Author Archives: Arab America

Many had hoped that Benjamin Netanyahu would be defeated in yesterday’s Israeli election. I was not one of them.

Many had already written him off – pre-election polls showed his Likud Party lagging behind the allegedly center-left Zionist Union, headed by Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni.

But I kept in mind the 1996 election where Netanyahu was universally thought to be the loser well after the votes had been cast.

In the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, it had been expected that his “dovish” successor Shimon Peres, who had launched a bloody invasion of Lebanon months earlier in the hope of proving to the electorate his tough “security” credentials, would easily win.

But on that election night, Netanyahu told his supporters, “The hour is still early and the night is long.” As the votes were counted, he pulled ahead beating Peres and securing his first term as prime minister.

Netanyahu did it again on Tuesday. With virtually all the votes counted, Likud has thirty seats, the Zionist Union has 24 and the Joint List of predominantly Arab parties is in third place with fourteen.

Source: electronicintifada.net

The United States still wants a negotiated political settlement in Syria that excludes President Bashar al-Assad, and its position on the Syrian leader has not changed, top U.S. envoy John Allen told Turkish officials late on Tuesday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday the U.S. would have to negotiate with Assad, though the State Department later said he was not specifically referring to the Syrian leader and that Washington would never bargain with him.

Kerry’s comments drew condemnation in Turkey, one of Assad’s most strident opponents, with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu saying negotiating with the Syrian leader would be like shaking hands with Adolf Hitler.

“General Allen reiterated that the United States’ position on Assad has not changed,” the U.S. embassy in Ankara said in a statement after Allen, the special envoy responsible for building the anti-Islamic State coalition, held talks in Ankara.

“The United States believes that he has lost all legitimacy to govern, that conditions in Syria under his rule have led to the rise of ISIL (Islamic State) and other terrorist groups, and that we continue to seek a negotiated political‎ outcome to the Syrian conflict that does not in the end include Assad.”

Source: www.reuters.com

The Syrian uprising began four years ago. On Sunday, thanks to the Korber Foundation, I was able to make a brief visit to Zaatari Refugee Camp outside Amman, Jordan. Established two years ago, Zaatari is now no longer a short-term shelter for those fleeing the butchery of the Assad regime—it has become a long-term residence for over 85,000 Syrians—a small town with two supermarkets, thousands of tiny resident-run shops, with water and sewage pipes being laid. The planning for Zaatari’s shift to semi-permanence reflects the longevity of this horrible war and the sad reality that, with half of Syria’s population displaced, even an immediate end to conflict would not bring the immediate return of refugees to their homes.

The government of Jordan and UNHCR (the U.N. refugee agency), which jointly manage the camp, have begun to shift from emergency assistance to building the economic and social infrastructure for long-term residency. Helping refugees find jobs and start businesses within the camp is cheaper, the U.N. notes, than providing humanitarian assistance—and with the conflict raging on, it’s increasingly crucial for younger men in the camp to find some means of making ends meet, lest they be tempted to return to Syria by militias offering cash to fighters. Moreover, long-term residency demands attention to dignity—a word the U.N. staff use frequently. Thus, providing food aid through debit cards residents can use to buy goods at a supermarket is better than handing out sacks of rice—enabling greater independence and more choice for camp residents and returning a sense of normality to lives upended by violence.

Source: www.brookings.edu

In February, a jury in an American court found the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) liable for compensation payments to US citizens who suffered damage in terror actions in Israel between 2000 and 2004. The verdict was reached using the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1992, which allows US citizens to seek compensation if damage has been inflicted on them by terrorist actions considered. The decision will have a number of important implications.

One of the implications is that the court found that there were operational links between the PA/PLO and the individuals who carried out the attacks in Israel. The evidence, the court was told, was based on intelligence information as well as, in some cases, the interrogation of suspects.  If the interrogations were carried out by the Israel Security Agency (ISA), it suggests that the court considers Israel’s methods of obtaining information and its interrogation techniques to be legitimate and meet US standards.

This is questionable as the ISA uses interrogation techniques on Palestinian detainees which are considered controversial even by some Israeli human rights groups such as the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI). The court should have reviewed each piece of information to make sure it was not extracted through the use of illegal methods. This would have required that the court call the “terrorist suspects” in for questioning to enable the jury to hear their testimonies as the primary source of information–as opposed to the use of secondary sources such as documentation provided by ISA. This did not happen.

Source: mondoweiss.net

So he won and I have to say I am relieved. There wll be no more endless cycles of pointless ‘negotiations’ with Israel pretending that some day it will agree to a two-state solution while continually escalating both settlement (colony) building and the maltreament of the Palestinians. Now everyone will see that the Palestinians were right all along and that Israel has never been a partner for negotiations. 

There is no real political Left in Israel and if the other side got to form a government, all we would have seen is more of the same. Now we’ll see if the EU has the decency and conviction to enact proper sanctions. Then of course there is the US. The US Administration might stall for a while, but we’ll see if they have what it takes to do the right thing. Israel is no friend to the US and the sooner they realise it the better. 

Source: mondoweiss.net

    Last month, ACCESS named Rana Abbas as its Director of Communications and Marketing.  Rana joined ACCESS in November 2013 and has over 15 years of community service and communications experience.  She has served as the Interim Director of the Communications and Marketing Department for the last year. In her capacity, she oversees all … Continued

Palestinian Women – Shared Struggle, Diverse Experiences  

How does one write about women and their concerns without reducing them to so-called “women’s issues”? Are the struggles of Palestinian women under occupation or in refugee camps all that different from Palestinian men? Is a mother’s concern for her children a “women’s cause” distinguished in its sentiment and action from paternal concern? Is gender all that important, after all? 

The Journal of Palestine Studies has long addressed these and similar questions regarding the lived experience of Palestinian women in historic Palestine and the diaspora. The Journal’s long history of papers, interviews, and essays have served to highlight the stories and experiences Palestinian women have to share. While they are part of a grander Palestinian story, these experiences highlight a reality that is often distinctive to women. 

For instance, in a 1994 interview conducted by Stephanie Latte Abdallah on behalf of the Journal, a Palestinian refugee woman in the Wahdat camp in Amman relates, “It is true that there is a lack of education among refugees in general because of our economic situation, but the men get out more and so are more exposed to political questions and what’s happening in the world. The women often stay at home, meet fewer people, and therefore have a hard time understanding the political, economic, and social questions on their own.” Additionally, Palestinian women face the challenge of “Gender Politics and Nationalism” as recounted by Sherna Berger Gluck, “At the height of the [first] intifada, women activists regularly echoed the refrain: ‘We will not be another Algeria’ – vowing they would not allow their interests to be subverted to political processes, as occurred in Algeria following independence.”

In its reports on Palestinian women, the Journal has sought to shine a light on the myriad experiences of Palestinians – of gender, class, religion, and geography – in order to convey the diversity of the Palestinian past and present.

As part of our Special Focus on Palestinian Women – Shared Struggle, Diverse Experiences in conjunction with the forthcoming International Women’s Day (March 8), the Institute for Palestine Studies has made available a series of articles from our archives. This archival collection includes articles on the early Palestinian women’s movement in the 1920s and 1930s, the role of Palestinian camp women as “Tellers of History,” the experiences of Palestinian female laborers in Gaza under direct Israeli occupation, and many, many more, including the aforementioned two by Abdallah and Gluck. These articles, which include several interviews, relate extraordinary stories often told in the voices of Palestinian women. In presenting them, we hope to inform our readers about the exceptional stories that make up the whole of Palestine.

Source: www.palestine-studies.org

Social networks offer an incredible tool for tapping into the collective unconscious, a virtual Jungian arena in which competition might be expected to amplify the critical values and anxieties of millions of people in real time.

In early 2015, these critical issues included the ambiguous color of a random dress, the so-called Islamic State, and llamas—in that order.

How did we get here?

The answer to this question is, predictably, complex. Divining the mood of the masses has always been a tricky business. Prior to the rise of democracy, there were few consistent tools for this purpose, aside from counting how many pitchforks and torches the peasants were waving outside the gates. The vote became one way to quantify citizen priorities. But in practice, democracy is reductive. A finite number of candidates run for a finite number of offices, and the winners infer what their constituents want and need.

The explosion of affordable communications technologies allowed such inferences to become more accurate over time. Still, at every stage, reductionist influences kept whittling and shaping the raw data of public opinion. Pollsters decided what to ask and how to phrase the questions. Politicians decided which issues to exploit. News editors and producers made judgment calls about what was newsworthy

Source: www.theatlantic.com

Khaled Bahah was released this week from house arrest, after having resigned as Yemen’s prime minister in January when Houthi rebels captured the presidential palace.

Gabi MacKenzie, Bahah’s former assistant at the embassy, said Bahah had been spending time working in his garden while under house arrest, and shared a photo of the former ambassador sporting a T-shirt and digging in the dirt.

Yemen press reported this week that Bahah left Sanaa after his release and it was unclear where he was headed, though MacKenzie confirmed he was still in Yemen Tuesday.

Bahah has stated he has no intention of resuming his post as prime minister. On his Facebook page, he characterized his release as “a goodwill gesture.” Also released from house arrest were his cabinet ministers.

Source: ottawacitizen.com

The 6th South American Festival of Arab Culture will run from March 18th to 31st in 27 cities across Brazil in abroad. The event is organized by the Library and Research Center of South American-Arab Countries (Bibliaspa) and the entire program is free of charge.

The event will span capitals such as São Paulo, São Luís, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Brasília, Curitiba, Florianópolis and Fortaleza, and municipalities like Diadema, Santos, Campinas, Santo André, Franco da Rocha and São Bernardo do Campo, all in the state of São Paulo, plus Foz do Iguaçu (in Paraná) and Olinda (Permanbuco). Activities will also take place in Buenos Aires (Argentina), Tunis (Tunisia) and Beirut (Lebanon).

Source: www2.anba.com.br

The Broward County School Board voted Tuesday to suspend a teacher who was accused of calling her student “a raghead Taliban.”

Maria Valdes, a French teacher at Cypress Bay High School, will be suspended for five days without pay and must complete mandatory diversity training.

The school board passed the item with no discussion.

Valdes allegedly made the comments to 14-year-old Deyab Houssein Wardani as he entered class wearing a hoodie.

According to the administrative complaint filed by Superintendent Robert Runcie, Valdes repeatedly called Deyab, who is Muslim, “the Taliban” and “terrorista” — Spanish for terrorist.

Source: wlrn.org

In the context of the absurd reality of Israel’s occupation, last Thursday brought a glimmer of good news. Attorneys for the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and settler group Elad withdrew their petition seeking to expel the Ruweidi family from their East Jerusalem home. Elad’s lawyer, Eitan Peleg, withdrew the following a recommendation made by the Israeli Supreme Court, casting doubt on Elad’s and the JNF’s claims to the property.

Peace Now settlement watch director Hagit Ofran told +972 that that the house will now officially and formally recognized as belonging to the Ruweidi family, after 25 years of attempted confiscations by Elad and its allies in the NGO sector and government.

Source: 972mag.com