The Pessoptimist

Jew in Arabia, goy in Israel

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Security Council rejects resolution on Palestine

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The Security  Council in seesion. (Photo AFP) The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday rejected a Palestinian resolution calling for an Isr...
Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Egypt: young protesters against anti-law get prison sentence of two years

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Yara Sallam  An Egyptian appeals court reduced the jail terms on Sunday for 23 young activists convicted of violating a law banning ...

"Palestinians will outnumber Jews in historic Palestine in 2016"

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Figures released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics on Monday suggest that Palestinians will outnumber Israeli Jews in histori...
Sunday, December 28, 2014

Bahrain detains leader of oppositional Wefaq party

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Sheikh Ali Salman. (Photo: Reuters) Bahraini authorities on Sunday detained the head of the main Shi'ite Muslim opposition group af...

''Islamic State executed almost 2.000 people in six months''

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The Islamic State militant group has killed 1,878 people in Syria during the past six months, the majority of them civilians, a British-base...
Monday, December 22, 2014

"Egypt arrested 10.000 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2014''

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   Arrest of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo. The photo (by AP) is from  October 2013. The Egyptian police arrested 10,000...

Jordan revives death penalty, executes 11 citizens

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Jordan executed 11 citizens on Sunday, ending an eight-year moratorium on capital punishment, judicial sources said. The hanged men were...
Monday, December 8, 2014

TV host colludes with Egyptian police in raid on visitors of bathhouse presumed to be gay

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  Almost naked men got arrested. The woman filming with her phone at the right is Mona Iraqi. The Egyptian police carried out a massive r...

Israeli airstrikes near Damascus, Israeli cooperation with Syrian rebels near Quneitra

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  The Syrian government accused Israel of launching a series of airstrikes on the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday, as a UN report documen...

Thirteen killed in failed US rescue attempt in Yemen

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Luke Somers in een filmpje dat AQAP vorige weekuitbracht A woman, a 10-year-old boy and a local al Qaeda leader were among at lea...
Saturday, December 6, 2014

Iranian official confirms airstrikes on IS in Iraq

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A senior Iranian official has confirmed his country carried out air strikes in neighboring Iraq against Islamic State fighters at the reques...
Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Radwa Ashour 1946-2014

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Radwa Ashour with her husband, Mourid el-Barghouti. Barghouti and Ashour met as students at Cairo University in the 1960s, and he writes a...
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Abu Pessoptimist
This blogname was derived from a satiric Arabic novel by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby. In the ''The Secret Life of Saeed The Pessoptimist'' he uses absurdism as a weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. I consider it to be an example for how events in Israel/Palestine best can be approached. The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. In a way that is also still my motto. My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. In 2018, I concluded the study 'Arabic language and culture' at the University of Amsterdam. I started 'Abu Pessoptimist' in January 2009 out of anger about the onslaught of that month in Gaza. The other blog, The Pessoptimist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)
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