A new "free" newspaper in the Arab world?

In the shadows of its more flamboyant Dubai relative, the UAE's capital has methodically been working to establish itself as a cultural hub in the Middle East.

As my colleague Hannah Allam wrote earlier this year, Abu Dhabi "is emerging as the more sophisticated and responsible emirate."

Abu Dhabi is slated to become home to branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums. France's Sorbonne is opening a campus. And the UAE capital is getting a new opera house.

Taking part in this cultural evolution is The National, a new, English language daily newspaper with a staff peppered with respected Western journalists.

The paper is owned by the Abu Dhabi government, but editors at The National say they will chart an independent course.

"Being government owned does not equal being goverment run," said Hassan Fattah, a former Middle East correspondent for The New York Times who is now deputy editor of The National.

But the paper's mission has already been questioned because of the leak of a memo from Martin Newland, editor of The Nation who used to lead The Daily Telegraph in England.

"We are not here to fight for press freedom," Newland wrote to his staff.

"I can tell you now that every application from a journalist wanting to come and work here who has included in his or her portfolio an 'investigative' piece about labourers’ living standards has gone straight in the bin," Newland wrote. "Not because the theme is unworthy—it is and we will do it—but because we are looking for other, more nuanced and mature avenues into the national story."

The paper has been on the racks for about two weeks and it has carried a mix of pieces so far.

One early story that caught my attention was a piece about prisoners in Abu Dhabi jails getting "five star" meals in a country where jail cells are stuffed beyond capacity.

There is the story about the UAE banning sales of "Grand Theft Auto IV" and piece on the ease an expat had in relocating his cat to Abu Dhabi.

There are more substantive pieces, such as the article by respected journalist Nicholas Blanford on Syrian soldiers joining militants at bases in eastern Lebanon.

But, as the US State Department notes, there is a great deal of self-censorship in the UAE, and press freedom only goes so far.

"We are here to produce a professional, commercially viable newspaper," Newland wrote in his note. "Press freedom is a by-product of this. The more we zero in on templated 'red line' stories at the expense of human interest and the ordinary narrative of life in the UAE, the more we look like a foreign newspaper, peering into the goldfish bowl…"

The Gaza shooting gallery

Palestinians carry the body of one of four children of the Abu Meatak family during their funeral in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, April 28, 2008. An Israeli tank shell fired during a clash with Palestinian gunmen tore into a tiny Gaza Strip home on Monday, Palestinian officials said, killing a Palestinian woman and four of her children and threatening efforts to arrange a truce between the warring side.(AP Photo/ Hatem Moussa)

While Egypt tries to broker a cease fire between Israel and Palestinian militants, the low-intensity war in Gaza continues to take its toll.

The latest innocent victims were a mother and four of her children who lived in the drab Gaza town on the front-lines of the repeated Israeli-Palestinian clashes.

The five were killed on Monday when the Israeli military fired on suspected militants.

Palestinians say the five were killed when Israeli artillery shrapnel hit their home as the family was sitting down for breakfast. The Israeli military says the five were killed by a secondary explosion when the Israeli army hit two militants carrying bags filled with explosives.

According to the report below from an Al Jazeera reporter on-the-scene, there was no secondary explosion caused by the bag. The five, according to this report, were instead killed by a second Israeli strike that was targeting an unarmed militant who was trying to escape.

The Israeli military and Defense Minister Ehud Barak offered no apologies for the deaths and put the blame on Hamas, the hard-line movement controlling Gaza.

"The State of Israel and the IDF place complete and utter responsibility on the Hamas terrorist organization for the injury and killing of uninvolved civilians," the Israeli military said in a statement. "By intentionally operating from within heavily populated areas, and using them for cover, the terrorist organization exploits civilians as human shields."

The claim failed to assuage many people, so the Israeli military announced that it was launching an internal investigation and planned to get answers within 48 hours.

The grim images are all-too-familiar: From Qana, Lebanon during the 2006 war with Hezbollah to the killing of eight Palestinians on a beach picnic in 2006 to the killing of 18 Palestinians hit by Israeli artillery in 2006 to the recent killing of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana by an Israeli tank shell, time and again, Israel has been forced to defend its questionable military actions.

Today, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "deep remorse" for the latest deaths, but then blamed Hamas for turning Gaza into an "inseparable part of the war."

While Israel tries to put the blame on Hamas, that does not relinquish it of its battlefield responsibilities in Gaza.

Under established rules of conflict, Israel must do all it can to avoid unnecessary deaths when fighting Gaza militants. And it has to consider whether an attack will create unreasonable civilian deaths.

The issue was described well during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war in this Human Rights Watch fact sheet.

Every time this issue arises, it inevitably gets muddled in a debate over what is reasonable on the battlefield. There are no hard-and-fast rules that set out how many innocent civilians it is OK to kill in battle.

But that debate misses the larger conundrum for Israel.

When I wrote about this during Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah, a variety of analysts said such strikes only served to undermine Israel's image and create more resentment.

At this point, the Israeli military is investigating two contentious attacks in Gaza (Monday's attack and the killing of Fadel Shana) that have generated international outrage just as Israelis are preparing to celebrate their 60th anniversary.

We'll soon see how Israel responds to the latest challenges.

Holy Fire in the Holy Land

Today marks the end of another holiday season in Jerusalem. Over the past week, bread was hard to come by as Jews celebrated Passover. And, this past weekend, Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter.

The converging holidays created traffic havoc in Jerusalem and massive throngs of people flowing into the Old City.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the Holy Fire ceremony held in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

According to tradition, on the Saturday before Easter, the Greek Patriarch enters the tomb where Christ is said to have been buried. While inside alone the holy spirit is said to light a bundle of 33 candles carried by the Patriarch. The Patriarch then carries the holy fire out of the tomb to light the candles of thousands of worshipers that crowd into the church for the ceremony.

