the very product Gore blames for the horrors of climate change.

Gore reportedly stood to make $100 million from the sale of his Current TV,  and pushed to have the deal close before the end of last year, so he could avoid the higher rate of tax  due to take effect under President Barack Obama, a fellow Democrat.  He defended the sale by claiming Al Jazeera provided top-notch coverage of climate issues, and insisted that both Al Jazeera and Current were founded “to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.”

Just before buying Gore’s channel, the emir visited Gaza, where he pledged $400 million to its Hamas rulers.

That claim is looking a bit dubious these days, as some of Al Jazeera’s top talent has been deserting the network amid claims it has become a shill for its Qatari owners and other Middle East autocrats. Spiegelonline, the web version of the German newsmagazine, has a lengthy report on the departures, which it says includes reporters and anchors from Paris, London, Moscow, Beirut and Cairo. Though previously lauded for its willingness to confront Middle Eastern regimes, it says, since the advent of the Arab Spring it “has shamelessly fawned upon the new rulers.”

Today, when Egyptians protest against President Mohammad Morsi and the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Jazeera is often critical of them, in the style of the old pro-government TV station. Conversely, according to ex-correspondent [Aktham] Suliman, Al-Jazeera executives have ordered that Morsi’s decrees should be portrayed as pearls of wisdom. “Such a dictatorial approach would have been unthinkable before,” he says. “In Egypt we have become the palace broadcaster for Morsi.”

It reports that the Emir of Qatar, who visited Gaza in October and pledged $400 million to Hamas, its terrorist rulers, is increasingly intolerant of independent voices:

A prominent correspondent who, until one year ago, used to report in Beirut for the network, says: “Al-Jazeera takes a clear position in every country from which it reports — not based on journalistic priorities, but rather on the interests of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar,” he says. “In order to maintain my integrity as a reporter, I had to quit.”

Critics say that the emir now essentially trusts only his own people: The network’s director general is now a relative of the emir, as is the head of the advisory board. They are seemingly required to follow political guidelines laid down by the palace — instead of serving the interests of viewers. Thanks to its oil wealth, Qatar is blessed with the world’s second highest per capita income, and it’s a key geo-political player with a clear agenda.

Signs of disaffection were evident even before the sale of Current TV closed. In September, Britain’s The Guardian reported that staff members had protested after being ordered to re-edit a UN report to give more prominence to the emir.

Al-Jazeera’s editorial independence has been called into question after its director of news stepped in to ensure a speech made by Qatar’s emir to the UN led its English channel’s coverage of the debate on Syrian intervention.

Journalists had produced a package of the UN debate, topped with excerpts of President Obama’s speech, last Tuesday when a last-minute instruction came from Salah Negm, the Qatar-based news director, who ordered the video to be re-edited to lead with the comments from Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

Despite protests from staff that the emir’s comments – a repetition of previous calls for Arab intervention in Syria – were not the most important aspect of the UN debate, the two-minute video was re-edited and Obama’s speech was relegated to the end of the package.

The emir’s visit to Gaza came just a few weeks later, the first visit by a head of state since Hamas gained control in 2007. Al Jazeera paid $500 million for Current TV not for its audience — it averaged just 40,000 on most nights — but because it  can be viewed in 40 million U.S. homes. The idea was to provide a conduit to U.S. viewers for independent-minded coverage of the Middle East. But an organization increasingly aligned to the political agenda of an all-powerful Qatari emir, and friend to Hamas, may find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm among a U.S. audience, even if it has a friend in Al Gore.

National Post

The agreement Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid (NV) thought he had reached with Republican leader Mitch McConnell (KY), died a slow, angry and ugly death Thursday.

When this new Senate held its first session in January, younger and more progressive Democratic members of the Senate wanted Harry Reid to take advantage of having a Democratic majority.

They urged him to make changes in the senate’s archaic rules while he had a Democratic majority vote. That action may only be taken at the start of a new congress.

Reid loves the senate and he loves its traditions. He refused to take advantage of his majority. Instead he trusted Mitch McConnell to keep his Republican minority caucus in line without any real rule changes.

Don’t they trade horses in Reid’s Nevada? Doesn’t Harry know that if a horse trader offers you a “too good to be true deal on a mare”, look closely at the animal’s past history and then study her teeth?

Harry Reid was snookered (tricked, fooled) by Mitch McConnell, who promised him a good deal on a mare in a deal that was “too good to be true” to run the senate, the old way.

Reid was also snookered by John McCain (AZ) and Lindsay Graham (SC), (above) two veteran members of the senate who claim all they want is “more information” on what happened at Benghazi before they would allow an up or down vote on the confirmation of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary.

That is Republican-speak that has nothing to do with Benghazi and everything to do with their awareness that Hagel does not meet their “I love Israel” taste test.

A snookered Reid was so angry about what was obviously a move to a Republican filibuster, that he called for an up or down cloture (“closure”) vote on whether or not to end debate on Hagel’s confirmation.

The Republicans knew he would lose that vote. They politely suggested a delay in the vote until February 25 (or 26) giving them more time to find something, anything, that would disqualify Hagel as defense secretary. They have been looking since December and they have always come up empty-handed.

Hagel is backed by virtually everyone but Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Republican party “I love Israel” senators.

Reid is not only a lousy horse trader, he also failed the test of a savvy legislative leader: Know your vote total before you call for cloture.

Under those archaic senate rules Reid refused to change back in January when he had his chance to do so, a cloture vote still needs a 60 vote majority.

To reach his required 60 votes to defeat cloture, Reid started with 55 affirmative Democratic votes. Even conservative Democratic senators in danger of neoconservative primary opponents, stuck with Reid. After that, Reid needed five more senators to win the cloture vote and end debate.

Reid picked up four Republican votes in favor of cloture, Senators Mike Johanns (NE), Susan Collins (ME), Thad Cochran (MS) and Lisa Murkowski (AK).  voted present. An affirmative Orrin Hatch (R-UT)  vote would have put the total at the winning total of 60.

Instead, Hatch voted present, making the final cloture vote 58 for and 40 against. Reid had reversed his yes vote to no, making it possible for him to call for another senate vote when the senate returns February 25.

When Reid spoke on the senate floor Thursday afternoon, he expressed frustration over the tactics of the obstructionists–led by  Senators James Inhofe (OK), John McCain (AZ) and Lindsay Graham (SC)–which forced the cloture vote that Reid lost.

But be not fooled, this whole process has been a charade to snooker the public into believing the Republicans speak the truth when they say they only want to know about Hagel’s finances, or Benghazi, or organization boards on which he sits, or speeches he has given throughout his career.

What really drives the Republicans is a desire to undermine a sitting Democratic president. Mitch McConnell famously said at the start of Obama’s first term that the Republicans would spend four years of non-cooperation with Obama. What the McCain-Graham-Inhofe filibuster is all about is a continuation of McConnell’s anti-Obama strategy from the first term.

In moving toward the cloture vote and the filibuster, Republicans threw up a variety of reasons for opposing Obama’s nominee for defense secretary. The reason menu had changed as often as your local restaurant changes its daily specials.

The current obstructionist rationale du jour is an old favorite, the special that first delighted the Republican conservative base’s palates when Susan Rice’s name was initially suggested as Obama’s next secretary of state, what happened at Benghazi.

First, with Rice and now with Hagel, Republicans are dishing out familiar questions: What does the White House know–and when did the White House know–the “full truth” about the four tragic American deaths at Benghazi.

That demand is leveled at President Obama, of course, since neither Hagel nor Rice had any responsibility in the events surrounding the Benghazi deaths.

To attack and smear Hagel, Republicans have falsely questioned his character and his integrity, including the absurd implication that he has the backing of Iran in his quest for confirmation.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has recently leveled her playful commentator style at Republicans who have been obstructing Democratic nominees.

When hearings began on the now-confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry, and the still-pending Chuck Hagel, Maddow skewed Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz for his aspersions against both Kerry and Hagel. The clip below includes a section of a speech Cruz made during an event sponsored by a media powerhouse of the conservative movement, the National Review.

The Republican congressional obstructionists, including Ted Cruz, have delayed the confirmation of Chuck Hagel for another ten days. When they return to work on February 25 or 26, they will have a pile of clippings to read, including these opening lines from an editorial in the New York Times that ran the day after they left town:

For the last four years, Senate Republicans have used the power of the filibuster to block legislation, bottle up nominees to courts and government departments, and strangle federal agencies, even though they are in the minority.

On Thursday, they hit a new low. They successfully filibustered Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, the first time a cabinet nominee for this post has been prevented from receiving an up-or-down vote.

These next ten days may well be the darkest moments in the life of the Republican party, and its allies in the right-wing government of Israel. Sometimes, winning leads to a much larger defeat.  This could be one of those times.

Out of all the global religious leaders no individual has more power than those who hold the same office as Benedict XVI. The Papacy is the governing authority for over one billion people worldwide and the Pope holds ones of the oldest and most important political positions within the international system. He is one of the few religious leaders who has the dual role of also being a political leader; a head of state in charge not only of a religious community but of a nation-state.

But does this role work in politics? Can the Pope work as both a religious leader and a political leader? Does the role cause a conflict of interests or can politicised religion work as a method of government?

Essentially we have to assume that the position of the Pope and the Papacy works as it has been a norm within the politics of Europe and the wider world for hundreds of years and his position at the head of the Catholic Church has been one of the enduring legacies of the traditions of ancient people and cultures.

However the role of the Papacy has never been simple and the political role that this office takes on has often been a source of tension with the secular leaders of Europe. Historically European monarchs often complained about the Pope overstepping his role as leader of the Catholic Church and intruding too much in the political affairs of nation states. The Pope, throughout the Middle Ages and arguably well into the modern era, saw his role as that of a European overlord. He was the arbitrator in the conflicts of secular leaders and the spiritual authority that guided all Catholic communities and all Catholic nations. This view has often contradicted the view of national leaders, who saw the Pope as a figure of religious authority and a leader in religious matters. For them all other decisions (and in some cases often including religious affairs, such as Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon) were the jurisdiction of national leaders.

In the modern world the Pope’s role has changed. Despite the fact that the Pope has, himself, become a national leader through the creation of the state of Vatican City, this nation has often been run more as a headquarters for a grand international business. Its political presence has been limited by the fact that it does have a unique political role in world politics and for some has changed the Papacy from being a great international organisation to something focused on a single nation. As a result the Pope, who is now both a religious and political leader, has lost that overarching political power that characterised the Papacy in the Middle Ages.

