Religion Dispatches
…d manipulation of domestic passion is the Republicans’ forte. UPDATE: The Arab-American Institute has criticized the language change on Jerusalem. From its statement: The 2012 language was clearly an attempt to bring rhetoric in line with reality—the generally acknowledged fact accepted by all sides of the conflict that the final status of Jerusalem is an issue that needs to be determined in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians them…
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…en mocked, the OIC’s only competition in presumed irrelevance was long the Arab League, as jaded Arabs and Muslims struggled to determine whose global body was more completely pointless. By appointing an accomplished young lawyer as America’s envoy to the OIC, Obama is raising the organization’s profile. (Somebody listened.) Identifying the OIC as an expression of a collective Muslim will means attempting to forge, out of a messy mix of states, a…
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…yet made up his mind. Over the years he has played both sides of the anti-Arab political fence. He has said of Arabs in general: “You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.” More recently, when he called for “all the nasty people who hate Israel” to “vanish from our world,” he singled out the relatively moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and added, “May God strike them down with the plague along with al…
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…n 1920, Buber told the Zionist Congress that Jews were far from powerless. Arabs would respond to the choices Jews made. “It depends entirely on us,” he declared, whether Zionists are greeted by Palestinian Arabs as hated conquerors or beloved friends. There have always been Jews in Israel who recognized the prophetic wisdom in such words. Now they are being joined by growing numbers of Jews in the United States and around the world, who are actin…
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…Israel was compelled to fight for its life in 1967 against Egypt and other Arab nations determined to destroy it. But in fact Egypt massed troops on Israel’s border only because the Egyptians believed (from faulty intelligence) that Israel was preparing to invade its ally, Syria. Though that wasn’t true, it is true that Israeli military leaders were urging their civilian government to fight a war sooner rather than later. The Israelis knew that th…
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…e on his Facebook page that while it is normally wrong to harm an innocent Arab for another’s sin, ‘war is war;’” and Yisrael Rosen, who “cites the 11thcentury Torah commentator Rashi on starving an enemy population to death, and advocates making Gazans suffer until they turn on Hamas.” In expressing solidarity with Israel, American Jewish groups are supporting a populace that has largely lived in a bubble during the current conflict. Haaretz repo…
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…ed on “Oriented,” a new documentary that chronicles the lives of three gay Arab citizens of Israel, including Khader Abu Seif and “the dichotomy of his life as a gay Arab Israeli citizen considered an outcast by the Palestinian society for his sexuality and viewed with unease by some Israelis for his brand of nationality.” Mexico: Marriage equality advances; opponents take to the streets An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 people marched in Guadalajara,…
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…xample—we have to beg, persuade and harangue our allies not to turn to the United Nations to censure Israel, or to ask the European Union and the Arab League to keep the Palestinian Authority afloat. Why are we spending so much political capital on a country that does not hold to our ideals (political idealism), and offers us little in return (political realism)? For what reason should we continue to devote our diplomatic energies defending an all…
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…mic extremist. Winter-wear should avoid excesses of weather-protection. An Arab woman dressed in a thick coat, a fur hat and a large scarf may be interrogated. Temperatures should be well below freezing for such clothing to be permissible. (The same goes for white girls with dark features). Allergy-masks are to be avoided by Muslim women. (We urge you to get the shots.) Scarves to protect your coiffure from the wind should be small (no more than 4…
Read More…s out, these events were feared to be the sign of an Arab winter after the Arab Spring, and that the Arab world really was violently reactionary. Today’s events show us something else: rational actors, who died tried to protect the American who gave so much to them. There are numerous reports of Libyans dying protecting the compound where Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed, taking him to a hospital, and having both people on the street and the g…
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