LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
ِMay 14/2010

Bible Of the Day
The Good News According to Mark 16/14-20
16:14 Afterward he was revealed to the eleven themselves as they sat at the table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they didn’t believe those who had seen him after he had risen. 16:15 He said to them, “Go into all the world, and preach the Good News to the whole creation. 16:16 He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who disbelieves will be condemned. 16:17 These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new languages; 16:18 they will take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it will in no way hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” 16:19 So then the Lord*, after he had spoken to them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. 16:20 They went out, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen.

Free Opinions, Releases, letters, Interviews & Special Reports
The Concerns of Lebanon's Christians Are Not Parochial/By: Michael Young/May 13/10
The end for America in the Middle East?/By Michael Young/May 13/10
The unanswered questions of Ketermaya/By: Ana Maria Luca/May 13/10
The Ethnic Cleansing of Assyrians in Iraq Must Be Stopped/AINA/May 13/10
Accountability is key to reform/Daily Star/May 13/10
Lebanon's failure to reform will not hurt EU ties - Laurent/By Patrick Galey/May 13/10

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for May 13/10
Judge Riachi: Why Hasn't a Sentence Been Issued in Bashir Gemayel's Case?/Naharnet
LF Students: We Received Threats after Taking Down Nasrallah Pictures from LAU-Jbeil Campus/Naharnet
South Lebanon: 11 French Peacekeepers Injured in Munitions Accident in Al-Tiri/Naharnet
Obama to meet with Lebanon's Hariri/AFP
Analysis: Syria handles scud row with eye on US/The Associated Press
Syria must disclose its nuclear intentions in case of Russia deal, US says/Ha'aretz
US wants high court to stay out of rendition case/Washington Post
Israel to Syria: No plans to attack/Ha'aretz
Lieberman: Syria behind foiled 2009 attempt to smuggle weapons from North Korea/Ha'aretz
Iraq violence set to delay US troop withdrawal/The Guardian
Israel says seized North Korean arms were for Hamas, Hezbollah/Reuters
Hariri denies support for Hezbollah Scuds/UPI.com
US gives $20 million to rebuild Lebanon refugee camp/AFP
Mikati: Centrism only way to Mideast peace/Daily Star
UNIFIL soldiers injured after blast in south/Daily Star
Court hands 31 Fatah al-Islam members 15-year jail terms/AFP
Zghorta, Batroun set for electoral battle, Sidon in limbo/Daily Star
Hassan: Government did not drop privatization option/Daily Star
Bahia Hariri's Son, Osama Saad's Sister Likely Going Head-to-Head in Sidon Election Battle/Naharnet
FPM Calls on Kataeb, LF to Join Forces with it to Save Jezzine from 'External Control'/Naharnet
Arab Diplomat Involved in Drug Smuggling Ring/Naharnet
Nahhas, Safadi Reject Regulatory Authorities Limiting Role of Ministers/Naharnet
March 14 Hush Hush as Budget Likely to Spur Heated Discussion in Cabinet/Naharnet
Gemayel: Region on Verge of Explosion, Hizbullah Should Be More Humble/Naharnet
Hariri to Meet Obama amid Tensions over Alleged Scud Deliveries to Hizbullah/Naharnet
Palestinian Detainee Reportedly Wanted to Blow Himself Up in Hariri, US Embassy to Enter Paradise!/Naharnet
Amnesty to Israel: Stop 'Harassing' Activist Held on Suspicion of Spying for Hizbullah/Naharnet
4 Hurt in Machinegun Attack on House of Newly Elected Member of Bekaa's Rawda Municipality/Naharnet
Moawad: Other Team Toppled Consensus, We'll Be Strong in Zghorta's Battle/Naharnet
Drug Dealer Wanted on 387 Arrest Warrants Captured in Britel/Naharnet
Chase Ends in Crash in Tal Abbas, 4 Wounded/Naharnet
U.S. Announces $20 Million for Nahr al-Bared Camp Project/Naharnet
 

Israel Scattering Military Equipment Amid Criticism Over Lack of Strategy to Face Hizbullah
Naharnet/The Israeli army is scattering its "sensitive" military equipment across the country as part of a new defense policy aimed at protecting the military from rocket and missile attacks, the commander of the army's logistics division said. Brig. Gen. Nissim Peretz told a conference at the Institute for National Security Studies on Wednesday that in the past two years the Israeli army has been examining the best way to protect its equipment in the event of an attack. The equipment includes ammunitions, weapons, fuel, food, spare parts and other gear meant to serve the army at a time of war. Peretz stated that fortification wasn't the ultimate solution adding that scattering the stockpiles in various locations in Israel is the best way to prevent the enemy from targeting the equipment. "Our efficiency suffers slightly in such a state, since not all means are in the same place, but they are better protected and enable the force in the forefront to achieve its objectives without compromising its means," he said. Meanwhile, Israeli Debkafile website said that high-ranking officers leading this week's exercises in northern Israel confronted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi with harsh criticism over the lack of a clear government strategy for dealing with the rising threat of Hizbullah and the alleged flow of advanced weaponry from Syria to the Shiite party. Debkafile's military sources said the officers accused the prime minister and chief of staff, who observed the drill, with standing idle because they were over-anxious to "keep Israel's borders with Syria and the Lebanese Hizbullah calm, whatever the cost."
