Mideast News & Politics

Rioting Ultras and Striking Police Officers May Ease Security Reform

The fall-out of last year’s death of 72 soccer fans in a politically-loaded stadium brawl has brought the need for reform of Egypt’s Mubarak-era law enforcement and judiciary to a head with football supporters in Egyptian cities protesting the verdict in the trial of those accused of responsibility for the incident and security officials striking against being made a scapegoat in the country’s political crisis.

Protests sparked by this weekend’s confirmation of the death sentences of 21 Port Said soccer supporters, conviction of only two out of nine police officers accused of responsibility for the worst incident in Egyptian sport history, and aquittal of 28 of the in total 73 defendants reflect intensified public anger rooted in widespread distrust of the security forces as well as the judiciary’s failure to hold accountable officers and officials responsible for the death of more than 900 protesters since former president Hosni Mubarak was toppled two years ago.

Blinded By Love: The US-Israel Relationship

The Washington-AIPAC love-fest season is upon us once again. The New York Times’ featured article displays a picture of Vice President Joe Biden and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a loving embrace pledging support and allegiance, unconditional and eternal, for the special relationship between the United States and Israel. Kiss! Kiss!

All talk of settlement freeze is shelved for the moment as the most formidable Washington lobby – for all intent and purposes, agents of a foreign country – push for yet more resolutions choking Iran; seek blanket agreement for congressional backing of whatever measure Israel deems necessary to pursue their interests; and secure their 3.1 billion yearly aid even as sequestration threatens American jobs and economic recovery. Not bad! If the forefathers could see the turn this democracy has taken, they would be thrilled I’m sure.

My reaction as a hyphenated American is pure horror! My Persian side — because of the double standard applied to policy issues and the mess it has created by selective meddling in my region. My American side — because of the constant hemorrhage of resource, blood and money due to this “special relationship” which seems only to benefit the Israeli hardliners and political aspires in the U.S. Congress.

Civil War in Syria: The Spillover Threat

Water tankers line the unpaved road outside a pre-fab United Nations meeting room in Za’atari, the Syrian refugee camp in a desert just south of the Jordanian-Syrian border that is home to 110,000 escapees from the brutal war between Bashar al-Assad and his opponents or just about a quarter of the total number of Syrians in the country. Inside the meeting room, different perspectives on resource conservation and entitlement spill into the open.

A young Jordanian aid worker complains that Syrians despite years of drought have little concept of water conservation, a sensitive issue in one of the world’s more water-starved nations that has seen its population grow by an approximate eight percent as a result of the refugee crisis. Jordanian and United Nations estimates suggest that Jordan’s Syrian population could increase to 600,000 by April and up to a million by the end of the year.

Gay and Lesbian Muslims Gather in Detroit To Debunk Homophobic Theories

Gay and lesbian Muslims are holding a two-day conference in Detroit this weekend featuring a gay Muslim leader who grew up in Detroit.

Diplomacy Is the Only Solution In Iran

In Barack Obama’s State of the Union address he claimed that the United States would do anything necessary to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb. For the first time, after decades of strangling economic policies and increasingly adamant threats, “anything necessary” includes negotiations with the regime in Iran. Yet, thus far Iran has refused.

In my last piece here at Aslan Media, I argued that it was possible -- and effective -- to continue pursuing a policy of economic sanctions against Iran. The divided opinions of Iranian diaspora community in the United States toward the Iranian regime and the volatile rial protests in Iran brought me to that conclusion. I constructed the argument based largely upon news pieces written outside of Iran. Iran’s political environment and censorship practices make it very difficult to obtain reliable information about the situation as it was unfolding inside of the country. I was very surprised when the article I wrote received some extremely negative feedback from Aslan Media’s readers.

Militant Jerusalem Football Fans Challenge Founding Principle of Israeli Foreign Policy

When militant supporters of right-wing soccer club Beitar Jerusalem last month vowed to keep their team pure in protest against the hiring of two Chechen Muslim players they went beyond what are usually accepted expressions of racism in Israel to unwittingly challenge a founding principle of Israeli foreign and defense policy coined by the country’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion: the need to ally Israel with non-Arab Muslim nations to compensate historically for the lack of and more recently uncertainty of its relations with Arab neighbors.

In doing so, they provoked a rare national outcry against the club’s racist policy – Beitar Jerusalem is the only top league club to have never hired a Palestinian player despite the fact that Palestinians rank among the country’s top performers – that in many ways reflected last month’s outcome of national elections and a growing awareness that Israeli policies are alienating even its closest allies. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party emerged narrowly as the winner from an election that showed Israel deeply divided between the right and the left.

Israel Risks its Place in America's Affections by its Tone-Deaf Policy

Chuck Hagel's Senate confirmation hearings are over, and while the presumptive US secretary of defence seemed somewhat ill-prepared for the barrage of questions he received from his former Republican colleagues, it is safe to say that he will be swiftly confirmed in the post.

As expected, a number of the questions asked of Mr Hagel were about his views on Israel, which was mentioned a staggering 166 times during the hearings (compared to 20 mentions of Afghanistan, a country in which US troops are dying every day). The senators were disturbed by statements Mr Hagel had made in the past concerning the so-called "Jewish lobby" (by which he meant the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac) and how it tends to "intimidate" members of Congress.

"I have always argued against some of the dumb things they do because I don't think it's in the interest of Israel," Mr Hagel said in 2006. "I just don't think it's smart for Israel." Mr Hagel has also bluntly dismissed those critics who have accused him of not being sufficiently pro-Israel. "I'm not an Israeli senator. I'm a United States senator," he told Aaron David Miller for his 2008 book, The Much Too Promised Land.

In the Arab World, Two Paths for Democracy and Liberty

In a January 30 op-ed in the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria argued that the recent violence in the streets of Egypt was a result of Egyptians choosing “democratization before liberalization” since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Noting that Egypt’s new constitution tries to make conservative Islamic values the law of the land (at the expense of things like religious freedom and women’s equality), Zakaria went on to hold up Jordan and Morocco as examples of how Arab governments can best reform their political systems. He argued that if Arabs want to live in countries that give everyone equal freedoms and rights, they should choose “evolution over revolution,” even if that means governments that are only partly democratic.

A Muslim Response to Pamela Geller’s Hate Speech

Provocative anti-Islam messages keep being displayed as “ads” around the country’s bus and metro stations thanks to the initiative of controversial anti-Muslim bloggers and hate group leaders Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. In the latest batch of ads, which plop gory images of 9/11 alongside cherry-picked scriptures, Geller and her ilk have intentionally tried to provoke people against Islam.

The purpose of these ads, though they are labeled as “freedom fighting” and promoting free speech is clear. Geller hopes to encourage her fellow Americans to turn against their Muslim neighbors by scaring them and attempting to present Islam as a religion of violence. Let's face the facts: All three monotheistic religions have ancient scriptures that contain passages about war and violence. One can easily compile from each of these traditions a selective list of sources that could inflame hatred. And anyone can just as easily find in Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy books verses that support peace, love, justice, co-existence and tolerance. But what good does it do to go around picking out the violent verses of each other’s sacred books and dangling them before the eyes of our fellow citizens?

In Wake of Port Said Tragedy, Egyptian Police Refuse to Secure Soccer Matches

A refusal by Egyptian security forces to police soccer matches spotlights differences between the interior and defense ministries at a time that President Mohammed Morsi is under mounting pressure to reform the country’s law enforcement institutions, widely despised for their role as the enforcers of the repression of toppled president Hosni Mubarak’s regime and continued violations of human rights.

The rejection contrasts starkly with the military’s authorization last month of the restart of the Premier League that had been suspended for a year in the wake of the death of 74 soccer fans in a politically loaded soccer brawl. The military endorsed the resumption against the will of the interior ministry provided matches were played initially in military stadiums without spectators.

The importance of reform of law enforcement is highlighted by the fact that Mr. Mubarak like most Arab autocrats ran a police rather than a military state. The interior ministry’s police and security forces are with 1.25 million men more than twice the size of the military. Widely viewed as corrupt and brutal, they were responsible for domestic spying and surveillance, repression of expressions of discontent and the stealing of elections.

Moreover, the impact of the interior ministry’s continued opposition to the reinstitution of soccer has not only a political but also an economic impact at a time that Egypt’s economy is in decline. A study by Assiut University’s Gamal Mohammed Ali established that some four million Egyptians make their living directly or indirectly from soccer. Mr. Ali estimated that the one year suspension had cost clubs $178 million.

Read more at The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer