Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was born April 28, 1937 and died December 30, 2006. He was the fifth President of Iraq, holding that position from July 16, 1979 until 9 April 2003. He was one of the leading members of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, and afterward, the Baghdad-based Ba’ath Party and its regional organization Ba’ath Party, Iraq Region, which advocated ba’athism, an ideological marriage of Arab nationalism with Arab socialism. (Patricia Ramos, july 2013)
An especially dangerous threat to liberty occurs when members of the press collude with government agencies instead of monitoring and exposing the abuses of those agencies. Unfortunately, collusion is an all-too-common pattern in press coverage of the national security state’s activities. The American people then receive official propaganda disguised as honest reporting and analysis.
"The national security of America and the security of the world could be attained if the American leaders [..] become rational, if America disengages itself from its evil alliance with Zionism, which has been scheming to exploit the world and plunge it in blood and darkness, by using America and some Western countries. What the American peoples need mostly is someone who tells them the truth, courageously and honestly as it is.
They don’t need fanfares and cheerleaders, if they want to take a lesson from the (sept. 11) event so as to reach a real awakening, in spite of the enormity of the event that hit America.
But the world, including the rulers of America, should say all this to the American peoples, so as to have the courage to tell the truth and act according to what is right and not what to is wrong and unjust, to undertake their responsibilities in fairness and justice, and by recourse to reason..."
Saddam Hussein, INA 15-9-2002
Joe Biden & Truth - 2009
US Vice President Joe Biden said that the new administration would seek the
unvarnished truth from its spies, whether or not their information supported
the goals of the government.
The Vice President's address was greeted with loud cheers by the several hundred CIA employees who gathered for the swearing in ceremony in the foyer of the Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Standing before the wall of 89 stars representing the CIA staff who have died in the line of duty, Mr Biden said:
"We expect you to provide independent analysis, not to engage in group think. We
expect you to tell us the facts as you know them wherever they may lead, not
what you think we want to hear." (Tim Shipman. 20-2-2009)
"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign
ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid
to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation
that is afraid of its people …
The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. …
Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." John F.Kennedy
“Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you can not retain.”
Saadi Shirazi
(Persian poet & humanist, born in Shiraz, Iran, c. 1210)
"The post-September 11 era in the US has heralded in a new age of ideology whose discourse and world views have served not only to accommodate such extremist views as those held by Sharon, but also to provide him with a platform and an influence that were unthinkable only a year ago.
Thus while the American President is busy devising a new Manichean universe of absolute good and absolute evil, pronouncing policy on the basis of a simplistic polarization of the world, and unilaterally defining the terms while categorizing state and non-state actors accordingly, Sharon’s Israel has maneuvered itself into a position of even greater power on the world stage provided explicitly by the US."
"The globalists wants to make the world unipolar in order to move towards a globalist non-polarity, where the elites will become fully international and their residence will be dispersed throughout the entire space of the planet.
Accordingly, for the salvation of people, peoples, and societies, the Great Awakening must begin with multipolarity.
This is not just the salvation of the West itself, and not even the salvation of everyone else from the West, but the salvation of humanity, both Western and non-Western, from the totalitarian dictatorship of the liberal capitalist elites.
And this cannot be done by the people of the West or the people of the East alone. Here it is necessary to act together. The Great Awakening necessitates an internationalization of the peoples’ struggle against the internationalization of the elites. Multipolarity becomes the most important reference point and the key to the strategy of the Great Awakening.
"Holism is the most fundamental discovery of 20th century science. It is a discovery of every science from astrophysics to quantum physics to environmental science to psychology to anthropology.
It is the discovery that the entire universe is an integral whole, and that the basic organizational principle of the universe is the field principle: the universe consists of fields within fields, levels of wholeness and integration that mirror in fundamental ways, and integrate with, the ultimate, cosmic whole...." "For many thinkers and religious teachers throughout this history, holism was the dominant thought, and the harmony that it implies has most often been understood to encompass cosmic, civilizational, and personal dimensions. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Lord Krishna, Lao Tzu, and Confucius all give us visions of transformative harmony, a transformative harmony that derives from a deep relation to the holism of the cosmos."
About political holism
Political holism is based on the recognition that "we" are all members of a single whole. There's no "they," even though "we" are not all alike. Because "we" are all part of the whole, and therefore interdependent, we benefit from cooperating with each other. Political holism is a way of thinking about human cultures and nations as interdependent. Political holists search for solutions other than war to settle international disagreements. Their model of the world is one in which cooperation and negotiation, even with the enemy, even with the weak, promotes political stability more than warfare.
In an overpopulated world with planet-wide environmental problems, the development of weapons of mass destruction has rendered war obsolete as an effective means to resolve disputes.
Political dualists consider political holists unpatriotic for questioning the necessity to defeat "them." In times of impending war, political dualists tend to measure patriotism by the intensity of one's hostility to the country's immediate enemy. Naturally, they would view as disloyalty any suggestion that the enemy is not evil, any call for cooperation with the enemy, any criticism of one's own country.
To political dualists, cooperation with the enemy means capitulation, relinquishment of the nation's position of dominance. At its extreme, political dualism is essentially tribalism. (Betty Craige, 16-8-1997)
Desmond Tutu & Ubuntu
"A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
"We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World.
When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity." (Ubuntu info)
Mrs. Asma al-Assad considered that holding a ceremony to honor the excelled students in high school is a message to the community to devote excellence as a noble value that requires concerted efforts, collaboration and cooperation.
Mrs. Asma al-Assad ‘s speech came during an honoring ceremony held by the Presidency of the Republic at the People’s Palace...
Mrs. Asma al-Assad stressed that diversity in specializations increases the importance of superiority achieved by students under the conditions of war and blocky, because of the country’s need at this time for every mind that thinks, every hand that works, and every heart that beats with love, stressing that the importance of excellence comes from passion and a sense of responsibility.
