Shin Bet ‘Jewish Division’ head exposed 8, October 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.Tags: Avigdor Arieli, Avigdor Arieli video, Shin Bet, Shin Bet 'Jewish Division' head exposed, Shin Bet video
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This video shows a high-ranking member of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service. The 17-year old Israeli who took this video and posted it on YouTube has been arrested as it is illegal to reveal and publicise such information.
Avigdor Arieli, the head of Shin Bet’s ‘Jewish Division’, lives in a settlement in the West Bank and his role it to monitor extreme right-wing Israeli settlers. Haaretz reports that his identity, despite being officially a secret, is well-known in the area.
As the sage Michael Dunn notes,
if the hardline settlers are out to get him, he must be doing something right.
Hat tip: Mideasti
Would US shoot down Israeli aircraft? 22, April 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in American ME Relations.Tags: Air force cadet, Iraqi air space, Israel overflying Iraq, Israeli air force, US Air Force
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The Mideasti blog covers a great little story of a young air force cadet asking a horribly tricky question of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
‘Since Iraqi airspace is a US declared no fly zone’ he began ‘would the US therefore shoot down any Israeli aircraft over flying Iraq?’
The Commander obfuscated about not answering hypotheticals and the great US-Israeli relationship but overall I wholly agree with Michael Collins Dunn commenting that
…I hope the AFROTC cadet enjoys doing his active duty at a radar station in northern Greenland or the South Pole, but it was a good question, wasn’t it?
Kuwait splurges its surplus & political reforms afoot? 20, October 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Kuwait.Tags: Kuwait, Kuwait Times, Kuwait budget surplus, Silk Road City, Kuwait parliament
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Business Intelligence Middle East reports that Kuwait will be spending some $63bn in the next four years on various projects which include fulfilling its oft-mooted Silk Road project, building a modern harbor and a railway and metro system.
Also in Kuwait, Michael Collins Dunn draws attention to an article in the Kuwait Times suggesting that they might revamp (again) their electoral district system by merging all areas into one large super constituency. Such a system would, theoretically, curtail the gerrymandering and buying of votes that has gone on when the districts were small and ‘buyable’. Whether or not this will aid in Kuwait’s political paralysis is, however, a different question.
Al Azhar bans the Niquab 10, October 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt, Islam.Tags: Al Azhar, Al Azhar Niqab ban, Egypt terrorist attacks, Niqab, Niqab ban, Sayed Tantawy
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The Islamic World’s oldest, most revered and preeminent seat of higher education has banned women from wearing the Niqab, as pictured above, in their dormitories and in women only classrooms.
The Grand Sheikh of Al Azhar Mohammed Sayed Tantawy decided to enforce the ban did as the Niqab is not mandated at all by Islam but is instead only a regional custom. However, there is also the very real and practical result of this ban that female students now have to show their faces to male security guards.
Such a move is unsurprising in security conscious Egypt. One one level, the legion of state security organs are ever vigilant in maintaining Mubarak in power. Keeping a closer eye on their preeminent seat of Islamic learning and preventing it from radicalizing is one aspect of this. Those wearing the Niqab are thought to be – ipso facto – of a more austere and extreme Islamic persuasion. This is not so say that they are necessarily extremists: of course they are not; but those wearing it “tends [sic] to be adopted by the most radical elements” as Dunn puts it. Additionally, Egypt’s vast security apparatus is there to protect Egypt’s economic lifeline – tourism – from debilitating terrorist attacks such as devastating attacks in 1997 in Luxor and in 2005-6 in Shark El Sheikh and in Dahab respectively.
Jewish businessman to buy half of Al Jazeera? 8, October 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Egypt, Qatar.Tags: Al-Jazeera, Al Jazeera sale, Haim Saban
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Micheal Collins Dunn turns Sherlock Holmes over the rumour that Jewish-Egyptian mogul Haim Saban is seeking to buy a large stake in Al Jazeera. Dunn comments that the notion that strong Jewish supporting tycoon buying Al Jazeera off the Qatari Royal Family sounds anywhere from bizarre to ridiculous (the latter of which being the end of the spectrum at which I stand). A bit of digging and Dunn goes to the source of the story, Egypt’s fairly scurrilous and tabloidish Al Misryyoon. Given the papers penchant for publishing – how to put this – not necessarily 100% corroborated reports and Egypt’s general antipathy towards Qatar these days and there is a perfect recipe for a naughty little story to stir up a bit of trouble.
Yemen: Who’s pulling the strings? 15, September 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Yemen.Tags: Terrorism's Shangri-La, Tisdall, Yemen civil war
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Simon Tisdall in the Guardian has a good piece on Yemen. Unlike the Michael Collins Dunn who does not see much evidence of foreign involvement but rather a Sunni media frenzy over the potential of Iran interfering, Tisdall quotes the rebels in the North claiming that Saudi planes have bombed them and that they have recovered Saudi mortars. They, therefore, have been helped by Al Sadr’s Shia forces which are generally believed to be at Iran’s behest.
So far it seems to me that rhetoric is overtaking facts and that the Sunni half of the Gulf’s perpetual view that Iran is just bound to interfere has led them to either pronounce that they in fact are meddling or for them to counter and support their ‘own forces’ in the conflict.
It is, however, a messy conflict to the extent that Tisdale quotes the Wall Street Journal as describing it as being second only to the unruly Af-Pak border area of North Waziristan as a ‘terrorist’s Shangr-La‘.
Update:
Carnegie on Yemen. Worth a read.
Iran meddling in Yemen? 10, September 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Middle East, Yemen.Tags: Houthis, Iran, Middle East Institute Blog, Yemen, Yemeni conflicy, Zaydis
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(Yemen was once variously known as Arabia Felix or Happy Yemen. The word being pushed off the cliff is Al Saaeed (Happy) by the other word Al Yemen. Al Hayat)
Michael Collins Dunn over at the indefatigable and ever-informative Middle East Institute Blog puts forward an intriguing case focusing on what he sees to be some level of distortion of coverage of the Yemani conflict. He discerns that there is something of an agenda of sorts being pushed by what appears to be much if not most of the Arabian Gulf’s media [I use the term pointedly, for a reason] to implicate Iran as fermenting, to various degrees, the trouble in Yemen.
This complex conflict between the Houthi rebels in the north against the south is being woefully simplified to the good, old fashioned binary Sunni/Shia conflict. Yet – needless to say – it if far more nuanced that this. Instead, Iran are ipso facto, so to speak, ‘supporting’ the Zaydis because they are quasi-Shi’ite and, ‘as usual’, – so the narrative goes – supporting terrorism of some description.
Dunn makes clear that there may well be sympathy from Tehran towards the Zaydis or even tacit (or otherwise) support. Yet there is little evidence of this. He further links this with the recent assassination attempts in Saudi (the bum bomb) and concludes that:
The result is that there seems to be an emerging narrative: the Yemeni Government is hand-in-glove with Al-Qa‘ida, or at least looks the other way, while their enemies the rebel Houthis are Iranian stalking horses. Or, if you want to combine the two, here (in Arabic) is a Saudi article in Al-Watan saying that the Houthis are actually supporting Al-Qa‘ida.
…
But the narrative is building. True, false, or in between, the charge is growing that Iran is fueling things in Yemen.
See this article in the Huffington Post for a Yemeni conflict primer.
Stealth F-35s in return for settlement movement? 11, July 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in American ME Relations, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.Tags: America, Arms trading, F-35 Stealth, Israel, Joint strike fighter
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Thanks again the the MEI Editor’s blog for pointing out that Israel has officially just asked the Pentagon for permission to buy a new generation of Stealth F-35 fighter aircraft from America. Dunn asks whether this will be used by Obama as some kind of carrot in return for real movement on, for example, settlements. Quite frankly, I just don’t see how Obama could not use this as leverage. This seems like a golden opportunity for Obama to exert some real pressure. These planes aren’t key to Israel’s security. The hundreds of advanced fighters that Israel has now are more than adequate, as has been proven time and again, to vastly out-match whatever Israel’s enemies could possible throw at them. I suppose that Israel might prefer these Stealth aircraft were they to want a safer way to, for example, go after Iran’s nuclear weapons, but I’m sure that they’ve got aircraft already that are more then capable of this. Also, symbolically, I think that holding back on giving Israel access to some of America’s most advanced technologies could be a useful in currying favour in the other camp.
Jerusalem’s parking issues 11, July 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.Tags: Haredi jews, Israel, Jerusalem
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The MEI Editor’s blog has an interesting couple of hundred words on the Jerusalem parking lot issue. As fascinating as that doesn’t sound, it’s worth a brief read as it highlights the divisions which are often forgotten within Israeli society by ‘Jewish Americans who idolise Israel and Arabs who hate Israel’ to paraphrase Dunn’usalems key sentence.
US support for Mousavi 20, June 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in American ME Relations, Iran.Tags: Ahmad, Ahmadinejad, Iran election, McCain, Mousavi, US support
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Thank God that McCain is not in the White House. Of course, were he there, maybe he’d act differently. Yet his call for Obama to offer some kind of support for the protesters on the streets would be, as Michael Collins Dunn simply summarises, devastating for Mousavi’s movement.
Any open support the US offers, other than the cautious sort of comments made so far by Obama, could be used by the regime against the protesters. Being able to paint Mousavi and his backers as American puppets — and Ahmadinejad is trying hard to do that — would guarantee the outcome. We’re the “Great Satan,” remember? And Mousavi was Foreign Minister and Prime Minister in the days of Imam Khomeini himself: his approach has been to call for returning to the principles of the revolution, not to the policies of the monarchy.
I’m not talking here about private citizens: Bloggers who change their website color to green in empathy, for example, or the Twitter posters who last night were urging others to change their location and time zone to make it appear they were in Iran, in order to confuse the security forces trying to track down tweeting Iranians. What I’m talking about is any open governmental support such as McCain and others seem to be calling for. That would be precisely the wrong thing to do.
It is not far from terrifying to think that someone so close to the White House would or even could countenance such a reaction. It just seems so startlingly obvious that to support them would offer Ahmadinajad such a staggeringly open goal and a guaranteed way to sink any (slim) hope that Mousavi has. Anyone heard of ‘the Great Satan?’ Ring any bells? To castigate someone as being US supported in Iranian politics is about as bad as it gets. To be openly supported at this stage by an American administration would just be suicidal. I realise that I am saying the same thing over and over again, but, it’s just such a ridiculous and worrying idea that I feel i must emphazise and then emphasize and then over emphazise just how bad and idea it is.