In addition the Papacy has had to deal with an increasing secularisation in world politics. Nations like Spain and France, once cornerstones of Catholic political authority now define themselves as secular states, where religion and Catholicism still play important roles, but ultimately policies are determined by national, rather than religious interests. With this modern framework the Pope can no longer exercise great political influence over the nations of the world. Instead the Pope has been forced to transform his role and is now seen as a source of spiritual and moral, rather than political, authority.

This pattern of seeing religious figures as sources of spiritual authority has been replicated worldwide and has spread to all other religions. The Dalai Lama, the head of Tibetan Buddhism, has lost much of the political authority of his position following the Chinese takeover of Tibet, which had been run effectively as a theocracy. Although he is still an advocate of the political rights of the Tibetan people and through his life has pushed for either an independent or at least autonomous Tibetan state, his political role has been greatly reduced. It is widely believed that any autonomous/independent Tibetan state would have a democratic government and that the Dalai Lama would likely be Head of State, a symbol of political authority. Therefore, in the modern world, his role today has become one that focuses far more on the spiritual rather than the political.

Arguably, in the modern world, it is only Islam which provides a workable framework for a politically religious government. Many of the states within the  Middle East and surrounding Islamic states are the only countries today that all define themselves as religious. In the same way the nations of Europe defined themselves as Christian kingdoms in the Middle Ages, the states of the Middle East today define themselves as Islamic nations.

Through the application of Sharia, the Islamic law code, and the use of Islamic principles as a guide to national politics, nations, including  Afghanistan, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, all have become religious countries. However even within these nations leadership is more secular in character. The Presidents, Monarchs and Prime Ministers of these nations are not religious leaders, instead they are secular leaders, who have strong religious principles and use religious ideology to govern their nations.

Within many Middle Eastern governments there is often political rivalry between the religiously motivated Islamist political parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, who seek to establish or enhance the adherence to Islamic law in the state and the secular parties whose focus in on national politics, economics etc. Following the Arab Uprisings many Islamist parties took the advantage to assert their political authority; in nations such as Egypt and Tunisia the Islamist parties have taken control and the leaders have asserted a form of religious authority over nations that have traditionally been secular in nature.

Although these leaders have established a hybrid government of political and religious authority there still exist two major limitations. Firstly the progress made in both nations has been hampered by further public protest, much of which resulted from the reforms that leaders in these nations have tried to implement. It has been argued that in nations where democracy is a new phenomenon, the Islamist groups did not act as the first choice for many voters, but rather as the only coordinated political opposition, who were offering a political system completely distinct from what went before.

Secondly the religious nature of the governments is limited by the fact that these leaders are not religious leaders, not in the same way that the Pope or the Dalai Lama is. In Egypt figures like the Coptic Pope of Alexandria, Theodoros II, Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar or Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt have very little political power and certainly do not act as political leaders. With these limitations the only true Middle Eastern theocracy is Iran.

During the Iranian Revolution of 1979 the Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini, took control of the nation establishing an Islamic state in which a religious official acts as the Head of State. The Ayatollah has sought to establish a system that not only used sharia law as a basis for government policies but orientated all aspects of government and social infrastructure to follow an Islamic framework. There have been problems adjusting to the new political structure with it proving difficult to reconcile certain aspects of society with Islamic teachings, for example Iran’s energy industry which is fundamentally a national and secular issue, rather than a religious one.

Combining the role of religious authority with a political role is incredibly difficult in the modern world, particularly in regions where the nations do not define themselves as religious, but where secularism and democratic principles have become the way to determine political policies. Some such as the Iranian Ayatollah have managed to establish a hybrid of religious and political governance in nations which are still perceived as religious states. However other leaders such as the Pope and the Dalai Lama have seen their role change in world politics from one that dictates political action to one of moral and spiritual authority.

Sociology of Muslim Brothers Ethics and the Spirit of Secularism

H.A. Yahya, former professor of comparative

The Arab Countries Flags
http://www.hasanyahya.com

Secularism religiously defined by Muslim Sheiks (al Qaradhawi for instance) who attacked the concept and described as : Deviation for faith. (See my 7 parts response to al Qaradawi’s Book titled: ‘Al-Hulul al Mustawradah wa Kayfa Jaat `alaa Ummatina’, the reported solutions and how it came to our nation(Islamic Ummah).

In my article : Titled: H.E Yusuf Al-Qaradawi On Secularism vs. Islam – Part I, I wrote:

“H.E. Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s thesis about his latest book secularism vs Islam. Shiekh Qaradawi  is an authority on Islam widely known and respected among Muslims. He’s an Egyptian by nationality lives in the Gulf state of Qatar, where famous Al-Jazeerah Arabic Channel has weekly program for the Shiekh, under the title: Islam and Life. Recently, he was denied entry visa to Britain because of his sharp criticism to the west, which he strongly denies. Recently in his book: Secularism vs. Islam, under the Arabic title: ‘Al-Hulul al Mustawradah wa Kayfa Jaat `alaa Ummatina’? “How the Imported Solutions Disastrously Affected Our Ummah” pp 113-4, He justifies rejection of secularism by saying: “Secularism may be accepted in a Christian society but it can never enjoy a general acceptance in an Islamic society. Christianity is devoid of a shari`ah or a comprehensive system of life to which its adherents should be committed. The New Testament itself divides life into two parts: one for God, or religion, the other for Caesar, or the state: “Render unto Caesar things which belong to Caesar, and render unto God things which belong to God” (Matthew 22:21). As such, a Christian could accept secularism without any qualms of conscience. Furthermore, Westerners, especially Christians, have good reasons to prefer a secular regime to a religious one. Their experience with “religious regimes” – as they knew them – meant the rule of the clergy, the despotic authority of the Church, and the resulting decrees of excommunication and the deeds of forgiveness, i.e. letters of indulgence.” (Yahya 2010, 2012)

Therefore, according to honorable sheikh for Muslim societies, “the acceptance of secularism means something totally different; i.e. as Islam is a comprehensive system of worship (`ibadah) and legislation (Shari`ah), the acceptance of secularism means abandonment of Shari`ah, a denial of the divine guidance and a rejection of Allah’s injunctions.”

As we see this is a wild judgment against secularism taken for granted by Muslim Brothers and Salfis alike. Al Qaradawi further gives instructions to falsify the  claim that Shariah is not proper to the requirements of the present age. And gives examples from Qur’an comparing knowledge of human beings to the knowledge of God. “The acceptance of a legislation formulated by humans means a preference of the humans’ limited knowledge and experiences to the divine guidance: “Say! Do you know better than Allah?” (2:140).

The Muslim Brothers’ ethics is vague and rejected on the ground of disputation with other Muslim groups (Salfis, radical groups and secularists, on the grounds of Islamic ethics which promote definition of society according to Muslim beliefs.). The daily political and social activities and solutions provided to stop the turmoil in Egypt and elsewhere, are far from secular laws, which may create the failure of Muslim Ethics in the face of secular (modern institutions). In Europe, however, the situation was different, the protestant ethics was dominated other groups in the way they solve social and economic problems by creating the state of law. With firm constitutions include all sects of Christianity and all other religious sects (Catholics, Jews, Muslims, atheists, etc.’).

The Muslim Brothers ethics as dominant in the Arab states are following H. E. Sheikh al Qaradawi’s interpretation of modern Islam as rejecting secularization. Therefore, Muslim Brothers are not able to get rid of the church teachings, like the case in Europe. In no way, the circumstances of The Prophet’s Age are very much different from modern times. And in no way, ethics can win as the Muslim Brothers claim. For one reason, may be logical, in faith, selfishness and identity deny the contributions of non-Muslims in making the modern state. Insistance of the Muslim Brothers on one faith state will be rejected on line with modern ethics. No matter religious or secular.

As far as the circumstances are sharply different, excluding some people in the state (other religions or women, or other sects, Shi’ah or Baha’i) is a mark of decay toward the church. In this case, logic has a defeated position in any argument to solve everyday political, economic oe social problems on both individual an communal levels.

My attempt here in this study is similar to Weber, the German philosopher, in his  study who shows in : “The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism” (Weber 1958), that affinity of faith and modern socioeconomic organizations was successful in Europe and the new land.

Salafi groups are in a sharp difference to Muslim Brothers position in politics. He elective affinity between both groups ideas and particular types of economic activities. For example, Salfis claim that the old system in times of Muhammad has to be applied, while the Muslim Brothers approach has modern political reflexivity beside Islamic ethics.

In our study we may hypothesize a nexus between Muslim Brothers religious beliefs and the development of modern economic system (such as mixture of capitalist-socialist form, for example) would be much appropriate than the Salafi approaches. Without such relations between ethics and modern spirit for freedom and democracy, the project for modern Egyptian (or Arab or Muslim) democratcy. Our hypothesis depends on modern Islam, as Weber saw it as a prophetic, this-worldly, salvationist religion with strong connections with other Abrahamic religions and regarded it as a useful test case of his thesis.

Unfortunately, we may argue that rational formal law, autonomous cities, an independent bourgeois class, and political stability are still totally absent in Islamic society because of the domination of tribal, familial and  patrimonial bureaucracy.

We also may argue according to historical facts,  that a hedonistic spirit and an accommodating Qoranic ethic could not produce salvation anxiety and that asceticism was blocked by two important social groups: the warrior group (army leaders and caliphs) that was the social carrier of Islam and the Sufi brotherhoods that developed mystical religiosity.

In modern times, the situation still exist. Salafis and others, Muslim Brothers and others. The new factor which may change the stagnation of mystical religiosity  is the secularists who are mixture of both (Muslim intellectuals) and modern ideas of progress.

While Weber’s hypothesis was inaccurate and criticized, because “the differential of Islam seem institutional” unlike ideological,which stamps Christianity, but “they operate in a contrasted institutional melieu’’ (Gellner 1983, p. 6).

Those who study Muslim societies like Gillner (1969, 1983, 1992, 1994), identify unvarying features of Muslim societies that make them susceptible to sociological analysis. Building on the work of Ibn Khaldun, he postulates a dialectic between city and tribe, each with its own form of religion. The central and perhaps most important feature of Islam, according to Gellner, is that it was internally divided into the high Islam of scholars and the folk (low) Islam of the people, (and I might add secular mentalities). High Islam is primarily urban, and folk Islam is primarily tribal and rural even if they reside in cities and villages. I agree with Gillner’s notion that although the boundaries between the two were not sharp but gradual and ambiguous, they nevertheless projected a distinctive tradition.This I believe is the corner stone for modern solution. One has to dominate, but not without modern laws and sound constitutions. Otherwise, the revival of Arab Manifest will be delayed until one side, armed with both ethics and logic of modern management, and modern institutions equalize treatment of all citizens on the same grounds of justice and recognition. The process of enlightening of common people will hinder the process of Arab Manifesto, but in the end, the new spirit of mental abilities and logical arrangements of law and constitution will come to prevail. Not necessarily, verbatim  as the case in Europe.

In the Egyptian case, The Muslim Brothers as the leaders of the country, and of course by the president, should have a plan to fully dominate the country. The practices and activities so far by the Muslim Brothers are far from the right track toward the 25 January revolution goals. In order to satisfy the people trust, he should come to real negations with all the sides, in spite of differences, at least to gain trust of the people. Later on, he might with the Muslim Brothers strengthen their position to lead according their ethics, which will not strictly following the steps of Muhammad, because that’s impossible in modern technological world, but they can according to logical plan to introduce with the other sides a roadmap for Free Egypt, at least as a slogan.

In conclusion, I might say, The old Arab and Muslim adverb “ you may fool the people once, but never forever. Or no one may put his hand in the hall of snake twice. The progress toward modern daily life is not contrary to the life of next world. And finally, enlightening time in the marsh of civilization, democracy and freedom, never go back to ignorance and failure of tribal, patriarchical, and theological rules. Evil and good were fighting each other across history, but people today in Egypt are in a stage of enlightenment, the Egyptian people will find the way to communal stability and state law according to sound constitution. I have no doubt, but this will take short or very long time. But the marsh has begun starting since January, 25, 2011. www.hasanyahya.com

*** Note for readers: If you like this, please let other people know about it. You may contact the author using this site. Thank you!

            Read the writer’s 200 books HERE or Here

أقرأوا للكاتب بعضا من 200  كتابا هنا أو هنا وشكرا .والله يرعاكم .

Arab American Encyclopedia-AAE

أنا على يقين أنكم إذا زرتم هذه المواقع ستجدون ما يسركم ويعجبكم من الكتب النافعة

والمحببة إلى نفوس القراء والقارئات العرب في المهاجر، وشكرا جزيلا للمساهمين في هذا المشروع النبيل

Prof. Hasan Yahya- الأستاذ الدكتور حسن يحيى
http://www.arabamericanencyclopedia.com

Victim-blaming is the predictable & cowardly response to rape by those who hate women. It’s a universal & hateful response to violence against women & a way simply, to abuse power to try & subdue & degrade women. We have the right to participate in our society, we won’t be cowed into not taking our rightful place and fight for our rights by these organised sexual terrorists.

We saw it in India, after the uproar following the gang-rape & murder of the student. We see it almost everytime there is a rape case in the mainstream media (think DSK, Assange, etc etc). How stupid do you have to be to think that the person responsible for rape is the person doing it?

Before anyone comes up with that stupid ‘you wouldn’t leave your car/house/valuables unlocked’ argument, we are human beings, ok? We should be able to go about our lives without the fear of sexual harrassment & violence, and being blamed for it when it happens. It’s not us that’s doing it now, is it? What does it say about their attitudes to Egyptian women,  that they are on the same sides as the rapists? I’ll let you make up your own mind.

For fucks sake

The Shura Council & the rapists are One Hand.

Reblogged from nellyali:

I read the papers and online testimonials of group attacks on women in the streets protesting and if I had not read the titles, I would think that the authors have suddenly taken an interest in the every day life of street children. I would have justifiably assumed they have become avid observers and who have taken to the street to highlight the prevalence and it’s normality in the street culture that very little children live every night.

Read more… 846 more words

This video (I know I probably should, but can’t bring myself to watch it until the end) shows a woman being attacked, brutalised and raped by a pack of men in Tahrir Square.

This ongoing & increasing sexual terrorism against the women of Egypt must stop! This pandemic of sexual violence was bad enough before the revolution, but it is now being deployed as a weapon against women on a scale never seen before.

The terrible case of the lady who was gang-raped & murdered on a bus in India was horrifying. What followed though, gave me some hope. Seeing the women and men of India rise up against the travesty that is misogyny & sexual violence was a beautiful and surprising phenomena. It gave me hope that something similar would happen in Egypt.

Alas! Not yet! Our prime minister seems more obsessed with dirty breasts that the dirty attacks on innocent women. The silence of those who should be cracking down on this is deafening. Every single Egyptian who is not on the side of those rapists and sexual terrorists should be out there protecting the dignity, freedoms & rights of their sisters and protesting this travesty on society.

Hope is not lost, though, there are many who are standing up against this, and I hope that it will increase rapidly. Please join the women of Egypt in solidarity next Tuesday. If you’re in London, please come to the embassy at 6PM.

https://www.facebook.com/events/150788335077948/

Shapiro spoke a day after the White House announced Obama will visit Israel, the West Bank and Jordan in the spring, at the start of his second term and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s third term. Obama’s previous term in office saw relations with Netanyahu deteriorate in part over failed talks with the Palestinians but also due to the two leaders’ different world views. The visit will be Obama’s first as president to the staunch U.S. ally.

Shapiro gave several interviews to Israeli media Wednesday morning with the same message.

“We have a very urgent agenda,” Shapiro told Army radio. “He (Obama) wanted in his first trip of his second term to speak with the prime minister about this urgent agenda, about Iran, about our joint efforts to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and stop its support of terrorism. And about Syria, the dangers in Syria and how to prevent … the chemical weapons from falling into dangerous hands,” Shapiro said.

We have a very complex agenda about Iran, Syria and the need to get Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table

“We have a very complex agenda about Iran, Syria and the need to get Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, so it’s important to begin as fast as possible,” he added.

The White House has not released the date of Obama’s trip or details about Obama’s itinerary, but Israel’s Channel 10 reported it had been scheduled for March 20. The visit raises expectations that peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which collapsed about four years ago, can be rekindled.

Palestinians refuse to resume the talks unless Israel stops building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says talks should resume without any preconditions, and has even stepped up construction in the territories since the U.N. recognized a de facto state of Palestine there in November.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said he welcomes the visit, which he hopes will result in the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

[related_links /]

Shapiro said that Obama will meet during his visit the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank along with the King of Jordan, who has had a role in peacemaking efforts.

“President Obama is not coming with conditions or demands. He is coming to confer with all our partners about problems and challenges we are dealing with in the region,” Shapiro told Israel radio.

He said that Obama isn’t “seeking a specific result” but wants to confer about ways of “bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiation table.”

Although Obama visited Israel and Jordan while running for president in 2008, he hasn’t been back since, drawing intense criticism from some pro-Israel groups who have claimed he is insufficiently supportive of the United States’ closest Mideast ally. Other top administration officials, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have visited, and Clinton’s replacement, John Kerry, is expected to travel to Israel on his first Mideast trip.

Shapiro said Obama will visit after Israel’s new government has been formed.

The announcement of the visit comes at a time of uncertainty for Netanyahu, who left January’s election weakened. The emergence of a new centrist party in Israel’s election offered hope to those urging the hawkish Netanyahu to make peace with the Palestinians a higher priority.

Shapiro shrugged off questions about relations between Obama and Netanyahu. “The personal chemistry between them is excellent. They know how to work together,” he said.

Obama will also discuss Iran’s nuclear program, the danger of Syrian chemical weapons reaching militants and other regional issues, Shapiro said.

Thankfully, this type of conspiracy theory fell out of fashion following the Holocaust. There is still a strong constituency for Jew-hatred in the Middle East, South Asia and various other parts of the developing world. But in the West, Protocols-style anti-Semitism has become completely extinct in mainstream society. Instead, since 9/11, right-wing warnings of a creeping ethno-religious takeover of the United States now focus almost exclusively on Muslims. (Re-read the last two sentences contained within the first paragraph of this article, and replace the word “Jew” with “Muslim.” The resulting text essentially summarizes much of what appears on fringe right-wing web sites such as WorldNetDaily, and in the Islamo-McCarthyism of Michele Bachmann and co.)

In general, this has been great for American Jews, whom American Christian conservatives now regard as natural allies and model culture-warriors in the fight against militant Islam. As demonstrated by the excoriation of Chuck Hagel for his relatively mild comments about “the Jewish lobby,” Jews (Zionist Jews, to be more precise) now are seen to lie at the über-patriotic core of public American life. This is a status they have never previously enjoyed in any Diaspora nation-state, in the entire history of their existence.

And yet, even in post-9/11 America, some Jews still are being accused of betraying their country. But now, bizarrely, the claim is that these Jews aren’t Jewish enough.

I first noticed this trend in 2010, when Glenn Beck was in jihad mode against Hungarian-American magnate George Soros. As I noted at the time, Beck’s “Puppet Master” series on FOX News replicated many classic conspiracist themes — such as the notion that Soros was running a shadowy international cabal that was seeking to destroy the United States and create a “One World Government.”

Predictably, many commentators accused Beck of being anti-Semitic. But the accusation didn’t make sense for one very simple reason: Beck himself is a passionate defender of Israel, and his case against Soros was in large-part based on the idea that Soros isn’t sufficiently Jewish. At one point, in fact, Beck bragged that he is “probably more supportive of Israel and the Jews than George Soros is.” He also said that Soros is “an atheist who doesn’t embrace his Jewish identity, and rarely supports Jewish causes.”

I thought of Beck’s rant the other day, when I read a transcript from Mark Levin, a Jewish conservative whose syndicated radio show reaches 8.5-million Americans. In the past, Levin has said that Barack Obama is “literally at war with the American people.” Now Levin is claiming that Obama is conducting this war as part of an informal alliance with Muslim extremists. “The Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated our government — it’s called Barack Obama,” Levin said on his January 31 broadcast. “No, he’s not a formal [Muslim Brotherhood] member, he’s a sympathizer. There, I said it. Prove otherwise.”

