BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer Democratic presidential nominee, Secretary Hillary Clinton, has developed an ethnic outreach effort to gain votes from various groups, including Arab Americans. Advising her campaign in Arab American outreach is Edward Gabriel, the former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco. Mr. Gabriel has been an active leader in the Arab American community for many … Continued
J.J. Goldberg
Forward
It’s becoming more and more obvious that there are some folks out there who simply can’t abide good news. Not just because they’re pessimists and get thrown when things are going well. No, we’re talking about the sort of people who find good news offensive. It outrages them. Their ranks are growing, and so is the level of outrage.
The mood has been in the air for a while now, but for me, at least, it really hit home in the last few days. What’s clued me in is the reader response to my August 26 column in the Forward. The one about that big new survey of Israeli and Palestinian opinion on peace negotiations and the two-state solution.
The survey (executive summary here, full survey here)found that most Palestinians, by a slim margin (51%-48%), and most Israelis by a larger margin (58%-32%), would like to see Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side. Majorities on both sides say they don’t want a single unitary state covering what’s now Israel and the territories. And that’s what I reported.
Well, you’d think I’d just called for Israel to adopt ham as its national food. Angry readers weighed in via comments on the Forward website, posts on Facebook and even personal emails, telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about. These four were typical, if somewhat mild:
“What nonsense. Palestinians are totally opposed to any solution which allows Israel to continue.”
“I read your essay about ‘but for this misperception.’ You didn’t mention the most important question of all: the ‘Right of Return.’ Palestinians, almost to a person, believe that the ‘refugees’ living in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Gaza should ‘return’ to their ancestral homes west of the Green Line. There is no deal to be made, there is no compromise here. I could point you to endless links to back this up…”
[Quoting from my column:] “ ‘Formal Israeli-Palestinian negotiations came close to agreement along the same terms in 2000-2001 and again in 2008. In both cases, however, Israelis presented what they called a ‘final offer,’ which Palestinian leaders declined to accept as final.’ I guess if we connect these dots, Israel should get more of the blame for the absence of a deal. Which still leaves this unanswered dot: Did the Palestinians ever make an actual offer, final or not?”
“The Christian prays for his daily bread; the Jew, for his daily illusion.”
Now, the truth is, I’m used to readers calling me names. Comment sections on news websites seem to attract grumps and trolls who like being able to talk trash and remain anonymous, or at least unseen. It’s part of the game, and sort of entertaining. So last week’s negativity was no surprise.
What did catch me off-guard was the nature of the objections. Usually readers weigh in to dismiss my opinions and insult my lineage. This time a fair number of readers wrote to tell me what the Palestinians actually believe. They seemed to think that the survey — conducted by two of the most respected research institutes in Jerusalem and Ramallah — was not a measure of public opinion but an expression of my warped personal outlook. That is, they looked at a piece of scientific research, saw that it doesn’t confirm their own prior beliefs and decided that it’s made up and that they know more than the experts.
If this sounds familiar, it should. It’s part of a growing tide of anti-intellectualism, anti-empiricism, science denial and conspiracy theory that’s swept the political right in the last decade, with particular virulence in America and Israel. In America it expresses itself in attacks on evolution, in the anti-vaccine movement and especially — and most dangerously — in climate denial. In Israel it’s exploded in the last few years in repeated attacks from the settler movement and religious nationalist right against the military and intelligence command. What the two countries’ denialists have in common is the belief that experts — the scientists who took us to the moon and cured smallpox, the generals who’ve protected Israel for 70 years — are a bunch of phonies.
And what of our critics — the ones who don’t like the new survey?
They raise three main points: First, that the Palestinians will never accept Israel’s existence; second, that they’ll never give up the right of return for Palestinian refugees; and third, that they never negotiate in good faith or agree to any concrete proposals.
It’s important to recall that there have been three rounds of formal negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. The first was in 1995, between Israel’s then-economics minister Yossi Beilin and then-deputy chairman of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas. They reached an agreement (text here) in mid-October. It was leaked to the press on October 28, embarrassing Abbas and his boss, Yasser Arafat, who promptly disavowed it. Whether the talks could have continued will never be known. Beilin never had a chance to show it to his boss, Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, because Rabin was assassinated on November 4, a week after the document hit the news. Shimon Peres, who succeeded Rabin as caretaker prime minister, didn’t believe he had a mandate to continue the final-status talks. He insisted on seeking his own mandate by callilng new elections and winning the job in his own right. He faced the voters the following May and lost to Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejected the idea of negotiating a final status agreement with the PLO.
Talks began again in 2000 under Ehud Barak, who defeated Netanyahu for the prime ministership in 1999. He famously met Arafat at Camp David in July 2000 for a two-week summit. As has been discussed endlessly, the summit ended badly when Arafat stormed out on July 25, having refused to accept various proposals that Barak had put forward but offering none of his own.
This version is partly based on a misunderstanding of the nature of diplomatic negotiations. Negotiators like to say that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” A related truth is that there’s no such thing as a final offer. Negotiators present ideas to the other side, which then presents own ideas. Eventually they meet in the middle. The fact that Arafat didn’t accept Barak’s “final offer” simply means they weren’t done negotiating.
Largely lost in the fog of history is the fact that talks resumed in August in Jerusalem. Aides to Barak and Arafat began meeting to discuss how, where and when to reconvene the formal negotiation, picking up where they had left off in July. The reconvening took place at the White House in mid-December. After about a week of talks, on December 23, President Clinton met with the negotiators and presented his own proposal for a peace agreement, the so-called Clinton Parameters (text here). The two sides sat down in January at the Egyptian resort of Taba to go over details and work on a final agreement.
