Author Archives: Arab America

Are Israel and Iran similar?

At least at first glance, they seem to be very similar. Iran is considered one of the leading state financiers of global terrorism, and Israel could soon find itself on the same list.

No, it’s not a joke. That was the clear warning that was issued this week in a report by Israel’s Justice Ministry.

“If it’s decided that the country has not demonstrated sufficient progress, Israel is liable to be subject to increased oversight and ultimately even to be added to the list of countries that are not cooperating with the international requirements in the field of the prevention of money laundering and the financing of terrorism.” That, in black and white, appears in a current official Israeli government document.

How did we become financiers of terrorism?

As usual, it is due to the criminal negligence with which the state is run. In short, shoddily. In the current instance, it’s a case of particularly shocking shoddiness and not just because Israel could become a sort of outcast nation in the view of the international community. It’s shocking shoddiness because it involves the primary infrastructure that finances all the organized crime in Israel, and the Israel Police have known this for years. It’s the main weak spot exploited by tax evaders, and the Israel Tax Authority has known this for years. It’s a market that attracts the most disadvantaged segments of Israeli society, those invisible people whom the state has neglected and abandoned to the less-than-tender mercies of the country’s family-run organized crime rings.

The government is aware of this, but simply doesn’t care. That is, until international agencies threatened to declare Israel a country that finances terrorism.

The market that I am referring to is the “gray market” — that unregulated segment of the financial sector. This week’s Justice Ministry recommendations were released by a team, headed by Deputy Attorney General Avi Licht, that was appointed to examine the regulation of currency service providers.

Source: www.haaretz.com

Suzanne Barakat talking to Anderson Cooper about Chapel Hill Shooting

Source: www.youtube.com

Dozens of people gathered at the Radiology building Wednesday evening for a vigil held in memory of three Muslim students killed in North Carolina.

23-year-old Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were killed Tuesday evening outside of their home execution-style, with bullets in their heads, according to multiple news reports.

Deah, an avid fan of the NBA and the Golden State Warriors, was in his second year of dentistry school at the University of North Carolina. His wife also planned to enroll there in the fall. Razan was an undergraduate student at NC State University.The couple, Deah and Yusor, had gotten married less than two months ago.

Students of all faiths and ethnicities at MSU gathered to honor the memories of the lives lost, as well as share their stories on how they feel about the situation.

Laya Charara, a second year medical student, founded the Muslim Medical Students Group at the College of Human Medicine and organized the event.

“When I look at the photos of Razan and Yusor, I saw myself, my best friends, and my community,” She said “When I looked at Deah, I saw my own brother. This happened in Chapel Hill, NC. It could have easily happened in East Lansing.”

At this time the exact motivation of the killing, some news outlets characterizing the shooting as fueled by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking.

The father of Deah, as well as some students at MSU do not feel that this is the case.

“This crime was not about a parking dispute,” Charara said. “It was not mental illness. It was an act of terrorism and hate, and any dispute of that is a disrespect to the memories of these individuals.”

The next step for combatting this, said those at the vigil, is continuing to raise awareness and have open discussions about faith and religion.

The vigil ended with a moment of silence for those murdered.

“Hate has no religion, ethnicity, nor color,” Charara said. “It is up to us to condemn ideologies that propagate this type of evil.”

Source: statenews.com

Karen Hicks said she was “shocked” by the attack but said her husband Craig, 46, had parking disputes with many neighbours, of all religions.

Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were found dead, shot in the head at home in North Carolina.

Their family has said the attack in Chapel Hill was motivated by hate.

Mohammed Abu-Salha, father of the two sisters who were killed, said Mr Hicks had killed them “execution style”.

“This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt,” he told the News-Observer newspaper.

“And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”

On Wednesday, the wife of Mr Hicks, Karen Hicks stood alongside a lawyer as she told reporters her husband believed “everyone is equal, it doesn’t matter what you look like, who you are or what you believe”.

Source: www.bbc.com

Three American Muslims have been shot dead near the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill in the US.
The three were named by police as Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21 and her sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19.
In a statement, police said they responded to a report of gunshots in the usually quiet area of Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill at 5.11pm local time on Tuesday. Upon arrival, officers found the three young individuals, who were pronounced dead at the scene.

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

The rise of ISIS, Syrian airstrikes and the continued conflict between Israel and Palestine raise important questions about the contemporary global resurgence of religion in the public sphere, which has important implications for immigration, secularism, freedom, and issues related to race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality. 
To explore such issues, the University of Arizona’s Religion, Secularism and Political Belonging Project, or RelSec, is hosting public talks with three internationally distinguished scholars. Collectively, the scholars are experts in freedom and personal agency in the modern world, political and religious conflicts, and the Asian American religious experience, among other topics.

Source: uanews.org

CAMP LEJEUNE, United States: A U.S. Marine who vanished from his post in Iraq a decade ago and later wound up in Lebanon chose Monday to have his case decided by a military judge instead of a jury.

Court was recessed until Tuesday, when opening statements are expected in Cpl. Wassef Hassoun’s trial on charges of desertion, larceny and destruction of property before the judge, Marine Maj. Nicholas Martz.

Hassoun also formally conceded that his second disappearance began with an unauthorized absence, entering a guilty plea to the lesser offense.

Prosecutors will still seek to prove the more serious desertion accusations against Hassoun and that he stole a pistol that was later lost. They have dropped an accusation related to a military vehicle that went missing.

Defense attorneys maintain Hassoun was kidnapped in 2004 by insurgents and later became tangled up in Lebanese courts. Prosecutors allege Hassoun fled his post because he was unhappy with his deployment and the treatment of Iraqis by U.S. troops.

Hassoun, a 35-year-old native of Lebanon and a naturalized American citizen, faces a maximum sentence of 27 years in prison if convicted of all charges, prosecutors said.

Defense attorney Haytham Faraj said the plea on the lesser charge will simplify the debate about Hassoun’s decision to go to Lebanon in early 2005 after briefly returning to the U.S. The lawyer says Hassoun didn’t intend to stay away permanently – a component of the desertion charge – but had his passport taken by Lebanese authorities.

Hassoun’s case began in June 2004, when he disappeared from a base in Fallujah, Iraq. Days later, he appeared blindfolded and with a sword poised above his head in an image purportedly taken by insurgents. An extremist group claimed to be holding him captive.

Not long after that, Hassoun turned up unharmed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, saying he’d been kidnapped. But officials were suspicious, and he was brought back to Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina, in 2004 while the military considered charging him.

After his return, Hassoun was allowed to visit family in Utah. With a military court hearing looming, Hassoun disappeared a second time in early 2005. Hassoun traveled to Lebanon but was arrested by that country’s authorities after Interpol issued a bulletin triggered by his deserter status, Faraj said. The defense says court proceedings in Lebanon lasted until 2013, and Hassoun turned himself in after the government there lifted travel restrictions.

Prosecutors have said his whereabouts were unknown for years.

The judge denied a defense motion Monday to prevent prosecutors from calling an Iraq native now living in the United States.

Faraj argued that the witness interacted with his client long before the disappearance and those conversations weren’t relevant.

But the prosecutor, Capt. Chris Nassar, said Hassoun made incriminating comments to the witness, including that he didn’t want to die in Iraq and wanted to leave the Marines.

The judge denied a prosecution motion seeking to bar the defense from referring in opening statements to the video that purportedly shows Hassoun being held by insurgents, nor mention Lebanese government documents related to court proceedings against Hassoun in that country.

The judge allowed the evidence to be mentioned in opening statements, but warned that the defense must later show the trustworthiness of those documents.

Source: www.dailystar.com.lb

Christianity has a history that most of us know little about. A history that spreads eastward as well as westward, writes former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams for BBC Newsnight.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

An open-air museum displaying some of Haifa’s historic Palestinian roots in present-day Israel, is said to promote coexistence

In Memory of Chaya Touma: Workshop of the Wadi Nisnas Ceramic Circle (MEE/Creede Newton)

Creede Newton
Tuesday 10 February 2015 14:48 GMT
Last update: Wednesday 11 February 2015 1:00 GMT
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Topics: Culture
Tags: Haifa; Museum without Walls; Chaya Touma; Emile Touma
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Haifa – In the old city of Haifa, a historically Arab city in the north of present-day Israel, history is visible in every corner.

The area bears the stamp of the historical inhabitants of the city. In 1947, when Palestine was under the British Mandate, Haifa was inhabited by roughly 70,000 Palestinians and 71,000 Jews, many of whom had settled there after waves of Zionist immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries from across Europe and North America. When the war that led to the establishment of the State of Israel began, the Palestinian population that did not flee Haifa congregated in Wadi Nisnas.

Today, the area is where the majority of Haifa’s Arab citizens of Israel live, including Palestinians and Syrians from the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967. A mixed Christian and Muslim neighbourhood known for its stone buildings, falafel, market, and friendly inhabitants, Wadi Nisnas is also home to more than 60 permanent outdoor art exhibitions called the Museum Without Walls (MWW). You can see art on the walls of buildings abandoned since the 1948 war, on the streets, the courtyards and the stairs used to traverse the hilly landscape of Haifa.   

The exhibition was started in 1996 with cooperation from Beit HaGefen, an organisation based in Haifa that “educates towards coexistence, neighbourliness and tolerance by means of communal, cultural and artistic activities” between the many religions living in the city – Jewish, Christian and Muslim (including the Druze).

According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the MWW “was one of the first venues that held joint exhibitions of prominent and emerging Arab Palestinian and Jewish artists on a regular basis”. Since 1996, the exhibition has featured over 800 works and 500 artists, over 100 of which are exhibited repeatedly.

The MMW aims to bring the coexistence of Haifa to the artistic realm, while simultaneously preserving the city’s historical roots. A number of the works are dedicated to Chaya Touma, a Jewish ceramic artist who married a Palestinian citizen of Israel named Emile Touma.

Emile, a communist philosopher, met Chaya at a Communist Youth Alliance dance class. As a public intellectual and founder of the National Liberation League in Palestine, Emile worked for the creation of two states based on the 1948 United Nations plan, but he also promoted the idea of coexistence between Arabs and Israelis.

The works of Chaya focused on the experience of Palestinian citizens of Israel. They often depict longing, suffering, and hope. Many of her works are featured in the MWW, and they often make reference to the Palestinians who were expelled from Wadi Nisnas in 1948, and other historical struggles of the Palestinian population.

Chaya died in June 2009. The couple’s belief in coexistence extended to the grave; she was buried next to Emile in a Christian Orthodox cemetery. An unusual resting place for an Israeli Jew.

The workshop of the Wadi Nisnas Ceramic Circle created a memorial to Chaya that rests on a wall of a home on the main street of Wadi Nisnas. Featuring brightly coloured ceramic plates depicting faces, fruits and animals, the memorial is hard to miss.

A collection of artwork sits on a plot of land and an abandoned building (MEE/Creede Newton)
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Source: www.middleeasteye.net

Here is a collection of telling, often luminous stories, about the lives of Lebanese women in America.

Evelyn Shakir crafts tales that are rich in history and cultural detail, setting her stories in different eras, from the 1960s to the present and carrying us back, on occasion, to the turn of the twentieth century.

Each in their own way, Shakir’s first- and second-generation women work either to reclaim their Lebanese heritage or to leave it behind. In “The Story of Young Ali” a teenage girl resists her beloved father’s traditional tales of honor and self sacrifice. The matriarch of “House Calls,” on the other hand, is so wedded to the past that she returns from the grave to harangue her Americanized family. In “Oh, Lebanon,” a young woman who has fled Lebanon’s civil war and refuses to cover her hair with a scarf finds that turning her back on her past leads her in unexpected directions.

With agile humor and emotional truth, Shakir offers multiple perspectives on the experience of Lebanese women in the United States. Her stories dismantle stereotypes and remind us that women of Lebanese background have been a part of the American narrative for over a century.

Source: booksonthemove.com

Along the halls of London’s Ayyam Gallery, a series of paintings by Kuwaiti-Syrian artist Shurooq Amin raise eyebrows and spark uncomfortable questions.

Source: www.barakabits.com

DEARBORN, MI — Michigan’s two U.S. Senators and a congresswoman sent a letter this week to the U.S. Census Bureau supporting a proposal to add a Middle Eastern-North African classification to the nation’s decennial population count.

The Census Bureau is collecting feedback on a proposal to allow people of Middle Eastern North African descent to identify as such in the 2020 census.

Congress would have to approve the change before it could be added to the 2020 census.

The 2010 census questionnaire, under a question on race, included check boxes for black, white and various Asian, Hispanic and native American identities, but no specific option for Arab Americans have historically been counted by default as white.

Some have pushed for the addition to allow more political visibility and grant opportunities for Arab Americans.

And Democratic U.S. Sens. Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow, along with U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Dearborn), whose district includes a large Arab American population, support the proposal.

“This proposal would provide a more accurate picture of the demographic composition of the United States, which is critical to ensure the proper allocation of government resources,” they wrote in a letter to Census Bureau Director John Thompson.

“Excluding the MENA (Middle Eastern-North African) category has serious ramifications for members of these communities, many of whom live in the State of Michigan. For example, since the MENA community is not included in the Census they are not eligible for protection under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which ensures the availability of foreign language ballots. Additional examples include researchers having difficulty conducting studies on health disparities without this critical information and challenges monitoring employment discrimination against Arab Americans without accurate count of the size and location of the population.”

The lawmakers pointed out vast gaps between estimates of the Arab American population developed by the federal government and by nonprofit groups.

“In Michigan, the Census estimates the population is at 191,600, while the Arab American Institute estimates that more than 500,000 Arab Americans call the state home,” they said in a statement publicizing the letter.

“This misrepresentation in population size has led to barriers for representation, employment, health and education.”

A pair of prominent Detroit-area Arab Americans weighed in on either side of the issue last week. More from the Associated Press here.

Source: www.mlive.com