Archive for September 25th, 2013
Preaches a message of forgiveness: Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun
Posted on: September 25, 2013
Preaches a message of forgiveness: Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun
Robert Fisk published in The Independent this Sept.23, 2013
“I had five sons, now I have four”: Syria’s senior cleric pardons the rebels who killed his son
The Grand Mufti of Syria preaches a message of forgiveness
‘I met those men who assassinated my son Sania. And they told me they didn’t even know whom they were killing.”
Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, the Grand Mufti of Syria, sits in a straight-backed chair, his immaculate white turban atop a narrow, intelligent and very troubled face.
His son Sania was a second-grade student at Aleppo University when he was shot dead getting into his car.
“I went to see the two men in the court and they said they’d just been given the number of the car’s registration plate, that they didn’t know whom they had killed until they went home and watched the news on television.”
I ask for his reaction to the men’s confession, and the Grand Mufti puts his hands over his eyes and weeps.
“He was only 21, my youngest son. It was October 10 last year. I am trying to forget that he is dead. In fact, I feel as if Sania is still living. On that day, he was to be betrothed to his future wife. She was a student of medicine, he was in the politics and economics department. ‘Sania’ in Arabic means ‘the highest point’.
The two men said that 15 in all were involved in planning my son’s death. They said they were told he was a very important man. I said to them: ‘I forgive you’. And I asked the judge to forgive them. But he said they were guilty of 10 times as many crimes and must be judged.”
Sheikh Hassoun holds up a finger. “That same day I received an SMS message. It said: ‘We are not in need of your forgiveness.’
Then I heard on one of the news channels that the gang’s leader had said he would ‘judge the Mufti first. Then let him forgive us.’ So I sent a message: ‘I have never killed any man and I don’t intend to kill any man but I regard myself as a bridge of reconciliation. A Mufti must be a father to all. So what do you want to kill me for?’
“All the men involved were Syrians, from the countryside of Aleppo. They said they received their command from Turkey and Saudi Arabia, that they were each paid 50,000 Syrian pounds (£350). This shows that my son’s killing was not out of doctrine or belief. The two killers were 18 or 19 only.”
So each man was paid the equivalent of £350; Sania Hassoun’s life was worth a total of just £700. “I had five sons,” the Mufti says. “Now I have four.”
Sheikh Hassoun is, you might say, government-approved – he prayed beside Bashar al-Assad in a Damascus mosque after a bomb warning – and his family, let alone he himself, was an obvious target for Syria’s rebels. But his courage and his message of reconciliation cannot be faulted. In whatever new Syria arises from the rubble, Sheikh Hussein should be there even if his President has gone.
And he speaks with remarkable frankness.
When I tell him that I fear the mukhabarat (intelligence service in Syria) contaminates all it touches, including the institutions of government, he does not hesitate for a moment before replying.
“I suffered from the mukhabarat. I was taken from my post as a preacher from 1972 until 2000. I was taken from my position as Friday speaker in the Aleppo mosque and from lecturing on four occasions. The intelligence services all over the world are the same: they never look after the interest of the human being – they only look after their own institution. Sometimes the intelligence service can be against the president himself.”
And he asks whether it is not also true that the American intelligence services do not also spy on Americans and all of Europe, a difficult question – it must be said – to deny. “Let us put aside the Prophet Mohamed, Jesus and Moses – all the rest of the world are controlled by intelligence services.”
Unlike most Syrians, the Mufti looks forward rather than back. He prays for a Geneva 2 conference. “I am the Mufti of all Syrians – Sunni Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze – of all the diversity of sects we had before the war. There is no choice other than reconciliation; it is the only way back. But to offer reconciliation, we must eliminate the ‘external hand’ first.
“And if the neighbouring countries like Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon don’t try to make this same reconciliation, they will burn – the fire of crisis will flow to them, especially Turkey. For all Syrians, we are open for them to come back. The problem is those who came from outside Syria – especially from Iraq and Turkey – who came without visas over smugglers’ trails either to meet death or to overthrow the authorities here.”
A tougher Mufti emerges now. His sons’ killers, it transpires, are not the only prisoners of the regime that he has met. “I saw men after they were arrested,” he says. “Some were in tears. They said they thought they were on their way to fight in Palestine, not to fight in Syria.”
