In an unprecedented discussion during the Democratic National Convention platform-writing committee hearing, Dr. Cornel West responded to Rep. Robert Wexler’s justification for Israel’s occupation. Dr. West respectfully pushed back from this justification, saying the occupation is a very real part of Palestinian suffering, and that peace cannot exist without an end to the occupation. Dr. … Continued
By: Eugene Smith/Contributing Writer Muhammad Ali’s deeds reverberated in America’s conscious as emblematic of freedom, redemption, and an unwavering commitment to justice. He was prone to controversy, yet he never wavered from his principles. In his old age he rose to reverence, as a voice for peace and acceptance, garnering the utmost respect and admiration … Continued
By George S. Hishmeh, Special to Gulf News
The failure of the French-sponsored conference that was attended by senior representatives from 26 countries, including senior French and American officials, has failed to outline the next diplomatic step for a two-state solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, now approaching 50 years. This disappointing outcome underlined that this solution may not be sustainable.
The objective of France in hosting this one-day event last week in Paris was not very clear, although French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault had acknowledged that the two-state solution was in “serious danger [and] we are reaching a point of no-return where this solution will not be possible”.
In turn, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who had failed in his long-lasting attempt at negotiating a settlement, also emphasised that all the participants at the Paris meeting agreed that direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians would be the only way to achieve a solution. This response mirrors a position favoured by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, along with his Palestinian counterpart, President Mahmoud Abbas, was not invited to the conference.
The expectations disappointingly focused on a new session towards the end of the year — not a very good time as the United States will then have a new government that will be preoccupied in establishing its administration and working out its relationship with the opposition party. In other words, the projected follow-up meeting may thus be held later next year.
An interesting point was raised by the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, who underlined at the Paris meeting that it was the duty of international and regional players to find a breakthrough since the two sides appeared incapable of doing so alone. Aaron David Miller, a vice-president of the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington and a longtime participant in the US negotiations with the Palestinians and Israelis admitted last Sunday in a column published in the Washington Post that he has not “given up hope for smart and well-timed US diplomacy”.
But, he continued: “I’ve abandoned my illusions of just how much America is able and willing to do to repair a badly broken, cruel and unforgiving Middle East. As the fix-it people, Americans have a hard time accepting when those directly involved aren’t willing or able to do so. But sometimes, it makes more sense for our diplomats and negotiators to stay home rather than look weak and ineffective while searching for solutions to problems they simply cannot resolve.”
What has been surprising this week is the trip that Netanyahu made to Moscow in an obvious attempt to divert attention from the Paris meeting and serve as a snub to Washington for its participation in the conference. At the same time, he has unexpectedly focused his attention on the Arab Peace Plan under which, the League of 22 Arab states offered normal relations with Israel, provided it abandon the Occupied Palestinian Territories. What has been amazing is that the plan, revealed in 2002, has never been discussed in an Israeli cabinet.
“In a familiar muddying of the water,” wrote Jonathan Cook in Mondoweiss, a news website, Netanyahu “has spent the past week talking up peace while fiercely criticising” the Paris conference, “the only diplomatic initiative on the horizon”. He noted that this was “the first time Israel has faced being dragged into talks not presided over by its Washington patron”. He underlined, “that [this] risks setting a dangerous precedent … worr(ying) that this time Washington may not be able — or willing to watch his back”.
Cook added that “even if negotiations fail, as seems inevitable, parameters for future talks might be established.” His conclusion: Still, Israel will try to ride out the French initiative until Barack Obama’s successor is installed next year. Then Netanyahu hopes, he can forget about the threat of two states once and for all. Cook’s column had this headline: ‘Israel wants a peace process — but only if it’s doomed to fail.’ Netanyahu keeps dreaming.
