Arab

Sen. Barbara Boxer introduced legislation last month that would allow Israel to continue racially profiling Americans of Arab and Muslim heritage who travel to Israel, even as it confers new privileges on Israelis traveling to the United States. I wonder whether she understands what it's like for her Arab American constituents to enter Israel. I always bet myself how long it will take for Ben Gurion Airport's security screeners to detect my heritage. My given names are European, and my family name is an unusual pluralization of a common Arab name that sometimes throws even Arabic speakers.

Sen. Barbara Boxer introduced legislation last month that would allow Israel to continue racially profiling Americans of Arab and Muslim heritage who travel to Israel, even as it confers new privileges on Israelis traveling to the United States. I wonder whether she understands what it's like for her Arab American constituents to enter Israel. I always bet myself how long it will take for Ben Gurion Airport's security screeners to detect my heritage. My given names are European, and my family name is an unusual pluralization of a common Arab name that sometimes throws even Arabic speakers.

Professor Said's implied apology for Saddam Hussein vitiated everything he praised in reviewing "A History of the Arab Peoples." His obvious political bias was present throughout and began with his bemoaning what he sees as the American attempt "in effect to destroy Iraq as a modern Arab nation." If he believes Saddam Hussein has created a modern Arab nation, then he must regret the silly opposition Hitler ran into when he was attempting to build his modern German nation on a startlingly similar pile of corpses.

Two years ago, the "Arab Spring" that deposed dictators and demagogues was an inspiration to hundreds of millions of repressed souls across the Middle East who yearned for a say in how they were governed. Today, with the Egyptian economy in ruins, tribal clashes convulsing Libya and at least 70,000 dead in Syria's crushed uprising, those still chafing under authoritarian rule in the region are curbing their revolutionary impulses. The sweep of democracy in 2011 has stalled as post-overthrow chaos has become a cautionary tale for those in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar.

Last week, simultaneous with a mob attack on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the slaying of an American diplomat in Benghazi, Libya, Mitt Romney tried to lay blame for the incidents on what he said was President Obama's weak foreign policy. He was aiming to hurt Obama, but did himself greater harm. The inaccuracy and poor timing of his attack made it look exactly like what it was: shallow politicking at a moment of national crisis. Romney should get additional demerits for simplistic thinking.

A basic tenet of the U.S. war against terrorism under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama has been the need to "drain the swamp" ? to eliminate the conditions that drive young Muslims toward extremism. Now, in much of the Arab world, the inhabitants of the swamp have pitched in courageously to drain it themselves. Are we ready to help? The Obama administration says yes, but in some cases, it's been slow to take action. And most members of Congress say yes too, but they're caught up in a frenzy of budget cutting that's likely to reduce the money available for the job. The first step, of course, is helping democratic revolutions succeed.

Israeli authorities banned Al Fajr, a leading East Jerusalem Palestinian newspaper, from sale in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for three days for contravening censorship, official military sources said Friday.

Masked men abducted and killed a Palestinian today and dumped his body in the marketplace of the West Bank's largest city, marking the seventh slaying in three weeks of an Arab suspected of collaborating with Israel. The kidnapers forced Adli Thalagi, 30, from his home early today, Palestinian sources said. They beat and stabbed him to death before dumping his body in a shopping district known as the Onion Market in Nablus, 30 miles north of Jerusalem, the sources said.

Re "Family Mourns Palestinian, Gingerly," May 12: Where is the outrage from The Times condemning or even commenting on the "death threat" that was issued by the minister of justice of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority? Any Arab who sells even one inch of land to an Israeli will be punished by death. Public apathy can be understood because not many newspapers found this decree to be newsworthy enough to print. And indeed these execution orders were carried out with the execution death of East Jerusalem real estate agent Farid Bashiti.

A new message attributed to Osama bin Laden denounced Arab leaders for their treatment of Palestinians. The audio was posted on the same website as some past Al Qaeda statements, but its authenticity could not be independently verified. The speaker called for fighting Arab regimes that protect Israel. Bin Laden and deputy Ayman Zawahiri often call Arab leaders traitors.

BEIRUT - When Mazen El Sayed, a.k.a. El Rass, picks up a microphone, his provocative phrasings may lock in on any number of targets: Islamic clerics, the West, Arab regimes, social inequities. "We are all made from the same steel," the Lebanese hip-hop artist proclaims, "but the blacksmith is rotten. " El Rass' broadsides are delivered in singular thrusts of the Arab language, resulting in imaginative lines evoking "the optimistic suicide bomber" or lauding "a rebel critical of the rebellion.

BEIRUT - A Syrian opposition coalition was seated as the legitimate government of Syria at an Arab League summit Tuesday, and the coalition's outgoing leader promptly pushed for the United States to use Patriot missile defense batteries against Syrian warplanes. Moaz Khatib, who resigned Sunday from the opposition coalition amid reports of deep divisions in its ranks, said he put the Patriot missile request to U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry during a meeting last month in Rome.

BEIRUT -- A major Syrian opposition coalition took a seat as the legitimate government of Syria at an Arab League summit Tuesday, and the group's outgoing leader promptly pushed for the United States to use Patriot missile-defense batteries against Syrian warplanes. Moaz Khatib, who resigned from the opposition coalition on Sunday amid reports of deep divisions in its ranks, said he put the Patriot missile request to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during a meeting last month in Rome.

Israel's Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal by Arab residents of Jerusalem's Beit Safafa neighborhood to halt construction of a freeway extension through their community. The court ruled that there was no urgent need to stop the project, but that the residents' ongoing legal appeal in a lower court should proceed without delay. A Jerusalem court previously ruled that residents were too late to stop the freeway, which was approved by the city in 1990. Residents say the two-mile extension of Begin Expressway will dissect their neighborhood and cut off access to stores, mosques and schools.

As change sweeps across the Arab world, there are a variety of lenses through which to examine these changes: religious, cultural, political, economic. Shereen El Feki has chosen a decidedly less conventional lens with her new new book “Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World” (Pantheon, $29), due out Tuesday. The book takes a close look at the sexual lives of men and women in the Middle East. Combining original research with first-person stories from housewives, young virgins, activists and sex therapists, “Sex and the Citadel” provides a detailed account of a veiled and sensitive aspect of Arab society.

JERUSALEM - Construction of a freeway extension through one of Jerusalem's most-prosperous Arab neighborhoods is igniting tension in the once-quiet community and reviving complaints about how the city treats Palestinian residents. If completed as planned in 2015, the nearly 1-mile extension of Jerusalem's Begin Expressway will slice through the neighborhood of Beit Safafa, home to about 12,000 Arabs. Many residents say the extension would contribute to what they consider a pattern of discrimination and marginalization of East Jerusalem's Arab residents.

At a small but heavily fortified outpost on the edge of this dust-blown town, a contingent of American soldiers has recently taken up residence alongside Kurdish and Arab forces in what is likely to be one of the last new missions undertaken by the U.S. military in Iraq. Known simply as Checkpoint 3, the outpost in Nineveh province is one of about two dozen erected over the last six months along a line stretching across northern Iraq from Syria in the west to Iran in the east. It marks the ill-defined and highly disputed border between Kurdish- and Arab-controlled territories.

Your editorial certainly is timely. We don't need any more "antis" being expressed. You seem to overlook, however, the ugly anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments all too often voiced by leaders of the Arab-American community. Should they not be reminded that in our democracy their right to their opinions must be balanced against their obligation to respect and allow the opinions of others? THOMAS M. HUNTER, Encinitas

Ninety-four people accused of trying to seize power went on trial Monday in the United Arab Emirates, in a tightly guarded hearing criticized by human rights groups. The suspects allegedly launched an organization that claimed to promote “the teaching and virtues of Islam, while their undeclared aims were, in fact, to seek to seize power,” Atty. Gen. Salem Saeed Kubaish told the UAE's national news agency in January. Kubaish said the group tried to turn public opinion against the government by falsely smearing the state and sought financial help and advice from the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

RAHAT, Israel - On a patch of agricultural land outside Israel's only officially recognized Bedouin city, workers are laying concrete for what the government says will be a cornerstone of its policy to lure impoverished Arabs from barren Negev desert terrain to approved Israeli towns. Upon completion, Idan Hanegev is designed to be Israel's largest industrial park, an 860-acre site with 130 factories employing thousands of Bedouins, a once-nomadic people who have lived in the Negev and other parts of the region since long before the nation of Israel was established.