Jerusalem News 869. Views, Jews, Ten Tribes News
28 July 2009, 8 Av 5769
Contents:
1. Tal Pavel. The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the Middle East
2. 600,000 Jews in Yesha, Eastern Jerusalem May Stymie US Plans
3. Rifat N. Bali. Present-Day Anti-Semitism in Turkey
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1. Tal Pavel. The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the Middle East
From: dayancenter <dayancen@POST.TAU.AC.IL>
Subject: Dayan Center,
TEL AVIV NOTES - "The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the Middle East"
Sender: The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
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The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the Middle East
Tal Pavel
Extracts Only:
The massive, sustained protests in Iran this past month against the regime's apparent falsification of the presidential election results was enabled by widespread employment of new communication technologies. Among them is Twitter, the micro-blog which enables its users to distribute short messages of no more than 140 characters ('Tweets') via the Internet, including by way of cellular phones.
Apart from serving as an additional means of personal communication, Twitter is used in the Arab-Islamic Middle East by a whole range of groups and individuals, covering the entire gamut of society. 'Tweets' are employed by political and social movements, religious websites and Islamic cultural centers, as well as for the promotion of films, fashion and commerce. News organizations, such as CNN, the BBC (especially its Persian language service), Al-Jazeera and the Voice of America all have popular Twitter feeds. Twitter speeds up the capacity to deliver the news because of its restricted structure, so much so that many people choose it over newspapers as their primary news source.
As a parallel information universe, Twitter enables the dissemination of information, mobilization of public opinion and evasion of governmental censors. In Syria, for example, Twitter enabled a wave of protests against the decision by the website, 'LinkedIn' , a social networking geared towards those interested in business to block its services in Syria, and the decision was ultimately reversed. Earlier this year in Iran, Twitter was employed by 'the March 18th movement' in remembrance of the Iranian blogger, Omid Razah, who died in prison on that date, and to pressure the authorities to release seven Bahai leaders that were arrested during the month of May.
A particularly powerful demonstration of Twitter?s potential came following the arrest of an American journalism student in Egypt while filming a demonstration. He immediately sent a message via his cell phone announcing his arrest to 48 "followers" on Twitter, and the message quickly spread around the world. As a result of the ensuing attention and entreaties, he was quickly released. Similarly, the well-known Egyptian blogger, Wa'el Abbas, was quick to publicize his arrest and subsequent experiences with the police this past April, causing embarrassment to Egyptian officialdom.
The usages of Twitter by women in the Arab world are especially varied, not surprisingly, given the relative anonymity it provides to the user. Twitter allows women to search for spouses, describe their lives, discuss issues pertaining to the status of Muslim women in their societies, and communicate and show solidarity with like-minded individuals, for example, lesbians. Women from Saudi Arabia tend to hide their personal 'Tweets' so that only those who have received their permission in advance can read their announcements. Women from most other Arab societies, which are socially more open and less hierarchical than Saudi Arabia, are more likely to enable their 'Tweets' to be read by all.
Women's advocacy groups make good use of Twitter: for example, the Egyptian group 'All of Us are Laila' has fought against the inequality in women?'s daily lives, in Egypt and the Arab world in general, for the last three years. So does Queen Rania of Jordan, who writes about diverse subjects on an almost daily basis, to a readership of about 125,000.
To be sure, there are those who belittle Twitter's reliability as a source of information, pointing to its maximum limit of 140 characters per item, and the instant worldwide dissemination of Twitter items without any cross-checking information to confirm their truthfulness. But these limitations are also the basis of its strength. Twitter serves as a speedy and direct platform able to bypass official state media oversight and the limitations on free speech by authoritarian governments. In the Middle East, in particular, it is nearly the only path for different social groups to get their messages across without government interference.
The power of Twitter in transmitting onsite and immediate reporting was highlighted in the months leading up to the Iranian presidential elections and in the subsequent demonstrations against the falsification of the results. Along with other on-line social networks, Twitter served as an almost exclusive source for the unfolding events in the streets of Tehran.
