Senate Bill 720: Making it a crime to support Palestinian human rights
August 20th, 20170 By James J. Zogby It is fascinating to watch some U.S. senators tripping over themselves as they attempt to defend their support for or opposition to proposed legislation that would make it a federal crime to support the international campaign to Boycott, Divest or Sanction (BDS) Israel for its continued occupation of Palestinian...
Charlottesville tragedy can be lesson to community
August 20th, 20171 By Abed Hammoud The recent tragic events in Charlottesville, VA should be a lesson to our Arab and Muslim community here in Metro Detroit, specially in the Dearborn-Dearborn Heights area. These events show that personal attacks, character assassination and the spread of false information on social media and elsewhere can have...
Clashes among Arab Americans get us nowhere
August 20th, 20170 On any Election Day, be it primary or general, it’s the norm for residents to differ in opinions on particular candidates and their qualifications. That’s why voters have the right to choose their representatives at the ballot box after much debate and discussion. However, that healthy democratic process should not turn into...
Power to the people: Why Palestinian victory in Jerusalem is a pivotal moment
August 4th, 20170 Neither Fatah nor Hamas have been of much relevance to the mass protests staged around the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. Neither have American pressure, half-hearted European "concern about the situation" or cliché Arab declarations made one iota of difference. United Nations officials warned of the grim scenarios of escalation,...
Our endorsements for Dearborn, Hamtramck and Detroit municipal elections
August 4th, 20170 One might think that Dearborn prospers businesswise— mainly as home to Ford Motor Company's world headquarters—yet it doesn't, due to the lack of change in the system and in the administration. Many businesses have moved out after Dearborn established restrictive ordinances. Business owners began setting up shops in nearby cities...
The Dearborn Heights 2017 primary elections: Our endorsements
July 28th, 20171 As Dearborn Heights' community and economic landscape transforms to reflect its neighboring city of Dearborn, so must the city's government transform to reflect its constituents. Over the years, many Arab Americans have steadily moved from Dearborn to Dearborn Heights, a bedroom community whose obstacle to tremendous ambitions has...
Fear and trepidation in Tel Aviv: Is Israel losing the Syria war?
July 28th, 20170 Israel, which has played a precarious role in the Syrian war since 2011, is furious to learn that the future of the conflict is not to its liking. The six-year-old Syria war is moving to a new stage, perhaps its final. The Syrian regime is consolidating its control over most of the populated centers, while ISIS is losing ground fast...
Restoring faith in representative democracy
July 27th, 20170 There's no shortage of threats to our democracy. Russian meddling in elections, the vulnerability of state voting systems to hacking, politicians' assaults on the media and political leaders' growing fondness for policy-making in secret — all of these pose a real challenge to our system's viability. As worrisome as these are,...
How Trump and Netanyahu pushed Palestinians into a corner
July 27th, 20170 Early October 2016, Misbah Abu Sbeih left his wife and five children at home and then drove to an Israeli police station in occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem. The 39-year-old Jerusalemite was scheduled to hand himself over to serve a term of four months in jail for, allegedly, trumped up charges of "trying to hit an Israeli...
Hamtramck’s Muslim majority Council proves media wrong
July 21st, 20170 HAMTRAMCK — When the voters of Hamtramck elected four Muslims to the City Council in 2015, it made headlines nationally and internationally on media outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, CNN, Fox News and more as a seemingly oxymoronic move in an "American city"— as if those public officials' Islamic faith...
The story behind the Jerusalem attack: How Trump and Netanyahu pushed Palestinians into a corner
July 21st, 20170 By Ramzy Baroud Early October 2016, Misbah Abu Sbeih left his wife and five children at home and then drove to an Israeli police station in occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem. The 39-year-old Jerusalemite was scheduled to hand himself over to serve a term of four months in jail for, allegedly, trumped up charges of "trying to hit...
Intra-cultural conflicts among Dearborn’s Arab Americans are a concern
July 14th, 20170 It is a known fact that Dearborn has the highest concentration of Americans of Arab descent, some thriving more than others, in part due to their long history in this nation. For many reasons, internal segregation, which tends to stem from religious separation, politics and tribalism, has truly become a community concern. Last week,...
Excessive fireworks put Dearborn residents in a war zone
July 7th, 20170 The Fourth of July has passed, but the community's celebratory faults haven't, as "war zone" sounds persistently reappear over the years. Dearborn's patriotism shines bright on Independence Day. However, community members launch dangerous fireworks in between houses and throughout neighborhoods— disregarding the potential dangers,...
The call to shut down Al Jazeera must be condemned
July 7th, 20170 It has been more than a month since four Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia decided to cut off ties with their neighbor, Qatar. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE imposed severe diplomatic and economic sanctions on the tiny Gulf state that heavily depends on imports for its daily consumption of necessary goods. The...
Hussein Berry is to blame for the tension on the school board and in the community
July 1st, 20172 These past few weeks have been filled with political rants, social media gossips and legal threats. It has become hard to find the truth amid the sea of accusations. This is the new age of politics, it is the Trump era. Truth has no place in his White House and it seems that it has no place in Dearborn, either. At the Dearborn Board......
Israel vs. the United Nations: The Nikki Haley doctrine
June 28th, 20170 The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, seems to be championing a single cause: Israel. When Haley speaks about Israel, her language is not merely emotive nor tailored to fit the need of a specific occasion. Rather, her words are resolute, consistent and are matched by a clear plan of action. Along with...
The conspiracy theory and the Dearborn Board of Education appointment process
June 23rd, 20171 Much has been said and written about the Dearborn Board of Education candidates and the process to appoint a successor to now Judge Mariam Bazzi. Most of the rants on social media centered around a couple of themes: Adel Mozip should get Bazzi's former seat because he received 11,000 votes during the last election, which he lost anyway;......
Too much at stake for Dearborn Board of Education to remain divided
June 16th, 20170 The inability of the Dearborn Board of Education to reach an agreement and appoint a new trustee to fill the seat vacated by former trustee and now Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Mariam Bazzi disappointed many in the city. Three Board members, Fadwa Hammoud, Mary Lane and Michael Meade, selected local businesswoman Celia Nasser....
Ahmad Jibril doesn’t belong to Dearborn
June 10th, 20170 Local and national articles are alarming readers with tales of an insidious "Dearborn cleric" who is apparently "popular" and "inspirational" to ISIS members. The headlines, however, have it all wrong. He is neither a cleric nor has he ever really been visible in Dearborn. Furthermore, his obscurity can hardly award him with any...
Not only Muslims: Last week, allies became casualties, too
June 2nd, 20170 Rick Best, 53, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, and Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, took a brave stand against bigotry and assault last Friday when they stepped in to defend two teenage girls from the verbal assault and abuse of a bigot whose best defense was that they "looked Muslim." Both 16-year-old Destinee Magnum and her...Donald Trump and the politics of whine
By Thomas L. Knapp "No politician in history, and I say this with great surety," President Trump told Coast Guard Academy graduates on May 17, "has been treated worse or more unfairly" than himself. A day later, in the wake of the Justice Department's appointment of former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to......
Trump’s visit to Israel: How Palestine disappeared from US media coverage
June 2nd, 20170 As if he has, overnight, been transformed into a master politician, Donald Trump's 27-hour trip to Israel has left many analysts mystified. Quoting former Israeli political adviser Mitchell Barack, the New York Times referred to Trump as the "Liberace of world leaders", in reference to flamboyant piano player Wladziu Valantino...
Trump must be more firm against White supremacy
June 2nd, 20170 By Dawud Walid Donald Trump's first visit abroad as president was marked by several statements which explicitly and implicitly stated that he wished to put America first. In the first leg of his trip in Saudi Arabia, he stated, "Our first priority is always the safety and security of our own citizens." As there definitely are......
Talking to the other side
May 26th, 20170 I've had a number of conversations recently that convince me our country is divided into two political camps separated by a deep and uncomfortably wide gap. No, I'm not talking about liberals and conservatives or pro- and anti-Trump voters. I'm talking about people who believe in politics and our political system and people who...
Fear as an obstacle to peace: Why are Israelis afraid?
May 26th, 20170 Bat-Hen Epstein Elias's long article on Iranian Jews is interesting. Parts of it, in fact, are heartwarming. Yet, despite the lack of any serious evidence, the story is entirely framed in the language of fear. Entitled, "All the Jews there live in fear that their telephones are tapped", the story in "Israel Hayom" peddles the idea......
