Manal and Alaa's bit bucket

A coalition of Arab human rights organizations are starting a movement to freeze Israel’s UN membership. I looked quickly through the list, and while some major ones are missing, the list does contain some of the most courageous rights groups in the region. Here’s an excerpt from their statement, and links to download the press [...]

It looks like Hamas may launch its own regional satellite television station:Gaza, 28 August: Ramattan news agency learned today from sources close to Hamas that the movement plans to launch its satellite television channel on 1 October.About a year ago, Hamas launched its private television station, Al-Aqsa Television, but the station remained an experimental terrestrial [...]

Sameh Naguib, a Socialist activist with Kefaya, speaks on Hizbollah and how the war transformed the region. You can find the interview here.

17 Egyptian human rights organizations called for the release of the kidnapped Fox journalists in Gaza, in a statement today. The Arabic statement could be found here.

I just read that Kifaya has started to work towards collecting a million signatures for a petition calling for the cancellation of the Camp David peace treaty. Can anyone confirm this?I’ll have more to say about this soon, but want to confirm it first.

That Amr Hamzawy — he’s so hot right now (you have watched Zoolander, haven’t you?):This widening ideological divide between ruling elites and oppositions will make it more difficult to adopt political reform measures, which require at least some consensus and flexibility on both sides. More troubling is that the positions of putatively democratic Arab opposition [...]

Eric Alterman on how neo-cons and Israel Firsters are attacking American Jewry for putting America’s interests before Israel’s: Things can become a little confusing when the same neocons who insist it is ipso facto anti-Semitic to ask what role Israel plays in their calculations instruct American Jews that they are paying too much attention to [...]

Perhaps the worst thing about Arab ruling elites is how embarrassing they are:Arafat widow denies reports she remarriedThursday August 17, 06:03 PMTUNIS (AFP) - The widow of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has denied Arab press reports that she had married a brother-in-law of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.“I absolutely deny reports about my [...]

Jonathan Edelstein at the Head Heeb has an interesting analysis of political crisis Israel is going through after the war:I’m not going to venture an opinion on whether Olmert should stay in office. My bet, though, is that he will stay, and that even if he is replaced, the coalition will continue in roughly its [...]

Costa Rica has decided to move its embassy to Israel from Jerusalem, where it has been since 1982, to Tel Aviv. President Oscar Arias said the move was needed to bring the Central American nation into line with international law and mend relations with Arab nations. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, but [...]

Tell me this is an elaborate spoof.Two websites claim they can arrange delivery of pizza and burgers to IDF units on the Lebanese border and “around Gaza,” and boast that they coordinate with the security forces so that there’s no “security risk.”Imagine the hassle these guys could have saved in Lebanon—all that unloading from ships, [...]

I have an op-ed piece on TomPaine.com, the progressive website, titled After Lebanon, What’s Left?. It discusses the long-term impact this war will have on Arab moderates, which the Bush administration and its allies have spoken about a lot but done little to reassure. I appreciate any feedback.

My friend Nadia Abou El-Magd of AP wrote this report today:For the majority of Arabs, Hezbollah won, Israel is no longer the undefeatable armyCAIRO, Egypt (AP) _ Babies have been named “Hezbollah” and “Nasrallah.” Even some die-hard secularists are praising the Shiite fundamentalist militia in the wake of its cease-fire with Israel _ saying its [...]

Sharq Al Awsat is reporting that Palestinian PM Hanniyah discussed the possibility of a national unity government with President Mahmoud Abbas. The thinking is that this would strengthen the Palestinian government’s international standing, break its political paralysis and enable movement on the prisoners’ document.

I thought Arabist readers would be interested in reading a translation of Hassan Nasrallah’s recent “victory speech.” It’s reproduced below (from BBC Monitoring). I found the passage about where he condemned some of the statements of parts of the political elite particularly interesting: they express both a great deal of anger at unnamed politicians (Jumblatt [...]

I’ve just received this from Al-Jazeera: “Hizb Allah says that it will not evacuate its fighters from south of the Litani river, and that its weapons are not up for discussions.”

People at this website have worked very hard to create a layered map for Google Earth showing as many of the attacks on Lebanon as they have been able to account for through media coverage. Just download the file (which I am caching here because a lot of people might want to see it), install [...]

I never met Lebanese journalist Hanady Salman, but I’ve been receiving her daily dispatches of reports and pix of Israeli war crimes in Lebanon since the war started, via Cairo-based journalist and friend Ranwa Yehia.I didn’t post any of them before, but the reports she supplied always guided us to where to look for info. [...]

I watched a documentary on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict last March during a visit to DC, directed by activist and friend Tarek Maassarani. Tarek has set up a website for the film equipped with trailer, blog, etc. Check it out: Sour Milk and HoneyThe film is quite long, but the 52-minute version has been accepted to [...]

The former head of the Egyptian consulate in Eilat was almost killed by his younger brother three weeks ago, according to Al-Masr Al-Youm, after the latter accused him of “treason” and being an “infidel” for assuming a diplomatic post in Israel.The paper ran an interview with Consul Hassan Eissa, 70, who said his one-year-younger brother, [...]

Fox News sucks, but sure this is NOT the right way to respond to their coverage.

When I saw this lead to a Washington Post article this morning, I was momentarily confused:Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday acknowledged mistakes in the war against Hezbollah as the Israeli government confronted widespread criticism and political recriminations over the conflict.“There have been failings and shortcomings,” Olmert, with deep circles under his eyes and a [...]

The New York Times’ coverage of the Lebanon war is a scab I can’t stop picking.The latest, from Steven Erlanger, is as dumb-founding as always.Written entirely from the strategic viewpoint of the Israeli government, this “news analysis” posits that the ceasefire depends on the Lebanese blaming Hezbullah for the damage the Israelis have done. If [...]

Interesting media clips on the Lebanon war coverage…

Al-Jazeera announced that “Israeli army will pull back as quickly as possible tomorrow to the Blue Line and the international border, the head of Israel’s ground forces G. Gantz said.”

Thanks to the often amusing Angry Arab for the link to a little light summertime reading, to whit to Norm Finkelstein’s latest rhetorical head butt to Alan Dershowitz.Under the guise of taking apart Dershowitz’s political-legal analyses Finkelstein gets off some nice shots: his victim is a “notorious serial prevaricator” and “moral pervert” who “mounts his [...]

Check out this interesting blog… LENIN’S TOMB

One of my favorite Ahmad Fouad Negm’s poems… البتــــاعEgyptian blogger Fantomas dedicates it to el presidente.

I’ve uploaded more photos of pro-resistance demos, that took place over the past week, to my flickr account.-A pro-resistance women’s candle vigil in Tahrir Square, on 2 August-I’ve added more pix by Amr Abdallah of Artists & Writers For Change’s pro-Hizbollah demo, on 3 August-Muslim Brothers’ protest at the Lawyers’ Syndicate in solidarity with the [...]

I received this from a friend…10th August, 2006We, the undersigned writers, gathered for a festival of literature in the idyllic Brazilian town of Paraty, cannot but help think of the innocent victims of wars in the Middle East.The Israeli invasion of Lebanon is only the most recent addition to the litany of war and occupation. [...]