Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, The

Letters to the Editor

Along with car bombs, lack of fuel and electricity, walled neighborhoods and ubiquitous killings, not only was al-Qaeda not present in Iraq prior to the U.S.\n Michael Bradley, Scottsdale, AZ Given our limited resources of both pages and personnel, we've had to make some fundamental decisions, the most basic of which is to provide our readers information not available in the mainstream media (which we're now seeing abbreviated as MSM), which innundates Americans with stories about Islamic fun...

Special Report

America Needs a Development Plan for Afghanistan Today

The resurgent Taliban are making gains, especially in the south, where British troops defeat them in battle-but then the poorly paid and trained Afghan army troops assigned to hold the territory fail to do so. [...] a few judges have been killed.\n That was a grave mistake, says Associated Press correspondent Kathy Gannon, who thinks Mullah Khaksar might have revealed some of Osama bin Laden's plans. In an interview in Maclean's magazine, Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between, about...

If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine?

The Palestinian leadership would make clear that if the U.S. and the EU, having just recognized a second Albanian state on the sovereign territory of a U.N. member state, will not now recognize one Palestinian state on a tiny portion of the occupied Palestinian homeland, it will dissolve the "Palestinian Authority" (which, legally, should have ceased to exist in 1999, at the end of the five-year "interim period" under the Oslo Accords) and the Palestinian people will thereafter seek justice a...

Israel's 'Targeted Assassinations' Strategy

No doubt, such spectacular feats of arms are also intended to remind Washington-and especially its intelligence community-that in spite of the fiasco of the Lebanese war, Israel remains a valuable strategic asset in America's "global war on terror." [...] the immense damage inflicted on Lebanon in 2006 failed to quell Hezbollah (although its fighters were forced by international pressure to withdraw from the border area), while the severe punishment that continues to be inflicted on Gaza and...

Is Israel Losing Its War Against the Palestinians?

After Hamas put down an attempt by U.S.-backed Fatah forces to take control of Gaza's security operations last summer, Israel imposed a siege on 1.5 million Gazans, cutting off supplies of all but the most basic food and medicines, and intensifying the bombing attacks that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and done billions of dollars worth of damage to Gaza's agricultural land and infrastructure. Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said, "The lo...

Relief Supplies Finally Break Gaza Blockade

In the course of the meeting it was decided that the Israeli peace movement would organize a relief convoy-both in order to alleviate the suffering and as an act of solidarity and political protest against the inhuman blockade imposed by the Olmert government on the million and a half residents of the Gaza Strip.

The Assassination of Imad Mugniyah: Just Another Mossad Extrajudicial Execution?

WHEN ARMED agents from the Mossad, Israel's spy agency, infiltrated the North African city of Tunis in 1988 to kill Abu Jihad, 51, Yasser Arafat's PLO deputy commander, "they employed up to 4,000 men for his assassination," wrote Robert Fisk in The Independent on April 13, 2001. Noted Fisk, "Today, Israel's murder squads come cheaper: a computer chip that activates a bomb in a mobile telephone, a family collaborator, or even a splash of ultra-violet paint on the roof of a car to alert an Isr...

The War Against Tolerance

Shoebat, who has written a book called Why We Want to Kill You, promises in his lectures to explain the numerous similarities between radical Muslims and the Nazis, how "Muslim terrorists" invaded America 30 years ago and how "perseverance, recruitment and hate" have fueled attacks by Muslims. Bush described the "war on terror" as a war against totalitarian Islamo-fascism while the Israeli air force was dropping tens of thousands of pounds of iron fragmentation bombs up and down Lebanon, an ...

United Nations Report

Affairs of States

For years at the U.N., the delegation incrementally increased the standing of Palestine and its representatives in the U.N., in the process annoying Israel and, of course, the U.S. But then the process reached its apogee and nadir simultaneously when Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority were given control of some of the occupied territories. Ever since President Bill Clinton wrote the script for the farce of free negotiations between Palestine and Israel, it has been clear that the en...

Congress Watch

Members of Congress Concerned About Bush's Future Plans for Iraq

ON NOV. 26 PRESIDENT George W. Bush signed, without congressional consultation, a "Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the U.S.," with the goal of concluding by July 31, 2008 a final agreement between the two governments, including U.S. "security assurances...to deter foreign aggression against Iraq."

Talking Turkey

Now Lifted, Headscarf Ban for University Students Still Controversial

Islamic tarikats-sufi orders-were banned, while a great deal of effort was put into convincing citizens that religious beliefs were reactionary, backward obstacles to the "attainment of the level of contemporary civilization"-the key goal of Ataturk's new regime. The protests by female students expelled from university for refusing to take their headscarves off-the ban, on the books since 1989, has not been strictly enforced since 1997-were a regular source of tension in the lead up to the A...

Southern California Chronicle

L.A. Welcomes Lebanese Filmmaker Nadine Labaki, Who Wrote, Stars in 'Caramel'

Sometimes they were spat on or called self-hating Jews-in one confrontation, a group of men claiming to be former IDF soldiers challenged the vigil, and one bragged that he had shot dead five Palestinians-but more often than not passersby read their signs and accepted flyers describing the dire conditions under which Gaza civilians are living. Emergency Interfaith Meeting on Gaza As the suffering in Gaza intensified due to Israel's drastic cuts of fuel and food to Gazans, the Islamic Center ...

New York City And Tri-State News

Combatants for Peace Launches U.S. Tour in Manhattan's St. Mark's Church

COMBATANTS FOR Peace began its U.S. speaking tour in New York City on Jan. 16-the one-year anniversary of the death of Bassam Aramin's 10-year-old daughter, Abir, who was shot by an Israeli border policeman as she was walking home from the Anata School for Girls. Noting that there is a tendency to attribute the failure of the peace process to extremists, Elhanan pointed out that extremists did not institute the occupation or build settlements or erect a separation wall. In almost every fiel...

Books

Palestinian Embroidery Motifs: A Treasury of Stitches 1850-1950

Reviewed by Urbane and Gwendolyn Peachey MARGARITA SKINNER of Switzerland, who over a period of 20 years worked in women's projects in Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iraq, has produced a comprehensive collection of motifs, in brilliant colors. Inspiration for the motifs came from everyday village life and from "uniforms, religious vestments, ceramics, printed fabrics, samplers and pattern books."

Islam And The Near East In The Far East

Ex-Dictator of Indonesia Suharto Dead Without Justice Being Done

It was as if it didn't matter much that he suppressed democracy, used thuggery to silence opponents, arrested thousands of his enemies, occupied Abyssinia, repressed Libya and took his country into a disastrous war at the side of Nazi Germany: punctual trains weighed heavily in the balance against such excesses. Again, there was talk of building ties and of diplomatic relations when the peace process concluded, but in September 2000, Sharon's walk in the precincts of the al-Aqsa Mosque and t...

European Press Review

Britain's the Sun Calls Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams a 'Burkha'

"Israel saw him as the terrorist 'mastermind' behind the planning for Hezbollah's July 2006 war with the Jewish state, which began with the audacious cross-border kidnapping of Israeli soldiers the organization hoped to swap for Lebanese prisoners," he noted. Differing Views on Kosovo's Declaration of Independence Kosovo has been a success of liberal interventionism, said the UK's Independent on Feb.\n The BBC's world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds, however, warned the same day that the...

In Memoriam

Dr. George Habash (1925-2008)

After he graduated from AUB in 1951 with a degree in medicine, Dr. Habash went to work in Palestinian refugee camps in Amman.

George Qumsieh (1933-2008)

A fixture at the posh Nablus Road hotel for 50 years, Qumsieh began work at the Colony in 1948, at the age of 15, after his father, a driver for the British Army in Palestine, was wounded in fighting between British troops and Jewish militants.

Israel And Judaism

In Latest Push for Mideast Peace, Which Side Will Organized American Jewish Community Be On?

Given the fact that opponents of the current peace efforts both within Israel and the U.S. are working in concert, the influence of the organized American Jewish community has, thus far, been a largely negative one-despite the fact that public opinion polls clearly show that the overwhelming majority of American Jews support a compromise which would lead to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle stood up to the president, who had the chutzp...

Gaza On The Ground

Getting Around in Gaza: A Testament to the Mother of Invention

In an act of desperation this past January, Gazans blew massive holes in Israel's monstrous 25-foot-high wall separating Gaza from Egypt, thus allowing hundreds of thousands of families, including the sick and injured, to obtain the basic necessities of life-food, medicine, fuel and more-denied them by the occupying power. Addressing the nascent motorcycle movement's chaotic learning curve coupled with its Wild West tendencies and the threat to the general population of motorized, unskilled ...

Strawberry Fields-Forever?

When the Israeli- and U.S.-backed Fatah militias failed to overthrow the government in Gaza last summer, as they had succeeded in doing in the West Bank, the Israeli government fully isolated the 23-mile-long strip of land bordering the Mediterranean. Since the homemade rockets used by the Palestinian resistance have a very limited range, the militants often retaliate against Israeli Hellfire missile and tank shell attacks on Gaza's cities from the fields around Beit Lahiya.

The Subcontinent

Musharraf and His Cohorts Take a Beating in Pakistani Elections

A supporter of President Musharraf, Altaf had helped him form a centrist coalition government and, should circumstances warrant, may well support whoever forms the government in Sindh as well as in Islamabad. Teams from the United States and the European Union monitored the elections, which the U.S. State Department had insisted be "free and fair"-to which Musharraf added the criterion "peaceful."

Northern California Chronicle

Activists Protest Torture Flights, Demand Jeppesen Stop Facilitating Cia Renditions

In order to bring attention to Jeppesen's role in "rendering" individuals suspected of being involved in terrorist activity to secret prisons outside of the United States for interrogations involving torture impermissible under U.S. and international law, members of the South Bay Coalition to Stop Torture protest on Second Street outside of the San Jose Federal Building every Friday afternoon. During the social hour prior to the program, civic, business and religious leaders of the Sacrament...

Election Watch

Individual Donors Give to Pro-Israel Pacs, Again to Pacs' Chosen Candidates

For starters, if the same individuals who provided the support to pro-Israel PACs also contributed directly to the same candidates who received pro-Israel PAC money, it could be argued that those individuals likely received guidance from those PACs as to where their additional funds would be the most useful.

John Mccain and the Neocon Resurgence

Beyond the media, the neocons have deeply embedded themselves in the political system and continue to play a major role in the campaigns of the various presidential candidates of both parties, frequently as foreign policy advisers.

Peace Negotiator Who Advised Obama Campaign Strikes Back at Critics

Former national security adviser Sandy Berger and former State Department officials Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, Aaron David Miller and Daniel Kurtzer released their open letter defending Malley on Feb. 12.

Presidential Candidates' Views On Israel and Palestine: Same Old, Same Old

Hillary Clinton Though her advocacy for Palestinian statehood in the 1990s drew criticism from American Jewish groups at the time, Senator Clinton (D-NY) generally has aligned herself with pro-Israeli interests throughout her political career. Two other excellent sources readers can refer to as they examine candidates' positions on national security, civil rights/civil liberties, and U.S. national interests in Iraq, Iran, and U.S.-Muslim World relations, are the Muslim Public Affairs Council...

U.S. Jewish Leader Worried by Thrust of White House Campaign

THE HEAD OF THE Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, expressed concern Feb. 12 regarding the atmosphere that has surrounded Democratic Senator Barack Obama's campaign for president, while making it clear he has no problem with Obama himself.

Waging Peace

Charles Enderlin On Peace in the Middle East

Outlining Israel's implementation of new tactics, Enderlin described the first phase as political in nature, with a focus on "leverage," targeting leaders and putting pressure on the Palestinian National Authority (PA) and the Fatah Party.

Druze Heritage Symposium at Library of Congress

The speakers detailed the historic and theological background of the Druze faith, which began as an 11th century branch of the Ismaili sect of Shi'i Islam.