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Saturday, April 12, 2014
Excerpts: Affection for Israel. Wishful jihadist. Iran ends cash subsidy program April 12, 2014

Excerpts: Affection for Israel. Wishful jihadist. Iran ends cash subsidy
program April 12, 2014

SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon) 12 April ‘14”Carla Bruni ‘Crazy about Israel’
ahead of Tel Aviv Show”, Agence France Presse
SUBJECT: Affection for Israel
QUOTE:” ‘I’m crazy about Israel’ she said . ‘It’s full of life’ “

FULL TEXT:France's former first lady Carla Bruni declared herself "crazy
about Israel" and talked about Jewish family ties in an interview published
by an Israeli daily on Friday[11April]

Ahead of a May 25 concert in Tel Aviv, the singer, guitarist and former
model told the Hebrew-language Yediot Aharonot that she hoped to bring both
her husband, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, and her son Aurelien with
her.

Italian-born Bruni, 46, told the newspaper that her father was Jewish and
that while Sarkozy had a Jewish grandfather he also has a Jewish grandson,
Solal, through his son Jean's 2008 marriage to Jewish heiress Jessica
Sebaoun.

"Jean married Jessica, who is Jewish and is the only observant one in her
family," she said.

Aurelien was born in 2001 from her relationship with philosopher Raphael
Enthoven, and both circumcised and baptized, she added.

"His father is Jewish and I give him the gift of both heritages," she told
Yediot Aharonot.

Bruni said that she had visited Israel twice before; once as a model and
once with her husband on a state visit.

"I'm crazy about Israel," she said. "It's full of life."

"Maybe if my husband comes we'll stay for a couple of days more. I want to
bring my son to Israel for him to get to know it."

SourceAgence France Presse



+++SOURCE: New York Times 12 April ’14:”In Jordan Town, Syria War Inspires
Jihadist Dreams” by Ben Hubbard
SUBJECT: Wishful jihadist dream
QUOTE: “his wife’s anguish soon persuaded him to return . . . he now longs
for his days as an international jihadist”

FULL TEXT: ZARQA, Jordan — Late one night, Abu Abdullah left his whole life
behind.Abandoning his wife, two children and a modest frozen foods business,
he sneaked across the border to Syria to join an affiliate of Al Qaeda.He
thrived on the blasts and gunfire and relished the feeling of serving what
he saw as a celestial cause. But his wife’s anguish soon persuaded him to
return to this desert city, where he now longs for his days as an
international jihadist.“If I could go back and do it again, I would not come
back,” he said. “Those were the best three months of my life.”

Here in the hometown of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who gained infamy for his
bloody reign as the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq during the early years of the
American occupation there, the increasingly sectarian war in Syria has
ignited militants, inspiring the largest jihadist mobilization the city has
ever seen.

Jordanian analysts and Islamists estimate that 800 to 1,200 Jordanians have
gone to fight in Syria, more than double the number who fought in
Afghanistan or Iraq. Though the fighters come from across the country, fully
a third hail from here, the most from any single area.

Most fighters disappear without telling their families, only to resurface
across the border with the Nusra Front, Syria’s Qaeda affiliate, or the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a Qaeda splinter group. While some are
uneducated and poor, others have university degrees and leave behind jobs,
homes, cars, wives and children for a cause they believe will bring them
rewards in heaven.

For most, it is a one-way trip, either because coming home could mean jail
time or because they die abroad. Every few weeks, a Zarqa family holds a
“martyr’s wedding,” so-called because achieving martyrdom is not seen as a
cause for sadness, but for gathering and celebration.

While analysts say Jordan’s stagnant politics and economy encourage
marginalized, devout men to seek glory on foreign battlefields, Islamist
leaders, fighters and their relatives describe decisions motivated by
intense conviction.

Many fighters are driven by the Syrian government’s extreme violence and the
sense that the world is doing nothing to stop it. At the same time, they see
Syria as a launching pad for their project to erase the region’s borders and
found an Islamic state and impose Shariah law.

“There is no such thing as Syria for the Syrians,” said Munif Samara, a
doctor and prominent Islamist in Zarqa. “If there is Islamic land, it is our
duty to implement Shariah.”

