Gotta get this book (taken from npr.org):

Excerpt: ‘The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III’

Raymond Carver, “The Art of Fiction”

by Introduction by Margaret Atwood, edited by Philip Gourevitch

 The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. II

Introduction by Margaret Atwood, edited by Philip Gourevitch
Picador
Paperback, 464 pages
List price: $16

NPR.org, January 28, 2009 · Interviewer:

Is it true that you celebrated your first publication by taking the magazine to bed with you?

Raymond Carver:

That’s partly true. Actually, it was a book, the Best American Short Stories annual. My story “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” had just appeared in the collection. That was back in the late sixties, when it was edited every year by Martha Foley and the people used to call it that — simply, “The Foley Collection.” The story had been published in an obscure little magazine out of Chicago called December. The day the anthology came in the mail I took it to bed to read and just to look at, you know, and hold it, but I did more looking and holding than actual reading. I fell asleep and woke up the next morning with the book there in bed beside me, along with my wife.

Interviewer:

In an article you did for The New York Times Book Review you mentioned a story “too tedious to talk about here” — about why you choose to write short stories over novels. Do you want to go into that story now?

Carver:

The story that was “too tedious to talk about” has to do with a number of things that aren’t very pleasant to talk about. I did finally talk about some of these things in the essay “Fires,” which was published in Antaeus. In it I said that a writer is judged by what he writes, and that’s the way it should be. The circumstances surrounding the writing are something else, something extraliterary. Nobody ever asked me to be a writer. But it was tough to stay alive and pay bills and put food on the table and at the same time to think of myself as a writer and to learn to write. After years of working crap jobs and raising kids and trying to write, I realized I needed to write things I could finish and be done with in a hurry. There was no way I could undertake a novel, a two- or three-year stretch of work on a single project. I needed to write something I could get some kind of pay-off from immediately, not next year, or three years from now. Hence, poems and stories. I was beginning to see that my life was not — let’s say it was not what I wanted it to be. There was always a wagonload of frustration to deal with — wanting to write and not being able to find the time or the place for it. I used to go out and sit in the car and try to write something on a pad on my knee. This was when the kids were in their adolescence. I was in my late twenties or early thirties. We were still in a state of penury, we had one bankruptcy behind us, and years of hard work with nothing to show for it except an old car, a rented house, and new creditors on our backs. It was depressing, and I felt spiritually obliterated. Alcohol became a problem. I more or less gave up, threw in the towel, and took to full-time drinking as a serious pursuit. That’s part of what I was talking about when I was talking about things “too tedious to talk about.”

Interviewer:

Could you talk a little more about the drinking? So many writers, even if they’re not alcoholics, drink so much.

Carver:

Probably not a whole lot more than any other group of professionals. You’d be surprised. Of course there’s a mythology that goes along with the drinking, but I was never into that. I was into the drinking itself. I suppose I began to drink heavily after I’d realized that the things I’d wanted most in life for myself and my writing, and my wife and children, were simply not going to happen. It’s strange. You never start out in life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat or a thief. Or a liar.

Interviewer:

And you were all those things?

Carver:

I was.

I was recently asked about how I could contribute to the diversity of an organization. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked this question. Here’s my answer:

     I grew up in a very small town in the southeast corner of Missouri, the daughter of very motivated and successful Korean parents. When I was five years old, I had my first brush with prejudice. Jennifer Watson (names have not been changed to protect the perpetrator) refused to let me jump rope with her because I was “too black.” This incident should give some insight into just how “monochromatic” my little town was. It didn’t take long for everyone to realize that this little girl with exotic black eyes and hair straight out of animé was not much different after all.

     I never gave much thought to how my presence anywhere was chalking one up for diversity. My father did, which is why he insisted I attend the Naval Academy to mitigate the losses he deemed would affect me as a “double minority.” When I was recruited for the Korean American Midshipmen Association (KAMA) at the Academy I lasted for one bowl of rice and two plates of bulgogi before I threw in the towel. I told them if I wanted to celebrate and embrace my Korean-American heritage, shouldn’t I be doing it with non-Koreans for impact?

