The editor of a Saudi Arabian social website has been sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for founding an Internet forum that violates Islamic values and propagates liberal thought, Saudi media reported on Tuesday. Raif Badawi, who started the “Free Saudi Liberals” website to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia,…
The director general of Saudi Arabian Airlines told an Arabic newspaper that the airline does not discriminate against Israelis, but cannot accept passengers not permitted entry to the country. In an interview Friday with the Al-Watan Arabic daily, Khaled Al-Molhem pointed out that there is no diplomatic relationship between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and…
Well, surprise, surprise. After months of hearing from all the wise pundits from left to right that Secretary of State Kerry was beyond his depth in Israeli-Palestinian peace-making, that he was “naïve and ham-handed” (מגושם in the original), “dumb” and “clueless,” it turns out they all got it wrong. Of course, they’re still a long…
Now that the White House has officially acknowledged the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons, the question is no longer whether we get involved in the Syrian civil war, but how. This represents a victory for the smallish, outspoken group of liberal interventionists who have been arguing for an American military role, while trying to…
A funny thing happened to Israeli figurehead president Shimon Peres on his way to the World Economic Forum. Scheduled to address a gathering of Middle Eastern political and business leaders at a Jordanian Dead Sea conference center on Sunday evening, the 89-year-old elder statesman came under furious attack from Likud cabinet ministers Sunday afternoon for…
From Tuesday’s Yediot Ahronot, as translated in the emailed Daily News Update of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace comes a fairly detailed description by Alex Fishman of John Kerry’s game plan for restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Fishman is Yediot’s veteran, impeccably well-sourced military affairs correspondent. He attributes this information to…
Has Ron Huldai forgotten that he is the mayor of Tel Aviv and not Jeddah, Saudi Arabia? In condemning the defacement yesterday of the memorial to assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the square outside Tel Aviv’s city hall, Huldai proclaimed, “We should cut off the hands that allow themselves [sic] to harm what is…
It looked, this week, like there might be progress for women in Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah granted women the right to vote, and to run for election to municipal councils and be appointed full voting members of the Majlis Al-Shura, a government advisory group. According to a New York Times editorial this week, however, women…
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