Film about Honor Killing

Maria's Cave is a new documentary film by Palestinian director Buthayna Khouri about so-called honor killings in Palestine. (in Arabic)

Happy Kingdom Rape Case Update

The Happy Kingdom is fighting back with its own PR about the Qatif woman who after being gang raped by seven men was sentenced to 200 lashes and a prison sentence for being with a man she wasn't supposed to be with. According to an official statement by the Justice (ha!) Whatever, the woman is married and was cheating on her husband with another man and therefore is very deserving of her sentence. Some of the readers agree and are shocked that she hasn't received the death penalty as she should.

In other words, the court doesn't distinguish between voluntary sex and forced sex. A woman (and theoretically a man) who chooses to have sex outside marriage is as much of a criminal as the men who raped her, if not more so.

The real problem then is the criminalization of consensual sex between adults. That is what is at the heart of this case and that is the law that should be changed.

Calling a Thief a Thief

"Just as a thief cannot present demands - neither preconditions nor any other terms - to the owner of the property he has robbed, Israel cannot present demands to the other side as long as the situation remains as it is," writes Gideon Levy.

Liberate Yourself: Dare to Wear a Corset!

Women have been feeling too comfortable in their own skin lately, so it's time to bring back the corset! Victoria Secret did just that in its latest run[a]way show.

What Does Israel Want?

"Of all Israel's iniquities in the occupied territories - the brutality, the assassinations, the siege, the hunger, the blackouts, the checkpoints and the mass arrests - nothing serves as witness to its real intentions than the settlements. Certainly for the future. Every home built in the territories, every light pole and every road are like a thousand witnesses: Israel does not want peace; Israel wants occupation," writes Gideon Levy.

Update: Rape of French Man in Dubai

I blogged about this story not a long time ago. According to this report in Al Arabeya, the rapists' trial has started in Dubi and the prosecutor is asking for the death penalty for the accused.

It's disturbing that he refers to the rapists as "sexual deviants," which is the term usually used to refer to homosexuals. In other words, he is trying them as homosexuals and not as rapists because Emerati law doesn't seem to recognize rape of another male as a crime but does punish for something they call there "forced homosexuality."

To sum up: One step forward, two steps backward.

"It's a Miserable Time to be a Gazan"

This is about the only non bs sentence in this New York Times article about Gaza.

Here's a couple of examples of what I mean by their bs:

"Hopes were high in 2005, when Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and 9,000 Jewish settlers, and the international community lined up to help the Palestinians make Gaza a model for their potential state."

Whose hopes exactly? Whose point of view is this guy reporting from? Palestinians warned that the unilateral withdrawal was not a solution, that Israel was reshuffling its occupation of Gaza in order to solidify its hold on the West Bank, and they were ignored. High hopes my foot!

Here's another bit of bs:

"After the Israelis pulled out in 2005, Gazans complained that they lived in a big prison, since Israel still controlled their airspace, sea coasts and principal border crossings. Such claims had an element of propaganda, but now, with the crossing into Egypt for people also shut, by Egypt, the accusation is much closer to reality."

Naay. I say it's still propaganda. The Palestinians are master propagandists. We didn't believe them then, why should we believe them now? The truth is that they are pretending they are stuck, unemployed, starving, drowning in sewage, and dying in order to make pretty Israel look bad.

My advice is to ignore the reporter and listen to the Palestinians he interviews in the multimedia feature on the left side of the page.

Does Israel Feel Safer Tonight?

"Twenty-one-year-old Sabri Al Kurdi [Nael al Kurdi] became the most recent medical patient to die while waiting to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment this week. Al-Kurdi, who suffered from cancer, was denied permission from Israeli authorities to travel to Egypt for, where he was to be treated. Al-Kurdi was one of numerous patents to be denied or delayed by Israeli authorities for "security reasons."

Save the Children, At Least!

"Bethlehem – Ma'an – Israeli military forces and settlers killed 38 Palestinian children and injured 209 children between January and September of 2007, according to a new report from the British charity Save the Children."

Fit Nation

Wanna immigrate? Lose weight!

Jordanian Women Go Crazy!

Al Quds al Arabi reports that 204 women are running in the Jordanian parliamentary elections. The language the paper chooses to deliver the news is ... hysterical!

