Finally.
And she’s fine.

This long response to the “Israeli lobby” article previously discussed makes some interesting points about how the lobby can be used as a convenient excuse to facilitate, rather than shape, policies that have their roots in racism:
American perceptions of and policy toward the Middle East are characterized by an easy and reflexive anti-Arab racism with [...]

Saudi Arabia asked Egypt to hold the 2007 Arab summit at the end of the predictably lame Khartoum summit, to which eight Arab leaders failed to show up. (Mubarak had more important things to do: he opened the region’s biggest sugar factory in Kafr Al Sheikh.) Since the Saudis didn’t give a reason for why [...]

For French speakers, Le Monde has a neat multi-part Flash presentation on political Islam across the Middle East. It’s introductory material, but it’s well made. One problem with it, though: they say Hassan Al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, was inspired by Saudi Wahhabism. I don’t think that’s true.

Thus begins Joe Klein’s latest Time column:
A few weeks before the war in iraq began three years ago, I checked in with an Israeli friend, an intelligence expert who in 1991 had uncannily laid out for me the course of the first Gulf War on the night before it happened. “It’ll be easier than 1991 [...]

The picture was posted on the website of a San Diego politician running for Congress with the following caption:
We took this photo of dowtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any [...]

March 28, 2006
I came back from my latest break in Cairo and then spent an entire week cooped inside the Baghdad hotel where the office is.
Outside Iraqis wondered whether full blown civil war had broken out as the tide of tortured corpses mounts, while inside I was wondering why I always had to ask for [...]

Jackson Diehl uses his latest WaPo column on Egypt, his favorite topic, to do a mini-profile of Hisham Kassem, the publisher of Al Masri Al Youm:
How did this space for press freedom open? Kassem doesn’t hedge: “U.S. pressure on the Mubarak regime has been the catalyst for most of the change we have seen,” he [...]

Condoleeza Rice did the Sunday talk shows in the US yesterday. I read the transcripts and her line on Iraq’s relationship to 9/11 stood out:
With Wolf Blitzer on CNN:
QUESTION: Did Saddam Hussein and his regime have anything to do with 9/11?
SECRETARY RICE: Saddam Hussein, and we have said this many times, as far as we [...]

In an Atlantic article on Ian Fleming, Christopher Hitchens writes:
[The University of Indiana in] Bloomington, of all places, is the repository of the bulk of Fleming’s books and papers. These, according to an excellent biography by Andrew Lycett, include State of Excitement, Fleming’s only unpublished work—disappointingly enough, an account of a trip he made to [...]

The Head Heeb ponders on how coup d’etats have become more fashionable since last August’s velvet coup in Mauritania. Surely the example of other types of regime change is also having an impact on how coups are viewed.
It reminded me of an article I published at the time in the late, lamented Middle East International. [...]

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif was on BBC’s Hardtalk a few days.ago. I’ve made an audio-only MP3 recording of the show here for those who’d rather not watch it streaming in RealPlayer. The interview covered a range of democracy-related issues and is interesting for the vapid answers Nazif gave on issues such as the Muslim [...]

Unsurprisingly, the study published a few days ago on the influence of the Jewish/pro-Israeli lobby on US policy in the Middle East has caused quite a stir. Most of the response seems to have been criticism. I finally got around to reading the full-length version and am pretty non-plussed. It does not contain anything very [...]

Write on essay on civil rights:
This essay contest takes its title from a 1951 poem by Langston Hughes: What Happens to a Dream Deferred?. The poem helped propel the civil rights movement in the United States. Today, it will hopefully inspire you to describe your dream deferred for the Middle East, which the United Nations [...]

Last summer, Cairo felt a bit like a pressure cooker. There seemed to be demonstrations every other day, and there was a sense that something had to change. But after the elections and the violence and the fraud, Egypt seems to be “back to square one,” as one analyst told me. For more on the [...]

I did a couple stories on the Hind Al Hinnawy/Ahmed Al Fishawy paternity case last year. So I was dismayed when I heard that the court had ruled against her a few months back, and unsurprised when I heard she was appealing.
Fishawy refused to take a DNA test. Now committees in Parliament are discussing [...]

Check out the guest post by Lindsay Wise on Abu Aardvark on the Amr Khaled goes to Denmark controversy. It’s been a big item in the Egyptian press for the past week, with some papers saying the controversy heralds “the end of Amr Khaled” while even is erstwhile supporters are critical of his initiative. I [...]

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad appointed a new vice-president today — Najah Al Attar, the Arab world’s first woman to hold the position.
“Attar will be responsible for following culture policy according to the directions of the president,” SANA said.
Attar, part of the old guard in the ruling Baath Party, was culture minister for more than [...]

Either John Sawers himself, or someone in his office, is getting rather fond of leaking confidential policy documents to the British press. Remember the British embassy memos on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood? Or last week’s revelation, in another leak, that Sawers had told Tony Blair that Iraq was an “unbelievable mess“? Well now it’s a [...]

