Set a Place for Gilad

Facebook campaign to raise awareness about Gilad at your own Seder table:

Soon, we'll be sitting down at the Seder table with family and friends, as we have for thousands of years, celebrating our exodus from Egypt.

We'll begin retelling our story, pointing to the matzah:

This is the bread of affliction, which our fathers ate in the land of Egypt.
All who are hungry, come and eat;
All who are in need, come and partake...
Now we are here, next year we will be in the Land of Israel;
This year, captive; next year [we will be] free men.

"השתא עבדי-- this year, captive."

Today, 'captive' rings all too familiar.

This year, someone really IS captive.

A twenty-four year old, lanky young man who grew up in Mitzpe Hila; the shy, cheerful, soccer-playing son of French immigrants. Who, as a kid, wrote stories about a shark and fish who learned to be friends despite their differences. Who spent vacations helping out at his parents' bed and breakfast, who loves to solve math problems, who memorized every international sports tournament result.

Gilad Shalit has been in captivity by Hamas terrorists for almost five years.

In violation of international law, Gilad has been denied visits from the International Red Cross and has had no contact from his family. He has been denied the right to humane treatment and to unfettered access to the Red Cross, in violation of Articles 13 and 126 of the Third Geneva Convention.

This Pesach, while we sit in the comfort of our homes, with candles lit and beautifully-set tables, with family and friends gathering together-- Gilad will be alone in an underground Hamas bunker.

Let us not sit idly by.

Let every Seder table across the world, from New York to Jerusalem, Paris to Mumbai, Moscow to Los Angeles to Sao Paulo, set a place for Gilad. As we thank God for our redemption thousands of years ago, let us also pray for Gilad's freedom and demand that the world not be silent; as we taste the bitter herbs, let us remember that the bitterness hasn't ended.

And when the children ask why on all other nights we eat bread and why tonight we eat matzah, let them also ask why there is an empty seat at the table.

גלעד, לא שכחנו אותך.
We have not forgotten you, Gilad.

ושבו בנים לגבולם | "And thy sons shall return to their borders"

For more information about Gilad and the campaign for his release:
www.gilad.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnMt9muhepM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZvHyZIg5Eo

Gilad Shalit is still alive

Just a small reminder.

 ~venti cafe latte~

Not to bash the Times, but...

The image alone, from the Times' "Israel Scours Palestinian Village in Hunt for Killers", looks right out of a movie.

A Palestinian girl, Rabah Abd al-Karim, 6, with members of her family  at the doorway to her house in Awarta, West Bank, that was searched repeatedly by Israeli soldiers during a door to door hunt for the killers of a family in neighboring Itamar.

It's unsettling to read about raids of Palestinian houses, "children crying...in fright...of" Israeli soldiers, a "dingy, sparsely furnished...house, with bare cement-block walls" where soldiers "broke all the closets and the family’s first, newly acquired washing machine". Unnecessarily brutal disruption of civilian life is shocking.

Yet I was even more shocked to see that the Times considers the hunt for the Fogels' killers in itself an emotional saga, a human interest story that the murder never was. Let us be totally honest: There was no equivalent article that described the Fogel funeral; no pretty imagery like "dingy", "sparsely furnished", "bare cement-block walls"; no similarly tearful descriptions of Israeli children dealing with post-attack trauma.

It seems as if the story of the children (albeit settlers) who lost their parents and siblings isn't especially compelling to Times readers; people would much rather read about the children who lost their newly acquired washing machine.

~mango passion fruit tea~

Embracing the Future of Media and Journalism

Interesting, if not unsettling, expose in The Atlantic Monthly, by James Fallows: "Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media"....


How our new fast-paced technological culture is changing the face of discourse and journalism.

~ pomegranate tea ~

Goldstone's Yom Kippur and the NYTimes, Take II

Thanks to Professor Adler for pointing this out. Apparently,

The Times saw a very different op-ed by Goldstone about two weeks ago, just one in a series of articles he'd written trying to clarify and finesse the meaning of the report; the paper rejected it because it said nothing new, the source said. 

That version didn't contain the crucial repudiation of the report's central thrust, that the Israeli Defense Forces targeted civilians intentionally and as a matter of policy...

Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy emails, "We did in fact receive an Op-Ed submission from Richard Goldstone on March 22, but that piece bears no resemblance to the one that was published in the Washington Post on Sunday." 

Goldstone's Yom Kippur

I have to say, I was wondering why Goldstone's retraction was published in the Washington Post and not in the Times....
YNet reports that the NYTimes had refused to publish Goldstone's letter of regret.


Interesting.

~ cappuccino~

A Thousand Words

NYTimes chose an interesting image for yesterday's headline, "In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out". I won't even enter the discussion on how misplaced this article is, how utterly irrelevant the Middle Eastern mentality finds sentences like:

With revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East, Israel is under mounting pressure to make a far-reaching offer to the Palestinians or face a United Nations vote welcoming the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank,Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Or how statements like 

“We want to generate pressure on Israel to make it feel isolated and help it understand that there can be no talks without a stop to settlements,” said Nabil Shaath, who leads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. 

....are nothing new.


Or how the PA's goals, in gaining membership in the UN and then accusing Israel of "occupying land belonging to a fellow UN member", don't make Israelis blink an eye. Since when has the UN had any real influence over Israeli policy? Operation Cast Lead, the Mavi Marmara incident last year, strikes on Gaza in retaliation for rockets into southern Israel: Israel clearly makes its decisions regardless of the United Nations' disapproving frowns and incessant banging of the gavel.


Let's not forget, after all, that it's a conglomerate of countries that includes Qaddafi's Libya, Egypt, Syria, North Korea; an organization which has invited Ahmadinejad to speak, and in heat of the turmoil of the Egyptian revolution, only found time to convene over Israel's imperialistic settlements. 

But let us turn to this most artfully shot image: 

Palestinians prayed near Israeli soldiers on Friday. They were protesting land confiscation in the village of Qusra, near Nablus.

Is this really the only type of protests that goes on? Peaceful prayer, in prostration? Oh yes, the image is beautiful, compelling. Kudos to you, NYTimes photographer, on 

excelling artistically.

But let's not kid ourselves. You craft a pretty bedtime story (not unlike that of Miral), but your educated readers? They're rolling their eyes.

~ cappuccino ~ 

A New Arab Generation Finds Its Voice

NYTimes came out with a pretty production of photos and quotes from students and young professionals across the Arab world, in response to the recent political turmoil in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and so on.


Most compelling:

~vanilla hazelnut latte~

Rifts in the Face of Tragedy

An op-ed I wrote for The Jerusalem Post, which you can also read here:

The media's bias isn't something I like to pounce on often; even if I disagree with an article or headline, I accept its attempt at balance. And as a journalism student, I am constantly seeking objectivity in everything I read, with every newspaper article and news broadcast becoming an object of scrutinizing study and analysis.

I write this as the girl who struggled and succeeded to screen liberal films that expose the Palestinian side of the conflict in a university that is mostly uniform politically. I write this as a Jew who corresponds with Israeli Arab pen pals, as a daily reader of BBC, Haaretz, The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, The Guardian, and The Jerusalem Post, as a student activist who is organizing an apolitical demonstration in Times Square in support of peace in the Middle East:

The outburst that happened in response to a story that really isn't at all complicated -- five Jews stabbed to death in their home on Friday night by an Al-Aqsa terrorist-- has been used to very artfully condemn not the murder itself, but the settlements and Israeli policies. It has completely crossed the lines of moderation and balance.

Yet what shocks me more than the response from the media, and that of the international community, is the response I hear from fellow Jews here in America.

The morning after the attack, a friend of mine studying in an American university commented offhand to me that "the people killed were not killed for being Jews, but for being settlers, and that is not a Jewish question. It's a very important Israeli political question."

"Insofar as Jews died," she added, "It is very sad-- but it is as sad as when a family is killed by a car crash."

As for the political activity going on on Facebook, in regard to my friends posting outraged links and images to the latest updates on the attack, she said, "It wouldn't hurt your friends to have someone challenge their propaganda."

Her words continue to ring in my head, days later. I still find myself in shock, and even pain, over them. Killed for being settlers alone. As sad as if they were killed by a car crash.

