Author Archives: Arab America

Perhaps nothing better symbolizes the Palestinian commitment to hold fast to the land than the olive tree. Its ancient roots and strong foundation a metaphor for the Palestinians’ unbroken presence and resilience. And for Israeli settlers guided by the fervent belief that Palestinians are squatters on land ordained by God for the Jewish people, the olive tree is a prime target. [1] According to a report on settler violence by The Palestine Center, “the period of the olive harvest annually brings a peak in violent settler activity.” [2] While the report notes that “the presence of Palestinian civilians in olive groves…is the main reason why this occurs,” the fact that a ruined harvest would economically devastate a family and may compel them to relocate is not lost on covetous settlers. [3] At the start of the recent harvest season, settlers from the religious-nationalist settlement of Yitzhar set on fire 100 olive trees near the city of Nablus on 22 October 2014. [4] “Over 7,500 olive trees belonging to Palestinians were damaged or destroyed by Israeli settlers between January and mid October 2012,” reports the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. [5] “If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, Their Oil would become Tears,” is a solemn saying attributed to the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
 
Settler violence is not confined to the groves. In one of the most infamous acts of violence, American-born settler Baruch Goldstein entered Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque on 25 February 1994 and opened fire on worshippers. All told, 29 Palestinians were killed, 125 were wounded, and Goldstein was tackled and beaten to death. [6] While most Israeli settlers are lured by the promise of subsidized housing (incentivized by their own state into law-breaking; all settlements are illegal under international law, a consensus disputed solely by Israel), a large faction of the over 500,000 settlers are messianic religious-nationalists animated by an unassailable dogma that the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea is the exclusive preserve of the Jewish people. [7] Many settlers are willing to employ violence to advance this world view. From 2007 to 2011, there was a 315% increase in settler violence against Palestinians (over the same period there was a 95% decrease in Palestinian violence in the West Bank). [8] Settler violence may fluctuate, but is “structural and symptomatic of occupation” and 90% of Palestinians villages under Israeli security jurisdiction in the West Bank have suffered recurring acts of settler violence. [9]

Source: www.palestine-studies.org

Robert Ford was always one of the Syrian rebels’ loudest cheerleaders in Washington, agitating from within a reluctant administration to arm vetted moderates to fight Bashar Assad’s brutal regime.

In recent weeks, however, Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria who made news when he left government service a year ago with an angry critique of Obama administration policy, has dropped his call to provide weapons to the rebels. Instead, he’s become increasingly critical of them as disjointed and untrustworthy because they collaborate with jihadists.

The about-face, which is drawing murmurs among foreign policy analysts and Syrian opposition figures in Washington, is another sign that the so-called moderate rebel option is gone and the choices in Syria have narrowed to regime vs. extremists in a war that’s killed more than 200,000 people and displaced millions.

Source: www.mcclatchydc.com

President Obama argued Wednesday that America must “discredit violent ideologies” if it wants to counter recruiting efforts by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda here at home.

The president, in his keynote speech at the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, aimed to strike a balance between addressing the risk of the radicalization of disaffected youths and the need to reassure Muslim Americans that their communities are not being targeted as a source of terrorist plots.

Critics of the president have questioned in recent days why the White House was not using the term “radical Islam” to describe the target of its counterterrorism efforts. Obama emphasized that “there is no one profile of a violent extremist or terrorist. . . . It’s not unique to one group or to one geography or one period of time.”

“But we are here at this summit because of the urgent threat from groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL,” he said, using a term to refer to the Islamic State. “And this week, we are focused on prevention, preventing these groups from radicalizing, recruiting or inspiring others to violence in the first place.”

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Lina Khattab, an 18-year-old Birzeit University student and dancer in the prominent El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe, was arrested by Israeli troops on December 13 2014. She, along with an array of other students, had been participating in a protest on behalf of Palestinian political prisoners, in celebration of the 47th anniversary of the founding of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Israeli authorities charged her with “throwing stones” and “participating in an unlawful demonstration.”

On February 16, Khattab was sentenced to six months in prison, three years on probation, and a 6,000 NIS ($1,500 USD) fine. The only evidence used against her in court were the testimonies of the three Israeli police who arrested her. No independent proof was provided.

Source: mondoweiss.net

Celebrating Arabic will likely continue for many centuries to come. Arabic is not under threat as many would like to have us believe. Yes there are cultural invasions, facilitated by different media technologies whether in traditional form such as newspapers, radio and television or the internet, website and social platforms. This is together with the “pigeonisation” of the language and mixing it with English, popularly known as “Arabizi” but these could be argued as no more than fads to set off the alarm-bells ringing.
In reality, Arabic will continue as a strong force because of the fact that many millions and millions speak it or learn it as a medium of instruction. Around 420 million across the Arab nation speak it on a daily basis and there is the fact there are 1.5 million Muslims around the world as far as Indonesia, China, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan to Turkey, Albania, Bosnia, to Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Tanzania who learn the language because of its religious Islamic association and as important cultural tools.
Arabic has come to be seen as a dynamic language of vitality and expression which it will continue to be prominent among its people, institutions, mosques, religious establishments, in its books, literature, essays, poetry, culture and media.
Despite the power politics that has reduced the Arab world to a sub-sphere of super-power/s and great-power rivalries, lynch-pinned through the oil economies, consumerism, strong purchasing ability and different stages of development, the Arab region remains a towering beacon. This is due to the strength of its language and seen as much by the United Nations when it recognised Arabic as one of its official languages in 1974, joining the other official languages of Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. The status of the language was further reinforced when the UN, at the behest of Unesco, made December 18 World Arabic Language Day to be celebrated every year.

Source: gulfnews.com

Yousra El Gendy is far from being the typical glamorous Egyptian singer musing about Prince Charming and performing the occasional belly dance.
She sings about anything that comes to her mind, including Cairo’s chaotic traffic which inspired the song she performs for the BBC’s Middle East Beats series.
She is a part of an emerging underground scene that seems to have found its place and role among the youth following the 2011 revolution.
This new generation of Egyptian musicians displays attitude and sings in modern urban slang with little regard for convention.
Western influence is clear in Yousra’s style and stance, her quirkiness and the electronic beats.
But the inspiration for her lyrics, which are tinged with sarcasm and innuendo, is all Egyptian, and in the case of this song, is literally the streets of Cairo which drive her crazy.

Source: www.bbc.com

Mashrou’Leila is arguably the most ground-breaking band in the Middle East at the moment, shaking up a once conservative music scene.
With an openly gay lead singer, a fresh, passionate, eclectic sound, and provocative lyrics, the Lebanese alternative rock outfit is not afraid to tackle sexual, social and political taboos.
The five band members, all ex-students at Beirut’s American University, came together in 2008, and have amassed an impressive following across the region.
They are resolutely independent, crowd-funding their albums, and remain outside the mainstream music business.
For the BBC’s Middle East Beats series, they perform Skandar Malouf, a satirical take on homophobic attitudes.

Source: www.bbc.com

Senior sources inside the presidential headquarters in Ramallah revealed on Tuesday a “wide range” of diplomatic moves aimed at saving the Palestinian Authority, Quds Net has reported. The measures include efforts to release the Palestinian tax revenues blocked by the Israeli occupation authorities for the past two months.

According to the sources, the PA leadership is contacting all European countries to urge them to take steps in the face of Israel’s punitive action against the Palestinians. The PA has been unable to pay the salaries of its employees for the second month in a row.

It is hoped that diplomatic pressure on Israel will push the Netanyahu government to commit to its economic agreements signed with the Palestinians. These include the collection and payment of tax revenues.

Meanwhile, European officials have claimed that the PA crisis will ease within the next few weeks. The PA, it is said, will get more political and financial support to avoid any possibility of its collapse.

Source: www.middleeastmonitor.com

One of the weaknesses of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State is that America isn’t trusted as a messenger in much of the Arab world. So it is important that Jordan’s King Abdullah II seems ready to play an unusually visible role in organizing Arab opposition to the extremists.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Rachel Maddow talks to Linda Sarsour, National Advocacy Director at the National Network for Arab American Communities, about the discussion around Islam and terrorism in mainstream politics.

Source: www.msnbc.com

The Chapel Hill murders must be seen as a tipping point and opportunity to examine and confront the forces that are leading Americans to believe the Islamic faith seeks to destroy “American values”
In an interview on CNN, Suzanne Barakat, the sister of one of the Chapel Hill shooting victims, said the film American Sniper has helped to not only “dehumanise Muslims” but also has created an atmosphere that is akin to an “open season” on Muslim Americans.

Barakat says it was this climate of anti-Muslim bigotry that led to her brother’s barbaric execution at the hands of avowed anti-theist Craig Stephen Hicks.

Is Barakat’s claim of an “open season” on Muslim Americans based in reflexive grief or are her words a somber narrative of what is really happening in America today?

Sadly, we need only examine violence and intimidation carried out against Muslims in the past week alone to establish a rising trend in anti-Muslim bigotry. On Friday, an arsonist destroyed an Islamic centre in Houston, Texas. An actual fireman posted on Facebook, “Let it burn…block the fire hydrant.” On Tuesday, police arrested a man for making a “bomb threat” at a Muslim centre in Austin, Texas. And a Hindu temple in Bothell, Washington, was mistakenly targeted with anti-Muslim graffiti. All these events in a single week – most of which were largely unreported by the mainstream media.

