Egyptian blogger who posted images of police brutality booted from YouTube

Wow. This is really too bad — a blow to all cyber-dissidents around the world.

Check out my article on the political implications of Arab and Iranian bloggers: Arab and Iranian Bloggers: Emerging Threat to the Official Line

CAIRO (CNN) — An award-winning Egyptian human rights activist who posts
videos about police abuse  said he had his account suspended by YouTube because of complaints that the videos contain “inappropriate material.”

 

 

 

Wael Abbas, an anti-torture watchdog, told CNN on Wednesday that there have been 100 videos posted on his account containing images of torture, police brutality, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, and election irregularities. Material he has posted is no longer available on the popular video-sharing Web site.
      He said YouTube sent him an e-mail saying they suspended it. “They didn’t ask me to remove it. They said ‘your account isn’t working,’ ” he said.
      When asked about the account, a YouTube spokesperson said, “We take these matters very seriously, but we don’t comment on individual videos.”
      YouTube regulations state that “graphic or gratuitous violence” is not allowed and violations of the terms of use could result in the ending of an account and deleting all of the videos in it.
      “YouTube prohibits inappropriate content on the site, and our community effectively polices the site for inappropriate material,” the spokesperson said. “Users can flag content that they feel is inappropriate and once it is flagged it is reviewed by our staff and removed from the system within minutes if it violates our Community Guidelines or Terms of Use. We also disable the accounts of repeat offenders.”
      Abbas admitted that some of the videos were in fact “graphic,” but said it is important to convey strong imagery to underscore the issue of abuse and make an “impact on public opinion.” 
      He likened the importance of such graphic imagery to the photos and videos that emerged in 2004 and illustrated the brutality in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, stoking international outrage.
      “We managed to direct the attention of the people to something that was taboo, something that was never discussed before — which is police brutality and torture inside police stations,” said Abbas, referring to his videos.
      The 33-year-old Abbas also operates one of Egypt’s best known blogs, misrdigital.com, and the popularity exists in large part to the frequent postings about police abuse. 
      He has gotten international notice recently, with the International Center for Journalists recently awarding a Knight International Journalism Award to Abbas for his work.  In one prominent incident, Abbas posted a video on his blog of a police officer binding and sodomizing an Egyptian bus driver who intervened in a dispute between police and another driver. 
      The video was one of the factors that led the conviction of two police officers, who were sentenced to three years each in connection with the incident. “It’s the first time Egyptian people saw something like that,” Abbas said, referring to beatings and torture. “It was a shock to the Egyptian people.”
      The blogger, who said he’s in a “state of shock” because he lost videos he’s uploaded for years, said he might resort to campaigning against YouTube. “We thought that YouTube was our ally,” Abbas said. “It helped show the truth in countries like Burma … With what they did now, it doesn’t seem like that anymore,” Abbas said.
      Abbas said he has also had a problem with Yahoo! because it shut down two
of his e-mail accounts, accusing him of being a spammer.

Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal Vexed Nixon

fascinating article, particularly on the heels of the Annapolis meeting:

By DAVID STOUT

Published: November 29, 2007 

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 — In July 1969, as the world was spellbound by the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, President Richard M. Nixon and his close advisers were quietly fretting about a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Their main worry was not a potential enemy of the United States, but one of America’s closest friends.

“The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons,” Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser, warned Mr. Nixon in a memorandum dated July 19, 1969 — part of a newly released trove of documents.

Israel’s nuclear arms program, which Israel has never officially conceded exists, was believed to have begun at least several years before, but it was causing special problems for the young Nixon administration. For one thing, the president was preparing for a visit by its prime minister, Golda Meir, who was also in her first year in office and whose toughness was already legendary.

Should Washington insist that Israel rein in its development of nuclear weapons? What would the United States do if Israel refused? Perhaps the solution lay in deliberate ambiguity, or simply pretending that America did not know what Israel was up to. These were some of the options that Mr. Kissinger laid out for Mr. Nixon on that day before men first walked on the moon.

