Re: OUT AND ABOUT IN NORTH AFRICA & THE MIDDLE EAST

**Lamplighter** Thu Nov 03, 2011 9:19 am

Latest on the Freedom ships trying to get to Gaza:

3 hours 51 min ago - Gaza Live Blog - A Jazeera

Israel has announced that its navy will attempt to stop two boats carrying pro-Palestinian activists bound for the Gaza Strip, in the latest attempt by activists to break the four-year Israeli blockade against the territory.

The Israeli military spokesman's office said the country's navy was "prepared to contact" the vessels and had "completed the necessary preparations in order to prevent them from reaching the Gaza Strip".

Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military official, would not say how the boats might be stopped, saying only "we will have to assess and see if we are facing violent passengers."

Describing their journey as a "provocation", she said Israel would offer to unload any aid supplies on board and deliver them to Gaza.

**rhodes** Thu Nov 03, 2011 12:00 pm

Lamplighter wrote:.... the Jews treated the Palestinians the same way the Nazis treated them YES and still are - witness the attempts to breach the embargo on goods reaching Gaza by sea, and the civilians who died on that relief ship.

Are there any Israeli citizens living in slums, camps etc? NO The settlements are being built so anyone can get housing, so long as they are Jews.

Or is it just the Palestinians? YES in ghettos called Gaza and the West Bank.

LL

well then the Jewish state of Israel is a darn diagrace, and so are America for sticking up for them mad

**Sabot** Thu Nov 03, 2011 12:14 pm

So I suppose that I must be a disgrace as well. But with Iran wanting Israel off the face of the earth I can see another side to this situation. Israel were horribly attacked in the beginning, and as far as I can see are just seeking to protect themselves.

**Lamplighter** Thu Nov 03, 2011 12:15 pm

rhodes wrote:
Lamplighter wrote:.... the Jews treated the Palestinians the same way the Nazis treated them YES and still are - witness the attempts to breach the embargo on goods reaching Gaza by sea, and the civilians who died on that relief ship.

Are there any Israeli citizens living in slums, camps etc? NO The settlements are being built so anyone can get housing, so long as they are Jews.

Or is it just the Palestinians? YES in ghettos called Gaza and the West Bank.

LL
well then the Jewish state of Israel is a darn diagrace, and so are America for sticking up for them

The problem is that the pro-Israeli lobby has incredible power in the US, as so many Jews fled there in the 1930s. I think the USA has a large sense of shame over things like the liner St Louis that was sent back to Hamburg before the war, also the fact that they stopped accepting Jews who were trying to escape the Holocaust. I also think the hawkish pro-Israel lobby plays on this a lot. Did you know that the number of Jews returning to the US/UK and other countries of origin has increased dramatically over the last 20 years? For many Jews the state of Israel is not what they envisaged it would be. LL

For the St Louis story - http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267

**rhodes** Thu Nov 03, 2011 12:22 pm

I wonder if any of the Jewish people returning to US/UK are doing so because they thought that Israel wasn't what they thought it would in terms of THEIR percieved lifestyles, or may it be because some of them find it repellant about how their "promised land" came about and the disgusting conditions GENERATIONS of Palestinians have been living in?

The whole world is a fecken mess

**bb1** Thu Nov 03, 2011 12:30 pm

Israel were horribly attacked in the beginning, and as far as I can see are just seeking to protect themselves.

Agree, I would have supported Israel, if only for historical reasons - until recently, Sabot.
The generations that have come after the founders of the state seem to have forgotten that it is wrong to persecute people.

I found Israel's conduct towards Gaza brutal and Fascist, and the attack on aid ships, leaving nine dead, in international waters, was little more than State-ordered piracy.

As Rhodes says, it's a feckin' mess.

**Sabot** Thu Nov 03, 2011 12:58 pm

It is a mess, Bonny, and it's always been a mess, right back to when Britain was persecuting The Jews in Israel after The War
Israel aren't Gassing Six Million Palestinians, so it a bit of an exaggeration to liken them to The Nazis. That alone puts my back up.

And it was The Palestinians who started hostilities by attacking The Kibbutz. Land that was being recovered from the desert by shear hard work, and land that Palestine didn't even want. Until it had been done.

Incidentally, I am not upset by the differences of opinion. To me it is a subject worth discussing. So please have no fear of offending me.

**bb1** Thu Nov 03, 2011 4:38 pm

Well, as Rhodes says, it's a feckin mess. The economic squabbles in Europe pale into insignificance beside it.

To me, they all have a right to exist; none of them have the right to attack their neighbours.

