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[The following is a response to Ehsani2's earlier post about his observations following his own trip to Syria.]

My Dear Friend Ehsani,

While I fully agree with many points you raised, I think that you also agree that what you described is just part of the picture.. a considerable part nonetheless. The economic lens you use is solid, however, one would need to apply a social one at the same time to get the full picture.

I would argue that the grim picture you color is not the complete one neither of Aleppo nor Syria in general. During our three hours chat in the “packed” fancy cafe in Aleppo (which charges $4.5 for a cup of chilled coffee, similar to what Starbucks charges in places like Dubai) we discussed positive and negative changes in the city compared to a year ago. It might be indicative to note that the number of those fancy cafes and restaurants in Aleppo and Damascus has tripled comparedd to a year ago (all of them are always packed despite the fact that they charge outrageous prices compared to the average Syrian income).

This year I managed to get a long good vacation in Syria (around 30 days). In a less romantic –and less socialist- take on ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’, I managed to break my earlier record and drove close to 2500 KM in less than 10 days around 7 of the country’s 13 muhafazat (governorates). I avoided “autostrads” (highways) and opted instead for the curvy and mostly mountainous village routes. I can confidently claim that I formed a semi-comprehensive picture of the developmental status through observation and talking to people in the western side of the country (which holds the majority of the country’s population). Those I talked to included remote villagers who were Sunnis, Christians, Alawis and Ismailis as well as urban Syrians in cities including Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Idlib, Lattakia and Tartous. This mini-research can complement the indicative anecdotal experiences posted here by Ehsani and other commentators.

To say that the changes occurring in Syria are only positive ones is ludicrous. Similarly, to portray the situation in only negative terms is equally misleading. As expected in any country going through dramatic changes on the economic and social levels, reality is a mixed picture of the good, the bad and the ugly as Averroes wisely suggests. For example, the most impressive developments I noticed were on the infrastructural level. They included hundreds of miles of modern highways under construction all around the country that are almost ready to be put in service (mostly done by mega Kuwaiti companies). A similar modern transportation infrastructure is also being laid in the eastern parts of Syria including bridges over the Euphrates. In addition, urban planning is becoming more systematic. For example, traffic within the cities has improved noticeably (especially in the most crowded roads in Aleppo, as Ehsani can confirm). There is now a new ruthless traffic law and a policeman or two literally on every corner. Taxi drivers will now refuse to drive you if your refused to put your seatbelt on (otherwise they would have to pay a fine of 2000 lira on the next corner, or pay triple the bribe they can afford). Brand new fuel-efficient and less-polluting public busses are running around the large cities instead of the old fuel-guzzling and carbon-spitting dinosaurs. The Damascus airport is one huge round-the-clock expansion workshop. A brand new train system is now connecting the major cities and even expanding to Turkey. Based on my first-hand experience, the new train carriages are similar to those in Europe (however, the railway is not as quit).

Just 50 KMs outside Aleppo in Idlib governorate, Turkish businessmen are trying hard to purchase every piece of land they can get their hands on as there’s a new Syrian-Turkish Free Trade Zone about to be built in the area. The smart landowners are refusing to sell so far until the new highway is finished. In Tartous, the brand new shiny corniche is packed with fancy cafes and families on picnics. The Dubai-like cafes and night spots on Latakia’s corniche could easily be confused with those in Beirut sea-side. Driving around the mountains, one could not but notice the large number of brand new 4 and 3 stars hotels mushrooming in addition to the smell of the new asphalt connecting the remote villages. Damascus has defiantly had the lion’s share of the development and investments. I insist that I’m pleasantly surprised with the cleanliness of the touristic neighborhoods in Damascus (including the old city). The city received a comprehensive make-over in preparations of the Arab League Summit earlier this year and in preparation for the “Arab Capital of Culture” year-long festival. Cultural events are packed (Ziad el-Rahbani’s series of concerts with his 50 man orchestra inside the ancient Damascus castle was simply out of this world). The earlier remarks by Observer and those of Ford Prefect are largely representative of the scene in Damascus. As for mega real estate projects, they are mainly taking shape around Damascus and along the coast (as promised Ehsani, I’ll email you some information on the new mega projects on the coast of Tartous).

My point from the above text is the following: Stating that infrastructure is not improving all around Syria is misleading. The whole country feels like an enormous development project. It will take years to transform it from a 1960s socialist Greece, repressive Spain or under-developed Turkey into a clean modern EU tourist heaven. Meanwhile, many painful social changes will take place, including the fluctuation of corruption levels and the economic injustice for those segments of society who will slip between the government safety nets. One notable example is an example based on the removal of oil subsidiaries noted by Ehsani. The government announced the removal of heating oil subsidiaries and instead introduced a 2 level support system: A coupon system where the poorest segment of families will get the oil virtually for free. The second is that each family in Syria (rich or poor) will get one ton (1000 litters) of heating oil per year in old subsidized prices (similar to prices in the last 40 years). This virtually includes every family with a family certificate (daftar ‘a’ilah), which includes almost every single person in the country. A ton of heating oil (which costs around a 600 dollars in new market prices in Syria) a year is enough. Every family will pay only $180 instead. You want more you can buy in market prices. This was also coupled with the introduction of a sever punishment for smugglers (up 10 years in prison and huge fines). I drove along the villages on the Lebanon border in Tartous and Homs and noticed unprecedented number of boarder patrols (”hajjaneh”) on back of trucks fully armed in camouflage. However, some segments in society were still overlooked in the subsidiaries and the government is adjusting accordingly. Of course, businesses who used to get the fuel virtually for free are adapting accordingly which will lead to inflation and increase in prices. In turn this should lead to more increases in salaries until things get close to regional or global average.

Now back to pollution, corruption and development in Aleppo. Based on my observation, I’d say that large cities like Damascus and Aleppo have been divided into areas of urban development for prioritization. The more attractive the neighborhoods to business and tourists, the cleaner you’ll find it and the faster its infrastructure is developed. For example, by the end of my vacation, a new sewage system was being installed in the higherend residential neighborhoods in Aleppo, the streets have been widened and redesigned in those areas. A hole in the street would get fixed in 2 days in these neighborhoods compared to maybe 2 weeks in the less touristy ones. However, I drove in the less advantaged Jalloum and Farafrah neighborhoods in Aleppo and I can say that they are much much cleaner than they were in the end of the nineties. The standard of the roads is of course less than that in the richer parts of the city. But creative solutions are being put in place. During the last 25 years, has anyone dreamed that the old Quweiq river of Aleppo would be revived after Turkey blocked it in the 60s? The river is now gushing with a relatively good level of water derived from the Euphrates dams. With regards to corruption and tax, one indicative example in Aleppo this year is the closure of the largest restaurant compound in the highend part of the city which was usually packed day and night since 15 years. The rumors go that the mega businessman who owned it refused to pay the huge taxes he owes the governorate of Aleppo. Other rumors say that he did not give the appropriate bribe of one of the big guys this year to overlook the taxes. I believe the truth is in both rumors. The businessman probably wanted to continue not paying taxes and thought he was powerful enough to not pay that senior official the new increased annual bribe. This is probably the case for most businesses in the country. The culture of paying taxes is lacking. One would bribe a senior official a similar “fee” to gain his loyalty rather than pay the government taxes he owes. The tax system is indeed broken and fixing it is no walk in the park. The disgruntled businessmen in Aleppo you talked to Ehsani in the prestigious “Nadi Halab”, will only get further disgruntled while this system is fixed. I still think that the solution would require a major cultural shift and massive awareness campaigns. If everyone in the country was to know that Rami Makhloof is paying X millions in taxes (even if he wasn’t) then most people would find it easier to adjust. Ehsani, you might want to expand on this?

The bottom line is that Ehsani’s well-thought analysis and observations paint a large part of the picture. Others’ observations complement it. The full picture is not as grim and not as rosy as many of us would like to think. It’s a mixed one, similar to social and economic development everywhere else in the world.

In a world dominated by media celebrities little space is left for intellectuals. Undergraduate students multiple-choice their way through the great lights of the academic past: Freud, Marx, Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault and the list goes on. But who among the living tops the list of brain savy heroes? Foreign Policy held a referendum for four weeks earlier this year in which 500,000 people responded. The idea was to create a list of the world’s top 100 intellectuals. But surprise, the list would seem more a result of who was motivated to respond than anything else. Write down your top three (or at least think about three prominent living intellectuals) and compare to the Foreign Policy list. (more…)

I heard a great story about Uri Avnery. A former member of the Irgun, the terrorist organization in the '40s, he became a member of the Knesset in the '60s and began speaking out against the occupation. Someone took him aside. "Uri, you could be prime minister some day, don't screw this up." But Avnery bombed out of mainstream political life, he sacrificed ambition for principle.

Here's Avnery on the death of Mahmoud Darwish, on Darwish's achievement in creating Palestinian consciousness, and on using Darwish's legacy to try and build two states. Notice he says what I say: recognition/acknowledgement precedes everything, precedes arguments over water rights and territory.

He did not want to be the National Poet. He did not want to be a political poet at all, but a lyrical one, a poet of love. But whenever he turned in this direction, the long arm of Palestinian fate dragged him back....

I love sport, but the Olympics are creeping me out. The eerily empty venues. The massive torch on the stadium at a time when the world is sucking oil--very Munich. The way the Chinese hurdler, the gold medal guy at Athens, tried to run so as not to disappoint China even though he had a damaged Achilles, grimacing in the blocks about to destroy himself. The reports that the Chinese calculated how many sports were up for grabs, x years ago, and began molding children to win them. The absence of diversity in the pool or on the diving boards. The underage Chinese gymnasts and the lies to cover it up. The weird fakeries in the opening ceremonies-- the lipsynching, the dressing up of majority Han ethnic children in native garb to impersonate ethnic minorities who were not invited. The superpower rivalries, the American pole vaulter saying she wanted to "kick some Russian butt..." The general absence of the Third World and Europe, Africa, the subcontinent. The general atmosphere of joylessness/nationalism/air conditioning...

I like the Visa ads where Morgan Freeman says, Go World. Would that it were true.

Jerry Slater has a smart piece in the Buffalo News saying that we can deter a nuclear-armed Iran but that deterrence is not the answer, disarmament is. Slater has a supple grasp on history. Some excerpts:

Suppose... that nothing can force or induce Iran to change its policies, and within a few years it begins producing nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them? The task would then be to deter Iran from ever using them, or giving them to uncontrollable terrorists. There is no reason to doubt the effectiveness of deterrence, meaning the implied or even explicit threat of massive nuclear retaliation if Iran or terrorist groups allied with it ever used nuclear weapons against Israel or the United States.

So far, deterrence has worked throughout the post-World War II nuclear age. No state has dared to use its nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear states, let alone against states that can retaliate in kind. Nonetheless, deterrence is a very bad way to continue to run the world. Aside from the greatly magnified difficulties of maintaining a stable deterrence system in a world of increasing numbers of nuclear states as well as, possibly, nuclear terrorist groups, we now know that even the relatively stable and simple two-state U. S.-Soviet mutual deterrence system came perilously close to breaking down on several occasions during the Cold War — during the Cuban missile crisis for sure, but also because of several hair-raising accidents, miscalculations and misunderstandings of radar, communications and other data.

Since deterrence can fail in many different ways, the only true solution to the problem of nuclear weapons is to get rid of them. It used to be thought that only woolly-headed liberals believed that global nuclear disarmament was a good idea or even possible, but Ronald Reagan began the process of changing all that in the mid- 1980s when he called for the abolishment of all nuclear weapons, which he considered to be “totally irrational, totally inhumane [and] possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”

Impressions following a two week visit to Aleppo
By Ehsani2
For Syria Comment
Aug. 18, 2008

Since August of 2006, It has been my custom to write up my personal observations following each extended trip to Syria.

In August, I stayed in my native city of Aleppo for two weeks, I will restrict my observations to what I saw and experienced in the country’s second largest city.

I will spare the readers any mention of geopolitics, Lebanon, Iran, Israel or the U.S.A. I will instead focus on the daily lives of Aleppo residents from my daily interactions with friends, relatives, Iraqi refugees, taxi drivers, police officers, real estate tycoons and day laborers. Readers of this forum should also be happy to learn that I also met with IDAF (a regular and astute contributor to Syria Comment) for a 3-hour coffee session at one of the city’s “fancy” outlets (more on this later).  

The main areas of interest that I will try to cover in this post are real estate values, education, job opportunities, income levels, price inflation, corruption, and public services.  

Real Estate:

As every Syrian knows by now, real estate values have been on a tear recently. Since 2005, prices of residential units have at least doubled. Land prices have risen even more. Those who have inside knowledge of imminent zoning changes have enjoyed close to six-fold increase in the value of their land holdings. There are several reasons for this trend: 

1-      Syrian money was frightened out of Lebanese banks following the Hariri assassination and withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. Much of it returned to Syria.

2-      US economic sanctions on Syria and the resulting risk of keeping funds outside the country for fear of having them blocked or frozen.

3-      Lower Syrian interest rates on domestic bank deposits.

4-      The lack of investment opportunities outside of real estate.

5-      General price inflation and the need to hedge through real estate assets.

6-      Supportive demographics.

7-      Overseas investments in the sector.

While this list is not exhaustive, I think that it helps explain the general background behind the outsized rise in values across the country.   

Where does the sector go from here?

I think down, and here is why:

There are two ways to determine whether real estate prices are over valued. One method relies on price/rental income calculation and the other uses median income/price ratio. At the height of the U.S. housing mania, house prices reached 26 times their rental income. During the same peak, median U.S. house prices were at four time’s median income. Using my own calculations, Syrian house prices are currently close to 43 times their rental income. In other words, rather than buying a house, one can rent it for 43 years at prevailing prices and rents for the same property. Buying real estate with such valuations is ….  well, let’s settle for the word “risky.” This is not to say that real estate values cannot rise further. I am suggesting that they are overvalued and may have seen their peak. 

Income levels and corruption: 

A junior traffic policeman makes SYP 9,000 ($USD 196) per month. There is no way for a head of a household with such a meager income to avoid the temptation of bribery. An intriguing observation is how skinny junior traffic officers are when compared to their heavier colleagues who ride motorcycles (presumably the senior officers grab the lion’s share of the bribery pie). 

Low incomes have made corruption a way of life for the average Syrian. The country’s armed services are no exception. New cadets who ask to be with their families for few days are asked what they can pay to be granted such a privilege. Their direct army supervisor simply awards the family break to those who pay the most among the group of cadets he supervises. My own relative is the source of this account. His sergeant assembled the entire platoon and offered weekend furloughs to the highest bidders. The prevailing price for a weekend home leave is 5,000 PS. No effort was made to keep the process secret. 

Job opportunities:

This is by far the biggest problem facing the nation. The official Government figures vastly understate the unemployment rate. Having talked extensively to civil organizations dealing with the city’s youth, I was told that close to 40 percent of university graduates cannot find jobs. The public sector has implemented a hiring freeze for years now. The private sector cannot possibly generate enough jobs for the ever increasing labor force. Capital is tied up in empty land and real estate. This does not do much for job creation.  

Inflation:

A number of people with inside knowledge have privately admitted to me that the Government mishandled the way in which it lifted the subsidy on heating oil. Rather than moving gradually, it was hiked by 350% in one shot. This shock was compounded by the rapid inflation in world commodity prices, which broadsided Syrians at the same time. The ill timing of the move delivered a major blow to the average person’s budget. Without exception, every single business has suffered since the rise in the price of heating oil several months ago. Salaries were increased by government decree, but the loss of income has been pervasive and demoralizing to the broad mass of Syrians.  

Public Services:

The proud historical city of Aleppo has never been dirtier. The daily garbage collection system is embarrassing and disgraceful. Late at night, people are seen placing small plastic bags at street curbs in front of their buildings. By the time they are collected, at least 3 different groups have opened these bags to search for things they might find useful. Wild cats compete with the poor for garbage scraps. The garbage containers that occupy many street corners are giant disease containers. The way they get emptied leaves them with spilled liquid and piles of fallen garbage nearby. In the scorching summer heat, the smell of the left over refuse adds insult to the injury of the smog. 

Government budget:

The tax and spend system is totally broken. No one wants to pay taxes because the government does not provide adequate services. The fall in revenues means that the government is indeed unable to provide the needed services. A vicious circle is quickly set in motion. No highway taxes are collected and No meaningful real estate taxes are collected despite vastly higher valuations. Even when an attempt is made, the taxman’s salary is low enough that a bribe is sure to score a hit and be highly effective.  

Conclusion:

Part of the rise in real estate values is due to non-economic factors. The feel-good attitude that has resulted from the sharply higher values of real estate has masked a deteriorating economic outlook for Syria. The country suffers from an acute shortage of job creation. Nothing is being done about this. Foreign investments in real estate will do little to address the country’s unemployment problem. The country’s youth will jump at any opportunity to leave the country for better economic prospects. This opportunity is clearly not available for most. In the meantime, more people seem to see value in quitting school and learning a trade at an ever younger age.  

The taxation system is broken. The Government budget is under severe strain. This has negatively impacted all government services from education to health care to garbage collection. Most importantly, the government is also unable to pay its civil servants adequately. Bribery inevitably fills the void. Everything can be obtained at a price. Government employees are left to fend for themselves. They see their direct superiors guilty of the act and they soon learn that they must do the same or fall even further behind. A culture of “kull-mean-ido-elloh” — every man for himself — is evident everywhere and no one seems to want to stop it.

Some readers will take issue with my memo. Many will see it as “too dramatic” and “biased”. I had a lengthy telephone conversation with Dr. Landis before I wrote this note. He is privy to a lot more details than I have written here. My dear friends Ford Prefect and Observer have recently written their own observations of Syria after visiting the country. I realize that they offered a much rosier picture than the one I portray. I hope that I am wrong and that they are both right. My friend Idaf is also sure to take issue with many of my observations as we were both in Aleppo at the same time. Again, I hope that the future proves him correct.

David Shasha at 3 Quarks has analyzed the 92d Street Y's program of events on the Upper East Side of NY in the coming year and concluded that while a plethora of non-Jews are invited to speak on many subjects, no Arabs are included in the programs that address the Middle East. And the roster of progressive Jews--two:

There is precious little balance in terms of the Israel-Palestine matter on the program for the season: Rabbi Michael Lerner (10/30) and Gershom Gorenberg (2/5) appear to be the only critical voices that will be heard in the series. Not a single Arab or Palestinian voice is to be allowed into the discourse. From Right Wing ideologues like Bret Stephens and Abe Foxman (3/24) to Ed Koch (10/30) to Cynthia Ozick (10/29) to more moderate Zionists like Aaron David Miller (5/7) and a panel on the new liberal lobbying group J Street (3/16), the basic idea is to appear to be presenting a wide-range of ideas, but in reality only affirmations of Israel will be presented. It is important to note that Gorenberg will be presenting in a series on the media and Rabbi Lerner will be part of a four-person panel where he will likely be the only participant critical of Israel in any way. And by no means should we think that Rabbi Lerner’s voice can truly represent a Palestinian vision, even if it is sympathetic to that position.

Most importantly, the series will have two programs that deal with the hysteria over Israel and the sense of embattlement that is a central part of Zionist thinking at present. There will be (12/8) the now-obligatory panel discussion of anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses – a panel loaded with Right Wing ideologues including a member of the U.S. Congress. There will be another panel called “Why Zionism has Become a Dirty Word” (3/24) that will in effect be another uncritical look at the current situation in the Middle East.

This is my favorite issue: the color bar even in liberal Jewish circles. Where is Jimmy Carter? Where are Walt and Mearsheimer? I'd note that Lerner is the only guy here who has endorsed Walt and Mearsheimer. (The usually-right Gorenberg has also attacked them.) Amazing that Abe Foxman and Ozick and Elie Wiesel, who didn't want gypsies in the Holocaust Memorial, are here. Where is David Zellnik?  Tony Kushner? Joel Kovel? Alisa Solomon? Norman Finkelstein? You'd only have to give Norman subway fare--and get a world figure on your stage from Brooklyn.

Parochialists aplenty. Shasha says that Bret Stephens, a neocon at the WSJ who supported the Iraq war, is making two appearances at the 92d Street Y this year. Egad. Stephens is the guy who challenged Ian Buruma's right to write about Israel critically with this brilliant line: "Are you a Jew?" The sadness is that the 92d Street Y is offering a haven to neocons, and accepting similar limits on speech, in the greatest city in the woild. Shasha again:

It is of course a reflection on the 92d Street Y's community. Older Jews, even liberal Jews, aren't ready to hear from the Other re Israel.

David Bloom says that he believes David Makovsky of WINEP misrepresented to Congress the Palestinian position on the Israeli fence crossing their lands when he said that they would accept it, with compensation. Bloom sent me the following links.

Here is Makovsky's testimony before Congress in 2004:

I happened to speak to the mayor of Qualqilya, and I saw the wall on the Palestinian side, and I asked him, I said, "If there was a compensation program to offset some of these hardships, would you be for it?" He said absolutely. And I think we need to think creatively for that minority of people who live west of the fence, and we'll get to that in a second -- how to create these jobs.

Bloom writes:

Having spent three months in Qalqilya district, including Jayyous, I never met a Palestinian who would accept compensation for their land--regarding it as their ancestral and cultural heritage, the selling of which amounts to collaboration with the Israeli occupiers. Marouf Zahran, the mayor of Qalqilya, told me in a Feb. 9 e-mail:

"It is with deep regret that I learn that David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy implied that I would accept 'compensation' for the impoverishing and destructive effects of Israel's Wall as built around the West Bank town of Qalqilya, the town of which I am Mayor. As I made clear to Mr. Makovsky during his visit that while I would welcome any relief offered to the suffering residents of Qalqilya, such relief would not be necessary if Israel builds its Wall on the border [the Green Line] between what became Israel in 1948 and Occupied Palestinian Territory. I made it very clear to Mr. Makovsky, with the express intent that Mr. Makovsky not misconstrue my statements for his own purposes, that under no conditions would I or the residents of Qalqilya accept or otherwise acquiesce to the construction of the Wall in exchange for compensation. Our property and our human rights are not for sale."

Here is an amazing forthcoming piece by David Klein, a math professor at California State, about trying to get Norman Finkelstein hired at his school over the last year to no avail. As you may recall, Finkelstein lectured at the school earlier this year. Apparently it was an audition. Klein organized a valiant and wide campaign on Finkelstein's behalf.

I'm excerpting a lot of Klein's story below. Simply amazing, and how does Klein conclude? By raising the spectre of an anti-Jewish backlash over the power of what he terms the Israel Lobby.  (I believe Walt and Mearsheimer were accused of antisemitism for once using a capital L). Klein:

And yes, the visit also elicited a lot of protest, covered here by Brad Greenberg. But back to Klein:

The president dodges this bid to hire Finkelstein, too, saying that the school is no longer hiring any university-wide positions. The Finkelstein balloon is over. Klein ends his piece with this great insight:

Jack Ross had a sharp historical response to the news from Ma'ariv I blogged about earlier today:

I long felt that Israel's blockade and "withdrawal" from Gaza resembled nothing so much as Stalin's Ukrainian policy, but after reading Pat Buchanan's recent book I decided the better analogy was to the Allied starvation blockade of Germany during Versailles.

[Buchanan: "In 1918, Germany accepted an armistice on Wilson’s 14 Points, laid down her arms and surrendered her High Seas Fleet. Yet, once disarmed, Germany was subjected to a starvation blockade, denied the right to fish in the Baltic Sea, and saw all her colonies and private property therein confiscated by British, French and Japanese imperialists, in naked violation of Wilson’s 14 Points."]

I was reminded of this by Ma'ariv's listing of the Israeli conditions on a Palestinian state because they so mirror the unreasonable demands of demilitarization imposed on Weimar Germany.  In this connection, I've always felt that the 2000 Camp David offer was somewhere in between "generous" and bantustans.

Do the Israelis have some subconscious determination to force the Palestinians to produce a Hitler?  What else to make of this bizarre new book by David Dalin claiming that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem lobbied Hitler to adopt the Final Solution? Or for that matter my last girlfriend, who in the messageboard rant where I learned she was a rabid Zionist, defending Michelle Malkin's screed against Rachel Ray for wearing a kaffiyeh, said that a kaffiyeh is MORE offensive than a swastika?

