Date:

April 25, 2018

Date:

April 18, 2018

1st Segment: Noor Harazeen (in Gaza)
Palestinian journalist, freelance film producer, and TV correspondent for TeleSUR and CGTN, based in Gaza city, occupied Palestine. Will speak with Noor about the horrific situation in the Gaza Strip, the killing of 33 Palestinians (including children and a journalist) and injury of 4,279 (including 642 children, 243 women, 66 journalists and 44 medical personnel) by the Israeli occupation forces since March 30, 2018. We will talk about the Great March of Return, the effect of the Israeli blockade on the children of Gaza, targeting of journalists and the Israeli killing of Yasser Mortaja, 30 years old Palestinian journalist who was a colleague and a close friend of Noor Harazeen. 
  
While covering the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, Noor Harazeen was almost killed when Israel fired a missile at the clearly marked TV vehicle she was riding in. Moments after she got out of the TV vehicle, it was targeted by Israel, and her driver was killed.
          

2nd Segment: Reese Erlich
A Freelance journalist who began reporting from Syria in 2002, and has covered the Middle East for over 30 years. He writes the syndicated column "Foreign Correspondent", and has authored several books including "Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect", and the best-selling book "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You". Erlich has produced several major radio documentaries and has won numerous journalism awards.
 
We will speak with Reese about the crisis in Syria and the recent bombing of Syria by the United States, Britain, and France on April 13, 2018. Reese says "The official version of the U.S. missile attack on Syria is already unraveling. The supposed chemical weapons factory bombed by the U.S. didn't leak chemicals. There have been no independent confirmations that the bombed sites had any connection to chemical weapons." Robert Fisk, award-winning journalist with the British Independent, just reported from Douma, Syria that a doctor he interviewed there told him people died from a lack of oxygen in underground tunnels, not chemical weapons.

Date:

April 11, 2018

1st Segment: Mustafaa Carroll
We will speak with Mustafaa Carroll, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Houston) about the stabbing and apparent bias-motivated attempted murder of a Muslim woman in Houston last week, April 5, 2018, and the rise of hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S.
    
The 31-year-old victim, who is white and wears an Islamic head scarf (hijab), says she was driving home early Thursday morning from her job as a nurse when her vehicle was almost sideswiped by a red SUV. When the victim pulled over and got out of her vehicle to check for damage and to collect herself following that near accident, the attacker made a U-turn and pulled up behind the victim’s vehicle. He then allegedly got out of his SUV and began shouting obscenities and racial and religious slurs such as, “Oh my God, it’s a raghead,” “It’s an f**king raghead,” “sand n**ger” and “desert monkey”. The victim tried to get back in her vehicle, but the passenger side door was locked. At that point the attacker began waving a knife in the victim’s face and then hit her on her shoulder and arms.
     
CAIR-Houston is offering $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the attacker.
      

2nd Segment: Rami Almeghari (in Gaza)
We will speak with Rami Almeghari, independent journalist and commentator in Gaza, occupied Palestine, about the dire situation in the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli siege and strangulation of nearly two million Palestinians (health situation, economy, unemployment, poverty, lack of building materials, borders, etc.), and The Great March of Return where tens of thousands of Palestinians began on March 30, 2018 a major peaceful protest against the ongoing Israeli atrocities and strangulation of Gaza and calling for their right of return, only to be faced with a massacre by the Israeli occupation forces. Since March 30, 2018, at least 30 Palestinian civilians (including children and a journalist) were shot and killed and more than 3,000 were wounded! A new video that went viral on social media, shows Israeli soldiers cheering after shooting unarmed Palestinian youth in Gaza.

Date:

April 4, 2018

1st Segment: Dr. Riyad Mansour's Remarks at the UN
Ambassador and Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, and the non-resident Ambassador of the State of Palestine to Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. He joined the Permanent Observer Mission of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to the UN, New York, in 1983 as Deputy Permanent Observer, and has since represented Palestine in several committees and bodies of the UN. Dr. Mansour has published several studies and articles about the Palestinian community in the US, lectured in several American universities, and has participated in numerous international conferences, symposia, seminars and panel debates as a representative of Palestine. He is also a member of senior officials committees of the State of Palestine and the PLO.
 
We will listen today to Ambassador Mansour's remarks delivered at the United Nations Security Council on March 30, 2018 in response to Israel's massacre in Gaza where 17 Palestinian civilians were shot and killed and more than 1400 others were wounded by the Israeli occupation forces!
  

2nd Segment: Poems from Rafeef Ziadah & Remi Kanazi
The month of April is National Poetry Month, and today on the show we will listen to a few poems on Gaza and Palestine by Rafeef Ziadah, Palestinian spoken word artist and human rights activist based in London, UK. Her performance of poems like ‘We Teach Life, Sir’ and ‘Shades of Anger’ went viral within days of its release. Her live readings offer a moving blend of poetry and music. Since releasing her first album, Rafeef has headlined prestigious performance venues across several countries with powerful readings on war, exile, gender and racism. We will also listen to poems from Remi Kanazi, a poet, writer, and organizer based in New York City, and author of the collection of poetry Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine. He is also the author of Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine and the editor of Poets For Palestine.
    

3rd Segment: "I Have a Dream" by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today, April 4, 2018, marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the greatest civil rights leaders, ever!
 
In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we will air today on Arab Voices his most famous and historic speech “I have a Dream” calling for racial equality. He delivered that speech on August 28, 1963 during the historic march on Washington, where hundreds of thousands of people marched for civil and economic rights. It was one of the largest demonstrations for human rights in United States' history.

Date:

March 28, 2018

"Digital Humanities of the Underground: The Palestinian Revolution Website" by Dr. Abdel Razzaq Takriti
The Department of History and the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Arab Studies at Rice University hosted Dr. Abdel Razzaq Takriti on October 17, 2017, where he presented his "Digital Humanities of the Underground: The Palestinian Revolution Website" project. Abdel Razzaq Takriti is Associate Professor and Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Arab History at the University of Houston. He is the author of the award-winning book Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman, 1965-1976 (Oxford University Press, 2013) and co-author and co-curator of The Palestinian Revolution website learnpalestine.politics.ox.ac.uk (2017).
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Dr. Abdel Razzaq Takriti's presentation on the "Digital Humanities of the Underground: The Palestinian Revolution Website".

Date:

March 21, 2018

8th Annual Houston Palestinian Festival
Live conversation with Houda Jarrah, board member with the Palestinian American Cultural Center (PACC-Houston) and volunteer on the festival committee team, and Mona Fareed, board member with the Palestinian American Cultural Center and chair of the festival committee team about the 8th Annual Houston Palestinian Festival scheduled to be held March 24-25 at Jones Plaza in Downtown Houston.
   
This year's festival is being held under the theme "We Are Jerusalem, We Are Palestine". It will include folkloric and contemporary music and dance, Palestinians culture and cuisine, traditional fashion show and wedding, grand bazaar, and kids fun zone. The festival will include two nights of performances by international singer Maher Al-Attili and Wessam Aljundi (Abu Batata), as well as Salem Omran, Aladeen Alhayek, DJ Ashraf, and Houston's favorite - Jabour!
 

