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Ed Webb

Jadaliyya - 0 views

  • At the heart of the regime’s responses to these pressures is the “National Dialogue.” The Dialogue, which kicked off last May, is a vaguely conceived multi-track forum in which a host of carefully selected political figures and experts convene periodically to discuss public policy reforms. The political leadership has marketed this initiative to its international and domestic detractors as a testament to its readiness to engage opponents and alternative viewpoints. In reality, the Dialogue is the regime’s attempt at gaslighting critics
  • the spectacle (as opposed to the outcome) of deliberation is the clear driver of this initiative
  • by early 2023, the regime had decimated the resources it now needed to erect a convincing façade of participatory politics to mitigate the concerns of its international partners and to absorb popular discontent
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  • The very existence of the Dialogue underscores the extent to which Sisi has managed to lock himself in a corner after spending much of the past decade destroying all forms of managed dissent and limited pluralism, once a staple of the previous authoritarian order.
  • the July 2013 coup proceeded on the ruins of the “civilian punching bag” model of 2012-13. The latter describes a tacit arrangement in which the military was poised to pursue its interests from behind a civilian interlocutor (or, a “punching bag”), the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party—an arrangement that ended in utter failure. By 2013, therefore, the military’s appetite for working in collaboration with civilian parties had run its course.
  • the reinvention of Mubarak-style dominant party rule was not an appealing option for Sisi in 2014.
  • “the New Youth Project” or NYP for short. The NYP describes a host of formal and informal initiatives and programs that, collectively, seek to cultivate a new cadre of youth politicians and public servants socialized around military-centric nationalism
  • a broader effort the political leadership is undertaking to inject into public institutions a broad-based ideological commitment to the military-dominated political order
  • a pervading discourse senior officials and pro-regime figures have propagated in the past few years under the banner of “the battle of consciousness” (معركة الوعي). Behind this rather eerie term is a narrative claiming that Egypt’s most pressing national security concern is the spread of misinformation and ideational attacks against society’s so-called core values. The implication of course is that any expression of dissent, criticism of government performance, or questioning of state-provided information is a suspected attempt to foment instability and undermine Egypt’s social peace. The solution, the story goes, is countering such “false consciousness” by promoting public awareness of these threats and by enlisting more patriots in the “battle of consciousness.”
  • the Sisi regime has been pursuing a broad-scoped project to ideologically militarize civilian spheres and to inculcate all sectors of Egyptian society with ideas rationalizing blind support for the military-sponsored regime
  • the politicians who have been coached to impress the crowd by their confident demeanor, their captivating TED Talk public speaking style, and their superficial use of catchy phrases that borrow (albeit superficially) from the language of scientific research. Most importantly, they have been socialized to accept the supremacy of the military such that they would never question the men in uniform, as was the case with the contentious youth activists who often denigrated officers in public forums and protests between 2011 and 2013
  • a consistent strategy Sisi has adopted whenever frustrated with the ineffectiveness or the bureaucratic resistance of state institutions: the creation of parallel structures to bypass these institutions altogether. Thus, today one finds a host of bodies and offices Sisi formed over the years and that seemingly replicate the roles of existing government ministries. Examples include the Supreme Council for Investment, the Supreme Council for Combatting Terrorism, the Supreme Council for the Automotive Industry, and, currently under study, the Supreme Council for Education. Whereas the office of the minister of health still exists officially, a presidential advisor for health affairs (a former minister of health himself), appointed by Sisi in 2020, has taken a visible role in explaining and defending state health policies, just like a minister of health would.
  • Mustaqbal Watan Party (MWP). MWP was once the embodiment of Sisi’s dream of a new generation of pro-military youth politicians who could lead Egypt’s post-2013 political scene. After several wake-up calls, the regime was forced to restructure the party so that “Sisi’s youth” could step aside to accommodate a larger role for the older and more seasoned networks and affiliates of the Mubarak regime—the same actors the president once sought to sideline. These transformations underscore the inherent limitations of the NYP and the idea that Sisi, despite all the power and resources he possessed, had to forge compromises with the once-dreaded traditional political classes, even if at the expense of his own coveted project.
  • observers were aware that MWP was among the political parties the intelligence establishment created and funded to promote the Sisi presidency. Nevertheless, Sisi kept an official distance from the party, avoiding any insinuation that Mustaqbal Watan represents the wielders of power in any formal sense. This policy was partly shaped by Sisi’s aforementioned skepticism of political parties and his interest in engineering the political field from a distance
  • there was more to Sisi’s apprehension toward the Mubarakists than appeasing the January 25thers or deflecting criticism. On a more fundamental level, Sisi was keeping a watchful eye on presidential hopeful Ahmed Shafik, former Air Force general and Mubarak’s last prime minister, who ran for president in 2012 and lost to Morsi in a tight runoff. Even though Shafik opted (rather grudgingly) not to run for president in 2014 after it became clear Sisi was the state’s chosen candidate and trying to challenge him was pointless, his supporters did not relent.
  • The idea of former Mubarakists banding together outside the state’s purview[3] was (and remains) an alarming prospect for Sisi for multiple reasons. They are proficient in mobilizing supporters in elections and have a long experience in the business of setting up vote-buying machines. More than any other civilian player, they can work collaboratively with security agencies. Most significantly, if organized sufficiently, they have what it takes to offer Sisi’s international allies and domestic constituents the same deal he offers them: a stable authoritarian project accommodating the various geostrategic, political, and economic imperatives the Sisi regime claims to protect
  • In early 2021, over half of MWP’s Central Secretariat members had ties to the NDP (compared to a quarter in 2016), and so did two thirds of its provincial leaders. This reality stood in stark contrast to the state of affairs inside Mustaqbal Watan during its founding years, when a younger group of political outsiders were running the show. Interestingly, by 2021, only two of Mustaqbal Watan’s 2014 founding signatories enjoyed posts in the party’s Central Secretariat, which now featured a completely different cadre of politicians.
  • lawmakers voted down by a wide margin the president’s highly coveted civil service bill, among the reforms reportedly “encouraged” by the International Monetary Fund at the time
  • in the fall of 2019, the president decided to put an end to this disarray, ordering a freeze on parliament’s operations, nearly a year before the next legislative elections were due.
  • The lead-up to the 2018 vote confirmed in many ways Sisi’s intolerance of any political competition, even to the most limited degree. He went to great lengths to eliminate all presidential contenders by any means possible: imprisonment, intimidation, violence, and dubious legal measures. Left to his own devices, Sisi would have run unchallenged. Pressured by Washington, however, he ultimately agreed to let one of his own political cheerleaders, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, run against him in what proved to be an unconvincing (even if lighthearted) episode of political theater, with Sisi winning 97 percent of the votes.
Ed Webb

Obama officials' spin on Benghazi attack mirrors Bin Laden raid untruths | Glenn Greenw... - 0 views

  • The Obama White House's interest in spreading this falsehood is multi-fold and obvious:For one, the claim that this attack was just about anger over an anti-Muhammad video completely absolves the US government of any responsibility or even role in provoking the anti-American rage driving it. After all, if the violence that erupted in that region is driven only by anger over some independent film about Muhammad, then no rational person would blame the US government for it, and there could be no suggestion that its actions in the region – things like this, and this, and this, and this – had any role to play.
  • it's deeply satisfying to point over there at those Muslims and scorn their primitive religious violence, while ignoring the massive amounts of violence to which one's own country continuously subjects them. It's much more fun and self-affirming to scoff: "can you believe those Muslims are so primitive that they killed our ambassador over a film?" than it is to acknowledge: "our country and its allies have continually bombed, killed, invaded, and occupied their countries and supported their tyrants."
  • the self-loving mindset that enables the New York Times to write an entire editorial today purporting to analyze Muslim rage without once mentioning the numerous acts of American violence aimed at them
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  • Critics of the war in Libya warned that the US was siding with (and arming and empowering) violent extremists, including al-Qaida elements, that would eventually cause the US to claim it had to return to Libya to fight against them – just as its funding and arming of Saddam in Iraq and the mujahideen in Afghanistan subsequently justified new wars against those one-time allies
  • The falsehood told by the White House – this was just a spontaneous attack prompted by this video that we could not have anticipated and had nothing to do with – fixed all of those problems. Critical attention was thus directed to Muslims (what kind of people kill an ambassador over a film?) and away from the White House and its policies.
  • the number one rule of good journalism, even of good citizenship, is to remember that "all governments lie." Yet, no matter how many times we see this axiom proven true, over and over, there is still a tendency, a desire, to believe that the US government's claims are truthful and reliable.
Ed Webb