In fact, "women's election hysteria" appears in the title of the article. If you are not scared away and choose to go beyond the headline, you encounter "hysteria" again along with words that translate as "surprising," "exciting," "unprecedented," "unheard of," "overwhelming," and "strange" !!!!!!!!!!

The article mentions that some women candidates were the consensus choice of their communities (gasp!). Even scarier, some are confident they will win even without the new quota system (choke!!). The article explains: this means that some women are actually COMPETING for real! With men! Can you believe it??

By the time I finished reading this "news" item, I was feeling really sorry for Jordanian MEN who should stand up for their rights, disarm the women, and put them back where they belong.

Learning Arabic

There is a growing interest in the US in learning Arabic. According to a survey done by the Modern Language Association (a cultish organization I'm a member of), the learning of Arabic is up by 126.5%.

When I told the news to a friend of mine, the response was: "Wow. Now there are 12 students studying Arabic!"

Jee! Some people just know how to burst your bubble!

But I say that these statistics should silence anyone who thinks that wars are not good. If any such person exists, I mean.

Salam

In Solidarity with Sabbah

Anti-Palestinian trolls are hard at work and one of their recent casualties is Sabbah, who is being banned (update: not banned, but flagged) by Facebook because of complaints about his political views. If they think Sabbah will be easily silenced, they have one or two or three things to learn.

For Daughters

Why some Lebanese sunnis convert to shiism. No, no, it's not all for the love of Hasan Nasrallah.

Mistakes Were Made

Iran made a mistake and published a translation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book Memories of My Melancholy Whores (translated as Memories of My Melancholy Mistresses). It was a best seller.

The mistake has been corrected and the book has since been banned. (in Arabic)

Um Kulthoum: Enta Omri

When a Woman is Gang Raped in the Happy Kingdom...

She gets 90 lashes and goes to prison. Her rapists get reduced prison sentences (ranging from one to five years instead of the usual death penalty). (according to this article in English, when she appealed the judged increased her lashes to 200 to punish her for appealing to the media).

It's all very logical according to the logic of the happy kingdom: When the woman was kidnapped and gang raped fourteen times by seven men, she was in a public place in the car of a man unrelated to her, which is against the happy kingdom's law. The rapists got reduced sentences for the same reason she got punished: if she weren't with the other man, she wouldn't have been raped.

Her companion was also kidnapped and beaten by the thugs. Then he was given 200 lashes and imprisoned for 6 months.

I think she should have received a lash for every day she lived. Because had she not been born, she would not have met the man and would not have been kidnapped and raped. Had she not been born, she would not have turned seven model citizens into rapists. Had she not been born, all the men involved would have continued to live happily ever after you know where.

Occupation: One House at a Time

"anger is built on anger, brick by brick," says Abdullah.

And one rotten strawberry on one rotten strawberry.

Gaza Rally Shooting

"Meanwhile the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which has a long record of criticising abuses by Israeli forces and both the main Palestinian factions, issued a strongly worded condemnation of "the excessive use of force" by the Hamas police at the rally. Its investigation into the rally said that, at about 11.30am, a jeep carrying plain-clothes Hamas gunmen drove "provocatively" in the direction of hundreds of demonstrators.

The report added of the subsequent violence: "The demonstrators threw rocks at the police who responded by indiscriminate gunfire and raiding the rally grounds. Pictures showed members of the police deployed around [the grounds] firing indiscriminately at the rally participants."

It questioned the claims by Hamas that its police or security force members had been injured saying they had not found such a case. The document added: "The duty of the police and security personnel is to protect participants. And in the case of coming under gunfire, as claimed by governmental sources in Gaza, indiscriminate, excessive, and lethal firing by the police at civilian gatherings is not justified."

Acid Wars on Jeans

Al Arabeyah. net reports that there have been recently in Syria acid attacks on women wearing jeans. The response of one religious authority is to say that acid is not the right way to go about it (how kind of him) and that this is a job for a committee, not an individual. So he suggests forming a moral surveillance committee to police people's behavior. He probably had the moral committees of Taliban, Iran, and Saudi Arabia as fine fine examples to follow.

Yep! That's what we need in the Arab world: more committees, more surveillance, and more police. And definitely less jeans.

The Mystery of the Naked Palestinians

"Palestinians residing near the Kissufim crossing in the central Gaza Strip say Israel Defense Forces troops have been conducting raids in the area, during which residents are taken away for lengthy questioning and returned without their cloths." (I think they mean clothes) "(the Haaretz video contains testimony by the Palestinian prisoners).

The Israeli army's response:

"claims are unfamiliar to the army, and that all suspects are returned in their clothes with all their possessions in hand."

How mysterious! It must be that the Palestinians are at it again. They just love to strip naked when they are released from jail. Somehow they find walking back into their own villages stark naked very ivigorating. They are really weird, those Palestinians. The things they do! Remember when they used to fly in the first intifada? That was the Israeli army's reasonable explanation of why thousands received bullets in their legs and arms and torsos. Then in the second Intifada, Palestinians insisted on sticking their heads in front of Israeli guns and pulling the trigger, which explains why bullets started appearing in their heads. Those Palestinains! Strange indeed!

I have more to say about this.

Said's Last Book

According to Mariam Said, Edward Said's wife, he was planning to write a new book called "The Other America" to show the differences between the American people and their government.

On the Verge of Another Nakba

Thus warn Elias Khouri in his assessment of the Palestinian situation. He proposes that in the absence of leadreship, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails should take over and lead the Palestinians out of their impossible trap. Prisoners did that before in Algeria and South Africa. (in Arabic)

Modesty Fashion

There's a modesty fashion movement in the US. Inspired by religious women who don't relate to mainstream women fashion, it seeks to offer "modest" alternatives.

I agree with the feminist critique of the reasons proponents of "modesty" dress present: that women should not be a "temptation" to men and hiding their bodies is the best way to control men's lust, harassment, and crime. Taliban were the extreme logical conclusion to this argument and Iran's fashion police is its farcical enforcer.

However, we need to acknowledge that sometimes women themselves seek "modest" dress as a rejection of the market's objectification of them. Once an Afghani-American young woman told me she decided to veil because she got fed up with the meat market ethos in her American high school. Her rebellion took the form of adapting modest dress.

I didn't go to an American high school so I don't have the same experience. In my high school in El Bireh, the headmistress was a devoted crusader against the feminine form and was always thinking up new ways of making us girls look like sacks of potatoes . So every other days she would announce over the loudspeaker a new dress rule. Skirts should be three inches below the knee. Black pants should be worn underneath the already long skirt. No belt. No short sleeves. A jacket must be worn over the dress even if it's summer. Well, when I think about all the energy we girls put into subverting her rules, I blush. I could have learned French instead!

The funny thing is that we really looked modest inside the school, which was meaningless since it was an all-girls school. But the moment we stepped outside to walk home, we looked...how should I put it...

different.

Torture Case Update

Remember the Egyptian man who was raped in the police station and a cell phone video of his rape was sent around to humiliate him? Unlike other cases the man went public and bloggers helped publicize the crime, which resulted in trying and sentencing the two policemen who tortured him. Each got 3 years in jail.

Seeking Fairuz

Even after sixty years of living in the State of Israel, Palestinian fans are unwavering in their love for Fairuz. They flock to see her in Amman, and this Haaretz reporter can barely hide his resentment.

An aside: He mentions that Fairuz's songs were once banned in her country because she refused to sing for a visiting president. I've never heard this one. Anyone knows anything about it?

And of course we can't speak of Fairuz without listening to her:

"How Many Palestinians Need to Drown" in Shit?

But if you think about it, it's totally their fault. They are under occupation, embargoed, starving, living in the dark, in the cold, unable to move, maligned, and forgotten and they have the guts to continue to shit!

Unbelievable!

Marriage Age

"Manama: A women's rights activist has urged the justice minister not to bow to pressure from religious figures and reverse his decision to set a minimum marriage age..."

What is the minimum age for women that this minister has dared propose and which outraged some people for its feminist radicalism?

15

I have no comment. Just a curse. Which I will keep to myself.

Souad Massi etc.: Paris Paris

Muslims Saved Jews

"Albania, a tiny European country with a Muslim majority, sheltered about 1,000 Jews who, with the exception of one family, survived Nazi occupation..."

Trading Pictures of Dead Palestinians

"Bethlehem – Ma'an – Israeli soldiers are trading pictures of dead Palestinians on their cell phones, the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv reported Thursday. Ma'ariv said that soldiers are known to use pictures of Palestinian corpses as screen savers in the place of pictures of friends or relatives.
Israeli troops reportedly enjoy swapping the latest photos taken in Gaza."