ADC! Where is the Belly Dancer?

On the stage, speakers discussed Palestine and Iraq. And then suddenly, in the middle of a touching speech, a strong voice, in Arabic, shouted: “Enough already! Where is the belly dancer?”

The NGOization of Palestine

In 2004, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence received an e-mail from the Ford Foundation. In the e-mail, the foundation rescinded a $100,000 grant it had awarded the group, explaining “that it had reversed its decision because of [the] organization’s statement of support for the Palestinian liberation struggle.”

Palestine to be an independent state of Israel

This upcoming weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to give a speech announcing a
change in his (personal) position on Palestinian statehood.

rerad.

UC Davis students move to cancel study abroad in Israel

UC Davis students have formed the EAP Equality Coalition (EEC), calling upon university administrators to discontinue a recently revived study abroad program in Israel. EAP is the UC sanctioned Education Abroad Program. Addressed to Eric Shroeder, the Summer Abroad faculty director at UC Davis, including Vice Provosts Jean-Xavier Guinard and William Lacy, the EEC petition [...]

BREAKING NEWS: Lebanon elects a Christian president

In what pundits called a victory for the United States, which had threatened to cancel aid to Lebanon if it voted “naively,” exit polls show conclusively that Lebanese voters elected a Christian politician to the Presidency in the June 7th national elections. While prominent Lebanese analysts had predicted this outcome months in advance, given that [...]

President Obama, I liked you better as a community organizer

“You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready [...]

Hearts, minds… but no political will?

As much as President Obama’s speech in Cairo has been branded as one “to the Muslim world”–whatever that might mean–it is certainly a speech whose audience spanned across a much larger swath of the world. In terms of signaling substantive policy changes for the peoples of that world, there is not much to count on. [...]

Palestinian President Hussein Ibish reaches peace agreement with Israel

As the elected leader of the Palestinian people, Hussein Ibish, a Senior Fellow of Americans Tasked with F*cking Palestine (ATFP, a leader of which was recently sentenced for allegedly embezzling donors of $100,000), recently reached a peace agreement with Israeli Consul General Yaakov Dayan in Los Angeles. Betraying decades of conventional wisdom and in a [...]

Did the ADC jump the gun on the NYC synagogue plot?

In an era when Arabs and Muslims are always the first suspects whenever terrorism is concerned (read the “Correction” here), I sympathize with the gut reaction of many Arabs and Arab organizations in this country to immediately and eternally condemn and distance those who might perpetrate such acts. I wonder, however, if there isn’t a [...]

Time traveling to the Middle East

In the Middle East, there is nothing to do but ride camels in historical parks like “Genesis Land” or buy rugs in ancient bazaars. It seems that there’s nothing Americans and Europeans like more than traveling back in time to see the rest of the world. Whether it’s a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or following the [...]