However, Middle Eastern governments have not remained passive in the face of the rapid expansion of the new media, and particularly of on-line social networks that increase the possibilities for individual action and challenges to governments. Authorities around the region have invested considerable efforts in regulating and restricting these new means of communication. For example, the Dubai government partially blocked the use of the highly popular social networking Facebook website and the internet voice and video Skype program, claiming that their action was justified by "content that was not concurrent with the religious, cultural, political, and moral values of the United Arab Emirates." Iran has cracked down heavily on Twitter and other social networking sites. Not only has it blocked access to particular internet sites, it has also installed content filters and monitored traffic on them, thanks to Nokia Siemens Networks? (NSN) features. The ability to monitor internet and Nokia cellular phone traffic resulted in the arrests of a number of persons transmitting reports about the unfolding events in Iran, resulting in a consumer boycott in Iran of Nokia phones as an act of protest.
Time will tell regarding the impact of Twitter on the relations between Middle Eastern authoritarian governments and their citizens. In the meantime, Twitter has demonstrated a capacity to serve as a means for continuous and rapid dissemination of information among wide sectors of the population. To be sure, this alone cannot bring about far-reaching social change or a fundamental expansion of political and social freedom, but it certainly carries much potential, and even inspires hope among long-disenfranchised and cynical Middle Eastern publics.
Dr. Tal Pavel is a specialist in internet and technology
2. 600,000 Jews in Yesha, Eastern Jerusalem May Stymie US Plans
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/132586
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(IsraelNN.com)
Extracts Only:
There are now more than 600,000 Jews living in Yesha (Judea and Samaria) and various neighborhoods of Jerusalem, including eastern Jerusalem, and sections in the north and south of the capital that were restored to the Jewish State in the Six-Day War in 1967 - but which the United States never has recognized as part of Israel. The Obama administration, continuing a change that began last when Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State, has labeled the neighborhoods, such as Har Homa and Gilo, as "settlements."
The number of Jews living in Judea and Samaria alone has crossed 300,000, and the growth rate by the end of the year is likely to reach five percent or more, creating an obstacle to U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign against the communities as "illegitimate."
Most of the growth has come in cities, such as Modi'in and Beitar Illit, which generally are lumped with smaller towns and hilltop outposts as ?settlements.? The figures, issued by the Civil Administration, do not include residents of several outposts.
The growth rate in Judea and Samaria, known as Yesha, was 2.3 percent for the first six months of the year, according to the report. However, the growth rate by the end of the year may be more than twice as much because of a traditionally large increase in home sales and rentals during the summer vacation.
The move to Judea and Samaria probably would be higher, but American-imposed building restrictions have prevented people from building their own houses. Real estate agents have reported that prices for the remaining empty houses have soared as people race to move into the remaining supply of housing.
National Union party chairman MK Yaakov Katz (Ketzaleh) responded to the Civil Administration statistics by calling on every Jewish family to "give birth to an additional child this year as a Zionist response to the decrees of Barack Hussein Obama."
3. Rifat N. Bali. Present-Day Anti-Semitism in Turkey
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT
=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID
=0&IID=3048&TTL=Present-Day_
Anti-Semitism_in_Turkey
Extracts Only:
Turkish intellectuals have always taken a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli stance. Islamists associate the "Palestine question" with alleged Jewish involvement in the rise of Turkish secularism. Leftists see Israel as an imperialist state and an extension of American hegemony in the Middle East. Comparable themes are found among nationalist intellectuals.
Turkish reactions to Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon and 2009 war in Gaza often spilled over into anti-Semitism. Newspaper columnists, some of them academics, belonging to the various ideological streams helped fan popular sentiment against Israel and Jews. Israel was said to be exploiting Holocaust guilt and the services of the "American Jewish lobby" to further its own nefarious aims.
