Saudi Arabia Foils Al-Qaeda Plot

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Combo image shows devices and money seized by the Ministry of Interior from suspected members of the Al-Qaeda Network. (SPA)

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By Muhammad Al-Sulami 

This article was published in Arab News on 27/11/2010

Saudi security forces have arrested 149 people from 19 cells linked to the Al-Qaeda network in the past 8 months and foiled attacks against government and security officials as well as journalists, the Interior Ministry said on Friday.

In a press conference in Riyadh, ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour ibn Turki said a total of 2.24 million riyals ($597,237) were seized from suspected Al-Qaeda members trying to collect money and spread their  ideology during the Haj and Umrah pilgrimages.

“In the past eight months 149 people linked to Al-Qaeda were arrested, among them were 124 Saudis and 25 were from other nationalities,” Turki said.

Al-Turki said the assassination plots were in advanced stages of execution when they were uncovered. “Documents and weapons for the execution of the plots were seized. Action was also taken with the help of Interpol to arrest foreign and local people involved in the plots.”

The spokesman said that advocates of deviant ideologies on Internet forums had usernames such as Killer, Anwar, Lover of Allah and Abu Rayyan. A woman militant who used a pseudonym on Internet forums was also tracked and arrested.

Al-Turki said that some of the militants entered the Kingdom on the pretext of performing Haj or Umrah and then went to secret locations for training.

He added that investigations are under way to trace the source of the militants’ funding and stop them.

“The ministry calls upon anyone who placed himself in a dubious position or maintains terrorist links in any form to turn himself in to the departments concerned so that he realizes the error of his actions. His surrender will be taken into account at the time of his trial,” Al-Turki said.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah said in a message to Haj pilgrims last week: “The terror that threatens the world is attributed to Muslims when it is caused by extremists who are outside the scope of the tolerant religion of Islam. The perpetrators of terror represent none but themselves even though they appear in the guise of Islam.”

Egyptian Election: Politicians Don't Realise They Could Be Tweeted Out

With the spread of consumer technology like mobiles, the time when voters were relegated to the spectators' seats has gone.

By Amira Nowaira

This comment was published in The Guardian on 26/11/2010

Egyptian legislative elections have always seemed fascinating to watch but hopelessly predictable. The current elections seem to be no exception, although there are indications that the winds of change have started to blow.

For the last 60 years parliamentary elections have been held with admirable regularity. Parliaments with various names, from Nasser's National Assembly to today's People's Assembly, have been in place to prove to the world that we have a functioning democracy.

But democracy often exists only in the eye of the beholder. Successive regimes, from Nasser through Sadat to Mubarak, have all insisted they were democratic. It was no doubt the fault of the citizens themselves if they did not recognise that basic, simple truth.

Not many people now realise that during the Nasser era elections were held and people were urged to go out and vote. True, the National Union, established in 1957, and later the Socialist Union were the only legally recognised parties, and their hold on power was uncontested. But the elections were not rigged. Rigging was unnecessary because the government sifted the candidates before nominating them and giving them its blessing. So it mattered little to the regime whether Mohammed, Ahmed or Laila was finally elected. Like taxes deducted at source, candidates were carefully scrutinised and pruned before they were offered for election.

But the rules of the game have changed since then. The Egyptian government now finds itself facing new challenges threatening its very authority and its monopoly on information and communication.

The ruling National Democratic party, however, seems hopelessly out of touch with the times. It doesn't realise that the day might come when it could be tweeted out of power. Nor is it able to understand that it won't be able to station the country's security forces on the information superhighway as it does on Cairo's ring-roads.

The time when citizens were relegated to the spectator seats is gone. The state can restrict the live coverage of polling stations but it cannot stop people using mobile phones to send photos and videos through web services such as qik.com. Nor can it stop people using blogs, Facebook or Twitter to relay information it doesn't approve of.

Egypt's contradictions may be a source of infinite amusement, but also one of genuine distress. Where else can you find a state of emergency that stays in place for 30 years? The word "emergency" implies a brief, intense situation that should disappear as soon as it is dealt with. But 30 years?