Mrs. Asma referred to the university study stage as a new and important stage in the students’ lives. The university, in addition to being a cultural and scientific edifice, is a national arena that brings together all the spectrum of Syrian society in one place and gives them a unique opportunity to know the homeland in all its aspects and to form knowledge that will be the basis for starting from it. In their analysis of the causes of the problems they may face and thus find appropriate solutions.
Ms. Asma also said that the success and excellence achieved by the students is a harvest of their hard work and for everyone who contributed to it...:
“You are the excellent students in Syria , each of you has a success story and a story of challenge, full of lesson, together with your parents and teachers, you are part of the story of a homeland that will remain stronger and will return better through our belief that the future is for science, excellence, work and production” Ms. Asma concluded.
The former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, who passed away last week at the age of 91, is the model foe the kind of non-Western political leader that the West turns into a hero or a legend – not for what they have done for their people or country but for helping to solve problems that plague that same West. The West has always been opposed to regional leagues and blocs elsewhere because such entities, whether Soviet, Arab or Afro-Asian, create counterweights that diminish its unipolar hegemony.
After becoming general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, Gorbachev contributed to the dismantlement of the Soviet Union. He oversaw the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact much as the Arab bond disintegrated after the October 1973 War thanks to some of our leaders. He almost singlehandedly ended the Cold War, which had caused the West to lose as much sleep as Arab-Israel conflict.
In 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, Gorbachev refused to intervene on the grounds that it was a domestic German concern. And, just as we paraded our revisionist policies beneath the banners of openness to the world and a desire for peace and an end to wars – for which our own leader was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize – Gorbachev introduced perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) for which he earned the same prize in 1990.
When we consider the achievements for which the Western press is extolling him today, we find that they have benefited the West alone.
He abolished the Warsaw Pact while the West perpetuated NATO which is currently making war against Moscow via Ukraine.
He gave up the nuclear arms race, allowing the West to continue to build its arsenals. He withdrew from Afghanistan while the American military remained there until President Biden withdrew the US troops only last year. Gorbachev’s call to renounce violence as a means to resolve international conflicts applied only to him. The West never felt bound by it and continued to use violence as a conflict resolution instrument in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya – and Ukraine.
When Gorbachev ran for president in 1996 he won only 0.5 per cent of the overall vote. Yet the West ranks him among the giants of the 20th century. It is a misleading list, although some of our own leaders are on it too.
Starting later this month, the Russian ruble will be on the list of currencies used by Egyptian banks and be used by tourism companies and hotels in a bid to boost Russian tourism in Egypt, an Egyptian Central Bank official told Al-Monitor. “The decision targets all commercial and industrial activities and not only tourism,” the official added.
The news comes as the European Union considers banning Russian tourists in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Mir is a payment and money transfer system operated by the Russian National Payment Card System.
Russia developed the Mir system to evade sanctions imposed on its ability to transfer funds abroad after its occupation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Many countries, including Bahrain and Iran, are currently seeking to join the Mir system to facilitate financial and commercial transfers with Russia.
Asked about the timing of the decision, the official stated that the government made the move in anticipation of the next winter tourism season as the EU tightened measures against Russian tourists’ entry to Europe. Ehab Wahdan, director of Tez Tour Egypt, a tourism company that mainly targets tourists from Russia and Ukraine, told Al-Monitor, “I expect a surge in the number of Russian tourists coming to Egypt during the upcoming winter season, especially considering that they do not have many options when it comes to travel destinations, and facilitating payment in rubles will contribute to this surge.”
Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum held in June, Tarek Raouf, head of the Egyptian Banks Company, said that Egypt is working to solve financial difficulties and circumvent the sanctions that prevented Russian tourists from using Visa and MasterCard abroad after these companies suspended operations in Russia in March.
Raouf added that Egypt is working closely with the Russian National Payment Card System to have its cards used in Egypt.
The number of Russian tourists coming to Egypt jumped to 1 million during the last quarter of 2021, following the return of Russian flights to Egyptian resorts on the Red Sea, according to ForwardKeys.
Tourism aside, the source at the Central Bank explained that the decision to use Russian ruble is aimed at achieving economic recovery as part of Egypt’s attempts to diversify its foreign currency sources. The source also stressed that linking Egypt to the Russian payment system will help buy Russian products, especially wheat and fertilizers, in the Russian currency...
Info: MIR is a local payment card in Russia sponsored by the government.
The National Payment Card System (NSPK) was established in July 2014 following sanctions against Russia earlier that year, which left Russian cardholders and merchants temporarily unable to transact on the international card networks. By December 2015, NSPK had developed the technical infrastructure and commercial agreements to begin card issuance and ATM and POS acceptance for MIR.
All Russian banks that are members of the international card networks process and clear via NSPK. MIR is already accepted at more than 85% of POS terminals in the country, in neighbouring countries through the exchange of BIN tables and internationally via co-branding deals with international card brands, including Amex, JCB and Maestro.
MIR can also be used to purchase goods online. MIR contactless, mobile and loyalty projects are in progress. The aim is to incorporate payment, non-financial and government services on to the MIR card.
In an interview with Sada El-Balad TV on Thursday, Russian Ambassador to Cairo Georgy Borisenko said Russia is working with the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) to approve the use of Mir bank cards in payments in Egypt soon. (Ahram Online, Saturday 17 Sep 2022)
[Israeli] Prime Minister Yair Lapid called Israel's diplomatic campaign against the revived Iran nuclear deal "successful" after western powers announced that the signing of the agreement will not happen in the near-future.
At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, Lapid said: "Following the Americans, yesterday the E3 countries announced that a nuclear agreement with Iran will not be signed in the near future, that the IAEA’s open files regarding Iran are not about to be closed."
