Bibi Snubbed by Barack Obama? Oy veh

A woeful diplomatic encounter in Washington between the leaders of Israel and Washington resulted in no official photo, no state dinner, and considerable paranoia and petulance on the part of the Netanyahu administration, obviously unaccustomed to being dressed down after basking in applause at a rapturous AIPAC meeting. News media in Israel are agog, and the Times of London weighs in from Washington about what really went down. See it here, and cringe at the range of informed or vile comments and talkback. As expected, the Israeli leadership has stuck to its guns, rolled up its flow chart and is adamant that no alterations in policy decisions about building in East Jerusalem will be made to suit US demands.

Flying Rabbis, Lady Gaga and Hider's 'Spiders of Allah': Sects and Violence

Fifty flying rabbis recently took to the sky in an aircraft, blowing on sacred ram's horns in an effort to purge swine flu from the airspace over Zion. And now Lady Gaga has arrived in Israel, wearing a spiked Star of David on her black leather fetish gear. Truth can be far weirder than fiction on the frontlines of holy war, whether the fight is against the H1N1 virus, moral depravity, or zealous terrorists clad in suicide vests.


Lady Gaga-hermaphrodite moral laxity?

After a sojourn in the Holy Land, writers as diverse as Mark Twain and Allen Ginsberg have come away with the notion that, regardless of any outsider's road map, peace in the Middle East will be achieved...when pigs fly.

Enter James Hider, an intrepid war correspondent for the Times of London who sometimes dyes his gingery eyebrows black to better blend in with the Arab Street. His prolific and authoritative coverage of conflict in Fallujah, Baghdad, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza for Rupert Murdoch's newspaper has been essential reading for years. Now, in his first book, The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War, published this summer by St Martin's Griffin, Hider unleashes his dark humor and angry wit in a troll through the atrocities that result when religious fanaticism and ignorance are given unlimited fire power. Hider goes beyond the jaded truisms of most eyewitness post - 9/11 war reportage. To Hider, an ardent atheist, religion in the Midde East has mutated beyond Karl Marx's "opium of the people" into "the crack cocaine of fanatical fundamentalism."

The book's odd title comes from an Iraqi urban myth which went viral online in the early days of the war. Jihadis were rumored to be onto a secret weapon: shrieking camel spiders "the size of dinner plates", primed to sprint at 25 mph on eight legs and attack infidel invaders like the US Marines. The timeline of Hider's personal chronicle sometimes is perplexing because the action surges ahead or casts back a couple of millennia. It's written in a self-deprecating Blackwater stream of consciousness-- complete with rapids, whirlpools, and the occasional snag.

As he gets "sucked back into the 3,000- year-old vortex of fighting between Israel and its neighbors", Hider jolts away from any anticipated script. For instance, his take on how the Islamist group Hamas and its Al Aqsa tv channel hijacked Disney characters to whip up pre-teen Palestinian martyrs against the Israeli occupation ends up in a rock fight with the "feral children" of Gaza, who got bored by the squeaky rodent on the program.

More thoughtful than the usual Gonzo danger junkie writing from a war zone, Hider doesn't tout his own brushes with death as courageous. At one point he castigates himself for his cynicism after he sees so many killings that they start losing news-worthiness. His eye for repellant detail, the kind of graphic description that copy editors would spike out of concern for readers at the breakfast table, has put me off Turkish delight forever. But there are other delights, particularly the droll accounts of unexpected encounters as he tracks sects and violence across the region.

Crossposted on the Huffington Post

Bedouin Obama's Baklava

A platter of sweets, all dripping with honey, is proffered at the Jerusalem bureau of the venerable Times of London. The occasion? Some 8000 Bedouin Obamas from northern Israel are hailing America’s new chief and claiming him as one of their own. And how exactly does this tribe link their blood line to the new American leaders? Ah, that evidence is still out. But it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

James Hider, the Times’ intrepid man in the Middle East, was bemused when Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, a 53-year-old local Bedouin elder from Bir al-Maksour, started whooping and hollering over the electoral victory of a long-lost relative. And a Bedouin connection to Barack Obama is mind-boggling, since the Kenyan and Kansas clans are so well documented. Still, the Bedoins consider how the president-elect’s lifestyle has been semi-Nomadic, shifting from Hawaii to Indonesia and back, then California, Massachusetts, Illinois and Washington DC. As soon as the tribe in Israel started to gather and share the sweet news of the family’s good fortune, word reached the inquisitive Times reporter, who hauled his share of cellophane-wrapped pastries back to the office rather than splotch his notebook with honey.

