http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/where-do-iraqi-christian-refugees-go-turkey/

Sarmad and Sandra packing clothes for fellow refugees in Istanbul (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

ISTANBUL — For Sarmad, translating e-mails from English to Arabic for fellow Iraqis is a welcome change from the incessant fear of murder he lived through in Iraq. In his hometown, Mosul, attacks on Christians have been an almost-daily reality throughout the past few years since the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

“I was stopped at the university,” Sarmad recalls. People he describes as “terrorists” told the 18-year-old mechanical engineering student, “If you come here again, we will kill you.”

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has targeted the country’s fast-disappearing Christian population, describing them as “legitimate targets” and causing unknown hundreds of thousands to flee in recent years. Out of an estimated 800,000 to 1.3 million Christians during the Hussein era, now less than half are thought to remain in the country.

Since an Oct. 31 attack on Baghdad’s Our Lady of Salvation Church, thousands more Iraqi Christians have run to Turkey. Exact figures are unknown, but Chaldean Church records show more than 600 arrivals in December 2010 alone, which exceeds the total arrivals for all of 2009.

The Oct. 31 attack began when Islamic militants with ties to al-Qaida took Sunday worshipers hostage. As police moved in, 58 people, including two priests, were killed.According to accounts of the carnage, a young child was killed when one of the attackers blew himself up inside the church. Over 100 more were wounded.

The latest arrivals are seeking asylum in Turkey and applying for formal refugee status in the hope of transfer to third countries, such as the United States, Canada and Australia. According to Father Gabriel, a Turkish Chaldean priest from the east of that country and now on sabbatical from his parish in Brussels to assist refugees in Istanbul, the resettlement process takes about two years.

Sarmad is part of the influx that fled to Turkey after the Baghdad bloodbath. He was joined at the Chaldean-Assyrian Solidarity Association (KADER) office by Sandra, a 21-year-old from Baghdad who, along with her seven-strong family, made the long bus journey to Istanbul “as soon as we could leave” after the Oct. 31 attacks.

“We were living with fear in our hearts for a long time,” she says. “My mother and I were threatened many times.”

Now Sandra is helping out at the KADER office, volunteering her time to distribute donated clothes to fellow Iraqis now sheltered by the Chaldean Catholic church in Istanbul. The office is just around the corner from St. Anthony’s, the largest Catholic church in Istanbul, and these days, alive with Iraqis happy to worship without fear.

Father Gabriel says the work is a challenge, but adds, “It is surely also a beautiful thing for me to be able to help.”

He asks that people in the West pay greater attention to the plight of Iraqi Christians, saying, “People are destroyed, angry, helpless.” He adds that trauma and shock is a factor. “Some of the refugees here have seen people killed, people shot, blown up, even their own family — inside a church.”

‘Iraqi Blood Is Sacred’

There seems to be little happening on the ground to protect Iraq’s Christians, or to prevent the annihilation of a community that predates Islam in Iraq by six centuries and some European conversions to Christianity by a longer period.

Some Muslim leaders in Iraq have acknowledged this, and at “The Religions’ Dialogue” conference recently held in western Baghdad, Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai, head of the Sunni endowment in Iraq, said “Iraqis are one body. If the Christian part suffers, the rest of the Muslim body will respond to it. Iraqi blood is sacred; you cannot cross a red line.”

However, it remains to be seen whether the group that perpetrated the Oct. 31 attack will pay any heed to these words.

An estimated two million or more Iraqis of all religions and ethnic groups have fled since 2003, but some have started to return as violence drops from the 2004-2007 peak. Last year, a total of 118,890 Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons returned to their country and homes, according to the United Nations.

However, the plight of Christians seems to be worse. The

European Union debated the issue after the Oct. 31 attack and called for a halt to violence. However, in mid-January, Sweden deported 24 Iraqi asylum seekers, citing a more stable situation in Iraq. Some of the group were Christians. “European countries don’t open their doors,” said Father Gabriel.

Europe is not a preference for Sandra or Sarmad, however, and Australia and the U.S. are the favored resettlement options. “My uncle is in Sydney,” Sandra said. “I hope I can join him there.”

Sarmad wants to go to America, but first he must help his family escape. “They are living in a small town not far from Mosul,” he said, “but cannot afford to travel now.”

His status as asylum seeker means that he cannot work in Turkey, while awaiting resettlement. Father Gabriel says KADER and other groups working with Iraqis desperate to leave need money. “Families often cannot afford to travel,” he said.

Nonetheless, the new influx continues, day by day. Sarmad cut in during an interview, saying that “today seven more of my friends are leaving from Mosul. They have had enough.”

“Today?” asked Father Gabriel. “Yes,” came the reply, “they will be here tomorrow.”

Full names in this article have been withheld upon request. Register correspondent Simon Roughneen filed this story from Istanbul.

The term MIST has been coined to describe the next tier of large emerging economies – Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey. Can Turkey live up to the hype?

Fishing off the Galata Bridge, Istanbul (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/feb/01/emerging-economies-turkey-jim-oneill

Simon Roughneen in ISTANBUL –  Acronyms have long been a favourite of policy wonks and policymakers, shorthand for describing the world and the changes taking place in it. Jim O’Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist who came up with the now-mainstream “BRIC” catch-all for four quite different economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – has done it again.

“MIST” – or Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey – is O’Neill’s latest rhetorical agglomeration, pulling four more far-flung countries together and talking-up the next tier of large “emerging economies”.

Pundits might have a field day with this, with MIST obviously more vapid and perhaps lacking the solidity of its BRIC antecedent. Still, all four have in common a number of factors: a large population and market, a big economy at about 1% of global GDP each, and all are members of the G20.

South Korea might chafe at the categorisation – it has a far higher per capita GDP than the others ($27,000) and is a member of the OECD, but Turkey will likely be pleased. Some say the hype (not to mention investment) that could be spurred by MIST is warranted.

