Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:
• 6 December 2012
• Globe and Mail
• By JOHN IBBITSON

In a marked shift from his previously unqualified allegiance, Stephen Harper has told Benjamin Netanyahu that Canada does not support the Israeli government’s decision to revive plans for settlements east of Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister believes the settlements would further impair efforts to achieve peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples – a message he conveyed directly to the Israeli Prime Minister during a phone call Saturday, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told The Globe and Mail…

“The Palestinians’ actions last week were very unhelpful to the cause of peace, and the Israeli response of settlement expansion is very unhelpful to the cause of peace,” Mr. Baird said.

• News source:
• 4 December 2012
• Globe and Mail
• By DAOUD KUTTAB

Despite the vote at the United Nations in support of Palestinian statehood, this non-violent effort by the Palestinian leadership is facing an uphill battle. Another narrative is competing for the hearts and minds of Palestinians.

• News source:
• 5 December 2012
• Transparency International
• Press release

A growing outcry over corrupt governments forced several leaders from office last year, but as the dust has cleared it has become apparent that the levels of bribery, abuse of power and secret dealings are still very high in many countries. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2012 shows corruption continues to ravage societies around the world.

Two thirds of the 176 countries ranked in the 2012 index score below 50, on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean), showing that public institutions need to be more transparent, and powerful officials more accountable.

“Governments need to integrate anti-corruption actions into all public decision-making. Priorities include better rules on lobbying and political financing, making public spending and contracting more transparent and making public bodies more accountable to people,” said Huguette Labelle, the Chair of Transparency International.

“After a year of focus on corruption, we expect governments to take a tougher stance against the abuse of power. The Corruption Perceptions Index 2012 results demonstrate that societies continue to pay the high cost of corruption,” Labelle said.

• News source:
• 21 November 2012
• Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
• By Brian J. Grim

Several recent incidents have drawn international attention to laws and policies prohibiting blasphemy – remarks or actions considered to be contemptuous of God or the divine. In a highly publicized case last summer, for example, a 14-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan was arrested and detained for several weeks after she was accused of burning pages from the Quran. In neighboring India, a man reputed to be a religious skeptic is facing blasphemy charges because he claimed a statue of Jesus venerated by Mumbai’s Catholic community for its miraculous qualities is a fake. The man reportedly is staying in Europe to avoid prosecution. In Greece, a man was arrested and charged with blasphemy after he posted satirical references to an Orthodox Christian monk on Facebook.

Pakistan, India and Greece are not alone in actively pursuing blasphemy prosecutions. A new analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that as of 2011 nearly half of the countries and territories in the world (47%) have laws or policies that penalize blasphemy, apostasy (abandoning one’s faith) or defamation (disparagement or criticism of particular religions or religion in general).

• News source:
• 30 November 2012
• Gush Shalom
• By Uri Avnery

IT WAS a day of joy.

Joy for the Palestinian people.

Joy for all those who hope for peace between Israel and the Arab world.

And, in a modest way, for me personally.

The General Assembly of the United Nations, the highest world forum, has voted overwhelmingly for the recognition of the State of Palestine, though in a limited way.

• News source:
• 4 December 2012
• Haaretz
• By Reuven Pedatzur

The real story behind Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza has not yet been investigated, but now that the explosions have stopped, we are obligated to delve into the truth. The decision to kill Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari, which was the opening shot of the operation, was made even though he was involved in negotiations on signing a long-term cease-fire agreement.

• News source:
• 4 December 2012
• New York Times
• By ANNE BARNARD and ELLEN BARRY

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Fierce fighting on the battlefield and setbacks on the diplomatic front increased pressure on the embattled Syrian government as fresh signs emerged on Tuesday of a sustained battle for control of the capital…

The latest reports followed developments on Monday when a senior Turkish official said that Russia had agreed to a new diplomatic approach to seek ways to persuade President Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power, a possible weakening in Russia’s steadfast support for the government.

• News source:
• 29 November 2012
• Reuters
• By Michelle Nichols

International Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said on Thursday he could not move forward with a peace plan unless it was backed by a U.N. Security Council resolution and he warned that a ceasefire would only hold if it was overseen by a peacekeeping mission.

