A wicked mother, a delusional tyrant, a few camels - House of Saddam is a treat, writes Nancy Banks-Smith.

31 July 2008
The Guardian

By Mohammed Omer
31 July 2008
The Nation

I am a Palestinian journalist from Gaza. At the age of 17, I armed myself with a camera and a pen, committed to report accurately on events in Gaza. I have filed reports as Israeli fighter jets bombed Gaza City. I have interviewed mothers as they watched their children die in hospitals unequipped to serve them because of Israel's embargo. I have been recognized for my reporting, even in the United States and United Kingdom, where I have won two international awards. I have also been beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers.

This summer, at age 24, I was honored to learn that I had become the youngest journalist to receive the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for the famed American war reporter and awarded to journalists who counter propaganda with the truth. Although Israel has sealed Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinians in what many now call the world's largest open-air prison, Dutch MP Hans Van Baalen lobbied the Israeli government to let me leave Gaza to receive my award in person. Upon my return from London, I was surrounded by Israeli security officers. I was stripped naked at gunpoint, interrogated, kicked and beaten for more than four hours. At one point I fainted and then awakened to fingernails gouging at the flesh beneath my eyes. An officer crushed my neck beneath his boot and pressed my chest into the floor. Others took turns kicking and pinching me, laughing all the while. They dragged me by my feet, sweeping my head through my own vomit. I lost consciousness. I was told later that they transferred me to a hospital only when they thought I might die.

Today, I have difficulty breathing. I have abrasions and scratches on my chest and neck. My hands don't function well; typing is difficult. My doctor informed me that due to nerve damage from one kick, I may be unable to father children and will need to have an operation.

By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

30 July 2008

It is difficult to get an impartially accurate perspective on US-Middle East relations in Washington. This is because people involved with the region are either Middle Easterners who have brought their torrid battles to the United States, or Americans who have exacerbated our region's own proclivity for extremism with their romantic adventurism, ignorant militarism, or shameless pro-Israeli obsequiousness.

The lack of any knowledgeable and neutral American policy input on the Middle East leaves the United States these days incredulously enjoying dwindling credibility, impact and respect simultaneously, even while it unleashes its armed forces. A smarter approach would benefit from the rich reservoir of knowledge that exists among some of America's seasoned diplomats who have devoted their entire professional lives promoting US national interests in the region.

I had a chance to experience this last weekend during a working visit to the idyllic town of Woods Hole, on Massachusetts' enchanting Cape Cod. I spend several days intermittently discussing US-Middle East relations with a man who spent 35 years in that world - Robert Pelletreau, Jr., former Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, and ambassador to three Arab countries.

By Mark Elf, a member of Arab Media Watch and one of the contributors to the "Jews Sans Frontieres" blog.

29 July 2008

What games the mainstream plays for Israel. Oh, by the way Israel killed yet another child today. Or was it yesterday, or tomorrow. Actually this one was today. But look at how CNN reports the crime:

By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

28 July 2008

Since 9/11, the United States public diplomacy program has been one of the great self-induced hoaxes of modern American public life. It has been managed for the most part by a frightening combination of misguided lightweights and over-the-top ideological zealots. So when I heard the other day that a new man was put in charge - Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James Glassman - I read a speech he made to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, outlining his plans and principles.

I sensed for the first time in recent years that perhaps a new rational element was intruding into the legacy of intemperate arrogance that had been the defining hallmark of Washington's public diplomacy program since 2002. To test this hypothesis, I visited Glassman for a chat in his State Department office. My conclusion: There is good news and bad news to report.

By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

23 July 2008

It is a sign of the times that Barack Obama made his first two presidential campaign stops abroad in recent days to the two active theaters of war, where 180,000 American troops have been engaged in fighting for nearly the past six years. It would be useful to ask the right questions about these wars, now that a new leadership will take office in Washington. One good place to start is to learn the right lessons from the conduct and consequences of these wars, so that any mistakes here are not repeated elsewhere in the future.

The presidential hopeful has been accused of flip-flopping over the occupation, but he was never for full withdrawal, writes Sami Ramadani, Arab Media Watch adviser, a political exile from Saddam's regime, and a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University.

22 July 2008
The Guardian

By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

21 July 2008

When Washington decided that the third-ranking US State Department official would join the international talks with Iran in Geneva last Saturday, it was a smart move - not, as some might claim, a humiliating defeat for the United States. Israel for its part swallowed its pride - and its words - last Wednesday when it exchanged Lebanese prisoners for the bodies of its two soldiers whom Hizbullah had kidnapped in 2006 - sparking that summer's war.

Both the United States and Israel are doing things they had said they would never do - the US sits and talks with Iran before Tehran has suspended uranium enrichment, and Israel does a diplomatic deal to retrieve its soldiers' bodies after it had failed to achieve that goal by vicious and prolonged warfare. The fact that the US and Israel were both politically humbled during the same week has been widely interpreted as a double defeat, and victories for Iran and Hizbullah. That is too simplistic a reading of the dynamics in the region.