Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 21, 2011

Freedom House vs. HRW on Libya

Last month I compared how Freedom House rates countries against how much attention Human Rights Watch pays to them.

Libya is a special case, because in 2009 its Middle East and North Africa director, Sarah Leah Whitson, gushed about how wonderful things were there. As quoted by Omri Ceren:
:

For the first time in memory, change is in the air in Libya. The brittle atmosphere of repression has started to fracture, giving way to expanded space for discussion and debate [and] proposals for legislative reform… I left more than one meeting stunned at the sudden openness of ordinary citizens, who criticized the government and challenged the status quo with newfound frankness. A group of journalists we met with in Tripoli complained about censorship… [b]ut that hadn’t stopped their newspapers… Quryna, one of two new semi private newspapers in Tripoli, features page after page of editorials criticizing bureaucratic misconduct and corruption… The spirit of reform, however slowly, has spread to the bureaucracy as well… the real impetus for the transformation rests squarely with a quasi-governmental organization, the Qaddafi Foundation for International Charities and Development.

Yet even without this "Tripoli Spring," HRW wrote only 10 reports on Libya - fewer than for Greece Peru, or the Philippines, or Brazil, and far fewer than Israel, the US, the UK or India.

Freedom House, however, gave Libya the worst score possible - a 7 on civil liberties and a 7 on political rights.

It sure looks like Freedom House's scores correlate a lot better with reality than HRW reports do.

Crazy Libyan rumors of Israeli involvement

Israeli F-16s! Jewish African mercenaries! Zionist riots! According to a bunch of tweeters, one or more callers to Al Jazeera claim to have seen Israeli F-16s land in Libya and/or bomb innocent civilians.

And the tweeters believe it.

Another rumor says that Israeli-trained African Jews are the mercenaries Gaddafi hired to shoot people:

But, of course, the Libyan regime has his own theories:

But no matter what, some tweeters understand that this is a great opportunity to engage in some old fashioned anti-semitism:

US throws Israel under the bus

My latest NewsRealBlog article is up, on the US veto of the UNSC resolution - and Susan Rice's groveling to the Arab world afterwards.

After I wrote it I saw this from Elliot Abrams' blog:

This is amazing language for a diplomat: “folly,” “illegitimacy,” “devastates,” “corroded,” and so on. It’s hard to recall such a vehement statement against Israel, nor one that contains so many conclusions that are, to say the least, highly debatable. Has construction in and around Jerusalem or in Ma’ale Adumim, for example, “undermined Israel’s security?” Given that the Israelis and Palestinians concluded the Oslo Accords and the numerous other agreements while construction activity was far greater than it is today, what is the basis for saying that it “devastates trust?” No doubt the Administration decided that as it had vetoed it would “make it up” to the Arabs with this statement. But emotive language such as Amb. Rice employed serves no purpose. Arab newspapers will headline the veto—assuming of course that they have space in their pages tomorrow after covering the revolts in Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Bahrain, and Egypt—and are very unlikely to cover her speech. Only Israelis and supporters of Israel in the United States will study her language, and remember it.

So, the Administration emerges having damaged relations with both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Decades of American experience at the United Nations proves clearly the “folly” of such diplomatic action, which “devastates trust” in the United States and therefore “corrodes hopes for peace and stability in the region.” Next time, say you’ll veto, veto, and leave it at that. The United States will end up with fewer angry friends and fewer gleeful enemies.

Exactly. In fact, none of the Arab media I can find is even mentioning Rice's tirade and instead are just concentrating on the veto:

Israeli Muslim sues Coca Cola for putting alcohol in recipe

From Globes:

An Israeli Muslim filed a NIS 1.2 billion class action suit against The Central Bottling Company Group Ltd. (the Israel franchisee for Coca Cola) in the Jerusalem District Court today for compensation for mental anguish and infringing the independent choices of the individual.