**Lamplighter** Mon Nov 07, 2011 8:18 am

Good morning:

Here are the links to the various Al Jazeera blogs; there is such a wealth of items that it would take me hours to filter and copy them and at present I don't have the time, sorry. LL

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Gaza

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Syria

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Yemen

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Egypt

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Bahrain

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Tunisia-Election

**Lamplighter** Sun Dec 18, 2011 8:59 am

It looks to me like the ultra-islamic attitude to women is now spreading to Israel:

Unholy Row In Jerusalem Over Status Of Women
By Emma Hurd, Middle East correspondent | Sky News – 5 hours ago

Equality campaigners say women in Jerusalem are facing discrimination and segregation because of the growing influence of ultra-religious Jewish leaders.

An attempt to ban women singing in public places is the latest move to spark protests after a few extremist Rabbis declared it too sexual for men to hear.

"The female voice is beautiful and it is fine for women to sing to each other but we do not want men exposed to the temptation," Yakov Halperin, a religious member of Jerusalem's City Council, said.

Women's rights groups have taken to organising public sing-a-longs in the street in response. "We cannot let them silence us," one woman said as a crowd of about 100 women sang beside one of the city's main roads. "This is a slippery slope and it's our democracy that's at stake," another protester said.

Even Israel's military, long a bastion of sexual equality, has been drawn into the row with some religious soldiers boycotting ceremonial events where female soldiers might be singing. Military leaders have refused to bow to the demands for all male choirs.

The increasingly conservative attitude towards women reflects the steady demographic shift in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. The ultra-orthodox Jewish community - with its preference for large families - is the fastest expanding sector of society. Some sections of the community shun Israel's modern, liberal values. In religious areas of the city there are growing incidents of self-imposed "separation" of the sexes, despite laws banning segregation. Frequently women sit at the back of buses, have separate entrances in some shops and different hours at medical facilities.

The practice is confined to ultra-observant neighbourhoods but women's groups claim it is part of the creeping marginalisation of half of the population. They point to the trend among advertising agencies to use only images of men in their campaigns in Jerusalem. Risque images of women that can be found plastered on billboards in Tel Aviv are considered offensive by the ultra-religious community.

"It is now rare to find any images of women at all, even those dressed modestly," Idit Karni told Sky News. She has joined other campaigners in hanging posters of herself around Jerusalem to try to restore females to public view. "I am a mother of daughters and I do not want them to grow up in a city where women are becoming invisible," Ms Karni said.

Liberal rabbis are backing the poster campaign. "What we're fighting against is a few extremists who are trying to distort Judaism. The faith is all about equality, and so is Israel," Rabbi Uri Ayalon told Sky News.

The Jewish State prides itself on women's equality. Golda Meir was Israel's Prime Minister in 1969 at a time when Britain had not yet passed laws guaranteeing women equal pay.

With a form of 'womens' apartheid' now prevalent in the ultra-orthodox areas, how long before they are forced to cover their heads and faces, to wear a 'Israeli hibab'? They still have to shave their heads upon marriage and wear wigs, no wonder so many Jews who sought a new life in Israel are returning to the UK and other countries. LL

**Sabot** Sun Dec 18, 2011 9:50 am

This is ridiculous, and also a bit scary. But I don't think it is much to do with Religion, just Male Dominance...I have known a few Christian Englishmen in my time who have the same weird ideas. Things always seem to swing from one extreme to another.

I do think that young girls tarting around the streets late at night, and drunk, are asking for trouble, but their parents have singularly failed to tell them that this is no way in which to behave, so the girls at risk often don't realize. Meanwhile, the rest of society is afraid to tell them for fear of being labelled sexists because we have had it rammed down our throats that women have a right to behave as they please.
So, in the minds of Pitch Forkers, an innocent young woman who knows no better may behave in a provocative and drunken manner while placing all of the blame on a supposed rapist, while an abductor may take his chances with small children because the parents are responsible for his actions.

How much any of this has to do with male dominance might be found in the minds of some men who wish to dominate. In an ideal society all people are equal. Sadly, this isn't the case.

**Lamplighter** Sun Dec 18, 2011 10:14 am

It has been building up for the last couple of years in Israel which is a secular society, and that really angers the ultras. I have a friend whose orthodox family emigrated to Israel after WW2 but went back to the UK where they felt free and able to worship etc as they wished. They found the ultras incompatible with what is written in the Torah and the Laws, just like the moderation Muslim finds with the fanatics in the Islam dominated countries. My friend's parents are now dead, his two sisters live secular lives having married non-Jewish men and he lives in a gay partnership with a non-Jewish German. I asked him if he would ever return to Israel and he was emphatic that never would he go there again, not even to visit. He says that the ultras are as bad ads the Muslim fundamentalists and that soon it will be a state where freedom is no longer practised. Many Jews have chosen to leave Israel, to either return to the home countries or find a new home elsewhere. Many Jews also no longer practise as they feel the ultras denigrate what was once a great religion by reading into the Sacred Books what is not there, even as the Islamists do with the Koran. Somewhere I recently read that a mullah says that driving a car or riding a horse is immoral for women as it gives them sexual feelings and mnay lead to outright promiscuity! Do you ride or drive, ma petite? LL rofl