Mr. Samara, who knows many Jordanians fighting in Syria, said he would not
discourage his own son, a dentistry student, from going to Syria if he chose
to.“How long do we live?” Mr. Samara asked. “Do I give him the world or do I
give him the afterlife?”

To illuminate why local men fight in Syria, Mr. Samara arranged a meeting in
his clinic between reporters and Abu Abdullah, who said that growing up in
Zarqa, he had long been aware of jihad as a potential career path. Men he
knew had fought and died in Chechnya and Iraq, and he began growing his
beard as a sign of devotion after the death of Mr. Zarqawi in 2006.

After the Syria conflict started, gruesome images on TV and worries about
spreading Iranian influence led him to jihad, he said, providing only his
nom de guerre to avoid arrest by the Jordanian authorities.

Friends already in Syria put him in touch with a smuggler, who led him
across the border at night with 16 other Jordanians, he said. All carried
medical supplies, mostly pills and needles. He took only a spare pair of
cargo pants and some extra underwear.Over 30, he was in worse shape than his
younger colleagues, so he performed poorly at military drills, he said. But
since he had run his own business, he was put in charge of the group’s
supplies, buying food for fighters and destitute Syrian families.

He called home often, and after hearing his wife complain that raising their
two children alone was hard, and that his 8-year-old daughter was troubled
by his absence, he said, he decided to return home.The Jordanian authorities
detained him at the border but released him a month later because they
lacked evidence that he had been a fighter, he said.

The Syrian Opposition, Explained
There are believed to be hundreds, if not thousands, of groups fighting in
Syria. These opposition groups are fighting the Assad regime, but recently
turned on each other with increased ferocity.

Now, back in Zarqa, he said that he missed his old life and that the police
watched him closely.

“Here you feel like you are in a small cage and can’t move,” he said.

His account could not be independently verified, but Marwan Shehadeh and
Hassan Abu Hanieh, Jordanian experts on Islamic movements, said its details
corresponded with the stories of other men who had fought in Syria.

In many cases, the fighters’ sudden departures deeply affect their families,
leaving many torn between support for the cause and mourning their personal
loss.

Sitting in his book-lined living room, one Zarqa father, Mohammed Abu
Rahaim, proudly swiped through photos on his phone and spoke of his two sons
who had joined the Nusra Front in Syria.

There was Hutheifa, 38, an athletic college graduate who left a wife, three
children and a teaching job. One photo showed him in silhouette, wielding a
machine gun. A video showed him adjusting the scarf over his face after a
rebel victory.

“He disappeared suddenly, then called and said, ‘I am in Syria,’ ” Mr. Abu
Rahaim said, recalling his son’s departure.

And there was Harith, 32, who also left a wife, three children and a steady
job. One photo showed him with a rifle at his side, heating water on a wood
fire. The next photo showed him dead, his bearded face protruding from a
body bag. Mr. Abu Rahaim said he had been driving when the phone call came
with the news. “I got out of my car and bowed to God,” he said, proud that
his son had achieved the martyrdom he so desired.

Mr. Abu Rahaim, a professor of Islamic culture, said the family had often
discussed “the affairs of the Muslims,” including the wars in Bosnia, Iraq
and Afghanistan, but that Syria felt more personal. His wife’s family fled
Syria in the 1980s during the government’s crackdown on the Muslim
Brotherhood, and some of their relatives had been killed.

Like many others, he saw jihad in Syria as a noble effort to replace the
countries created by colonial powers with an Islamic state. “Western
countries allowed sects, misled groups and misled parties to rule the
Muslims,” he said. “Will this last forever? Impossible!”

When news of his son’s death spread, hundreds of mourners came to the house
for the martyr’s wedding. In a large tent draped with black flags, attendees
listened to sermons, sang religious anthems and chanted, “Our path: Jihad!”

But Mr. Rahaim’s wife, Huda Wazan, cried as she spoke of her sons, recalling
how attentive the younger had been to his infant daughter and how she had
once hidden the elder’s passport to prevent him from quitting school for
jihad. “You worry because the environment and the friends really impact the
way these young men think,” she said.

While she believed it had been her son’s fate to die in Syria, she was still
crushed by the loss.

“There are people who say it is a wedding for the martyr instead of a
funeral, but I don’t agree with this,” she said. “It is a funeral for me.”

Rana Sweis contributed reporting from Zarqa


+++SOURCE: Washington Post 12 April ’14:”To save money, Iran ends popular
cash payout program”, by Jason Rezaian
SUBJECT: Iran ends cash subsidy program
QUOTES:”As of last month, more than 90 percent of Iranians were receiving
monthly direct deposits”; “Rouhani will assume the blame”
FULL TEXT:TEHRAN — In a bid to cut spending, the Iranian government has
ended a massive cash assistance program and launched a celebrity-driven
campaign to convince millions of Iranians that they do not need the help.

It’s unlikely to be a popular message. As of last month, more than 90
percent of Iranians were receiving monthly direct deposits from the
government of about $15 — a sum that many, though certainly not all,
depended on to buy staples whose prices have soared in recent years.

The payments were launched in 2010 by then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as
part of a program to reduce state subsidies on utilities and food. But they
ended up costing the government billions of dollars and, many economists
say, contributing to Iran’s skyrocketing inflation rate.

On Friday[11 April], the government of President Hassan Rouhani sent the
final payment to Iranians’ bank accounts, and it is taking applications to
determine how many people really need the help.

To keep that number as low as possible, the government is airing radio and
television ads in which professional soccer players and actors say they will
not enroll. Most cabinet ministers have urged their staffs not to sign up,
and one of the country’s highest-ranking Shiite clerics issued a fatwa
Thursday deeming the collection of payments by those who are not poor
“religiously problematic.”

Deciding who truly needs the help — and slimming such a massive assistance
program in general — will be a key test for Rouhani, who was elected in June
largely based on his promise of a brighter economic future for all Iranians.
The government has not said what the cutoffs for eligibility will be or when
the payments will resume.

Ahmadinejad’s government originally intended to deliver the deposits only to
the needy. But analysts say a combination of limited income data and
political turmoil after Ahmadinejad’s disputed 2009 election led him to view
the aid as an opportunity to placate a restless society.

“Given that the government was already unnerved by the 2009 protests,
universalizing the cash grant was the path of least resistance for
Ahmadinejad,” said Kevan Harris, a Princeton University sociologist who
studies Iran’s social welfare system.

For millions of Iranian households, the deposits quickly became an important
economic boost during difficult times. The program is now generally accepted
as an important first step to wean the public off of overly subsidized
utilities, but at a very high cost.

The head of the government agency that oversees the deposits said this week
that in the 38 months since the program began, the equivalent of more than
$50 billion had been paid to Iranian bank accounts.

But as the government asks the public to help it reduce the payouts, some
recipients are calling the message insensitive to the problems of ordinary
people.

“My husband is retired, and we rely on the payments to help manage our
expenses,” said homemaker Masoumeh Tabrizi, 65. “We must register. I have
seen on TV that they are telling people not to take the money, but it seems
they do not recognize the situation of people like us.”

Alieh Firoozi, another homemaker, said she had already registered for the
payments.

“If the government doesn’t want to give it to us, let them make that
decision, but I think they must take special care of families like ours,”
Firoozi said. She said her family of five uses the monthly cash infusions to
help cover the expenses of a disabled daughter who requires constant care
and lives in a state-run hospital.

The online application process is also an effort by authorities to collect
financial data from a public that has rarely been willing to divulge such
information to the state. The government has warned that those who provide
false financial data on their applications will be fined three times as much
as their previous monthly deposits.

The program changes have coincided with the announcement of utility and
gasoline price increases, which are adding to public concerns that this year
will be even more economically trying than last year.

“Whenever the price of gasoline goes up, so does the price of bread, and
when bread gets more expensive so does everything else,” said Marzieh
Dolati, a teacher who said she makes the national average income of about
$350 per month. “We’re not stupid. We see what’s happening in front of us.”

Increasing prices and the national currency’s diminished purchasing power
have been among Iranians’ core complaints for several years. If these
problems are not resolved, they threaten to undermine the new government’s
popularity.

“These price hikes will create short-term bursts of inflation,” said Harris,
the Princeton sociologist. “There's no getting around it. If the government
cannot explain the rationale for the policy as it continues, then people
will forget about Ahmadinejad, and Rouhani will assume the blame
=========================================================
Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA

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