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By Frances Itani
$24.00
By Brad Kessler
$16.32
$22
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Uh, so we’re not completely sure what to make of this trailer for the Japanese animated series “Cat Shit One” (?!), which features a specialized squad of mercenary sniper rabbits duking it out in the desert with turban-clad camels. Don’t be fooled by the cute-and-fluffy tail action—these bunnies are killing machines.
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bbc.co.uk
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An obvious Photoshop job in Israel has hilariously tried to make Israel’s inaugural Cabinet a bit more Orthodox. In one ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper, two female Cabinet members were cropped out of an official picture and replaced with two non-Cabinet men.
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telegraph.co.uk
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Israel’s new super-duper-ultranationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday dismissed a 2007 agreement with Palestinian officials aimed at discussing the creation of a Palestinian state. Lieberman claims the agreement, made in Annapolis, Md., has “no validity.”
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scrapetv.com
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The same day that President Obama released a message of new understanding and diplomacy to the Iranian people via his vlog, two U.S. Navy vessels collided in the Strait of Hormuz off southern Iran. More than 25,000 gallons of diesel fuel was spilled and 15 sailors were slightly injured.
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A U.S. official believes that Iran has obtained enough nuclear material to make a bomb. Israel is believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, though it has never acknowledged this. Why does Iran pursue a nuclear bomb? And will Iran come out of the nuclear closet?
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guardian.co.uk
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In a political blast from the past, former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been chosen to form Israel’s next government, ending a nine-day struggle between the candidates and paving the way for a coalition arrangement with a strong right-wing bent.
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Gas may be cheap again, but the bursting of the petro bubble has sent unemployment soaring to 40 percent among Middle Easterners 15 to 24 years old, stirring unrest. Dubai’s airport parking lots are littered with abandoned cars as foreign nationals flee. Egypt, with half a million newly unemployed headed home from abroad, could see a repeat of last year’s bloody economic riots.
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AP photo / Sven Kaestner
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By Robert Fisk — The organized persecution of a group is despicable whether the victims are the Jews of World War II or today’s Gazans.
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observer.com
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On Tuesday, the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in his country, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad extended a tentative offer to open a dialogue between the U.S. and Iran—provided that the Obama administration makes good on its “change” slogan.
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Flickr / david55king
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With world opinion soured by the recent events in Gaza, Israelis are headed to the polls to elect a new government that is widely expected to move further to the right. Pre-election polls put the conservative Likud in the lead. Labor was a distant fourth, behind even the ultraconservative Yisrael Beitenu, despite taking a hawkish turn.
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AP photo / Alessandro Della Bella
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By Sandy Tolan — Dear Mr. Prime Minister: I write with grave concern over your impertinent remarks to the president of Israel at the World Economic Forum last week, which threatened to delay dinner for hundreds of extremely important global thinkers.
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Both Israel and Hamas vowed to stop fighting two weeks ago, but since then attacks have continued. Before his country launched airstrikes on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had warned Hamas of a “disproportionate Israeli response” to Hamas rocket and mortar attacks. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, is headed to Cairo, though his influence is surely weakened by the recent fighting.
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What’s that you say, Jimmy Carter? Peace in the Middle East is possible? The former president paid a visit to “The Daily Show” Monday night to advance this bold thesis—and to describe what it was like to mingle with Bill Clinton, two Bushes and Obama at the White House. How ’bout that Oval Office rug, gents?
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NARA / White House
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Former President Jimmy Carter tells the Associated Press, “If we look toward a one-state solution, which seems to be the trend—I hope not inexorable—it would be a catastrophe for Israel. ...”
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Two of Britain’s biggest networks, Sky and the BBC, have refused to air a two-minute fundraising appeal on behalf of Gaza. The decision not to broadcast the spot, produced by a committee made up of Britain’s biggest aid agencies, has triggered public outcry, condemnation from politicians and a formal investigation by the BBC Trust.
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How did the changing of the U.S. presidential guard register throughout the Middle East? Will Barack Obama deliver on his inaugural promise to usher in a new era of respect and consideration for mutual interests of the U.S. and the Mideast? This week’s “Mosaic Intelligence Report” offers some answers.
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AP photo / Eyad Baba
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Shortly after Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza, Hamas followed suit with its own separate announcement. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would withdraw troops “as soon as possible,” and Hamas said it would give Israel a week to do just that.
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AP photo / Hatem Moussa
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In this installment of BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen’s diary about the Israeli-Palestinian war, Bowen describes how, thanks in part to technology, the word on Gaza is getting out despite the Israeli ban on foreign journalists.
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By William Pfaff — The people of Gaza and Israel suffer at the hands of leaders whose bewildering and savage decisions have no rationally achievable purpose.
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AP photo / Abdel Kareem Hana
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By Chris Hedges — Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back. The slaughter—let’s stop pretending this is a war—is empowering an array of radical Islamists inside and outside of Gaza.
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AP photo / Elizabeth Dalziel
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By Robert Fisk — It all depends where you live. That was the geography of Israel’s propaganda, designed to demonstrate that we softies—we little baby-coddling liberals living in our secure Western homes—don’t realize the horror of 12 (now 20) Israeli deaths in 10 years and thousands of rockets and the unimaginable trauma and stress of living near Gaza.
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This week’s “Mosaic Intelligence Report” takes stock of various reports about the current Gaza crisis from Middle Eastern media outlets as the conflict reached the 14-day mark. Needless to say, we’re not likely to hear all these voices on CNN.
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Theatrum Belli
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By Robert Fisk — So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?
