Author Archives: Arab America

The latest war in the Middle East, the Saudi Arabian-led assault on Yemen to prevent the Houthi movement from taking full control of the country, has triggered a fascinating…

Source: linkis.com

Confused about what’s happening in the Middle East? No need to worry—our research team at the Institute of Internet Diagrams has come up with the ultimate explainer in the shape of an interactive diagram that sums up the geopolitical alliances traversing this ancient region, which dates back to the Mesozoic Era.

The diagram clearly maps out the relationships between the main players as well as external powers, like the United States and Russia, that are deeply involved in the region. It is best to view the diagram using 3-D glasses, but the graphic will still work if none are available.

While it is common to hear people describe the Middle East as a complex and obscure place, the diagram plainly illustrates that this is not the case. The relationships follow logical patterns reflecting geopolitical interests, partnerships, and conflicts. For example, the United States is evidently on friendly terms with Iran. In Iraq. But America is on the opposite side of the conflict in Yemen. In Syria, the U.S. and Iran are both against and with each other, depending on the outcome of the nuclear talks.

This partially reflects President Obama’s breakthrough system of decision-making, which goes beyond outdated binary oppositions. Forced to choose between confronting and appeasing Iran, Obama has chosen to do both, arguing that at least one of those policies is the right one. Despite critiques from conservatives who are still clinging to old-fashioned ideas, this way of thinking is quite popular in the Middle East, as reflected in the old proverb, “You can have your cake and eat it.”

By carefully following the lines one by one, you can see that Egypt and Qatar are against each other, except in Yemen where they are now allies; Saudi Arabia is both supporting and bombing ISIS; and Libya is its own worst enemy. But it’s best if you draw your own conclusions; the diagram only takes about three minutes to understand fully. After which, you will be qualified to advise President Obama on Middle East policy.

Source: m.theatlantic.com

Congressmen Doug Lamborn and Ron DeSantis introduced the Boycott Our Enemies, Not Israel Act in order to stop boycotts of Israel.

According to the bill, potential contractors with the US government should certify that they are not participating in any boycott against Tel Aviv.

The legislation includes penalties for false certification, including permanently banning a company from doing business with the US government.

“Our government business practices should not play any role in harming our greatest ally in the Middle East,” Lamborn said in a statement.

“The BDS movement represents a disgraceful attempt to single out Israel for punitive treatment,” Congressman DeSantis said.

“This bill sends a strong message that we will not allow taxpayer funds to go to contractors who participate in this contemptible charade,” he added.

The BDS movement is a pro-Palestinian campaign in support of Palestinian unions.

It is set to increase economic and political pressure on Israel. The movement also seeks to end the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands and respect the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

The latest move is the third such attempt by American lawmakers in the wake of a global campaign to boycott Israel over its settlement expansion.

Two bipartisan bills were introduced earlier to counter the movement, which has spread in universities across Europe, the US, and some other countries

Source: www.presstv.ir

The Missouri History Museum canceled a recent panel discussion on Ferguson, Ayotzinapa and Palestine due to pressure from the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) to remove Palestine from the event, according to a cache of emails released by the St. Louis chapter of Jewish Voice For Peace.

The JCRC is a national organization with an Israel advocacy wing.

The event, scheduled for 19 March, was organized by Washington University student group AtlaVoz in collaboration with local Black, Latino and Palestinian activist groups to draw parallels between the struggles against state violence in the US, Mexico and Palestine.  

After fully approving and enthusiastically promoting it, museum officials changed their tone two days before the event, demanding that panel organizers either remove Palestinian panelists and the topic of Palestine or find a new venue. The organizers refused to acquiesce to censorship, so the event was canceled.

This prompted a large community protest outside the museum expressing outrage for the museum’s disrespect for speech and discrimination against Palestinians. 

The museum claimed that it shut down the event because panel organizers drastically altered the discussion from the initially approved topic. Furthermore, a museum spokesperson insisted to The Electronic Intifada that “there was no outside pressure” to cancel the event and “the decision was made internally at the museum staff leadership level.”