The plaintiff, an Israeli Muslim, filed the suit following publication on the web last week of what is apparently the secret recipe of Coca Cola, and which allegedly contains alcohol. The class action suit was filed by Advs. Hani Tannus, Ofir Cohen, and Mahmud Machjana.

Alcohol is forbidden by Islam, and the plaintiff cites he has been unwittingly drinking alcohol for years. He therefore claims Coca Cola is guilty of misleading consumers, infringing the independent choices of the individual, and causing huge mental anguish.

The plaintiff says that his class action suit comprises NIS 1,000 compensation for each of the 1.2 million Muslims living in Israel.

The suit said, "This is one of the greatest deceptions in the history of consumer affairs, when a company ignores the existence of alcohol as an ingredient despite being aware that the Muslim world abstains from products like these. This is a very serious matter and it certainly won't be the last in the world in light of the fraud.

The "secret recipe" story came out last week when a public radio show noticed that one of the pages from Coca Cola's founder's notebook was visible in a 1979 newspaper article. Here's the alleged recipe.

Of course, if it is legitimate, that is a recipe from the late 19th century.

It is a bit crazy to assume that Coke contains alcohol today. The company admits this recipe might be an early version of the formula, but it is not close to what Coke is today.

Not only that, but Coke is manufactured in Muslim countries as well. As the Economic Times reports:

Coca-Cola has no alcohol in it, said the firm's manufacturer in Malaysia as it rubbished reports that the secret of the way it is prepared is out.

Coca-Cola Malaysia's public affairs and communications director Kadri Taib said alcohol was not an ingredient and no fermentation took place during the manufacture of the drink.

"The precise formulation of the drink is our company's most valuable trade secret.

"The ingredients and manufacturing process are rigorously regulated by government and health authorities in more than 200 countries, including Malaysia, which have consistently recognised the beverage as a non-alcoholic product," he said.

The clarification about alcohol is essential for the beverage manufacturer in the Muslim majority nation since Islam forbids it.

This isn't stopping the Arabic press from reporting that class-action lawsuits in all Muslim countries might put Coca Cola out of business.

The demand is for compensation of the Muslim Ummah for psychological and religious damages theyh have suffered as a result of drinking Coca-Cola, which contains a proportion of alcohol... and the teachings of the Islamic religion prohibits drinking alcohol.

Counsel explains that "the Muslim population in Israel, approximately 16%, were drinking Coca-Cola all the time without their knowledge that it contains alcohol, and this is what caused significant psychological damage after discovering the presence of alcohol.

"The Coca-Cola Company is deceiving consumers, particularly Muslims, for the past 150 years, and we demand compensation of 1000 shekels for every Muslim Arab citizen inside Israel, where the number of Muslims in Israel is 1.1879 million, so total of compensation is about 1.2 billion shekels."

If the Jerusalem District Court rules to compensate Muslims inside Israel 1.2 billion shekels, that will open the door to all the world's Muslims, estimated at about one billion Muslims, to bring cases against the Coca-Cola Company, which may have to declare bankruptcy to compensate those affected.

I guess we shouldn't tell them the secret behind Mecca Cola....

Libya update (updated!)

Things are really getting out of control in Libya.

The latest reports:

Military jets are reported to be bombing or strafing protesters, killing perhaps 250 people or more. Two Libya pilots defected with their planes to Malta, refusing to bomb their own people.
So far, seven Libyan ambassadors have quit their posts over the fighting.
There are reports of doctors getting killed in the hospitals, and of people being shot no matter where in the streets they are.
Earlier rumors that Muammar Gaddafi was fleeing to Venezuela have been denied by Venezualan authorities.
The justice minister, Mustapha Abdul Jalil, has joined the protesters and it trying to help them organize.
Some cities, especially in the east, are said to be held by the anti-government forces, and that reporters will be able to enter from Egypt.
Some reports say that Egypt is opening medical clinics at the border. Also reports that they are sending medical aid in.

