Is Netanyahu Down In the Dumps?

It started in 1996, then the owner of the store over the basement was abducted under orders of Arafat, who was asked by Egypt's Mubarak to persuade him to give basement to Copts but he refused, was then referred to as a Subterranean volcano in 2009 and by 2010, we were updated about the ownership of a long-forgotten medieval cellar that for centuries has been filled with rubbish.

The basics:

The cellar, which dates to at least the 12th century, lies in Jerusalem, and is claimed by both a Palestinian Muslim shopkeeper and Egyptian Coptic Christians who have responsibility over part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of Christianity's holiest site.

The legal battle over the centuries-old vaulted stone cellar has been festering for 14 years...Antonios al-Orshaleme, general secretary of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem, insists the basement is holy ground and was once part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, revered by most Christians as the site where Jesus Christ was crucified and buried.

...The church was built in the fourth century. Its destruction seven centuries later provided an impetus for the Crusades. It was rebuilt in 1048 following agreement between the Byzantine Empire and the region's Muslim rulers.  "Here is a monastery, below is also a monastery," says Orshaleme.

Not so, says lawyer Reuven Yehoshua, who represents storekeeper Hazam Hirbawi. "For 800 years this cellar was used as a garbage dump," says Yehoshua.

And, basically, PM Binyamin Netanyahu may have to resolve it.

Why? 

Israel court stumped by holy row over property near Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The owner is dead but his son and his Israeli lawyers keep on.

This week, a report (in Hebrew) indicates the decision was that thee cellar belongs to ... Hirbawi.

And you thought the Temple Mount was the only troublesome holy site?


(thanks to RH)
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Seen An Egyptian Coptic Church Lately?

Ever heard of the Virgin Mary Church on Cairo’s al-Wahda Street?

No?

Well, on

May 8, this church, in the impoverished Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba, a ten-minute drive from Tahrir Square, was a scene of devastation. It had been ravaged by flames and its insides gutted, smashed, looted, and charred after clashes broke out between Muslims and Christians over the case of a Coptic woman named Abeer Fakhri, an alleged convert to Islam whom ultraconservative Salafis had claimed was being held against her will at the nearby Church of St. Mina, which was also attacked. Fifteen people were killed in the violence and almost two hundred injured.

This extract is from this article, "Egypt: The Victorious Islamists" by  Yasmine El Rashidi in the New York Review of Books, a very liberal left weekly.

The "good" news in Egypt is

Of all the organized political movements and groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, its Freedom and Justice party, and its loose alliance of similarly conservative political entities—such as the recently approved Islamist al-Wasat party—are the only ones pushing for elections in September. Liberal opposition groups have called for their postponement, citing the need for more time to organize, but the military, so far, has said it will not change the date.

And there's more:

The Brotherhood made scathing statements against women and Copts soon after Mubarak’s ouster. Its leaders are now openly calling for an Islamic state, something they had previously denied was among its goals. “They will never change,” the outspoken newspaper editor Abdel Halim Qandil told a friend and me recently. “I don’t trust them. They are deceptive.”...the Muslim Brotherhood seems confident that it will emerge victorious in September’s parliamentary elections. In February it said it would win no more than 20 percent of the seats; it is now—officially—aiming for 50 percent. Essam el-Erian recently told me, “But of course we want a majority or the largest percent we can get.” Through a coalition agreement with other Islamist groups, Lacroix said, this “seems increasingly likely.”
At the end of May, in a public library in Imbaba, not far from the Virgin Mary Church, a group of Salafis—who call themselves “Salafyo Costa” after Costa Coffee, which they like to drink—held an open meeting, intended “to begin a dialogue with liberals and help cast aside this idea of us as devils,” as Mohamed Tolba, one of the group’s organizers, told me...After the meeting, one of the Salafist wives approached me, inviting me to a women-only gathering at her house. “You’re so young,” another said, before proceeding to explain how she slowly converted from being uncovered to wearing a full-face veil. “It just takes time,” she said reassuringly. “You get used to it.”

...Sitting in the Virgin Mary Church with Father Sarabamon, I told him about the invitation of the Salafi women. He smiled. “They want to convert you,” he told me. “I fear the worst. You know already that they don’t teach Coptic history in schools. It will take time, but I see the direction we are moving in.”

As goes Egypt...

But of course Barry Rubin has been writing this for months.

^

No "Hand-in-Hand" - They Stab Priests...In Egypt

I guess that Muslim-Christian solidarity in Tahrir Square ("Muslim-Christian unity was one of the themes on Sunday. Members of Egypt's Coptic Christian minority said mass in the square and many of the placards combined the Muslim crescent and the Christian cross. "Hand in hand" was a common chant") was all BS:-

Coptic Christian priest killed in southern Egypt
Associated Press

Feb 23, 4:46 AM EST

ASSIUT, Egypt (AP) -- A Coptic Christian priest has been killed in southern Egypt, triggering street demonstrations by several thousand Christians.  The priest was found dead in his home. A fellow clergyman, Danoub Thabet, says his body had several stab wounds. He says neighbors reported seeing several masked men leaving the apartment and shouting "Allahu akbar," or "God is great," suggesting the killing was motivated by the divide between Egypt's Muslims and its minority Coptic community.

What else is BS in Egypt?

Muslim Brotherhood secular?
Democracy?
Maintaining Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty?


(k/t: YV & AR)
^

Pork Gets Porked

Despite this (and this), we're going to use "pork" as a verb, meaning: to take advantage of.

You all laughed when you read this, yes?

Israeli Health Minister Yakov Litzman has been updating a nervous public on the swine flu epidemic - and he started by renaming it for religious reasons.

Well, read on:-

The World Health Organisation (WHO), bowing to pressure from meat industry producers and concerned governments, said on Thursday it would refer to a deadly new virus strain as influenza A (H1N1), not swine flu.

"From today, WHO will refer to the new influenza virus as 'influenza A (H1N1)'," it said on its www.who.int/en/ website.

The new strain has infected 257 people. The WHO has confirmed eight deaths although many more people are suspected to have died from the virus.

It derives from a swine influenza virus but the new strain has been found only in people. While it contains mostly swine flu genetic sequences, it also contains small amounts of human and bird flu virus genetic material.

No pigs have been confirmed to be sick with it.

WHO has consistently said the disease cannot be caught from eating pork if it is prepared properly.

"There is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products," it said on its website on Thursday.

The name of the flu led several countries to ban imports of pork from Mexico and the United States, where the outbreak first appeared, and authorities in Egypt have ordered a cull of pigs.

So, how to defend ourselves?

CNN relates:-

...Markel was tapped by the CDC to study what worked and what didn't during the 1918 flu disaster. Markel and colleagues examined 43 cities and found that so-called nonpharmaceutical interventions -- steps such as isolating patients and school closings -- were remarkably successful in tamping down the outbreak. "They don't make the population immune, but they buy you time, either by preventing influenza from getting into the community or slowing down the spread," Markel said.

Markel describes a dramatic example in the mining town of Gunnison, Colorado. In 1918, town leaders built a veritable barricade, closing down the railroad station and blocking all roads into town. Four thousand townspeople lived on stockpiled supplies and food from hunting or fishing. For 3½ months, while influenza raged in nearly every city in America, Gunnison saw not a single case of flu -- not until the spring, when roads were reopened and a handful of residents fell sick.

You'll never know.

The real problem?

Here:

Egypt has begun forcibly slaughtering the country’s pig herds as a precaution against swine flu, a move that the United Nations described as “a real mistake” and one that is prompting anger among the country’s pig farmers.

The decision, announced Wednesday, is already adding new strains to the tense relations between Egypt’s majority Muslims and its Coptic Christians. Most of Egypt’s pig farmers are Christians, and some accuse the government of using swine flu fears to punish them economically.

According to World Health Organization officials, the decision to kill pigs has no scientific basis. “We don’t see any evidence that anyone is getting infected from pigs,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s assistant director general. “This appears to be a virus which is moving from person to person.”

