Month: August 2006

Coptic conscript tortured to death?

There had been emails circulating among the Egyptian leftist Yahoo! Groups demanding an investigation into the death of a Coptic army conscript. The emails had links to The Free Copts website, which alleges Private Hani Sarofim was tortured to death by his commander to force his conversion to Islam.

The article included a statement by the deceased family and contact numbers, which when I tried, I could not get through.

I am extremely troubled by this, and can not validate what happened. The Free Copts have previously reported on some serious abuses that did indeed happen, but there were other cases which they blew out of proportion. I don’t know if this case is true, but if so, then one can safely say we are still living in the Medieval Ages. Please if anyone has more information about this subject, or if you managed to get through to the family on the phone numbers, fill us in.

Arab politics meets Days of Our Lives

Perhaps the worst thing about Arab ruling elites is how embarrassing they are:

Arafat widow denies reports she remarried
Thursday August 17, 06:03 PM

TUNIS (AFP) – The widow of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has denied Arab press reports that she had married a brother-in-law of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

“I absolutely deny reports about my marriage with Mr Belhassen Trabelsi and will take legal action against the media who published this wrong piece of information,” Suha Arafat, who has French citizenship, told AFP on Thursday.

Trabelsi is a brother of Leila Trabelsi, the wife of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Groan.

Israel’s political crisis

Jonathan Edelstein at the Head Heeb has an interesting analysis of political crisis Israel is going through after the war:

I’m not going to venture an opinion on whether Olmert should stay in office. My bet, though, is that he will stay, and that even if he is replaced, the coalition will continue in roughly its present Kadima-centered form. Whatever expectation of a political earthquake the war may have created, and whatever differences the coalition members have over where to go from here, their survival instincts and vested interests will be a powerful force against radical change. This isn’t last year where much of the ruling coalition hoped to gain from a radical realignment; this time around, the overwhelming concern is to avoid losing, and that will make all the difference.

There are three potential ways the current government can be replaced. The first, and most extreme, is a collapse of the government followed by dissolution of the Knesset and a general election. The second involves the right-religious bloc plus a sufficient number of Kadima defectors invoking the “rule of 61” – the provision in the Basic Law: The Government that allows 61 MKs to install a new prime minister – and put either Netanyahu or Lieberman in the premier’s chair. The third is a palace coup, in which a senior Kadima figure takes over from Olmert with or without a reshuffle of the coalition.

I don’t much faith in Israeli politicians no matter which party they’re from these days, but I always believe that things could be worse.

Then there was one

Costa Rica has decided to move its embassy to Israel from Jerusalem, where it has been since 1982, to Tel Aviv.

President Oscar Arias said the move was needed to bring the Central American nation into line with international law and mend relations with Arab nations. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, but most nations don’t formally recognize that claim.

“It’s time to rectify a historical error that damages us on the international level and deprives us of any friendship with the Arab world,” Arias said Wednesday.

The Costa Rican foreign ministry explained the move as one of wanting to comply with the UN’s guidelines to refusing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but the move may have also come at the behest of the country’s new president, Nobel Prize winner Oscar Arias, who announced the decision soon after the Hizbullah-Israel ceasefire went into place. (It had been part of his election campaign pledges.) Of course Israel is appalled:

The government of Israel expresses its regret and disappointment at the decision by the government of Costa Rica to move its embassy from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. This act, taken at this particular time, is liable to be interpreted as giving in to terrorism and awarding its perpetrators.

Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel and the Jewish people and nothing will change our firm stand on this subject.

So are American Jewish organizations:

“Given the fact that Costa Rica is a shining light of democracy in Latin America, this action against another democracy, Israel, is particularly painful,” David Harris, the American Jewish Committee’s executive director, said in a statement Wednesday.

The only other country to have its embassy in Jerusalem is El Salvador, which was the first South American country to forge strong links with Israel. It acquired the region’s first jet fighters from Israel in the early 1970s, when Israel was close to the military dictatorship there. Israel continued to maintain close links to the military junta that fought, with US and Israeli backing, a long and bloody civil war against Marxist rebels throughout the 1980s. A UN report found that nearly all the human rights violations documented throughout that period were caused by paramilitary troops and allied right-wing death squads.