August 21, 2002

The New Republic's Yossi Klein Halevi reports on how the Palestinian authorities treat homosexuals: Tayseer, as we'll call him, a 21-year-old Gazan whose constant smile tries to conceal watchfulness, learned early on that to be gay in Palestine is to be a criminal. Three years ago his older brother caught him in bed with a boyfriend. He was beaten by his family, then warned by his father that he'd strangle Tayseer if it ever happened again. It happened again a few months later. Word gets around a refugee camp, and a young man he didn't know invited Tayseer into an orange grove. The next day he received a police summons. At the station Tayseer was told that his sex partner was in fact a police agent whose job is to ferret out homosexuals. If Tayseer wanted to avoid prison, he too would have to become an undercover sex agent, luring gays into orchards and turning them over to the police. Tayseer refused to implicate others. He was arrested and hung by his arms from the ceiling. A high-ranking officer he didn't know arranged for his release and then demanded sex as payback. Tayseer fled Gaza to Tulkarem on the West Bank, but there too he was eventually arrested. He was forced to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects and other creatures he could feel but not see. . . . During one interrogation, police stripped him and forced him to sit on a Coke bottle. . . . When he was released a few months later, Tayseer crossed into Israel. He now lives illegally in an Arab Israeli village and works in a restaurant. His dream is to move to Tel Aviv. Would someone please remind us again why the creation of a Palestinian state is a "liberal" cause? 4:06:20 PM

Blogger Eric Alterman weighs in with this grotesque bit of moral equivalence: Marwan Barghouti, as I understand it, plans and helps execute attacks against Israelis only in the occupied territories, where right-wing and opportunist Israelis have chosen to put themselves and their families at risk on land to which they have no legal or moral right. . . . He is, in other words, the very definition of a freedom fighter; a violent one, to be sure, but fighting a violent enemy. If Israel were to come to its senses, he is the kind of leader with whom it would need to make peace. Alterman, who faults the Israeli government for putting Barghouti on trial, doesn't even have his facts straight; the indictment of Barghouti charges him with involvement in murders within Israel as well as in the disputed territories. But while this is merely sloppy, the characterization of Barghouti as a "freedom fighter" is insane. Does anyone really think a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would be any freer than the rest of the Arab world? (Except, of course, in the sense of being free of Jews.) The Jerusalem Post reports that the Israeli Defense Forces have arrested the Palestinian suspected of murdering Shalhevet Pas, a 10-month-old Jewish girl who lived in the West Bank city of Hebron, in March 2001. (Seth Lipsky wrote about the murder at the time.) Another proud Palestinian freedom-fighter ridding the world of a Zionist aggressor infant. Meanwhile, Ha'aretz reports Nelson Mandela won't attend Barghouti's trial after all.   "opinionjournal" 4:04:19 PM

Dontlink.com does just that. Want David Sorkin to link to your Web site? Just ask him not to. The linking advocate's Web site thumbs nose at the Web's proliferating anti-linking policies. [CNET News.com] 2:03:20 PM

Another airline in trouble: Squeezed by low-fare competitors and weak travel demand, Continental Airlines joins other big carriers in slashing flying capacity into 2003 and raising service fees for many passengers. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] 10:02:20 AM