And say what you want about Al Jazeera, but it is the best place to find up to the minute information.

UPDATE: Tweets are, predictably, blaming Israel. Some say that Israeli F-16 are bombing the protesters, some say that Libya is blaming Israel for the protests, and others say that "African Jews trained in Israel" are the mercenaries killing Libyans.

The sad part is that many idiots are believing it.

Sexual abuse against reporters is largely unreported

The horrific Lara Logan story gets even worse:

More details have emerged of Lara Logan's terrifying ordeal at the hands of a frenzied mob.
The 39-year-old foreign correspondent for CBS News show 60 Minutes was separated from her film crew in Cairo on February 11 and surrounded by as many as 200 men in Tahrir Square at the height of the anti-Mubarak demonstrations.

According to one source, reported in The Sunday Times newspaper, sensitive parts of her body were covered in red marks that were originally thought to have been bite marks.

After further examination they were revealed to be from aggressive pinching.
It has also been revealed that she was stripped, punched and slapped by the crowd, which was labelling her a spy and chanting 'Israeli' and 'Jew' as they beat her.

And medical sources have revealed that marks on her body were consistent with being whipped and beaten with the makeshift poles that were used to fly flags during the demonstration.

An unnamed friend of the reporter told The Sunday Times: 'Lara is getting better daily. The psychological trauma is as bad as, if not worse than, the physical injuries. She might talk about it at sometime in the future, but not now.'

Even more shocking is that incidents like these are not that rare.

Kim Barker describes a "minor" incident when she waded into a Pakistani crowd:

So, wearing a black headscarf and a loose, long-sleeved red tunic over jeans, I waded through the crowd and started taking notes: on the men throwing rose petals, on the men shouting that they would die for the chief justice, on the men sacrificing a goat.

And then, almost predictably, someone grabbed my buttocks. I spun around and shouted, but then it happened again, and again, until finally I caught one offender’s hand and punched him in the face. The men kept grabbing. I kept punching. At a certain point — maybe because I was creating a scene — I was invited into the chief justice’s vehicle.

At the time, in June 2007, I saw this as just one of the realities of covering the news in Pakistan. I didn’t complain to my bosses. To do so would only make me seem weak. Instead, I made a joke out of it and turned the experience into a positive one: See, being a woman helped me gain access to the chief justice.

And really, I was lucky. A few gropes, a misplaced hand, an unwanted advance — those are easily dismissed. I knew other female correspondents who weren’t so lucky, those who were molested in their hotel rooms, or partly stripped by mobs. But I can’t ever remember sitting down with my female peers and talking about what had happened, except to make dark jokes, because such stories would make us seem different from the male correspondents, more vulnerable. I would never tell my bosses for fear that they might keep me at home the next time something major happened.

The CPJ blog elaborates:

Here are some of the cases of sexual violence against journalists CPJ has documented:

Colombian journalist Jineth Bedoya was raped, kidnapped, and beaten in May 2000 after reporting on far-right paramilitaries while on assignment for the Bogotá daily El Espectador: "Floating in and out of consciousness, Bedoya was taken to a house across the street from the prison," wrote CPJ's Frank Smyth that same year. "The kidnappers bound her hands and feet, taped her mouth, and blindfolded her eyes. Then they drove her to Villavicencio, where she was savagely beaten and raped. During the assault, the men told her in graphic detail about all the other journalists who they planned to kill."

In 2006, we reported on a plot to kidnap and rape Mexican journalist and human rights activist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro. Cacho was arrested on December 17, 2005, and released on bail the next day in connection with a case against her for defamation and slander, which CPJ found was brought in retaliation for her reporting on a child pornography and prostitution ring. Tapes of telephone conversations between several people, two of whom were the governor of the state of Puebla, Mario Marín, and a local businessman, were delivered to the Mexico City offices of the daily La Jornada. Media reports said the recordings were made before and during Cacho's detention. In the tapes, obscene language was used to describe plans to put Cacho behind bars and assault her. In one conversation before Cacho's arrest, a man who was identified by the Mexican press as Hanna Nakad Bayeh, a Puebla-based clothing manufacturer, asked businessman José Camel Nacif Borge to pay someone to rape her in jail. According to the transcriptions published in La Jornada, Nacif replied, "she has already been taken care of."

