Apartheid, Saudi style

Just imagine the international outcry that would ensue if Israel were to declare Jerusalem and Tel Aviv off-limits to anyone but Jews.
Or if Italy were to close off Rome to anyone who isn't a member of the Catholic Church.
One can only begin to imagine the fury that would erupt, as the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post would no doubt lead the charge against such rancid acts of ethnic and religious discrimination.
And yet - it is precisely this kind of prejudice that is being practiced in Saudi Arabia on a daily basis, where Wahabi apartheid bars entry to "infidels" to places such as Mecca and Medina, as I note in the news item I wrote below that appears in today's Jerusalem Post.
Interestingly enough, I checked the US State Department's annual country reports on human rights and religious freedoms, and neither of them even mentions the Saudis' outrageous state-sanctioned policy of segregation.
And these, of course, are the very same Saudis being touted as "moderates" and "allies" of the US and the West. What sheer and utter hypocrisy. 


The Jerusalem Post, May 25, 2007

Saudis Arrest Christian for Entering Mecca
By Michael Freund

Saudi officials have arrested a man in Mecca for being a Christian, saying that the city, which Muslims consider to be holy, is off-limits to non-Muslims.
Nirosh Kamanda, a Sri Lankan Christian, was detained by the Saudi Expatriates Monitoring Committee last week after he started to sell goods outside Mecca's Great Mosque.
After running his fingerprints through a new security system, Saudi police discovered that he was a Christian who had arrived in the country six months earlier to take a job as a truck driver in the city of Dammam. Kamanda had subsequently left his place of work and moved to Mecca.
"The Grand Mosque and the holy city are forbidden to non-Muslims," Col. Suhail Matrafi, head of the department of Expatriates Affairs in Mecca, told the Saudi daily Arab News. "The new fingerprints system is very helpful and will help us a lot to discover the identity of a lot of criminals," he said.
Similar restrictions apply to the Saudi city of Medina. In a section entitled, "Traveler's Information," the Web site of the Saudi Embassy in Washington states that, "Mecca and Medina hold special religious significance and only persons of the Islamic faith are allowed entry."
Highway signs at the entrance to Mecca also direct non-Muslims away from the city's environs.

Stop the Palestinian Rocket War

while Peretz is busy chomping on his lip, thousands of other Israelis in the south of the country are living in fear of losing their lives
Another day, another rocket attack.

For the first time since the flare-up of the current Palestinian Rocket War against the Jewish state, an Israeli woman was killed yesterday in the southern town of Sderot by a projectile fired from Gaza. 32-year old Shirel Freedman died when her car was struck by a Palestinian Qassam rocket, one of nearly 20 that were launched yesterday against Israel.

And just how did Israel's Defense Minister Amir Peretz respond to the latest outrage? Why - with "restraint" of course.

Speaking to a European Union envoy, Peretz said that Israel was "biting its lips" in order to refrain from carrying out a ground offensive Gaza.

But while Peretz is busy chomping on his lip, thousands of other Israelis in the south of the country are living in fear of losing their lives. The Government's passivity in the face of the rocket assaults, and their unwillingness to do what is necessary to to bring them to a halt, is a failure on par with last summer's disastrous war in Lebanon. It is time to take aggressive action to end the Palestinian Rocket War once and for all, and to unleash the IDF in all its glory.

And the winner is.....

Thanks to all of you who took part in the annual Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards and who voted for this blog, "Fundamentally Freund". The final results were published today, and I'm proud to say that this blog won the following three "medals":

1 - Winner - Gold Medal - Best Right-Wing Jewish Blog

2 - Winner - Silver Medal - Best Pro-Israel Advocacy Blog

3 - Winner - Bronze Medal - Best Overall Blog

Stay tuned, and keep checking in, as we fight the war of ideas one truth at a time.