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Blog — Posted by Jeffrey Wright
Friday March 08, 2013
AIPAC's hawkish resolutions undermine American claims that it would prefer to solve the dispute diplomatically and add suspicion to an already fractious Iranian-American relationship. Such needless provocations only hurt the US and Israel, since both countries would be much better off seeing the Iranian conflict resolved diplomatically. Read More »
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Wednesday February 27, 2013
Now that the Hagel confirmation fight is over, we can look back at what a strange and sad spectacle it’s been: Senators quoting the fever dreams of conservative activists on the Senate floor, McCarthyite insinuations of guilt by association, men who received Vietnam-era draft deferments questioning the patriotism of a man with two Purple Hearts, and attempts to smear Hagel merely because of his association with organizations representing Arab Americans, including AAI. Read More »
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Monday January 28, 2013
Friday marked the two-year anniversary of the beginning of the revolution that pushed Hosni Mubarak from power and ushered in a new era in Egyptian politics. As Tahrir Square fills again with protesters, this time shouting slogans against the Muslim Brotherhood and their president, Muhammad Morsi, it’s an important time to reflect on the revolution’s successes and failures. Read More »
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Wednesday January 23, 2013
On Capitol Hill today, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared in front of Senate and House committees to defend her handling of the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya last September. Read More »
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Monday January 07, 2013
Today’s big news in Washington is the announcement of President Obama’s nominations for two key foreign policy posts: former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel has been tapped to be the next Secretary of Defense and current Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism John Brennan will leave the White House to serve as director of the CIA. Both men must be confirmed by the Senate in hearings expected to begin later this month. Though both of these nominations are important in their own right, they also provide a window into the evolving foreign policy outlook of the Obama Administration. The results are decidedly mixed. Read More »
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Wednesday December 12, 2012
Since President Mohamed Morsi’s decree on Nov. 22, which placed his decisions above judicial review, Egypt has been in a state of perpetual political crisis, with each day bringing new demands and concessions from both Morsi and his secular opponents. Throughout it all, American diplomats and policy-makers have been remarkably silent Read More »
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Friday July 20, 2012
Just in time for Ramadan, a federal judge has ruled that an injunction preventing the opening of a new mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee is illegal and should be overturned, allowing the mosque’s members to use the space during the the Muslim holy month. Read More »
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Monday July 16, 2012
By Nama Khalil and Jeffrey Wright
On July 10, the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia held a hearing entitled “Chronic Kleptocracy: Corruption within the Palestinian Establishment.” As their title suggests, the hearings were meant to expose the corruption of Palestinian political institutions, particularly that of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Fatah Party that remains dominant within the PA. Read More »
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Wednesday July 11, 2012
Earlier this week, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the Chair of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced H.R. 6067, titled the Western Hemisphere Security Cooperation Act of 2012. The bill provides for an American response to a favorite bugaboo of conservative foreign policy types: the supposedly growing threat of Hezbollah’s operations in Latin America. The only problem is that the threat is overblown. Hezbollah’s activities in Latin America are limited to fundraising, not operations, and the idea that these activities threaten American interests is absurd on its face. Read More »
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Friday July 06, 2012
An Arab American businessman agreed to end his hunger strike yesterday after authorities in Dubai granted his request for bail. The case of Zack Shahin, an Arab American of Lebanese descent originally from Ohio, has strained the usually close relationship between the United States and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and raised concerns about the security of the large expatriate business community in Dubai and other Emirates. Read More »
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Friday June 29, 2012
In a video released this week by the Institute for Palestine Studies, Arab American Institute founder Jim Zogby sits down with Sandra Tamari, a Palestinian American activist recently detained at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. Read More »
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Friday June 29, 2012
After making an important statement about the strength of organized and motivated Arab American communities in the New Jersey primary between Reps. Bill Pascrell and Steve Rothman, Arab Americans around the country are looking to replicate their success in a number of key congressional races. One such race is in Ohio’s 9th Congressional district, where Rep. Marcy Kaptur will face Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher. Read More »
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Thursday June 21, 2012
The last two weeks have brought a flurry of news from Egypt, beginning with a court decision that invalidated a third of the seats in Parliament and allowed the ruling military council, the SCAF, to dismiss the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Parliament and seize legislative power. Read More »
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Tuesday June 19, 2012
Every June, Dearborn, Michigan, a Detroit suburb with one of the country’s most concentrated Arab American populations, holds an Arab International Festival, a celebration of Arab food, culture, music and Dearborn’s thriving Arab American community. In the last few years, though, the festival has also attracted all manner of anti-Muslim protesters, from Islamophobes warning of the imminent Sharia takeover to Christian missionaries interested in converting Muslims. Read More »
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Friday June 08, 2012
The New York Times reported this week on the efforts of current and former Obama Administration officials to reassure Israel about its continued resolve to prevent Iran from successfully building a nuclear weapon. Read More »
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Tuesday May 29, 2012
The Obama Administration should open the program to public debate so it could stand or fall on its merits. Either way, Americans deserve to know the details of what is being done in the name of their safety. Read More »
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Friday May 25, 2012
Given polling before the elections, this result is rather unexpected, and for forces sympathetic to the Jan. 25th Revolution, it represents a concerning embrace of Egypt’s status quo. Read More »
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Monday May 21, 2012
American policymakers should be cautious before endorsing Saudi efforts to expand the GCC. Such an expansion would spread Saudi influence and religion and stifle the legitimate democratic aspirations of the peoples of the peripheral GCC states, all in the name of providing deterrence against an Iranian threat that would be better managed through diplomacy. Read More »
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Monday May 14, 2012
In an amendment to an appropriations bill being considered last week, Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-NJ) [pictured left] attempted to strip federal funding from police departments that use ethnic or religious profiling, as the NYPD has done against American Muslims and Arab Americans in and around New York City. Read More »
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Thursday May 10, 2012
Rep. Holt has also introduced H.RES 651, a resolution which would express the House of Representatives’ disapproval of the NYPD’s use of ethnic and religious profiling. Though the resolution is nonbinding, its passage would be a strong signal to Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly that the Congress disapproves of their surveillance program. Read More »
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Looking at Iran by James Zogby
Kahlil Gibran Awards Gala - April 16, 2013
