On Saturday, March 21, a dramatic anti-war assembly rallied at the White House and then wound through the streets of Washington, D.C., delivering symbolic flag-draped coffins to the headquarters of war contractors like Honeywell Corporation, the AIPAC offices and finally at the Senate Office Building at the U.S. Capitol.
Source: www.answercoalition.org
On March 22nd 1945 the Arab League was founded in Cairo.
The goal of the league was to draw closer relations between the member states, safeguard them and consider their interests.
The original member states of the league were Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan (at that time Transjordan), with Yemen joining less than two months later.
The league was initially headquartered in Cairo, although this was moved following Egypt’s suspension, then returned there after the country reentered, and currently has 22 members.
Source: www.bubblews.com
Arab scholars working in the West have a “duty” to assist with the development of the higher education sectors in their home countries, a leading professor said.
Sultan Abu-Orabi, the secretary general of the Association of Arab Universities, told Times Higher Education that scholars should return to the Middle East to undertake visiting professorships, co-author papers, attend conferences and supervise graduate students.
This would help to counter the impact of the “brain drain” which sees most Arab institutions lose the “cream of the cream” of their staff and student bodies to Europe and the US every year, said Professor Abu-Orabi, a former president of Jordan’s Yarmouk University.
Many students in disciplines such as medicine and engineering take their first and second degrees in the Middle East before leaving to undertake further study or pursue an academic career, meaning that institutions “don’t get something back”, he said.
“They have studied here in the region and now they are far away,” said Professor Abu-Orabi. “Therefore there is some duty on the shoulders of these people, that they should really put some effort in to help those in their home countries.”
Professor Abu-Orabi acknowledged that the political instability of the Middle East and the restraints on academic freedom in some countries did not encourage scholars to stay in the region.
Key challenges included the comparatively low level of public investment in research, particularly outside the Gulf states, at approximately 0.3 per cent to 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product, he said.
The Arab world made up about 6 per cent of the world’s population, but accounted for less than 0.5 per cent of its research output, according to Professor Abu-Orabi. Meanwhile, in the Arab world there were around 600 researchers per 1 million inhabitants, compared with as many as 10 times that in the US and Europe.
One solution was closer collaboration with European scholars, and also with researchers in the Gulf states, said Professor Abu-Orabi.
Meanwhile, many Arab universities need a stronger strategic vision to ensure that their educational standards were high enough and that their graduates met the expectations of employers, he added.
Professor Abu-Orabi also called on Western governments to do more to support Syrian academics and students who had been forced to flee the conflict in the country. He acknowledged that European universities had taken on some Syrian students but suggested that the priority was to increase financial support for refugees and their education in countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
“European countries should help the Syrian students and Syrian universities through the problems they are facing because a lot of Syrian students are without universities, they don’t have a job or money,” he said.
“There is a duty on the international community to help those students who go to schools and universities, otherwise they will be thrown on to the streets.”
Professor Abu-Orabi, a chemist with a PhD from the University of Michigan who has held visiting positions at the University of Salford and several German institutions, was speaking at the THE MENA Universities Summit, held in Qatar last month.
chris.havergal@tesglobal.com
Source: www.timeshighereducation.co.uk
Diana Buttu was not optimistic about the outcome of the Israeli elections before Tuesday, nor was she surprised. Now, with Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party having retained the majority, and with the prime minister renouncing the two-state solution in a final bid for conservative Israeli votes, the Palestinian attorney, policy adviser and former negotiator sees a narrow path forward for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
“I think that there will be a U.N. resolution,” proposed by the Palestinians, Buttu said in an interview Wednesday, “to have a deadline for the occupation to end. We’re coming up on 50 years,” she said, referring to the anniversary of the 1967 War when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
The United States, which has been a staunch ally of Israel, has traditionally exercised its veto power at the U.N. Security Council to block Israel-related resolutions. Buttu doesn’t see that policy changing anytime soon despite the poor personal relationship between President Obama and Netanyahu, who has grown increasingly close to Republican party leadership. Still, Obama told Netanyahu in a phone call on Thursday that the United States would have to ‘re-assess our options’ based on Netanyahu’s comments on Palestinian statehood, The New York Times reported Friday. Separately, Politico cited hints by unnamed administration officials that the U.S. “would not rule out the possibility” of relaxing its U.N. veto pen.
RELATED: Chuck Todd on Netanyahu’s flip-flopping statements: ‘This is a political survivor’
Whatever happens at the U.N., Buttu believes public pressure and civil rights-style activism, including marches and boycotts and pushing for international sanctions against Israel could make a difference.
“If we’re going to move forward, we have to begin to hold Israel accountable,” she said. “You can’t pretend that this is business as usual.”
On the eve of his reelection Netanyahu said he would prevent Palestinian statehood. Then he issued a video warning to supporters to counter the votes of Arab citizens. “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves,” Netanyahu said, adding: “Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses.”
“I mean how do you step down from that?” Buttu asked; “once you’ve made it very clear that you don’t want to see a Palestinian state, you don’t want to see Palestinian freedom, and that you believe that your own citizens; citizens of the state, are a strategic or a demographic threat to your country?”
Netanyahu revised his pre-election statements in an interview Wednesday with msnbc’s Andrea Mitchell, saying he still favors a two-state solution but none is possible as long as Hamas is in power. He also said he is “proud to be the president of all Israeli citizens.”
But Buttu hopes that a new right-wing government will only encourage Palestinian supporters to embrace the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” movement launched in 2005 to spotlight what BDS supporters, including Buttu, call “Israeli apartheid.”
Palestinians, she said, should engage the international community the way black South Africans and African-Americans once did.
“In the West Bank, you have two different laws, two sets of laws for different people,” she said, noting that Jewish Israelis there live under a different law than Palestinians. “Even inside Israel, there are different laws in place for the Jewish citizens of the state versus somebody like me who’s a Palestinian citizen of the state.”
RELATED: Netanyahu walks back Palestinian state remarks
She is more optimistic about electoral gains made in the Israeli parliament this week for Israeli Arab citizens. A new Arab coalition party won 14 seats, due largely to historic voter turn-out in that community, becoming the third-largest party in the Knesset.
“The third largest party in [the just-concluded] election was a party that models itself after Martin Luther King.” She describes the Joint List, a collection of four small Israeli parties, as “a civil rights group that consists both of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis … nationalists, environmentalists, feminists, you name it.”
Arabs make up approximately 20% of Israel’s population.
“So they’re going to have to be pushing against this tide of very racist legislation,” she said, referring to the controversial “nationality” legislation drafted by Netanyahu’s cabinet last November, which enshrines the idea of Israel as a Jewish state, not a multi-cultural one, into law, and delists Arabic as a national language. Critics including the Anti-Defamation League have warned that the legislation would undermine Israel’s democratic character. Others, including Arab citizens of Israeli call it racist. It’s “legislation that goes against where Palestinians can live, to what types of jobs they can have, to the rights and privileges, the benefits that they get in the state. So there is a civil rights struggle that’s happening,” she said.
Buttu sees the larger issue as the need to combine the struggles of Arabs inside and outside the internationally recognized Israeli borders. “Now that Netanyahu has declared the two state solution dead, it’s time for the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be joining this civil rights movement,” she said. “And I think that’s what we’re going to see in the coming years.”
Source: www.msnbc.com
Jerusalem (AFP) – As the man who took the Arab Israeli parties to their single biggest election win of 13 seats, Ayman Odeh dreams of a bigger political future for his community.
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The 40-year-old lawyer on Tuesday won his first parliamentary seat at the head of the Arab Joint List — a bloc formed in response to a new Israeli law that upped the electoral threshold.Before becoming the head of what has now become the third-largest alliance in the Knesset, Odeh told AFP he felt the weight of “great responsibility” on his shoulders since he represents the Arab Israeli community that makes up 20 percent of Israel’s population.
Source: news.yahoo.com
47SOUL are winning fans all over the Middle East, and poised to take the world by storm with their energetic sound and politically engaged lyrics.
Less than two years old, they have been booked for UK festivals Womad and Glastonbury in June 2015.
Formed in 2013 in Amman, Jordan, the members come from different countries and hold different travel documents and passports.
Travel restrictions and political instability stop them from coming together in their home region to perform and rehearse, forcing them to seek opportunities abroad.
The sound of 47SOUL is rooted in Arabic dabke: the street music of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. But the five piece are taking it into the future with analogue synthesizers and electronic beats, and hyped verses from the four singers.
47SOUL are working on a debut album, due for release in June 2015.
Source: www.bbc.com
Arab Idol runner up Farah Yousef wooed people with her sweet and strong voice. She is a powerhouse when it comes to classical Arabic songs. It comes easy to them Syrian vocalists. Farah Yousef did not have great last six months. I hardly heard of her news.
Source: hotarabicmusic.blogspot.fr
Social networking site Twitter has announced plans to open its first Middle East office in Dubai.
A handful of sales and media staff are expected to start working in the emirate within months. They will primarily focus on building relationships with local businesses and boosting their profiles and investment on the micro-blogging site.
Source: www.arabianbusiness.com
Michael Douglas, in his op-ed piece in last Sunday’s LA Times, “Finding Judaism, facing anti-Semitism”, tells a compelling story about his young son encountering an anti-Semite at a hotel pool in southern Europe who shouted insults at him because he was wearing a Star of David. While everyone can agree it’s important to stand up against anti-Semitism, it’s also important to reject false claims of anti-Semitism used as an ad hominem sword to protect Israel and the actions of its government from criticism. Where real anti-Semitism is present, as in the despicable incident involving Michael’s young son, it needs to be named and shamed and hopefully soon eradicated. Where it’s not, where it’s used as a tactic to protect Israel from valid criticism, we need to reject it and avoid the slippery slope that reduces claims of anti-Semitism to little more than political theatre.
Source: mondoweiss.net
Jon Stewart is accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of taking a page out of the American political …
Source: popist.com
BEIRUT: American University of Beirut announced Thursday the appointment of Dr. Fadlo Khuri as the next president for the prestigious institution.
“The Board of Trustees at the American University of Beirut has voted to elect Fadlo R. Khuri, MD, as the 16th president of the university,”an AUB statement said.
He will replace Dr. Peter Dorman, who became the university’s president in March 2008.
Currently, Khuri is professor and chairman of the department of hematology and medical oncology, Emory University School of Medicine, and holds the Roberto C. Goizueta distinguished chair for cancer research, the statement said.
He also serves as deputy director for the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Dr. Khuri was recently appointed executive associate dean for research of the Emory University School of Medicine.
According to the statement, Dr. Khuri was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and brought up in Beirut, where he attended AUB from 1981-82. He moved to the U.S. in 1982, and earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale University, in Connecticut, and his MD from Columbia University in New York.
He completed his residency in internal medicine at the Boston City Hospital, Boston, and his fellowship in hematology and medical oncology at the Tufts Medical Center.
He was on faculty at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center from 1995-2002 prior to joining Emory University and the Winship Cancer Institute, Atlanta, in 2003.
An accomplished molecular oncologist and translational thought leader, Dr. Khuri’s clinical expertise and research are focused on the development of molecular, prognostic, therapeutic and chemopreventive approaches to improve the standard of care for patients with lung and aerodigestive cancers.
“President-elect Khuri is a highly accomplished educator and researcher and an articulate voice on the imperative of liberal arts education in the Arab world. Equally important, he is a person of profound personal integrity,” AUB Board Chairman Dr. Philip S. Khoury said.
Source: www.dailystar.com.lb
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Commuters in cities across the United States were surprised this month to find their daily trips to work adorned with posters and banners calling on their government to end military support to Israel.
The posters were rolled out in seven cities for the entire month of March, and are part of a broader awareness campaign by the US-based Palestine Advocacy Project, an activist group also known as Ads Against Apartheid focused on raising awareness about American complicity in the Israeli occupation.
Messages decrying Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes, its incarceration policies targeting Palestinian children, and its construction of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are among the themes tackled by the ad campaign, whose launch was timed to coincide with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the country earlier this month.
Source: www.maannews.com
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