Israel has indicated that it means to keep all the land it has confiscated with the "security" fence in the West Bank. What does that mean in an agricultural area? Andrea Whitmore, a Missouri activist, supplied me photos and a description brought back by her husband Doug, a volunteer for three months in '07-'08 with a peace organization that opposes the occupation.

Says Whitmore:

Falamya is a village near Jayyous (in the northern West Bank). My husband and his fellow volunteers  had to monitor the Falamya agricultural gate among other duties.

The Israelis have cut an army road through Falamya fields--the farmers, who live in the village, are cut off from their own land--now on the other side of the road. You can see in the top left picture (the smiling woman is an international volunteer) the double roll of razor wire, maybe 5 feet high. Then there's a ditch you can't see in the picture, about ten feet wide, then a gravel patch to show footprints, then the barbed wire electrified fence-- not to kill but to send a signal to an army command post somewhere that the fence is disturbed. Hence the soldiers' annoyance when boys throw stones at the fence, which means they have to get in their jeeps and investigate.

Then more gravel, then the road, then more gravel on the other side and some of the fencing repeated. You can only imagine how much cherished farm land was seized and destroyed and what an awful deprivation it is for the people who are living in their own land and being treated like criminals. [all emphases Weiss's]

The farmers must get a permit (not so easy, often denied or not renewed) to farm their own fields, or to graze their herds. Every day they have to go to the gate and wait for the soldiers inside the building to open. You can see in the bottom picture that a man is standing at a door looking up. He's waiting for a light to indicate that he can come through. There's another man on the right waiting to go through a turnstile to go up to that door, which houses a metal detector and where the farmers must show their IDs, their permits, and go through the metal detector. All to go to their own land.

If they want to take their tractor across, they have to go through and be checked, then go back through, then get on their tractor and drive through, stop and have their tractor inspected. It's outrageous, and in contravention of international law in every possible way.

"Instead of adopting a resolute stance against terrorism, the Kadima-Labor government continues to release hundreds of prisoners in return for nothing,"
—Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, August 18, 2008

Vs.

"In an expedited process Israel should now announce an organized plan to release prisoners as part of the diplomatic track with Abbas. The announcement alone and a real move toward implementing such a plan would immediately boost Abbas’ popularity … Initiating a plan, rather than responding to terrorists demands and strong internal public pressure, would start a process in which each side—Israel, the PA and the international community—assumes responsibility. If we don’t plan the next step ahead of time, we might find ourselves in the same situation again."
—Lt. General (Ret.) Orit Adato, former commissioner of the Israeli Prison Service; first international vice president, International Correction and Prison Association (ICPA), June 26, 2008. Interview with Middle East Bulletin.

The Israeli ministerial committee that oversees prisoner releases approved today the cabinet decision to release 199 Palestinian prisoners as a gesture of goodwill to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This move comes a month after the Israeli government exchanged with Hezbollah five Hezbollah terrorists, including the killer Samir Kuntar, and 199 bodies of Lebanese combatants and infiltrators, for the remains of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

In June, Middle East Bulletin spoke with Brigadier General (Ret.) Ilan Paz, former head of the Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank (2002-2005), and Lieutenant General (Ret.) Orit Adato, former commissioner of the Israeli Prison Service. Both highlighted the importance of the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Paz, speaking about the Hezbollah exchange, said:

“[W]hat we are seeing now is madness. We have one partner, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA), with whom we are negotiating for peace. We are not supporting Abbas by freeing his people from prison. Instead, we are rewarding terrorist organizations – Hamas and Hezbollah – by freeing prisoners according to their demands. In the prisoner swap with Hamas, Israel will likely release Fatah prisoners including Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti.

“What is the political logic? By acting this way we not only encourage future kidnappings of soldiers but also reinforce the conception that Israel only understands force. In the long run, it undermines our partner and the chances of reaching peace. To make the picture more balanced, we have to initiate prisoner releases in cooperation with the PA and demonstrate that this concept wrong.”

Adato asserted that Israel “would be wise … not to wait to address the issue only as part of a final agreement at the end of a process but to use it to move the process itself in the right direction. We need a strong leadership that can face the public and make difficult decisions, including the release of some Palestinians from Israeli jails, from a position of strength at a time of strength rather than a position of weakness (like the exchange of Israeli POWs).”

To read their full interviews go to:
Dealing with the Challenge of Prisoners, interview with Brigadier General (Ret.) Ilan Paz
A Deeper Look at Prisoner Exchanges, interview with Lieutenant General (Ret.) Orit Adato

Egypt and Saudi promise better relations with Syria: Alex writes:

Amr Moussa says he is expecting some promising developments that might lead to improved relations between Egypt/Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Mubarak and King Abdullah met and they claim that now that Syria is willing to have an ambassador in Lebanon, they might feel a bit more generous with Syria.

How sweet, and honest, of them.

وكان لإعلان بيروت ودمشق الاتفاق على تبادل التمثيل الديبلوماسي الكامل بينهما صدى في لقاءات الإسكندرية. ووصف السنيورة هذا الاعلان بالخطوة «المهمة (وتأتي) على المسار الصحيح»، ونقل عن مبارك «تأييده وتأييد مصر لكل عمل يؤدي إلى دعم العلاقات العربية - العربية وهذه خطوة على الطريق الصحيح». وتوقع موسى «تطورات إيجابية ستؤدي إلى نتائج إيجابية»، حين سئل عن ما إذا كان هناك تحسن في الأجواء بين القاهرة والرياض من جهة ودمشق من جهة أخرى.