• News source:
• 29 November 2012
• Financial Times
• By Tobias Buck in Ramallah

The Palestinians won an overwhelming diplomatic victory at the UN on Thursday after 138 out of 193 member states voted to upgrade their status at the global body, sending one of the strongest signals yet in favour of an independent Palestinian state.

Speaking before the vote at the UN General Assembly, Mahmoud Abbas, the veteran Palestinian leader, described the resolution as the “birth certificate” of the Palestinian state. He said Palestine was in “desperate need of peace” and insisted that the UN move was intended “to launch a final serious attempt to achieve peace” with Israel.

• News source:
• 17 November 2012
• Scoop.nz
• By Uri Avnery

HOW DID it start? Stupid question.

Conflagrations along the Gaza Strip don’t start. They are just a continuous chain of events, each claimed to be in “retaliation” for the previous one. Action is followed by reaction, which is followed by retaliation, which is followed by …

• News source:
• 30 October 2012
• AFP

Beirut: Amid the roar of gunfire and explosions echoing through Syria’s streets, the non-violent activists who launched the revolt against President Bashar Al Assad are struggling to make their voices heard.

But although the revolt they set off has morphed into a bloody insurgency, many believe there is still room for peaceful activism in strife-torn Syria.

“We started this revolution to rid the system of violence, not merely to oust Al Assad,” said Mohammad Qoraytem, a 33-year-old Syrian activist in Daraya, a town southwest of Damascus.

“Ours is an uprising of principles,” he told AFP via the internet.

Considered a heartland of non-violent activism, Daraya was the site of the worst massacre in Syria’s 19-month conflict, with more than 500 people killed there in late August, according to monitors.

But two months after the massacre, activists there said they are continuing to work in the non-violent spirit of the Arab Spring that overthrew regimes in Tunisia and Egypt and inspired Syria’s revolutionaries.

• News source:

A Child’s View From Gaza Exhibition – Tues., Nov. 6 – Tues., Dec. 4, 2012, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (details below)

Public Reception for A Child’s View From Gaza – Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012, 7:00 p.m. (details below)

Exhibition:
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), Victoria Chapter, is delighted to announce the presentation in Victoria of a fascinating and heart-wrenchingly beautiful collection of drawings by children and youth from Gaza. The exhibition, A Child’s View from Gaza, features 20 drawings by children in Gaza from 5 to 14 years of age, created during the course of art therapy. The exhibition reflects the children’s perceptions of the Israeli offensive against Gaza, which took place from December 27, 2008 to January 17, 2009. Each drawing is unique in its perspective and details.

Public Reception:
CPJME is holding a public reception and viewing of A Child’s View From Gaza exhibit, at the A. Wilfrid Johns Gallery, Faculty of Education, MacLaurin Building-A Wing, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, on Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012, at 7:00 p.m.

There will be a presentation by Dr. Robert Dalton, Art Education Professor, at the University of Victoria. Dr. Dalton’s Ph.D. dissertation was focused on the theme of children’s war drawings, and since then he has studied collections of drawings from Iraq, Afghanistan and other regions of the world, where the lives of children and youth have been affected by conflict. As well, he has studied art collections where peace, a much more hopeful and uplifting topic, was the theme.

Refreshments will be served. Live Arabic music will be performed. Short film clips (The Future for Gaza’s Children-An Interview with Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj, Psychiatrist; Samouni Street; and Gaza: Did You Know?) will be shown. Guests will be invited to participate in an art activity. A Gazan/Palestinian cultural display will be on hand.

CJPME gratefully acknowledges the A. Wilfrid Johns Gallery for providing this venue.

• News source:
• 18 October 2012
• Eurasia Review
• By Ramesh Jaura

A veil of silence and secrecy has shrouded the fate of a conference on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction in 2012, since the UN announced on October 14, 2011 that Finland will host it.

• News source:
• 1 October 2012
• Daily Star
• It is not naive to believe that nuclear deterrence is both fragile operationally and of thoroughly dubious utility in sustaining the peace. Nor is it naive to believe that even if nuclear weapons cannot be un-invented, they can ultimately be outlawed.
• By Gareth Evans

Across the Islamic world – from North Africa to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – we see fragile relationships, unhappy transitions, unresolved conflicts and outright attacks on the United States, despite Obama’s case for a new beginning, movingly articulated in his June 2009 speech in Cairo. Israel, which has been deaf to Obama’s urging, is further from reconciliation with the Palestinians, and closer to war with Iran, than it has ever been.

• News source:
• 16 October 2012
• Today | MSN
• By Lizzie Stark

Can the Arab-Israeli conflict be resolved through a few good meals? Probably not, but reveling in the similarities of each other’s cuisine is certainly a delicious starting point.

Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, authors of the new cookbook, “Jerusalem,” explain that whether it’s called an “Israeli salad” or an “Arab salad,” the simple combination of chopped tomato and cucumber that appears on tables all over the city shows that Jerusalemites share tastes that cross religious and sectarian boundaries.

• News source:
• 9 October 2012
• Washington Post
• By Johari Abdul Malik

A call for the de-escalation of violence in Syria will ultimately save innocent lives, as it isolates and delegitimizes the Assad government that continues to use violence against the largely civilian population. Many Americans feared that the “jasmine revolutions” (not Arab Spring) would become protracted civil wars, yet to our surprise this generally did not happen.

While Syria is the exception, there is a Syrian Nonviolence Movement that is trying to gain support and is taking lessons from the nonviolence in Islamic history.

• News source:
• 10 October 2012
• Toronto Star
• By Catherine Morris

• News source:
• 10 October 2012
• New York Times
• By STEPHEN N. XENAKIS

LATE last month the American military flew a man named Omar Khadr from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he had been a detainee since 2002, back to Canada, the country of his birth. Mr. Khadr’s repatriation was part of an informal agreement between the two countries after his 2010 guilty plea for murdering an American soldier.

Mr. Khadr, who now sits in a maximum-security facility in Canada, was supposed to be moved out of Guantánamo in October 2011. But the Canadian government voiced concerns over his potential threat, and his transfer was delayed for another year. While he will certainly spend more time in prison, the Canadian government has yet to announce how long, or when he will be eligible for parole.

Is Omar Khadr a threat to national security? These questions, and the way his case has been handled, reveal a great deal about the way we approach national security and detainees. Some of the Guantánamo detainees, as we know, are dangerous men. Others, like Omar Khadr, are emphatically not.

I served 28 years in the United States Army and had the privilege of commanding thousands of troops as a brigadier general before I retired. I am also a psychiatrist who, as an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion, was asked to evaluate Mr. Khadr. I have spent hundreds of hours with him since 2008 and have thoroughly reviewed the findings of my colleagues as well as the interviews and reports by the prosecution’s experts. From my first involvement in this case, I have kept America’s national security interest foremost in my thinking and integrated it into my assessment as a psychiatric expert.

There was no question that Mr. Khadr suffered life-threatening injuries, as well as concussions, in a firefight that led to his capture, in 2002, at a compound in Afghanistan. He was 15 years old and had been sent there by his father to translate for Libyans training Afghan fighters on how to make improvised explosive devices.

• News source:
• 27 September 2012
• God's Politics
• By Jim Wallis

The most recent discussions of U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East, once again say more about politics during an election year, than they do about the fundamental issues we must confront if we want to see substantial change…

Here are three principles that may help us navigate a path out of this mess…

• News source:
• 19 September 2012
• CNN
• By Erica Chenoweth

In ongoing struggles against oppressive governments, movements for change often confront a key strategic question. From Syria to Morocco to Bahrain to Occupy Wall Street, activists want to know: would unarmed resistance be enough?

Generally, yes. Nonviolent resistance is more than twice as successful as violent resistance, even in the face of brutal regime repression. That’s what Maria Stephan, a strategic planner in the U. S. State Department, and I found when we examined 323 social change campaigns from around the world between the years 1900 and 2006.

We believe that ours is the first study to try to answer in a systematic, empirical way whether nonviolent or violent resistance methods are better at producing short- and long-term political change.  We looked at the success rates of the toughest types of insurrections: anti-dictator, self-determination and anti-occupation movements. Our cases range from the famed Indian Independence movement in the 1930s and 1940s to the Serbian movement to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, among many others.

The results are detailed in our book, Why Civil Resistance Works: the Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. The results were a surprise to me, a skeptical scholar of political violence. In our book we set aside the question of which method of resistance is right or wrong morally and assessed, instead, which was the superior strategic choice.