Now Sheikh Abdullah is determined to hold a large barbecue in Obama’s honor and slaughter a dozen goats to feed the villagers. The action will take place up in Northern Israel, near the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus is believed to have walked on water a couple thousand years ago. At least it's not at Armageddon.

According to Hider, the elderly mother of the sheikh first spotted the family resemblance when she watched the charismatic Illinois senator on television. She insists that Obama is a dead ringer for an African migrant laborer who once worked for a wealthy sheikh in British Mandate Palestine during the 1930s. At 95, the mother’s memory of the distant past seems remarkably sharp.

“The Africans would sometimes marry local Bedouin girls and start families, though, like many migrant workers, would just as frequently return home after several years,” Abdullah told the Times.

One of those men was a relative of Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother, Sheikh Abdullah maintains.

He estimates that his tribe extends to as many as 8,000 members, all of them loosely connected to the president-elect.”

Long-lost relatives are bound to start appearing from all branches of the Obama family tree and try to converge on the White House. These Galilee Bedouins may represent a rather shady offshoot that rambled quite a distance off in the Holy Land. An undeniable surge of affection for the new American leader is transcending distance and going around the globe. That’s going to be some inauguration party! (Meanwhile, one of Hider's colleagues at the Torygraph divulged a hot tip that the new American leader could have feet of clay: A set of garden gnomes in East Jerusalem is also asserting Obama lineage.

cross-posted from Feral Beast.

Palestinian football players stuck in Gaza ahead of historic match

Reviving 'footie' in the occupied territories is fraught with problems, reports James Hider in today's London Times. After years of matches hosted by other Arab states, the Palestinian national football team will play its first-ever international home game on Sunday. But excitement is not exactly fever pitch. With nearly 50 per cent of their soccer players still marooned in Gaza, this West Bank match is likely to underscore the bitter divisions in the territories. Coming up up with a Gaza strip for football-- even though so many neighbors profess that Palestine is not a real country, but a name from the colonial past and a figment of the victimised imagination-- is unlikely to become a reality any time soon. Bishara, a Palestinian player from abroad, complained that as he tried to cross into the West Bank, Israeli security forces mocked him and demanded "how can you be playing for the Palestinian national team when there is no Palestine?"

So tomorrow's match is expected to be mainly a Fifa-Fatah extravaganza, and may inflame intra-team rivalries unless some travel permits are issued soon by the Israelis.

The match against Jordan will be attended by Sepp Blatter, head of Fifa, which paid for the 6,000-seat stadium close to the boundary between Ramallah and Jerusalem as part of an effort to revive the sport in the occupied territories, impoverished by years of conflict, corruption and political instability.

But amid all the fanfare, it is possible that half the national team may be missing, unable to make the journey from the Gaza Strip across Israel to the West Bank.

“It is easier for us to travel to the Far East, which is thousands of kilometres away, than to get to the West Bank, which is only dozens of kilometres away,” said Mohammed Baroud, 26, a Gaza member of the national team.

It is not only Israel that divides the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean Coast from the West Bank and which has enforced a strict limit on all movement in and out of the coastal enclave, controlled since last year by the Islamist movement Hamas.

The West Bank is dominated by the mainstream Palestinian movement Fatah, which called Hamas’s armed takeover of the Gaza Strip a “coup” and has cracked down on the Islamist group in the area it still controls. It has closed Hamas-linked charities, and arrested preachers and journalists linked to the group.

“The Palestinian soccer union in the West Bank did not call their branch in Gaza to get the team ready,” said Mr Baroud, one of 13 players on the national team who are trapped in Gaza. “They are not giving us the proper attention and all we get from them is promises.”

“It is the dream of any Palestinian player to play in such an historic event,” he said. In the past, Palestinian matches have been hosted by neighbouring Jordan or Qatar in the Gulf.

Gaza team members are angry to be left out of such an event. “We are totally frustrated, and we only train so to keep in shape,” said Mr Baroud.

Naiem El-Swairky, head coach for the national team in Gaza, said the West Bank sports authorities had applied for Israeli travel permits for seven players and one coach but had received no word on whether they would be provided.

