Links from my del.icio.us account for January 5th:

• Informed Comment: Global Affairs: End Game in the Gaza War? - Three-part analysis of Gaza war by A.R. Norton and Sara Roy.
• missing links: After meeting Condi, Israeli officials start planning for a forced mass evacuation of Palestinians from northern Gaza: Israeli TV - More indications that Israel plans massive ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza.
• Wounded Gaza family lay bleeding for 20 hours - Haaretz - Israel News - Amira Hass tries to have a wounded family evacuated out of Gaza.
• Mondoweiss: Ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza? - Does Israel plan to create a cordon by forcibly dislodging the inhabitants of northern Gaza?
• Foreign journalists vie for the few slots to get into Gaza - Haaretz - Israel News - Out of hundreds, only eight international journalists allowed into Gaza. Yet the media mentions little of this blackout.

Industry watchdog Editor & Publisher:

NEW YORK (Commentary) Israel launched its much-anticipated invasion of Gaza on Saturday. For over a week, U.S. media had provided largely one-sided coverage of the conflict, with little editorializing or commentary arguing against broader Israeli actions.

Most notably, after more than eight days of Israeli bombing and Hamas rocket launching in Gaza, The New York Times had produced exactly one editorial, not a single commentary by any of its columnists, and only two op-eds (one already published elsewhere). The editorial, several days ago, did argue against the wisdom of a ground invasion - - but even though that invasion had become ever more likely all week the paper did not return to this subject.

Amazingly, the paper has kept that silence going in Sunday’s paper, with no editorial or columnist comment on the Israeli invasion. The Washington Post did manage to work up an editorial for Sunday which, in the usual contortionist manner, found the invasion “justified” but also highly “risky.”

[From UPDATED: Media Commentary Muted as Israel Invades]

Links from my del.icio.us account for January 2nd through January 5th:

• YouTube - Nassrallah VS. Egypt - Video of Nasrallah#039;s attack on Egypt#039;s policy towards Gaza.
• In Gaza, the real enemy is Iran - Los Angeles Times - Israelis Yossi Halevi and Michael Oren (can you be taken seriously as a historian when you deny reality in this way?) bring out the party line, that Hamas is just an Iranian proxy, an argument which serves to delegitimize the claims of Palestinians to their land.
• Egypt denies Kadhafi’s son permission to land at airport - Yahoo! News - Seif al-Islam Qadhafi denied permission to enter Egypt to go to Gaza.
• WEST BANK: Rounded up in a Hamas crackdown | Babylon Beyond | Los Angeles Times - The LAT#039;s Ashraf Khalil gets arrested in the West Bank by PA police for covering a Hamas demo in Ramallah. Ask yourselves: would he have been arrested if he was not Arab-looking?
• GAZA STRIP: In praise of Al Jazeera | Babylon Beyond | Los Angeles Times - The LAT#039;s Ashraf Khalil praises al-Jazeera#039;s extensive coverage of the strikes on Gaza, and gets the trolls on attack mode. The point made in this blog post is that the images you see on al-J you will never, ever see on a US TV station - and why that#039;s the case is a good question to ask.

Click on the image below to download a high resolution PDF of this map.

Update: This blog overlayed the map with Google Earth. [Thanks, Stefan.]

Links from my del.icio.us account for January 1st through January 2nd:

• Rutherford, B.K.: Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World. - New book on Egypt.
• Robert Fisk: The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act - Robert Fisk, Commentators - The Independent - Something is rotten in the state of denial… But Fisk brings out a stupid argument that it#039;s all about the Western aid to Egypt. It#039;s not: it#039;s about US ability to destabilize domestic power structures as well as what the regime perceives as its security interests.
• Egypt FM: Hamas gave Israel the excuse to launch Gaza attacks - Haaretz - Israel News - Egypt takes up Israel#039;s talking points.
• Gazans head home as Egypt blocks supplies - #039;Ebb…
• How Hamas is altering Israeli politics - Yahoo! News - Likud losing out to warmongering Kadima and Labor.
• Special spin body gets media on message, says Israel | World news | The Guardian - Israel#039;s spin unit.
• International Crisis Group - B25 Palestine Divided - Report provides background of Hamas-Fatah split, before current crisis.

