Back when I was in Catholic elementary school and in the Boy Scouts, we would often be enlisted to participate in fund-raising drives that had us going door-to-door in our neighborhoods collecting money for various charities or causes (school or church related projects, scouting trips, etc). Engaging in this exercise, year after year, taught us some lessons about human behavior. Read More »
Air Date: 9/22/2011
Arab American comedians, Dean Obeidallah and Aron Kader, discuss their latest comedy tour “Arabs Gone Wild”; Bill Press, political commentator and host of the “Bill Press Show.” Read More »
This was a disturbing and dangerous week at the United Nations. After all the drama leading up to this session of the General Assembly, we come away with three troubling facts clearly established: the Palestinians, despite a valiant effort, are no closer to a state; the Israelis are more isolated, yet more emboldened than before; while the United States emerges from the week weaker and less trusted as a world leader. Read More »
It took mass demonstrations followed by the take-over of their embassy in Egypt last week for some in Israel to wake up to the fact that the Palestinian issue remains a flash point for Arab public opinion. The U.S. Congress and policy-makers in Washington, on the other hand, appear to remain oblivious to this rather obvious reality. Read More »
H.R.H. Prince Turki Al Faisal, Chairman, King Faisal Center and Former Ambassador to the United States and United Kingdom; @SultanAlQassemi, Columnist and Social Media Commentator Read More »
"To govern is to choose, and the choices made [by the Bush Administration] in 2002 were fateful. The United States began that year shocked and wounded, but with tremendous strategic advantages. Its population was more closely united...World opinion was strongly sympathetic. Longtime allies were eager to help...The federal budget was nearly in balance...All that was required was to think broadly about the threats to the country, and creatively about the responses. Read More »
Air Date: 9/8/2011
Eric Treene, Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination at the U.S. Department of Justice; Hind Khoury, Former Ambassador of Palestine to France; Rashid Ghazi, Director of the new film Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football; Kathy Kiely, Managing Editor of Politics for the National Journal Read More »
For Arab Americans, the 2012 election will be different. Many of the same critical issues that shaped the 2008 contest are still in play, and will define the national agenda in 2012: Iraq remains unsettled; there is no Israeli-Palestinian peace; the U.S. economy is still in shambles; and intense partisanship continues to impede solutions to some of our nation's most pressing problems. Nevertheless, this election will be different. Read More »
In the past few weeks, the Republican presidential primary contest has become more confusing and, for some in the GOP, disheartening. For months now, the rather lackluster field of ten or so announced Republican candidates has been raising money, hiring staff, and campaigning vigorously in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina—sites of some of the earliest contests in the 2012 presidential nominating contest. Read More »
For months now, the world has witnessed an acceleration of deadly violence in Syria, as the Assad government has resorted to increasingly brutal methods in an effort to smash a mass uprising in the country. While the government maintains that it has offered the protesters a range of reform proposals, their heavy-handed and lethal repression of largely peaceful demonstrations has called into question the seriousness of their intention to change their approach to governance. Read More »
Several sad parallels can be found in the bumbling way Washington dealt with raising the debt ceiling and averting financial catastrophe, and the U.S.'s overall handling of the search for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Read More »
Critics' reactions to polling results can sometimes be as interesting and disturbing as the results themselves. During the month of July, we released the findings of a six nation survey of Arab public opinion on topics ranging from the standing of the U.S. two years after President Obama's celebrated Cairo University speech, to evolving Arab attitudes toward Iran, and the expectations created by the "Arab Spring". Read More »
Iran's favorable ratings are in a "freefall" across the Arab World, with Iran's behavior in Iraq, Bahrain, and the Arab Gulf region being viewed negatively by most Arabs. These are a few of the key findings of an Arab American Institute poll conducted by Zogby International during the first three weeks of June, 2011. The poll surveyed over 4,000 Arabs from Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and UAE, and has a margin of error of 3.5% (in Morocco, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) and 4.5% (in Lebanon, Jordan, and UAE). Read More »
Air Date: 7/28/2011
Hannah Rosenthal, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, U.S. Department of State; Salam Al-Marayati, Executive Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), Geneive Abdo, Fellow and Iran analyst at The Century Foundation. Read More »
In July of 2002 I was in Damascus, Syria, having been invited by the U.S. Embassy to deliver an address at the University. I was delighted that the auditorium was full, but a touch nervous since I had chosen to speak on the challenges facing the country. Read More »
Radwan Ziadeh, Director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and visiting scholar at the George Washington University; Lara Friedman, Director of Policy and Government Relations at Americans for Peace Now; Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Read More »
Air Date: 7/14/2011
Maen Areikat, PLO Chief Representative to the U.S.; Norman Ornstein, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor, University of Maryland Read More »
A few months back I had a quick exchange with President Obama about the U.S. standing in the Arab World. When I mentioned that we would be conducting a poll to assess Arab attitudes two years after his Cairo speech, he responded that he expected that the ratings would be quite low and would remain low until the U.S. could help find a way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Read More »
On the very day that The New York Times reported that the Israeli military had demolished the homes of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley in order to clear the area to consolidate Israeli control, that very same military was being rebuffed in its efforts to remove an illegal Jewish settler outpost in that very same occupied West Bank. Read More »
Air Date: 7/7/2011
Jeremy Ben-Ami, President, J Street; George Cody, Executive Director, American Task Force for Lebanon; Dan Friedman, Staff Writer, National Journal Read More »
#NC lawmaker equates Islamic prayer w/ terror http://t.co/G9sp1NeLC1 @mostrolenk @aaiusa h/t @ozzyformayor
about 6 hours, 31 minutes ago.
Latest poll to be released Friday finds Americans are divided on continuing aid to #Egypt: http://t.co/1spZM1m9d2
about 9 hours, 12 minutes ago.
RT @MaiE_89: In the 1990’s, #Egypt had a 60% favorable rating among Americans, while today only 36% of US views the country positively via @AAIUSA
about 9 hours, 15 minutes ago.
Looking at Iran by James Zogby
Kahlil Gibran Awards Gala - April 16, 2013President Obama got it just about perfect in his Jerusalem speech when he urged Israelis to see the world through the eyes of Palestinians. That portion of his remarks was so compelling it deserves to be quoted in full: Read More »
Air Date: 5/31/2012
Fellows from Syracuse University’s “Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program (LDF); Bill Press, Host of the “Bill Press Show” and author of the new book, The Obama Hate Machine: The Lies, Distortions, and Personal Attacks on the President---and Who Is Behind Them. Read More »
The story of Arab Americans coming of age as an organized community is a classic American tale of immigrants seeking opportunity, benefiting from America’s freedoms, but also experiencing, at times, the dark side of exclusion and discrimination that has so often been a part of our nation’s history. Read More »
Apr 16 2013
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