Author Archives: Arab America

Lawyers for embattled Professor Steven Salaita have fired the latest round in his employment lawsuit against the University of Illinois, rebutting the UI’s motion to dismiss the case.

In a response filed late Monday in U.S. District Court in Chicago, Salaita’s team said the university had a contractual obligation to hire Salaita, disputing the UI’s contention that he had no “binding contract” or “unambiguous promise” of a job.

Salaita received a written job offer in American Indian Studies in September 2013 and formally accepted it in writing, and in the ensuing 11 months before he was to start teaching “all the parties ever did was confirm their understanding that there was an agreement,” said Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Salaita along with the Loevy and Loevy law firm in Chicago.

Source: www.news-gazette.com

Photographer Najib Joe Hakim documents the experiences of Palestinian-Americans living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the second largest community of Palestinians in the U.S. With a camera and audio recorder in hand, Najib explores how Palestinian-Americans connect with the idea of “home,” how they’ve experienced returning to Palestine and the indignities of living in a country that is often ignorant if not hostile toward Palestinians. As Najib relates,

Source: blog.palestine-studies.org

Everyone is familiar with the disaster that was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress earlier this month—which, coordinated with the Republican leadership and executed behind President Barack Obama’s back, strained relations between the United States and Israel.
As reported in the latest issue of Newsweek in the article “Black Power In Washington,” members of the Congressional Black Caucus took particular affront to Netanyahu’s address, in part because some in the caucus made up of Black lawmakers believed its unprecedented audacity was particularly disrespectful to America’s first Black president. In fact, 57 Democrats—including most Black lawmakers—stayed away from the Israeli leader’s March 3 speech in protest.

Source: blackamericaweb.com

Twenty-year-old Summer Nasser is a born and bred New Yorker, but her strong family ties bring her to Yemen several times a year. On her latest trip, in February, she arrived just as the US was pulling out its diplomats and military personnel in face of rising violence in the country.

Source: www.pri.org

America is suffering from a severe addiction and the dealers in our government, in our academic, financial and social institutions, are not your average crack drug dealers — but Zionists, providing the needed “fix”. It is time for a much-needed rehabilitation in America, and for us to get on the road to recovery from this toxic and fatal addiction.

The recent speech Netanyahu gave to a standing ovation in a joint session of the House and the Senate, along with the public humiliation he dished out to America’s elected president and the American people should be a wake up call to line up in the voting stations and vote out of office ALL those who attended Netanyahu’s speech — those being members of the American Knesset.

Adding insult to injury, Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with Stephen Rosen formerly with AIPAC, wrote this about Netanyahu’s visit, “a half smile appeared on his face, and he pushed a napkin across the table… ‘you see this napkin, in twenty-four hours we could have the signature of seventy senators on this napkin’.”

At least Rosen used a napkin, not toilet paper to hypothetically secure the signatures of his seventy “American” senators.

Source: www.veteranstoday.com

Comedy Central stands by Jon Stewart’s replacement Trevor Noah as rightwing sites suggest he has a “Jewish problem.” The real problem is that he is likely to be critical of Israeli militarism

Source: mondoweiss.net

Hundreds of mourners gathered outside of al-Shifa hospital to protest the killing of Tawfiq Abu Reyaleh, a 34-year-old fisherman shot by the Israeli navy just hours before.

Along with his shipmates on the overnight shift, the late father of five was struck by a bullet when Israeli forces opened fire on their boat on 7 March, as they sailed within the six-nautical mile limit that Israel has imposed on Gaza’s sea vessels, according to the fishermen.

Abu Reyaleh was survived by his wife and four children, who live in northern Gaza.

Source: electronicintifada.net

While the Palestinians feel that the momentum is with them, the International Criminal Court prosecutor still has unlimited time to decide if there are grounds for an investigation, let alone a trial.

Source: www.haaretz.com

Out of Bounds: Academic Freedom and the Question of Palestine, by Matthew Abraham. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. vii + 261 pages. Appendices to p. 373. Index to p. 379. $110.00 cloth, $29.95 paper, $25.99 e-book.
 
REVIEWED BY STEVEN SALAITA
 
Matthew Abraham’s Out of Bounds arrives at an opportune moment. Not long after its publication, Ohio University student council president Megan Marzec was pilloried across the country (and by her own university’s administration) for spoofing the Ice Bucket Challenge by pouring a bucket of fake blood on her head to protest Israeli aggression during Operation Protective Edge. Rev. Bruce Shipman “resigned” as priest-in-charge of Yale’s Episcopal Church amid public outrage against his suggestion that Israeli violence might be partly responsible for rises in anti-Semitism. And I was dismissed from a tenured position at the University of Illinois for tweets critical of Israel.
 
It is to Abraham’s great credit that he perfectly anticipates these events—all of which warrant inclusion in any subsequent edition—by so thoroughly exposing the strategy and rhetoric of pro-Israel activism on campus. Primarily using a series of case studies, Out of Bounds explores the implications of this form of organizing on academic freedom and open debate in the United States. His overarching argument is that Palestine has repeatedly been attacked as a geography “out of bounds” of respectable scholarship; it therefore acts as an avatar of restricted academic freedom.
 
Much of Abraham’s analysis focuses on Norman Finkelstein, who was denied tenure in 2007 by DePaul University in Chicago in a high-profile (and controversial) case. DePaul apparently caved to pressure led by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who constructed Finkelstein as an anti-Semite, and rejected Finkelstein’s promotion based on his lack of “collegiality.” Abraham is now an associate professor of English at the University of Arizona, but at the time he taught writing, rhetoric, and discourse at DePaul. His insight into university governance and the major players involved is evident throughout, and he concludes that “Finkelstein’s tenure denial . . . left many observers of the American academic scene (as well as other spectators) aghast at DePaul’s seeming complete disregard for due process and academic freedom protections that serious scholars are supposed to enjoy” (p. 35–6). This episode produces intriguing reading, but Abraham is no gossip or demagogue. His analysis is always scrupulous and he avoids attributing actions to anybody absent hard evidence. Therefore, his clear sympathy toward Finkelstein and disapproval of Dershowitz’s behavior is impossible to see as anything other than a justified authorial convention. Furthermore, Abraham frames the incident within a broader pattern of Zionist harassment, illustrating how easy it is to conceptualize criticism of Israel as inherently uncivil.
 
After examining two more high-profile incidents—criticism of Joseph Massad at Columbia University in 2004–5 and the backlash against Walt and Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)—Abraham examines the careers of Edward Said and Noam Chomsky, probably the two most famous academic supporters of Palestine. Though Said faced constant harassment from political opponents who never tired of trying to get him fired, Abraham concentrates on Said as an academic symbol of theoretical relativism (a position, as Abraham notes, Said would have rejected). Abraham examines the effects of 9/11 on the practice of cultural criticism, invoking Said to illustrate how useful his insights around Arabs and Islam could be in contradistinction to the reductivist forms of sloganeering he was often made to embody. Said, Abraham concludes, encapsulates all that makes academic freedom worth saving.
 
In the chapter devoted to Chomsky, Abraham largely treats the famous linguist as a commenter on the role of intellectuals in industrial Western democracies. This reading is frequently omitted in discussions of Chomsky, yet Abraham astutely shows it to be crucial to the issue of academic freedom and Palestine. Abraham focuses on analyzing Chomsky’s criticism of professors and academic institutions, which he sees as complicit in the U.S. government’s malfeasance. For Chomsky, modes of repression in academe can be self-regulating through both consent and conscious adherence to the lucrative habits of appeasing power. According to Chomsky, the suppression of Palestinian voices exists deep in the governing structures of academe.
 