Egypt falls again in World Press Freedom Index, now ranked 159th | RSF - 0 views

  • Amid growing hostility to media criticism of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s government, Egypt has fallen one place in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index that Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published today.
  • the media reflect the country’s polarization between support for Sisi and opposition, but the authoritarian regime has used the fraught security situation to crack down on critical journalists in the name of stability and national security
  • Now ranked 159th out of 180 countries, Egypt had fallen steadily in the Index since the end of the Mubarak era, when it was ranked 127th out of 173 countries
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  • in the anti-terrorism law adopted in August. Under article 33, the media are now obliged to limit themselves to the government’s version of terrorist attacks
Ed Webb

In Post-Mubarak Egypt, Journalists Resent New Media Controls | World | TIME.com - 0 views

  • optimism crumbled on Aug. 8 when the Shura Council — the upper house of parliament controlled by Morsy’s Muslim Brotherhood — announced dozens of new editors at a host of state-owned newspapers and magazines. The new al-Ahram editor, Abdel Nasser Salama, was just one of the hires that prompted a widespread revolt among Egyptian journalists
  • The day after the appointments, a handful of columnists (all at privately owned papers) ran blank columns in protest — objecting to both the individual choices and the idea that Morsy’s government was adopting the Mubarak-era levers of media control. That turned out to be just the opening salvo in a widening conflict that has Morsy’s young government accused of suppressing free speech. A pair of prominent government critics now face charges of incitement to violence and the purely Mubarak-era crime of “insulting the President.” Tawfiq Okasha, a firebrand anti-Brotherhood television host, has had the channel he owns temporarily shut down. And police raided the offices of the privately owned newspaper al-Dostour, confiscated the Aug. 11 edition of the paper and charged its editor in chief, Islam Afify, with incitement.
  • Kassem still warned that the Brotherhood had already proved itself too prickly and thin-skinned to rule responsibly over a raucous post-Mubarak Egypt. “They’re a quasi-military organization,” he said. “Internally there’s no such thing as criticism of your superiors.”
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  • Morsy’s Egypt has a very different atmosphere than Mubarak’s, and segments of the postrevolutionary population have no intention of giving up such hard-won freedoms. On Aug. 23, about 1,500 protesters gathered in a public square near Tahrir and chanted against the government’s recent media moves. One protester held up a sign in Arabic that said: “Insulting the President Is One of the Rights We Gained in the Revolution.”
  • the situation at state television has measurably improved since Morsy took office. “I don’t see that there’s directives coming from above anymore,” she said. “You can’t say there’s no freedom of expression. We’ve come such a long way.”
  • only a small handful of her colleagues were willing to join her in an office protest against the appointment
  • she has been professionally marginalized inside the newspaper — given a steady paycheck and nothing to do. She used her free time to write a book called Diary of an al-Ahram Journalist, but fears that title might not be accurate for much longer. “It’s the first time I’ve said to myself, ‘Maybe it’s time to leave,’” she said.
Ed Webb

Channel 4 cancels Islam documentary screening after presenter threatened - Telegraph - 1 views

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    His book was panned by knowledgeable critics, so it may be that his film was garbage. On the other hand, death threats are never justified over expression.
Ed Webb

Brotherhood critical of state-run media |GulfNews.com - 0 views

  • journalists accused the Muslim Brotherhood of trying to control the state-run publications by picking editors who will allegedly toe its line. The Shura Council, the nominal owner of these publications, has recently unveiled controversial criteria for editorship of these publications and asked journalists interested in the job to forward applications. Officials in the council have said the aim of the move is to revamp the state-owned press institutions. “The Freedom and Justice Party has replaced [Mubarak’s] National Democratic Party in attempting to dominate the national press,” Yehia Qalash, an ex-member of the Press Syndicate board, told Gulf News. “If the Brothers were really sincere about their call for reforming these intuitions, they would remove these institutions from the Shura Council’s control. In fact, they merely follow in the footsteps of the Mubarak regime,” he added.
Ed Webb

Iraqi 'Ninth Studio' avoids TV's sectarian divide - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle... - 0 views

  • Since 2003, the televised media environment in Iraq has witnessed dramatic changes. Whereas Iraqis were once forced to choose between only two local television stations — one administered by the Ministry of Information and the other run by the son of then-President Saddam Hussein — they now have dozens of satellite channels reporting on national affairs.
  • a deep hunger on the part of many Iraqis to learn about the outside world from which they had been cut off by the old regime's extremely strict official censorship. Iraq undertook a rapid and astounding transition from a model of censorship resembling what George Orwell described in his novel 1984 toward what former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described as a state of "untidy” freedom.
  • There is a widespread belief that the official Iraqi channel has lost its independence and been completely reduced to subservience to the will and dictates of the government, even to the point that members of parliament have threatened to block funding for its operating budget. In similar fashion, most other Iraqi channels have become captive to political influences either hostile or sympathetic toward the government. Many have concluded that the media outlets in Iraq are actually deepening the country's ethnic and sectarian divides, rather than working to overcome them. 
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  • Whereas entertainment channels that do not offer news content can attract a multisectarian and multiethnic viewing base, news channels generally draw upon a particular ethnic or sectarian segment of the population whose coverage it favors, further reinforcing the political divisions that already afflict the media environment. 
  •  “The Ninth Studio” does not rely for its success on an enormous budget or sophisticated technical capabilities. Rather, it tends to deal frankly and directly with issues that concern the ordinary audience, and to do so with a high degree of independence. “The Ninth Studio” tends to focus on issues pertaining to the corruption and inefficiency of governmental institutions, and generally offers scathing criticism of Iraqi officials, without indulging in the discourse of sectarian prejudice.
  • Despite the absence of sectarian language on “The Ninth Studio,” and the difficulty of discerning any sectarian bias in its rhetoric, Iraq's Media and Communications Commission temporarily shut down its office in September on the pretext of it being a threat to public peace. Most likely, this decision came in response to governmental pressures, and as a consequence of the show's earlier criticism of the commission.
  • The problem is that neutral media organizations usually lack sufficient financial support, and are exposed to pressures by officials who are unhappy with their content, without being able to rely on independent institutions capable of defending them.
Ed Webb

Reflections on Not Writing about the Syrian Conflict - 0 views

  • My own work shows how mass cultural producers have worked through the state in an effort to reform the regime. I continue to view most of the drama creators with whom I worked as honest critics of dictatorship, given the high degree of dissatisfaction with the regime expressed to me in interviews and informal conversations. This criticism, often dismissed as a regime-sanctioned safety-valve mechanism, sincerely reflected the relatively progressive, secular politics of most TV makers themselves. The uprising has split the drama field, the majal al-fann; some artists have backed the opposition, others remain silent, and some support Bashar al-Asad. A handful of prominent actors—drama industry’s public face—have continually praised the leadership’s handling of the crisis. Yet most screenwriters and some directors—the industry’s “brains”—have embraced the opposition, or condemned the regime. Some have been arrested; at least one remains incarcerated.
Ed Webb

Printing of newspaper with critical content halted | Mada Masr - 0 views

  • The third weekly issue of Al-Wady newspaper, scheduled to hit the stands on Monday night, did not go to print, editor-in-chief Khaled al-Balshy told the privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm daily on Tuesday. He added that he did not know why. This is the second time the printing of this issue has been halted after being sent to Al-Akhbar foundation printers, Balshy told privately owned newspaper Youm7.
  • The issue included an investigation of the controversial AIDS cure announced by the military, a revisiting of the State Security building raids that occurred in 2011, and letters from detained activists Alaa Abd El Fattah and Ahmed Maher.
  • Al-Wady, owned by businessman Tarek al-Nadeem, had advertised its print issue on its Facebook page, revealing many heated topics.
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  • In his article that was supposed to appear in the print issue, Abd El Fattah compares the revolution to an autistic child losing his ability to engage with reality.
Ed Webb

SpyTalk - Israeli spies wooing U.S. Muslims, sources say - 0 views

  • “Israeli agents have become more aggressive in targeting Muslims living in the United States as well as in operating against critics.”
    • Ed Webb
       
      Because, y'know, criticism kills
Ed Webb

Khaled and the myth of rai | The Middle East Channel - 0 views

  • it was not the opposition of "fundamentalists" that kept rai music (not just Khaled's) off of Algerian state radio. It was rather the Algerian (secular) regime's cultural policies. The state promoted classical Arabic culture and language and denied Algeria's multi-cultural nature. Expressive culture in Arabic dialect or Berber was therefore mostly excluded from the state-controlled media. Rai is sung in the distinctive colloquial Arabic of Wahran, which is not only very different from "classical" or literary Arabic but is also full of borrowings from Spanish, French and Berber. This official national-cultural politics, which was particularly severe during the regime of Houari Boumediene (1965-1978), began to loosen during Chadly Benjadid's regime (1979-1992). In his 1998 autobiography, "Derrière la sourire," Khaled recounts how he managed to break the official embargo in the early 1980s. He was invited to appear on a television show in Algiers, which he knew couldn't be censored because it was to be broadcast live. Khaled was warned ahead of time: no vulgarities, no sex. So he sang three songs: the first, about the Prophet Muhammad; the second, a "poetic" song, one that was artistically acceptable; and the third, about alcohol and women.
  • Khaled, and other rai stars, came to play at this festival due to the efforts of the "liberal" wing of the Algerian regime -- and particularly to Lieutenant-Colonel Hosni Snoussi, director of the state-supported arts and culture organization, Office Riadh el Feth in Algiers, who had taken Cheb Khaled under his wing. The regime's liberal wing became interested in promoting rai in the wake of a spate of unrest that erupted during the early 1980s. Most notably, the 1980 riots in Tizi Ouzou, Kabylia (the "Berber Spring"); the 1985 riots in Algiers, which broke out following rumors that housing being built for the poor would be allocated to state bureaucrats; and the 1986 student riots in Constantine that resulted in the deaths of four protesters and spread to other cities. Young Algerians played a leading role in all these protests. The liberal wing of the regime determined that, to deter further unrest, the state should focus on promoting the interests of youth and on developing the market economy. Rai was very popular with Algerian youth, and so the "liberals" determined that promoting it was to be an important element of these reform efforts. It was changes in state policy toward rai, pushed by Snoussi, that got Khaled and other rai stars onto the stage in Algiers in 1985.
  • The French government had a stake in trying to control and channel the energies of the rai scene.
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  • Khaled opened his set at Bobigny with a religious song, "Sallou 'ala al-Nabi" (Blessings on the Prophet). This is also how he typically opened concerts in Algeria. This is important to underscore because standard accounts of rai music (like Eyre's) typically give the impression that there is a kind of inherent antagonism between rai artists and Islam.
  • Because rai was a badge of cultural pride for young Beurs, the French state determined that its interests lay in promoting North African Arab culture in France, rather than being an antagonist. Not just Khaled, but an array of top Algerian rai artists performed at Bobigny in 1986. Clearly the tab for transporting and putting up these stars was an expensive proposition for the French government. Moreover, because Khaled had been avoiding his military service, Col. Snoussi had to intervene with the Algerian military authorities in order to secure him a passport to travel to France.
  • That liberal elements of the Algerian state played a major role in initiating and underwriting the process whereby rai music became known around the world, and whereby Khaled became the world's best-known Arab singer, deserves to be much more widely known. (Government sponsorship and subsidies for rai came to an end, after the bloody riots of October 1988 and the state's launching of a movement toward reform and democratization.) It is remarkable success story, with significant political and cultural implications, in both France and Algeria. Col. Snoussi and his liberal associates deserve credit, as do key French actors like Martin Meissonier and Jack Lang.
  • Khaled met some criticism after recording the John Lennon song "Imagine" with Israeli artist Noa (for the European release of his 1999 album Kenza) and after performing the song with Noa at a "peace" concert called "Time for Life" in Rome in May, 2002. Khaled subsequently toured the Middle East with Palestinian-American 'ud and violin maestro Simon Shaheen and Egyptian shaabi singer Hakim. In Lebanon and Jordan he encountered campaigns to boycott his concert, on the grounds that he had engaged in "normalization" with Israel by performing with an Israeli artist and in the presence of Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Khaled responded that Palestinian singer Nabil Khouri had also performed at the concert and that Yasir Arafat's adviser Mohammed Rashid was in attendance. The Lebanon and Jordan concerts were well-attended, despite the protests. Khaled also recorded with the Algerian Jewish pianist Maurice El Medioni on his 2004 album Ya-Rayi, but I'm not aware that any criticism was leveled against him for working with Medioni or with U.S. musicians
  • It makes more sense to speak of Khaled as a European artist who has done much to promote Arab culture in the West, rather than to frame him as an Algerian artist, the thrust of whose work is against Islamic intolerance.
Ed Webb

