إقتراح

أكيد أكيد كراسي السلطة دي مريحة جدآ جدآ لدرجة إن مش بس عبدالناصر، ولاالسادات، ولااللي مايتسماش،ولا المجلس، ولا حتى الراجل الطيب اللي الناس إختارتة من الميدان بيرضوا يقوموا من عليه ويسيبوه لغيرهم يجربه شوية. ومش بينفع معاهم أي كلام ولا حتي الطبل البلدي.ء

 لهذا، أقترح سحب وتدمير جميع الكراسي اللي في قصر السلطة، مجلس الوزارة، مجلس الشعب، مجلس الشورى ( دة لو صمموا يبلونا بيه برضة)، المجالس المحلية، مجالس الإدارات، المجالس الرياضية، وحتى مجالس الأنس،  و تغيير إسمهم جميعا من مجالس لمواقف.ء

مين عارف، يمكن لما ضهرهم يتقطم يحلوا عنا ويمشوا!!!ء

October 6th

Other than private occasions such as birthdays and wedding anniversaries of loved ones, October 6th was my favorite holiday. To me it is the day we Egyptians regained our land and even more importantly, we regained our dignity (KARAMA).

It's ironic that a person who supposedly played a role in that historic day, has betrayed his people and his military oath and turned into a criminal who stripped Egyptians of our karama, and even collaborated with the same enemy our brave soldiers defeated.

For this reason, I now value and cherish two more dates, January 25th, and February 11. The first marked the long awaited unity of all factions of Egyptians to revolt against the tyrant, and the second marked his actual fall from his illegal thrown.

I am now eager to add a third and most important date to the previous ones. I'm waiting for the day when the honest and innovative Egyptians who actually initiated and lead the revolution, to take charge of Egypt's future.

Say Amen.


مدنية ديمقراطية، لا دينية ولا عسكرية

Palestine Inside Out

Do you think that you know everything about the suffering of Palestinians in the occupied territories? Unless you are a Palestinian living in the West Bank then please allow me to answer on your behalf. The answer is NO.

Only a handful of books can help you begin to understand the extent of the humiliation, suffering and dire conditions under which our brothers and sisters in humanity, the Palestinians endure and suffer at the hands of our other brothers and sisters in humanity, the Zionists.

One of the books that might help you begin to understand is Nothing to lose but your life which I recently reviewed. Another that I  strongly recommend is Palestine Inside Out by Saree Makdisi.

On page one of the introduction, you are introduced to a unique Palestinian tragedy. Sam Bahour, a Palestinian businessman happily settled with his wife and two daughters in the West back was informed that because he was born in Ohia, he must leave his home in the Palestinian territories because the Israeli government facility in the settlement of Beit El, has decided not to renew his permit!!!

 Allow me to repeat this because I had difficulty understanding it the first time around. A Palestinian born to two Palestinian parents, who was born in Ohio because his parents were forcibly expelled from their home and land, and who is married to a Palestinian women born in the West Bank and who is listed on the territory’s official population registry, thus the couple is eligible for family unification, yet an illegal occupying force stationed in an illegal settlement built on internationally acknowledged Palestinian land has the authority to throw him out at will!!! I still don’t get it!!!

On page three we are assured that Sam’s case is not an isolated incident.  Amal al-Amleh, a wife and mother and a resident of the West bank made the unforgivable mistake of crossing the Jordan River to visit her ailing father in Jordan. When she tried to return to the West Bank, the Israeli soldier at the Allenby Bridge denied her the required permit to rejoin her husband, a West bank native, and her children because Amel was born in Jordan. Though she is only a few miles away, it’s been years since Amel last saw her children. Her youngest who was only ten months old when she left and her siblings are growing motherless because an Israeli occupier is preventing a Palestinian woman from traveling from one Arab country where her father lives to an Arab territory where her husband and children are awaiting her. 

According to the Israeli Human Rights Organization B’Tselem , 120,000 Palestinian applications for family unification have been pending since 2000. 

