Politics

Jim Brunner
Seattle Times

PHILADELPHIA — An Iraqi American delegate from Washington had a pro-Palestinian sign yanked out of his hand this week by a member of the Democratic National Committee — an incident caught on national television.

The incident, which left some delegates steaming mad, happened Tuesday night when it came Washington’s turn to formally cast its votes for the Democratic presidential nomination in the roll call of the states.

Majid Al-Bahadli, a Bernie Sanders delegate, moved in close and held up a sign reading “I support Palestinian human rights” behind state Democratic Party Chair Jaxon Ravens, as Ravens recited the state’s vote.

On Thursday morning, loud boos rang out from some Sanders supporters during Washington’s delegation breakfast as the roll-call moment was replayed on a video.

Al-Bahadli remained angry. “This is unacceptable,” he said, adding he didn’t know who had taken the sign until someone sent him photos. When he got the sign back later, he said it was ripped.

Wilbur said she did not see what was on the sign when she grabbed it. “It had nothing to do with what was on the sign at all,” she said. “It had nothing to do with the content.”

She said she did not rip the sign and returned it later intact to an arena staffer so it could be returned.

Wilbur said she believed the sign was blocking the views of people behind it. “The sign was there. We were doing roll call. I thought it was blocking someone’s face.”

Tearing up, she said she was sorry and that she had tried to apologize to Al-Bahadli.

Source: www.seattletimes.com

Aaron Sankin 

DailyDot.com

Standing onstage in Cleveland last week, a few blocks from where the Republican Party gathered to formally nominate Donald Trump as its presidential nominee, political science professor and TV host Melissa Harris-Perry had a message for Americans freaking out over the outcome of the November election.

That message, at its core, carries important lessons for partisans of all stripes—regardless of whether they support Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, or someone else entirely.

The former MSNBC host, who has since become a special correspondent for BET after her acrimonious split with the left-leaning cable news network, spoke for about five minutes to close out a stand-up comedy event featuring a trio of Muslim comedians organized by the Arab American Institute.

Typically, the Arab American Institute, which was founded in the mid-1980s to encourage civil participation among Arab Americans, hosts policy forums. However, as the group’s co-founder, Dr. James Zogby, said in his introductory remarks, the 2016 Republican Convention called for an “unconventional event for an unconventional election cycle.”

After stand-up sets from comedians Dean Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid, Harris-Perry (who frequently had Obeidallah as a guest on her MSNBC show) delivered her remarks to a room that, according to the clapping when the comedians asked about it, largely wasn’t supporting Trump.

“I take very seriously [that], to be engaged in the work of democracy is to recognize that you’re going to lose about half the time,” said Harris-Perry, who brought along a group of her students from Wake Forest University. “I like to say that democracy is for losers. Democracy isn’t really for winners. If you expect to win then you should probably prefer authoritarianism, right? The fact is that, if you expect to win and to win all the time, then authoritarianism is just a more efficient form of governance.”

“Democracy means that, even when you lose, winners don’t take all,” she continued. “Democracy means that, even when you lose, you don’t have to shut up. Democracy means that even when your side loses today, you get to keep engaging, you get to keep a seat the table, you get to keep being part of the conversation, you get to keep trying to persuade. To lose an election is not to have a coup staged in the streets.”

Harris-Perry, who never mentioned any current or erstwhile 2016 presidential candidate by name in her remarks, charged that the idea of multiple sides battling it out in the realm of ideas and cobbling together compromises is “not just some kind of post-modern, millennial, feel-good moment.”

“We have to laugh because we’re human. We have to cry together because it matters. It’s part of our human vulnerability and I am encouraged that we can show up together in Cleveland and show up together in Philadelphia. We can recognize that even when really scary things are happening, we can keep holding on to each other,” she concluded. “… I thank you for letting my students be here, for laughing even when you sometimes want to cry, and for saying that, even if we lose, it doesn’t mean we have to shut up. We can keep talking and, even if the other side loses, that doesn’t mean they have to shut up either. That’s part of the big project of democracy together.”

Source: www.dailydot.com

James Reinl
Middle East Eye

PHILADELPHIA, United States – Few Arab or Muslim Americans expected Donald Trump’s coronation at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Cleveland to be a joyous affair. After three days in Pennsylvania’s sweltering heat, the Democratic shindig has proven similarly underwhelming.

US television networks have highlighted the lacklustre support grassroots activists from both main parties have afforded their nominees: Trump, a tough-talking New York tycoon, and his Democratic rival, the career politician Hillary Clinton.

