 Egypt – Regimes throughout the Arab world are consistently censoring the Internet and arresting and torturing Internet users, a new human rights report has claimed. The 235-page report, “One Social Network With a Rebellious Message”, examines Internet freedom in 20 Arab countries. “In the Arab world, where the most repressive regimes lie, the Internet has been a tool used to bring democracy and free expression to the region,” read the report, issued by the Egypt-based, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI). “This new force cannot be stopped by governments’ actions of censorship, blocking the internet and arresting and even torturing internet users.” The report looks at four online platforms – blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – as examples of Internet-based tools which Arab Internet users, especially young people, use to express their opinions, expose corruption and counter repression. “The problem is that there are no laws to regulate Internet usage,” Rawda Ahmed, a lawyer and head of the legal division at ANHRI told The Media Line. “Here in Egypt, there are many internet users, bloggers and Facebook users? Many of them are arrested, tortured or illegally detained, and receive arrest warrants under the Emergency Law.” The report found that Syria also employed its Emergency Law to censor and repress Internet users. In Saudi Arabia, the report said, religious authorities issued fatwas, or religious decrees, to ban certain websites the government was unable to block. According to the report the number of Internet users has reached 58 million in the Arab world, of which only users in Lebanon, Algeria and Somalia have Internet freedom. The report claimed that the relative freedom experienced by Internet users in Lebanon and Somalia is mainly due to the widespread practice of phone tapping in Lebanon and the government’s engagement in a conflict in Somalia. The report found that Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, countries which allowed Internet freedom in the past, have started to show a repressive attitude towards Internet users, while Egypt has become the Arab world’s most repressive country towards Internet users. Egypt stopped the policy of blocking websites five years ago, but has heightened its oppression of bloggers and Internet users. “The number of Internet users and bloggers in the Arab world who actually deal with political issues is only a few thousand,” the report said. “But these activists and bloggers have managed to shed light on corruption and oppression and are getting many forces and opposition blocs on their side.” The two Arab League members not included in the report are Djibouti and the Comoros Islands, for lack of information on Internet usage in these countries. Statistics on communications in the Arab world from the report: – 58 million Internet users – 176 million mobile phones – 34 million land lines – 12 million Facebook users – 600,000 bloggers, a quarter of them active – Algeria has the highest numbers of Internet cafes – around 16,000 – Egypt has the highest number of Internet users – 15 million and also the largest number of YouTube users – Mauritania has the lowest number of Internet users, with 60,000 – Countries with the highest number of Facebook users are Egypt, Algeria and Lebanon – The UAE has the highest number of mobile phone users
 In a Dec.7, 2009 article, the Daily Telegraph looks at the plight of Palestinian refugees living in squalid conditions in Lebanon and perhaps hits the nail on the head: "How could it be possible that for the past 61 years Palestinians are trapped in these camps," complained Mahmoud al-Jomaa, who chairs an organisation that provides health programmes for children. What hurts the most for the refugees is the feeling that they have been forgotten by the world - and particularly by other Arabs. "Seven million Jews worry about the fate of Gilad Shalit, while 300 million Arabs couldn't care less what happens to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians," said Walid Taha, who lives in the Shatila camp in Beirut. In fact, the bulk of UNRWA's funding comes from western donors with only a small proportion from the Arab states: According to an Oct. 2009 feature in The Independent: UNRWA's grant of refugee status to the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees according to the principle of patrilineal descent, with no limit on the generations that can obtain refugee status, has made it easy for host countries to flout their obligations under international law.
According to Article 34 of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, "The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees," and must "make every effort to expedite naturalisation proceedings" – the opposite of what happened to the Palestinians in every Arab country in which they settled, save Jordan. Indeed, the article states: In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children – and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions.
Even the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan, historically the most welcoming Arab state, has reason to feel insecure in the face of official threats to revoke their citizenship. The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries – combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities – recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe. In addition, the Palestinian Authority has not been at the forefront in helping relocate the residents of refugee camps into permanent housing facilities. Arabs have to share responsibility for the refugee issues since they rejected the 1947 partition plan and and launched a war of destruction. Had they, like Israel, accepted the partition, there would have been no war and no refugees. We congratulate the Daily Telegraph and Independent for going beyond the standard reporting on Palestinian refugees. Perhaps it is time for Karen AbuZayd to take a more sophisticated examination (including some self-examination) regarding the Palestinian refugee problem. Simply blaming Israel and "occupation" is simplistic and does little to resolve the issue. More at HonestReporting
 The Knesset has passed an initial reading of a proposal, stipulating that negotiations on Arab refugees must include demands for compensation of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries made Aliyah [immigration] to Israel in its early years, after being banished and forced to leave behind property and asset worth billions of dollars.
