Arab and Islamic, By Law and Definition

Egypt has put up its Constitutional Declaration in English, and I am examining it. Articles 1 and 2 are as follows:

Article 1:
The Arab Republic of Egypt is a state with a democratic system, based on citizenship, and the Egyptian people are a part of the Arab nation working toward achieving its comprehensive unity.

Article 2:
Islam is the religion of the state, and the Arabic language is its official language. The principles of Islamic law are the chief source of legislation.

I am not going to speak for or against this formulation, it's about what you would expect. I am, however, seeing floating before my eyes any number of anti-Zionist types who have told me, with tears in their eyes, how backward, primitive, inherently racist, and inimical to peace it is for Israel to want to be identified as a Jewish state.

And I wonder what they will have to say about this precise double-whammy of self-identification by ethnicity and religion.

No, actually, I don't wonder. They'll scoot right along to show me the later articles promising freedom of religion, and not see their hypocrisy at all.

The Right To Make And Eat Felafel

Over at Anne's Opinions, she's tearing up Guardian Israel correspondent Harriet Sherwood. Most of the piece is about coverage of the new anti-BDS legislation, but she added something else that caught my Jewish foodie eye. Anne writes:

In a similar, and totally related, development, Harriet Sherwood reports on McDonald’s withdrawing its McFalafel from Israeli restaurants due to its unpopularity.

So far so tasty.

Then she scrambles her omelette by adding in this nasty little aside right at the end:

"Falafel is thought to have originated in Egypt, although Israel now claims it as a national dish."

Oh! Those thieving Israelis! Not only content to steal other people’s land, now they go and steal other people’s foods! They can claim it as their national dish but we liberal-minded people know better.

Once again Sherwood betrays her bias by inserting an unrelated dig at Israel.

May she stew in her own falafel oil.

This sort of tripe is not uncommon with anti-Zionist types. Assuming as they do that Israelis plopped into the Middle East like Martians from outer space, they are constantly on the lookout for examples of appropriated Middle Eastern foods and such, in order to better define Israelis as fundamentally inauthentic and nonindigenous. I thought I should add a note at Anne's blog, reproduced below:

Lemme ‘splain, Harriet. In 1948, Egypt had 75,000 Jews. Currently, it has less than a hundred. Most of those people headed to Israel, after state persecution and confiscation of their property. In 1956, the Minister of Religious affairs announced that ‘all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state’, and promised to expel them. Almost no one managed to stay after the 1967 war.

In Israel, these fine people continued to make felafel, and along with other Jews from the region popularized it with the multicultural population of the new nation.

Now, of course, not only is their right of return to Egypt not a potent talking point with left-wing pundits, but even their right to make and eat felafel is apparently up for grabs.

Eejit.

Trouble at Rafah

When I first heard that Egypt was 'opening' the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, I assumed that would last a few weeks, then there would be trouble, and the gates would be quietly closed again.

Today, Gazans stormed the gate, as Egyptian troops and Hamas fighters struggled to keep control. A couple of notes on CNN's take on this:

First, CNN writes: The Rafah Crossing had been subject to frequent closures by Egypt after the Islamic militant group Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007.

The closure of the border had been part of an embargo policy by Egypt and Israel aimed at cutting off Hamas, but the embargo created an economic hardship on the Palestinian territory by limiting shipments of goods in and out of the country.

I'll have to check on this, because I may simply be fooling myself, but I have an idea that this sort of language 'closures by Egypt', 'an embargo policy by Egypt and Israel' were not commonly used until after the fall of the Mubarak regime, when the excuse that somehow Egypt was just doing this on Israel's behalf could no longer be used. I may malign the press. I'll try to check into this.

Secondly, CNN states that (i)t is the first kink in cross-border travel after Egypt reopened the crossing with Gaza last week, a symbolic move that signaled the Cairo government's greater support of Palestinian aspirations.

However, even before this, border control was going to remain tight:

The rulings indicate that women, children and men under 18 and over 40 years of age are permitted free passage from Gaza to Egypt; men under 40 will be required to apply for a visa which must be granted by the authorities for entry. A great majority of Gaza's population is under 40. According to a Palestinian official, a total of 23 people were turned away due to Egyptian security concerns. It was expected that by day's end, 1000 Gazans will have left to cross into Egypt.

The "New Egypt" Looks Just Like The Old Egypt

After years of hostility, it looks as though the new Egyptian government may finally simply not allow Jewish worshippers into Egypt for a hilula at the grave of Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira.


"After the January 25 revolution, which toppled over the Hosni Mubarak regime, the Jews will not be allowed to enter Demito any more and endanger the public morals and hurt the feelings of its 5,000 residents," Moustafa Rasslan, a lawyer, said.

He called on the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has been ruling the country since February 11, to enforce a 2001 court ruling that compelled the Culture Ministry, responsible for the site where the annual gathering takes place in late December and early January, to cancel the Abu Hasira celebrations all together.

"If the SCAF does not enforce the ruling, Damito residents will not allow the Jews come to their village to attend the week-long Abu Hasira Mulid (festival), where they used to behave in a way that contradicts Islamic traditions and public morals under the very nose of security officials of the ousted regime," he said.

Yeah, those guys up there look like a pretty raunchy bunch. Terrifying, really.

A few days after Mubarak went down, a young man yelled at me (as a representative Zionist) on the Berkeley campus that now that Egyptians were free, they were 'free to hate you'. He was, of course, quite correct. Foolish of me, I suppose, to hope that for once a people might gain freedom without attacking the Jews first thing.