Good news in the Middle East

Two pieces of good news this week:

Egyptian blogger and dissident Alaa is being freed, finally. A worldwide blogger campaign probably had something to do with it.

The Presbyterian campaign to divest from Israel has been defeated. If you haven't been following this saga of the past three years, Solomonia wrote many posts on it as it developed. Kesher Talk was also tracking this campaign (among others) here.

Speaking of Presbyterians, David Paulin has done some research on how Presbyterian seminaries have influenced the attitudes of this generation of clergy toward Jews and Muslims, here and here. (Unfortunately, a similar in-depth study needs to be made of Jewish seminaries.)

UPDATE: The release of Alaa was a real cliffhanger. They transferred him to a really shitty jail for his last night, and finally released him after a crowd of bloggers began to descend on the police station.

UPDATE: Solomonia has more on the PC (USA) General Assembly meeting where the divestment initiative was voted down. For good measure, a resolution was passed condemning suicide bombing as a crime against humanity. Note this Orwellian detail:

. . . this resolution passed against the desire of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) and the Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns (ACREC) who both advised against this condemnation. My correspondent notes:
The ACSWP's objections included assertions that it was one-sided and that the General Assembly had alread condemned violence in any form and that "The biblical witness on suicide and war is complex. It includes Saul's suicide and Samson's pulling down a Philistine temple on himself and others." -- This last argument is straight from Naim Ateek's essay on suicide bombing, by the way.

(More on Ateek and his organization Sabeel.)

5 Comments

#1 from frontinus | June 22, 2006 7:23 AM | Reply

More good news. Hopefully this hasn't been posted already. If so, sorry.

BALAD, Iraq (AP) - The U.S. military has begun sending thousands of battered Humvees and other war-torn equipment home as more Iraqi units join the fight against insurgents and American units scheduled for Iraq duty have their orders canceled.
In the last four months, the Army has tagged 7,000 Humvees and 17,000 other pieces of equipment to be shipped to the United States to be rebuilt. They then will be distributed among active and reserve units at home, or possibly returned to equip Iraqi security forces.
The military said the shipments will result in a reduction in the amount of U.S. equipment in Iraq, a cut made possible because the area patrolled by American troops is shrinking. The move also anticipates that the number of American troops in Iraq will decline.

Prepare for the inevitable "wag the dog," "Bush finally sees that we've lost," or "we need more troops not less!" panoply of spins. That is if anybody actually sees it.

#2 from frontinus | June 22, 2006 7:35 AM | Reply

I'll retract that last jab at the media. It's actually received some pretty good coverage considering--LA Times, WaPo, Houston Chronicle, Newsday.

#3 from PD Shaw | June 22, 2006 4:14 PM | Reply

There are three generations of Caterpillar workers in my family, none of whom were aware of the proposed divestment of that company's shares. Next time I would suggest that the PCUSA elites threaten a boycott during tough financial times, when they might be able to help close a plant or lay off some workers.

#4 from PD Shaw | June 22, 2006 5:09 PM | Reply

If my reference to PCUSA was oblique, this headline explains a lot:

Presbyterian General Assembly Votes to Declare Suicide Bombing a Crime Against Humanity Over Objections of Social Witness Policy Committee

Also, over the objections of the Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns.

The ACSWP's objections included assertions that it was one-sided and that the General Assembly had alread condemned violence in any form and that "The biblical witness on suicide and war is complex. It includes Saul's suicide and Samson's pulling down a Philistine temple on himself and others."

Judas committed suicide too and then there's the incest and the rape and the adultury. All very complex.

#5 from J Thomas | June 26, 2006 3:19 PM | Reply

This is good news for the israelis.
But what does it mean for the americans?

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