The former chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) is pushing for a case to be opened into the "ongoing genocide" against Iraq's Yazidi community at the hands of ISIS militants.
Luis Moreno Ocampo said he was approached in the United States recently by Yazidi activists who are seeking justice for the systematic...National Election
Qais al-KhazaliBAGHDAD - The head of one of Iraq's fiercest Shi'a militias called the U.S.-led coalition's campaign against ISIS ineffective and accused Washington of lacking the will to uproot extremists controlling large swathes of Iraq and Syria.Qais al-Khazali, leader of Iranian-backed paramilitary group Asaib Ahl al-Haq, said the...
July 9th, 20150
Dr. Farid Fata has been described as a "cancer to the medical community and accused of "medical genocide."
DETROIT—Judge Paul Borman sentenced Dr. Farid Fata to 45 years in prison on Friday after the oncologist tearfully begged for mercy. Fata showed no emotion when victim impact statements were read...
May 8th, 20150
Iraqi Christians protesting religious cleansing in Detroit August 2014 during a unity rally where the Chaldean and Assyrian communities of Michigan were asked to unite for the survival of Iraqi's religious minorities.DETROIT — “To the Chaldean and Assyrian community of Michigan, enough with the division,” said Noor Mattr, a young...
BEIRUT — Tens of thousands of Lebanese Armenians marched north of Beirut Friday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.Carrying Armenian flags and white signs with the picture of a violet forget-me-not flower which was adopted as the symbol of the centennial, the demonstrators gathered the...
April 17th, 20150
Armenian civilians, escorted by armed Ottoman soldiers to a prison, April 1915.DEARBORN — It has been a century since the Ottomans massacred 1.5 million Armenians and drove hundreds of thousands out of their ancestral homeland in what is today Turkey. But 100 years after the tragedy, Armenians are still holding on to the culture and...
SANAA — Houthi forces fought street-by-street battles with local militia in the old center of Aden on Wednesday, as the first boatloads of emergency medical aid reached the south Yemeni port city, which relief workers say faces a humanitarian catastrophe.
Iran, which denies arming the Houthis, has condemned the Saudi-led...
April 9th, 20150
DEARBORN — Hundreds of Arab Americans gathered in front of Dearborn's Henry Ford Centennial Library on Sunday to protest against the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. The demonstrators, who were mostly Yemeni, chanted and held signs condemning the rulers of Saudi Arabia and called for unity and dialogue in their...
So Bibi gave his talk. I wrote up an advance briefing on what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would say before Congress on March 3 and got it almost perfect. I even got some of the punch lines word-for-word. To be honest, that was an easy task. There was absolutely nothing original in this speech. As is true with...
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...
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,...National Election
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 69th United Nations General Assembly at United Nations Headquarters in New York, Sept. 26.UNITED NATIONS — The Palestinians have drafted a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an end to Israeli occupation by November 2016, which they have shared informally with Arab states and...Other Voices
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...
August 29th, 20140
DETROIT — More than 1,000 Iraqi Christians gathered for a peaceful rally and prayer vigil at Hart Plaza on Friday, Aug. 22. The crowd demanded an end to the violence plaguing Iraq’s religious minorities. Demonstrators also walked to the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building holding signs that read, “Save the Christians...
August 29th, 20140
AFPD Chairman and CEO Audey Arabo, community activists Afaf Konja and Sam Yono, Chaldean Bishop Frank Kalabat, Bishop Sarhad Jammo among others stand with United Nations Deputy Security-General H.E. Jan Eliasson at the UN headquarters in New York.DETROIT — A delegation of American Iraqi Christians has been meeting with federal and...
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...In Our Opinion
Christians have lived in Mosul since the dawn of their faith. Over that more than 2,000-year period, armies conquered and left. Wars were waged. Governments fell. Civilizations collapsed. But the Christians remained in their cities and towns, with their church bells ringing tunes of diversity in the land between the two rivers, the...
August 1st, 20140
DEARBORN — On Tuesday, July 29 local Muslim American activists met at the Lebanese American Heritage Club in Dearborn to plan a rally in support of Iraqi Christians. “We want to express solidarity with our Iraqi Chaldean, Assyrian and Syriac brothers and sisters,” said Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American...
July 18th, 20140
DEARBORN — The power of social media prevailed last weekend when a hashtag that started in Dearborn's Arab American community went viral across the world on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.#AmericansWithGaza was a trending topic around the world, involving Americans taking selfies of themselves with a hand-written message...
Ron Dermer, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, received fierce backlash on Thursday, July 17, as he defended his country’s Operation Protective Edge offensive on Gaza during a Twitter Q&A.According to the latest Pew Research polling on the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Americans still heavily lean...National Election
ANKARA — Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan offered what the government said were unprecedented condolences on Wednesday, April 22, to the grandchildren of Armenians killed in World War I by Ottoman soldiers.In a statement issued on the eve of the 99th anniversary of the deeply contested deaths, Erdogan unexpectedly described the...World
UNITED NATIONS — When Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas decided to defy the United States and Israel over stalled peace negotiations, he formally indicated to the United Nations last week that Palestine will join 15 international conventions relating mostly to the protection of human rights and treaties governing conflicts and prisoners...Other Voices
Journalistically, there’s a problem with this passage from Monday’s New York Times: “Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon of Israel … castigated Iran as being dedicated to a nuclear weapon and acting to deceive, and he repeated Israel’s warning that it would not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.” Can you tell what the flaw is?If...Other Voices
There is no question that President Barrack Obama is a gifted orator. He rose to fame as the junior senator from Illinois, and was propelled to the White House, at least partly because of his skills as a speaker. In his five years as president, he has often used that skill when addressing the public.Yet his pretty words delivered in a...Art & Culture
DETROIT — It is said that music transcends cultures, colors and nationalities. But with the Armenian American community, music has transcended continents and traveled through generations to symbolize the survival of the culture from war, massacres and estrangement. Armenian American musician Ara Topouzian, who plays the...Other Voices
In a recent article, published by The Arab American News, Attorney Kassem Dakhlallah argues that Israel legitimately resorted to self-defense by preemptively striking the air forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the June 1967 war. This is as an astoundingly flawed reading of the existing historical facts. Many folks continue to...National Election
BEIRUT - A jihadist group has expelled rebel Free Syrian Army fighters from their positions in the northern city of Raqa, a watchdog reported on Wednesday, Aug.14. "Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) have taken control of the positions of the Ahfad al-Rasul brigade in Raqa," the Syrian Observatory for...World
WASHINGTON - Samantha Power easily won Senate confirmation as President Barack Obama's next ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday, August 1.The Senate voted 87-10, in favor of Power, a former White House national security staffer and former journalist, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Problem from Hell," a study of U.S....
