Author Archives: Arab America

In 2010, the Census Bureau estimated that there were 1.7 million Americans of Arab descent. The Arab American Institute thinks this was an undercount, and puts the number now at about 3.7 million. The Pew Research Center says that there are about 2.4 million Americans who identify as Muslim. We can safely say that there are “millions” of Americans who identify as Arab, Muslim or both.

If a big chunk of these people decided to engage Washington to move US policy towards the Palestinians in the direction of more justice, could they have an impact?

A lot of people will tell you that there’s no point in trying. The pro-Netanyahu lobby is too powerful in Congress, they say.

It’s true that the pro-Netanyahu lobby is perceived, not without some justification, as one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. However, until now, the pro-Netanyahu lobby has not faced meaningful grassroots opposition in Congress on questions of US policy towards the Palestinians at the edge of their grasp. It’s easy to be perceived as powerful if serious opponents don’t show up to fight you on issues that could matter.

We’ve seen on the issue of diplomacy with Iran that the pro-Netanyahu lobby was not unbeatable. There have been two agreements with Iran so far, both of which the pro-Netanyahu lobby did not like, and both of which the pro-Netanyahu lobby could not stop. In the case of diplomacy with Iran, the pro-Netanyahu lobby has faced powerful opposition, led by the president, but including many members of Congress and outside groups. That’s the key thing that made the pro-Netanyahu lobby beatable: the fact that they faced serious opposition.

Now there is a test case before us to see if serious opposition to the pro-Netanyahu lobby on US policy towards the Palestinians can develop. The pro-Netanyahu lobby has attached language to the trade bill package before Congress that seeks to block European sanctions against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

One reason that this should be a winnable fight is that even if people who care whether Palestinians live or die do nothing, the “Fast-Track” bill may go down to defeat anyway. Most Democrats hate it. The entire labor movement and most environmentalists are against it. People who care about access to essential medicines for poor people are against it. If a new bunch of people who aren’t otherwise involved in “trade” fights got involved on the no side, it could make a difference, because the forces in play are already roughly matched. It’s not like we’ll be fighting AIPAC alone. Now we’ll be fighting on the same side as the AFL-CIO.

A second reason that this should be a winnable fight is that the pro-Netanyahu lobby is reaching beyond the edge of its usual grasp. Although the pro-Netanyahu lobby supports the settlements, they usually try to pretend otherwise. That’s why an AIPAC press release praising the legislation doesn’t mention the settlements. That’s why they’re trying to stay below the radar on this pro-settlement effort; the Jewish Daily Forward calls it a “stealth move,” and notes [my emphasis]:

This week’s congressional committee measures appear to be the first-ever formal step toward U.S. government recognition of the settlements’ legitimacy. None of the Capitol Hill sources contacted appeared to be aware of the explosive significance of the “territories under the control of Israel” clause.
[…]
European boycott efforts currently in effect or in the pipeline that might fall under the new congressional measures are nearly all limited to the settlements, not to Israel proper. Moreover, the United States already has stiff measures on the books, going back to the 1970s, that target boycotts against Israel. The sole effect of the new congressional measures, therefore, is to extend U.S. protection to the settlements “in territories controlled by Israel.”
You can add your voice to the settlement critics opposing “Fast Track” here.

Source: www.truth-out.org

The Business for Peace Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 Oslo Business for Peace Award, given annually to exceptional global business leaders who exemplify the Foundation’s concept of being businessworthy by ethically creating economic value that also creates value for society.  Honourees are selected by an independent committee of Nobel Prize … Continued

Salma Hayek is in Lebanon, her first visit to her ancestral homeland, to launch “The Prophet,” an animated feature film she co-produced. Hayek visited the picturesque mountain village of Bcharre in northern Lebanon on Sunday to pay homage to Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese-born poet who wrote “The Prophet,” the book on which the film is … Continued

