Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Saudi scholars agree - Israel must be destroyed

Saudi scholar Mohasen Al-Awaji has caused controversy by saying he is prepared to appear on Israeli television.

And why is that?

Interviewed on Al Arabiya news channel last week, Al-Awaji said that although he has not been invited by any Israeli TV channel he would be willing to appear purely to tell the Israeli viewing public about the threat posed by Zionism. He added that appearing on Israeli TV was the right move and would help counter Israeli propaganda.
“The aim is to expose the crimes the Zionists have committed. Debating with logic and evidence and using their media and appearing on their television channels will be effective and allow us to reach a wider audience. At the same time it will show the Zionists that we are willing to talk to them on their own ground,” he said.

But even such a move as going on Israeli TV and telling Israelis how evil they are is way too liberal for others:

There has been strong opposition to Al-Awaji’s offer. Other Saudi scholars fear that it will inevitably be seen as a step toward normalizing relations with Israel.

“What Al-Awaji has proposed is a great mistake,” said Dr. Mohammad Al-Nujaimi, a member of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy and professor of comparative Fiqh at the High Institute for Judicial Studies at Imam Muhammad bin Saud University in Riyadh. He said Al-Awaji’s call goes against all the fatwas the ulema have issued that normalization with Israel in all its forms — politically, economically, socially and in terms of media — “is not permissible at all.”

Al-Nujaimi said there could be no normalization of relations with Israel which, he said, has for many years broken all international agreements and sabotaged every peace initiative. He said that nothing will work with it except jihad, including boycotting all of its media networks and cultural activities.

So is Al-Awaji more liberal than Al-Nujami?

Despite his willingness to appear on Israeli television, Al-Awaji told Arab News that he is impressed and delighted at the negative response. He said that it drove home the fact that the Arab and Muslim worlds “are not and never will be ready to have relationships with the Zionist body, and that this foreign body among us is not accepted, especially following its barbaric attacks on Gaza.”

Notice that he doesn't say that "as long as Israel occupies..." or "as long as Israel oppresses..." or anything like that. The controversial scholar agrees 100% with his critics that Israel will never be accepted by the Arab world, no matter what it does.

But wishful-thinking Westerners will always cling to that absurd hope that if they only get Israel to make one more concession, then there will be peace.

Pure anti-semitism in Islam Online

Khalid Amayreh, a true anti-semite and prolific writer in Arab and far left sites, puts some pure Jew-hatred in an article in Islam Online.

The upshot is that Jews are acting as Nazis so righteous people like him have an obligation to reveal that to the world. He even uses the term "Judo-Nazis."

It's not even worth fisking, but it is worth reading, if only to see the depth of hate that Jews have to put up with as well as the sickening comments supporting him from around the world.

I wrote a comment; we'll see if it gets flagged as being abusive:

I could easily write an article using the same appalling "logic" of Amayreh to "prove" that Muslims are today's Nazis.

Ethnic cleansing? Check. Mass murder? Check. Jew-hatred? Check. Islamic supremacists? Check. Imams who use Sharia law to justify terrorism? Check.

Amayreh's total inability to see things clearly can be seen in these two sentences:

"In short, Israel's ultimate goal behind the exaggerated and never- ending regurgitation of holocaust rituals is not really to remind humanity of the extent to which man can be cruel to his fellow man. Rather, it is to obtain a license, or even a carte blanch, to torment and savage the Palestinians, destroy their homes, steal their land, and expel them to the four winds."

I have news for you, Khalid. Jews and Zionists are not nearly as obsessed with Palestinians as you are with Jews. To even consider that Holocaust memorials are purely a cover for Jews desiring to annihilate Palestinian Arabs shows such a breathtaking, self-centered distortion of reality as to be laughable - if it wasn't for the fact that you would happily send these evil "Judo-Nazis" into the sea as your ancestors stated explicitly time and time again before there was such a thing as "occupation."

It is a discredit to Islam Online to host such pure garbage.

You might want to throw in your two cents as well.

UPDATE: I couldn't resist another comment:

1971: Jordan murdered thousands of Palestinian Arabs in Black September.
1975: Hundreds of Palestinian Arabs killed in a single day, December 6, by Lebanese Phalangists.
1985-86: Syrian troops murdered thousands of Palestinians in Lebanese camps (War of the Camps.)
March 1991: 400,000 Palestinians are expelled from their homes in Kuwait - in a single week.