Of particular interest are the three appendices Abraham includes, one of which transcribes separate conversations between Chomsky and Finkelstein and scholars of rhetoric. These exchanges expose a stark contrast between the confident moral language of both Chomsky and Finkelstein and the theoretical complexities of humanistic discourse. For example, Palestine is “complex” usually when somebody wishes to forestall blunt criticism of Israel. This engaging and instructive illustration shows a fundamental conflict between the slow pace of academe and the intensity of activism, supporting a major strain of the book’s overall argument.
 
Scholars and activists working on Palestine have been complaining about restrictive university governance for decades. Therefore, it is important that a study systematically assessing those restrictions has been published. Even better, the study is intelligent, rigorous, and meticulous. Abraham often deploys the specialized language of his field, but I doubt any educated reader will have difficulty understanding any of it. In this way, Abraham’s work satisfies the imperatives of both academic complexity and activist urgency. I enthusiastically recommend it.
 
Steven Salaita is an independent scholar.

Source: www.palestine-studies.org

Support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at nearly a 20-year low among Americans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Only 39 percent of respondents in the poll expressed support for a two-state solution, down from 58 percent in 2003, according to a Gallup Poll.

Those in favor of such a resolution still outnumber their opposition — 36 percent of respondents in the new poll expressed outright disapproval of the idea of a Palestinian state. But the percentage of respondents supporting a two-state solution is lower than at any time since 1998.

The result comes at a particularly tumultuous time in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, as support for Israel in the U.S. has taken on an increasingly partisan hue.

The White House and Republicans openly feuded over House Speaker John Boehner’s decision to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress without consulting with the Obama administration in advance.

Then, in the run-up to Israeli elections in early March, Netanyahu declared that there would not be a Palestinian state under his watch, severely hampering the goal of a two-state solution, which has been stated U.S. and Israeli policy for decades.

After the election, Netanyahu walked back his comments, but the White House said his campaign pledge rejecting a Palestinian state would lead to a reevaluation of U.S. policy.

“We cannot simply pretend these comments were never made,” White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told the left-leaning pro-Israel group J Street.

Boehner told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that the Obama administration’s treatment of Netanyahu was “reprehensible,” while offering some rhetorical support for the Israeli prime minister’s position.

“How do you have a two-state solution when you don’t have a partner in that solution?” Boehner said, articulating support for a Palestinian state in theory while making clear that he does not see it as possible in the near future.

Source: www.politico.com

The Jenin-based Freedom Theatre is scheduled to lift the curtain on its new theatrical production, The Siege, this Saturday.

The play opens as part of a day of cultural events at the theater in the occupied West Bank planned to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the assassination of its co-founder, Juliano Mer Khamis. His murder remains unsolved.

The date is also the thirteenth anniversary of the massive invasion of Jenin refugee camp by the Israeli army. Known as Operation Defensive Shield, that invasion saw large areas of the camp demolished and dozens of people killed.

Another of the Israeli military’s actions during Defensive Shield was the invasion of central Bethlehem and the subsequent 39-day siege at the Church of the Nativity.

It is this event which forms the central story to the Freedom Theatre’s new play.

Source: electronicintifada.net

Students at the University of Sussex in the UK have voted overwhelmingly in support of their student union being part of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

In a cross-campus referendum that closed on Friday, 806 students voted in favor of BDS (68 percent of votes cast), compared to just 373 votes against.

The referendum ensures that Israeli products will remain off the shelves at student union shops. This policy had been in place since 2009, but was due to expire.

The vote means the student union should now step up its campaigning against the contract between the University of Sussex and Veolia, a French multinational targeted by the BDS movement over its role in illegal Israeli settlements.

I spoke with Kareem B, a Palestinian student involved in the highly visible campus campaign that involved several weeks of events and actions on campus.

“Students at Sussex were horrified at Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in Gaza last summer,” he said. ”We’ve been able to show that joining the BDS movement is one of the most effective ways we can take effective action in solidarity with Palestinian students and young people.”

Source: electronicintifada.net