Beirut, 13 May 10, 09:55

LF Students: We Received Threats after Taking Down Nasrallah Pictures from LAU-Jbeil Campus
Naharnet/Students affiliated to the Lebanese Forces complained that they had received threats after taking down pictures of Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah that were posted on the Jbeil campus walls of the Lebanese American Lebanese (LAU). LF said Hizbullah-affiliated students on Wednesday posted Nasrallah pictures in the LAU campus's parking lot, causing tension among undergraduates. It said Hizbullah students confronted fellow LF learners as they tried to take down the posters. LF students said they had received threatening phone calls from a number of Hizbullah and AMAL students at both LAU's Beirut and Byblos campuses. They said security forces managed to quell the situation. But Hizbullah students made a second try at posting Nasrallah pictures in the same place. LF students waited a while before taking down the new posters. Beirut, 13 May 10, 14:10

Riachi: Why Hasn't a Sentence Been Issued in Bashir Gemayel's Case?
Naharnet/Special Tribunal for Lebanon Vice-President Judge Ralph Riachy criticized the Lebanese judiciary and wondered why the Judicial Council hadn't issued any ruling in the case of President-elect Bashir Gemayel's assassination in 1982. "We wouldn't have needed an international court in the first place" if the Lebanese judicial system was flawless, Riachy told al-Akhbar newspaper in remarks published Thursday. "They might say that (lack of a sentence) is due to the non-presence of the accused. But I wonder why the culprits couldn't be sentenced in absentia," he said about Gemayel's case.About accusations that the STL is politicized, Riachy said: "What can we do to convince them that it isn't?" Beirut, 13 May 10, 12:13

Gemayel: Region on Verge of Explosion, Hizbullah Should Be More Humble
Naharnet/Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel said the region is on the verge of explosion and urged Hizbullah to be more humble. "The regional situation is either dragging us into a mess, and this means more trouble for Lebanon, or is on the verge of an explosion, meaning Lebanon will not be spared," Gemayel said in an interview published Friday by pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.  "We should avoid igniting a regional war," Gemayel warned, pointing to three crises with an impact on Lebanon – Israel's stubbornness and hostility towards Arabs and Palestinians, the difficulty facing the new Iraqi regime against terror and the Iranian nuclear issue. He called on Hizbullah to be "more humble" and to take into account the concerns of the vast majority of Lebanese in terms of usage of weapons. Gemayel said "some" aspects of the political leanings that emerged in 2005 no longer exist, pointing to Druze leader Walid Jumblat who quit the March 14 alliance and to dispute over Article 6 of the ministerial statement which is related to Hizbullah arms and relations with Syria. Beirut, 13 May 10, 12:33

Amnesty to Israel: Stop 'Harassing' Activist Held on Suspicion of Spying for Hizbullah
Naharnet/Amnesty International has urged Israeli authorities to end what it called "harassment" of an Arab human rights activist held on suspicion of spying for Hizbullah.
The non-governmental organization said Ameer Makhoul, an Arab citizen of Israel, has been denied legal advice while in custody. "His arrest and continued detention smacks of pure harassment, designed to hinder his human rights work," an Amnesty statement said. "If this is the case, we would regard him as a prisoner of conscience (and) call for his immediate and unconditional release." Makhoul was arrested last week by police and Shin Bet agents in a raid on his home in the northern port city of Haifa. Another Israeli Arab man, Omar Sayeed, also accused of spying for Hizbullah, was arrested on April 24 but news of the two cases was blacked out by a court order that was lifted only on Monday. Makhoul, whose brother Issa is a former Israeli Arab lawmaker, heads Ittijah (the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations), a group that fights discrimination against Israeli Arabs. "Ameer Makhoul is a key human rights defender, well-known for his civil society activism on behalf of the Palestinian citizens of Israel," said the statement from London-based Amnesty. Israel's 1.3 million Arab citizens are Palestinians who remained in the Jewish state after the 1948 Middle East war that followed its creation and their descendants.(AFP-Naharnet) Beirut, 13 May 10, 09:03

June 13 Set as By-election Date to Replace MP Alameddine
Naharnet/The interior ministry has set June 13 as the date for holding the parliamentary by-election in the Minieh-Dinniyeh electorate after the death of MP Hashem Alameddine two weeks ago. A decree calling on voters to take part in electing an MP for the Sunni seat in Minieh-Dinniyeh has been published in the official Gazette, the ministry announced in a statement Thursday. Alameddine, Mustaqbal Bloc member, died on April 29 at the age of 70 after a battle with illness. He was married to Lidia Alameddine and had a lone daughter, Alana-Sofia.
He first ran for Minieh's Sunni seat in the 1992 parliamentary elections; however, he lost the electoral battle that year. In 2005 he made it to the Parliament after joining the Reconciliation and Reform electoral list. He was re-elected in the 2009 parliamentary elections. Beirut, 13 May 10, 17:52

The unanswered questions of Ketermaya
Ana Maria Luca, /By: Now Lebanon
May 13, 2010
“Nobody cares about that horrible murder; they are only judging the people for killing the murderer,” says Zahra, a woman in her 40s whose green eyes match her veil. She walks across the street toward the Ketermaya village cemetery, where the bodies of Youssef and Kawthar Abu Merhi and their two young granddaughters, Amina and Zeina, were buried on April 27 after being murdered in their home the day before. The sense of trauma is still palpable two weeks after the alleged murderer, Mohammad Msallem, a 38-year-old Egyptian who worked as a butcher in town, was lynched by enraged villagers during the victims’ funeral in full view of the local police.
But unanswered questions remain, as Msallem’s family left the village right after the slaying, and the police are not proceeding with an official investigation into the quadruple murder.
Nobody really knows why the family was killed and why the suspect would have done such a thing. “They barely knew each other. They only said ‘hi’ and that’s it,” Zahra says of the victims and Msallem. “We can’t see why he could have done this. We only found out he confessed to the police after being arrested.”
The evidence of Msallem’s guilt only came after the lynching, when the authorities announced that his DNA matched the blood on a shirt found in his house and that his fingerprints were found on a bloody knife. But according to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, the results of the DNA test came out too soon to be accurate, and Msallem’s fingerprints were on the knife because he used it for his job at the butcher shop.
Minister of Justice Ibrahim Najjar announced after the lynching that the people who killed the murder suspect would be prosecuted. However, the security forces are having difficulty detaining the people identified from the shaky cell-phone footage of the incident as the ones who played the main roles in the public execution.
When the police arrived in town last Friday and took three suspects in for questioning about the incident, the villagers left their shops, locked their houses and took the streets to protest the action of the security forces.
“People felt solidarity. It wasn’t programmed, it just happened,” says Mohammad Hajib Hassan, the temporary president of the Ketermaya municipal council. “The negotiations had not finished,” he said of the talks between security personnel and local officials to get the suspects to turn themselves in. “People were angry that the security forces didn’t wait for the negotiations to finish,” he explains.
Village officials are asking that in return for handing themselves in, the 10 people who are suspected of leading the lynching of the Egyptian butcher and hanging his body from an electricity pole with a meat hook be granted plea bargains.
The villagers say they are cooperating now with the security forces and that two more suspects turned themselves in for questioning on Tuesday, a sign that the negotiations are going well between the two sides.
Meanwhile, Ketermaya villagers all tell the same story about the murder. Everyone NOW Lebanon spoke to denied knowing Mohammad Msallem personally; they say they all avoided talking to him and that he always looked scary and dirty, like a troublemaker or even a drug user. They say Msallem used to mutilate the animal bodies in the butcher’s shop where he worked, though nobody seems to know where exactly his former employer is located. But they all say they know for certain that Msallem raped a 14-year-old girl a few months before he allegedly committed the quadruple murder and that he was released by the police after confessing.
However, Egyptian authorities quoted in Al-Ahram say that Msallem was never arrested for committing the rape because there was never any evidence of sexual assault on the girl after a forensic examination. Msallem’s neighbors in Ketermaya tell NOW Lebanon the girl’s family lived in the same building as Msallem and they don’t remember any animosities between the two families, even after the incident. Al-Ahram also pointed out that the girl’s grandfather, Abu Ali Zaarour, was murdered in the same manner as the Abu Merhis and their granddaughters four years ago, before Msallem arrived in Ketermaya.
“We don’t really know much,” says an old woman who lives across the street from Msallem’s old house. “We went there right after Rana [the mother] arrived home and started asking around about her children. She came home, she saw that her girls were not greeting her and went around asking people. Everybody started to follow her so almost everybody was there when they found the bodies.”
The old woman says she is unhappy that the media focused on the lynching and not on the murder. “It was horrible; the little girl was stabbed 27 times, the grandmother was missing the nose and an ear and the grandfather an eye,” she says covering her mouth in awe. “The children living on this street are scared and still have trouble sleeping.”
*Nadine Elali contributed reporting to this article.

The Concerns of Lebanon's Christians Are Not Parochial
By: Michael Young
http://www.aina.org/news/20100512194657.htm
With Lebanon's municipal elections underway, a significant question has emerged after two Sundays of voting, one with deeper consequences for the country and for sectarian relations. Namely, what does the future hold for Lebanese Christians?
In the three major elections held during the past five years, the parliamentary elections of 2005 and 2009 and the current municipal elections, the truly competitive races took place in predominantly Christian areas. In mainly Shiite constituencies Hizbollah easily prevailed, along with the weaker allied Amal movement. While in majority Sunni districts the Future Movement led by Saad Hariri held sway. Only the Christians, especially their largest sect, the Maronites, escaped such unanimity through their political divisions.
In some respects this was laudable. For optimists, the Christians' pluralism was a sign of political maturity, as was their ability to accept the election processes as peaceful contests. There is some truth here. Historically, the Christians, like Lebanon's other religious groups, known here as confessions, have tended to gravitate around dual rival leaderships. Christians still do so, while Lebanon's Muslim communities in the past decade and a half, and longer in some cases, have come to be dominated by a single party or individual.
However, the optimistic reading of the Christians' destiny fails to take into consideration underlying dynamics that threaten the community's status as a central participant in Lebanese political life.
For starters, there are demographics. Christians today represent anywhere between a quarter and a third of Lebanon's population (no census has been taken since 1932), after having been a majority in the pre-Independence and immediate post-Independence period. In 1989, the Taif Accord established parity between Christians and Muslims in parliament, after decades when Christians held a 6-to-5 majority. This was later integrated into the constitution as one of a series of amendments that diminished Christian political clout. Most prominent, the executive powers of the president of the republic, traditionally a Maronite, were distributed collectively to the council of ministers, led by a Sunni prime minister.
Christian-Muslim legislative parity, though Christians make up less than half the population, continues to be respected by Muslims. Indeed, in the recent municipal elections in Beirut, Mr Hariri sponsored a list of candidates, half of whom were Christian. Unlike parliament, municipal councils are not divided along religious lines.
However, the decision was a sign of a deeper problem. If parity is increasingly regarded as a favour to be granted by Muslims, then it could just as easily, and legitimately, be challenged once the Muslims decide that the political breakdown no longer reflects reality. It is here that Christians, particularly the Maronites, have failed to prepare themselves for such an alternative. And to do so essentially requires that they overhaul their decades-old outlook when it comes to Lebanon and their aspirations in it.
Taif outlined a process of political deconfessionalism, whereby Lebanon would gradually reduce or eliminate the apportionment of political and administrative posts according to religion. The process never got off the ground, for myriad reasons. The most compelling, however, was that deconfessionalising the system would create panic among Christians by denying them the protection of parity, taking away from them reserved government posts, above all the presidency, therefore formalising their minority status.
Yet for Christians to cling to this unnatural situation through fear is potentially dangerous. It is better for them to seize the initiative of change, shaping outcomes in their favour, rather than have change imposed on them one day if Sunnis and Shiites agree to reduce Christian power. The Taif process allows for manageable change, including the formation of a senate to decide on vital national issues that would maintain Christian-Muslim parity. A system allowing communities to rotate senior government posts between themselves is also feasible, and could further reassure Christians.