Levin continued:

Meanwhile, you want to look into Obama’s soul? You want to look into his soul? Well, look at his soul. You want to know what I see? … I see Chuck Hagel. What kind of commander-in-chief would nominate somebody like Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense? I’ll tell you what kind of commander-in-chief, the kind of commander-in-chief that arms the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamo-nazi regime in Cairo … Chuck Hagel, whose a sympathizer with the most radical elements in the Middle East, and an Israel-hater … And [Hagel will] still be confirmed, I bet, because the Democrats are lockstep. Even the Jewish Democrat members of the U.S. Senate, they’re lockstep. The Anti-Defamation League, their lips are sealed. AIPAC [The American Israel Public Affairs Committee], Hagel once called them the ‘Jewish lobby.’ They’re lips are sealed, they’re all a bunch of cowards. It’s the righteous gentiles who are speaking up.

The idea that AIPAC is somehow “a bunch of cowards” when it comes to standing up for Israel is laughable. So is the notion that Jewish Senators are prepared to sell out Israel and the United States to the Islamists out of deference to Obama and the (imaginary) Muslim Brotherhood puppet-masters who control his agenda. But the fact that 8.5-million Americans are getting this stuff piped into their brain is disturbing.

In the same vein was a Feb.3 Jewish Press column written by New York-based feminist-turned-anti-Islamist Phyllis Chesler, entitled “Upper West Siders Forget to Think Jewish.” She begins the column by recounting overheard conversations at a screening of The Gatekeepers, a new film from Israeli director Dror Moreh:

The crowd at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema on the upper west side is mainly Jewish and liberal — ultra-liberal. They behave as if they are superior to all Ostjuden, the illiterate, superstitious, unwashed Eastern European Jews — and therefore, in their sleek leather boots and fashionable coats they are, surely, finally, safe. At least, safer. After millennia of persecution, here are Jews who are not self-hating, not even opportunist, just Jews who feel secure as long as they feel superior to other Jews. The Ostjuden today are the Zionists, the “settlers,” the “right wing.” Psychologically, this means that they deserve to survive. They are the “good” Jews. Assimilated, exquisitely moral, the first to find imperfections in their co-religionists.

As for The Gatekeepers, an acclaimed film featuring interviews with six former heads of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service, Chesler is contemptuous because it does not convey the case against the Palestinians as she would like to see it presented — even though it casts Israel’s own retired intelligence chiefs as articulate protagonists. In this regard, Chesler declares the film to be “suicidal and traitorous.”

I will agree with Chesler that some militantly anti-Israel Jews really do know how to get under their co-religionists’ skin. No doubt, that’s half the appeal of Jewish dissident groups such as Independent Jewish Voices here in Canada — a chance to stick it to all the Israel-loving relatives who browbeat you at the Seder table for all those many years. And I will confess to having launched my own broadsides at IJV and others here in Canada.

But can we not cool it with terms like “traitor” and “cowardice,” and insinuations that mainstream Jewish lawmakers and lobby organizations are indirectly in league with militant Islam? (That includes a certain prominent Sun News commentator, who once suggested that the head of the Canadian Jewish Congress had converted to Islam, because he was a proponent of hate-speech laws exploited by aggrieved Muslim groups.) Now that Western gentiles generally have stopped spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, there really is no need for Jews themselves to rush to fill the vacuum.

National Post
jkay@nationalpost.com
Twitter @jonkay

دقيقتان مع الدكتور يحيى : طارق بن زياد وفتح الأندلس

الجزء الأول : فتح الأندلس وخطبة طارق بن زياد

ضمن مشروع إحياء التراث العربي في المهجر الذي يتولى تمويله ورعايته الأديب الفلسطيني

الدكتور حسن عبدالقادر يحيى ، رعاه الله وغفر له !

www.arabamericanencyclopedia.com/

www.hasanyahya.com

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم ، والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله ، بعد

تكثر القصص والروايات عن هذا الحدث الجليل في أيام الدولة الأموية الأولى ، ومن المصادر ما قاله الحميدي في جذوة المقتبس إن موسى بن نصير ولي إفريقية والمغرب سنة سبع وسبعين فقدمها ومعه جماعة من الجند فبلغه أن بأطراف البلاد من هو خارج عن الطاعة فوجه ولده عبد الله فأتاه بمائة ألف رأس من السبايا ثم ولده مروان إلى جهة أخرى فأتاه بمائة ألف رأي وقال الليث بن سعد بلغ الخمس ستين ألف رأس وقال الصدفي لم يسمع في الإسلام بمثل سبايا موسى بن نصير ووجد أكثر مدن إفريقية خالية لاختلاف أيدي البربر عليها وكانت البلاد في قحط شديد فأمر الناس بالصوم والصلاة وإصلاح ذات البين وخرج بهم إلى الصحراء ومعه سائر الحيوانات وفرق بينها وبين أولادها فوقع البكاء والصراخ والضجيج وأقام على ذلك إلى منتصف النهار ثم صلى وخطب الناس ولم يذكر الوليد بن عبد الملك فقيل له ألا تدعو لأمير المؤمنين فقال هذا مقام لا يدعى فيه لغير الله تعالى فسقوا حتى رووا ثم خرج موسى غازيا وتتبع البربر وقتل فيهم قتلا ذريعا وسبى سبيا عظيما وسار حتى انتهى إلى السوس الأدنى لا يدافعه أحد فلما رأى بقية البربر ما نزل بهم استأمنوا وبذلوا له الطاعة فقبل منهم وولى عليهم واليا واستعمل على طنجة وأعمالها مولاه طارق بن زياد البربري ويقال إنه من الصدف وترك عنده تسعة عشر ألفا من البربر بالأسلحة والعدة الكاملة وكانوا قد اسلموا وحسن إسلامهم وترك موسى عندهم خلقا يسيرا من العرب ليعلموا البربر القرآن وفرائض الإسلام ورجع إلى إفريقية ولم يبق بالبلاد من ينازعه من البربر ولا من الروم ولما استقرت له القواعد كتب إلى طارق وهو بطنجة يأمره بغزو بلاد الأندلس فغزاها في اثني عشر ألف من البربر خلا اثني عشر رجلا وصعد على يوم الاثنين خامس رجب سنة اثنتين وتسعين وذكر عن طارق أنه كان نائما في المركب وقع التعدية فرأى النبي صلى الله عليه و سلم وأمره بالرفق بالمسلمين والوفاء بالعهد هكذا ذكر ابن بشكوال .

وقيل إن موسى ندم على تأخره وعلم أن طارقا إن فتح شيئا نسب الفتح إليه دونه فأخذ في جمع العساكر وولى على القيروان ابنه عبد الله وتبع طارقا فلم يدركه إلا بعد الفتح وقال بعض العلماء إن موسى بن نصير كان عاملا شجاعا كريما تقيا لله تعالى ولم يهزم له قط جيش وكان والده نصير على جيوش معاوية ومنزلته لديه مكينة ولما خرج معاوية لصفين لم يخرج معه فقال له ما منعك من الخروج معي ولي عندك يد لم تكافئني عليها ، فقال لم يمكني أن أشكرك بكفري من هو أولى بشكري منك فقال من هو فقال الله عز و جل ، فأطرق مليا ثم قال أستغفر الله ورضي عنه.

 ونرجع إلى أخبار طارق بن زياد ،  فقد قال بعض المؤرخين كان لذريق ملك الأندلس استخلف عليها شخصا يقال له “تدمير” وإليه تنسب “تدمير” بالأندلس فلما نزل طارق من الجبل كتب “تدمير” إلى لذريق إنه قد نزل بأرضنا قوم لا ندري أمن السماء هم أم من الأرض فلما بلغ لذريق ذلك وكان قصد بعض الجهات البعيدة لغزو له في بعض أعدائه رجع عن مقصده في سبعين ألف فارس ومعه العجل تحمل الأموال والمتاع وهو على سريره بين دابتين وعليه مظلة مكللة بالدر والياقوت والزبرجد فلما بلغ طارقا ، قام في أصحابه فحمد الله وأثنى عليه بما هو أهله ثم حث المسلمين على الجهاد ورغبهم ومما قال :

(أيها الناس أين المفر؟ البحر من ورائكم! والعدو أمامكم! وأنتم أقرب إلى الأيتام في مأدبة اللئام ، وقد استقبلكم عدوكم بجيشه وأسلحته وأقواته موفورة ، وأنتم لا وزر لكم إلا سيوفكم ولا أقوات إلا ما تستخلصونه من أيدي عدوكم ، وإن امتدت بكم الأيام على افتقاركم ولم تنجزوا لكم أمرا ذهبت ريحكم ، وتعوضت القلوب من رعبها منكم الجراءة عليكم ، فادفعوا عن أنفسكم خذلان هذه العاقبة من أمركم ، بمناجزة هذا الطاغية فقد ألقت به إليكم مدينته الحصينة ، وإن انتهاز الفرصة فيه لممكن إن سمحتم لأنفسكم بالموت ، وإني لم أحذركم أمرا أنا عنه بنجوة ، ولا حملتكم على خطة أرخص متاع فيها النفوس،  إلا وأنا أبدأ بنفسي ! واعلموا أنكم إن صبرتم على الأشق قليلا ، استمعتم بالأرفه الألذ طويلا ، فلا ترغبوا بأنفسكم عن نفسي ، فما حظكم فيه بأوفى من حظي ، وقد بلغكم ما أنشأت هذه الجزيرة من الحور الحسان من بنات اليونان الرافلات في الدر والمرجان والحلل المنسوجة بالعقيان ، المقصورات في قصور الملوك ذوي التيجان ، وقد انتخبكم الوليد ابن عبد الملك أمير المؤمنين من الأبطال عربانا، ورضيكم لملوك هذه الجزيرة صهارا وأختانا ، ثقة منه بارتياحكم للطعان ، واستماحكم بمجالدة الأبطال والفرسان ، ليكون حظه منكم ثواب الله على إعلاء كلمته ، وإظهار دينه بهذه الجزيرة ، وليكون مغنمها خالصة لكم من دونه ، ومن دون المؤمنين سواكم والله تعالى ولي إنجادكم على ما يكون لكم ذكرا في الدارين ، واعلموا أني أول مجيب إلى ما دعوتكم إليه ، وأني عند ملتقى الجمعين حامل بنفسي على طاغية القوم لذريق ، فقاتله إن شاء الله تعالى فاحملوا معي فإن هلكت بعده فقد كفيتكم أمره ولم يعوزكم بطل عاقل تسندون أموركم إليه ، وإن هلكت قبل وصولي إليه فاخلفوني في عزيمتي هذه ، واحملوا بأنفسكم عليه واكتفوا الهم من فتح هذه الجزيرة بقتله فإنهم بعده يخذلون ). انتهت الخطبة وتم بعدها فتح الأندلس.