But the subtext – that Trump’s bashing of Muslims, Mexicans and other groups is countered by a Democratic “big tent” to shield all minorities, is increasingly being challenged by those attending the Democratic National Convention (DNC) here in Philadelphia. 

While the RNC crowd in Cleveland was whiter, and without a niqab in sight, the politics are not so different at the DNC, Raed Jarrar, a policy analyst at the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, told Middle East Eye.

“The optics are different between the DNC and the RNC, which was less diverse, but the actual policies between the two parties are, unfortunately, almost identical,” said Jarrar, a Washington-based blogger.

Jarrar and others highlight the Democratic platform, or manifesto, which continues to prioritise the rights of Israelis over Palestinians, despite the efforts of Clinton’s former Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, to treat both sides in the decades-old conflict equally.

But what really bugged Muslims this week was Bill Clinton, the Democratic nominee’s husband and former president, who started riffing at the tail-end of an impassioned speech about why Americans should send his wife back to the White House.

“If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together, we want you,” Clinton said, naming the various groups with a stake in a Democrat-led America.

Though seemingly harmless, it jarred with many Muslims because it seemingly accepted an assumption that they must work harder to show patriotism than others – a touchy subject in the wake of post-9/11 racial profiling and police raids on mosques. 

“The assumptions behind this are that Muslim Americans should be singled out and required to prove their loyalty and Americanism more than others,” said Jarrar. “The assumption that they should be kicked out of the country is really shocking to hear in 2016.”

Similarly, the failure of the Democrats to bring more of Sanders’ input into Israel-Palestine policy remained a bone of contention among the Muslims and Arabs who are ideologically torn over supporting America’s main liberal party.

The Democratic platform, agreed in Philadelphia this week, calls for “a strong and secure Israel” of which Jerusalem should “remain the capital”. Democrats pledge to “oppose any effort to delegitimise Israel, including at the UN or through” a boycott movement, known as BDS.

“Language against BDS shows how biased the platform is,” said Jarrar. “It’s another example of how US citizens don’t have many options when it comes to US foreign policy and militarism. Democrats and Republican candidates are almost identical.” 

James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), sat on the platform committee and said there was much “good language” on Middle East issues in the document, but ultimately warned that it would fail to advance the stymied Middle East peace process.

Pursuing the Democratic agenda towards Israel would continue the “region’s depressing and dangerous downwards spiral of oppression and violence”. The more pro-Israel Republican policy, alternatively, is worse and would yield “disaster,” he added.

Against this backdrop, Arab and Muslim Americans would doubtless have a tougher time under a President Trump.

The celebrity realtor has famously rounded on Muslims, unveiling plans to stop Islam’s adherents from entering the US. He has also blasted Syrian refugees and an unverified number of New Jersey residents who celebrated the 9/11 attacks.

Although some have joined the “Muslims for Trump” group, Zogby doubts they represent a significant chunk of the estimated 3.5-4.5 million Muslim Americans.

On 8 November, US Muslims will mostly back Clinton over Trump, despite the misgivings expressed by Muslim activists in Philadelphia this week, Zogby said. The former first lady may need it – opinion polls show she trails Trump by 1.1 percentage points.

“I dare say that the Democratic ticket will do very well, the Republican ticket will not do very well, despite their cherry-picking efforts,” Zogby said of Muslim voters on the side-lines of the convention this week.

According to Maya Berry, executive director of AAI, a lobby group, an estimated 3.7 million Arab Americans – a mixture of Muslims, Christians, atheists and others – may play a key role in the battleground states that could yield the keys to the Oval Office.

According to Berry, Arab Americans represent some five percent of voters in Michigan, a key swing state, as well as two percent of voters in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and other battlegrounds.

“So in an election that’s close, we’re definitely within the margin of victory on that,” Berry told journalists in Philadelphia.

Arab Americans are not yet counted in the US census, so the population figure of 3.7 million may be an inflated estimate that equates to about 1.1 percent of the population. Latinos (17.4 percent) and blacks (13.2 percent) are bigger chunks of the melting-pot nation.

With traditions of social and economic conservatism, they were evenly split between the main parties until the turn of the century, and backed George W Bush by 44.5 per cent in the 2000 presidential election, according to pollster John Zogby.

Since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, Arab Americans edged left and currently favour the Democrats (about 40 per cent) over the Republicans (20 per cent), while 30 per cent remain independent, according to AAI. 

Arab Americans are typically small business owners and professionals who are swayed by the same bread-and-butter issues as other Americans – jobs, taxes, schools and hospitals. US foreign policy is important, but not paramount, according to AAI studies.

They are being driven even further into the Democratic fold this election cycle, analysts say. There are exceptions, though. Mariam Noujaim, a Maronite Christian from Lebanon who has lived in California since 1979, will vote for Trump in November.

“He’s going to attack the terrorists. You can’t be lenient with these people,” Noujaim said of Trump’s policy against the Islamic State (IS group). Bombing IS oil fields will “cut off their money source, their oxygen” and help address the violence that plagues the region, she told MEE.

Source: www.middleeasteye.net

By Sarah Lazare

AlterNet 

Today, there are at least 3.3 million Muslims living in the United States, with Muslims now comprising roughly one percent of the population and constituting the fastest-growing religious group in the country.

But during former President Bill Clinton’s much-anticipated speech at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, Muslim Americans were depicted as foreigners, welcome only to the extent that they assist the so-called war on terror.

“If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together,” said Bill Clinton, to uproarious applause. “We want you.”

Muslim civil rights campaigners were quick to raise concerns about the false assumptions underlying the former president’s statement, with Imraan Siddiqi of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) taking to social media Tuesday night to point out the obvious: “Muslims aren’t a foreign entity.”

Please fill out this short app:
Love America?
Love Freedom?
Love Terror?
*Great, you’re pre-qualified to stay!

— Imraan Siddiqi (@imraansiddiqi) July 27, 2016

In an election cycle defined by fever-pitch anti-Muslim incitement, it is an unfortunate necessity for Muslims to emphasize this fact. As the GOP nominee Donald Trump repeatedly vows to impose a ban on Muslims and kill the family members of ISIS, his key supporters continue to ratchet up their rhetoric, fueling a climate of incitement that appears to be contributing to an uptick in hate crimes.

In the immediate aftermath of the July 14 Nice, France attacks, Trump backer and former House speaker Newt Gingrich proclaimed during an appearance on Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in sharia they should be deported.”

The implication that the “Americanness” of Muslim U.S. citizens is somehow suspect on the basis of religious or ethnic background also surfaced in Bill Clinton’s remarks. And herein lies a troubling reality: even as the Clinton campaign portrays itself as taking a stand for tolerance against Trump-style bigotry, it also employs Islamophobic rhetoric that is dangerous in its own right.

In December 2015, in the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino massacre, Hillary Clinton delivered a foreign policy address at the Brookings Institution in which she stated:

We’re going to have to have more support from our friends in the technology world to deny online space. Just as we have to destroy [ISIS’s] would-be caliphate, we have to deny them online space. And this is complicated. You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, etc. But if we truly are in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we’ve got to shut off their means of communicating.

More recently, after the mass killing at the Orlando LGBTQ Pulse club, Clinton was quick to point blame at “radical Islamism,” even though the heads of the CIA and FBI both say there is no evidence that the shooter had material connections to Islamist militant groups outside of the United States.

As Khaled Beydoun, assistant professor Barry University Dwayne O Andreas School of Law, recently argued: “Clinton’s rhetoric towards Muslims rings with tolerance. But it is frequently flanked with qualifiers such as ‘terror-hating,’ ‘peace-loving’ or the seemingly benign, yet divisive ‘moderate Muslim’ tag.”

But the Clinton campaign’s problem with Islamophobia also extends to her vast network of surrogates and backers.

Eleven advocacy organizations signed an open letter in December of 2015 expressing concern about her campaign surrogate, the retired general Wesley Clark, who has previously called for the interning of some Muslim-Americans. “If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine,” Clark told MSNBC in July 2015. “It’s their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”

Another major Clinton backer, the pro-Israel donor Haim Saban, declared in the aftermath of the November 2015 Paris attacks that the U.S. should escalate its surveillance of Muslim-American communities. “I’m not suggesting we put Muslims through some kind of a torture room to get them to admit that they are or they’re not terrorists,” he told TheWrap. “But I am saying we should have more scrutiny.”

And Electronic Intifada journalist Rania Khalek recently noted that Clinton’s troubling relationship with Muslim and Arab Americans dates back to the dawn of her career in electoral politics. During her 2000 Senate race, Clinton was criticized for accepting contributions from Muslim organizations targeted by an Islamophobic smear campaign. “Without hesitation,” writes Khalek, “Clinton condemned her Muslim supporters, returned their donations and refused to meet with Arab and Muslim Americans for the remainder of her campaign.”

The Clinton campaign is presenting itself as the reasonable alternative to Donald Trump’s bigotry. But that doesn’t place it above scrutiny, especially when it casually echoes the Islamophobic themes emanating from the far-right. 

But according to Darakshan Raja, founder of the Muslim American Women’s Policy Forum, “Bill Clinton didn’t use Trump’s rhetoric. Trump expanded on the rhetoric and policies Bill Clinton implemented. Trump is successful because Bill Clinton as a president passed some of the most draconian laws from the 1994 Crime Bill, the 1996 anti-terrorism laws, and the 1996 illegal immigration bills.”

Source: www.alternet.org

Jeremey Seth Davis

SC Magazine

An Arab-American policy organization in the U.S. has joined with civil liberties and privacy groups to address domestic surveillance policies that target Arab American and American Muslim communities.

Arab American Institute executive director Maya Berry participated on a panel discussion highlighting digital aspects of civil rights and civil liberties priorities on Wednesday during day three of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The discussion involved American Civil Liberties Union president Susan Herman, Center for Constitutional Rights executive director Vincent Warren, and New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice Fellow Michael German.

The session tackled government surveillance programs and policies, such as the Department of Justice’s 2014 guidance that expanded the parameters of an ethnic and religious profiling ban to extend to state and local law enforcement law authorities.

Last month, the group participated in a coalition opposing warrantless mass surveillance and called on legislators to not renew Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

Source: www.scmagazine.com

By Jack Khoury Haaretz Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has asked Arab states to help the Palestinians prepare a lawsuit against Britain over the 1917 Balfour Declaration, on the grounds that it ultimately led to the Palestinian Nakba. Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, is the Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of … Continued

by Jadaliyya Reports

The Middle East Studies Association, American Anthropological Association, Executive Committee of the American Comparative Literature Association, American Studies Association, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, German Studies Association, International Center for Medieval Art, Latin American Studies Association, Linguistic Society of America, The Medieval Academy of America, National Communication Association, and Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association collectively note with profound concern the apparent moves to dismantle much of the structure of Turkish higher education through purges, restrictions, and assertions of central control, a process begun earlier this year and accelerating now with alarming speed. 

As scholarly associations, we are committed to the principles of academic freedom and freedom of expression. The recent moves in Turkey herald a massive and virtually unprecedented assault on those principles. One of the Middle East region’s leading systems of higher education is under severe threat as a result, as are the careers and livelihoods of many of its faculty members and academic administrators.

Our concern about the situation in Turkish universities has been mounting over the past year, as Turkish authorities have moved to retaliate against academics for expressing their political views—some merely signing an “Academics for Peace” petition criticizing human rights violations. 

Yet the threat to academic freedom and higher education has recently worsened in a dramatic fashion. In the aftermath of the failed coup attempt of July 15-16, 2016, the Turkish government has moved to purge government officials in the Ministry of Education and has called for the resignation of all university deans across the country’s public and private universities. As of this writing, it appears that more than 15,000 employees at the education ministry have been fired and nearly 1600 deans—1176 from public universities and 401 from private universities—have been asked to resign. In addition, 21,000 private school teachers have had their teaching licenses cancelled. Further, reports suggest that travel restrictions have been imposed on academics at public universities and that Turkish academics abroad were required to return to Turkey. The scale of the travel restrictions, suspension and imposed resignations in the education sector seemingly go much farther than the targeting of individuals who might have had any connection to the attempted coup.

The crackdown on the education sector creates the appearance of a purge of those deemed inadequately loyal to the current government. Moreover, the removal of all of the deans across the country represents a direct assault on the institutional autonomy of Turkey’s universities. The replacement of every university’s administration simultaneously by the executive-controlled Higher Education Council would give the government direct administrative control of all Turkish universities. Such concentration and centralization of power over all universities is clearly inimical to academic freedom. Moreover, the government’s existing record of requiring university administrators’ to undertake sweeping disciplinary actions against perceived opponents—as was the case against the Academics for Peace petition signatories—lends credence to fears that the change in university administrations will be the first step in an even broader purge against academics in Turkey.

Earlier this year, it was already clear that the Turkish government, in a matter of months, had amassed a staggering record of violations of academic freedom and freedom of expression. The aftermath of the attempted coup may have accelerated those attacks on academic freedom in even more alarming ways.

As scholarly organizations, we collectively call for respect for academic freedom—including freedom of expression, opinion, association and travel—and the autonomy of universities in Turkey, offer our support to our Turkish colleagues, second the Middle East Studies Association’s “call for action” of January 15, request that Turkey’s diplomatic interlocutors (both states and international organizations) advocate vigorously for the rights of Turkish scholars and the autonomy of Turkish universities, suggest other scholarly organizations speak forcefully about the threat to the Turkish academy, and alert academic institutions throughout the world that Turkish colleagues are likely to need moral and substantive support in the days ahead.

Source: www.jadaliyya.com