A 2007 article from Columbia Journalism Review has more:

The photographer was a seasoned operator in South Asia. So when she set forth on an assignment in India, she knew how to guard against gropers: dress modestly in jeans secured with a thick belt and take along a male companion. All those preparations failed, however, when an unruly crowd surged and swept away her colleague. She was pushed into a ditch, where several men set upon her, tearing at her clothes and baying for sex. They ripped the buttons off her shirt and set to work on her trousers.

“My first thought was my cameras,” recalls the photographer, who asked to remain anonymous. “Then it was, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be raped.’˺” With her faced pressed into the soil, she couldn’t shout for help, and no one would have heard her anyway above the mob’s taunts. Suddenly a Good Samaritan in the crowd pulled the photographer by the camera straps several yards to the feet of some policemen who had been watching the scene without intervening. They sneered at her exposed chest, but escorted her to safety.

Alone in her hotel room that night, the photographer recalls, she cried, thinking, “What a bloody way to make a living.“ She didn’t inform her editors, however. “I put myself out there equal to the boys. I didn’t want to be seen in any way as weaker.”

Women have risen to the top of war and foreign reportage. They run bureaus in dodgy places and do jobs that are just as dangerous as those that men do. But there is one area where they differ from the boys–sexual harassment and rape. Female reporters are targets in lawless places where guns are common and punishment rare. Yet the compulsion to be part of the macho club is so fierce that women often don’t tell their bosses. Groping hands and lewd come-ons are stoically accepted as part of the job, especially in places where western women are viewed as promiscuous. War zones in particular seem to invite unwanted advances, and sometimes the creeps can be the drivers, guards, and even the sources that one depends on to do the job. Often they are drunk. But female journalists tend to grit their teeth and keep on working, unless it gets worse.

Because of the secrecy around sexual assaults, it’s hard to judge their frequency. Yet I know of a dozen such assaults, including one suffered by a man. Eight of the cases involve forced intercourse, mostly in combat zones. The perpetrators included hotel employees, support staff, colleagues, and the very people who are paid to guarantee safety–policemen and security guards. None of the victims want to be named. For many women, going public can cause further distress. In the words of an American correspondent who awoke in her Baghdad compound to find her security guard’s head in her lap, “I don’t want it out there, for people to look at me and think, ‘Hmmm. This guy did that to her, yuck.’ I don’t want to be viewed in my worst vulnerability.”

The only attempt to quantify this problem has been a slim survey of female war reporters published two years ago by the International News Safety Institute, based in Brussels. Of the twenty-nine respondents who took part, more than half reported sexual harassment on the job. Two said they had experienced sexual abuse. But even when the abuse is rape, few correspondents tell anyone, even friends. The shame runs so deep–and the fear of being pulled off an assignment, especially in a time of shrinking budgets, is so strong– that no one wants intimate violations to resound in a newsroom.

Rodney Pinder, the director of the institute, was struck by how some senior newswomen he approached after the 2005 survey were reluctant to take a stand on rape. “The feedback I got was mainly that women didn’t want to be seen as ‘special’ cases for fear that, a) it affected gender equality and b) it hindered them getting assignments,” he says.
Caroline Neil, who has done safety training with major networks over the past decade,
agrees. “The subject has been swept under the carpet. It’s something people don’t like to
talk about.”