وقد كان أثر الخطبة كبيرا على الجنود السامعين فبعدما فرغ من تحريض أصحابه على الصبر في قتال لذريق وأصحابه وما وعدهم من الخير الجزيل انبسطت نفوسهم وتحققت آمالهم وهبت رياح النصر عليهم وقالوا له قد قطعنا الآمال مما يخالف ما عزمت عليه فاحضر إليه فإننا معك وبين يديك فركب وأصحابه فباتوا ليلتهم في حرس إلى الصبح فلما أصبح الفريقان تكتبوا وعبوا جيوشهم وحمل لذريق وهو على سريره وقد حمل على رأسه رواق ديباج يظلله وهو مقبل في غابة من البنود والأعلام وبين يديه المقاتلة والسلاح وأقبل طارق في أصحابه عليهم الزرد من فوق رؤوسهم العمائم البيض وبأديهم القسي العربية وقد تقلدوا السيوف واعتقلوا الرماح فلما نظر إليهم لذريق حلف وقال إن هذه الصور هي التي رأيناها ببيت الحكمة ببلدنا فداخله منهم الرعب فلما رأى طارق لذريق قال هذا طاغية القوم فحمل وحمل أصحابه معه فتفرقت المقاتلة من بين يدي لذريق فخلص إليه طارق فضربه بالسيف على رأسه فقتله على سريره فلما رأى أصحابه مصرع صاحبهم اقتحم الجيشان وكان النصر للمسلمين ولم تقف هزيمة العدو على موضع بل كانوا يسلمون بلدا بلدا ومعقلا معقلا .

وحول خبر بيت الحكمة بالأندلس قول لذريق إن هذه الصور هي التي رأيناها في بيت الحكمة إلخ اشار به إلى بيت حكمة اليونان وكان من خبره فيما حكى بعض علماء التاريخ أن اليونان وهم الطائفة المشهورة بالحكم كانوا يسكنون بلاد الشرق قبل عهد الإسكندر فلما ظهرت الفرس واستولت على البلاد وزاحمت اليونان على ما كان بأيديهم من الممالك انتقل اليونان إلى جزيرة الأندلس لكونها طرفا في آخر العمارة ولم يكن لها ذكر إذ ذاك ولا ملكها أحد من الملوك المعتبرة ولم تك عامرة وكان أول من عمر فيها واختطها أندلس بن يافث بن نوح عليه السلام فسميت باسمه ولما عمرت الأرض بعد الطوفان كانت الصورة المعمورة منها عندهم على شكل طائر رأسه المشرق والجنوب والشمال رجلاه وما بينهما بطنه والمغرب ذنبه وكانوا يزدرون المغرب لنسبته إلى أخس أجزاء الطير وكانت اليونان لا ترى فناء الأمم بالحروب لما فيها من الأضرار والاشتغال عن العلوم التي كان الاشتغال بها عندهم من أهم الامور فلذلك انحازوا من بين يدي الفرس إلى الأندلس فلما صاروا إليها أقبلوا على عمارتها فشقوا الانهار وبنوا المعاقل وغرسوا الجنات والكروم وشيدوا الأمصار وملؤوها حرثا ونسلا وبنيانا فعظمت وطابت حتى قال قائلهم لما رأى بهجتها إن الطائر الذي صورت هذه العمارة على شكله وكان المغرب ذنبه كان طاووسا معظم جماله في ذنبه . وفي الجزء التالي نحدثكم عن قصة الحكماء اليونانيين الذين حكموا الأندلس قبل وصول جيوش الفتح بقيادة طارق بن زياد إن شاء الله تعالى!

www.hasanyahya.com

Read the writer’s 200 books HERE or Here

أقرأوا للكاتب بعضا من 200  كتابا   هنا  أو هنا  وشكرا .والله يرعاكم .

Arab American Encyclopedia-AAE

أنا على يقين أنكم إذا زرتم هذه المواقع ستجدون ما يسركم ويعجبكم من الكتب النافعة

والمحببة إلى نفوس القراء والقارئات العرب في المهاجر، وشكرا جزيلا للمساهمين في هذا المشروع النبيل

الكاتب المعجزة
عربي أردني من فلسطين
www.hasanyahya.com

Coming to Astoria: An Immigrant’s Tale

by Omar Kiam

2012, smashwords.com

Coming to Astoria is an auto-biography by an Arab immigrant whose family was displaced as the result of the creation of the modern borders of Israel in 1948. The author’s family and many like them, who had lived peacefully alongside their Jewish neighbors for centuries, chose to leave Palestine and, in this case, move to Jordan due to the violence between the surrounding Arab nations and the new Jewish State.

Please note:  I am not an expert on the history of the aggression and the culture of terror and exploitation in the Middle East, so I am unable to properly explain the context of this story. I do not want to be disrespectful to the real human crises in this region by misrepresenting them or introducing my personal opinions. However, I encourage *all* readers from around the world to look closely at the past 80 years (well, actually, 3000 or so) in the Middle East. Avoid popular media because each journalist and news outlet has a rooting interest in their writing. Read the history books and the documents from the times, and learn. The “conflict in the Middle East,” as we Westerners like to sanitize and call it, is unresolved for very complicated, very violent, very ugly reasons.

Kiam’s Coming to Astoria is wonderful because it gives us a first-person account of what happens to the average family caught in the borders and within Arab cultural traditions. We don’t often have the chance to listen to the common man’s story. We hear what the governments do not censor or what Al Jazeera or CNN chose to report. We listen to stories of celebrities who have overcome humble beginnings and so on. Those stories are all slanted, and not representative of the more average experience. Coming to Astoria is the story of a typical person trying to live within and around these conflicts.

For its universality, Coming to Astoria is worth the read. However, as a work of writing, it is clearly the result of someone not well-practiced in the skill and art of story-telling. The narrative often rambles. Scenes from the author’s memory are given great detail, and then years are glossed over, with no connecting tissue between them.  There is no unifying theme. Kiam occasionally wanders into the realm of political rant, and spends pages blasting Arab governments and family customs, particularly pertaining to the treatment of women, and then returns to a catalog-like listing of events from his life. Approximately half of the book is spent bitterly detailing the abusiveness of family members, with no resolution other than “eventually I met and married a nice American girl and raised great kids.” Overcoming a history of domestic violence is no small accomplishment – I would have liked to hear that story.

In summary, the story would benefit from a ghost writer, or a very strong editor, who can connect Kiam’s dots and present a complete tale rather than a set of scenes. One wants to enjoy the book for its unique perspective and first person narrative, but the writing gets in the way. Hopefully, this author will continue to work on his craft, and retell the story again in more polished form.

This review first appeared on irevuo.com

This nation’s foreign policy is, for this weekend at least, in the pious hands of John Hagee, a  Christian fundamentalist preacher from Texas.

To be sure, Hagee is not the only policy-shaker whose minions are roaming the hallowed halls of the nation’s capitol. But he is certainly the most conspicuous and overt religionist participating in the US senate battle over President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, former Senator Chuck Hagel.

Hagee created Christians United  for Israel (CUFI) in February, 2006. Seven years later (a divine period which in biblical years led to the release of slaves), CUFI is buying television ads in four states, each of which has a Democratic senator who could be vulnerable to defeat in 2014.

That reads more like the creation of, rather than the release of, slaves, but then, divine commands may more often than not, be in the minds and hearts of the divine command transmitters.

At any rate, it is not seven years, but six years (the term of office for a US senator), which John Hagee assumes is on the minds of four Democratic senators who are up for reelection in 2014. The states and the senators are Arkansas (Mark Pryor), Louisiana (Mary Landrieu), Colorado (Mark Udall) and North Carolina (Kay Hagan).

The goal of CUFI’s ads running in those states, and the strong Christian fundamentalist religious pressure behind them, is quite simple: Threaten, intimidate and warn these four Democrats that they could pay a price for voting in favor of Hagel.

And, it must also be noted, the ads let other senators know CUFI is watching.

JTA, the Global News Service of the Jewish People, describes the Washington political/religious scene this week:

CUFI’s affiliated Action Fund also has rallied hundreds of Christian pastors and leaders to Washington this week to lobby against the former Nebraska senator’s bid to succeed Leon Panetta.

And on Tuesday, as the pastors were swarming Senate offices, CUFI published four ads in states where Democratic senators are thought to be vulnerable in 2014: Arkansas, Louisiana, Colorado and North Carolina.

“We pray you vote against confirming Senator Hagel,” said the ads, addressed to each state’s senators.

CUFI is not targeting Republican senators with prayers and threats. No need, prayers and threats have long since done their work.

No CUFI ads ran in Texas, for example, a state already safely in CUFI’s clutches. Indeed, the Lone Star state, which has sent two Bushes to the White House, has two Republican senators now leading the vitriolic political/religious charge against Hagel.

Sen. John Cornyn, the senior Texas senator, was the first senator to come out against Hagel’s nomination. He did so, he acknowledged, at John Hagee’s behest during a meeting this Monday.

Cornyn set the tone for the Hagel hearing with his egregious declaration, ”I cannot support a nominee for defense secretary who suggests we should be tougher on Israel and more lenient on Iran.”

The second Texas senator, Ted Cruz, now beginning his first term, is shown in the picture above, talking to Democratic Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, right (with Hagel behind them). During Thursday’s hearings, Cruz fired a series of prosecutorial questions at Hagel in the eight hours the nominee endured in his grilling before the committee.

Some Democrats on the Armed Services committee were supportive of Hagel, but they were careful not to give any hint that they had any doubts about their love and devotion to Israel.

They are, after all, fully aware of the leitmotif (an anglicization of the German Leitmotiv, literally meaning “leading motif”, or perhaps more accurately, “guiding motif) constantly ringing in their political ears back home through media, donors, voters and alas, religious groups from mainline Protestants to the right wing fundamentalist CUFI crowd.

From the Republican side in the Senate committee hearings, there was only polite deference displayed for Hagel’s Vietnam military and senate service.  Instead, adopting the style of another prosecutorial senator, Arizona’s Republican Senator John McCain, Cruz demanded yes or no answers, or the order of “do you or do you not stand behind this quote from 1999 (or 2002, or whenever)”.

It was, over all, an ugly scene in the nation’s capitol as Republican senators bolstered their Israeli bona fides to demonstrate just how much they love the Zionist program that occupies a Palestinian population and elevates Israel above criticism or blame.

If there has been any senatorial concern that Israel became the first country to boycott a UN Human Rights Council review of its rights situation this week, it did not surface in any format I could locate.

During the Hagel hearings, Republicans focused exclusively on loving Israel as they leveled blistering attacks on a former senate colleague,  forcing him to explain, clarify and at times, appear to reverse statements made over the past decade. The senators tried to get him to give yes or no questions to some of the more complex issues this nation will confront during his term as defense secretary.

In spite of these highly personal attacks, Hagel remained cool, maintaining his composure to such a degree that, if you are pulling for him, he succeeded in making his attackers look both nasty and petty.

In preparation for the hearings, Hagel did his political homework. He bolstered his support among pro-Israel Democratic senators. Once he convinced Chuck Schumer of New York, that he (Hagel) was not anti-Israel, he passed the Schumer litmus test.

Here is JTA’s reading of the groundwork Hagel and his White House counselors, laid prior to the hearings:

In his efforts to tamp down the pro-Israel opposition to his nomination, Hagel has won support from some of the leading Jewish pro-Israel Democrats in the Senate: Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who chairs the Armed Services Committee, as well as Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.).

The Vietnam War hero also has the support of liberal Jewish groups, including Americans for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and J Street. On Wednesday, J Street was set to join Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a veteran and a member of the Armed Services Committee, on a conference call backing Hagel.

Hagel also has met with leaders of centrist pro-Israel groups, several of which had expressed concerns about his candidacy, including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The groups described the meeting as “an important opportunity for a serious and thorough discussion.”

In his fight against Hagel, John Hagee’s CUFI had the support of co-religionist groups in the Jewish community, none of which, however, to my knowledge, ran ads “praying” for senatorial votes

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) did contribute a web video which the JTA describes as “featuring Democrats and Jewish organizational leaders expressing concern about Hagel.

“Expressing concern” is Zionist polite parlor talk for “we don’t like you or what you stand for”.

No prayer talk either from the Emergency Committee for Israel which ran a full-page ad in the New York Times, January 15, joining the Zionist Organization of America in opposing Hagel.

And of course, it would not be a pro-Israel alley fight without the presence of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, described by JTA as “one of the GOP’s most generous donors and an RJC board member”. Adelson made his pitch directly by calling senators who appreciate his fondness for Israel as well as his generous deep pockets.

Matt Brooks, the RJC’s executive director, went all down-home-like on us with his comment, “We’ve made a strategic decision to gin up as much support among our leaders to reach out to the folks.”

As was to be expected, the progressive political left was harshly critical of Hagel’s testimony.  Philip Weiss, major domo of Mondoweiss, reacted to the Thursday hearings:

The first few hours of Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing have been sickening. I thought he was named to be United States Secretary of Defense, not Israel’s defense. The most urgent questions were about Israel, and many came from liberal Democrats insisting that Hagel is pledged to going to war against Iran if it acquires a nuclear weapon.

Hagel was suitably craven. “I’ve said that I’m a strong supporter of Israel… I’ve said that we have a special relationship with Israel… Ive never voted against Israel in my career… I’ve been to Israel many times,” he told Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

David Weigel writing for Slate, saw something bogus in the questions thrown at Hagel by Senator Ted Cruz, who came to the hearings with

three—count ‘em—visual aids to his interrogation of Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel. He played two clips from Hagel’s interviews on Arab-language media, attempting to prove that Hagel agreed with callers who accused Israel of “war crimes” and the United States of “bullying,” because he quickly agreed with the questions and moved on. The third aid was a chart blowing up a July 31, 2006 quote from Hagel, during Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah.

“In a speech on the floor of the Senate you referred to Israel’s military campaign against the terrorist group Hezbollah as a, quote, ‘sickening slaughter,’” said Cruz. “Do you think it’s right that Israel was committing, quote, a ‘sickening slaughter,’ as you said on the floor of the Senate?”

As with so much else today, Hagel was caught short, and tried to explain why “slaughter” might occur if “war crimes” didn’t. It was another hit he should have seen coming; the Weekly Standard, in a morning cheat sheet of Hagel quotes, reported that Hagel “accused Israel of carrying out a ‘sickening slaughter’ in Lebanon.”

But it’s misleading. Hagel’s full speech is available on C-SPAN.

The larger context of the quote, Weigel reports, is here:

“How do we realistically believe that a continuation of the systematic destruction of an American friend, the country and people of Lebanon, is going to enhance America’s image and give us the trust and credibility to lead a lasting and sustained peace effort in the Middle East?

The sickening slaughter on both sides must end, and it must end now.”

The final vote may come Monday. In spite of the hostile hearings, it still appears Hagel will win confirmation. That vote will end yet another political episode when the ambiguity of democracy is put on full display.

It is not always pretty; at times it is downright ugly. But it is what we get when flawed political leaders struggle to govern.

               The picture above is by Chip Somodeville/Getty Images, from Slate.

Morsi & the Brotherhood have trapped themselves with all the empty promises & platitudes to justice & freedom.

And what do people who are trapped do? They lash out. Egyptians again, are paying the ultimate price. More blood is shed, more martyrs made. The dictator does what dictators do (how quickly Morsi picked up the ropes) he kills, he oppresses, he sends in the tear gas & the troops, he orders a curfew & calls for a new (but old, these tactics are so, so old now) state of emergency.

That didn’t stop the fight for freedom & justice before, and it won’t now, either. Morsi should know that, but the power has gone to his head and the man only has himself to blame for the deaths, the troubles and the disappointment.

Traditionally we see the Middle East as representing the countries of Western Asia; Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq etc. It is often viewed as a separate continent to Asia, although in reality its is only a sub-region of this vast continent. It is assumed that the Middle East has a homogeneous culture; one that is both Arab and Islamic. Their economy is viewed as one reliant entirely on oil and their political affairs are seen as often undemocratic, corrupt and focused on conflict (another characteristic of the Middle East’s history)

I am going to explore some of the geographic understandings of the Middle Eat and question our assumptions of what is included under the definition of the ‘Middle East’.

The first thing to consider is that the term ‘Middle East’ is a western term, one that the people of the region never designated themselves. The term defines the region in relation to the West; the Far East was China, Japan and Korea  and therefore the nations from Turkey through to Yemen and Egypt through to Iran were all included in this ambiguous understanding of the ‘Middle’.

However no other term has satisfied the world media or analysts and therefore the Middle East is still the term we use to understand the region by and it is the term I will use to help further understand and define this region.

Understanding the Middle East Through Geography

(Above: Map of the Greater Middle East)

The easiest way to understand the Middle East is to establish geographic boundaries for the region. Traditionally this has meant that the Middle East has incorporated the entire Arabian peninsula and the historic ‘Levant’ or Near East region including Syria, Israel, Lebanon and Jordan. In addition Egypt, Iran and Turkey have been seen as Middle Eastern states. However this traditional view of the Middle East has often been criticised. People have argued that Egypt should be seen as a North African state, whose shared history and modern politics  have created a common identity with the Middle East, but not necessarily made it part of it. Likewise for both Iran and Turkey these are seen as nations that have developed in a unique way to the rest of the Middle East, largely because of their position on the margins and thus cannot be part of the shared history that defines this region.

But the limitations of the Middle East often go further than this core. As part of the ‘Greater Middle East’ analysts, politicians and social scientists have argued that the similarities in culture, religion and society mean that nations stretching across the Sahara to Morocco and down into East Africa, to include Sudan and Somalia, should all be considered part of the ‘Middle East’. Some extensions even include nations of Central Asia, although these are not widely accepted definitions.

If geography does not give a clear understanding of the region that it makes sense to look for greater clarity in the characteristics of Middle Eastern society.

Understanding the Middle East Through Religion

(Above: Majority Muslim nations in the world)

Understanding why the geographical boundaries of the Middle East vary so much can only be achieved by understanding the cultural characteristics that link this multitude of nations. One of the common characteristics is religion. The Middle East is traditionally seen as an Islamic region, with this religion acting as a monolith of regional culture. The Middle East is almost completely defined by this common characteristic and has coloured the view people round the world have of the region.

However defining the Middle East by religion has two great problems. Firstly when we look at the map of majority Islamic nations it is immediately obvious that being a Muslim nation does not equate to being a Middle Eastern state. It is clear that the Islamic culture, that is a common link between the North African, Central Asian and core ‘Middle Eastern’ nations, is at the root of why these nations are all included in the concept of the ‘Greater Middle East’. However countries, such as Indonesia, Bangladesh and Albania are all defined, on the map, as Islamic nations but they are clearly separate and distant from the core of the Middle East, ultimately undermining the stereotype of the Middle East being defined by the Islamic religion.

The second problem is that by defining it by religion we assume that is truly a monolithic society. In reality the Middle East is a religiously diverse region. As it’s the cradle of the the major monotheistic religions there have always communities of Jews and Christians. In today’s Middle East Israel is the obvious exception to the dominance of Islam. As a Jewish state it fundamentally undermines the blanket notion of Islam as the religion of the Middle East. In addition there are Christian communities all across the region, with notable communities of Christian Copts and Maronites making up significant parts of the populations of Egypt and Lebanon respectively. With this religious diversity it’s clear that religion cannot be a way to define the Middle East, but rather a way to simply understand it better.

Understanding the Middle East through Ethnicity and Culture

(Above: The Members of the Arab League which, in the modern day, constitute the Arab World)

Ethnicity, culture and language have all been factors used to help understand the concept of the ‘Middle East’. Traditionally the Middle East has been equated to another concept; one of the ‘Arab World’, because of the belief that ethnically the Middle East is Arabic. This has in turn created the belief that the Middle East is an Arabic speaking region and that the shared history of the region is the history of the Arab people against the rest of Western and Asian society.

In some ways this has given us the best understanding of the term ‘Middle East’ and is definitely the way most people begin to understand this global region. However like all other understandings of the term it has its setbacks. It includes many countries in North, East and even West Africa which geographically have not been viewed as Middle Eastern. It also excludes both Turkey and Iran as these are ethnically Turkish and Persian respectively, but traditionally these have been seen as major figures in Middle Eastern affairs, actively promoting a cultural balance to the homogeneity of Arab culture. To exclude these two nations from an understanding of the Middle East appears to ignore the major historical and cultural influence these nations have had on the region.

