Quotes of the week—follow the links to read the whole thing.
Maikel Nabil Sanad, a 25-year old pacifist currently on a hunger strike in an Egyptian prison, is one of the Arab world's most pioneering human rights activists. A veterinarian by profession, in April 2009, Sanad founded the "No to Compulsory Service Campaign," which aims to end the compulsory three-year military service term for Egyptian males and reportedly has upward of 3,000 members. Last year, he became the first known conscientious objector in Egyptian history when he refused to report for duty.
While distaste for the draft is not uncommon among middle-class Egyptians, the reasons for Sanad's conscientious objection are virtually unheard of in the Arab world. "I don't want to point a weapon at a young Israeli, recruited into obligatory service, defending his state's right to exist," he explained in October 2010. He has frequently expressed his admiration for Israel's democratic freedoms, respect for women's rights, and religious tolerance while voicing rejection of Arab terrorism and outrage over the blatant anti-Semitism propagated by the Egyptian military and political establishment during the Mubarak years. He even went so far as to publish an article on the Arabic language website of the Israeli foreign ministry entitled, "Why I Am a Pro-Israel." He is learning Hebrew and has a Hebrew section on his blog. . . .
Sanad has suffered numerous abuses in prison, such as denial of access to decent food, placement with common criminals, being forced to shower in dirty water and to sleep on insect-laden bedding. Until recently, he was denied access to essential medical care. . . .
And all this in the new, "democratic" Egypt.
Rebecca Witonsky, “Dissident Watch: Maikel Nabil Sanad,” Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2011
The protesters and family members gather outside hospitals in Syria for what has become a grim routine of the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime: reaching out for the dead and wounded, trying to wrest their bodies away from security forces. . . .
With security forces largely in control of public medical care, "people prefer to die rather than go to a hospital," Khaled, a demonstrator, said Friday in the eastern city of Dair Alzour, where activists said three of the day's estimated 18 deaths occurred.
Khaled, who like many protesters asked that his full name not be used for safety reasons, described an instance this week at a hospital in his city. Activists had learned that a wounded confederate had been taken to a hospital, he said, only to be left to bleed to death by medical workers sympathetic to the regime. The body was confiscated by security forces, Khaled said, and has not been released to the man's family.
Deprivation of medical care and misuse of hospitals have become "routine, systematic," said Wissam Tarif, an activist now outside Syria. "What we have seen is security forces based in the hospitals. It is the security forces that have control of the hospitals, and in most cases the medical personnel cannot do anything about it."
Accounts from Tarif and other activists Friday detailed some of the abuses: security forces seizing the bodies of slain activists to block mourners from holding funerals, which could turn into protests against the government; and taking wounded activists who need treatment away from hospital wards.
Activists describe doctors and nurses abusing bleeding, helpless protesters, especially at state-run medical centers.
Ellen Knickmeyer and Roula Hajjar, “Wounded Syrian protesters being abused in hospitals,” Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2011
Jihadists among the Libyan rebels revealed plans last week on the Internet to subvert the post-Moammar Gadhafi government and create an Islamist state, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.
U.S. officials said spy agencies are stepping up surveillance of Islamist-oriented elements among Libyan rebels. A government report circulated Tuesday said extremists were observed “strategizing” on Internet forums about how to set up an Islamist state in Libya after the regime of Col. Gadhafi is defeated.
“Several forum participants have suggested that, following a transitional stage, the battle should turn against secularist rebels and members of the [rebels’] Transitional National Council,” the unclassified report stated.
Bill Gertz, “Jihadists plot to take over Libya,” Washington Times, September 4, 2011
Demonstrations were held Saturday in Tabriz and Orumieh -- the capitals of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan provinces, respectively -- and in several other towns in the two provinces to protest the disastrous condition of Lake Orumieh. The salt lake has been drying up rapidly in recent years; approximately half of the area it formerly covered is now completely dry. Experts predict that unless drastic actions are taken, it will completely dry up and disappear in about five years. Reports by several sources indicate that the demonstrations were broken up by police and security forces, and a large number of protestors were arrested.
Muhammad Sahimi, “Growing Unrest in Azerbaijan Region over Imperiled Lake Orumieh,”Tehran Bureau, September 4, 2011
Iran is trying to put down a new wave of civil disobedience — flash mobs of young people who break into boisterous fights with water guns in public parks. A group of water fighters was arrested over the weekend, and a top judiciary official warned Monday that "counter-revolutionaries" were behind them. . . .
Throughout the summer, Iranian police have been cracking down. In the first incident, in July, hundreds of young men and women held a water fight in Tehran's popular Water and Fire Park, spraying each other with water guns and splattering bottles of water on one another. Police detained dozens of those involved.
Since then, police have arrested dozens more involved in similar water fights in parks in major cities around the country.
Hard-liners see the water fights as unseemly and immoral, breaking taboos against men and women simply mixing, much less dousing each other with water and playing in the streets. . . .
On Monday, the spokesman of the judiciary, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, accused unnamed foreign hands of organizing the water gun campaign.
"This is not simply a game with water. This act is being guided from abroad," he said. Some of those detained Friday have admitted "they were deceived, and some said they came out based on a call from a counterrevolutionary," he said, quoted in the conservative news web site Tabnak. . . .
But even some conservatives who are strong supporters of Islamic rule thought arresting young people was going too far.
"I feel bad when I see some youth were detained for water fights. Those who support such detentions think the Islamic system is somehow very fragile," said Mohammad Reza Zaeri, a conservative cleric, on a state TV talk show recently.
Nasser Karimi, “Water gun fight in a park? Iran sees dark designs,” Associated Press, September 5, 2011
“Stand out for yourselves and demand respect. Shame has to switch sides!” This is the cri de guerre of Majdoline Lyazidi, the 20-year-old founder of SlutWalk Morocco, a Facebook page which aims at raising awareness against sexual harassment in the Moroccan society. The concept seems to be catching on, with more than 3,000 members joining in less than 15 days since the page was first created.
The SlutWalk protest marches started out in the city of Toronto, Canada, on April 3, 2011, as a movement against excusing rape by referring to a woman's appearance. It was sparked by a controversial statement made by one of the city's police officers who told a group of young female college students that to protect themselves against rapists “women should avoid dressing like sluts.” It quickly became a global movement with rallies and marches from Sydney to London. See Global Voices coverage on SlutWalks in Costa Rica, India, Brazil and Australia.
The concept didn't quite catch on in the Arab world. Some have blamed the fact on a culturally loaded, Western-centric campaign. Others explain that the region is busy fighting for greater change anyway. But there are those like Majdoline who think a genuine change must include the fight against gender-based forms of violence and a shift in the way women are treated in society.
Hisham Almiraat, “Morocco: SlutWalk Gets A Toehold,” Global Voices, September 7, 2011
I wish it would be historically possible—that is, historically honest—for Israel to be omitted from the long list of target countries that have been the victims of terrorism. Alas, it is not. But President Obama has a habit of making such lists, and he always fails to include Israel (or anyplace within its borders) as a target of this distinctive and most vicious form of warfare. . . .
But he owes us a narrative, his narrative. After all, our soldiers are being killed and they are also killing. And innocents are being killed daily by adversary forces Obama will not name or characterize or define. Who does he really think we are fighting? The Bahai, maybe? Opus Dei? The Lubavitchers? If Obama does not think that we are besieged by several strands of Islam, what explanation has he for the wave of terrorism that has taken place in recent decades?
Martin Peretz, “Why Won’t Obama List Israelis Among the Victims of Terrorism?” The New Republic, September 8, 2011
This week, the head of the Home Front Command, Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg, said what he thought to the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “It's being called the Arab Spring, but it could turn into a radical Islamic winter," he said. "And that increases the chance of an all-out, total war, which could even include the use of weapons of mass destruction.” . . .
Eisenberg's analysis (which was meant to be a situational assessment, not a defiant declaration) drew a reprimand from Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Barak's aide, Amos Gilad, joined the fray, telling Israel Radio's Reshet Bet's Aryeh Golan, “Our security situation has never been better.” The same declaration, word for word, was made by our nation's leaders on the eve of the Yom Kippur War. Surely anyone who remembers this trembled. . . .
No Israeli campaign ever ends with the enemy's surrender, which is one of the reasons why we are eternally at war. If we aren't prepared to defeat our enemies, once and for all, with conventional weapons, what's the point of making hollow threats of any other type of retaliation?
Israel Harel, “As war looms large, Israel is sticking its head in the sand,” Haaretz, September 8, 2011
Days before Syrian forces launched a deadly offensive against street protesters in the western city of Baniyas, the colonel leading the attack gathered up six of his officers. The colonel, one of the officers later recounted, put his cellphone on the loudspeaker setting, for all to hear.
The voice of Syria's then-defense minister, Ali Habib, boomed out, providing chilling orders for a crackdown on Baniyas' civilian protesters:
"Any kind of gathering, you disperse it with sheer force. You shoot," the minister said that day in May, recalled a 21-year-old lieutenant in the quwat-al-khassat, or special forces, who said he was one of the six gathered around the colonel's phone.
"And the officer who cannot handle that and disagrees, we will deal with them directly." . . .
The sergeant said his last hours of service in the Syrian armed forces came one day in early June, when he and others under the command of a high-ranking Defense Ministry official were sent to the northern town of Jisr Shughur to crush an uprising.
"The town was empty," recounted the sergeant. "We heard the distant voice of a muezzin's call to prayer, and then the chanting of a protest."
"We were ordered to shoot in that direction, without knowing who, and where, we were shooting." Fellow soldiers, he said, "started shooting."
Unwilling to fire on unarmed people, he said he fell back with another soldier, who was from the town and knew the backstreets. Soon, he said, they dropped their guns and were fleeing down narrow lanes past the corpses of civilians, some of them children, in the streets and on doorsteps.
"Usually, there is a whole line of security forces behind our backs" to shoot soldiers who refuse to fire on protesters, the sergeant recounted. "I was lucky to be able to run away."
Ellen Knickmeyer, “Syria defectors shed light on regime's crackdown,” Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2011
The question of Tehran’s status as nuclear power is a genuine matter of concern for international policymakers, but they have become far too accustomed to treating it as a perpetual hypothetical. The assumption has always been that Iran would never get a nuclear weapon, because the West would have enough advance warning to prevent that from happening, whether by means of diplomacy or force.
Unfortunately, the time for hypotheticals has passed. Given the latest advances in Iran’s enrichment program, and the weaknesses of the international community’s existing monitoring, we must reckon with the fact that we likely won’t have time to preempt Tehran’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb. The international community has no choice but to already treat the Islamic Republic as a de facto nuclear state.
Greg Jones, “No More Hypotheticals: Iran Already Is a Nuclear State,”The New Republic, September 9, 2011
Comments