Il direttore generale di Al Jazeera va a Washington, e apre – sembra – un nuovo capitolo nella storia dei rapporti tra l’amministrazione americana e la regina delle tv arabe. La clip è su Washingtonnote, dove si ricorda anche che Wadah Khanfar era capo dell’ufficio di Baghdad quanto le truppe americane in Iraq bombardarono la sede di Al Jazeera.

Come cambiano i tempi…

Occhio della telecamera su Farah Pandith, la nuova rappresentante speciale del dipartimento di stato presso i musulmani. Questo è l’incontro che si è tenuto il 17 luglio al Washington Institute for Near East Policy (qui). (thanks, John)

The Office of the Special Representative to Muslim Communities (OSRMC) will operate outside of the traditional Washington mindset to work at a grassroots level, engage the next generation, and build new partnerships. The new office will connect directly with Muslims worldwide — brainstorming with nonstate leaders and individuals inside various communities — to create sustainable solutions to the challenges they face.

Identity is one of the most serious issues facing Muslim youth today. Many young Muslims, in both Muslim minority and Muslim majority countries, are questioning their place in society and struggling to reconcile their culture and religion with modernity. In response, the U.S. government has created initiatives such as the “citizen dialogue program” to engage and mentor these youths. This program joins young American Muslims who have navigated these complex issues of identity with their peers from other countries. More will be done to seed initiatives that bring different people together to work on ideas and challenges. The OSRMC, for instance, will bring together youth workers from London with those from Amman and Mumbai to discuss how to use technology and sports to most effectively engage young Muslims in their neighborhoods.

Tecnologia e sport? Mi sembra un po’ poco… Facciamo “governance e rappresentanza”? Forse è meglio…

I turchi vorrebbero entrare nei colloqui in corso al Cairo per la riconciliazione interpalestinese. La richiesta è stata fatta all’Egitto.

La paura della febbre suina ha colpito la festa più popolare del Cairo, quella dei moulid alla moschea di Sayyed Zeynab. La festa richiama talmente tanta gente, da potersi trasformare in un veicolo di trasmissione dell’influenza A: i fedeli arrivano da tutto l’Egitto, e passano intere notti attorno alle moschee più importanti della città. Le autorità egiziane hanno quindi deciso che quest’anno i moulid non ci saranno.

Que le gouvernement prenne des précautions en diminuant le nombre de gens dans les moyens de transports, surtout le métro, les stations balnéaires, les souks et les casinos de la rue Al-Haram, on peut le comprendre car ces endroits sont souvent encombrés. Mais annuler un mouled qui va durer à peine quelques jours, cela est insensé », lance Manal, une bénévole qui distribue de l’eau fraîche à l’entrée de la mosquée.

Gli stessi timori stanno colpendo i viaggi dei pellegrini alla Mecca.

A intervalli regolari, la società israeliana discute e si divide sulla questione delle colonie. E dei coloni. Ora non succede in maniera così diffusa e coinvolgente: l’ampliamento delle colonie suscita molte meno reazioni di prima… Oggi interviene Asher Susser, su Haaretz, per spiegare che l’ampliamento delle colonie mette a rischio la legittimità dell’esistenza di Israele. Soprattutto quando si parla del nodo fondamentale: le colonie dentro Gerusalemme est, la Gerusalemme palestinese occupata dal 1967. E la conclusione di Susser, professione d’esperienza alla Tel Aviv University, è paradossale: i coloni più radicali stanno giocando per la one-state-solution, come gli intellettuali della sinistra estrema israeliana.

The current settlement campaign, on the other hand, like the unnecessary construction in East Jerusalem, is not designed to ensure the existence of the state of the Jews, but rather to deprive the Arabs of their state in the West Bank and their capital in Arab Jerusalem. That is precisely the difference between the just Zionism of self-defense and aggressive Zionism, which is totally dismissive of the Arabs and their human rights.

According to the settlers, the Jews have the right “to settle everywhere,” and the Jews of course also have needs created by “natural growth.” In their opinion, do the Arabs also have the right to settle everywhere, or is any construction by Arabs illegal for one reason or another? And don’t the Arabs have “natural growth”? In the eyes of the settlers, the term “illegal” only applies to Arabs, not to the settlers’ construction, because the source of their inspiration is divine and beyond the democratic context. According to this approach, the law only exists as a tool of the state, as the settlers’ subcontractor, to deprive the Arabs of what little is theirs.

Such an approach of “me and me alone” should outrage every reasonable person, and as a result a large and important part of the Israeli Jewish public believes that this line of thinking is intolerable. And it is not just them. The Obama administration knows that Israel can be attacked over the settlement issue because American Jewry, too, will not come to Israel’s defense on the matter. If that is the situation, why should we complain about the goyim who view the settlements as an act of outrageous injustice?

Through their actions, the settlers not only undermine the legitimacy of settlement in the territories, they also undermine international legitimacy for the very existence of the State of Israel. The grave results are in plain view. Zionism’s just cause and existential interests are grounded in the equality and mutuality of partition. [...] It is patently apparent that, beyond the issue of basic justice, dividing the land is also in the clear interest of Zionism and anyone who wants to maintain the State of Israel as the state of the Jews. In the arrogance of their position, which tramples on the rights of others, the settlers are compromising the foundations of the justice of the Zionist enterprise, and acting against the State of Israel’s existential interests. By making the Land of Israel the supreme value over and above the State of Israel, they are joining, in a bizarre way, their left-wing post-Zionist “brothers,” who also propose a single state that will succeed the state of the Jews.