George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com
Source: gulfnews.com
BY: Sam Husseini/Contributing Writer The dissent within the Democratic Party that Sen. Bernie Sanders has sparked needs somewhere to go. It should go in a direction that doesn’t back Clinton — and doesn’t help Trump. That seems like you can’t do both those things, but you can if you parse it through and do some … Continued
BY: Andrew Hansen/Contributing Writer As of Monday, Hillary Rodham Clinton has clinched the Democratic nomination after a long battle for the nomination against Independent Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders. The news surfaced hours before the polls opened for the Democratic Primary Elections in New Jersey, South Dakota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana, and California. Clinton secured … Continued
By: Christa Case Bryant/ Christian Science Monitor Since 2005, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) has called on the international community to pressure Israel economically as “a form of civil resistance to Israeli occupation, colonialism, and apartheid.” That would mean significant lifestyle changes for some consumers. Here are 10 brands that BDS supporters have urged … Continued
Jill Colvin
San Diego Tribune
Donald Trump says he made “a lot of money” in a deal years ago with Moammar Gadhafi, despite suggesting at the time he had no idea the former Libyan dictator was involved in renting his suburban New York estate.
“Don’t forget, I’m the only one. I made a lot of money with Gaddafi, if you remember,” Trump said in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday. “He came to the country, and he had to make a deal with me because he needed a place to stay.”
“He paid me a fortune. Never got to stay there,” Trump said. “And it became sort of a big joke.”
The presumptive Republican nominee was talking about a bizarre incident in 2009, when Gadhafi was in desperate search of a place to pitch his Bedouin-style tent during a visit to New York for a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.
After trying and failing to secure space in Manhattan’s Central Park, on the Upper East Side and in Englewood, New Jersey, the Libyan government turned to Trump’s 213-acre Seven Springs estate in suburban Bedford, New York.
Gadhafi never stayed at the property, but it was nevertheless a spectacle. Reporters flocked to the town to watch construction crews erect a white-topped tent that was lined with a tapestry of camels and palm trees and outfitted with leather couches and coffee tables.
At one point the tent was torn down after the Town of Bedford threatened to sue Trump personally — and was then re-erected, to the town’s chagrin.
At the time, Trump distanced himself from the matter, hinting that he’d been tricked into renting his land. Representatives of Gadhafi — loathed in the U.S. due to his ties to terrorism — had falsified the identity of their client in other instances to make renting property easier.
Before the tent was re-pitched, Trump said he had “no idea” that Gadhafi might be involved in the deal to rent a section of the estate, a town official said. Bedford Town Supervisor Lee Roberts told The Associated Press at the time that Trump told her that, as far as he knew, his arrangement was with partners in the United Arab Emirates.
“We have business partners and associates all over the world.
The property was leased on a short-term basis to Middle Eastern partners who may or may not have a relationship to Mr. Gadhafi. We are looking into the matter now,” Trump Organization spokeswoman Rhona Graff said in a statement at the time.
But Trump had changed his tune two years later, when he boasted of having “screwed” the Libyan leader on the deal.
“I dealt with Gadhafi. Excuse me. I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for the whole year or for two years. And then I didn’t let him use the land. That’s what we should be doing,” Trump said in a 2011 interview with Fox News.
He reiterated the claim on CNN that same year. Trump said he had leased Gaddafi “a piece of land for his tent. He paid me more than I get in a whole year. And then, eh, he wasn’t able to use the piece of land. … So I got in one night more money than I would have gotten all year for this piece of land up in Westchester. And then didn’t let him use it? That’s called being intelligent,” Trump said.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks did not respond to questions Sunday about whether Trump was aware at the time that he was dealing with Gadhafi and how much he made from the deal.
Bedford Town Attorney Joel Sachs, who dealt with Trump directly on the issue, said that Trump insisted to town officials that he didn’t know about the Gadhafi connection — and that officials suspected he was lying.
“We believe that Trump knew that he had leased his property to Gadhafi,” Sachs said. “He definitely denied that he knew, but we had gotten a lot of evidence.”
Roberts, the former Bedford town supervisor, said Sunday she didn’t remember much about the back-and-forth, but agreed it was a mess. “It was a very emotional time. People got very upset at the thought of him coming here,” she said.
But there was also an element of the absurd. “There was a goat involved. They were going to kill a goat and have it for dinner,” she said. When Gadhafi didn’t show, “it got a reprieve.”
Roberts said she was offered the goat as a souvenir of sorts, but had to turn it down.
“No, we can’t have a goat in my town house!” she recalled with a laugh.
Source: www.sandiegouniontribune.com
By Aaron David Miller
The Washington Post
Aaron David Miller is a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. He served in the State Department from 1978 to 2003.
Israel wanted no part in it. And neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians were scheduled to attend. Yet Secretary of State John Kerry remained optimistic ahead of Friday’s sure-to-go-nowhere Middle East peace conference in Paris. “What we are seeking to do,” he said, “is encourage the parties to be able to see a way forward so they understand peace is a possibility.”
I recognize that sentiment: wanting to remain upbeat, even while knowing that the odds are long. For much of my 24-year career as a State Department Middle East analyst, negotiator and adviser, I held out hope that a conflict-ending peace agreement was possible. I had faith in negotiations as a talking cure and thought the United States could arrange a comprehensive solution. I believed in the power of U.S. diplomacy.
But by the time I left government in 2003, I was a disillusioned diplomat and peace processor with serious doubts about what the United States could accomplish in the Middle East. I realize now that, like Kerry, I was tilting at windmills. U.S.-brokered peace in the Middle East is a quixotic quest. And the more we try and fail, the less credibility and leverage we have in the region.
Looking back now, the high point of my optimism was probably in 1991, the year we orchestrated another, more productive Middle East peace conference in Madrid. I remember that on one of nine trips that led to the conference, a large fly boarded the plane with us at Andrews Air Force Base and buzzed annoyingly around the staff compartment. I was vainly trying to swat it when Secretary of State James Baker walked by to brief the press in the rear of the aircraft. Hours later, while drafting talking points, I felt a presence over my shoulder and turned just as Baker’s large hand dropped the fly onto my yellow legal pad.
That kind of sums up how I thought about our diplomacy back then: With good timing and assertive American leadership (something short of fly-crushing brute force), we could solve festering problems once and for all. My memos at the time had a yes-we-can edge.
The moment seemed ripe for a Middle East breakthrough facilitated by the United States. Our influence in the region was at an all-time high. The U.S. military had just pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, and the Israelis and Arabs were off-balance — in the case of Jordan, Syria and the Palestinians, they were looking for ways to ingratiate themselves into America’s good graces. We were respected, admired and feared in the region to a degree we haven’t been since.
Baker, meanwhile, was probably the best U.S. negotiator to tackle the Middle East since Henry Kissinger brokered three disengagement agreements in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. I watched Baker cajole, pressure and threaten to walk out on both Israel’s Yitzhak Shamir and Syria’s Hafez al-Assad, and I saw him huddle with Palestinians like a football coach to encourage them to attend the peace conference. It helped that he had the full backing of President George H.W. Bush — his close friend who cared about Mideast peace and was making good on a pledge to Saudi Arabia that he’d take on the Arab-Israeli issue after the Persian Gulf War.
The Madrid conference produced the first direct bilateral negotiations and peace process success between Israelis and Arabs — Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians — since the Egyptian-Israeli agreement 12 years earlier. I reveled in our achievement and marveled at what U.S. diplomacy could accomplish when it was tough, tenacious and strategic.
My mistake was in believing that Madrid, which really produced only a procedural breakthrough, would necessarily create a foundation for progress on the substantive issues. I thought if we just kept the process going, if we were committed and creative, we would somehow find our way to agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians on Jerusalem, borders and refugees, along with agreement between the Israelis and the Syrians on the Golan Heights. But we never got there. Process can’t substitute for substance.
I maintained my misplaced optimism into the Clinton administration. Sitting with my family on the South Lawn of the White House in September 1993, watching President Bill Clinton preside over the historic handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, I believed, in what had to be one of the most stunning misjudgments of my career, that the peace process had become irreversible.
