Novel Saudi idea: Treat maids as if they're human

The Saudi-based Arab News, which goes out of its way to appear progressive to Western audiences, shows again its racist mentality with this unreal article:

JEDDAH, 31 March 2008 — Spoil your housemaid if you want to keep her. Give her a salary hike, a day off each week and above all be gentle with her. This is the advice people should heed if they want to ensure their maids do not begin looking for employment elsewhere.

An estimated 7,000 maids run away from their Saudi employers each year. “Spoiling maids is the best way to keep them. Employers don’t want to lose their maids and go through the hassle of spending SR7,000 and reams of red tape to get a new one,” said a Saudi who went through the bitter experience.

The Kingdom is home to around 3 million foreign maids. Many work here illegally after arriving on pilgrim visas. Most housemaids in the Kingdom are Indonesian, around 1 million according to sources at the Indonesian Embassy. Filipinos, Sri Lankans, Indians and Moroccans follow.

Labor experts say that the main reasons for maids running away include low pay and abuse. ...
Abdul Qader Hussein, a teacher, has seen several of his housemaids run away.

“I used all means, such as locking the maid in her room at night and securing windows with iron grills, but they were of no avail. I can’t do without a maid because my wife is also a teacher,” he said.

“Finally, a friend of mine told me the secret of keeping a maid for long term. Give her a pay hike and treat her well. From SR700 I raised her salary to SR1,200, the highest amount she is likely to earn if she runs away. It worked. She is with us now for over two years. None of the maids in the past stayed for more than a couple of months,” he said, adding that he also gives his maid occasional gifts in the form of cash or clothes.

Maj. Muhammad Al-Hussein, spokesman of the Passports Department in the Makkah region, said that in most cases maids run away with the help of middlemen of their own nationality.

“They promise them new jobs with better pay and work atmosphere, including a weekly holiday, which Saudi sponsors seldom give,” he said.

“It has also been reported that some ill-treated maids have resorted to acts of vengeance before running away,” Al-Hussein added. According to one such report, two Indonesian and Filipino maids made their employers consume food containing urine, stool and blood.

Ahmad Al-Ghamdi, who runs a recruitment firm in Jeddah, said maids could be stopped from running away only if Saudi families learn to treat them with kindness like family members. “They should never be viewed with suspicion and prejudice,” he added.

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Saudis don't go to prostitutes. They "marry" them.

Everyone knows that it is a farce, but their "moral codes" are so strong that they all pretend anyway.

From Saudi Gazette:

Single men, and even married ones who are unhappy or just bored and don’t mind polygamy, can easily find a foreign matchmaker in the Holy City.

All a man has to do is contact one of them, and she will find him a bride from among the numerous overstayers in town. Most probably, she will be Indonesian, Mauritanian, Burmese or, if he’s the talkative type, Egyptian or Moroccan, which takes care of the language barrier.

“God the Almighty will bless me because I seek to unite two people in matrimony,” says one matchmaker who would only identify herself as Umm Ayman, “and to find women husbands who can shelter them, particularly of Saudi nationality.”

The matchmaker’s ostensible keenness to observe Shariah extends as far as letting the suitor eyeball his prospective wife. If an agreement is reached, the rigorous process of negotiating the dowry and the matchmaker’s fees begins in earnest. The more interest the groom shows, the more expensive it can get for him.

In this kind of deals, everything, no matter how personal, is bound to have a price tag. Depending on how pretty the would-be bride is, the dowry could range from SR10,000 to SR20,000 – and those are the bare minimums. If the groom shows too much interest, the figure could go well beyond that.

Standard fees for the matchmaker begins with SR500 just for starting the work, plus SR1,000 to SR1,500 once the marriage contract is made.

The service is hardly shoddy. The matchmaker takes on the easy task of producing the two witnesses who should attest to the marriage, and they probably are the same nationality as the bride’s. They get a paltry SR50 each, and the marriage “official” gets a princely fee of SR100.

And that’s it. There are no more expenses for the groom to pay and, of course, to keep things under a lid, no wedding ceremony is ever held, and the two are hitched happily ever after.