In other words, where there is consensual change, there will also be a willingness by all sides, particularly the Muslims, to compromise. Yet the Christians have shown little willingness to address deconfessionalisation, and their leaders have been reluctant to initiate communal discussion on the topic.
Which brings us to the psychological advantages of accepting a system that reduces or does away with sectarian quotas. For as long as Christians cannot transcend the fact that they are losing power, they will be unable to reinvent themselves in a new Lebanon. Their focus on preserving elusive prerogatives has prevented them from admitting to the dwindling advantages of these prerogatives. What they need is to define a new role for themselves, in a country where Muslims still remain amenable to facilitating this transformation.
This is no easy feat. The presence of an armed Hizbollah makes any new negotiation on power-sharing difficult today, especially between Sunnis and Shiites. Christians in particular are passing through a period of hardening dejection, exacerbated by destructive political rifts. Their saga of decline is undermining the confidence of their youths, whose first reflex is to emigrate. Christian churches, often pillars of the community educationally, but also socially and even politically, are in need of profound reform. Christian leaders are by and large obsessed with parochial calculations, and thoroughly incapable of fashioning a new vision for their coreligionists.
And yet the Christians have much to offer. Among both Sunnis and Shiites you will hear warnings of the imbalances in the political and social system if Christians were to collapse into irrelevance. Christians played an essential function in the creation of modern Lebanon, and for better or worse the system's DNA has been affected as much by their cultural, social and political reflexes as by that of the other communities, if not more so. Lebanon's Christians remain important, but they seem to be the last to realise it.
By Michael Young
www.thenational.ae
**Michael Young is the opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut. His book, The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life Struggle (Simon & Schuster), has just been published.
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The end for America in the Middle East?
By Michael Young
Daily Star/Thursday, May 13, 2010
Overstatement in the service of truth is no vice, some might say. But where is truth, or indeed overstatement, in the observation that we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of America’s 60-year domination of the Middle East, unless the Obama administration reverses its policies? Alarmingly, no one has any answers.
The notion sounds absurd. America lose the power that it has managed to retain for as long as most of us have been alive? Perhaps it is absurd. But consider this: given President Barack Obama’s lack of a coherent strategy for the region, everywhere we see deepening vulnerabilities, when not a conscious decision by Washington to downgrade its ambitions in the face of more dynamic regional actors. These actors have shortcomings of their own, but they appear to be better prepared to deal with the consequences than the United States.
And let’s add one more item to the bleak mix: Washington’s listlessness actually increases the chances that it will enter into a war with Iran, which Obama has been so understandably keen to avoid.
The Arab state system may well be caught up in a phase of terminal deterioration. Most Arab regimes are old and have lost much legitimacy by consolidating their authoritarianism while offering their younger, expanding populations little in the way of consensual social contracts, useful educational opportunities, and better living conditions. Stalemate prevails, and the onetime sway of leading Arab states has devolved to non-Arab states on the region’s periphery: Turkey, Israel and Iran.
This has had negative consequences for the United States, whose political preeminence in the region rested on the old Arab order. Longstanding American allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are weaker than ever before. At the same time, the Obama administration is in the throes of psychological retrenchment over the Middle East, the result of myriad factors, above all a sense that the US cannot financially afford the vast empire it once controlled.
Looking at American policy, what do we see today? For starters, we see an Iran actively challenging America in the region. This may look like hubris, but the Iranians see little that is worrisome. Take Iraq, which the US fought long and hard over and ultimately stabilized after the spectacular blunders of the immediate postwar years in 2003-2005. Today, Obama’s stubborn priority is to withdraw, effectively denying Washington the primary terrain needed to contain Iran, but also to exercise its power over Syria and to an extent Saudi Arabia.
Iraq’s election results provided an opportunity for the Obama administration. Iran’s closest allies lost ground, in contrast to the blocs led by Ayad Allawi and Nouri al-Maliki. Instead of trying to impose some compromise between the two men that could have created the basis of a more stable Sunni-Shiite order, therefore of a new strategic relationship between Washington and Baghdad, Obama did nothing. Iran saw an opening and is now helping establish a Shiite-led government that will doubtless favor Iranian interests.
