I hope I’m mistaken but it seems the US media has gotten into a fairly recent frenzy about Jordan-related news that has a distinct Not without my daughter flavor about it. Here is one example with headline:
Estranged Jordanian father charged in Ashby kidnapping
The estranged husband of an Ashby mother who has not seen her daughter
in 11 years was arraigned in Ayer District Court Wednesday on one
count of kidnapping of a minor by a relative.
Mhad Kadter, a citizen of both the United States and Jordan, was
arrested in Ohio with the cooperation of the FBI, the National Center
for Missing Children and Interpol.
And yet another:
Kidnapped boy, now 15, reunites at last with mom
For 14 years, Kathleen Ziadeh longed to see her only son, Zaid, who as
a toddler was abducted to the Mideast by his Jordanian father tired of
life in the United States. During those years, Ziadeh and the child’s grandmother, Barbara
Dooley, lobbied U.S. presidents and Jordanian royalty, sought help
from the State Department and courts overseas, and even had the weight
of a national newspaper columnist behind them. But none of their efforts succeeded in bringing back Zaid or easing their heartbreak …
yes, there is such a thing called the amber alert, but what that does is allows govt. officials to release the name and picture of a child so they can be found. this was done and allowed because before the amber alert was created, police and govt. did not want to release the name of a missing child in case they were sexually assaulted. and usually when a victim is sexually assaulted, police do not release the names, especially if they are under age. The amber alert changed all of that. But the amber alert is a government thing. this is all beside the main point.
It is up to a newspaper or broadcast station to pick up that amber alert and make it news. and, as examples have been made by Luai, and many others are available, the amber alerts mostly picked up by the press are either victims who are young, middle class white girls, with suspects who are usually minorities. sad, but true.
I think the underlying issue here is the way the press presents or reports these stories of kidnappings. The kind Natasha is talking about makes it look like this happens every time a muslim or arab man fathers a child with a western woman. this is simply not so. just like the idea that only white middle class young women are only kidnapped in the US. this would be the idea one would get about kidnappings if they only relied on mainsream western news. fortunately though, like i stated before, all i have to do is go to my local post office or dmv and i will see the many black, hispanic and asian children who are kidnapped yet get no press coverage.
This is a sad reality that parents think they can just take the kids and force them to live with them. What are these people thinking?? Or are they thinking at all. The kids have to be traumatized by being taken away from their comfort zone…it is compounded even more with them being taken to another country.
Did any of you hear about the American woman who took her kids from Jordan to the US. I don’t think so…and you probably never will. Imagine FOX covering that story…yeah, right. Well, the family lived in Jordan and the kids were born there. The wife told the husband that she wanted to visit the US for a few weeks. After arriving she took the kids to her parents house and didn’t allow the husband to see them. She then claimed spousal abuse and got the police involved. Well to make a long story short, the claims were proven false. But the courts ruled the children should stay with the mother. Never mind she had no way to support them, the government just provided her with welfare benefits. As the kids got older, they one by one decided to leave the mom and go live with their father. I think that when the parents divorce the kids should choose which parent they would like to live with. It should be their interests that are considered.
Linda, you are absolutely right. Race really has a lot to do with the media coverage victims get. And in some cases the race of the suspect. Take for example the recent FL girl who was missing for a few weeks. If this happened to a minority, I really doubt they would get the same coverage. Kid disappearances happen every second of every day. Why do some get coverage while others don’t.
To move away from children we can examine the Chandra Levy disapperance or Laci Peterson disappearnce/murder. Both white, upper middle class females. There are many victims that are not afforded TV time these two got. It is good they got the coverge, but what about the others who just simply vanished. Granted with Levy, the suspect was a congressman so maybe that justifies they coverage. But there are many others who suffered the same fate as Laci, yet we never saw them on TV.
My .02 Canadian. That’s all I have left after losing it in Windsor last night. Damn roulette.
to the west, arabs and specifically muslim arabs, will always be looked at as backwards and uncivilized people. i frankly dont loose too much sleep over it, perhaps ive grown immune to it, either way, let them write their articles…they’ve bombed or helped bomb our cities so at this point…sticks and stones
Ed,
The reason I included that anecdote about my sister’s classmate was to make a point that some embassies make an effort to help these mothers. The reason I didn’t name the embassy is because basically they are not supposed to get that involved but they do because there are legitimate cases and the mother cannot afford to come to Lebanon to get here child.
Also, I know of other cases (also Lebanon) where the mother has come to Beirut and the embassy contacts the local media. The media has always been helpful-I remember working for a TV station and not only did we carry the press conference, we included a hotline number viewers could call with information on the missing girl.
I think maybe the local media has a role to play in these cases. In the Arab world, people try to avoid ‘fadiyh’ or scandals. When someone kidnaps their child and it’s splashed out for everyone to see, believe me that’s a scandal.
Amal,
Some kidnappings by fathers or mothers get wide publicity in the states. In fact, bulletins are plastered on the news, radio and web which we call “Amber Alerts”. These are done when authorities can reasonably ascertain that an abduction took place and it is believed the child could be harmed.
What makes these “headlines” so different is due to the fact that there is little hope, if any, for the mothers to get the child returned and that they are out of the country.
I wouldn’t categorize this as bias. In fact, this blog is the only mention I’ve seen in a long time in regards to a child abduction to a foreign country.
Sterling,
I don’t think Natasha was defending the idea of a father snatching his or her child without the consent of a mother. I think this post was just highlighting the obesession with Western media’s fascination of such cases. I mean, as Linda pointed out, kidnapping is not uncommon in the US. But would a US father kidnapping his child get half as much coverage? I don’t think so. Such stories supposedly ‘prove’ that Arab fathers are more likely to kidnapp their offspring if they end up with Western women. It’s like a warning to these women to stay away from men from the ‘Muslim’ world.
When my sister was in junior high school in Lebanon, she had a classmate whose father had kidnapped him from his Western mother. The couple was divorced and the mother had custody of the child. Well the father wanted to take him to Lebanon for a ‘vacation.’ When he got there, his father threw away his passport. The kid was stuck. To make a long story short, since the mother had custody the embassy actually got involved, got the kid a new passport and a ticket out of there.
I don’t think anyone would deny that women generally have inferior legal status in the Muslim world. (This varies in degree from country to country, I know.) I’m not sure, Natasha, if you’re defending the idea that a father can permanently remove a child from the country of its birth without either the consent of the mother or a ruling from a custody court in the child’s home country. That some countries shelter fathers who have kidnapped their children from their mothers and home countries is shameful and irrational and of course diminishes western respect for the jurisdiction involved. It’s not just Arab states that do this – Greece is notorious for it, as well.
And Shirin, some of us in the U.S. would argue that much of the U.S. media is anti-U.S. Certainly the bulk of the U.S. media did, and continues to do, its utmost to undermine the war in Iraq and U.S. policy in Iraq since the war.
These kidnappings have been going on for many decades, and are often extremely abusive for the children. Many are extremely happy to be released from Arab servitude when found or rescued. Like it or not, Arab husbands’ rights are regarded as egregiously excessive by the civilized world.
wow, i didnt know all the kidnappings taking place were done by jordanians. i mean come on, when it comes to kidnapping cases in amercia, the media focus on cases where the suspect might be a minority or the victime is always white. In the past years, all of the high level cases of kidnappings that were a big deal in the news were perdominantly while young girls. it makes it look like only white young girls are being kidnapped in this country. well it does not look like that when i go down to the post office or dmv and see the missing persons board.
the u.s media i think has always had a one sided biast view against arabs or anyone non american altogether.
people who read different news form all over the world have an easier time to compare and understand things more i think that reading news from a one sided source.
but then to look the problem straight in the eye, arabic men have more power in doing what they want in marriages and especially regarding kids. like if an arabic couple have issues and want to divorce the kids ususally end up with the family of the father. and if the mother is foreign and of different religious background then its even easier for the ftaher to just take the kids and leave. i’m not syaing this happens all the time but i know people this happened to.
american media should focus on the problems their country in dealing with before insulting others. there are enough cases in the states where merican fathers kidnapped their kids… a way of covering their problems is making big deals out of other countries…