And where else can you find a presidential candidate casting his vote for another instead of himself? This was what the 90-year-old Ahmed El-Sabbahi did in 2005, when he proudly declared that he gave his vote to Mubarak.

More seriously, where else can you find a banned organisation like the Muslim Brotherhood getting high-profile coverage in the media and a sizable representation in the 2005 parliament? If the organisation is illegal and banned, why are they all over the media, giving interviews and making statements?

Where else can you find a nation with more than 50% of its population under the age of 15 that is ruled mostly by septuagenarians and octogenarians? Whenever the ruling NDP tries to indicate its endorsement of the nation's youth, it is actually referring to people in their 50s. One must admit, though, that the NDP deserves marks for consistency at least, for if power is still in the hands of octogenarians in the prime of life, then the 50-year olds of the NDP are green youths still being groomed for their future.

One of the features of the 2010 parliamentary elections to be held tomorrow is that the ruling NDP is standing in many constituencies in opposition to itself. The party, reluctant to upset some of its prominent members, has ended up nominating two, three or even four candidates in the same constituency contesting the same seat along with other non-party candidates. The more the merrier, according to the NDP. And non-NDP candidates may defect to the NDP as soon as its over, as happened after the 2005 parliamentary elections.

So the whole election may boil down to the NDP versus NDP, or the NDP versus the Muslim Brothers. The voters are therefore in the happy position of being able to freely choose either the frying pan of the NDP or the fire of the Muslim Brotherhood (if the Brothers can keep out of jail during the campaign). Women have even more limited options, for the Muslim Brotherhood is by definition a negation of their very existence, unless a woman should decide to turn into an honorary "brother".

A great deal has been said about the newly established 64-seat quota for women to increase their percentage in parliament. I just hope that these women do not become the wallflowers they are intended to be.

When the curtain finally falls, amid the mad cheering and the deafening chants of victory, will this election make any difference to the lives of the 80 million Egyptians who have followed the action mostly from the safe distance of their spectator seats? I doubt it. But while the outcome is assured, I feel sure things will never be the same again. The NDP is well advised to take heed.

Water Or Egypt’s Role?

By Hassan Haidar

This comment was published in al-Hayat on 25/11/2010

The statements made by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi have surprised Egypt and many others as well. And although Cairo rushed to deny any efforts on its part to start a war against Addis Ababa due to the dispute over dividing the water of the Nile, finding strange the claims made by Zenawi, and denying as well his accusation against it of offering support to Ethiopian opposition groups, the stance taken by Ethiopia raises many questions over its timing, content and purpose, as well as over who might be inciting it.

Zenawi’s words coincide with Addis Ababa hosting the summit of East Africa’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which was intended to discuss the situation in Sudan and Somalia, and which witnessed Ethiopian “mediation” between Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir and his Vice President Salva Kiir Mayardit to resolve the dispute over the referendum and the region of Abyei. Here too a second “warfront” was started against Egypt, which is exerting tremendous effort in this regard and which is concerned with the situation in Sudan much more than is Ethiopia, the Prime Minister of which has been excessive in warning against the return of infighting between the two parts of Sudan.

These Ethiopian claims have had many preludes in Addis Ababa. Indeed, Ethiopian newspapers have applied themselves since the beginning of the year to publishing scenarios of an expected war against Egypt, attributed to American and Western researchers. Most of these scenarios aim at justifying the unilateral steps taken by Ethiopia in terms of building dams on the Nile without consulting with the two downstream countries, Egypt and Sudan, and at inciting Ethiopians against Egypt under the pretext that 85 percent of the river’s water comes from springs located on their soil and that they have the right to make use of it as they wish, without any consideration for international law and for ratified treaties concerning the division of the river’s water.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry considered Ethiopia’s escalation to be the result of the “frustration” felt by Addis Ababa after having ratified with four other countries a new draft agreement for dividing the water, one which is finding difficulties to be recognized internationally, because it does not include all the countries through which the Nile flows. The Ministry has asserted that Cairo clings to its firm legal and political stance on this issue, and that it follows the path of dialogue and cooperation, one which it has never relinquished or thought of alternatives for.

Yet Cairo suspects an Israeli role, as well as a sympathetic US role, in inciting Addis Ababa against Egypt and its role in the region, in both its Arab and African aspects. Egyptian sources say that Tel Aviv has contributed to financing the building of dams in Ethiopia, which appear to be useless for agriculture and aimed only at withholding water and producing some electricity, and that it is exerting pressures aimed at an old goal: demanding that Egypt retract its categorical refusal to supply Israel with part of the Nile’s water, or else its share of the water would gradually be decreased, with Ethiopia’s cooperation, which would threaten its security, in terms of food as well as politics – something the features of which have begun to appear with the decision by the Egyptian government to decrease the areas reserved for growing rice due to the large quantities of water it requires, and the subsequent fact that the government has had to import quantities of water at high prices in order to provide the needs of local consumption.

Egyptian circles also mention evidence of the growing relationship between Israel and Ethiopia, which would represent the background for Addis Ababa’s stances. Among such evidence is the decision announced by Tel Aviv this month to assimilate new waves of Ethiopian Jews (Falasha), reaching up to eight thousand people over the next four years, under the pretext of saving them from a deteriorating humanitarian situation at home – this after Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had chosen Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda (countries of the Nile basin) as stops in his trip to Africa last September, a trip which especially involved proposing water projects.

In Tehran, "The Shark" Faces Choppy Waters

By Amir Taheri
This comment was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 26/11/2010
 
Until just a year ago, Mehdi Hashemi was a shadowy figure on the margins of politics and business in the Islamic Republic in Iran.
 
His friends praised his business acumen that, so they claimed, had helped him make several hundred million dollars before his 21st birthday.
 
They also recalled how, in his late teens, he had visited Washington on a secret diplomatic mission in the 1980s on behalf of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. During that visit, Mehdi had toured the White House and informed his interlocutor, Lt. Colonel Oliver North, that the ayatollah was prepared to become a close ally and partner of the United States. The mission had failed to achieve its goal because American journalists, always looking for another Watergate, had spilled the beans and triggered the so-called Iran-Contra scandal.
 
Mehdi Hashemi’s detractors have always seen him as a wheeler- dealer acting as front man for his once powerful father Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
 
The same detractors claim that Mehdi built his business empire thanks to juicy government contracts and questionable deals with foreign countries, notably China.
 
Last week, as he was contemplating his future in a luxury hotel in London, Mehdi Hashemi earned that an arrest warrant ahs been issued against him and that he would be picked up as soon as he sets foot in Iran. Among a dozen or so charges levelled against him by the Islamic Revolutionary Prosecutor is “activities against national security.”
 
The state-owned media have been spreading all sorts of rumours about Mehdi’s alleged contacts with un-named “foreign powers” to undermine and even overthrow the Khomeinist regime.
 
Whatever the truth about Mehdi Hashemi, one thing is certain: by the late 1990s he had become a symbol of nepotism and corruption in a political system that claims to be whiter than white.
 
Thus, when he launched his first presidential bid over five years ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had his eyes on Mehdi Hashemi as an easy target. Without ever naming him, Ahmadinejad claimed that the Rafsanjanis had tried to cast themselves as a new aristocracy of which Mehdi was the worst example.
 
With a hint here and a nod there, Ahmadinejad claimed that he would bring the Rafsanjanis to justice on unspecified charges of corruption.
 
Once he had won the presidency, however, Ahmadinejad realised that the Rafsanjani clan and its network of business and political allies were much stronger than he had thought.
 
During Ahmadinejad’s first term in office, Rafsanjani managed to retain his position as Chairman of the Expediency Council, a powerful pulpit from which he could counter may of the president’s moves.
 