Iran and Syria, in the role of Russia

By Itamar Rabinovitch

Haaretz

Now that the fighting in Georgia has died down, policy shapers and pundits in the West are free to analyze the maneuvers and results, and draw lessons. The picture that emerges is a dismal one. Vladimir Putin's Russia exercised brutal force with the object of bringing a rebellious neighbor to its knees. The United States, which encouraged Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to defy Moscow, did not give him any real support. Former Soviet republics and satellites will now think twice before confronting Russia, or will be tempted to seek shelter beneath the cover of the U.S., NATO or the European Union. Oil is now much less likely to reach the Caspian Sea without Russia's involvement. The Georgian crisis will have specific repercussions on the Middle East. There is less of a chance that the United States and Russia will be cooperating to stop Iran's nuclear program. There is a greater chance that Russia will wage a more ambitious and aggressive policy, including selling advanced weapons systems to Iran and Syria. There will also be a host of indirect repercussions. In this context, there is a striking similarity between the Russian move in the Caucasus, and Iran and Syria's move in Lebanon. On May 7, an armed struggle broke out between Hezbollah and the so-called March 14 coalition, led by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. The crisis was prompted by Siniora's refusal to put up with Hezbollah having its own nationwide communication network, another blatant blow to the Lebanese government's sovereignty. Hezbollah beat its rivals in the violent conflict, but refrained from extracting a military achievement, opting instead for political gains. On May 23 a political compromise was reached in Doha, Qatar, enabling a new government led by Siniora, and letting the elected president, General Michel Suleiman, enter his post. In addition, Syria agreed, with French mediation, to establish diplomatic relations with Lebanon, thereby obliquely recognizing it neighbor's independence and sovereignty. That understanding paved the way for Bashar Assad's invitation to the July 13 conference of the new Union for the Mediterranean, as an honored guest of France. ….. In early 2009, Israel will have to choose between a political response (from an Israeli standpoint, an agreement with Syria; from an American standpoint, dialogue with Syria and possibly Iran), and preparing to meet more serious challenges than the ones we faced in the summer of 2006. The writer served as Israeli ambassador to the United States.

 

A third Syrian airline, The Damascus Pearl, is being established under the ownership of the Makhlouf family, the family of Assad's mother

تأسيس ثالث شركة طيران خاصة حملت اسم (لؤلؤة الشام) مملوكة من آل مخلوف

The long delayed opening of the Damascus Stock Exchange (DSE) is again back on the table, though Syrian market watchers may be taking the news that trading will start within a few months with a pinch of salt. On August 11, Abdallah Dardari, Syria's deputy prime minister for economic affairs, said the Damascus bourse would be launched before the end of the year, whether or not all of the technical requirements had been put in place.

"Before the end of this year, even if it means trading on a chalk board, I told them they have to start dealing," Dardari said in an interview with Business International Middle East.

While this might sound like a firm commitment from one of the most senior ministers in the Syrian government, similar declarations of intent have been made annually since 2005, when the parliament ratified a series of regulations clearing the way for a stock market to be set up.

First scheduled for early 2006, the opening of the exchange was again announced for early and then late 2007, and again for the first half of this year. While few reasons have been given for the repeated postponements, Syria has struggled to gain access to the necessary technology to operate a modern stock market. This has mainly been due to the US embargo on Syria, first imposed in 2004. This has limited Syria's access to high tech computer equipment, including that needed to serve as the backbone for the stock exchange.

An example of this was the refusal by the Scandinavian exchange Nordic OMX, which was taken over by the investment arm of the government of Dubai in 2007, to provide the required technical assistance.

Today, with the apparent dawn of a new era of rapprochement following Damascus' opening of peace talks with Israel, improving ties with a number of Arab neighbors, its support for the forming of a national unity government in Lebanon and the warm welcome President Bashar Al Assad received from European leaders when he attended the Mediterranean Union summit in Paris in mid-July, this could change.

According to Faud Lahham, a management consultant who has advised on the stock exchange project, the Syria's market regulatory body - the Syrian Commission on Financial Markets and Securities - was in talks with both Jordan and Dubai about using their technology for the DSE.

Perhaps less optimistic than Dardari, Lahham told the Financial Times on July 7 that the stock market was on course to open at the beginning of 2009, with around 30 companies set to be listed……

One company that may be listed on the Damascus exchange is national flag carrier Syrian Air. Announcing plans for the airline to buy 50 aircraft from Airbus on August 13, Dardari said the restructuring and re-equipping of the company could be a preliminary to an initial public offering on the Damascus stock market.

Syria lures investment as Gulf countries ignore US sanctions
Monday, 18 August, 2008,

Foreign investment into Syria from the Gulf was about $750mn last year and may have exceeded $2bn annually over the past five years, said Abdallah Dardari, the country's Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs

DAMASCUS: Abdallah Dardari, Syria’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs, has said his country is luring record foreign investment, mostly from oil-rich Arabian Gulf states, and that US sanctions have had a limited impact.

“I don’t think the US has managed to damp foreign direct investment,” Dardari said in an interview in Damascus last week. “Sanctions have failed, especially when they are unilateral.”….

Dardari said that funds from wealthy Arab states are compensating for a drop in oil production, helping push economic growth to about 6% this year, he said…..

Dardari’s growth forecast may prove optimistic, with the Economist Intelligence Unit estimating that growth will slow to 2.4% this year, from 4.3%, because of falling oil production and a poor harvest.

Oil output has declined to 385,000 bpd from a peak of 590,000 bpd in 1996.

Revenue from oil dropped to less than 4% of gross domestic product last year from 17% in 2004, Dardari said. Non-oil exports exceeded $12.5bn, compared with less than $1bn in 2000, spurred by regional demand for items such as textiles, pharmaceuticals, cotton and agricultural produce.

Rising inflation is also a challenge, forecast to accelerate to 16.8% in 2008 from 12.2% last year because of reductions in fuel subsidies and a 25% increase in government salaries and pensions, according to the EIU.

Reducing some of the fuel subsidies “has cooled an overheating economy in the first half of 2008 which helped reduce inflation rates contrary to what everyone thought,” Dardari said. “Raising the price of diesel reduced inflationary expectations and everyone realized the market will stabilise.”

To boost investment, in January of last year, Syria introduced a law allowing foreign investors to own or rent land and take profits out of the country in any currency…..

The government is also in the process of formulating a thorough value added tax regime that will be ready by the end of the year, Dardari said. The VAT will increase the government’s revenue with a limited impact on production and investment, according to the International Monetary Fund…..

Clouds over Lebanon and Syria
The establishment of normal diplomatic relations between Syria and Lebanon is seen as a positive, but Syria's real intentions are still at issue.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
By Fady Noun in Spero News.