"I thank France, the United Kingdom, and Germany for their strong position on this matter. In recent months, we held a discreet and intensive dialogue with them, and presented them with up-to-date intelligence information about Iranian activity at nuclear sites," he said.
"Together with Alternate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Israel is conducting a successful diplomatic campaign to stop the nuclear agreement and prevent the lifting of sanctions on Iran. It is not over yet. There is still a long way to go, but there are encouraging signs.
Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, is continuing with his sharp attacks against former premier Benjamin Netanyahu and has now accused the Likud leader of inspiring a "blood libel" against him, following accusations made by a former Yisrael Beytenu party activist that Liberman sought to hire him to assassinate a senior police official.
"This is a blood libel characteristic of Netanyahu's modus operandi," Liberman said. "A person 'remembers' things that happened 20 years ago and publishes them two months before elections.
These are Netanyahu's methods, exactly the same methods as Goebbels and Stalin, making absurd and outrageous allegations against people and to repeat these allegations over and over again until people get used to the notion...."
Liberman doubled down and attacked further, accusing Netanyahu of treachery.
"Netanyahu wants to establish a fundamentalist coalition," he claimed. "We can see him entrenching himself with these ideas when he aligns with United Torah Judaism to exert pressure on the Belz Hassidic group in an effort to persuade them to abandon their core curriculum studies. He also supports the cancellation of the Law of Return. It's obvious that a coalition that includes Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and Gafni carries a price - and that price is the cancellation of the Law of Return..."
Responding to Liberman's statements, the Likud party said, "The national agitator, Don Liberman [i.e. implying that Liberman has Mafia connections -ed.], is now panicking and has abandoned all restraint..."
The Law of Return - Debate in Israel
Among Israeli Jews, continued Jewish immigration enjoys strong support. According to a 2016 poll conducted by Pew Forum 98% of all Jewish Israelis wanted the law to continue to allow Jewish immigration. However, some argue that the law permits the entry of too many non-Jews, undermining its purpose.
Support for the law among Israeli Arabs is much less. According to a poll overseen by Haifa University sociologist Sammy Smooha among 700 Jews and 700 Arabs conducted in 2017 only 25.2% "accepted" the Law of Return, down from 39% in 2015.
In September 2007, the discovery of a violent Israeli Neo-Nazi cell (Patrol 35) in Petah Tikva, made up of teenage immigrants from the former Soviet Union, led to renewed calls amongst politicians to amend the Law of Return. Effi Eitam of the National Religious Party and the National Union, which represent the religious Zionist movement, stated that Israel has become "a haven for people who hate Israel, hate Jews, and exploit the Law of Return to act on this hatred." (Wikipedia info)
Iran on Saturday slammed a joint statement by European superpowers, criticizing Iran for escalating its nuclear program, labelling it as “deviant”.
“It is surprising and regrettable that in a situation where the diplomatic interactions and exchange of messages between the negotiating parties and the coordinator of the talks for the final negotiations are going on, three European countries issue such a statement in a deviant manner and far from a fruitful approach in the negotiations,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said. Kanaani’s statement came after a joint statement by the UK, France, and Germany criticized Iran earlier in the day, saying that Tehran “continues to escalate its nuclear program way beyond any plausible civilian justification.”
“The three European countries are advised to provide a solution to end the dispute instead of entering the phase of destroying the diplomatic process,” Kanaani added.
The statement from the European superpowers came after a Wednesday report from the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said that they were "not in a position to provide assurance that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful".
Tehran dismissed the report as “baseless” on Thursay. Iran has on several occasions said that their nuclear program only serves a peaceful purpose.
Kanaani expressed Tehran’s will to still reach a final agreement:
“Iran still has the will and readiness to finalize the agreement, and believes that if there is the necessary will and avoiding external pressures, it is possible to reach an agreement quickly,” he said.
The head of Hamas's political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, arrived in Moscow on Saturday to hold high-level political talks with Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
According to a statement by the Palestinian movement, Haniyeh was accompanied by Hamas deputy chief Saleh Arouri and members of the political bureau Mousa Abu Marzouq and Maher Salah.
A Hamas spokesman said that Moscow had invited the movement to visit Russia to discuss mutual ties and the current situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The visit, which is set to last for several days, comes amid tense relations between Moscow and Tel Aviv over Israel's support of Kyiv during the ongoing Russian campaign on Ukraine and its air strikes in Syria, where Russia maintains a military base.
It also comes a month after an Israeli military campaign against the Gaza Strip, where Hamas is the de facto ruler.
The assault on Gaza ended on 7 August, after killing 45 Palestinian civilians, including 15 children and senior PIJ member Tayseer Jabari, and destroying dozens of homes and buildings.
In a statement at the time, the Russian foreign minister said that new "cycles of violence between Palestine and Israel can be effectively prevented through the creation of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, which would live in peace with Israel".
In May Russia condemned Israel for its "anti-Russian" remarks after Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid defended his country's vote to suspend Moscow from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Russia's foreign ministry described Lapid's statement as "regrettable" and accused Israel of using the Ukraine conflict as a distraction from the Israel-Palestinian conflict...
Iran moved one step closer to full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) after Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian signed a memorandum of commitment for Tehran's permanent membership in the powerful regional grouping.
Amir Abdollahian announced signing the document in a tweet on Wednesday.
The top diplomat is accompanying Iranian President Seyed Ebrahim Rayeesi on a visit to the city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan, which is slated to host a summit of the SCO.
"Tonight, in the historical city of Samarkand, I signed the memorandum of commitments of Iran's permanent membership at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with the [body's] secretary-general," the foreign minister wrote in the tweet.
"Now, we have entered a new stage of diverse economic, commercial, transit, energy, etc. cooperation [with the body's member states]," the senior diplomat added.