Sinan Ülgen heads up Istanbul Economics, a thinktank in the cultural capital. He says: “Turkey became a much more attractive destination for FDI, breaking a new record in 2007 before the global crisis with $22bn of FDI [foreign direct investment] inflows.” Investment has waxed and waned since then but, as Ülgen continues, the country has a “large and as yet unsaturated market”, which should make it attractive to investors.

Turkey has other assets too. With three grey minarets tacked – rather incongruously – on to the old, faded red brick, the Hagia Sophia, once the largest church in the world and subsequently a mosque, is now a museum, a landmark draw for Turkey’s tourist industry.

Visitors queuing outside the Hagia Sophia (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

It works, and even on a cold Thursday morning in January, with the minarets fading into the steely looking sky, hundreds of visitors lined up to roam the vast mosaic-covered interior. By 2023, the centenary of the founding of the Turkish Republic, the country hopes to have more than doubled arrivals to 63 million, thereby becoming one of the world’s top five tourist destinations. It is all part of Turkey’s plan to rise up the global economic ladder, partly by taking advantage of its location as a natural bridge from east to west. One can, after all, cross from Europe to Asia in Istanbul.

Sumru Altuğ is professor of economics at Koç University. She observes that “Turkey’s potential lies in its ability to exploit its proximity to markets in the region such as the Middle East, Central Asia, the Balkans, Russia as well as taking advantage of the energy market in the region”.

With the country’s European Union membership prospects diminishing, it seems, Turkey is looking toward its nearer neighbours for economic opportunities. The government of the Islamic-leaning Justice and Development party has just launched the country’s first Islamic investment fund, making Turkey a belated entrant to the growing sharia finance sector. Ankara has established visa-free travel arrangements with Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Syria, with similar bilateral deals under discussion with other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

However, the prominence of the Silk Road is much less than it was, and it is not like Turkey can merely replicate its Ottoman-era past, utilising its geographic position to collect taxes from traders. Nowadays, asAltuğ puts it: “One must create a favorable tax environment, undertake infrastructure investment, and be competitive against many players at once.”

Being competitive might not be easy. Turkey has relatively high labour costs and its main exports – such as cars and textiles – are under pressure from Asian rivals, while hi-tech investment does not as a rule go to Turkey. Labour force participation by women is a low 22%, says Ülgen, and there are wide economic disparities between more affluent areas, such as around Istanbul, and the country’s east and north-east, where per capita incomes are lower by a factor of 10.

Youth unemployment is high – 25% according to the OECD – though a young population can spur growth when harnessed properly. Unlike Asia’s growing economies, domestic savings are low, while Turkey seems to have a perennial balance of payments deficit. Legal reforms are necessary too, according to the economist Emre Deliveli, a regular on “Dr Doom” Nouriel Roubini’s RGE Monitor website. The country’s new Commercial Code should, he hopes, be “geared towards facilitating ease of doing business”, as otherwise the country’s potential could be squandered.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LG14Ak03.html

Synagogue dig at Magdala. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

TIBERIAS – The breeze cooling the furnace-like lakeshore funnels down between hills behind, redolent of history like so much else in the Holy Land. One, an extinct volcano popularised as the ‘Horns of Hattin’, marks the site where Saladin defeated a Crusader army in 1187. Closer again is the cliff-face where over a thousand years before, Jews are said to have committed mass suicide rather than be taken captive by the Romans in 67 AD, 3 years before the destruction of Jerusalem and a better-known mass suicide at the Masada.

Downhill is the reed-laden lakeshore along the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus Christ walked. He may well even have preached in a startling new discovery 200m from the water’s edge at Magdala, thought to be the home-place of Mary Magdalene, 5km from Tiberias and around the same from Capernaum. A synagogue dating to the first century AD, possibly destroyed during the same Jewish revolt, has been discovered during excavations for the construction of a new Catholic pilgrimage center.

Like many other locations in the country, Magdala is precious to more than one religion. An image of a seven-branched menorah (a type of candelabra) found at the synagogue dig is apparently a replica of the the iconic menorah held at the Second Temple, nowadays reproduced on Israel’s coat of arms. The temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD , marking the start of 2000 years of Jewish dispersal prior to the formation of Israel in 1948.

Back in Jerusalem some of the most important and poignant landmarks for the three monotheistic faiths are

located within a stone’s throw of each other. One diplomatic flashpoint is the Cenacle, where the Last Supper is said to have taken place as well as the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Underneath is the supposed tomb of King David, founder of Jerusalem and the Jewish kingdom, and from whom Christ is said to be descended. The interconnectedness – and rivalries – between Judaism and Christianity could hardly be better encapsulated in one set of buildings. Moreover a windows inside contains Arabic lettering, relics of the mosque installed in place of the church after the conquering Ottoman Turks evicted the Franciscan custodians of the site during the sixteenth century

Sovereignty over holy sites is a core issue in ongoing Israeli-Holy See negotiations. The latter supported the 1947 UN Security Council Resolution 181 which partitioned Palestine. However the two sides did not establish diplomatic relations until 1993. Still, they were were in close touch long before, much as the US and Holy See had informal discussion decades before Washington DC granted formal recognition in 1982. Meeting on June 15, Israel and the Holy See agreed to disagree on who controls the Last Supper Room, removing it – for now – from the basket of bilateral issues being discussed by the two sides over the past decade. Uri Goldflam is an academic and tour guide based in Jerusalem. Speaking inside the Last Supper room, he said that Israel is loathe to grant the Vatican control there as it would lead to it being converted to a Church, denying access to people from other religions. Catholic scholar George Wiegel countered by telling AToL that practice and precedent at other Catholic pilgrimage sites in the country belies this assumption. The legal status of church properties and communities in Israel are perhaps the trickiest area of contention. When the region was controlled by the Ottoman Empire and later the League of Nations, those properties enjoyed a special legal and tax status–which has apparently been rendered unclear by the creation of the State of Israel.

