Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, The

'Amreeka' Screening and Discussion with Executive Producer Alicia Sams

Executive producer Alicia Sams was on hand to answer questions about this chronicle of a Palestinian single mother searching for a home.

9/11 Commemoration at L.A. Islamic Center

Rabbis, priests, Buddhist monks, Mormons, Muslims, consular officials and law enforcement leaders from the FBI and LAPD, along with L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, stood united on the podium at the Islamic Center of Los Angeles at noon on Sept. 11 to commemorate the victims and families of 9/11/2001.

A Conversation with R. Hakan Tekin, Turkey's Consul General in Los Angeles

Good will between the people of the Arab world and Turkey has been at an all time high since May 31, when Israel commandeered the humanitarian aid flotilla to Gaza and killed at point-blank range nine Turkish citizens, including a young Turkish American, aboard the Mavi Marmara, a passenger ship owned by the Turkish charity IHH (Foundation for Freedom and Humanitarian Relief). [...] just before Israel launched its Operation Cast Lead on Gaza, we were negotiating between Syria and Israel. Ac...

Activists to Take Case to Congress After Supreme Court Ban On 'Terror' Contact

Judge Ralph Fertig is president of the Humanitarian Law Project, the lead plaintiff in the first case challenging the PATRIOT Act to reach the Supreme Court (on appeal by Attorney General Eric Holder). Since the court's ruling, he has been explaining the ramifications of the decision at many public gatherings in Los Angeles.

Afghanistan's Untapped Riches Fueling Conflict?

Dr. Graciana del Castillo, senior research scholar at Columbia University, warned that U.S. interests are very different from the Afghan government's interests, and that previous success stories with mineral extraction and exploration included advisers with no interest, stake, or agenda in the project so as to guide the governments in the best way possible.

Ajyal Performs at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens

Anti-War Amendments to Supplemental Funding Bill Get Support-but Not Enough

The August issue of this magazine described how the Senate transformed H.R. 4899, a relatively modest $6 billion disaster relief and summer jobs bill, into an "emergency" supplemental appropriations bill to provide about $35 billion for the military operations and economic support in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan-plus money for Haiti, veterans, and victims of hurricanes, floods and oil disasters-bringing the total to about $59 billion. 47 House Republicans Would Say It's Okay for Israel to ...

Beating Death of Young Egyptian Leads to Protests, Trial of Policemen

[...] on June 30, prosecutors ordered the detention of two plainclothes policemen pending further investigation into Khaled's death. Authorities in Egypt continue to harass, intimidate, arbitrarily detain and engage in violence against peaceful demonstrators, journalists, human rights activists, and bloggers," it states, and calls on the Mubarak government to "make respect for basic human rights and democratic freedoms a priority.

Bethlehem University Graduate From Gaza City Visits San Francisco

Speaking Aug. 8 at St. Thomas More Church, the home of Northern California's Arab-American Catholic Community helmed by Monsignor Labib Kobti, the young graduate related her struggle to complete her education at Bethlehem University, where she began her studies in 2005. Since 2000, Israel has enforced a ban preventing Gaza students from attending universities in the West Bank.

Bethlehemite Wins Debate

Gil Ramot, director of outreach and programs for the Jewish Federation of Ventura County, said that, as an Israeli, what he calls the security fence enables Jews to feel safe from suicide bombers when they board a bus.

Beyond Arab Poll Results

Arab support for the two-state solution remains surprisingly high, according to Dr. Shibley Telhami, who discussed the results of the University of Maryland's annual public opinion poll-carried out by Zogby International in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Morocco, Lebanon and Jordan-at an Aug. 26 panel discussion at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC.

California Legislators, Interfaith Leaders Condemn Rise in Islamophobia

Elizabeth Sholes of the California Council of Churches, simply exclaimed, "God bless the world-no exceptions!" Other speakers included Dr. Tom Bhe of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association; Georgette Imura, Council of Asian Pacific Islanders Together for Advocacy and Leadership; John Reiger, Veterans for Peace; Linda Ng, Organization of Chinese Americans; Tyrone Netters, NAACP; and Marielle Tsukamoto, Japanese American Citizens League. -

Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.

Participants, who came to the event to "Reclaim the Dream," listened to government officials and civil and human rights leaders address concerns about education, jobs, health care, gun violence, gay rights, immigration, xenophobia, Islamophobia and congressional voting privileges for the District.

Conversion Bill Debate Evidence of American Jews' Increasing Discontent with Israel

If this bill passes, Newhouse warned, future historians will inevitably wonder why...Israel chose to tell 85 percent of the Jewish diaspora that their rabbis weren't rabbis and their religious practices were a sham, the conversions of their parents and spouses were invalid, their marriages weren't legal under Jewish law, and their progeny were a tribe of bastards unfit to marry other Jews. Expressing a view being heard more and more among thoughtful American Jewish observers, Siegman conclud...

East Jerusalem's Shu'fat Refugee Camp: 'For All Practical Purposes, Ramallah'

According to a report this year by the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the expansion of the Shu'fat checkpoint will mean it operates like the massive ones at Qalandiya, Zeitoun, and Gilo. In the spring of this year, when the talk was of a U.S.-Israeli "rift" centering on Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem, the city's mayor, Nir Barkat, and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were keen to drive home the same message: that Jerusalem is an "open"...

Fully Understanding Implications of Kosovo, Rule of Law, Israel Ignores and Obstructs

[...] in September the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development reported that the economy of the occupied Palestinian territory continued to perform well below potential. The International Federation of Human Rights worries that "Thousands of extrajudicial and summary executions, massacres, enforced disappearances, internally displaced persons and other grave international crimes have been documented by the United Nations themselves in Colombia under Uribe's presidency," and pointed to his a...

Ground Zero and Islamophobia in America

Helping Moderate Muslims By Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf It is customary for Muslims to begin by first invoking the name of the all-merciful and all-compassionate creator, the creator of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, the God of Abraham, the God of Ishmael and Isaac, the God of Moses and Aaron, the God of Jesus Christ and his mother, Mary, and the God of Mohammed. [...] I'm grateful to our mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and to so many others who have spoken out in favor of our ...

Hcef Conference to Examine Business Opportunities in Palestine

Forum speakers will include Hashim Hani Shawa, chairman and general manager of the Bank of Palestine; Dr. Juan José Daboub, former managing director of the World Bank; Dr. Samir Hazboun, chairman of the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Youssef Habesch, country officer with the International Finance Corporation; Faris Hadad-Zervos, adviser to the World Bank; and William Corcoran, president of American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA).

In Gaza, Apathy and Skepticism Over Peace Talks Abound

[...] explains Umm Fouad, a 46-year-old mother from Deir al Balah in the central Gaza Strip, "This is the only place for us to escape" the frequent electricity shortages and resulting sweltering interiors. Because the amount of fuel allowed into Gaza is not sufficient to operate the electrical transformers at full capacity, electricity shortages have became part of daily life here.

International Al-Quds Day in Dc

Speakers included Ambassador Edward Peck, who survived Israel's attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Medea Benjamin (co-founder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange), Rabbi Yisoroel Dovid Weiss (Neturei Karta International), Chuck Carlson (founder of We Hold These Truths), Hajj Mauri' Saalakhan (director of the Peace and Justice Foundation), Imam Abdul Alim Musa (Masjid al-Islam, DC), and Imam Abolfazl Nahidian (Manassas Mosque, Manassas, VA).

Interns Tell a 'New Story'

Sleibi produced a YouTube video about the Washington Report, met foreign policy experts, photographed panel discussions and conducted research-as well as performing typical internship duties like stuffing renewal notices and helping staff our bookstore, full of Palestinian handicrafts, olive oil and pottery. Each New Story Leadership intern was given the chance to tell their story to large audiences (which included host families, host organizations and donors to the new program) at a Congres...

Iraq: Mission Transformed?

Addressing the difficulties surrounding the most recent elections, Blinken noted that the process of forming a new government already had survived a number of "sky is falling" moments. [...] despite the fact that "the sun has yet to rise on a new Iraqi government," the country has managed to avoid a power vacuum, he said, due to the presence of a caretaker government. According to Kubba, Iraqis viewed the reduction in troops as the result of a bad U.S. economy and an overstretched military,...

Israel's Hysteria Over the Prospect of Iranian Nuclear Weapons

According to Professor Lustick, the Israeli government's "Iran is Nazi Germany" rhetoric demonizes Iran "in an effort to find some way to position Israel as a country within the world community facing an enemy, rather than as the enemy of the world community which...is its current fate." The use of military force "would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy interests in the Middle East," he said, suggesting that the main U.S. goal should be to prevent an Israeli military strike on Iran, as w...

Kathy Kelly Talks About the Killing Fields in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Activist, author and three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly spoke at Grace United Methodist Church in Des Moines on July 30 about her concern over civilian deaths in the U.S. war in Afghanistan and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, in the U.S. targeted assassination campaign in Southwest Asia. Kelly and two other speakers, Catholic Worker members Brian Terrell of Maloy, IA and Rene Espeland of Des Moines, said that reliance on robotic aircraft has escalated alo...

Letters to the Editor

Ken Capalbo, via e-mail According to the Center for Responsive Politics <www.opensecrets.org>, as of the eve of Sept. 14 primary elections, of the six Independent candidates, only one had raised any money at all (Frank Carter, $500), compared to the Democratic nominee, Providence Mayor David Cicilline, who had raised $1.3 million, and his Republican opponent, John J. Loughlin ($470,000). By way of explanation, we are long-time conscientious objectors to paying taxes for weapons and war...

Libya's Celebration Is Fun for All

Wearing national dress, Libya's Ambassador to the U.S. Ali Suleiman Aujali, his wife, Naima Bseikri, and their granddaughter Daniya Ali (left) greeted guests P.J. Crowley, assistant secretary of state for public affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and his wife in Washington, DC celebrating Libya's 41st anniversary of the Great First of September Revolution.

Marking 9/11 with Scarves

Exasperated with the spiraling anti-Muslim media frenzy as the ninth anniversary of 9/11 approached, non-Muslim women from Whittier to Los Angeles decided to wear head scarves on Sept. 11.

Muslims in America: Myths and Realities

Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, shared anecdotes of American Muslims-their individual struggles and aspirations in the U.S. He cited polls that show a correlation between Muslim and Catholic-American values, indicating similar opinions on healthcare and education as well as conservative tendencies on social issues.

Negotiating for a Framework Agreement: 'The Opposite of a Peace Treaty'

First in the negotiations for the "Declaration of Principles," then in the negotiations for interim agreements, we will sell them again, to be sure, for a third, fourth and fifth time in the negotiations for the permanent agreements. [...] I do not believe that he will sign-and even if he did, that does not mean that he would implement it. [...] I insist: there should be no agreement on a process that is designed to lead to a "declaration of principles" or a "framework agreement."

Nlg Picnic for Lynne Stewart

[...] these draconian orders frequently are ignored by vigorous defense attorneys, he continued.