Yet another important article by the great Amira Hass. Here is all of it:
In the elections, Israelis will not be voting just for themselves. Not only will they choose parties that affect their own lives for four years, but also those of 3.5 million occupied Palestinians – as they have done for 39 years now. [...]

Le Monde had an article a couple of days ago about a phenomenon I haven’t read about elsewhere. It quotes the governor of Kerbala talking about a recent attack on the Iraqi city in which, “for the first time,” Grad missiles were used.
Grad missiles, the article explains, are the successor to the Katiousha rocket that [...]

From a Nation piece on the Rachel Corrie play affair:
The book is the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie. Composed from the journal entries and e-mails of the 23-year-old from Washington State who was crushed to death in Gaza three years ago under a bulldozer operated by the Israeli army, the play had two successful [...]

Remember that scandal about the Lincoln Group, a Pentagon consultant that paid off Iraqi reporters to print stories favorable to the occupation? Well, that wasn’t against Pentagon policies after all — no rules were broken. I’m relieved.

Abu Aardvark has an interesting post on an attempt to pass a law in Jordan that would forbid disrespecting the state. It started as a response to Syrian mockery of the really rather ridiculous “Jordan First” campaign launched by the Hobbit-King Abdullah. Usually when countries adopt a me-first policy, it means that they’re about to [...]

Et tu, FT?
CRAP stands for Courageous Reformist Arab Personalities, of course.

The Guardian profiles the Omani poet Abdullah Al Ryami:
Al Ryami first came to the attention of the authorities in July 2004, after an appearance on the Iranian television station Al-Alam where he cast doubt on the Omani government’s willingness to implement democratic reforms. He was immediately put on a media blacklist, with his journalism, poetry [...]

The real problem with the Arab world is a humiliation deficit. So says Nick Denton, publisher of Wonkette, Gizmodo and other hipster blogs:
The US needs to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime because he’s a bad man, sure, because he may conceivably be connected with Al-Qaeda, because he’s developing weapons of mass destruction, because a friendly Iraq [...]

Haven’t read it fully yet, but this long LRB essay on the pro-Israel lobby in the US is worth taking a look at. Here’s how it starts:
For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of [...]

Two good stories on the Arab press came out recently: this IRIN one looks at the regional situation, whereas this one looks at the situation in Egypt specifically. It quotes one analyst as saying the estimated debt of state papers amounts to $1.4 billion. Incidentally, when I was in Morocco I read that the Arab [...]

Haaretz has a great profile/interview with Al Afif Al Akhdar, a noted Tunisian liberal intellectual living in France. This is the type of people that should be getting more attention — and proof that it’s not Wafa Sultan vs. all other Arabs out there. Here’s a link to a Google search of his name that [...]

Salon.com has published what I think are the most complete set of documents on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, including all available pictures (this includes some new ones since the last release).

A rare sensible editorial from the NYT on the Israeli raid on a Palestinian prison in Jericho, even if I don’t agree that Britain and the United States are “most to blame” for the fiasco with their military observers. I’d reserve that for, er, Israel.

The March issue of the Arab Reform Bulletin is out. I have an article in it about the future of liberals in Egypt. Here’s the full table of contents:
Algeria: Debate on Constitutional Reform
Robert P. Parks
Bahrain: A Year of Decision
Toby Jones
Broader Middle East Initiative: Arab Governments Strike Back
Bahey Eldin Hassan
Egypt: What Future for Liberals?
Issandr El Amrani
North [...]

This Fustat post made me laugh.

Ahead of demonstrations tomorrow in support of judges, there will be a sit-in vigil all night tonight in Midan Tahrir in the heart of Cairo. Nice to see a more original form of protest than usual.
Update: Pics can be reached via Fustat.

Via Fustat, there is a nice interview of Youssef Chahine on Qantara. I thought this exchange was interesting:
Do you believe that the United States or France would help “Kifaya” like they supported the opposition movement in Lebanon?
Chahine: No. The U.S. is helping Mr. Mubarak. They put him there. He is one of their stooges. He [...]

I second these people who are already tired of the fabricated media sensation that is Wafa Sultan. Moorishgirl highlights her endorsement (in a bizarre picture pose) of The Arab Mind, a notorious book about why Arabs are inherently backwards, while Aqoul has a great step-by-step guide on becoming a Muslim Reformist.
Enough of this crap already.
Update: [...]

In Palestine, like this:
The previous head of the Civil Administration, Brigadier General Ilan Paz, issued orders more than a year ago to shelve the list, but due to a policy of closing off the Jordan River bridges to Palestinians a short time after the intifada began, Israel also banned entry to Palestinians with land in [...]

Ammar Qurabi, a dentist who serves as the spokesman of a Syrian rights group, was arrested in Damascus after he returned from a trip to the US:
Qurabi, who represents the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Syria, had left Syria in January, associates said. He spent more than a month in the United States, attending [...]

A kind soul at the Memory Hole put up the entirety of the State Department’s $5 million Future of Iraq Project (you know, the one nobody bothered to read) as PDF files. All 1200 pages. Here’s the background:
Starting in October 2001, about a year and a half before the US and its allies invaded Iraq, [...]