Ethiopian Christians were long ago kicked out of the church and relegated to space on the roof (I was told it was because they didn't pay taxes or dues, but I'm not quite sure...), where they perform their own Holy Fire ceremony later in the evening.

The Ethiopian ceremony may actually be the more colorful of the two, as the worshipers don white and play drums as they take part in the Holy Fire ritual.

Below are a few pics from the week of celebrations.

Worshipers take part in the Ethiopian Holy Fire ceremony.

Saturday service in the Ethiopian section of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall during Passover.

A Turkish tumult that almost wasn't

As a journalist, there is nothing quite as cutting as being accused of being a liar.

It comes with the territory, especially in this part of the world. So it wasn't  a complete surprise this week when veteran Turkish lawmaker Onur Oymen accused me of distorting his words.

Fortunately, I had taped the interview and I think it is quite clear at this point that we clearly represented Oymen's words. I even gave him a chance to qualify, clarify or retract.

Now, Turkish columnists who have listened to Oymen's words are having their say.

"Who is the liar who twisted the truth here?" wrote Turkish daily Star columnist Ahmet Kekec. "Seems to me like it's Onur Oymen."

But the controversy almost never came to pass.

The day after my interview with Oymen, I lost my voice recorder with the Oymen interview somewhere in Ankara.

I was winding up my reporting and had not yet taken the time to transcribe Oymen's interview.

I retraced my steps with my Turkish colleague, Serkan Semen. We checked the restaurant where we ate lunch. No luck. We checked security at the mall entrance where we had stopped between interviews. Nothing.

That meant that the recorder was probably in one of the many taxis we had taken that day.

I figured the chances of finding it were slim to none.

Fortunately, we had receipts from all the taxis we had taken. We figured out which was the most likely taxi to have the recorder and then tried to track down the owner.

Still, I figured the chances of finding it weren't good.

We took another taxi to a dispatch center, but the driver we were looking for wasn't one of theirs. They called another dispatch center and, sure enough, a taxi driver had turned the recorder into the office a few minutes away.

We drove over and there it was: They had the recorder.

Thanks to Serkan and some Turkish taxi honesty, I was able to recover the recorder and accurately report Oymen's words.

Without it, I never would have felt comfortable reporting Oymen's analogy. And I certainly wouldn't have been able to defend my reputation by posting the transcript and audio on-line for everyone to read and hear.

Are Muslim head scarves fascist?

Are Muslim head scarves fascist symbols?

The question came up during a recent interview I did with Onur Oymen, a veteran Turkish lawmaker who served as the nation's ambassador to NATO.

Oymen, a leader in Turkey's Republican People's Party (AKA the CHP), suggested just that during our talk about the rising influence of the nation's ruling Justice and Development Party.

In the course of our talk, Oymen suggested that Muslim head scarves in Turkey were akin to Nazi Brownshirts in Germany or fascist Blackshirts in World War II Italy.

The comparison struck me as stark, so I asked Oymen to explain what he meant.

"Anything, not only head scarf, but anything, any uniform that will be used as a symbol of a political belief or religious belief is a sort of identification of a religious or national symbols to dominate the society," Oymen said. "For instance, in the Hitler time, Hitler youth were put in black shirts, so they called themselves Blackshirts. So it was a symbol of Nazi ideology. In Mussolini time, in Italy, they were wearing brown shirts, so those who carry brown shirts are by definition supporters of Mussolini. So only in authoritarian systems you have such things. Not in democracies."

In writing about Turkey's current political troubles, I made reference to Oymen's remarks, something that has caught the attention of reporters in Turkey.

Now Oymen is denying that he made the comparison and is apparently preparing to demand a correction of some sort.

Well, let's go to the tape, which I still have -- and which we hope to post later. (Here it is.)

Here is the full transcript of the relevant section of the interview, conducted in English. I interviewed Oymen in his Ankara office at the CHP headquarters.

Judge for yourself.

Question: "Under the American Constitution if the nation or a state were to prevent women from wearing head scarves in universities it would actually be seen as an infringement on their religious freedom."

OYMEN: "Of course, because you don't have the danger of Islamization of American society or Sharia governments in America. You don't have such a threat. If some Indian students put their special traditional clothing in universities we don't mind because we don't see them as a threat to our society. But if in Turkey you use it as a symbol of religious state, then it's different. For instance, why Nazi clothings, uniforms, are prohibited in Germany? Isn't it a democracy, Germany? Why you prohibit such uniforms? Because they feel that there's a threat of a revival of Nazi tradition. You see the difference."

Question: "So you would equate head scarves with Nazi..."

OYMEN: "Of course, yes. Anything, not only head scarf, but anything, any uniform that will be used as a symbol of a political belief or religious belief is a sort of identification of a religious or national symbols to dominate the society. For instance, in the Hitler time, Hitler youth were put in black shirts, so they called themselves Blackshirts. So it was a symbol of Nazi ideology. In Mussolini time, in Italy, they were wearing brown shirts, so those who carry brown shirts are by definition supporters of Mussolini. So only in authoritarian systems you have such things. Not in democracies. In a Western society you cannot identify the political philosophy or belief of persons while looking to their clothing only. It's what they are trying to do in Turkey. Not only putting the head scarf, but they put it in such a special way that only the believers of this party ideology do it. It's not a traditional head cover of Anatolian woman. It has nothing to do, it completely, never seen such a thing until 20-30 years ago in Turkey. There was not one single person covering their head in this format. So it is the symbol of the ruling party or, to say the truth, symbol of a certain political-religious ideology. And it is imported from Lebanon. It was originally used in Lebanon and they imported it to Turkey as a symbol. And the prime minister himself said, if it's a symbol what's wrong with that? So he accepts that it is used as a political symbol."

Question: "But to sort of equate Blackshirts or Brownshirts with a head scarf of billions of people from a religious party seems to be rather..."

OYMEN: "Well you may believe that it's exaggerated. It may. It may be. But in the beginning, Hitler was elected as a political party. He got 44 percent of the vote, he got the support of any number of Germans who are not by definition Nazis. But by time he turned the country into an authoritarian system, totalitarian system and he created a mess who was responsible for, let's say, sufferings of millions of people. I cannot compare today our ruling party with Hitler. Of course not. But the matter, the fact that the party is elected does not mean that they would always observe the rules of democracy. So this is the difference. So Hitler did it for political ideology or nationalist ideology. Now, in our country, they use their political backing in elections for an Islamic society. So, you cannot find one single week, look at the newspapers, you cannot find one single week in the last five years or more where one of the leading members of the government has not raised a religious issue." 

Israel may pay for filmmaker's death

As Israel begins its investigation into the killing of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana, there are reports that the government is preparing to pay millions of dollars to the family of another cameraman shot dead by an Israeli soldier in Gaza five years ago.

Haaretz newspaper reported today that Israel is considering paying $3.5 million to the family of James Miller, an award-winning British filmmaker who was killed in Gaza while working on a documentary.

Miller, then 34, was shot dead by an Israeli soldier while he and two of his colleagues were waving a white flag at night and trying to leave an area then under Israeli military siege.

The incident, like Shana's recent killing, was chillingly captured on film (below) and shown in the documentary "Death in Gaza."

The course of the Israeli investigation into Shana's killing is likely to follow that of the Israeli investigation into Miller's killing.

Then, as now, Israel's first response was to state that "cameramen who knowingly enter a combat zone endanger themselves."

Although the above footage shows that there was no firefight, the Israeli military at first stated that Miller and his team were caught in crossfire.

After nearly two years, Israel announced that it was closing the military investigation without indicting the soldier who fired the shot. The military said it could not legally determine that the shot fired by the soldier killed Miller.

Even so, Israel said it would discipline the soldier for violating the rules of engagement.

Miller's family then filed suit and a British inquest concluded in 2006 that Miller had been murdered.

British officials continued to press for Israel to take action and threatened to extradite the Israeli soldiers if no action was taken.

Now, after five years, Israel appears to be looking to resolve the matter by paying the family in exchange for an agreement by Britain not to pursue the matter.

Carter diplomacy goes nowhere

He came, he saw, he Cartered.

For nearly a week, the former US president who brokered the ground-breaking 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, shuttled around the Middle East on an unconventional fact finding mission.

Defying objections from Israel and the Bush administration, Jimmy Carter met with Hamas leaders from Gaza. He met with the pivotal Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, in Damascus. He met with Syrian President Bashar Assad. He went to the Israeli town of Sderot to see the damage caused by Gaza rockets. He met with PA President Mahmoud Abbas. He carried a message to Mashaal from right-wing Israeli leader Eli Yishai. He floated his own peace proposals.

In the end, it all led to naught.

On Monday, Carter wrapped up his Middle East mission by briefing the Israel Council for Foreign Relations at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

"We believe that the problem is not that I met with Hamas and Syria," Carter told the packed hall. "The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with these people who must be involved."

In his talks with Hamas leaders, Carter sought to persuade the group to declare a unilateral, 30-day cease fire in Gaza as a good-will gesture. But Hamas was having none of it.

Early Monday, Carter said, he called Mashaal one last time to try and convince the Hamas leader to accept the idea.

"I told them, 'don't wait for reciprocation,'" Carter later told reporters. "Just do it unilaterally. This will bring a lot of credit to you around the world, doing a humane thing. They turned me down. I think they're wrong. I did the best I could on that. I don't understand their rocket decision."

Carter told the group that Hamas was willing to accept any peace deal Abbas signed with Israel - if it was put to a vote of the Palestinian people. Within hours, though, a Hamas leader in Gaza poured cold water on the statement.

Sami Abu Zhuri told the Associated Press that Carter's comments "do not mean that Hamas is going to accept the result of the referendum."

So much for that.

In the end, Carter's diplomatic gambit gave Hamas some high-profile legitimacy amid the ongoing debate about whether Israel and the US should talk directly to Hamas.

As Carter noted, Israel is already engaged in indirect talks with Hamas in an effort to secure the freedom for Gilad Shalit, the young Israeli soldier captured by Hamas-led militants along the Gaza-Israel border nearly two years ago.

"There are now direct talks between Israel and Hamas, but with Egypt as an intermediary," Carter said. "This permits Israel to deny that they are communicating with Hamas. But it is well known that Egypt, on behalf of Israel, is seeking to reach an agreement on key issues."

Carter said he did convince Hamas to let Shalit write a second letter to his family to show that he is alive and well.

While Carter was engaging in his one-man shuttle diplomacy, Hamas was stepping-up its attacks on the critical Gaza lifelines to the outside world.

Hamas has staged five attacks on the border crossings in ten days, including a bold suicide bombing attack on Saturday using two booby trapped jeeps meant to look like military vehicles and an APC Hamas captured from the PA military when it seized control of Gaza last June.

Israel has so far responded with relative restraint by not immediately sealing the borders. But the attacks are certain to make it easier for Israel to scale back, if not cut off, supplies to Gaza. That, in turn, will make it more difficult for life in Gaza.

Someone get Jimmy Carter back on the phone...

(AP photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill)

Pummeled with palm fronds

There's nothing that says "Peace on earth and good will towards men" quite like pummeling police with palm fronds in the church where tradition says Jesus rose from the dead.

In the latest ironic chapter in the bitter relations between the feuding sects that have carved up Christianity's most revered site, Armenian and Greek worshipers got into a brawl on Sunday inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Armenians and Greek Orthodox worshipers celebrate Easter on a different calendar, so today was their Palm Sunday.

The latest perceived slight came when a Greek priest entered an area where Armenian priests were conducting services.

Armenian priests responded by kicking the Greek priest out, pushing him to the ground and kicking him.

When police tried to break up the brawl, according to the Associated Press, the cops were pummeled with palm fronds.

"This behavior is criminal and unacceptable by all means," the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in the Holy Land, Theofilos III, said later.