Spring Fund Drive

Date:

March 14, 2018

Melvin Goodman
Director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC, and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He was an analyst at the CIA for 24 years; a former analyst at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; and author of several books on international security, including "National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism" and "Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA". His latest book is "Whistleblower at the CIA". Goodman helped draft the report that described Israel’s attack against Egypt on the morning of June 5, 1967.Last year, he published the piece The Six Day War and Israeli Lies: What I Saw at the CIA. Goodman has written numerous articles and op-eds over the years, appeared on various media outlets, and has lectured all over the country. He is also the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.
 
Note that we are offering two of Melvin's books during the show today (see below). 
    
We will speak live with Melvin about Trump's firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and the nomination of CIA Director Mike Pompeo (known for his opposition to the Iran deal and his bias against Islam with Islamophobic views and association with an anti-Muslim hate group) to replace Tillerson, and Gina Haspel, CIA Deputy Director (known for her leading role in torture of detainees) as a replacement for Pompeo.
        

KPFT continues its Spring Fund Drive, and Arab Voices Needs Your Support to raise $1,500. We are offering the following "Thank-You" Gifts during this drive:

• "National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism" book by Melvin Goodman ($100)
   

• "Whistleblower at the CIA: An Insider’s Account of the Politics of Intelligence" book by Melvin Goodman ($100)
   

• Both Books by Melvin Goodman ($150)
   

• "Ralph Nader: Empowering People in the Trump Era" DVD $100
   

• "All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone" DVD $100
   

• "The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in The United States" DVD $120

Please call 713-526-5738 between 6 pm and 7 pm central time on Wednesday and support your commercial-free community radio station. You can also send email to info@ArabVoices.net with your name and the amount you'd like to pledge. Thank you.
 

Spring Fund Drive

Date:

March 7, 2018

KPFT continues its Spring Fund Drive, and Arab Voices Needs Your Support to raise $1,500. We are offering the following "Thank-You" Gifts during this drive:

• "Ralph Nader: Empowering People in the Trump Era" DVD $100
   

• "All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone" DVD $100
   

• "The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in The United States" DVD $120

Please call 713-526-5738 between 6 pm and 7 pm central time on Wednesday and support your commercial-free community radio station. You can also send email to info@ArabVoices.net with your name and the amount you'd like to pledge. Thank you.
 

Spring Fund Drive

Date:

February 28, 2018

1st Segment: Khanh Pham, JD
Staff Attorney with Boat People SOS-Houston (BPSOS), a non-profit social and legal services provider whose purpose is to empower, organize, and equip immigrant communities in their pursuit of liberty and dignity. It provides education, information, and direct assistance to immigrant and refugee families on potential health and legal issues prevalent in the immigrant communities.
  
We will speak with attorney Pham about the various services provided by Boat People SOS-Houston (BPSOS) to the communities, including the Arab American community, where they have staff on board, Rhoda Jazairy, that can speak and translate to Arabic-speaking members of the community.
       

2nd Segment: ACC's Annual Gala (Part 2 of 2)
We will continue to air the remaining remarks delivered at the Arab American Cultural and Community Center's (ACC) Annual Unity and Friendship Gala held on December 8, 2017, where they highlighted the Culture and People of Syria. We will listen today to the keynote address delivered by Fares Ksebati, Co-Founder and CEO of MySwimPro and the son of Syrian immigrants, and also listen to the remarks of the Gala Honorees Said Fattouh, recipient of the 2017 ACC Outstanding Arab Media Award, and Amer Al-Nahhas, who received (on behalf of the Syrian American Club) the 2017 ACC Outstanding Refugees Service Award, as well as the announcement about the ACC Young Writers Award Contest winners.
   
Last week (archived online at www.ArabVoices.net), we aired the remarks of Mrs. Hadia Mawlawi, Gala Co-Chair, Dr. Faiza Zalila, ACC President, and Dr. Aziz Shaibani, recipient of the 2017 ACC Outstanding Community Service Award.

Date:

February 21, 2018

ACC's Annual Unity & Friendship Gala (Part 1 of 2)
The Arab American Cultural and Community Center (ACC) in Houston held its Annual Unity and Friendship Gala on December 8, 2017, under the theme "Elevating Humanity", and it highlighted the Culture and People of Syria. The Gala Chairs were Mrs. Hadia Mawlawi and Mrs. Mariam Haddad. The Mistress of Ceremonies was Gina Gaston, reporter and co-anchor at KTRK-TV ABC13 News in Houston.
    
The ACC honorees were Dr. Aziz Shaibani (2017 ACC Outstanding Community Service Award), Mr. Said Fattouh (2017 ACC Outstanding Arab Media Award), and The Syrian American Club (2017 ACC Outstanding Refugees Service Award).
      
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to some of the remarks made at the Gala, including the remarks of Mrs. Hadia Mawlawi, Gala Co-Chair, Dr. Faiza Zalila, ACC President, and Dr. Aziz Shaibani, recipient of the 2017 ACC Outstanding Community Service Award (introduced by Dr. Ussama Makdissi and Dr. Michael Newmark).
   
Next week, we will air the keynote address by Fares Ksebati, and the remarks of Said Fattouh and Amer Al-Nahhas, as well as the ACC Young Writers Award Contest winners.

Date:

February 14, 2018

1st Segment: Maha Freij
Deputy Executive Director & Chief Financial Officer at ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), and a leading visionary in the Arab American community with regard to philanthropy and building strong institutions to strengthen the voice of the community in American civil society. Under her leadership, the Center for Arab American Philanthropy (CAAP), a national institution of ACCESS, has established itself as the only national Arab American community foundation in the U.S., connecting philanthropists across the country and helping them to make a greater impact. Maha is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including the American Task Force for Palestine’s 2011 Distinguished Service in Philanthropy Award; the Arab American Association of New York’s 2010 Community Service Award; the Arab American Heritage Council’s 2010 Community Leader of the Year Award; Alternatives for Girls’ 2005 Role Model Award; Crain's Detroit Business, Best Managed Non-Profit Organization, 2000; and New Detroit, Inc.’s 1996 Richard Fisher Fiscal Integrity Award.
 
We will speak with Maha about ACCESS, CAAP, and the upcoming Threads of Giving Gala that will be held in Houston on March 16, 2018, honoring businessman and innovator Farouk Shami with the first ever Outstanding Arab American Philanthropist Award, recognizing his charitable efforts both at home and internationally.
           

2nd Segment: Shireen Al-Adeimi
A doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she has been conducting research on improving students’ writing outcomes through whole-class, dialogic discussion. Shireen was born and raised in Yemen, and has been working on bringing attention to the crisis there. She recently published an article titled "Only Americans Can Stop America’s War on Yemen," which states: "Yemen continues to suffer in silence as the world turns away from its ongoing misery."
  
We will speak with Shireen about the crisis in Yemen, the dire situation there as a result of the Saudi-led war on Yemen that devastated the country, the U.S. involvement, and what it takes to stop the war.

Date:

February 7, 2018

1st Segment: Mustafa Tameez
Founder and Managing Director of Outreach Strategists, a bipartisan public affairs firm. His firm serves clients and projects ranging in size and scope from small local interests to national governments. He is working in conjunction with the Alliance for Compassion and Tolerance to spread awareness about the ACT: NOW! Hotline to the community. Mustafa Tameez’s long career in communications and public affairs has focused on helping clients overcome challenges at home and abroad.
 
We will speak with Mustafa Tameez about the newly established ACT: NOW! Hotline (832-680-0108), a service of the Alliance for Compassion & Tolerance in partnership with Crisis Intervention. It provides emotional support, crisis intervention, suicide prevention services, and is sensitive to any cultural issues of importance. We will talk about cultural stigmas against mental illness/loneliness/depression, issues facing young adults from our community today, signs parents should look for, the kinds of actions parents/community leaders should take, and the kinds of actions young people should take.
        

2nd Segment: George Joseph
Criminal justice, immigration, and national security reporter. His work has appeared in many outlets including Foreign Policy, The Intercept, The Guardian, NPR, The Atlantic, The Nation, ProPublica, The Verge, Slate, and CityLab. His area of focus is on surveillance, law enforcement, the use of “big data” in criminal justice systems, and how data is interpreted by law enforcement. George has just published an EXCLUSIVE report at Foreign Policy after he obtained a newly leaked internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) draft report calling for "long-term" and continuous monitoring of "at-risk" immigrants, focused exclusively on young, Sunni Muslim men.
 
We will speak with George about the newly leaked internal DHS report he obtained, and his exclusive report on it, titled "Draft DHS Report Called for Long-Term Surveillance of Sunni Muslim Immigrants".

Date:

January 31, 2018

Ariel Gold
National co-director of CODEPINK, who also manages the organization’s campaigns for Palestinian rights. She is a Jewish-American activist who visited occupied Palestine several times and stayed for months in Palestinian homes to experience first-hand what life is like under military occupation. Her last visit was a few months ago where she met Ahed Tamimi and her family in Nabi Saleh. During her last visit to occupied Palestine, she was attacked by an Israeli colonizer. Ariel’s colleagues and co-founders of CODEPINK, Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, were detained on Saturday, January 27, 2018 in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron along with Palestinian human rights defender Issa Amro and CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry. Benjamin, Evans and Barry traveled to the West Bank to join with Palestinian activists in their struggle to end Israel’s systems of apartheid and occupation. They entered the country despite the recent announcement by the Israeli government "Israel's BDS Black List" that the leaders of CODEPINK, along with 19 other organizations worldwide, are banned from entry into Israel because of their campaigns for Palestinian freedom and equality. Ariel has also organized several US speaking tours for Palestinian activists, Iyad Burnat, Bassem Tamimi, and Issa Amro.
    

We will speak live with Ariel about her experience in occupied Palestine and what she is hearing from CODEPINK's activists currently there, the efforts and actions underway nationally and internationally to free Ahed Tamimi and all Palestinian political prisoners, especially today, January 31, 2018, on Ahed's 17^th birthday, Jerusalem, and more.

Date:

January 24, 2018

“Sectarianism and Anti-sectarianism in the Modern Arab World” by Dr. Aziz Al-Azmeh
The Arab-American Educational Foundation Chairs at both Rice University and the University of Houston hosted and co-organized the "Arab Traditions of Anti-Sectarianism Conference", held December 1-2, 2017 at Rice University and the University of Houston.
   
The keynote address at the conference was delivered on December 1, 2017, at Rice University on the topic "Sectarianism and Anti-sectarianism in the Modern Arab World" by Dr. Aziz Al-Azmeh, University Professor in the Department of History and Director of the Center for Religious Studies at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.
      
Today, on Arab Voices, we will listen to Dr. Al-Azmeh's keynote address on “Sectarianism and Anti-sectarianism in the Modern Arab World”.

Date:

January 17, 2018

1^st Segment: Sana Shahid
Houston activist, and one of the organizing leaders and Outreach Specialist for the 2018 Houston Women's March (last year, nearly 22,000 attended the women's march in Houston). She is also the Communications and Outreach Coordinator for the Southwest Chapter of Citizens' Climate Lobby.
    
We will speak with Sana about the upcoming 2018 Houston Women's March, scheduled for Saturday, January 20, 2018.
      

2^nd Segment: "Living Our Faith: Defending Freedom"
The Council on American-Islamic Relations Texas (Houston Chapter) held its Annual Banquet on November 12, 2017, in Houston under the theme "Living Our Faith: Defending Freedom". Several local community members, faith leaders, and elected officials attended the event that featured an awards ceremony recognizing several individuals. It was a celebration of CAIR-Houston's achievements and it also highlighted how to work together to protect civil rights and share a positive message about Islam and Muslims.
   
There were several remarks at the event, and today we will listen to some of them, including those of Dr. Tarek Hussein, CAIR Houston President; Mike Floyd, elected member of the Pearland ISD Board of Trustees, one of the youngest elected officials in the United States, and recipient of the 2017 CAIR-Houston Political Activism Award; and Mustafaa Carroll, Executive Director of CAIR-Houston, and recipient of the 2017 CAIR National Leadership Award.

Date:

January 10, 2018

1^st Segment: Bassem Tamimi (Ahed's Father, in Nabi Saleh, occupied Palestine)
A long-time Palestinian activist and head of the Popular Committee in Nabi Saleh. He is the father of Ahed Tamimi, the 16-year-old Palestinian girl who was taken from her house three weeks ago in the middle of the night by the Israeli occupation army and has been placed in Israeli occupation jail since then. Bassem's wife, Nariman, has also been arrested and placed in jail. Bassem Tamimi was arrested himself at least a dozen times by the Israeli occupation forces and spent several years in Israeli jails. Amnesty International designated him "a prisoner of conscience", and the European Union described him as a "human rights defender".
    
I had met Bassem Tamimi in person in 2015, and today he will join us via phone from Nabi Saleh, occupied Palestine to talk about the village of Nabi Saleh and the struggle of its residents and the Tamimi family against the Israeli occupation, the jailing of Bassem's daughter, Ahed and his wife, Nariman, and more.
       

2^nd Segment: Mohammed Nabulsi
Palestinian-American attorney and community organizer. He is currently the Project Development Coordinator for the Palestinian Youth Movement. He also serves on the Steering Committee of the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization, one of 20 organizations placed on a "BDS Blacklist" published by Israel on January 7, 2018, barring its members from entering Israel because of their support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Mohammed Nabulsi was one of the main organizers of the recent NSJP conference held in Houston and has since been attacked by Zionist hate groups for his role in organizing the conference.

We will speak with Mohammed about SJP, the Israeli occupation and its decision to blacklist 20 organizations, including NSJP. We will also talk about the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and more.

Date:

January 3, 2018

"Black November: The Role of Partition in Palestine's History and Destiny" by Ilan Pappé
Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston co-hosted with the Palestinian American Cultural Center Professor Ilan Pappé on November 30, 2017, who presented on the centennial of the Balfour Declaration. The title of his lecture was "Black November: The Role of Partition in Palestine's History and Destiny."
    
Today, on Arab Voices, we will listen to Professor Ilan Pappé's lecture.
   
Professor Pappé is the author of several books, most notably "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" and most recently "The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories." Presently he is the Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. Professor Pappé obtained his BA degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979 and the D. Phil from the University of Oxford in 1984. He founded and directed the Academic Institute for Peace in Givat Haviva, Israel between 1992 to 2000 and was the Chair of the Emil Tuma Institute for Palestine Studies in Haifa between 2000 and 2006. Professor Pappé was a senior lecturer in the department of Middle Eastern History and the Department of Political Science at Haifa University between 1984 and 2006. He was appointed as chair of the Department of History at Cornwall Campus, 2007-2009 and became a fellow of the IAIS in 2010. His research focuses on the modern Middle East and in particular the history of Israel and Palestine. He has also written on multiculturalism, Critical Discourse Analysis and on Power and Knowledge in general.

Date:

December 27, 2017

"Jerusalem: Communities Leading Change" by Fayrouz Sharqawi
The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. held an event titled "Jerusalem: Communities Leading Change" on November 7, 2017. The guest speaker was Fayrouz Sharqawi, Advocacy Director at Grassroots Jerusalem. In her talk, Fayrouz explains the specific and unique political reality that Palestinians face in the city of Jerusalem. She discusses the recent movement for Al Aqsa and the necessity of organizations like Grassroots Jerusalem to build a cohesive political platform through which Jerusalemites can voice their demands and bring attention to the indigenous and independent Palestinian economy outside of the international aid and NGO system.
  
Today, on Arab Voices, we will listen to that talk and some of the questions and answers that followed.
 
Fayrouz Sharqawi is the Advocacy Director at Grassroots Jerusalem and has a broad and experienced understanding of development and resistance under occupation. Ms. Sharqawi’s tours of the city focus not only on the political reality, but also on the potential that lies in the Palestinian economy in Jerusalem, demonstrating the unity of communities across divides, and attempting to cultivate direct support and solidarity to Palestinian initiatives in Jerusalem.

Date:

December 20, 2017

1st Segment: Issa Amro (in Hebron, occupied Palestine)
Palestinian activist and human rights defender based in Hebron, occupied Palestine. He is the coordinator and co-founder of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Issa won the 2009 One World Media award for coordinating the B’Tselem camera distribution project, and in 2010, he was declared "human rights defender of the year in Palestine" by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2013, the United Nations Human Rights Council expressed concern for his well-being and safety due to numerous accounts of harassment from Israeli soldiers and settlers and a series of arbitrary arrests. He has spoken at the UN Human Rights Council regular session at three different occasions. Issa was arrested numerous times by the Israeli occupation army, and was indicted by the Israeli military court with 18 charges against him. In May 2017, Bernie Sanders along with 3 U.S. Senators and 32 Congressmen wrote to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to urge Israeli authorities to reconsider the charges against him. In late September, 2017, after being released on bail from Israeli occupation jail, Issa Amro met Bernie Sanders and members of Congress in Washington DC.
  
We will speak with Issa Amro (in Hebron) about the situation in occupied Palestine, the recent kidnapping and jailing of Ahed Tamimi, 16-year-old Palestinian girl along with her mother and other relatives, President Trump's decision on Jerusalem, and much more.
      

2nd Segment: Tarek Abuata
Palestinian Christian born and raised in Bethlehem, occupied Palestine (the birth place of Jesus Christ). He is the Executive Director of FOSNA, Friends of Sabeel North America, a nonprofit Christian ecumenical organization seeking justice and peace in the Holy Land through nonviolent advocacy and education. Tarek was Executive Director at Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace, and has also served as Executive Director at Love Thy Neighbor. In addition, he worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT); United Palestine Appeal; Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation; and the Negotiations Support Unit of the Palestinian Authority. Tarek holds a JD from the University of Texas Law School and is licensed to practice law in Texas and DC.
    
We will speak with Tarek about Christians in Palestine and their suffering under the Israeli occupation, the situation there especially as we get closer to Christmas, President Trump's decision on Jerusalem and Christian reaction to it, and much more.

Date:

December 13, 2017

1st Segment: Remarks from Houston's Emergency Rally: Jerusalem is the Capital of Palestine
Hundreds of people participated in the "Emergency Rally: Jerusalem is the Capital of Palestine" rally that was held in Houston on Saturday, December 9, 2017. It was a protest against President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and his plan to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The rally was organized by several organizations including Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston. Participants marched from the corner of Post Oak and Westheimer to the Water Wall in the Galleria area, and held a candlelight vigil.
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to some of the remarks delivered at the rally by individuals and representatives from various organizations.
   

2nd Segment: Zaha Hassan
Middle East Fellow at New America, A human rights lawyer and former coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership (2010-2012). She is a member of Al Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and is a contributor to the Hill and Ha’aretz. Her political commentary and analysis has been published by the New York Times, CNN, Salon, the Oregonian, the Detroit News, and other outlets. She is the former cohost of the Portland, Ore.-based radio show, One Land Many Voices, on KBOO 90.7 FM.
 
We will speak live with Zaha about President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. We will talk about the occupation of Jerusalem and the situation there.

Date:

December 6, 2017

1st Segment: Walid Khalidi's Keynote Address on Jerusalem at the United Nations
World-renowned Palestinian historian and Scholar (born in Jerusalem); General Secretary and co-founder of the Institute for Palestine Studies; and author of numerous books and articles.
 
We will listen to professor Khalidi's keynote address on Jerusalem delivered at the UN Headquarters. He gave a historic overview of the history of Jerusalem (including Islam's relationship to its Judaic and Christian antecedents) saying that there had been no conflicts between Islam and Judaism over the city until the advent of Zionism. He also talked about the 1947 UN resolution, and the transformation of the city since its conquest in 1967. Khalidi ends his talk by outlining what he sees as the "pillars" of an honorable and peaceful solution for Jerusalem.

2nd Segment: Ali Abunimah
Co-founder and Executive Director of the award-winning and widely acclaimed publication The Electronic Intifada. Abunimah is a media commentator, an expert on Palestine and the Palestinian-Israeli problem, and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, and One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
 
We will speak live with Ali about President Trump's plan to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and the impact of such a move.

Date:

November 29, 2017

1st Segment: Abdel Razzaq Takriti on “Arab Traditions of Anti-Sectarianism" Conference

We will speak with Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Associate Professor & Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Arab History at the University of Houston about the upcoming “Arab Traditions of Anti-Sectarianism" conference that will take place Friday and Saturday, December 1st and 2nd at Rice University and the University of Houston.
  

2nd Segment: "Viewing Israel-Palestine Through the Lens of Settler-Colonialism" by Ilan Pappé
   
We will air today a speech titled "Viewing Israel-Palestine Through the Lens of Settler-Colonialism" by Ilan Pappé, Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, and author of several books. In that speech, delivered at the Israel Lobby And American Policy Conference held earlier this year in Washington, D.C., Pappé discusses the value of viewing Israel-Palestine through the lens of settler-colonialism, how Zionist myths have been shaped and/or perpetuated by the Israel lobby, and what framework is necessary to overcome these myths and ensure that efforts to resolve the "conflict" are grounded in reality.
 
NOTE: Ilan Pappé will be in Houston speaking at the University of Houston on Thursday, November 30, 2017 on the topic "Black November: The Role of Partition in Palestine's History and Destiny", organized by Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston and sponsored by the Palestinian American Cultural Center. See Community Calendar for more details.

Date:

November 22, 2017

Rami Khouri
An internationally syndicated political columnist, book author and professor of journalism. He was the first director, and is now a senior public policy fellow, at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He also serves as a non-resident senior fellow at Harvard University Kennedy School Middle East Initiative. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, and was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006. He teaches or lectures annually at the American University of Beirut and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard, Mount Holyoke, Princeton, Syracuse, The Fletcher School at Tufts, Northeastern, Denver, Oklahoma and Stanford universities, and is a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on US Relations with the Islamic World. He is a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Arab East Jerusalem). He also serves on the Joint Advisory Board of the Northwestern University Journalism School in Doha, Qatar, Georgetown University’s Center for Regional and International Studies in Doha, Qatar, and recently completed a four-year term on the International Advisory Council of the International Committee of the Red Cross. He was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times for seven years and for 18 years was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, Jordan, where he also served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archaeology, history and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan, and often comments on Mideast issues in the international media. He has a BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University, NY, USA.
  

We will speak live with Rami about the recent internal domestic changes and crackdown in Saudi Arabia (are we witnessing real changes and an end to corruption, or is it about power grab and scare tactics); the surprise resignation announcement of Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri while in Saudi Arabia (on hold after his return to Lebanon); the boycott and blockade on Qatar by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and others; the catastrophic situation in Yemen as a result of the Saudi-led war on the country; the latest on Syria and what is next; and more.

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November 15, 2017

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November 8, 2017

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November 1, 2017

Alison Weir
Founder and Executive Director of If Americans Knew and President of the Council for the National Interest. She is the author of "Against Our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Israel". Her essays and articles have appeared in a number of books, magazines, and newspapers; among them The New Intifada, Censored 2005, The Encyclopedia on Israel-Palestine, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, San Francisco Bay View newspaper, CounterPunch, and The Link. Weir speaks widely throughout the country. Since early 2001 she has given hundreds of presentations, including two briefings on Capitol Hill, speeches at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, the National Press Club, and at universities such as Harvard Law School, Columbia, Stanford, UC Berkeley, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Vassar, and the Naval Postgraduate Institute. She has spoken at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, numerous Rotary Clubs, churches, libraries, and other community venues. In addition, she has been invited to give papers at international conferences, including lectures at the Asia Media Summit in Kuala Lumpur for three straight years. A top level British attendee termed her speech "the most brilliant of the entire conference." In 2004, Weir was inducted into honorary membership of Phi Alpha Literary Society. The award cited her as a: "Courageous journalist-lecturer on behalf of human rights. The first woman to receive an honorary membership in Phi Alpha history."
 

Thursday, November 2, 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a pledge by Britain's foreign secretary at that time, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a Zionist leader in the British Jewish community, to establish "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. Today on Arab Voices, we will speak live with Alison Weir about the Balfour Declaration, how did it come about, who wrote it and why, who was behind it, how it got implemented, the connections to the U.S. and World War I, its impact on the Palestinians over the past 100 years, and more!

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October 25, 2017

Dima Khalidi
Founder and Director of Palestine Legal and Cooperating Counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Her work includes providing legal advice to activists, engaging in advocacy to protect their rights to speak out for Palestinian rights, and educating activists and the public about the repression of Palestine advocates. Dima worked with CCR as a cooperating attorney on the Mamilla Cemetery Campaign, drafting a Petition to United Nations officials to act against the desecration of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. She also worked on numerous cases that sought to hold Israeli officials and corporations accountable for Israeli violations of international law, including Belhas v. Ya’alon, Matar et al. v. Dichter and Corrie v. Caterpillar, as well as on CCR’s Guantanamo Bay docket. Prior to studying law, Dima worked at Birzeit University, heading a research project on the role of informal justice mechanisms in the Palestinian legal system. She has advocated on Palestinian rights issues in media forums such as the New York Times, the Jewish Press, The Hill, Huffington Post Live, The Real News Network, Al Jazeera English, Mondoweiss, Huffington Post, Law and Disorder Radio, and Radio Tahrir. She is fluent in Arabic and French. Dima is based in Palestine Legal’s Chicago office, and is admitted to practice law in Illinois.
 

We will speak live with Dima about the anti-BDS laws that have already passed in 22 states in the U.S. including Texas (HB 89), aimed at punishing or suppressing boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns for Palestinian freedom. We will talk about the City of Dickinson (south of Houston, Texas) that is requiring applicants for hurricane Harvey rebuilding funds (donated by individuals, not State money) to verify in writing that they will not take part in a boycott of Israel. We will also talk about the federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU on October 11, 2017 challenging a Kansas law on behalf of a high school teacher who is being required by the state to certify that she won’t boycott Israel if she wants to take part in a teacher training program. We will also speak about the constitutionality of these laws and the first amendment, the efforts to counter these anti-BDS laws in the U.S., and what you can do about them.
    
 

Fall Fund Drive

Date:

October 18, 2017

KPFT continues its Fall Fund Drive, and Arab Voices Needs Your Support to raise $2,700. We are offering several "Thank-You" Gifts during this drive including the 3 documentaries/recordings listed below:

• "Ralph Nader: EMPOWERING PEOPLE IN THE TRUMP ERA" DVD

• "All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone" DVD

• "The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in The United States" DVD

Please call 713-526-5738 between 6 pm and 7 pm central time on Wednesday and support your commercial-free community radio station. You can also send email to info@ArabVoices.net with your name and the amount you'd like to pledge. Thank you.
 

Fall Fund Drive

Date:

October 11, 2017

"Ralph Nader: EMPOWERING PEOPLE IN THE TRUMP ERA" - DVD available for $100 contribution
DVD of two talks by Ralph Nader: 1) on the topic of 'Empowering People in Trump Era' based on his latest book 'Breaking Through Power,' given on February 22, 2017 at the University of Laverne (approx. 83 minutes long); 2) 'Ralph Nader In Conversation,' a Scripps Presents event in Claremont on February 21, 2017 (approx. 68 minutes long). The total time is 2:30 hours. Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to portions of Nader's talk from the DVD.
 

"All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone" - DVD available for $100 contribution
'All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone' looks at how independent journalists like Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Matt Taibbi and others are changing the face of journalism, providing investigative, adversarial alternatives to mainstream, corporate news outlets. The cameras follow as they expose government and corporate deception. Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to portions from that documentary/DVD.
 

"The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in The United States" - DVD available for $120 contribution
Israel's ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and its repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world — except the United States. "The Occupation of the American Mind" takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S. Narrated by Roger Waters and featuring leading observers of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the film explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel's favor. The Occupation of the American Mind provides a sweeping analysis of Israel's decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people — a battle that has only intensified over the past few years in the face of widening international condemnation of Israel's increasingly right-wing policies. Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to an interview we conducted with Professor Sut Jhally, executive producer of the film and also listen to portions of this film documentary/DVD.

Date:

October 4, 2017

1st Segment: The Arrival: Trump’s Travel and Refugee Ban
Making Contact, an award-winning weekly magazine/documentary-style public affairs program heard on 140 radio stations in the USA, Canada, South Africa and Ireland, produced a new segment titled “The Arrival: Trump’s Travel and Refugee Ban”.
 
Leading up to the US Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s travel ban, we’ll hear about the order’s impact on people from affected, Muslim-majority countries, and how advocacy groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations are responding. On this edition of Making Contact we begin with the story of a woman who was in flight to the US when President Trump signed his first travel ban. Special thanks to the Stanford Storytelling Project and State of the Human podcast managing producer, Jake Warga.
 
Featuring:
• Nisrin Abdelrahman, Stanford PhD Student in Anthropology
• Zahar Billo, Civil Rights Attorney and Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
    
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to “The Arrival: Trump’s Travel and Refugee Ban” segment.
  

2nd Segment: Dr. Ahmad Tibi's Remarks at the ADC Convention
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), a civil rights organization committed to defending the rights of people of Arab descent and promoting their rich cultural heritage in the USA, held its 37th National Convention on September 22-24, 2017 in Washington, D.C. There were many dynamic and engaging sessions, including a Community Empowerment Luncheon with Arab-American Congressional Candidates, discussions on Charlottesville and the Reemergence of White Supremacy, Criminalization of Race, and the Arab and Muslim Ban. There was a session exploring One State or Two State Solution – What’s Best for the Palestinians featuring experts on the subject, and there were several keynote addresses covering different topics including Civil Rights. ADC also honored several individuals who have committed themselves to the advancement of social justice. There was also a special memorial honoring the life and legacy of Dr. Jack Shaheen.
 
At the September 24, 2017 Palestine Luncheon and Awards Ceremony, the keynote speaker was Dr. Ahmad Tibi, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset. Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to most of Dr. Tibi's remarks at the ADC Convention.

Date:

September 27, 2017

"The Invention of Sectarianism in the Modern Middle East" by Ussama Makdisi, Ph.D.
The Center for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy held an event titled “The Invention of Sectarianism in the Modern Middle East” on September 20, 2017. The speaker was Ussama Makdisi, Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to that lecture.
   
Professor Makdisi is the author of Faith Misplaced: the Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001. His previous books include Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East, which was the winner of the 2008 Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association, the 2009 John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association, and a co-winner of the 2009 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize given by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Makdisi is also the author of The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon and co-editor of Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa. He has published widely on Ottoman and Arab history as well as on U.S.-Arab relations and U.S. missionary work in the Middle East. Among his major articles are “Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: An Interpretation of Brief History” which appeared in the Journal of American History and “Ottoman Orientalism” and “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity” both of which appeared in the American Historical Review. Professor Makdisi has also published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and in the Middle East Report. Professor Makdisi is now working on a manuscript on the origins of sectarianism in the modern Middle East to be published by the University of California Press. In 2012-2013, Makdisi was an invited Resident Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin). In April 2009, the Carnegie Corporation named Makdisi a 2009 Carnegie Scholar as part of its effort to promote original scholarship regarding Muslim societies and communities, both in the United States and abroad.

Date:

September 20, 2017

Massacres and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State in Myanmar
Today’s show is about the grave humanitarian crisis, violence and ethnic cleansing we are witnessing in the Rakhine State in Myanmar, where brutal killings, shelling, destruction of villages and rape is underway of the Muslim Rohingya minority. Nearly half a million Muslim Rohingya were forced to flee across the border to Bangladesh.
 
We will listen today to statements on that topic from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the country of Bangladesh where nearly half a million Muslim Rohingya are now refugees, and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues
 
We will also listen to several Houstonians who participated in a Silent Protest held in Houston on September 17, 2017 including a Rohingya student living in Houston, and statements from several local organizations including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Houston).

Date:

September 13, 2017

1st Segment: Dr. Aziz Shaibani
President of the Arab American Educational Foundation, and past president of the National Arab American Medical Association and the Arab American Cultural and Community Center in Houston. He is a member of the “Art of the Islamic Worlds" committee at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and also serves on the advisory board of the Arab American National Museum and is a board member at the Rothko Chapel. Dr. Shaibani is the director of the Nerve and Muscle Center of Texas, a clinical professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and an adjunct professor of neurology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, American Neurological Association, American College of Physicians, and American Association of Neuromuscular & Electrodiagnostic Medicine. He is also president-elect of the Texas Neurological Society. In 2014, he authored the award-winning book “A Video Atlas of Neuromuscular Disorders”. Dr. Shaibani is a regular speaker at local, national and international neurology meetings.
 
We will speak with Dr. Shaibani about the short and long term health impact of Hurricane Harvey; the impact it has made on the health care system in Houston; measures people can take to minimize delayed health effects, and more.
   

2nd Segment: Dr. Emran El-Badawi
Program director and associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Houston. He has published in English as well as Arabic and has contributed to Forbes, The Christian Science Monitor and made dozens of national as well as international media appearances, including for The New York Times, Al-Jazeera and the European ARTE network. Dr. El-Badawi has advised law firms, government, and cultural organizations about matters related to Arabs, Islam and the Middle East. Dr. El-Badawi has received numerous awards for his work and research including honorable acclaim by the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize for his book on The Qur'an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions. Furthermore, his professional management and scholarly projects have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for several organizations. He can be found on Twitter @EmranE.
 
We will speak with Dr. El-Badawi about Houston's diversity, the size of Hurricane Harvey's tragedy and the lesson of how a strong community empowers a city during large tragedies. Dr. El-Badawi will also share stories of Houston Arab-American citizens and businesses saving lives and helping rebuild Houston, and talk about the near future, new initiatives and how you can help.

Date:

September 6, 2017

1st Segment: Dr. Faiza Zalila
We will speak with Dr. Faiza Zalila, President of the Arab American Cultural & Community Center (ACC) in Houston about the Arab American community in Houston and ACC efforts to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey, and the drive the ACC launched to collect much needed items to distribute in collaboration with other organizations to victims of Hurricane Harvey.
 

2nd Segment: MJ Khan
We will speak with Mr. MJ Khan, President of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH) and former Houston City Council member, about the Muslim American community in Houston and ISGH efforts in the greater Houston area to assist the victims of Hurricane Harvey, and the relief efforts, and opening of mosques as shelters to those in need.
 

3rd Segment: Wafa Abdin
We will speak with Wafa Abdin, Vice President for Immigration and Refugee Services at Catholic Charities, where she oversees the Cabrini Center for Immigrant Legal Assistance, the largest non-profit provider of immigration legal services for low-income and indigent non-citizens and Refugee Resettlement Program. We will speak with her about President Trump's termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program; the impact of the termination on the nearly 800,000 young immigrants, or “Dreamers,” who came to the USA as children and know the United States as their only home; and what needs to happen next.

Date:

August 30, 2017

Date:

August 23, 2017

David Vine
Associate Professor of Anthropology at the American University in Washington, DC. He is the author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. David is also the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Mother Jones, Boston Globe, Huffington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. David is also co-author of The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual or, Notes on Demilitarizing American Society, with the Network for Concerned Anthropologists. David is a contributor to TomDispatch.com and Foreign Policy in Focus.
  

We will speak live with David about his books, U.S. foreign and military policy, U.S. military bases around the world including the Middle East, U.S. involvements with wars in the Middle East, and more.

Date:

August 16, 2017

“Conservation and Sustainability in the Holy Land” by Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh
On June 26, 2017, Palestinian Scientist and Professor, Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, spoke at the Houston Museum of Natural Science on the topic “Conservation and Sustainability in the Holy Land”. Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to his remarks.
  
After graduating from the University of Jordan, Qumsiyeh received his master's degree in evolutionary biology from the University of Connecticut and his Ph.D. in zoology/genetics from Texas Tech University. He completed a clinical cytogenetics fellowship at the University of Tennessee and clinical molecular genetics fellowship at Duke University. Following a prestigious career in cytogenetics in the US, Qumsiyeh returned to Palestine where he has been on the faculty at Bethlehem University and Birzeit University. In 2014, he founded the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University. He continues at PMNH as its director.