Arabic inscription and mihrab pointing toward Mecca, inside the Last Supper room (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Theologically, much has been done since in the past half-centry to pave the way for a diplomatic relationship. The Second Vatican Council adopted the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” called Nostra Aetete (in our time). The declaration addresses the church’s relationship with all non-Catholics and, in particular, affirms the deep connection between Christianity and Judaism, rejecting anti-Semitism “any time and by anyone.” Pope John Paul II made an emotional visit to the Western Wall in 2000, which author Dore Gold says, in The Fight for Jerusalem, marked a dramatic shift in the “theological connection between Christianity and Judaism” with the Church unlikely to backslide to what he described as “its formerly ambivalent attitude.”

Thus, bilateral negotiations continue amid occasional lurid headlines suggesting that Catholic-Jewish relations are bogged down in the ‘black legends’ of the past. After a deluge of stories about Holocaust-denying former bishops, Pope Benedict XVI made a successful visit to the Holy Land last year, though he refused to tour the inside of Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, unless an exhibit depicting World War II Pope, Pius XII, as indifferent to the Shoah, was removed. Views are divided on the historiography – though these do not manifest themselves as virulently as the headlines imply. Raymond Cohen teaches international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He told AToL that “in Israel people believe that it might have helped had the supreme moral leader of the world spoken out against the Nazi exterminations of the Jews.” Defenders of the wartime Pope say that a more outspoken approach would have only increased persecution of Catholics and clergy in Nazi-occupied Europe. Wiegel, a Papal biographer and more recently author of God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, says that arguments over whether Pope Pius XII should have said more will continue, but he adds that “no serious student of these matters believes that he was indifferent to the fate of European Jewry, and most now recognize that he ordered Catholic personnel and institutions in Rome to do whatever they could to save Jews — which included hiding Jewish refugees at the papal summer villa at Castel Gandolfo.”

In any case, these issues does not appear to affect bilateral relations. Prof Cohen, who is

Entrance to King David's tomb. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

currently conducting research on Israeli-Vatican relations, added that “the negotiations are protracted because they are immensely complicated” and added that both sides “have a good personal and professional relationship.” Neither side gives away much, often issuing laconic joint statements . The last, dated June 16, included the following – “The plenary welcomed the progress accomplished by the ‘working-level’ commission since the previous plenary, and has agreed on the next steps towards conclusion of the agreement.” Both sides will meet again in December.

Though Jerusalem is famously divided and site of multiple interfaith turf wars dating back 2000 years, the contemplative silence of the Galilean lakeside might provide a setting for a more ecumenical, collaborative approach. Fr. Eamon Kelly is based at the Notre Dame Institute in Jerusalem, which is overseeing the construction of the Magdala center. He said that the site “will be important for religious dialogue – between various Christian denominations and between Christians and Jews, and a location where all can be together”

- Roughneen visited The Holy Land during June.

Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchure (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LF29Ak02.html

T-shirt for sale in Jerusalem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

JERUSALEM – In ‘The Great Divorce’ C.S. Lewis attempted to allegorise about a reality which he admitted he could not know, but tentatively hoped to suggest. The US-Israeli relationship, to most, seems like an unbreakable bond, and any potential divorce might be regarded as unimaginable.

But when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets US President Barack Obama on July 6, they will discuss a relationship that is on the rocks, despite an annual US$2billion in aid and – in keeping with the traditional parameters of the relationship – Obama’s repeated commitment to Israel’s security. Stirring things up in advance, Israel’s Ambassador to the US Michael Oren spent Sunday and Monday denying media reports that he told Israeli diplomats that a “tectonic rift” was emerging between the two countries.

The summit will be a reprise of a stillborn meeting originally scheduled for late May, which Netanyahu cancelled after nine Turks were killed by Israeli commandoes onboard one of the six boats attempting to breach the blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. In the aftermath, whatever Obama’s private thoughts, he refused to join the chorus condemning Israel. But American policymakers felt themselves to be caught between a rock and a hard place, and beyond this incident, there are divergent worldviews colouring thinking in both administrations.

Much has been made of Obama’s attempts to “reach out” to the Muslim world, and his sackcloth-and-ashes pose for perceived American foreign policy sins-of-the-fathers. But In Israel his Cairo Speech was taken as a signal that this American administration does not see Middle East geopolitics in the same light as its ally, and therefore puts Israel in danger.

It is not the first time that the two have quarreled, with tetchy relations apparent during the Bush I administration. Alon Pinkas is former Israeli Consul-General to the US. Speaking to seminar of foreign and Israeli journalists at the IDC Herzliya last week, he believes that a turning point has been reached in bilateral relations. “In reality, US interests in the Middle East are with the Arab world. That is where the oil is, and Israel is just one small country surrounded by 290 million Arabs”, he said.

That is just part of the bigger picture. Both Obama and Afghanistan-bound Gen. David Petraeus believe that “solving” the Israel-Palestine conflict will contribute to US strategy elsewhere – particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unproven and hazy thesis that fits in well with Obama’s hoped-for outreach to the Muslim world.

Again, this is being noted by Israelis. Dr Jonathan Fine teaches at the IDC Herzliya. Reminding AToL that the US that Israel is dealing with much the same ideological opponents in Hamas as the jihadists the US faces in Afghanistan or Iraq, he lamented that “the Obama effect” means that the US does not receive anywhere near the same condemnation as when Israel attacks its nearby enemies, or engages in a clumsy and deadly attempt to stop boats reaching Gaza. America’s targeted assassinations and drone warfare continue in south Asia, in greater number and to deadlier effect than during the Bush II era.

Israel feels it has been sacrificed on the altar of another Obama initiative, which might otherwise be described as inherently laudable. At the recent Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, Obama endorsed a resolution which omitted any mention of Iran but specifically targeted Israel, demanding that it sign the NPT and allow inspections of its facilities. Whatever about the rights and wrongs of the specifics, the disparity between including Israel and excluding Iran was glaring to Israeli policymakers.

