Israel's airport security is widely admired but its stringent passenger screening has been criticized by other countries -- and by the Israeli supreme court. On Monday, some Israelis got a glimpse of what it's like on the receiving end of a harsh security inspection when they were forced to undress by personnel at an airport in Turkey.

The incident came days after relations between Israel and Turkey reached an all-time low when Turkey announced a further downgrade of diplomatic ties, including expelling the outgoing Israeli ambassador to Turkey and suspending military and economic dealings. The Turkish moves followed Israel's rejection of a Turkish ultimatum for Israel to apologize for last year's deadly flotilla raid.

After the airport incident, Israeli officials accused Turkey of trying to lead Israel into an open confrontation.

Some saw the episode as retaliation for similar treatment of Turkish citizens by Israeli authorities the evening before. But an Israeli foreign ministry official admitted that Turkish citizens were routinely humiliated at Israel's Ben-Gurion airport.

Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor told Israel Radio on Monday that he hoped Turkey and Israel could find a way to fix the damage to their relationship but said that would not be easy. Once a strong strategic ally of Israel, Turkey now seeks closer ties with Egypt, another regional asset threatening to slip away from Israel.

Speaking at the International Conference on Economic Regional Cooperation in Tel Aviv, Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer warned that a disruption of trade with Turkey could prove "expensive" for Israel.  Israeli exporters are already expressing concern; Turkey is Israel's sixth-largest export destination.

Some defense analysts speculated that the rift could hinder Turkey's fight against Kurdish militants. Turkey has recently acquired substantial military gear from Israel, including armored vehicles, upgraded tanks and unmanned aerial vehicles. That equipment already has been delivered but the usual post-sale agreements for maintenance and parts are now iffy.

-- Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem

Photo: A Turkish Airlines jet. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Ahmad, a Syrian university student and pro-democracy demonstrator, is optimistic that the regime of President Bashar Assad cannot sustain its ferocious crackdown on protesters for much longer.

“Perhaps one or two months,” he told Babylon & Beyond in an interview in neighboring Lebanon, where he recently arrived with the help of smugglers. “The international sanctions are hitting and the internal situation is very bad. In my area and in other places people are not paying their electricity and water bills anymore -- let alone taxes -- because they started to despise the regime. People are only buying food and necessities."

Ahmad, who did not want to give his last name, is from Baniyas, the Syrian coastal city that became a protest hub before coming under siege by the Syrian army and security forces in May. Large protests haven't been reported there since.

Ahmad says he participated in protests from the start and became involved in a Syrian activist group that documents the uprising against Assad. He often spoke to Arab and international media, including the Los Angeles Times, about the situation on the ground during the upheavals. It didn't take long before his name ended up on the Syrian authorities’ black list of activists.

"They started listening to my phone from the beginning. My family had to flee the city and I haven’t seen them in six months. I can’t talk to them. I have a friend in Damascus whom I spoke to once on the phone. They took him and held him for two months."

Before the army and security forces started cracking down on demonstrators months ago, Ahmad said,  protesters did not call for the downfall of the regime. In the first week, protesters complained about sporadic and expensive electricity and wanted a corrupt local government official fired, he said. Then demonstrators called for prisoners to be freed.

The violence had not begun yet but security forces were trying to impose an economic siege as protests gained strength in Baniyas; the forces banned the entrance of various goods and necessities into the city, according to Ahmad's account. Then phones and electricity were cut late one night, prompting residents to fear that something bad was coming.

Ahmad recalls groups of people standing in the city streets that night, nervously talking to each other.

Khamis Kadafi, the youngest son of longtime Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, has been killed in a NATO airstrike, Sky News reported.

The British network said a man claiming to be Khamis Kadafi’s bodyguard said the younger Kadafi was in a Toyota Land Cruiser that was hit by a missile fired from a NATO Apache helicopter. A rebel official told the network that they were close to confirming that Khamis Kadafi died Saturday during fighting with rebels near Tarhuna, about 50 miles southeast of Tripoli.

Khamis Kadafi, a Russian-trained military officer, commanded an elite battalion dedicated to protecting his father.

Activists say killings and arrests are continuing across Syria despite President Bashar Assad's pledge last week to end military operations against protest strongholds.

At least 12 people were killed across the country between Wednesday afternoon and early Thursday, according to the Local Coordination Committees, a network of Syrian opposition activists. Additionally, Syria's army conducted raids on Thursday in the town of Bokamal on the Iraq border, activists said.

In the capital, Damascus, attackers abducted and beat a prominent Syrian cartoonist, who was found bleeding along the city's airport road. A photo released by activists after the attack showed cartoonist Ali Ferzat, 60, in a hospital bed, with his head and both hands swathed in bandages.

Activists blamed government security forces and pro-regime men known as shabiha.

The cartoonist, one of the best-known in the Middle East, had become increasingly critical of the Syrian regime and had begun addressing the uprising against Assad in his drawings. One of his recent cartoons depicts Assad painting railway tracks to escape from a train approaching him at fast pace.

Several Facebook groups sprang up Thursday in solidarity with the artist.

Also Thursday, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch released a new report on Syria called "Setting the Record Straight.'' The report challenges the Syrian regime's accounts of the current state of the crackdown.

The organization sought to debunk the impression that the Syrian authorities have ended the military crackdown since Aug. 17, when Assad pledged to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon that "military and policing operations had stopped.”

The report claimed that at least 49 people have been killed in operations across Syria since that phone call.

"That same day, and in the days that followed, Syrian forces attacked peaceful protesters in Homs, Latakia, towns in the governorate of Daraa, and suburbs of Damascus," said the report. "On August 19 alone, 31 protesters were killed by Syrian security forces, including 3 children, according to local activists."

The report also explored the "myth" that Syrian troops need to use lethal force to put down armed groups, saying that only a small number of demonstrators have used force and that there is no real organized armed opposition.

The Syrian government has insisted throughout the uprising against Assad, now in its fifth month, that it is fighting obscure armed groups.

A report by Syria's state-run SANA news agency alleged that seven members of the army were killed in ambushes by "armed terrorist groups" in areas near Homs on Wednesday.

The Syrian government says hundreds of army and security personnel have been killed by armed gangs over the last months. Human Rights Watch says "there are credible accounts" that those Syrian troops were killed by other members of the security forces.

"Security force members who defected have told Human Rights Watch of cases in which soldiers who defected or refused to take up arms were shot by officers, for example. The Syrian government has not published a list of dead security forces, while anti-government activists have compiled a list of 394 security members killed," said the report.

-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut

Photo: Prominent Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat at his Damascus gallery. Activists say he was kidnapped, beaten up, and dumped on a road by Syrian security forces on Thursday. Credit: Khaled Hariri / Reuters

The toppling of President Hosni Mubarak was expected to make life easier for human rights groups and civil organizations, but the groups say the country's new ruling military council is harshly crushing dissent and waging a systematic effort to defame them in the eyes of the Egyptian public.

On Monday, 36 rights organizations sent a joint complaint to the U.N’s Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights about a “smear campaign” organized by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces and its appointed interim-government.

“The undersigned organizations wish to whole-heartedly condemn authorities’ manipulation of the media to publicize investigations into associations accused of receiving U.S funding without identifying the groups in question,” the organizations said in a statement.

Last month, SCAF member Major Gen. Hassan el Roweini said the April 6th Youth and Kefaya movements –- oppressed during Mubarak’s reign -– were receiving funds from foreign countries to serve an outside hidden agenda. His assertion, playing into widespread suspicions of foreign interference, was followed by a state security investigation into the funding of unnamed civil society organizations. 

Egyptian regulations prohibit any civil society association of receiving foreign funds without the Ministry of Social Solidarity’s approval.

When asked for a response to the organizations’ complaint, SCAF member Gen. Mamdouh Shahin told Babylon & Beyond it is “not SCAF's responsibility to reply to these allegations”.

But in an apparent bid to stem criticism of its tactics, the military this week acquitted and released 40 activists detained by military courts, state newspaper Al Ahram reported. 

The conflict symbolizes the main impediments facing Egyptians’ aspiration for democracy. Advocates like Ahmed Ragheb of the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre believe that the active presence of rights associations is needed to monitor SCAF until Egypt holds presidential and parliamentary elections.

“It’s either we turn a blind eye to any violations carried out (by SCAF) and become another autocratic regime, or maintain our watchdog status as the only way for reaching democracy,” he says.

The Egyptian army was untouchable during Mubarak’s reign. No one dared to publish anything about the military. 

On April 11, blogger Mikael Nabil was sentenced to three years in jail by a military court after criticizing the army in one of his blogs.

Bahey Eldin Hassan, director of the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies, said SCAF is cracking down on rights organizations because of their role in “exposing a number of violations carried out by military police like the use of force in dispersing sit-ins and subjecting female protesters to virginity tests, as well as the trying of thousands of civilians in front of military courts”.

-- Amro Hassan in Cairo

Photo: A July protest demanding an end to military-court trials for civilians. Credit: Associated Press

A spokesman for Libyan rebel forces said Wednesday that they had seized control of Moammar Kadafi's infamous Abu Salim prison south of Tripoli.

Fighting had been reported at the prison early Wednesday, with reports circulating online that rebel fighters had made their way inside the compound.

Late Wednesday, Al Arabiya television reported that Ahmed Bany, a spokesman for the rebels, said Abu Salim was under opposition control.

Controversial Libyan state television talk show host Hala Misrati has reportedly been detained in Tripoli after she waved a gun on air during a weekend broadcast.

Misrati's hour-long show "Libya on This Day," airs on the state-run satellite channel, Al Jamahiriya 2.

She rose to fame during the uprising due to her steadfast defense of the Moammar Kadafi regime and her combative interview style. She was known for interrogating fellow journalists on air, plunging into lengthy tirades against the rebels and deriding the satellite network Al Jazeera as the "khanzeera" channel, or pig channel. At one point, she denounced Eman Al Obeidi, a Libyan woman who had accused Kadafi militiamen of gang raping her.

This weekend, Misrati could be seen behind her desk, wearing a green scarf and brandishing a pistol as rebels closed in on Tripoli, vowing to defend the station from potential attacks.

"We are willing to become martyrs," she shouted.

She gave a brief interview after the incident, defending her behavior and igniting a firestorm of comments from opponents in the blogosphere and on Twitter, who speculated about where she went after the broadcast and what became of her gun.

On Monday, CNN reported that rebel officials had detained Misrati. CNN's Sara Sidner in Tripoli apparently tried to interview Misrati.

"Tried to interview her today but unable to access her. Rebels: 'she is unharmed,'" Sidner tweeted late Monday.

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--Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Video: (top) Hala Misrati, a controversial Libyan state television talk show host who waved a gun on-air during the weekend, was reportedly detained Monday in Tripoli. Credit: YouTube.

Video: (bottom) Misrati is known for her combative, pro-regime style. Earlier this year, she denounced Eman Al Obeidi, a woman who claimed to have been gang raped by Kadafi militiamen. Credit: YouTube.

The search was on for Moammar Kadafi late Monday.

After nearly 42 years in power, Kadafi was nowhere to be seen or heard in Tripoli on Monday — unlike Sunday, when he issued a series of audio messages calling on supporters to resist rebel forces who had descended on the city.

"I am in Tripoli … I am with you until the end," Kadafi said.

Then he disappeared.

A large number of British and NATO reconnaissance planes were flying over Libya Monday looking for Kadafi and other leaders in his regime, the Daily Telegraph reported. British airborne radar were reportedly  tracking all civilian aircraft leaving Tripoli in case Kadafi tries to flee by air.

"We have no confirmation of Kadafi's whereabouts," British Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday, after he returned from his summer vacation to deal with events in Tripoli.

Mahmoud Nacua, Libya's new diplomatic envoy to London, told The Guardian: "We don't know exactly where he is, but the fighters will look to find him. Maybe it will be hours or days, I don't know, but his era is over."

Rumors of Kadafi’s whereabouts were flying online and in the media.

Kadafi faces an arrest warrant from the international criminal court, which would theoretically limit his destinations. However, similar warrants have not crimped the travel plans of other embattled leaders, such as Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who continued to travel to countries that do not recognize the international criminal court.

Al Arabiya satellite network reported that Kadafi was in the Tajura Cardiac Hospital east of Tripoli.

A rebel spokesman in London said Kadafi, 69, who last appeared in public in May, might have already fled to neighboring Algeria, whose leaders had opposed NATO intervention in Libya.

There were also claims that the South African government (which recognizes the international criminal court) had sent planes to ferry Kadafi to an undisclosed location (South African leaders refuted the rumors).

Pentagon officials have said they believe Kadafi is still in Libya. An unnamed diplomat told Agence France-Presse that Kadafi was still in Tripoli Monday and could be in his huge Bab Aziziya compound.

Kadafi’s own words support this theory. Last month, Kadafi declared during an audio broadcast that "I will never leave the land of my ancestors or the people who have sacrificed themselves for me."

Others have speculated that Kadafi may have retreated from the capital to one of his strongholds: Surt, the western coastal town where he was born and may have stockpiled weapons, or Sabha, the southern desert town where he could make his escape across the border to Chad.

Last week, Kadafi apparently asked neighboring countries — including Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia — to shelter his family, according to a spokesman for the rebels' Transitional National Council.

By Monday, three of Kadafi’s seven sons had been captured by rebels, although his eldest son, Mohammed Kadafi, had apparently escaped rebel custody.

Video footage surfaced purporting to show a rebel attack on a compound belonging to Kadafi’s daughter Aisha, but the video could not be independently verified.

--Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi salutes his armed forces during a parade in Tripoli in September 1999. As rebels descended on the Libyan capital Monday, the longtime leader's whereabouts were unknown. Credit: Stringer/Reuters.

Video: Rebels claimed to have attacked the compound of Moammar Kadafi's daughter, Aisha, Monday, but video footage of the alleged attack could not be independently verified. Credit: YouTube.

Mohammed Kadafi, the eldest of Moammar Kadafi's seven sons, appears to have escaped rebel custody in Tripoli after he surrendered at his home late Sunday, according to reports by the Al Jazeera satellite news network.

Two of Kadafi's other sons, Seif Islam and Saadi Kadafi, both still appeared to be in rebel custody Monday.

Kadafi, 41, apparently escaped from the rebels with the help of Kadafi loyalists, who stormed the house where Kadafi was being held and freed him after clashes with guards, Al Jazeera reported.

In an interview with Al Jazeera Arabic on Sunday, the head of the Libyan opposition had said that Mohammed Kadafi was taken into custody after he refused to surrender and his guards shot at rebels. One rebel was killed and one bodyguard was injured in the clashes, he said.

When an Al Jazeera reporter spoke with Mohammed Kadafi by phone afterward, he confirmed that he had surrendered to the rebels and said he had been treated well.

"Too much Libyan blood has been shed," he said. "I just hope that security and stability come to Libya."

Suddenly, as the audio interview was being broadcast, gunfire erupted in the background.

"I am being attacked right now. They are inside my house," Kadafi said.

Then the line went dead.

According to Al Jazeera, Mohammed Kadafi was living with his wife, children and mother, who had divorced his father.

Kadafi had been considered as a possible successor to his father. He leads the General Posts and Telecommunications Co., which owns and operates cellphone, satellite and Internet systems in Libya. After anti-government protests began in February, the company apparently severed Libya's Internet connections to the rest of the world.

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-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: Mohammed Kadafi, 41, the eldest of Moammar Kadafi's seven sons, apparently escaped rebel custody Monday after surrendering at his home Sunday. Credit: Amr Nabil / Associated Press

Video: Gunfire errupted at Mohammed Kadafi spoke with Al Jazeera by phone. Credit: YouTube

President Obama interrupted his vacation on Martha's Vineyard Monday to address events in Libya.

Although the president expressed confidence in NATO forces and the international coalition's response so far, he voiced concern about a potentially bloody transition from the longtime rule of Moammar Kadafi.

“The rights of all Libyans must be respected,” he said, noting that "fierce fighting" has continued and that Libya is "at a tipping point."

He said Kadafi could reduce the bloodshed by relinquishing power and calling on his forces to lay down their arms.

But Obama, who has been monitoring events in Libya from Massachusetts, said much of the country had clearly moved beyond Kadafi's grasp.

“The future of Libya is in the hands of its people,” Obama said. “This much is clear: the Kadafi regime is coming to an end.”

Disturbing new footage showing uniformed soldiers beating, kicking, and humilitating what appear to be detainees have emerged on the Internet and gone viral on pan-Arab TV stations in the last few days.

One of the clips, posted below, shows a group of handcuffed, shirtless men being punched and kicked by men in camouflage uniforms -- some of whom are seen recording video of the abuse with their own mobile phones (warning: violent images).

The men are sitting in the middle of a dusty road in what looks like a makeshift military camp. Tanks and a fluttering Syrian flag can be seen at a distance away.

The demonstrators hold their shoes aloft amid loud shouts of "Bye, bye, Bashar!" taunting embattled Syrian ruler Bashar Assad with their footwear in what is considered a grave insult in the Arab world.

Protesters in the Inshaat neighborhood in Syria's central city of Homs were in high spirits during Friday's nationwide "Promise of victory" rallies despite the regime's continued violent crackdown on anti-government protesters, according to the video below purportedly captured on Friday.