Having read this, you must be either outraged by the cruelty and injustice of the Israeli practices, or you could be suspicious of the credibility of it all. You might be thinking why and how could any person do this to another human especially when some of them or of their parents have suffered tremendous injustice and cruelty at the hands of the Nazis. 

The answer to this question is simple. The Israeli forces are merely implementing an Israeli government policy (as set in place by Ariel Sharon and reaffirmed by his successors) with the stated objective to separate the Jews from non-Jews.   Thus the concept of transfer.

“Transfer” is a euphemism referring to the removal or expulsion of the indigenous, non-Jewish, population of Palestine.  During the creation of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced (transferred) from their homes, and forcibly prevented from returning afterwards, despite their moral and legal right to do so. Having captured what remained of Palestine during the 1967 war, Israel again found itself taking control of land with a population it did not want. Thus a shift from the 1948 large scale “forcible expulsion” to the “voluntary transfer” by basically turning the lives of Palestinian in the West Bank to hell!!!

Some of the devilish tools used to ensure the transfer:

• The Immense Wall
• Gates closure
• Sterile highways
• Work Permits
• Travel Permits
• Visa permits
• Check points
• Back-to-Back cargo checkpoints
• Back-to-back cargo road blocks
• Uprooting of trees
• House demolitions
• Land confiscation
•  New military zones
• New seam zones

And the list goes on and on and on.

Look up those terms and see how each one of them is making the lives of the Arab residents of the West Bank unbearable.

As suggested earlier, read Saree Makdisi’s book and learn much more about those injustices, then do speak out against them. Remember, "indifference to evil is even more evil than evil itself" (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel).

The American Granddaughter

As mentioned in the previous post, the late Noha Radi's Baghdad Diaries educated me on what the embargo was doing to the Iraqi people. Riverbend's amazing blog and book Baghdad Burning was pivotal in exposing the true face of the invasion.  

The American Granddaughter novel by Iraqi Inaam Kachachi, completes the picture, and is extremely valuable in highlighting the history, the dreams, and the lives of  important sectors of the Iraqi people, that is the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, and the Shiites.

The novel is also unique in showing the American invasion of Iraq from the point of view of an Iraqi American returning to her homeland as an interpreter working for the invading forces. It's true that she took the job for the money, but she went there convinced that she was helping rebuild her homeland. 

If Zaina was successful, at least for a while, in deceiving herself about the truth of her mission and that being a part of the invading army could also mean that she is on the side of the Iraqi people, her grandmother was too wise and too proper to accept that.

Zaina's love for her grandmother, her forbidden love to her milk brother Muhaymen, and what she saw with her own eyes throughout her mission in Iraq has finally made her sadder but wiser.

Back to Iraq

If there is anyone out there who is still undecided about the invasion of Iraq, I will give you one last chance before I call you a complete moron. You need to answer the following questions:

1. Do you think that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11?
2. Did the invasion of Iraq eliminate terrorism?
3. Did any of the tens of thousands of invading forces ever find any weapons of mass destruction?
4. Did the Bush/Blair invasion eliminate the killing and torture that the Iraqis suffered from under Saddam?
5. Did the embargo which was enforced for years hurt anyone but the innocent Iraqi children and peaceful civilians
6. Is the Iraqi economy, education, health care, industry, infrastructure better today, eight years after the invasion, than they were prior to it?

If you answered any of the above question with anything other than NO (even a may be is not allowed), then you are a hopeless moron, and please leave my blog this minute and remove it from your history, and don't you ever come back.

 

Otherwise, you're a reasonable and logical person, and can benefit from reading a number of excellent books that I found solid, candid, and courageous.

1. Baghdad Diaries - Noha Radi
2. The Plan of Attack - Bob Woodword
3. Baghdad Burning - Riverbend
4. Collateral Damage - Chris Hedges
5. The American Garnddaughter - Inaam Kachachi

I've reviewed Baghdad Burning & Collateral Damage in previous posts. In my next post, I'll review the only fiction book in the list, The American Granddaughter.