newswire

Anti-Arab graffiti stuns Maryland churches

By Erin Donaghue

It was Jan. 13, a Tuesday evening, when parishioners at the Sts. Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church on River Road first noticed the graffiti. It was scrawled in blue spray paint on a back entryway to the church — according to officials there, a dimly lit area that would make it an easy target for vandals.

Written across the door was a Star of David and the words "Israel forever — Arabs never." The incident has shocked congregants at the Potomac church, which draws many parishioners who are of Middle Eastern descent. While the services are conducted in English, much of the chanting is in Greek or Arabic.

"I was stunned," said Bethesda resident Joanne Demchok, a parishioner at the church. "Why would someone do something like that?" According to the Rev. George Rados, a priest there, the incident was most likely tied to the recent conflict in Gaza. Israel launched an offensive into Gaza late last month, drawing widespread criticism from humanitarian groups, in response to rocket fire.

Source: [Gazette.net]

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Hooked on chill pills in war-torn Gaza

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The new drug overtaking the Gaza Strip doesn't stimulate hallucinations or give endurance at the dance club. It merely chills you out, which is exactly what many Gazans say they need. Ruled by Islamic hard-liners from Hamas and locked in by Israel, Gazans can't travel outside the strip, have few places to go for fun, and are faced with a failing economy.

Thus the boom in the popularity of tramadol, a painkiller known here by a common brand name, "Tramal." Growing numbers of Gazans have begun using the drug over the past year and a half to take the edge off life in the impoverished seaside strip, pharmacists and residents say.

This worries medical personnel, who say the drug can cause dependence. It is a prescription drug in many countries, and the Hamas-run Health Ministry has made efforts to control it, but without much success in a society where medicines available only by prescription elsewhere are often sold over the counter. Tramadol is especially popular among young men. Some down the pills with coffee or dissolve them in tea. Others pop them freely when hanging out with friends. Grooms have been seen passing them out at weddings.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Iraqi Women Seek Freedom of the Road Again

By Mary Beth Sheridan

BAGHDAD -- The black-masked militias have vanished from most Baghdad streets, and the car bombings are down to one or two a day. So one recent afternoon, Hadeel Ahmed, a ponytailed college student in jeans, did something few Iraqi women have dared recently. She drove a car.

"It bothers me to have to depend on my brother or father to take me everywhere," the 25-year-old student declared, after finishing a class at al-Riyadh Driving School. "I want to be independent."

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, women in the Iraqi capital have virtually disappeared from behind the wheel. With gun battles raging, the police force collapsing and the traffic lights dead, highways turned into a Mad Max world. Even today, you can travel for a half-hour across the sprawling city and not see a single woman driving.

But with the sharp drop in violence this year, women are venturing onto the roads. They are gingerly reclaiming freedoms denied by the Islamic extremists who warned them to stop driving, give up makeup and cover their hair -- or risk death.

Source: [Washington Post]

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Fulbrights restored to Gaza students

JERUSALEM (AP) The U.S. has reinstated the Fulbright scholarships of seven Gaza Strip students blocked by Israel from leaving the Hamas-ruled territory, the State Department said Monday.

The students were informed Thursday that their scholarships for the upcoming academic year would be deferred because they couldn't get out of Gaza, which Israel blockaded after the Islamic militants seized power a year ago.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. reversal came on orders from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who first heard about the scholarship snafu on Friday. "She wasn't pleased," McCormack said.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Gunmen kidnap Iraqi Chaldean Catholic archbishop

MOSUL, Iraq -- Gunmen kidnapped the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul on Friday in the northern Iraqi city and killed his driver and two companions, police said. "He was kidnapped in the al-Nour district in eastern Mosul when he left a church. Gunmen opened fire on the car, killed the other three and kidnapped the archbishop," said provincial police spokesman Brigadier-General Khaled Abdul Sattar.

An assistant to Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, the Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad and spiritual leader of Iraq's Catholics, said they had heard that three people had been killed and they did not know the fate of the archbishop, Paulos Faraj Rahho.

Christian clergy targeted

A number of Christian clergy have been kidnapped or killed, and churches bombed in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.Last June gunmen murdered Catholic priest Ragheed Aziz Kani and three assistants in Mosul, 240 miles north of Baghdad, after stopping his car near a church in the eastern part of the city.

Source: [MSNBC]

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UN shocked by 'grim' life in Gaza

The UN's top humanitarian affairs official has said he was shocked by the "grim and miserable" situation he witnessed on a visit to the Gaza Strip. Undersecretary General John Holmes said it was the result of Israel closing its border crossings and the "limited food and other materials" allowed in. Mr Holmes said 80% of Gaza's 1.5m population now depended on food aid.

Israeli spokesman Mark Regev said the situation could "very quickly return to where it was" if rocket attacks ceased. Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza last month after a sharp rise in rocket attacks by militants based there.

The restrictions prompted militants from the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls Gaza, to blast holes in the border with Egypt on 23 January. The breaches were sealed by Egyptian security forces only on 3 February, by which time hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had taken the opportunity to cross into Egypt and obtain essential supplies.

Source: [BBC]

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Militants bomb Gaza YMCA library

Gunmen have attacked the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Gaza City and blown up its library, burning thousands of books, its director says. Eissa Saba said 14 men overpowered the centre's two security guards before placing bombs in the library and main office. The latter did not explode.

The guards said the gunmen had asked them why they worked for "infidels," Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, is home to 3,500 Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox.

A number of Christian and other institutions regarded by Muslim extremists as un-Islamic have been targeted by armed gangs over the past two years in the coastal territory, the BBC's Katya Adler in Jerusalem says. So far no-one has claimed responsibility for the attack, which has been condemned by all the main Palestinian factions.

Hamas, which ousted the rival Fatah movement from the territory in June, has said it is looking into Friday's incident. The YMCA in Gaza City is a social institution open to Palestinians from all communities.

Source: [BBC]

Backward, Christian soldiers, marching as to peace

By Daoud Kuttab

During the run-up to the 1998 Christmas celebrations, U.S. president Bill Clinton, along with his wife, Hillary, and daughter, Chelsea, visited the Palestinian town of Bethlehem to light up the Christmas tree in Manger Square, outside the Church of the Nativity. With that symbolic visit, and the understanding that Mr. Clinton was showing to the needs of the region, Palestinians of all faiths had high hopes that the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict might soon end. It didn't.

Early next month, President George W. Bush will be also visiting the West Bank and, like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice before him, will likely visit the birthplace of Jesus. If he does, he will join members of the dwindling Palestinian Christian community, the majority of whom are Eastern Orthodox and who celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7.

Coming after renewed negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, the visit to the occupied territories will be welcomed by Palestinians. But it will be hard to quickly forget the last seven years of the Bush administration and its unconditional support for Israel, with its heavy-handed policies toward Palestinians and Lebanese. Most Arabs don't understand the ideological underpinnings for U.S. support to Israel, which many believe contradicts overall U.S. interests in the region.

Source: [Media Monitors]

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Israeli settlements in West Bank 'expanding'

Construction is continuing in dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank despite Israel's pledge to freeze their expansion, an campaign group has said. Peace Now says Jewish population growth is three times higher in the area occupied in 1967 than in Israel itself.

It says settlers are bypassing a ban on using caravans to expand settlements by erecting pre-fabricated homes on site. Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are deemed illegal under international law. Israel had pledged to stop their construction as part of internationally-backed peace efforts.

Peace Now says there is continuing construction in 88 out of about 150 of the authorized settlements, in addition to the building of permanent structures in 34 unauthorized settlement outposts. Settler leaders expressed pleasure about Peace Now's report, thanking it for "documenting their endeavor."

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Iraqi Christians seek new life in Europe

MOSUL -- Members of the Iraqi Christian community in the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk have asked European countries to expedite their visa applications and grant them asylum, according to Christian leaders there.

"Most of the Christians in Iraq have moved to northern provinces as they flee violence against their religious group. Most of them were taking refuge in Mosul and Kirkuk but in the past two months, at least 27 Christians were killed in Mosul and Kirkuk as they were leaving their churches or community prayers in private residences," said cleric and spokesman for the Christian Peace Association (CPA), Lucas Barini.

"Panic has spread, especially since women and children were among the victims," Barini added. "In the past two weeks, at least 120 families have received threatening letters at their homes giving them a month to leave Mosul and Kirkuk but they don't have anywhere else to go."

Source: [IRIN]

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