The emails obtained by Jewish Voice for Peace through a Freedom of Information Act Sunshine request demonstrate that the publicly-funded research institution lied. 

The museum has asked the JCRC and another anti-Palestinian organization to design a future program on “the history of Palestine and Israel.”

“Disturbed” by Palestine-Ferguson connection

On 17 March, JCRC executive director Batya Abramson-Goldstein emailed museum president Frances Levine to apply pressure to remove Palestine from the discussion.

“I am writing because I have been receiving emails and phone calls expressing dismay at the upcoming History Museum Program: Ferguson to Ayotzinapa to Palestine: Solidarity and Collaborative Action,” she said. “I can understand the dismay. How should I reply to those asking why this event is being sponsored by the History Museum?”

In another email to Levine, Abramson-Goldstein complained that “The conflating of the issues is disturbing. The parallels being made, likewise. The panel is seen as ‘stacked.’ The plan to base a documentary on the event raises the level of concern RE the harm this program may cause.”

Without hesitation, the museum contacted Sourik Betran, the Washington University student who organized the event, and gave him an ultimatum. Either remove Palestine and Palestinians from the discussion or find a new event location, he was told.

Levine dutifully responded to Abramson-Goldstein, writing, “Thanks Batya for bringing this to my attention. [Managing Director of Community Education and Events] Melanie [Adams] says she spoke to you and is back in touch with the students. This is not the program that she approved originally. She has given them some choices to bring the focus back where it was in Ferguson or to take the program back to their campus space. Not sure why they wanted it here anyway …”

Abramson-Goldstein then wrote to Levine expressing her gratitude and enthusiasm for the censorship. “When you and I eventually have our breakfast/lunch/coffee we can look back at this incident as an illustration of a potentially damaging incident defused,” she exalted.

Source: electronicintifada.net

All states commit crimes, but only one state is pronounced immoral and fatally flawed. And only that one – the whole world over – is subject to cultural and academic boycotts: Israel. A case against an academic boycott of Israel might seem so easy to make that we’d hardly need more than a paragraph or two in which to do it. So why publish a 550-page book, including 25 essays by leading scholars and journalists, accompanied by 30 pages of documents? A good question without an obvious answer, until we discover in this impressive anthology that the American Studies Association (ASA) is not the only academic organization to have recently passed resolutions supporting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS).

Preceded by several historically misleading and morally suspect paragraphs beginning with “Whereas,” the BDS resolutions passed by the ASA, the Association for Asian-American Studies, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (The Modern Language Association defeated a resolution, but sadly not without a battle) call on Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders, end its occupation and “colonization” of all Arab lands, and respect the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties, as stipulated in United Nations Resolution 194.

Source: www.haaretz.com

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process — the one that is supposed to end with a two-state solution — is on life support. Both sides in the conflict have made their share of missteps, but Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, all but pulled the plug earlier this month by pledging during his reelection campaign that Palestine would never become a state on his watch. He reaffirmed the sentiment even as he dialed back the rhetoric after the vote. This position runs directly counter to U.S. national security goals.

A two-state solution has been an American policy for nearly two decades. In a 2002 speech, George W. Bush became the first president to explicitly call for the creation of an economically sustainable, demilitarized Palestinian state. “The establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue,” he said in 2008. “The Palestinian people deserve it. And it will enhance the stability of the region. And it will contribute to the security of the people of Israel.” Today, virtually all American politicians, on both sides of the aisle, publicly support this outcome. But with Netanyahu standing in its way, how can the United States advance this goal?