In the meantime, however, Barak was losing his government. On September 20, Arye Deri, the head of Shas, a key coalition partner, entered prison on a bribery conviction. Deri had been a strong ally of Rabin and a key coalition partner. The man appointed by Shas spiritual mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef to succeed Deri as head of the party was Eli Yishai, a radical rightist who would eventually join forces with Meir Kahane’s disciples. As soon as Deri entered prison, Yishai began organizing to bolt the coalition, leaving Barak with a minority government. Then, on September 30, the bloody Second Intifada broke out.
By the time the negotiators reconvened formally in Washington in December, Barak was hanging on by a thread. He called for a new election February 7, hoping he could present a peace agreement and turn the vote into a referendum. But time ran out at Taba. Talks were suspended on January 27, to be reconvened after Barak was reelected 11 days later. But Barak was in trouble. He was sponsoring historic negotiations while heading a minority government. He was, moreover, negotiating with an enemy while his nation was under fire. Both sides’ negotiators would later declare that they were closer than ever to a full agreement. But on February 7 Barak lost to Ariel Sharon. Once again, negotiations were cut short when the Israeli leader overseeing the negotiations was removed from office.
One of the best, most objective histories of the Camp David-Taba process is this essay by political scientist Jeremy Pressman, director of theMiddle East program at the University of Connecticut. It explains both the sequence of events and the positions of the two sides on the issues being negotiated. It’s only 39 pages and well worth the read.
A year later after Taba, on March 27, 2002, the League of Arab States held a summit in Beirut and adopted the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative (text here). It offered Israel full peace, normal diplomatic relations and a formally declared end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, if Israel would accept creation of a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital, as well as “an agreed, just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees” — that is, a solution that’s agreed on between the two sides. The word “agreed” wasn’t in the original draft, but was inserted at the insistence of the Jordanians, who wanted to make sure the document was something Israel might at least consider.
The document was adopted unanimously by the 22 Arab states, including the so-called State of Palestine, which is a member of the league. The PLO had formally signed an international document accepting the principle of peace with Israel and a compromise on the refugees.
A year later, in 2003, a group of Israelis and Palestinians met in Geneva for an unofficial effort to draft a model peace agreement. The goal was to show that it was achievable. The Israeli delegation consisted of private citizens and was led by former minister, now opposition figure Yossi Beilin. The Palestinian delegation was led by a serving Palestinian Authority cabinet minister and close aide to Abbas, Yasser Abed Rabbo. The document they drafted (text here), known as the Geneva Initiative (sometimes called Geneva Accord, though that implies some official status it doesn’t have) is strikingly similar to the Clinton Parameters.
During the Geneva meetings, Beilin had a telling conversation over lunch with a member of the Palestinian delegation, Qadoora Faris, a prominent Fatah figure who is close to convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti. As Beilin tells the story, he asked Faris why he was bothering discussing a Palestinian state on 22% of historic Palestine when they could simply wait 20 years until Palestinians were a majority in Israel and the territories. All they’d need to do is demand one-man-one-vote. “Yes, we could wait 20 years until we’re a majority,” Faris said in reply, as Beilin told it to me. “Then we could commence another 100 years of violent struggle until we won our rights. But I have children. I want them to have a life.”
In 2008 there was yet another round of negotiations between Israel and the PLO — this time a series of face-to-face talks between Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Those talks climaxed on September 16, 2008, when Olmert showed Abbas a map of the Israeli-Palestinan border as he proposed drawing it. He also offered to absorb 5,000 Palestinian refugees as a sort of symbolic right of return.
What happened next has been the topic of furious debate ever since. The conventional Israeli version is that Abbas said no, just as Arafat had done at Camp David. In fact, Abbas met with his negotiations committee the next day to discuss how to respond to Olmert’s proposal. The two sides were still divided on several issues, including the settlement-city of Ariel, deep in the heart of the West Bank, that Israel refuses to dismantle and the Palestinians refuse to leave in place.
A larger issue was the refugees. Abbas reportedly told his committee that Olmert’s offer to absorb 5,000 was “a joke.” A leaked document that I was shown later, reliably described to me as minutes of that meeting, indicated that Abbas was going to insist on a formula that would add up to 150,000. To the average Israeli ear that sounds like a frighteningly high number of refugees to absorb, even though Israel would, under the Abbas formula, retain full right to pick and choose whom to admit. It’s also less than the 200,000-odd Palestinians who would be removed from Israel’s population rolls once East Jerusalem became the Palestinian capital. But Abbas never had the opportunity to discuss the number with Israel.
Another document, part of the so-called Palestine Papers leaked to Al Jazeera and The Guardian in 2011, quoted Abbas elaborating on his view of the refugee issue in a March 2009 meeting with the negotiations committee. “On numbers of refugees, it is illogical to ask Israel to take 5 million, or indeed 1 million,” Abbas was quoted as saying. “That would mean the end of Israel.”
The larger issue, though, was Olmert. When he and Abbas held their fateful meeting in September, he was already a caretaker prime minister. He had resigned in August, claiming that the distraction of the snowballing bribery investigation against him was preventing him from giving the job his full attention. He handed chairmanship of his Kadima party to foreign minister Tzipi Livni, who set about trying to assemble her own coalition within the existing Knesset. But she was unable to get the parties in Olmert’s coalition to stay on with her. On October 26 she gave up and publicly called for new elections, to be held the following February.