The Lebanese have received peacefully the news of an upcoming exchange of ambassadors between Lebanon and Syria, following a decision placed at the opening of the joint statement published at the end of the meeting between presidents Bashar el-Assad and Michel Sleiman (August 13-14). But no one is celebrating it. … Everyone wants to believe the good news, everyone wants to believe in the magic wand of the Doha agreement, but everyone is also asking how long these good relations will last. … Mr. Moallem has spoken of "privileged relations" between Lebanon and Syria, an expression that refers directly to an agreement of cooperation, coordination, and friendship imposed on Lebanon in 1991…

Syria continues to be a concern, notably because of its lack of transparency. This includes the country's refusal to mark the boundaries of the region of Shebaa, which is preventing Lebanon from reclaiming by diplomatic means the part of its territory occupied by Israel. Hezbollah's weapons and the organic relationship between Hezbollah and Iran, through Syria, are still a problem, in the eyes of many Lebanese….

KNAISSEH, Lebanon — For years, residents of this Lebanese village have slipped in and out of Syria over a border that was never officially marked. Even after Syria set up sand barricades in 2006 to stop smuggling, they found ways to make the journey.

Last week, after agreeing to establish diplomatic ties for the first time in their complex history, the leaders of Lebanon and Syria announced that they will resume work on officially demarcating the border.

But the residents of Knaisseh say such talk means little to them.

"They could build walls. We would still find a way to cross to the other side," said Fadlallah Khodr, a shepherd and father of 10 who lives in Knaisseh. "It is a matter of survival. Half of my family lives on the other side. I cross there on a daily basis, to see them and to shop."

The villagers say any move toward formalizing the border would disrupt their lives. Like Khodr, many here have family and friends in Syria, and marriages between Syrians and Lebanese are common. The nearest major city, Homs, is a 30-minute motorbike trip away in Syria, closer than any large village on the Lebanese side.

Response to 9/11 Offers Outline of McCain Doctrine
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, August 16, 2008 , NYTimes

…. In a marathon of television and radio appearances after 9-11, Mr. McCain recited a short list of other countries said to support terrorism, invariably including Iraq, Iran and Syria.

“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East….

As American troops massed in the Persian Gulf in early 2003, Mr. McCain grew impatient, his aides say, concerned that the White House was failing to act as the hot desert summer neared. Waiting, he warned in a speech in Washington, risked squandering the public and international support aroused by Sept. 11. “Does anyone really believe that the world’s will to contain Saddam won’t eventually collapse as utterly as it did in the 1990s?” Mr. McCain asked.

In retrospect, some of Mr. McCain’s critics now accuse him of looking for a pretext to justify the war. “McCain was hell-bent for leather: ‘Saddam Hussein is a bad guy, we have got to teach him, let’s send a message to the other people in the Middle East,’ ” said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts…..

Lamia Youssef Shakour has been named the new Syrian Ambassador to France. Amb. Shakour is the daughter of Gen. Youssef Shakour who also served as Ambassador to France. Shakour has worked for the UN in New York and presently directs the United Nations Human Settlements Programme in Kuwait. Mrs. Lamia Chakkour, Chief UN-HABITAT Kuwait.

For an interesting interview with Israel's Foreign Minister on the Georgia situation and whether Israel's soft stand toward Russia will win Russian good will in not arming Syria. http://www.cjp.org/page.aspx?id=182308

Ma'ariv reported yesterday that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert has turned over to the U.S. a document setting out Israel's security demands in a final agreement, and that the U.S. is considering "bridging" proposals to split the differences between Israeli and Palestinian offers down the middle, and defy the Israel lobby by doing so. But look how far apart the sides are: Ma'ariv says the Israelis are offering 93 percent of "Judea and Samaria," and that the 7 percent Israel plans to hold on to includes all the land west of the fence, including Palestinian farmland I blogged about yesterday. "The differences between the two sides are still significant," Ma'ariv says. "Since Israel does not count the area of greater Jerusalem" in that 93 percent figure. And Jerusalem has been put off for last, if a deal can be reached on territory and refugees.

But how? Israel's  security demands sound like occupation by another name. Says the paper (I've got no link, this is fan mail from some flounder):

1. The Palestinian state will be fully demilitarized...

2. The Palestinian state will be forbidden from entering military alliances with other countries.

3. Israeli warning stations will be positioned on hilltops [in the West Bank ].

4. The IDF will maintain a presence along the Jordan River...

6. Israel will retain its control over air space.

7. Israel will have access to roads that run deep into Judea and Samaria .

As for the right of return under UN 194, Ma'ariv says that Israel would offer to absorb an as yet undetermined number of refugees in “humanitarian cases only.” The numbers are likely to be a
few thousand every year for approximately ten years.

What is the American interest? Ma'ariv adds the following about the lobby:

Oh, now it's lobbies. When will the American people/journalists wake up to our interest here?

Tonight a rare thing has happened.  When someone from Campus Watch tries to publish a comment at this site it’s always because Daniel Pipes or one of his minions is taking another pot shot at me.  But tonight, the comment linked to a post by Islamophobe wingnut Debbie Schlussel.  Surprisingly, the post had nothing directly to do with me.  But was it ever rich!

Before we review Schlussel’s ravings, we should say a word about another site, Masada2000.  This is a Kahanist hate-site filled with spew against liberal Jews, Arabs, rabbis insufficiently pro-Israel, gay Jews, feminists, you name it.  Though the site owner attempts to conceal his identity, it is one of the worst kept secrets of the internet that the site is likely maintained by Victor Vancier aka Chaim ben Pesach.  Vancier was a national leader of the JDL in its heyday and spent 10 years in the federal slammer for throwing hand grenades and smoke bombs into opera halls and the like whenever Soviet arts groups performed in New York.

Vancier, now calling himself Chaim ben Pesach, runs another Kahane-wanna[be] site called Jewish Task Force which, along with Masada2000, is perhaps the vilest Jewish website I’ve ever come across.  A member of its discussion forum once wished cancer of the rectum on me.  Oh, it’s a swell bunch I tell you.

Getting back to Debbie, she’s on the warpath because three moderate Republicans (yes, Virginia, there are a few) created Repubicans for Obama: Jim Leach, Lincoln Chafee and Rita Hauser.  The one that really sticks in Deb’s craw is Hauser, a wealthy New York corporate lawyer and former president of the University of Miami.  Hauser has held numerous power positions running various Jewish organizations and been a political fixture as a donor to Republican presidential campaigns over many years.

