Author Archives: Arab America

Ambassador Shabazz (lower left) Dr. James E. Lyon (lower right), Dr. Amal David and her President of Arab America, Warren David (top). The need for unity has become increasingly clear. The U.S.continues to witness vicious, hate-fueled crimes at an increasing rate, crossing the nation from Ferguson to Chapel Hill. Minorities of all backgrounds report acts … Continued

Former Miss USA Rima Fakih stunned in her first appearance in season three of the Lebanese edition of “Dancin with the Stars”.

Source: en.bellebeirut.com

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of “gangsterism” Wednesday over its decision to withhold the transfer of more than $100 million a month in tax revenues it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf.

Opening a two-day meeting of senior Palestinian officials, when overall ties with Israel and the possibility of suspending security coordination with the Israelis will be discussed, Abbas described the tax move as a provocation.

“How are they allowed to take away our money? Are we dealing with a state or with a gangster?” he asked a gathering of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s central council, its second-highest decision-making body.

Source: www.dailystar.com.lb

There is a currently popular idea in Washington, DC, that the United States ought to be doing more to quash the recently born Islamic State, or IS, because if we don’t, they will send terrorists to plague our lives.

Incredibly, most of the decision makers and policy influencers in Washington also agree that America has no standing in the Middle East; that is, the United States has no natural influence based on territorial proximity, ethnicity, religion, culture, politics or shared history. In short, the only apparent reason for our presence in the Middle East is to support Israel.

To say that the United States is universally resented by everyone in the region is a massive understatement. That we are hated, despised, and the sworn enemies of many, is not difficult to understand. There is no moral ground under our feet in any religion. Stealing is condemned.

Abetting in the pillaging of Palestinians and their land is hard to justify. Yet we keep sending Israel military and financial aid, we support them in the United Nations, and we ignore the pleas of Israel’s neighbors to stop the spread of settlers on more stolen land.

There was once an old canard that we had to intervene in the Middle East to protect the flow of oil to Western Europe and America. But since the defeat of Nazi Germany in North Africa, that threat has never again existed. The fact is that the source of most of the wealth in the Middle East is oil, which is a commodity; there’s a lot of it all over the world.

If it’s not sold, the producer countries’ economies collapse, because that’s all they have on which to survive. They are, few of them in the Middle East, industrial economies, or mercantile economies. They are almost completely dependent on oil exports to Europe and Asia for their economic survival.

The oil crunch in 1973 that saw prices rise in the West and shortages grow was a temporary phenomenon produced by the Persian Gulf countries that was impossible to sustain. It was like a protest movement, a strike. It ended by costing OPEC a lot of money and by spurring a world-wide surge in exploration and drilling for more oil supplies.

Oil is not a weapon as some would have us believe. As the Middle East, and now Russia, knows all too well, it is a crutch.

Therefore, we get down to the real reasons why the United States is involved militarily in the Middle East. One, we clearly don’t need their oil. A possible reason for being there is conquest: we covet Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan for ourselves. I think we can dismiss that notion as absurd and move on.

Then the question screams: Why are we there? Why are we continuing to give IS and other extremist, nationalistic groups a reason to hate us and want to destroy us?

The only answer is Israel. We have made Israel the artificial hegemonic power in the region against the will of everyone who is native to the area. We have lost all credibility among Arabs, all moral standing and nearly all hope of ever restoring either.

The United States has become a pariah in the Middle East, and the result is that we will be faced with endless war and terrorist attacks for ages to come unless we make a dramatic change of course in our foreign policy–namely, stop supporting an Israeli regime that will not make peace with its neighbors.

An organization called the Jewish Voice for Peace has endorsed a call from Palestinians for a boycott of Israel, divestment of economic ties, and sanctions (on the order of those imposed on Iran and Russia) to encourage Israel to end its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied since 1967.

The JVP urges Israel to dismantle the grotesque wall they have built to keep the Palestinians out of territory that was once theirs; to recognise Palestinians as citizens of Israel with equal rights; and to recognise the right of refugees to return to their homes and properties in Israel as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

The argument that we are fighting IS because they threaten our democracy is absurdly infantile. That’s another of those political throwaways we hear because our leaders think we’re all simpletons who can’t figure things out for ourselves.

How on earth could 40,000 or 100,000 disaffected Arabs destroy American democracy? They are fighting us because we are there fighting them. Let us go home, and they would have no reason to fight us.

I suggest this avenue knowing full well that some may say that we must instill the spirit of democracy among these people or there will never be peace in the world. Excuse me, but there will never be peace in the world. We all thought that when Gorbachev gave up the Soviet Empire, an era of Russian democracy would ensue.

Instead, Russia got drunken and loutish leadership until a strongman, in the Russian historical context, Vladimir Putin, took over. Democracy cannot be exported. It has to be wanted and won in the light of local historical, religious, social and economic needs. If they want what we have, Arab women will find a way to get it.

In spite of all this more or less common knowledge, the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, warns us that if we don’t crush Iran, if we don’t continue to support Israel and back their hegemony, the world will collapse in anarchy, and democracy will be lost to all of us. I ask you: how much of this nonsense are you willing to take? Someone has to begin a discussion on what the hell we’re doing in the Middle East — and do it soon.

Source: thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com

Israeli Prime Minister delivered his highly anticipated address to Congress on Tuesday, urging the United States against agreeing to a nuclear deal with Iran, a state that “will always be an enemy of America.”

Haaretz analysts weigh in on Netanyahu’s speech, as well as its potential effects on the Israeli election and the impending nuclear deal with Iran:

Netanyahu’s speech was no game-changer, Chemi Shalev writes. The ultimate decision about Iran’s nuclear future still lies, as it did before, with Ayatollah Khamenei in Tehran and not with Netanyahu and Congress in Washington. Further, it remains unclear what effect, if any, the event will have on Israeli voters.

What’s certain, however, is that the days leading up to the election will be dominated by security, Yossi Verter writes – the main issue Netanyahu and his campaign staff want to highlight. Verter writes that Netanyahu will try to win the 2015 election by doing what he does best — a bombardment of words, words, words.

Despite the strong rhetoric, Amir Oren believes the speech was much ado about nothing, delivered with an attitude of resignation to his loss of the premiership. Oren added that the speech appeared to be made in preparation for Netanyahu’s imminent electoral defeat – a bid to become defense minister in Isaac Herzog’s government, following his loss of the premiership.

Zvi Bar’el writes that Netanyahu presented Congress with a warped view of the Middle East. Among the many falsehoods in the speech was his attempt to persuade the U.S. not to be alarmed if Iran abandons the talks: In reality, Iran has implemented its obligations under its 2003 interim agreement with the U.S., Bar’el writes.

All things considered, today’s Haaretz Editorial takes Netanyahu to task for failing to mention the one thing that endangers Israel’s ability to survive as a Jewish and democratic state: the unending occupation of the territories.

Source: www.haaretz.com

High-level discussions are under way to more closely involve Arab states in the work of the Middle East Quartet and reinvigorate the four-member group that has been seeking to mediate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2002. Rather than formally expanding the Quartet’s membership, the idea is to have more frequent top-level meetings with at least … Continued

Gaza’s only power plant is about to shut down by the end of this week, as a Qatari grant to pay for diesel fuel has run out, a Hamas energy and natural resource authority official told the Ma’an news agency.

Gaza’s single power station, which was damaged during the summer war, is struggling with a severe lack of fuel and is only able to provide six hours of power a day.

“The strike on the power plant, which cut off electricity and running water to Gaza’s 1.8 million residents and numerous hospitals has catastrophic humanitarian implications and is very likely to amount to a war crime,” Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program, said.

According to Ma’an, Gaza has been forced into dependence on Israeli electricity as a result of the siege, which has crippled domestic production and repair capabilities. The Palestinian news agency neglected to mention that the reason Israeli maintenance workers refuse to go out and fix the damaged lines has to do with their being targeted by enthusiastic freedom fighters.

With the Qatari regime less interested in supporting the Gaza government, and with Egypt officially declaring Hamas a terrorist organization, it appears that the beleaguered strip is looking at many dark nights

Source: jewishbusinessnews.com

The first woman in Iraqi history to be appointed acting mayor of Baghdad began her work in office today.

Dr Zekra Alwach holds a PhD in civil engineering and works as director general of Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education, the Iraqi government agency responsible for higher education and scientific research.

She replaces former mayor Naeem Abaob al-Kaabi, who was dismissed by prime minister Haidar al-Abadi on February 17, amid widespread violence and allegations of corruption in the Iraqi capital.

Source: www.newsweek.com

Many of the arguments Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made in his speech to Congress on Tuesday probably resonated with his American listeners, including the argument that allowing Iran to keep a uranium enrichment capacity poses dangers. As we found in a survey we conducted Feb. 19 to 25, Americans care about many of the considerations that he has been raising. But, even putting aside the partisan nature of Netanyahu’s speech, it is still unlikely that the substance of what he said will move the majority of Americans to oppose making a deal with Iran that would allow it to have a limited uranium enrichment program.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the United States on Tuesday that it was negotiating a bad deal with Iran that could spark a “nuclear nightmare,” drawing a rebuke from President Barack Obama and exposing a deepening U.S.-Israeli rift.

They delivered dueling messages within hours of each other.

Netanyahu made his case against Obama’s Iran diplomacy in a speech to Congress that aligned himself with the president’s Republican foes. Obama responded in the Oval Office, declaring in a frustrated tone that Netanyahu offered “nothing new.”

 
In its response, the Iranian government denounced Netanyahu’s 39-minute speech as “boring and repetitive,” the state news agency IRNA said.

In an appearance boycotted by dozens of Obama’s fellow Democrats, Netanyahu said Iran’s leadership was “as radical as ever” and could not be trusted and the deal being worked out by the United States and other world powers would not block Iran’s way to a bomb “but paves its way to a bomb.”

“It will all but guarantee that Iran will get those nuclear weapons, lots of them,” the Israeli leader said. “We’ll face a much more dangerous Iran, a Middle East littered with nuclear bombs and a countdown to a potential nuclear nightmare.”

His speech, a point-by-point critique of Obama’s strategy, drew 26 standing ovations in the Republican-controlled chamber.

Netanyahu both inveighed against the emerging deal and suggested broadening the scope of negotiations to require a change to what he described as Iran’s “aggressive” regional posture – an idea swiftly rejected by the Obama administration as de facto “regime change” in Tehran.

Source: www.reuters.com

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won applause, whoops and standing ovations on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, but conversations with lawmakers immediately after Netanyahu’s long-awaited address suggest that he didn’t win the prize he was really looking for: a decisive shift in the conversation about nuclear diplomacy with Iran.

Instead, legislators reiterated old talking points about the nuclear negotiations backed by the Obama administration, and expressed their respect for the Israeli leader and the position he sees himself in as his country’s last hope against a potential Iranian nuclear attack. Of course, those who attended the controversial speech were already making a silent statement in support of Netanyahu, given the administration’s strident criticism of his address and the choice by many Democrats to give it a miss.

“It was very powerful,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said of the speech. “But I hope it doesn’t explode the possibilities of an agreement.”

The comment from Feinstein, one of a number of Democrats who have not openly challenged the administration on the negotiations but have indicated receptiveness to Netanyahu’s concerns, captured the overall congressional response to Bibi’s appearance on the Hill: It was salient, but it didn’t change our minds.

“The [Prime Minister] has doubts about Iran, and I have doubts about Iran. I did going in, I still do. That is a valid starting point. We don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we want the United States to be a strong ally of Israel,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has also supported negotiations. “But reaching the goal of stopping nuclear weapons is clearly what’s at issue here. The [Prime Minister] is dismissive of the president’s efforts. I think at some parts of his speech, he may have mischaracterized some of things that are being said.”

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

“Never has so much been written about a speech that hasn’t been given,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, as he looked ahead to his speech before Congress.

The Israeli leader’s comments at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference Monday perfectly captured the contentious debate surrounding his invitation to address Congress. Controversy has swirled since the beginning, as House Speaker John Boehner extended the invitation without informing the White House.

Source: www.msnbc.com