June 23, 2022
June 6, 2015
Holy Switch
What I found rather interesting was how these two women reacted to their experiences. The Jewish woman was truly a fish out of water, and couldn't wait to drink a beer as soon as she could after leaving. (One wonders what happened to the English language translation of the Qur'an she was given as a parting gift.) The Muslim woman, on the other hand, realized that she felt the most comfortable with traditional, orthodox Islamic beliefs and practices. After her stay with the Jewish family, she felt she was a better Muslim for having gone through the experience.
Holy Switch - Episode 3
October 17, 2014
Cloudy With a Chance of Chicago Bulls
Sure enough, when she heard the song she got real excited. "Abah!" she said. "This is the song from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs!" :)
September 20, 2014
Speedrun: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
August 17, 2014
Monique Evans Embarrasses Herself
August 14, 2014
Robin Williams on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"
August 9, 2014
Jessie Ware - What You Won't Do For Love
August 4, 2014
Alan Parsons - Fragile
I had heard about Alan's new song, Fragile, some time ago, but I only got to see this music video and hear the song for the first time last night. It's pretty good. Check it out!
August 3, 2014
Conflicts Forum on Palestine
The rest of the essay deals with Iraq/ISIS/Iran and Ukraine/Russia, so if you have an interest in these conflicts, you might want to click on the link above.
In Palestine,
we see something akin: Israel has used the pretext that it was searching for three young settlers taken hostage, and ‘presumed’ to be still alive (but whom the Israeli government knew to be dead, and to have been killed by Palestinians who were not Hamas), to degrade Hamas institutionally in the West Bank, as well as in Gaza – with Prime Minister Netanyahu saying (in Hebrew) “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan” – Or, in other words, ‘no two-state solution’ and effectively no end to the occupation.
Netanyahu used the murders to nurse Israeli popular anger at Hamas (whom the PM said repeatedly was responsible – when it was not). Mirror passions were then ignited amongst Palestinians in wake of the revenge immolation alive of a sixteen-year-old Palestinian boy. Netanyahu’s aim in this political deceit was to use the crisis firstly, to hobble Hamas in the West Bank; and secondly, to try to re-impose the status quo in Gaza (the return of the PA to governing Gaza). The December 2012 ceasefire agreement, brokered with Hamas, which Israel claims Hamas to have breached with retaliatory rocket fire – in fact provided for some alleviations on the longstanding encirclement and siege of the Gazan people – alleviations were never enacted by Israel.
Netanyahu now wishes to re-impose the unalleviated siege (i.e. the earlier status quo) under the guise of a ceasefire agreement, whereas Hamas seeks to break it definitively. It plans to do this by following the tactics used by Hizbullah in Lebanon in the 2006 war: Hizbullah’s leadership was buried deep underground; it allowed the initial aerial carpet bombing to roll over their (largely) unaffected military forces – and Hizbullah fighters managed to keep on firing rockets into Israel. The purpose of the rockets was never intended to inflict a military defeat on Israel, but was intended to force IDF ‘boots on the ground’ in South Lebanon (ideal guerrilla country), where the IDF could be made to experience pain. Ultimately the only answer to rockets whose operators can ‘fire and flee’ in less than 60 seconds – well before Israeli forces can lock onto the firing point – can only be ‘boots on the ground’.
It remains to be seen whether Hamas’ tactics will work (Gaza is mainly flat and largely sand – unlike south Lebanon – which puts Hamas at a distinct disadvantage). But clearly the Hamas military wing, who are the ones calling the shots, do not want a ceasefire at this time – especially “a fraudulent ceasefire”. ”My Israeli source”, commentator Richard Silverstein, writes, “who was consulted as part of the negotiations, tells me that this was not, in reality, an Egyptian proposal. It was, in fact, an Israeli proposal presented in the guise of an Egyptian proposal. Israel wrote the ceasefire protocol. One side prepared the ceasefire, and essentially presented it to itself and accepted it. The other side wasn’t consulted”. Tony Blair, the Quartet Envoy, similarly facilitated the ‘ceasefire’.
Hamas wants to force Netanyahu into a ground incursion (and seems now to have succeeded in this). And Netanyahu and President Sisi hope to use any ‘ceasefire’ agreement to return Gaza to the status quo ante - and to stage the replacement of Hamas as the source of governance and authority with the Palestinian Authority (in other words, to stage a ‘soft coup’ in Gaza as in 2007).
But the point of all this is precisely its pointlessness. Israeli security officials openly say that ‘mowing the grass’ (i.e. killing Gazans in sufficient numbers to deter aggression – until the next round of conflict) is pointless. It is strictly tactical and short-term, and achieves nothing strategic. Israel just has to continue ‘mowing the grass’.
The Palestinian issue (though demoted in regional attention over recent years), nonetheless is both neuralgic and iconic for most Muslims. It still remains the fulcrum around which regional differences may be buried. It can and does have the ability to de-stabilise politics (Arab leaders still fear its prominent featuring on news broadcasts) – albeit not to the extent they did in earlier decades. It is plain that the situation in Gaza is critically unstable and cannot continue indefinitely; the two-state project has been dead for some years (Martin Indyk recently confirmed its demise), yet Europeans and Americans seem paralysed in their decision-making: they simply find it easier – given the strong political cross-currents – to broadly let events take care of themselves.