In the cases that I know of, the journalists did nothing to provoke the attacks; they behaved with utmost propriety, except perhaps for one bikini-clad woman who was raped by a hotel employee while sunbathing on the roof in a conservative Middle Eastern country. The correspondent who was molested by her Iraqi security guard is still puzzling over the fact that he brazenly crept into her room while colleagues slept nearby. “You do everything right and then something like this happens,” she says. “I never wore tight Tshirts or outrageous clothes. But he knew I didn’t have a tribe that would go after him.”

That guard lost his job, but such punishment is rare. A more typical case is of an award winning British correspondent who was raped by her translator in Africa. Reporting him to a police force known for committing atrocities seemed like a futile exercise.

Like most foreign correspondents who were assaulted, those women were targets of opportunity. The predators took advantage because they could. Local journalists face the added risk of politically motivated attacks. The Committee to Protect Journalists, for example, cites rape threats against female reporters in Egypt who were seen as government critics. Rebels raped someone I worked with in Angola for her perceived sympathy for the ruling party. In one notorious case in Colombia in 2000, the reporter Jineth Bedoya Lima was kidnapped and gang-raped in what she took as reprisal for her newspaper’s suggestion that a paramilitary group ordered some executions. She is the only colleague I know of who has gone on the record about her rape.

The general reluctance to call attention to the problem creates a vicious cycle, whereby editors, who are still typically men, are unaware of the dangers because women don’t bring them up. Survivors of attacks often suffer in lonely silence, robbed of the usual camaraderie that occurs when people are shot or kidnapped. It was an open secret in our Moscow press corps in the 1990s that a young freelancer had been gang-raped by policemen. But given the sexual nature of her injury, no one but the woman’s intimates dared extend sympathies.

Even close calls frequently go unmentioned. In my own case, I never reported to my foreign editor a narrow escape at an airport in Angola in 1995. Two drunken policemen pointing AK-47’s threatened to march a colleague and me into a shack for "some fun." We got away untouched, so why bring up the matter? I didn’t want my boss to think that my gender was a liability.

I am certainly not going to criticize victims of sexual assault for not going public. However, the news industry as a whole has a responsibility to report on the topic, without naming names.

Because it is swept under the rug, people get the impression that all people are the same, and that all cultures are equally righteous. Obviously there are rapes in the West as well, but female reporters in Missouri or Birmingham do not have to worry as much about these sorts of incidents as those in Egypt, Pakistan and Russia.

Last year, in one of Israel's more regrettable episodes, a female Al Jazeera reporter was strip searched before a press conference. She spoke up and it became an international incident. And she was right to speak up.

But when only a relatively minor incident in Israel gets major coverage - one in which no one is even alleging sexual overtones - shouldn't these far more common cases in Arab, Muslim and other countries get a lot more exposure?

Or is it not only the female reporters who want to sweep it under the rug, but the entire journalism profession that doesn't want to appear Islamophobic or to feed stereotypes?

(h/t Silke, Jed)

Khameini calls Zionists "cancer". Time to return the favor.

From AFP:

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blasted "cancerous" Israel Monday, a day after its premier Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the planned passage of Iranian warships through the Suez Canal.

"The fake Zionist government is a cancerous tumor and the cause of different diseases and political, economic calamity in the region," the commander-in-chief of Iran told officials while marking the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Mohammed which in the Shiite calendar fell on Monday.

"The arrogance (Iran's standard term of abuse for the United States) is doing its best to preserve this warmongering tumor, but today the hatred of regional nations towards this cancerous tumor is more evident," state television quoted him as saying.

Iran regularly hurls insults at Zionists, but this is a field of diplomacy that we have pretty much ceded to Iran.

Isn't it time we show the ayatollahs what an insult should be?

The pitiful pile of pus that calls itself Khameini, whose mother was twice the man he'll ever be and who enjoys copulating with the corpse of his syphilitic grandpa, needs to learn what a real insult feels like.

So if you have some good ones, put them in the comments.Try to keep the language clean so as to avoid the Disqus bad word filter. (Plus, IMHO, that makes them funnier.)

Morning links

Anti-Israel indoctrination in the UK (The Jihad threat)

Could the Kingdom of Bahrain Become an Iranian Pearl Harbor? (JCPA)

Human Rights Watch's bad record on Israel got worse (NY Daily News op-ed)

Palestinian Incitement: The Real “Deal Breaker” (Joel Fishman/Israel Council for Foreign Relations)

Does the Arab world truly want a "Palestine?" (Efraim Karsh in MEF, audio)

(h/t Daphne Anson, Silke)

BDSers also want to boycott Palestinian Arab products!

The latest monthly COGAT report shows that not only does Gaza export strawberries and carnations, but also bell peppers:

In January 163.282 tons of strawberries, 2,693,430 carnations and 5.05 tons of bell peppers were exported.

Since the beginning of the season (28 November 2010) 315.27 tons of strawberries, 3,064,638 carnations and 6 tons of bell peppers were exported to European markets.

So the question is, is anyone calling for a boycott of Gaza flowers, strawberries and peppers?

Why, yes! The same BDS groups who want to boycott Israel also want to include Gaza - and the West Bank!

Palestinian Arab produce gets exported to Europe through Israel's Agrexco. And the BDSers call to boycott Agrexco.

Here's what they say about Gaza:

Under the severe conditions of Israel's illegal blockade which have brought Gaza imports and exports to a near halt, Agrexco has exploited its close relationship with the Israeli occupation authorities in order to secure a monopoly-like status in the export of Palestinian produce from Gaza, whenever a trickle of Palestinian products is granted to pass the blockade, often for Israeli public relations purposes. In the previous season, for instance, only a few tons of strawberries were allowed out of Gaza. While this season may see a larger quota of exports, the total number of Palestinian farmers involved is less than one thousand. Experts also predict that many of those can switch to producing items that are needed in the local Gaza market, if denied gateways to export strawberries and flowers. All claims that Agrexco operations benefit Palestinian farmers are no more than a fig leaf to cover up its complicity in Israel's violations of international law and the rights of the Palestinian people.... Instead, we call for intensifying pressure against Agrexco through a systematic and full boycott of all of Agrexco’s products and services.

Produce from the West Bank as well as Gaza are marketed by Agrexco under the brand name "Coral." They need to use Agrexco in order to pass all the certifications needed to get into the European market.

Here's one of the people that BDSers are telling to go to hell:

Um Hajjar Al-Ghalayini, 46 years old, owns half an acre of sandy Gaza land that produces two tons of strawberries every season. Since her husband died two years ago, the crop is the sole means of support for her nine children, mother-in-law and widowed sister, so every one of the bright red berries counts.

Last year, she had no choice but to sell her produce to the local market. That filled the Gaza markets with fruits and vegetables to the benefit of consumers, but for growers like Um Hajjar it was a disaster. Her earnings dropped by more than half and the family had a tough year economically. This week, as Israel took another step in easing its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, Um Hajjar delivered her strawberries to the Kerem Shalom checkpoint on the Israel-Gaza border, their first leg of a journey to the more profitable markets in Europe.

“Now I can say that things are getting back to normal, if not on the right track,” she told The Media Line.

So the BDSers don't give a damn about Palestinian Arab farmers in Gaza or the West Bank!

The next time someone tells you that people who boycott Israel are motivated because they love Palestinian Arabs so much, ask them if they support the boycott of Agrexco's Coral brand as well.

Daily MSM review (David G): The wonderfully moderate Qaradawi

Today's review of the major media, by David G:

About 24 hours after Elder of Ziyon wrote about the impending return of Youssef el-Qaradawi, the Washington Post and New York Times first covered him. These articles were in the context of reports on the demonstration he headlined Friday.

The Washington Post did not mention Qaradawi's name at first.

The demonstration, billed as a "Day of Victory and Continuation," came a day after three senior government officials and a wealthy industrialist who were close to Mubarak and were members of the ruling party were arrested on suspicion of corruption, money laundering and the misuse of public funds. Prosecutors are investigating the allegations, state television reported.

Qaradawi was only mentioned at the end.

In Tahrir, or Liberation, Square on Friday, a troupe of men wearing black T-shirts danced and sang in celebration of the arrests. Makeshift placards and banners held up by the crowd proclaimed the end of Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule and called on the generals to pursue all corrupt officials, revise the constitution and make Egypt a democracy.

"Our demands are clear as the sun," read a sign held by Marway el-Rawy, a 23-year-old woman.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a renowned Islamic scholar, presided over Friday prayers in the square, the heart of the revolt.

He called on the military to dismantle the current government and then said that the square should be renamed "Martyrs' Square" for the more than 330 people who were killed there.

There would seem to be some conflict between the democracy protesters and the proposal to change "Tahrir Square" to "Martyr's Square." To report that he simply "presided over prayers" seems to be conciously downplaying his role at the demonstration. The CSM reported:

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a leading Egyptian Islamic theologian popularized by Al Jazeera, returned to Cairo today to deliver a stirring but overtly political sermon, calling on Egyptians to preserve national unity as they press for democratic progress.

The CSM's reporter used "stirring" several times and at the end does his best to frame Qaradawi as moderate. Still the opening paragraph makes it clear that Qaradawi's role was to speak not simply to preside over prayers.

Qaradawi has often been a controversial figure in the West – he was banned from traveling to the US because of his support for attacks on US troops in Iraq, for instance – but is very much in the Sunni Islamic mainstream.

When former Monitor reporter Jill Carroll was kidnapped in Iraq in 2006, Qaradawi issued a religious ruling reiterating his position that the kidnapping and murder of civilians is sinful and called for her immediate release.

i.e. He's only controversial in the West but he's mainstream Sunni. Plus he differentiates between soldiers and civilians. Needless to say there's a lot more to Qaradawi, and it isn't particularly moderate.

The New York Times first reported on Qaradawi's return as part of a longer article about the region.

Mr. Qaradawi, who returned Thursday night from three decades in exile, spoke at a combination victory rally and democracy demonstration that brought hundreds of thousands of Egyptians back to the epicenter of the revolution that toppled Mr. Mubarak. State television, which until Mr. Mubarak’s departure last Friday had consistently belittled the crowds in the square, put attendance at two million.

Calling the demonstration one of "democracy" goes beyond the title of the gathering, which was of "victory and continuation."

In a second article focused on Sheikh Qaradawi, by David Kirkpatrick, it is clear that the Times is interested in boosting his "moderate" credentials.

Sheik Qaradawi, a popular television cleric whose program reaches an audience of tens of millions worldwide, addressed a rapt audience of more than a million Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square to celebrate the uprising and honor those who died.

"Popular television ..." just like Oprah!

On Friday, he struck themes of democracy and pluralism, long hallmarks of his writing and preaching. He began his sermon by saying that he was discarding the customary opening “Oh Muslims,” in favor of “Oh Muslims and Copts,” referring to Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority. He praised Muslims and Christians for standing together in Egypt’s revolution and even lauded the Coptic Christian “martyrs” who once fought the Romans and Byzantines. “I invite you to bow down in prayer together,” he said.

He's a pluralist!

Scholars who have studied his work say Sheik Qaradawi has long argued that Islamic law supports the idea of a pluralistic, multiparty, civil democracy.

Scholars agree!

But he has made exceptions for violence against Israel or the American forces in Iraq. “You call it violence; I call it resistance,” said Prof. Emad Shahin of the University of Notre Dame, an Egyptian scholar who has studied Sheik Qaradawi’s work and was in Tahrir Square for his speech Friday.

"You call it violence; I call it resistance." You say "to-may-to"; I say "to-mah-to."

While Qaradawi's hate of America and the United States was noted in the first paragraph the lengths the reporter, David Kirkpatrick goes to portray as a moderate is really rather disturbing.

The Lede (not by Robert Mackey in this case) also has something on the Sheikh observing:

In an interview with The Guardian a few years ago, he expounded on some of his views, including his distaste for homosexuality and his belief that wives should be beaten only as a last resort, and even then just "lightly."

I'm sure that wives the world over will regard that as enlightened.

Still the Lede too, emphasizes the Kirkpatrick article on how "moderate" Qaradawi is.

Just going through the archives, here are some of Qaradawi's "moderate" hits:

Calling on Muslims to "cleanse" Palestine
Refusing to attend an interfaith conference because it has Jews
Condemning Muslims wanting to visit Al Aqsa Mosque while Israel is there
Calling on the PLO to return to terrorism (and the PLO's hilarious response)
Plus, a little Jew hatred for fun as he wrote the introduction to a biography of a major terrorist.

What's going on in Morocco?

CNN International reports:

Protests sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa have spread to Morocco, where thousands demonstrated Sunday to call for political reform, according to a human rights organization.

Police stayed away from the marches and demonstrations, most of which were peaceful, Human Rights Watch reported.

A government spokesman told a Russian television station on Sunday that protests in Morocco are not unusual, according to the Moroccan state news agency, Agence Maghreb Arabe Presse.

"Unlike most Arab countries, rallies and protests are common in Morocco," said Khalid Naciri, communication minister and government spokesman.

Naciri said the protesters' demands are "ordinary" and that the rallies take place lawfully and preserved public order in an environment of "stability." He also said the protests are part of the practice of democracy, Agence Maghreb Arabe Presse said. Demonstrators' demands are on the agenda of most political parties, he said.

Sounds like things are normal and under control.

Yet at the same time, Arabic Al Arabiya is reporting that there are 5 dead and dozens injured as people are rampaging through the streets, smashing cars, torching buildings and breaking store windows. The five were burned to death in a bank that was set on fire, mostly in Al Hociemba. 40 security personnel were injured.

The photos seem to support the Al Arabiya version.

UPDATE: CNN now mentions the bodies, without quite understanding what else happened yesterday.

PA whines about Chilean miner trip to Israel

From Ha'aretz:

Newspapers in Chile are carrying extensive coverage of the visit to Israel of the 33 miners who were trapped in the earth for 69 days before being rescued last October in a story that captured worldwide attention

The trip to Israel has been described by Chile's media as "a fitting way to salute to dramatic rescue of the miners."

But some newspapers are reporting that the visit is causing friction with the Palestinian Authority, which would like to be more actively involved.

PA diplomats in Santiago have complained to the Chilean foreign ministry that although the miners are scheduled to visit Bethlehem and Ramallah, in PA territory, the visit that has been described solely as a "trip to Israel." Dr. Mai al-Kaila, the PA ambassador to Chile said that the Palestinians would be happy to host the miners and their entourage during their visits to Bethlehem and Ramallah.

Chile is home to the largest Palestinian community outside of the Middle East, roughly 300,000-strong, with two-thirds of its members Christians. It is a relatively well-established community, politically active and vocal about events in the Middle East.

When tensions rise between Israel and Palestinians on the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, demonstrations are held in Chile's capital city, Santiago. Recently, tensions with the country's Jewish population (roughly 15,000-strong ) flared over Chile's recognition of Palestinian independence. Eugenio Toma, a senator of Palestinian origins, accused Chilean Jews of being "agents of Israel's government," and of "defrauding the public regarding the piratical occupation of Palestinian lands."

I had missed where a Palestinian Christian Chilean, tirelessly working to advance the cause of the PLO in Chile, accused Chile's Jews of being Israeli agents.

Of course, Israel is paying for this trip, so the PA's pique is simply whining.

But perhaps the funniest part of this episode was this comment by "Historian" in Ha'aretz: