Labels: blogosphere, Egyptian democracy, Maikel Nabil
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:51 PM
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Nabil’s support for Israel is not as black and white as some activists would like it to be. In the simplest view, Israel is all bad, Palestinians are all good. Instead, Nabil sees shades of grey and lots of nuance. “We should differentiate between supporting Palestinian rights and being anti-Israel,” Nabil said at Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Sunday. Nabil's lecture about Egypt’s historical relationship with Israel drew hundreds of students to Hebrew University's Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, and more than 50 students were turned away. “Supporting Palestinian state rights doesn’t mean that we have to deny the right of Israel to exist,” Nabil said.I'm kind of surprised that our embassy in Cairo wouldn't even talk about giving him a visa. We constantly see complaints (or at least we did until Mubarak was overthrown) that hundreds of Israelis visit Egypt (including yours truly in 1980) while no Egyptians visit here. Maybe they thought he was a terrorist....
“Me and my friends understand we won’t achieve democracy without peace,” Nabil explained. “[Israel and Egypt’s] fates are linked together. As long as dictatorships and authoritarian governments are using security to take our rights and our freedoms from us we will be losing our rights and moving backwards,” he said.
Nabil stressed that he had serious reservations about Israel: he doesn’t support Netanyahu, Likud, or the army’s compulsory draft. He doesn’t like the fact that religion and state are so closely intertwined or the treatment of women by the ultra-Orthodox. He is furious with Israel for propping up President Hosni Mubarak’s decades of dictatorship. And he blames Israel for making it impossible for Egyptians to visit – Nabil said he tried for two years to get a visa to visit Israel and begin a dialogue, but the Israeli embassy in Cairo refused to even meet with him.
But disagreeing with key aspects of the state doesn’t mean Egyptians should strike down the 30-year peace treaty with Israel, he stressed. Nabil wants to concentrate on fostering an environment for Egypt’s nascent democracy to grow and thrive. Democracy cannot happen without peace and stability, he said, including peace with Israel.
“I am not saying that I am able to make a huge achievement,” said Nabil. “I just want to open a door for people who are like me, who want to approach the other side and cross these borders and break these walls and try to make a change.”
Labels: blogosphere, Egypt, Egyptian democracy, Maikel Nabil
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:42 AM
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An Egyptian activist blogger who endured 10 months of imprisonment and abuse by the country's military is taking his message of peace to Israel and the West Bank this weekend in an effort to spur peace in the region.
"After years of calling for peace, I have realized that practicing peace is more important than talking," Maikel Nabil, 27, wrote of his trip. "My visit is a message from the Egyptian peace community that we have had enough violence and confrontation and we want this to end. We want to live together as human beings without violence, racism or walls."
Nabil was arrested in March 2011, two months after pro-democracy protests erupted in Egypt and weeks after a military regime took over the country.
After writing about alleged army violence against protesters during the uprising, Nabil was arrested and charged with insulting the military and spreading false information.
He was the first prisoner of conscience in post-revolutionary Egypt. His imprisonment sparked an outcry from prominent rights groups such as Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders.
The military junta pardoned him in January along with nearly 2,000 other prisoners as a way to appease protesters. Nabil later described being kept in solitary confinement, witnessing the torture of many prisoners, being drugged and going on a hunger strike.
The trip to Israel and the West Bank -- his first -- is being organized by the Geneva-based advocacy group U.N. Watch. The group's executive director, Hillel Neuer, called Nabil a role model and "a true hero who inspires hope around the world." U.N. Watch is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee.
But a funny thing happened when Nabil tried to speak at taxpayer-funded Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Sunday. Nabil was shouted down by Arab students. How open-minded and tolerant!Nabil is scheduled to speak at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, The World Union of Jewish Students and Tel Aviv University. He also has plans to visit Ramallah in the West Bank.
Egyptian blogger, Maikel Nabil Sanad, was shouted down today during his visit to Israel… by Arab students studying at Hebrew University. The protesters were screaming, “Shame on you”.
...
Sanad, born into an Christian Copt family, is a liberal secularist and doesn’t believe that Egyptians have had the opportunity to hold free elections, since the atmosphere created by the Muslim Brotherhood does not permit an environment where the actual will of the Egyptian people can be expressed.
He is very fearful about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and compares what they’re going to do, to what Hamas did in Gaza, particularly regarding the oppression of women.
Oh, and he also admires and supports Israel , which would explain the shout-down.
But what would explain the Arab (“Palestinian”) protesters’ hypocrisy? After all, they’re the ones studying at the Hebrew University.Yes, there are Arabs at Hebrew U. According to the one daughter who studied there, they have a type of affirmative action that might even make the American Left cringe: Not only are they admitted to the university via affirmative action because they are Arabs, they also have their grades raised by affirmative action because they are Arabs. Think about that the next time an Arab doctor wants to treat you.
Labels: Egypt, Hebrew University, Israeli Arabs are a fifth column, Maikel Nabil, Palestinians
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:54 PM
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Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Thursday, January 26. 1) Mahmoud the two-faced
Maariv (in Hebrew) reported (translated by Daily Alert)The talks underway between Israel and the Palestinians in Amman have not lead to any progress. The opposite is true: the Palestinians refused to talk with Israel on the issues related to security arrangements for their future state, even though at issue is one of the central subjects in the conflict. The prime minister’s envoy to the negotiations, Adv. Yitzhak Molcho, brought to the meeting between the parties on Saturday night Brig.-Gen. Assaf Orion, the head of the strategic unit of the IDF Planning Branch, in order to present Israel’s positions on security in the talks. However, the head of the Palestinian negotiating team, Saeb Erekat, refused to allow the officer to appear before them.Khaled Abu Toameh on The New Hypocritical Stance of of Mahmoud Abbas:
The Palestinians want to speak about borders and less on the issue of security. According to senior sources in the Israeli security establishment, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is under pressure not to continue the direct talks with Israel after Jan. 26, so that he will “leverage” the failure of negotiations for “PR purposes” and strengthen the legitimacy of the Palestinians in the international community.The Palestinian Authority claims that the Israeli arrests are aimed at sabotaging the "reconciliation" process between Fatah and Hamas. But the truth is that the Israeli clampdown on Hamas in the West Bank is first and foremost designed to help Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.The hypocrisy is understandable. Abbas knows that Hamas is popular. It's one thing for him to take action against his rivals; politically having Israel do it shows him to be weak and allows Hamas to accuse Abbas of being Israel's stooge.
The Palestinian Authority is fighting Hamas in the West Bank because it fears that the Islamist movement is working to undermine Abbas and Fayyad. Israel is fighting Hamas to prevent terror attacks and stop the movement from toppling the Palestinian Authority.
Abbas alone cannot fight Hamas; he needs Israel's help -- and gets it. He knows that without the Israeli security crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank, his regime would not be able to remain in power for one day.
Plus the IDF gives the Truth behind Hamas' funding.
2) Just dropped in to see what condition my preconditions are in
Above I cited an incident as reported by Ma'ariv, however Isabel Kershner reports it differently in the New York Times, Palestinians and Israelis Don’t Agree on New Talks (h/t Daroff):The final meetings in Jordan were tense. On Saturday, there was an open clash between the Israeli envoy, Yitzhak Molho, and the Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, according to a Palestinian official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. Mr. Molho brought an Israeli military expert to the meeting to present an outline of Israel’s security concerns. Mr. Erekat strongly objected because the sides were not supposed to be conducting negotiations at a technical level and the Palestinians had not brought an expert of their own.Even if Erekat was technically correct (something I can't confirm) it's interesting that Kershner doesn't even seek out the Israeli view on the matter (that Abbas isn't interested in discussing security matters with Israel and that he wants the talks to fail) but simply provides the Palestinian narrative.
Palestinian leaders have been facing tough questions from their own politicians and the public about their readiness to hold even preliminary talks in Jordan without longstanding conditions having been met.
The final paragraph even justifies Abbas' refusal to negotiate. Her final sentence is misleading as "longstanding conditions" really means "preconditions." (Earlier in the article Kershner had reported that previous talks had stopped when the Israeli settlement freeze expired in 2010. That settlement freeze was a new step Israel had taken at the behest of the Obama administration. So it is neither a "condition" nor is it "longstanding.")