Egypt on Saturday recovered 239 artifacts that had previously been smuggled to France.
This comes only a day after the Arab state had recovered additional 123 artifacts that had been smuggled to the US in the past.
The return of the art pieces came after the Egyptian government succeeded in proving ownership, sources at Cairo International Airport said.
On Friday, Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damati said that over the past ten months, his country had recovered a total of 221 artifacts that had been previously smuggled to the US, Australia, Germany and Denmark.
Saturday’s returned pieces raise the total number of recovered artifacts to 460.
There has been a marked increase in the theft of Egyptian antiquities in the years following the 2011 popular uprising that ended the autocracy of longstanding President Hosni Mubarak.

Source: www.worldbulletin.net

Islamic art was on the agenda in London this week, with something for everyone — from Indian miniatures or Ottoman embroideries to contemporary Arab art. Bonhams broke new ground by holding the first dedicated sale of modernist Iraqi art on Monday. It racked up a healthy, if modest, £1.2m with most of the 36 lots on offer going well above estimate: for instance, £194,500 was given for “Cubist Cockerel” (1955) by Shakir Hassan Al Said (the estimate was £25,000-£35,000; final prices do not include fees but estimates do). A portrait of the Iraqi poet and academic Lamea Abbas Amara, by Al Said’s teacher, Jewad Selim, (1919-61) made £176,500 (estimate £70,000-£100,000).
“Until now, Egyptian and Iranian artists have figured more in our sales,” says the firm’s specialist Nima Sagharchi, “but we have always had a close relationship with Jewad Selim’s family, and I was able to source a lot of material in Jordan, where the Iraqi elite moved after the Iraqi war [of 2003].” While many buyers were in town for Islamic Art Week, telephone bidding was also brisk, particularly from the Gulf. Asked whether Bonhams would consider restarting Dubai sales — abandoned in 2011 — Sagharchi said: “If anything this [sale] proves that the location is not important, buyers will find us.” But he is thinking of further themed sales from other countries in the region.

Source: www.ft.com

Thank you for your front-page article “A woman on the $20 bill?” (April 18).

While all four women proposed by the advocacy group “Women on 20s” to replace President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill are worthy candidates, an even better idea would be to depict the crew of the space shuttle Challenger that exploded during liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986.

The Challenger Seven — Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee and Michael J. Smith — were collectively a cross-section of the very best of America. The two women and five men were diverse in their geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds (McNair, for instance, grew up in poverty as an African-American in the segregated South before becoming a renowned physicist and astronaut), their faiths (Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Baha’i), their professional backgrounds (test pilot, engineer, physicist, teacher) and their ancestral heritage (African-American, Asian-American, Irish- and Arab-American, etc.). Yet they were all brilliant, supremely accomplished, and were working together for the unifying goal of exploring space and pursuing science for the benefit of America and humankind.

They embodied this nation’s remarkable diversity, its promise of unlimited opportunity and, quite literally, its highest aspirations.

Source: www.stltoday.com

McCaulfe was an Arab American who was tragically killed.  

“Nagorno” is a Russian word for “mountain,” while “Karabakh” is a word of Turkic and Persian origin meaning “black garden.” When joined by a hyphen, the two words denote the boiling point of the Caucasus: Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed enclave — one of post-Soviet Europe’s “frozen conflicts” — that doubles as a mountainous graveyard. A de facto independent but unrecognized state, Nagorno-Karabakh is ethnically Christian Armenian but was given to Shiite Muslim Azerbaijan by the Soviets in 1922. To say that the region has been a “standing dispute” since then, and even to an extent beforehand, would be a serious understatement. In a six-year war over the territory, begun in 1988 as Soviet rule tapered off and waged by Azerbaijani troops and Armenian secessionists, about 30,000 people died and over a million were displaced (and remain so to this day). A Russian-brokered ceasefire was signed in 1994, but it has been frequently violated.

Imagined Futures, a solo show of Syrian-Armenian, London-based artist Hrair Sarkissian’s previously unseen photography and new video work at The Mosaic Rooms in London gives a potent sense of a mountainous region that has become afflicted, estranged, and dark with blood. Sarkissian’s images are so acutely sad they puncture.

Front Line (2007) is a series of images — 12 landscape photos and a photo installation of 17 portraits — exploring the 1988–1994 Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and its consequences. The substantial photographs of the mountainous region are eerily devoid of human life. They depict flimsy shanties; outmoded war machinery, like rusted tanks (in a stray sign of life, a small square of space on one of the tanks has been painted a bright blue and yellow); and piles upon piles of rubble. As the only icons of permanence, the rubble and the mountains seem to apathetically swallow buildings, life, everything.

Source: hyperallergic.com

When Jussie Smollett learned about the March2Justice, part of him may have wished, for just a second, mind you, that he wasn’t a star of the breakout hit series Empire.  Because he had to be on a tour for the show, he was unable to join the activists who on April 13, began a 250-mile journey by foot from New York to Washington, D.C.

“This is work I’ve been doing since I was a child. My mother is an activist [who has] marched with Angela Davis, Huey Newton and for civil rights my entire life,” said Smollett, who participated in his first march in 1989 at age six to protest the shooting death of Yusef Hawkins. “But this is a different movement and this is a different moment because I am very much an adult.”

| EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE MARCH2JUSTICE |

Given the year the 31-year-old has had, it’s really saying something when he describes the two days he spent with the March2Justice group as two of the “greatest” and “most emotional” of his life. They are, he told BET.com, also two days that he will never forget.

He is particularly in awe of the three women who organized the nine-day pilgrimage: Linda Sarsour, who is Arab-American and a Muslim; Tamika Mallory, an African-American woman, and Latina Carmen Perez.

Their diversity “is what America is about. This is what the nation is about. And when you look at the fact that all of this was done by three women says so much,” Smollett said.

After organizing a hugely successful march in New York on Martin Luther King Day called Dream for Justice, the three women started brainstorming about what to do next. It was Mallory’s idea, Sarsour told BET.com, to “do something dramatic to show people that we’re serious and willing to do whatever it takes,” like organizing a march from Staten Island, where Eric Garner lost his life to abusive police tactics, to Washington, D.C., where they rallied in support of the End Racial Profiling Act and other civil rights legislation.

“We all thought it was crazy, but we believe in each other and we believe that we can do anything and we did it,” Sarsour said.

On April 21, the final day of the march, the group trekked from Howard University to the U.S. Capitol’s West Lawn, where they held a rally. They were joined by people as old as 73 and as young as nine, Smollett said.

One of the most memorable moments for the actor and singer was a die-in the group did in front of the steps of the United States Supreme Court. As they circled the corner on their way to the West Lawn, they were met by a barricade of officers, “and we were just singing [the Peace Poets’] lyrics, ‘I can hear my brother crying,” Smollett crooned.

“It was a very special moment and very, very emotional,” he added.

But there were also moments of sadness and anger, such as when 11-year-old Heaven Gross got up on stage at the rally to speak about her father’s death in March at the hands of Metro Transit Police in Washington, D.C., and when the brother of Rekia Boyd, who was killed by a Chicago police officer, tearfully recalled the callous way his family was treated in court on the day the officer responsible for his sister’s death was acquitted by a Cook County judge on a legal fine point.

“As I heard some of the families speak, it made me angry. It really pissed me off,” Smollett said, “But we have to channel that anger and negativity into a positive action because it’s the only way we’re going to get something done.”

The following day, the March2Justice organizers, marchers and other activists spent the morning on Capitol Hill talking to lawmakers about legislation. Smollett says he hopes that the support he’s seen turns into action and that people around the country who care about justice will educate themselves about the bills and help fight for their passage.

While he acknowledges that he now has “a bit of a platform” thanks to his new fame, it is not necessary, Smollett believes, for anybody who truly is determined to make a difference.

“I’ve always been speaking; maybe more people are listening now,” he modestly says. “But for me it didn’t matter whether two people were listening or two million people were listening. The work is still the same, the problems are still the same, and we’re in need of justice.”

Source: www.bet.com

he book ‘The Prophet’ by acclaimed Lebanese-American author Khalil Gibran has been made into an animated film.

The film is produced by Salama Hayek, who lends her voice to the movie along with Liam Neeson.

The film will premier in Dubai on May 5, with a general release on May 7. The worldwide release will be in August.

Watch the video to hear more from Haytham Nasr, the executive producer…

Source: 7daysindubai.com

When ISIS came knocking on Huda Alrawi’s door, looking to marry off her daughter and draft her son, the Iraqi schoolteacher knew she had to flee.
When Huda Alrawi fled Iraq it was almost exactly 10 years after al Qaeda militants killed her husband for owning a barbershop that practiced hair threading—a beauty routine they considered anti-Islamic.

It was five months after ISIS militants began forcing their way into her house, tapping their guns against her neck and calling her a spy because the Iraqi government paid her salary as a school principal.

It was after multiple visits by mysterious veiled women who would knock on her door under the premise of enrolling their children in her school, but then ask Alrawi whether her daughter was the right age for marrying and if her son was old enough to join in the Islamic State’s jihadist crusade.

Now, after smuggling herself across miles of ISIS-controlled territory and selling her last belongings to pay for a ticket to neighboring Jordan four months ago, Alrawi is out of moves.

Cars swerve in and out of loosely defined lanes in the steep streets of Amman, and Alrawi, clad in a scarf with delicate flowers creeping up the side of her head, issues stern directions to a driver. She rifles through her purse and pulls a packet of photos. It appears she always keeps them with her. The first are of her and her daughter, a 10-year-old named Shams, covered head to toe in blue niqabs, the ultra-conservative veil required by the Islamists. She explains that when ISIS arrived in her town, they had to don the identity-obscuring veil even at home, in case anyone came by to check. They stand in front of her house in Iraq, which, as the rest of the photos prove, had been reduced to a pile of rubble.

She points to this photo to justify her currently perilous existence as a refugee: “My daughter, give her to be married? No. My son, give him to daesh to kill people?” she asks, using the Arabic abbreviation for the Islamic State. “No.”

Jordan currently plays host to more than 800,000 refugees, the vast majority fleeing civil war in Syria. But since ISIS spread violently into Iraq, the population of Iraqis arriving in Jordan has nearly doubled, totaling around 60,000. Most of the country’s refugees live in cities, but as they are not legally allowed to work, they survive in the margins. Four years into the conflict in Syria, the flood of newcomers has strained Jordan’s hospitality. In the past few months, the government and the World Food Program have dramatically severed social services and food assistance to the already struggling population.

Source: www.thedailybeast.com

Stepping over the threshold of a smaller than average wooden door, the first thing that hits me is the smell. There’s no mistaking the familiar depth and richness of coffee.
It is said that coffee originated in Yemen and spread to the rest of Arabian Peninsula when a clergyman offered the drink to an ailing seaman on a trade ship. The drink was said to immediately take effect and cured him. It didn’t take long for this port town to captivate the rest of the world with its bitter, rich flavour and golden colour.
What better way to explore this magical elixir than at the coffee museum tucked away in a quiet corner of  Bastakiya, a visual and olfactory delight to both the coffee enthusiast and the occasional coffee drinker.
The decor by itself, practically invites you to take a seat and savour this drink with all its history and significance and that’s exactly what I did.

Source: www.masala.com

BY NANA ASFOUR The New Yorker In 1987, toward the end of the Lebanese civil war, Yasser Mroué, the youngest brother of the Lebanese playwright, artist, and actor Rabih Mroué, was shot by a sniper as he crossed a street in Beirut. The bullet pierced his skull, and shattered pieces lodged themselves in his brain, … Continued