Author Archives: Arab America

All eyes are now focused on the upcoming fortnight, awaiting the much-promised address to the joint-session of the US Congress by the defiant Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, which is likely to turn matters sour between Israel and the US. This will most likely be the case should Netanyahu retain the Israeli premiership after the elections on March 17.

However, all this depends on what happens in the next few days preceding the national elections and whether Netanyahu and his short-sighted supporters maintain their aggressive positions. These include the continued rejection of Palestinian ambition to gain statehood, as well as the participation of the US alongside the four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in critical negotiations with Iran over its nuclear ambitions — an issue that is troublesome to Israel, also believed to have nuclear ambitions as well, but remains unchallenged by key western nations.

Official and unofficial American supporters of Israel and the Israeli public remain seriously divided over the arrogant and unyielding performance of Netanyahu ahead of the Israeli elections and the simultaneous negotiations with Iran. A significant American warning came this week from Martin Indyk, a two-term ambassador to Israel and the current vice-president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington. The former US special envoy to last year’s failed Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations was also a participant last week in the annual Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv.

He warned at the INSS conference, according to the Jerusalem Post, that if the Israeli government emerges after the election and does not launch a diplomatic initiative or opposes a Palestinian state, Israel will likely face a UN Security Council resolution proposed by all permanent members designed to “lay out the principles of a two-state solution”. US Secretary of State John Kerry is said to be working on such a project at this time. Indyk, who did little to hide his position that Netanyahu was responsible for the breakdown of the peace talks, underlined

Washington’s concern that the situation on the ground was reaching a boiling point, something that had been exacerbated by Israel’s withholding the transfer of tax funds to the Palestinian National Authority so that it could pay salaries of the Palestinian civil servants.
“The way forward,” he continued, “begins with coordinating an initiative with the United States … and then, looking to Egypt and Jordan and the resurrection of the Arab Peace Initiative”.

What may, however, tone down Israel’s anxiety about the Obama administration’s position is the appointment of a new secretary of defence, Ashton Carter, a longtime Pentagon aide. The Jerusalem Post described Carter as “an ardent supporter of Israel who has also enjoyed a close relationship with (Israeli) Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon”.
Another American, who had immigrated to Israel and is now its ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, who reported, according to Politico Magazine, that congressional Democrats were “already suspicious of him, alleging that he has been undermining negotiations with Iran by distributing negative talking points” to Congressional offices. According to the New York Times, the White House chief-of-staff, Denis McDonough, among others, had initially resisted the appointment.

Paul Pillar, a longtime CIA analyst, wrote in the National Interest, that “the naming of Dermer is a statement that manipulation, with a hard-Right twist, of American politics is not just something that arises from time to time in US-Israeli relations but instead is the main aspect of the relationship”. He elaborated: “It also is a statement by Netanyahu that he isn’t bothered if the relationship is seen that way.”

Much as Obama seems angered by Netanyahu’s upcoming trip to Washington and addressing a joint session of Congress, days before the Israeli election, Israeli polls “across all ideological groups [show] a majority does not trust Obama to ensure that Iran does not achieve a nuclear weapon”, reported the Times of Israel. “Among undecided voters, the distrust is slightly deeper, with 17 per cent saying they trust Obama and 76 per cent saying they do not.”

But the Washington Post ran an interesting letter-to-the-editor from a reader who described himself as Jewish. He wrote: “Mr Netanyahu and his Likud Party have done considerable harm to Israel, to its international standing and even to the reputation of the Jewish people in general. Furthermore, his unseemly attempt to come pleading to Congress while wilfully dismissing President Obama plays into the hands of people who proclaim that Israel holds undue influence over the affairs of the US government.”

George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com

Source: gulfnews.com

Source: endtheoccupation.org

With Israel preoccupied with elections and the Arab world preoccupied with fighting the Islamic State, the Palestinians feel sidelined and are looking to launch a “diplomatic intifada.”

Source: www.al-monitor.com

Palestian writer Atef Abu Saif has been nominated for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction but was stopped by security services from attending the announcement in Morocco.

Source: www.al-monitor.com

Well, Baker is a speaker at J Street’s fifth annual conference next month (March 21-24). This will shock Israel supporters. It is a sign that the lobby really is splitting, and there’s going to be a rightwing lobby for the Republicans and a centrist lobby for the Democrats. J Street declared that the lobby was splitting over the illegal Israeli settlements issue five years ago. But it couldn’t pull that off; the lobby was still unified in favor of settlements, and J Street pulled in its horns lest it get completely ostracized, and Obama supported the settlements at the U.N. Getting Baker on board is a sign that J Street means to drive that settlement wedge after all and believes it has support for such a stance inside the Democratic Party.

Source: mondoweiss.net

Spiegel online interviewed Isaac Herzog, the Labor leader in the election campaign in Israel. He says that Benjamin Netanyahu should cancel his scheduled speech to Congress next month:

I think it is totally unnecessary. He should cancel this speech. This appearance in Congress is adverse to Israeli interests and will only hamper further the relations between the government of Israel and the US administration.

An important CNN poll is out showing that overwhelmingly Americans regard the invitation to Netanyahu to speak to both house of Congress to attempt to overturn our president’s policy re Iraq as inappropriate, 63 to 33,  and that young people have more progressive views of the conflict than older ones. From CNN:

A large majority of Americans believe that Republican congressional leaders should not have invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress without consulting the White House, according to a new CNN/ORC survey.

The nationwide poll, released Tuesday, shows 63% of Americans say it was a bad move for congressional leadership to extend the invitation without giving President Barack Obama a heads up that it was coming. Only 33% say it was the right thing to do.

“The endgame on Iran is coming, and that’s what’s driving this,” Aaron David Miller says to Wolf Blitzer, at the link. (One pro Israel guy talking to another, that’s the discourse.)

The CNN poll– 1000 people between Feb. 12-15–  also shows greater distance from Israel among young people.

Source: mondoweiss.net

Linda Bevis wears many hats. She is a Washington state resident, an activist, a lawyer, a mother and a teacher.

And for the past few years, she’s worn a hat that combines many of her previous hats. The 53-year-old Bevis is the force behind the Palestine Teaching Trunk, a one-of-a-kind tool designed to bring Palestine into American high school classrooms.

Bevis’ project is springing into action at a time when the Palestine solidarity movement is growing in the face of spirited opposition–opposition that has also faced off against Bevis. The group StandWithUs has attacked Bevis, with members writing blog posts against her project. Bevis says that the group has pushed for a workshop on the trunk to be canceled.

In 2009, Bevis began work on the “trunk,” both a literal trunk full of educational materials and an online tool teachers can use. (The word “trunk” is often used in education circles to mean a collected group of materials for teaching on one topic.) Three years later, the Palestine Teaching Trunk was up and running. Its promise is to teach high school students about a topic that teachers normally don’t delve too deep into. Bevis’ materials detail how they align with state and national education standards.

The Palestine Teaching Trunk, Bevis says, is an initiative trying to educate Americans about Israel/Palestine and U.S. involvement with the conflict.

Linda Bevis.

“I think a lot of how the United States is viewed in the world has to do with how its involved with Israel/Palestine,” Bevis, who is active with the Seattle-based Palestine Solidarity Committee, told me over the phone. “So I think for students to actually understand anything about America’s foreign policy or anything about how other countries view us, or anything about why 9/11 happened, for instance, they need to understand something about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Source: mondoweiss.net

Instro Precision, an arms company near Broadstairs (Kent), was occupied at 5am this morning to protest its sales to both Israel and Afghanistan. Four people are on the roof with banners to shut the factory down, with ten more on the ground, one of whom is locked to the fence.

A wide range of groups came together to make this happen, including: Brighton BDS, Brighton Palestine Action, Smash EDO, Stop NATO Cymru, Anarchist Action Network, East Kent CAAT, Swansea Action for Palestine (with a bit of support from us too).

(Photo: London Palestine Action)

Instro is owned by Israeli arms company Elbit Systems, who make drones that are used to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Optical and camera systems like those made at the Instro factory are also supplied by Elbit for use in drones flown over Afghanistan, as well as in Israel’s apartheid wall.

Elbit Hermes drones have been flown over Afghanistan and the new Watchkeeper drone, based on the Hermes, was deployed by the MOD last year. Although the Watchkeeper is ostensibly a surveillance drone, it has been displayed with missiles under its wings at the DSEi arms fair in London.

Source: mondoweiss.net

Laughter is a medicine that is helping to heal ties between a bunch of funny Muslims and their fellow Americans.

Source: www.aquila-style.com

In an era where conflict between cultures has become alarmingly frequent, the composer Mohammed Fairouz has crafted his music into a plea for understanding and the transformative power of poetry.

The prolific 29-year-old, whose work brings elements from the Islamic world to Western classical music, bases much of his new album, “Follow, Poet,” around verses by 20th-century literary giants W.H. Auden and Seamus Heaney.

The belief, Fairouz says, is that both music and poetry have a power to bring greater understanding, if only people take the time to listen and reflect.

“In order to make war, you have to dehumanize somebody — this is a very well-known fact. It’s much more difficult to dehumanize a group if you love their music and their poetry,” Fairouz told AFP over a mug of tea at a New York recording studio.

Source: www.aquila-style.com

As they continue to mourn the loss of the three Chapel Hill shooting victims, leaders of the Arab and Muslim communities are also part of a growing chorus cr…

Source: www.nbcnews.com