     When I had my service interview to be accepted into the naval intelligence community, a commander asked me how I would deal with being a double minority (my dad was apparently on to something) in a field that was dominated by men. I told him that I would deal with it the way I deal with every situation- do the job and do it well- earn the respect of my subordinates, peers, and superiors not because I’m a woman who can get the job done, or a Korean who can get the job done, but as a person who can get the job done. A month later the commander approached me at half-time of a Navy football game and said he was looking forward to me joining the intelligence community.

     What I am trying to say through these examples is that despite the relative lack of diversity in my hometown and even in Annapolis, I view diversity as the necessary norm. This perspective drives me to break barriers that have been placed in front of so many because of people’s or places’ inabilities to embrace diversity. 

     Ironically, it was neither my ethnicity nor my gender that made me aware of my perceived place in this world- how “diverse” I was. It was my religion. When I converted to Islam almost twelve years ago I had to fight to “fit in” again. I had a woman empathetically shake her head at me and yell across a checkout line that she knew what I was going through because she, too, had lived in Saudi Arabia (where I had never been). A young man at an ATM machine told me that “my people” should go back to “where you came from.” An associate at Radio Shack told me that they didn’t carry an international TV antenna because, “this is America!”

     These incidents reminded me that books can very often be read by their covers, and that my view of diversity is not necessarily embraced by everyone. I don’t resent that. I don’t fight back combatively. But, I am driven to change what is all too often the response to these types of verbal presumptions. The type of response that the Muslim community newspaper hoped I would engage in.

     I fall back on why I left KAMA, instead introducing seaweed sprinkles and white kimchee to all of my American friends. I defer to staying quiet on the line while a client I haven’t met complains to me about the strange Muslim he’s dealing with, and then cordially meet him the next day at Starbucks (wearing a headscarf) to discuss our contract. I go back to telling the present editor of the newspaper I began that I think he’s being unprofessional and doing a great disservice to the Muslim community by printing what I believe to be a propagandistic collection of biased editorials paraded as news.

     I have always been fiercely motivated, disciplined, and independent. As a now “triple minority,” the very best I can do is be the best person I know how. I value integrity, honesty, and flexibility. Life and work is full of unanticipated twists and turns that manifest themselves in all sorts of crazy ways. I cherish these twists and turns. I thrive on creating solutions that hopefully bring people together in new and unanticipated ways.

     I always tell people that I am a mutt: “I am the strangest Korean you’ll ever meet. I’m tall, I’m not lithe, and I wear a headscarf.  I’m an American Korean who married an Egyptian who has predominately Pakistani and Naval Academy friends. I only read French, only understand Korean, and read, speak, and understand Arabic. I can make a mean Korean-Pakistani version of a typical Egyptian dish.”

     My own diversity enables me to see past people’s differences and focus on the truth of their likenesses.

 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,480037,00.html

22-year-old Natalie Dylan is selling her virginity in an online auction and has reportedly received over 10,000 bids.

A 22-year-old woman is selling her virginity online — offering her body to bidders nationwide in an auction that reportedly has netted a $3.7 million offer — and the law isn’t doing a thing to stop her.

The FBI isn’t interested. The U.S. attorney doesn’t care. Everything is fine by local police, and she isn’t breaking any laws.

That’s because Natalie Dylan, a made-up name for a real 22-year-old California college grad, is marketing her maidenhead in Nevada, where prostitution is legal.

But some religious legal groups are objecting to the sexual sale, saying they are concerned that its influence may reach beyond the borders of the “Battle Born” bordello state.

“It does seem crazy,” said Mathew Staver, director of the Liberty Center for Law and Policy. “The rest of the country has an interest in stopping that kind of activity from spreading from Nevada to their home state.”

Staver said because the bidding was being conducted online, federal law could be applied to stop the auction from going through.

“Nevada has been out of step with the rest of the country for many years with regards to prostitution, and that’s why I think it’s important for federal prosecutors to look into this, so that Nevada does not dictate the morals and moral decency for the rest of the nation,” Staver told FOXNews.com.

But federal authorities said there wasn’t much they could do about the case, and deflected attention toward local statutes.

“Being that prostitution is legal in the area that she’s listing from, and she’s over 18 and it’s consensual, I would defer it to local police authorities,” said David Staretz, a spokesman for the FBI’s Las Vegas field office.

The Postal Inspection Service, which monitors the Internet for some illegal transactions, is “currently unaware of any specific fed prohibition against this activity,” said spokesman Al Weissman.

The office of the U.S. attorney in Nevada said that it has prosecuted over 200 cases in the last six years involving the solicitation of minors online, but it had never worked on a case like this involving adults.

The Moonlite Bunny Ranch, the brothel that is arranging and hosting the deal, sounded especially gung-ho about Dylan.

“Natalie is a virgin and would like to sell this priceless and rare commodity in a very exclusive and private setting,” says the Bunny Ranch Web site.

While the commodity’s rarity may be debatable, more than 10,000 bidders have come forth to put a price tag on Dylan’s purity. And if the Bunny Ranch’s owner is to be believed, someone has offered $3.7 million, a price far above rubies.

“One time only she will appear at the bunny ranch and give up her virginity to the highest bidder,” says the brothel’s Web site in a needlessly repetitive statement. Dylan says she is trying to finance graduate studies for her sister and herself.

Some legal experts say they’re well within their rights to make the sale.

“It’s a First Amendment issue. You can advertise goods or services that are illegal where they’re advertised but legal where they’re performed,” said Marc Randazza, an attorney specializing in first amendment law. “What’s she’s advertising is as legal as toast with the crust cut off where she is.”

Randazza said some prosecutors might be eager to jump on the case, but that this “commercial speech” is protected.

“If this is legal where it’s being advertised” — in Nevada — “the government can’t say you can’t advertise it here,” he told FOXNews.com.

Wired president: Obama creates an e-mail trail

‘Anything that Obama’s thumbs tap out into the ether is of historical value’

By Pete Yost

The Associated Press

updated 3:02 p.m. ET, Fri., Jan. 23, 2009

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama is the first wired president, ready to exchange e-mail with close friends and advisers. When do the rest of us get to read them?

We may have to wait until as late as 2028, depending on when Obama leaves office as president. That’s according to leading presidential historians who make their living hunting through records at the National Archives and Records Administration.

White House lawyers maintain that Obama’s messages are subject to the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate law intended to stop former presidents from carting away the records of their time in office. But the law also gives ex-presidents exclusive access to their own records for lengthy periods, allowing them to cash in on memoirs that rely on material the public hasn’t seen.

“Basically, anything that Obama’s thumbs tap out into the ether is of historical value and has to be saved,” said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private Washington-based group that seeks to open government information to the public.

Obama’s electronic circle of friends includes some senior staffers and some personal friends who “are able to BlackBerry with the president so he can stay in touch with them,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Friday.

Historians already are drawing parallels between Obama’s e-mails and the communications habits of some of his predecessors. President Richard Nixon dictated late-night memos on important and mundane subjects, giving historians an opportunity to peer inside the administration of the only president to resign from office.

“I wrote a whole chapter in my book from those late-night memos,” said University of Wisconsin Professor Stanley Kutler, author of “The Wars of Watergate.”

Under the Presidential Records Act, former presidents and vice presidents can restrict access to some of their records, including confidential communications with advisers, for up to 12 years. If Obama were to serve two full terms, that would put the release date for many of his records at 2028.

Former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush made such claims. Former President Bill Clinton was more open, waiving some of the privileges invoked by Bush and Reagan.

Five years after a president leaves office, the public can begin requesting documents. Reagan released huge chunks of material after only five years, including many on his meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 2001, President George W. Bush gave former presidents and vice presidents more authority beyond the 12-year period to claim executive privilege. Obama overturned Bush’s order on his first full day in office this week. Bush’s order enabled the withholding of papers that contained military, diplomatic or national security secrets, communications among the president and his advisers or legal advice.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28816112/

Have to admit I’ve changed my mind today. I never really gave much notice to Weezer. But after hearing this interview and song excerpts from frontman Rivers Cuomo, I stand corrected. He was so impressive- his passion for learning, expanding, and creating his music was inspiring. If you love the artistry of music, are an artist, or have a passion for anything, you’ve got to listen to this and hear a song he wrote and performed with artists solicited from You Tube. He wrote the words, the music. Check out the piano on this You Tube video. If you play piano, you know this is not easy to play, much less compose. Great stuff!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99636767

Famous for melancholic poetry, I remember being chilled by Emily Dickinson’s poems that spoke of death. But then… I happened upon this poem while researching for a high school project. I have never forgotten it, and it is SO appropriate today, and into tomorrow.

