Author Archives: Arab America

Amal Clooney laid her case before the European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday against a Turkish politician who denied the 1915 Armenian genocide.

The international human rights lawyer is representing Armenia in a case against Dogu Perincek, the chairman of the Turkish Workers’ Party, who was convicted in Switzerland in 2005 for calling the Armenian genocide an “international lie.”

The Strasbourg-based ECHR later agreed with Perincek that the conviction violated his freedom of expression, and now Switzerland is appealing, with Armenia’s backing as a third party.

“The most important error” made in the earlier ECHR ruling, Clooney said, “is that it cast doubt on the reality of the Armenian genocide that the people suffered 100 years ago.” In her remarks, Clooney noted Turkey’s “disgraceful” record on freedom of expression.

An estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks in what historians widely consider to be the first genocide of the 20th century, but Turkey has contested the numbers and refused to call it a genocide.

The case could also have wider implications for Europe, where several countries have laws prohibiting public denial of past genocides such as the Holocaust.

Clooney, now arguably the most famous human rights lawyer in the world after marrying actor George Clooney in September, previously represented Greece in its long-running bid to have a collection of classical Greek sculptures returned from the British Museum. She also defended one of three al-Jazeera journalists detained in Egypt.

Source: time.com

FORT WAYNE—The Indiana Center for Middle East Peace is scheduled to present the film “Al Helm: Martin Luther King in Palestine,” chronicling Dr. Clayborne Carson’s play about Dr. King as it was presented in Palestine, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Feb. 5 at the Downtown Allen County Library Theater, 900 Library Plaza.

Dr. Carson is scheduled to be in Fort Wayne for the film showing to lead a discussion on its themes and to talk about his work as head of Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research Institute.

Source: www.frostillustrated.com

People of Middle East/North African ancestry are currently categorized in the US Census, along with most government and public records, as “white”…here’s why it’s time we have our own MENA (Middl…

Source: www.buzzfeed.com

Saudi Arabia’s new King Salman further cemented his hold on power, with a sweeping shakeup that saw two sons of the late King Abdullah fired, and the heads of intelligence and other key agencies replaced alongside a cabinet shuffle.”

Source: news.yahoo.com

Jordan refused to release an imprisoned female militant on Thursday to meet a deadline set by the Islamic State, demanding that it first needed proof that a captured Jordanian pilot was still alive.

The impasse provoked fears that the extremists would carry out their threats to kill the pilot and a Japanese journalist they were also holding hostage.

Jordan said it had been prepared to meet the Islamic State’s demand to free the imprisoned militant, Sajida al-Rishawi, and deliver her to the Syrian-Turkish border by sunset on Thursday.

“Rishawi is still in Jordan, and the exchange will happen once we receive the proof of life we ask for,” Agence France-Presse quoted the minister of state for media affairs, Mohammed Al-Momani, as saying shortly before the deadline expired.

Source: www.nytimes.com

In the last 24 hours the controversy over the planned speech by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to both houses of Congress on March 3 to rebut the president’s policy on Iran has blown up to a new level. Muted outrage over the invitation has turned into open rage. The opposition to the speech by major Israel supporters across the political spectrum, liberal J Street, center-right Jeffrey Goldberg, and hard-right Abraham Foxman, all of whom say the speech-planners have put the US-Israel relationship at risk by making it a political controversy in the U.S., has been conveyed to the Democratic establishment.

The New York Times and Chris Matthews both landed on the story last night, a full week after it broke, to let us know what a disaster the speech would be if it’s ever delivered. So these media are acting to protect the special relationship by upping the pressure to cancel the speech.

With even AIPAC washing its hands of the speech, it sure looks as if Israel supporters want an exit from this fiasco. Jettisoning Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer or cancelling the speech would seem like a small price to pay in the news cycle next to a spectacle in which leading Democrats are forced to line up against Netanyahu in Washington, even as they file in and out of the AIPAC policy conference and praise Israel to the skies.

Here are the developments. First, the New York Times’ Julie Hirschfeld Davis has a report of unleashed White House fury over the invitation. The story contains the signal that Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, will be the fall guy for the scandal:

The outrage the episode has incited within President Obama’s inner circle became clear in unusually sharp criticism by a senior administration official who said that the Israeli ambassador, Ron Dermer, who helped orchestrate the invitation, had repeatedly placed Mr. Netanyahu’s political fortunes above the relationship between Israel and the United States.

The official who made the comments to The New York Times would not be named, and the White House declined to comment….

So: The White House gets to appear as if it is protecting the special relationship between the countries from that shmendrick Dermer. The message to Dermer is delivered in scatological terms by former ambassador Dan Kurtzer, a liberal Zionist:

“He has soiled his pad; who’s he going to work with?” Mr. Kurtzer said.

Dermer’s felony was politicizing the relationship between the countries. Hey, no one wants this politicized? The neoconservatives do; they want a battle over Iran policy. So did Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, when he said Obama was taking his talking points from Tehran. The left surely wants the matter politicized; that way our politicians can come out against Israeli settlements and massacres. But the centrist elements of the lobby have cohered over this issue, saying the speech is a big problem, and Obama must keep Israel supporters happy in order to get the prize here: freedom to negotiate with Iran.

Source: mondoweiss.net

Tarik Kafala, the head of BBC Arabic, prefers to avoid the word “terrorist”. He’s avoided it in coverage of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, saying it is a “loaded” term. Cue outrage: from Norman Tebbit, a victim of the Brighton bombing, and historian Anthony Glees, who said the executive “needs to consider his position”.

A value-laden term
What did Kafala actually say, again? He told the Independent that “we know what political violence is, we know what murder, bombings and shootings are and we describe them. That’s much more revealing, we believe, than using a word like terrorist which people will see as value-laden.”

Hardly the words of an apologist for jihadism, as his critics seem to be suggesting. And, in fact, very much in line with the BBC’s editorial guidelines, which say:

The word ‘terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term, without attribution. We should let other people characterise while we report the facts as we know them.

Political intimidation
So “terrorist” is a characterisation. Its meaning depends on context and intention (something crystallised by the line – often quoted but never reliably attributed – “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”). Those contexts and intentions have been set out by various national international bodies. The EU, for example, defines terrorism as acts such as attempted murder, kidnapping, etc, where the aim is of

Source: www.theguardian.com

The three-car caravan was headed to a funeral, everyone dressed in their Friday best. It was warm outside, as Baghdad often is in the fall, causing their crisp shirts to wilt and sweaters to itch. The men argued over who they’d pick for their soccer dream team, the kids played games on their dads’ smartphones.

The cars were stuffy inside, packed with way too many people. Adults wedged in sideways, kids plunked on laps. Packed in there tighter than carry-on luggage, my family knows how to fill a car.

Eight to nine of them can squeeze into the average five-seat sedan — a shape-shifting gene passed from generation to generation. Or maybe it’s just that we’re Iraqi, meaning stubborn. If something doesn’t fit, we make it.

Did ‘American Sniper’ miss an important mark?
But that ride would be the last for many of them. They were killed in a suicide bombing while attending that funeral in western Baghdad. Three generations wiped out in a split second. Old men, middle-aged fathers, kids so young they had their baby teeth.

I got the news at home in Los Angeles via Facebook, from relatives who’ve scattered across Iraq and the Middle East after the 2003 invasion. We grew up miles and cultures apart, me here in the U.S., most of them in Iraq, but we came to know one another on family summer vacations in smoldering hot Baghdad.

Source: www.latimes.com

A Republican state lawmaker in Texas is sending a message to her Muslim constituents: if they want to come calling at her Capitol office, they better pledge allegiance to the United States.

Newly-minted state Rep. Molly White (R) wrote Thursday in a Facebook post that she’d left an Israeli flag on the reception desk in her Austin office to mark the occasion of Texas Muslim Capitol Day. She said she also instructed her staff to “ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws.”

Source: talkingpointsmemo.com

Remy decides to stand up for freedom the easiest way he knows how: by taking selfies. #YOLO! Approximately 2 minutes. Subscribe to Reason TV’s YouTube channe…

Source: www.youtube.com

Spain’s ambassador to the United Nations is blaming Israel for the death of a Spanish UN peacekeeper during the Israeli military’s exchange of fire with the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group.

“It was because of this escalation of violence, and it came from the Israeli side,” Spanish Ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi told reporters.

The UN peacekeeper has been identified as Cpl. Francisco Javier Soria Toledo, 36.

The Security Council condemned the peacekeeper’s death in the strongest terms and offered its deepest sympathies.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has launched an investigation into the death the peacekeeper who was evidently hit by Israeli artillery fire on the border with Lebanon.

A statement released by the mission on Wednesday said that the precise cause of his death is as yet undetermined.

Source: www.haaretz.com