These are only crimes against Palestinians Arabs. I'm not even talking about things like Syria's massacre at Hama or Egypt's use of chemical weapons in Yemen, both with thousands of Arab victims.

I'm not even mentioning non-Arab victims of Arab aggression!

So, are the Lebanese, Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians and Kuwaitis also Nazis? Because they do a much more efficient job of murdering and displacing Palestinian Arabs than Israel could ever dream of doing. And no Arab country except for the partial exception of Jordan allows Palestinian Arabs to become citizens - even if they want to!

Face it: Amayreh is calling the Jews "Nazis" because he simply hates Jews, not because of anything they've done. Because if he is honest with himself, Israel has treated Palestinian Arabs no worse than their Arab brethren have - and he would never dare call them Nazis.

Former Jordanian diplomat argues for Arab claim to Haifa

The government-aligned Jordan Times has an op-ed by Hasan Abu Nimah, who is Jordan's former UN ambassador and as such cannot be considered a mere flake. The article, however, argues that the Green Line is not a valid border of Israel, either:

[The idea of a land swap including the large settlement blocs] is based on the common, but false notion that the June 4, 1967, demarcation line separating Israel from the West Bank (then part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) is the legitimate border of Israel and should therefore be the one along which the conflict should be settled.

This assumption is wrong; the 1967 border has no legitimacy and should not be taken for granted.

He then engages in a nice piece of historical revisionism here, forgetting that Israel accepted the 1947 partition and that the Arabs are the ones who attacked first:

The [partition] resolution was never implemented, however. Immediately after it was passed, Zionist militias began their campaign to conquer territory beyond that which was allocated by the partition plan. Vastly outgunned Palestinian militias resisted as best as they could, until the belated intervention of Arab armies some six months after the war began. By that time it was too late - as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had already been ethnically cleansed, expelled from their homes. Israel, contrary to myth, was not brought into being by the UN, but by war and conquest.

The highlighted statement is an outright lie. Arabs attacked Jews immediately after the UN vote - the first massacre was less than 24 hours after the resolution passed. The Haganah waited months before going on the offensive, as it became clear that this was the only way to defend the Jews from being slaughtered. And the first wave of Palestinian Arabs to leave the country went quite voluntarily, mostly the upper class running away to Lebanon, where they thought they could wait out the fighting and return home the same way they did during the 1936-9 Arab riots.

The 1949 Rhodes Armistice, which ended the first Arab-Israeli war, left Israel in control of 78 per cent of historic Palestine and established a ceasefire with its neighbours, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Until the second round - in June 1967 - Arabs had been calling for the abolition of the "illegal Zionist entity" planted by colonial powers like a dagger in the heart of the Arab nation. They also waited for the United Nations to implement its many resolutions redressing the gross injustice inflicted hitherto.

He is right in one aspect: before 1967, Arabs never considered the Green Line to have any legitimacy. And, in fact, they pretty much still believe that Israel has no legitimacy and continues to exist solely as a "dagger in the heart of the Arab nation." The only grudging admission they give towards Israel's existence is based on the utter inability to destroy her, not a change of heart about the borders or right of Israel to exist.

However, they generally keep these opinions to themselves. The West does not take kindly to their arguments that Israel should be completely destroyed, so they instead couch their arguments in terms of "settlements" and "occupation" and "international law," when in fact their real aim has not changed, and is only delayed by what they perceive as the quirk of temporary Jewish military strength and Western support for the "colonialists."

He ends the article saying that

...if Israel tells the Arabs that the West Bank settlements of Ariel and Maale Adumim are part of Israel, then the Arab position can be that Haifa, Jaffa and Acre are still part of Palestine.

Again, this is not some crazy nutcase writing for the Electronic Intifada (where this article was quickly reproduced.)This is a former Jordanian ambassador, writing for a semi-official Jordanian newspaper.

It reveals the truth about how far away a real peace truly is, and it proves that Israel is not going to gain any legitimacy in even the so-called "moderate" Arab states by giving up its land for an illusory peace.

