Friday, March 09, 2007

News from the Middle East

Would like to hear the bad news first and more bad news second, or the other way around?

That the agreement between Hamas and the Fatah arranged at Mecca brokered by Saudi Arabia ended the fighting between them is well known. Less well known are the terms. One of them is that Fatah agreed to PA schoolbooks teaching that the destruction of Israel is a religious duty, not just a nationalist obligation. A nationalist obligation can be negotiated about, however insincerely. A religious struggle (Ribat) cannot. http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=1908 has quotes.

The other not so good news is that an American Jewish group, Brit Tzedek vShalom, has already come to the defense of the new textbooks. They wrote a letter to Senator Clinton who had publicly criticized the new textbooks, asking her to reconsider, claiming the new textbooks "encourage a peaceful resolution of the conflict" and "endorse democracy".

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