HOPE

Hope is the things with feathers,

That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

I know this has made the rounds on a lot of circuits, but apparently some people haven’t read it yet. I had a friend just the other day ask me why I never have time to talk to her when she calls me at 7PM on a weeknight (oh, I don’t know, extra-curricular sports for kids, dinner for kids, bath time for kids, bed time story for toddler, dinner for husband and myself, cleaning up house before it all has to start over again at 6AM the next day!). So, in case you haven’t read why we stay-at-home mommies aren’t chatty Kathy, read this:

Excerpt from the book “Posterity: Letters of Great American to Their Children.” I thought this was such a timely and relevant letter to refer to. For those of you who are not familiar with Hume Cronyn, he was an actor, writer, producer, and director, whose career spanned nearly six decades. In this 1961 letter, Cronyn is replying to his 16-year old daughter Tandy, who was studying in Germany and wrote:

“…we have to forgive them sometime [for the Nazi atrocities]. If a race of people has to be blamed, why not admit that the humans in general are guilty… Every nation has its black side.”

This is an excerpt of Cronan’s reply, which I thought was thoughtful, reflective, sensitive, and above all else, hopeful. Something we need a lot of now:

“The barbarian lies miserably close under the skin of all of us. I do think that we are inclined to have national traits and characteristics, some of them pretty frightening, just as we have them in families. Our last best hope may be that, as the world grows smaller and we become one community of human beings, our good and our bad may counter-balance one another and that between all families, there may emerge a universal morality and a universal human characteristic superior to any of those in existence today.”

Mr. Cronyn, these words do you proud! Almost fifty years later, we’re still trying to achieve what you so eloquently hoped for…

If it weren’t for the US insisting on defending the Israeli governments bad decision over and over again, I’d say it’s none of our business. Two nations want to live in perennial fear and danger as volatile enemies- have at it. But… we are almost inextricably involved. And this has made us (and when I say us, I mean the American people, too)  targets of hate and distrust around the world.  What is so plainly obvious to the majority of the world is deemed acceptable by the US government. The following news report makes me wonder what I’m missing. Why is our government allowing and essentially supporting this Israeli offensive at the expense of our own country’s credibility and security? Fill me in if you have the answer:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090115/wl_mcclatchy/3145540/print

Israel shells Gaza U.N. warehouse, hospital, media offices

By Ahmed Abu Hamda and Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy Newspapers Ahmed Abu Hamda And Dion Nissenbaum, Mcclatchy Newspapers Thu Jan 15, 12:22 pm ET

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Israeli military punched deeper into Gaza City on Thursday with a series of strikes that hit the United Nations’ headquarters, a major hospital and the offices of international media groups.

As Israeli leaders weighed an evolving Egyptian initiative that’s considered the best hope for ending the 20-day-old conflict, Israeli forces delivered another blow to the Hamas -led Gaza Strip .

For the first time in the offensive, Israel killed a top Hamas political leader in the Gaza Strip . Late Thursday, an Israeli air strike hit Said Siam, who served as interior minister after Hamas won control of the territory in democratic elections in 2006.

The most spectacular strike Thursday came when Israeli forces opened fire on the U.N. compound in Gaza City and set off an uncontrollable blaze that sent a pillar of charcoal-black smoke hundreds of feet into the sky.

Israeli forces hit the compound as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon was preparing to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in Tel Aviv .

Ban said that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had apologized for the attack.

“The defense minister said to me it was a grave mistake, and he took it very seriously,” Ban said before meeting with Livni to discuss U.N. efforts to bring the fighting to an immediate end.

Israeli officials, however, later issued contradictory versions of why Israeli forces fired on the U.N. compound. An anonymous Israeli military official first told the Associated Press that Gaza militants had fired anti-tank weapons and machine guns from inside the compound.

Then Israeli officials came forward to say that preliminary results showed that the militants ran for safety inside the U.N. compound after firing on Israeli forces from outside.

Chris Gunness , a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency dismissed the Israeli claims as “baseless” and challenged Israeli officials to produce evidence to support their version of events.

Relations between the U.N. and Israel have been strained by Israeli attacks in Gaza that have killed United Nations staff members, students and refugees seeking refuge in temporary shelters. In the worst such incident, 43 Palestinians were killed last week when an Israeli strike hit a U.N. school where hundreds had sought safety.

Then, as now, Israeli officials initially claimed that Hamas militants had fired from inside the school. After the U.N. denied that charge, Israel said that its soldiers had fired at Hamas militants who were firing mortars near the school.

On Thursday, Gunness said that Israel’s shifting stories raise questions about Israeli officials’ veracity.

“With every flip-flop, Israel’s credibility is severely undermined,” he said.

Israeli forces also hit a Red Crescent hospital where more than 100 staff and patients were trapped as a blaze engulfed the administration building.

“It is unacceptable that wounded people receiving treatment in hospitals are put at risk,” said Jakob Kellenberger , the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross .

Another Israeli strike hit several high-rise buildings, including one that houses the Reuters news service’s office.

Reuters had given the Israeli military the location of its office before the fighting broke out last month. On Thursday, as Israeli forces moved in, Reuters staffers said they called the Israeli military to remind them where they were.

Two minutes after they made the call, a shell hit their office, the Reuters staff reported.

The Associated Press reported that gunfire hit its office in a separate building.

Thursday’s attacks came as Israeli negotiator Amos Gilad met with Egyptian diplomats who’re trying to broker an end to the fighting that’s claimed nearly 1,100 Palestinian lives so far.

While Hamas leaders have said they back the Egyptian plan in principle, they haven’t agreed to the details.

Egypt has proposed halting the fighting temporarily to allow mediators to draw up a longer-term cease-fire deal, but crafting a workable plan could prove difficult.

Israel has said it would end the military operation when Hamas halts persistent rocket fire aimed at southern Israeli cities and world leaders ensure that the hard-line Islamist forces running Gaza aren’t able to smuggle more weapons in through tunnels under the Gaza - Egypt border.

Hamas has refused to concede defeat and vowed to keep fighting until Israel agrees to allow a normal flow of aid and supplies into Gaza .

Egyptian, Israeli and Hamas leaders all have suggested in recent days that a deal is within reach.

More Palestinians have been killed so far in Israel’s offensive than in any single year this decade. Some 40 percent of the more than 1,000 dead are women and children, according to Palestinian medical officials.

More than 4,500 people reportedly have been wounded as Israeli forces have taken aim at densely populated civilian areas that military officials say Hamas fighters use as cover. On the Israeli side, 13 people have died, 10 of them soldiers.

As Israeli soldiers clamped down Thursday on Gaza City , thousands of residents fled their homes looking for safety, many in their nightclothes.

In response to the strike on media offices in Gaza City , the Foreign Press Association in Israel denounced Israel’s “unconscionable breach” and urged members not to distribute or broadcast photos or video that the Israeli military gave them until there was a formal apology.

Since early November, Israel has imposed a near-blanket ban on international reporters entering Gaza , a decision that the press association, including McClatchy , is challenging.

Israel’s high court directed Israel to allow reporters into Gaza during the fighting, but the Israel Defense Forces have refused to do anything more than take selected journalists on short embeds with troops.

“The FPA rejects and condemns the IDF policy of controlling the news coverage of the events in Gaza ,” the association said Thursday in a statement. “By preventing the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza and bombing buildings housing offices of international media — contrary to IDF assurances that these media buildings would be safe — the IDF is severely violating basic principles of respect for press freedom.”

The Israeli campaign has forced tens of thousands of Gazans from their homes with nowhere for them to go, collapsed Gaza’s health system and cut off huge sections of the territory from water, electricity and medical care, nine human rights groups have said.

In a joint statement, the groups — including the Israeli sections of Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights — said Wednesday that, “This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare and raises the suspicion, which we ask be investigated, of the commission of war crimes.”

Israeli officials have said that their forces don’t intentionally target civilians, and they reject allegations that they’ve violated international laws.

(Hamda is a McClatchy special correspondent. Nissenbaum reported from Jerusalem .)

It’s clear that I am incredulous about the US government’s response to the offensive in Gaza. If the tables were turned- if Hamas had bombed UN schools and buildings (which would never have been forgiven as “accidents”), if they were using white phosphorous over a densely-populated Israeli community, if they had killed over 1,000 people in less than two weeks, including innumerable women and children- we would have already dessimated Hamas, labeled them immoral, blood-thirsty rogues, and evil, evil terrorists.

Anyway, despite my lambasting of the US response, I’m here to throw an equal blanket of shame on the Arab and neighboring nations. I have been just as disgusted with their non-response, their selfishness, their servility. What a supreme failure of nations! The only particle of relief give them is that they haven’t been good for anything or anybody but themselves for hundreds and hundreds of years. What a disgrace!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/15/gaza-egypt-saudi-qatar-summitGaza split prompts Arab countries to boycott emergency summit

Egypt and Saudi Arabia refuse to attend Qatar meeting

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and half a dozen other Arab countries are refusing to attend an emergency Arab summit in Qatar tomorrow, underlining deep divisions over how to respond to the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Fourteen members of the 22-strong Arab League have said that they will attend the hastily arranged meeting in the Qatari capital, Doha, but regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia staked out its own position by convening a rival summit of Gulf countries in Riyadh today. The flurry of inter-Arab diplomacy comes as Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, seeks to broker an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Mubarak insists leaders should meet, if at all, on the margins of a long-scheduled Arab economic summit in Kuwait early next week.

Egypt has been heavily criticised for acquiescing in, or even colluding with, the Israeli onslaught and for refusing to open its border with the Gaza Strip. Syria, Hamas’s most important Arab backer, is behind the Qatari call for a summit.

President Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, would like to see Egypt and Jordan – which both have peace treaties with Israel – at least recall their ambassadors from Tel Aviv in protest at the Gaza offensive. Neither has done so. Jordan has publicly criticised Israel, but was quick to deny this week that there had been firing across its border into Israel.

Middle East analysts and diplomats say Mubarak and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah fear raising expectations from a summit when the Arab world is so deeply divided. Morocco, also in the western camp, said today that it would not attend any summit. “It is distressing that these underlying disagreements tend to push the crucial interests of the Arab nation into the background, especially the Palestinian cause,” a Moroccan government statement said.

Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain and Kuwait have also said they will not attend a Doha summit, meaning that supporters are still one short of the quorum of 15 required by Arab League rules.

“We believe that a summit in Doha would be frustrating for the Arab street because there is no proper preparation,” Hassan Issa, a retired Egyptian diplomat, told al-Jazeera TV. “There are differences between Arab countries. You simply cannot have a summit in an atmosphere like this. It would be counterproductive.”

Wrangling between governments contrasts with Arab public opinion enraged by images of the bloodshed in Gaza, with millions watching graphic coverage on al-Jazeera and other satellite TV channels. Every Arab country has had angry demonstrations against Israel. Lebanon’s Hizbullah, which fought Israel in 2006, hails Hamas as a like-minded resistance movement but apart from other Islamist groups such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, elsewhere in the region it is less a case of admiration for Hamas than sympathy for the ordinary Palestinians bearing the brunt of the Israeli offensive.

Governments accept that Egypt is the only Arab state capable of brokering an Israel-Hamas ceasefire, but Mubarak has also been the target of popular wrath for acquiescing in the blockade of Gaza and failing to open the Rafah border. Cairo insists that to do so would risk compromising its own security and playing into Israel’s hands by allowing it to evade responsibility for the future of the Palestinian territory.

Egypt counters that Assad is being irresponsible in backing Hamas. “The difference between Hamas and Hama is just one letter,” said one Egyptian official, alluding to the infamous massacre of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood at Hama in 1982.

“Mubarak may be the only one who can engineer a ceasefire but the Arab street basically agrees with Assad,” said a diplomat based in the region.

Criticism of Hamas has focused on its decision not to renew the previous six-month ceasefire with Israel, risking the onslaught that began on 27 December. But there has also been anger at Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and president of the western-backed Palestinian Authority. Kuwaiti MPs said Abbas would not be welcome at next week’s economic summit due to his “negative attitudes” over the Israeli offensive, complaining he had “obstructed the operations of a legitimate resistance against the aggression on occupied Arab land”.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, accused Arab leaders of passivity in the face of the crisis. “Unfortunately, some regional, Islamic and Arab states for whatever reason and with a smile of satisfaction, are supporting or tolerating this rare genocide in silence,” Ahmadinejad wrote to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. “With God’s help and relying on the Gaza people’s resistance and belief in God, undoubtedly the Zionist regime will fail and will eventually collapse.”