I won’t be posting a report on today’s Kefaya pro-resistance demo, as I couldn’t go. But you can check some demo pix here.
Jano Charbel of dpa who attended the protest told me he was punched and beaten by batton-wielding CSF, who took his bag, and returned it later without his mobile phone nor the money [...]

As with every single posting Baheyya writes, this is a must read…

Not a single conversation thesedays about US policy in the region, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, and what have you–that does not end with the question, where are the Arab Americans, and why aren’t they as organized as the pro-Israel lobby. Issandr has blogged several postings about this subject before.
Anyways, Zazou posted some critical comments on Darell [...]

Funny YouTube parody of an English-language Al Jazeera, where every other sentence is “Death to America!” Quite relevant since the real Al Jazeera International should be launched quite soon. A lot of people on the YouTube comments thread found it racist, but I think it’s rather a clever play on perceptions of Al Jazeera.

The Actor’s Guild and the Artists’ Syndicate have called for a sit-in at the UN office in Cairo, today Monday, to protest the Qana massacre.
The actors and artists will assemble in front of the Guild, located in el-Bahr el-A3zam Street in Giza, at noon, and will move in buses and cars to Garden City, where [...]

I’m watching Al-Jazeera now. The channel has just announced that the US State Department said Israel agreed to suspend aerial operations for 48 hours, and will investigate what happened in Qana.
UPDATE: Now Al-Jazeera is saying that “Israel’s temporary suspension of aerial bombardments does not cover missile launch batteries.”

HRW issued a statement denouncing Israel’s massacre in Qana today…
Israel/Lebanon: Israel Responsible for Qana Attack
Indiscriminate Bombing in Lebanon a War Crime
(Beirut, July 30, 2006) – Responsibility for the Israeli airstrikes that killed at least 54 civilians sheltering in a home in the Lebanese village of Qana rests squarely with the Israeli military, Human Rights Watch [...]

I uploaded pix of today’s protests here.
Will be posting a report soon…
UPDATE: Here’s the report….
I arrived in Talaat Harb Sq. few minutes after 7pm, and there were only 20 leftist activists standing in the square, with Palestinian and Lebanese flags, and no security presence.
Earlier in the day, there had been confusion about the protest’s location.
There [...]

An opinion piece by William M. Arkin on the Washington Post blog…

Sickening events in Seattle, where a Muslim-American man killed one woman and wounded five other people, because he was “angry at Israel.” The Arab-Israel conflict is not a Muslim-Jewish conflict, and it should not be turned into one.

Hanady Salman, an editor at as-Safir newspaper, writes about today’s massacre in Qana:
Qana - Sunday July 30th , 2006
Only to let you know that these are 55 civilians, all killed , 20 of them are kids betwween 7 months and 12 years old.
Only to let you know that a number of these children are handicapped, [...]

The following comment came from one of the blog’s readers on the posting I put earlier on the Israeli psy-ops:
To all.
I would like to inform you that your message board has been hijacked by giyus.org. This is a Zionist internet computer system designed by the Israeli government to attack any criticism to Israel and its [...]

More than a 100 (independent and opposition) Members of Parliament marched in the streets today to protest the Israeli military operations in Lebanon, and demanded the expulsion of the Israeli and US ambassadors to Egypt. The MPs left the parliament shortly after noon, chanting “We are all with the resistance,” and marched towards the US [...]

You can find photos of the July 28 NYC solidarity protest here…
UPDATE: I also received this from Arabist reader and friend Shehab in NYC
Yesterday, Jul.29th about 300 Pro Lebanese demonstrators crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. Here are some photos.

Once more, Israel shows its “civilized” face in Qana..
Al-Jazeera is reporting 55 civilians dead, mostly women and children, in an Israeli bombardment of a three-story building that was hosting refugees, around 1am. The building contained 63 members of two families, according to Al-Jazeera.
The same town had witnessed Shimon Peres’ 1996 massacring of civilians who took [...]

Eleven Egyptian civil society organizations issued a statement on Saturday, denouncing Israel’s war on Lebanon.

A report by AP on the Israeli pullout…

Here is a rather amusing article by Ralp Peters, a former US Lt. Colonel and a raving pro-Zionist, calling for redrawing the boundaries in the Middle East.

It seems the democratization domino effect Bush expected following the War on Iraq is working the other way around. The US is increasingly inspired by its Arab “allies.” Bush’s proposed detainee bill is a worrying development for anyone who cares about civil liberties. It sounds a bit like the Egyptian emergency law…
Bush submits new terror [...]

Click to download PDF version.