Film designed to anger Muslims divides the West
The timing could not be more truthful. Just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ended a peacekeeping mission to Israel-Palestine and declared her opposition to Israeli settlement expansion, Israel announced plans to build 1,400 new settler homes in the West Bank. Last week Secretary Rice gave a press...A responsible response to Geert Wilders
NEW YORK ? As soon as I heard that right wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders' anti-Islam film had been uploaded onto an internet site, I did what any self-respecting Muslim would do: I clicked on the link and prepared to be offended. Talk about anti-climax! What happened, Geert? Like a magpie stringing cheap trinkets together,...When a ‘custodian of freedom’ is the perpetrator of ethnic cleansing
A few weeks after newly elected Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, apologized to the Aborigines, the indigenous inhabitants of Australia, Rudd was party to a motion in Parliament describing Israel as a "robust democracy" and a "custodian of freedom" in a region abounding in autocracies and theocracies. Opposition Liberal...Granholm did not deserve the coverage
To the Editor: How much did Granholm pay you to write this untrue letter about her and the state of Michigan? (Michigan ranked one of best-managed states, Issue 1153, March 8-14, 2008). Granholm is an anti-American who hates herself and everyone else! She's trying to close all the schools here, the jails and the mental...End the shame of NSEERS
Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security, and the United States Citizens and Immigration Services (USCIS) introduced a plan that would reduce the Naturalization Background backlog, as well as the green card backlog. Officials hope to move nearly 900,000 applicants by the end of September. This is great news for...Something bad is happening to us
We have become accustomed to treating the Palestinians as inferior people. Generations come and go, and new soldiers abuse the residents of occupied Hebron in almost the same manner. This time, it was regular soldiers in the Kfir Brigade. They exposed their backsides and sexual organs to Palestinians, pressed an electric heater to the...A hole in the wall
As the massacres against unarmed Palestinians continued under the policy of ethnic cleansing which has been utilized by the global Zionist movement since the beginning of its occupation of Palestine, two important studies concerning the preparations for the war on Iraq were released in the West. The first study, "Flimsy...Where’s the American Jewish condemnation?
For years now, I have heard demands that we Americans of Palestinian descent condemn various military actions taken by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. And we do so, because innocents should never pay for the sins of their military forces and government. But I'd like to know if the American Jewish community will ever...The sad, unfortunate State of the Union
The State of the Union address is officially a big deal. And it is always accorded an appropriate measure of attention by the television networks, members of Congress and the American people. But some State of the Union addresses are more equal than others. When George Bush addressed Congress in 2005, he did so as the most powerful man...Mike Gravel is right choice for Arabs, Muslims
As the Michigan Co-Director of the Mike Gravel for President campaign, I am writing to take issue with William Fisher's article, "American Muslim voters left out in the cold," and his statement, "Among candidates, the single exception appears to be Democrat Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio congressman and former mayor of Cleveland. He has...Power to the Palestinians!
The people of Palestine have done it again, taking their own fate in their hands after being let down by their own "moderate" political leadership and, indeed, the entire international community in their struggle for freedom. Early this morning they simply blew up the wall separating Gaza from Egypt, breaking a siege imposed on them by...The Islamophobic movement – what it is and what needs to be done about it
As we bid farewell to 2007, it's important to look back on three separate events that, taken together are significant, but went largely unreported. A video surfaced on the Internet, showing two masked Russian neo-Nazis with two hostages, one from Tajikistan and the other from Dagestan. With a swastika flag waving in the background,...How children learn religion can make or break their lives, their societies
Is it possible to critique systems of religious education without shocking sensibilities or touching sacred cultural symbols? The way children learn about their religion can lay the foundation of their abilities in critical thinking. When children are made to think that their religion is the only perfect faith, their biased...What’s wrong with the Arab World?
The quick deterioration of political, social, and economic order in most countries in the Arab world reflects a range of underlying tensions, problems and failures that have manifested themselves for almost a century, and most of them are self-made Arab failures. Every regime of the Arab world has proved a failure. Not one has been able...How to win the GWOT
BEIRUT — I do not spend much time mingling with officers in the United States armed forces, but when I do, usually at a conference or international gathering, or reading texts on the web, I always come away from the experience more heartened than threatened. Presumably, so does President George W. Bush, who spends much of his time......
Maybe there was a confrontation
I'm no military expert, but I'm pretty sure that five small speedboats armed with machine guns, rocket launchers and "white boxes" are no match for a Navy cruiser, destroyer and frigate, especially when it's between Iran and America. I mean, the last thing that the American nuclear superpower would be afraid of is an oil-producing...Free at last, free at last
Twenty years of government harassment comes to an end For the last 20 years, the U.S. government has accused me of being a terrorist. Along with six other Palestinians and a Kenyan, we were dubbed the "Los Angeles Eight" by the media. Our case even made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. On Oct. 30, 2007 — 20 grueling years after the......
Tips to prevent identity theft in 2008
If you're like most people, you have at least one New Year's Resolution you have committed to keep in 2008 to improve your quality of life. Lose weight. Go to the gym. Stop smoking. Allow me to offer one additional resolution that can help you stay true to all of those others: Resolve to protect yourself against the nation's...Obama shakes up Democratic Party
Des Moines — Iowans shocked the foundation of the Democratic Party Thursday night when Illinois Senator Barack Obama placed first in the Iowa caucuses among the Democratic candidates. I had traveled with friends to Iowa to experience the last minute campaigning and the legendary Iowa Democratic caucus process which, by all...We need to stand up for our own
In a report published December 9 in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, a poll cited that 74% of Israeli youth believe Arabs are less intelligent and that they are violent. Two thirds of Israelis believe that Arabs are "not clean," and half of them would not accept to live in a building where an Arab lives, nor would they allow an Arab to...A Jewish Israel needs a wholesome, healed Palestine
One of the most complex and confounding elements that emerged during the run-up to the Annapolis meeting was the demand by several senior Israelis, and its parallel rejection by Palestinian officials, that the Palestinians recognize Israel as "a Jewish state" as a precondition for the start of talks. Israel's demand that the Arabs......
Bush: It’s a goat even if it flies!
What did President Bush read in his oval office on Monday Dec. 3, 2007? He read a report compiled by sixteen American intelligence agencies concluding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, contradicting a previous assessment that Tehran was working on, even close to, building a nuclear weapon. This report...What it’s really all about
When Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinians, responded to Ehud Olmert's statement, "We won't hold negotiations on our existence as a Jewish state," he made an error. Erekat declared that the Palestinians wouldn't accept a Jewish state, because "No state in the world connects its national identity to a religious identity."......
Carter documentary makes you care about Mideast
Even before anyone realized that Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" would stir up controversy and a lively but sometimes vicious debate, filmmaker Jonathan Demme decided to follow the former president during his book tour. Demme has produced a powerful documentary, "Jimmy Carter: A Man from Plains," now...A Muslim belongs in the Cabinet
LAS VEGAS — Mitt Romney tells good jokes. I had the chance to hear a few of them this month at a political fundraiser in Las Vegas, where the Republican presidential contender gave his audience a few good chuckles before going into his domestic and foreign policy agenda. His platform seemed sound enough analytically — until he......