Egyptian newspaper blames US allies for killing Nasser

Al Masry Al Youm has an editorial, titled "Who Killed Nasser?," that ends with this sterling logic:

The US allies' hatred of Nasser, which drove them to assassinate him, physically or morally, requires that we probe further into his murder, both criminally and politically. But until such an investigation is actually launched, we can say that Nasser was killed by Washington's Arab and Zionist allies.

In other words, "Since we have no data to support our wild suppositions, we just have to assume that they are completely true."

One other great part of the article:

Recently released documents belonging to the US, British and Israeli intelligence reveal the involvement of the rulers of some major Gulf countries in plans to defeat Nasser before the 1967 war. Those documents also uncovered secret communications with Israel to assassinate Nasser or defeat him--which is exactly what happened in 1967.

You see, Israel defeated Egypt because some Gulf countries asked them to!

Arab diplomat annuls marriage to bearded bride

From Al-Arabiya:

An Arab ambassador annulled his wedding after discovering that his bride, who wore the niqab, had a beard and squinted, UAE media reported on Wednesday.

The marriage had been arranged through pictures given by the bride’s family that were later proven to be those of the sister of the bride-to-be.

During the brief meetings with his fiancé the ambassador was unable to see her face as she was fully veiled. Once the marriage contract had been signed, he tried to kiss his wife, a doctor, and discovered "she had a beard and squinted."

According to press reports, the ambassador then logged a court complaint claiming he had been “tricked” by his in-laws and a divorce was granted.

The nationalities of the parties involved were not revealed.

Was the father-in-law named "Laban"?

Iranian cleric warns of Jews buying land - in Kurdistan

From Iran's ever-entertaining PressTV:

A Sunni cleric in the northwestern Iranian city of Sardasht has warned about attempts by Israeli Jews to purchase 'Muslim lands' in Iraq's Kurdistan region.

“Unfortunately, in recent weeks, several individuals affiliated with Israeli Jews have been purchasing property from Iraq's Kurdish Muslim population, in violation of our religious guidelines," said Molla Khezr Rahimi in an address to a Quranic event on Tuesday.

Molla Rahimi, speaking at Sardasht's Amini Mosque, added that "individuals with ties to the Zionist regime" have managed to purchase land in Iraqi Kurdistan by offering lucrative deals.

“Some people have sold their land for worldly profits. They have been tricked by the Jews," Rahimi said.

“Selling Muslim land to people affiliated with Israel is haram (religiously forbidden) under any guise whatsoever, even if the land is being purchased to build a church, because this is part of a pre-planned plot."

The cleric told the people of the Kurdish border city that entering into deals with Israeli Jews for financial gain was wrong, as it would set the scene for further “Zionist presence" in the region.

I'm dying to know what the "pre-planned plot" is. Is Israel trying to purchase all of Kurdistan and kick the Muslims out to build a new Jewish state? Are the Jews trying to buy land near Iran to stage a ground invasion? Maybe they plan to build farms and factories that would smuggle evil Jewish goods into Iran. Or maybe they will use the land to build a tunnel underneath Muslim holy sites to destabilize them.

There are so many possible plots, why can't we hear the details?

Col. Travers and Goldstone

JCPA is about to put up a very damning report on the anti-Israel bias that Col. Desmond Travers has. Travers was one of the four members of the Goldstone "fact-finding" mission, and his influence over the report is clear. Here it is:

Col. (ret.) Desmond Travers was one of the four members of the UN Fact Finding Mission that produced what is widely called the Goldstone Report. The Mission investigated Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009. Travers joined the Irish Defense Forces in 1961 and retired after forty years. As the only former officer who belonged to Justice Richard Goldstone's team, he was the senior figure responsible for the military analysis that provided the basis for condemning Israel for war crimes.

After following his repeated public appearances with the other mission members in July 2009, and especially in light of his most recent interviews, serious flaws have now become evident in the methodology he followed, in his collection and processing of data, and in the conclusions he draws. In the past, the flaws in the Goldstone report, and especially its lack of balance, have been criticized by the London Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist, but the fundamental problems of its military analysis have not been fully addressed. In the material presented here, this becomes evident in four specific ways:

1. A Fundamental Bias against the Israel Defense Forces

During the Mission's collection of testimonies from Palestinian psychologists in the Gaza Strip, Travers asked them straight out to explain how Israeli soldiers could kill Palestinian children in front of their parents. In an interview with Middle East Monitor, on February 2, 2010, he asserted that in the past Israeli soldiers had "taken out and deliberately shot" Irish peacekeeping forces in Southern Lebanon. Both of these statements by Travers are completely false. It should be stressed that one of the most vicious and unsubstantiated conclusions in the Goldstone Report is the suggestion that Israel deliberately killed Palestinian civilians.