Rafsanjani did even better. He managed to get himself elected as the Speaker of the Assembly of Experts, a powerful organ that, in theory at least, could impeach and replace the Supreme Guide.
Over the past five years, Ahmadinejad has developed an alliance with the military-security elites who believe that they have been cheated by the mullahs of their opportunity to get rich. As a result, most of the juiciest government contracts have gone to companies controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The Rafsanjani clan has even lost its 25-year long control of Iran’s trade with China.
 
Rafsanjani has always played a long game, weathering many a political storm and earning the sobriquet of “the shark”.
 
This is why he has refused to openly side with the anti-Ahmadinejad coalition formed after last year’s controversial presidential election. Even when Ahmadinejad ordered a cat-and-mouse game against the clan, including briefly arresting Rafsanjani’s wife and daughter, the “shark” managed to keep his cool.
 
For almost three decades, Rafsanjani’s cautious game has helped him survive where many others lost their political fortunes and, on occasions, even their lives. In fact, Rafsanjani is one of only two close associates of Khomeini to be still alive, in Iran, free, and in power. The other one is Ali Khamenei. All other close associates of Khomeini are either dead, in exile, in prison or, at least, out of power.
 
This time, however, the strategy that worked for such a long time, may prove ineffective. Ahmadinejad regards it as his mission to break Rafsanjani and, in doing so, break a whole generation of political mullahs who see themselves as the true custodians of the Khomeinist revolution.
 
And it is in this that Rafsanjani might find a glimmer of hope. If Ahmadinejad succeeds in bringing down Rafsanjani, would he know when and where to stop? Would he not try to undermine Khamenei’s position? After all, it is now clear that the president and the Supreme Guide do not share the same world and have different opinions on a number of key issues.
 
Ahmadinejad has built his political persona on two claims.
 
The first is that he has a line of communication with the Hidden Imam, which means that he could receive guidance from an authority far higher than Khomeini let alone Khamenei. Ahmadinejad’s second claim is that the faith that he professes is “the Iranian interpretation of Islam” and thus closer to nationalism than religion.
 
So far, Ahmadinejad has not succeeded in fully developing his radical reinterpretation of the o-called Islamic revolution in clear ideological terms. However, a number of his aides and allies, including Esfandiar Rahim Masha’i and Muhammad-Ali Ramin are busy concocting a witches’ brew called “the Iranian school of Islam.
 
In such an ideological concoction, there would be no room for political mullahs, least of all a “Supreme Guide”.
 
Thus, at first glance, Mehdi Rafsanjani may appear to be a small pawn that is easily jettisoned. However, his downfall could trigger an avalanche that would bury more important figures with him.
Today, the always clever Mehdi is faced with a dire choice: either contemplate a life in exile, which would mean a vote of no confidence in the Khomeinist regime’s judicial system, or return home to an uncertain future.
 
In exile, he would join hundreds of former Khomeinist officials who gather in the cafes of Paris, London and New York to plot the end of Ahmadinejad.
 
At home, he would join scores of former Khomeinist officials in the notorious Evin Prison where tens of thousands of people have been executed or have died under torture since 1979.
In the system that the late ayatollah invented, no one is safe.
 
No one, not even “the shark.”

Lebanon: The Message Of Ardogan's Visit

This editorial was published in The Daily Star on 26/11/2010

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was feted this week in Lebanon by the country’s leaders and officials during a visit that was heavy in symbolism, and perhaps even heavier in impact.

Although Erdogan’s two-day trip was officially focused on bilateral economic and business ties, he was naturally unable to avoid the state of affairs in Lebanon, which has been suffering from crippling bouts of political paralysis for much of the year.

Erdogan did pledge to help act as a fireman, stressing his country’s support for serious efforts to quell possible strife. Perhaps Erdogan can assist in extinguishing some of Lebanon’s smaller fires, but he doesn’t represent a magic solution. He repeated Ankara’s well-known goals of seeing peace, stability, prosperity and security in its immediate vicinity, thereby emphasizing that his visit to Lebanon was more strategic in nature.

Thankfully, Erdogan’s visit was one that covered nearly all of Lebanon’s political spectrum. He met leaders from all sides, and stayed on message, whether he was in the south, the north, or the capital, stressing the same principles and not catering to narrow partisan interests.

More importantly, Erdogan’s visit was about the inking of significant bilateral agreements that are the fruit of more than five years of negotiations and preparations. A free trade agreement, other forms of liberalization and bilateral cooperation, such as the possible creation of a regional version of the Schengen Zone, and the continued presence of Turkish troops in the UNIFIL force in the south: all of these were of central importance during Erdogan’s visit.

Were there protests during Erdogan’s visit?

Certainly, Lebanon’s Armenians had their say, and it should not be forgotten that Turkey’s recent diplomatic tiffs with Israel have upped the pressure on Ankara to follow through, to satisfy those for whom the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is their highest priority.

In the end, Lebanese should walk away with an abiding message from Erdogan’s visit: the value of healthy bilateral relations, when states deal with states, on an equal footing.

There were no ulterior motives behind the visit, which focused on matters of mutual interest. Erdogan pointed out that national sovereignty is not something that should be linked to the size of a given state, and that a sound economy flows from complete sovereignty, not the other way around.

Fellow members of the international community of nations shouldn’t act in patronizing fashion toward Lebanon, despite its small size; the visit by Erdogan ought to remind the Lebanese of the value of establishing bilateral ties based on joint interests, mutual respect, and a sound vision for the future.

Investigative Journalism Is Possible In the Middle East And North Africa Region

By Rana Sabbagh
This comment was published in The Jordan Times on 26/11/2010

In a largely autocratic region where media freedom is declining, a new generation of bold Arab investigative journalists is leaving its imprint, exposing human misery and standing up to higher powers.

Armed with courage, perseverance and commitment to their profession, they document issues of serious concern to their societies and are becoming an important force in promoting the rule of law and democratisation.

These journalists, hailing from both private and public media outlets, are working under the umbrella of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) - a media-support network promoting the culture of in-depth reporting across Arab newsrooms.

So far, ARIJ-sponsored investigations have not forced the resignation of senior technocrats or corrupt officials, but they have led to sizeable improvements in the day-to-day lives of local communities, in the health, environment, education and human rights fields.

In Egypt, under martial law since the 1981 assassination of president Anwar Sadat, a lawyer asked the prosecutor general to sue the government for negligence after ARIJ fellow Mona Iraqi exposed mismanagement of hazardous hospital waste in a TV documentary.

Her colleagues, Hisham Allam and Dareen Farghali, caused a public outcry after documenting how untreated wastewater leaving the state-run sugar factory was polluting parts of the Nile River and threatening the well-being of over 220,000 residents.

After the publication of their investigation in the leading independent newspaper Al Masry Al Yawm, the parliament summoned the minister of health for questioning.

In Syria, government bulldozers cleared the site hosting the largest garbage dump near the capital to curb the spread of infectious diseases and ease air pollution. Khaled Mousa and Baraa Boushi worked for three months showing how the contractor was abusing the deal. In the process, they were threatened by local garbage collectors who were operating with tacit support from junior municipal officers.

In another case, the Yemeni government formed a committee to look into several hospitals where a local journalist showed how incinerators burning medical waste were operating below the minimum temperature needed to ensure safe disposal.

In Jordan, 15 orphans filed complaints with the National Centre for Human Rights after freelance journalists Majdoleen Allan and Imad Rawashdeh investigated physical, psychological and sexual abuse at several orphanages. Some of these complaints were referred to the prosecutor general while the centre will document other cases in its 2010 Annual Report on the state of affairs in orphanages.

Since the publication of the report earlier this year, the government took several measures to improve and redress the situation.

In another investigation into legal and professional obstacles impeding access to public documents, in line with Jordan’s Right to Access Information Law, Allan sued Jordan’s Land and Survey Department for withholding data on the sale of state-owned land to investors. This is the first case filed at the Higher Court of Justice for lack of access to information, a right guaranteed by the largely ineffective 2007 law.