In Hebrew, Walla reports (h/t Challah Hu Akbar):.לדברי אבו מאזן, אין טעם לחזור למו"מ רשמי ללא תנאים מקדימיםwhich means:According to Abu Mazen there is no point to returning to official negotiations without preconditions.It's pretty clear why there are no serious negotiations. You may not know that if you read the New York Times though.
3) The Egyptian blogger who was ahead of the curve
Recently the Egyptian blogger, Maikel Nabil Sanad was released from jail. Max Strasser observes that, in one way, he differed from most of the other public revolutionaries (h/t Shmuel Rosner):Nabil never bought into the "one hand" rhetoric. On Jan. 30, he went to Tahrir Square carrying a sign that read, "We refuse to allow the army to steal the people's revolution."There's one other way Nabil is different. It's a point emphasized by Honest Reporting and ignored by Robert Mackey: Nabil's pro-Israel.
While most activists saw Hosni Mubarak and his cronies as their primary target, Nabil, a pacifist, bore a grudge against the Egyptian armed forces that stretched back before the revolution. In November 2010, he was briefly arrested for his campaign against compulsory conscription. "I hope that the day comes when the Egyptian military goes back to its barracks and to stop interfering in politics, so Egypt would be transformed into a civilian country without powers of military people on civilians," he wrote in October 2010.
The past year's events have brought many Egyptians around to Nabil's point of view. In addition to the widespread use of military trials, the military's security forces have killed scores of civilians and injured hundreds more since February. The political transition has also been ill-defined and characterized by backroom deals, as the military junta looks to entrench its power and prevent oversight of their activities. This month, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a leading voice of the revolution, withdrew from the presidential race in protest of the military's grip on power.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Egyptian Revolution, Maikel Nabil, Middle East Media Sampler, negotiations without preconditions, Soccer Dad
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:16 PM
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An Egyptian blogger has been sentenced to three years in jail for criticizing his country's military.An Egyptian blogger was sentenced Monday to three years in prison for criticizing the military in what human rights advocates called one of the more alarming violations of freedom of expression since a popular uprising led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak two months ago.Actually, this is the real reason he was imprisoned.
The blogger, Maikel Nabil, 25, had assailed the Egyptian armed forces for what he called its continuation of the corruption and anti-democratic practices of Mr. Mubarak. Mr. Nabil often quoted from reports by established human rights groups.
“Maikel is the first prisoner of conscience in Egypt after the revolution,” Adel Ramadan, one of his lawyers, said in a telephone interview. “This ruling is a warning to all journalists, bloggers and human rights activists in Egypt that the punishment for criticizing the army is a sentence in a military prison.”
...
The charges against Mr. Nabil included insulting the military establishment and spreading false information about the armed forces. The tribunal charged him with spreading information previously published by human rights organizations like Amnesty International on the army’s use of violence against protesters, the torture of those detained inside the Egyptian Museum and the use of forced pelvic exams, known as “virginity tests,” against detained female protesters.
The main evidence against Mr. Nabil, who blogged under the name “Son of Ra,” was a CD containing 73 screen shots of entries on his blog and his personal Facebook page, according to Heba Morayef, a researcher in Egypt for Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York.
Human Rights Watch had been calling for Mr. Nabil’s release for days.
Mr. Nabil has the unusual political position in Egypt of being a pacifist as well as a champion of Israel, often praising its democracy, educational standards and innovations.And the Times didn't even link his blog....
Mona Seif, a rights advocate, said Mr. Nabil may have been singled out as an easy target, partly because of previous run-ins with the military and partly because of his pro-Israel views. Mr. Nabil, who is Christian, refused to fulfill his obligatory military service in 2010 on pacifist grounds and has campaigned against forced conscription ever since, Ms. Seif said.
On his blog, Mr. Nabil argued that little changed when Mr. Mubarak was removed from power. “The revolution until now has succeeded in getting rid of the dictator, but the dictatorship is still there,” he wrote.
Labels: Egyptian regime change, Maikel Nabil
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:34 PM
0 comments
I guess it's no surprise that none of the other Egyptian bloggers who were invited on the air by Channel 10 was willing to talk to them.Labels: blogosphere, Channel 10, Egyptian regime change, Hosni Mubarak, Maikel Nabil, Muslim Brotherhood
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:08 PM
4 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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