In this mailing:
- Khaled Abu Toameh: Egypt Punishes the Palestinians
- Douglas Murray: Three Cheers for TAG [Together Against Grooming]
Egypt Punishes the Palestinians
by Khaled Abu
Toameh
July 12, 2013 at 5:00 am
July 12, 2013 at 5:00 am
|
Share:
   |
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
Egypt is
allowed to strangle the entire Gaza Strip and deny its people food and fuel,
especially on the eve of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, but one hardly
hears about these anti-Palestinian measures: they are being carried out by an
Arab country, not by Israel.
The Palestinians often complain that Israel, the US and other countries keep
intervening in their internal affairs. These complaints often draw much
attention from the Western media and many in the international community.But when the Palestinians meddle in the internal affairs of Arab countries, sometimes triggering acts of violence and instability, the international media and public opinion tend to look the other way.
And when the Arab countries retaliate by punishing the Palestinians, as is happening these days between the Palestinians and Egypt, the international community and human rights organizations rush to bury their heads in the sand.
Egypt is allowed to strangle the entire Gaza Strip and deny its people food and fuel, especially on the eve of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, but the media and human rights groups are missing in action. This, by the way, is happening at a time when Israel has announced a series of gestures toward the Palestinians on the occasion of Ramadan.
Each time they are punished for poking their nose into other people's business, the Palestinians start whining and crying, accusing the Arab countries of turning against them.
Today, it is Egypt's turn to punish the Palestinians for meddling in that country's internal affairs.
Following the military coup that ended President Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood regime, the first decision the new rulers of Egypt took was to ban Palestinians from entering their country without prior permission from Egypt's security authorities.
As these security forces rarely issue permits to Palestinians to enter Egypt, this decision means that thousands of Palestinians will not be able to continue their studies, receive medical treatment or visit relatives there.
The Palestinians have a long history of meddling in the internal affairs of Arab countries, even if that always proves to be counterproductive and harmful to Palestinian interests. Now, the new rulers of Egypt are extremely angry with the Palestinians, especially Hamas, for supporting Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
But instead of punishing Hamas and its leaders, the Egyptian authorities have resorted to collective punishment against the Palestinians, particularly those living in the Gaza Strip.
One hardly hears and reads about these anti-Palestinian measures: they are being carried out by an Arab country, not by Israel.
The Rafah border
crossing between Egypt and Gaza, January 2009. (Source: International
Transport Workers' Federation)
|
About 2,000 Palestinian pilgrims who were in Mecca have not been able to return home because of the closure of the Rafah terminal.
In addition, hundreds of Palestinian university students and patients have not been permitted to leave the Gaza Strip.
Thousands of Palestinians living in various countries, who were planning to spend the summer vacation with their relatives, have also been deprived of entering the Gaza Strip.
The closure of the border crossing has also been accompanied by an Egyptian military offensive to destroy dozens of smuggling tunnels along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. This offensive, which began last week, has resulted in a severe shortage of basic goods, fuel and gas inside the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians are now paying a heavy price for Hamas's and others' intervention in the internal affairs of Egypt.
Further, Hamas's rivals in Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are now repeating the same mistake by supporting the military coup against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
If and when the Muslim Brotherhood returns to power, they will do to Fatah and the Palestinian Authority what the Egyptian authorities are doing now to Hamas and Palestinian supporters of Morsi.
Sadly, the Palestinians have not learned the lesson from previous mistakes they made when they pushed their noses into other people's business. Each time the Palestinians get involved in internal conflicts in the Arab world, they always end up being the biggest losers
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, injured and displaced in Syria over the past two years. Again, because some Palestinians have either joined the "rebels" or the pro-Assad forces, this is a self-inflicted tragedy.
In the past, the Palestinians paid a very heavy price for meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and other Arab countries, but this price has not deterred them.
That meddling is also the reason most Arab countries have long despised the Palestinians, subjecting them to Apartheid laws and other punitive measures, including travel bans and deprivation of financial aid.
For earning the enmity and contempt of their Arab brethren, the Palestinians have only themselves to blame: they shoot themselves in the foot and then blame others for their misery. They would be better served if instead they would start directing their energies toward solving their own problems and improving their living conditions -- exactly what the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas governments are not doing.