“I think the union in the West Bank are not pushing hard for the participation of Gaza players. It usually takes us seven to ten days to get ready and the game is on Sunday, and no one contacted us yet. I don’t know whether to think it is deliberate or if they couldn’t get us permits,” he said, wary that his players may fall foul of the bitter dispute between Fatah, which favours a peace deal with Israel, and Hamas, which is staunchly opposed to the very existence of the Jewish state.

“I will give the union the benefit of the doubt since the Israelis are not even giving sick Palestinians permits to go to hospitals and many of them are dying in Gaza, so I would like to think it is the Israelis’ fault,” said the head coach.

Mr El-Swairky said that with the borders closed and living standards plummeting, Gaza had become a “cemetery of ambition” for Palestinian athletes. “Palestinian sport is paying a heavy price,” he said. “Now it is in clinical death, and if the situation continues like this, Palestinian sport eventually will die.”

Some 630 checkpoints, barriers and earth mounds block movement across the West Bank. Reuters notes that the venerable Palestine FA was formed in 1928 and joined FIFA in 1929 but at the time the association was made up of Arab clubs, Jewish clubs (including the venerable Maccabe Tel Aviv) plus clubs representing British policemen or soldiers serving in the region during the British Mandate rule between World War One and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

An Arab club represented the Palestinian FA in an attempt to qualify for the World Cup in 1930. The qualification matches for the 1934 World Cup were contested by a Palestine team made up exclusively of Jewish and British players.

As hostilities between Jews and Arabs worsened in the early 1940s, domestic league soccer was abandoned. After 1948, the Palestine FA was reformed as the Israeli Football Association.

The day when Middle East rivalries can be taken out on the football pitch seems very far off indeed.Israeli-Arab players have been insulted on the pitch at Tel-Aviv and right wing fans booed and cat-called last year during a minute's silence for the slain leader Yitzhak Rabin prior to a match.

Addendum: The coach says all player s have got permission to come to the west bank! See, it can be arranged.

Viagra to keep IAF pilots up

Viagra will render Israeli fighter pilots a potent force, according to James Hider, the Times' Jerusalem correspondent. It's not quite the air force blue we're accustomed to. Do these pills work on the principle of more bloodflow to the main brain? It's second-generation Viagra, lasting 36 hours and alcohol consumption is not a problem. If you support Israel's erect fighting men, read on:

Israeli fighter pilots may soon be receiving Viagra-style pills to help them to perform better at greater heights, according to a study by military officials released yesterday.

While the potential use of anti-impotence pills may make pilots’ enemies in the Middle East crack a joke or two at their expense, military researchers believe the ingredients that allow improved blood flow for men suffering from sexual problems may help flyers operating at very high altitudes.

The proposal, to be presented to the air force by a retired general, developed from a study by Israeli doctors among mountain climbers scaling Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, according to Bamahaneh (“On the Army Base”), an official military magazine. The study found that tadalafil, the active ingredient in Cialis, a Viagra-like antiimpotence drug, helped climbers to ward off fatigue and dizziness at greater heights.

With combat pilots operating hi-tech equipment in low-pressure environments, doctors believe the drug could enhance their operational abilities.

“The Viagra family of drugs is considered effective in these conditions because when there is a long shortage in oxygen it leads to high blood pressure in the lungs, and the drugs help fight that,” a military medical officer told the weekly magazine.

“The study’s findings justify the continuation of tests with drugs of this type in low-oxygen environments,” an air force officer said.

Israeli air force pilots are sometimes called upon to perform incredible feats of airmanship, such as the 1981 operation to destroy Iraq’s nascent nuclear reactor. Eight F16 fighter-bombers, escorted by six F15 tactical fighters, flew almost 700 miles (1,100km) across Jordanian, Saudi Arabian and Iraqi airspace to destroy the French-built reactor.

According to some accounts, the jets flew in such close formation that any radar pickup would have identified them as one large passenger aircraft.