Washington’s refusal to develop a strategic relationship with Iraq to hold back Iran, means the US will have to rely, instead, on the frail Gulf states to push back against the Islamic Republic. Not surprisingly, Iran sees very few serious obstacles coming from its Gulf Arab neighbors. And these would dissipate completely if Tehran were to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran has the added ability in places such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait, but also in Yemen, of being able to mobilize members of disgruntled Shiite minorities.
The impact of a Palestinian-Israeli settlement on the Gulf and Iraq, the critical playing field in the American-Iranian rivalry, would be relatively limited. The Palestinians have been a tool used by Iran, as has Lebanon, to protect its core objective: building up its supremacy in the Gulf. Iran’s priority is to progressively undermine America in the Middle East, with other regional tensions, in themselves of less immediate importance to Tehran, feeding into this. Hizbullah and Hamas act as useful shock absorbers for Iran while it develops a nuclear capability, the cornerstone of its bid for regional hegemony.
Which brings us to the shipwreck that is Afghanistan. Obama has locked himself into an impossible situation there. The president has set a deadline for the start of a withdrawal from the country in July 2011, and if he fails to win the midterm elections next November, which is probable, we can be sure that he will begin implementing his pullout before the next presidential election, unless there is a dramatic improvement in American fortunes. Until now the signs are not good. Washington finds itself fighting the Taliban while striving to find common ground between the conflicting objectives of its two major (and mistrusted) allies in the Afghan war, President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan. Add to that that Pakistan has no real desire to see the US succeed, preferring to reassert its own authority in Kabul.
This is excellent news for Iran. An Obama administration trapped in the tentacles of Afghanistan makes more likely American retreats in the Middle East. And if Barack Obama decides next year that it is time to wind down his Afghan adventure, the implications for America’s view of itself, and the world’s view of America, could be dramatic, particularly if Iran uses that opening to finalize a nuclear weapon. Obama will have presided over two major military withdrawals while allowing Iran to become a major adversary in the Middle East.
But there is another possible scenario. Obama may realize that he’s been cornered by Tehran, and resort to the one thing he can still call upon with some sense of superiority, military power. Having stood down in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and in all probability on the Palestinian track; having seen his major allies becoming steadily more marginal; having seen all this, the president may finally decide that enough is enough, and go to war. Whatever happens, Obama’s bad choices today are pushing him in the direction he most dreads.
**Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR. His “The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon’s Life Struggle” (Simon & Schuster) has just been published.

Jordan Launches Campaign: 'No Zionist Enemy Products'
by Hillel Fendel/Arutz Sheva
It's not only the Palestinian Authority, and it's not only against the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Jordan, too, has quasi-officially announced a boycott on all Israeli-made products.
Doron Paskin, head of research at Info-Prod Research, reports for Calcalist that the campaign is headed by Jordan's trade unions, whose leaders held a press conference on Monday to announce the boycott. Dr. Ahmed Armouti, chairman of the Trade Unions Organization, said that the campaign was conceived to mark 62 years since what Arabs call the Naqba [Catastrophe], otherwise known as Israel's independence.
In addition to the dissemination of lists of Israeli-made products so that simple Jordanians can know what not to buy, a mass burning will be held this Saturday. Fruits and vegetables from Israel will be collected from the market in Jordan's capital Amman and will be publicly burnt. The event is being organized by a body called the Committee to Make War on Normalization [with Israel].
Two of the largest traders in the Amman market have already announced their intention to stop buying from Israel, Paskin reports.
It was explained at the press conference that the boycott violates no Jordanian laws.
Jordan and Israel have officially been at peace since they signed a peace treaty in 1994. Prior to that, Jordan warred with Israel in 1948, launched many fedayeen (terrorist) attacks in the following years, and then attacked Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967 – when it lost Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to Israel.
Jordan sat out the Yom Kippur War, and friendly ties ultimately developed between its leader King Hussein and Israeli governments. Hussein died five years after signing the peace treaty with Yitzchak Rabin in 1994. His son and successor, Abdullah is not enthusiastic about the peace with Israel; he told The Wall Street Journal last month that Jordan was better off economically before it made peace with Israel.