There are also, like with religion, problems from within the core of the Middle East. In reality the Middle East has a great cultural mix. Kurds make up one of the most important ethnic minorities within the region and in addition there are also ethnic minorities of Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Assyrians and many more. This ethnic mix has understandably resulted in a mixed linguistic tradition. Language cannot be seen as the great uniting factor. Alongside Arabic there are four other major languages spoken in the region including Berber, Persian, Turkish and Kurdish.

Ultimately culture provides to many variables in the understanding of the limitations of the Middle East to be used to establish one clear definition of this region.

The Middle East as a Concept

I hope that I have began to break down some of the stereotypes of the Middle East and the way people interpret this region. It is not a simple region to understand and there is no definitive way to establish the boundaries of the territory. Whatever set of conditions is used, be they ethnicity, language or religion, to understand the region we cannot achieve a consistent result.

All we can say is that there is a definitive core to the Middle East, understood by world politics and the world media that includes the nations of the ‘Near East’ and Arabian peninsula. Developing a wider concept of the Middle East will simply be down to a combination of personal interpretation and general consensus. The characteristics we apply to the region (Arabic, Islamic etc) should not be taken as the given in all circumstances, but rather representative of the dominant and prevalent nature of Middle Eastern society.

The Middle East is far more diverse and evolving that we often give it credit for and in the future we must see this region, not as a fixed location, but rather as a fluid concept; ever changing and multifaceted.

In scenes reminiscent of the heady, uncertain days at the start of the uprising in January 2011 when hopes of toppling Hosni Mubarak’s military regime soared and everything seemed possible, protesters clashed repeatedly with police and sometimes with each other in several major cities including Cairo, where the area around Tahrir Square was enveloped in a shroud of tear gas for hours late Friday.

Seven demonstrators had been killed in Suez, according to the BBC. Scores of others were injured  and in the Egyptian capital gangs of roving, stone-throwing teenagers spent hours spoiling for trouble.

With the country so deeply divided, there might have been even more trouble had Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood not ordered its supporters to stay at home, lest they ended up in a deadly riot with the secularists, as happened one night outside the presidential palace in December.

“Bread, freedom and social justice. That is what we wanted then and that is what we want now,” Bassel Adel said, repeating a popular mantra first heard at rallies two years ago. “We are unhappy because we did not get anything we wanted. Morsi has no interest in democracy or political freedom. He has produced a constitution without consulting the people.”

Adel, who sits in the current parliament for the opposition Dustour Party, threatened that if Morsi did not meet their demands, his party and others would band together to boycott elections that have been pushed back from this month until April.
“This is the beginning of another revolution,” said Ahmed Attif as he hawked Palestinian scarves at Tahrir Square because his usual work in a bazaar disappeared when tourism dropped. “The Egyptian pound is down against the dollar. Our economy is even worse now than it was under Mubarak. Morsi behaves like a dictator. Something must be done.”

That sentiment was what brought Mohammad Ahmed, who is unemployed, to Tahrir Square with his cousin and fiancee, Dina Mahmoud, who teaches art at a school.

“We begin again because no other course of action is open to us,” Ahmed said. “Life is worse for us in every way today. We don’t trust the police. Most of us have serious economic problems and no chance to solve them.”

One of the many reasons the Egyptian revolution is incomplete is because the country remains deeply divided with no hint that either side wishes to compromise.

Many of Mubarak’s associates continue to lead lives of privilege similar to what they enjoyed under the old regime. The police remain an erratic force that commands little respect when it does show up. In many ways the courts and the bureaucracy behave as if they were the official opposition and not servants of the government and the people.

For its part, Morsi’s government, has shown little aptitude for running a government, tackling the economy or reforming the security services.  Morsi is hemmed in by another problem. His supporters, and those who back his far more extreme partners, the Salafis, are clamouring for Islamization while the opposition and western governments, including the U.S., whose loans keep Egypt afloat, are concerned about the lack of political freedom and the rights of women and minorities.

Mostly there is a sense of paralysis. The secular and Islamist visions fight for supremacy. Nobody talks of compromise. The cards remain heavily stacked in the Brotherhood’s favour. They and their allies win about 70 per cent of the vote every time there is an election or referendum and they are likely to do so again in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

The secularists and the country’s large Coptic Christian minority have had trouble accepting that practising democracy includes accepting defeat at the ballot box. The Islamists have also had trouble acknowledging that others have rights, too, and that dramatic social change cannot be imposed when millions of their compatriots are strongly opposed.

The endless protests and uncertainties have left many in Tahrir Square bewildered and despairing. But Friday’s turnout was by the far largest in many months.

“What is the opposition, I’m not even sure any more. I am not a member of a party but I am opposed to everything that is going on today,” said Rana Safey, a 26-year-old medical doctor who came to Tahrir Square with a group known as the Anti-Harassment Movement, which tries to prevent women from being assaulted as such gatherings.

“We have been at this so long that this is not the end or the beginning of anything. I only hope that maybe in 10 years we will reach a state when people realize that Islamists are not the solution.”

Shortly after the polls closed in Israel’s Knesset election this past Tuesday, two American Liberal Zionist groups, J Street and Americans for Peace Now (APN), were out with triumphant emails to their peace-oriented members:

Israel voters have chosen a new government that will “revive the peace process with the Palestinians and make vital moves to “save” Israel”.

Writing for Mondoweiss, the website co-edited by Philip Weiss and Adan Horowitz, Alex Kane bluntly rejects that optimistic conclusion:

In his scathing criticism of the optimism of J Street and APN, Kane sets the stage for what will most certainly be an intense struggle within the American peace camp over the meaning of this Knesset election:

The liberal Zionist wing of the American Jewish community are deluding themselves about the results of the Israeli elections.

They see the Israeli elections as a triumph for politicians who are going to revive the peace process with the Palestinians and make vital moves to “save” Israel, in their words, from the scourge of apartheid or a one-state solution with equal rights for all.

But their rhetoric about the outcome of the elections represents a fantasy with little bearing in the reality of what the Israeli government is and will continue to be: a settlement expanding, occupation supporting right-wing government that is committed to the suppression of Palestinian rights within the Green Line and in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israeli government, in other words, will remain committed to the status quo of apartheid.

Ha’aretz  columnist  Ari Shavit  joins the optimistic J Street amd APN crowd with his cry of relief that the election results benefit Israel’s identity:

This week the idiotic march of the right to the right wing of the right came to an end, and the renewed march of the right toward the center began.

But above all, the election results have significance for our identity. The dramatic headline of the election is short: Israel is not right-wing. This week proved that as opposed to the impression both here in Israel and in the world, Israel is not messianic and not racist and not anti-democratic. We are not all Moshe Feiglin [referring to a newly elected Likud Knesset member well-known for his extremist anti-Palestinian views.]

Contrary to many pre-election stories that promised a surprise increase to as many as 15 seats for the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party, led by Naftali Bennett, Bayit Yehudi was not the surprise of this week’s election.

The surprise of the election Tuesday was the Yesh Atid  (There is a Future) party, led not by a “charismatic” figure, but by a “handsome” former television personality turned politician in time to run in this 2013 election, Yair Lapid (shown above).

The most likely result of the election will be for Israeli President Shimon Peres to instruct Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new government, one which will place leadership in the months ahead in a coalition led by the right-wing Netanyahu-Liberman parties with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party.

Several reports from Israel predict that unless Avigdor Lieberman demands his Foreign Ministry post back (he resigned earlier because of legal problems) that post could go to Yair Lapid.

It is worth noting that Lapid’s parents moved their family to Israel when Lapid was a small child. Lapid learned his English from his American-born parents.  He later worked in New York City, improving his American-made accent, a great advantage for an Israeli foreign minister.

Does Lapid as a partner with Netanyahu offer hope for a creative approach to peace with Israel’s Palestinian neighbors? Is he truly the hope for peace that J Street and APN claim?

The evidence is not promising. Lapid’s campaign was focused on winning support from those Israeli voters who took to the streets last year to protest against Netanyahu’s poor handling of the economy.

His campaign largely ignored  ”the Palestinian issue”, but on the Sunday before the election, Lapid shared his views on “Arabs” in a media interview, leaving no doubt as to his attitude toward Palestinians:

Yair Lapid, the head of the Yesh Atid party, explained Sunday that he has no expectations from negotiations with the Arabs. ”I do not think that the Arabs want peace,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

Lapid said that he does not care what the Arabs want. “What I want is not a new Middle East, but to be rid of them and put a tall fence between us and them.” The important thing, he added, is “to maintain a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel.”

This is the man who is expected to form a new government with Netanyahu.  The New York Times confirms that union:

The last votes counted, mostly those of active-duty soldiers, gave the right-wing and religious factions that make up Mr. Netanyahu’s current coalition a one-seat majority. But the prime minister has indicated that he wants to form a broader government, partnering first with Yair Lapid, the leader of the new, centrist Yesh Atid party, whose second-place finish stunned Israel

Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Lapid, who together control 50 of Parliament’s 120 seats, met for two and a half hours on Thursday in Jerusalem and “discussed the challenges facing the nation and the ways to deal with them,” according to a statement from Mr. Lapid’s party.

Yousef Munayyer, executive director of The Jerusalem Fund and its educational program, The Palestine Center, underscores Alex Kane’s judgment on Liberal Zionism’s overly optimistic reading of the election. Munayyer wrote on his blog:

If you haven’t noticed, the Liberal Zionist brand is desperate to portray the outcome of the Israeli election as the salvation of the Israel they know is down there somewhere.

Alex Kane agrees with Munayyer when he concludes his Mondoweiss rejection of the unrealistic optimism of J Street and Americans for Peace Now:

The liberal American Zionists are utterly delusional, grasping at any straw to try and convince the world that there is a possibility for a two-state solution and that Israel can make peace.

The start of a second term for Barack Obama is not a time for false optimism about peace that might arise from a new Israeli government. It is rather, a time for the realism of Palestinians like Hanan Ashrawi, writer, scholar and political activist, who brings a Palestinian realistic reminder to the world in an Ha’aretz piece she wrote before the election.  