Date:

August 9, 2017

No U.S. War Planes Over Syria
On Tuesday, August 8, 2017, a coalition of six organizations (Veterans For Peace, The Nation magazine, RootsAction.org, Watchdog.net, World Beyond War, Daily Kos) held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., calling on the U.S. to remove all military aircrafts from the Syrian airspace. The speakers argued that the U.S. military role in Syria is illegal and immoral and addressed concerns that “global policing” and intervention in Syria is an unwinnable military strategy. The speakers included:
  
John Kiriakou, CIA Whistleblower (he will be speaking in Houston on August 12)
Matthew Hoh, Former State Department official
Christie Edwards, Chair of the ASIL Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict and an advisor to the Center for Civilians in Conflict on international humanitarian, human rights, and gender issues
David Swanson, Author and Director of World Beyond War
Norman Solomon, Co-Founder and Coordinator for RootsAction.org
  
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to the news conference and some of the questions and answers that followed.

Date:

August 2, 2017

Will Picard
Founder and Executive Director of The Yemen Peace Project (YPP). He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in Modern Middle East Studies and Southwest Asian Conflict Studies. His senior thesis explored the importance of the Sa‘dah wars in the context of modern Yemeni history. He first visited Yemen in 1999, and has studied Yemeni history and contemporary affairs ever since. Will directs the YPP’s day-to-day operations, manages the organization’s website and Twitter account, writes for the Blog, and hosts the Mafraj Radio podcast.
 

We will speak live with Will Picard about Yemen, the dire situation there and the effects of the current Saudi-led war on Yemen that devastated the country, and the prospects for resolutions and peace in Yemen. We will also talk about the new report "America’s Role in Yemen 2017 and Beyond" produced by YPP about the United States’ involvement in Yemen.
 
According to the United Nations, Yemen is now the largest global humanitarian crisis where 20 million Yemenis, or 70 per cent of the population, require humanitarian assistance, making it the world's largest food security crisis. In addition, the world’s worst cholera outbreak is currently unfolding in Yemen with nearly 400,000 cholera cases have been recorded in recent months.

Date:

July 26, 2017

Maria LaHood's remarks on "Anti-BDS Legislation and the First Amendment"
Deputy Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, with expertise in constitutional rights and international human rights. She works to defend the constitutional rights of Palestinian human rights advocates in the United States. She works closely with Palestine Legal to support students and others whose speech is being suppressed for their Palestine advocacy around the country. She also works on the Right to Heal initiative with Iraqi civil society and Iraq Veterans seeking accountability for the lasting health effects of the Iraq war.
 
We will listen to Maria's speech on “Anti-BDS Legislation and the First Amendment: Recent Legislation that Threatens First Amendment Rights of Palestinian Solidary Activists and the Legal Challenges Thereto”. Her talk was delivered at the "Israel Lobby and American Policy" conference held on March 24th, 2017 at the National Press Club, organized by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
  

Said Arikat
Journalist, author, and political analyst. He is the Washington, DC Bureau Chief for the daily Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds (based in occupied Jerusalem), for which he is a writer, columnist, and analyst. He is an adjunct professor at the American University in Washington, DC where he teaches a course on "The Role of the Media in the Arab World". He also served as spokesman and director of public information for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq from 2005 to 2010.
 
We will speak live with Said Arikat about the situation in occupied Jerusalem where Israel shot and killed several Palestinians and injured more than 1000 over the past few days, and has been attacking and preventing Muslim worshippers from reaching and praying at Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied Jerusalem.

Date:

July 19, 2017

Dr. Missid Ghanem & Mays Kseibi
Dr. Missid Ghanem is a Psychologist, president of the World Wide Mental Health organization (WWHM) and Director of the new Summer of Hope (SoH) program in Houston.
 
Mays Kseibi is an educational management leader and a multicultural educator with an extensive background knowledge in international student services and academic advising. Mays has a masters in educational management development and currently serves as the Core Curriculum Director of the Summer of Hope (SoH) program in Houston.
 
We will speak with both Dr. Ghanem and Mrs. Kseibi about the new Summer of Hope (SoH) program that provides free English language and life skills training to the Syrian refugee children living in Houston.
   

Wajahat Ali remarks on "Israel Lobby Ties to Islamophobia"
Pro-Israel Organizations, Donors and Islamophobia: Findings from Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America
 
We will listen to the full speech given by Wajahat Ali, journalist, writer, lawyer, an award-winning playwright, and lead author/researcher of “Fear Inc., Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America”, discussing the making of Fear Inc. and the Lobby’s role in contributing to Islamophobia at the "Israel Lobby and American Policy" conference held on March 24, 2017 at the National Press Club. The conference was sponsored by the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep).

Date:

July 12, 2017

In Memoriam: Dr. Jack Shaheen
On Sunday, July 9, 2017, Dr. Jack Shaheen, a pioneering Arab-American scholar in the area of media representations of Arabs, an internationally acclaimed scholar, and author, passed away in South Carolina at the age of 81. Dr. Shaheen was a writer and lecturer specializing in addressing racial and ethnic stereotypes. His books include "A is for Arab: Archiving Stereotypes in U.S. Popular Culture", "Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs After 9/11", and "Reel Bad Arabs", which was later made into a film documentary "How Hollywood Vilifies Arabs!" by Media Education Foundation. His work focused on racism and orientalism, particularly in popular culture such as Hollywood films. He has given over 1,000 lectures on the issue across the United States and on three continents. Dr. Shaheen was also a former CBS News consultant on Middle East affairs, and professor emeritus of Mass Communications at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. He received two Fulbright teaching awards, and was also the Distinguished Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.
 
We will listen today to portions of Dr. Shaheen’s talk in the film documentary "How Hollywood Vilifies Arabs!" by Media Education Foundation, and also listen to his talk at the "Israel Lobby and American Policy" conference on March 24, 2017 at the National Press Club, organized by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. He spoke on the topic “Strategies to Successfully Push Back Against Harmful Hollywood Stereotypes About Arabs and Muslims, and the Work New Generations Must Take On”.
   

International Day of Quds
We will also listen to portions of the remarks that were delivered at the International Day of Quds rally that was held in Houston outside the Galleria on June 23, 2017. There were many remarks delivered during the rally, and we will air today portions of the remarks of the Reverend Ronnie Lister, Patrick Higgins, Rabbi Joseph Kohn with Neturei Karta, and Abbas Hamideh, co-founder of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.   

Date:

July 5, 2017

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh - "A Christian Palestinian Scientist from Bethlehem Talks About Conflict Resolution"
Last week, on June 27, 2017, Palestinian Scientist and Professor, Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, spoke at the Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston on the topic: "A Christian Palestinian Scientist from Bethlehem Talks About Conflict Resolution". Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to his remarks at the church.
 
After graduating from the University of Jordan, Qumsiyeh received his master's degree in evolutionary biology from the University of Connecticut and his Ph.D. in zoology/genetics from Texas Tech University. He completed a clinical cytogenetics fellowship at the University of Tennessee and clinical molecular genetics fellowship at Duke University. Following a prestigious career in cytogenetics in the US, Qumsiyeh returned to Palestine where he has been on the faculty at Bethlehem University and Birzeit University. In 2014, he founded the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University. He continues at PMNH as its director.

