Salon.com > arabs

“The Attack”: I married a suicide bomber

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 21:00:00 +0000

At the beginning of “The Attack,” a film by Lebanese-American director Ziad Doueiri that’s adapted from a bestselling novel by Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra, Dr. Amin Jaafari seems to have it all. More than that, Amin seems to embody the possibilities of a new Middle East. He’s both an Arab and an Israeli, a secular Muslim from the Occupied Territories who is now a full-fledged Israeli citizen and a respected surgeon at an elite Tel Aviv hospital. (Indeed, the actor who plays him, 36-year-old Ali Suliman, has a similar biography: Born in Nazareth and educated at a leading acting school in Tel Aviv, he has worked in Britain, Hollywood and Israel.)

But that vision of a Middle East beyond bigotry and warfare is in many ways an illusion. That’s the vital and essential delicacy of “The Attack”: Doueiri, himself a child of the Lebanese civil war who grew up to become a cameraman for Quentin Tarantino and now a filmmaker in his own right, believes in the possibility suggested by people like Amin, but also understands its difficulties and pitfalls all too well. He violated both Lebanese law and long-standing Arab custom by making a film in Israel, one that acknowledges that Israelis are human beings rather than monsters, and now the only way his own people will see his film is by way of pirated DVDs and YouTube clips.

Is the two-state solution finally dead?

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Let’s give Mitt Romney some credit for candor on the Middle East, if for almost nothing else. President Obama’s soaring rhetoric in his campaign-style speech this week in Jerusalem, when he urged the Israeli public to “create the change that you want to see” and laid out a moral and philosophical case for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, showed us the leader of the free world at the top of his oratorical game. But Obama didn’t go to Israel with any concrete plan to restart negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, a pair of weakened politicians who lack clear mandates from their own people. Despite vague promises to send Secretary of State John Kerry into the breach in coming weeks, it’s by no means clear that he has one.

Psy to change name of “Gangnam Style” follow-up over fear of offending Arabs

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Psy's new single isn't out yet, but he's already worried that it might offend people. The AP reports:

"The announced title for the song can be written as 'Assarabia' or 'Assaravia' in English. It's slang used by South Koreans to express thrills. It suggests no ethnicity or body part, but worries have risen that Arabs might misinterpret the title and find it derogatory."

To address any potential concerns, Psy plans to change some lyrics in "Assaravia" as well.

The single is already being hailed as the follow-up to the viral sensation "Gangnam Style" that set a world record at 1.44 billion views on YouTube. As such, it is going to need to be accompanied by moves that somehow top the horse-dance. "There is such a high level of expectation now," Psy told George Wayne from Vanity Fair. "I have to come out strong with my new single."

Luckily for Psy, Wayne had some ideas:

Judge clears DoJ over post-9/11 confinement of Muslims

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:45:00 +0000

A federal judge ruled Thursday that a lawsuit against Department of Justice officials brought by men detained for immigration violations in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 cannot proceed.

The men, whose complaints were brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, are immigrants in the U.S. who hail from from Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria and Turkey, as well as natives of India and Nepal. "In the weeks following the attacks, they said they were held in federal custody on the pretext of minor immigration violations while the FBI investigated them for potential links to terrorism," Reuters reported.

The dismissed complaint claimed that former U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft, FBI director Robert Mueller and former Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner James Ziglar oversaw federal policies which led to the men's harsh detention. However, on Thursday the judge ruled that although the men were certainly detained on the basis of "race, religion and national origin," the federal officials named in the suit did not intend to discriminate.

Al Jazeera different than Fox?

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 21:43:00 +0000

Qatari network Al Jazeera’s purchase of Al Gore’s Current news channel, revealed yesterday, has already hit a snag: Time Warner Cable promptly dropped Current, denying the forthcoming Al Jazeera America access to Time Warner subscribers.

Though the Time Warner decision had reportedly been threatened due to Current’s low ratings, there’s no denying that at least some segment of the U.S. viewing public has long harbored antipathy toward Al Jazeera. An editorial published today by Fox News runs through the talking points about the network it calls “anti-American terror mouthpiece Al Jazeera.” Among them: “Al Jazeera, known as the network of the Arab Street, is also known for taking anti-American, anti-Israel and pro-terror positions.”