PA Continues its Boycott Efforts
At the same time, the Palestinian Authority is continuing its campaign to boycott Israeli-made goods from Judea and Samaria – in violation of the Oslo Agreement. In addition, it has added all Israeli-made goods to its list of "products to be avoided." A gathering was held in a Ramallah suburb this past week honoring volunteers who raise awareness in the PA public regarding the "importance" of spurning the Israeli-made goods. High school and college students are being trained throughout the PA-controlled areas to engage in such activities.

Canada Expresses Concern over Egypt’s Extension of Emergency Law
http://www.international.gc.ca/media/aff/news-communiques/2010/160.aspx
(No. 160 – May 12, 2010 – 10:45 a.m. ET) The Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the following statement expressing concern over Egypt’s extension of its emergency law:
“Canada regrets the Government of Egypt’s announcement of plans to extend its emergency law until May 31, 2012. Canada views the ongoing state of emergency as an obstacle to the full respect of human rights and the rule of law in Egypt.
“Canada recognizes that Egypt has introduced limits to the application of the emergency law. However, Canada believes that Egypt should fully honour its commitment to lift the state of emergency, a pledge it recently reiterated at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“Canada continues to call for the respect of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”
- 30 -
For further information, media representatives may contact:
Ève Cardinal
Press Secretary
Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs
613-995-1851
Foreign Affairs Media Relations Office
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
613-995-1874

The Ethnic Cleansing of Assyrians in Iraq Must Be Stopped
GMT 5-13-2010
Assyrian International News Agency
(AINA) -- Over half of the 1.4 million Christians who lived in Iraq before the 2003 invasion have fled the country. If they could, most of the others would have departed as well if some nation was ready to take them in. Nearly every human rights organization and numerous parliaments are in agreement that an ethnic and religious cleansing has been underway in Iraq (report). Non-Muslims are not welcome any longer in large segments of the country. Kidnappings, rapes and executions are daily occurrences for the non-Muslims of Iraq. Sixty churches have been bombed, sometimes systematically on the very same day in different places in the country.
One of the worst attacks happened on May 2nd. A busload of Christian Assyrian students was attacked between two checkpoints. In the place where they should have been safest, two roadside bombs were detonated. The next morning I received a video taken with a mobile telephone at one of the hospitals where the wounded and injured students were being cared for (Watch video of victims at hospital).
In Sweden there are thousands of Assyrian Iraqis hidden from the authorities because they have been rejected as refugees and are forbidden to remain in Sweden. They are hunted down by the Swedish police. If they are arrested, they are put in prison or in custody until the authorities have enough refugees to fill a plane with which to fly them to Baghdad. They are dumped by the Swedish police back to that very city where they can be slaughtered for their religion or ethnicity.
During the past two years I have followed some thirty persons who have been forcibly expelled. Nearly all of them have fled Iraq again. In the beginning of last week one of the refugees I helped conceal informed me that "a pregnant refugee woman looked for a hospital where she could give birth but the local hospital refused to accept her. She desperately needed a caesarean and they wanted her to pay SEK 50,000 (7,000 Dollars) which she did not have." Two days later the organization Läkare i världen, (Médecins du Monde) in Sweden (which helps refugees who are hiding) arranged medical care for this pregnant woman.
The woman's husband and I spoke about the consequences of the war in Iraq and the Swedish authority's cynical treatment of those who have fled for their lives. He showed me a photo of his brother and said "It made no difference how much evidence that my brother presented to the Migrationsverket (The Migration Board) and the Migrationsdomstolen (The Immigration Court): for example threatening letters and a list of people who were to be executed. Despite all this they sent him back. Shortly after he was dumped back in Baghdad he was kidnapped by the very same Islamist group that he had described to the Migration Board. The group later returned him as a corpse."
On Tuesday May 4th, I was at the Migration Board's main office in Norrköping. Fredrik Beijer, the chief of staff at the Board, had called a group of activists from the Swedish and Middle Eastern churches to a meeting. Among them was the Bishop of the Eastern Assyrian Church, Mar Odisho Oraham, as well as the Swedish priest Henrik Törnqvist. This was because the action group and I had collected 88 cases that concerned Christian Iraqis who had earlier been rejected. The chief of staff of the Board wanted to examine these cases to find out if the Board had made any errors in those that concerned Christians from Iraq. But he claimed that he couldn't find any errors. "A number of them had remained in the country (Iraq) after the threats began," Beijer claimed, among other things. I replied that it is correct that they had fled from their homes to hide among family and friends until they could find a smuggler who could help the leave Iraq. In some cases, those who had hidden them had been exposed and were forced flee in turn.