Netanyahu has already signaled his willingness to concede in the face of international pressure by the recent announcement to ease the Gaza blockade, which the US regards as untenable. In doing so, he may have left himself vulnerable domestically, with the so-called ‘centrist’ Kadima Party led by Tzipi Livni leading the charge. She is seen by many in Washington as less-hardline than the current coalition, with whispers that the US might work behind the scenes to unseat Netanyahu who seen as beholden to religious parties in his coalition and therefore unable to meet the US halfway on issues such as settlement expansion.

After the announcement that the Gaza blockade would be relaxed, Livni accused the Netanyahu Government of making policy at the dictates of international opinion. Previously she accused the incumbent of destroying Israel’s position in world opinion, by its reaction to the flotilla. So before Netanyahu goes to the White House, it seems that Livni has her sights trained on him, irrespective of whether he aligns more closely to Obama on settlements, Gaza or Iran, or whether another row ensues. It is just a few weeks since Vice-President Joe Biden was humiliated in Jerusalem by the announcement that Israel plans 1600 new houses in East Jerusalem. In contrast with the visiting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Netanyahu did not get the customary White House Lawn press and photo-op with the US President during his most recent visit to the US.

He is likely to this time, though cynics might feel this is more about Obama playing to domestic politics than a reappraisal of how the US administration views Israel. Well-known foreign policy analyst Anthony Cordesman recently rationalised that Netanyahu’s government is becoming a “strategic liability” for the US, saying that “It is time Israel realised that it has obligations to the US, as well as the US to Israel, and that it becomes far more careful about the extent to which it tests the limits of US patience and exploits the support of American Jews.”

That support will weigh on Obama’s mind as he continues his introduction to what predecessor Harry S Truman described as a problem unmatched in its complexity and potential for controversy. While 78% of American Jews voted for Obama in 2008, it seems many might be having second thoughts. With midterm elections looming and the passage of the healthcare bill tempered by spectacular losses such as Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, Obama may not want to see the relationship with Israel deteriorate on his watch, for now at least.

Old-school powerhouses in the American-Jewish lobby have rowed in behind the Israeli Government and lambasted the Obama administration’s cool approach to the “special relationship” between the two countries, though there are divergent views within the constituency. Stephen M Walt co-authored ‘The Israel Lobby and US foreign policy’, a provocative take on the influence of the Jewish lobby in the US. He told AtoL that “here are some new pro-Israel groups like J Street that are trying to encourage smarter policies, and there is a much more open discussion of these issues now (due in part to the rise of the Internet and the blogosphere), but the raw political power of AIPAC et al is still formidable.” An April survey by Quinnipiac University showed 67 percent of Jews as disapproving of Barack Obama’s “handling [of] the situation between Israel and the Palestinians.” In another poll, support for President Obama in the Jewish community dropped to 58 percent, a loss of 20 points on the 2008 election.

However other data suggests that the majority of American Jewish voters are card-carrying Democrats and liberal progressives first, with Israel policy less of a priority. This makes them somewhat of an anomaly in a party whose supporters are far less likely to be supportive of Israel than Republicans. (48 percent among Democrats, 85 percent among Republicans).

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=117949

Simon Roughneen in Ramallah – It might be unwitting irony, but the coffee-shop overlooking central Ramallah tips its hat to an American consumer icon, in what might otherwise be deemed an outpost of anti-Americanism.

Inside Stars and Bucks, Ramallah. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Stars and Bucks cafe in downtown Ramallah is branded with almost the same colour scheme as the global chain, a hue pretty-close to Islamic green. Hummus and labaneh are on the menu should the customer want a more “authentic” experience than just downing a Middle East macchiato. Inside a mixture of western and Arabic-dressed women kept to their own tables, appearing inscrutable behind outsized sunglasses. Some men lounged on sofas, puffing on shishas while watching the Portugal-North Korea World Cup mismatch.

Outside traffic crawled through the streets and pedestrians meandered in the 34 degree heat. Downhill from Ramallah’s centre-point at al-Manara square and the iconic coffee shop, a lush fruit and vegetable market is packed high with greens and reds, browns and yellows, while shoppers browsed melons, tomatoes, onions. “You need to ask if you want to take photos here”, said Ashraf, leaning out over his stall to make himself heard over the din of hagglers, before happily posing behind his produce.

Since 2008, the Palestinian Authority has implemented some institutional reforms and economic development, supported by more than US$3 billion in foreign donor assistance.

Growing if still limited Israeli-Palestinian economic cooperation has contributed, with an estimated US$4billion annual turnover, and the U.N. says Israel has dismantled 20 percent of its West Bank checkpoints in the past year.

Fruit and vegetable market near al-Manara Sq, Ramallah. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

However the overall standard-of-living is officially below that seen prior the second intifada, and 505 checkpoints still hinder travel. Ameen, a 22 year old from a village near Jericho, believes that life has not gotten any better for Palestinians in the West Bank. “I have not been to Jerusalem in six years, not since I took a Palestinian ID”, he says. The contested city, site of landmark holy sites for Christianity, Islam and Judaism, is just 15 kilometers away.

Even closer to Jerusalem, residents of Bethlehem can look right across into the iconic and contested city, which both Palestinians and Israelis want as their capital.. Depending on the location, that view is marred by Israel’s unfinished security fence, or segregation wall, depending on who you are talking to. “I cannot go to Jerusalem, unless God forbid, I get sick”, said Mr Sadeh, who earns a living as a tour guide at the city’s Church of the Nativity, within which lies the birthplace of Jesus Christ. His plight mirrors that of millions of Palestinians whose day-to-day life is hampered severely by Israeli security requirements, of which the wall is the most potent and visible restriction.

Getting back to Jerusalem from this tourist draw was hassle-free, with Israeli soldiers waving our taxi through the checkpoint. “See, there are no security problems here”, scoffed *David, the driver, “so they have no need for the wall.” In contrast, coming back from Ramallah meant a customary walk through the checkpoint, after alighting from the bus bound for Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City. “Visa, visa! Show me your visa”, demanded the young female soldier behind the glass.

