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| International-UN-NGOs |
| The United Nations and the fall |
| 2015-07-03 |
| It's probably a mix of my age and the fact that not everyone in the media world has free access to social media -- that's "free" as in unmonitored -- but alongside Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections I also have emails and phone numbers written down in a notebook and stuffed into a folder of business cards that has grown fatter over the years. It was here I looked for some names and contact details last week, and as I did so I realized how much the world has changed -- and not for the better. I was trying to find the addresses of Egyptian journalists I used to be in touch with, along with a couple of Libyan journalists, a Tunisian writer and some Fatah-affiliated Palestinians based in Gaza. One of the Egyptians barely escaped with his life after the fall of Hosni Mubarak and now lives in the US; the other -- the one who a few years ago told me: "The Sunni-Shi'a divide doesn't exist. It's being created by America to split the Muslim world" -- is also no longer reachable; my heart goes out to the Libyans, as their country disintegrates around them; ditto the Tunisian, who must now realize that the Jasmine Revolution was not as romantic as its named implied. I was looking for them in the wake of a Black Friday followed by a bloody weekend and even worse week. On June 26 the world was shocked when a terrorist gunned down 39 beachgoers, many of them British tourists, at Tunisia's Sousse resort; the general public also did a double take when it learned that the attack on an American-owned gas company near Lyon in France included the decapitation of the terrorist's former boss, whose head was impaled on the factory fence. It is a mark of Western arrogance that it paid less attention on the same day to the Sunni attack on a Shi'ite mosque in Kuwait during Friday Ramadan prayers. The Sunni- Shi'ite divide is not a figment of our imaginations; it is rocking the world as we know it. And giving the Shi'ite side of it easy access to nuclear arms as well as an economic boost is not going to solve the problem, whatever President Barack Obama and those negotiating with Iran on his behalf believe. I searched, in vain, for the Cairo-based journalist, not only to get her updated take on the post-Arab Spring world but also for information on the wave of terror that has swept Egypt again, from the assassination of the attorney-general to the attacks by Islamic State that left some 70 Egyptian soldiers and policemen dead in Sinai on Wednesday. Closer to home, terrorists claimed the life of 27-year-old Malachi Rosenfeld, who was gunned down in a car as he traveled home with three friends near Shvut Rahel, close to Shiloh in the Binyamin region, on Monday. Israeli officials are wary of calling it a new intifada, but from President Reuven Rivlin down it is being acknowledged that there is a wave of attacks that is not the isolated efforts of "lone wolves." These deadly assaults seem to be well planned and they are being carried out against the backdrop of sickening incitement. How is the world dealing with all this? Well, the United Nations Humans Rights Council, as usual, has been busy bashing Israel for "possible war crimes." Well, UN represents the Will of Peoples of the World---and we all know how Peoples of the World feel about the Jews and their unfair advantages. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |