Where the election stands
The next few weeks in politics are a little like the All-Star break in baseball. With the Republican and Democratic national conventions upon us, it's a good time to step back and assess this year's election. Which carries bad news for both parties. The Republicans face a steep electoral challenge. If Hillary Clinton carries Florida...
The numbers in Obama’s drone death report don’t add up
July 7th, 20160 More than three years after President Obama pledged to be transparent about the United States' lethal drone program, his administration has finally come forward with an accounting of the numbers of civilian deaths that resulted from drone strikes between Jan. 20, 2009 and Dec. 31, 2015. But the numbers only cover airstrikes...
What Clinton should learn from Brexit
July 1st, 20160 President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton.BREXIT — the stunning British vote to leave the European Union — is a clear and dramatic rebuke of the country's political and economic elites. A majority voted to leave, even though the heads of the United Kingdom's two major parties, more than a thousand corporate and bank...Cheating taxpayers for political advantages
Politicians who limit the effectiveness of government agencies for short-term political advantages cheat taxpayers and short-change the government. I first met Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a brash young Republican, at a gathering of EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center), which challenges invasions of privacy by big...
How Israel uses water as a weapon of war
June 24th, 20160 Entire communities in the West Bank either have no access to water or have had their water supply reduced almost by half. This alarming development has been taking place for weeks, since Israel's national water company, Mekorot, decided to cut off or significantly reduce the supply to Jenin, Salfit and many villages around Nablus,...
Trump is assailing the Constitution, not simply Muslims
June 23rd, 20160 "Religious freedom is not an issue for conservatives or progressives, deists or agnostics, Christians or Muslims. This is an American issue."GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has ratcheted up his politics of fear campaign strategy by exploiting the recent mass shooting in Orlando. This was no surprise to American Muslims and other...
Gaza: Resistance Through Poetry
June 17th, 20160 Muin Bseiso“(At dawn) … I will resist ... (Since) upon the wall there is still a white sheet … And my fingers are yet to (completely) dissolve.” This is a translated verse from Muin Bseiso's "Three Walls of the Torture Chamber." He has been one of Gaza's most influential intellectual and renowned poets. After Israel...
Detroit businesses should join Project Green Light
June 17th, 20160 Mayor Duggan and city leaders announcing new businesses joining Project Green Light, May 23.Detroit is a city for the future. Despite the remaining challenges, there is a financial and political willpower to turn the city around. Arab American business owners have no choice than to adapt and contribute to this turnaround or be left out...
What’s allowed when dealing with Israel?
June 10th, 20160 Activists rally against Israel.That "terrorism" is a malleable term of propaganda, with no fixed meaning or consistent application, is now quite well-established. Still, its recent application to a spate of violence targeting Israel's occupying soldiers in the West Bank is so manipulative and extreme that it's...
Muhammad Ali: A profile in moral courage
June 10th, 20160 "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong — no Viet Cong ever called me nigger." With those pointed words, Muhammad Ali explained his opposition to the war in Vietnam and justified his refusal to submit himself to the draft. He declared himself a conscientious objector. After declining three times to step forward for induction...
Ya’alon’s morality and Israel’s future is terrifying
June 2nd, 20160 Israeli society is constantly swerving to the right. The country's entire political paradigm is redefined regularly. Israel is now "ruled by the most extreme rightwing government in its history." This statement has grown from being an informed assessment to a dull cliché over the course of only a few years. In fact, that exact...
Americans are helping eight million people break this bad law
May 27th, 20160 Last week immigrants, their families and legal advocates rallied outside the Supreme Court as eight justices heard oral arguments in United States v. Texas, an immigration case concerning the Obama Administration's Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) program, which would have offered deferred...
Dearborn Police needs greater accountability to improve
May 13th, 20160 Dawud Walid among demonstrators at a rally demanding accountability from Dearborn Police after Kevin Mathews death, Jan. 4.The recent settlement of an excessive force lawsuit by the Dearborn Police against a mentally impaired man, Ali Beydoun, of Lebanese origin is part of an ongoing saga regarding this embattled police department.The...The spirit of Nelson Mandela in Palestine
The Nelson Mandela statue in RamallahI had mixed feelings when I learned that Palestine has erected a statue of Nelson Mandela, the iconic South African anti-Apartheid leader. I was pleased that the unmistakable connection between the struggles of Palestinians and South Africans is cemented more than ever before. On the other hand,...Did the Arabs betray Palestine?
At the age of 21, I crossed Gaza into Egypt to pursue a degree in political science. The timing could not have been worse. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990 had resulted in a U.S.-led international coalition and a major war, which eventually paved the road for the 2003 U.S. invasion. I became aware that Palestinians were......
Superdelegates from the Middle Eastern perspective
Born in Lebanon, raised in Syria and a resident of Gaza and Ramallah as an adult, I covered elections as a journalist. The concept of elections was very simple in my pre-America experience: you go and cast your vote for the person you would like to govern you. But in the United States, I'm discovering, the concept is a lot more...Failed Abbas is derided and scapegoated
Image: Niño Jose Heredia"We won’t act like them; we will not use violence or force; we are peaceful; we believe in peace, in peaceful popular resistance." This was part of a message issued by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in October, only days after a few incidents took place in which Palestinian youth were accused of......
Syria’s future will profoundly impact the region
"How Syria goes the region will"The atrocities perpetrated by all sides of the civil war in Syria have reached the level of genocide. Half the population of 23 million people has been displaced. 300,000 have died. Over two million injured? The country is in ruins. National unity is severely eroded. The threat of Syria’s collapse...Dearborn’s nightclub, nightmare
"We cannot afford to allow these clubs to ruin our city."It's Monday night around 8 p.m., and I'm laidback in a chair watching an incident unfold on a television screen. I watch intently as five or six police cruisers roll up to a crowded nightclub parking lot around closing time. I'm watching dash cam footage as one of the cruisers...Non-violent BDS should be welcomed, not condemned
A thousand Israelis and their supporters gathered in Jerusalem's International Convention Center on March 28, at a conference aimed at combating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). The conference was a display of "fear, paranoia, anger and determination", as described by Antony Loewenstein, and featured top...College is not the only option: High school students need to learn about skilled trade
Somebody has to maintain the hospitals where all these future medical students work. Last week, I found myself standing in the middle of a classroom at Fordson High School surrounded by about 25 rambunctious teenagers. This was a first for me. I probably ended up learning more from the experience than they did. It was career night and......
Arab American backing of Sanders has possibilities
Elections do have consequences and so do campaigns. In this case the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders carries more than just the promise of a political and economic revolution. His campaign so far bears more significance than the hope of a radical change on Wall Street and the offering of free tuition at...Bigotry competition: Cruz and Trump’s hatred endangers our safety
Trump and CruzArabs and Muslims have condemned terrorism; they have cooperated with law enforcement; they have held rallies and organized press conferences to denounce violence. And they continue to be the largest group of victims of terror worldwide. It seems that even if Muslims walk on water to reject terror, they will still be......
U.S. elections fuel tension of Arab-Israeli conflict
America’s short sighted foreign policy on the Palestine question plays well in the current presidential elections. The Arab-Israeli conflict is an attractive medium for pandering to campaign donors and to voters. As a result, the presidential primaries add fuel to the tension between the two sides. With jaws dropped...Why BDS Cannot Lose: A Moral Threshold to Combat Racism in Israel
While racism is a part of life that's practiced, observed and reported on in many parts of the world, institutionalized racism through calculated governmental measures is only practiced — at least, openly — in a few countries around the world: Burma is one of them. However, no country is as adamant and open about its racially......