**Sabot** Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:24 pm

I Drive, and Ride the odd horse, LL Although I don't do much riding anymore because I have never been able to afford a really good horse to call my own, so I never got beyond sniffing up the nose of today's horse ride. This is the way in which people communicate with horses. This is what tells the horse that you care about how they feel. We think that we dominate them, but we don't. And No, I can't say that I ever got any sexual pleasure out of riding a horse. Just the wind in my hair, and at one with The Universe for a minute.
The last time I rode a horse was during the breaking of a Colt by Gypsies who didn't want his back broken by weight and ignorance.
The little, big horror got loose on the road shortly afterwards, and only I had the courage to snaffle him and lead him home, but only because I wasn't afraid of him. Or he of me.

Incidentally, my half brother is a Jew, being as how his mother, my stepmother, was a Jewess by birth of her own German Jewess mother. No one knows what happened to her family, but I suspect that it wasn't good.
As a very small girl, I saw the fear of my stepmother, not just for her but for her son as well. And not just from Germany, but from society in general. My stepmother told me that my brother was a Jew, but forbade me to mention it for fear of what society would do to him. I bring it up now and again, but Leonard doesn't want to discuss it, so I don't know how he feels about it all. But I would have defended him to the death. And her.

As it happens, my stepmother wasn't a very nice person, and she did inflict great hurt on the daughters of her husband by his first marriage.
My mother died of Tuberculosis when I was very young, and who knows who can deal with which was what?
I suspect that my stepmother lived in great fear through out The War, just for being a Jew. And who knows what damage that can do? I am still working on forgiving her.
My father is another story

Me? Britain treated The Jews with great contempt. Britain is every bit as culpable. The Jews can have anything they want in my book. They made Israel. It is theirs for the taking. The Jews dragged it out of The Desert.

As for The Orthodox Jews. This is no different from Anthony Bennett who uses his Bible to suit himself.

**bb1** Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:48 pm

Thanks, Sabot - isn't it silly that the manner in which people follow their god should cause so much trouble?

Pity there isn't a big patch of empty desert somewhere to dump every single ultra- Muslim, Christian, Jew - the whole lot of them - and leave them to fight it out between themselves away from the rest of the world.

I find it ironic that all three faiths come from the same root, but they never seem to stop fighting long enough to notice that....

Horses? Whahhhh! I have fallen off horses rather too often to associate them with any kind of pleasure....speaking to horses, yes. Feeding horses, no probs!

Sitting precariously on top of a large lump of animal with a mind of its own - never again Hide

**Sabot** Sun Dec 18, 2011 3:09 pm

I still ride on the occasions that I can get my leg over, although it becomes a little more difficult as time goes by. But I know of a dreadful old harridon who still rides at the age of 92. More power to her elbow. I hope I still can when I am so old.

But you see, we are talking about Jews here. And when was the last time that any of us saw Jews killing people?
They just got out there into the The Desert, and made it work. They beat the odds, and turned a desert into a viable place from which to earn a living. And to survive the horrors of what happened to them.
I don't care of whom is their God, or even my God. But then I don't actually have A God. What makes us so sure that there is a benign or even a belligerent God who ever had the time to care.

I tell you now that there is no God that could ever make sense to us. He is Almighty. We are totally unable to understand this.

He is the Universe. We are nothing in the true order of things. No better or worse than any beetle that crawls the earth. Come to terms with that nasty fact and then we might have some chance of making good of the brief time that we have.

The Pitch Forkers choose the worst of a flawed society, while we choose the best. It is almost certainly genetic and inbred, and quite possibly there is nothing to be done about it it.
But The Laws of our lands usually manage to make some sense, although not always. Which is one of the reasons for why Execution will never be acceptable. Although that was never a reason for me. Execution is just plain wrong, no matter what.

But none of this diatribe explains my reasons for supporting The Jews. And be sure that I always will. I was about eight years old when I discovered what had happened. And enough is enough. Six F**king million people is beyond explicable.
My stepmother might not have been a very nice person, but never would I have wished that upon her.
For now, you may be sure that various races still wish for the anhiliation of The Jews.
Not least the likes of ignorant people like Bennett, who most certainly has no more conception of Jews than he does of Muslims.
I would like to say that he is dangerous, but I doubt that that he is.

I am so sorry for my brother who could have been a very good Jew.