One has to be careful crediting anything a lunatic like Deb has to say–but according to her, Hauser’s foundation was “the funder” of the Edward Said chair at Columbia University and her law firm represented the interests of the PLO during Arafat’s day.  In the eyes of a rabid Israel-Uber-Alles supporter like Schlussel this is tantamount to a betrayal of one’s race.  So it is fitting that as she foams at the mouth against Hauser, Schlussel invokes none other than Masada2000:

The most spot-on description of Rita Hauser is on Masada 2000 (with background music of “Who Let The Dogs Out?”), where she is a member of the Jewish S.H.I.T. (Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening Jews). Here’s just a tad:

Her unsolicited meddling on behalf of the Jewish State led to the Oslo Peace Accords and the resulting murder of more than 1,400 Jews! But this lady is not through with Israel yet, in fact, not by a long shot. On a Oct.14, 2003 C-SPAN2 speech, she told her audience, “It’s a moral duty to speak out against Israel” followed by “The Oslo Process was the best thing that ever happened to Israel!” … “a joyous moment.”

Read the rest.

Just as an antidote to this lunacy, let’s note this paragraph at the Fulbright Association which accompanies the news that she has been awarded its lifetime achievement award:

Rita Hauser, a Fulbright fellow in France in 1954-55, chairs the International Peace Academy, a research body affiliated with the United Nations. Ms. Hauser, an international lawyer, was the founding chair of the Advisory Board of the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy. She is a director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the RAND Corporation, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, among other organizations. In 1997, she and her husband founded the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, where she sits on the Visiting Committee of the John F. Kennedy School.

Omitted here is her role in government service during the administration of George Bush pere. Do I even need to say the idea of blaming her for Oslo or killing Jews is a calumny of the worst kind. I’d venture to say that the CSPAN “quotations” are probably also fabricated, as is most of the material at Masada2000.

Three web hosts have taken down Masada2000 for content so vile it violated their terms of service. Vancier is so paranoid about concealing his identity he’s violated the provisions of ICANN by registering Masada2000 using fraudulent contact data. Neither ICANN nor the site registrar, to whom the violation has been reported, can be bothered to enforce their own regulations.  UPDATE: I’ve just noticed that he’s now using a service to conceal entirely his registration data from public scrutiny.

You’ll note that Schlussel quite wittily says of Hauser’s involvement with Republicans for Obama:

…With Hauser at the forefront, they might as well call the group Lewinskys for Arafat.

Masada2000 advocates sexual violence against Jewish women

She, of course, would like to conjure in your mind Dr. Hauser, like Lewinsky, performing a certain sex act on Yaser Arafat and Palestinians in general. Sadly, No! memorably described this passage:

…Rita Hauser…is a…fellatrix of Yasser Arafat’s dead penis

This is of a peace with the rhetoric spewed by Masada2000 attacking Rabbis Michael Lerner and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi:

“What’s with this guy!! Is he some sort of pervert? As part of his ordination of Lerner, did Schachter-Shalomi ask Lerner how he strokes it?”

Masada2000 pornographic obsession with Jewish-Arab sex

Also quite charming is the page dedicated to mocking Jewish women peace activists (including rabbis) saying “a few leftist chicks in need of a good reaming” with the “Palestinian peace dildo.”  I have a question for Debbie Schlussel: how do you feel now linking to a Jewish site that advocates raping Jewish women? Or dare we say that you and Masada2000 are made for each other?

Last week I blogged about Israeli shootings of young Palestinians who were protesting Israeli expansion in Azzoun in the West Bank. Why are they protesting? The famous Israeli separation fence travels across Palestinian farmland in the area, well inside the Green Line representing the '67 borders.  

In fact, the fence at Azzoun plays a role in the plans of Lev Leviev, the diamond merchant and notorious colonizer of Palestinian territory. One of his settlements, Zufim, is built on land near Azzoun. You'd think that the fence would travel just east of that illegal settlement. But it doesn't; it travels nearly 2 miles to the east of the settlement, gobbling land from Azzoun. Why? Because Zufim has plans to add an "industrial zone" on that land, and the fence is accommodating that future expansion. The wall thus gives Zufim space to expand by something like 10 times its current size, grabbing an additional 250 acres of Azzoun's farmland. And though an Israeli court ruled that the fence is not performing a security function here, just a landgrab, the army has ignored an Israeli court order to move the wall back.

David Bloom of Adalah-NY says the industrial zone is to be built by Leviev's Leader company, which appears to be the sole developer of the settlement. Bloom goes on:

I wonder whether that industrial zone is intended to be for Palestinian workers. This is an apartheid scheme Meron Rapaport has written about: give the farmers jobs in Israeli "estates" built on land their ancestors proudly tilled for centuries. And so passage into these industrial zones would not require entry into Israel proper.

It would be just like Leviev to take the natives' resources and put them to work in factories he's built, like his diamond polishing plants in Namibia -- and Angola -- which he claims are a great benefit to the local population.

I described the idea of putting Jayyous farmers to work in Zufim here ( in the last section called "the industrial agenda") and noted that David Makovsky of WINEP told Congress that Palestinian residents of Qalqilya (the large city on the other side of Zufim) would be willing to accept the loss of their lands if they were compensated. In his testimony, Makovsky that "there is hardship" for Palestinians impacted by the fence, but asserted that most "are very happy to hear the Israeli government coming out this week with a 2-billion shekel or $500 million program on the hardship. I happened to speak to the mayor of Qualqilya, and I saw the wall on the Palestinian side, and I asked him, I said, 'if there was a compensation program to offset some of these hardships, would you be for it?' He said absolutely. "

A common point raised is that the real purpose of the wall is  political, to confiscate the most arable Palestinian land & water resources -- there are six wells in Jayyous, trapped behind the wall -- and to enclose the settlements inside Israel, de facto annex them, and allow them to expand on the confiscated lands. In both Bil'in and in Jayyous/Azzoun (plus a third village, Nabi Elias, which Rapaport mentions in his article), the path of the wall was deliberately drawn to allow Leviev to expand his settlements.

Here is a letter from residents of Bil'in and Jayyous to the actress Susan Sarandon, asking her to repudiate Leviev, whose store in New York she has patronized.

One more thing: some liberal Zionists will tell you that the Israel court has changed the wall route where necessary to limit confiscation. In fact there have been few improvements, and the army often ignores the court orders to move the wall anyway. As this article I wrote a year ago shows, the court is worse than useless.