United Arab Emirate singer bathes in chocolate while Gaza children can’t find water to drink

United Arab Emirate singer bathes in chocolate while Gaza children can’t find water to drink

By Iqbal Tamimi

The gap between some Arabs and the Palestinians is very wide and deep. Even deeper than a bathtub full of molten chocolate.
UAE media code of ethics claim that it is an Islamic state and accordingly applies filtering. It even filters grassroots websites while at the same time it allows dating websites to eat the sphere available. It has its reservations on the news and what should be aired and what should not on grounds of ethics. At the same time it allowed bad taste video clips for local singers to be broadcasted on TV screens. Double standards are everywhere when it comes to media in UAE. The crimes of expatriates are always covered extensively while the horrors of the locals seem not to exist unless it happens to be on a very large scale that it can puncture some big investors’ pockets.

Alwaleed bin Talal Chairman of Rotana International media and business tycoon had to respond to appeals reached him through media and Internet forums, to intervene and stop showing a video clip of the Emirati female artist Roweda Mahrouqi on his channels, which showed Roweda (bathing) in chocolate. The public thought that such video clip is distasteful and contrary to the norms of the traditions. From my previous media experience I would say the norms they meant allows for bathing in chocolate but while being dressed modestly I guess. Alwaleed Bin Talal responded by instructing the officials in the channel to stop showing the video clip on his owned Rotana channels.

People has nothing against bathing in chocolate in private in UAE, but this indulgence in delicious dark chocolate bathing ritual was a demonstration of how insensitive media producers to people’s feelings. Even wealthy Arab countries have pockets of poverty one can’t believe how dark it is because of the false impressions people see through the glossy magazines and industrialist’s paid luxurious life adds on TV. I am not going to talk about the needy in oil rich Arab countries because they still can get help one way or another through charitable organizations, unlike their brothers in Palestine.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, published a report about Poverty in the Gaza Strip in May 2006. It clearly shows that, more than 22% of children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition, including 9.3% suffering from acute malnutrition, 13.2% suffering from chronic mal-nutrition and 15.6% suffering from acute anaemia. It is expected that this will lead to long-term negative effects on the physical and cognitive development of many of these children. More than half of Palestinian families eat one meal a day only. Food consumption in Palestinian families dropped by 25-30% per person, especially protein intake. The number of Palestinians living under extreme poverty multiplied threefold since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/Reports/English/Poverty%20in%20the%20Gaza%20Srtip.pdf.

These statistics are 2 years old and now the circumstances are much worse. The latest news was about blocking urgent Aid even through Interpal International relief through UK Lloyds bank.

I wish I can meet Rweda to advise her to save the chocolate she use for her bath to save the life of a number of children who are screaming of hunger. I would like to remind her that.. art - should she consider herself an artist – is a mission and it is supposed to be about ethics, ...a message to the humanity. I would like to ask her a very clean ..sugar free question...
What kind of message were you sending dear?

source

Read More

Is Dubai Helping Ethnic cleansing in Palestine?

From Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

The government of Dubai recently allowed a major bankroller of Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank to open at least two Jewelry stores in the Gulf emirate.

According to reliable sources in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a key member-state, Israeli billionaire and diamond magnate Lev Leviev is preparing to open two large jewelry stores in Dubai, a world's hub of Jewelry trading.

The first store will be opened soon at the Burj Dubai Mall (Dubai Mall Tower) while a second store is slated to be opened later this year in the new Atlantis Hotel on the Jumeirah Palm Island.

Leviev has already opened one store in Dubai in March, 2008, in the lobby of al-Qasr Hotel on Madinat Jumeirah.

The Dubai authorities were initially reluctant to grant the Israeli billionaire a license to do business in the oil-rich emirate. However, Leviev reportedly successfully lobbied "North American and European connections" to convince Dubai officials to reconsider their objections.

Leviev's companies, including Africa-Israel and Leader Management & Development as well as several other subsidiaries, have been quite active in displacing Palestinian villagers from their homes and land in several parts of the West Bank.

The two firms have built hundreds of settler units in at least five Jewish settlements constructed on land illegally seized from its Arab proprietors.

In recent years, a company called Leader belonging to Leviev built the settlement of Zufim on private Arab land seized from the village of Jayyous. Danya Cebus, a subsidiary of the Leviev-owned company Africa-Israel has built hundreds of settler units on land stolen from the village of Bilin. Numerous additional settler units were built in the two large settlements of Ma'ali Adomim, a few kilometers east of Jerusalem, and Har Homa, near the predominantly Christian Arab town of Beit Sahur.

Israel hopes that these settlements will cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, thus making the Palestinian dream of making the city the future capital of a prospective Palestinian state utterly unrealistic and outright impossible.

In addition to his intensive involvement in Jewish settlement expansion, including colonies defined by the inherently unjust Israeli justice system as "manifestly illegal," Leviev has donated undisclosed but reportedly large sums of money to the Land Redemption Fund, a land-grabbing organization affiliated with Gush Emunim, the ideological group behind Jewish settlement activities in the West Bank.

According to the Israeli newspaper, Yedeot Ahronot, the Land Redemption Fund uses fraud and strong-arm tactics to seize land from Palestinians for settlement expansion.

Last year the Israeli group, Peace Now, and other settlement-watch groups, discovered that hundreds of settler units built in the settlement of Matityahu in the Salfit region, in the central West Bank, were actually built on private Palestinian land seized at gun point from its legal and rightful Palestinian owners.

However, despite the discovery, the Israeli government refused to dismantle the illegal settler units, with one Israeli official saying that "this problem will be discussed with the Palestinian Authority in the context of final-status talks."

Leviev's companies are actually destroying the lives of thousands of Palestinians by narrowing their horizons and dispossessing them of their livelihoods.

Abdullah Abu Rahma from the village of Bilin and Sharif Omar from Jayyous told representative of the human rights group Adalah-NY (www.adalahny.org), which monitors Israeli theft Palestinian land, that "Leviev's companies are destroying the olive groves and farms that have sustained our villages for centuries."

"We call on people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied against apartheid South Africa."

The mayor of Jayyous, which suffered incalculable losses due to Leviev's destructive rampage in the northern West Bank, told this reporter that "Leveiv is indulging in ethnic cleansing against our community and our farmers."

"He is building settlements at our expense; he is destroying our land, our farms, and our orchards, and at the same time he is opening business in Dubai in order to finance his crimes against our people. Shame on Dubai and its government."

Some Jewish organizations opposed to the Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing and apartheid have also called on the countries of the world to boycott Israeli businesses and firms involved in dispossessing Palestinians of their land.

"We call on the government and people of the United Arab Emirates to join the growing international campaign to boycott Lev Leviev's companies due to their construction of Israeli colonial settlements," declared Daniel Lang-Levitsky of Jews Against the Occupation-NYC.

"A major Israeli violator of Palestinian rights and international law should not be opening jewelry stores in Dubai," said Issa Ayoub, a spokesperson for the Adalah-NY group. Adalah-NY organized eight boycott protests outside Leviev's new Madison Avenue Jewelry store in New York City over the last five months.

The Palestinian Authority has refused to comment on the Dubai government decision to allow the settler bankroller Leviev to open business ventures in the oil-rich emirate.

One Palestinian official contacted by telephone said "I don't know anything about this affair and I have not heard of Leviev."

A Hamas official in the Gaza Strip said "the Palestinian people were feeling embittered and betrayed by this scandalous behavior on the part of the Dubai government."

"We were hoping that Dubai would stand with us against the genocidal Israeli regime and its unrelenting efforts to ethnically cleanse our people from their ancestral homeland. We had never imagined that a day would come when we had to appeal to an Arab country to refrain from harming us and undermining our cause."

__,_._,___

Read More

First Israeli store to open in Dubai UAE and this helps Palestine How?

Update : The story below was something I came across on
The Internet, not realizing it was old news and
a comment was made that it did not happen was
great news.

Forgive me for not realizing the date on the article.
How ever my action call still stands that Israel
needs to be boycotted and I join the calls out there
for that as well as trade Trade Embargo's
imposed on them.

Ml clothing chain, which specializes in large sizes,

to open four stores in prestigious Dubai
UAE shopping areas

I would suggest people contact the UAE Government
& show support against this happening.
Israel needs to be boycotted along with a
trade embargo imposed
not only by middle east governments but
governments around the world.

Speak out now! contact middle east governments
and governments around the world.


Israel needs this especially when you take a look at
the collective actions imposed on Gaza and the current
occupation that continues to happens.


The ml men's clothing chain which specializes in large
sizes will be opening a store in Dubai in the near future,
making it the first Israeli brand to reach the Arab emirate.

Opening the Dubai branch will bring the clothing brand back
on the international scene, after other overseas stores have failed.

It was reported by Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Thursday
that ml signed a distribution agreement with a French company
which specializes in marketing large-size fashion lines.

The French company signed a deal with the Albulug Company
owned by one of Dubai's wealthiest families to open
an ml chain in Dubai.

In the fist stage of the deal, ml will open four stores
with an average area of 100 square meters in prestigious
shopping centers and leading malls.

Read More