Segacs's World I Know

Archive for the ‘Middle East’ Category

Further evidence of the increasing antagonism between Iran-backed Hamas and the Arab nations, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak publicly blamed Hamas for bloodshed in Gaza:

“How long will Arab blood continue to be spilled, only to hear those who admit to miscalculating the scope and scale of Israel’s response?” Mubarak asked in a speech marking Egypt’s national day to honor its police force.

Mubarak’s comment came in reference to remarks reportedly made by Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal, who admitted at the end of the three-week Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that he did not anticipate the scope of Israel’s operation. Similar sentiments were expressed by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah at the end of the Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

Mubarak went on to say that resistance movements must take responsibility over the welfare of their people. “The resistance must take into account victories and losses. It is responsible for the people, who in turn should settle the score [with the resistance] over the gains it has achieved, but also the sacrifices, the pain and the destruction it has caused,” he said.

The split in the Middle East is heating up, with the rival Palestinian factions serving as proxies, as usual:

The Egyptian president also hinted that Hamas and other militant Palestinian factions are serving the Iranian agenda in the region, especially since the fighting in Gaza ended. “They are trying to take advantage of Israeli aggression to force a new reality on the current Palestinian and Arab situation. A new reality that will alter the equation and reorganize the balance in favor of known regional powers and will serve their agenda,” Mubarak said. His comment came in response to Meshal’s recent calls for the establishment of an alternative Palestinian body, to rival Fatah in representing the Palestinian people.

It’s not much of a secret that there’s no love lost between Hamas and Egypt, which supports Fatah in the factional struggle. Mubarak is appealing to the EU and the international community to try and maintain the regional balance of power. But analysts speculate this could be costly for him at home, where the extremist Muslim Brotherhood (from which Hamas is an offshoot) could make political gains in Egypt at Mubarak’s expense. The peace between Israel and Egypt has always been chilly and fragile, and it’s looking shakier than ever.

As for Israel? As long as Palestinian factions gain popular support by being perceived as the toughest against Israel, Israeli citizens will continue to pay the price for this power struggle.

Shimon Peres’s attempt to put a positive spin on the global economic crisis:

“The leaders of Iran cannot give their children uranium for breakfast,” Peres said, adding that the world financial crisis would hamper Iran’s progress toward nuclear capability. “As the price of oil declines, Iran doesn’t have as much money to invest in uranium, missiles and terrorism,” he said.

Erm. Not sure about the logic of that one, Shimon. Worsening economic conditions usually breeds more hatred and a need for scapegoating, just as peace usually requires prosperity to achieve. But hey, way to keep up that optimism.

This one’s a real doozy: EU worried about freedom of religion in Iran.

Every joke I could make here would be just too easy, so I’ll let it speak for itself.

That’s how the Syrian Interior Minister described this week’s Syrian parliamentary elections, in which – surprise, surprise – the Ba’ath ruling party won:

The rubber-stamp legislature is likely to consolidate the rule of President Bashar Assad, who is expected to seek its nomination to run for a second seven-year term in July. There had been no doubt about the outcome, because the constitution guarantees the Baath Party and its allies a two-thirds majority in the parliament.

[ . . . ]

Interior Minister Bassam Abdel-Majid said the National Progressive Front, a grouping of 10 political parties led by Assad’s Baath Party, won 172 seats in the 250-member parliament in the tightly controlled elections on Sunday and Monday, an increase of five seats.

Abdel-Majid said the remaining 78 seats went to independents, who have to be approved by the government under Syrian law, and rarely challenge the administration.

Yes, we can clearly see how an election in which the ruling party is guaranteed to win, independents are hand-picked by the ruling party, and dissidents are barred from running or imprisoned, is free, democratic, transparent, and fair. That’s the kind of logic that apparently only applies in Syria… or maybe in Nancy Pelosi’s mind.

Another day at the U.N., another toothless move to try to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions:

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday to impose new sanctions on Iran for its nuclear ambitions by targeting Tehran’s arms exports, state-owned bank and elite Revolutionary Guards.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki immediately rejected the council’s demand to suspend uranium enrichment, which can be used for making bombs and to general electricity. He maintained Iran’s program was for peaceful purposes.

It’s almost like watching paint dry, seeing the predictable moves play out. This is a game the U.N. has no desire to play, and Ahmadinejad knows it full well. He’s already concluded that there is nothing the world can do to stop him from going nuclear, and that by pressing the U.N.’s buttons like this, he’s only exposing its weaknesses further.

And with the United States tied up in Iraq, Israel facing an existential threat if it attempts to thwart Iran, and the rest of the world casually indifferent, the outcome of this game has been determined months ago. And even the best-case endgame scenario here is pretty damn frightening.

The Eurovision song competition is the latest to jump on the anti-Israel bandwagon, threatening to ban this year’s Israeli entry for having an “inappropriate political message”:

Eurovision Song Contest organizers said Thursday they might ban this year’s Israeli entry, “Push the Button,” because they say it has an inappropriate political message.

The song, to be performed at the contest in Helsinki in May, overwhelmingly won Israel’s competition Wednesday. It’s sung in English, French and Hebrew by the group Teapacks and seemingly refers indirectly to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its hard-line leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“It’s absolutely clear that this kind of message is not appropriate for the competition,” said Kjell Ekholm, an organizer of the contest. “We’ll have all the delegation leaders here in Helsinki next week, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this case within the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) group.”

The song warns about the dangers of nuclear war, but in an interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, band members denied that the song is about Iran, calling that “absurd.”

The lyrics of the song refer to “demonic” and “crazy rulers,” and say that “he’s gonna blow us up to … kingdom come.”

Ahmadinejad’s recent anti-Jewish statements have added to fears in Israel that Iran’s nuclear program is intended to produce weapons that could be used against that country.

And apparently the contest organizers support Iran’s ambitions to wipe Israel off the map enough to believe that any song that protests against it – or against nuclear war in general – is “not appropriate”.

Hear that? It’s Israel Double Standard Time, still ticking away.

300,000 people turned out in Beirut to honour assassinated ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri’s memory and protest Syrian attempts at control in Lebanon.

It’s looking more and more like Lebanon is headed towards yet another “civil war” – or at least, that’s what the media will insist on calling it. The same media that gives Hezbollah credibility as a “Lebanese opposition party”.

Beirut is on fire.

The war between Lebanon and Syria is once again coming to a head, with Hezbollah fighting for Syria by proxy. Today’s “strike” was initiated by Hezbollah to escalate the fighting.

The aim of Hezbollah is to topple the Lebanese government and take over Lebanon for Syria. It has never made any secret of this. To achieve this goal, Hezbollah uses violence, force, threats, and terrorist tactics. The “political arm” of Hezbollah exists only to further the aims and successes of the terrorist group. It’s a foreign army, paid for by a foreign country, with the goal of invading and taking over Lebanon for a foreign government.

So why, then, does the international media insist on legitimatizing Hezbollah by calling it the “opposition”?

Let’s call this what it is: A war between Syria and Lebanon, fought on Lebanese soil but paid for with Syrian money. To use the word “opposition” is to give Hezbollah a legitimacy does not deserve.

Ehud Olmert found out the hard way that Prime Ministers aren’t allowed to have slips of the tongue. . . especially when the subject in question is nuclear weaponry:

Israel’s prime minister spent Tuesday trying to put the nuclear genie back into the bottle after a remark in an interview was interpreted as confirming that Israel has nuclear weapons – widely assumed to be true, but never officially admitted by Israel.

Meanwhile, ambiguity has never been the strong suit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel’s days were numbered.

Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War 2 as a “myth” and calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, launched another verbal attack on the Jewish state.

“Thanks to people’s wishes and God’s will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want,” he said.

“Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out,” he added.

Was Olmert’s statement a deliberate warning in response to Ahmadinejad’s blustering? Or was it an honest mistake? If the latter, then just chalk it up to Olmert’s long list of gaffes. But if the former, it seems nobody has ever bothered to explain Israel Double-Standard Time to Olmert. Either way, he’s likely going to pay the price for this one.

(Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust-denial conference, by the way? It’s amazingly sparking protests among Iranian students. This is bound to be deeply embarrassing to the Iranian dictator, and he will probably take some sort of steps to quell the dissent. Keep an eye on this one – it could be a big story.)

The verdict is in for the Butcher of Baghdad: death by hanging.

I’m sure that the US administration expected this to be a pivotal moment and a resounding victory. Instead, Saddam’s execution will probably pass as a mere footnote to the ongoing violence in Iraq.

Still, there cannot be a punishment quite bad enough to befit the crimes that Saddam Hussein inflicted in the course of his dictatorship, and there really couldn’t be any other verdict but a death sentence. So, barring an unlikely appeal victory, Saddam Hussein will probably hang by next month, and one less horrible dictator will be alive in the world.

It won’t solve Iraq’s problems. Far from it. But now, that seems almost besides the point.