Random finds

The new issue of the Middle East Report is out, and judging from the table of contents it looks packed with interesting stuff. Too bad you can't read it all online, so I guess I'll have to be contented with articles like Jim Lobe's take on the Bush Team Reloaded.

The Washington Monthly, a Democrat-centrist political magazine, has a special issue on Middle East Democracy and running blog commentary from a number of prominent bloggers. Shame it doesn't include Arab experts or bloggers, but an interesting look at the American take on things.

Maria Golia has another one her moving columns in the Daily Star, this time on Mubarak.

David Hirst has a column on American and democracy in the Arab world, also in the Daily Star.

Haaretz has a long feature on Egyptian Jews and the controversy over Jewish texts that are wanted by American Jewish organizations.

Haaretz also has a profile of Dr. David Bukay, an Israeli academic who believes that Arabs have no conscience.

Megan Stack of the LA Times writes about Egyptian judges.

Finally, an AFP article carried by the Daily Star looks at the two women terrorists involved in last week's Cairo attack. I point to it because I found the violence of that particular incident particularly disturbing.

Comments

[rojan]

about the article on the two young women who attacked the bus-- i've been reading thus far that one Israeli couple happened to be on the bus...that it was a coincidence that they were on the bus. but this article said that it was an Israeli bus, and implied that the shooters and past bombers were specifically targeting foreigners. but my impression so far is that they seem to target areas where there are more egyptians than foreigners. please correct me if i am wrong? thanks

[Dan Marsden]

I have an entire entry on my blog dedicated to criticising the Bukay affair...

You can read it http://marsden.blogspot.com/2005/04/haifa-unbecoming.html" rel="nofollow">here.

[Moritz]

@rojan: wherever you go in cairo, there is more egyptians than foreigners. but the khan al khalili and midan tahrir areas are quiet busy with foreigners. if they would try to attack egyptians you'd rather go somewhere with less security and more people like the markets close by midan ramsis or the assabiya area (i think that's the name). it's quiet hard to target foreigners in cairo, as security is rather tight. i guess it would be difficult to blow up a bomb directly in front of the egyptian museum or on the mariott terrace or close by the pyramids. therefore i guess the places where the attacks happened were as close to many foreigners as you can get. additionally it is not so central to kill many foreigners. it's enough if there is newspaper articles in europe, that there was an attack in khan al khalili or close by the egyptian museum. most people who were in cairo as tourists only, will not know the areas good enough to know, if they were actually where it happened or only close by. therefore the deterrence works anyway.

moritz

[praktike]

That Maria Golia has a way with words. I'll have to pick up her book.