Israellycool

Meet the Egyptian version of the Hatfields and McCoys.

Two families in the Upper Egyptian Qena province decided to settle a feud with blades, but no lives were lost in the cutting that followed.

Instead a family in Mahrousa village in western Qena held hostage a member of its rival family, shaved his moustache, beard, hair and eyebrows, then set him free.

Shortly afterwards, the family of the shaved man kidnapped a member of the other family and did the same to him. Then they celebrated their revenge by firing gunshots in the air.

A fight broke out between the two families until the police stepped in, arresting people and confiscating weapons.

The situation was resolved only when Qena governor, senior police officers, public leaders and parliamentarians interfered to bring about a reconciliation between the two sides, fearing the situation would have deteriorated.

Banners later appeared in the region with the slogan, ‘Take care of your moustache!’ In Upper Egypt, men consider their moustaches a mark of manhood and pride.

I guess in Upper Egypt, they haven’t yet been introduced to Hummers.

Egyptian blogger Alaa has been freed, after being detained last month by Egyptian police while demonstrating peacefully.

According to Sandmonkey, he endured quite an ordeal, being abused and beaten. But it was the power of the people which helped secure his release.

Congratulations, Alaa!

The Danish government ignored several offers from Egypt to help it avoid a full-blown crisis over cartoons of Prophet Mohammed first published in Denmark, media in Copenhagen quoted Egypt’s foreign minister as saying on Thursday.

 

“I said that we were approaching something that was very dangerous. The contents of this case risked causing serious consequences,” Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Abul Gheit told the Politiken daily, describing discussions with Danish authorities in the months before the row over the Mohammed drawings escalated into violent protests in many Muslim countries.

 

The row, he had warned his Danish counterpart Per Stig Moeller, “could cause problems for your country with the rest of the Arab-Muslim world. I warn you, we must find a solution before these problems arise.”

 

Despite several phone calls with Moeller, Gheit said that his warnings were not heeded.

 

“The [Danish] foreign minister’s message was ‘no, no and no. If this is a case for you, you should pursue it in court’,” Gheit said.

 

Moeller denied, however, on Thursday having had any phone conversations with Gheit on the issue.

 

“It is not true that the Egyptian foreign minister called me several times on the phone. He never called me once,” he told reporters.

 

The 12 drawings of Mohammed, which first appeared in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten last September, have over the past month sparked violent protests in Muslim countries against Denmark especially, as well as against other European countries where the cartoons have since been reprinted.

 

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has refused to apologize for the publication of the cartoons, insisting that his government has no sway over what appears in the media in Denmark, where freedom of expression is fundamental.

 

In the Politiken interview, however, Gheit claimed that Egypt had stated in letters and phone calls to Danish authorities and international bodies last year that an official stand against offending religious beliefs would be enough to defuse Muslim tensions, and that Copenhagen would not have had to compromise on its support for freedom of expression.

 

“I did not want the Danish prime minister to stop Jyllands-Posten … All I wanted was a stand [on the issue]. I wanted to know if an offense had been committed or not and if this was acceptable,” he said.

 

In a letter addressed to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, dated November 23, 2005, Gheit even insisted that “We do not expect any country to take punitive or disciplinary action against a newspaper.”

 

He went on, however, to say that “we had expected an official Danish statement that would emphasize the necessity and indeed the obligation for respecting all religions and refraining from offending their followers with a view to avoiding escalation [of the conflict] that could entail serious ramifications.”

Cairo traffic police have launched a crackdown on joyriding wedding convoys they say add to the already considerable perils of the Egyptian capital’s streets.

 

 A police official told AFP Saturday that traffic agents had been posted at strategic spots across the city to catch offenders and strip them of their licenses.

 

“Over the past two days, 300 driving licenses have been confiscated and the judiciary will decide whether or not to apply permanent driving bans,” he said.

 

Interior Minister Habib al-Adly was quoted as saying in the top-selling state-owned daily Al-Ahram that such measures was required against the convoys “who disrupt the traffic and put citizens’ lives in danger”.

 

Many Cairenes celebrate weddings by hiring cars and motorbikes to tear around the capital’s streets in often ragged convoys, blaring horns and disrupting traffic.

 

Several of these convoys, which often involve hanging precariously from car windows, have ended in tragedy in a city of 17 million where the streets are notoriously dangerous and traffic law rarely enforced.

An Egyptian man discovered on his wedding day that his fiancee of three years was a man who had been concealing his identity behind a veil.

 

The 26-year-old groom-to-be, Tamer Shehata, was notified by a female guest attending his wedding that his would-be wife was a man in women’s clothing.

 

When Mr Shehata confronted his fiancee, he broke down and revealed that he was actually an 18-year-old man called Ahmed Abo Zeid.

 

Mr Abo Zeid confessed that he had tried several times to undergo a sex change but had failed to secure doctors’ approval.

 

Mr Abo Zeid, whose face was obscured to Mr Shehata by a niqab or burka (face veil) said he had intended to tell after they were married, and had hoped to convince Mr Shehata to consummate the marriage.

Several Egyptian newspapers asserted that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the UN nuclear watchdog and its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, constituted a warning to the United States and Israel.

 

“By handing the prize to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its boss, the Nobel committee wanted to send a message to the entire world that nuclear weapons were and still are a threat to the whole of humanity and need to be opposed by any means,” the state-owned Al-Ahram daily said.

 

“The specific choice of ElBaradei is an implicit message, notably to the United States and Israel,” the top-selling newspaper went on, quoting the Nobel committee as describing the laureate as “unafraid” in his advocacy of new measures to prevent nuclear proliferation.

 

The independent Al-Masri Al-Yom entitled one its editorial “ElBaradei, the embodiment of impartiality”.

 

“Despite his placid character, the man is solid … and while subjected to intense pressure, notably from the United States and Arab commentators, he pressed on without making any concessions, displaying true professionalism and commitment,” editorialist Alaa al-Ghatrifi wrote.

 

“His impartiality on all issues earned him huge popularity on the board” of the agency, he explained.

ElBaradei, 63, received his prize on Friday and became the fourth Egyptian Nobel laureate in history.

Egyptian movie audiences are not accustomed to laughing about the Arab conflict with Israel, or to seeing Israeli diplomats portrayed as regular folks living next door.

 

But in Egypt’s box office hit, “The Embassy Is in the Building,” the director, Amro Arafa, uses comedy to try to get Egyptian audiences to consider a most serious point: that peace with Israel is in Egypt’s own interest.

 

“We have signed peace with this country,” a state security agent says during a pivotal scene in the movie. “This is our country’s policy, and it is for our interest. Do you want to be against the country’s interests?”

 

The security man, who spoke about the need for “peaceful coexistence with them,” was talking to a character played by Adel Imam, Egypt’s most famous comic actor, arguably one of the only actors in Egypt who could pull off such a movie and still keep the audience laughing.

 

“The Embassy Is in the Building,” which is still in theaters, was the second biggest hit at the box office this year among Egyptian-made movies, bringing in nearly $3 million. It is a wry look at Egyptian society with a main character who lives in Dubai and has a taste for beautiful married women. He gets fired after having an affair with his boss’s wife, and returns home to Egypt only to find that the Israeli ambassador, David Cohen, has moved into his building.

 

The movie pokes fun at leftists still clinging to pan-Arab nationalism and takes a swipe at a nationalist poet, Amal Donqol, who wrote a poem saying Egypt and Israel could never have normal relations. It spoofs Islamists as goofy men with beards and guns, and it lampoons the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera.

 

But this is not just a movie aiming to make people laugh - according to critics, political observers and the director - but an effort, however ham-handed, to use the Egyptian cinema to make people at least entertain the notion that peace with Israel is good for Egypt, even while Israel may itself remain an object of hate.

“We do not have a problem with the Israelis or the Jews; we have a problem with the Israeli government,” said Mr. Arafa, the film’s director, repeating a semantic distinction that was once popular among Egyptians but was dropped altogether after the second intifada heated up in 2000. “This is the first time that a movie deals directly with this problem, ‘Why we hate the Israeli government.’ “

 

For an outsider, it might be difficult to walk away from this movie with the impression it is any kind of olive branch. Throughout the film, there is strong anti-Israeli language. And it ends with the death of a cute, heroic Palestinian boy at the hands of Israelis and an angry protest outside the Israeli Embassy in Egypt. The protesters are shouting:

 

“Down with the Israeli occupation!

 

“Down with murderers of children!

 

“Down to enemies of peace!

 

“Down with the settlements!”

 

But consider how the movie is perceived by at least some people who have lived through the chaos and hatred that have consumed the region for so long.

 

“When I look at it after clearing the dust, I can see a few good things,” said Jacob Setti, press attaché of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. “It is the first film I see that deals with the Israeli Embassy as an ordinary thing. It is in Cairo, functioning, working like any other place. Another point is that it deals with the Israeli ambassador as someone who is doing his work and speaking Arabic, as many of them do. The third issue is even the film admits that there is a good level of relationship between both governments, and I think that in the future we will see a development in this relationship.”

 

Tarek el Shenawy, a leading film critic in two popular Egyptian weekly newspapers, said the last protest scene reflected a new perspective, because the protesters neither called for the embassy to leave Cairo nor demanded the end of relations with Israel.

 

“The film carries a message from the government: Do not hate Israel, do not love Israel, just forget about it,” he said.

 

The two-hour film also stems from a broader change in a society that had long been frozen in economic, political and social terms, analysts said. About a year ago, Egyptians began to hold demonstrations in the street - not focused on Israel, but domestic issues. In the past the government did not allow any demonstrations critical of the president or his policies.

 

The domestic-oriented protest marches may not have sparked a widespread opposition movement, but they have signaled a shift in focus for the minority that does speak out - from foreign affairs to domestic affairs. The first multicandidate campaign for president, which ended earlier this month, was criticized for being brief - only 19 days - but the opposition candidates traveled the country talking about domestic issues, with the topic of Israel rarely coming up during the race.

 

“The more democratic space we have, the more focused we would be on our domestic problems,” said Wahid Abdel Meguid, a political analyst and deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “Arab governments used the struggle with Israel as an excuse for political oppression, as an excuse for their failure to run the country.”

 

Whether Mr. Imam can make people laugh is not in doubt. But on the question of whether his comedy can help promote a more moderate view toward relations with Israel, the jury is still out.

 

“I loved the movie,” said Reem Abdel Nasser, 19, as she left the theater last week. “It deals with all the problems and issues we are concerned and confused about. And he presents a diplomatic solution for the Israeli-Arab problem which I agree with. We have to live with them. We do not have to be friends, but we do not have to be enemies. We should just live together.”

 

But that is not what her father came away with. “The movie is a reminder for people to wake up and understand Israel,” said her father, Gamal Abdel Nasser. “It is a very difficult problem to solve, and the only way to solve it is by force. Whichever was taken by force should be restored only by force.”

BENI SUEF, Egypt (AP) — An actor knocked over a candle on a stage filled with billowing paper, starting a blaze that killed at least 32 people, many as they struggled to escape the packed theater through the only available exit, officials said.

Ancient Egyptians gossiped about a bald queen, royals who had affairs, missing bodies, homosexuality, harem intrigue and more, according to a noted Egyptologist.

 

Lisa Schwappach-Shirriff, curator of California’s Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, which houses North America’s largest collection of Egyptian artifacts, recently found evidence for tabloid-like gossip in the museum’s eclectic archives and elsewhere. The findings suggest humans always have enjoyed chatting about personal or sensational information concerning others.

 

They also reveal what officials communicated through their official artwork and hieroglyphics.

 

“The ancient Egyptians believed that anything written down became magically true, so even if something was true, if it was unpleasant, it was usually not written,” said Schwappach-Shirriff, who recently presented her findings at the museum, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary.

 

She added, “That is what makes it so interesting when you find out small details of what we would consider gossip.”

 

As an example, she explained that a text from around 5,000 years ago described how an unnamed king frequently visited one of his general’s houses at night. The text repeats the phrase, “in whose home there was no wife,” suggesting that the king was having a homosexual affair.

 

“Did that mean the Egyptians were anti-homosexual in their opinions? Maybe not,” Schwappach-Shirriff told Discovery News. “The problem could have been that the general was not fulfilling his social duties by producing an heir from a wife.”

 

Andre Dollinger, another Egyptologist who has published many works on Egyptian history and culture, suggested people also gossiped about royals who partied too much.

 

“A drawing on limestone shows a king with what seems to be a six o’clock shadow, looking much the worse for wear,” Dollinger said.

 

Schwappach-Shirriff said a more visual form of gossip was discovered near the temple of Queen Hatshepsut. She declared herself king and had a close relationship with an advisor named Senenmut.

 

“How close is a matter of conjecture, but it is clear that the workmen who were building the temple thought that it was very close,” she said. “A graffito was discovered depicting a distinctly feminine ‘king’ in a compromising position with a non-royal individual. Since this was found at a construction worker’s rest area at the site, you can imagine them giggling to themselves over lunch.”

The al-Qaida group in Iraq released an Internet video that appeared to highlight one pretext why terrorists might have targeted Sharm: the presence of Israeli tourists.

 

The video did not mention the Sharm bombings nor make any claim of responsibility. But it showed the interrogation of Egypt’s top envoy to Iraq, Ihab al-Sherif, whom the group kidnapped and said it killed earlier this month. In the video, the diplomat was asked about Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which allows Israelis to travel without visas to a zone known as “Part C,” along the Sinai’s eastern coast.

 

“From which point does Part C start?” a questioner asked al-Sherif. “From Taba to Sharm e-Sheikh,” he replied.

 

If you seek an evidence on how the Jews are desecrating the land of Muslims, contemplate the words of the Egyptian ambassador,” said a statement, posted with the video on an Islamic Web forum.

An Egyptian woman protests against the disengagement plan

This last Olympic Games, you may recall how an Iranian Judoka made a mockery of the spirit of goodwill by refusing to compete against his Israeli opponent.

Ayatollah Ashraf, an Egyptian religious Muslim who routinely shows up for games in a traditional attire, pulled a no-show on her Israeli opponent at the first round ping-pong games of the world championship in Shanghai, China.

 

Marina Kravechenko the Israeli table tennis player technically won and moved up to the second round of games.