Turkish approaches to the "Palestine question" rarely venture outside the clich? of Turkish popular culture. Turkish publishing houses providing translated works on the issue are careful not to run afoul of popular sentiment. The net result is that both Turkish columnists and their readers utilize only limited sources on the conflict that are preponderantly anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic.
Any attempt by the Turkish Jewish leadership to confront Turkish society on combating anti-Semitism is likely to backfire and even further exacerbate the problem. Given the reality, the only options left for Turkey's Jewish community are to either continue living in Turkey amid widespread anti-Semitism or to emigrate.
The Islamist Community
Turkish intellectuals holding either Islamist or leftist positions have always taken a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli stance.
For much of the Islamist intelligentsia, references to Palestine, a former Ottoman province, bring to mind events from the last-and in their minds, darkest-years of the empire. These include Zionist leader Theodor Herzl's request in 1901 from Sultan Abdulhamid II for permission to settle Jewish immigrants in this territory and the Sultan's refusal; and, about a decade later, the presence of the Salonician Jew Emmanuel Carasso, a member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP),[2] in the delegation notifying the Sultan of his removal and exile to Salonica, where he would live out his remaining years in the villa of the Jewish family Allatini.[3]
Although these might appear unrelated events, the Islamists see a direct causative line from Abdulhamid II's rejection of Herzl's request to his later removal from the throne. In this view, the Young Turk Revolution-and more specifically, Abdulhamid's forced abdication after the failed counterrevolution of April 1909-were payback, delivered at the hands of Jewish and crypto-Jewish cabals secretly manipulating the CUP.[4] Nor, from the Islamist perspective, does the revenge-taking end with the Sultan's abdication. They believe that the final stages of the retribution were the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 at the hands of Turkish nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal (Atat?k), who originated in the "cursed city" of Salonica and is widely thought among Islamists to have been a D?me, a descendant of the Jewish devotees of Sabbatai Sevi who followed him into a nominal conversion to Islam but continued to practice their own heretical brand of Judaism in secret, and the "placing of the Turkish people in the straightjacket of secularism with the intent of debasing it."
Indeed, because of this widespread conviction a book by Soner Yalcin, a journalist for the mainstream H?riyet newspaper, claiming in short that the Turkish Republic has always been dominated and governed by Donmes [i.e. secret Jews or Jewish descendants] has become a bestseller and sold close to two hundred thousand copies.[5]
The Islamist mindset views Israel as a "robber state," which divested the Palestinians of their homeland. For the Islamists, Israel was born of a revolution that they see as Jewish-directed and carried out for Jewish aims,[6] and both the secular Turkish Republic and Israel were established by the Donme Mustafa Kemal. More broadly, the Islamists see Zionism and its political manifestation, Israel, as merely one branch of the overarching plan for world domination set forth in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the classical anti-Semitic work that has become a bestseller in Turkey among various conspiracy books whose main theme is Zionist domination of the world.[7] Zionism, from this standpoint, is a satanic and expansionist ideology that threatens not only the Arab world but Turkey itself.[8]
There are several other complementary themes as well. One of these is the abiding belief that during the Conference of Lausanne following Turkey's successful War of Independence, Haim Nahum Efendi, the last Ottoman chief rabbi[9] and an adviser to Turkey's delegation to the talks, somehow persuaded Ismet Pa a, the head of the Turkish delegation and future Prime Minister to promise the Great Powers that, in exchange for granting the new Turkish state's demands, the Caliphate would be abolished and a secular regime would be imposed on Turkish society.[10]
Another Islamist claim centers on Moiz Kohen, a Turkish Jew and fervent advocate of Kemalism, Turkish nationalism, and the Kemalist regime's policy of "Turkification," which called for all non-Muslims and non-Turkish speakers to abjure their particular ethnoreligious identities and become part of the greater Turkish nation. Kohen himself Turkified his name to Tekin Alp and in 1936 published a treatise, Kemalizm, under this new name. Islamists believe that like Mustafa Kemal and Haim Nahum Efendi, Kohen was a "Shari'a-hating Jew." As evidence they often cite the title of one of the chapters of Kemalizm, "To Hell with the Shari'a" (Kahrolsun eriat).[11] The Islamists also hates Turkish nationalism which in essence is a secular ideology as they believe that nationalism is an ideology not compatible with Islamism the later perceiving all Muslims as one people (Ummet). For this reason they believe that Turkish nationalism with its secular character is dividing the Muslim ?met. Again since Moiz Kohen was also an ideologue of nationalism Islamists thought that Kohen has "planted the virus of nationalism" within Turkish society in the hope of destroying the unity of the Islamic nation.