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

In the workshop of the Barchini family, science and art collide. Dana Barchini, 26, and her father Joseph Barchini, 80, both potters and sculptors, work alongside each other, whether it be in the family workspace or testing clay in the Bekaa Valley to be used for their pieces. Joseph, educated in France at the Ecole des Metiers d’art, returned to Lebanon after also receiving his doctorate at the Sorbonne, where he studied the technical aspects of the ceramics the potters created in his native country, as well as their socio-economic situation. He returned to Lebanon to use his knowledge to improve the potters’ situation and to help modernize their work process. Joseph opened his first workshop in 1965 in his parents’ home in Beirut, but when the civil war began, he had to move north. Now he spends nearly every day in his second workshop he built in Ain Saade in 1980, a village eight miles north of Beirut, testing different aspects of the pottery craft and creating new glazes through chemical reactions.

Source: www.al-monitor.com

Mahmoud Al-Habbash, the religious advisor of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Friday for the Saudi-led alliance, which is attacking Houthi militias in Yemen, to attack the Gaza Strip, the official PA news agency Wafa has reported.

“The Arab nation has to attack any illegal side in the Arab region with an iron hand,” he said during his Friday sermon in Ramallah. “It has to start from Palestine.” He insisted that the protection of legitimacy in any Arab country is the duty of all the Arab leaders. “They have to initiate attacks against outlawed people anyhow and regardless of time and place, starting from Palestine.”

He insisted that what happened in Gaza when Hamas took full security control of the territory in 2007, was “a coup” and must be dealt with decisively. “People who carry out coups, must be attacked with an iron hand,” he said.

In response, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar wrote on his Facebook page that everyone who had hoped for the Israelis to defeat Hamas is now calling for the Arabs to do it. “This, he scoffed, “is the worst kind of tyranny.”

Habbash did not mention the fact that Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006 and was thus the legitimate, democratically-elected government when this “coup” was supposed to have taken place. Nor did he mention the coup led by his friends in Egypt against President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Morsi was Egypt’s first democratically-elected leader.

Source: www.middleeastmonitor.com

The elections for the twentieth Israeli Knesset, or parliament, were not lacking in drama: there were media ploys, political realignments and several surprises as the right-wing Likud party, contrary to many expectations, defeated the Zionist Union, considered to be a center-left party in Israel.

The elections also saw an unprecedented level of racist incitement against Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, a fifth of the population, which played a critical part in the election’s events and results. This series of threats, intimidations and attempts to delegitimize Arab citizens and their political participation, which occurred throughout the process, did not end until the polls closed on 17 March.

Source: electronicintifada.net

Along with his family, Abu Ahmed, who hails from Jenin governorate in the northern West Bank, has been stuffing cigarettes for three years. He fills on average 3,200 cigarette tubes — locally known as “al-Arabi” — with 4 kilograms (roughly 9 pounds) of tobacco for $20 per day. Abu Ahmed, who runs an olive grove at his farm, relies on this job to provide for his family.

Source: www.al-monitor.com

Many Lebanese female entrepreneurs and designers have made it internationally, revolutionizing the perception of Lebanon’s fashion.

Source: www.al-monitor.com

The state agency that regulates the legal profession in Virginia has canceled a planned seminar in Jerusalem following objections over Israel’s discrimination against Americans of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim ancestry.

“Certain members of the Virginia State Bar and other individuals have expressed objections to the VSB’s plan to take the Midyear Legal Seminar trip in November to Jerusalem,” Kevin E. Martingayle, the agency’s president, wrote in an email to members today. “It was stated that there are some unacceptable discriminatory policies and practices pertaining to border security that affect travelers to the nation.”

“Upon review of US State Department advisories and other research, and after consultation with our leaders, it has been determined that there is enough legitimate concern to warrant cancellation of the Israel trip and exploration of alternative locations,” Martingayle said.

“Undoubtedly, this news will disappoint some VSB members,” Martingayle added, “But we are a state agency that strives for maximum inclusion and equality, and that explains this action.”

Dozens of lawyers who are members of the VSB had signed an open letter detailing Israel’s discriminatory practices, citing reports from the US government and Amnesty International.

The Electronic Intifada has also reported extensively on Israel’s discriminatory denial of entry and other forms of abuse and harassment of Palestinian Americans and other travelers.

Source: electronicintifada.net