The SCO's Secretary General Zhang Ming, Amir Abdollahian stated, congratulated the Islamic Republic on the occasion of Iran's "permanent accession" and signing of the document, calling it an "important development". By signing its first memorandum of obligations, Tehran's accession to the full membership of the organization will be finalized by April 2023.
The SCO was founded by China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan in 2001, and currently forms the world's biggest regional market with eight official members, and three observer states.
The organization accounts for 40 percent of the world's population and 28 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP).
Putin, Raisi begin bilateral talks
on SCO summit sidelines
SAMARKAND, September 15, TASS
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi are holding talks on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s summit in Samarkand on Thursday.
Moscow and Tehran are wrapping up work on an agreement that is set to elevate their relations to a strategic partnership, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi on the sidelines of the SCO summit on Thursday.
"Work on a new big agreement between Russia and Iran, which will mark the elevation of relations to the level of strategic partnership, is in its final phase," Putin said.
It is expected they will focus, among other things, on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) for the Iranian nuclear program, bilateral cooperation, international and regional security, including the Syrian settlement, and the situations in Afghanistan and the southern Caucasus.
On 13 September, 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation signed the Oslo Accords, which set a historical precedent in Palestinian recognition of the occupation state, giving it a measure of legitimacy in a concession that Israelis had never imagined could happen. Not in their wildest dreams could they have thought that the day would come when the Palestinians, its rightful owners, would recognise Israel's "entitlement" to their land and control over it.
Yasser Arafat - Signer of the Oslo Accords
Nearly three decades after its signing, it has become clear to Palestinians that the Oslo Accords will not lead to the end of the occupation and their right to self-determination.
Far from it. The agreement has failed the Palestinians on every level — political, economic and social — while working in the interests of the occupation state. The people of Palestine now understand that their "representatives" are doing Israel's dirty work by preventing legitimate Palestinian resistance activities, providing the occupation state with the opportunity to normalise relations with Arab countries.
Even Israelis know that this is the case. In fact, they knew from the very beginning that Oslo contained within itself the seeds of its own failure. The only remaining task is for it to maintain the security of Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people and their just cause.
Given the lack of a political horizon between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and the latter's shift to the far right, it is obvious that Israel is trying to drop Oslo, even though it still relieves the occupation state of the economic and financial burden of taking care of Palestinian affairs.
At the same time, it has kept the political issues and security in Israeli hands. Thanks to Oslo, it is a "Super Deluxe", near cost-free occupation...
A bloc of Arab parties has split ahead of Israel's fifth elections in less than four years, a move that could dilute the minority's political influence and aid former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's return to power.
Israeli media reported late Thursday that the nationalist Balad party will run separately from the other two parties in the Joint List. If it does not meet the minimum threshold, Balad would not enter the next parliament and its votes would essentially be wasted.
The disunity could also dampen overall turnout among Israel's Arab minority, which accounts for 20% of Israel's population. Arab parties have helped block Netanyahu from returning to power in recent elections. A fourth Arab party, the Islamist Ra'am, also broke from the Joint List and made history last year by joining the governing coalition, a first for any Arab faction.
Israel's Arab citizens have close familial ties to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and largely identify with their cause, leading them to be viewed with suspicion by many Jewish Israelis.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — In a statement Sept. 15, Hamas officially announced the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Syrian government after a decadelong hiatus caused by the Islamist movement's support for the 2011 Syrian revolution.
In its statement, Hamas stressed ongoing efforts “to build and develop solid relations with the Syrian Arab Republic, within the framework of its decision to resume diplomatic relations with our brothers in Syria.”
“Syria has embraced our Palestinian people and the resistance factions for decades, which requires us to stand with it today in light of the brutal aggression it is facing,” the statement continued, in reference to the recent Israeli airstrikes in Syria.
By the end of 2011, Hamas left its offices in Damascus... At the time, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accused the movement of supporting Syrian armed groups fighting his government.
Hamas began to have a change of heart vis-a-vis the Syrian revolution after having disengaged from the Muslim Brotherhood, redefining itself as Palestinian resistance movement only, in its new political charter that was announced on May 1, 2017.
In its previous charter, Hamas had defined itself as one of the branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Ahmed Abdel Rahman, political analyst and member of Islamic Jihad, told Al-Monitor, “Hamas’ statement announcing the resumption of relations with Syria was ready a month ago, but was postponed at the request of the Syrian regime as it wanted to ensure Hamas’ genuine position.”
He added that Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad played a role in restoring relations between Hamas and Syria, stressing that Hezbollah had the biggest impact in this regard.
In a speech Sept. 17, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that Hamas’ decision to resume ties with the Assad government was the right thing to do, adding that “Syria, with its people and leadership, will remain the true support of the Palestinian people.”
The future Palestinian state that will exist next to Israel must be peaceful and not terror-based, Prime Minister Yair Lapid told the UN General Assembly on Thursday afternoon, just before returning to Israel.
If that condition is met, then the best path forward is “an agreement with the Palestinians based on two states for two peoples,” Lapid said.
This “is the right thing for Israel’s security, for Israel’s economy and for the future of our children.”
His statement about a future Palestinian state and his affirmation of a two-state resolution to the conflict marks the strongest language an Israeli premier has used with regard to Palestinian sovereignty since the days of prime minister Ehud Olmert.
It is the first time since 2016 that an Israeli leader has spoken of the two-state solution when addressing the UNGA.
“Despite all the obstacles, still today a large majority of Israelis support the vision of this two-state solution. I am one of them,” Lapid said.
“We have only one condition: That a future Palestinian state will be a peaceful one, that it will not become another terror base from which to threaten the well-being and the very existence of Israel..".
Lapid arrived in New York on Tuesday morning to join the world leaders gathered for the high-level opening sessions of the 77th UNGA.
He arrived at a time when it appeared that US President Joe Biden’s efforts to revive the 2015 Iran deal had come to a standstill. In his meetings with world leaders and in his speech to the plenum, Lapid said the time had come to abandon that document and to negotiate a new deal. “The only way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is to put a credible military threat on the table,” Lapid said.
“And then – and only then – to negotiate a longer and stronger deal with them. It needs to be made clear to Iran that if it advances its nuclear program, the world will not respond with words, but with military force. Every time a threat like that was put on the table in the past, Iran stopped, and retreated.” Lapid charged that Iran was fueling global and regional terrorism, particularly against Israel, and that the UN had failed to act when faced with this threat.
The UN’s actions toward Israel could be construed as antisemitism, Lapid noted.
Tonight we heard a speech full of weakness, defeat and surrender.
After the right-wing government led by me removed the Palestinian state from the global agenda, after we brought four historic peace agreements with Arab countries that bypassed the Palestinian veto, Lapid is bringing the Palestinians back to the forefront of the world stage and putting Israel right into the Palestinian pit.
Lapid has already said in the past that he is ready to "evacuate 90,000 Israelis to establish a Palestinian state". Now he intends to give them a state of terror in the heart of the country, a state that will threaten us all.
So I'm letting you know, Lapid: I and my friends will not allow this.
We will not allow the establishment of Hamastan on the border of Kfar Saba, Petah Tikva and Netanya. We will not return Israel to the Oslo disaster. Lapid endangers our future and our existence both on the Palestinian issue and on the Iranian issue... We will return to Israel a strong government that will prevent a Palestinian state, stop Iran, restore national honor and bring Israel back to the world status it had...
In an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry spoke with Al-Monitor about the UN General Assembly speeches today by Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Here are excerpts of Shoukry’s remarks:
“I recognize that Prime Minister Lapid has publicly indicated his support of a two-state solution. This is something that we have constantly advocated in our discussions both with the Israeli government, and our partners in the European Union and the United States, and we hope that the solution will be fulfilled.
We recognize of course that in Israel there are upcoming elections, and the necessity to await the electoral process and the composition of a new Israeli government.
We hope that that government will endorse the two-state solution and effectively re-initiate negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, and implement them.
It’s not enough to declare one’s intentions.
More than three decades after Oslo, the vision of the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, living side by side in security and peace with Israel, has not been achieved.
And I can understand the disappointment that was conveyed in President Abbas’ speech for exactly the same reason."
[Israeli] Defense Minister Benny Gantz is warning that a government led by Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu would spell the end of the State of Israel.
Speaking to Kan 11 News in an interview which will air in full on Saturday night and of which excerpts aired on Friday, Gantz said, “There is one scenario in which Netanyahu establishes a narrow, extreme government that is not good for the country. When that happens, you can invite me for an exit interview about the country.”
Gantz was also asked whether he too supports a two-state solution, following Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s expression of support for this solution in his speech before the UN General Assembly.
“I say we have to regulate our relationship with the Palestinians. We are in favor of two entities, which cannot be a state that will endanger the State of Israel.
The State of Israel will forever have to maintain security superiority in this region. We don't want to control the Palestinians, but we are also not willing to take a security risk,” he replied.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke at the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, where in his near hour-long speech he said Israel was "destroying" the two-state solution, and lambasted the UN for failing to end Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands.
"[Israel] has and still is through its current policies, which are premeditated and deliberate, destroying the two-state solution," Abbas said to other world leaders in attendance. "Israel does not believe in peace. It believes in imposing a status quo by force and by aggression."
The Palestinian leader said that Israel is working towards "making the relationship between the State of Palestine and Israel a relationship between an occupying state and an occupied people, nothing more".
Abbas's comments are in stark contrast to those of Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who spoke at the UN the day before.
Lapid threw his support behind the two-state solution, a reference which Israeli leaders have generally avoided during the UN assembly.
Still, despite Lapid's verbal support, prospects for a two-state solution continue to shrink as a result of illegal Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank, the intended future home of a Palestinian state. Nearly 700,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Abbas said on Friday constitutes 25 percent of the West Bank's population.
Using an array of visual aids, Abbas brought up the issues of Israel arresting Palestinian children, Israel's bombardment of Gaza in 2021, which killed more than 250 Palestinians, the raids on Palestinian NGOs, and the attack on the funeral of the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The Palestinian president also criticised the role of the United Nations and its member states, including the US, for protecting Israel from accountability.
"Do you know who is protecting Israel from being held accountable? The United Nations. And on top of the United Nations, the most powerful in the United Nations," he said, referring to the US.
"Surprisingly, states like the United States pretend to uphold international law and human rights, while at the same time providing - and I will speak frankly here - providing unlimited support to Israel, protecting Israel from accountability, and assisting Israel to pursue its hostile policies in contempt to the whole international community. "
A new poll released Saturday found that a majority of Jewish Israelis are opposed to advancing a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, at least in the near-term.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Yair Lapid, speaking at the UN General Assembly said “a large majority of Israelis support the vision” of a two-state solution” and that he is one of them.
But the Israel Democracy Institute poll said that only 31 percent of Jewish Israelis think that a government formed after the November 1 elections should try to advance a two-state solution. This figure was down from 44 percent in February 2021. According to the poll, 58% of Jewish Israelis opposed such a move, with another 11% undecided.
Among Arab Israelis, the support for a potential two-state solution was far higher, with 60% agreeing the next government should push for such a diplomatic outcome.
“An agreement with the Palestinians, based on two states for two peoples, is the right thing for Israel’s security, for Israel’s economy and for the future of our children,” Lapid said Thursday. “Despite all the obstacles, still today a large majority of Israelis support the vision of this two-state solution. I am one of them,” he said.
“There are absolutely no guarantees if we don't move towards a nationwide cease-fire, and get the political process back on track, that things cannot collapse again,” said Geir Pedersen, UN Special Envoy for Syria, in an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Syria, once at the top of the global agenda, now competes for attention with an array of global crises, including climate, the war in Ukraine, and its impact on food and global energy security.
These competing crises have made Pedersen’s already formidable task that much harder. More than 75% of Syrians can’t meet their most basic needs; there are 5.6 million refugees in neighboring countries; and 6.9 million internally displaced, out of an estimated population of 17 million. Women and children have suffered disproportionately as a result of the war. There are now even reports of a cholera outbreak. “My job is to remind [the international community] that Syria is in a continuing crisis,” said Pedersen.
“It is first and foremost a crisis of epic proportions for the Syrian people, as well as for the neighboring countries with huge refugee populations. And we still haven't sorted out the threat of terrorism. And you have five armies operating on Syrian territory: the Iranians, the Americans, Russians, Israelis and of course the Turks."
Pedersen has sought to build confidence among the parties, with some success, providing incentives for all sides to take steps that would be reciprocated, including prisoner exchanges.
“I would not say that the nationwide cease-fire is a precondition for moving forward,” he explained. “I think actually, the idea behind the step-for-step is to try to establish an understanding between the key actors, that it is possible to move forward without threatening the core interest of any of the parties.”
But, he said, “We don't really have the stability we need. And we haven't used the period to develop the political process.”
Pedersen referred to the UN-mediated committee to draft a new constitution as a "disappointment,” because "the committee has not delivered what we expected of it.”
Pedersen worries that left unaddressed, the continued Syrian crisis, amplified by the global economic and energy crisis, risks state collapse.
“And this is a real threat first and foremost to Syrians and the region, but also to international peace and security. Of course today, it occurs against a backdrop to what's happening in Ukraine, naturally enough, but also to other issues.”
Pedersen is not one to give up hope, and seeks to build on a general good will for Syria, even as other crises may seem to take priority.
“Only by moving the political process forward in a real and comprehensive way, in line with resolution 2254, can we meet the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people and restore Syria’s sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity,” added Pedersen.
A lightly edited transcript of the interview follows:
Pedersen: I met yesterday with the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey and Iran at the Turkish mission to the UN. I think they wanted to send a message of support to the work that I am doing, realizing that the international climate is extremely difficult. My message was that the situation in Syria is becoming more difficult by the day when it comes to the economic conditions, reminding them that 9 out of 10 Syrians are living in poverty and that we have more than 14 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.
And the sad fact is that still half the population has left their homes. And that you have five armies operating within the same territory.
The country is divided in at least three different areas — and if you include the Golan [Heights] — at least four. And there is no sign on any of these fronts that we will see an improvement.
Al-Monitor: You deal every day with the tragedy that is Syria, now over ten years on from the uprising of 2011. Are you finding a fatigue with the Syrian issue in Western capitals, given the many other world crises — the war in Ukraine, climate, etc.? Is the political will still there to support a political resolution to the crisis? Pedersen: Yeah, that's a very good question. And I think it's fair to say that if you look at the different faces of the conflict, you had, of course, from the West, a very active period from 2011 to 2015. Then from 2015 to 2020, the Russians came in and, of course, changed the way the conflict was developing.
And while the West, from 2011 to 2015, believed in regime change, advocated for regime change, and I think believed that that was possible, that view has gradually changed. From 2015 to 2020, with the agreement, in March 2020, between Russia and Turkey on the cease-fire then. The US openly says that it is not pursuing a regime change in Syria.
Those years, between 2015 and 2020, the Russians, Iran and the government in Damascus most probably actually believed that perhaps a full military victory was possible.
Then I think we have seen since March 2020, that is not doable. You need actually a negotiated outcome. But then I think your observation in your question is absolutely correct: I do notice [a fatigue] from the Europeans and from the Americans. Of course there is [now] much less focus on this, maybe for obvious reasons.
My job is to remind them [the international community] that Syria is in a continuing crisis. It is first and foremost a crisis of epic proportions for the Syrian people, as well as for the neighboring countries with huge refugee populations.
Iran’s Theocrats seek to Control Women’s Bodies,
just as do U.S. Republican Theocrats Juan Cole, 09/25/2022
On Saturday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi announced that his government would pull out the stops to crush the popular unrest sweeping the country that were sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa “Zhina” Amini, 22, a Kurdish young woman who was arrested by the morals police for wearing tight jeans. Protesters allege that she was beaten so badly that it led to her death.
The protests in Iran are not only about compulsory veiling but about compulsory everything. Veiling has become a symbol for the government’s determination to control the bodies and private lives of citizens.
That determination is behind a Draconian law passed last fall that severely restricts access to abortion. If you can’t tell whether I’m talking about Iran or Texas, it is because both are in the grip of theocracies. The theocratic government of Iran wants to control the bodies and personal lives of women, just as Republican lawmakers in the United States do, with their anti-abortion stance.
The Republican Party has come to be so tightly intertwined with the evangelical Christian community of the Bible Belt that it is a theocratic party itself, similar in some ways to the Principalists or hard liners in Iran.
Just as Iranian hard liners are hostile to democracy, fearful that the people cannot be trusted to vote for the theologically correct position, so US Republicans have increasingly turned against democracy.
Evangelicals are only 17% of the US population now, and are rapidly shrinking, so the only way they can impose their religious precepts on the rest of the population is through minority rule– enabled by gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the legalization of dark money politics.
iran 2022: pro-government rally
The US wealthy for the most part have thrown in with the evangelicals to get tax breaks, since they can fly their wives to blue states or abroad for unwanted pregnancies and do not care what happens to the little people. Once a political party becomes an instrument of theocracy, it feels a compulsion to impose its theology on everyone.
In liberal (with a small ‘l’) political thought, which includes parliamentary conservatism, law is an expression of the majority of the elected representatives of the people. One can dislike a law, but a classic liberal must admit the validity of the law if it derived from that majority. Theocracy is profoundly anti-liberal. Theocrats believe society must be governed in accordance with God’s will as they interpret it.
Many theocrats are not clerics. Many of them wear tailored business suits...
Because of evangelical Republican rule of some US states, we already have elements of the Christian Republic of America, to mirror the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi & his wife Jamileh Alamolhoda
Violent protests have broken out in several Iranian cities over the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman who died at the hospital days after collapsing at a police station in the capital Tehran, where she and a group of others were receiving educational training on dress code rules.
Despite Iranian officials’ clarification on the circumstances surrounding Amini’s death, violent street protests have led to attacks on security officers and acts of vandalism against public property and sanctities.
Speaking on Friday, Iran’s Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said the riots that have followed Amini's death, had nothing to do with the tragic event, stating that the issue was being exploited to instigate chaos and wreak havoc across the country.
Last week, Iranian police released CCTV footage, which shows Amini collapsing in the police station. The video rejected claims that she was beaten up, denying any physical contact with her.
Reformist politicians have publicly demanded the elimination of Iran's "morality police", known as Gasht-e Ershad, while protests continue in Iranian cities following the death of Mahsa Amini. Since June, conservative President Ebrahim Raisi's administration has implemented restrictive measures on women's dress.
On Tuesday, Shargh and Etemad daily, two leading reformist newspapers, demanded on their front pages the removal of the police branch responsible for implementing sharia laws related to women's hijab.
Under the headline "the demand for shutting off Gasht-e Ershad", Etemad published an open letter by a former legislator, Elias Hazrati, in which he urged President Raisi to end the Islamic morality police operations.
"I demand that you, commandingly, order the removal of Gasht-e Ershad to heal the pain of millions of Iranians," he wrote.
Meanwhile, in a speech to the country's parliament, Behzad Rahimi, a legislator from the Kurdish city of Saqqez, Amini's hometown, denounced the police for the harsh methods of dealing with what authorities considered inappropriate hijab.
"Gasht-e Ershad has always been a source of stress for our women," ISNA news agency quoted Rahimi. "Gasht-e Ershad squashes human dignity, and we must respect the public demands, urging a revision in [their activities]."
At the same time that ordinary Iranians and reformist politicians have voiced their anger against the Islamic "morality police", conservative outlets labelled the anti-hijab protests as a "disorder" organised by "foreign enemies".
As hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square for Friday prayers on 18 February 2011, an elderly cleric took to the stage to address the faithful.
"Don't let anyone steal this revolution from you – those hypocrites who will put on a new face that suits them," said Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who died in Qatar on Monday aged 96.
"The revolution isn’t over. It has just started to build Egypt - guard your revolution."
Seven days earlier, Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak had resigned the presidency in the wake of mass protests against his decades-long administration.
By the end of the year, the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the previously banned Muslim Brotherhood, had won the largest number of seats in the country's first free and fair parliamentary elections, and the FJP's Mohamed Morsi had been elected president.
As one of the most prominent ideologues associated with the Brotherhood, Qaradawi and his teachings stood at the centre of world-shaking events. He will be widely remembered as the first, and perhaps the last, global Muslim scholar-activist.
Throughout his career as a public intellectual, his approach to Islamic law - one that combined scholarship and political activism - and his ability to communicate these ideas in plain language, would earn him millions of followers.
Born in 1926, Qaradawi grew up in an Egypt still under British colonial rule. In his youth he combined religious education with anti-colonial activism, a combination that led to his repeated arrests at the hands of the Egyptian government.
Following Egyptian independence, his association with the Muslim Brotherhood - founded in 1928 when Qaradawi was two years old - also led to his arrest by the Arab nationalist President Gamal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s. He eventually left Egypt for Qatar in the early 1960s, when he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Shariah at the newly established Qatar University and granted Qatari citizenship in 1968.
While living in Qatar, he rose to fame as a scholar for his 1973 book Fiqh al-Zakat (The Jurisprudence of Zakat), which was an attempt to explain and reform the rules governing Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam centred around compulsory alms-giving.
Qaradawi saw his efforts at legal interpretation and public instruction as part of a project of Islamic renewal rooted in the 19th-century reform movement known as Islamic Modernism ushered in by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and his Egyptian student, Muhammad 'Abduh. Qaradawi claimed that his approach to Islam was based on the middle road of moderation, or wasaṭiyya....
Yet Qaradawi was fiercely opposed to anything that smacked of religious syncretism, insisting that Muslims must always judge their affairs by what he deemed to be clear Islamic injunctions.
Moreover, if Qaradawi concluded that a foe was motivated by anti-Muslim animus, such as Zionism, communism, or later in his life, anti-Sunni animus in the case of the Syrian government, he was willing to adopt rhetoric that was both exclusionary and justified militant resistance on terms that were often inconsistent with his other writings.
His overtly sectarian rhetoric during the Syrian Civil War, in which he went so far as to apologise to the Saudi religious establishment for his previous defences of Iran, suggested that he came to see the conflict as an existential one between Sunnism and Shi'ism, rather than a revolution against a dictator.
By 2013 the Egyptian counter-revolution was under way, with Morsi imprisoned and replaced by general-turned-president Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi and the Brotherhood outlawed once more.
Qaradawi was the subject of an Interpol wanted notice – subsequently rescinded by the international policing organisation on the grounds that it was assessed to be politically motivated – and in 2018 he was sentenced in absentia to life in prison by an Egyptian military court.
Qaradawi hoped that his brand of Islamism could bring together enough Muslims and non-Muslims to secure a non-autocratic future for Arab states that was capable of resisting both Salafi-Jihadism and western and Israeli domination.
But a near-decade of regional turmoil has instead revealed deep and unresolved cleavages within Arab societies. All such illusions have been destroyed, and the path forward for the Arab world looks even darker than it did before 2011.
Israel’s Central Election Committee on Thursday disqualified a major party representing Palestinian citizens of Israel from running in forthcoming elections.
The Israeli electoral body said that the Palestinian National Democratic Assembly – commonly known as Balad – had “opposed and rejected the Jewish and democratic character” of Israel. Israel controversially defines itself as “the state of the Jewish people” while Balad and other Palestinian parties have long campaigned for it to be defined as a state for all its citizens. Palestinian citizens of Israel make up over 20% of the country’s populati
The Election Committee voted 14-0 to ban Balad from running, but rejected a similar move banning the United Arab List party of Mansour Abbas, which participates in the current Israeli governing coalition, from running.
The banning motion was requested by an Israeli party called “We Are Together Towards a New Social Order”. It was supported by Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh called the ban “an attempt by Gantz and [Israeli Prime Minister Yair] Lapid to engineer the Arab leadership according to their political needs.” The Central Election Committee’s decision came after Balad decided to split from the Joint List coalition of Palestinian parties in Israel and run in the elections independently, even though it was not expected to get enough votes to clear the threshold for Knesset representation.
Ideology Balad - Wikipedia info:
Balad is a political party whose stated purpose is the "struggle to transform the state of Israel into a democracy for all its citizens, irrespective of national or ethnic identity". It opposes the idea of Israel as a Jewish state, and supports its creating a new "binational" state.
Balad also advocates that the state of Israel recognize Arabs as a national minority, entitled to all rights that come with that status including autonomy in education, culture and media. Since the party's formation, it has objected to every proposed state budget.
The party supports the creation of two states based on pre-1967 borders, with the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem to constitute a Palestinian state and returning Palestinians who left homes in Israel to where they were.
The Turkish intelligence service has been conducting negotiations with the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus to define a "road map" on several issues, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has revealed.
"Our intelligence service is conducting negotiations there [Damascus], and we will define our road map based on the results," Erdogan said during an interview with CNN Turk on Wednesday.
Erdogan renewed the threat to launch a military operation in north-eastern Syria against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), saying: "We can come any night."
He stressed the need for the SDF to withdraw from the Turkish border, in accordance with the agreement concluded with Russia and the United States after 'Operation Peace Spring' in 2019.
Erdogan called on Moscow and Washington to implement the agreements concluded with Turkiye in 2019 regarding Syria and warned that "the PKK organisation is still spreading near our
borders in violation of those agreements." Turkish officials have in recent weeks spoken about the possibility of starting dialogue with the Syrian regime to address a series of issues, including a political solution to the Syrian civil war and Syrian refugee crisis.
The Assad regime has set several conditions to engage in political dialogue with Turkiye, the most prominent of which is the Turkish forces' withdrawal from Syria and the cessation of support for those considered by the regime as "terrorists".
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"The national security of America and the security of the world could be attained if the American leaders [..] become rational, if America disengages itself from its evil alliance with Zionism, which has been scheming to exploit the world and plunge it in blood and darkness, by using America and some Western countries.
US Vice President Joe Biden said that the new administration would seek the
unvarnished truth from its spies, whether or not their information supported
the goals of the government. 
"The post-September 11 era in the US has heralded in a new age of ideology whose discourse and world views have served not only to accommodate such extremist views as those held by Sharon, but also to provide him with a platform and an influence that were unthinkable only a year ago. 
"The globalists wants to make the world unipolar in order to move towards a globalist non-polarity, where the elites will become fully international and their residence will be dispersed throughout the entire space of the planet. 
Political holism is based on the recognition that "we" are all members of a single whole. There's no "they," even though "we" are not all alike. Because "we" are all part of the whole, and therefore interdependent, we benefit from cooperating with each other. Political holism is a way of thinking about human cultures and nations as interdependent. 
Mrs. Asma al-Assad considered that holding a ceremony to honor the excelled students in high school is a message to the community to devote excellence as a noble value that requires concerted efforts, collaboration and cooperation.
When we consider the achievements for which the Western press is extolling him today, we find that they have benefited the West alone. 
Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, is continuing with his sharp attacks against former premier Benjamin Netanyahu and has now accused the Likud leader of inspiring a "blood libel" against him, following accusations made by a former Yisrael Beytenu party activist that Liberman sought to hire him to assassinate a senior police official.
“It is surprising and regrettable that in a situation where the diplomatic interactions and exchange of messages between the negotiating parties and the coordinator of the talks for the final negotiations are going on, three European countries issue such a statement in a deviant manner and far from a fruitful approach in the negotiations,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said.
The top diplomat is accompanying Iranian President Seyed Ebrahim Rayeesi on a visit to the city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan, which is slated to host a summit of the SCO.
Tonight we heard a speech full of weakness, defeat and surrender.
[Israeli] Defense Minister Benny Gantz is warning that a government led by Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu would spell the end of the State of Israel.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Yair Lapid, speaking at the UN General Assembly said “a large majority of Israelis support the vision” of a two-state solution” and that he is one of them.
“There are absolutely no guarantees if we don't move towards a nationwide cease-fire, and get the political process back on track, that things cannot collapse again,” said Geir Pedersen, UN Special Envoy for Syria, in an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. 
Born in 1926, Qaradawi grew up in an Egypt still under British colonial rule. In his youth he combined religious education with anti-colonial activism, a combination that led to his repeated arrests at the hands of the Egyptian government.
By 2013 the Egyptian counter-revolution was under way, with Morsi imprisoned and replaced by general-turned-president Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi and the Brotherhood outlawed once more.