Syria: On the first day of the Eid ul-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, seven people have been killed in the security forces' relentless crackdown on protestors. Six were reportedly killed in Daraa during a massive demonstration at al-Omari Mosque, and one was killed in Homs. Protests also broke out in a number of provinces after Eid prayers, including Damascus, Rif Dimashq, Homs, Hama, Latakia, Idlib, and Aleppo.

Yemen: According to the official Yemeni news agency, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has vowed to honor the Gulf Cooperation Council initiative, and says he is ready to hold immediate elections for a new president. A source close to Saleh said that the president has reached a deal with the opposition which stipulates that elections will be held within three months, as Saleh transfers power to his deputy, Abed-Rabbu Mansur Hadi. This political breakthrough, however, has failed to bring joy to Yemenis on the first day of Eid ul-Fitr. Many Yemenis are concerned with the deteriorating security situation in the country and are living amid harsh conditions.

Libya: Head of Libya's Transitional National Council Mustafa Abdel Jalil has set Saturday as the final deadline for forces loyal to fugitive Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi to lay down arms. Jalil said that negotiations were underway to arrange the peaceful surrender of the areas still held by pro-Gaddafi forces. Such areas include Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte, the district of Bani Walid southeast of Tripoli, and the southern areas of Libya.

Bahrain: A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned that the situation in Bahrain remains "tense and unpredictable" as the Manama regime continues its brutal crackdown on peaceful demonstrations. About 124 cases in Bahrain have so far received verdicts, including two death sentences; sixteen of the cases were acquitted completely, while seven others were partially acquitted, according to the UN rights official.

(Al Jazeera English: 1532 PT, May 16, 2011) There is a serious and growing rift in Iran between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. Ahmadinejad has reportedly asked the Khamenei if he can resign. Al Jazeera's Dorsa Jabbari reports from Tehran.

(Al Jazeera English: 1356 PT, May 4, 2011) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ended an apparent boycott of his official duties by chairing his second cabinet meeting this week. While a rift with the Intelligence Minister seems to have ended, another confrontation appears to be developing.

The president's actions are now the cause of much debate. While Ahmadinejad has made no comments about his 10 day absence from his job, it has given his critics reason to question his ability to govern. Al Jazeera's Dorsa Jabbari reports from the Iranian capital of Tehran.

(Euronews: 0751 PST, April 6, 2011) The Freedom Group in Libya has released a video showing Libyan air force Brigadier General Ali Atallah al-Obeidi who has apparently defected to them. In the tape he says he quit because Gaddafi gave orders to kill civilians and as he did not want the blood of his own people on his hands.

It is claimed the former general walked for 15 days from Tripoli to the besieged city of Misurata. It is the only major town in Western Libya where the revolt has not been crushed amid accusations from the rebels that NATO have been too slow with air support for them.

(Euronews: 2330 PST, April 3, 2011) Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has sent a trusted adviser to Athens as speculation grows that he is trying to find a way out of his stand-off with the international community. The diplomatic mission comes amid signs that those close to Gaddafi are becoming nervous about the long-term consequences of his defiance.

Libya's deputy Foreign Minister Abdelati Obeidi flew to Greece carrying a personal message from Gaddafi to Greek premier George Papandreou. It is thought the Libyan leader is seeking a way to stop the fighting.

Debating Gaddafi's Options

(Al Jazeera English: 0645 PST, April 4, 2011) Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has always publicly insisted that he will not leave Libya, despite the crisis in the country, and that he will fight "to the death" against his opponents. In private, however, it appears that he may be open to a negotiated exit. Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher reports on the Libyan leader's potential options.

(Mosaic Video Alert: March 28, 2011) NBN reports on a new crime committed by Muammar Gaddafi and his regime: the rape of Iman al-Obeidi. The victim is a "lawyer who embodies the model Libyan woman, but bothered the regime for being a free woman.” Iman was detained and raped by 15 of Gaddafi's mercenaries. The regime first accused al-Obeidi of being drunk and mentally ill, then offered to bribe the rape victim in exchange for her silence, a request that was rejected. Benghazi residents held a solidarity rally with Iman and online activists rallied behind her with a Facebook page entitled "We are all Iman al-Obeidi."

(Channel 4 News: 1359 PST, March 26, 2011) As a Libyan woman makes a desperate, dramatic plea for help in a Tripoli hotel, Channel 4 News Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Miller witnesses how Gaddafi's forces deal with dissent.

(Mosaic Video Alert: March 16, 2011) The BBC reports on violent clashes between anti-government protestors and security forces in the western Yemeni city of Hodeidah. Forces tried to disperse the crowd by using live ammunition, rubber bullets, and tear gas. Demonstrations and rallies are also being held in a number of the country's provinces such as Sana'a, Aden, and Ta'iz to demand that Ali Abdullah Saleh step down. Reports from the eastern provinces of al-Jawf and Ma'rib indicate that the ruling party is planning to organize its supporters to carry out similar protests in several provinces. This will be done in an attempt to counter the regime's opponents and show support for Saleh's decision to stay in power until the end of his mandate in 2013.

Today, 1.5 billion Muslims across the globe celebrate Eid al-Fitr, a three-day holiday marking the end of Ramadan. However, one renegade pastor of a church with fewer than 50 members, Rev. Terry Jones, has cast a shadow on their festivities. For the past several weeks, the media has treated us to live theater of the absurd by amplifying a statement made by an unknown preacher from Gainesville, Florida proposing to burn Qurans on the ninth anniversary of 9/11.

Jones has garnered worldwide news media attention these past few days and become an overnight influence

on American foreign policy and public image abroad, even receiving a call from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and many pleas from world leaders and celebrities asking him not to go ahead with his plans. The President of the United States urged him to listen to "those better angels," and military leaders warned that his actions would endanger U.S. troops and give Islamic terrorists a recruiting tool.

The media frenzy over Jones' actions reached a peak this Thursday when he announced he was canceling, and later, that he had only "suspended" what he had dubbed International Burn a Quran Day.

The New York Times sent this "breaking news alert" to my Blackberry: "The pastor planning a burning of the Koran (Quran) on Saturday said he will cancel the event, adding he plans to meet with the Imam planning to build an Islamic center near ground zero."

Minutes later wire services competed to report that Rev. Jones had backed off and then threatened to reconsider burning the Quran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks saying that he was lied to with a promise to relocate the "Ground Zero Mosque" from its current location.

This story has also become headline news all over the Middle East, in an almost coordinated fashion to what is being reported on US networks. This means that viewers in the region were treated to viewing this story not only on CNN International and Fox News, but also on Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and hundreds of regional and international television networks carried on satellite systems in the region. Television viewers in the Arab world had to endure endless coverage of the pastor from Florida, coupled with the controversy over the proposed building of a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan near Ground Zero. Making the matter worse, this happened during the month of Ramadan, the biggest time for watching television in the Arab world, akin to the sweeps season in the United States. This could not have happened at a worse time!

Will Jones set Islam's holy book on fire? Will there be copy-cats? It does not matter.

To millions of Muslims across the globe, the mere thought of such a thing happening is repulsive. If the satanic ritual (as an Egyptian Sheikh has described it) does not occur, then that's because the pastor from Florida has been under intense pressure to give it up. Furthermore, the controversy over the Islamic center in lower Manhattan is not going to disappear anytime soon. Ramadan has been tainted by Islamophobia over the building of a mosque, and Eid has been hijacked by one bigot. The media has created a monster.

Article originally published on the Huffington Post

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The dreaded "A-Word" has once again made its way into Israeli media, not by a leftist "self-hating Jew", but by a prominent Israeli politician, the Minister of Defense, who is a decorated soldier and a former prime minister as well. "A" is for Apartheid.

An awful word that evokes awful memories, presumably left behind in the annals of history in places such as Soweto and Cape Town. A word that has invited rage, insults, and attacks against a former US president who received a Nobel Peace Prize.

This past Tuesday, however, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that if Israel does not achieve a peace deal with the Palestinians, it will have to become a binational state or be an undemocratic apartheid one if it remains as it is.

"The simple truth is, if there is one state" including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, "it will have to be either binational or undemocratic. ... if this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state," Barak said at the Herzliya Conference north of Tel Aviv.

Though rarely used by Israeli leaders in connection to the Palestinians, the term "apartheid" is becoming more common to describe the current reality on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

More than two years ago, on the anniversary of the 1947 UN partition plan that would have divided British mandate Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned of this same scenario. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Ehud Olmert said Israel was "finished" if it forced the Palestinians into a struggle for equal rights.

If the two-state solution collapsed, he said, Israel would "face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished".

But veteran Israeli journalist David Michaelis believes that a South African-style apartheid system has already emerged due to Israel's prolonged occupation of Palestinian territories.

"What Ehud Barak intended to do is to send a stark warning that Israel is heading towards a binational situation; however, we are already in a binational situation, and an apartheid system that's working very well for the Israeli military and government."

Five years ago David Michaelis and I jointly interviewed Palestinians and Israelis about the prospect of a binational state. Most Palestinians we spoke to then were thinking of independence and most Israelis were thinking of separation. At the time, the Israeli government was frantically building the Separation Wall, and only a handful of Israelis entertained the idea of binational coexistence. One such person we interviewed who predicted what Ehud Barak is currently cautioning of was Meron Benvenisti, a former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem.

Benvenisti has recently published an elaborate article in Ha'aretz chronicling how Israel became a de facto binational regime.

"The attempt to mark the settlements, and the settlers, as the major impediment to peace is a convenient alibi, obfuscating the involvement of the entire Israeli body politic in maintaining and expanding the regime of coercion and discrimination in the occupied territories, and benefiting from it," he argued.

According to him, the violent events of the (second) intifada brought the Jewish-Israeli public to a crossroads in relation to their neighbors-enemies. Benvenisti argues that Israeli-Jews turned their backs on the Palestinians, erasing them from their consciousness and imprisoning them behind impenetrable walls, and became willing to congregate in a ghetto and pray that the Mediterranean might dry up or a bridge be built to connect them with Europe.

"This mentality is manifested in two, recently constructed, architectural monuments whose symbolism transcends their functional value: The gigantic Separation Wall and the colossal Ben Gurion air terminal. The former is meant to hide the Palestinians and erase them from Israeli consciousness and the latter serves as an escape gateway."

David Michaelis concurs and believes that most Israelis prefer to live in denial and avoid the subject of apartheid.

"The peace process is a misnomer, and the word occupation is misleading because it's really about systematic control."

How long can Israelis live in this denial and pretend that apartheid-like conditions do not exist?

Well you've heard the expression, "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..."

Article first published on the Huffington Post

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