While Travers assumes the worst of intentions on the part of the Israel Defense Forces, he praises Hamas for their cooperation with the Mission. When he was asked about Hamas intimidation that affected the Mission's inquiries, he replied that that there was "none

whatsoever." Yet the Goldstone Report itself noted in Paragraph 440 that those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of Palestinian armed groups because of a "fear of reprisals." He rejects the notion that Hamas shielded its forces in the civilian population and does not accept the idea that Israel faced asymmetric warfare.

2. False Information Reported About Weapons Systems

Travers comes up with a story that the IDF had unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) that could obtain a "thermal signature" on a Gaza house and detect that there were large numbers of people inside. Incredibly, he then suggests that with this information that certain houses were "packed with people," the Israeli military would then deliberately order a missile strike on these populated homes. The primary technical problem with his theory is that Israel does not have UAV's that can see though houses and pick up a thermal signature. More importantly, Israel used UAV's to monitor that Palestinian civilians left houses that had received multiple warnings, precisely because Israel sought to minimize civilian casualties, a fact that Travers could not fathom, because of his own clear biases.

3. Completely Inaccurate Data

Travers rejects that Israel began military operations against the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008 as an act of self-defense in response to Hamas rockets. He bases this idea on a "fact" that he presents that in the month prior to start of the war, there were only "something like two" rockets that fell on Israel. Israeli military sources found that there were in fact 32 rockets fired from Gaza at Israel over three days alone--between December 16 and 18, 2008. He adds to his analysis that at this time Hamas sought to extend the tahdiya, or lull arrangement--which he called a cease-fire. Yet the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas announced on December 17 that the lull would come to an end two days later and would not be renewed. The head of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, Khaled Mashaal, announced the end of the lull on December 14. To say that Hamas wanted to continue the lull is a complete distortion of events.

In his Middle East Monitor interview, Travers states that he "only came across two incidents of where there was an actual combat situation" – the exchange of fire between Israel and Hamas. Because he minimizes the possibility that Israel was engaged in real combat in the Gaza Strip, it follows that he naturally conclude that Israel was essentially attacking non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead.

4. Lack of Professionalism in Conducting Thorough Investigations

Travers relies on his own prejudices when he looks into the question of whether Gazan Mosques had been militarized by Hamas and turned into weapons depots. In an interview with Harpers, published on October 29, 2009, Travers makes a sweeping generalization: "We found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions." He then dismissed those who suggested that was the case by saying: "Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion." How many mosques did Travers investigate? He admits that the Mission only checked two mosques.

Of course, Israel produced photographic proof that large amounts of weapons were stored in mosques, like the Zaytun Mosque. In a subsequent interview, Travers rejected the Israeli proof: "I do not believe the photographs." He described the photographs as "spurious." Travers appears to be bothered by proof that contradicts the conclusions he reaches on the basis of a very limited investigation. In early 2010, Colonel Tim Collins, a British veteran of the Iraq War, visited Gaza for BBC Newsnight (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/ 8470100 .stm, 20 January 2010) and inspected the ruins of a mosque that Israel had destroyed because it had been a weapons depot. He found that there was evidence of secondary explosions cause by explosives stored in the mosque cellar. Travers clearly did not make the effort that Collins made.

In his questioning of Palestinian witnesses in the Gaza Strip, Travers does not ask the questions that a military advisor should raise. He did not ask those giving testimony if they were member of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam units of Hamas and were combatants. He also failed to ask them straight out if their homes had been used to store munitions, like Grad rockets. Instead, his questions reflected his ideological bias.