ON THE UP

— Viagra saved the life of Lewis Goodfellow, born prematurely last year and weighing only 1lb 8oz, when one of his lungs failed. It caused tiny blood vessels in the lung to widen, to give his body sufficient oxygen

— Argentinian research last year found that the drug may be useful in treating jet lag. Hamsters subjected to simulated jet lag recovered up to 50 per cent faster when given the drug, known generically as sildenafil

— In an American study in 2005 Viagra was given to pregnant women with high blood pressure. It helped to maintain healthy circulation and possibly contributed to easier, safer childbirth

— Viagra mixed with stimulants such as cocaine or Ecstasy has become increasingly popular in nightclubs. The combined drug — known as “sextasy” — is taken to fuel all-night dancing and sex marathons

Oy veh, fellas. Straighten up and fly right

Gazans Breach Blockade and stream into Sinai

At least 350,000 shoppers from Gaza scrambled over a flattened security fence at the Rafah border and into the bazaars of Egypt early this morning to buy stocks of food, oil, medicine, flour, and cigarettes. It was like a collective nicotine fit for thousands who had withstood a prolonged, chilly weekend in Gaza replete with power cuts and cold food. Much of the Israeli press tried to paint the international outcry over the looming humanitarian crisis inside Gaza as a public relations coup for the Islamist party Hamas. Gazans should expect retaliation for their non-stop rocket attacks on Sderot, Israeli politicians admonished, and ought to turn against Hamas as the source of their problems.

There was a border skirmish between Gazans and Egyptian riot police at Rafah on Tuesday, then the 17 dawn blasts that breached the wall. Gunfire had erupted in the Palestinian crowd, as seen in this Al Jazeera clip.

Yet most Gazans were exhultant and some were quoted saying that after 17 blasts and a bulldozer, it felt like the equivalent of the Berlin Wall toppling.
James Hider, of the London Times, dug a little deeper and learned that

"Hamas had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches.

That meant that when the explosive charges were set off in 17 different locations after midnight last night the 40ft wall came tumbling down, leaving it lying like a broken concertina down the middle of no-man's land as an estimated 350,000 Gazans flooded into Egypt.

The guard, Lieutenant Abu Usama of the Palestinian National Security, said of the cutting operation: "I've seen this happening over the last few months. It happened in the daytime but was covered up so that nobody would see."

Asked whether he had reported it to the government, he replied: "It was the government that was doing this. Who would I report it to?"

Abu Usama, who normally works from a small guard cabin in no-man's land, added: "Last night we were told to keep away from the wall. We were ordered to stay away because they were going to break the blockade."

Stirring September sunsets are a blast

In the old city of Jerusalem there are a tangle of historic tales, waiting to be respun. My droll buddy James Hider, intrigued by the blast that marks the evening meal during the holy month of Ramadan, sought out the Sandouka family that has summoned fasters to dinner for the past century or so with a cannonball. His report appeared in the London Times, and it makes an intriguing read. Uri Lupolianski, the orthodox Mayor of Jerusalem, has no problem with the Arab family that shoots shells at sundown outside the venerable gates. The mayor sided with the traditionalists and derided new rules that would force Sandouka, who has been shooting the signal blast for two decades, to pass a $2000 certification course before handling explosives.

The shots used to be fired from a cannon donated by the Ottoman Empire, at the Old City’s Flowers gate. Twenty years ago, that artillery piece was replaced by a gun donated by Jordan. Now, Mr Sandouka fires a large percussion grenade – a sort of glorified firework that makes a loud boom – from a pipe set up at the gate.
Israeli security forces have insisted that the percussion grenade for Iftar– which does contain explosives – must be delivered every day by an armed Israeli military explosives expert, to make sure that it does not fall into the hands of terrorists.

Despite the security crackdown, festivity reigns. Churchbells clang, shofars sound their single insistent tone, and muezzins sing forth from minarets as the High Holydays and Ramadan converge this year. Nearly all my neighbours are putting up their sukka huts and issuing invitations to dine outside with them in a "Feast of the Tabernacles." And Christian Zionists are arriving for the good times in full force: 7000 evangelical Christians from dozens of countries plan to march through the city to show their support for Israel. The evenings are getting chilly and the bazaars are hawking heaps of ceremonial plants. Pedestrians tote lulav (palm frond), hadass (myrtle), aravah (willow branch) and etrog (knobbly citron) for the holiday, which celebrates harvest and sacrifices that date from before the sacking of the Second Temple. Iftar parties, replete with twinkling lights and honeyed sweets, enliven every twilight. Faith and family seem to bind Jerusalem at this time of year and life seems sweet.
Except perhaps for the Prime Minister, who is now under investigation for a shady property deal that discounted a pricey garden flat for his family. But Ehud Olmert has managed to wriggle free of all corruption allegations in the past.
Having friends on high must help. There's no sign yet that the sun is setting on his premiership. But after the holidays, things may get heavier for him.