In the three short years that Hop! has been in Israeli homes, it has become a unique phenomenon: It's the channel that everyone loves to love. It's hard to imagine any other entity in the oft-berated Israeli media - especially when it comes to its influence on children - being so universally praised by parents, critics, academics and, of course, children. Hop!'s reputation is now approaching the problematic point where parents are parking their kids in front of the TV screen without bothering at all see what's on, just because they've heard that, as the slogan says, with this channel, the child is "growing up in good hands."

In May 2001, police arrested over 50 men during a raid on the Queen Boat nightclub on the Nile in Zamalek. Originally, the case was handed over to the Egyptian State Security-Emergency court, which delivered one-year or two-year sentences to the men. Two other men, considered to be the ringleaders, were given longer, three-year and five-year sentences after they were accused of "scorning religion." Emergency court decisions cannot be appealed.

But in June 2002, Egypt’s military governor ordered a retrial for the men, including those who were acquitted, to be held in regular criminal courts. The governor said the case did not fall under the jurisdiction of the State Security-Emergency court.

[A Jewish participant] defined the [Arab] participants as people who are disgusted with MK Azmi Bishara's rhetoric. Bishara, he said, "has managed to concentrate all the young intellectuals of Israel's Arab sector around him, and they look down on all the others."

Some of these "others," mainly older people, came on the trip because they are disgusted with the nationalist rhetoric, and simply want to live in peace. They can perhaps be defined as the "bourgeoisie" of the Arab sector: people who have succeeded in their lives in Israel, and for whom a polarization of relations between the peoples threatens their serenity. They want to live in peace, and usually accept the Jewish identity of Israel, but will not relinquish their self-respect, of which Arab-Palestinian identity is a part. "I don't feel that we have been `fated' to live together," said Ahmed Massalah of Daburiya, who owns a successful law firm in Afula. "I want to live alongside you."

Even the doctor, Darawshi, a native of the village of Iksal, whose tone is more aggressive than that of Massalah, accepts the Jewish identity of Israel, but emphasized that he does so "in the spirit of the [Israeli] Declaration of Independence," i.e., maintaining the full civil rights of the Arab public. "I would define it this way: Israel as the state of the Jewish people, and of all its citizens," he says.

Nuha Kawar, a poet from Nazareth, even admitted at the end of the first day that she had come on the trip as an Arab nationalist and a "Jew-hater," but the sights she saw in Auschwitz had brought about a profound change in her position. Immediately afterward, she even wrote a poem of identification with the pain of the survivors.

The overseas media operators licence is simply a policy matter which is in line with the United States of America and other countries, where foreigners are not permitted to own and operate any newspapers or other media communications in those countries.

The official slogan here is "Tonga: the land where time begins". It might better read "the land where time stands still"

Almost everywhere else in the Levant, because of discrimination and in some cases outright persecution, the Christians are leaving. Today in the Middle East they are a small minority of 14 million; in the last 20 years at least two million have left to make new lives for themselves in Europe, Australia and America. Only in Syria has this pattern been resisted. As the Syrian Orthodox metropolitan of Aleppo, Mar Gregorios Ibrahim, told me on my last visit: "Christians are better off in Syria than anywhere else in the Middle East. Other than Lebanon, this is the only country in the region where a Christian can really feel the equal of a Muslim."

Shortly after [1948], the Syrian government intensified its persecution of the Jewish population. Freedom of movement was severely restricted. Jews who attempted to flee faced either the death penalty or imprisonment at hard labor. Jews were not allowed to work for the government or banks, could not acquire telephones or driver's licenses, and were barred from buying property. Jewish bank accounts were frozen. An airport road was paved over the Jewish cemetery in Damascus; Jewish schools were closed and handed over to Muslims.

[...]

For years, the Jews in Syria lived in extreme fear. The Jewish Quarter in Damascus was under the constant surveillance of the secret police, who were present at synagogue services, weddings, bar-mitzvahs and other Jewish gatherings. Contact with foreigners was closely monitored. Travel abroad was permitted in exceptional cases, but only if a bond of $300-$1,000 was left behind, along with family members who served as hostages.

Ordinary Muslims in Syria, it seems, have not forgotten the line in the Koran about not disputing with the people of the book — that is, Jews and Christians — "save in the most courteous manner . . . and say we believe in what has been sent down to us and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is one."