The Mockingjay of Palestine: “If we burn, you burn with us”
Raed Mu’anis was my best friend. The small scar on top of his left eyebrow was my doing at the age of five. I urged him to quit hanging on a rope where my mother was drying our laundry. He wouldn’t listen, so I threw a rock at him.I didn’t mean for the rock hit him, but it did. My father dragged to me to his house kicking and...Police should be on, not behind, cameras
Police body cameras are all the rage lately. Al Sharpton wants them used to monitor the activities of cops. Ann Coulter wants them used to “shut down” Al Sharpton. The White House wants them because, well, they’re a way to look both “tough on police violence” and “tough on crime” by spending $263 million on new law...What lies ahead in Congress
Given all the words and images devoted to the midterm elections over the past few weeks, you’d think the results had told us something vital about the future of the country. In reality, they were just a curtain-raiser. It’s the next few weeks and months that really matter.The big question, as the old Congress reconvenes and prepares...American justice failed Michael Brown
More than three months after Darren Wilson executed Michael Brown in broad daylight in Ferguson, the grand jury’s decision is in. No state prosecution, no justice from the state’s court system, for his crime. Wilson will never be tried, let alone convicted. But in the real justice system, this is not the end for Wilson — it’s...Talk of a third intifada: Only Palestinians can decide
When a journalist tries to do a historian’s job, the outcome can be quite interesting. Using history as a side note in a brief news report or political analysis often does more harm than good. Now imagine if that journalist was not dependable to begin with, even more than it being “interesting”, the outcome runs the risk of...Changing how Michigan votes for president might render your vote meaningless
Voters beware—your vote for the president and the vice president – may become meaningless if the Legislature adopts a proposed bill that would change how Electoral College votes are allocated.The League of Women Voters of Dearborn – Dearborn Heights urges you to contact your legislator, opposing HB 5974, which would change the way...The age of TV clowns: Arab media on the brink
Tawfiq Okasha.As I was finalizing my research for this article, I found myself browsing through a heap of hilarious videos by mostly Egyptian TV show hosts Tawfiq Okasha and Amr Adeeb.In one of his numerous videos on YouTube, Okasha, the star and host of the Cairo-based privately funded al-Faraeen channel, tries to explain the...The new Fourth Estate
Because of its power to influence public affairs, the press has long been known as “the Fourth Estate.” But I think the media may have been displaced. These days, it’s lobbyists who seem to carry the most clout in Washington.Here’s a case in point. When Congress closed at the beginning of August for its end-of-summer recess, it...Gitmo force-feeding manual reveals gruesome practices
Last week the U.S. government submitted to the District Court in Washington, D.C., the most recent standard operating procedures (SOPs) for force-feeding in the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. What remains of the documents, after redactions, is a shameful exercise in doublespeak that attempts to disguise what is really happening in...
Some Chaldeans’ misconceptions about Muslims cannot be ignored
October 17th, 20140 Imam Sayyad Hassan Al Qazwini of Dearborn's Islamic Center of America shakes hands with Chaldean Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim as Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako stands in the center.Being Chaldean and working as a reporter in Dearborn covering metro Detroit’s Arab and Muslim communities is not easy. It never has been. Over the years I...Attention next attorney general: More justice wanted
Secret laws, secret courts, secret evidence, secret dragnet snooping, too big to fail, too big to jail… the Department of Justice (DOJ) has not been fully living up to its name.As Attorney General Eric Holder prepares to step down, it is time to look forward and ask what his replacement must bring to the table for our country. The...What if ‘Islamic State’ Didn’t Exist?
What if the so-called "Islamic State" (IS) didn’t exist? In order to answer this question, one has to liberate the argument from its geopolitical and ideological confines. Flexible language Many in the media (Western, Arab, etc) use the reference “Islamist” to brand any movement at all whether it be political,...In Memoriam: Mustapha Al-Abed Hammoud : The loss of an extraordinary man
Hammoud, who hailed from the Lebanese village of Tebnine, never surrendered easily. He was an extraordinary man who lived a full life and excelled in every aspect and at all levels. Hammoud, the oldest son of a southern farmer, as he used to proudly describe his father, reached for the stars. He was fearless and stood head-to-head...Fighting ISIS: A coalition of uncertainty
One way to grasp the immense difficulty facing President Obama as he tries to forge an effective international coalition to oppose the Islamic State is to examine the difference between this effort and the last time the United States led a diverse group of countries to take on a conflict in the Middle East: Operation Desert Storm, in...Losing the plot: Israel’s premier to face new Gaza reality
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war-turned-genocide in Gaza has backfired badly - his strategy has helped resurrect Hamas, the very movement he tried desperately to crush.Aside from being a major military setback, Israel’s war on Gaza has also disoriented the policies of Netanyahu like never before. Since the......
Winners and losers in Gaza: On victory and false victory
In the rush to analyze the outcome of Israel’s 51-day war in Gaza, dubbed Operation Protective Edge, some may have neglected an important factor: this was not a war by traditional definitions of warfare; thus the conventional analyses of victory and defeat is simply not applicable.That being the case, how can we explain Israeli Prime...The influence of the Saudi lobby in Washington
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia speaks with President Obama.Usually one speaks comically of the Arab lobby in Washington, D.C.. Since the oil boom in the 1970s, various Arab-American businesspeople and crooks traveled to the Middle East offering their services to Gulf regimes and promising—in return for large sums of money—to launch......
The real threat from the “Islamic State” is to Muslims, not the west
"I was like any other regular Canadian. I watched hockey, I went to the cottage in the summertime, I loved to fish, I wanted to go hunting… I was a regular person," said Abu Muslim in the last video he recorded before his death. And then came his pitch: "Everyone can contribute something to the Islamic State, as it is obligatory on...Time to strengthen the United Nations
Sometimes, amid the heated political debate about what should done by the U.S. government in world affairs, a proposal cuts through the TV babble of the supposed experts with a clear, useful suggestion.That proposal came on August 17, when Pope Francis told journalists how he thought the world should cope with the challenge posed by...Honor journalist James Foley: Don’t watch the video
If the early reports are correct and journalist James Foley was, in fact, executed by the Islamic State, you can honor him -- and not play into the terroristic hands of that organization -- simply by not watching the video of his murder.Video voyeurism of the worst variety exists when we feast on the death of journalists who strive,...Hashtag Genocide: Gaza fought back
GAZA – My old family house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza was recently rebuilt by its new owner, into a beautiful three-story building with large windows adorned by red frames. In Israel’s most recent and deadliest war on Gaza, the house sustained significant damage. A large hole caused by Israeli missiles can be seen from......
Local reaction to report smearing Dearborn fell short of its significance
Last week, The Intercept, an online news source, leaked a federal document that alleges Dearborn has the second highest number of "known or suspected terrorists" in the country. Within hours, it made headlines across the country and front page news in local media.The report was not only inaccurate, it was an insult to the city and the...Government Discontinues Processing EBT for Merchants
Does your business currently accept or plan to accept Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) in the future? If so please take note that effective September 21, the government will no longer process EBT transactions or provide free equipment to merchants who were not approved by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) prior to March 21, due to......
Storm leaves thousands of Metro Detroit residents in limbo
On Monday, August 11, the metro Detroit region was hit hard with torrential rains, causing many communities to become inundated with several inches of precipitation in a relatively short period of time. As a result, thousands of metro Detroit residents experienced sewage backup onto their property. The law regarding the rights and...On heroes and preachers: Gaza’s new resistance paradigm
"Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? In Israeli prison, of course!" was the title of an article by Jo Ehrlich. published in Modoweiss.net on Dec 21, 2009. That was almost exactly one year after Israel’s concluded a major war against Gaza. The so-called Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008 – January 18, 2009) was, until then, the......