Earlier back in Ramallah, just a ten minute walk away from al-Manara Square, the mausoleum of Yasser Arafat is open to visitors, apparently without any interrogation or security checks. “Just leave your bag here”, said one of the soldiers manning the entry gate. Within the Mukata – HQ of the Palestinian Authority – a 120 square foot structure holds remains of the former Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader. The tomb is surrounded on three sides by water and on one side by a piece of railtrack, symbolising what Palestinians hope to be the temporary nature of the grave, and by implication, of the current political situation in the West Bank. The stated hope is to rebury Arafat in Jerusalem sometime in the future.

Arafat's Grave. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Across the other side, residents of Israeli neighbourhoods overlooking the same barrier see it differently. Uri Goldflam is an academic at the IDC Herzliya, and often takes visiting groups on tours of Jerusalem to give an Israeli perspective on current events relating to the city. He acknowledges that the “security fence” has contributed to making life harsh for ordinary Palestinians, but says that with memories of suicide bombers crossing the narrow pass from the nearby West bank still fresh in Israeli minds, the barrier remains necessary.

Removal, if it ever materialises, will almost-certainly require a full endgame political solution to the Israel-Palestine issue. Polls suggest that Israelis support a two-state solution, however this does not translate politically in a proportional representation vote system that facilitates a proliferation of small parties often devoted to sectarian or narrow agendas, who then have a disproportionate influence on policy in coalition governments that struggle to last full term. No direct talks have taken place in over a year and a half, and now Israelis and Palestinians are reduced talking indirectly – a regression to a two decade-old old status quo ante.

View of the separation barrier from Jewish neighbourhood in Jerusalem. During the 2nd intifada, Palestinian suicide bombers crossed the narrow divide here into Jerusalem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Dr Kobi Michael lives in Ashkelon and within range of Hamas rockets coming from Gaza. He says that the primary obstacle to peace is that “Palestinians, not just Hamas, do not recognise the right to a Jewish nation-state”. He adds that Israelis need to hear this said – in Arabic – by the Palestinian leaders. Meanwhile many Palestinians think that Israel is bent on undermining a possible two-state solution by expanding settlements in what would presumably be Palestinian territory in that new state.

Within the Palestinian side, Fatah is nervously looking over its shoulder at an emboldened Hamas in Gaza. Described as a reformist, former Word Bank economist and current Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad has pushed many of the measures contributing to improved living conditions in the West Bank. But this has not apparently bolstered Fatah, which cancelled a West Bank municipal election last week, despite the absence of Hamas from the West Bank. Word is that Fatah fears losing to independents, a further blow not only to its diminishing prestige among Palestinians, but to hopes of a solution to the conflict.

*asked that a pseudonym be used

Traffic at Israeli checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Self-described peace activists join hands at Damascus Gate, old city Jerusalem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Praising God. Religious Jews dance in downtown Jerusalem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Separation wall pictured close to Bethlehem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

View of the old city, including the Dome of the rock and al-aqsa mosque, from Jewish cemetary in East Jerusalem. Jews buried here believed that when the Messiah comes, it will be in this place, close to where King David founded the city of Jerusalem in around 1000 BC. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Banner close to the Mukata in Ramallah. The "right of return" is one of the most awkward issues in Israeli-Palestine negotiations. Palestinian refugees in the Middle East want the right to return to their pre-1948 family homes in what is now Israel. Israel says that this would mean the end of the Jewish state. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

More photos here -

http://www.simonroughneen.com/culture-religion/israel-in-the-dock-%e2%80%94-but-what-do-israelis-think/#more-2886

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/06/22/israel-in-the-dock-but-what-do-israelis-think/

Tel-Aviv at night. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Simon Roughneen in Tel-Aviv – Israel has taken a hammering once more in much of the world’s media after the recent flotilla incident and due to the Gaza blockade. Despite the country’s uncompromising “siege mentality” image, a few days in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem suggests that many people are sensitive to what the world thinks. Gali Ginat is a reporter for Maariv newspaper, the second-biggest seller in Israel. She lamented that “it seems that the rest of the world hates us now”. And while the Government and the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) have mounted a vociferous defence of the country’s actions in recent weeks, many Israelis are not fully-convinced.

I spoke with Gal Lin at the Media in Conflict seminar organised by the IDC Herzliya, where he is a student. He said that “it’s almost a consensus in Israel that the execution of the operation to stop the flotilla was poor”. During the seminar IDF spokeswoman Lt Col Avital Liebovich fielded tough questions from Israeli journalists who thought the operation was a mess, and from Turkish reporters who questioned the official account of events.

After the flotilla incident and a Red Cross statement that the blockade contravenes international law as it involves collective punishment of one million Palestinians living inside Gaza, Israel announced that it would relax some of the blockade’s provisions. Most Israelis I asked about this said that they are happy for anything that could not be used against Israel by Hamas to be let through, as the Red Cross and others say that humanitarian conditions inside Gaza are “dire”. It is difficult to get information from Gaza and Israeli journalists are not generally permitted to enter the strip. Foreign correspondents are encouraged to go to Gaza, according to the IDF spokeswoman, but this reporter had not yet been granted permission to enter the territory at time of writing.

Jewish settlement in the West Bank, viewed from road into Bethlehem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Israel’s politics features multiple viewpoints and opinions, from secular Zionism to radical leftists to  ultra-orthodox religious parties.  Despite the country’s small size and population, over 30 parties ran in the 2009 parliamentary elections, contesting 120 seats. That vote resulted in a right-leaning coalition under current PM Benjamin Netanyahu gaining power – which opposition leader Tzipi Livni accuses of destroying Israel’s already-shaky standing in world opinion. 12 parliamentarians represent the roughly20% of Israelis who are Palestinian, sometimes called Arab-Israeli  to distinguish them from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. These are Arabs who remained in Israel after the 1948 war, and while they have full citizenship rights, with surveys suggesting that a majority prefer to live in Israel than in neighbouring Arab states, subtle forms of discrimination exist according to various high-level reports.