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AP photo / Sebastian Scheiner
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Israeli forces crossed into Gaza on Saturday night, launching ground attacks and seriously ratcheting up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict following a week of bombardment from intensive airstrikes. The United Nations Security Council met that evening in New York about the mounting Mideast crisis.
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Ma'an Images
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The United Nations marked Israel’s seventh day of aerial attacks by warning of a “critical emergency” in the Gaza Strip, as Palestinians endure food and medical supply shortages and distribution problems even as estimates of dead and wounded Palestinians continue to rise.
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Maan Images / Hatem Omar
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After five days of almost constant aerial attacks and the deaths of nearly 400 Palestinians, the Israeli government has refused a 48-hour cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, arguing that it needs to “keep up the pressure on Hamas”—a startling euphemism for its lethal assaults—as the Israeli military ramps up for a likely ground invasion.
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theatrum-belli.com
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Be it due to danger or the ever-present desire for security, the Israeli government has always found reason to forbid journalists to enter the Gaza Strip at times of “conflict.” The current brutal assault on Gaza is no different, but this time an association of journalists has filed a petition in the Israeli Supreme Court to demand access to the occupied territories.
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AP photo / Eyad Baba
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By Robert Fisk — If reporting is, as I suspect, a record of mankind’s folly, then the end of 2008 is proving my point.
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It may seem misguidedly America-centric to link the immediate future of many parts of the Middle East to President-elect Barack Obama, but because the U.S. has inserted itself so strongly into the region, a good deal undoubtedly rides on the choices of the next American administration.
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AP photo / Khalil Hamra
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By Robert Fisk — No one in 1967 dreamed that the Israeli-Arab conflict would still be in ferocious progress 41 years later, but the wording in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 has something to do with this ongoing clash.
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AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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Still-President Bush has discussed his legacy with his sister Dorothy Bush Koch as part of a national oral-history project, suggesting the future should remember him for his “liberation” of 50 million people and reluctance to ”sell his soul ... to accommodate the political process”—likely referring to that which is outlined in the U.S. Constitution.
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By Amy Goodman — As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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independent.co.uk
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By Robert Fisk — Incredibly, as Afghanistan sinks back into the anarchy which became its natural state these past 29 years, Afghan film-makers are producing movies of international quality, turning out pictures which prove—even amid war—that a country’s tragedy can be imaginatively recreated for its people.
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AP photo / Ariel Schalit
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If it looks heartless and sounds heartless, it probably is heartless. A direct quote from a Voice of America news piece: “Israel is ignoring pleas by the United Nations to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, standing firm on its blockade of the Palestinian territory.”
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AP photo / Morry Gash
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By Chris Hedges — War is a poison. It is a poison that nations and groups must at times ingest to ensure their survival. But, like any poison, it can kill you just as surely as the disease it is meant to eradicate.
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blogs.tnr.com
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The U.S. presidential election was watched with interest, of course, by Israelis, some of whom favored John McCain because they believed he would have been a better “friend of Israel” than Barack Obama will be. Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy wonders if there aren’t some problems with this idea.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Fisk — How is Barack Obama going to repair the titanic damage which his vicious, lying predecessor has perpetrated around the globe and within the U.S. itself?
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Which U.S. presidential candidate did Iranians hope would win? Do Palestinians think President-elect Barack Obama will understand the needs and challenges of their region better than President Bush has?
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A new book investigates the illicit trade in antiquities and raises uneasy questions over cultural patrimony, the fevers of nationalism and the imperial ambitions of museums.
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This week’s Mosaic Intelligence Reports investigates John “Drill, Baby, Drill!” McCain’s claims about “good” and “bad” oil, energy independence and whether he played a little fast and loose with the oil talk during the final presidential debate,
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“Mosaic Intelligence Report” host Jamal Dajani is distinctly unimpressed with the level of knowledge about the Middle East displayed by Sarah Palin and Joe Biden during Thursday night’s vice presidential debate.
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By Robert Fisk — By grotesque mischance, $700 billion—the cost of George Bush’s Wall Street rescue plan—is about the same figure the president has squandered on his preposterous war in Iraq, the war we have now apparently “won” thanks to the “surge.”
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AP photo / John Moore
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The acclaimed journalist stopped by our offices this week, where he told Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer that the Middle East is a lot less puzzling than it’s made out to be: “It’s we who are there, not the other way round. ... It’s not our land. It’s not our religion. Our soldiers are in the Muslim world and they should not be there.” Updated with parts 3 and 4
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Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his running mate sent a clear and unpleasant message to the Arab world, as did the absence of former President Jimmy Carter from the lineup of speakers at the Denver convention last week.
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What is it about the region that provokes intense sectarian passions, prompting seemingly endless vendettas? “Kingmakers,” by Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, tells the story of British and American entanglement and how the modern Middle East was invented. It also offers an exemplary history of hubris.
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uavinfo.com
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One way the U.S. military could maintain a presence in Iraq, even if by proxy, in the near future is through the use of unmanned drones with foreboding names like the MQ-9 Reaper and the Predator, both of which are able to carry seriously sinister weaponry like the laser-guided Hellfire missile.
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Skyrocketing oil and natural gas prices in the second quarter of this year led ExxonMobil to report the highest profit ever by an American company. Despite falling production and rising operating costs, Exxon brought in $138 billion in revenue and reported an astounding net income of $11.7 billion. Who else is profiting?
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, beset by accusations of corruption and bribery, announced Wednesday that he will resign after an internal Kadima Party election to choose a new leader on Sept. 17.
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Mosaic producer Jamal Dajani warns that early enthusiasm for Barack Obama in the Middle East has been replaced with skepticism.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Sen. Angus King
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