There are times – when Sheikh Hassoun speaks of an “external hand”, “elimination” and “criminal gangs” – when one hears His Master’s Voice. And on the question of sarin gas, he takes the government’s side of the story. He quotes Bashar al-Assad as saying he would never use gas against Syrians – that if he had used it, the war would not have gone on for two and a half years.
The first major use of gas came in March at Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province, near the Mufti’s residence, when at least 26 civilians suffocated to death. This is his version of what happened.
“Some of the farm labourers reported to me that all the terrorists in the area had suddenly left – the night before the attack – and had evacuated all their people. So the civilians were happy – they were civilians and many were the wives and children of soldiers – and so they went back at last to their homes. Then came the chemical missile attack. I said at that time, in March, that this event is just an experiment, that gas will be used again in other places.”
This, of course, is not a story the Americans want to hear.
Five months ago, the Mufti was invited to speak at George Mason and George Washington Universities in the United States and he travelled to Jordan for his visa. He says he was asked to go to the US embassy in Amman where he was interrogated by a woman diplomat from behind a glass screen.
“I was so insulted that I decided not to go and I left for Damascus the next morning.” A wise move. Sheikh Hassoun says that, the same day, one of his sons, who was in Amman, received a call from the embassy denying him a visa. “To be a secular Mufti,” the sheikh adds, “is dangerous.”
And it is true that the Mufti is a most secular man – he was even once an Assembly MP for Aleppo. “I am ready to go anywhere in the world to say that war is not a sacred deed,” he says. “And those who have fought under the name of Jesus, Mohamed or Moses are lying. Prophets come to give life, not death.
“There is a history of building churches and mosques, but let us build human beings. Let us cease the language of killing. Had we paid all the funds of war to make peace, paradise would exist now. This is the message of my Syria.”
A dangerous man indeed.
Conflict of Interest? Ruth Eglash, Washington Post’s new Jerusalem correspondent, married to pro-Israel propagandist
Posted on: September 25, 2013
Washington Post’s new Jerusalem correspondent married to pro-Israel propagandist. Isn’t this appointment a Conflict of Interest?
Ruth Eglash, the Washington Post’s recently hired Jerusalem correspondent, has what could be a serious conflict of interest – her husband’s political and business ties to the Israeli government and its overseas propaganda apparatus…
The Washington Post’s conflict of interest policy states:
This newspaper is pledged to avoid conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest, wherever and whenever possible. We have adopted stringent policies on these issues, conscious that they may be more restrictive than is customary in the world of private business.
Relatives cannot fairly be made subject to Post rules, but it should be recognized that their employment or their involvement in causes can at least appear to compromise our integrity. The business and professional ties of traditional family members or other members of your household must be disclosed to department heads.
Ali Abunimah submitted in The Electronic Intifada on Sept. 18, 2013.
The newspaper refuses to say if Eglash disclosed her husband’s activities to her bosses as company policy demands.
Ruth own reporting and activities indicate that Eglash has difficulties providing fair and dispassionate coverage regarding Palestinians.
Eglash, who joined the Washington Post in April, was previously deputy managing editor of the far right-wing Jerusalem Post.
Ruth Eglash at the 2010 United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) Rio Forum (Flickr)
Close ties to Israeli government, army and anti-Palestinian propaganda
The husband Michael Eglash is president of the marketing firm Upstart Ideas.
Michael Eglash, who hails from Milwaukee, has been deeply involved in efforts to promote Israel and Israeli government policy for years and this is now his main business.
His firm lists among its past and present clients and close partners numerous Israeli government and Israeli-government backed entities including the the Ministry of Tourism, Taglit-Birthright Israel and the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
The JNF is deeply involved in the ongoing forced removals of Palestinian Bedouins from their ancestral lands in the Naqab (Negev) region.
Eglash’s company provides “marketing analysis, strategic recommendations and full service implementation of marketing campaign and recruitment strategy for a range of Israel programs,” according to its website.
Upstart Ideas says that it “helped to establish the wildly successful ‘Hasbara Fellowships’ organization and … worked extensively with JNF’s Caravan for Democracy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Jewish Agency for Israel and Hillel.”
The company also claims that “Our marketing strategies have turned small Israel-based educational tour organizers into the biggest players with the Taglit-Birthright Israel market.”
Taglit-Birthright, partly funded by the Israeli government, gives free trips to young North American Jews, to bolster their support for Israel and encourage them to move there.
Eglash was also co-founder of the advocacy group Upstart Activist, which appears to be an earlier incarnation of the work he now does through Upstart Ideas.