But when human right abuses take place in countries such as Sudan or Burma, Israelis scent a double-standard, believing that what happens in these places does not spark the same level of ire in the West . IDC lecturer Dr Jonathan Fine reflected that “the Turks just killed 140 Kurds a few days ago, but where are all the demonstrations?” Israeli opposition parliamentarian Nitzan Horowitz believes that one reason why Israel is vilified in world opinion is that “people have higher expectations of us than many other countries as we are a liberal democracy”. However he disagrees with what he terms “the siege” of Gaza, saying that it not only does it make life excessively-hard for Gazans, but that it bolsters Hamas rather than the given rationale of undermining it.

Israelis soldiers give a busker a break in market area of Jerusalem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Now, after the Government’s decision to relax the blockade, the next test will be implementation – whether or not revised list of goods actually gets through and living conditions improve for Gazans. But according to almost every Israeli I spoke with, a full ending of the blockade cannot be considered until at least Hamas frees kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and probably not until Hamas officially recognises Israel.

The Gilad Schalit casee remains emotive in Israel. Palestinians say that the capture of one Israelisoldiers cannot be compared to the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Self-deprecatory humour? (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

http://www.thepost.ie/news/world/coloniser-israel-relaxes-gaza-blockade-49972.html

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0620/worldreport.html

SIMON ROUGHNEEN IN JERUSALEM – Israel’s Government last week agreed to relax its 4-year long blockade on the

Gaza Strip, but the fallout from the recent flotilla incident lingers. With Israeli-US relations somewhat-frayed of late, US President Barack Obama called the move “ a step in the right direction”. Israel has come under intense international criticism for the deaths of nine Turks onboard the Mavi Marmara, one of six boats that tried to breach the naval blockade on May 31 last. Former Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble is one of two foreign observers to a committee set up to look into the clash, but described as a diversion by critics such as Turkey who want an international investigation.

Israelis call it a security fence, Palestinians call it a segregation wall. Pictured near Rachel's Tomb close to Bethlehem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Israel maintains that its soldiers were set upon first by members of a controversial Turkish group known in English acronym form as the IHH. Israeli Defence Force (IDF) spokeswoman Lt Col Avital Liebovich told a press conference that video evidence proves that the fourth Israeli soldier to land on the boat was the first to open fire on the IHH contingent, after three colleagues were already attacked with iron bars.

Israel has been accused of heavy-handedness in dealing with the ship and many Israelis I spoke with this week criticised the planning and methods used to deal with the flotilla. Alon Pinkas recently served as Israeli Consul-General to the US. Speaking at the closing of the “Media in Conflicts Seminar” in Tel-Aviv on Friday, he said that “Israel has never been in a worse place in world opinion”, but added that some of this opprobrium comes from a misperception among liberal opinion in the west that “Israel is a coloniser” akin to the French and British empires.

Previously Israel ruled out changing Gaza policy without progress on freeing Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid in 2006. Contrary to international law, Hamas has not given the Red Cross access to Mr Shalit, who has been held incommunicado. Gaza is controlled by Hamas, deemed a terrorist group by the US and EU. On Thursday a Hamas spokesman described Israel’s decision to ease the blockade on the Gaza Strip as “a new trick aiming at enhancing the siege’s image and securing its continuation instead of lifting and ending it.” Hamas does not recognise Israel and its charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

And now Gaza is at the center of some regional chest-pounding. Asked by the Post, Lt. Col. Leibovich would not discuss rumours that Saudi Arabia will turn a blind eye should Israel fly over its territory to attack suspected nuclear sites in Iran. Turkey, once Israel’s closest ally in the region and still the second-biggest army in NATO, is seemingly moving to the east, with an Islamist party in power and the prospect of EU membership ever more distant.

The Israeli Government is warning Lebanon, Iran and Turkey against sending boats or allowing boats to depart, to try breach the blockade, raising concerns that more sea-borne clashes could ensue. Israel points out it has previously intercepted arms cargoes on the Mediterranean, coming from Iran and destined for Hamas.

But inside Gaza itself, the impact of all this hits hard, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The day before Israel announced the relaxation, the Red Cross deemed the blockade a violation of the Geneva Conventions, as it involves a collective punishment of the Palestinian people inside Gaza, also contrary to the laws of war which say that civilians should not be made suffer for the actions of armed groups. The Red Cross said that the blockade is choking off any real possibility of economic development, with the quality of the territory’s health care system at an all-time low. Israel’s relaxation does not affect the sea blockade of Gaza or its ban on the private import of building materials, saying that these will only be allowed into Gaza under international supervision.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0110/worldreport.html

ABU DHABI – When Irish people think of a diocese, they likely imagine a county-sized region with townland parishes within.

Not so for Bishop Paul Hinder. He is the Pope’s representative in the heartland of Islam, in charge of a diocese encompassing six Arab countries – Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

I caught up with him at St Josephs Cathedral in the oil-wealthy city of Abu Dhabi, part of the Emirates. That same day, neighbouring Dubai launched the world’s tallest building, the 800 meter high Burj Khalifa, with the building effectively paid-for by Abu Dhabi, which is footing Dubai’s bills after spectacular property bust last year.

Bishop Hinder is more concerned about the estimated 2 million Catholics across his vast diocese. The majority are Filipino migrant workers, with an estimated 1 million or more in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and site of its holiest places. Here open Christian worship is not permitted, and priests cannot serve.

Workers also come from countries such as Ethiopia and India, and many suffer at the hands of unscrupulous agents and employers. Often they come to the region on the promise of a good job and good conditions, but on arrival their passport is taken by their new employer, or the agent who brought them from home, and they are forced to work long, almost incessant hours, with no recourse to due process.

The women usually work as domestic servants, and stories of beatings and sexual abuse are rife. Some women are trafficked into prostitution, Men often work on the mammoth construction projects, such as the Burj Khalifa, toiling in the hot desert sun for a pittance. Some say their conditions are little more than slavery.

It is a stark contrast to the luxury enjoyed by western expats living tax-free in Dubai or Abu Dhabi.

The Church does what it can to help, but in Saudi Arabia, where the bulk of the flock are, Church activity is proscribed. In Abu Dhabi, there is more freedom, and Bishop Hinder acknowledges that the Church was welcomed by then-ruler Sheikh Sayed, when the regional hq was moved from Yemen in the 1970s.

Still, however, the church must keep a low profile, and it is absolutely forbidden by law for Bishop Hinder or any of the 60 priests in the vast diocese to proselytise. As if to underline the heirarchy, the evening call-to-prayer issued aloud from the green-lit sandstone mosque next door, causing a pause in our conversation.

St Joseph’s Cathedral sits in the shadow of the minarets, and looks more like a community hall, with no discernable physical features such as spires or crosses outside or on the building. Still, it caters for 13 language groups, and on Christmas Day over 20 Masses were celebrated.

All in all, the diocese is made up of 20 parishes across the six countries, with seven churches in the UAE, 4 in Oman, 1 in Qatar and 1 in Bahrain. Bishop Hinder says that resources are stretched, and that sacramental work takes up most of the time, leaving less opportunity than elsewhere to develop social organisations such as Caritas, which could help some of the struggling Catholic migrant workers, or to do pastoral work with parishioners.

But it is Saudi Arabia where the biggest challenges lie ahead. Masses cannot be held and confession cannot take place. And though conditions improved after the Saudi king’s visit to Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, Bishop Hinder says that he does not expect any churches to be built there anytime soon.

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=19329

Faces of the family hidden to protect their identity (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Iraqi Christian refugees flee the horror of sectarian violence at home to struggle with life in Lebanon.

By Simon Roughneen in Beirut for ISN Security Watch

“My friend was stopped at a checkpoint on the road to Irbil from Baghdad. The people in the car had to show their ID cards to the masked men.

“They could see she was Christian from her name. They dragged her from the car, pushed her to her knees and put a gun to her head.

“They told her to convert to Islam, or die. She refused and started praying out loud. But they did not kill her, not straight away. They raped her and then she was shot in the head.”

Pascale (her name and the names of her family members have been changed to protect their identity) has recounted this tale too many times to cry any more. However this story, as elemental as it is heart-rending, is not unique among the estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees who have fled their country since 2003.

Maybe the heroism of this story loses some of its currency with each telling, or maybe each individual tragedy gets lost in Iraq’s deluge of blood-letting.

But before this reporter can overcome his pitiful inability to cope with what has just been said and ask more details, Pascale’s husband Paulos picks up the thread.

“Our neighborhood in Mosul was nicknamed Death Street. Two weeks before we left, my next-door neighbor was shot in his home. The terrorists said ‘give the child to your wife.’ When he did this, they shot him four or five times, in front of the woman and her little one.”

Pausing momentarily, he adds, “Later, two of my sisters were widowed by car bombs.”

The family has spent the past year in a claustrophobic one-room apartment in Beirut’s outskirts. Kitchen and living room by day, bedroom by night, the entire flat is a little bigger than the average western bathroom and opens into a covered car park.

Lebanon hosts some 50,000 Iraqis while neighboring Syria and Jordan have around 1.5 million and 500,000, respectively, though these are high-end estimates used by the governments in Damascus and Amman, and are disputed by refugee agencies who posit lower figures.

But in global terms, displacement in and from Iraq outranks Sudan and is second only to Afghanistan.

Of Iraqis in Lebanon, 30 percent are Christian, with over half Shia, reflecting long-standing links between the respective communities in both countries. The rest are Sunni – around 17 percent of the total – and the balance minorities such as Mandeans and Yazidi.

Iraq’s Chaldeans speak a form of Aramaic, the language used by Jesus Christ. Chaldeans converted to Christianity in the 1st century AD and have been in Iraq ever since. Like Lebanon’s Maronites – the majority Christian community in that country – the Chaldeans are part of the Roman Catholic Church.

Michel Kasdano, a retired Lebanese armed forces general, told ISN Security Watch, “In the past six months, most of the arrivals have been from Mosul as security there deteriorates.”

Kasdano leads a diocesan team that helps Christian Iraqis arriving in Lebanon, providing financial and educational support, medical aid and assistance in finding accommodation and employment, all mirroring similar work by Shiite and Sunni Muslim groups.

A precipitous decline in Iraq’s ancient Christian population has left approximately 450,000 to 700,000 in the country. Estimates vary but between 300,000-500,000 have fled since the fall of Saddam’s regime in 2003, while a similar number left during the final 15 years of Baath dictatorship in Mesopotamia.

In February 2008, Christian persecution in Iraq – and Mosul in particular – claimed its highest-profile victim: Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paul Faraj Rahho. His body was found days after he and three companions were ambushed by gunmen, and a month after the archbishop had called for Christians to cease paying the jizya, once a tax paid by Christians and Jews to Muslim rulers. Since the fall of Saddam, the jizya has morphed into a protection racket extorted by paramilitaries, with the proceeds apparently funding terrorist groups.

Kasdano added that “30 percent of the attacks [on Christians] are criminal opportunists who see a weakened and vulnerable minority.”

The start of the exodus

The refugee flight started in 2005, two years after the US invasion of Iraq, as hoped-for reconstruction and nation building gave way to al-Qaida-infiltrated sectarian and ethnic chaos that the US and its allies seemed incapable of handling until the recent “surge” orchestrated by General David Petraeus. The move saw local Sunni leaders partner with the US-led coalition to drive foreign al-Qaida affiliates from the country, abetted by Iran-induced Shiite militia ceasefires.

The number of Iraqis leaving the country skyrocketed with the attack on a shrine in Samarra in early 2006, which sparked a de facto sectarian civil war between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq. Christians were caught in the middle.