For the Palestinians, all this created a dilemma. Abbas and Olmert were, by both men’s estimates, about two months away from clearing up all the details and concluding a deal. But as a caretaker prime minister, Olmert’s authority to close a deal this controversial was unclear. Moreover, while Livni was still chasing her coalition in September, it was already evident that she wasn’t going to make it. If Netanyahu won the election, would he agree to implement an agreement concluded by a caretaker prime minister? An agreement that he fundamentally opposed in principle?
In the end, of course, Netanyahu did win the February 2009 election, returning to the office he’d left 10 years before. Abbas assumed that he would pick up the negotiations where they’d left off in September. But Netanyahu insisted on negotiating “without preconditions,” meaning without accepting the progress that had been made since 1995, but instead starting all over from scratch. And that’s been the argument ever since.
For a third time, negotiations were cut short when the Israeli prime minister was removed from office.
One of the best summaries of the events surrounding the Olmert-Abbas negotiation is this article by Canadian-Israeli journalist Bernard Avishai, published in the New York Times Magazine in 2011. Avishai interviewed both Olmert and Abbas for the article. It’s well worth a read.
And then you can resume calling me names.
Source: forward.com
By Luke Winkie
VICE
From the column ‘The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election’
According to the Council of Arab Islamic Relations (CAIR), about 70 percent of American Muslims voted for George W. Bush in 2000. Twelve years later, only 4 percent voted for Mitt Romney.
Those numbers underscore just how badly the Republican Party has estranged itself from what one of its natural constituencies. The industrious, fiscally conservative, family-oriented values of American conservatism should give the GOP a lot of in common with religious Muslims, but after the war on terror and more than a decade of having their faith demonized, not too many Muslims have decided to remain in the party of Bush. Donald Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigration may have put an exclamation point on the trend, but the Muslim exodus from the GOP started a lot earlier than that.
VICE tracked down a handful of Muslims who once identified as Republican but have leaned Democratic in recent elections. Here’s what they had to say about why they left the party—or why they feel the party left them.
Sarah Cochran
VICE: What’s your background like?
Sarah Cochran: I was born and raised in the Kuwait by expat parents from India. As a child, I always looked forward to moving to America because it was the place I could finally belong. I was 18 when I arrived—four days before Saddam invaded. I ended up staying here because I couldn’t go back, and there weren’t any universities in Kuwait anyway. My dad ended up losing everything because of the invasion, so I worked a graveyard shift and put myself through community college.
After that I had an arranged marriage and moved to Texas with my new husband, and spent about ten years sitting at home and having kids. But I had a change of heart, got divorced, and applied to Georgetown’s master’s program in conflict resolution. As I was graduating, I got a job on [Republican] Ed Gillespie’s campaign for Virginia’s Senate seat. That’s when my interest in politics started. I was in charge of his Muslim outreach. I worked really hard on that.
How did your parents vote?
My parents were both diehard Republicans; my dad even supported the party financially. I think he has gotten a little lost like I did, but he’s still hardcore. But I’ve become very critical, obviously. My criticism goes back to the Bush days. Navigating that space with my dad, I noticed that it was kinda like a frat house: a little racist, a little cliquey. I was like, Well, this doesn’t feel right. I think what’s happening right now is emblematic of what’s been happening for a while.
How has your relationship with the party changed since 9/11?
The party doesn’t really appeal to us anymore. I stuck to my guns because think there’s a congruence between Islamic values as Christian values, which the party is based on. But I draw the line when you start getting into the realm of injustice and racism. I do believe you can be magnanimous and a party for all people and still be conservative. When [Barack] Obama came along, it was the first time I voted for Democrat. At the end of the day, I want a leader who’s going to make sound, intelligent decisions under pressure.
What was it like to give a lot to the Republicans, then start to feel ostracized by that same party?
When I first joined the Gillespie campaign, I felt like the oddball. But very, very quickly I made myself a part of the team. I think they just grew to respect my allegiance to the campaign.
I do feel alienated right now because he’s running for governor next year, and he’s throwing his weight behind Trump. I respect his decision because it’s for the party, but I feel like this party is not supporting the right values and is trying to stay together like a club.
“It’s really hard to be a Muslim, a Republican, a woman, and a mother. It’s hard to be all those things at once.”
How do you feel about the Trump campaign?
It causes me a lot of anxiety because I am a mother of four, so I worry about my children’s safety and the opportunities they’ll have when they come out of school. I never thought I’d have to worry about these things in this country considering where I’ve lived in the past, where you couldn’t open your mouth. It’s really hard to be a Muslim, a Republican, a woman, and a mother. It’s hard to be all those things at once. When I go to the Muslim community, I don’t feel like I’m totally embraced because I’m a Republican, and when I hang out with Republicans, I don’t feel like I fit in there.
Have you decided who you’re voting for this November?
I haven’t. It’d be so disingenuous if I didn’t vote, so I’m either going to have to make a really hardcore decision the day of. I have been YouTubing [Libertarian Party candidate] Gary Johnson a lot. None of them look like presidents to me. None of them. I’m scared, actually, I’m not sure what I’ll do. If I vote for Hillary, it will be purely for the women power thing, because I don’t agree with her on anything.
Tariq Malik
VICE: When did you come to America, and how long have you been voting Republican?
Tariq Malik: I moved here from Pakistan when I was 17 years old. I’m 61 now, so it’s been a long, long time.
Who was the first president you voted for?
The first president I voted for was Jimmy Carter, then I voted for [Ronald] Reagan, and then for Bush.
And then you started voting Democratic after that?
Yes. I supported John Kerry and then Obama. For a while, the Republicans had a pretty good agenda. They were fiscally conservative, Reagan did some immigration reforms, they were focused on the Constitution, they believed in smaller government—and those are good things in my opinion. But on the other hand, I think the Republican Party has kinda lost their own party.
What’s it been like watching the Donald Trump campaign?
He’s just fear-mongering, which is not good for the tenor of our nation. One of the reasons I got my citizenship and stayed here is because I like the whole concept of America. I want to be part of it, I want to contribute to it. I run businesses and help people, and I think a lot of people are like me—Muslims, non-Muslims, whatever. At some point, everybody came here, and that’s what makes this country. That’s what we’re so proud of. I consider myself an American who’s loyal to this country as much as anyone else. To talk about segregation by faith—I’m not that religious myself—that’s against the Constitution. A presidential candidate creating those differences isn’t true to the country.
What does the Republican Party have to do to win your vote back?
I think they have to connect to the people. They have to go back to their original concepts of fiscal conservatism and put more emphasis on domestic agenda because we need to take care of our own people first. I like the idea of empowering state governments, so they can handle their own affairs. Those are all still part of the party, but they’ve been put on the back burner to issues that are more politically charged.
Ashraf Abou Elezz
VICE: What’s your background with Islam? Did you grow up in it?
Ashraf Abou Elezz: I’m a Muslim by birth, I was born in Egypt in 1960 and raised there. In 1991 I moved to the States.
Were your parents conservative?
Growing up in Egypt, it was a socialist one-party system. My mother had some liberal ideas, and my father was a judge and didn’t have strong views on politics at the time. They were both opposing the dictatorship, but not actively opposing it.
Who was the first president you voted for in America?
I got my citizenship in 2001, which was right after George W. Bush was elected. I was leaning more Republican at the time as I was getting my citizenship, because I found some of the moral aspects of the Republican Party were more consistent with my viewpoints. But after the war in Iraq, I changed my affiliation. My first registration as a voter was Republican but that switched very quickly.
“Right now, for Arabs and Muslims and minorities, to support the Republican Party is like cockroaches supporting Raid”
What do you think of this campaign?
Regardless of what [Donald Trump] says or what he is, as a person he’s not qualified to be a president. First, he doesn’t have the expertise in politics. While he may be a smart businessman, as a person, he’s not smart enough. The comments he’s making are showing he’s very superficial in the way he thinks. My main concern with Donald Trump is that professionally—as a professional politician—he’s not qualified. Maybe I like my barber very much, but I’m not going to him to get my gallbladder removed. My surgeon might not be the most morally acceptable person, but at least he does have the education and the training to do the job.
Do you know who you’ll be voting for this election?
Right now, I think I’ll be voting for Hillary Clinton. She’s not my number-one choice, but she’s the only alternative I can see that’s capable of being president for the next four years.
Nasser Beydoun
VICE: What’s your background?
Nasser Beydoun: I was born in Beirut, my parents came to America when I was five years old. I was raised in Detroit, went to college in San Diego, lived in Qatar for five years. I used to run the Arab-American Chamber of Commerce, and now I’m chairman of the Arab-American Civil Rights League.
How long have you vote Republican?
I’ve voted Republican in every presidential election except 2004, when I voted for Kerry.
What first drew you to the Republican Party?
I liked the Republican’s centrist worldview when it came to foreign policy, and I liked their fiscal conservatism. I like giving people the opportunity to move forward.
How did the party start to lose you?
My disillusionment started with the second Iraq war because I had a gut feeling that it was based on lies. And obviously since then we’ve learned that that was a war we never should’ve had.
You voted for John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012—those were both pretty centrist candidates. What do you think has happened to the party that’s made it so radical?
I think it started with the Tea Party, which was made up of uneducated white folks scared of losing their privilege. A lot of the pent-up racism in the United States was drawn out. Trump delivered a message that a lot of people wanted to hear but were afraid of saying it themselves. And also, Congress had a lot to do with it, with their “no-to-everything” policy they had with Obama. Anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian. Everything that was “anti” started to embody the Republican Party.
When you hear Donald Trump talk about things like banning Muslims from entering the country, do you get scared?
First of all, I don’t think he believes a lot of the things he says. He’s pandering to the 12 million ignorant Americans who support him. Trump doesn’t scare me; it’s the education system that allows him to exist that scares me.
Do you think the Republican Party realizes it could be doing a better job to reach that community?
The Muslim community is conservative, it’s family-oriented, it’s highly educated, and fiscally responsible. It’s very easy to reach out to the Muslims. But I think the Republican Party is going to be humiliated by Trump, and once they go through their autopsy, they’ll realize if they continue their racist ideology they’re just going to become the Whigs of modern times.
What does the Republican Party have to do to win your vote back?
On a local level, we have a great relationship with our Republican governor [of Michigan] Rick Snyder, but on a national level, I don’t think they’re ever going to be able to come out of the hole that Donald Trump has dug for them. Right now, for Arabs and Muslims and minorities, to support the Republican Party is like cockroaches supporting Raid.
Source: www.vice.com
BY:Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump opened a campaign office near Tel Aviv last week. The office is located in Tel Aviv’s diamond district, serving central Israel. This is the third office Trump has opened in Israel. It joins two others in Occupied Jerusalem and Modiin, a city in the Occupied West … Continued
By Katie Zezima Washington Post INDIANAPOLIS — After a terrorist attack in Paris last year carried out in part by Islamist terrorists who masqueraded as migrants, Gov. Mike Pence directed all state agencies to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees here in Indiana. Pence is now running on the Republican presidential ticket with Donald Trump, who has called for … Continued
By Dean Obeidallah
CNN
Did Donald Trump actually believe that raising baseless accusations about the health of Hillary Clinton, who is two years his junior, will somehow cause people to stop supporting her and side with him or a third party candidate?