According to its website:
Upstart Activist’s speakers have delivered hundreds of lectures, workshops, and seminars on over 50 North American campuses and in communities since 2001. Upstart Activist speakers have been sponsored by Caravan for Democracy, Hillel groups, AIPAC chapters, Hasbara Fellowships, Hadassah groups, synagogues and Jewish Federations.
The speakers in Upstart Activist’s roster include members of the Israeli army, among them representatives of its propaganda wing, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.
Ruth Eglash herself has been on speaking gigs sponsored by her husband’s clients or partners although there’s no indication that the appearances were brokered by him.
She is listed as a member of the speakers bureau of the Jewish National Fund.
Last year, she spoke in Milwaukee at an event sponsored by the Milwaukee chapter of Hadassah, the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Israel Center of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation – a member of the Jewish Federations of North America.
Several of these sponsors are members of the “Israel Action Network,” a multi-million dollar initiative set up specifically to counter the growing movement for Palestinian rights.
The Jewish Federations of North America, chief sponsor of the Israel Action Network, is also listed as one of Upstart Ideas’ clients.
Washington Post conflict of interest policy
There is no doubt whatsoever that Michael Eglash has been personally committed to promoting the cause of Israel for all of his adult life, and has helped establish and works closely with official entities dedicated to that cause.
There is also no doubt that the commercial interests of Eglash’s marketing firm, and therefore his livelihood, depend on favorable portrayals of Israel and negative portrayals of Palestinian rights advocates, especially for such clients as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Tourism or Taglit-Birthright.
Washington Post’s response
I wrote to Washington Post foreign editor Douglas Jehl to ask two questions:
1. did Ruth Eglash disclose her husband’s professional and business activities; and
2. did the newspaper believe that these activities could at least appear to compromise the newspaper’s integrity?
Jehl did not respond to either question, but sent the following statement by email, copied to the newspaper’s Jerusalem bureau chief William Booth and deputy foreign editor Griffe Witte:
The Post is committed to its stringent policy on avoiding conflict of interest, which cover the entire newspaper, including foreign bureaus and among the contract employees who work for the foreign staff.
Ruth Eglash’s apparent biases
This response is less than satisfactory, especially given the indications from Ruth Eglash’s own work and activities.
On 4 March, soon before joining the Washington Post, Ruth Eglash appeared on a panel titled “Telling Israel’s Story,” alongside Jewish Agency social media director Avi Mayer and Israeli army spokesperson Avital Leibovitch.
The panel was chaired by Aryeh Green, a former advisor to the Israeli government, but the panel included no one known to be critical of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians who could provide a balancing viewpoint.
Criticisms of Zionism are “sick”
Last year Ruth Eglash wrote an outraged Huffington Post column condemning a YouTube video called “Shit Zionists Say” – part of a spate of such spoofs with such titles as “Shit Girls Say,” “Shit Arab Girls Say,” and “Shit Gay Guys Say.”
The lighthearted video featured numerous persons associated with the Palestine solidarity movement, including Rae Abileah, Dalit Baum, Anna Baltzer, Abraham Greenhouse, Jesse Bacon, Sherry Wolf, Max Blumenthal and myself.
Eglash refused to include a link to the video, claiming:
Shit Zionists Say, (does not deserve a link) is a clip made by a group calling itself “Existence is Resistance.” Disturbingly, they have turned a creative and entertaining genre into a very unfunny and failed attempt to make an extreme political point about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Their video does not feature one single Zionist, but a stream of anti-Zionist individuals expounding deep hatred in sick and very unconstructive way [sic].
While the video is highly offensive, it also does nothing to promote the very real and serious need for Israelis to recognize the rights of Palestinian people as human beings and the need for everyone in the region to work towards peace.
Anyone watching the video would see that it is a spoof of arguments and statements that Palestinians and Palestine solidarity activists hear from Zionists on a daily basis, although often expressed in violent, Islamophobic and racist terms that were absent from the spoof.
Eglash’s intolerance of even this sort of mild satire of Zionism, and her characterization of people engaged in solidarity work in such sweeping terms — imputing to them “deep hatred” and “sick” language — suggests she is incapable of dispassionate reporting.
Biases in The Washington Post
Biases are also clearly visible in The Washington Post.