Christians Not That Far Behind

You thinks Muslims only dislike Jews?

A monastery was ransacked in January. In May, monks there were kidnapped, whipped and beaten and ordered to spit on the cross. Christian-owned jewelry stores were robbed over the summer. The rash of violence was so bad that one prominent Egyptian writer worried it had become “open season” on the nation’s Christians.

Read on.

And on.

And on.

This is No "Honor Killing"

But simply plain sectarian murder.

Four Coptic Christians have been shot dead in broad daylight at a jewellery shop in a busy district of the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

Details remain sketchy, but witness accounts speak of two men, wearing wigs and sunglasses, entering the shop and opening fire with automatic weapons.

...There are fears the attack may have been sectarian or even political.

...The shop's owner and three of his assistants were killed in the attack. All four were Christian Copts.

Might have been?

Eat Like An Egyptian (Coptic)?

Odd news item I spotted:-

Jonathan McCullum was in perfect health at 70kg when he left last summer to spend the school year as an exchange student in Egypt. But when he returned home to Maine just four months later, the 1.75-metre teenager weighed a mere 44kg and was so weak that he struggled to carry his baggage or climb a flight of stairs. Doctors said he was at risk for a heart attack.

McCullum says he was denied sufficient food while staying with a family of Coptic Christians, who fast for more than 200 days a year, a regimen unmatched by other Christians.

But he does not view the experience as a culture clash. Rather, he said, it reflected mean and stingy treatment by his host family, whose broken English made it difficult to communicate.

McCullum said his host family gave him only meager amounts of food, and his condition worsened during the last seven weeks, when the family observed a fast limiting the amount of animal protein he was given.

McCullum said the parents gave him the smallest food portions, hid treats in their bedroom and complained that the cost of his upkeep was more than they spent for their daughter when she was home.

The host father, Shaker Hanna, rejected McCullum's story as "a lie," suggesting that he made it up because his parents were hoping to recover some of the money they paid for his stay as compensation.

"The truth is, the boy we hosted for nearly six months was eating for an hour and a half at every meal. The amount of food he ate at each meal was equal to six people," Hanna said. He added that the boy was active, constantly exercising and playing sports.

Hanna, an engineer, said his family went out of its way to prepare special foods, including fish and chicken, for McCullum during the fast periods.

McCullum disputes that. The family served meat early in his stay, he said, but that ended during the fast period.

He said he never got breakfast and his first food of the day usually was a small piece of bread with cucumbers and cheese that he would take to school for lunch. There was a late-afternoon dinner consisting of beans, vegetables and sometimes fish, and a snack of bread later in the evening.

McCullum sometimes bought food, but at one point was reduced to stealing it from a supermarket. He was caught, but the store accepted the small amount of money he had and let him go.

Still, McCullum did not complain to his parents. His father suspects he may have fallen victim to Stockholm syndrome, in which people start to feel a sense of loyalty to those who victimize them.

The McCullums said AFS provided false assurances that he had seen a doctor and was in excellent health.

AFS, a nonprofit formerly known as American Field Service, is one of the largest and oldest organizers of student exchanges. Since its founding as an ambulance corps during World War I, the agency has arranged exchanges for 325,000 American and foreign students from more than 50 countries.

The McCullums said AFS discourages parents from telephoning or e-mailing their kids abroad, believing the distraction would run counter to the program's goal of immersing them in local culture.

"They told us to have as little contact as possible, and we bought into it," Elizabeth McCullum said. She said she had confidence in AFS, regarding it as "the gold standard" of exchange programs, but now is aware that things can go terribly wrong.

The Committee for Safety of Foreign Exchange Students, a nonprofit advocacy group, said the exchange programs are rampant with instances of abuse and neglect.

"This is not an isolated incident. I'm aghast but I'm not shocked," the committee's director, Danielle Grijalva of Oceanside, Calif., said after hearing McCullum's story.

The McCullums are considering a lawsuit. David McCullum expressed concern about the long-term physical and psychological effects on his son. "Someone needs to be held accountable, and I would like someone to say, 'I'm sorry.'"