Even Trump’s new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, seemed to disavow this new health smear, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night that the approach by campaign surrogates was a “strategy” that was not her “style.”
Unfortunately, perhaps, for Conway, plenty of Trump talking heads have been hammering this bogus point for days — people like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and even the candidate himself, who earlier this week asserted that Clinton lacks the “mental and physical stamina” to be President.
In fact, just hours after Conway’s comments on CNN, former Trump denouncer (and now Trump supporter) Karl Rove appeared on Fox News to launch a flurry of accusations that Clinton was not physically well, even using white boards scrawled with talking points as a visual aid.
And in a bizarre — and somewhat “off-message” — installment of this cooked-up drama, on Wednesday morning Trump surrogate Ben Carson called Trump himself “elderly” (along with Clinton) and declared that they should both “disclose their medical history.”
Which brings us to how this line of attack on Clinton has not hurt her — since there’s zero objective evidence she has any medical issue — but rather produced a backlash that has hurt Trump.
It has caused the media to again focus on Trump’s own health issues.
There is, of course, the media scrutiny of the truthfulness and accuracy of the “doctor’s letter” Trump produced in 2015 that asserted the candidate was in good health.
For one thing, the letter’s over-the-top, salesman-like language and conclusions sound like something Trump could have written himself. It raised only a little attention when it was released back then and was discussed briefly during the primaries but otherwise was quickly forgotten. (In contrast, by the way, Clinton released a far more detailed two-page letter from her physician.)
But now thanks to Trump, the media is taking a closer look. On Wednesday, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta noted that Trump’s physician, Harold Bornstein, who signed the letter, has “questionable” qualifications. Gupta explained that Bornstein, who claimed in that letter he was a member of the College of American Gastroenterology, actually had not been involved with that organization for over 20 years.
And Gupta and others have noted that the letter contains language not typically associated with actual medical doctors. One example is the hyperbolic boast that Trump’s lab results were “astonishingly excellent.” Also odd was Bornstein noting that Trump’s test results were “positive,” which in physician-speak is not good (good test results are negative.)
The closing line? Well, when was the last time you heard a doctor prognosticate something like this? “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
In her own interview Wednesday night with Conway, Rachel Maddow scoffed at the veracity of this letter and pressed Trump to release more records: “If he was elected, Donald Trump would be the oldest person to ever be sworn in as president … doesn’t he owe it to the American people to release an actual medical report, a more credible, more complete statement?”
(Perhaps Trump can produce his medical records along with his tax returns.)
There are two other points that Trump’s attack on this medical front raises:
First, it reminds Americans about Trump’s self-professed medical disability, which allowed him to avoid serving in the Vietnam War: The wealthy candidate, who loves to talk about the military and our veterans, didn’t serve in America’s military when he had the chance, and for questionable reasons.
The finding of Trump’s doctor that his patient, at 70, is in “extraordinary” health — better even, presumably, than when he needed a medical deferment in his 20s — may be hard for voters to swallow.
Second, this baseless attack on Clinton’s health reeks of the same conspiracy theory junk we have heard before from him. For example, who can forget Trump’s jaw-dropping claim last May that Ted Cruz’s father was somehow involved in the assassination of President Kennedy?
Even the way Trump’s cheerleader-in-chief Rudy Giuliani recently tried to support his claim that Clinton was very ill smacked of typical conspiracy fare: “Go online and put down ‘Hillary Clinton illness’ and take a look at the videos for yourself.”
This may come as a shock to Giuliani, but not everything on the Internet is true, especially when it just leads you to an echo chamber link of Giuliani saying the same thing. (For a helpful look at all this, check out Stephen Colbert’s takedown, and don’t miss the clip of Trump and Giuliani’s little performance with the former New York city mayor in drag.)
Trump’s outlandish attacks may have helped him in the GOP primary but outside his base, it’s hard to believe they will be viewed with anything but alarm about the man who wants to be President.
What else will backfire for Trump? Will his next attack on Clinton make us re-examine his bigoted comments about Latinos and Muslims? Or maybe cause us to revisit the allegations of the class action fraud case pending against him in connection with Trump University?
Given Trump’s track record, it’s entirely possible.
Source: www.kvia.com
Rania Khalek
The Electronic Intifada
Dwight Bullard, a progressive African American state senator representing Florida’s 39th district, is under attack from Israel lobby groups for visiting the Israeli-occupied West Bank in May on a delegation hosted by the Dream Defenders, a group that supports the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
Unbowed, Bullard has told The Electronic Intifada that he witnessed “segregation and injustice” in Palestine.
Leading the attack against Bullard is the pro-Israel group Miami United Against BDS.
In a press release last week, it accused Bullard of meeting with “terrorists.”
“Bullard took a trip in May to territories under Palestinian control where he met with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organization listed by the State Department since 1997 as a foreign terrorist organization,” the group stated.
The US and Israel consider virtually all Palestinian political factions and resistance organizations to be “terrorist” groups.
A desperate smear
Pro-Israel groups are pointing to photos posted to social media during the trip as proof that Bullard met with the PFLP.
In the photo at the top of this article, originally posted to the Dream Defenders’ Instagram account, the delegation is seen posing for the camera in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem with Mahmoud Jiddah, identified in the caption as their tour guide.