The four people who represented the Migration Board that Tuesday obstinately claimed that "the people whose cases had been submitted had remained in the geographic area (Iraq) after the risk had become apparent" -- playing with words. The Board's head jurist, Mikael Ribbenvik, did concede that "as the situation has improved with time, it has become much worse for minorities." But it became obvious that this was of no help to those who are currently in hiding to be permitted to remain in Sweden. The Board did not feel that their fears were "well founded."
Not a single perpetrator, not a single terrorist who has kidnapped, raped or killed a non-Muslim has been convicted in Iraq. The country now has a constitution based on an interpretation of the Koran. During Saddam's regime nearly all who applied for asylum to remain in Sweden received it. We knew that he was certainly a brutal dictator and people needed protection from him. Now in the midst of an ongoing genocide, minorities get rejected by the Swedish Migration Board. Since it has become worse for non-Muslims in Iraq today, Sweden cynically sends them back there. I cannot reconcile these facts.
The Board claims that there is no systematic persecution in Iraq. This despite the fact that everyone else, among them the foremost experts in the world, claims that it is ongoing. When I relate about persons who have been expelled from Sweden and managed to flee to Syria and other bordering countries, where they obtained refugee status from the UNHCR, this has no effect on the Swedish decision makers. When I relate that I have taped the voice of a Swedish civil servant working for the Board who has even encouraged Christian Iraqis to flee again as soon as they have been arrived in Iraq, Mr. Beijer red-faced and said "we are thankful that you informed us, it is unethical behavior which we want to know about."
Several employees at the Migration Board, who have been forced to hold a so-called returning interview with Christian Iraqis, feel ashamed. They are aware that these people should not be expelled but instead be protected.
This is the way the interviews sound: "I know it will be difficult for you in Iraq but I have to tell you the way it is. If you agree to be expelled to northern Iraq where it is relatively safe we will not hand over your case to the police. If not, the police will hunt you down, arrest you, keep you in custody, force you on a plane and dump you in Baghdad. My advice is that you agree to do this voluntarily, in which case you can receive 30,000 kr ($3,900) as a resettlement fee. Take the money and flee to Syria." This is the conversation that Beijer claims is unethical.
That I, an investigative journalist and author, should hide refugees would certainly be considered unethical by Sweden's migration minister Tobias Billström. He probably would have like to make the hiding of refugees illegal. In that case I will accept the punishment. I am proud that I can help. I want to continue to be proud of Sweden's reputation of being one of the most welcoming countries for people who have fled to save their lives. I am ashamed about the current "unethical situation." An unjust law is no law at all. As a reply to my reaction to Beijer's statement about the Board employee whom he claims acted unethically, he wrote to me the next day: "My reaction to your information regarding what an employee of the Migration Board had said, only concerned that I don't believe that it is the employee's duty to advise the person being interviewed how they should act after a future return to their homeland. How much one should like to do so, we cannot mix ourselves in the applicant's life after they have departed our country."
No, but we can see to it that they are not sent back as long as there is a risk that they will be killed. As I was writing this text I was interrupted by a Christian Iraqi in hiding. He had just received a rejection by the court. Before fleeing from Iraq his brother had been beheaded in front of his eyes; the Islamists released him later so that he could tell other Christians of what had happened. This is a man who witnessed something horrible, a man whose name is on a death list, and a man that Sweden wants to send back.
Two Iraqi ministers have, in the media, asked that Sweden should stop sending back persons that Iraq cannot protect. Why do we do this? It's not enough to say that the law isn't adequate -- we must change it now.
To the international community I say: Protect the non-Muslims in Iraq before it is too late. The majority of them are found in the northern part of the country, in what is known as the Nineveh Plains. This must become a defended protectorate. How many more must die? How many more have to be forced to flee. The United States must take its responsibility. It behooves the EU and the UN to take on this responsibility as well.
By Nuri Kino
Journalist and author Nuri Kino has been called by several human rights organizations one of the leading experts on the consequences of the war in Iraq. Kino has produced six radio documentaries on this subject, two TV documentaries, written a book of reports on the plight of the refugees and in the fall he will have a book published called "The Line in the Sand" that he has written together with the American journalist David Kushner. He has also lectured about the war at several universities and parliaments about the situation faced by non-Muslims in Iraq.