Dubai ports firm enforces Israel boycott

Jerusalem Post The parent company of a Dubai-based firm at the center of a political storm in the US over the purchase of American ports participates in the Arab boycott against Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

I would be shocked if they did not participate in the Arab boycott when they are running ports in Arab countries. But if the Jerusalem Post is trying to imply that they would enforce an Arab boycott in US ports they are totally wrong.

The firm, Dubai Ports World, is seeking control over six major US ports, including those in New York, Miami, Philadelphia and Baltimore. It is entirely owned by the Government of Dubai via a holding company called the Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation (PCZC), which consists of the Dubai Port Authority, the Dubai Customs Department and the Jebel Ali Free Zone Area.

Another misleading fact. Just because the parent company includes Customs in Dubai, that does not mean they would control customs in the US. The US customs people would still be in charge, and American agencies would continue to be providing the security at the American ports

"Yes, of course the boycott is still in place and is still enforced," Muhammad Rashid a-Din, a staff member of the Dubai Customs Department's Office for the Boycott of Israel, told the Post in a telephone interview.

"If a product contained even some components that were made in Israel, and you wanted to import it to Dubai, it would be a problem," he said.

Danny Carlton blogged I, again, suspect that Bush may be engineering a tempest in a teapot in order to distract the childish interests of the MSM. It seems so similar to the Harriet Myers thing. He proposes something many find objectionable, but is only marginally so, just as the MSM's attention is focused on areas that slow things down. While they scamper to paint Bush with their "bad guy" brush, he withdraws his proposal, and quietly slips in what he wanted all along.

Michelle Malkin blogged And from the capital of the UAE via the Khaleej Times

Close on the heels of the cartoon controversy raging across the Muslim world, it is the turn of an upscale American school in Abu Dhabi to ruffle Muslim sentiments by teaching lessons that allegedly ''smell of racism.''

It is not terribly smart to use a text book that disparages the culture of the country you are a guest in.

Over 100 copies of the social studies text book, 'World Cultures' taught to the sixth grade children were confiscated by the Ministry of Education yesterday, for allegedly presenting Islam and the Muslim countries including Gulf states in a negative light while glorifying Israel on the other hand, Khaleej Times has learnt.

Forbes magazine notes:

Dubai, in the final analysis, is still very much a part of the Middle East and Islamic world, where it finds itself geographically, politically and culturally.

What did you expect: Hollywood on the Gulf?

Its remarkable success--steering a delicate middle course between currents of Islamic extremism that are found as near as its much larger, though scarcely as prosperous, neighbor, Saudi Arabia, and the tolerant moderation valued so deeply by the West--has insulated it from terrorism and lets the sheikh's palace sit with its gates all but unguarded deep into the night.

Yet Dubai, the single most prosperous of the seven emirates, is still very much a part of the Arab world.

Go ahead. Yell "Islamophobia!"