A legislative proposal on the issue by Knesset Member Nissim Zev (Shas) passed its preliminary Knesset reading on Sunday.
The bill stipulates that in any negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the rights of Arabs who left Israel in 1948, the government of Israel would be required to present its own demands for reparations for the Jews of Arab countries. 
MK Zev says his proposal is anchored in both a United Nations resolution and the U.S. Congress.
“The Jews from Arab countries are defined as refugees by the United Nations,” he emphasized.
“It’s not something we made up, but rather a U.N. definition. In addition, the American Congress itself resolved, in 2008, that the rights of these Jewish refugees must be recognized in the course of the negotiations.” The resolution, passed by the House of Representatives in April 2008, recognized Jewish refugees from Arab countries who were forced to flee their homes in the aftermath of the creation of the State of Israel.
It requires U.S. officials involved in any Middle East peace negotiations that deal with the Arab refugees to "also include a similarly explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries."
One Congressional co-sponsor said at the time that “it’s not just the Arabs and Palestinians in the Middle East, but also Jewish people who themselves were dispossessed of their possessions and their homes, and were victims of terrorist acts.” Another said there were more Jewish refugees than Palestinian refugees, and “their forced exile from Arab lands must not be omitted from public discussion on the peace process." Read more at INN 
 Kareem Shaheen A Nobel Peace Prize winner yesterday called on women in the UAE and wider Arab world to fight for “economic independence” and equal political rights.
Dr Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel laureate and human rights activist, said a key first step was raising “the awareness of women in the Arab world, and then they have to encourage women to go in search of work and leave their homes to work”. That would better enable women to venture into the marketplace, she told The National.
“Then [comes] the economic independence of women. And I’m saying economic independence that they get from working, not from inheriting some money from their fathers.”
Dr Ebadi was in Abu Dhabi for the Festival of Thinkers, organised by the Higher Colleges of Technology and in which The National is a partner. She delivered the keynote address at the Emirates Palace hotel on Monday. The event ends today. In the UAE, Dr Ebadi said, “women are allowed to have an education. They go to school and even university, but it’s a very low percentage of these women who enter the work market and become active. Therefore the situation is discriminatory”. She said the lack of female empowerment in the Middle East was evident in the low number of women holding key leadership posts.
“Polygamy still exists,” said Dr Ebadi. “The political rights of women are not equal to the political rights of men. “You don’t see any women who are holding senior positions, political or economic.
“In Saudi Arabia, women aren’t even allowed to drive their own cars, let alone be engaged in political and cultural activities, whereas in other Islamic states, such as Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, for many years women have been able to work in political fields and even become prime ministers.
“Behind all this thinking, ideology, it is not Islam, because Islam respects the rights of women.” The differences between Islamic countries were the result of different degrees of patriarchal culture, Dr Ebadi said. “So this culture gives an interpretation of Islam which suits their patriarchal culture. And that is why we see how the situation of women is different from one Islamic culture to the other.”
But the blame laid with both genders, she said. “Although the women are victims of this culture, they’re also the carriers and promoters of this culture. Don’t forget that any man who is a bully has been raised by a woman, and it’s only women who can stop this wrong culture, that does not believe in the equality of mankind, from being carried on and promoted.”
The UAE and the Arab world could learn from Iran’s growing feminist tradition, Dr Ebadi said, where women actively engaged in the post-election protests.
In addition, “many of our women are professors and lecturers, we have many women who are engineers, doctors, and have senior administrative positions”, she said, pointing out that even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, appointed a female adviser and a female minister. “There is a saying, ‘Modernity is born in the streets’. And a woman who leaves her home for work gradually becomes modernised.” Source: The National
 A special report by Judith Miller and David Samuels You might think Palestinian refugees would be welcomed by their Arab neighbours, yet they are denied basic rights and citizenship It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel.
The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state. Yet in the two decades since the end of the Cold War, after two Gulf wars, and the rise and fall of the Oslo peace process, not a single Palestinian refugee has returned to Israel – and only a handful of ageing political functionaries have returned from neighbouring Arab countries to the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, failed peace plans and shifting political priorities have resulted in a second Palestinian "Nakba", or catastrophe – this one at hands of the Arab governments.