The Nixon White House’s concerns over Israel’s weapons were detailed in documents from the Nixon Presidential Library that were released on Wednesday by the National Archives under an executive order that requires that classified documents be reviewed and possibly declassified after 25 years.

The documents provide insights into America’s close, but by no means problem-free, relationship with Israel. They also serve as a reminder that concerns over nuclear arms proliferation in the Middle East, now focused on Iran, are decades old.

The papers also allude to a 1972 campaign by friends of W. Mark Felt, then the second-ranking F.B.I. official, to have him named director of the bureau after the death of J. Edgar Hoover in May of that year. Mr. Nixon, of course, did not take the advice, instead naming L. Patrick Gray. Mr. Felt later became the famous anonymous source “Deep Throat,” whose revelations during Watergate helped topple the president.

There are also snippets about Washington’s desire to manipulate relations with Saudi Arabia, so that the Saudis might help to broker a Middle East peace deal; discussion of possibly supporting a Kurdish uprising in Iraq; and a 1970 clash in which four Israeli fighters shot down four Russian MIG-21s over eastern Egypt, even though the Israelis were outnumbered by two-to-one.

But perhaps the most interesting material, and the most pertinent given the just-completed peace conference in Annapolis, Md., concerns Israel and its relations with its neighbors, as well as with the United States.

“There is circumstantial evidence that some fissionable material available for Israel’s weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States about 1965,” Mr. Kissinger noted in his long memorandum.

He also said that one problem with trying to persuade Israel to freeze its nuclear program was that inspections would be useless, conceding that “we could never cover all conceivable Israeli hiding places.”

“This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us,” Mr. Kissinger said, “and may even have stolen from us.”

Although Israel has never publicly acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons, scientists and arms experts have no doubt that it has them, and the United States’ reluctance to pressure Israel to disarm has made America vulnerable to accusations that it has a double standard when it comes to stopping the spread of weapons in the Middle East.

Mr. Kissinger’s memo, written barely two years after the 1967 Middle East war and while memories of the Holocaust were still vivid among the first Israelis, implicitly acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself, as subsequent American administrations have done.

But Mr. Kissinger reflected at length on the quandary faced by the United States. “Israel will not take us seriously on the nuclear issue unless they believe we are prepared to withhold something they very much need,” he wrote, referring to a pending sale of Phantom fighter jets to Israel.

“On the other hand, if we withhold the Phantoms and they make this fact public in the United States, enormous political pressure will be mounted on us,” Mr. Kissinger went on. “We will be in an indefensible position if we cannot state why we are withholding the planes. Yet if we explain our position publicly, we will be the ones to make Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons public with all the international consequences this entails.”

One of those consequences might be to “spark a Soviet nuclear guarantee for the Arabs, tighten the Soviet hold on the Arabs and increase the danger of our involvement,” Mr. Kissinger wrote at another point.

After he met with Mrs. Meir at the White House in late September 1969, Mr. Nixon said: “The problems in the Mideast go back centuries. They are not susceptible to easy solution. We do not expect them to be susceptible to instant diplomacy.”

But Avner Cohen, the author of “Israel and the Bomb,” (Columbia University Press, 1998) who is a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, said on Wednesday that there was enough historical evidence to indicate that the president and the prime minister had reached a secret understanding on at least one issue: Israel would keep its nuclear devices out of sight and not test them, and the United States would tolerate the situation and not press Israel to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that has been embraced by scores of countries around the world.

“That understanding remains to this day,” Mr. Cohen said.

Can Hamas be Ignored?

by Vivian Salama

Middle East Times

Middle East author and historian Rashid Khalidi offered the following forecast for Tuesday’s peace gathering in Annapolis, “Cloudy with rain and a chance of storms.” He added, “That’s been the Middle East forecast for decades.”

The media has been criticized for its relentless skepticism of the “get together” – as one White House official described it – taking place in Maryland this week. For many, this multilateral gathering of more than two dozen delegations to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli issue is merely history repeating itself. In 2000, just as President Clinton was preparing to leave office, he invited the then-embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his beleaguered Palestinian counterpart Yasser Arafat together at Camp David to negotiate a final settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Seven years later, a politically besieged President George W. Bush has invited Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas – both of whom are fighting to stay for political survival – to make long overdue concessions and revitalize final status talks. Photo-ops and cliché catch phrases like “Road Map to Peace” will not undo the decades of damage this conflict has inflicted upon both sides. Israel’s Prime Minster Olmert has lost considerable support in Israel following his futile military campaign against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. President Abbas comes to the table representing a government that was not democratically elected by the majority of Palestinians, and so by attending the meeting – all the while further alienating Hamas which essentially rules over Gaza – he may be doing himself more harm than good.

Meanwhile, since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has been preoccupied with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the greater War on Terrorism, all the while neglecting this conflict which continues to be a source, if not a consistent grievance for much of the Middle East and the Muslim world. The War on Terrorism ultimately amounts to a war of ideas. To win the war of ideas, the U.S. must take genuine steps toward solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. That’s where Annapolis comes in.

British-Arab historian Albert Habib Hourani wrote shortly into the Suez Crisis of 1956 that “[He] who rules the Near East rules the world; and he who has interest in the world is bound to concern itself with the Near East.” With just over one year left on the clock, the administration, led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has put considerable time and energy in recent months into assuring both sides that it is committed to finding a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. How the Bush administration intends to help foster the creation of a Palestinian state when neither the United States nor Israel recognize Hamas – elected democratically by the Palestinian people in January 2006 – has yet to be determined.

Much of the talk leading up to this meeting has revolved around the idea of concessions. Such a compromise would include full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank with the exception of a few areas amounting to minor border tweaks. Control of the city of Jerusalem would be shared along ethnic lines with commitments from both sides to strive for peaceful coexistence.

A positive aspect to staging the Annapolis gathering at this particular time is that the stakes are high for all the major players involved. The Bush administration, desperate to establish any kind of credibility in the region, knows that the road to fixing the diplomatic disaster created in Iraq runs through Jerusalem. Also, many Israelis, tired of the same old tug-of-war that has dictated the conflict, are pressing for the old “land for peace” notion that has popped up repeatedly in various peace processes involving Israel. Abbas and his Fatah party understand that a failure to achieve a final settlement for the majority of Palestinians will undermine the credibility he is struggling to retain in the face of Hamas. More poignant is that the United States and Israel understand this too.

Ultimately it is not what comes out of the meeting in Annapolis that will be telling, but rather, what is to follow. If the meeting can jump start a series of talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis, then hope is not lost. However, it is unrealistic to think that anything will be accomplished so long as the parties involved continue to isolate Hamas.

How the World Sees America – Beirut

On the subject of Lebanon, my friend and colleague Amar Bakshi is currently in Beirut as part of his wonderful series “How the World Sees America,” Washingtonpost.com. 

Click here to watch Amar’s story and read his blog as the country attempts to sort through the current political crisis and appoint a new president.

Constitutional impasse in Lebanon

Over the coming days, I will be writing a lot about the upcoming Annapolis “get together” (as White House officials are calling it) as well as the escalating crisis in Lebanon.  In the meantime, BBC’s Kim Ghattas provides a great summary of the political situation in Lebanon and what it could mean for the country’s ever-fragile stability.

Constitutional impasse in Lebanon

Kim Ghattas BBC News, Beirut

As Lebanon continues to wait for a new president and inches closer to the possibility of a constitutional vacuum, a sense of doom is settling over the country.

Issam – a 50-year-old owner of a large business – sends his wife to stock up on tinned food for their mountain house in fear of a possible war.

At a jeweller’s shop, the talk is all about the rising price of gold. “Every time the price of gold rises like that, there’s a war in the region,” says one woman.

Trying to make appointments with people is sometimes impossible – “Call me tomorrow, who knows if we’ll still be alive then” is often the answer.

And then there are those who have postponed all their plans, from going on holiday to buying new clothes, until after 24 November – the date on which the current president, pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud is meant to leave office. Parliament needs to elect a new president before then or the country will plunge deeper into a crisis that has paralysed political life for the last year.

The election has been postponed twice already because of a lack of quorum, as rival camps – the anti-Syrians and the pro-Syrians – try to hammer out an agreement outside parliament. The next attempt has been slated for 12 November but is most likely to be postponed again.

Assassinations

The 6-year-long mandate of President Emile Lahoud was extended for three years by a vote in parliament in 2004.

The extension required a constitutional amendment which legislators approved after much pressure and arm-twisting from Damascus. At the time, Syria was still the political power-broker in Lebanon, where it maintained more than 10,000 troops.

The vote extension turned out to be the start of Lebanon’s worst crisis since the end of the 15-year-long civil war in 1990.

Since 2004, there have been eight assassinations of high-profile anti-Syrian figures, including legislators and the former prime minister Rafik Hariri, massive demonstrations by both Syria’s opponents and its supporters, and a devastating war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Today, the situation is as follows:

The anti-Syrian camp has a majority in parliament for the first time in decades and wants to use it to install someone from its bloc as president, thus reclaiming one of the last vestiges of Syrian influence in Lebanon.

Four anti-Syrian legislators have already been assassinated, and to avoid being deprived of the slim majority they still have in parliament, members of the anti-Syrian bloc have checked in en masse into a highly-secured hotel until a president has been elected.

Stand-off

The pro-Syrian opposition accuses the majority of doing America’s bidding in Lebanon and insists on a compromise candidate, someone who will protect Hezbollah and its weapons.

The two sides have been in a stand-off for two years, with the opposition maintaining a sit-in in the centre of Beirut, effectively besieging the prime minister’s offices and other government buildings.

For such a small country, Lebanon commands a lot of international attention.

The country’s presidential election was on the agenda of the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she held talks with some of her European counterparts in Turkey over the weekend, on the sidelines of a summit on Iraq and its neighbours.

Lebanon also came up in talks between US President George W Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Washington this week, and French presidential envoys have been sent to Damascus and Beirut.

The Arab League regularly sends representatives to Beirut and the Russians have also weighed in with a call on Lebanese leaders to “realise the historic responsibility and reach accord” at this “fateful” moment for Lebanon.

Regional tensions

Many of the regional issues and tensions come together here and often threaten to boil over: the Arab-Israeli conflict, Shia-Sunni tensions and more importantly the US-Iran stand-off.

The battle for influence over the Middle East is being fought not just in Iraq but also in Lebanon, and the election of a new president has in effect become a showdown between the US and Europe on one side, backing the parliamentary majority, and Iran and Syria on the other, supporting the opposition, led by the Shia militant group Hezbollah.

There are fears that if Lebanon fails to elect a new president, it could plunge into a constitutional vacuum and possibly civil strife.

The fate of Lebanon is in the hands of Bush and Sarkozy Headline, Al Akhbar newspaper

This in turn could have implications for the wider region, with the possibility that a conflagration could start in Beirut and spread throughout the Middle East.

Many observers, including some members of the anti-Syrian camp, advocate a compromise solution in the form of a consensus candidate to avoid rocking the boat at a time when the region is unstable and talk of war between the US and Iran is in the air.

Staunch members of the anti-Syrian camp say a compromise candidate would mean giving in to Hezbollah, however.

Rival administrations?

The US, worried about the possibility of losing Lebanon to the Syria-Iran camp, is sending strong signals – in statements by Condoleezza Rice and the US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad – that it believes the majority should choose the president.

If no president is elected by November 24, the Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, an ally of the West, takes over executive power under the constitution.

But the opposition has already warned it will not recognise Mr Siniora’s powers and there are fears it might form a rival cabinet.

The parliamentary majority has also threatened to elect a president by a simple majority vote in the assembly, instead of the required two thirds – a move the opposition rejects as illegal.

Such a split could also lead to the setting up of two rival administrations, a sad reminder of the last few years of Lebanon’s civil war when a similar situation arose.

“The fate of Lebanon is in the hands of Bush and Sarkozy” was the headline of the opposition al Akhbar newspaper on Wednesday – and in the hands of Syria and Iran, the anti-Syrian camp might retort.

What is clear is that as so often in its history, Lebanon finds itself – or allows itself to be – at the centre of a tug-of-war between world powers, a struggle that is probably not going to end on November 24, unless signs of a regional agreement somehow emerge.

And so holidays and clothes-buying will most likely be postponed again and more tinned food bought.

CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS If no president is elected by November 24, the Prime Minister Fouad Siniora takes over executive power under the constitution The president must be elected by a two-thirds majority in parliament The current president had his term extended by three years in 2004

Gaza Crisis; Mubarak-Olmert Meeting; Annapolis At Last

This is a rather moving interactive feature by Steven Erlanger, the New York Times correspondent in Israel, on the devastating economic crisis in Gaza.  I recommend it if you have a few minutes:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/11/18/weekinreview/20771118_GAZA_FEATURE.html

I did a story several years ago on the lack of foreign investment in Gaza.  Click here to read it. Also, just as my skepticism took on a new form, the invitations have been sent out and a date set for the Annapolis (Maryland) Palestinian-Israeli summit.  (Alas, I did not receive an invitation – it must be lost in the mail.  To find out who did, click here)  Ehud Olmert was in Egypt with President Hosni Mubarak and the two men (both of whose countries are the first and second highest recipients of US dollars, respectively) gave the thumbs-up to the conference. 

Here’s the story from the New  York Times:

Wanted: Participants for Mideast Talks

By HELENE COOPER and ISABEL KERSHNER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — The Bush administration finally acknowledged publicly on Tuesday that it had issued formal invitations to 40 countries and organizations that it hopes will attend a heavily anticipated Middle East peace conference scheduled for next week in Annapolis, Md. But the long, drawn-out route that State Department officials followed before making the acknowledgment reflected the high-stakes gamble that the administration is taking, as well as the unsettled nature of the outcome. Even late Tuesday afternoon, administration officials were still in negotiations with their Arab counterparts over whether Saudi Arabia and Syria would send their foreign ministers to the conference, or make do with lower-level envoys.

President Bush telephoned King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to enlist his support for the conference, and in particular to try to get an agreement from him that the Saud family would be represented at the conference by Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, administration officials said.

The presence of Prince Saud is seen as critical to assure a certain level of Arab commitment to the peace process. But the Saudi royal family has been unwilling to give the Annapolis conference a high-level endorsement without assurances that the negotiations will be substantive, with real concessions from Israel, including a freeze on settlements that would lead to Israeli withdrawal from land that it seized in 1967.

Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, would say only that Mr. Bush and King Abdullah had “shared their views of the process that is under way between the Israelis, Palestinians and the international community.”

C. David Welch, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said in a news conference on Tuesday evening that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent an invitation to both Prince Saud and the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem. Mr. Welch said the decision to attend was up to the individual countries, but added, “I’m hopeful and expectant of a positive response.”

An Arab official with knowledge of the negotiations said it was likely that Prince Saud would attend the Annapolis conference. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic protocol.

Mr. Welch said “we won’t turn off the microphone” if Mr. Moallem, who rarely interacts with administration officials because of administration policy toward Syria, attends the conference and wishes to speak there. Israeli officials had asked that Syria be invited, and several State Department officials have said privately that it would be a mistake to exclude Syria from the meeting.

If Saudi officials sit down with the Israelis, it will be a rare event at public Israeli-Palestinian talks. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to the United States, attended a peace conference in Madrid in the fall of 1991, but as an observer, not a formal participant.

Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel, although Saudi officials have also urged the Bush administration to push hard to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli peace issue. There have been some unconfirmed reports of other contacts between Israeli and Saudi officials, including some earlier this year.

The conference, which will begin with a preliminary meeting in Washington on Nov. 26 and move to Annapolis on Nov. 27, is supposed to initiate final-status peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to settle the long-running, seemingly intractable issues that have bedeviled peace negotiators since 1979.

“This is the holy grail of diplomacy,” a senior administration official said. “We’re trying to rally the Arab world for support of this process, and they are master fence-sitters.”

Mr. Bush is expected to begin the Annapolis conference with a substantive speech, and part of the American effort to woo Arab leaders includes assurances to them that he will lay out an ambitious agenda that will pin all sides to firm negotiations on the status of Jerusalem, the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the contours of a Palestinian state.

“This is the point where the rubber meets the road,” said Martin Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel. “The United States really wants for Arab states to turn up, to bless the process.”

Until Tuesday evening, State Department officials would not officially confirm even the date of the conference.

“My hope and desire is that we can talk to you, in the not-too-distant future, about not only the list of invitees, but the date as well as the agenda for the Annapolis conference,” Sean D. McCormack, the department spokesman, said at a briefing early in the day, in language that was opaque even by diplomatic standards. “I anticipate there’s going to be a day that all the participants are going to be at Annapolis, and there are probably going to be events the day before and the day after.”

Appearing with the Israeli prime minister in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday gave his full endorsement to the scheduled gathering, and raised hopes among Israeli officials of wider Arab participation at the meeting.

“Obviously we would hope that Egypt’s position will be representative of a larger Arab position,” said Mark Regev, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman.

At a joint news conference at Sharm el Sheik, an Egyptian Red Sea resort, both leaders billed the Annapolis meeting as a springboard for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward a final settlement of the conflict.

Israeli officials described Tuesday’s summit meeting as “covering bases” ahead of a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on Thursday. Israel sees Arab support for the budding Israel-Palestinian peace process as crucial, to give added legitimacy to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and Isabel Kershner from Sharm el Sheik, Egypt.

Arab-Americans organize to challenge Hollywood stereotypes

(Pictures from the event below — thanks to my friend Yasmin Hamidi for these great photos) 

The Associated Press

Friday, November 16, 2007

NEW YORK: A leading Arab-American activist said Friday he plans to open an office in Hollywood to challenge stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. entertainment industry.

 

“The equation on American television and film is, Arab equals terrorist,” said Jack Shaheen, who was in New York on Friday for a meeting of the Network of Arab-American Professionals.

The group is comprised of about 5,000 young professionals who “are all around us,” said Dena Zakaria, a Philadelphia lawyer whose parents come from Syria.

“They’re your doctors, your lawyers, your engineers,” she said. “They’re part of the fabric of American society, they’re integral to the nation’s landscape. We’re here to stay.”

Zakaria said that despite efforts by the government and others to combat stereotypes, “the perception of Arabs by American citizens is getting worse and worse.”

“The negative stereotypes of the Arab ‘bad guy’ without a counter-image have prompted this groundswell of activism by members of the community,” she said.

This year’s conference will include presentations by Shaheen on his book, “Reel Bad Arabs,” which examines how films present Arab stereotypes; the Palestinian ambassador to the United States, Afif Safieh; and the Egyptian novelist and feminist, Nawal El Saadawi.

Shaheen, a 72-year-old Lebanese American, said he plans to set up an office in Hollywood to lobby filmmakers and television producers, and will recruit staff members this weekend at the conference.

He says he has compiled about 50 examples of films and TV programs “that blend the Arab terrorist image with images of ordinary Arabs and Muslims in America.”

“I want these young Arab-American professionals to help squash this damaging virus of hate,” he says. “The only way that can happen is if they can take steps to meet with producers, writers, directors and not let these manufactured prejudices continue.”

The organization was founded in January 2001, nine months before Sept. 11.

Yasmin Hamidi, a network spokeswoman, said the terror attacks fueled the growth of the organization.

“Arabs and Muslims in America felt an urgent need to organize because the community was under increased scrutiny,” Hamidi said.

Below: Far Left, Afif Safieh, head of PLO Mission to the US; Jack Shaheen; gentleman nearest to the right, Khalil Jehshan of Pepperdine University and one of the founding fathers of the Arab American lobby.

Egyptian Author and Feminist Nawal Al-Saadawi

Garcias Are Catching Up to Joneses

Sam Roberts

New York Times  

(Nov. 17) – Step aside Moore and Taylor. Welcome Garcia and Rodriguez.

Smith remains the most common surname in the United States, according to a new analysis released yesterday by the Census Bureau. But for the first time, two Hispanic surnames — Garcia and Rodriguez — are among the top 10 most common in the nation, and Martinez nearly edged out Wilson for 10th place.

NAAP Conference a success

Spent all of yesterday at the Annual Conference for the Network of Arab American Professionals (NAAP).  I served on a panel discussing how to get published with two incredibly impressive women, Terri Ginsberg and Deborah Kanafai - both of whom have experience publishing books of different kinds.  The theme of the conference was reshaping the image of Arabs in American society, particularly following September 11th.  The keynote speaker, Jack Shaheen, delivered a very interesting (and to some, incredibly moving) speech on the need for an Arab Lobby in Hollywood (in addition to Washington) to change the image of Arabs in cinema.  All in all, it was a lovely weekend.  It was the first time I had attended such an event and I was proud to see so many bright and successful people of Middle Eastern descent under one roof. – V

Detained Muslim Brotherhood Members Face New Escalations

Received this from a young member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood today.  This is an example of the way security forces are cracking down on various opposition groups – the Muslim Brotherhood especially as they pose the biggest political threat to the Mubarak regime.

 State Security Apparatus escalated its assault on detained Muslim Brotherhood members when officers woke them up at 2am a couple of days ago for “inspections purposes.”
The detainees, praised by a civilian court as “well known, reputable and respectable businessmen,  engineers, doctors, accountants and professionals” we dealt with in a humiliating manner, as inspection dogs were used to walk them out of their cells, and they were kept all together in one cell, standing up and facing the wall while their cells were being inspected.
Inspection lasted for 5 hours, as the officers only left at 7am. This five hours inspections was fruitless, as nothing “illegal” was found with any of the detainees, whose belongings were scattered in their cells.
Officers presented no justification for this “night raid” of Tura and Burj Al Arab Prisons, the only place in Egypt where political opponents used to sleep not awaiting a “3am knock on the door” by State Security Apparatus coming to arrest them.
Forty Brotherhood leaders, including Deputy Chief Khayrat El Shater, are currently standing before a military tribunal. Forty one sessions have been held so far, while all international and local observers, journalists and human rights activists have been denied access.
In the last few sessions, the defense team discredited the financial report on the detainees’ assets, both in terms of content and legality. Reports of this coming out of the court room through lawyers and detainees’ families seems to have provoked State Security Officers, who retaliated by the night inspections.
Health conditions of the detainees have been deteriorating over the past months, due to the lack of sufficient health care. At least seven defendants were unable to attend a few sessions due to health problems, while AbdelRahman Seoudi, one of the defendants, suffered a heart attack in the last session.
These intimidations, accompanied by intense and long court sessions, have a negative effect on the detainees’ health. Court sessions take place at least three times a week in the Haikstep military base’s desert outside Cairo, with each session lasting for 7-8 hours, and the defendants spending at least two more hours in transportation between the military base and prison.
They try to use the few hours they have left resting and reviewing the case documents to prepare for the next sessions. They hardly have time to meet with lawyers, so they have to do a lot of homework themselves, while leaves only a few hours of rest. Now, the regime is intimidating them in these few hours, which would have a negative effect on their health.
The case of the Muslim Brotherhood members standing before a military tribunal is “politically motivated, and all the charges are groundless and fabricated with no substantial evidence whatsoever,” as a civilian court put it. MB leaders who were detained from their houses in night raids starting 14th December last year, and lasting for 3 weeks, were acquitted four times by civilian courts, and a fifth court found the president’s decision to transfer them to a military tribunal to be “unconstitutional,” yet they were never released.   
Now it seems that all that is not enough injustice for the respectable detainees, so the regime is trying to humiliate them. It will never succeed in doing so, because the Egyptian people, as well as democracy and human rights activists all over the world, will continue to look up with full respect to the sacrifices of men who have sincerely served their country and their cause. The only worry is that these escalations would have a drastic effect on the detainees’ health.