Protests are more widespread than ever in Bahrain, while opposition groups in and out of Syria unite, but doubts about the prospects of the Arab League mission grow after the controversial chief of the mission dismisses an observer’s claim to have seen government snipers with his own eyes as “a hypothetical remark”:
As Iran delays missile tests and proposes to reopen nuclear talks, the director of Mossad dismisses claims that a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat to Israel:
Israeli soldiers with a conscience, no longer able to keep silent tell the truth about the Gaza massacres …
- Israeli Soldiers Told to ‘Cleanse’ Gaza (channel4 / youtube)
… meanwhile, Jerusalem mayor Nir Barakat doesn’t need bombs and guns to ethnically cleanse Jerusalem, he can do it with a pen:
- 70,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites to Be Re-classified as West Bank Citizens (Wadi Helwa Information Center)
“Creating an official headquarters for the Taliban would … help avoid further missteps, such as inadvertently negotiating with imposters, as happened in November 2010″ and “would make them more independent of Pakistan and the ISI”:
- Could Giving the Taliban a Street Address Bring Peace to Afghanistan? (Christian Science Monitor)
“I was shocked to discover that what the militants were doing was against Islam…. Now I call them terrorists, not jihadis” — Sultan Mehmood Gujar, former funder of Islamist militants:
- US Ups Extremist Fight in Pakistan (AP / abc News)
The U.S. says Egypt agreed to stop raids on democracy groups, but Gamal Banna, “one of Islam’s leading liberal thinkers” and younger brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood warns that if Islamists do not “move quickly to fix years of social and economic neglect … they could lose this opportunity and [the revolution] might collapse”:
After a Christian student’s Internet posting of a supposed picture of Muhammad (peace bne upon him) spawned violence, the military government promised “security around churches” and the ” Muslim Brotherhood has also vowed to protect the country’s churches”:
- Egypt Muslims, Christians Clash (News 24)
Richard Bonin writes, “It is remarkable how Ahmad Chalabi, a Shiite exile who commanded no army and led no tribe, managed to get a superpower to wage a war it will rue for years”:
- Iraq’s One-man War Machine (LA Times)
Uri Avnery argues that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Republic of Iran all owe Israel a big “thank you” for their success:
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