EGYPT: Crackdown on Facebook activists

It seems that the government has declared another war on Facebook activism. Last weekend, police arrested about 14 Facebook activists who earlier this year called for a national strike over inflation.

The activists, in their early to mid-20s, were arrested during a peaceful protest Wednesday at the coastal city of Alexandria, about 130 miles north Cairo. The prosecutor reportedly accused them of instigating civil disobedience and blocking traffic and ordered their detention for 15 days pending investigation.

Amnesty International is said to have expressed concern over the arrests and called upon the Egyptian authorities on Saturday to release the detainees.

The social networking site Facebook has recently become one of the prime outlets to voice criticism of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. In the spring, a Facebook group that called itself April 6 and encompassed thousands of activists, circulated messages calling for a national strike to protest price hikes and political blockade. The call was followed by riots in the town of Mahalla in Egypt's Nile delta, an alarming occurrence for Mubarak's regime, which had never faced such a challenge.

Nevertheless, the call was not heeded by large sectors of the society. The girl who set up the group was arrested and held a few weeks until the interior ministry heeded an appeal made by her mother.

Since then, the regime has seemed adamant about curbing Internet activism. Last month, the local press unveiled notorious would-be legislation to regulate the media.  Under the bill’s provisions, Facebook activists and bloggers are subject to legal retribution.

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo

Photo: Facebook activist Israa Abdel Fattah. Credit: Agence France-Presse

ISRAEL: Nine hours at Eretz checkpoint

By Ashraf Khalil in Chicago

My adventures as an Arab American journalist crossing in and out of Israel have already been documented here.

But even for someone who goes in expecting delays, aggressive questioning and the occasional strip search, my experience on Sunday leaving the Gaza Strip through the Eretz border crossing was a shock.

About 18 months ago, Israel completed construction of a massive automated inspection terminal at Eretz.

The size of a warehouse, a bewildering high-tech cattle pen built with one primary goal: to ensure that everyone coming out of Gaza gets their bags and their body thoroughly screened long before they ever get in a room with an Israeli.

Dozens of automated doors and gates open and close before you; disembodied Israeli voices tell you where to stand, when to walk into various scanning devices and when to open your bags, display them to the cameras and place them on conveyor belts.

The terminal was built...

LIBYA: Gaddafi son's arrest leads to oil embargo on Swiss

Libya does not react lightly to authorities in another country getting in the way of its leader’s son.

The brief detention by the Swiss police of the youngest son of Muammar Gaddafi, Hannibal, last week for allegedly beating two of his servants in a luxury hotel has sparked a serious international row between Switzerland and the North African nation.

Libya decided Thursday to cut its oil shipments to Switzerland as a result. The state-run shipping company threatened to take more actions against the Swiss if they do not apologize for the arrest.

ISRAEL: Obama's Western Wall prayer made public

Before leaving Israel on Thursday, Barack Obama took out a sheet of King David Hotel stationery and penned a heartfelt prayer to God. It was meant to be private, but his early morning visit to the Western Wall, where he deposited the folded piece of paper into a crevice, was a public event.

As the Democratic candidate headed for the airport, a young Orthodox religious student searched the Wall until he found the note and turned it over to Maariv. The newspaper's decision to publish the prayer drew a storm of criticism in Israel.

"It was unworthy and inappropriate to publish this note," fumed Shmuel Rabinovitz, the rabbi of the Western Wall. "This violates a request that is private and personal." The rabbi's objection follows a 1,000-year-old Jewish edict against snooping on someone else's mail.

Bloggers joined in denouncing the newspaper, even as they speculated how much Obama's letter would fetch on eBay. But one critic, attorney Guy Mashiach, figured the senator probably anticipated the invasion of his privacy.

"Obama is intelligent enough to understand that in Israel, nothing remains private, discreet and secret for more than a few hours and that one mustn't count on a secret meant to be shared only by you and God for eternity being kept even in the holy of holies," he wrote on the Haaretz newspaper's web site. "Obama didn't fall into the trap of asking for John McCain's disappearance ... and penned a remarkably beautiful note, as though he had known the note would go directly to one of the more tabloid-like papers."

Read more about Obama's stolen Western Wall prayer

— Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem

Photo: Barack Obama places a note in the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, in Jerusalem's Old City. Credit: Tara Todras-Whitehil / Associated Press

IRAQ: An IED in Ramadi

By Saif Rasheed and Doug Smith in Ramadi

It was a comfort when our host, Capt. Jonathan Hamilton, told us attacks in Ramadi were down to about seven a month.

A Marine patrol had just dropped us off at Joint Security Station Karama, the outpost in western Iraq where we would spend four days with Hamilton’s weapons company. We were there to learn about the rebuilding of Ramadi, and we didn’t relish the idea of dodging bombs or seeing people get hurt.

But it didn’t take long to find out that Marines still face hazards.

Later that day, we were interviewing Lt. Col. Amer Ubaid Hays Rishawi, head of intelligence for the southern precinct of Ramadi police, when a policeman came in and told him to cut it short because there was an emergency.

We soon learned that three Marines were injured when their Humvee hit a roadside bomb. We were relieved to hear that the injuries were minor and that none of the Marines required hospitalization.

But our feelings about the attack took an eerie turn when someone mentioned that it was the same convoy that had dropped us off. The attack occurred on its return to Camp Ramadi.

Despite assurances that the patrol would have been out there whether we were in Ramadi or not, we felt in some way responsible.

These thoughts had drifted out of mind three days later when we returned to Camp Ramadi, the main base where we would start our journey home.

We didn’t remember Sgt. Josef Surunis, who worked behind a desk in the adjutant’s office and greeted us on our return.

But he remembered us. The fact that Surunis is the base personnel director doesn’t keep him from going on patrol. He was in the convoy that took us to Karama and in the vehicle that got hit. With him were Sgt. Micheal Lauderback and Lance Cpls. Michael Riddle and Patrick Minick. 

Surunis motioned us around his desk to show us photos of the wrecked Humvee. After realizing he was not seriously hurt, Surunis had taken out his camera to document the close call.

ISRAEL: Waitin' for Obama

Last December, a Kassam rocket tore through Pinhas and Aliza Amar's kitchen. Pinhas and Aliza were home with two of their daughters. Aliza was injured, the rest unharmed. The Israeli family is rebuilding its home and renting two houses away.

In the southern Israeli city of Sderot, this isn't big news. But it swept the Amar family into the American presidential campaign. Sen. John McCain met with the family and inspected the damaged house when he visited Israel in March. This week, Sen. Barack Obama dropped by.

The Democratic candidate's visit was brief. For the Amars, it took up the entire day.

The Amars' door is always open. On principle. It is the family's way of life, inherited from Aliza's parents along with the house where she was born, which now has no roof. First one up opens the door, last one to bed shuts it. In between, everyone and anyone are welcome.

Reporters spotted the family on Obama's itinerary, and the phones hadn't stopped ringing. Aliza is having to juggle interview requests while preparing gifts and contemplating food for the distinguished guest. I figure the best way to cover Obama's visit is to hang out with the family for the day, observing and trying to blend in.

I arrive as Aliza holds court at a dining table that takes up the living room. Over coffee, cigarettes and two cellular phones, the woman who describes herself as "simple" puts army generals to shame. Ordering flowers, outsourcing shopping, giving interviews and commissioning special pastries, the matron shows grace under fire. Some days, it's Kassam fire. Today, it's media fire.

Come in, she signals. I'll be right with you. Right after Channel 10.

It's hot. There are fans everywhere. Pinhas steers me out of the sun and into the house. The last of the reporters had left at 11 the previous night, and the first had called before 7 a.m. Wednesday. A bit of chutzpah, no? remarks Aliza, who had spoken to them and countless others anyway.

LEBANON: Beirut nightlife again starts to sizzle

Beirut will be back on the world map and, this time, it will be for good reasons. That was the message behind the relaunching party of Time Out magazine’s Beirut edition, after a two-year hiatus, at the Riviera Beach Lounge along the capital's seafront.

With fireworks and champagne bottles in sparkling boxes, the party was designed to mirror the reemerging face of Beirut: a city of glitz and glamour boasting many trendy open-air rooftop nightspots, underground nightclubs and funky bars.

MIDDLE EAST: Among Arabs, disappointment over Obama's visit

Sen. Barack Obama’s declarations in Israel yesterday left many Arab observers sour and doubtful that the presidential candidate could bring change in U.S. policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Some Arab newspapers commented angrily over Obama’s description of Israel as a “miracle” and his justification for the summer 2006 Israeli attack on Hezbollah as the Jewish state’s “right to defend itself."

The Arab nationalist, Beirut-based Assafir newspaper, for instance, criticized Obama’s “bias” toward Israel and printed a front-page photo, above in lower right of page, of him wearing a Kippah and solemnly laying flowers by a Jewish memorial in Jerusalem:

The democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency seemed very far yesterday from the line of moderation and change that he claims as his. He revealed, in Jerusalem and Sderot, a new political bias regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, supplemented with the flattering of the leaders of Israel, which he called a “miracle”. [He] did not show enough attention to the peace process and was even about to ignore the Palestinian leaders whom he quickly met in Ramallah.

IRAQ: Trapped in Taqaddum with the Lioness

By Doug Smith, in western Iraq

If I was going to be trapped on a base with 4,000 U.S. service members, I ought to be able to find a story.

“Find the PAO,” I thought. The public affairs officer is the person in a military unit whose job is to get the good news out and to facilitate the work of embedded reporters. Facilitating can mean anything from vigorously assisting to artfully getting in the way, depending on the story and the reporter.

My search turned out to be something of an Arthurian quest. Suffice it to say after three hours of walking aimlessly and riding buses that seemed to be going nowhere I found 1st Lt. Lori Miller in an underground bunker inherited from Saddam Hussein’s air force. Taqaddum (an Arabic word meaning progress) was a giant air base built by the deposed Iraqi dictator.

A bright young woman from Indiana, Miller did a quick read on me and, despite my faux Iraqi facial hair, decided to open doors.

Her first offering was the Lioness. She was coming into the bunker’s makeshift sound studio to record a satellite interview with NBC. I could talk to her after the interview, Miller said.

Though feeling some qualms about poaching on a fellow reporter’s work, I thought it would do no harm to listen in.

The Lioness was Cpl. Nicole Estrada, a 22-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga. The sobriquet comes from the fact that she, along with a few dozen other women Marines on the base, volunteered to step into a combat role beside fighting men.

In Iraq the tradition of the male-only infantry has yielded slightly to the reality that every civilian, man or woman, is a potential suicide bomber. The Marines have set up highway checkpoints where they stop and physically search every person driving through.

A man, particularly an American in uniform, could sour these inherently tense encounters by just looking too directly at a woman, let alone patting her down.

So the word went out to the diverse branches that make up a base — administration, food services, motor transport and postal — that women were needed to team up with the infantry outside the wire.

Estrada, a field wireman by training, stepped forward.

She received two weeks of training in search technique and the culture and language of Iraq. Then she joined an infantry unit.

In the interview, she told NBC’s Jay Blackman that she was not authorized to say where she was stationed.

I sympathized with Blackman’s efforts to elicit drama and emotion from a Marine over a satellite feed with a bad delay.

Asked why she chose to put her life at risk, Estrada said she wanted to interact with the Iraqi people, to see what their culture was like and how they lived. Nothing particularly scary or threatening had happened. She had done her job.

Estrada’s best line was an inadvertent double entendre, obviously unsuitable for broadcast. Asked whether Iraqis could see she was a woman in her military garb, Estrada said they could identify women by their hair, using the plural of the common three-letter word for the knot of hair many women Marines tie behind their heads. The whole office burst out laughing.

ISRAEL: Gaza, my uncles and 'the cousins'

By Ashraf Khalil in Gaza City

Last week I took a vacation to Egypt to visit family, the first time I’d been back to Cairo since I was posted to Jerusalem in February.

My relatives peppered me with questions about life in a country next door that they know they’ll never visit.

What’s Al-Aqsa Mosque like? Have you crossed through the wall? How do “our cousins” (one of the more polite local euphemisms for Israelis) treat you at checkpoints?

Two uncles asked me what was the Palestinian, especially the Gazan, opinion on Egypt.

I hesitated.

“Well, do you want the honest answer or the diplomatic one?”

They wanted honesty, so I gave it to them.

“Ya amo (uncle), the Palestinians think that Egypt is an equal partner in the siege of Gaza and the suffering of the people there. Actually 'partner' is the wrong word. They think Israel and America are partners and Egypt is taking orders from them.”

Technically, there is a host of diplomatic commitments — some dating back to the original Camp David accords — that govern the status of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and the Sinai. But on the ground, there’s nothing to keep Egypt from unilaterally opening the border, something Cairo has done before to let in emergency medical cases.

At other times, the Gazans have initiated their own unilateral border openings, blowing open the border wall in January of this year and flooding into the northern Sinai for almost two weeks.

But the general status quo for more than a year has been Egyptian soldiers helping to turn Gaza into a massive boiling prison.

“If you were a lifelong Gazan,” I asked my uncles, “what would your opinion of Egypt be?”