Related Topics: Egypt
| Khaled Abu
Toameh
Three Cheers for TAG [Together Against Grooming]
by Douglas Murray
July 12, 2013 at 4:00 am
July 12, 2013 at 4:00 am
|
Share:
|
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
If you
congratulate people for speaking out against the gang-rape of children, your
society may be in something of a mess.
Last week in the UK, a gang of seven men from Oxford -- British Muslims of
largely Pakistani descent -- were sentenced to a total of 95 years in prison
for the sexual exploitation of a number of girls as young as 11. The gang had
subjected their victims to harrowing years of ordeals including gang-rape.
Though responses to these outrages was universally, "Horrified!" the
events did not, sadly, come as a surprise. On the contrary this is just the
latest in a set of similar cases that have come to light in the United Kingdom
in recent years. In each case -- in Derby, West Yorkshire, Rochdale and Telford
-- the victims have been underage white girls, generally from disturbed
backgrounds and often from children's homes. The perpetrators have been Muslim
men, overwhelmingly of Pakistani heritage.It seems that for years nobody wanted to do anything about this. A police force and prosecution service, terrified of accusations of racism or "Islamophobia," failed to act; as a result, many more girls were assaulted than they might otherwise have been. Even now, in reporting the case, there seems a desire to overlook what links these cases lest anyone feed into savory peoples' unsavory ideas. People are rightly careful to stress that we are talking about a minority of Muslim males. And they are rightly eager to stress that most of the Muslim communities in the UK are also horrified by such cases.
That the girls were selected by their abusers because of their different racial and religious background is not in doubt; it has even been confirmed by the sentencing judges.
But until now -- amid the outrage -- there has been among many people an unmistakable element of denial. Although there have been good, outspoken individuals, certain Muslims have been uncomfortably over-fulsomely praised for their "courage" in speaking out against the crimes -- as though it were something remarkable for a Muslim to speak out against a rape-gang. What a low place to put the bar of praise. If you congratulate people for speaking out against the gang-rape of children, your society may be in something of a mess.
Alyas Karmani of
"Together Against Grooming". (Source: taguk.org)
|
"Allah commands us to undertake all matters to the highest standard of excellence. As Muslims we are commanded to be just, fair and shun evil, wrongdoing and all forms of indecent and immoral behaviour. Failure to remember and act on this results in the society that we are part of declining in social and moral terms. Addressing every man today, I will speak to you of sexual grooming.
"There has been a lot in the news recently about men of Pakistani and South Asian backgrounds in Derby, Rochdale, Telford, Oxford and West Yorkshire who have been convicted of this evil and wicked crime. These actions are reprehensible and we condemn those involved and support the victims who are innocent children.
"Islam is a religion of mercy and compassion and places a strong obligation on safeguarding and protecting the weak and vulnerable from abuse - particularly women and children."
All this strikes me as rather good news, in a period fairly lacking in the same.
Unfortunately not everybody who could have done with getting involved in this initiative actually did so. Oxford's local paper, the Oxford Mail, did some solid investigative reporting and discovered that a number of mosques in the area -- precisely the area which the latest rape-gang had come from -- failed to read out the sermon.
For instance, at the Central Oxford Mosque, instead of reading out the message categorically condemning the abuse, the imam apparently spoke about "Ramadan and charity." According to one of those involved, the TAG-proposed sermon was a "publicity stunt" which merely fed into a "far-right agenda." He went on to say, "I have always felt it is not a race or religious issue. They are talking to the converted. Every single Muslim knows it is abhorrent."
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Madina Mosque was quoted as saying that it was unnecessary to address the problem in mosques. "It is not a specific subject that you need to talk about in the mosques. As far as grooming issue [sic] is concerned I think that is now history. This pattern of child abuse has finished. This sentencing I am sure has assured that." Other mosques in the area had the same resistance to the anti-rape sermon and refused either to read it out or address the issue.
It is a good thing that TAG got any mosques at all to unite in reading out the same condemnation at the same time across the country. That is how one would want any Muslim-led campaign to look. Of course there are others who would rather this did not happen.
Related Topics: United
Kingdom | Douglas Murray
To subscribe to the this mailing list, go to http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/list_subscribe.php
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment