Fault Lines, Not Red Lines

Why the earthquake near Iran's dated and unproven nuclear reactor at Bushehr should scare you.

A 6.3-magnitude earthquake shook Iran's southern shores on Tuesday, April 9, on the afternoon that the country was celebrating its National Nuclear Technology Day. Nearly 800 homes were destroyed, killing 37 people and injuring more than 900. Iran's sole nuclear reactor, located in Bushehr, almost 100 miles from the quake's epicenter, was, according to Iranian and Russian officials, unaffected. But there's no way of knowing until the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report comes out in May. Either way, they got lucky.

REAR MORE AT Foreign Policy

*Photo Credit: IAEA Imagebank

Tunisia's Last Jews at Ease Despite Troubled Past

Murdokhai Izra will celebrate his 60th birthday next month at his home on Tunisia's south-eastern island of Djerba.

A Tunisian Jew, Mr Izra only left the place of his birth when he turned 18 to enrol at the University of Gabes, still not too far away from his roots.

"When I left Djerba to study commerce, I felt more and more homesick," said Mr Izra, as we met in Djerba's Ghriba synagogue as Tunisian Jews marked the annual pilgrimage to Africa's oldest Jewish temple.

His son and two daughters did not follow in his footsteps. They received their university education in France, which they have since made their home. They are like thousands of other Tunisian Jews, whose number in the country nose-dived from 100,000 in 1960s to around 1,500 today.

READ MORE AT BBC

*Photo Credit: Tab59

Geller's Speech Echoes Anti-Semitism

The Jews Against Islamophobia Coalition (JAIC) strongly reaffirms its commitment to challenging Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism and calls on the rest of the Jewish community to do the same. While the Great Neck Synagogue has decided not to host Pamela Geller, JAIC is outraged by those synagogues and Jewish institutions that are now offering platforms for Geller's hate speech. JAIC also condemns those who have been targeting individuals speaking out against hate speech.

READ MORE AT Mondoweiss

Did We Get the Muslim Brotherhood Wrong?

The academic community also saw it as important to distinguish the Muslim Brotherhood from the al Qaeda strands of extremist Salafi-jihadism that were the focus of the "war on terror." The Brotherhood had a different ideology, a different conception of its place within the broader Egyptian public, a different strategic vision, a different social constituency, a different view of controversial concepts such as jahiliyya and takfir, a different view of the legitimacy of violence. Brotherhood and Salafi-jihadist figures argued with each other constantly, denouncing each other over ideology and tactics. Lumping together the Brotherhood with al Qaeda would have been a major analytical error with serious policy consequences. Academics helped to sort out such confusion, and were right.

...But getting the Brotherhood's pre-2011 ideology and behavior basically right is no cause for comfort given the dizzying and disturbing developments since the revolution.

READ MORE AT Foreign Policy

*Photo Credit: thierry ehrmann

No Room for Radicals

Just hours after the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing were identified as Muslims, Representative Peter T. King of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, called for an “increased surveillance” of Islamic communities in the United States. “I think we need more police and more surveillance in the communities where the threat is coming from,” he told National Review. “The new threat is definitely from within.”

Mr. King’s hypothesis, and the widespread surveillance policies already in effect since 9/11, assume that the threat of radicalization has become a matter of local geography, that American Muslims are creating extremists in our mosques and community centers.

But what we’re learning of the suspects, the brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, suggests a different story...

READ MORE AT The New York Times Opinion Pages

*Photo Credit: David Shankbone 

The Good Outnumber You And We Always Will

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."

But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem -- one human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out.

READ MORE AT Huffington Post

*Photo Credit: @alaimbro on Instagram

The Bassem Youssef Phenomenon

How many viewers watch Bassem Youssef’s El Bernameg TV show — with its sharp cynicism directed at Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi — and enjoy it without limits or reservations?

How many enjoy the show, however discreetly, but have certain reservations regarding its level of cynicism and the nature of Youssef’s performance?

In contrast, how many viewers resent the program in principle, cannot bear to watch it until the end and switch channels?

These are questions we do not have accurate answers to because of the absence of credible institutions that survey and measure the trends of Egyptian and Arab viewers using scientific and documented methods.

READ MORE AT AlMonitor

*Photo Credit:  ~W~

The Greater Danger: Military-Trained Right-Wing Extremists

Before last week's bombing attack in Boston, there was a growing anxiety in the United States not only about homegrown violent Islamic extremism, but -- especially after Nidal Hasan killed 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, and then further after Eric Harroun was accused of fighting alongside a terrorist group in Syira last month -- about the specific and particularly frightening prospect of such extremism developing among members or trainees of the U.S. military. It's an understandable anxiety, and it may again be vindicated. But there's meanwhile a more worrying danger: that right-wing extremists who have served in the U.S. military will use their training in carrying out terrorist violence.

READ MORE AT The Atlantic

*Photo Credit: Danny McL

Egypt Is Too Big to Save

Two years after the popular revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak, Egypt appears headed toward a "failed state" scenario. While Cairo has not yet defaulted on its debts -- an economic hallmark of nearly all erstwhile states -- it already meets many of the other political conditions associated with comprehensive failure. In Washington, the discussion is narrowly focused on the implications of the rapidly deteriorating economic situation, with little appreciation that the financial morass is inextricably linked to the government's increasingly authoritarian politics. If the ruling Islamist party does not change its approach, the economy will not improve, and the state will move closer to collapse.

Since the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) came to power, governance in Egypt has exhibited several classic characteristics of failed states...

READ MORE AT RealClearWorld.com

*Photo Credit: oxfamnovib

Pew Poll: Declining Democratic Preference for Israel

M.J. Rosenberg just featured the latest Pew poll on American attitudes toward Israel and Palestine. He focussed on a decline among Democrats in those who say they favor Israel over the Palestinians. In the past 35 years, those who declare their sympathies lay more with Israel declined from 44% to 39%. While preferences among Republicans rose from 49% to 66%.

While I agree with M.J. that this is an important statistic, I don’t share his optimism that the Democratic Party will shed its knee-jerk pro-Israelism anytime soon.

READ MORE AT Tikun-Olam

*Photo Credit: looking4poetry