Such brawls are hardly uncommon in this church.

For more than 150 years, the feuding religious groups have maintained a formal "status quo" agreement that strictly divides and regulates use of the church.

But the deal did little to stop the fights. Tensions rise around the Christian holidays and it's not that surprising to see priests in ceremonial robes pushing and shoving each other in various corners of the church.

The ongoing feuding may be one reason why some of the priests who take care of the church skulk around with a scowl instead of a beatific smile...

(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer, above right: Police trying to break up the Sunday brawl.)

Will Israel live to 100?

Next month, Israel will celebrate its 60th birthday in high fashion.

President Bush will lead a high-powered international cheering squad that will converge on Jerusalem to take part in extensive festivities meant to trumpet the nation's accomplishments.

But what, exactly, has Israel accomplished since its contentious founding in 1948?

Analysts, pundits and political observers are already beginning the "Israel at 60" debate.

The current issue of The Atlantic includes, "Unforgiven," a thoughtful piece by Jeffrey Goldberg that delves more deeply into the anguish of Israeli author David Grossman that I wrote about last month.

In the piece, Goldberg argues that "Zionism may actually be the most successful national liberation movement of the 20th century" but suggests that "60 years of independence have not provided Israel with legitimacy in its own region."

By contrast, Goldberg contends that the Palestinians have created "perhaps the least successful national liberation movement of the 20th century."

"But failure has not diminished the desire of many Muslims to see the end of Israel," Goldberg writes, "and the ultimate success of the Zionist idea depends not only on Israel’s ability to keep its citizens alive, but on its ability to end talk of its impermanence."

The Economist has produced a sprawling, 13,000-word analysis -- titled "The dysfunctional Jewish state" -- by correspondent Gideon Lichfield (who also writes the Fugitive Peace blog).

"Compared with much of its past," Lichfield writes, "Israel's present is prosperous and secure. But its future is as uncertain as at any time in its 60 years of history."

In one piece on Israel's security, Lichfield bluntly calls the nation's continued blockage of Hamas-controlled Gaza "cynical, unethical and prohibited by international law," and suggests that "the very workings of Israeli security doom the plan to failure."

In another segment on Israel's attempts to assimilate Jews from across the world, Lichfield notes that some Israelis have found a "certain comfort in the fragmentation" that divides immigrants from Ethiopia, Russia and elsewhere around the globe.

In writing about Israel's attempts to write its first constitution, Lichfield quotes one prominent politician as saying that the time is not ripe because "a constitution is an expression of agreements that don't exist yet."

Goldberg's Atlantic piece contains a link to an older article by an Atlantic literary editor titled, "Will Israel live to 100?" in which the writer, Benjamin Schwartz, argues that "Israel's long-term prospects are bleak" because the Israelis and Palestinians remain divided by intractable issues of land and demography.

"The century-long Palestinian-Zionist conflict is a story of two peoples, each with reasonable claims to the same piece of earth," writes Schwarz. "And nearly every aspect of that story suggests that in the end—and to the detriment of those peoples, their region, and perhaps the entire world—their aspirations are not amenable to compromise.

The Schwarz piece was written in 2005.

For those who have covered this story for decades, (and even for some who covered it for a few years) sometimes it can feel like a macabre version of "Groundhog Day," the 1993 comedy starring Bill Murry as a weatherman destined to live the same banal day over-and-over again until he reassesses his priorities.

When I spoke to Grossman in February, I asked him if, despite all the bleak predictions, he saw any chance for some sort of dramatic paradigm shift that could propel the two sides into an historic new era.

Grossman dismissed the idea.

"I don’t think that we can achieve a real reconciliation without solving the practical problems," Grossman said. "And I will tell you that even, when the practical problems will be solved, first it will take many years until the wounds and the hatred will cure. Many years. Sorry. It can be generations the trauma is so deep."

Last images of a Gaza cameraman

It had been a relatively quiet month in Gaza when 23-year-old Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana got in the company SUV on Wednesday afternoon and headed off with a soundman to cover the latest Israeli military incursion.

Three Israeli soldiers had been killed earlier in the day and tensions were high as Israeli tanks and troops pushed into central Gaza.

Shana stopped the SUV, clearly identified with large red-and-white "TV" and "PRESS" logos, a few hundred yards from an Israeli tank settled on a ridge nearby.

Shana got out of the SUV and started filming. In the footage, things are quiet as Shana zooms in, then pans back. There is a flash from the tank's cannon muzzle and a plume of black smoke. Then Shana's camera goes black.

Shana was one of 20 Palestinians killed in the deadliest day in Gaza in weeks.

From the footage, it looks as if the blast decimated the Reuters SUV. Shana's flak jacket was partially blown off.

On Thursday, doctors in Gaza said it was clear that Shana had been killed by an especially controversial kind of Israeli tank shell.

The doctors said the tank fired a flechette shell that explodes in the air and sends thousands of small metal arrows flying through the air. Human rights groups have unsuccessfully urged Israel for years to stop using such shells in Gaza because of the increased danger to innocent civilians.

Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger called for an "immediate and full investigation."

"We and the military must work together urgently to understand why this tragedy took place and how similar incidents can be avoided in the future," Schlesinger said.

The Israeli military apologized for the incident and said it was unintentional.

Thousands of people turned out Thursday for Shana's funeral where some local journalists accused Israel of deliberately targeting the cameraman for trying to film the attacks that killed several innocent civilians and young children.

Covering clashes in Gaza is always risky, especially for cameraman like Shana whose job it is to get footage of the violence.

Simply wearing a flak jacket with "PRESS" on it, or driving around in a car with "TV" on the side is never a guarantee of immunity. And, in some cases, it can make you a target.

Gaza kidnappers over the last few years have targeted cars with both PRESS and United Nations logos on the side.

Last year, Palestinian journalists issued a public denunciation after Islamic Jihad militants reportedly disguised one of their cars with TV logos in an attempt to stage an attack on Israeli forces on the Gaza border.

In an ironic twist to yesterday's events, one of the three Israeli soldiers to be killed, 20-year-old Manhash al-Baniyat, was an Arab Bedouin from an unauthorized Israeli village.

Manhash was due to be married next month and had built a home in his Negev village that the Israeli government had already threatened to demolish.

"Sometimes you feel like belonging to the state, but sometimes you get fed up because you build a house and they come and destroy it," said al-Baniyat's cousin, Awada Smaana.

McClatchy recently wrote about the Bedouin in Israel, which you can read here.

UPDATE: Four days after Shana's death, the IDF announced on Sunday that it would conduct a formal investigation into the cameraman's killing.

The announcement followed days of calls from various sources for an immediate investigation.

On Thursday, the Foreign Press Association, of which McClatchy is a member, issued a statement expressing "profound concern over the lack of a clear explanation" from the IDF about Shana's death.

"Video footage shot by Fadal himself shows that he was hit by a tank shell," said the FPA. "At the time, Fadal was not in an area where any fighters were present. He and his vehicle had clear markings indicating he was a member of the press. He was at least one and a half kilometers [about a mile] from the tank from which the shell that killed him was fired. A full accounting of this occurrence from the IDF is necessary and urgent."

On Saturday, Human Rights Watch concluded that the Israeli military "fired recklessly or deliberately" at the Reuters crew.

“Israeli soldiers did not make sure they were aiming at a military target before firing, and there is evidence suggesting they actually targeted the journalists,” said Joe Stork, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Israel should investigate these deaths and, if crimes were committed, hold to account those responsible.”

Such IDF investigations usually lead nowhere, but we will see what comes of this one...

Israel's bread war

A Lemur eats a matza, a cracker-like bread eaten during the Jewish festival of Passover, in the Ramat Gan Safari outside Tel Aviv on Monday, April 14, 2008. The eight-day Passover holiday, during which observant Jews do not eat leavened foods, including bread, begins April 19. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In Egypt, the troubled masses have been fighting - and dying - for the right to buy scarce bread. (Something my colleague, Hannah Allam, wrote about last week on her blog...)

In Israel, the battle isn't over a lack of bread, it's a war over the right to sell it.

Anguished ultra-Orthodox leaders are battling a new court ruling that will allow restaurants and stores to sell bread during Passover, which begins this weekend.

Normally during Passover, stores, restaurants and homes are cleared of most leavened products to commemorate the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. (The stuff is usually burned or "sold" to a non-Jew.)

But four Jerusalem restaurants challenged Israel's Passover Bread Ban Act and argued that the law only banned the public display of such things, not the actual sale of them.

In something of a surprise move, a Jerusalem judge agreed.

Last week's ruling has sparked outrage, parliamentary hearings and ominous warnings that the very Jewish identity of Israel is in danger.

Eli Yishai, head of Israel's influential Shas party, called the decision "an affront to Judaism."

Yitzhak Cohen. Israel's Minister of Religious Affairs, said the ruling was "a loaded gun pressed to the temple of the Jewish people."

"There is no Jewish identity if there is pitas on Passover," declared Zevulun Orlev, head of Israel's National Religious Party.

A disgusted Labor lawmaker, Yoram Marciano, bluntly declared that, if the court was going to allow the sale of bread during Passover, "let's abolish the Jewish state."

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert urged critics not to turn the issue into a "cultural war."

And Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni urged everyone to chill out.

"Unfortunately," Livni said, "ever since religious parties began to monopolize Jewish matters in a manner that concerns itself only with religious issues and inflated budgets for religious interests, tensions have arisen between the secular and religious communities in Israel. This tension and animosity has eroded what should be a central concern: Preserving each Israeli’s sense of Jewish identity irrespective of the specific concerns and interests of the haredi community.”

The day I started Intifada III

At the urging of my friend over at Israelity Bites, I recently downloaded PeaceMaker, a video game designed by a former Israeli intelligence officer and one of his American colleagues who are trying to capture the complexities involved in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Within minutes, I had sparked the third Palestinian intifada.

I guess this peacemaking thing is harder than it looks...

The game lets you play as either the Israeli prime minister of the Palestinian Authority president.

Either way, you are faced with suicide bombings, militant attacks, uncompromising hard-liners, restive settlers, recalcitrant militants, a fickle public, faltering peace talks and a panoply of real-life challenges that have made solving this conflict impossible for generations.

I chose to first play as the Israeli PM and was immediately confronted with a suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed 18.

First, I took a moderate stand. I demanded that the Palestinian PM crack down, beefed up security and offered economic aid.

Israeli hard-liners accused me of kow-towing to the Palestinians. Palestinian extremists accused me of offering meaningless concessions in the face of an oppressive Israeli occupation.

I tried speaking to the Israeli public and asking the UN to intervene. I unveiled a domestic economic reform package and was accused of ignoring security issues.

Within minutes, I had sparked the third intifada.

Game over.

Next go-round I took a tough approach. I sent in the troops, set up more checkpoints, built more sections of the separation barrier, assassinated militants... and soon sparked the third intifada.

I tried playing as the Palestinian PM and had no better luck.

Of course, I might have done better if I hadn't of just launched into the game without figuring out exactly how to play, but, hey, I figured, what was the worst thing that could happen?

I've still not managed to solve the Middle East conflict, but some of my more insightful colleagues have succeeded in bringing virtual peace, so apparently it is possible.

I guess it's just as well that I'm not involved in Middle East diplomacy...

You can get a flavor for the game here:

And the creators talk about it here:

Hamas and moderate Islam

Last summer, a few weeks after Hamas seized military control of the Gaza Strip, I sat on a Mediterranean beach with several Hamas leaders as they sought to divine the future.

Earlier in the day, hard-liner Mahmoud Zahar had called Gaza the "new Riviera."

Sitting by the surf, Ahmed Yousef, a more pragmatic, Western-trained Hamas political strategist, held up Turkey's Islamist-influenced Justice and Development Party (AKA the AKP), as a model.

