its hard to find topical information about the relationship between palestinians and non israeli elements on a daily basis.. but every now and then things surface.. as did an item reporting that palestinians would be expelled from the UAE in droves.. i raised the subject on the uae community blog and a bizarre conversation ensued.. youre all welcome to read..
שבת שלום
i would like to take a moment to dedicate a wish of peace to the souls of the thousands of victims that were murdered 11 September 2001.. i was almost one of these people..
Friday, September 11, 2009
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20 comments:
How were you almost one of those people? Many of us here were almost one of those people too.
the 9th of the september was the last saturday of the school holidays.. it was so busy.. i had a flight from montreal through boston to LA and back to sydney and i had to be home in time - had an important meeting on the monday morning..
the highway between ottawa and mtl was blocked due to renovations and so i had to drive the scenic route and it took longer than i expected.. compounded with an error as to flight time (i thought it was departing at 1230 but it was scheduled for 1200) i missed my flight..
the check in counter assisted with the rebooking of my flights which included flight AA11 from logan boston to tom bradley LA - on the monday morning.. they advised that i find accommodation for the weekend given the situation was my own fault and instead i waited there helplessly at dorval airport in mtl waiting for something to change.. an hour or so later the chick at the check in counter (who i now understand was there as my saviour from the angel of death) approached me and said she had found some room on a flight through chicago and that since all flights were with AA that they could reroute me..
the mtl boston legs of the trip had been purchased separately - on AA on because of the frequent flyer points - i was lucky..
i flew that day and cancelled my AA11 booking..
when i lay in bed at 1130pm on the monday night in sydney after having had the meeting and exhausted myself all day having gone straight from the airport to work - i witnessed the planes crash on tv live.. the very plane i was booked on.. the very one i was told there was no chance to avoid flying..
I second Dubai Jazz. I find it suspicious that you are so interested in this stuff. Sure you have a secret agenda.
:D :D
Incidentally I chatted with Nizo about it here. This is his take on intra Arab relations.
Basically his take on this is this:
We're not nations yet, we're still a collection of competing tribes.. Most of whom hate each other more than we hate Israel.
You know, if Nizo can live with this, I am sure you can deal with it too
:D :D
Wow a provocative discussion going on there.
Odd that there is no official reason behind this. It's either politically motivated and the people are pawns in a bigger game, or there was some security concern but I'm going to go with my first hunch. The deported people in this are, unfortunately, incidental.
BTW I do find it funny that everyone thinks you have some sort of sinister plan because you have concern about what will happen to these displaced people. As if you are operating an elite wing of Mossad or something. I do not mean to make light of this situation but it does get pretty zany insofar as the discussions go.
Ricardo said...
Wow a provocative discussion going on there.
Odd that there is no official reason behind this. It's either politically motivated and the people are pawns in a bigger game, or there was some security concern but I'm going to go with my first hunch. The deported people in this are, unfortunately, incidental.
They are not incidental. The Lebanese on their part were reporting that Lebanese Shias are being deported too. You put Gazans and Lebanese Shias together and you get Hamas + Hezbollah = Iran. Probably the Persians have been again musing in public about Bahrain being historically part of Iran or that their territorial dispute with UAE is going beyond the three islands.
Wow, Lirun, I had no idea.
I guess I didn't think about the rest of your post--I was just remembering 9/11, seeing those planes, the horror...
Nobody thank you for pointing that out. Yes, deport!
Lirun I am very glad you missed that flight. That is scary stuff.
Ah dear Rircardo. They don't teach the history of the Middle East in your schule? What a shame. Otherwise you would have known a few peculiar details about the history of our region :D :D
Not so long ago, to be precise just before the first Gulf War, the Palestinians in Kuwait were greeting the liberation army of Saddam Hussein. In a few months that followed a certain number of people were killed, tortured and raped, while 1% of the population has simply disappeared. Nobody even knows where they are, though my guess is their remains should be scattered in mass graves somewhere in the desert or southern Iraq. Ever since then our friends in the Gulf are a bit paranoiac about their Palestinian brothers :D :D
I hope you would excuse our friends now that you are a bit better informed. And don't even ask me about the Black September in Jordan or Lebanon's civil war. And anyway, as a bright young guy you sure know what Wikipedia is
:D :D
Incidentally, I was serving on the Allenby bridge a while after Saddam's army was expelled from Kuwait. In a span of a few weeks we had to move through dozens of thousands of Palestinians kicked out of Kuwait back to the West Bank/Gaza. You would not believe me what a mess it was
:D :D
Nobody - You'd be shocked that my feeble knowledge of things in the middle east passes for well versed in the good old US of A. LOL! Terrible isn't it? There is just not a lot of coverage devoted to these matters here, you have to dig, even farther than Wikipedia. They want American Idol here.
You know, what you have just explained here is crazy but by no means shocking to me. Who is more of a danger to the Palestinian people? Israel? I don't believe so but never did.
The Allenby bridge incident must have solidified your belief in Middle eastern solidarity with the Palestinians but only if you were heavily drugged. :)
There are a few Israelis at my shul but none of them are in a teaching capacity. This is unfortunate as I'd be very interested in their perspective on things.
You know, what you have just explained here is crazy but by no means shocking to me. Who is more of a danger to the Palestinian people? Israel? I don't believe so but never did.
This is not crazy and if you continue overreacting I will get apprehensive about sharing with you our Israeli perspective. If stuff like this makes you think that it's crazy, what you are going to say about really crazing stories? This story is mellow by the standards of the region. After all, Saddam was not gasing Kuwaitis with mustard gas by thousands. So they are certainly luckier than Iraqi Kurds or Shi'tes. Neither the bill presented by the Kuwaitis to the Palestinians for their enthusiasm for and collaboration with the occupying regime was exuberantly harsh. They just tortured a couple of dozens and sent the rest of the Palestinians packing.
Now the Palestinian admiration of Saddam Hussein is well known. Only Hassan Nasrallah rivals Saddam in this. So what the Emiratis are doing is just a precaution. I am sure that as they are deporting them, deep in their hearts they are wishing the Palis all the best in the world
:D :D
The important thing to understand about this region is that however bad the official armies and security services can get, it's still peanuts compared to what ordinary human beings, walking the street next to you, can inflict on you, if you get them really upset. You may find this story and its comments very illuminating regarding the last point
"This is not crazy and if you continue overreacting I will get apprehensive about sharing with you our Israeli perspective. "
I will remain calm for the sake of reading more of these stories :)
Now regarding this story you referenced me to and the comments that followed, what friends do they really have in the region? I'm not speaking of saber rattling but real friends who back up their words. Because from what I see, it seems they are hated just as much as Israel but with a smile. Cold comfort.
I have wondered why this odd relationship exists with the other Arab nations and the Palestinians. They're like the relative everyone says they love but no one will have over.
The intricacies of the Arab mentality and how they reconcile all these contradictions often avoid me. However, at the practical level I got some kind of intuition as to what they can or can't do and where shit is going to hit the fan next time. You don't have to understand them to know what they are going to do next time.
PS
If you liked the stories you can find more of this stuff here.
You are also wrong if you think that other Arabs are mistreating Palestinians. In this region everybody is at loggerheads with everybody else. Say in Iraq the main war is between the Sunnis and Shias. Naturally as Sunni Arabs the Palis are targeted by the Shias and because of their well known fascination with Saddam Hussein they are targeted by both the Shias and the Kurds, but they are not at the center of that war.
The same goes about Kuwait. How many Palis have the Kuwaitis expelled? A couple of hundreds of thousands? If I believe this article published in today's Economist, the Saudis expelled one million Yemenis for the same thing. So it has nothing to do with the Palestinians in particular. It's just that the Middle East is the Middle East.
BTW Lirun. It was a terrible idea to post a link to Nizo blog on the UAE blog. Nizo is too much even for Westerners and Israelis. It's a gay blog with outright porn stuff. Never mind the discussion in the comments section which was highly critical and disparaging of the Arabs. You sure don't post such links on Arab blogs unless you mind your reputation to be completely destroyed.
unless you mind=unless you don't mind
doesnt look like anyone cared :)
You may be misreading them. Very often it's a sign of hostility or contempt. Israelis are obsessed with always having left the last comment on a thread. Arabs very often pretend to ignore you if they are really hostile. You know, I am tracking people visiting my blog out of curiosity. These people have dramatically different reactions than Israelis and other Westerners.
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