There are, however, two little conditions the brides usually set for the marriage to be consummated.

First off, having children is a definite no-no.

Then there is the small matter of the groom having to give a one-hour prior warning that he’s about to show up at the love nest.

According to Umm Ayman, the wife usually takes all necessary precautions not to get pregnant.
“The last thing she wants is to bear the responsibility of motherhood, what with being illegal and all,” she says. “Then there is the ever-present elephant in the room – the almost certain possibility that the marriage would not last for long anyway.”

The one-hour notice makes about as much sense as the marriage itself. While the pretext is always that the wife needs time “to get herself ready,” a number of these women are often married off to more than one man, and they don’t want to get caught.

On the night of consummation, it is considered “appropriate” for the groom to buy dinner for his new-found wife and in-laws. Of course, all of this is hush-hush – not even the neighbors find out.

Sheikh Abdulmohsen Al-Obaikan, Counsel at the Ministry of Justice and a member of the Shoura Council, says this kind of marriage is both illegal and un-Islamic.

“If the intention is to break up the marriage after a while, this marriage would be one of pleasure, which isn’t part of Shariah.”

He further added that being married to several men at the same time amounts to prostitution.

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Saudi Vice, episode 13: Lockdown!

We have already seen many of the adventures of our heroes, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. But what happens to the perps after the crime was committed? How does the Commission ensure that these lowlife immoral scum - especially the women - are never allowed to corrupt upstanding Saudi citizens any more?

The brilliant mullahs who guide our heroes have a foolproof, fail-safe method of ensuring the purity of Saudi society. From the Saudi Gazette, referring to Saudi women's prisons:

[S]ome inmates who had been indiscriminately arrested by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice on charges of illegal actions stay in custody indefinitely, simply because the commission never gets around to pressing charges...

Brilliant! If they never get charged, they can never go free!

And what about those that did manage to get sentenced? As the National Human Rights Society found:

In a surprise visit to the Berman Prison in Jeddah last week, the National Human Rights Society (NHRS) found that four female inmates have AIDS, and two others suffer from Tuberculosis.

She said the delegation was stunned to learn that King Saud Hospital in Jeddah had turned down repeated requests to conduct HIV tests for the female inmates, claiming that the test is too expensive.

The NHRS’s team, headed by Jawhara Al-Anqari, the Society’s Deputy Chairman for Family Affairs, also found that there were Saudi women who were still in prison after they had completed their jail terms, because their families refused to receive them....

Furthermore, the delegation found that all the prisoners were being kept in the same dormitories, regardless of age and crime records.

So the Commission wisely throws women in prison when they are suspected of horrific crimes like "khulwa" and while in prison they might be stuck there forever, exposed to other prisoners who are only murderers or the like, and exposed to diseases that can kill them.

Thus ensuring that they never, ever get back on the streets where they might entice young men into a meal at a public restaurant.

Our heroes have saved Saudi society's purity yet again!

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Saudis block access to human rights websites

From Saudi Gazette:

RIYADH – The National Society for Human Rights is seeking to unblock some internet sites of some Arab and international human rights organizations, the Arabic daily Al-Watan reported on Saturday.

Dr. Saleh Al-Khathlan, head of the Observation and Followup Committee at the society and a professor of politics at the King Saud University, said the society had taken note of the bans applied to some websites like those of Human Rights Watch, Reporters Sans Frontiers and the Arabian Network for Human Rights Information.

Al-Watan quoted Khathlan as saying that the blockage goes against the Kingdom’s commitments as a member of the UN’s Human Rights Council. He added that those sites are committed to international standards regarding their online content.

He said blockage is in breach of article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which states the rights of freedom of speech and obtaining information.

It is also in breach of article 23 of the Arabian Pact of Human Rights, adding that Saudi Arabia is the head of the Arab League’s permanent oversight committee on human rights, an image that the block might harm.

You'd almost think that they were trying to hide something....

I wonder if they are just as vigilant against porn websites?

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Tunnel collapse!