Jiddah is an African Palestinian who was a member of the PFLP in the 1960s. He was arrested with his brother and cousin in 1968 and spent 17 years in Israeli prison, accused of planting bombs, before being released in a prisoner exchange.
Today Jiddah is a leader in the African Palestinian community and works as a tour guide in the Old City of Jerusalem.
He can be seen in this 2011 video produced by the Alternative Information Center, talking about his own life and the history of his community in Jerusalem.
“Meeting with the Afro-Palestinian community in East Jerusalem is a must for anyone seeking to understand the continued Palestinian struggle for liberation,” Ahmad Abuznaid from Dream Defenders told The Electronic Intifada.
“The Dream Defenders did not meet with the PFLP, but this attack on the senator shows the true desperation of the efforts to hold back our movement,” he added.
Speaking with The Electronic Intifada, Bullard also rejected the accusation that he met with terrorists.
“When they showed me the picture [of Jiddah], I was like, you mean the guy who gave us a tour of Old Jerusalem? He’s a tour guide,” said Bullard, laughing.
Pro-Israel groups are also outraged over Bullard’s meeting with Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights defender and a co-founder of the BDS movement, which Miami United Against BDS calls “anti-Semitic.”
Amnesty International, among other organizations, has expressed concern at Israel’s threats to retaliate against Barghouti for his political activities. In apparent fulfillment of those threats, Israel has effectively imposed a travel ban on him.
“It is unthinkable to accept that there is someone in the Florida legislature who is willing to meet openly with terrorist groups and other hateful organizations whose values are diametrically opposed to those of Floridians and all Americans. It is our duty to condemn this form of hate and defeat it,” Joe Zevuloni, an Israeli American businessman and founder of Miami United Against BDS, said in the press release.
Zevuloni did not return The Electronic Intifada’s calls seeking comment.
The only national group to throw its weight behind the protest so far is The Israel Project, a politically connected right-wing organization that specializes in feeding anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim propaganda to journalists and policy makers.
“Any Florida state legislator who would go to Israel and choose to meet with those groups, it’s more than troubling, it’s deeply disturbing,” Ken Bricker, The Israel Project’s Southeast regional director, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“I have to wonder if the constituents in his district [are] aware of who he is and what he believes in,” added Bricker.
Bullard was also attacked as a supporter of hatred by Uri Pilichowski, a West Bank settler.
“Floridians should know about Dwight Bullard’s associations with groups that seek the destruction of Israel and the Jewish People and call for Bullard to cut those ties,” Pilichowski wrote in The Times of Israel.
Picking the “wrong” side
Bullard told The Electronic Intifada that he went on the trip to “develop an understanding” of the Palestinian side that is often missing from the mainstream narrative. He added that he is willing to go on a trip hosted by a pro-Israel group as well, though he is unhappy with the reaction he has received from such groups since his return.
“Had I gone on an AIPAC trip or toured with the [Anti-Defamation League] there would be no outrage or Palestine group protesting outside my office,” argued Bullard, referring to two of the major national pro-Israel lobby groups. “It’s only a news story if you pick the wrong side.”
American lawmakers routinely travel to Israel on delegations hosted by Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC – it’s practically a requirement for politicians at the national level.
Bullard was especially frustrated by the demands from Israel’s supporters that he shut out constituents based on their political views.
“As a public servant I’ve meet with a number of groups that I fundamentally disagree with on 85 percent of issues but I still meet with them. I’m a strong pro-choice advocate but I meet with all the pro-life folks,” he said. “And we go all through it on why I can’t support their issues. I won’t close the door on them.”
Attacking Black leaders
The smear campaign against Bullard is just the latest fault line between pro-Israel groups and African American activists and leaders affiliated with the Movement for Black Lives.
Early this month, pro-Israel groups attempted to discipline MBL for expressing solidarity with Palestinians in its platform.
The Dream Defenders, which endorsed the MBL platform and whose members helped draft it, strongly denounced the reaction from Zionist groups.
After meeting with Palestinians who support BDS and seeing the repressive conditions they live under, Bullard has come to understand the boycott as part of their struggle for their civil rights.
“I think what people need to do is recognize why an African American would feel a sense of alignment with oppressed people,” said Bullard.
“It’s not just hearing about injustices happening to the Palestinian people. When you see it first hand, that’s a game changer,” he added.
“The fact that it was so in your face, you realize your own privilege even in circumstances related to race. We talk about driving while Black [in the US]. The idea that [in Palestine] you have to be carrying a particular ID in order to move freely within spaces in a place that you call home, that stuck with me,” he said.
Bullard was so disturbed by what he witnessed, he felt compelled to wear a kuffiyeh – a Palestinian checkered headscarf – at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last month, “to show solidarity with Palestine,” he said.
A Jewish Telegraph Agency reporter noticed Bullard’s scarf and snapped a photo of him that was published with a story on Bullard’s trip to Palestine.
“There’s segregation and injustice going on over there,” said Bullard, “and in the words of Dr. King, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Bullied into voting against BDS
Florida is one of several states to have passed anti-BDS laws that bar state investment in, or business with, companies that boycott Israel.
The Florida law is especially draconian in that it makes no distinction between “Israel” and Israeli-occupied territories, effectively punishing even those who boycott goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which even the US recognizes are illegal under international law.
Bullard initially opposed the anti-BDS legislation, voting against it twice in subcommittee meetings because he viewed it as a violation of free speech that he said “screams un-American.”
However, Bullard told The Electronic Intifada he was ultimately “bullied” into voting for the law.
“It was the first time I felt pressured to vote in a particular way,” he recounted, adding, “there are probably three or four votes that I’ve taken in my tenure in the legislature that I’m very uncomfortable with having taken.” The anti-BDS vote “is easily in the top three,” he said.
Bullard served in Florida’s lower house from 2008, until he was elected to the senate in 2012.
Israel as a wedge issue
The Miami Herald endorsed Bullard early this week, indicating that the accusations have gained little traction.
Still, Bullard’s district in South Florida is home to a well-organized Jewish voter base that is older and strongly pro-Israel.
In order to capitalize on this, Miami United Against BDS is organizing a protest outside Bullard’s office on 28 August, two days before the Democratic primary election for his senate seat in a redrawn district.
Bullard’s opponent is Andrew Korge, the son of a major donor to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Korge has tried to turn Bullard’s visit to Palestine into a wedge issue on at least one occasion, during a homeowner’s association meeting last month, according to Bullard.
Rejecting the insinuation that he’s anti-Semitic, Bullard said, “I’ve had a pretty solid relationship with Jewish groups. I’ve advocated for and represented Jewish causes, Holocaust memorial and education funding.”
But when it comes to showing support for Palestine, Bullard observed, “all of that easily gets forgotten.”
Source: electronicintifada.net
MSLGROUP
PRNewswire
It is unlikely that Donald Trump will get even twenty percent of the Arab American vote this election. Whether or not people like Hillary Clinton, the Arab American community will maintain its historically support for democrats over republicans, James Zogby said in an interview with Focus Washington host Chuck Conconi. With candidates on both sides of the aisle making mistakes, this election seems to be impacting how American’s view the Arab American community.
Jim Zogby, President and Co-Founder the of the Arab American Institute and member or the Democratic National Convention Platform Drafting Committee, said he is has seen an increase in the practice of profiling since 2002, despite positive statements from American politicians like President Bush and President Obama. “As the negatives have gone up, the positives have gone up,” he said in regard to support from other ethnic communities. “Groups that wouldn’t give [the Arab American community] the time of day twenty years ago now embrace us.”
Zogby expressed frustration with the distinction between Christian and Muslim Arab Americans in campaign organizing, and the tendency in campaigns to prioritize religious identity over ethnic identity. “We have to be able to define ourselves,” he said about Arab Americans, rather than allowing others to conflate religious and ethnic identities for political purposes. “I do not think religion and politics belong together”
Zogby, who travels extensively, said that throughout the Middle East and even in Europe, he gets a similar response with regard to the reputation of America abroad, “What the hell’s wrong with you people?” America is not putting its best foot forward in this election cycle, he called this “a ‘hold your nose’ election,” and he said, “frankly, you know, we can do better as a country, and we’re not.”
While he said Donald Trump has caused irreparable damage to America, it did not start just with this election cycle, but, much to Zogby’s concern, America has been in a “steady downward spiral.” He suggested that the damage began under Former President Bush, who he said, tarnished the view of America, and continued with President Obama, who built up expectations he could not fulfill and now, with Donald Trump, who Zogby agreed, “is, as Hillary Clinton says, a great recruiter for Isis.” Looking at the election overall, Zogby said, “It troubles me deeply that we [are] presenting to the world a flawed system.”
“The fact [is] that you cannot view America either as fundamentally good or fundamentally evil. We are both,” he said, “We’re the Statue of Liberty and we’re Donald Trump… We’re not just Donald Trump, but we have produced Martin Luther King, we’ve produced people who have taken us to great heights and shown us great promise and done great things.”
Zogby, who is a first generation American, points out that his father was an illegal immigrant, and hanging on the wall in his office are his father’s naturalization papers and a parchment from President Obama, appointing him to a post in the government. To Zogby, that the son of an illegal immigrant can serve the President of the U.S. is the unique story of America. “Never forget we’re capable of doing bad things, but we’re also capable of doing great things,” he concluded.
Source: www.prnewswire.com
BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer Today is Ms. Zaineb Hussein’s first day of work as the Deputy Political Director for Hillary in Michigan. Hussein will be working under Clinton’s Michigan Political Director Tommy Stallworth, a former Michigan Representative. This appointment makes Hussein the highest ranking Arab American in the Hillary for Michigan campaign, which is significant representation for … Continued
Khaled Almaeena
Saudi Gazette
The moment of truth for Americans and the world will be decided on November 8. In the coming weeks, the frenzy of the election campaign between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will reach an all-time high. Of all the US presidential campaigns, this one stands out as the most vicious.
Accusations are hurled, innuendos made and even the personal honesty of the candidates is questioned. The television screen has become a gladiator’s arena!
Both candidates have encouraged their supporters to go for each other’s throat.
Watching the campaign in its entirely gives you a feeling of sitting in the front row of a circus. Trump is quite a performer. He insults without inhibition. He plays the joker knowing that there are those who are fighting for him who will be disappointed if he does not.
“Is he sadistic?” asked a Gulf national. “Why does he shoot himself in the foot?” wondered another.
Trump spent five days making fun of Khizr Khan the Muslim American whose son was killed in Iraq. He was cruel and insensitive. This cost him a lot of support among veterans.
On the other hand, Hillary Clinton was on a tour making economic appeals to a wide group of potential voters many of whom were undecided about her because of past scandals that included Benghazi, emails and undisclosed sources of funding that many thought came from Arab countries.
Trump has not missed any opportunity to ridicule Clinton who is also appealing to different ethnic groups in the US who are nervous because of Trump’s rhetoric of hate which many feel has led violence especially against Muslims. On August 13, an imam of a New York mosque and his assistant were gunned down in broad daylight and left for dead as they walked near their mosque.
In another case, a churchgoing Lebanese Christian Arab was shot dead at point blank range by a person shouting “dirty Arab”. Many Sikhs have been assaulted; they are targeted because of the turban they wear. An Emirati man was badly roughed up at an Ohio hotel after a receptionist, described as dumb by her colleagues, claimed that she “overheard” him state his pledge of allegiance to Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS).
There have also been several cases of Muslim passengers delayed by hyper-sensitive flight attendants. And in one case, a young Italian mathematics professor was dragged off a plane because a fellow passenger was made afraid by his mysterious scribbling on a notepad.
Trump has increased the level of paranoia and xenophobia in American society. What will come next no one knows.
“So what does it mean for us in the Gulf?” one student asked. “Well, we don’t really matter,” another answered. Apart from initially paying homage to Israel and bowing down before the Israeli lobby, Clinton now has no time but to blunt Trump’s attacks. Whoever wins will not have much time to think about our interests, nor will they care about past relations with the countries of the Arab world.
American politicians are pragmatic when it comes to their interests, which are mainly oil, political and economic hegemony and strengthening Israel’s hold on the Middle East. They cannot look further than that.
For us to think otherwise would be an exercise in foolishness. Whoever comes to the White House will only serve their own agenda. So my dear Arabs, please don’t assume anything else.
We have never been on the US radar screen nor will we ever be.
Source: saudigazette.com.sa
By Khaled A. Beydoun
The Washington Post
Khaled A. Beydoun is an associate professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law and an affiliate faculty member at University of California at Berkeley.
Donald Trump’s calls for a ban on Muslims entering the United States and, more recently, for “extreme vetting” of anyone seeking to immigrate to the United States have been condemned as breaks from the nation’s traditions of religious tolerance and welcoming immigrants. Actually, Trump’s proposals reflect a long-standing, if ugly, strain of U.S. immigration policy, one that restricted the entry of Arab and South Asian Muslim immigrants and barred them from becoming citizens until the middle of the 20th century.
The Naturalization Act of 1790, which limited citizenship to “any alien, being a free white person,” drastically restricted the ability of Muslims to become citizens. The requirement meant that immigrants seeking lawful residence and citizenship were compelled to convince authorities that they fit within the statutory definition of whiteness. Arabs, along with Italians, Jews and others, were forced to litigate their identities in line with prevailing conceptions of whiteness — which fluctuated according to geographic origin, physical appearance and religion. Courts unwaveringly framed Islam as hostile to American ideals and society, casting Muslim immigrants as outside the bounds of whiteness and a threat to the identity and national security of the United States.
Long before 9/11 and the war on terrorism, U.S. courts painted Islam as more than merely a foreign religion, but rather as a rival ideology and “enemy race.” In a notable 1891 case, the Supreme Court highlighted “the intense hostility of the people of Moslem faith to all other sects, and particularly to Christians.”
Scores of Muslim immigrants were turned away at U.S. ports in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Christian immigrants suspected of secretly being Muslims were also excluded. In 1913, a South Carolina court rejected the citizenship petition of a Lebanese Christian, saying that his skin complexion, “about [the color] of walnut, or somewhat darker than is the usual mulatto of one-half mixed blood between the white and the negro races,” provided evidence of miscegenation with Muslims. Ahmed Hassan — a native of Yemen and the first Arab Muslim to apply for citizenship — was denied naturalization in 1942, because, a court said: “It cannot be expected that as a class they [meaning Arabs, a term used synonymously with Muslims at the time] would readily intermarry with our population and be assimilated into our civilization.”
The United States’ functional ban on Muslim immigration persisted until 1944, two years before Trump’s birth. It was shifting U.S. geopolitical interests, not evolving perceptions of racial or religious inclusion, that drove dissolution of the restrictions. The post-World War II era saw the United States in direct competition with the Soviet Union over regions of influence, including the Arab world. The naturalization of Arab Muslim immigrants promoted the broader project of enhancing the United States’ profile in strategically important nations, most notably oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the first court ruling to grant naturalization to an Arab-born Muslim was for a Saudi man, in Ex Parte Mohriez, in 1944 — and, even then, based only on the finding that Arabs should be considered part of “the white race.”
Despite the Mohriez decision, the Naturalization Act remained the law of the land until 1952, and restrictive immigration quotas stayed on the books. These quotas sought to “preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity” and prevent the entry of Muslim immigrants. Before 1965, the Muslim American population was overwhelmingly composed of native-born African Americans. The dismantling of the Naturalization Act and immigration quotas opened the door to immigrant Muslims from various corners of the Arab world, South Asia and Africa, boosting the U.S. Muslim population from 200,000 in 1951 to more than 1 million in 1971.
Today in the United States, Islam is practiced by 8 million people, a growth rate higher than any other faith group. But the threat of the Islamic State and intensifying Islamophobia has Trump, more openly than any other politician, actively revisiting America’s dark chapter of xenophobia and anti-Muslim animus.
In that sense, “Make America Great Again” is far more than a campaign slogan. It is a racial plea that evokes a time in the United States when whiteness was the legal hallmark of American citizenship, and Muslim identity the embodiment of everything un-American.
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
Jill Stein of the Green Party has received considerable attention in an all but ordinary election cycle. Stein outlined aspects of her foreign policy platform and counterterrorism approaches in a recent CNN Town Hall. ISIL and Counterterrorism During audience questioning, Stein broke from mainstream opinion on ISIL and the Middle East, suggesting that there is … Continued
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