Several local radios hosted journalist Suhair Jaradat after she exposed Jordanian families forcing their newlywed daughters to undergo medical virginity tests because they did not bleed the first time they had sex with their husbands.

In war-torn Iraq, local journalists documented how Al Qaeda and other shadow groups were recruiting hundreds of children to carry out suicide bombings, and how women in Kurdish areas are being subjected to the illegal practice of genital circumcision. Bahrain’s Hana Buhiji exposed abuses facing an army of domestic immigrant workers, documenting several cases of mistreatment ranging from denial of monthly wages to sexual and physical harassment by employers abusing legal shortcomings. Not all investigation? had happy endings. In three cases, ARIJ fellows were threatened by officials and business interest groups and forced to stop looking into smuggling of endangered eagles, the manufacturing of local cosmetic products causing skin allergies and facial scarring and the selling of adulterated alcohol.

The Arab world, which mostly lacks parliamentary democratic systems, has a long way to go before in-depth reporting designed to reach the truth - or even simply the facts, as best as they can be determined - becomes an integral facet of daily practices in newsrooms.

The Middle East and North Africa region continues to have the world’s poorest press freedoms’ ratings, shows the 2010 Freedom House global press freedoms index. The region lacks other important elements, such as a reformed legal environment, a tradition of lively and competitive press with a diversity of owners, and adequate societal support for bold journalists willing to question authority in a professional way.

Arab states, with the exception of Jordan, have no laws guaranteeing the right to access public information. Even in the Kingdom, journalists still complain that the 2007 law has many loopholes that bureaucrats use to block the flow of information.

Media-shy and suspicious officials and lack of public information and reliable statistics will continue to hamper the emergence of social and political truths in the Arab media. But at least, a new generation of Arab journalists is dedicated to assuming the role of the fourth estate. ARIJ provides its fellows a reliable conduit and professional training, a small grant covering the cost of the investigation, a coach and pre-publication legal screening.

Today, over 250 Arab editors and journalists, from 20 Arab countries, will be attending the Annual ARIJ Conference in Amman, for the third time running - a mission made possible by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

The writer, ARIJ executive director, media trainer and journalist since 1984, is former editor-in-chief of The Jordan Times.

Fighting Against Israeli Oppression

Zoabi is a courageous woman who articulates the sentiments of many Jews and Arabs

By Mohammed Azhar Ali
This comment was published in Arab News on 26/11/2010 

The first woman to represent an Arab party in the Israeli Parliament brought a stirring plea for human dignity, equality, freedom, democracy, justice and peace to Canada. Those who listened were touched. But those weren’t many — her visit was ignored by most government leaders and the media.

Haneen Zoabi, 41, represents Balad (the National Democratic Assembly) in the Knesset. She champions human rights without distinction on the basis of race, religion or gender. She defends, in particular, women and children whose rights are suppressed the most, she says.

She told her Canadian audience that her party is struggling to bring equality, human dignity and democracy to Israel. If her words are heeded, she feels that peace and cooperation will replace violence and hate in the Middle East. But brutal violation of a people’s dignity and basic human rights will prolong and deepen the conflict.

Knesset hard-liners called Zoabi a traitor because she criticizes the Israeli suppression of the Palestinians’ basic rights and Israel’s siege of Gaza. She and three other Israeli Arabs were on the Turkish relief ship Mavi Marmara which was taking humanitarian supplies to Gaza when Israeli commandos attacked it on the high seas on May 31, 2010.

She called it tragic that Israel imposed an illegal siege on one and a half million Palestinians in Gaza turning them into prisoners who were denied basic needs, including proper food, shelter, education, medicines and jobs. Israel imposed the siege when Hamas won the election in Gaza (according to most observers because of the corruption and spinelessness of Palestinian Authority officials). Zoabi stated that the ship was taking supplies to Gaza to provide much-needed goods to the besieged and to highlight the immorality and illegality of the blockade.

According to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, the blockade has wrecked the 1.6 million Gazans’ physical and mental health, caused severe malnutrition, especially among infant and pregnant and nursing mothers, destroyed most small businesses, caused hunger and shortages, sent unemployment soaring and prevented the rebuilding of Gaza after Israel’s 22-day assault in December 2008. Israel also prevents Gazan fishermen from fishing beyond five kilometers.

While Gazans are suffering the most, stated Zoabi, the 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel are also suffering severe discrimination. Israeli authorities deny basic rights and equality to its Arab citizens. For example, from 1948 till 1966, the Arabs of Israelis lived under military regime. She said that there is no Israeli constitution that guarantees equality to all citizens.

She declared that some 23 laws disenfranchise Palestinian Israelis, especially in land, citizenship, education, construction, etc. A Jew from anywhere in the world can get citizenship in 24 hours, but Palestinians who have lived there for generations cannot get it if they were abroad temporarily for family, health or education reasons. “If I marry a Palestinian from outside Israel proper, I would be banished from Israel,” she declared.

She said: Israeli authorities confiscated 82 percent of our land, Israelis developed 600 Jewish cities but no Arab ones, We cannot study our history, poetry and literature but we must study Zionist literature, There is not a single Palestinian Arab university to teach us our culture and heritage.

Zoabi stated that Palestinian Israelis constitute 18 percent of the population, but 60 percent live below the poverty line because of state neglect and policy. Such Arab Israelis get no more than eight percent of the jobs. Arab Israelis do not like to serve in Israeli armed forces, police or diplomatic services because they would have to defend policies that oppress them.

We became a minority in our own land, she continued, because my people were expelled while Jews from other lands were brought in, she continued. Though we are the victims of discrimination, the media and politicians demonize us as security or demographic threats. When Arab Israelis protest against injustice, they are harshly suppressed. Instead of attaining peace through equality and justice Israel is building walls, imposing a siege and coordinating security with the compliant Palestinian Authority.

Now Israel is insisting that Palestinian Arabs swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state, which she said would “criminalize our just struggle for our national rights, equality, democracy and justice.”

Zoabi stated that her party opposes violence and religious extremism. It stands for an Israel where all citizens are equal and enjoy full human rights. But the media and politicians portray them as a threat and now there is very little contact between Arab Israelis and Jews. Seventy percent of Israelis do not want Palestinians as their neighbors.

Zoabi received death threats and was accused of being a traitor when she spoke against Israel’s siege of Gaza. Likud member of Knesset Yariv Levi demanded the removal of Zoabi’s parliamentary privileges. On Oct. 27, 2010, she was shot in the back by Israeli police with rubber bullets during a clash between Jewish extremists and the residents of the Arab town of Umm Al-Fahm.

But the first Palestinian woman to graduate from Haifa University and Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, who once worked for the Israeli Ministry of Education, refuses to yield to threats or to bitterness. She remains in the Knesset’s Status of Women Committee.

She doesn’t enjoy the fame of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King. But her message of human dignity, brotherhood, justice and equality is the same as theirs. She is calling on all people — Jews, Arabs, others — to support these goals so that Israel becomes a democracy for all of its people. She said a Middle East settlement must be justice and address the problems that began in 1948. She doesn’t distinguish between a one-state or a two-state solution. What she is passionate about is that the agreement must be based on justice, equality, democracy and human dignity and rights, not on one’s faith or race.

It is a message that serves the interests of all parties — Israel, Palestinians, others. It is not a message that many people are paying attention to. But then the words of Gandhi, Mandela and King also fell on deaf ears initially. Zoabi is a courageous woman who articulates the sentiments of many Jews and Arabs. One wishes, though, that there were many more with her courage, integrity and values not only in Israel and the Arab countries but in Canada, the US and Europe as well.

Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a journalist, retired Canadian civil servant and refugee judge.
He has received the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for his work as a journalist, his leadership of Muslims and efforts to promote better understanding between Canadians of different faiths.