From JPost:

An Egyptian security official says a tunnel used for smuggling between Egypt and Gaza has collapsed and killed at least one Palestinian.

The official says Sunday's collapse occurred when the tunnel's fragile sand ceiling fell under its own weight. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

He says Palestinian rescue workers are trying to extract the Palestinian man's body from the Gaza side of the border where he entered the tunnel.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 52.

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Bahrainis fear: "Soon we'll see Israelis living among us"

The ultimate nightmare scenario for some Bahrainis:

A PROTEST group pushing for the re-opening of the Israel Boycott Office in Bahrain is hosting a major conference next month to highlight its cause.

It claims that as a result of the office being closed, Israeli produce is now finding its way into the Bahrain market.

The group also accused the US military of bringing in Israeli goods to be consumed at its naval base in Bahrain.

The Bahrain Society Against Normalisation with the Zionist Enemy is behind next month's event, which is expected to bring together MPs and young activists to highlight issues relating to the office's closure.

Mr Abdulmalik said closing the boycott office was a dangerous first step on the road to opening diplomatic ties.

"Israeli products won't rush into the country as soon as the office is shut, but closing it is the first step in building Zionist trade and diplomatic relations and soon we'll see Israelis living among us," he added.

First Zionist produce, then real Zionists. Horror upon horror!

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Gazans claim to have hit Kiryat Gat with rocket

Palestine Today quotes a Reuters report I cannot find anywhere that claims that a Qassam rocket hit Kiryat Gat on Saturday, some 30 kilometers from Gaza. Firas Press quotes the same report, although it looks more like they copied the PalToday report.

Seems unlikely.

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Fitna

The release of the Dutch film Fitna has provoked much reaction in the blogosphere, and not a huge amount yet worldwide.

If you haven't been following the story, Wikipedia describes it like this:

Fitna is a film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Dutch parliament. The movie offers his views on Islam and the Qur'an. The film's title comes from the Arabic word fitna which is used to describe "disagreement and division among people", or a "test of faith in times of trial". The movie was released to the Internet on 27 March 2008.

It was originally hosted on a video streaming site LiveLeak, but today LiveLeak removed the video in the face of very real death threats.

Here is a copy from Google Video, which may or may not stay up:


There are two issues to be dealt with here, and it is important not to mix them up. One is the message of the film, and the other is the entire idea of censoring media that offends a group of people.

The message seems to be that Islam is inherently evil, as Wilders takes Quranic verses and juxtaposes them with images of terror and hate speech by Muslim clerics. While there is plenty to criticize about Islam and how it is practiced by many today, this is a bit oversimplistic and smacks more of propaganda than a documentary. A much better example, in my opinion, was Obsession, a 12-minute version is here:


To judge Fitna as objectively more offensive than any number of rabidly anti-semitic videos that are allowed on YouTube is absurd, however. The fact that it is being censored is more troubling than any perceived offense it is guilty of, and really, it does not show anything more than Jihadi videos already do.

A possible Freudian slip by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon illustrates the problem well:

"I condemn in the strongest terms the airing of Geert Wilders' offensively anti-Islamic film," Ban said in a statement.

"There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free speech is not at stake here."

Normally, when one says that something is an incitement to violence, it means that the people watching it would be moved to act violently against the players portrayed in the medium. In this case, though, the only people being incited to violence are the very violent people the film is about, not the viewers. Moon is, perhaps subconsciously, saying that the reason he is against the film is because it can cause Muslims to riot and kill. Ban is effectively giving Muslims veto power over any medium that they deem offensive - he is advocating censorship. Despite his protests, the right of free speech is exactly what is at stake here.

Whether he meant it or not, the vehemence of his reaction is way out of proportion to the objective amount of offensiveness that this video contains. It is well within the bounds of any reasonable definition of free speech and it does not come close to hate speech or incitement to violence, unlike any number of anti-semitic sermons that can be seen broadcast weekly on Islamist TV stations, like this recent example.

The only way to fight this obscene censorship - even if you disagree with the film's message, as many sober people do - is to make sure that it is uploaded and available to everyone who wants to find it, on video sharing sites large and small. It may be a tempest in a teapot but the symbolism of the Islamists managing to shut it down portends much worse things to come.