This week’s attacks against Muslim Americans have not been confined to graffiti, arson, vandalism, and threats. On Monday, a 39-year-old male suspect was arrested for the stabbing of two victims at a bus stop in Southfield, Michigan. The suspect asked whether the two victims were Muslim before stabbing one five times in the face, neck and back; and the other in the hand.

The past week is emblematic of the broader trend of escalating anti-Muslim violence. Consider that before 9/11, there were only 40 to 50 anti-Muslim hate crimes per year. In the year 2001, there were nearly 500 hate crimes against Muslims, and since then there has been anywhere from 100 to 150 anti-Muslim hate crimes per year.

Saladin Ahmed, an Arab American science fiction writer, summed the current plight of Muslims in America today when he tweeted, “It’s some fucked up shit when you realise you’re feeling thankful for ‘not looking Arab’ and not having an accent.”

The release of American Sniper has led to an increase in incidences of violence and intimidation carried out against Muslim Americans, according to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). “A majority of the violent threats we have seen over the past few days are result of how Arab and Muslims are depicted in American Sniper,” said the ADC in a statement. “We have collected hundreds of violent messages targeting Arab and Muslim Americans from movie-goers.”

If an overtly racist and demeaning film has played a part in the escalation of Muslim harassment in America, it’s only a bit part. The lead actor is a little more conniving and sinister. The lead actor is not only flushed with cash, but is also executing a coordinated and sustained propaganda campaign to dehumanise Muslim Americans as part of a broader strategy to support pro-Zionist goals.

Since 2001, a group of shadowy groups and individuals have spent millions to disseminate misinformation about Muslims into the mainstream media, body politick, and public consciousness. The objective? Provide political cover for both the US’ war on terror, and Israel’s war on Palestinians.

Yasmine Taeb, co-author of the new report, “Fear, Inc. 2.0: The Islamophobia Network’s Efforts to Manufacture Hate in America,” said in a recent interview that “since 2001, there has been over $57 million that’s been contributed to this fear-mongering, anti-Muslim, anti-Islam organisations by eight very wealthy donors.”

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, thirty-seven US-based anti-Islam groups enjoyed a combined revenue of $119 million in the years 2008 to 2011. One of CAIR’s findings is that these groups are “often tightly linked” and that “key players in the network benefited from large salaries as they encouraged the American public to fear Islam.”

These well-funded and well-organised groups push erroneous and spiteful narratives:

In Europe, there’s the Eurabian conspiracy theory, which holds there is a secret plot between European and Arab leaders to facilitate mass Muslim immigration, “subjugate Europe, and transform the continent into an Arab colony, Eurabia.” Like the Jewish conspiracy theories in Germany during the 1930s, no evidence is ever offered to support either the plot or the actual likelihood Muslims will come to dominate Europe, demographically. It’s a conspiracy that has been pushed by everyone from the nationalistic English Defence League to Dutch politician Geert Wilders; and is outlined in great detail in Bat Ye’or’s book Eurabia: the Euro-Arabiz Axis.

In America, it’s the Sharia law conspiracy theory, which holds that “alongside the use of violence is the strategy of stealth jihad, which aims at the infiltration of national institutions and the assertion of Muslim’s demands through the legal system.” It’s a conspiracy pushed by everyone from the Republican Party to Fox News; and is evidenced in Mark Steyn’s book American Alone.

The Sharia law conspiracy theory can easily be dismissed as wildly ridiculous, but it’s a conspiracy that has gained traction nevertheless. A 2011 survey found 30 percent of Americans believed Muslim Americans were seeking to replace the US Constitution with Sharia law.

So who are these groups and individuals pushing evidently obvious misinformation and gross generalisations for the purpose of manufacturing a climate of fear, suspicion, and anger toward American Muslims?

US neo-conservative activists David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes established Campus Watch in 2002, which identified and monitored university professors who openly supported rights for Palestinians and encouraged students to protest Israel’s oppressive policy towards its Arab citizens, and those in the West Bank and Gaza. One year later, Horowitz founded DiscoverTheNetworks.org, which identified and assailed groups and individuals “accused of enabling Islamism and undermining American values.” And in 2007, Horowitz organised Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

NYU adjunct professor Arun Kundnani notes that by 2008, “a group of well-funded Islamophobic activists had coalesced. Pamela Geller’s blog Atlas Shrugs (named after Ayn Rand’s novel) had come to prominence with the Khalil Gibran International Academy campaign. She worked closely with Robert Spencer, whose Jihad Watch site was run as a subsidiary of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.” Kundnani also notes that the Los Angeles-based millionaire couple Aubrey and Joyce Chernick used their foundation to fund Robert Spencer with “close to a million dollars between 2004 and 2009.”

It was during this period that ACT! For America was formed. Started by Bridgette Gabriel in 2007, this Islamophobic citizen action network had established more than 570 chapters and 170,000 members before the end of its second year.

It’s this network of anti-Muslim organisations and individuals that drives not only media distractions, such as the hysteria over the “proposed” mosque at Ground Zero, but has also largely driven the narrative of conservative media, the religious right, New Atheism, and nearly the entire Republican Party. “In America today, the level of public anti-Muslim bigotry is shockingly high. Politicians and pundits, usually on the right, say things about Muslims that they would be immediately fired for saying about Christians or Jews,” writes Peter Beinhart.

During the 2012 GOP presidential campaign, Herman Cain declared: “There is this creeping attempt, there is this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government.” Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich thundered, “I believe Sharia is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” While Peter King (R-NY), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, claimed: “There is an infiltration of the Sharia practise into all of our operating systems in our country, as well as across Western civilisation.”

There is no evidence anywhere from anyone to support the notion Muslim Americans desire to implement Sharia law in America. In fact, a 2011 Pew Research Center poll found that perhaps as many as 80 percent of Muslims living in America do not attend mosques and have a secular outlook.

So where are these conservative politicians and the right wing media getting their Sharia law talking points from?

During the 2008 election, and with a Democratic candidate whose middle name is Hussein, 28 million copies of an anti-Muslim propaganda film, Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, was distributed throughout hotly contested electoral battleground states. The film was funded with a $17 million donation from a conservative group that political funding laws allow to keep the names of its donors anonymous, and forewarns of a Muslim plot to takeover America.

While the film did not prevent candidate Barack Obama from winning the presidency, it was successful insofar as it injected anti-Muslim hysteria into America’s political bloodstream. According to a 2010 Time magazine poll, more than 25 percent of Americans believed the President to be a Muslim.

Fear and suspicion is the root cause of violence carried out against Muslim Americans. In a 2011 poll, 6 percent of Muslims said they had been victims of a hate crime. Louise Cainkar, author of The Impact of the September 11 attacks on Arab and Muslim Communities in the United States, cites a study in which all those interviewed, college educated Muslim American women in Chicago, had all been “the victims of physical or verbal abuse, or knew someone close to them who had been”.

If discrimination at the hands of an ever fearful and hateful general population isn’t enough, Muslim Americans are also faced with the fear of reporting the crime carried out against them. Not only do Muslims believe the authorities won’t help, but Muslims are acutely aware that they’re the targets of deportation, surveillance, and harassment by law enforcement. “That excessive scrutiny has eroded the trust necessary for victims to report hate crimes,” writes Farhana Khera.

Taeb says the main goal of Muslim civil rights activists should be to name and shame the funders of anti-Muslim bigotry, which she hopes will “dry up the money”. In an interview with Democracy Now, Taeb says: “If we eliminate the money trail, if we eliminate these millions of dollars that are being donated to these organisations, that essentially their living is now just to promote discriminatory policies against three million Americans.”

Khera suggests the Justice Department should launch a website modelled on the Education Department’s Stopbulling.gov – dedicated to informing the public on how to identify and report hate crimes. “The site should also provide a one-stop shop for tools and resources for law enforcement, educators, public officials, media and other key stakeholders in reducing hate-motivated violence,” suggests Khera.

These are some of the things we can do to lessen persecution against Muslims based on their faith. The Chapel Hill murders must be seen as a tipping point – an opportunity to examine and confront the forces that are leading Americans to believe the Islamic faith seeks to destroy “American values.” It was this worldview (“Islam is at war with the West”) that led Anders Breivik to murder 77 students in Norway; it’s probable it led Hicks to murder three Muslims in North Carolina, and it certainly is behind the spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes. So what are we going to do about it?

– CJ Werleman is the author of Crucifying America, God Hates You. Hate Him Back, Koran Curious, and is the host of Foreign Object. Follow him on twitter: @cjwerleman

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. 

Photo: An image grab from a video by the Center for American Progress (YouTube)

Source: www.middleeasteye.net

Shocked by the mass killing, world leaders and religious figures have expressed their solidarity with Copts, already a persecuted minority before the killings.

In a statement, the Coptic church said that its leadership had “confidence that their great nation won’t rest without retribution for the evil criminals.” During a speech on Monday to members of the Church of Scotland, Pope Francis decried the deaths. “The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out be heard. It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants,” he said. “They are Christians!”

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com