Tunisia’s Uprising: the “Reverbaration!”

Update:

Egypt protests: Three reported dead in ‘day of revolt’

more here

And Egypt’s Foreign Minister said “It won’t happen here..”

 

It’s been just two days since the people of Tunis forced a heathen-dictator out and became free. This is the first dictatorship in the Middle East that has evaporated. This is the first chance ever for a real and first democracy to descend upon the Middle East and North Africa.

Every Arab leader – and the Israeli War Criminal Netanyahu – has watched Tunisia‘s revolt in fear while citizens across the Arab world watch in solidarity, elated at that rarity: open revolution.

Egypt, Jordan, Algeria and Morocco are seen as the other countries most likely to face serious popular unrest over unemployment, corruption and hopelessness, though social, political and economic conditions vary considerably between them. [Guardian]

Libya

Dictators – and frankly morons – like Gaddafi of Libya, condemned the Tunisian uprising; he had to open his mouth making such ridiculous comments that “Tunisians rushed into this.. and that the deposed dictator was “the best Tunisian to have ever ruled Tunisia..”[source]

Today – January 16, 2011, Libyans are about to do the same – and hopefully, topple this old senile and arrogant so-called leader as they pretty much make the same demands.

Jordan

Thousands of Jordanians have taken to the streets. While we still hope to see them topple their corrupt dictator-King, they have demanded an end to corruption and demonstrated in front of the Jordanian Parliament and shouting anti-government slogans. It’s a start. (source Aljazeera)

"No to Corruption.. YES to holding the Corrupt Accountable"

Egypt

Egypt’s idiotic foreign minister claimed that what happened in Tunisia will not be repeated in Egypt!He accused foreign media to be instigating chaos and

Abu Algait, Egypt's Foreign Minister dared to share his "wisdom"

I don’t know what Zodiac influence he’s under, but I am willing to bet a dollar that Egypt will be next, followed by Jordan. Source

Algeria

A young and unemployed man set himself afire today following in the footsteps of the young Tunisian who later died of his burns. Source

Yemen

The people here have warned the government to take notice of what happened in Tunisia and warned against adjusting the country’s constitution to extend the current dictator’s term!

Israel and Palestine

While the protests may not be related to the Tunisian uprising, thousands of Israelis rallied in defence of human and civil rights alongside Palestinians.

Under the banner of the “Democratic Camp”, a coalition of organisations and prominent individuals, the marchers heard speakers lambast the Israeli government, singling out the rightwing foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who is seen as threatening Israel‘s democracy.

Source

Lebanon

Saad Hariri faced calls to remain in exile after 11 Hezbollah ministers quit, causing his government to collapse. Anything to do with Tunisia? You be the judge: the timing suggests that it may just be!

Hariri said today that the crisis, Lebanon’s worst in nearly three years, would not be solved without further mediation from Saudi Arabia and Syria, the two parties in a failed deal that was supposed to help end months of political paralysis.

Happy New Year. We’re off to a fantastic start!

Freedom and True Democracy coming to a country near you!

ATW

Israel targets Human Rights groups!

Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent

• August 03. 2009

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Jeff Halper. co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Alexei Kidel for The National

NAZARETH // In a bid to staunch the flow of damaging evidence of war crimes committed during Israel’s winter assault on Gaza, the Israeli government has launched a campaign to clamp down on human rights groups, both in Israel and abroad.

It has begun by targeting one of the world’s leading rights organisations, the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), as well as a local group of dissident army veterans, Breaking the Silence, which last month published the testimonies of 26 combat soldiers who served in Gaza.

Additionally, according to the Israeli media, the government is planning a “much more aggressive stance” towards human rights groups working to help the Palestinians.

Officials have questioned the sources of funding received by the organisations and threatened legislation to ban support from foreign governments, particularly in Europe.

Breaking the Silence and other Israeli activists have responded by accusing the government of a “witch hunt” designed to intimidate them and starve them of the funds needed to pursue their investigations.

“This is a very dangerous step,” said Mikhael Mannekin, one of the directors of Breaking the Silence. “Israel is moving in a very anti-democratic direction.”

The campaign is reported to be the brainchild of the far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, currently facing corruption charges, but has the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Early last month, Mr Lieberman used a press conference to accuse non-profit organisations, or non-governmental organisations, of replacing diplomats in setting the international community’s agenda in relation to Israel. He also threatened reforms to curb the groups’ influence.

A week later, Mr Netanyahu’s office weighed in against Human Rights Watch, heavily criticising the organisation for its recent fund-raising activities in Saudi Arabia.

HRW has pointed out that it only accepts private donations, and has not accepted Saudi government funds, but Israeli officials say all Saudi money is tainted and will compromise HRW’s impartiality as a human rights watchdog in its treatment of Israel.

“A human rights organisation raising money in Saudi Arabia is like a women’s rights group asking the Taliban for a donation,” Mark Regev, a government spokesman, told the right-wing Israeli daily newspaper the Jerusalem Post.