The Left
Turkey's leftist intelligentsia tends to see Israel as an "imperialist and expansionist state" and "an extension of American hegemony in the Middle East." Hence, it views the Arab-Israeli conflict through the prism of "solidarity with those oppressed by the imperialists"-namely, the Palestinians.[15]
The Nationalists and Neonationalists
Anti-Semitism in Turkey is encountered not only among the Islamists and leftists but also among the nationalist and neonationalist[20] streams, which in recent years have declared their hostility to the European Union, the United States, and Israel. The anti-Semitism in this camp stems mainly from the popularity that Mein Kampf enjoys among its members as an "ideological handbook."[21] The Turkish translation of Mein Kampf has indeed become a bestseller in the country and can be purchased in some of the largest supermarket chains and bookstores.[22]
Attitudes in Turkish Society as a Whole
Various Turkish opinion surveys in recent years indicate a rise in xenophobia. This hostility is directed at the United States and the West in general, but also at everyone who does not resemble the "average Turk" in appearance or behavior (blacks, immigrants, gays and lesbians, non-Muslims, etc.).[23] A popular saying is "The Turk has no friends other than the Turk."
Both Israel and Jews in general are also targets of this sentiment. A Pew Research Center survey of Turkish opinion, published in September 2008, found that 76 percent of Turks viewed Jews negatively while only 7 percent expressed favorable opinions.[24]
The Turkish Public's Reaction to the Lebanon War
During the war in Lebanon in summer 2006, Israeli tourists traveling in Turkey's southeastern region sometimes met hostile reactions from locals. A shop window in Alanya displayed the awkwardly-worded placard, "For Children Killers, Israelis No Sale, No Entry."[45] One Israeli family was actually assaulted by an individual in the same town.[46]
Reactions in Daily Life
In reaction to the [Gaza] war, the Turkish Consumers Union (T?eticiler Birli i) called for a boycott of Israeli products.[69] The Pera Museum in Istanbul postponed the opening of an exhibition of works by Marc Chagall on loan from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The abovementioned leading curator Vas f Kortun called on the art community to boycott Israeli artists.[70]
The famous female vocalist Y ld z Tilbe invoked curses on Israel during a television program, saying, "May God bring down one disaster after another upon Israel." The studio audience answered, "Amen."[71] At a press conference to condemn Israel's actions and also to criticize the "Apologize to the Armenians" signature campaign started by a group of leftist and liberal intellectuals apologizing for the 1915 massacres,[72] Niyazi ?pa, chairman of the Eski ehir-based Osmangazi Federation of Cultural Associations, declared that "Dogs are free to enter but not Jews and Armenians."[73]
Despite the presence of 1,500 Turkish police officers, a Eurocup basketball game in Ankara between T?k Telekom and the Israeli team Bnei Hasharon had to be called off because of attacks against the Israeli players by Turkish spectators.[74] But the most disturbing incident during the war was the general directive issued by the National Education Ministry that all school staff and students were to stand for a minute of silence in honor of the children killed in Palestine.[75]
R fat N. Bali is an independent scholar, a graduate of Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Religious Sciences Division, in Paris and a research fellow of the Alberto Benveniste Center for Sephardic Studies and Culture (Paris). He is the author of numerous books and articles on the history of Turkish Jewry. His most recent publication is A Scapegoat for All Seasons: The D?mes or Crypto-Jews of Turkey (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2008).
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