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Will the Trump Administration Shift U.S. Policy in Favor of Palestine?
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Go topInvestor’s Business Daily Scandal: A new investigation reveals that Bill and Hillary Clinton took in at least $100 million from Middle East leaders. Can such a financially and ethically compromised candidate truly function as our nation’s leader? The investigation by the Daily Caller News Foundation has uncovered a disturbing pattern of the Clintons’ raising money … Continued
BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer Today, a Lebanese-Brazilian lawyer, Michel Temer, assumes presidential responsibilities of Brazil, after being the Vice President. This happened immediately after President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil was suspended for six months due to her upcoming impeachment trial. Temer was born in Tiete, Sao Paulo state to Lebanese Maronite immigrants who moved to Brazil to … Continued
by Jake Heller and Melanie Bencosme NBCNews.com You might know Saba Ahmed as the woman who wore an American flag hijab on Fox News last November. You might not know, however, that she is a Republican — or that she spends much of her non-cable news time trying to convince other Muslims to support the GOP’s eventual … Continued
The Guardian
So now we know. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States. Considering the Islamophobia of Trump’s campaign up until now, some terrible months lie ahead for Muslim Americans. But I won’t be intimidated by Trump. In fact, this is an exciting turn of events.
Trump was never alone in his Islamophobia, and most of the other Republican candidates for president of the United States had also expressed alarmist ideas regarding Muslim Americans. Ted Cruz called on police to patrol “Muslim neighbourhoods”. Ben Carson stated that a Muslim would “have to reject the tenets of Islam” before becoming president. Chris Christie said that the United States should not admit any new Syrian refugees, not even “orphans under the age of five”.
But Trump’s Islamophobia has always been different because his campaign is different. The thuggish threat of violence that accompanies it, at times openly courted by the orange-dusted billionaire, transforms his vague and unenforceable platforms into excuses for roaming vigilantes around the country to bust some heads. The threats and ridicule have not only been levied against Muslims, but also Mexicans, women, African Americans, the undocumented, the differently abled and so many others.
On the same day that Trump secured the Republican nomination, leaflets were left on parked cars in Sacramento, California, calling for a fight “to prevent the genocide of white peoples by both Islam and Mexico”. The leaflets urged “white resistance groups and lone wolves” to “kidnap, rob, torture for information and execute all Muslims and Latinos. Leave no survivors.” This may be the obscene ravings of some lunatic crank, but the mix of Muslim and Mexican in the age of Trump is unmistakable.
This could get worse, but we should not be naive about the amount of violence that his campaign has already stoked. Earlier this month, Georgetown University released a study of Islamophobia during the presidential season thus far. The report found that since March 2015, when the first Republican candidate (Ted Cruz) announced his bid for the White House, there had already been about 180 reported incidents of anti-Muslim violence across the US, including 12 murders, 34 physical assaults, 56 acts of vandalism, nine arsons and eight shootings or bombings, among other incidents.
Donald Trump mocks reporter with disability
The context of these horrific numbers is complicated with the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino and the Syrian refugee crisis, and the report acknowledges this, but it is also worth noting that anti-Muslim sentiment in America has tended to spike at predictable times. According to the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, which has charted polling data regarding anti-Muslim sentiment since 9/11, the largest spikes do not track with high-profile terrorist attacks but occur during presidential election cycles, this one being no exception.
While his campaign traffics in violence and threats, Trump doesn’t scare me. His corrosive comments on Muslims and Mexicans will only bring Muslims and Mexicans, and everyone else, closer together. The shameful, divisive campaign that Trump is running may be mobilising one type of voter to his side – primarily the angry white voter – but you can no longer win the presidency on angry white votes alone. Mitt Romney won the white vote handily in 2012 and still lost the general election badly.
This is a different country than Trump voters understand it to be. The 2016 election will see the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse electorate ever, with nearly one in three (31%) of eligible voters being non-white, according to the Pew Research Center. Muslims and Latinos are already actively seeking to register more voters than ever, and expect Muslim voter registration to really take off in June, during Ramadan, when Islamic centres will be full of congregants. Latino voter registration is already skyrocketing.
Even more fundamentally is the organising energy I see from young Muslim Americans and so many others determined not to let their country be taken over by radical haters. What I’ve never seen – and don’t expect to see – are Muslims cowering in fear of Trump. He may never have expected it, but Trump is helping to build the strongest, most multicultural, multifaith, and multi-ethnic America we have ever had. So, thank you, Donald. You really are making America great.
Source: www.theguardian.com
Sputnik News
100 years ago, the terms of a secret deal dividing the Middle East between the UK and France were put forward. A century on, the Sykes-Picot agreement is still the subject of lively debate, with many citing it as a major factor behind today’s instability in the region.
On May 9, 1916, the terms of the Sykes-Picot agreement were outlined in a letter between the British and French, with the actual deal signed one week later, on May 15, 1916.
The agreement, negotiated by British diplomat, Sir Mark Sykes and Frenchman Francois Georges-Picot, aimed to divvy up large swathes of the Middle East that were at the time under the control of the Ottoman Empire, as the West believed Ottoman control of the area would not last beyond the end of World War One.
The deal, which ultimately triggered a series of other similar agreements relating to control of the Middle East, loosely led to the creation of a border between modern-day Syria and Iraq, with many others arguing that it laid the platform for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Under the deal the French were to control an area extending from Southeastern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and parts of northern Iraq, while the British would take control of the area consisting of the majority of modern-day central and southern Iraq, as well as Jordan.
A third area, loosely based around today’s Israel, was to become an Arab kingdom under a joint French-British mandate.
1916 Boundaries Slammed
Critics have since slammed the carve-up of land, saying the Sykes-Picot deal largely ignored many ethnic and political divides, with many of the borders between French and British control drawn with a ruler.
According to legend, Sykes’ described his method behind the boundaries in a briefing with then British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in 1915.
“I should like to draw a line from the ‘E’ in Acre to the last ‘K’ in Kirkuk,” he is alleged to have said, while sliding his finger across a map in Downing Street.
While designed to prevent conflict between the British and French in a post-WW1 land grab, the deal has been blamed with fermenting sectarian violence across the Middle East.
Russian Scoop
Adding to the infamy of the Sykes-Picot plan was the circumstances in which the deal was revealed to the world.
Initially a secret agreement between the French and British, Russian Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Leon Trotsky, published the details of the deal in November 1917, ultimately revealing the Sykes-Picot plot.
While Russia’s Tsarist government were a minor party in preliminary talks, the country’s Bolshevik revolution transformed Russia’s foreign policy, and Trotsky’s leak was seen by many to reveal the imperial intentions of Britain and France.
As a result, the deal has also come to resemble foreign control of the Middle East, with many researchers pointing out its relevance in prevailing anti-Western sentiment throughout the region.
This was demonstrated by Daesh’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who after sweeping through large swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014, declared: “This blessed advance will not stop until we hit the last nail in the coffin of the Sykes-Picot conspiracy.”
Impact Lives on
And while the deal to divide up the Middle East has since been widely derided by experts and critics, it is clear the agreement is still having a very big impact on current events.
Despite Iraq and Syria being divided along many internal religious and ethnic lines, with various different groups controlling swathes of land inside their respective countries, the international powers involved in today’s anti-Daesh campaign are trying to maintain the borders loosely set-out in the 1916 agreement.
There is a fear that a new demarcation of borders may trigger even more instability in the Middle East, highlighting the impact the Sykes-Picot agreement is still having on the Middle East — one century on.
Source: m.sputniknews.com
BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer Arab Americans have been mentioned more during this election cycle than any other in the past. This is largely due to the inflammatory rhetoric Donald Trump, and other presidential candidates, have said about Arab Americans, Muslims, and Syrian refugees. During his campaign, Trump has referred to Syrian refugees as a “Trojan horse” for … Continued
Joint Israeli-Palestinian peace-building NGOs and other creative ventures are working to overcome challenges and foster tolerance in the absence of political reconciliation [EPA] Zena Tahhan Al-Jazeera Next month, a French initiative to revive peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis is expected to take place in Paris.The new initiative, however, is being held against the background … Continued
Nick Hawatmeh from Warren, Michigan was one of the youngest Arab Americans to be involved in politics. Since high school, Hawatmeh has been involved in local and national politics, commenting on current events, approaching legislators, and advocating for those in need of help. Like many Arab Americans, Hawatmeh was not afraid to be vocal about the … Continued
By George S. Hishmeh, Special to Gulf News
Published: May 5, 2016
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US President Barack Obama is reportedly frustrated that the American public does not see his achievements the way he does, as he is looking forward to a positive legacy after spending more than seven years in the White House. And, of course, the international public is undoubtedly reacting very similarly despite some of his triumphs at home and abroad.
For example, The New York Times underlined his view that “his bailouts of the [US] economy and auto industry… prevented the Great Recession from haemorrhaging into a Great Depression,” and the paper added, “historians agree”. He also pointed out that he has “avoided the military misadventures of his predecessor, George W. Bush” who sent American troops to Iraq on a very unsuccessful mission.
But obviously he overlooks his major failures after his first visit to Cairo, and later Jerusalem, that raised hope in the Middle East and elsewhere that these gestures would usher an Arab-Israeli peace settlement and transform the entire region. His reluctance to press forward in reconciling the Israelis and Palestinians remains a baffling turnabout.
If there is anything that should motivate him nowadays in proceeding once again onwards are the sordid current reports concerning Palestinian youngsters, boys and girls, in resisting Israeli aggression and yearning for justice in the Holy Land.
A recent front-page news story in The New York Times, authored by Diaa Hadid from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, revealed that the number of Palestinian prisoners under 18 more than doubled to 430 from 170 before the stabbings and shooting and vehicular attacks began on October 1. “Of them, 103 were 16 or younger, up from 32.
She wrote: “The increase reflects the Israeli crackdown on Palestinians who throw stones or otherwise confront soldiers and civilians among an outbreak of attacks in which nearly half of the suspects are teenagers. It has renewed a debate over how Israel’s military justice system, which prosecutes Palestinians from the West Bank, differs from the courts that cover Israeli citizens and Palestinian resident of [occupied] Jerusalem, and especially how it handles very young offenders.
“Nobody doubts what she did,” Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group, B’tselem said of Dima [a 12-year-old girl], but if she was an Israeli child, it would be impossible under Israeli law to sentence a child this young for an actual jail term.” (Dima was sentenced to four-and-a-half-month term but served half the time).
Most West Bank suspects are interrogated alone and reportedly had faced some form of physical abuse and were not informed of their rights.
Last Thursday, another shameless act by Israeli forces was committed when they killed two Palestinian siblings — a young pregnant woman and her 16-year-old brother — at an Israeli military checkpoint in Ramallah where the Palestinian National Authority maintains its headquarters.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the silence of the international community after Israel shot the couple, following alleging that she threw a knife at an Israeli officer who was just 20 metres away. The recent violence has left more than 200 Palestinians dead.
More abuse of the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank was revealed last week with claims of a four-fold increase from last year in the rate of Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes and structures, which reportedly left a record-high 808 Palestinians displaced since the start of the year. According to UN documentation, the Israeli occupation authorities have destroyed some 585 Palestinian structures across the Occupied Palestinian Territories since January.
All eyes, meanwhile, are focused on the upcoming French sponsored international conference on a two-state solution process, which is set to start on May 30. This will be the first concrete step to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since the failed shuttle diplomacy launched by US Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013.
Interestingly, neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are invited to the meeting, for fear that the Israelis will boycott the event. In fact they announced their boycott of the session, a development that they hope will backfire on whatever the event will propose. In most views, Israel is not seen as a serious negotiator since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shunned any face-to-face meeting with the Palestinian leadership. The participants include the so-called Middle East Quartet — the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations — and the 22-member Arab League. But, if successful, an international peace conference will be launched later this summer.
But the focus of this international meeting is likely to be on Obama, who may still be hesitant to make any serious move because of the upcoming US election.
Source: gulfnews.com
Brian Vines The Guardian There are 1.9 billion Muslims worldwide, and Muhammad, or one of its variants, is the most common name in the world. In America, 3.3 million people identify as Muslim, according to a recent Pew study. While former GOP contender Ben Carson would “absolutely not agree” with the US being run by … Continued
Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney talks to BBC News about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. In her interview, she discusses his disparaging comments toward Muslims and women. Clooney talks about how Trump demonizes all Muslims and portrays them as people who hate the American way of life, despite many Muslims living comfortably in U.S. society. … Continued
BY Jay Karr The Island Packet Jack Shaheen, the son of Lebanese Christian immigrants, began his groundbreaking research into how Arabs and Muslims are demonized in American pop culture in the 1970s. Today, he says, anti-Muslim bias is worse than ever. Read more here
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