IRIS Blog

By Ian MacKinnon (Times-UK)

Security has deteriorated to such an extent over the past year that only a few dozen international staff dare to live and work in Gaza. All but twenty-five "critical and essential" UN workers have withdrawn to offices in Jerusalem and Amman after the seizure of two staff in July and August. Those left working for UN agencies live under curfew and are back in their guarded apartments before nightfall. When UN staff travel outside Gaza City they do so in armored vehicles to enable them to escape a hold-up.

This is playing out as predicted.

See also:

Former IDF Chief of Staff: Al-Qaeda Sees Gaza as "Safe Haven," Establishing Base - Ori Nir

Al-Qaeda operatives are establishing a base in Gaza for launching attacks against Israel and neighboring pro-American Arab regimes, Israeli security officials say. Israel's former military chief of staff, retired Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, told the Forward in an interview that in the wake of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in August, al-Qaeda began to see the area as a safe haven. "What we are recently identifying is the entrance of various so-called vanguard, precursor elements - al-Qaeda operatives without a doubt - who are coming with a long-term plan to establish an infrastructure there." "They are already there to take advantage of the negative potential in Gaza: the instability, the chaos, the lack of Palestinian Authority control. They will use it to establish an operational base or to control, from there, al-Qaeda cells in the West Bank."

Israeli officials are concerned that al-Qaeda operatives could smuggle in missiles with longer ranges than the Kassam rockets that Palestinian militants currently use or bring in stronger explosives for suicide bombs, Ya'alon said. "Israel is a preferred target, whether on its own merits or as a symbol of the West."

Israel has become a more attractive target for al-Qaeda with the growing influence of the organization's leader in Iraq, Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi. "Zarqawi has been saying for some time that after the battle in Iraq is won, the next phase will be the liberation of the Al Aqsa" mosque in Jerusalem, said Yoram Kahati, a former Israeli intelligence officer and now a research fellow at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. "The battle for Palestine, as Zarqawi sees it, is the ultimate one," said Kahati.

Abbas even said that the Qassam rockets being fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel are "Israel's problem" and that he does not intend to interfere. "Let the Israelis deal with it," he said.

After Israel began to deal with it:

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who was in Gaza on Wednesday, condemned the Israeli move, saying, "Israel left the Gaza Strip and has no right to return under any pretext, such as the firing of rockets, which I also condemn."

(Hat tip: Michael S.)

Here is a shocking illustration of yesterday's must-read post The Unreported Legal Abuse of Non-Muslims in Islam (from The Arab News-Saudi Arabia, via the excellent Lost Budgie Blog).

A Riyadh judge sentenced an Indonesian maid, who accused her sponsor and his wife of torturing her, to 79 lashes yesterday....In March, Miyati was brought to a hospital in Riyadh by her sponsor in a critical condition suffering from gangrene to her fingers, toes and a part of her right foot. Doctors had to remove some of her fingers and toes....A judge later sentenced the sponsor?s wife, who admitted to beating Miyati, to 35 lashes. The husband was found innocent due to lack of evidence against him.

There was a "lack of evidence" against the husband despite the pictures, the medical evidence and the wife's confession. The (apparently Muslim) maid's testimony was essentially discarded because it is accorded half of the weight of that of a Muslim man.

Despite the distinction unanimously claimed by the mainstream media between "radicals" and the "moderate majority," there is no significant Muslim opinion that disagrees with either the desirability of implementing Muslim law or the half-valuation of testimony under it. There is almost no source other than IRIS explaining the systemic incentive to exploit the "other" under Islam.

See also:

Saudi Police Arrest Thousands of... Runaway Maids

Saudis to Gouge Out More Eyes

An Iraqi Politician Who Takes Risks (Christian Science Monitor):

Iraqi politician Mithal al-Alusi, a secular Sunni who has made two trips to Israel, says his goal is to form an antiterrorism alliance that would include the U.S., European countries, Turkey - and Israel. "How can we have a new Iraq if we push the same agenda as Saddam Hussein?" asks Alusi, a tall and well-dressed man in his 50s. After Alusi went to Israel in the fall of 2004, he found himself thrown out of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). In February, gunmen missed Alusi in an assassination attempt outside his home, but killed his two grown sons.

Editorials in the two leading liberal newspapers (whom IRIS has regularly criticized) have finally criticized the continuation of the $2 billion annual aid to the Egyptian regime. It is another hypocritical stain in the essential Bush Arab Democracy project.

Hosni Mubarak's Democracy (Editorial-New York Times)

So much for holding Egypt up as a beacon of burgeoning democracy in the Middle East. Last Saturday an Egyptian court, in a move worthy of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, sentenced Ayman Nour, the prominent liberal opposition leader, to five years at hard labor for supposedly forging signatures on petitions used to create his political party. If Mubarak doesn't take heed, then it might be time to start thinking about the $2 billion a year in financial and military aid that American taxpayers have spent bankrolling Mubarak's despotic rule.

Stand Up to Mubarak (Editorial-Washington Post)

Now comes the real test: Will President Bush use the considerable means of American leverage over the Egyptian regime in defense of Mr. Nour? A first step would be to suspend all discussions between his administration and Egypt over a free-trade agreement. Mr. Bush should also order a long-overdue review of U.S. aid to Egypt, beginning with its military component. By helping Mubarak's generals, the U.S. merely props up his dictatorship.