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Muslim expert weighs in on pedophilia (MEMRI)

The depths of depravity and ignorance of "Islamic legal experts" is mind boggling.

Check out this guy:

Iraqi Expert on Islamic Law Calls to Allow Young Girls to Get Married: In Islamic Countries, Girls Get Their Periods at the Age of 8-10. Westerners Criticize the Prophet Muhammad for Having Sex with His 9 Year Old Wife, But Allow Fornication with Underage Girls

Following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-'Ubeidi, an Iraqi expert on Islamic law, which aired on Al-Rafidein TV on March 14, 2008: Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-'Ubeidi: There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18. This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law. Why? Because there might be cases in which it is impossible to keep the girl [single] until the age of maturity. For example, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Serbs killed many Albanian Muslims, and there are many mass graves there. [Muslim] families fled from that war, and so did small children, who were not yet at the age of marriage. But if a man takes such a girl in, he might desire her, and eventually commit a sin, even though his intentions were noble. So he can formally marry her, but without having sex with her. She will remain like that until she grows up, and then someone will ask to marry her, or he will find her a husband – this happens in many Islamic countries with girls from Bosnia-Herzegovina – and when he finds her a husband, he will divorce her, so that she can marry again. In such a case, there should be no waiting period. So there is no need for the girl to be of age. Most of the time we act according to what is acceptable to most people, and indeed, most men do not marry a girl until she is of age. In some Islamic countries, the age of maturity can be 8 or 10 years. In Yemen, a girl might get her period at the age of 8. In cold countries, such as Russia, Belarus, Scandinavia, New Zealand, Canada, and so on, a girl might not reach maturity until she is 22 years old. She might not get her period until then. Therefore, the greatness of Islamic law is manifest in the fact that marriage is not just for pleasure. True, it is the basic objective for marriage, but there are some cases that require solutions. [...] Many criminals, the enemies of Islam, ask: "How could the Prophet Muhammad, at 52 years of age, marry 'Aisha when she was only 8 years old, and consummate the marriage when she was 9 years old?" I say to them: People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Why do you permit your young girls to fornicate? They consider it one of their liberties. Therefore, in these stupid countries, you rarely find girls aged 10 or 12 who are still virgins. They permit this. They have even legislated laws stating that if a girl is under the age of 18, and her girlfriend [sic] or whatever has had sex with her, she has the right to have an abortion. How can you permit the outcome without accepting the cause? Why do you allow your girls to have sex and say this is an individual liberty? It is okay to fornicate with girls there or force them to have sex, and so on, and they have the right to have an abortion. If you permit all this before the age [of 18], without a marriage contract and without any legal grounds – how come you forbid marriage?

That's easy - to stop creepy guys like him from marrying them!

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PA "cuts salaries" of Gaza Al Aqsa Brigade terrorists

Firas Press (Arabic) reports that after much negotiation, PA prime minister Fayyad decided to "cut" the salaries of the Al Aqsa Brigades terrorists in Gaza.

The PA had offered to let them keep their salaries if they would promise not to shoot rockets at Israel and they rejected that offer.

This means, of course, that up until now the PA has been using western funds to pay salaries of terrorists in Gaza - for many months after the Hamas coup, when they had literally no jobs to do besides make and shoot rockets at Israeli children.

It also means that the PA continues, today, to pay known members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in the West Bank with US and European tax dollars.

I've already shown that the bulk of the PA payroll goes towards Gaza, and Gazans get more than double per capita from the PA than the West Bank Arabs.

Given past experience, it is entirely possible that the PA will relent in the face of pressure and restore these salaries anyway. Some Western leaders will undoubtedly think that it is preferable for terrorists to be funded by the West via the PA than by Iran via Hamas.

And so it goes.

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Peacekeeping, PalArab style (grim milestone watch!)

Ma'an Arabic reports on a clan clash that happened while the two families tried to reconcile:

Twowere killed and eight others injured, four of them seriously, when a reconciliation took place this afternoon to end a family quarrel in the ancient town of Kafr third, south of Qalqilya.

