Israel Getting Its Way with Obama Administration. Surprise Surprise!

"BERLIN - The Obama administration has agreed to Israel's request to remove East Jerusalem from negotiations on the impending settlement freeze," Haaretz reports.

The fact that settlements are illegal in occupied land is not subject to negotiations. East Jerusalem is occupied and settlements in it are illegal and must stop. It's not going to help Obama's credibility to go against international law. And no speech of his will make this right.

Empty Words Watch

"Haniyeh sung the praises of Palestinian “steadfastness” during the war. “The Palestinians withstood the greatest air attack,” he said.

hummm!! What exactly were their options?

Movie Trailer: Israel's Terror Inside

March for Healthcare

If you are in the US, this is an important cause for us all.

"Khedi Kasra" Campaign for Gender Equity

Who Is Confused?

"A Bahraini man won his three-year legal battle to have his sex change officially recognized by the courts."

But, Al Arabiya article chooses this headline for the news:

"Bahraini woman wins battle to become a man."

So Hussein got the medical, religious, and legal institutions on his side (or at least not against him). Now, he needs to win over the media.

Elia Suleiman's "The Time that Remains (trailer)

Palestinian film director Elia Suleiman has a new film out, The Time that Remains. View the trailer below. And if you haven't seen his earlier Chronicle of a Disappearance and Divine Intervention, please do. They are brilliant. And very funny.

Is Israel Stealing Palestinian Organs?

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has demanded an investigation by human rights organizations of the news reported in a recent article in a major Swedish newspaper that the Israeli occupation army harvested organs from Palestinian youths as far back as 1992. In contrast, the Israeli government continues to bully the Swedish government to condemn the article. The Swedish foreign minister has refused because to do so would be to go against freedom of speech.

The logic of the occupation is to steal the land, the water, our dignity, and life. Why not kidneys and hearts? I wouldn't be surprised.

Gay Palestinians are Too Hot!

Yes, gay Palestinians are too hot to handle for the Israeli gay community! They were not allowed to speak at the recent anti-homophobic demonstration that was held in Tel Aviv following the shooting of two gay youths in the city. A representative of Aswat, the Palestinian lesbian organization located in Haifa, was denied access to the stage to speak to the crowd, so was a former Arab Kenesset member, Issam Makhoul. The response of the organizers was "we can't go so far."

Why?

Because the organizers are afraid that Palestinian gays will speak about the other violence: the violence of the racist Israeli state towards its Arab inhabitants, gay or non-gay, and the violence of the Israeli occupation that victimizes thousands that go unmourned.

Also gay Palestinians may challenge the myth Israelis embrace that Israel is wonderful to Palestinian gays because it's the only democracy in the Middle East. They may tell stories of how Palestinian gays are exploited by the state to construct this myth but how little actual support and help they get.

I also wonder if these kinds of gay Palestinians, the Aswat women kind, are not the gay Palestinians the Israeli establishment likes to parade around. They are gay Palestinians who speak for themselves, they are activists in their own communities, and they have courage and spunk. They don't fit the role assigned to them by the Israeli state and the gay community of either being victims of their society or native informants.

But ultimately gay Palestinians would ruin the anti-homophobic demonstration, which was apparently full of homophobic politicians, by injecting politics into the proceedings. Yes, this was meant to be a feel-good event which had no place for "politics."

As if gay rights and anti-homophobia struggle can be apolitical! Only in Israel.

(ps. my only objection to the article I link to in this post is the hijab metaphor. It is neither necessary nor appropriate).

Selling Afghani Women to Fundamentalists

What is going on in Afghanistan regarding women is a text-book lesson on how politicians sell women, over and over again, to win elections.

According to reports, these so-called Islamic laws stipulate that a woman can't leave the house without her husband's permission, that a man has the right to starve his wife if she does not give him sex (four days is the maximum she's allowed to withhold sex from him), and that a rapist can escape punishment if he pays "blood money" in the case that the woman he raped suffered injury--as if there were rape without injury!!

If these laws are allowed to stand, they will end up defining Islam, no matter how much some Muslims feel they are against their religion. In other words, this is not simply an issue for Afghani women, or for Shi'at Afghani women alone. In my opinion, it is imperative that Muslims speak up against them and in support of Afghani women who risk lives to protest laws that are legalizing their degrading treatment. This should not be an issue only for Human Rights Watch. It's a priority issue for Muslim women and men.

Slavoj Zizek: On Israel's Theft of Palestinian Land, Ethnic Cleansing, and Violence

"while paying lip-service to the two-state solution, Israel is busy creating a situation on the ground that will render such a solution impossible. The dream underlying Israel's plans is encapsulated by a wall that separates a settler's town from the Palestinian town on a nearby West Bank hill. The Israeli side of the wall is painted with the image of the countryside beyond the wall – but without the Palestinian town, depicting just nature, grass and trees. Is this not ethnic cleansing at its purest, imagining the outside beyond the wall as empty, virginal and waiting to be settled?", writes Slavoj Zizek in this excellent article.

"Leila"

Saudi singer Abdel Rab Idrees

Killing Gay Men in Iraq

A new Human Rights Watch condemns the murderous campaign against gay men in Iraq. (in Arabic)

You can get the full Human Rights Watch report here.

On the Margins of the Fateh Convention

There are no women in Fateh's newly-elected central committee. Only 18 studs. The token woman they used to have, Intisar al Wazir (Khalil al Wazir's widow), didn't get enough votes. Neither the other 5 women running for the 18-seat committee. (in English)

Let's keep our hopes that they do better in the next central committee elections...in another twenty years!

"On the Earth, Much is Worth Living For"

Psychologists Reject Gay Therapy

"The American Psychological Association declared Wednesday thatmental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments.

In a resolution adopted by the association’s governing council, and in an accompanying report, the association issued its most comprehensive repudiation of so-called reparative therapy, a concept espoused by a small but persistent group of therapists, often allied with religious conservatives, who maintain that gay men and lesbians can change."

Well, it's about time.

ON a related topic, a Haartz survey found that half of the population in Israel believes that homosexuality is a perversion. According to the paper,

"A Haaretz-Dialog poll, conducted under Prof. Camil Fuchs finds that 46 percent of the people surveyed answered the question "Do you see homosexuality as a perversion?" in the affirmative, while 42 percent answered that it was not a perversion. Twelve percent said they did not know.

The survey also finds that 71 percent of the ultra-Orthodox population believe homosexuality is a perversion. So do 67 percent of the religious (Orthodox), 64 percent of the Arabs, 57 percent of the Russian-speaking immigrants, 44 percent of the observant (traditional) Jews and 24 percent of the secular population."

"Flogging is not pain, flogging is an insult to humans, women and religions"

From the BBC on Lubna al Hussain's case. The video shows a sign carried by one of the women protestors that can be translated as: "Free our Way/You Pained Our Hearts"

The Lowest Action of the Month ...

Is Hamas's decision not to allow Fateh delegates to leave Gaza and threatening those who did manage to sneak out with arrest upon return.

You've learned all the tricks of the Israeli occupation, boys. Shatreen!!

Yes, I'm aware that they demanded that the PA releases their prisoners (another occupation trick the PA learned). But there is more to it: Hamas's goal is to destroy Fateh, not just the PA. Hence, the decision. But they are wrong. If they stay out of it, Fateh will self-destroy.

On the Margins of the Fateh Convention

In his opening speech at the Fateh convention, Ahmad Qurai3 declared:

"Fatah is the mother of the dialogue and the owner of the homeland and victory."

Owner of the homeland??? I think our problem is right there: when leaders and political group declare they "own" the homeland, the homeland is lost.

I hope the English translation of the quote is wrong. But I doubt it.

When the Passion is for the Regime, not the Women it Oppresses

Oh, could this be true?

Abdel Bari Atwan, the chief editor of Al Quds al Arabi newspaper, devoted his "Opinion" column today to object to the Sudanese government's decision to put Lubna al Hussain on trial for wearing pants. If convicted, she will receive up to 40 lashes. (see my post yesterday for details about the case).

I welcome this stand, of course. I can't help noticing, however, that he seems more concerned about how the case is being used in the Western media to conspire against the Islamist Sudanese regime, which Atwan supports, than about the rights and dignities of Sudanese women.

He also has nothing to say about Luban al Hussain's courage in standing up for herself and for other women. On the contrary, he sneakily tarnishes her by saying that the Sudanese government has allowed her to become a hero for western media. Predictably, some of his readers picked up on this slight and ran away with it.

What they don't want to see is that Lubna al Hussain is no Ayaan Hirsi Ali and that her efforts to challenge injustice should be supported by us all, mainly because it is the right thing to do and secondarily so she does not become another Hirsi Ali.

So I would say: Try again, Mr. Atwan. Try harder to feel more for the individual and less for the regime that oppresses her.

Lubna al Hussain: A Woman Against Injustice

Lubna Al Hussain, the Sudanese journalist accused of wearing "scandalous" clothes in public, will receive, if convicted, up to 40 lashes and/or be fined. The "scandalous" clothes in question consist of long pants, a loose shirt, and a headcover. Apparently, according to the enlightened views of the Islmaist Government of Sudan, pants are a no-no!

Al Hussain, a widow in her thirties, works for a leftist newspaper. She was arrested along with 12 other women. According to her, ten of the women received lashes at the police station, most of them were not Muslim. She is using her trial in order to publicize the injustice of the Sudanese law that allows beating women and humiliating them because of what they wear. Al Hussain insists that nothing in Shari'a allows for such laws. She also says that not even 40 thousand lashes will deter her from her cause.

A disturbing (if not surprising) detail reported in Al Arabiyah article is that since the case became public, a man threatened Al Hussain by yelling: "Your fate will be like that of Marwa al Sharbini." Al Sharbini is the Egyptian woman stabbed to death in a German court a few weeks ago.

If true, the irony of such a death threat is breathtaking, but again not surprising. Some of those who shed tears over the tragic death of Al Sharbini are not really concerned for women's rights, including their right to wear what they want. But since I haven't said anything about that case yet (been on vacation from the blogosphere), I will stop here. For now.

As to Lubna al Hussain, she comes from a long line of hardy leftist Sudanese women who stood up against injustice and oppression, in both its secular and religious forms. Her courage, like theirs, is an inspiration!!