By Daniel Pipes:

It comes as a relief to learn that Karen Hughes, who runs the public diplomacy shop at the US State Department, has suspended the pathetic effort to reach out to Arab and other foreign audiences via a taxpayer-funded magazine named Hi International (best remembered for a notorious June 2005 article, "Sharp-dressed Men," that told how "real men moisturize").

Indian in Saudi Arabia to Have an Eye Gouged Out

The big story here is not the brutality of the Saudi justice system. What is never reported is that because non-Muslim testimony has half the weight of a Muslim's in a sharia court, non-Muslims are almost always the losers of disputes. (The same holds true for women.) In this case, for example, an Indian gas station worker pointlessly testified that the injury he inflicted was in self-defense.

This presents enormous potential for abuse, even disregarding corruption and the routine hostility toward the "other" in the Muslim world. This is how the most unbelievable items are routinely stolen from Christians, for example, such as land and houses in the West Bank and Gaza. It is one reason why Christians are fleeing nearly every country with Muslim rule.

This system offers unscrupulous Muslims carte blanche to abuse others in private, which is behind the routine oppression (including rape) and de facto enslavement of foreign domestic workers in Saudi Arabia.

A former PLO terrorist, Walid Shoebat, explained how his land and property in Judea were stolen from him by his family after he converted to Christianity. His case was not typical, given the death sentence meted under sharia for converts from Islam. After he converted, he learned that his American mother had been held prisoner for 35 years after a honeymoon in the Holy Land. His father's responses to her attempts to flee made her keep her Christianity a secret from her own children.

Update (Dec. 29): Here is a shocking illustration:

79 Lashes for Gangrenous Maid Who Spoke Against Saudi Torturer (from The Arab News-Saudi Arabia, via the excellent Lost Budgie Blog).

A Riyadh judge sentenced an Indonesian maid, who accused her sponsor and his wife of torturing her, to 79 lashes yesterday....In March, Miyati was brought to a hospital in Riyadh by her sponsor in a critical condition suffering from gangrene to her fingers, toes and a part of her right foot. Doctors had to remove some of her fingers and toes....A judge later sentenced the sponsor?s wife, who admitted to beating Miyati, to 35 lashes. The husband was found innocent due to lack of evidence against him.

There was a "lack of evidence" against the husband despite the pictures, the medical evidence and the wife's confession. The (apparently Muslim) maid's testimony was essentially discarded because it is accorded half of the weight of that of a Muslim man.

Despite the distinction unanimously claimed by the mainstream media between "radicals" and the "moderate majority," there is no significant Muslim opinion that disagrees with either the desirability of implementing Muslim law or the half-valuation of testimony under it. There is almost no source other than IRIS explaining the systemic incentive to exploit the "other" under Islam.

See also:

Saudi Police Arrest Thousands of... Runaway Maids

Saudis to Gouge Out More Eyes

April 24, 2006: Pakistani Teen Raped, Jailed in Saudi Arabia
"Isma Mahmood, 16, was deported to Pakistan last month after having served six months in shackles and handcuffs in a prison in Saudi Arabia. Her crime?being raped by a Saudi man"

Katyushas Injure 4 in Northern Israel While Kassams Fall in South
10,000 missiles were moved to the northern border after Israel withdrew from Lebanon. Similar results will occur in Gaza and any West Bank land from which Israel withdraws, resulting in the nightmare scenario illustrated in this map that the PLO has admitted for decades is its Phased Plan for the Destruction of Israel

Israelis Hold Record for Use of Russian Websites
See this must-read for context ("An entire Russian-speaking world has been created in Israel, yet few people outside of that world have any idea what it contains")

Why European Women Are Turning to Islam

Five Saudi Policemen Killed; Terrorist Captured

Israeli Jets Hit Militant Base in Lebanon

Chanukah Party Miracle at Kindergarten in Kibbutz Sa?ad

Overheads Take Up to 1/3 of Tsunami Funds

By Amir Taheri (Arab News-Saudi Arabia):

The U.S.-led coalition has achieved all its principal objectives in Iraq: The Baathist regime has been dismantled. Democracy seems to be flourishing after several local elections, a constitutional referendum, and two general elections. A one-party system has been replaced with a pluralist one with more than 200 political groups and parties. Baghdad, which once hosted the headquarters of 30 international terror organizations, is now one of the few capitals in the Middle East in which terrorists are no longer welcome.

Iraq may have to live with some level of insurgency for years. What matters is that the terrorist insurgency has already been defeated in political terms. The U.S.-led coalition came to Iraq not to impose democracy by force but to use force to remove impediments to Iraq's democratization. That task has been achieved in record time.

More Middle East Double Standard at the Times
The bias is daily--here's today's installment. I'll jump in when the bias is outrageous or funny

Hamas Leads, Abbas Third in PA Election Poll

Iraq Remains Thought to Be From 1991 Grave

Steinitz: Egypt is Preparing for Possible War with Israel

Syrian Arrested in Lebanese Editor's Death

Saudis Arrest a Wanted Terrorism Suspect

Kuwait Sentences Terrorists to Death for Planning Attacks