"You can actually deal with Hamas and work with them to moderate them," Yousef said. "Don't make them your enemy. We should try these things before blocking the road. Everybody tried to destroy Hamas and didn't give us a chance. Deal with us."

The simmering issue -- whether to talk to Hamas -- is boiling again as former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in the Middle East on a personal diplomatic mission.

Carter is drawing fire for his plans to meet in Syria with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.

On Sunday, Carter told "This Week" on ABC News that he is "quite at ease" with his plans to meet Mashaal.

"I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process," Carter said.

The same issue came up last week while I was doing some reporting in Turkey as the nearby nation faces political uncertainty amid the state prosecutor's attempts to ban Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling AK Party.

In short, the prosecutor is accusing Erdogan and the AKP, after leading the nation for five years, of trying to transform Turkey into an oppressive Islamic state.

That's a topic for another time, but the trip brought to mind Yousef's comments on the beach last year and made me wonder what, if anything Hamas, could learn from the AKP.

First off, the political parallels aren't well aligned.

Erdogan and the AKP lead an independent, predominantly Muslim nation of 70 million that has had one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

Hamas controls virtually nothing but the small, isolated Gaza Strip with an economy that has been strangled by Israeli sanctions.

Way back in 1949, Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel, which has, in turn, provided Turkey with lots of guns.

Hamas has yet to recognize Israel or give up on its stated goal of, one-day, destroying the predominantly-Jewish nation.

That is one of the most significant differences separating the AKP and Hamas.

When it first won power in 2002, the AKP put any designs of imposing Islamic values on Turkey on the back burner. Instead, the AKP focused on economic issues as it sought to gain EU membership for Turkey.

Both Hamas and the AKP retain popular support by providing people with the services they need.

But Hamas does not appear to have learned much from the AKP.

After winning political power in the 2006 PLC elections, Hamas did little to moderate its views.

While Israel and the US cut off ties with the Hamas-led PA until the group abandoned its stated pledge to destroy Israel, Hamas dug in its heels.

Hamas took to fighting not just with Israel, but with its Palestinian rivals in Fatah, which was arming up for a military showdown with Hamas.

Fragile Palestinian unity fractured last June when Hamas took the initiative and seized military control of Gaza.

Even before, and ever since, Hamas has made it clear: There can be no lasting peace until Israel and the US talk to us. We're not changing our political positions to placate the West.

Publicly, Hamas has stood by the basic principle it has offered for years: A pledge to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip based on the borders set in the 1967 Six Day War.

This is unacceptable to the US and Israel because Hamas won't go one step further and explicitly acknowledge that Israel has the right to exist in the rest of the land that was once British Mandate Palestine.

That has made it impossible for there to be any positive political momentum in the last two years.

Hamas argues that it was never given a chance to govern, never given a chance to demonstrate its pragmatic side.

The point is certainly debatable.

Perhaps this week Khaled Mashaal will reveal his more pragmatic side to Jimmy Carter and take a dramatic step to change the dynamics.

Somehow, I doubt it.

Middle East Winds of War

Spring in Washington brings cherry blossoms. Spring in the Middle East brings rumors of war.

Last week, The Jerusalem Post carried an ominous front page story with the headline: "IDF on high alert as Syria boosts troops near the border. Barak cancels trip to Germany due to tensions in the north."

Aside from the fact that the story was based on a poorly-sourced report in a London-based Arabic newspaper, and that the rumored troop build-up was taking place along Syria's border with Lebanon, not Israel, the story was quickly knocked down - by Israel's own military leaders.

Still, there are plenty of reasons to worry that Israel could celebrate its 60th anniversary this year with another deadly clash with one of its Middle East rivals.

The concern hit home for me last week when I called a diplomat in the region for a reality check on the Syrian story.

The Jerusalem Post stoked similar fears last summer that proved to be totally unfounded.

This time around, there seems to be much more concern.

"There's a lot of shadow boxing and anxiety," the diplomat told me. "The mood music is very unsettling to everybody."

The problem this summer is that there is more than one problem.

Start with Hezbollah, which is expected to strike back at Israel in retaliation for the Feb. 12 assassination of Imad Mughnieyh, one of its militant masterminds.

While no one knows for sure if Israel was behind Mughnieyh's death in Damascus, Hezbollah says it is certain Israeli agents were responsible.

Israel has been bracing itself for a Hezbollah strike ever since.

In recent weeks, sources say, Israel has sent word through diplomatic channels to Syria with a blunt warning: If Hezbollah strikes us, we will respond by attacking you.

Publicly, Israel has sent out contradictory messages to Syria. Sometimes it seeks to assure Syria that it wants no war. Other times it warns that it will respond forcefully if there is an attack.

Syria has its own beef with Israel following an air strike last September that demolished a mysterious Syrian facility.

Israel has never publicly taken responsibility for the strike, though it is widely accepted that Israel hit Syria - and there are reports that Israel and the US are preparing to release details of the strike in forthcoming Congressional hearings.

Along with the worries to the north, there are concerns to the south.

Israel's tenuous, informal cease-fire with Hamas was shattered today when Gaza militants staged a deadly cross-border raid on the main crossing with Israel used to transfer critical fuel into the Gaza Strip.

The attack was an ominous sign that Egyptian attempts to broker a stable cease fire have failed.

Israel responded to the attack by sending tanks into Gaza and warning Hamas leaders controlling the narrow Mediterranean strip that they would be held accountable.

Taken together, the volatile mixture has created serious concerns for diplomats in the Middle East.

While there is debate within the diplomatic community about how serious the threats are, there is more concern this summer than last.

"The tinder is dry," said one diplomatic official I spoke to last week, "and if there is a spark, it could start a conflagration."

Israel targets "peace" radio station

After RAM FM went on the air last year, the English-language radio station launched an ad campaign with the motto: Music has no boundaries.

This week, the South Africa-funded radio station trying to promote Israeli-Palestinian co-existence discovered that it does.

On Monday, Israeli police raided RAM FM's Jerusalem office,, arrested eight and seized the station's transmitter.

The raid was apparently based on Israel's claim that RAM FM is a pirate radio station operating without a license - a charge RAM FM officials deny.

Today, after the Foreign Press Association denounced the arrests as "absurd," the RAM Fm staff members (including a friend of mine) were released from jail and placed under house arrest.

Despite the Israeli raid, RAM FM offices in Ramallah remain open and the station remains on the air.

Even if the station does not have the proper license, it's not clear why Israeli police had to arrest and jail young reporters and other staff members.

An Israeli official told Reuters that the arrests were not politically motivated, but this is not the first time that RAM journalists have been targeted by Israel.

RAM FM went on the air last year in hopes of using music to create new links between Israelis and Palestinians. The station can be heard from Tel Aviv to Jericho and claims to have about 200,000 listeners.

"We build bridges through music and entertainment, rather than through politics and contentious issues," the RAM FM station manager told Haaretz last month.

In its infancy, the station is definitely a work-in-progress.

The song selection careens from retro to hokey to cheesy modern hit. RAM FM deliberately steers clear of songs in Arabic or Hebrew. The DJ banter can often be as mindless as anything you'd hear on US radio stations. And the small, young news staff is still working to develop its voice.

If bad song selection was reason enough to close a radio station, Israel might have some standing. But the circumstances leading up to the raid and arrests are curious, especially since RAM FM has been operating for a year and promoted itself across Israel.

If Israeli officials had a problem with the station's license, it's not clear why they didn't simply call RAM FM officials in for a meeting instead of staging a raid.

UPDATE: Here's a statement issued Wednesday by the Foreign Press Association.

"The Foreign Press Association demands the immediate freedom of eight RAM-FM staff members who have been placed under house arrest and forbidden to speak publicly.

Three of the eight are accredited journalists with valid GPO cards, and their arrests raise particular concern about the issue of freedom of expression in Israel.

Regardless of the merits of the charges brought by the Ministry of Communication against RAM-FM, the FPA strongly deplores the tactics used by authorities in this case, which have included raiding RAM-FM's offices, seizing its equipment, arresting its staff for 24 hours, and then placing personnel under house arrest.

We call upon the government of Israel to recognize the peaceful spirit under which RAM-FM operates and its goal of fostering coexistence between the Israeli and Palestinian people."

Gaza's sick political pawns

As UK PM Benjamin Disraeli is said to have famously stated, there are three kinds of lies: "Lies, damn lies and statistics."

The oft-cited quote seems particularly apropos in the numbers game clouding the fate of thousands of sick Palestinians trapped in Gaza who have become political pawns in the war between Hamas and Israel.

Last week, the World Health Organization released a report that sought to bring some clarity to the issue.  But it only served to muddy the waters.

Here's one fact that Israel and the WHO both agree upon: Last year, Israel granted permits for 7,176 sick Palestinians to cross into Israel for medical treatment they can't get in Gaza. That was up from 4,932 in 2006.

In raw numbers, that's a 45 percent jump. But, the WHO noted, Israel is actually allowing a smaller percentage of Palestinians to leave Gaza for medical treatment.

According to the WHO, in January, 2006, Israel allowed 97 percent of sick Palestinians seeking exit permits to leave Gaza for treatment.

In December, 2007, that figure had fallen to 64 percent.

Over the last six months, the WHO concluded, 32 sick Palestinians died in Gaza because of Israelis policies that prevented them from getting out.

Ambrogio Manenti, head of the WHO office for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, described the cases as examples of "nonsense, inhumanities, and, in the end, tragedies...that could and should have been avoided."

Israel fired back by calling the report "one-sided, mistaken and misleading."

The Israeli government blamed Hamas and Gaza militants for the underlying problems and said delays were caused because of Israel's need to respond to attacks and security threats.

"The State of Israel, in absolute contrast to the claims made in the report, takes a humanitarian, humane approach every single hour of every day, despite the constant security threat," the government stated.

Well, having stood for more than an hour in the cold and rain outside the Erez terminal with a Palestinian teacher with breast cancer trying to get into Israel for chemotherapy, I would say that statement seems to be a bit of a stretch.

And, as McClatchy reported last fall, Israel has tried to turn sick Palestinians into informants and refused to let them out of Gaza when they refused. (Time Magazine's Tim McGirk wrote about the same cases in a story late last month.)

One of the patients we spoke to said an Israeli interrogator told him to "go back to Gaza and die" because he refused to give them any information on one of his brothers - a wanted militant.

Even if the WHO and Israeli government can't agree, it's clear that Gaza's most vulnerable residents are being used as political pawns.

For those that have died because they couldn't get out for life-saving treatment, and for those still trying to get out, it probably doesn't matter who is to blame.

DocAviv

It's probably a stretch to say that Israeli cinema has come of age, but it is certainly maturing.

This year, for the first time in more than 20 years, an Israeli film, "Beaufort," was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. (It lost, but is still a well-done anti-war film.)

Another recent Israeli comedy, "The Band's Visit," has garnered positive critical reviews and audience support.

This week, Tel Aviv launched its tenth annual International Documentary Film Festival known as DocAviv.

The nine-day festival will feature more than 80 films that cover everything from Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah, the plight of illegal Palestinian construction workers living in squalor in Tel Aviv, Bedouin wives, female suicide bombers, and the nature of obsession.

The quality of the small number of movies I've seen so far is pretty uneven. But there are a few standouts.

Last night, the festival kicked off with a special screening of "The Beetle," an inventive film about a father-to-be who sets off on an improbable journey to prove to his irritated and very pregnant wife that his irrational attachment to his disintegrating VW Beetle is not irrational at all.

To prove his point, director Yishai Orian tracks down all the previous owners of his VW and then, with his wife due to give birth within days, sets out for Jordan in hopes of finding a mechanic who will be willing to give his VW a quick, complete -- and cheap -- overhaul.

Along the way, Orian unearths a key to the VW hidden in the car's tail light by one of its owners, muses about the VW's Nazi origins, enlists a Jordanian camel to pull his broken-down Beetle into town and persuades a Jordanian shepherd in the desert to squeeze a few shots of fresh goat milk into his morning cereal.

The story is almost too good to be true. And Orian admits that some of the scenes -- such as the moment when he takes the car to the scrap yard and stops workers from demolishing his Beetle at the last minute -- were played out for dramatic effect.

"When you go on such a journey, the viewers need to feel the need to go on this journey with you," Orian said. "Cinematic scenes work on your feelings and your heart to make the journey work so that viewers will say: I will go also."

Orian wouldn't say if the scene with the camel pulling his VW was staged. "I'll leave that to the audience," he said, which one would assume is a polite way of saying yes.

I'm no cinematic expert, so I can't say if this type of fictional drama is typical in documentary films, but it certainly made the film entertaining. And there is plenty of poignant reality in the 70-minute film to make it worth watching.

Marla's ghost, Marla's legacy

Marla Ruzicka

(Photo/Scott Nelson)

She was one of the most unlikely characters to turn up in the smoldering streets of Baghdad. Young, bubbly, beautiful and blond. A salsa dancing anti-war activist from California who traipsed into the middle of the war with little more than her seemingly-naive idealism.

No one was quite sure what to make of Marla when they first met her, but by the end of her time in Iraq, she had gained the trust -- and, more than that, truly melted the hearts -- of hardened American soldiers, weary Washington politicians, cynical British journalists, and wary Iraqi citizens.

Along the way, she managed to change U.S. foreign policy to help innocent war victims.

From San Francisco to Kabul, Washington to Baghdad, mentioning Marla's name to the right people would bring a knowing smile to many faces.

Three years ago this month, on April 16, 2005, Marla Ruzicka and her Iraqi colleague, Faiz Ali Salim, were killed by a suicide car bomber targeting a U.S. convoy on Baghdad's airport road. Her last words, according to a medic: "I'm alive."

She was 28.

There have been many tributes to Marla, including this Rolling Stone piece, this appreciation from The Washington Post's Pamela Constable, and this recent personal essay by Catherine Philip, who covered Iraq for The Times of London and discusses how "the ghost of Marla" still haunts those who knew her.

Marla's tale is supposed to be told in "Sweet Relief," a Hollywood movie ("in production," apparently) starring Kirsten Dunst.

Marla's legacy lives on at CIVIC (the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict), a humanitarian group that has been working to keep the plight of war victims in the public eye.

Last week, the two women who now lead CIVIC, Sarah Holewinski and Marla Bertangolli-Keenan (aka Marla B), came to Israel on a kind of exploratory mission to see what they could do to help victims of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

After visiting war victims in southern Lebanon, the two came to Israel to see things on the other side of the border.

Like many an activist before them, Sarah and Marla B. were interrogated for hours when they arrived at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport. They were separated and grilled about what they were doing in Israel. The Israeli interrogators pressed them to see if they were laundering money for Hamas, a suspicion most likely based on nothing but Sarah and Marla B.'s looks, their jobs, their recent travels, and someone's "hunch."

When Sarah told one Israeli interrogator that they were here to help war victims, she said, he laughed in her face.

Of course, that's what Marla Ruzicka faced more than once as she tried to put the issue on the agenda. And, in the end, Marla did put the issue on the agenda.

But Sarah and Marla B. are now wading into especially murky waters as CIVIC attempts to broaden its scope and see what they can do for victims of the 34-day war nearly two years ago.

CIVIC is wrestling with what Israel can do to help innocent war victims in southern Lebanon and what Hezbollah can do to help innocent war victims in northern Israel.

It's not very likely that Israel is going to pay any money to directly help the families in Qana and Tyre and Bint Jbail. And it's even less likely that Hezbollah is going to pay money to help Israeli war victims in Kiryat Shemona and Haifa and Nahariya.

And, one suspects, Israeli war victims aren't going to take Hezbollah money while Lebanese civilians aren't likely to take money from Israel.

So what are the options?

It might be possible to persuade Israel to donate money to some international fund to aid the victims of cluster bombs. But what do you do about Hezbollah?

Even if you could persuade Hezbollah to cut a check to fund some sort of humanitarian aid effort for war victims, who could or would take money from Hassan Nasrallah?

Aside from the fact that Hezbollah is on the US list of terrorist groups, it's not likely that human rights groups or the UN or aid organizations helping war victims would be able to accept money from Nasrallah.

(Don't expect any pictures of Nasrallah standing next to a big blown-up copy of a $10 million dollar check for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines...)

Sarah and Marla B. aren't really sure yet how to handle this conundrum.

It will be interesting to see how CIVIC wrestles with these issues.

The Queen Is Alright

Jordan's Queen Rania is taking to the Internet airwaves with a new stereotype busting initiative.

With a new YouTube Page, Rania is encouraging people to write to her with their questions about the Arab world.

"What most people know about the Arab world and Arab people they've known through programs like '24' and Jack Bauer," Rania says in her inaugural video. "And I think they're in for a very big surprise."

Rania says she wants people to get to know "the real Arab world, to see it unedited, unscripted and unfiltered."

Yes, well, it certainly won't be unedited and unfiltered.

Jordan is one of the more progressive countries in the region and you can actually find more American chains in Amman than in Jerusalem. (Can't someone open up a Subway in Jerusalem???)

But it is still a monarchy with a fine-tuned security apparatus. It's always entertaining to listen to news on the government-owned radio stations that lead their newscasts with reports about "His Majesty," King Abdullah, opening a new hospital or announcing a new literacy program.

Rania plans to keep this going through August and so far the video has generated mostly positive and constructive comments (along with plenty of remarks from viewers writing about the queen's natural beauty).