Iraq | Press Freedom - 0 views

  • media watchdogs said the action was more likely taken in response to the station’s programming, which had at times been critical, or satirical, of the Iraqi government. The move by security forces is an ominous sign for the country’s press, which, for the first time in decades had been enjoying relative freedom.
  • Ziad al Jillily, head of Iraq’s Journalistic Freedom Observatory, said that freedom of speech and journalism were the sole benefit of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
  • The media here is now freer than Syria’s or Iran’s and less partisan than, say, Lebanon, where most of the media outlets are owned or controlled by politicians of various stripes. Basking in this freedom, both news and entertainment programs regularly push the boundaries. In an Iraqi version of "Punk’d," for example, which aired on Baghdadiya, actors played pranks on celebrities that often involved fake car bombs, checkpoint harassment and live bullets. As the celebrities screamed and fainted on screen, and readers complained, Punk’d Baghdad-style might not have been a good idea. But it did come from a lively, growing culture of media freedom.
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  • Militia groups who ruled Iraq during the worst years of sectarian violence saw a free press as a Western imposition and targeted both Iraqi and foreign journalists
  • Reporters without Borders revealed that at least 230 media workers had been killed in Iraq since the American invasion
  • One Iraqi journalist, one among hundreds that worked with Western news agencies in Baghdad, has worked in media for years, but tells no one in his neighborhood about it. “If they knew, I would be a target for militias, for Al Qaeda, and even for Iraqi security forces,”
  • Jillily said that journalists have increasingly found their access curtailed by Saddam-era laws that remain on the books. A journalist was arrested in the southern city of Kut earlier this year, he said, for publishing an article criticizing the judicial system, and was only released after he denied that he had written it. “There are many people trying to bring back the times of dictatorship to Iraq,” he said, “…you can’t expect a government that has politicians who are deeply corrupted to give freedom for journalists.”
Michael Fisher

Identity Crisis Permeates Turkish Society : NPR - 0 views

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    Modern Turkey was founded as a secular, Western-oriented state. But these days, Turks say the country is expressing its Muslim identity more than its secular one. And the critical question of Islam versus secularism colors just about every debate in the country.
Ed Webb

Charles Freeman fails the loyalty test - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

  • In the U.S., you can advocate torture, illegal spying, and completely optional though murderous wars and be appointed to the highest positions.  But you can't, apparently, criticize Israeli actions too much or question whether America's blind support for Israel should be re-examined.
  • Blumethal also suggested that right-wing Israel fanatics in the U.S. are particularly interested in controlling how intelligence is analyzed due to their anger over the NIE's 2007 conclusion that Iran had ceased its pursuit of nuclear weapons. “It’s clear that Freeman isn’t going to be influenced by the lobby,” Jim Lobe, the Washington bureau chief of Inter Press Service, remarked to me. “They don’t like people like that, especially when they’re in charge of products like the NIE. So this is a very important test for them.”
  • Does anyone doubt that it's far more permissible in American political culture to criticize actions of the American government than it is the actions of the Israeli Government?
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  • Having the kind of debate in America that they have in Israel, let alone Europe, on the way ahead in the Middle East is simply forbidden.
  • What I find most mystifying is that Israel-centric fanatics actually think it is a good thing for Israel to impose these sorts of Israel-based loyalty tests and orthodoxies on American politics.  Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly want the U.S. Government to be "even-handed" in the Israel/Palestinian dispute and substantial portions of Americans do not favor American policies towards Israel.  Isn't it rather obvious that at some point, there will be a substantial and understandable backlash as Americans watch people like Chuck Schumer openly boast that anyone who makes "statements against Israel" that he deems "over the top" will be disqualified from serving in our Government, despite a long and distinguished record of public service and unchallenged expertise?
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