Eyewitnesses said that Kamal Kassim Mara'abe (45 years old) and Muhammad Qasim Mara'abe were killed this afternoon and injured eight others on the background of an old quarrel between the Mara'abe, Nahed families.

The eyewitnesses added that during the reconciliation between both families to end the dispute, the oldest members of the Nahed family attacked Mara'abe family members with guns, which led to two deaths and injuring eight others.

And the cycle of violence continues...

We have now reached a Grim Milestone as 50 Palestinian Arabs are known to have been violently killed by each other this year so far.

UPDATE: 3 dead, 12 wounded. 51.

UPDATE 2: The IDF may have stopped much worse bloodshed.

UPDATE 3: One of the victims was a 13-year old boy, shot in the head.

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Today's Gaza news you won't see anywhere else

Hamas abducted two teachers in Khan Younis, suspected of Fatah activities

Hamas also arrested one of their own, suspected of spying for Israel

Hamas arrested three students in Khan Younis from a secondary school

It is reported that Hamas was searching cars to prevent the firing of rockets by Islamic Jihad towards Israel today.

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Newsweek: Let's blame the non-Muslims for Muslim violence!

An unreal article by Christopher Dickey in Newsweek, who bends over backwards to minimize Muslim violence and to blame it all on stupid mistakes by non-Muslims who end up provoking the violence. With the equally unreal title:
Christian Rage and Muslim Moderation

Some lowlights:

If the satellite networks allow their lenses to zoom back from the book burners, they may discover there's no raging crowd there, just the usual collection of unemployed malcontents on any street in Karachi. And what is most important, we may find that the Muslims of this world are just as weary of this sorry spectacle—maybe even more so—than the Christian, Jewish and secular publics in the West.

We may, and we may not. His examples of Muslim moderation are an interesting combination of cherry-picking and wishful thinking.The Turkish government is "supporting theological scholarship intended to modernize—and moderate—traditional Islamic teachings." A single Lebanese Ayatollah is not openly calling for violence anymore. Saudi Arabia's king is acting against al-Qaeda-style terrorism. And then:

But even with many qualifications and reservations, in my view the conciliatory trends in Islam make an interesting contrast with renewed provocations coming out of Europe.

There's no use wasting much space on the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, the dyed blond with ugly roots who is promoting a film he says will prove his belief that "Islamic ideology is a retarded, dangerous one."

Yes, freedom of speech is such a nuisance sometimes.

....Danish cartoonists and editors previously unknown to the wider world garnered international attention when they published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 that brought on bloody riots in several Muslim countries in 2006. Having sunk once again into obscurity, the editors decided to publish one of the cartoons again last month, reportedly after the arrest of an individual plotting to kill the cartoonist. Great idea. Take one man's alleged crime and respond with new insults to an entire faith.

What a wonderful use of sarcasm, Mr. Dickey! I especially like how you characterize the people who were murdered by the cartoon riots as being the victims of publicity-seeking cartoonists in Denmark. The fact that the riots were stoked by Muslim leaders - months after their initial publication - just don't fit your recollections of the events, so we will just ignore those inconvenient facts for now.

The most problematic event of late, however, was Pope Benedict's decision to baptize the Egyptian journalist Magdi Allam in Saint Peter's on the night before Easter, thus converting a famously self-hating Muslim into a self-loving Christian in the most high-profile setting possible. Perhaps Benedict really thought, as the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano opined, that the baptism was just a papal "gesture" to emphasize "in a gentle and clear way religious freedom." But I am not prepared to believe for a second, as some around the Vatican have hinted this week, that the Holy Father did not know who Allam was or how provocative this act would appear to Muslim scholars, including and especially those who are trying to foster interfaith dialogue.

What Dickey refuses to face up to is that even if the Pope's timing was provocative, it doesn't justify any violent reaction. Luckily, it didn't happen this time, but Dickey is justifying it before the fact. Ironically, the progressive Dickey is assuming that Muslims will act like animals and writes his column with that assumption in the forefront.

(h/t Global Freezing)

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Israeli saving the world's birds

This is the sort of story that almost never gets told about Israel.

From Science Alert (Australia):

Each northern spring an awesome aerial torrent of 500 million birds pauses at a tiny fleck of a sanctuary at the tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, en route from the heart of Africa to the vastnesses of Europe and Asia.

Many birds have flown non-stop from the Central Highlands of Ethiopia, devouring their own muscle and intestines in the 40-hour flight. When they sink to rest at Eilat, in southernmost Israel, they are at the very limits of their endurance. Without this stopover on their ancient migratory path, most of the birds would never complete their journey. Food from its lakes and vegetation is vital to rebuilding their strength for an onward trek that, in some cases, bears them as far as Wales or the Bering Strait.

For 15 years a stoic, courageous and grittily determined Israeli ornithologist, Dr Reuven Yosef, has fought with all the means at his disposal to keep intact this remaining claw-hold on survival for the world’s dwindling migratory bird populations.

Flash floods, savage vandalism, a suicide bombing, landmines and relentless development are among the challenges he has faced in striving to hold open this everconstricting highway of the natural world. If it closes, ornithologists warn, a major route will be sundered and many of the 280 migratory bird species of Europe, Asia and Africa using it may vanish.

Dr Yosef ’s visionary International Birding and Research Centre, Eilat (IBRCE) gained worldwide recognition with an Associate Laureateship in the Rolex Awards for Enterprise. Developed from an old rubbish dump and lovingly restored to 64 hectares of lakes, wetlands, visitor facilities and natural vegetation to harbour birds, the Centre is today acknowledged as one of the world’s ornithological wonders, inspiring projects as far afield as Kenya, Tibet, China, Mongolia and North America.

...Gradually the dry salt marshes fringing the sea succumbed to a concrete plague of hotels, promenades, marinas and gaudy attractions. A strip of wasteland lying between the town and Jordanian border to the east, beneath the smoky thunder of low-flying passenger jets, became a rubbish tip. Nobody wanted it, except a keen-eyed Indian-born ornithologist, Reuven Yosef, who saw its pivotal significance to the wildlife of the planet.

...Wounded and invalided out of the army, he took up studies as an aspiring ornithologist at Ben Gurion University and then at Ohio State University in the US, carrying out field research at the Archbold Biological Station in Florida, famous for the study of migratory birds. While there, he was invited to set up a nature reserve near Eilat that would enhance the town’s appeal to visitors.

Yosef was delighted, both at the chance to help protect bird migration in a world where it faced growing pressures from human activity, but also at the opportunities for scholarship the site presented – sampling each year an astonishing cross-section of the world’s avifauna.

Of the 120 000 hectares of salt marshes that once sustained billions of birds on their migratory journey, only a few hundred remained. The land was poisoned by mining activities extending back almost 3000 years. The rest was a garbage dump, filled with heaven-knew-what. Raising money from friends and supporters, Yosef purchased 64 hectares, and with the help of local earthmoving contractors, effluent from the sewage works, fresh water from the local desalination plant and brackish water from the local saltworks set about creating several lakes – fresh and saline – and restoring vegetation.

Gradually the sanctuary became a welcoming haven to the exhausted airborne travellers, offering seeds and brine shrimp to nourish and restore them. With the birds came scholars from around the globe to study the unending avian throng, 100,000 visitors a year to witness one of Nature’s marvels and 60,000 wide-eyed schoolchildren to learn about a phenomenon that, without great care, their own children may never see.

Not only is he saving untold numbers of bird species, but he is helping Israel gain a hundred thousand bird-loving tourists annually.

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The Mufti's Blue Eyes

Earlier this week I posted a link to a Time article from 1948 that parenthetically mentioned a number of blonde Palestinian Arab leaders.

It turns out that at least one's Aryan features helped cement his bond with Heinrich Himmler. From the March 28, 1948 Palestine Post:

Himmler understood then what most people stubbornly refuse to acknowledge today - the Arab enemy has always been Jews, not Zionism.

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