She writes:

In many elections, politicians are accused of stealing public resources. In Israel, in addition to stealing Palestinian land and natural resources, most Israeli politicians are bent on confiscating the last hope for a two-state solution. Most Israeli political parties are guilty of the deliberate omission of peace from their agenda.

They talk about negotiations when they mean dictation. They talk about “managing” the occupation rather than putting an end to it. While there is a global consensus for a two-state solution, the main Israeli electoral lists see no room in historic Palestine for two states.

Are Liberal Zionists trapped in a delusion that leads them to protect their “Zionist identity” instead of seeking the justice which Zionism, as a political entity, has conspired to deny Palestinians?

It is a fair question, and it is a realistic question. Certainly, it is the kind of moral question that theologian Reinhold Niebuhr would demand that we examine. 

The picture above of Yair Lapid is by Oliver Weiken of the European Pressphoto Agency.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The next days and weeks will test Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s powers of persuasion and compromise like nothing he has confronted before during several decades in the hurly-burly of Israeli public life.

A dramatic rise in support for centre-left parties whose primary focus was on social and economic issues resulted in what Israel Radio described Wednesday as a virtual dead heat between the right and the centre-left in Tuesday’s general election. This likely means that Mr. Netanyahu will have greater difficulty getting political backing to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months. It will also seriously complicate his ambition to expand Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The tricky process of forming a new coalition will begin Thursday when Bibi — as he is universally known in Israel — meets with the leaders of deeply religious parties such as Shas, who have been among his closest allies. After that, the prime minister will hold the first of what may end up being many negotiations with popular broadcaster Yair Lapid, whose new, secular There is a Future party did far better than pollsters or anyone else had predicted.

Having gone to the polls early and with what was widely thought to be an unassailable lead, Mr. Netanyahu suddenly faces humbling choices as he begins his third term as prime minister if he is to form a coalition that does not quickly collapse. If he leans too far to the left he could face a revolt from many deeply conservative members of his own Likud-Israel Beiteinu alliance, which is already reeling from the loss of 11 of its 42 seats.

If Mr. Netanyahu opts to stick with the religious parties on the right, he must also bring in the new, staunchly pro-settler Jewish Home Party. But in doing so he risks further alienating middle class Israelis who demonstrated through the ballot box Tuesday that they want their government to urgently address the high cost of living and related issues such as housing.

“With King Bibi’s ship of state sinking in Pyrrhic victory, the sharks begin to circle,” was how Bradley Burston put it in a commentary in Wednesday’s Haaretz newspaper. “In the space of a few hours Netanyahu watched as the American people formally gave their president four more years and the people of Israel gave their prime minister a few more hours.”

An example of the potential hazards in forming the “broad coalition” that Mr. Netanyahu talked about in what was not really a victory speech Tuesday night is the exemption from military service and generous subsidies that ultra-Orthodox Jews have received in return for supporting the government. Opposition to those who escape military duty and spend their lives praying rather than working is one of the main reasons that Mr. Lapid and his There is a Future party won the second highest number of seats in the next Knesset.

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Another problem for Mr. Netanyahu is that the Jewish Home Party and its charismatic young leader, Naftali Bennett, have been adamant that the Palestinians must never have a homeland. Another reason that There is a Future went from zero seats in the last Knesset to 19 seats in the next one was its insistence there must be a two-state solution. Or as the political novice Mr. Lapid has demanded, Mr. Netanyahu must address “the diplomatic stalemate” that has existed for several years between Israel and the Palestinians.

It is hard to imagine how Mr. Netanyahu will be able to keep a future cabinet happy for long if it has ultra-Orthodox members who want to preserve their perquisites, other religiously driven parties who want the settlements in the West Bank to be the bulwark of a Greater Israel and the centre-left parties which want nothing to do with either of these ideas.

Lior Mizrahi / Getty Images

Still, it could have been worse if the 20% of the electorate, who consider themselves Palestinian Israelis, had turned out to vote in far greater numbers. To express their extreme dissatisfaction with, and indifference towards, Israel, only one in three bothered to go to the polls. As a result, the three Arab parties won just 12 seats.

If two-thirds of the Arab minority had turned out to vote, as their Jewish Israeli compatriots did, the Arab parties would have won about 24 seats. Such a result would have obliged Mr. Netanyahu to include a few more centre-left deputies sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in his government.

The only plus for Mr. Netanyahu that may arise from Tuesday’s election shock is that if the prime minister forms a broader national unity government that has more moderate policies concerning the Palestinians and which shows more flexibility about how to thwart Iran’s nuclear plans, Israel’s badly strained relations with the U.S. and Europe are likely to improve.

Those two crucial files are what matter the most to the world. But for the moment about half of the Israeli electorate has shouted that it is most concerned with inequalities in their own lives.

On a night of electoral upsets, support for Netanyahu’s right-wing vision for Israel dropped sharply, according to exit polls released when voting ended. The right-wing bloc in the next Knesset was poised to win about 61 seats, compared to 59 seats by the centre-left bloc.

The major shock was a stunning showing by the centrist There is a Future Party. Formed only one year ago by television anchorman Yair Lapid, it appeared to have won 18 or 19 seats to apparently push past the Labor Party for second place. Polls during the campaign had indicated that There is a Future would win no more than 10 seats.

“I believe the results are an opportunity for change in Israel,” Netanyahu said in a victory speech that defied convention because he started to speak as Lapid thanked his supporters on national television.

Netanyahu promised details on his coalition plans “in the days ahead. I can see many, many partners in the future. We will open our arms and build a broad government.”

Tuesday’s unexpected results suggest that in order to form a stable coalition government the 63-year-old prime minister will have to reach out to Lapid and other centre-left leaders for support. This may force the prime minister to moderate his policies on settlements in the West Bank and the terms for peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Such a shift would complicate his position within his own Likud party, where most of his colleagues are to the right of him, but could improve currently brittle relations with Washington and Europe.

If the preliminary results produced by three separate exit polls hold, the alliance between the Likud party and the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, which draws most of its votes from Russian Jews, will end up with 31 seats in the next parliament. This compares with 42 seats that the partners won in the last election three years ago.

Underscoring the problems which may lie ahead for Netanyahu if he refuses to moderate his policies on issues involving the Palestinians, Karin Alharhar, who was elected on the There is a Future ticket, said: “One of our principles is to go back to negotiations” with the Palestinians. “If any government is not willing to do this we would decline to join it.”

Speaking for Likud, Sport Minister Limor Livnat said Netanyahu had already called Lapid and told him that “he was looking forward to great things from him in his government.

“We had expected to do better, of course, but the important thing is that Benjamin Netanyahu will be the next prime minister,” Livnat said.

Another new party to do well, but not as well as polls taken during the campaign had indicated, was the hardline right-wing Jewish Home Party, which appealed to religious voters, especially in settlers in the West Bank. Under political newcomer Naftali Bennett, who has strongly rejected a two-state solution with the Palestinians, it took 12 seats.

Many of the 500,000 Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank – who in the past had voted for Netanyahu and Likud – said they were voting this time for the much younger Naftali Bennett and Jewish Home because it had outflanked Netanyahu on the right.

As the result of a complicated electoral system that gives seats to any party crossing a two per cent threshold, 11 parties won seats in the next Knesset. Such an unwieldy result and the tight finish between the right- and left-wing blocs indicated that days and likely weeks of negotiation lie ahead for Netanyahu and his potential coalition partners.

But it the talk of Israel on Tuesday night was There is a Future’s and its silver-haired 49-year-old leader, Yair Lapid, coming from nowhere to place second. The result had not been foreseen by any Israeli and foreign pundits.

“Lapid is the surprise of the election (but) Netanyahu will be the next prime minister because there is no other potential prime minister,” pollster Yehuda Ben Meir said. “Lapid has said he won’t try to become prime minister because he lacks experience.”

“I don’t envy him (Netanyahu) his position. He will have a very hard time forming a coalition. He is definitely going to work for a wider coalition and the clear and obvious partner is Mr. Lapid. . . . How (Lapid’s) influence works is hard to say but he is not nearly as right as Likud. He is not left, either. He is centre. It will have a certain moderating influence.”

Meir Sheetrit of the centrist Hapnua Party said: “Netanyahu can make history or be history. It will be a hard test to form the next government. What he needs to do is form a large coalition. This could make a real change in Israel. There could be a chance for real peace. If he only goes with the right-wing parties it will be a very narrow government.”

There is a Future’s platform included an emphasis on social issues, a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and compulsory military service for all Israeli citizen including ultra-Orthodox Jews and those of Palestinian decent.

The new centrist party’s strong result sent a clear message to Netanyahu that “Israelis wanted to see their country take another direction,” said Rabbi Dod Lipman, who was elected from the party’s list. Lipman credited a combination of religious and secular voters interested in social issues with producing the unexpected result after a series of elections where religious and secular Israelis mostly voted for different parties.

The subtleties of Tuesday’s election results will become more apparent as official results trickle in early Wednesday but exit polls in Israel have usually been a fair, general barometer of the final outcome. No party has ever been able to form a majority government in Israel since it became a country 64 years.

About 5.6 million Israelis were eligible to vote. Thirty-four parties contested the election, although only about 10 were expected to win more than a few of the 120 seats in the Knesset.

One of Netanyahu’s top priorities will likely to be to try to repair a rift with U.S. President Barack Obama, who did not take kindly to Netanyahu having appeared to support his rival, Mitt Romney, in last fall’s U.S. presidential elections. Differences of opinions exist between Washington and Jerusalem over how best to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Netanyahu has also frustrated Obama by approving the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.

The 100-day campaign, which is normal for Israel, began when Netanyahu called early elections on Oct. 16.

Netanyahu was first elected prime minister in 1996 and was prime minister for three years. He won office again in 2009.

While whether to attack Iran is Israel’s major foreign preoccupation, it hardly figured as an issue during the campaign. Neither, really, did the question of the settlements. However Netanyahu spoke forcefully near the end of the campaign about his plan to allow building in an area of the West Bank near Jerusalem and vowed that none of the approximately 500,000 settlers would be forced to move. These statements were regarded as an attempt to prevent the further loss of Likud votes to Naftali Bennett of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home Party, whose policy of resolutely favouring the building of more settlements was appealing to many religious voters who regard the territory as part of Greater Israel.

The main issue during the campaign was the economy and related matters, such as the high cost of housing and taxes and the future of education and health care.