There is a growing movement among left-wing thinking Jews to be absolutely paranoid of anything that smacks of conservatism. That includes, apparently, mourning the deaths of the Fogels-- precisely because BBC and CNN report the Itamar killings with quotations, we readers ourselves have begun to question our own emotional responses. Perhaps, one thinks, the 'intellectual', 'reasonable' and even fashionable way of responding is to simply, coolly, distantly, point to maps of settlements. To disregard the naked hatred in this act, and to call those who find the attack anti-Semitic, 'ethnocentric'. The logic is as follows: Those who feel emotionally affected by this must be supporters of the settlers, therefore politically conservative and possibly even religious, therefore irrational, and therefore racist.

Most political discussions for us college students take place not in the coffeeshops or salons of old, but rather via the world of social media, mostly Facebook and occasionally Twitter. The debates have grown heated, and within the Jewish student community, I'm finding that many of my friends are posting comments like, "There are people murdered all over the world. EVERY DAY. This is no different! Get a grip, people." They equate those who decry terrorists as animals, to Nazis' dehumanizing of Jews. Blanket statements are made, accusing other Jews of having waited 'for a Palestinian Arab to kill someone so they could justifiably rant against "hate-filled Arabs who train their children to kill Jews"'. 

The fact that parallels are being drawn between this killing and the happenstance of a car crash, or that this is seemingly justified by the 'settler' label, or the fact that there are genocides going on in Darfur and therefore this is insignificant, underlies a disturbingly shifting view amongst Jews (both American and Israeli) towards Israel and towards each other. I am forced to wonder about the future of the State and of Diaspora Jewry: where are the young idealists and dreamers of 1948?  It's overwhelmingly discouraging to see such cynicism, self-bashing, and inner fighting often just for the sake of fighting, especially after such bloodshed. 

So in a time in which Jews jump to condemn other Jews of racism, ethnocentrism, and fanaticism, let us remember this:

Five Jews or peaceful civilians or settlers or family members or West Bank residents or Judea and Samaria citizens or breathing feeling thinking laughing crying human beings were just murdered by an Al-Aqsa Palestinian terrorist in the deceptive peace of the Sabbath night. 

To the Jews who use such an event to immediately accuse other Jews of racism (the irony: it takes a hate act done by a Palestinian against Israelis to spawn condemnation of Israeli racism):

I wonder at your chutzpa to dare to taint the pure memory of five innocent human beings with absolutely any prejudices, whether against Jew or Muslim, during such a difficult national tragedy. 

And to the world which uses this act of terror to denounce the Jewish reaction as impetuous and exaggerated:

Know that, despite everything, we refuse to be overtaken by anger and we refuse to hate. Maimonides writes that anger is the worst trait a person could have: 'So too is anger an exceedingly bad quality; one from which it is proper that one distance himself to an extreme. A person should train himself not to anger even on a matter regarding which anger is appropriate.'  The Israeli government as well as the surviving Fogel family have condemned those who take personal revenge and take the law into their own hands. As Prime Minister Netanyahu said, "The law that is taken into one's own hands is no longer law"-- never should a person react upon emotion, upon angry impulse and without rational thought, no matter what his personal reasons. 

Yet sadness? Mourning? That is entirely appropriate, essential even; those who mock it or shrug it off as political radicalism do so callously. In Judaism, the process of loss is crucial to individual as well as collective growth: Jewish tradition enumerates the detailed laws of shiva and shloshim and the year of mourning after a family member passes away. We are commanded to remember, to never forget and to learn from those who have passed on.

And so, dear world, let us mourn our dead in peace-- for to deny respect and validity to emotions in a time like this is to deny the very stuff that makes us human.

~turkish caffe latte ~

Exhibit C: New York Times

Here's an excellent example of the headlines Steuter and Wills, in their At War With Metaphor, describe:

Although they are only a small percentage of what is publicly said and written about the war on terror, it is worth paying special attention to headlines because they are, for a large part of the population, a main source of information; many people glean their knowledge from scanning headlines rather than reading whole articles...four out of five people read only news headlines.

Headlines matter more than we think. The Times' Isabel Kershner chooses her words deliberately, in the aftermath of the Itamar terror attack in Israel:

Emphasis on:
1. Israeli military is the active subject. 
2. Suspicion of Palestinians (and thus probably a false overreaction to a single incident)
3. A hunt. Not a search for murderers, but a merciless hunt.
4. Settlers have been killed: the fact that their house was built on the land they chose is a completely justified reason for what took place. 
Well, at least there are no quotation marks.


