^^^Which just means, I don't know anything, I just know it is not what we are doing, and we will achieve peace and justice, I just don't know how, but it is based on our own understanding of our problems. Notice I said Allah has given us a prescriptionto follow. Islam is not a blanket nor a buzz word. Its true application has been hijacked. I swear to Allah nothing else would work. You can try democracy, you can try fake Islam, you can try clan set, try what you like, ultimately it is going to end in failure. P.s. At least you've gone off your old tired Somalinimo horse, now if someone can kindly get Xiin off that dead horse as well, it is a right step in the right direction.

^^You are convinced that Somalinimo (which by your admission you do not know exactly what is)is what SOMALI PEOPLE WANT? People need knowledge and application of Islam to the T so they can be successful. Don't stress you pretty head dear, Allah already told you and gave you a prescription to follow. You don't need inn aad ka fakaridid or reinvent the wheel. Nationalism has no place in Islam, and concepts such as Somalinimo are just weapons to misguide and then abuse the masses.

Propaganda war: trusting what we see? Israel has tried to take the initiative in the propaganda war over Gaza but, in one important instance, its version has been seriously challenged. The incident raises the question of how to interpret video taken from the air. Israel released video of an air attack on 28 December, which appeared to show rockets being loaded onto a lorry. The truck and those close to it were then destroyed by a missile. This was clear evidence, the Israelis said, of how accurate their strikes were and how well justified. A special unit it has set up to coordinate its informational plan put the video onto YouTube as part of its effort to use modern means of communications to get Israel's case across. The YouTube video has a large caption on it saying "Grad missiles being loaded onto the Hamas vehicle." As of Saturday morning UK time, more than 260,000 people had watched it. It turned out, however, that a 55-year-old Gaza resident named Ahmed Sanur, or Samur, claimed that the truck was his and that he and members of his family and his workers were moving oxygen cylinders from his workshop. Ahmed Sanur is challenging Israel's claim that rockets were targeted This workshop had been damaged when a building next door was bombed by the Israelis and he was afraid of looters, he said. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem put Mr Sanur's account on its website, together with a photograph of burned out oxygen cylinders. Mr Sanur said that eight people, one of them his son, had been killed. He subsequently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: "These were not Hamas, they were our children... They were not Grad missiles.". The Israeli response was that the "materiel" was being taken from a site that had stored weapons. The video remains on You Tube. But the incident shows how an apparently definitive piece of video can turn into something much more doubtful. B'Tselem said these cannisters were near the destroyed truck It is reminiscent of an event in the Nato war against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999. In that case, a video taken from the air seemed to show a military convoy which was then attacked. On the ground however it was discovered that the "trucks" were in fact tractors towing cartloads of civilian refugees, many of whom were killed. The Israeli propaganda effort is being directed to achieve two main aims. The first is to justify the air attacks. The second is to show that there is no humanitarian calamity in Gaza. Both these aims are intended to place Israel in a strong position internationally and to enable its diplomacy to act as an umbrella to fend off calls for a ceasefire while the military operation unfolds. Israel has pursued the first aim by being very active in getting its story across that Hamas is to blame. The sight of Hamas rockets streaking into Israel has been helpful in this respect. It has also allowed trucks in with food aid and has stressed that it will not let people starve, even if they go short. Israel appears to think its efforts are working. One of its spokespeople, who has regularly appeared on the international media, Major Avital Leibovich, said: "Quite a few outlets are very favourable to Israel." Ban on foreign media Israel has bolstered its approach by banning foreign correspondents from Gaza, despite a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court. The Arab television news channel Al Jazeera is operating there and its reports have been graphic and have affected opinion across the Arab world. The BBC also has its local bureau hard at work. But the absence of reporters from major organisations has meant, for example, that Mr Samur's story has not been as widely told as it probably would have been, or his account subject to an on-the-spot examination. Meanwhile Israel has received good coverage of the threats and damage to its own towns and communities. Whether Israel retains any propaganda initiative is not all certain. Pictures of dead and wounded children have undermined its claim to pinpoint accuracy and the longer this goes on, the greater the potential for world public opinion to swing against it, with diplomatic pressure building for a cessation. Its presentational problems would be hugely increased if it engaged in a ground operation, which would bring with it more pictures of death and destruction. Update: several readers have e-mailed to ask whether I believe Hamas. One said I had "bought into" Hamas propaganda. Another that I should have dealt with Hamas' claims: "What's missing speaks volumes about your one-sidedness." I do not believe anyone's "propaganda." We seek to verify all claims, from whatever source. One of the main claims in Gaza at the moment is the serious situation for the population. Having reported from Gaza many times over the years, I know how crowded parts of it are and how dependent the people are on food aid from the UN. This means they have no other source of supply but equally, if the system is working, they should be getting enough to get by on. The problem is that foreign correspondents cannot get in to establish the exact situation for themselves. Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time. At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics,­ or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow. Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier. For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is a scientist born in AD 965 in what is now Iraq who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham. Most people in the West will never have even heard of him. As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently been given the opportunity to dig a little into his life and work through my recent filming of a three-part BBC Four series on medieval Islamic scientists. Popular accounts of the history of science typically suggest that no major scientific advances took place in between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance. But just because Western Europe languished in the Dark Ages, does not mean there was stagnation elsewhere. Indeed, the period between the 9th and 13th Centuries marked the Golden Age of Arabic science. Great advances were made in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Among the many geniuses of that period Ibn al-Haytham stands taller than all the others. Ibn-al Haytham conducted early investigations into light. Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method. As commonly defined, this is the approach to investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data. This is how we do science today and is why I put my trust in the advances that have been made in science. But it is often still claimed that the modern scientific method was not established until the early 17th Century by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Ibn al-Haytham arrived there first. In fact, with his emphasis on experimental data and reproducibility of results, he is often referred to as the "world's first true scientist". He was the first scientist to give a correct account of how we see objects. It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago He proved experimentally, for instance, that the so-called emission theory (which stated that light from our eyes shines upon the objects we see), which was believed by great thinkers such as Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy, was wrong and established the modern idea that we see because light enters our eyes. What he also did that no other scientist had tried before was to use mathematics to describe and prove this process. So he can be regarded as the very first theoretical physicist, too. He is perhaps best known for his invention of the pinhole camera and should be credited with the discovery of the laws of refraction. He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colours and studied shadows, rainbows and eclipses; and by observing the way sunlight diffracted through the atmosphere, he was able to work out a rather good estimate for the height of the atmosphere, which he found to be around 100km. In common with many modern scholars, Ibn-al Haytham badly needed the time and isolation to focus on writing his many treatises, including his great work on optics. An unwelcome opportunity was granted him, however, when he was imprisoned in Egypt between 1011 and 1021, having failed a task set him by a caliph in Cairo to help solve the problem of regulating the flooding of the Nile. While still in Basra, Ibn al-Haytham had claimed that the Nile's autumn flood waters could be held by a system of dykes and canals, thereby preserved as reservoirs until the summer's droughts. But on arrival in Cairo, he soon realised that his scheme was utterly impractical from an engineering perspective. Yet rather than admit his mistake to the dangerous and murderous caliph, Ibn-al Haytham instead decided to feign madness as a way to escape punishment. This promptly led to him being placed under house arrest, thereby granting him 10 years of seclusion in which to work. He was only released after the caliph's death. He returned to Iraq where he composed a further 100 works on a range of subjects in physics and mathematics. While travelling through the Middle East during my filming, I interviewed an expert in Alexandria who showed me recently discovered work by Ibn al-Haytham on astronomy. It seems he had developed what is called celestial mechanics, explaining the orbits of the planets, which was to lead to the eventual work of Europeans like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago. Professor Jim Al-Khalili presents Science and Islam on BBC Four at 2100GMT on Monday 5, 12 & 19 January BBC

^^^That is because your wife would laugh her head off at you if you asked! LOL. Anyway CL I think Ngonge is getting a bit paranoid and at the same time big headed, so iska daaf.

Why have you all hijack my thread. :mad: You have the whole of Politics section to discuss Somali and all their problems.

^^^Okay here is a deal, I would arrange for you and him to go cinema. How about that?

^^^I only understood Seven Pounds right at the end, the rest of the time, I was trying to figure out what was going on, this is because I did not read what the movie was about at all. I was only searching for a film to watch and I came across it, thought Will smith must be saving earth kind film. LOL.

Shuttle diplomacy Diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting in the Gaza Strip are moving into high gear. French President Nicolas Sarkozy will be shuttling across the Middle East, taking in Egypt - which mediated a recent six-month truce between Hamas and Israel - as well as Jerusalem, the Palestinian West Bank town of Ramallah and Syria. Mr Sarkozy's Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, is part of an EU delegation, which has met Egyptian President Mubarak in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al Sheikh. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said that Egypt could play a vital role in easing the conflict in Gaza. "We would like very much to obtain a ceasefire - the sooner the better... The co-operation with Egypt is going to be fundamental." EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said it was vital to get food and medical supplies into Gaza to ensure hospitals were able to function. She said: "We know fuel, food, water, wheat - all that is missing. We want the hospitals to work, and indeed, for that we know that politically to get a ceasefire as quickly as possible." Israel has said it will allow more aid into Gaza later, and that 80 trucks would cross from Israel carrying food and medicines. BBc News

Reader? Is that not something to do with American politics of something? I'm good, how you doing? Good rest? P.s. Ngonge is too old for Cinema, last time he went, it was black and white screen

^^How is rape not a big crime? By what measure are you being fair to state that him being a child rapist is not that big. Acuudubililah. P.s. Please I'm not interesting in whether he is a national hero for some people or not, the guy is a criminal on the run for a very serious crime. It is neither here nor there if he is a lyrical maCc.

Oxfam supported health worker killed and ambulance destroyed in Israeli shelling in Gaza Israeli offensive puts families’ and aid workers’ lives at risk, Oxfam warns A paramedic working for an Oxfam funded organisation was killed when an Israeli shell struck a civilian ambulance in Gaza today according to international agency Oxfam. The tragedy illustrates the deadly dangers faced by Palestinian civilians and aid workers, said the agency. Another paramedic lost his foot and a driver was injured in the same incident, which occurred when an ambulance belonging to Oxfam’s partner organisation, Union of Health Work Committees, was hit while trying to evacuate an injured person in the Beit Lahiya area, Oxfam said. The UN estimates over 100 civilians have been killed in Gaza over the past week although some other organisations believe the civilian death toll is significantly higher. “The incident shows yet again that trying to fight a military campaign in the densely populated streets and alleys of the Gaza Strip will inevitably lead to civilian casualties. There are no safe areas and Gazans who want to flee the fighting have been prevented from leaving the Strip,” said Oxfam GB Country Director John Prideaux-Brune in Jerusalem. The Israeli ground offensive into Gaza, which began on Saturday following a week of heavy bombardment by land, sea and air, is preventing urgently needed supplies of medicine, food, water, and fuel from reaching one and a half million Palestinian women, men and children, Oxfam said. “Hospitals in Gaza are overflowing with dead and wounded while facing severe shortages of essential medical supplies and spare parts. Oxfam and local partners have had to suspend all our work, apart from emergency medical aid. Many of our colleagues in Gaza are trapped in their homes, and in fear of their and their families’ lives. Others, such as the paramedic Arafa, have lost their lives trying to save others. “The trickle of humanitarian aid that Israel has sometimes allowed in through one border crossing at Kerem Shalom has been completely inadequate to meet the needs of 1.5 million people – 80% of whom are reliant on this aid. Since the start of the Israeli ground offensive, even that trickle has dried up. An immediate ceasefire is urgently needed to allow essential aid to reach those families who need it,” added Prideaux-Brune. Oxfam is calling for a binding UN Security Council resolution to demand: an immediate halt to violence in Gaza and Israel by all parties, all parties to commit to an immediate, comprehensive and permanent truce, Israel, Hamas and other parties to permit immediate and unhindered access to and from Gaza for humanitarian and commercial goods, and for people, thereby ending the blockade. Oxfam is also calling on the European Union to suspend the EU-Israel upgrade process until there is a comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza, and Israel provides unimpeded humanitarian access.

Salam people, Morning Snow

Although demos do largely make people feel "better" for at least doing something, Demonstrations should really only be used to bring something to the forth front of the public agenda or provide a issue with media coverage. However you can only achieve that if the demonstrations is large enough, and well planned, i.e. the reasons you are demonstrating are well know. For the most part on their own, all the do is register your disapproval on a public level. With regards to Palestine, the demos are being used in the west to bridge the gap between the reporting of the west biased media and the daily on goings. The speeches in the UK were used to highlight the disparities and disproportion nature of the Israeli response and highlight the deliberate disregard for civilian life. The demonstration in London was large enough to attack both news coverage and public/ political attention. It has been used as a systematic tool following political lobby through out the week on ALL levels MEP, MP, Party level. Places like Manchester and Bham did not get much covering because the attendance was said to only reach about 2,000- 5,000 people. HEre are some pictures for the Manchester one www.thinkingoutoftheblog.blogspot.com London was said to be as high as 20,000, although the police estimate is 10, 000. Che the pictures are loaded on Facebook. I will try and load some here Inshallah.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East Bill Rammell commented on the situation in Gaza during interviews with the BBC and Sky News on Saturday 3 January. Speaking on the Radio 4 Today programme David Miliband said: 'Everyone wants both sides to stop and everyone wants those with influence to use that influence to put a stop to this. I think that the dangers for Palestinians are very, very large and the dangers for Israel are very, very large as well and I spent a good part of last year arguing that the only way to get a sensible set of security arrangements for Israel and justice for the Palestinians was a comprehensive peace. That means sorting out the relations of all the Arab world with Israel, not just the Palestinians, and I think the significance therefore of the Arab League letter to President-elect Obama, reiterating their commitment to normalise relations with Israel in return for a secure and viable Palestinian state, is very significant. I think that is the only way in which were going to be able to achieve the two goals that are so important to everyone: a secure Israel and justice for the Palestinians.' Read the transcript of the interview During an interview on Sky News Bill Rammell said: 'This is a dark and dangerous moment in the Middle East. We've been unequivocal in arguing for an urgent and immediate ceasefire. We've argued very strongly for effective humanitarian aid access, the medical supplies, the food, the equipment that is desperately needed. But we've also argued for a reinvigorated political process because a military solution is not going to be a sustainable one. We desperately need to see that ceasefire and diplomatic activity take place. That's what we've been arguing for. There is immense international diplomatic activity taking place at the United Nations, in the European Union, at the Quartet and bilaterally the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have been talking on a daily basis to their counterparts in Israel, the Palestinian territories and the wider Arab world to try and move us towards that ceasefire.' Read the transcript of Bill Rammell's interviews with the BBC and Sky Foreign Secretary David Miliband commented on the escalation of the conflict in Gaza on Saturday 3 January. He said: 'Unfolding events show the urgent need for the immediate ceasefire that we have called for. The escalation of the conflict will cause alarm and dismay. Intensive diplomatic efforts to find a solution continue. The EU troika will visit the region tomorrow, as will President Sarkozy. The Prime Minister and I remain in very close contact with our EU, US and Middle Eastern colleagues. We are determined to work as quickly as possible for a durable ceasefire which must include an end to the smuggling of arms into Gaza and the opening of the Gaza crossings. The UK believes that the crisis in the Middle East matters to the whole world. The only sustainable basis for delivering security and justice for Israelis and Palestinians, is the vision of two states living in peace side by side, supported by the rest of the region.'

^^You mean you are laughing at Juje signature. Oh Okay. Maxaan moodeye innaad events aad kuu qooslasiid. Caafwaan.

^^What is so funny about people abusing the deen to fight another one who is also abusing the deen for his own purposes?

^^^Do you have something to say about the video? :confused: if so spit it out.

AfricanOwn Killing or rather fighting only breeds more enemies and does not really slove anything. Where there is smoke there is normally a fire, however small, I don't think repressing is the answer, as these hit and runs will continue, they need to deal with it some other way.

MAshallah, looks great.

This is so not funny. Accudubililah, it is hard to keep up at this rate.

Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land {Part 1} For those who can't watch it, you can read it below: The Israeli - Palestinian conflict dominates America and news coverage of international issues. Given that news coverage is America's main source of information on the conflict. It becomes important to examine the stories the news Media are telling us. And to ask the question does the news coverage reflect the reality on the ground? Prof. Robert Jensen Journalism, University of Texas-Austin, USA. "One of the things you have to keep in mind when you are looking at how media report on something like Israeli - Palestinian conflict. It is not only understanding what is there in the story but more importantly what is not there or being left out. In that sense, absence is as vital as the presence in terms of how people make sense of the story. CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING" Alisa Solomon Journalist, The Village Voice USA The context that is often missing from the current reporting is that the Palestinian uprising is the revolt against the 34 year (actually 38) long occupation and if there is no occupation in the story then the story does not make any sense and the occupation is frequently missing. Seth Ackerman Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, USA A typical TV news reporter for example of some ABC news will show dramatic pictures of these confrontations, where Palestinians are confronting Israeli troops and the troops are responding. The most Americans donʼt understand the history of the conflict and this is an example of riots that are going on where the authorities are taking measures to crack down. What is not mentioned is the fact that these confrontations are taking place on occupied territory and the Israeli troops which are there are defending an occupation that does not have any international legitimacy. Major Stav Adivi, reserves Israeli Defense Forces, Israel. The American Media are concentration only on the violence but not on the reasons and the basic facts of occupation. Hanan Ashrawi Palestinian Legislative Council, West Bank This is not presented as an army using its arsenal against young people who are largely unarmed and who are protesting because of the occupation, the siege and total oppression over the nation. The lack of context is so dramatic that only 4% of the network news reports on the occupied west bank and Gaza strip mention that the west bank and Gaza strip are occupied. Seth Ackerman The Israeli military sends its troops into the occupied territories to defend what is considered to be an illegal occupation and when the population there resist Israel is presented as being under attack. Hanan Ashrawi They donʼt present it as Israel is the aggressor or Israel is killing people on their own land in their own homes as an occupied nation but it is presented as Israel is defending itself. Hussein Ibish American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, USA Israel's basic posture is anything but defensive. Israel is the only country in the world right now which in contravention to the UN security council resolutions maintains tens of thousands of heavily armed troops outside and inside its borders in someone elseʼs country for the sole purpose of taking their land away from them and in the process forcing them to live under the worst form of tyranny imaginable which is a foreign military dictatorship. Hanan Ashrawi The tanks, gunshipʼs, snipers are all on Palestinian land and I donʼt see why they have to protect themselves on our land if they have occupied our land. That context is always missing. So even if Israel is busy murdering people in our land it is always presented as a part of the self defense mechanism of Israel. Naom chomsky Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology , USA When Israel in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend themselves against population aggression. You cant defend yourselves when you are militarily occupying somebody elseʼs land, call what you like it but this is not defense. Public relations works not only by controlling the content of media reports but also by making sure that some voices are never heard. The marginalization of the Israeli peace movement in the American media is an example of how this works. Seth Ackerman says It is being the point of view that of the Israeli peace movement for years that the fundamental cause of the conflict is Israeli occupation in Palestinian land and settlement policies. But that view in the United States is considered extremely marginal and you rarely see that view is put forward in the American media. Gila Svirsky Coalition of Women for a just Peace, Israel. We in the women's peace campaign Israel, organized a mass vigil of women in black and a mass march through the streets of Jerusalem with two thousand women strong both Israelis and Palestinians. Can you picture that dramatic moment of two thousand women dressed in black marching down the streets of Jerusalem so that we hung banners on the walls of the old city saying peace in three languages Hebrew, Arabic and English and Guess what IT DID'NT GET INTO THE MEDIA. Prof Neve Gordon Ta'ayush (Arab-Jewish Partnership), Israel. That is not the kind of image that the media wants to create because then all these images of Jews and Arabs working together of Palestinians wanting peace would create a kind of dissonance and would contradict that kind of message the media has been giving us for years and years, then how do u explain it? YOU CANT EXPLAIN IT.. Prof. Robert Jensen Israeli public relations machine knows that if the views and voices of Jews who disagree with its policies will become public it would be impossible to maintain the lie that any criticism towards Israel is by definition Anti-Semitic. In fact the accusation of Anti-Semitism is been Israelʼs most effective strategy in silence in descent and American journalism in particular have been targets of this tactic. Robert Fisk Journalist, The Independent, UK Any environment in which journalist or any person steps forward and starts making serious criticism of Israel, of Americas relationship with Israel, the unconditional support for Israel, the failure of any serious pressure to be put upon Israel by the united states to prevent the building of further settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land or any suggestions on the war between the Israelis and the Palestinians as a colonial war will be met by a definite chorus of accusations, slanderous and lying that they are that the person who brings up that subject is some form of Anti-Semite or racist and this remains the constant weapon that is used. Prof. Robert Jensen The fact that Anti-Semitism is a lie that are well in the world today makes it all the more important to differentiate between the real Anti-Semitism it needs to be condemned and opposed in its own right and its misuse as a PR strategy. Trying to scare people in the silence by conflating any criticism in the Israeli policies as Anti-Semitism. In fact the tracks of the real threat that Anti-Semitism does oppose. Robert Fisk ........Because they are Anti-Semites and there are racist in the world. And if this continued campaign of abuse against decent people and trying to shut them up by falsely accusing people of Anti-Semitism continues, the word Anti-Semitism will begin to become respectable and that is a great danger. Then the really bad guys which are around and they are people who would want burn synagogue just like they are people who would want burn the mosques will start coming of their own. Provided by: http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/

Europe is Israel's largest market for exports, with total trade with the EU amounting to more than €25.7 billion in 2007. The European Parliament has the power to take action to put real pressure on Israel! URGENT: Please Take Action NOW! 1) Contact your MEP and ask them to take action to support Gaza. Here is a sample letter: Dear (Name of MEP), I am outraged at the current events in Gaza, where Palestinians are being killed in large numbers due to Israeli attacks. I am also shocked to learn that the Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has said that "it will continue as long as necessary". As my MEP I urge you to take urgent action to oppose these attacks. I look forward to your response. Thank you, (your name) Contact Your MEP Now! Follow This LINK for contact details of your UK region's MEPs (Or for all European MEP's offices at the eurpoean parliament follow THIS LINK ) P.s. Following the campaign against the Israel-EU agreement, MEPs voted to to suspend approval for the proposed support for Israel. Jazak'Allah khair to all those who contacted them. Now your brothers and sisters need you to give a few more minutes of your time - please contact your MEP now!

When you read the statements from Israeli and US politicians, and try to match them with the pictures of devastation, there seems to be only one explanation. They must have one of those conditions, called something like "Visual Carnage Responsibility Back To Front Upside Down Massacre Disorder". For example, Condoleezza Rice, having observed that more than 300 Gazans were dead, said: "We are deeply concerned about the escalating violence. We strongly condemn the attacks on Israel and hold Hamas responsible." Someone should ask her to comment on teenage knife-crime, to see if she'd say: "I strongly condemn the people who've been stabbed, and until they abandon their practice of wandering around clutching their sides and bleeding, there is no hope for peace." The Israeli government suffers terribly from this confusion. They probably have adverts on Israeli television in which a man falls off a ladder and screams, "Eeeeugh", then a voice says, "Have you caused an accident at work in the last 12 months?" and the bloke who pushed him gets £3,000. The gap between the might of Israel's F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters, and the Palestinians' catapulty thing is so ridiculous that to try and portray the situation as between two equal sides requires the imagination of a children's story writer. The reporter on News at Ten said the rockets "may be ineffective, but they ARE symbolic." So they might not have weapons but they have got symbolism, the canny brutes. It's no wonder the Israeli Air Force had to demolish a few housing estates, otherwise Hamas might have tried to mock Israel through a performance of expressive dance. The rockets may be unable to to kill on the scale of the Israeli Air Force, said one spokesman, but they are "intended to kill". Maybe he went on: "And we have evidence that Hamas supporters have dreams, and that in these dreams bad things happen to Israeli citizens, they burst, or turn into cactus, or run through Woolworths naked, so it's not important whether it can happen, what matters is that they WANT it to happen, so we blew up their university." Or there's the outrage that Hamas has been supported by Iran. Well that's just breaking the rules. Because say what you will about the Israelis, they get no arms supplies or funding or political support from a country that's more powerful than them, they just go their own way and make all their weapons in an arts and crafts workshop in Jerusalem. But mostly the Israelis justify themselves with a disappointing lack of imagination, such as the line that they had to destroy an ambulance because Hamas cynically put their weapons inside ambulances. They should be more creative, and say Hamas were planning to aim the flashing blue light at Israeli epileptics in an attempt to make them go into a fit, get dizzy and wander off into Syria where they would be captured. But they prefer a direct approach, such as the statement from Ofer Schmerling, an Israeli Civil Defence official who said on al-Jazeera, "I shall play music and celebrate what the Israeli Air Force is doing." Maybe they could turn it into a huge nationalfestival, with decorations and mince pies and shops playing "I Wish We Could Bomb Gaza Every Day". In a similar tone Dov Weisglas, Ariel Sharon's chief of staff, referred to the siege of Gaza that preceded this bombing, a siege in which the Israelis prevented the population from receiving essential supplies of food, medicine, electricity and water, by saying, "We put them on a diet." It's the arrogance of the East End gangster, so it wouldn't be out of character if the Israeli Prime Minister's press conference began: "Oh dear or dear. It looks like those Palestinians have had a little, er, accident. All their buildings have been knocked down – they want to be more careful, hee hee." And almost certainly one of the reasons this is happening now is because the government wants to appear hard as it wants to win an election. Maybe with typical Israeli frankness they'll show a party political broadcast in which Ehud Olmert says, "This is why I think you should vote for me", then shows film of Gaza and yells: "Wa-hey, that bloke in the corner is on FIRE." And Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues, and the specially appointed Middle East Peace Envoy, could then all shake their heads and say: "Disgraceful. The way he's flapping around like that could cause someone to have a nasty accident." Here

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt a country where 'the idea of service has simply ceased to exist' There was a day when we worried about the "Arab masses" – the millions of "ordinary" Arabs on the streets of Cairo, Kuwait, Amman, Beirut – and their reaction to the constant bloodbaths in the Middle East. Could Anwar Sadat restrain the anger of his people? And now – after three decades of Hosni Mubarak – can Mubarak (or "La Vache Qui Rit", as he is still called in Cairo) restrain the anger of his people? The answer, of course, is that Egyptians and Kuwaitis and Jordanians will be allowed to shout in the streets of their capitals – but then they will be shut down, with the help of the tens of thousands of secret policemen and government militiamen who serve the princes and kings and elderly rulers of the Arab world. Egyptians demand that Mubarak open the Rafah crossing-point into Gaza, break off diplomatic relations with Israel, even send weapons to Hamas. And there is a kind of perverse beauty in listening to the response of the Egyptian government: why not complain about the three gates which the Israelis refuse to open? And anyway, the Rafah crossing-point is politically controlled by the four powers that produced the "road map" for peace, including Britain and the US. Why blame Mubarak? To admit that Egypt can't even open its sovereign border without permission from Washington tells you all you need to know about the powerlessness of the satraps that run the Middle East for us. Open the Rafah gate – or break off relations with Israel – and Egypt's economic foundations crumble. Any Arab leader who took that kind of step will find that the West's economic and military support is withdrawn. Without subventions, Egypt is bankrupt. Of course, it works both ways. Individual Arab leaders are no longer going to make emotional gestures for anyone. When Sadat flew to Jerusalem – "I am tired of the dwarves," he said of his fellow Arab leaders – he paid the price with his own blood at the Cairo reviewing-stand where one of his own soldiers called him a "Pharaoh" before shooting him dead. The true disgrace of Egypt, however, is not in its response to the slaughter in Gaza. It is the corruption that has become embedded in an Egyptian society where the idea of service – health, education, genuine security for ordinary people – has simply ceased to exist. It's a land where the first duty of the police is to protect the regime, where protesters are beaten up by the security police, where young women objecting to Mubarak's endless regime – likely to be passed on caliph-like to his son Gamal, whatever we may be told – are sexually molested by plain-clothes agents, where prisoners in the Tora-Tora complex are forced to rape each other by their guards. There has developed in Egypt a kind of religious facade in which the meaning of Islam has become effaced by its physical representation. Egyptian civil "servants" and government officials are often scrupulous in their religious observances – yet they tolerate and connive in rigged elections, violations of the law and prison torture. A young American doctor described to me recently how in a Cairo hospital busy doctors merely blocked doors with plastic chairs to prevent access to patients. In November, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm reported how doctors abandoned their patients to attend prayers during Ramadan. And amid all this, Egyptians have to live amid daily slaughter by their own shabby infrastructure. Alaa al-Aswani wrote eloquently in the Cairo paper Al-Dastour that the regime's "martyrs" outnumber all the dead of Egypt's wars against Israel – victims of railway accidents, ferry sinkings, the collapse of city buildings, sickness, cancers and pesticide poisonings – all victims, as Aswani says, "of the corruption and abuse of power". Opening the Rafah border-crossing for wounded Palestinians – the Palestinian medical staff being pushed back into their Gaza prison once the bloodied survivors of air raids have been dumped on Egyptian territory – is not going to change the midden in which Egyptians themselves live. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah secretary general in Lebanon, felt able to call on Egyptians to "rise in their millions" to open the border with Gaza, but they will not do so. Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the feeble Egyptian Foreign Minister, could only taunt the Hizbollah leaders by accusing them of trying to provoke "an anarchy similar to the one they created in their own country." But he is well-protected. So is President Mubarak. Egypt's malaise is in many ways as dark as that of the Palestinians. Its impotence in the face of Gaza's suffering is a symbol of its own political sickness. Independent