**Lamplighter** Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:16 am

The fourth dictator is a casualty of the Arab Spring, but he is alive and also immune from prosecution, it seems:

Daily Telegraph:

Ali Abdullah Saleh flies out of Yemen 'to get treatment in US'
Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Sunday left his country to seek medical treatment in the United States after asking for forgiveness from his people for any "shortcomings" during his 33-year rule.

By Alex Spillius9:04PM GMT 22 Jan 2012

Ali Abdullah Saleh effectively became the fourth leader toppled by the Arab spring when a deal was brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council granting him "complete" immunity from prosecution in return for stepping down.

OUT AND ABOUT IN NORTH AFRICA & THE MIDDLE EAST - Page 2 Saleh_2116707b

OUT AND ABOUT IN NORTH AFRICA & THE MIDDLE EAST - Page 2 Saleh_2116707b

Photo: AP

In a televised speech, Mr Saleh said that "if there had been mistakes, then they were unintentional". He had "dedicated his life to serve this nation", he said, encouraging protesters to "go back to your homes and families and open a new page with the new leadership".

He was travelling to Oman before departing for New York where wounds suffered in an assassination attempt last year will be looked at. However, he vowed to return to lead the General People's Congress party that underpinned his time in power.

At least 270 people were killed and many more injured by his security forces during protests against his autocratic rule. Many were picked off by rooftop gunmen during regular Friday marches in Sana'a, the capital.

He effectively became the fourth leader toppled by the Arab spring when a deal was brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council granting him "complete" immunity from prosecution in return for stepping down.

The immunity law, which finally passed parliament on Saturday, continued to spark protests over the weekend, with tens of thousands taking to the streets to demand Mr Saleh's prosecution.

Under the agreement, Mr Saleh's long-time deputy, Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, who sat next to the president during the speech, was approved as the consensus candidate in the election for a successor to be held on February 21.
After that date, Mr Hadi is to be "handed over the presidential palace while Ali Abdullah Saleh will take his bag, bid farewell, and leave to his own home", the Saba news agency quoted the president as saying. "I announce from here, out of respect and appreciation for Hadi's stances and efforts, his promotion to the rank of marshal," Mr Saleh said.

**bb1** Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:56 am

Another of those diplomatic illnesses, LL?

**Lamplighter** Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:07 am

bb1 wrote:Another of those diplomatic illnesses, LL?

He was almost killed when his palace was bombed; he was taken to, I think, Saudi Arabia where he was treated for extensive burns etc. It was said at the time, as I remember, that he would need more operations, and the photos of him that were shown after he got back to Yemen were quite horrific, so maybe this is genuine, I would not, however, wish to hazard a guess. LL

**bb1** Wed Feb 22, 2012 1:34 pm

Sunday Times Journalist Killed In Syria

The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have paid tribute to two Western journalists, including Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times, who have been killed in an attack in the Syrian city of Homs.

The second was named as French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, who was also killed in an attack which is said to have targeted an opposition safehouse.
William Hague said: "Marie and Remi died bringing us the truth about what is happening to the people of Homs.
"Governments around the world have the responsibility to act upon that truth - and to redouble our efforts to stop the Assad regime's despicable campaign of terror in Syria," he said.
Ms Colvin had been a war reporter for the Sunday Times for 20 years, and during a career that took her to some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, lost an eye to a shrapnel wound in Sri Lanka in 2001.
In a statement, the editor of the Sunday Times John Witherow said: "Marie was an extraordinary figure in the life of The Sunday Times, driven by a passion to cover wars in the belief that what she did mattered.
MARIE COLVIN'S LAST AUDIO DESPATCH FROM HOMS, FEB 21, 2012

"She believed profoundly that reporting could curtail the excesses of brutal regimes and make the international community take notice. Above all, as we saw in her powerful report last weekend, her thoughts were with the victims of violence.

"Throughout her long career she took risks to fulfil this goal, including being badly injured in Sri Lanka. Nothing seemed to deter her. But she was much more than a war reporter.
"She was a woman with a tremendous joie de vivre, full of humour and mischief and surrounded by a large circle of friends, all of whom feared the consequences of her bravery."
Mr Ochlik was a 28-year-old award-winning photojournalist, who had covered events in Haiti and Libya. He is the second French journalist to be killed in the unrest in the country, after cameraman Gilles Jacquier died in a mortar attack during an authorised press trip, also in Homs.
Upon hearing news of his death, the French government called on Syria to make an immediate stop to the bombardments in Homs, and to allow safe passage for humanitarian aid to reach affected areas.
"France is more determined than ever to end the savage repression that the Syrian people are experiencing every day," said the country's foreign minister Alain Juppe, who summoned Syria's envoy to France to demand an end to the violence.

A British freelance photographer, Paul Conroy, was injured in the same attack, but initial reports suggest he is not seriously hurt

More at:

http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16174827

**bb1** Wed Feb 22, 2012 11:13 pm

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