Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Mariage annulé: pour Dati, «un moyen de protéger la personne», Libération, 30 mai 2008

Alors que la polémique enfle autour de l’annulation par la justice du mariage d’une jeune femme qui avait menti sur sa virginité, la garde des Sceaux Rachida Dati a défendu vendredi cette décision au motif qu’il s’agissait aussi de «protéger la personne».

«La justice est là pour protéger. Le fait d’annuler un mariage est aussi un moyen de protéger la personne qui souhaite peut-être se défaire du mariage, parce que je pense que cette jeune fille (…) a souhaité également, sans doute, se séparer assez rapidement», a déclaré la ministre de la Justice. «L’annulation de mariage est un moyen de se séparer rapidement», a-t-elle ajouté.

Depuis la médiatisation hier de cette affaire, les réactions indignées venant du monde associatif et politique se multiplient, y compris dans les rangs de l’UMP. L’un des porte-parole de l’UMP Frédéric Lefèbvre a ainsi souhaité vendredi que la chancellerie «déclenche un recours dans l’intérêt de la loi pour dire le droit».

«Si c’est la question de la virginité qui a motivé l’annulation du mariage, je demande à la chancellerie de déclencher un recours dans l’intérêt de la loi pour dire le droit», a-t-il déclaré dans un communiqué.

Witness: ‘Likud on the terraces’ by David Goldblatt | Prospect Magazine June 2008 issue 147

We pull off the sharply lit trunk road into darkness. In the car’s beams we pick out the broken street lamps, the pitted road and accumulated rubbish that announce our arrival in Arab Israel. Ahi Nazareth’s ground sits on a high spike of a hill on the city’s outskirts. On the summit, the floodlights of the citadel-stadium send a flare of light into the sky.

From the gloom below come the relentless spinning blue lights of police cars, vans and armoured trucks, criss-crossed by thin yellow beams from the helicopters circling above us. Denoted by his car number plate, the seventh-ranking police chief in the country is here, along with at least 600 police as well as border guards; one armed man for every six or seven fans, and they are nervous.

Like so much in Israel, the tension of this moment can be traced back to 1948—Israel’s foundation year—and before. No Arab, Muslim or Christian has ever played for Beitar, though they are common in every other Israeli squad. Beitar fans have always booed Arab players and fans for not singing the Hatikva (Israel’s national anthem) before games, but in the last decade or so the chants have become more viciously anti-Arab.

The most recent escalation in tensions began last November, on the 12th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by the ultra-nationalist Yigal Amir. A minute’s silence was held by every Israel football crowd but for Beitar, where La Familia sang songs in praise of Amir and the West Bank settlers. The following month they joined settler groups in a flag-planting ceremony on an occupied East Jerusalem hilltop earmarked for settlement. The next few games heard the usual but now louder refrains of “Muhammad is dead,” and “Death to the Arabs.”

Bruce Wilson, Talk To Action | Reclaiming Citizenship, History, and Faith, May 15, 2008

Yesterday I discovered an astonishing audio recording of a sermon, by controversial McCain endorser Pastor John Hagee, in which Hagee elaborates on his view that Hitler and the Nazis were divine agents sent by God to (with gruesome inefficiency it would seem) chase Europe’s Jews towards Palestine. In his 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown”, Hagee proposed that anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves - the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive.

McCain Rejects Pastors Backing Over Remarks - washingtonpost.com, May 23, 2008

STOCKTON, Calif., May 22 — Sen. John McCain on Thursday repudiated the presidential endorsement of the Rev. John Hagee after learning about a sermon in which the megachurch pastor from San Antonio declared that God allowed the rise of Adolf Hitler because it resulted in returning Israel to the Jewish people.

The Arizona Republicans decision to distance himself from Hagee came after months of mounting criticism, particularly from Roman Catholics, over his acceptance of Hagee’s endorsement in late February. Hagee has called the Catholic Church a “false religious system” and a “false cult system” and has suggested that the church played a role in the Holocaust.

This review does not do this film justice.  It is a brilliant portrait of despair.

9 Star Hotel, The New York Times, May 23, 2007

In “9 Star Hotel,” the Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar draws us into the precarious world of young Palestinian construction workers scrabbling to survive in and around the Israeli city of Modiin. Irregularly and illegally employed, the men hide in the wooded hills above the city, sleeping in shelters made from scraps of Sheetrock and constantly on the alert for Israeli security forces.

Accompanied by Mr. Haar and his hand-held camera, the workers sneak across hazardous highways at night, flee police raids and speculate on an uncertain future. The cheerful Ahmad, nicknamed the Merchant by his peers, was once a night watchman in an Israeli building. Now he scavenges for garbage and argues with his friend Muhammad, a thoughtful day laborer who worries about the Palestinians’ lack of progress.

“We think backward, we never think forward,” he says, exemplifying the film’s bipartisan tone. “9 Star Hotel” may strive to make the political personal, but it does so via subjects who seem just as willing to question their own culture as the one that excludes them.

Nevertheless, by ignoring Israeli voices and focusing only on the immigrants, Mr. Haar has produced a documentary filled with immediacy but free of analysis, a fascinating but ultimately unenlightening record of their plight.

9 STAR HOTEL

Bin Laden: All Muslims must help end Gaza siege - Haaretz, May 18, 2008

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden lashed out at Arab leaders for sacrificing the Palestinians in a new message released Sunday and he called on Muslim militants in Egypt to help break the blockade of Gaza.

“Those (Arab) kings and leaders sacrificed Palestine and Al-Aqsa to keep their crowns. … But we will not be relieved of this responsibility,” bin Laden said in the audio message posted on an Islamic militant Web site where al-Qaida leaders issue their statements.

Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City is one of the holiest sites for
Muslims.

 al-Jazeera, May 18, 2008
دعا زعيم تنظيم القاعدة أسامة بن لادن في رسالة صوتية جديدة إلى فك الحصار الذي تفرضه إسرائيل على قطاع غزة.

وقال بن لادن في رسالة “موجهة إلى الأمة الإسلامية” بثها موقع إسلامي على الإنترنت مساء الأحد إن “الواجب الديني يفرض على كل مسلم محاربة الحصار الإسرائيلي الظالم على غزة”.

وأضاف أنه لن يتسنى تحرير الأراضي الفلسطينية بدون قتال ما أسماها “حكومات عربية تؤيد إسرائيل”.

Fareed Zakaria, Who’s the Real Appeaser? Newsweek.com, May 17, 2008

The foundation of Hizbullah’s strength is not just its rockets but the support it can command from 1 million Lebanese Shiites. That’s why dealing with the group as a military problem is counterproductive. Augustus Richard Norton, author of the best recent study of Hizbullah, argues that the 2006 war strengthened the group. “I was in Lebanon in late 2007,” he told me. “And Shia families that had been neutral for 20 years now accepted Hizbullah’s argument that the Shia needed the protection it provided.”

The Bush administration’s response to the current setback has again been a military one—promising more arms for the Lebanese Army. But the reason Hizbullah was able to wrest control of so much of Beirut was that the Army sat back and refused to intervene. The Army—which mirrors the diversity of the society—was wary of getting involved in a struggle in which it would likely lose militarily and politically.

It’s not just Hizbullah. In dealing with many such groups—Hamas, the Taliban—the Bush administration has adopted a macho, exclusively military approach. All three of these groups have a political base in their societies that is deep and enduring. Denouncing them as evil and promising to destroy them will not change that; in fact, doing so only adds to their mystique of resistance and struggle. What we need is a political strategy to combat, contest and weaken the appeal of these groups or to marginalize their violent factions. Such a policy would naturally involve some contact with their leaders, but as part of a much broader effort to engage all groups in these societies politically.

Jazeera, May 16, 2008, بن لادن يهاجم الغرب ويتعهد بمواصلة الجهاد لتحرير فلسطي

حمل زعيم تنظيم القاعدة أسامة بن لادن على الزعماء الغربيين لمشاركتهم في احتفال إسرائيل بذكرى إنشائها، وتعهد بمواصلة الجهاد ضد الاحتلال الإسرائيلي حتى تحرير فلسطين.

وقال بن لادن في رسالة صوتيه جديدة في الذكرى الستين لنكبة فلسطين “إننا سنواصل بإذن الله القتال ضد الإسرائيليين وحلفائهم إحقاقا للحق، ولن نتخلى عن شبر واحد من فلسطين بإذن الله ما دام على الأرض مسلم صادق واحد”.

وشدد على أن الجهاد من أجل القضية الفلسطينية هو أحد الأسباب الرئيسية التي تقف وراء حرب القاعدة ضد الغرب، ومصدر إلهام لمنفذي هجمات 11 سبتمبر على الولايات المتحدة عام 2001.

وأشار إلى أن “مشاركة زعماء غربيين لليهود في احتفالهم بذكرى إنشاء إسرائيل يؤكد على أن الغرب يؤيد هذا الاحتلال اليهودي الغاشم لبلادنا، وأنهم يقفون في خندق الإسرائيليين ضدنا”.