The Israelis and the Palestinians, without U.S. involvement, had reached an agreement on mutual recognition and a declaration of principles that was supposed to get them toward talks on the big issues. I really thought they had taken ownership of their negotiations and would dedicate themselves to making the Oslo Accords stick.
Through the crises of the next seven years of the Oslo process — Palestinian terrorist attacks, Israeli settlement activity, the assassination of Rabin by an Israeli extremist opposed to Oslo — I kept the faith that the almighty peace process ultimately would succeed. I convinced myself that with added urgency from the United States, the confidence-building, interim measures laid out in the Oslo agreement could be made to work and pave the way for negotiations on the core issues. Early in 1997, literally down on my hands and knees in the West Bank city of Hebron measuring the width of a street that figured prominently in the negotiations, I felt both small and ennobled. This was important, and I’d do anything to keep the process alive.
My commitment, and the illusions that sustained it, would take me all the way to the ill-advised, ill-timed and ill-prepared July 2000 Camp David summit: a last-ditch effort to save the Oslo process. During a briefing a week before, Clinton went around the room asking everyone to gauge the prospects of the summit. And everyone, from the national security adviser to the secretary of state, said more or less the same thing: There was a chance; Ehud Barak and Arafat would make decisions only in the heat of a summit; the president owed it to the cause and to himself to pursue peace before the end of his term. The assessment we all should have given him was that there would be no conflict-ending accord or even a framework agreement, because neither Barak nor Arafat were ready to pay the price, and the president was unlikely to bridge the gaps. But I brushed aside my doubts and echoed the others. Part of me was concerned about pissing off everyone else in the room. The invitations to Arafat and Barak had already been issued, so the briefing really was a formality. But part of me still wanted to believe that we could make peace.
The president thought that if he could just get the Israelis and the Palestinians in the room, he could somehow get them to an agreement, building on what Barak was prepared to offer and using the famous Clinton powers of persuasion. But we had no strategy, we coordinated too closely with the Israelis, and we had no Arab buy-in on issues such as Jerusalem nor any sign that the Palestinians would move off their core demands. We didn’t run the summit; the summit ran us.
When I think back about that fateful period, I shudder. With the best of intentions, in eight months, we planned three presidential negotiations (two on the Syrian track and one on the Palestinian) and failed at all three.
What I should have realized all along was that strong U.S. mediation can’t make up for weak leadership of the parties to a negotiation. We can’t talk them into getting control over their political constituencies. And we can’t expect that our enthusiasm will persuade them to invest in solutions, take necessary risks or recognize that a negotiated settlement is in their interest (and not just ours).
In March 2002, during the height of the second intifada, President George W. Bush’s Middle East envoy, Anthony Zinni, and I were sent to negotiate a cease-fire between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. But that was either the Bush administration’s idea of a cruel joke or just a throwaway talking point before the final break with the PLO leader.
That week, a Palestinian suicide bomber had blown himself up at a Passover seder in Netanya, killing 30 Israelis and wounding 140. Israeli forces responded with Operation Defensive Shield, entering the West Bank and imposing closures on most major Palestinian cities and towns.
I’ll never forget the scene in Arafat’s compound. The place reeked of foul air, body odor and too few working toilets. The only light, in what had been in better days a reasonably well-lit conference room, came from candles and a bit of sun that managed to peek through windows that were almost completely blacked out for fear of Israeli snipers. And there in the gloom sat a self-satisfied Arafat, his black machine gun ominously displayed on the table, holding forth about how he’d be rather be martyred than surrender to Israel’s diktats.
There was no longer any way for me to rationalize the importance of process without direction, negotiations without substance or even the use of the word “peace.” Our overinflated optimism at Camp David had had real costs. After raising expectations we couldn’t deliver on, we blamed Arafat for the summit’s failure, and that made it easier for him, in the wake of Sharon’s provocative visit to the sacred Temple Mount, to acquiesce to and encourage the violence that would become the second intifada.
U.S. diplomacy can be effective when we have partners willing to make decisions, when all parties feel an urgency to make those decisions and when gaps separating the parties can actually be bridged. The Iran nuclear agreement, while greatly flawed, is a case in point. It succeeded because it was not a transformational but a transactional arrangement, a highly detailed arms-control accord of arguably limited duration and scope that both the United States and Iran wanted for their own reasons.
But when it comes to matters that cut to the core of people’s identities — such as Jerusalem or Palestinian refugees, or the social engineering required to end Syria’s civil war — or creating an outcome in Iraq or Libya that produces stability and good governance, the United States doesn’t have the horses to pull the wagon. The inconvenient reality is that we will never have a greater stake in this region, or more power to remedy its ills, than those who live there.
I haven’t given up hope for smart and well-timed U.S. diplomacy. But I’ve abandoned my illusions of just how much America is able and willing to do to repair a badly broken, cruel and unforgiving Middle East.
As the fix-it people, Americans have a hard time accepting that we can’t sort out conflicts when those directly involved aren’t willing or able to do so. But sometimes, it makes more sense for our diplomats and negotiators to stay home rather than look weak and ineffective while searching for solutions to problems they simply cannot resolve.
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
The winner of this “election” for Palestinian president was a 24-year-old lawyer from east Jerusalem, who defeated a woman and a Christian from Bethlehem. But this was reality television — not real life — and the vote came on a TV show called “The President” that is meant to educate young Palestinians about politics.
In reality, Palestinians haven’t had a chance to cast an actual ballot for president in over a decade.
The spirited competition among the three young finalists has drawn attention to the shortcomings of the Palestinians’ experiment with democracy, complicated by Israeli military occupation, now in its 50th year, and two decades of failed peace efforts.
The last time the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip elected a leader was in January 2005, when current President Mahmoud Abbas won by a large margin. Now polls indicate widespread discontent with Abbas and the long-ruling entrenched leadership around him.
“This show was an opportunity for the Palestinian youth to raise their voice and deliver their message,” said Waad Qannam, the winner of Thursday night’s finale, who was awarded a new car and is expected to meet Abbas.
“The show proves that we have skillful young leaders who can take over when there is an opportunity,” he said. “This is a message to the politicians to open the gates for the new generation to practice politics and prove themselves.”
The show’s format brings in elements from “Arab Idol,” a popular show in which viewers across the Middle East choose their favorite singer by voting with text messages, as well as the “The Apprentice,” the international reality show that helped put another presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, in the spotlight.
The finalists were Qannam; Fadi Khair, 30, a male nurse from the West Bank; and Naameh Adwiya, a 22-year-old woman and political science graduate from east Jerusalem. All are active in Abbas’ Fatah party.
Several hundred people packed a Ramallah auditorium for the finale. A Palestinian flag stood on the side of the stage, while a black screen with floating stars, along with the show’s logo, formed the backdrop. Senior politicians and security officials were in the audience, although Abbas was not.
Maan, a local TV network, has been airing the show for the past six months. The program is funded by Search for Common Ground, a U.S. nonprofit group that promotes conflict resolution. The goal was to give young Palestinians an opportunity to practice running for office and voting for a candidate.
Suheir Rasul, the group’s local co-director, said the show was the only place where Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and many other places can vote.
“Palestinian youth do not get the opportunity to engage with political leaders on this magnitude. This program is not just a TV show; it’s actually the only true democracy in practice,” she said.
It is the second time the Palestinians have held the contest.
Raed Othman, the program’s spokesman, said 1,180
Palestinians ages 20 to 40 applied. A committee of politicians, business leaders and public personalities narrowed the list to 48 contestants. The final three were selected by a panel of judges and votes by viewers.
Over six months, the list was whittled down through written tests and interviews about public affairs and politics. Contestants also took courses in communications and public service, and put forth plans for increased political participation and better public services.
Like any good politician, the finalists were polished and generally cautious in their responses, venturing into controversial topics only when asked by the judges.
But during Thursday’s finale, they were asked a range of questions on issues affecting Palestinians, such as Israel’s demand to be recognized as the state of the Jewish people, recent executions by Hamas, and socio-economic problems in refugee camps.
Khair, a member of the West Bank’s Christian minority, said in one of the final episodes that as president, he would work to change laws including one that says the Palestinian president must be a Muslim. He called the law unjust.
Adwiya said she would allow university students to demonstrate against her or rip down posters of her in the streets. “Yes, I would let them do that and express their feelings,” she said.
Abbas has shown little tolerance for dissent, frequently breaking up protests and, in several cases, jailing people for critical Facebook posts.
The prospects of reaching peace with Israel rarely came up, and when the topic was mentioned, contestants tended to take strong positions against Israel.
Qannam said Israel was responsible for the current wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence and said he wouldn’t call on Palestinians to stop stabbing attacks.
Abbas was elected in January 2005 for what was supposed to be a five-year term.
But the rift between his Fatah party and the Islamic militant group Hamas, which led to the establishment of rival governments in 2007, has prevented new presidential and parliamentary elections.
Hamas remains in control of Gaza, while the Fatah movement governs in the West Bank. Both camps are entrenched in their respective turf, and there’s no sign they would risk losing control by holding elections
In his decade in power, Abbas has failed to deliver on a promise to lead Palestinians to independence, with negotiations on terms of statehood stalled since Israeli hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister in 2009. The Palestinian economy is stagnant, and polls have indicated two-thirds of Palestinians want Abbas to resign.
“Why watch virtual elections? We need real elections,” said Hisham Atta, a 21-year-old university student from Ramallah.
But Sawsan Abu Adel, 28, said she has enjoyed the show.
“It’s good to see these boys and girls competing and dreaming,” she said. “But in reality, the ones who take the jobs are the sons and daughters of the officials.”
Source: www.oaoa.com
BY HANNAN ADELY
NorthJersey.com
More than 100 people packed the Palestinian American Community Center Thursday night, where well-known Arab-American activists touted Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders as the best person to represent their interests and urged them to vote in the party primary next Tuesday.
Linda Sarsour, a racial justice activist who has rallied for Sanders at events across the U.S., said Sanders has reached out to Muslims and Arabs and listened to their concerns.
“Bernie Sanders chose to put people like me, people in hijab, women who are attacked by Islamaphobes, in front in his campaign,” said Sarsour, who leads the Arab American Association of New York, urging the crowd to become more active in politics.
According to news reports, Sanders won the Arab-American vote in the Michigan presidential primary by a 2-to-1 margin, support that may have helped him pull off a surprise primary victory in Michigan.
Polls, however, have showed that most Muslims support Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president. A March poll by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that 40 percent of Muslims favor Clinton and 27 percent favor Sanders. Another poll by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, done on March 1, also showed that most Muslims supported Clinton. Neither poll surveyed Arab Americans, the majority of whom are Christian, as a group.
Ahlam Jbara, the national Arab and Muslim director for the Sanders campaign, spoke at the event in Clifton. She said she has seen a shift toward Sanders since those polls, especially after the Democratic debate in New York in April, when Sanders sparred with Hillary Clinton over Israel and spoke sympathetically about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.
Anam Salem, 28, a Clifton resident who attended the event, said she was glad that the campaign was paying attention to her community. ”He has definitely made an effort to reach out to Muslims and engage them and make their voices heard and address their issues — unlike other candidates, who I feel have made no effort or who have done the exact opposite by attacking the community,” she said, talking about the current and former GOP candidates who have made negative comments about Muslims.
But one person at the event said he was still undecided about who to vote for on Tuesday. He was concerned that a lack of support for Clinton would pave the way for a win by Republican Donald Trump, who he feared would persecute minorities.
James Zogby, a well-known advocate for Arab-American political engagement and rights, spoke to audience members by phone, telling them they had the chance to vote for someone who has advocated for them and “gone out on a limb” by voicing support for Palestinians. Sanders appointed Zogby to the committee that will write the Democratic Party platform.
Donna Nassor, of Hackensack, who is third-generation American with roots in Lebanon and Syria, said she supports Sanders’ positions on most issues.
“He’s not excluding Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians,” said Nassor. “He’s including them and welcoming them. That’s a good thing. Why shouldn’t their voices be heard?”
Many of the people at the event said they were concerned with ending and preventing U.S. wars in the Middle East. But Nassor and other voters said they were also inspired by issues important to all Americans, like government transparency and reducing student debt.
Source: www.northjersey.com
BY HANNAN ADELY
NORTH JERSEY.COM
Prominent Arab-American activists will speak at the Palestinian American Community Center in Clifton Thursday evening to stump for Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jim Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, and Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, will talk about “why Bernie is the best candidate for Arab Americans.” Palestinian-American comedian and writer Amer Zahr also will speak.
The event is sponsored by Sanders’ campaign for the New Jersey primary and by Muslim Americans for Bernie Sanders.
In his bid for the Democratic nomination, Sanders has courted Muslim Americans, who come from diverse ethnic backgrounds, and Arab Americans, the majority of whom are Christian. Although their overall numbers aren’t large in the U.S. – Muslims make up about 1 percent of the population, and many live in electoral swing states like Florida, Ohio and Michigan.
Political pundits say that a strong Arab American vote for Sanders helped him pull off a surprise victory in Michigan’s Democratic primary. According to news reports, Arabs voted for Sanders by a 2-to-1 margin. The Sanders campaign is hoping to tap into that kind of support in New Jersey in the primary on Tuesday.
Zogby, a member of the Democratic National Committee, has fought for Arab American political empowerment, for Palestinian rights, and for other causes important to the Arab community for three decades.
Last week, Sanders appointed Zogby to the 15-member committee that will write the Democratic Party platform.
Sarsour,, of Brooklyn, has been a vocal of police surveillance of Muslim communities and discrimination. She and Zahr have been active in Sanders campaign events across the U.S.
The event takes place at 7 p.m. at the Palestinian American Community Center, 388 Lakeview Ave., Clifton. It is open to the public, but RSVPs are encouraged.
Source: www.northjersey.com
By Jack Lessenberry
Metro Times
For nearly a year now, the media has been fascinated by Donald Trump’s every utterance, the more sexual and outrageous the better. Did he really talk about his schlong?
Did he really say “blood coming out of her whatever?” Did he really say John McCain wasn’t much of a war hero because he was captured? Well, yes, yes, and yes.
Will he really be the GOP nominee for president? Absolutely, comrades. When it comes to a Trump presidency, there is a hell of a lot to be concerned about.
But one of the biggest and so far too-overlooked ones is what the Trump campaign is doing to our nation’s children. Richard Cole is one of the grand wise men of this state: a fixer who was Gov. Jim Blanchard’s chief of staff, worked with Mike Duggan at the Detroit Medical Center, and was a senior executive at Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Not to speak of a host of other jobs, including stints as a professor at Michigan State and Ferris. Cole directed me last week toward a stunning new study by Morris Dees’ Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been crusading against hate and racism for many years. They surveyed schoolchildren — and found those from immigrant or minority backgrounds are terrified about what President Trump might do to them.
That’s not surprising, given that attacks on immigrants and promises to deport at least 11 million undocumented residents have been a hallmark of Trump’s campaign. The SPLC study looked hard at this.
The results were shocking: More than two-thirds of educators reported that young people in their schools — most often immigrants, children of immigrants, Muslims, African-Americans, and other students of color — had expressed concern about what might happen to their families after the election.
The study found that these kids, not surprisingly, are scared, stressed, and in need of reassurance and support from teachers. Muslim children are harassed and worried.
Even African-American children, whose families arrived here (as slaves) in some cases before the American Revolution, ask about being sent back to Africa.
Cole, who as a professor has written widely about the problems of child abuse, told me that “Childhood trauma comes in many forms, and the Southern Poverty Law Center national survey of teachers has documented a new form of child abuse in the form of political hate speech.
“Children across America, particularly minority children, are being traumatized by the mean-spirited political rhetoric Donald Trump has used to gin up his angry base.”
Worse, teachers often feel powerless to help, he told me, since many of them “seem fearful that their attempts to buffer the impact of this rhetoric on the children in their care will be seen as the kind of overt political statements that could jeopardize their careers.”
I rushed off to read the study, and found he was exactly right. This may be a real threat in Michigan especially, where we have higher-than-average populations of Muslim and African-American children.
Last week, I talked to my colleague Alicia Nails, an attorney and a journalist who runs our highly successful Journalism Institute for Media Diversity at Wayne State.
JIM, as we call it, has had the goal for more than 30 years of making America’s newsrooms look more like America. While some of our students are white young people with an interest in diversity, most are black, Muslim, Hispanic, or high-achieving members of other minority groups.
Nails told me her students are more cynical than scared, at this point, though they do talk about moving to Canada if Trump were to win. But it’s a different story for younger kids.
She went last month to talk at a career day at Clippert Academy Middle School in Southwest Detroit.
“The students in the six rooms I visited were 95 percent Latino — some not yet speaking English — with a few black, white, Arab, and Asian students among them,” she told me.
“The Latino students in one class absolutely brought up the issue. Trump IS on their minds as a crazy wild man with crazy wild ideas about excluding some Americans.”
How could they not have him on their minds?
The Southern Poverty Law Center found that this was definitely getting in the way of kids learning. A Tennessee kindergarten teacher said she has a student who constantly asks if the wall has been built yet. “Imagine the fear in my students’ eyes when they look to me for the truth,” she said.
They found Muslim kids who fear they would have microchips implanted under their skin, and bullies who taunted classmates of color that they would soon be deported.
Worse, some teachers have decided to avoid talking about the election entirely, either out of distaste, uncertainly about what to say, or fear for their own jobs.
Others vow to do the right thing, vowing, as one Indiana high school teacher did, “to take a stand even if it costs me my position.” Cole, who has four daughters of his own, hopes “American teachers don’t allow fear of retaliation to (have them avoid) the important role they can play in comforting our African-American, Latino, and Muslim kids who are feeling the toxic stress caused by the hate speech dominating so much of the nasty reality show playing out on the campaign stage.”
Studies have shown the effects of trauma like that can last a lifetime. Comparisons of any politician to Hitler ought to be avoided if at all possible.
Trump is certainly not a Nazi (he actually is rather more the swaggering Benito Mussolini) and is not anti-Semitic. But I can’t help wondering if he has left America’s minorities feeling a little like Jewish kids in Germany felt in 1932.
Hillary and Bernie wars
With the Republican smashmouth nominating campaign over, the ravenous cable news vultures have fastened on the remaining contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
They want a headline every minute — and have been seeking to inflate the Bernie-Hillary battle into a war of toxic nastiness that is destined to rip the Democrats apart.
Don’t bet on it. If you are too young to remember, there was much snippiness and nastiness between Hillary and Barack Obama at this point eight years ago, when it was becoming increasingly clear that he had the nomination won, despite her string of primary wins late in the contest. Many of her supporters vowed never to support him, no matter what.
In the end, they virtually all did. And that was when the alternative was John McCain, not a swaggering slob who seemed sneeringly proud he knew little about government.
Hard Choices, Clinton’s 2014 memoir of her years as Obama’s secretary of state, begins with her historic meeting with Obama when it was clear he’d won the nomination. Issues and bitterness there were — but according to Clinton, both agreed not to blame the other for the excesses of their followers.
That will happen again. This time, assuming Bernie doesn’t pull off a miracle, Hillary Clinton will be the nominee.
She should be; she will end up with more votes. Does anyone really believe that anyone sane who supports Bernie Sanders could switch to the vulgar xenophobe discussed above?
Nor should any of them think staying home, or wasting a vote on a third-party candidate is a morally legitimate choice.
Trump has to be stopped.
And nobody should be allowed to forget it.
Source: www.metrotimes.com
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