Kuwait is big into bans. A few years ago it banned women performers of any kind. Last year it banned women from holding jobs after 8 p.m. (The ban presumably does not extend to women keeping their households going at all hours of the night). It banned "The Kingdom," a Hollywood movie filmed in the United Arab Emirates about an FBI team investigating a terrorist attack in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And earlier this year its parliamentarians sought to ban Valentine's Day celebrations, fearing the effects of Cupid's arrow on national morals.

So it was no surprise that, as reported in today's Al-Watan newspaper in Bahrain, Kuwait has banned the display of any flag other than the Kuwaiti flag, and the display of any national leader other than Kuwait leaders. "The decision," Al-Watan reports, "came after a political crisis was sparked by a memorial ceremony held in Kuwait for Lebanon's Hezbollah military leader Imad Mughnieh, in which Hezbollah flags and pictures of its leader Hassan Nasrallah were raised."

But before you take this to be confirmation that free-speech repression is an Arab specialty, consider this: the same day that Kuwait announced its ban, a member of the Israeli Knesset (the Israeli parliament) declared that--as the Jerusalem Post summarized it--"treacherous Arab [members of the Knesset] as well as Arabs who demonstrated against Israel ought to be banished from the Knesset and from Israel." Effi Eitam, the repressive parliamentarian, was venting over Arab-Israelis protesting Israel's latest bloodletting in Gaza. About 1,000 demonstrators, the Post also reported, gathered in the Arab town of Umm el-Fahm on Monday evening chanting slogans such as "With spirit and blood we will liberate you, o Palestine," "Israel is the mother of terror," "Israel is a terror state" and even "Stop the Zionazi."

If it's kindred little despots he's looking for, Effi Eitam might feel quite comfortable in the Kuwaiti parliament.