"Marginalised, deprived of basic political and economic rights, trapped in the camps, bereft of realistic prospects, heavily armed and standing atop multiple fault lines," a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Lebanon recently observed, "the refugee population constitutes a time bomb." The fact that the divided Palestinian political leadership is silent about the mistreatment of the refugees by Arab states does not make such behaviour any less reprehensible – or less dangerous.
Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Iraq were similarly dispossessed after the second Gulf war. In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children – and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions.
Even the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan, historically the most welcoming Arab state, has reason to feel insecure in the face of official threats to revoke their citizenship. Read more here,,,, Source: The Independent
 By Robert Fisk In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years. The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs.
Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security." This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy.
China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves. The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank.
But it is China's extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states. Read more here,,,, Source: The Independent
 by Daniel Greenfield
Myth 1: "Israel was created because Europe felt guilty about the Holocaust." This left wing myth has been widely repeated, most recently by Desmond Tutu. While blatantly false on a level that even the most serious anti-Israel historian can recognize, it persists because its function is to delegitimize as the product of post-war colonial guilt, rather than longstanding Israeli national aspirations. Israel was not created in 1947. By 1947, Israel already was a functioning country with a language, culture, agriculture, universities, newspapers and military forces which proved capable of defending against the armies of several Arab nations. The only thing that happened after the Holocaust was a UN vote in 1947 was for a partition plan that was never implemented because the Arab world instead chose to try and destroy Israel. Israel however would have declared independence and fought for its own survival, with the same exact outcome, regardless of UN Resolution 181. This vote is often described as creating Israel, but it was more accurately an attempt to settle the borders of Israel that failed because of Arab genocidal hostility that expressed itself not only toward Israel, but toward the Jews living in Arab lands. Nor did post-war European colonialism create Israel. Britain, which was the colonial power in the region, was against Israel's independence and abstained in the UN vote. The majority of votes for Resolution 181 came from non-European countries, primarily in Latin America and Eastern Europe, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, Peru and Poland, Ukraine and the Soviet Union. 7 European countries voted Yes, most of them Northern European states such as Sweden and Denmark, which experienced only a limited impact of the Holocaust. 12 Latin American countries voted Yes. Twice the number. And all of them countries that had their own national aspirations and had fought against colonialism. Post-Holocaust guilt was not the reason Resolution 181 passed. Less than a third of the 33 votes came from countries where the Holocaust had taken place. The reasons were varied and different. Some Latin American countries identified with Israel's national aspirations and some sought economic ties. Truman was influenced by the desire for Jewish votes in an upcoming election. The Soviet Union wanted to sabotage Britain's colonial program. The motives of different countries were varied and complex. Iran for example voted against the resolution and yet became the second country to recognize the new State of Israel. Left wing activists may insist that Resolution 181 was a racist act, but in fact half the countries who voted for it were non-white, and most of the countries who voted for it were non-European. Therefore the myth that Israel was created after the Holocaust by guilty Europeans, a myth that has been bandied about by everyone from Desmond Tutu to Wallace Shawn to Barack Obama is just that, a myth. Israel would have existed regardless of the Holocaust or UN Resolution 181, which was voted for primarily by non-European countries in any case. Those who repeat the myth are therefore demonstrating either extreme ignorance or extreme deceptiveness. Myth 2: "European Nations Gave the Jews a Land Already Inhabited by a People." This is one of the more common myths that seeks to strike at the legitimacy of the creation of the modern state of Israel, and treats the Jews as a foreign body within the land. This is a continuation of the anti-semitic stereotypes of the Jews as eternal wanderers and eternal foreigners. The fact of the matter is that Jews had an ongoing presence in the land going back thousands of years, that was only interrupted by massacres and expulsions, after which the Jews population would once again attempt to reestablish itself. Greek, Roman, Arab and Ottoman colonialism expelled Jewish populations and attempted to replace them with their own populations in order to gain a foothold in the land. Unlike them however the Jews remained the land's indigenous population. Throughout history Jews struggled to achieve independence with armed revolts from Roman and Byzantine rule. The last such revolt took place somewhat more than a thousand years before the creation of the modern State of Israel, rather than two thousand as most people believe. Jewish attempts to revive the State of Israel were repeatedly and brutally suppressed, in at least one case by outright genocide. Nor was that the only genocide that Jews in Israel experienced.
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