In a recent article on Israel’s efforts to impose its curriculum on children in occupied East Jerusalem, Eglash and her colleague William Booth wrote:
Israel has declared Jerusalem its undivided capital. Yet East Jerusalem is sought by the Palestine Liberation Organization as the capital of a future state. There are about 360,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem. A large but unknown number consider themselves Palestinian residents of “Occupied East Jerusalem,” others choose the term “permanent residents,” and a small but growing number are seeking Israeli citizenship.
This euphemistic passage fails to point out that eastern Jerusalem is considered occupied territory under international law, and Israel’s annexation is universally considered illegal.
No country in the world, not even the United States, recognizes Israel’s claims to Jerusalem.
Yet Eglash places “Occupied East Jerusalem” in quotation marks, demoting these incontrovertible facts to the mere opinion of an “unknown number” of Palestinians.
It is not Palestinians who deem themselves “permanent residents.” Rather it is the Israeli occupation that treats Palestinian Jerusalemites as if they were immigrants in their own city, often using this as a pretext to withdraw or deny their residency cards, effectively expelling them from their native city.
Such skewed reporting ought to be deeply worrying to anyone who wishes to turn to the Washington Post as a reliable source on the situation in Palestine.
Lebanese Women cry foul: 112 “Foreigners” get citizenship and none for their children?
Posted on: September 25, 2013
Women cry foul: 112 people get citizenship and none for them?
BEIRUT: Women’s rights advocates cried foul Friday after a local newspaper published a copy of a presidential decree granting Lebanese citizenship to 112 foreigners.
The individuals named in the decree hail from France, Italy, Australia, Germany, Holland, Canada, the United States, Jordan and several other countries. The decree sparked outrage, particularly from Lebanese women barred by law from passing their citizenship to their foreign spouses and children.
Meris Lutz published in The Daily Star this Sept. 21, 2013 “Women cry foul after 112 people get citizenship”
| The Daily Star |
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| Activists carry banners during a rally as they call for the right of the Lebanese woman to pass her nationality to her husband and children in front of the Grand Serail in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, April 3, 2012. (The Daily Star/Mohammad Azakir) |
Decree 10214 was issued in March and first came to light several months ago in a report by Al-Jadeed television, but the text itself never surfaced and could not be found in the Official Gazette.
Observers believe that it was not published because of a legal interpretation that holds publishing it isn’t obligatory, because it involved a limited number of people, implying it was not of public concern.
Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel, speaking to LBCD, confirmed the decree’s existence and said there were individuals who deserved to receive Lebanese citizenship.
Some of the naturalized Lebanese appeared to be members of the clergy or Jordanian royalty, and local press reports indicate others were relatives of high-ranking Lebanese officials.
The Individual Initiative for Human Rights called the decision a “scandal” and a “humiliation” for Lebanese women.
The Collective for Research and Training on Development (CRTDA), which has been actively pushing for women’s full citizenship rights with the Arab Women’s Right to Nationality campaign, called the decree and lack of transparency surrounding it “shameful.”
“This decree clearly reveals Lebanese officials’ disregard for Lebanese women and their rights, as well as the falseness of their claims to uphold a state based on citizenship, rights and the law,” a statement issued by the group read. “It’s particularly shocking that officials took a step such as this at a time when the country and its citizens are in free fall, while the current political class is unable to provide even minimum security and acceptable living conditions for the sons and daughters of this country.”
Lina Abou Habib, an organizer of the CRTDA campaign, slammed President Michel Sleiman and Prime Minister Najib Mikati for signing off on the decree, adding that she had lost any faith she had left in the Lebanese state.
“Do the prime minister and the president have any idea about the humiliation of these families on a daily basis?” she said. “They can’t work, go to public school, access health care … Do they have any idea, because they decide to go and give the Lebanese nationality as a gift to wealthy people? I am outraged, absolutely outraged.”
Abou Habib was similarly unimpressed with the excuses offered by some legal experts for not publishing the decree in the Gazette, adding that if not for the leaks to the press, no one would have known.
A decree issued in 1994 that granted citizenship to about 80,000 foreigners was published.
“They can easily hide behind legal technicalities and maybe it is a legal justification, but nevertheless it’s really a coincidence that it also suits the purpose of hiding something that actually is wrong, is morally wrong,” she said. “They have no justification other than saying ‘we can do it.’”
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2013/Sep-21/232045-women-cry-foul-after-112-people-get-citizenship.ashx#ixzz2fdNxguJ7
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
Adonis Diaries 