~vanilla hazelnut latte~

Exhibit B: BBC. More Quotation Marks.

BBC and CNN must know something we don't, because quotation marks seem to be the latest trend when reporting on attacks on Israel.

Last time, it was a 'terror attack'. 

Now, it's a 'Palestinian'.

By enveloping everything in quotations, media sources have been inviting readers to question the entire Itamar murder story: "Those Israelis say it's a Palestinian, but who knows? After all, it's Israelis speaking." The murderer himself is intangible, a ghost of the IDF's imagination, a mere speculation on the part of the authorities.

Note, here again, BBC writes,

The family...were stabbed to death by an intruder who broke into their home, Israeli media reported.

BBC Images.

Intruder, not terrorist.
Not to mention the photograph of choice: the vicious Israeli soldier in full gear. None of the images of victims and murder scenes that news websites usually gobble up and broadcast for days afterwards; apparently those types of images only work for Muhammed al-Dura moments. 
And last but not least, a classic BBC-style conclusion:

Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
They are held to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

BBC must, of course, end a story on a terror attack on Israelis, with a  condemnation of...Israel -- because Israel, with its settlements, just has these types of terror attacks coming.

Exhibit A: CNN

Apparently the terror attack was questionable, hence quotation marks. CNN wasn't exactly sure; perhaps, after all, it was a sheer accident that the couple and their three children were killed in their sleep on Sabbath night. 
CNN:

"According to a military spokeswoman, an intruder entered the Israeli settlement of Itamar near the northern West Bank city of Nablus around 1 am, made his way into a family home and killed two parents and their three children."

'Intruder', and not 'terrorist'. No mention that the murderer was in fact a terrorist, other than a suspected 'terror attack' in quotations (and then second-guessed, by attributing the term to IDF sources). An intruder: just an unfortunate incident, a thug, a mere burglar attempt that had had terrible consequences.
I'm not asking for Arutz-7 reporting from American and European news outlets; not for emotional eulogies, and not for loaded phrases like 'cold-blooded murder'. We do not ask for even sympathy in our national tragedy. All we ask for is objectivity. We ask that media outlets stop the relentless doubting and the condemning of the innocent, and cease the deliberate word substitutions: a terrorist is a terrorist. Call it what it is. 
And if you're too afraid to face the undeniable truth, shame on you: you are a disgrace to the entire field of journalism.

Writer's Block No More

Confession: I had long been enduring writer's, or rather blogger's, block. 
Until last night's horrific terror attack in Itamar, Israel, when a Palestinian terrorist entered the home of the Fogel family and killed the young parents, Udi and Ruth, in addition to three of their children, Yoav (11), Elad (4), and Hadas (3 months).
Putting aside the massacre itself, the situation which brought it about, and the implications for the people of Israel: the media coverage of the attack itself is extensive and clearly indicative of a journalistic bias against Israel.
I write this as a journalism student, one clearly invested in Israel but at the same time as devoted to objectivity and the pursuit of truth as possible: international newspapers' responses to the attack have been merciless, and their urgency in condemning Israel is thinly disguised. 


Full analysis to follow. 


Until then: ברוך דיין האמת. Blessed is the True Judge.

~earl grey~

What the evening news conveniently forgot to mention...as of yet

Wall Street Journal's Farnaz Fassihi reports:

Iran arrested opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, along with their wives, and transported them to a prison operated by the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran, family members said.

Advisers to the opposition leaders said a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards who is sympathetic to the opposition movement confirmed the news of the arrest and the leaders' whereabouts. They said he told them they were taken to Heshmatieyh prison, a high-level security facility inside a Revolutionary Guard military base in eastern Tehran.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, leader of the Green Movement

And the Financial Times:

The two leaders have been unable to see their children over the past week and their food was reported to have been provided by the security forces. Their children had expressed concern that the two couples had been relocated in recent days when there were no lights in their houses.Reports of the arrests come ahead of a protest called 

by the Iranian opposition for Tuesday in protest at the unofficial house arrest of the two leaders.  

Will be interesting to see how the media plays this story out...In the meantime, Joe Klein of TIME's blog, aptly commented:

The disconnect between the barbaric regime and the eminently civilized people I've met there is the greatest of any country I've ever visited. I hope the day is near when this terrible government is ended. I fear, though, that it will have to happen from within--through an enlightened leader who allows gradual reforms--rather than from the streets.

~nana tea~ 

Confronting the Misinformed Over Lattes. Venti-Size.

Last week, my journalism professor ('News Writing and Reporting') asked the class to conduct some man-on-the-street interviews. The purpose of the assignment was to practice interviewing, quoting and attributing; the first and easiest place I could think of for some quote-gathering was Starbucks at 34th and Park-- easily one of the most eclectic mixes of coffee-drinkers in the area.

The usual spot.

We were to pose several different questions to the unsuspecting latte-sippers and web-surfers, including the asking-for-it open-ended, "What do you think of the wave of protests sweeping the Arab world?"
Eric, a gray-haired young man sporting a Calvin Klein-sweater and dark denim, told me that he's ecstatic about the Arab protests. "These people aren't only rising up against their own government," he said excitedly, motioning with his arms from his bar stool, "but also defeating the US and its backing Mubarak!"   
Interesting.
"The [Egyptians] are role models for us in America. There are a lot of lessons for us here: I hope the new leadership will correct other imbalances in the area, and inject a whole new context of ethics into the region."
Very interesting. 
I nodded, jotting down every word. "Inject a 'whole new context of ethics'? In what sense?"
"That is, into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he said somberly.
Apparently the only issue throughout the whole Middle East that so bothered this fellow New Yorker was Israel. Not the millions of women across the region who continue to be oppressed. The journalists who are denied the right to speak out about crucial issues and most terrible injustices. The homosexuals who are refused to live as they please, minorities who are refused to pray as they wish.

How tragic: that a people's honest fight for freedom and democracy has become inextricably tied to an issue completely unrelated to it, thanks to media portrayal. Up till now, "Middle East" in news headlines was more often than not a code word for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the first time ever, the world's and the media's "absurd obsession with Israel has been laid bare", as Nick Cohen writes so well this week in The Guardian. Now, the lives of millions of Arabs have been brought to Europe's attention.
Israel's left-wing daily Haaretz echoes, in some ways, Cohen's views. Bradley Burston thanked the Egyptians for jolting not just the world but the Israelis out of fixed ideas. "It is beginning to dawn on my people, the Israelis, that freedom for Arabs may have nothing to do with annihilation for Jews," he wrote. And he's right: perhaps these recent protests really have nothing else to do with Israel, other than the fact that Arab citizens might be able to "influence the trajectory of their countries' development" -- a development which can only be positive for Israel, if it proves to be true and democratic.
It seemed to me that my friend Eric was seeking to draw lines that didn't really exist between two issues, making the exact mistake he has been drawn to make by the news outlets. 
"I was just reading about the latest headlines, on the J-Street website," he pointed to his open laptop screen proudly, clearly proving his worldliness. 
I marveled at the objective choice of news source.
Towards the end of our conversation (which lasted for a whole fifteen minutes, much longer than it was supposed to), I closed my notebook and asked him pointedly if it struck him at all wrong that, with all of the injustices being committed throughout the Middle East these past few weeks, the only issue which the UN Security Council has convened to discuss was the Israeli settlements.
"Really?" he said, surprised. "Didn't they meet to discuss...Egypt?"
Mhmm. Actually, they didn't.

~grande cappuccino. whipped cream of course.~

Dinosaurs of International Relations Still Looking for Israeli Sharks

Minister Ayalon makes a compelling argument in the Huffington Post this week. He urges readers to "wake up and face the very real problems affecting the Arab world", and to stop "quixotically searching for Israeli sharks and vultures in every Middle Eastern event".

One would think that the recent events in Tunisia, Cairo, Yemen and elsewhere would demand soul-searching and humility on the part of these talking-heads who pontificate from their comfortable think-tanks and self-appointed analyst positions in Washington, London and Brussels....Nevertheless, they cling to the tired and discredited claim that building a few of apartments in Ariel is what drives the so-called "Arab street" to distraction. For those who don't read Arabic, many of those demonstrating in their capital cities wrote slogans in English to give a voice to their frustrations that the rest of the world could understand. 

I didn't see any signs about settlements, the Palestinians or the stalemate in the peace process on the streets of Tunis, Sanaa or Cairo. The few signs that did mention Israel were so monstrously antisemitic that they can be dismissed as the rantings of those who can not tolerate a Jewish presence anywhere in the Middle East and are hardly interested in any sort of peace process.

Bravo, Mr. Ayalon. Let world leaders wake up to the real issues that face the Arab world and all of us.




~glass of shiraz~

On the UN Security Council and Israeli Settlements

UN Security Council is expected to vote some time this month on a resolution denouncing Israeli settlements, and though Mr. Obama himself "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements", the administration is expected to veto the resolution.
Sen. Hilary Clinton has stated (quite justly and objectively) that "New York is not the place to resolve the longstanding conflict and outstanding issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians."
Though some, such as Josh Ruebner for the Huffington Post, have an issue with the Obama administration's attempt at objectivity and commitment to remaining unbiased:

Its absurd threat to veto the upcoming Security Council resolution condemning Israel's settlements demonstrates U.S. contempt for international law and its inability to be a credible "honest broker" for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

'Settlers'

Since when has condemning Israel and favouring one side over another been part of the job of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking? To expect the American government to solely deny Israelis the right to live in the West Bank or East Jerusalem, without establishing conditions for the Palestinian side, is to support a role as dishonest broker, and to vote for such a resolution would only further isolate Israel from the rest of the world. 

A friendly member of the UN.

I'm confident that the United States, despite everything, will continue to defend Israel from the UN's unjust allegations. Let us not forget that the 'United Nations' is an organization which is comprised of Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, and Yemen. 
Let us also not forget that, even with the UN enforcing resolutions, the PA has shown that they are refusing any offer of a settlement freeze, if it requires them to recognise Israel as a Jewish state. 
Seems like just another UN attempt to rush to condemn Israel, without actually taking note of either side's concerns and interests.

~nana tea~ 

Humanity, By the Pixels

World Press Photo recently announced the winners of its 2011 photojournalism contest. A non-profit organization based in the Netherlands, World Press Photo supports the development of photojournalism internationally, by holding this annual contest and exhibition, by organizing workshops and classes such as the Joop Swart Masterclass, and otherwise. 

A few which caught my eye:

A man and a boy, displaced by floods, walk through flood waters on August 22, 2010 in the village of Baseera near Muzaffargarh in Punjab, Pakistan. This photograph is part of a series that took the 1st Prize for People In The News Stories of the 2011 World Press Photo Contest. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

In this photo released by Word Press Photo, the 1st Prize Contemporary Issues Stories by Ed Ou, Canada, Reportage by Getty Images, shows four Somali refugees en route to Yemen sleep in the desert after traveling all night on muddy roads and in pouring rain, Somaliland, March 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Ed Ou/Reportage by Getty Images)

Amit Sha'al, Israel. Altneuland.

~mint tea~ 

When Protests Aren't Enough

Dr. Oz-Salzberger, Israeli writer, historian, and professor at the University of Haifa, had a good point this week in Newsweek. Though comparing the Egyptian protesters to the ancient Israelites is a bit of a stretched reading of the Bible, she has it right when questioning our haste in interpreting the ensuing revolution as the catalyst for a true democracy: 

Democracies do not emerge fully equipped from ordinary people’s heartfelt protestations. Democracies need honest legislators, professional judges, incorruptible civil servants, and unbiased public-opinion makers. Such institutions will not grow out of the cracked pavement of Tahrir Square alone.

It's amazing to see that Western leaders continue to think that majority rule is the key to establishing a peaceful nation and stable government; anyone who has studied recent history and current events will tell you that a government ushered in by 'majority rule' can be far from moral or democratic. Gaza overrun by Hamas, Lebanon by Hezbollah, Iran by Ahmadinejad and even Russia by Putin: all of these governments were instituted with elections of sort. Elections that are, in Dr. Oz-Salzburger's words,

pseudo-democratic processes where majoritarian rhetoric trumps substantive democracy.

Of course Egypt needs new leadership, and one chosen by a fair vote: all of the regimes in today's Arab world are in need of new, incorruptible and moral leaders. 
But let us be wary. Let us not get too carried away with rash statements, with the rosy image of democracy and the freedom we think it will inevitable bring -- not every riot turns into a Boston Tea Party and not every revolution leads to a star-spangled banner.


~nana tea~