Loaning a car to a friend is a roll of the dice
“Hey buddy, can I borrow your car?” The question seems innocent enough. The answer, more often than not, is “of course you can, my good friend.” However, at the risk of sounding uptight, letting someone borrow your car is like placing the deed to your home on the poker table. It’s even worse than that,...Arab community should seriously address the issue of sexual harassment
Last week, State Representative Rashida Tlaib went public with detailed allegations of sexual harassment by ADC’s Regional Director Imad Hamad against her and other female interns during her time spent at the organization. The ADC has finally agreed to the gravity of the situation and decided to perform a thorough investigation, which...Dix area residents feel ignored by the City
Dear Editor:I am a concerned resident of the Southend of Dearborn. For over 50 years, I have seen changes; some for the better, but a lot for the worse. The best days for south end residents were during the administration of the late honorable Mayor Michael Guido (God rest his soul). During that time, police patrolled our streets...Qusair: Exclusive eyewitness account
QUSAIR, Syria — A city that lies in rubble, where ghosts, dead bodies and soldiers share the deserted streets. Qusair, the Stalingrad of Syria, the revolution's fallen icon and the regime's turning point, from north to south, east to west, is obviously under the regime's full control now. Soldiers can be seen everywhere doing all that...Employment relationship in Michigan is no-strings-attached
An often misunderstood concept is what it means for an employee to be “wrongfully terminated.” Recently fired individuals sometimes seek the advice of an attorney regarding whether their previous employer may have run afoul of employment laws in terminating their employment. Almost always, the answer is “no.”In...Slip and fall law in Michigan: You’d better watch where you’re going
Unexpected falls can often lead to serious injuries. Anyone who has been seriously injured can attest that no amount of money is worth nearly as much as good health. However, our system of justice is powerless to repair broken bones and can do nothing to ease the pain, resulting from injuries. The only thing our system...Syrian rebels balk at peace talks
Reasonable people can disagree on what to do about Syria, a problem with no good solutions, and particularly about what to do regarding aid to Syrian rebels. There ought not to be disagreement, however, on not letting the United States, a would-be benefactor, get pushed around or have its diplomacy subverted by the rebels, who are the...Evidence does not support fears of Islam in the West
WASHINGTON – While scholarly work has debunked the idea of incompatibility of Islam with Western values, it has not really changed this dominant perception pervading political discourse and policy making. This notion of incompatibility between Islam and the West has actually intensified in the last 15 years, as the perception of Islam...
Nakba: 65 years later, and we’re winning
May 17th, 20130 Well, it’s that time of year. It’s the day when we Palestinians commemorate the establishment of the State of Israel. They call it “independence,” and we call it “Nakba,” which basically means “catastrophe,” or “calamity.”There are still many people living today who suffered the catastrophe of 1948, were...Who are the war criminals in Syria?
Last week, several polls came out assessing U.S. public opinion on intervention in Syria.According to the Huffington Post poll, Americans oppose U.S. air strikes on Syria by 3-to-1. They oppose sending arms to the rebels by 4-to-1. They oppose putting U.S. ground troops into Syria by 14-to-1. Democrats, Republicans and independents are...When will we put our money where our mouth is?
Dear Editor: Alan Hart is a writer, journalist and activist who has made it his life’s work to promote the truth about the core of the Middle East’s century-old state of conflict; That core being the Zionist propaganda machine’s campaign to portray Israel as a poor, helpless victim of worldwide anti-Semitism, which entitles...Author’s portrayal on aging Arab Americans not entirely accurate
Dear Editor,I would like to congratulate the Arab American News for publishing a series of articles on aging Arab Americans. The first article in the series, authored by Mohamad Ozeir, introduced the importance of the topic, which deserves recognition in the Arab American community. However, the most recent...Fighting racism after Boston: A Dearborn resident’s view
After 9/11, my high school cafeteria split in half: Arab-Americans on one side, everybody else on the other. I don't know why, but I felt like I had to choose a side. I chose to sit with nobody. Growing up in Dearborn, Michigan, I lived in a city where 40 percent of the population is from the Mediterranean and many are of the Muslim...
Not in my name: A reflection on the Muslim and Arab American community response to the Boston Marathon bombings
April 26th, 20130 It has been nearly two weeks since the Boston Marathon bombings, yet no amount of time that will pass can alleviate the remaining shock of having, once again, become targets in our own backyards. This time, the attack took place during one of our country’s most cherished annual traditions. The first thoughts that Muslim and...What we did to Iraq
The U.S. public was always carefully protected by its media from full knowledge of what the U.S. government did to Iraq. The networks had a rule, of never showing blood. They almost never showed wounded Iraqis with bloody bandages. Of course, they never showed dismemberment (bodies blown up, unlike in Hollywood movies, don’t just pile......
Challenging your property tax assessment in Michigan
Metro Detroit — It’s that time of year again — local residents and business owners are receiving their property tax “notice of assessment.” After five years of a battered real estate market, many suspect that they are being overtaxed on inflated values or properties. Although data suggests that residential home prices are...The hour scoop: A breakdown of Dearborn’s ‘Arabic time’
Arab Dearborners of the 90’s will recall this little tune from the evening lineup of an Arabic television program broadcasted locally on cable, which was, until the advent of Internet and satellite TV, one of the local Arab community’s links to the Arab world along with several Arabic cable programs that was driven out of business by......
A peaceful but difficult farewell
January 12th, 20130 It was an extraordinary Monday morning by all measures. The sun was shining and there wasn't a single cloud in the crisp, bright sky. At the same time, it was a day that I never wanted to come. It was 10 in the morning and time for the countdown for Kay Siblani's funeral services, then to the grave site where she would be laid to...
Kay’s story is our story
January 5th, 20130 The June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that led to the occupation of its capital Beirut again exposed a glaring lack of Arab opinion in America's mainstream media, and it became a breaking point later that year for three individuals from different worlds who wanted to make a change. The biased reporting on Arab issues that continued...
Blackburn, Lane re-elected despite puzzling endorsements for Petlichkoff
November 12th, 20120 Even though former Dearborn School Board member Mary Petlichkoff had the endorsement of Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly, five Dearborn City Council Members, the current State Rep. and a former State Rep, she failed to win a seat on the School Board, and was defeated by a wide margin. When all votes were tallied, Aimee Blackburn came...
Election 2012: Accomplishments we can build on
November 9th, 20120 There's no such thing as a perfect Election Night, but for the Arab American community in Dearborn, this past Tuesday's results, and the historic turnout in our community that made them possible, constituted something pretty close. First off, give yourselves a big hand. Despite the ongoing logistical challenges many in our......
Blackburn, Lane re-elected despite puzzling endorsements for Petlichkoff
November 9th, 20120 Even though former Dearborn School Board member Mary Petlichkoff had the endorsement of Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly, five Dearborn City Council Members, the current State Rep. and a former State Rep, she failed to win a seat on the School Board, and was defeated by a wide margin. When all votes were tallied, Aimee Blackburn came...U.S. housing market threatened by changes to short sales
DETROIT — As lenders continue to see rising default rates and a backlog of foreclosures and bad debt piling up, short sales have been extremely attractive to sellers, banks, buyers and realtors. Instead of having a house sit vacant for months at a time, mortgage servicers have successfully used the short sale process to determine which......
Romney anything but a moderate on foreign policy issues
I have been reading Mitt Romney's memoir, ‘No Apology.’ It is as if Romney is two people, one a wise, thoughtful person who could work with Democrats and lead the country, the other an unreflective, unsophisticated ideologue who is dangerous. The chapter on health care shows a man who has done his homework. I know this field...The glaring contradiction in anti-Iran policy
President Barack Obama, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have at least one thing in common when it comes to Iran. All are guilty of flagrant self-contradiction.Each says that a nuclear-armed Iran could not be effectively contained the way the U.S. government contained the......