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There was intense lobbying against Hani Shukrallah (in ahram and outside of it) whose policy many have discovered today, was not acceptable. He was not informed of that previously and he wasn't informed of his replacement.

There was intense lobbying against Hani Shukrallah (in ahram and outside of it) whose policy many have discovered today, was not acceptable. He was not informed of that previously and he wasn't informed of his replacement. This development is an exception to the changes that took place yesterday because all the other editors were above 65 and thus had to go. All the editors under 65 remained, except Shukrallah who is 55.

There was intense lobbying against Hani Shukrallah (in ahram and outside of it) whose policy many have discovered today, was not acceptable. He was not informed of that previously and he wasn't informed of his replacement. This development is an exception to the changes that took place yesterday because all the other editors were above 65 and thus had to go. All the editors under 65 remained, except Shukrallah who is 55.

The law voted on by parliament a few weeks ago — eight years after the constitution entered into force — serves as a means to implement what is specified in the Constitution, without adding anything other than clarifications. For example, it notes that Turkmen, Assyrian or Armenian citizens have the right to ask the administration of the government school where their children study to provide the latter with lessons in their mother tongue.  In this respect, Iraq is following in the footsteps of developed countries that have realized the importance of teaching a person his or her mother tongue if they so desire. Lawmakers have confirmed the importance of spreading "linguistic awareness" and bringing the various components of the country closer together. Today, this is now an issue of law, budget and implementation, especially when it comes to the employees who should be appointed in official circles and schools so that this law can come into effect. [To truly implement the law], thousands of employees are needed. 

the law confirms — without directly mentioning it — the idea that was expressed in Article 3 of the Constitution: that Iraq is a country of many nationalities, religions and sects. This is one of the most important issues that the Iraq state has refused to recognize since its inception. In Iraq, there are languages that can be traced back to completely different linguistic families. These include Semitic languages, Indo-Iranian languages (from which Farsi and Kurdish originated), Altaic languages (from which Turkish languages originated), Indo-European languages (from which Armenian originated) and Caucasian languages (from which Circassian originated). There are also some Iraqis who speak languages that are Slavic in origin

in spite of the sacrifices made by Kurds in Iran, Turkey and Syria, the type of recognition achieved by Iraq's Kurds in January of 2013 still remains a dream

Does it matter that Recep Tayyip Erdogan has just named as his chief adviser a former journalist who alleges that foreign powers have tried to kill the Turkish prime minister by telekinesis? Here are some reasons why Tuesday’s appointment of Yigit Bulut, a Sorbonne graduate who has also alleged that Lufthansa is plotting against Turkey (pictured), may be of relevance.

The prime minister is the overwhelming power in a country in which he has steadily added to his clout during a decade in office, which has seen him win three elections. The last few weeks has shown several instances in which supposedly independent Turkish institutions appear to have fallen in line with his preferences – whether by making a former governing party MP editor-in-chief of a seized newspaper, fining television channels that screened extensive footage of the protests or launching an investigation apparently spurred by his denunciations of the interest rate lobby.

Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish writer who has backed Erdogan in the past, says Bulut’s appointment shows that the prime minister takes the conspiracy theories seriously – if only because he wants to use them as propaganda ahead of presidential elections next year.

officers from a military intelligence unit called Telem design much of the Arabic language curriculum

“The military are part and parcel of the education system. The goal of Arabic teaching is to educate the children to be useful components in the military system, to train them to become intelligence officers.”

Mendel said Arabic was taught “without sentiment”, an aim established in the state’s earliest years.“The fear was that, if students had a good relationship with the language and saw Arabs as potential friends, they might cross over to the other side and they would be of no use to the Israeli security system. That was the reason the field of Arabic studies was made free of Arabs.”

"The internet has revolutionised political life in Egypt," comments Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyid, a politics professor at the American University in Cairo. "It's a tool enabling opposition groups, particularly those who are subject to suppression by the government, to communicate with their members and co-ordinate activities."

with only 13 million internet users in a population of 80 million, he worries the medium has its limits. "The rest of the population still isn't reached," Mr Maher points out. "We need to find ways to reach the street. The ruling party is allowing internet use while it oppresses any opposition presence in the streets because it doesn't see the internet as a real threat."

The ruling National Democratic party, however, seems hopelessly out of touch with the times. It doesn't realise that the day might come when it could be tweeted out of power. Nor is it able to understand that it won't be able to station the country's security forces on the information superhighway as it does on Cairo's ring-roads.

Algeria's 19-year state of emergency will be lifted in the "very near future", state media has quoted Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president, as saying.During a meeting with ministers on Thursday, the president also said Algerian television and radio, which are controlled by the state, should give airtime to all political parties.He added that protest marches, banned under the state of emergency, would be permitted across the country of 35 million except in the capital. His comments come as anti-government protests escalate in Egypt and follows a wave of similar uprisings in other Arab states including Tunisia and Yemen

Meanwhile, new Vice President Omar Suleiman said Mr Mubarak had asked him to open dialogue with all political parties on constitutional reform.

In its statement, carried on Egyptian media, the military said: "To the great people of Egypt, your armed forces, acknowledging the legitimate rights of the people... have not and will not use force against the Egyptian people."

The US state department has despatched a special envoy to Cairo, former ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner, to urge Egyptian leaders to embrace political change.

many people said they were too busy with their own popular struggles to pay much attention to words from Washington

there was no mention of Saudi Arabia, perhaps the most powerful conservative influence on the region and a close American ally. Mr. Obama said that Iran may have sought to capitalize on the unrest in another ally, Bahrain, they noted, but he failed to mention that Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries had intervened there to crush the revolt

“We’ve had long experience with American policy in the region, and we don’t trust Obama’s call for change in Syria,” said Abdel Majid Manjouni, head of the opposition Socialist Democratic Arab Union Party in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. “Only the Syrian people can impose change, not the powers abroad.”

Filastiniyat, a non-governmental advocacy organisation committed to ensuring and supporting the equitable participation of Palestinian women and youth at all levels of the public sphere. Filastiniyat workshops offer a platform for vivid discussion and varied viewpoints, and such events never fail to draw media attention.

Although the activists of the volunteer organisation do not put it this way, it seems that the women journalists’ club aims at freeing journalism from narrow-minded party politics and taking it back to its roots, to informing the public in a spirit of free speech and right to information. In the journalism field in Gaza, telling the truth can be life-threatening and the attack against free speech comes both from the Israeli occupation forces and from the domestic political leadership.

Women journalists in Gaza are not only struggling with basic necessities for existence for themselves and their families, but also for employment. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the unemployment rate in 2012 among Palestinian journalism graduates aged 20-29 was 52 percent: 38 percent among male graduates and a striking 82 percent among female graduates. UNESCO and Birzeit University’s Media Development Centre are about to release an in-depth Media Development Indicators Report, which analyses different factors of freedom of speech and media freedom in Palestine. According to this study, discrimination of women journalists is deeply rooted in media houses and union life, and the rights of all journalists are constantly violated both by the Israeli occupational authorities and the Palestinian authorities.

The video opens with bearded men traveling in a pickup truck, flying the black IS flag with its distinctive white calligraphy. The driver of the truck pulls up beside another car and honks for the other driver’s attention. The IS guy in the passenger seat leans out the window and asks him, in Hebrew with a comically exaggerated Arabic accent, “Hey bro, how do you get to Jerusalem?” The driver of the car shouts back (in Israeli Hebrew), “Take a left!” Then there’s the slogan, in red Hebrew letters emblazoned on a gray, bullet-marked background: “THE LEFT WILL SURRENDER TO TERROR.” One of the IS guys fires celebratory bullets skyward and the driver peels off, ostensibly in the direction of Jerusalem, as they all shout exultantly in Arabic, “Shukran, ya ward!” (“Thanks, bro!”). The camera pans briefly to the rear of the truck to focus on a popular Israeli bumper sticker that reads, “Anyone but Bibi.” The tagline: “It’s us, or them. Only the Likud. Only Netanyahu.” The snatch of Arabic rap lyrics is excerpted from a song by an Amman-based Palestinian group called Torabyeh: “I want to be buried in the same cemetery that my grandfather was buried in. And since my childhood I’ve been dreaming to be a soldier and as time passed I discovered who I want to belong to: Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah, Hamas or…Jabha …”

Netanyahu has for years been promoting his message about the threat to Israeli security posed by Islamic extremism, never missing an opportunity to list Hamas along with the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and even Fatah, mixing them all up so that the average Israeli Jew reflexively associates Arabs and Islam with terror. Like all accomplished populists, he understands the power of repeating a mendacious slogan, and he is an expert at exploiting popular fears and racism.

The popular Israeli narrative is so reactionary and confused these days, that if one were to walk the streets asking average citizens if there was a difference between Fatah and Al Qaeda, most people would be hard-pressed to answer coherently. Go ahead and try to explain to an Israeli audience that Hamas is a small offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, that it is basically a technocratic political party, that it is extremely unpopular in Gaza and that it has nothing to do with expansionist jihadism. Try telling people that if Israel would lift the siege on Gaza, disgruntled Palestinians in Gaza would probably kick Hamas out of power immediately. Just try. The best you can hope for is that you’d be told that you’re a traitor who should go live in Gaza.

While the economic crisis related to the fall of oil revenues has caused political and social tensions, the Algerian authorities are showing increasing intolerance towards criticism, already under attack since the start of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s fourth term in April 2014.

Hassina Oussedik, director of Amnesty International’s chapter in Algeria, says the attacks on freedom of expression have been "constant". "In 2015, not a month has passed without witnessing cases of people being oppressed as they try to express themselves peacefully. The authorities rely on poorly formulated or ambiguous laws to arrest people," she told Middle East Eye. "They use provisions of the penal code that criminalise 'contempt', 'insult' or 'defamation' aimed against representatives of the state and other institutions in order to restrict freedom of expression, including humour, expression on the internet and on the street."

But an Algerian police officer, in charge of monitoring public demonstrations, said claims of repression were excessive and defended his activities."Repression? Dictatorship? Censorship? All of this is much exaggerated and is far from the truth," he told MEE. "If we did not do our job of monitoring and surveillance, Islamists and terrorists would feel omnipotent. In the 90s, this led us to chaos! Is it normal to insult the state, the president, the police or the army with impunity?"

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan created a new controversy on Feb. 9, Turkey's Quit Smoking Day, when he appeared to link addiction to alcohol and tobacco to poetry, literature and cinema. In a country where censorship is already rife, his remark sparked concern that fresh restrictions might be in store.

Why did Erdogan’s words stir controversy, concern and criticism? To better understand the anxiety, one must examine some practices that became widespread in Turkey after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power.

Any image of cigarettes in movies aired on television must be blurred, even the smoke. The censored imagery has come to include drinks and bare female breasts. Subscription TV channels have also adopted the practice, blurring images of tobacco, alcohol, breasts and buttocks, despite their subscribers paying for a private service.

Knesset member Ksenia Svetlova, a member of Shaffir’s party, raised the gauntlet March 2 by filing a sexual harassment complaint against Channel 20 and the show with the Council for Cable and Satellite TV. Svetlova claims that Segal and the members of the panel violated a clause in the law that defines sexual harassment as a degrading or derogatory comment made because of the subject’s gender or sexuality. It will be interesting to see how the council handles Svetlova’s complaint, especially when dealing with freedom of expression and satire.

Segal is refusing to apologize. He will simply admit that it was a stupid and tasteless joke. During a bellicose interview with Army Radio on March 3, Segal shifted the debate to the political arena, turning it into an argument between right and left. He said, among other things, that the left-wing media was being hypocritical. He has no reason to apologize, he claimed, just as the popular satirical TV show "Eretz Nehederet" ("A Wonderful Land") was not asked to apologize for the sexual connotations of their jokes about right-wing ministers such as Ayelet Shaked (HaBayit HaYehudi) and Tzipi Hotoveli (Likud). When asked about why he was doing his satire on a news show, especially on one devoted to Jewish heritage, Segal responded that he does not make a firm distinction between current events, lighter news and humor. Toward the end of his interview, he said, “Personally, I feel bad that she was hurt. If only she would have left it as a personal insult, instead of bringing in sexual harassment. … But this is an attempt to silence Channel 20.”