WASHINGTON (IPS) - Both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have risen in Europe over the last four years, according to a survey conducted earlier this year by the Pew Research Center. While attitudes towards Muslims are substantially more negative than those against Jews across Europe, anti-Jewish sentiment as grown steadily in five of the six countries surveyed on the question. Read more about Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia on the rise in Europe, decline in US
WASHINGTON (IPS) - With less than two months before the November elections, Arab American voters in the United States are poised to vote heavily Democratic, according to a poll released here today by the Arab American Institute. The poll, which was conducted by Zogby International for AAI, a Washington-based lobby and public education group, found that the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, currently leads his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, by some 20 percentage points among Arab American voters — 54 percent to 33 percent — in a two-man race. Read more about Poll shows Arab Americans favor Obama by wide margin
Where are you taking us, Mr. President? To what desert are you leading us? To what catastrophe? How dare you decide how many refugees can or cannot return? Who gave you permission to speak in my name, and in my children’s name? Who asked you to barter our rights? What is the price for the sale of an entire people’s rights and their sacrifices for 60 years? Abdelfattah Abusrour decries the Palestinian Authority president’s recent statements undermining the Palestinian refugees’ right of return and compensation. Read more about A refugee's open letter to Mahmoud Abbas
RAMALLAH, West Bank (IPS) - Palestinian children continue to be victims of disproportionate and indiscriminate violence from the both the Israeli occupation and internal Palestinian infighting in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Read more about UN office: Palestinian children's rights being violated
JERUSALEM (IRIN) - Economic progress ha s been insufficient to stimulate growth in the Occupied Palestinian Territories because of the restrictions on movement, while dependency on aid was increasing, the World Bank said on 17 September. In a report released ahead of a donors’ meeting on 22 September, the bank praised the reform efforts of the Palestinian Authority, saying appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad had managed to significantly reduce expenditure, cut down on government employment and begin reforming the security forces. Read more about World Bank: Growth weak, aid dependency rising
On 26 August 2008, a group of human rights advocates attended a meeting at the offices of SNS Asset Management in Utrecht, the Netherlands. We were there to urge the bank — a full subsidiary of SNS Bank, one of the top five banks in the Netherlands — to withdraw its investments in the French Veolia Corporation because of Veolia’s direct and indirect involvement in Israel’s violations of international law in occupied East Jerusalem. Jeff Handmaker comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Dutch bank must disinvest from rights abuses
This week marks the 26th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, one of the bloodiest events of the second half of the twentieth century. A Google search for recent news reports on this year’s commemoration of the atrocity, however, brought up very little. The Electronic Intifada co-founder Laurie King comments that the failure to hold massacre perpetrators accountable has let the atrocities continue. Read more about And so it continues: 26 years after the massacre
Zaki Khimayl’s home and cafe are located on Jaffa’s beach, a stone’s throw away from Tel Aviv. However, like hundreds of other families in the Arab neighborhoods of Ajami and Jabaliya of Jaffa, Khimayl is up to his eyes in debt and trapped in a world of bureaucratic regulations apparently designed with only one end in mind: his eviction from Jaffa. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Jaffa's "renewal" aims at expulsion of Palestinians
GAZACITY (IPS) - A strike call has trapped thousands of teachers between Fatah unions and a Hamas government. The strike in Gaza called by the Palestine Teachers’ Union — a non-elected body supported by the government of Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank — continues into its third week. Of the Palestinian territories, Gaza strip is ruled by the Hamas government and the West Bank by the Fatah Party led by Abbas. Read more about Gaza teachers trapped between Fatah and Hamas
Israeli security officers at Ben-Gurion Airport last week forced an African-American member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to perform twice for them in order to prove he was a dancer before letting him enter the country. Abdur-Rahim Jackson felt humiliated and “deeply saddened,” particularly because his Arab/Muslim sounding first name was the reason that he was the only member of his company subjected to this typical Israeli ethnic profiling. Omar Barghouti comments. Read more about Don't dance for apartheid
