The Hamas government has banned motorcycle riders from carrying women on the back seat – the latest in the militants’ virtue campaign in Gaza.
The ban was posted on Hamas Interior Ministry Web site on Tuesday.
It says the ban seeks “to preserve citizen safety and the stability of Palestinian society’s customs and traditions.” (full article…)

Who made Hamas the gatekeepers of Palestinian society and tradition?

A new report from Adalah shows how the courts and police attempted to stamp out opposition to Operation Cast Lead. “This is a time of war, and every incident harms the people’s morale.”

This was not a sentence in a right-wing journal, but rather a statement by an Israel Police representative during Operation Cast Lead seeking to persuade the Tel Aviv District Court to block anti-war protesters from the city. (full article…)

Criminalising dissent is not unique to Israel. Many oppressive states, such as apartheid South Africa, have used it to de-legitimise parties, ideas and activities disliked by ruling elites and security apparatuses. Furthermore, persecution on grounds of “security” creates an immediate divide between Arab and Jewish citizens. In 2007, the head of Shabak, the Israeli general security agency, stated that struggles against the Jewishness of the state, even if lawful and democratic, would be deemed subversive. The current right-wing government is seeking to condition citizenship on loyalty to Zionist ideology, a demand unparalleled in any democracy and contrary to the most basic of human rights. With this kind of attitude, it is no wonder that young Arab men and women inside Israel are victimised because of their noble aspirations to equality and freedom. (more…)

“We don’t have a police state here in Palestine. We have two police states. One in Gaza and one in the West Bank,” says Rabie Latifah from the Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq.

“The abuse of Palestinian civilians by both Fatah and Hamas security forces has become systematic and is no longer the exception to the rule,” Latifah told IPS. (more…)

Jordanian police Sunday arrested 11 people, including trade union leaders, to break up a demonstration against fruit and vegetable imports from Israel, protest organizers said. (more…)

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Wednesday that “the predatory nature of Tehran’s regime has been exposed” (more…)9

The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale. (more…)

As’ad AbuKhalil, Lebanese politics professor at California State University, said Iranian opponents of Ahmadinejad — if they come out on top — would still likely promote a nationalist agenda that Riyadh sees as a threat to its interests. Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi was prime minister under the Islamic Republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “The site of public demonstrations by the thousands against their leaders …troubles all Arab leaders,” AbuKhalil said, pointing to the lack of popular democracy on a par with that of Iran in most of the Arab countries. “Arab regimes may also fear that if the Iranian regime feels cornered and pressured, it may lash out, and Saudi Arabia may be the first to feel the wrath of the regime,” he said. (more…)

The son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the social activist and poet who was executed by a former military regime in Nigeria, claimed victory against Royal Dutch Shell last night after the company agreed to pay $15.5m (£9.7m) to settle a lawsuit he and others had filed against it in a New York court.

“I think he would be happy with this,” Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr said after terms of the settlement were made public, even though the amount involved amounts to a tiny fraction of Shell’s annual profits and the company insisted that, by making such a payment, it was not admitting to any wrongdoing. (more…)

President Obama should not have decided to come to Egypt. The visit is a clear endorsement of President Hosni Mubarak, the ailing 81-year-old dictator who has ruled with martial law, secret police and torture chambers. No words that Mr. Obama will say can change this perception that Americans are supporting a dictator with their more than $1 billion in annual aid. The Western press is clearly excited about Mr. Obama’s “significant” choice of Egypt, and his destination, Cairo University, which the news media seem to consider a symbol of enlightenment, secularism and freedom. The truth is that for years, Cairo University students have been demonstrating against the rising cost of education, demanding the university subsidize expensive text books, only to be rebuked by the authorities, who claim no funds are available. Yet the university somehow managed to find the money to polish up the building dome that will shine above Mr. Obama’s head when he delivers his address. As for the other host of the president’s visit, Al Azhar University, one of its students, Kareem Amer, is languishing in prison after university officials reported his “infidel, un-Islamic” views to the government, earning him a four-year sentence in 2007. In advance of the visit, Egyptian security forces have rounded up hundreds of foreign students at Al Azhar. We do want allies in the West, but not from inside the White House. Our real allies are the human rights groups and unions that will pressure the Obama administration to sever all ties to the Mubarak dictatorship. Their visits to Egypt are more meaningful, even if unlike Mr. Obama, they do not get a lavish reception. (more…)

The Knesset on Wednesday morning approved in a preliminary reading a bill introducing one year in prison for anyone speaking against Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, should the call contain a reasonable possibility “that it may lead to acts of hatred, scorn or lack of loyalty to the State or its government authorities or law systems which have been established legally.” (more…)

If Obama is sincere in treating Muslims as partners and engaging them with mutual respect, his very pretty words must inspire legitimate policy reform. First, he must use this opportunity to empathize with the people’s concerns by denouncing the heinous crimes and oppressive, intolerant conduct of client autocrats, such as Mubarak and the Saudi royal family – just to name a couple. (more…)

Repressive actions are being carried out by de facto government forces in the Gaza Strip against Fatah Youth members preparing to mark Prisoners Day in Rafah, head of the youth council in the Gaza Strip Mahmoud Qanan said Thursday. (more…)

According to Israeli police reports, at least 763 Israeli citizens, the majority of them Palestinian and 244 under 18 years old, have been arrested, imprisoned or detained for participating in such demonstrations. Most have been held and then released, but at least 30 of those arrested over the past three weeks are still being held in prison. (more…)

Meanwhile, Israeli police admitted they arrested about 600 people involved in protests against the Gaza offensive, some of them for stone-throwing. Adalah lawyers said more than 200 people, most of them Arab, were still in jail.

“We’re talking about mass arrests,” said Abeer Baker, adding that Israel was exploiting a 30-day window before an indictment had to be filed to hold suspects without producing evidence. (more…)

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. (more…)

Control Room, directed by Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, provides unique insights into the media dynamics on the eve of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. It primarily portrays the interactions between Al Jazeera journalists on the one hand and US military spokespersons and Western journalists on the other hand. Al Jazeera is a TV station largely funded by the Arab Emirate of Qatar, which has the politically most open system in the Emirates. It was initially hailed by Western commentators and the US government as exceptionally critical of Arab governments and the region’s most prominent outlet for free speech. When it reported on atrocities by the Algerian military, for example, the Algerian government decided to disconnect the electricity in the capital city of Algier to avert that ordinary Algerians would observe the grim accounts. Al Jazeera fell into disfavor with many rulers, as a consequence of which its licenses to broadcast and report have been canceled or otherwise thwarted in dozen countries. Contrary to popular perception, Al Jazeera was not chiefly at odds with Western government before the Iraq invasion. (more…)

The headlines say it all: “Russia Vote to Cement Putin Dominance“, “Russian Election Insider Outlines Fraud“, “Putin’s Phony Election“. Russia votes today in a sham of a parliamentary election – orchestrated by Putin himself – rife with enough anti-democratic trappings to make Stalin proud.

In many ways, Russia’s political landscape is a fascinating place. Most voters have no faith in Russian elections and 35% prefer the former Soviet system. Perhaps surprisingly, most Russians even favor the concentration of Putin’s power (though the efficacy of Putin’s electioneering may have something to do with it). (more…)

The inanity of authoritarian movements can never be underestimated. The horrific shooting by Hamas of unarmed demonstrators is only the latest example of the Islamist group’s unwillingness or inability to control its forces in the Gaza Strip.

Squandering the general support they enjoyed here by forcibly seizing control of the Strip last June, many Gazans now regard Hamas as an unhinged group of fanatics more concerned with rooting out political opposition than in combating the Israeli occupation. (more…)

George W. Bush seems terribly confused these days (and not just because he can’t decide whether the U.S. supports the Kurds in Iraq, opposes the Kurds in Turkey, encourages Kurdish terrorism in Iran or does all three simultaneously). With Pervez Musharraf declaring emergency rule in Pakistan, the Bush Doctrine has come face to face with a genuine challenge: should the United States toss in its shameful support for Pakistan’s authoritarian Falstaff or… well, not?

The latter, it seems, has become the favored option in Washington. (more…)