Two weeks into Israel's housing protest, demonstrations are sweeping the country. More than 150,000 people took part in protests nationwide calling for socioeconomic change and demanding "social justice." And what started with the odd tent has become the summer of Israeli discontent.

Young Israelis feel they are victims of the country's strong economy and decades of security-heavy priorities. The Israeli economy boomed, but its young middle class has bombed, caving under price hikes, taxation and increasingly privatized public services such as health, education and child care. The leadership admits there are problems but say protesters' complaints are exaggerated.

The economic trend was no accident, protesters say, but a calculated economic ideology coupled with conservative politics. Decentralizing Israel's economy was necessary but privatization has run amok, critics say, with the government outsourcing its commitments to the majority of its citizens, who now demand government reaffirm its vows to the greater public.

"Re-vo-lu-tion!" cries bounced off walls in Tel-Aviv, Beersheva, Haifa and other towns Saturday night. 

So here's a Revolution 101, an incomplete dictionary to the cousin of the Arab Spring: the Israeli Summer. Naturally, there are millions of possible definitions.

A is for Arabs. It took some time, but Arab citizens of Israel joined the protests. Chronic under-budgeting has left many in the lower rungs of the country's socioeconomic ladder with more than half below the poverty line and a shortage of 60,000 housing units in the sector comprising 20% of Israeli society. A rare opportunity to join a social cause striving to be inclusive, not exclusive.

B is for Babies. Baby products and child care are too expensive, keeping women from professional development and young families in constant debt. Thousands marched with strollers and baby carriages last week, demanding, among other things, work schedules that are better synchronized with child-care calendars so parents can actually work.

C is for Competition. There is none, protesters say, that's why prices are high. 80% of the nation's economy is controlled by a few dozen powerful family empires who prevent real competition.

When the protest for affordable housing began, some dismissed the campaign as a "Woodstock" of college kids on vacation. By the time Saturday night rolled around, tens of thousands demonstrated in Tel-Aviv and what started as a students' summer protest became a nationwide push for change and a political headache for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A few months back, citizens' protests targeted the pricing of specific commodities like gasoline, water and cottage cheese. Now, protest is everywhere. Students are camping out in the streets in tents. Dairy farmers are blocking roads with cows. Doctors are striking, the head of Israel's medical association is on a hunger strike. The latest is a Facebook call not to show up for work on Aug. 1.

Israel's economy is strong, the public is constantly told; the country has money, the economy is growing.

Then why is everyone angry? First of all, because they can be. A quick look around the neighborhood has reminded people they have power and can use it to rework priorities and redistribute resources.

Beyond that, some numbers (from a story by Sever Plocker, a financial journalist): Over the last five years, the average income in Israel has increased by 17% and food prices by 25%. Water rates have gone up 40% and gasoline by 23%. The average apartment price has gone up 55% and rent by 27%.

That last item, housing, sparked the protest sweeping the country. But it's not only the last five years, Plocker writes. Real wages haven't increased since 2000, while companies traded on the stock exchange have grown by 300%. The rich are getting richer, the middle class is treading water and "this unusual prosperity has passed it by," Plocker noted.

Iranians take great pride in the natural bounty of their land, but farmers have been struggling to keep up cultivation since the government slashed energy subsidies late last year.

Earlier this week, Ali Asgar Yousefnejad, a lawmaker from the Mazandaran province in northern Iran, spoke out against the soaring prices of electricity, fertilizers and fuel and their effect on farmers in his district.

"The farmers first change their rice paddies, which consume a lot of water, to orange grooves," Yousefnejad told Babylon & Beyond. "Then if the water needed for orange orchards or citrus fruits is too expensive, they convert to kiwi fruit and so on until they give up farming altogether and sell their agricultural land to the builders to build villas and destroy the forests."

The Mazandaran province, on the Caspian Sea, is a popular vacation destination for the well-to-do from Tehran and other major cities.

An Emirati military officer has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Rhode Island on human trafficking and other charges after the officer allegedly took a Filipino woman working as a maid for him and his family to the United States and then kept her there under slave-like conditions.

Arif Mohamed Saeed Mohamed Al-Ali, 46, who is currently enrolled in a one-year program at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, is accused of taking the woman's passport, forcing her to work long hours without pay and forbidding her from talking to anyone outside the family or attending religious services, the Providence Journal reported Wednesday. 

Al-Ali is also accused of providing authorities with false documents in an attempt to prove he paid the woman $19,000 in wages, which were allegedly never transferred to her. Al-Ali pleaded not guilty on Tuesday. The woman, who ran away in October, is reportedly in hiding.

Human rights organizations have long been critical of the treatment of Asian and African domestic workers employed in Arab countries, and sadly, stories like the one that allegedly took place in Rhode Island are not uncommon in the region.

According to the Journal's report, Al-Ali had hired her through a company based in the United Arab Emirates, which has been singled out for its poor treatment of foreign workers. The situation in the region is so bad that the government of the Philippines has already banned its citizens from going to certain Arab countries to work as maids and nannies.

Several local initiatives have been launched over the years to raise awareness regarding domestic worker abuse in Arab countries. In 2008, a high-profile media campaign titled "rahma" or "mercy", aimed at Saudi citizens, sparked controversy with a series of shocking print and television advertisements featuring foreign drivers and maids wearing dog collars and horse bridles with the tagline "don't deny me my humanity."

--Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: An ad for the "rahma" campaign features a maid being treated like an animal and reads "don't deny me my humanity". Credit: Rahma campaign via migrant-rights.org

Strikes by Egyptian public workers are prolonging the nation's instability and threatening its economic future, the ruling military council said Friday as it warned that steps would be taken to halt the disruptions.

A week after widespread protests forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down and take refuge at a seaside compound, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said that it would no longer tolerate "illegitimate practices."

Strikers "will be confronted," warned the council, which took interim power a week ago when Mubarak caved in to protesters' demands for democratic reform and a new leader to direct it. The army statement, aired on state-run television, said all necessary "legal steps" would be taken to protect the citizenry and the nation.

Work stoppages for better pay and conditions swept Egypt as protesters intensified their demands that Mubarak leave, and many public employees continue to press for improvements before returning to work to restore normal government services.

The military statement accused unidentified "elements" of interfering to prolong the labor strife and said some were seizing government land and property for their own use.

— Carol J. Williams

 As  anti-government  protesters  in Tahrir Square erupted into rage Thursday night after President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down, many Egyptians sank further into distress.  While the fortunate may have emerged unscathed with homes and bank accounts intact, many more will have suffered as these last 17 days unfolded with loss of wages, sales and tips or baksheesh.

Wrapped in the green and orange worn by sanitation workers across Cairo, the elderly woman with bloated ankles can be found most days sitting on the curb, her broom by her side.  She makes 50 Egyptian pounds or about $8 a day and usually relies on strangers for more. Whether the revolution will bring her a cozy retirement is doubtful.

Nearby, a young boy, beautiful in face and spirit, hauls trash bags fifty times bigger than the school backpack he should be carrying. His pay keeps  his family in baladi bread.  Measly wages are not the only  trigger prompting demonstrations against  Egypt’s ruling class. But it is a unifying one.  Indeed, countless labor unions are remonstrating loudly across Egypt.  Telecom Egypt workers say they make 600 Egyptian pounds a month, a wage they say that hasn’t changed in 20 years.  Postal workers, factory workers and even professionals such as doctors and teachers report similar pay. Many Egyptians rely on tips or as in the case for teachers, private tutoring sessions, or for doctors, private patients, for their real compensation.

The policemen who fled their posts last week also earn dismal salaries:  Conscripts at the bottom take home less than 100 Egyptian dollars a month, some in management can earn tens of thousands a month.   It is a system that has fostered corruption and cronyism for several decades.  In attempts to assuage protesters last week, the government raised wages of government employees by 15%, to take effect in April. Considering the average wage, that boost will barely buy an extra 2 pounds of of beef ($12) each month. A good gauge of economic progress in Egypt will be when beggars no longer earn more than workers.

In spite of severe economic hardships, Cairenes are trying to slip back into their usual genial society. Crowds once again swell the streets, cafes are abuzz, restaurants  welcome diners and taxi drivers honk their services, hungry for any fare.

In this city of 20 million, kindness is anything but random during this troubled time. A policeman sits near my neighborhood’s edge, sewing the beginnings of a suit jacket in one hand and nursing tea with the other. He smiles a big hello and offers a glass.  Strangers whisper  "Ezzayik" to ask if everything is OK.  Nearby at a busy intersection, free packed lunches of chips and baguettes are handed through taxi windows.  "We just wanted to do something nice for them," said the  young volunteer.

— Clare Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: Protests in Tahrir Square Credit: Reuters

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Israel's foreign relations are suffering these days from an outbreak of poor diplomacy. Not necessarily bad; just poor.

Foreign Ministry employees say they are just that, poor. Their basic salaries have been devalued by about 40% since last being updated in the early 1990s, and many of them rely on help from welfare services, say activists from the ministry workers' union.

The diplomats have years of experience, a stack of academic degrees and high motivation to serve. They also have families to feed and pensions to fund, and say neither is doable on their paychecks, which some revealed on a popular news site. Only an idealist or a fool would join the foreign service under these conditions, they said. Finance Ministry officials said the paychecks didn't reflect considerable extras.

Iran's former former minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was abruptly fired last week while on a diplomatic mission to Senegal, is mad as hell and isn't gonna take it any more.

In an unusually harsh criticism of his former boss, Mottaki called his dismissal by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "insulting" and "anti-Islamic."

He was replaced by Ali Akbar Salehi, the former head of Iran's nuclear program, who was feted at a reception Saturday that was supposedly in Mottaki's honor.

Mottaki blew off the reception. Instead he sent a blistering text to Iranian media denying an Ahmadinejad aide's claim that he was aware that he was about to get canned.

"I was not informed about my replacement within 24 hours after I left for a trip and what is more ridiculous is the date set for the farewell and introduction ceremony," he said, according to numerous news agencies.

He called the manner of his dismissal "insulting and not according to diplomatic protocols."

Where is your Sri Lankan from?

It's a nasty old joke in Lebanon, one that gets even less funny every time a foreign maid or nanny is reportedly abused.

But activist Wissam Saliby turns this trope of casual racism on its head in a new satirical video he hopes will shine a light on the conditions of African and Asian domestic workers in Lebanon.

In Sri Lankiete Libnanieh (My Sri Lankan is Lebanese), the roles of madam and maid are switched as two spoiled housewives played by Asian women discuss the comparative laziness and stupidity of their Lebanese and Syrian maids, who are treated badly.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Iranians this month that "frugal" families have nothing to fear from impending economic pressures.

But just in case, his government is cracking down on labor activists who may disagree.

Three workers from the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Co. Union are facing jail time on charges of insulting the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to an Iranian human rights organization. The union, formed following a massive strike in 2008 over withheld wages, has complained of continual harassment by authorities.

"It has gotten more intense, the crackdown, in the last two years, but the last two months have been worse because [the government] is getting rid of subsidies," said Mehdi Kouhestaninejad of the Canadian Labor Congress.

Landing a job interview in Beirut has proved a daunting task for 21-year old Lebanese university student Lubna Mohamad.

Not because there are no jobs, but because she is veiled, she claims.

Mohamad, who sports a casual conservative look consisting of jeans, long-sleeved shirts, nail polish and an Islamic headscarf, claims she has been turned down from no less than three recent job interviews -- over the phone -- simply because she admits that she observes Islamic dress code.

When she applied for a secretarial position at a small firm in predominantly Christian East Beirut, she says the phone conversation she  had with the office manager quickly drew to an end when she asked him whether the office would have a problem with her being veiled.

"Yes, we do," was purportedly his answer.

An Egyptian administrative court has upheld an earlier verdict that forces the government to set monthly minimum wage at 1,200 pounds ($207 in U.S. dollars) for public and private sector employees, most of whom earn between 200 and 500 pounds. 

The verdict, which was announced Tuesday, comes amid Egyptians' anger over soaring prices of basic food commodities, which sparked a number of minor demonstrations as inflation rates hit 11.7% last month. Employees within the public sector, who form 22% of Egypt's total workforce, have continuously voiced their dismay over their wages. The last official minimum wage was set in 1984 at 35 pounds a month ($6).

Labor activist Nagy Rashad and lawyer Khaled Ali, both members of the Labor for Change movement, filed a lawsuit earlier this year demanding that the government raise minimum wages. The court ruled in favor of the pair in March before the government appealed.