Links from my del.icio.us account for December 30th through January 1st:

• The Daily Star - Opinion Articles - The Middle East as a nagging irritant - Rami Khouri looks at stagnation and worse in the Middle East.
• Eyeless in Gaza II—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine) - Scott Horton asks: could the true purpose of this whole exercise be to hamstring the incoming Obama administration as it moves to implement a new Middle East policy?
• Genève : les esclaves des Kadhafi parlent - Europe - Le Monde.fr - Details on the scandal Hannibal Qadhafi (Muammar#039;s fourth son) holding of two domestic servants against their will, and the practice of importing and entrapping slave labor from the Maghreb.
• Donkeys ordered to wear diapers in Egypt - Why o why?
• TelQuel : Le Maroc tel qu’il est | Enquête sur les Forces armées royales - Interesting article on Moroccan military policy under M6.
• Oh the humanity - The National Newspaper - Review of Faisal Devji#039;s quot;The Terrorist in Search of Humanityquot; -on the inner life of Jihad.
• Neighbors / The Muslim Brotherhood - Iran’s brothers-in-arms? - Haaretz - Israel News - Rather lame analysis of Iran-Egypt rift: it#039;s not that Iran is trying to get a quot;footholdquot; in Egypt via the MB, but that the regime has so thoroughly discredited itself it is making unlikely ideological alliances possible. If this continues, despite the state media attacks on Iran, most Egyptians and indeed Arabs will begin to see the Iranian model of confrontation as the only legitimate policy being acted out in the region.
• AFP: Egypt cancels New Year’s Eve over Gaza ‘massacres’ - Mubarak regime makes token gesture but still keeps the Rafah border closed.
• ANALYSIS-Hezbollah chief stirs Arabs to turn on rulers | Reuters - Hassan Nasrallah, the most feared man among the Arab regimes.
• Ali Abunimah: No words left to describe latest Gaza catastophe | Comment is free | The Guardian - quot;But the bombs dropped on Gaza are only a variation in Israel#039;s method of killing Palestinians. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food, cancer treatments and other medicines by an Israeli blockade that targeted 1.5 million people - mostly refugees and children - caged into the Gaza Strip. The orders of Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, to hold back medicine were just as lethal and illegal as those to send in the warplanes.quot;
• Nir Rosen: Gaza: Israel, Hamas and the logic of colonial power | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - Nir Rosen comes out as a one-stater.

Via POMED.

I won’t point to all the shoe stories out there, which mostly point out the obvious: “shoe incident highlights cataclysmic perception of Bush administration,” which doesn’t even begin to do justice to this strange little grinning man who decided he would wreak havoc thousands miles away from where he lives and whose country (or at least its leaders) still believe they have a right to do just that. Yankee, will you just go home?

Personally, as a funny aside on shoegate, I much prefer this clip from the great, prophetic movie Wag The Dog - which let’s remember preceded much of the Clinton and Bush era warmongering.

Watch the rest here.

Links from my del.icio.us account for December 15th:

• The Arabist Review - Ursula remembers Hagg Madbouli, the grouchy owner of the eponymous Cairo bookstore.
• Hips, lips tits…it’s BETTIE PAGE! - Picture collection of the late Bettie Page. [Via Ibn Kafka]
• POMED Notes: Human Rights in Egypt - Notes on panel on human rights in Egypt, includes Saad Eddin Ibrahim.
• Khaleej Times Online - Egypt court convicts 22 for food riots - Mahalla alleged quot;riotersquot; convicted 3-5 years in prison in security court that offers no appeal.
• Chicago: Briefly Noted: The New Yorker - Tiny review of Alaa Aswany#039;s novel.

Shaaban’s Obama song

This has been out a while but it’s actually the first time I get hold on a MP3 file. [Thanks, Max]

Selected lyrics:
“Bush goes and Obama comes”
“People think Obama will be Saladin”
“But Palestine is still occupied and Iraq is still at war”
“Let’s hope Obama isn’t like Bush”

What a beautiful scene. Makes you want to cry with joy.

I’ve been loathe, aside from the quick links, to comment on Barack Obama - the man, his election, his policies and picks. After all, he’s not even president yet.

Like most people I cannot but be impressed by his charisma and talent, but overall I never really bought in to Obamania and he was not my favorite Democrat in the primaries (I fully recognize I was wrong in my choice of John Edwards, though, since his sex scandal would have lost him the race had he been the Democratic candidate). My basic position on Obama’s Middle East policy during the elections was that he would deliver little different, even if one could hope that he would pick different people to work on it than the ones we’ve had for two decades, and that on the Israel question specifically not only did he fail to distinguish himself (aside perhaps from his speech to Jewish-American in Columbus, OH) but bent over backwards to reassure the lobby, all the while neglecting to highlight its responsibility in the warmongering of the last eight years. (I also found his lack of strong reaction to the economic crisis during the election quite shocking, which is my other major beef with him.)

So basically, I already am skeptical that we will see a fundamentally different US Middle East foreign policy than the Clinton and Bush years, which were not that different apart from Bush’s hyper-militarism (before we had more discreet militarism). I was unhappy about Hillary Clinton being picked as SecState, because I associate the Clintons as one of the worst developments in American politics in the past quarter-century, and did not see the political necessity of appointing his ex-rival rather than a more dour and wonky choice. But I don’t really care that much, think that all of the vapid editorializing about the Arab world expecting change from Obama is complete bullshit driven by a US news framing agenda rather than any Arab reality, and am sadly resigned to yet another administration that will miss the point about the centrality of the Israel-Palestine issue in this region (which every elder American statesman has made for years) and the extremely pernicious impact it has had on the US foreign-policymaking process. I just hope Obama can/will/wants to do good on other issues, such as the environment or healthcare - although I remain fundamentally convinced he’s miss one of the most important issues of our time.

Even so,I was surprised to read this albeit speculative article in Haaretz/a about the Obama-Clinton Middle East strategy:

However, senior government sources in Jerusalem said that the information they have received indicates that the new administration is planning a hierarchy of about five special envoys to various regions, overseen by a kind of “super coordinator,” who would answer directly to the president and the secretary of state.

The sources said that the new policy is part of Obama’s and Clinton’s understanding that all the conflicts in the Middle East and Southeast Asia are to some extent connected to the Iranian nuclear program and withdrawal from Iraq. Therefore, it is important to operate in a number of parallel but coordinated channels to attain achievements on all fronts.

The most prominent name in consideration for the top coordinator post is Dennis Ross, who served as President Bill Clinton’s special envoy to the Middle East. Ross’ name has also come up as a possible senior adviser to Hillary Clinton.

The envoy to the Middle East would oversee the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, negotiations between Syria and Israel and the situation in Lebanon.

Short-listed for this job are Colin Powell, who was President George W. Bush’s secretary of state during his first term; Dan Kurtzer, U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005; and Martin Indyk, who is close to Hillary Clinton and who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1995 to 1997 and from 2000 to 2001.

All conflicts in the Middle East are connected to Iraq and Iran?!!?! If they see it that way, it’s because they’ve decided the priority will be Iraq and Iran, which is to say it’ll be Iran. Fair enough, the Israeli-Palestinian process does appear at a deadlock with inter-Palestinian rivalry and the prospect of a new Netanyahu administration in Tel Aviv. Nonetheless, considering the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, continued ethnic cleansing and settlement expansion in Jerusalem and the West Bank, one would think the US could have other priorities on its mind (indeed, since a good part of the US defense establishment thinks it can live with a nuclear Iran, one wonders whether this isn’t an Israeli priority).

It’s also extremely depressing to see the list of names for top coordinator (Dennis Ross - nuff said) and for Middle East Envoy: Martin Indyk is AIPAC’s man and Colin Powell was a failure as SecState and obviously overwhelmed by his bureaucratic opponents. Even with Dan Kurtzer, the most palatable and professional of these choices, we have the slight problem that his brother is an Israeli settler.

Now one might put this down to the idea that these are the only acceptable names to Israel, which largely calls the shots with regards to US peace process policy, at least since the first Clinton administration. But it also shows a staggering lack of imagination: in all of the talent pool of Washington, DC, these are the only men one can think of for the job? Where’s the change we can believe in, Mr Obama?

Links from my del.icio.us account for December 13th through December 14th:

• Gaza families eat grass as Israel locks border - Times Online - “We had one meal today - khobbeizeh,” said Abu Amra, 43, showing the leaves of a plant that grows along the streets of Gaza. “Every day, I wake up and start looking for wood and plastic to burn for fuel and I beg. When I find nothing, we eat this grass.”
  Abu Amra and her unemployed husband have seven daughters and a son. Their tiny breeze-block house has had no furniture since they burnt the last cupboard for heat.
  “I can’t remember seeing a fruit,” said Rabab, 12, who goes with her mother most mornings to scavenge. She is dressed in a tracksuit top and holed jeans, and her feet are bare.
• Border patrol - The National Newspaper - On France#039;s sovereign wealth fund, which invests domestically, presumably to keep those nasty Arabs out of French boardrooms.
• Enemy mine - The National Newspaper - Max Rodenbeck reviews Gilles Kepel#039;s quot;Beyond Terror and Martyrdomquot;.
• Hamas warns Israel truce coming to end
  (Reuters) - Meshaal says from Damascus Hamas won#039;t renew six-month truce that wasn#039;t.
• Confessions of a xenophile - Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, author of quot;In An Antique Landquot;, reminisces about living in the Delta, empire and the non-aligned movement.
• Diplomacy over Syria | Where shall I go next? | The Economist - About Syria#039;s adept diplomacy.
• Who Originated the ‘Nuclear Umbrella for Israel’ Proposal? - Jim Geraghty - The Campaign Spot on National Review Online - Charles Krauthammer wrote about it, Hillary Clinton advocated it, apparently.
• Cette « double autorité » qui écartèle les Palestiniens, par Amira Hass (Le Monde diplomatique) - Hass on the division of what#039;s left of Palestine.

The 11th Cairo International Biennale kicks off in a few days, and while I’ll unfortunately miss the opening I will be back in a few weeks to check out this intriguing project I was emailed about. The No. 1 Sun Engine was operational in Maadi, a posh southern suburb of Cairo, in 1913 and was among the first serious experiments in solar power. Its American inventor, Frank Shuman, raised funds to deploy the bizarre contraption (which works by powering a low-pressure steam turbine) in London before visiting sun-drenched Cairo to build it. Its first use in to power a water-pump for irrigation with water from the Nile.

You can read more about the history of the sun engine at project page, where there’s a timeline that tracks Shuman’s movements alongside with prominent historical events, such as Lord Kitchener’s arrival in Cairo and the start of World War I. The juxtaposition of this early venture into solar power and major geopolitical developments is fascinating, if only because WWI ushered in the era of oil (and the systematic sabotage of alternative energy projects), while Shuman developed his machine because he (as a Pennsylvanian) was worried about reaching the exhaustion of then-recoveroble coal, the Victorian age’s equivalent of peak oil. Of course, coal (control of which was a key objective of WWI and which is now undergoing a revival in China and the US among others) powered the war effort and shaped European societies, notably by making industrialization possible, much as after WWI control of oil (and specifically Middle Eastern oil) would help make possible massive social change and an unprecedented age of plenty in America.

I’ve always found this interconnection of social organization, imperialism and technology fascinating - such as in some of the recent work of Tim Mitchell, who has looked at the differences in social organization of coal and oil-based societies (because of the distribution model for each resource) and their role in making Western democracy possible (and therefore also perhaps impossible in other conditions). In this respect I highly recommend his short article n the subject (to my knowledge the only one available), which is in Word format here: Tim Mitchell’s article on carbon democracy

But I’ll go see this exhibition for the sheer cool steampunk aspect of it.

Links from my del.icio.us account for December 12th:

• Arab Reform Bulletin - Modern Politics or the Politics of Modernity? - Fouad Ali al-Himma#039;s and Morocco#039;s obsession with quot;tradition and modernityquot;.
• Egyptian chronicles: Egyptian Da Vinci Code - Zeinobia on the book that got the Coptic Church huffin#039; and puffin#039;, quot;Azazel: The Devil Within,quot; which she describes as the Egyptian quot;Da Vinci Codequot;.
• Nobel Peace winner urges Obama to focus on Mideast - Yahoo! News - Martti Ahtisaari says MEPP should be priority.
• Israeli Arabs should live in Palestinian state: Livni - Yahoo! News - This is Israeli quot;centristquot; politics: take people#039;s land, then expel them and tell them they should feel happy they have something.
• TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | Palestinian statelessness is an American Jewish achievement - Philip Weiss discusses the Avraham Burg book, stressing the moral responsibility of American Jewry for the perpetuation of the conflict over Palestine. Part of a larger debate on the book.
• New Statesman - On a sea of stories - Hugh Kennedy reviews the new translation of the Arabian Nights.

Links from my del.icio.us account for December 11th through December 12th:

• Al-Qaeda terrorist surrenders in Algeria, discloses plans for December 11 attacks - Algerian attack planned to quot;commemoratequot; UN bombing.
• מגזין הכיבוש Occupation Magazine - Profile of Avraham Burg, who reminds us that Zionism still is racism.
• Al-Qaida au Maghreb : une menace pour la France - Afrique - Le Monde.fr - Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb threatens France, but is it all bombast?
• Daily News Egypt - IN FOCUS: POST MUMBAI JIHADISTS - Khalil al-Anani says the Bombay attacks mark a new type of quot;mercenary jihadismquot;, or the professionalization of the jihadist.
• The Baby, the Bathwater, and the Freedom Agenda in the Middle East - Carnegie#039;s Michelle Dunne argues for more, better done, democracy promotion in the ME in the Washington Quarterly.

Links from my del.icio.us account for December 9th through December 10th:

• Oxford Research Group: The Arab Peace Initiative: Why Now? - Document revisits the 2002 Arab Peace Plan, offers suggestions for revival. [PDF]
• MANIFESTO ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE FUTURE
  OF FOOD SECURITY - Major document on food security and environment. [PDF]
• Contemporary Security Policy: A Tipping Point Realized? Nuclear Proliferation in the Persian Gulf and Middle
  East - US military monograph on nuclear proliferation in the Persian Gulf, explores neo-realist theories, nuclear-free zone idea. [PDF]
• Obama’s Middle East Policy: What the Arab World Expects - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - Collection of articles about Arab expectations for Obama, includes writers Elias Khoury, Gamal Ghitani, and various political pundits, analysts and politicians.
• E-Notes: Where is Egypt Headed? - FPRI - Dan Kurtzer, former ambassador to Egypt and Israel and probable Obama appointee, on the future of US-Egypt relations.
• Israeli hardliners score well in Likud vote - Yahoo! News - "Among the strong performers were a former parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin, Benny Begin, the son of former prime minister Menachem Begin, and former army chief Moshe Yaalon — all considered hawks who believe in a Greater Israel which includes the West Bank and the Gaza Strip"
• The Arab Obama Part 1: Caricatures of the the President-elect - Post on the cartoon representations of Obama in the Arab press.

Links from my del.icio.us account for December 8th through December 9th:

• LRB · Robert Vitalis: Sons and Heirs - Vitalist reviews Steve Coll's "The Bin Ladens".
• ei: Israel’s “Auschwitz borders” revisited - Ali Abunimah article, illustrated with "Arabs to the gas chambers" picture. I like the way it ends: "The Holocaust lesson that I learned at school is that we are obliged not to wait until things are as bad as Auschwitz before we speak out and act."
• Israël devra attendre - Euro-MPs, going against French presidency of EU and Foreign Affairs commission wishes, postpone move towards closer ties with Israel, noting that it has "violated all of its commitments, notably with regards to human rights." Finally a sign of some democratic representation in EU decision-making, even though increasing ties without a permanent peace settlement should not be even considered at all.
• Israel’s West Bank system like apartheid: rights group - Yahoo! News - Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
• Jimmy Carter writes new book on Middle East - Yahoo! News - Book is "We Can Being Peace To The Holy Land."

Are the Israelis trying to destabilize Mahmoud Abbas with this leak?

JERUSALEM – Israeli officials said Monday they would delay the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners until next week because of a request by Palestinian officials.
They said the Palestinian officials had asked for the delay because President Mahmoud Abbas is out of the country and wants to be back in the West Bank to greet the freed prisoners.

Note that if they were immediately released they could spend eid with their families.

[From Israel to delay Palestinian prisoner release - Yahoo! News]

Links from my del.icio.us account for December 8th:

• CUMINet · Copenhagen University Middle East and Islam Network - Middle East blog of Danish academics.
• Hajj in exchange for power - Haaretz - Israel News - Amira Hass on Hamas' hajj policy, aimed at establishing its legitimacy vis-a-vis Ramallah as well as Saudi and Egypt. This affair, with Hamas preventing hajjis who did not register through Gaza from going, has been used a lot of the government press in Egypt to attack them and undermine their religious credentials.
• Long-Standing Conflict Ends As Israel Returns Lawn Mower To Palestine | The Onion - You won't see this kind of moral message in the NYT: "The mower was originally lent to Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, in November 1949 as a good-faith gesture by Palestinians seeking to reach out to the people who had appropriated 80 percent of their land and wished to cut the grass growing there."
• Idea Lab - Who Wrote the Koran? - NYTimes.com - On Iranian theologian Abdulkarim Soroush, who questions the direct divinity of the Quran. I wonder how this relates to the concept of Wilayat al-Umma developed by some Najafi dissident theologians.
• The Associated Press: Curbs make Gaza fete like turkey-less Thanksgiving - Eid in Gaza - note that Egyptian security recently stopped a convoy of sheep and food at the border. 'Ebb!