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"The world just sat by": Interview with Dahr Jamail

Christopher Brown 2 September 2006



Dahr Jamail is an award-winning, independent journalist who reported live from Baghdad for eight months in 2003. He is considered one of the best sources on the war in Iraq. Recently, he returned to to the Middle East, traveling to Syria. While in Damascus, the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah began. Jamail left immediately for Beirut and sent daily dispatches from his Iraq-dispatches website. Christopher Brown received the chance to speak to Jamail about what he saw during this 34-day conflict in the Middle East. 

Rooftop protest against arms dealers

2 September 2006



23 August 2006 - Protesters are currently occupying the roof of an arms manufacturer who supply weapons to the Israeli army used in the bombing of Gaza and Lebanon. In the early hours of Wednesday morning (today) protesters climbed 40 feet onto the roof of EDO MBM on Home Farm Road, Brighton. Activists aim to draw attention to the production of weaponry used in war crimes. Sarah Johnson, press spokeswoman for Smash EDO, said “Over a thousand civilians have died as a result of Israel’s bombing of Lebanon. Israel continues to kill civilians in the West Bank and Gaza with weaponry armed with components made in Brighton.” 

Half-yearly report on house demolitions in Jerusalem

2 September 2006



During the first half of the year 2006, 47 structures were demolished in East Jerusalem by the Municipality of Jerusalem and/or the Ministry of Interior. There were 16 pirate gas stations included in that statistic, therefore a net total of 31 residential structures was demolished. Relative to preceding years, this represents a decline in the number of home demolitions in Jerusalem. Were this decline to continue proportionately for the remainder of the year, the annual number would be approx. 70 structures, i.e. 20 less than in 2005. 

The correct moral position for Lebanon

Sami Hermez and Noora Kassem 2 September 2006



The Lebanese people should not reject Hizballah, as their arms protect the country’s sovereignty, dignity, and rights. Hizballah is not the reason Israel has attempted to destroy Lebanon. Israel has attacked Lebanon, and has been an aggressor against many other Arab peoples, because this is the only way it can survive. It has used violence against Lebanon because it wants the people as a subjugated neighbor with no power and no ability to take any moral stand. Israel, along with the United States, would like the Lebanese people, and other Arabs alike, to be followers and consumers while Israel makes no retribution for the crimes it has committed against them or against the other 10 percent of the Lebanese population — the Palestinians who reside in camps. 

Lebanese army deploys in more areas of the south; UN helps clear deadly ordnance

31 August 2006



Lebanese troops today moved into more areas of the south of the country after Israeli forces withdrew, the United Nations said, as it continued to coordinate the deployment and stepped up its work to clear the masses of deadly unexploded ordnance that litter the countryside. “The Lebanese Army has started the deployment in the general area of Bastra and the area south of the Kafr Shuba and Shaba villages in the Eastern part of South Lebanon where the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) withdrew on 30 August,” the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a press release. 

Extended run of Dean Obeidallah's one-man comedy show in NYC!

2 September 2006



The New York Arab-American Comedy Festival is happy to announce that Dean Obeidallah’s comedic one man show “I Come in Peace” will be playing for one more week after its recent successful run in the New York International Fringe Festival. Before 9/11, comedian Dean Obeidallah was living the typical white guy life. He hung out with his white friends and did generic white people stuff. Then 9/11 happened. Dean’s life would never be the same. What is it like to be an Arab-American with a Muslim last name after 9/11? Why did 9/11 transform Dean from a typical white guy to Super Arab? Is the Bush administration listening to his phone calls? Find out the answers to these questions and more in Dean’s comedic one man show “I Come in Peace.” 

Objections to plans to confiscate Arab-cultivated land in northern Israel

2 September 2006



On 21 and 28 August 2006, Adalah submitted two objections on behalf of 19 Arab farmers from the north of Israel to Local Master Plans G13449 and HBG/1237 to the Haifa and Northern Planning and Building Committees. The plans demarcate an area of land cultivated by Arab farmers in and around the area of Wadi al-Malak to be confiscated, with the stated goal of creating a man-made forest in the area, called the “Kiryat Ata Forest” in the plans. Adalah demanded that the committees conduct a thorough examination of the facts on the ground in the area, and to withdraw the plans. 

ADC Welcomes State Department Inquiry into Israeli Use of Cluster Bombs

25 August 2006



The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) welcomes reports that the United States Department of State has opened an inquiry into whether, during its recent conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel violated secret agreements made with the United States concerning the use of American-made cluster bombs. The State Department investigation was reported today in the New York Times. According to the Times the inquiry is based upon, “reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.” 

Genocide in Gaza

Ilan Pappe 2 September 2006



A genocide is taking place in Gaza. This morning, 2 September, another three citizens of Gaza were killed and a whole family wounded in Beit Hanoun. This is the morning reap, before the end of day many more will be massacred. An average of eight Palestinian die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip. Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralyzed. The inhuman living conditions in the most dense area in the world, and one of the poorest human spaces in the northern hemisphere, disables the people who live it to reconcile with the imprisonment Israel had imposed on them ever since 1967. There were relative better periods where movement to the West Bank and into Israel for work was allowed, but these better times are gone. 

For Israel's Security: Zainab Fawqi-Sleem and the Question of Lebanon

Ramzi Kysia Houla 1 September 2006



Yesterday, I shed my first tears for Lebanon. Yesterday, I visited Houla, a stone’s throw from the Israeli border. Yesterday, I was discovered by Zainab Fawqi-Sleem - a young, Lebanese woman who was killed in Houla, alongside her sister-in-law, Selma, on July 15th. Zainab is but one of over 1,300 innocents killed in this war, but she is the one who found me. On October 31st, 1948, in one of the few massacres of the Nakba to occur inside Lebanon, proto-Israeli militas seized the town of Houla, setting off bombs and burning down several houses. There’s a memorial to the massacre in the center of town, not far from homes smashed flat by this current war.