Travers most recent interview also had a disturbing additional element. When addressing the role of British officers in defending Israel's claims, Travers suddenly adds: "Britain's foreign policy interests in the Middle East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists." Travers implies that British Jews have interests that differ from Britain's own national interests and that Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government is influenced by these considerations. This statement, unless corrected, places Travers is a position in which his views are suspect of being motivated by anti-Semitic prejudices. Even without this last statement, he clearly emerges as an individual who is not qualified to take part in any serious fact-finding mission and the U.N. should not seek his services in the future. Given his statements, Justice Richard Goldstone should repudiate Col. Travers and completely reject the conclusions that he reached as a result of his work.

Abbas tried to stop Channel 10 corruption report

Israel's Channel 10 has broadcast details of corruption at the highest levels of the PA, including millions of dollars stolen from public monies (shelled out by the US) and a sex scandal involving a top Abbas aide.

The whistleblower, Fathi Shabaneh, was actually hired to root out corruption in the PA. In a recent interview with The Jerusalem Post:

“Some of the most senior Palestinian officials didn’t have even $3,000 in their pocket when they arrived [after the signing of the Oslo Accords],” Shabaneh said. “Yet we discovered that some of them had tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in their bank accounts.

Until today we didn’t hear about one official who was brought to trial for stealing money from the PA, although we had transferred many of the cases to the Palestinian prosecutor-general.”

The PA response is that it maintains transparency with donor countries and operates a strict oversight mechanism on their payments.

This is true - but it is not because of Fatah members suddenly wanting to be honest, but rather because the donor countries insist on it. In other words, the PA is still headed by corrupt thugs who would happily steal everything they can, but they need to be more clever than before so as not to be caught. And they are secure in the knowledge that their pseudo-government will never prosecute them for corruption.

And how does Mahmoud Abbas handle the news that the scandal was going to be broadcast? Why, he did what he always does: he threatened to resign (in a letter to Netanyahu) if Channel 10 broadcast the report.

And Mohammed Dahlan led a meeting of Fatah officials this morning - not to discuss how to root out corruption, but to figure out how to contain the scandal.

This is a classic case of how the honor/shame dynamic works. In such a culture, appearance is more important than reality, so therefore all efforts must be made to give an appearance of honesty and transparency but none to actual soul-searching.This is why we see honor killings and this is why we see such a massive cover-up of corruption.

In fact, the Abbas aide who was literally caught naked in bed by Shabaneh's people said on the videotape, "Thank God it’s you and not the Israelis." He was secure in the knowledge that such a scandal will not ever be publicized by the PA.

What a difference a caption makes

The same event, as seen by by Reuters and AP.

Reuters:

An undercover Israeli police officer (R) scuffles with a Palestinian youth suspected of throwing stones while trying to detain him during clashes in the Shuafat refugee camp in the West Bank near Jerusalem February 9, 2010. Clashes erupted between Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli police that entered the refugee camp, a Reuters witness said on Tuesday.

AP:

A Palestinian rioter tries to grab a weapon from a plain-clothes Israeli police officer, right, during clashes in Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010. Palestinians scuffled with Israeli security forces, after an arrest operation triggered clashes in the camp the day before.

In Reuters' version, the Israeli is the aggressor. In AP's, we learn that the Palestinian Arab is trying to grab a weapon - presumably to use it on the policeman.

In Reuters' version,the Arab is a "youth." In AP's, he is a rioter.

In Reuters' version, the fighting just spontaneously "erupted" on Monday. In AP's more accurate version, an arrest operation prompted Palestinian Arab violence.

Reuters, not surprisingly, relied on an Arab stringer for its description of the events.

Let's look at the stones being hurled, shall we?

That concrete block, dropped on a person or through a windshield, could easily kill someone.

And here is what a much smaller projectile looks like upon impact with a human head, luckily protected by a helmet:

This is the kind of "non-violent resistance" that the man of peace, the moderate Mahmoud Abbas, is encouraging.

Qaradawi forbids Hamas to reconcile with Fatah

As if we needed any more proof that rabid terror-supporting Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi was really a secret Zionist, he just came out with a fatwa - against Palestinian Arab unity.

Qaradawi said that if Hamas would reconcile with Fatah, then Hamas would lose its hold on Gaza. The logic is that Hamas is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Gaza is now the first piece of land that the Muslim Brotherhood can point to as saying that they control it. Qaradawi does not want to give that up, no matter how much Gazans are suffering.

Qaradawi, who is regarded in some quarters as "moderate," came out with a fatwa in 2007 (according to Palestine Press Agency) saying that Hamas' violent coup was perfectly in line with Sharia law and that it was permissible to murder in order to establish the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza.

Hamas' cash flow problem

Hamas gets plenty of money from Iran, but it is having a problem smuggling it into Gaza.

According to Asharq Al-awsat, Hamas employees have not yet been paid for the month of January. Apparently, Egypt has been much more vigilant at stopping money from being transferred over the Rafah border.

Hamas is denying any cash flow crisis, saying they are just distributing salaries in a different way.

Hamas has a $540 million annual budget, and 32,000 employees in Gaza. In addition, there are tens of thousands of PA employees who get paid to sit at home and do nothing.

58% of the PA budget goes to Gaza for these non-working employee salaries, fuel, and electricity.

A brief peek into recent Palestinian Arab court rulings

Palestinian Arab newspapers are different from other nations' media, in that you hardly ever read about court cases and rulings for ordinary crimes. They arrest people, but after that the stories usually disappear. Whether this is a reflection of the complete absence of any normal system of justice, or a cultural anomaly, I cannot say.

However, today there was one of these rare stories, apparently from a military court.

As best as I can interpret it, the following cases were concluded:

* A man was sentenced to death for collaborating with Israel.
* A soldier was sentenced to one year of prison for theft.
* 4 civilians were acquitted of attempted murder charges.
* 6 civilians were sentenced to six months of prison for being "against the general policy of the revolution."

See? They have a perfectly good criminal justice system!

Palestinian NGO Network demands apology from Berlusconi

From YNet, February 3:

In a speech in Jerusalem, Berlusconi said Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza last year was justified self-defense. But during a stop in the West Bank, he later explained this does not rule out sympathy for the war's victims. some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the fighting.

Berlusconi said, "Just as it's right to cry for the victims of the Shoah, it's right to show pain for what happened in Gaza." Shoah is the Hebrew word for Holocaust.

The Palestinian NGO Network is outraged and demands an apology for Berusconi's equating Gaza with Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Just kidding! They are really demanding an apology for Berlusconi saying that Operation Cast Lead was a reaction to years of Palestinian Arab rocket attacks, and not for saying that it was a case of pure, naked, unjustified aggression meant to murder 1.5 million people.

November 2009-February 2010 rocket calendars

Q=Qassam
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
MS=Mortar landing short
P=Projectile of unknown type
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims

November 2009

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat
1	2	3 1Q	4	5	6	7
8 1Q	9 1Q	10	11	12	13 2Q	14
15	16	17	18 1Q	19	20	21 1Q
22	23 1Q	24	25	26 5M	27	28
29	30

December 2009

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13 2Q	14	15	16 2Q	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28 (1P)	29	30 1M	31 (2P) 1M?

January 2010

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat
					1 1M 1MS	2
3	4 1MS	5	6	7 1Q 10M	8 1M	9 2Q
10 4MS	11 1Q	12	13 1Q	14	15 1M	16
17	18	19	20 1Q	21	22	23
24 1Q	25	26	27	28	29	30 1Q
31

February 2010

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat
	1	2 1Q	3 1Q	4	5	6
7 1Q	8 1Q	9	10 ?P	11	12 1Q	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28

Two good followups to horrible stories

From Al Arabiya, in a followup to this story:

Saudi Arabia's human rights commission has hired a lawyer to help a 12-year-old girl divorce her 80-year-old husband, the lawyer said, a move activists hope will lead to a ban on child marriages.

Also from Al Arabiya, in a followup to this story:

Prosecutors in Turkey are seeking life in jail for the father and grandfather of a girl who was buried alive for befriending boys, local judicial sources said Monday.

The pair were arrested after the body of 16-year-old Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a hole in a chicken pen outside her house in Kahta town, Adiyaman province, 40 days after she went missing.
A post mortem showed a significant amount of soil in her lungs and stomach, meaning she was buried alive, forensic experts have said.

The judicial source said they would likely face a charge of "premeditated homicide with aggravating circumstances, perpetrated with cruelty" being drawn up by prosecutors.

Turkish law demands life in prison if convicted of those charges.