Links from my del.icio.us account for April 15th through April 16th:
- Strategic Insights — The Arab Minority in Israel: Motivations for Collective Action – Interesting academic article on 48 Palestinians and their potential for action
- Arab world sees U.S. in poor light: poll – Yahoo! News – No kidding
- "Bilal Hussein to Be Released Wednesday" by Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine) – AP photographer Bilal Hussein to be freed tomorrow
- Mauritania Mulls Ending Israel Ties – Only (kinda) democracy in Arab world reviews Israel relationship
- abu muqawama: Al-Qaeda's Arithmetic of Response – Fascinating guest post on al-Qaeda's doctrine of just war
I love how Mauritania is called a democracy and receives little to no criticism (I looked) on this site. While “the arabist” has hundreds of entries regarding the evils of zionism, there is not one article which mentions the fact that Mauritania SANCTIONS SLAVERY BASED ON “RACE”. Clearly, those who accuse Israel of a moral double-standard have a lot of self-reflecting to do.
FYI Mauritania banned slavery in the 1980s, and while it does continue in some areas and of course is abominable, it is being phased out. There are some long-term difficulties in reintegrating former slaves, who are destitute in an extremely poor country, but there has been progress. So it’s not true that Mauritania “sanctions” slavery — it doesn’t, even if the practice endures in some remote localities. Slavery unfortunately continues in various shapes across the world, particularly sexual slavery. Just because I don’t mention that (although in Mauritania I do follow the progress and reversals in the campaign to eradicate slavery) does not mean I don’t care or that I somehow think Israel is always worse than anything else going on in the world. Israel’s policies and the occupation of Palestine and Syria, however, do have a much bigger impact on regional politics than Mauritania’s human rights situation.