In all, one-in-five Iraqis have left their homes since 2005. However the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that 40 percent of Iraqi refugees are Christian — a staggering number considering that Christians made up for only some 4 percent, or 1.5 million, of Iraq’s total pre-invasion population.

The caveat, however, for Iraq’s Christians, is that they are an unprotected minority, and unlike the Sunnis, Shia or Kurds, the Christians do not have a homegrown militia. The US and its allies in Iraq have been shied from protecting Christians, partly due to wariness of offending Iraq’s Muslim majorities.

Paulos recounted to ISN Security Watch that in the vortex of violence and extremism that started 2003, Sunnis aghast at losing power in Iraq told Christians in the area “Your uncles are here, Crusaders.”

But Uncle Sam’s arrival did not do much for Iraqi Christians, with some accusing the US Army of failing to protect them as it feared this would fuel insurgent propagandists.

On the other hand, the US television news program 60 Minutes documented Iraqi Christians asking that US Marines not be deployed near their churches, fearing Sunni or Shia militia reprisals for this alleged “collaboration.”

Paulos laughs, wistfully weighing the pros and cons: “We never expected the Americans to put a soldier at every house.”

When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met Pope Benedict XVI in July this year, he asked the pontiff to persuade Iraq’s Christians to return to Iraq, and stated his belief that they were not being targeted by Iraq’s violent ethno-religious strife.

But in response to the meeting, Iraqi Christian parliament member Younadam Kanna told the Associated Press that the situation for Christians in Baghdad had improved in recent months but, “in Mosul, the situation is the same as it used to be and it’s getting worse.”

According to Kasdano, “Christian refugees from Iraq do not want to go back, they feel they are being driven out.”

Hardships in a foreign land

Lebanon’s Iraqis face some onerous common challenges, irrespective of the circumstances of their exile. First among those is the Lebanon’s lack of refugee legislation, leaving the Iraqis in a legal no-man’s land.

Stephane Jaquemet of the UNCHR office in Beirut told ISN Security Watch, “Lebanon does not have a refugee law. It treats most Iraqis as illegal immigrants, regardless of their need to be protected as refugees.”

A memorandum of understanding signed by Lebanon and the US in 2003 aimed to loosen procedures, but this was intended for only hundreds of annual arrivals, not the 50,000-plus influx, adding to Lebanon’s long-present 400,000 Palestinian refugees in camps across the country.

“The authorities here will not see Lebanon as an asylum country until the Palestinian issue has been resolved,” Jaquemet said.

For Paulos and Pascale, coping with three children struggling to find schools and friends, with either parent seeking one decent work opportunity, capped by the frustrations and struggles of the asylum system – it all makes for a grinding, stultifying existence.

The family says it has already been turned down for entry to the US. With relatives in Australia and Sweden, options to move to those countries have also been ruled out for now due to the complicated legal issues concerning the number of family members they will take.

Not shy on black humor, Paulos predicts, “We will go to Afghanistan!” But joking aside, unless he finds better paying work, and in turn a more congenial place to live, he even contemplates a return to Iraq, back home to Death Street.

Kasdano counsels otherwise, pointing out that he has heard of a factory owner in East Beirut who needs workers; and of a neighborhood housing hundreds of Iraqis, which means company and community support.

However, Paulos seems at his wits end. “Why not go back? Maybe I will be killed at home, but we are dead living here like this.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/14/petraeus-visit-focuses-on-military-assistance/

BEIRUT — Gearing up to take over the U.S. Central Command for the Middle East in September, Gen. David H. Petraeus last week paid a surprise visit to Beirut to meet Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

The U.S. Embassy in Lebanon said the meetings “focused on the United States´ assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces, so it can maintain peace and stability, and safeguard the Lebanese people.”

Shot-up banner of Saad Hariri, Tripoli (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

However, the stopover last week came just a day after the Lebanese government agreed on a new manifesto, claiming “the right of Lebanon, its people, its army and its resistance to liberate its land in the Shebaa Farms, Kfarshuba Hill and Ghajar,” areas currently under Israeli control.

The “resistance” refers to Hezbollah, which in May received an effective veto in a new national unity government deal brokered in Doha, Qatar, after its fighters overran much of Beirut.

The Lebanese parliament on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the new government, which gives Hezbollah and its allies 11 out of 30 seats in the Cabinet.

Hezbollah – listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Britain, Israel, Australia and the Netherlands – is also able to retain its arsenal under the national unity government – a blow to the credibility of the U.N. Security Council, which has ordered Lebanese militias disarmed.

The Iran-backed Shi’ite Hezbollah militia is advancing at the expense of the pro-Western March 14 coalition, a Sunni-led amalgam that includes Druze and some Christian allies.

Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah “simply isn’t working.”

Toni Nissi, general coordinator of a private charity and advocacy group that calls for full implementation of U.N. resolutions on Lebanon, told The Washington Times that “March 14 has compromised with terror.”

However, Alain Aoun, political officer for the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), a key Christian partner of Hezbollah, told The Times that “our objectives are to preserve unity, and Hezbollah’s arms should be dealt with as part of a process that addresses the reasons why those arms exist.”

Mona Yacoubian, a Lebanon specialist at the United States Institute of Peace, said the manifesto is “a Lebanese-style compromise [and] clearly a sop to Hezbollah.” It also asserts the government’s authority on issues of national defense simply serves to help put the current unity Cabinet in place, she said.

However, Israel sees the uneasy Hezbollah-March 14 rapprochement as a threat.

Professor Barry Rubin directs the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya. He told The Washington Times that “in several important ways, including the non-enforcement of the U.N. resolutions, not restricting Hezbollah activity, claiming Shebaa farms, permitting attacks on Israel, Hezbollah policy seems to be Lebanese policy.”

In 2007, the U.S. boosted military assistance to Lebanon to $270 million, a fivefold jump that makes the country the second-highest per-capita recipient of such American aid.

Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC