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Bringing Sesame Street back to Palestine

RAMALLAH - A US-funded, Palestinian-produced version of Sesame Street, or Shara'a Simsim in Arabic, is poised to hit the market in early 2009. Daoud Kuttab, Director of Pen Media, a Palestinian educational media organization, and the local Executive Producer for the series, said Sesame Street in Palestine is about giving back pride to the Palestinian youth.

"Whether it's the television program, special appearances, or outreach initiatives, Shara'a Simsim goals are to serve as a catalyst for positive change by promoting Palestinian children’s sense of their own identity." But this is not an easy task.

Launching at a tough time

Abdel-Hakim Abu-Jamous, Director of Media for the Palestinian Ministry of Education told MENASSAT that the trouble is dealing with the trauma and fear that has made living in the Palestinian Territories a nightmare for Palestinian children. "We have to provide a sense of calm to show children that there is hope," Abu-Jamous said.

Source: [MENASSAT]

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Anti-Arab graffiti stuns Maryland churches

By Erin Donaghue

It was Jan. 13, a Tuesday evening, when parishioners at the Sts. Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church on River Road first noticed the graffiti. It was scrawled in blue spray paint on a back entryway to the church — according to officials there, a dimly lit area that would make it an easy target for vandals.

Written across the door was a Star of David and the words "Israel forever — Arabs never." The incident has shocked congregants at the Potomac church, which draws many parishioners who are of Middle Eastern descent. While the services are conducted in English, much of the chanting is in Greek or Arabic.

"I was stunned," said Bethesda resident Joanne Demchok, a parishioner at the church. "Why would someone do something like that?" According to the Rev. George Rados, a priest there, the incident was most likely tied to the recent conflict in Gaza. Israel launched an offensive into Gaza late last month, drawing widespread criticism from humanitarian groups, in response to rocket fire.

Source: [Gazette.net]

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How al-Arabiya Got the Obama Interview

By Scott MacLeod

How did a journalist for an Arab-language broadcaster score the first television interview granted by President Barack Obama? Well, at first, Hisham Melhem, the Washington bureau chief for al-Arabiya, a Saudi-backed news channel headquartered in Dubai, thought he was getting someone else. Not that he hadn't tried — like everyone else in Washington — to snag the historic first.

When Melhem's bosses in Dubai got a feeler from the White House on Sunday, it seemed that al-Arabiya was about to get an exclusive interview not with Obama but with new Middle East envoy George Mitchell. The previous Friday, Melhem had begun pressing for an interview with Mitchell after learning from sources that the former U.S. Senator and Northern Ireland peace negotiator was heading to the Middle East almost immediately. The White House told al-Arabiya execs to be ready for a major interview on Monday. (See pictures of Obama's campaign behind the scenes.)

Shortly before 9 a.m. on Monday, Melhem knew from the caller ID on his BlackBerry that the White House was phoning him. As Melhem remembers it, "This man says, 'My name is so-and-so, and I'm either going to make your day or ruin your day. Would you like to chat with the President about 5 p.m. today?' I joked, 'I guess I can accommodate the President.' "

Source: [Time]

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Report: Senior Saudi cleric OKs 10-year-old to marry

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) A pan-Arab newspaper quotes Saudi Arabia's most senior Muslim cleric as saying it is OK for 10-year-old girls to marry.The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper also quotes Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Baz, the country's grand mufti, as saying that those who believe women should not marry before the age of 25 are following a "bad path."

His comments during a lecture Monday come as Saudi human rights groups are fighting to put an end to marriages involving the very young. The groups are pressing the government to define the minimum age for marriage.

On Sunday, the government-run National Human Rights Commission condemned marriages of minor girls, saying such marriages are an "inhumane violation."

Source: [MSNBC]

Industry outrage at Captain abu Raed, Gomorra snub

Last year, the Academy's foreign language "phase 1 committee" -- which consists of several hundred Los Angeles-based members who divide up and screen the foreign entries, with minimal attendance requirements and a bizarre vote-tabulation process -- created an uproar by failing to include two critically-acclaimed films, "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" (Romania) and "Persepolis" (France), among the 9 films on the shortlist from which they would ultimately select 5 nominees for best foreign foreign language film.

The very public drubbing that the committee received prompted the Academy to make some major changes in the way the shortlist and nominees would be determined this year and going forward. However, as revealed by this morning's announcement of this year's shortlist -- which has the industry up in arms today due to the appalling exclusion of two of the year's most acclaimed foreign language films, "Gomorra" (Italy, d. Matteo Garrone) and "Captain Abu Raed" (Jordan, d. Amin Matalka) -- little seems to have changed.

Who am I to comment on this? Well, for one, someone who saw more of the foreign language entries than many members of "the phase 1 committee." This year, I watched several dozen of the most celebrated (by critics, festivals, etc.) foreign language submissions prior to this announcement so that I could offer an informed opinion when it came. And, in fact, I correctly predicted seven of the nine that were selected this morning (out of 65 that had eligible).

Source: [LA Times - The Feinberg Files]

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$240k awarded to man forced to cover Arabic T-shirt

NEW YORK (AFP) – An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded 240,000 dollars in compensation, campaigners said Monday. Raed Jarrar received the pay out on Friday from two US Transportation Security Authority officials and from JetBlue Airways following the August 2006 incident at New York's JFK Airport, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced.

"The outcome of this case is a victory for free speech and a blow to the discriminatory practice of racial profiling," said Aden Fine, a lawyer with ACLU. Jarrar, a US resident, was apprehended as he waited to board a JetBlue flight from New York to Oakland, California, and told to remove his shirt, which had written on it in Arabic: "We will not be silent."

He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like "wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber,'" the ACLU said. Jarrar eventually agreed to cover his shirt with another provided by JetBlue. He was allowed aboard but his seat was changed from the front to the back of the aircraft.

Source: [Yahoo News]

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Fraud undermines West Bank land deals

BURQA, West Bank - The transformation of a piece of West Bank land from a Palestinian field into a Jewish settlement has roots in an unlikely place — Orange County, Calif. — and in a document that a man supposedly signed more than four decades after the date of his death.

Unfolding from the West Bank's terraced olive groves to a strip mall in a Los Angeles suburb, the story of this posthumous deal offers a rare glimpse into the underworld of straw companies and middlemen through which chunks of land move from Palestinian to Israeli hands. Each transaction further complicates an Israeli withdrawal that would be key to any peace agreement.

The land now houses a thriving Jewish settlement, another of the "facts on the ground" that strengthen Israel's grip on the West Bank and outrage the Palestinians. Such property deals are driven by the settlers' belief the land is their God-given right; the cooperation of Israel's governments, even those that have talked peace; and cash from wealthy donors, many of them American Jews.

In this case, a 2004 document shows a Palestinian farmer named Abdel Latif Sumarin sold a plot long tended by his family near the village of Burqa, east of the city of Ramallah, to a company with an Arabic name. The paper contains Sumarin's signature in clear English script and that of a California notary.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Arabs hail shoe-hurling journalist

BAGHDAD - Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets Monday to demand the release of a reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush, as Arabs across many parts of the Middle East hailed the journalist as a hero and praised his insult as a proper send-off to the unpopular U.S. president.

The protests came as suicide bombers and gunmen targeted Iraqi police, U.S.-allied Sunni guards and civilians in a series of attacks Monday that killed at least 17 people and wounded more than a dozen others, officials said.

Journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi, a 28-year-old unmarried Shiite, was kidnapped by militants last year and, separately, detained briefly by the U.S. military prior to this incident — a story of getting hit from all sides that is bitterly familiar to many Iraqis. Over time, he came to hate both the U.S. military occupation and Iran's interference in Iraq, his family told The Associated Press on Monday.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Hooked on chill pills in war-torn Gaza

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The new drug overtaking the Gaza Strip doesn't stimulate hallucinations or give endurance at the dance club. It merely chills you out, which is exactly what many Gazans say they need. Ruled by Islamic hard-liners from Hamas and locked in by Israel, Gazans can't travel outside the strip, have few places to go for fun, and are faced with a failing economy.

Thus the boom in the popularity of tramadol, a painkiller known here by a common brand name, "Tramal." Growing numbers of Gazans have begun using the drug over the past year and a half to take the edge off life in the impoverished seaside strip, pharmacists and residents say.

This worries medical personnel, who say the drug can cause dependence. It is a prescription drug in many countries, and the Hamas-run Health Ministry has made efforts to control it, but without much success in a society where medicines available only by prescription elsewhere are often sold over the counter. Tramadol is especially popular among young men. Some down the pills with coffee or dissolve them in tea. Others pop them freely when hanging out with friends. Grooms have been seen passing them out at weddings.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Guerilla Street Artist Princess Hijab Hits Paris

I admit, the title put me off a little. Princess Hijab? But when I looked through her flicker albums, I was blown away. Princess Hijab is an anonymous 20-year-old guerilla street artist based in Paris, who began her “noble cause” of “hijab-ising” advertisements in 2006. She does this by using spray paint and a black marker to cover women’s faces and bodies in ads, or by pasting “hijab ad” posters everywhere she goes.

There’s no way of knowing if Princess Hijab is a hijabi. Or even a Muslim. And although I don’t really ‘get’ art, I find her work fascinating. According to her profile page on Art Review:

She takes the veil/ hijab/ chador, which a number of French citizens believe is incompatible with the main principles of French secularism and would prefer it to remain in the private sphere, and brings it firmly into the public sphere.

Source: [Muslimah Media Watch]

Cairo Activists Use Facebook to Rattle Regime

By David Wolman

July 23, 2008: Under the scorching sun on a beach in Alexandria, Egypt, a few dozen political activists snap digital pictures and chatter nervously. Many of them wear matchingwhite T-shirts emblazoned with the image of a fist raised in solidarity and the words "April 6 Youth" splashed across the back. A few of them get to work constructing a giant kite out of bamboo poles and a sheet of plastic painted to look like the Egyptian flag. Most are in their twenties, some younger; one teenage girl wears a teddy bear backpack.

Before the group can get the kite aloft, and well before they have a chance to distribute their pro-democracy leaflets, state security agents swarm across the sand. The cops shout threats to break up what is, by Western standards, a tiny demonstration. The activists disperse from the beach, feeling hot and frustrated; they didn't even get a chance to fly their kite. Joining up with other friends, they walk together toward the neighborhood of Loran, singing patriotic songs.

Then, as they turn down another street, a group of security agents jump out of nowhere. It's a coordinated assault that explodes into a frenzy of punches and shoves. There are screams and grunts as about a dozen kids fall or are knocked to the ground. The other 30 or so scatter, sprinting for blocks in all directions before slowing enough to send each other hurried text messages: Where are you? What happened?

Source: [Wired]

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As Taboos Ease, Saudi Girl Group Dares to Rock

By Robert F. Worth

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — They cannot perform in public. They cannot pose for album cover photographs. Even their jam sessions are secret, for fear of offending the religious authorities in this ultraconservative kingdom. But the members of Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock band, the Accolade, are clearly not afraid of taboos.

The band’s first single, “Pinocchio,” has become an underground hit here, with hundreds of young Saudis downloading the song from the group’s MySpace page. Now, the pioneering foursome, all of them college students, want to start playing regular gigs — inside private compounds, of course — and recording an album.

“In Saudi, yes, it’s a challenge,” said the group’s lead singer, Lamia, who has piercings on her left eyebrow and beneath her bottom lip. (Like other band members, she gave only her first name.) “Maybe we’re crazy. But we wanted to do something different.” In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different.

Source: [NY Times]

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Iraqi Women Seek Freedom of the Road Again

By Mary Beth Sheridan

BAGHDAD -- The black-masked militias have vanished from most Baghdad streets, and the car bombings are down to one or two a day. So one recent afternoon, Hadeel Ahmed, a ponytailed college student in jeans, did something few Iraqi women have dared recently. She drove a car.

"It bothers me to have to depend on my brother or father to take me everywhere," the 25-year-old student declared, after finishing a class at al-Riyadh Driving School. "I want to be independent."

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, women in the Iraqi capital have virtually disappeared from behind the wheel. With gun battles raging, the police force collapsing and the traffic lights dead, highways turned into a Mad Max world. Even today, you can travel for a half-hour across the sprawling city and not see a single woman driving.

But with the sharp drop in violence this year, women are venturing onto the roads. They are gingerly reclaiming freedoms denied by the Islamic extremists who warned them to stop driving, give up makeup and cover their hair -- or risk death.

Source: [Washington Post]

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'My wife wears hijab. I wish she didn't'

By Robin Yassin-Kassab

When I first saw my wife, she was seated in the middle of a crowded room, she had her eyes fixed on me, and she had a luxuriously unruly cascade of hair. We started talking, and from then on her hair's startling blackness seemed emblematic of the force of her character.

In a city where half the women covered their hair in public, and just because she had such beautiful hair, Rana's hair became for me her sign, the feature by which I'd pick her out at a distance, my symbol for understanding her and what she meant to me. So when, five years into our marriage, Rana decided to cover her hair, I was somewhat bothered.

We'd moved from Syria via Morocco to Saudi Arabia, we'd had children, and Rana had worked as a teacher and TV presenter. She'd always been an elegantly modest dresser, but here, amid the compulsory dress codes of Saudi Arabia - which annoyed us both - she'd decided to introduce something new The hijab bothered me not just for the personal reasons above: I didn't agree that it was Islamically required. While most Muslims have interpreted Koranic guidance on women's dress to require head covering, the text itself is open to interpretation. 'And tell the believing women,' it says, 'to lower their gaze and to be mindful of their chastity, and not to display their charms (in public) beyond what may (decently) be apparent thereof; hence, let them draw their head-coverings over their bosoms.'

Source: [Guardian]

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Mufti: Let men and women pray together

SYDNEY -- The Mufti of Australia wants to allow men and women to pray together in the country's mosques, a break with tradition observers say may anger some Muslims.

Sheik Fehmi Naji el-Imam argues that separating the sexes in mosques is a cultural matter, not a religious one required by the Koran, The Age reports. He plans to propose the change at the Australian National Imams' Council meeting in December.

He told the newspaper he is trying to respond to complaints from Muslim women that the religion discriminates against them. "It is good to hear the complaints of the sisters, and to try to find some solution to their concerns," he said. "My duty is to propose, to discuss and try to convince. I can't guarantee the outcome."

Source: [UPI]

Escape to Dubai?

Business is booming right now! I mean, the place has what, double-digit GDP growth? Like, that’s crazy!” Brooke Butler tucks her silken hair behind her ears, flashes a wide smile, and digs into her dumplings. It’s Pan-Asian night at Entre Nous, the restaurant on the ground floor of Novotel Dubai, and Butler, a 24-year-old Texan with an exuberant demeanor and a slim volleyball player’s build, is taking a pause from a long day schmoozing real-estate executives.

She has just spent several hours working the lavish stalls and displays of Cityscape, a four-day conference billed by its promoters as “The World’s Largest Business-to-Business Real-Estate Event,” taking place in a cavernous conference hall next door. After dinner, Butler is due at Çin Çin, a swanky cigar-and-wine bar, to meet the CEO of a real-estate company. “I want to have a million dollars saved and then come home,” Butler says. In Dubai, it is a plausible target, even for a saleswoman only three years out of Dallas Baptist University; she is certain she’ll meet it. But how long will it take?

When she arrived, fresh from being laid off by the San Antonio office of Liberty Mutual, for whom she sold home, auto, and life insurance, she thought that she would be in and out in two years. “I know a girl who made $2 million U.S. in commissions last year,” she said then. “And that’s tax-free! Within a year, I’ll be a millionaire. It’s not that difficult over here.”

Source: [New York Magazine]

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Abused labor concerns NYU - Guggenhem in UAE

By Megan Chuchmach

In a rush to establish outposts in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, venerable American institutions, including New York University and the Guggenheim Museum of Art, are not addressing concerns about migrant labor, human rights advocates say.

NYU, which will have the first American comprehensive liberal arts school campus in the Middle East, and a Frank Gehry-designed branch of the Guggenheim Museum are some of the big names that have buildings in the works on the developing Saadiyat Island off the coast of Abu Dhabi and which are of concern to activists.

"We don't believe that they are doing nearly enough to avoid the exploitation of workers in their own projects," said Human Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the organization's Middle East and North Africa division. She said that the institutions have not made public commitments to ensuring that its construction workers are not exploited.

Source: [ABC News]

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Egyptian sexual harasser jailed

An Egyptian man has been jailed for three years with hard labour for sexual harassment of a woman in the street. Sharif Gommaa was also ordered to pay 5,001 Egyptian pounds ($895) damages to Noha Rushdi Saleh for the attack in Cairo's Heliopolis district.

Women's rights activists welcomed the ruling saying it was the first known case of prison for such an offence. The defendant was accused of repeatedly groping Noha Rushdi Saleh as he drove slowly alongside her in his car.

Although many Egyptian women and visiting foreigners complain of unwanted sexual advances in Egyptian streets, the subject is rarely addressed by the authorities or mainstream media. However, this attack in June became the focus of media coverage after the 27-year-old filmmaker, also known as Noha Ostadh, went public about her ordeal.

Source: [BBC]

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Dubai Deals With Expat Debauchery

DUBAI: Dubai may be the playground of the Middle East, but for expats and tourists, play time here can get out of hand. In one famous case of expat debauchery this summer, Britons Vince Acors, a tourist, and Michelle Palmer, a resident, were arrested for having sex on a Dubai beach. Also accused of hurling racial slurs and a shoe at the approaching police officer, the couple now faces up to six years in prison.

The Palmer-Acors case highlights a growing frustration with the behavior of Western visitors, not only among Emiratis -- who comprise only 20 percent of the population in their own country -- but also among expats. Roughly a week after the beach arrest, Dubai police announced they had recently detained 79 people for violations of public decency.

Such crackdowns and incidents have fueled a stereotype of the vacationing foreigner, with the British leading in disrepute. "In the Arab world, being an English girl now means you can't hold down your drink, you're an alcoholic and you're a slut," said one longtime resident of the UAE, who knows Michelle Palmer and spoke to ABC News anonymously. "I look down on it ... the blatant disrespect because she thought she was above the law."

Source: [ABC News]

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Madaba mosque fosters peaceful coexistence

By Jumana Al Tamimi

Dubai: A newly built masjid in a Jordanian city was named Al Maseeh Eisa Bin Mariam (Jesus Christ Son of Mary) in a bid to show Muslims and Christians can coexist. This comes amid what many Jordanians and Muslims describe as increasing enmity between Islam in the West.

Surprised

"In this way, we want to emphasise that Jesus is loved by all Muslims," the masjid's imam, Jamal Safarati, was quoted as saying in press reports. "Muslims don't disagree on that," he added.

Verses from the Quran dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ have been inscribed on the facade of the mosque, which was inaugurated three months ago. The masjid was built a short distance from a church in the small city of Madaba, 30km southwest of Amman.

Source: [Gulf News]

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