HRW recently published reports arguing that the Israeli army had committed war crimes in Gaza, including the use of white phosphorus and attacking civilian targets.

HRW is now facing concerted pressure from Jewish lobby groups and from leading Jewish journalists in the US to sever its ties with Saudi donors. According to the Israeli media, some Jewish donors in the US have also specified that their money be used for human rights investigations that do not include Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel’s foreign ministry is putting pressure on European governments to stop funding many of Israel’s human rights groups.

As a prelude to a clampdown, it has issued instructions to all its embassies abroad to question their host governments about whether they fund such activities.

Last week the foreign ministry complained to British, Dutch and Spanish diplomats about their support for Breaking the Silence.

The testimonies collected from soldiers suggested the Israeli army had committed many war crimes in Gaza, including the use of Palestinians as human shields and firing white phosphorus shells over civilian areas. One soldier called the army’s use of firepower “insane”.

The Dutch government paid nearly 20,000 euros to the group to compile its Gaza report, while Britain funded its work last year to the tune of £40,000 (Dh245,663).

Israeli officials are reported to be discussing ways either to make it illegal for foreign governments to fund “political” organisations in Israel or to force such groups to declare themselves as “agents of a foreign government”.

“Just as it would be unacceptable for European governments to support anti-war NGOs in the US, it is unacceptable for the Europeans to support local NGOs opposed to the policies of Israel’s democratically elected government,” said Ron Dermer, a senior official in Mr Netanyahu’s office.

He added that many of the groups were “working to delegitimise the Jewish state”.

Jeff Halper, the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, said the government’s position was opposed to decades-old developments in human rights monitoring.

“Every dictator, from Hitler to Milosevic, has said that there must be no interference in their sovereign affairs, and that everyone else should butt out. But international law says human rights are universal and cannot be left to individual governments to interpret. The idea behind the Geneva Conventions is that the international community has a duty to be the watchdog on human rights abuses wherever they occur.”

Mr Halper, whose organisation last year received 80,000 euros from Spain to rebuild demolished Palestinian homes, was arrested last year for sailing to Gaza with peace activists to break the siege of Gaza.

Other groups reported to be in the foreign ministry’s sights are: B’Tselem, whose activities include providing Palestinians with cameras to record abuses by settlers and the army; Peace Now, which monitors settlement building; Machsom Watch, whose activists observe soldiers at the checkpoints; and Physicians for Human Rights, which has recently examined doctors’ complicity in torture.

Mr Mannekin added: “The government cannot suppress information about what happened in Gaza by shutting us down.

“You can’t send 10,000 soldiers into battle and not expect that some of the details will come out. If it’s not us doing it, it’ll be someone else.”

The government’s current campaign follows a police raid on the homes of six Israeli women peace activists in April.

The women, all members of New Profile, a feminist organisation that opposes the militarisation of Israeli society, were arrested and accused of helping Israeli youngsters to evade the draft. The women are still waiting to learn whether they will be prosecuted.

jcook@thenational.ae

“NO” to PEACE!

To all Israeli NaZionists, Supporters and Christian-Zionists: Here’s the Only Democracy in the Middle East responding to calls for Peace in the Middle East.

Peace means that Israel may not further expand its Apartheid and racist state. It means abandoning the dream of a Greater Israel: from the Nile to the Euphrates!The only Peace Israel understands is Piece: of another chunk of Palestinian or Arab lands!

The Jewish Hitler

Israel rejects the international call for the creation of a Palestinian state, just hours after the US urged it to commit to the two-state solution.

Defending Tel Aviv’s opposition to the peace process, hardliner Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday called on the international community to stop pushing for the creation of a Palestinian state, according to Jpost.

He also dismissed the calls to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli core issues. Core issues include Israeli settlement activities, status of al-Quds (Jerusalem), the fate of Palestinian refugees and final borders.

“Over the last two weeks I’ve had many conversations with my colleagues around the world. And everybody, you know, speaks with you like you’re in a campaign: Occupation, settlements, settlers…”, said the Israeli foreign minister while accusing the world leaders of “speaking in slogans”.

He also said peace negotiations have reached a deadlock and that issues such as “land for peace” and “two-state solution” are overly simplistic slogans that ignored the root and causes of the long-running conflict.

The Yisrael Beiteinu party leader made the remarks hours after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implicitly rejected the new Israel government’s stance over the Israeli- Palestinian peace talks.

Trying to link the 60-year long conflict to Iran’s growing clout in the region, the US top diplomat said Tel Aviv must be committed to the peace process if it wants to enjoy Arab support for countering Iran.

“For Israel to get the kind of strong support it’s looking for vis-a-vis Iran it can’t stay on the sideline with respect to the Palestinian and the peace efforts, that they go hand-in-hand.”

While the new US administration has put its weight behind the two-state solution pursued during the Annapolis conference, the new Israeli government insists it is not committed to the initiative.

On Monday Lynn Pascoe, the UN under-secretary general for political affairs, called Tel Aviv’s refusal to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank as the main obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state.  This should have read: the main obstacle to Peace in the Middle East!

ATW