Date:

June 28, 2017

                

Summer Fund Drive

Date:

June 21, 2017

               

Summer Fund Drive

Date:

June 14, 2017

Nawal Abou-Awad
We will speak with Nawal Abou-Awad, PAC Youth Ambassador, about the planned "Know Your Homeland Camp2" organized by the Palestinian American Council (PAC). It is a trip to Palestine from July 15 to July 30, 2017. For more information and/or to register, visit www.pac-usa.org.
   

Congressman Al Green's Houston Iftar Remarks
More than 1,500 people attended the annual Houston Ramadan Iftar Dinner on May 28, 2017. The keynote speaker was Sylvester Turner, Mayor of the City of Houston. Texas Governor Greg Abbott spoke via a pre-recorded video message, and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee also spoke at the event, amongst many others. Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to the remarks of Congressman Al Green that he delivered at the event. The event was organized by Abu Dhabi, Baku, Basrah, Istanbul and Karachi Sister City Association along with the Islamic Society of Greater Houston.
  

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee's March & Press Conference on Anti-Hate
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee held a march and a press conference on Sunday, June 11, 2017 at the Mickey Leeland Federal Building in Houston, with members of the Muslim Community, to stand against hate for Islam. It was a counter demonstration to the anti-Muslim marches held the day before across the US including the Houston area by ACT for America, an anti-Islam hate group. The group's founder and chairman, Brigitte Gabriel, believes Arabs “have no soul”, and “every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim” and that a Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States”. She also argues that “America is at stage two Islamic Cancer". ACT for America supports anti-Islam legislation and unequal treatment for Muslims. Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to some of the remarks made at the press conference including those of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, HISD Trustee Rhonda Skillern-Jones, former Houston City Council member and President of ISGH MJ Khan, Executive Director of CAIR-Houston Mustafaa Carroll, Reverend Sadraque Cius, Muslim Child Yousef, and Imam Majid Siddiqui.

Date:

June 7, 2017

Melvin Goodman
Senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He was an analyst at the CIA for 24 years; a former analyst at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; and author of several books on international security, including "National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism" and "Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA". His latest book (just released) is "Whistleblower at the CIA". Goodman has written numerous articles and op-eds over the years, appeared on various media outlets, and has lectured all over the country. He is also the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.
    
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the remaining 22% of Historic Palestine (Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem), the longest enduring military occupation in the world. Today on the show, we will talk about this 50th anniversary (Arab Voices' commentary).
 
We will also speak live with Mr. Melvin Goodman about what he saw during the six-day war in June 1967 while working at the CIA, and the lies Israeli officials at the highest level made to the White House about the start of the six-day war. Mr. Goodman helped draft the report that described Israel’s attack against Egypt on the morning of June 5, 1967. In a new piece he just published, The Six Day War and Israeli Lies: What I Saw at the CIA, he says "There were sensitive communications intercepts that documented Israeli preparations for an attack, and no evidence of an Egyptian battle plan. The Israelis had been clamoring about indications of Egyptian preparations for an invasion, but we had no sign of Egyptian readiness in terms of its air or armored power. The assumption was that the Israelis were engaging in disinformation in order to gain U.S. support.".
 
We will also speak with Mr. Goodman about his new book "Whistleblower at the CIA: An Insider’s Account of the Politics of Intelligence" (City Lights Publishers, 2017).

Date:

May 31, 2017

Arab Barghouti
We will speak live with Arab Barghouti, son of the Palestinian leader, parliamentarian, and political prisoner, Marwan Barghouti (who is being held in Israeli jails for more than 15 years and recently led the massive hunger strike that lasted 40 days). We will speak with Arab about the Palestinian political prisoners' hunger strike, its importance and the fight for dignity for all Palestinians. We will also speak with him about his dad, Marwan Barghouti, and more.
  
 
Houston Stands with Palestinian Political Prisoners on Hunger Strike
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Houston organized a protest on Thursday, May 25, 2017 in front of the Israeli consulate in Houston in solidarity with more than 1500 Palestinian political prisoners that were on hunger strike that lasted 40 days to protest Israel's inhumane treatment of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners. The protesters also participated in the global #SaltWaterChallenge that was launched by Arab Barghouti, son of the Palestinian leader and political prisoner Marwan Barghouti, in support of the demands of the Palestinian political prisoners.
     
Today on Arab Voices, we will hear the remarks of several local Houstonians who participated in the protest including the remarks of the Reverend Ronnie Lister.

Date:

May 24, 2017

1st Segment: Zaha Hassan
Human rights attorney, Middle East Fellow at New America, and former coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership from 2010-2012. As a New America fellow, she will complete a novel, Die Standing Like Trees, which deals with a Palestinian-American woman’s search for answers twenty years after her mother’s violent death during the height of the Oslo peace talks. Zaha received her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, an LLM in transnational & international law from Willamette University, and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington in Seattle with a B.A. in political science and Near East languages and civilizations. She has been co-host for the last two years of the Portland, Oregon radio show, One Land Many Voices, on KBOO 90.7 FM and is a contributor to the online magazine, The Civil Arab.
  
We will speak live with Zaha about President Trump's visit to occupied Palestine, the ongoing (37 days and counting) Palestinian Political Prisoner's Hunger Strike, and more.
 
Please note there will be a protest "Houston Stands with Palestinian Political Prisoners on Hunger Strike" this Thursday, May 25, 2017, in front of the Consulate General of Israel in Houston organized by Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston. Click here for more details.
       

2nd Segment: Sahar Aziz
Professor of law at Texas A&M University School of Law where she teaches courses on national security, civil rights, and Middle East law. She also serves as a Nonresident Fellow at Brookings Doha Center. Prior to joining Texas A&M, Professor Aziz served as a Senior Policy Advisor for the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security where she worked on law and policy at the intersection of national security and civil liberties. Her academic articles have been published in the Harvard National Security Journal, George Washington International Law Review, Penn State Law Review, and the Texas Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Journal. In 2015, Professor Aziz was named an Emerging Scholar by Diverse Issues in Higher Education and received the Derrick Bell Award from the American Association of Law Schools Minority Group Section. She is a blogger for the Huffington Post and the Race and the Law Profs blog. She also serves on the board of the ACLU of Texas. Professor Aziz earned a J.D. and M.A. in Middle East Studies from the University of Texas where she served as an associate editor of the Texas Law Review.
 
We will speak live with Sahar about President Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia. Sahar published oped on CNN titled "Trump's Doublespeak in Saudi Arabia", in which she says "If there's one thing we've learned about Donald Trump, it is that he has no qualms about contradicting himself to get what he wants. In Saudi Arabia, he wanted a $110 billion arms deal -- not to promote peace and tolerance, as he later proclaimed in his Sunday speech. Thus, his speech will not "be remembered as the beginning of peace in the Middle East," as he loftily put it, but rather a boost to the war that is ravaging it. Nor will Trump's speech put an end to the Islamophobia and bigotry that he has spent the past two years inciting. After all, he needs scapegoats to blame when the terrorism in the Middle East inevitably reaches the United States.".

Date:

May 17, 2017

"Israel's Politics of Fear and the Palestinians" by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
The Arab-American Educational Foundation Lecture Fund and the History Department at Rice University sponsored a talk titled "Israel's Politics of Fear and the Palestinians" on April 4, 2017, at Rice University with guest speaker Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian from Jerusalem.
 
The talk was based on Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian's newly published book about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict entitled Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear. By drawing attention to violence against Palestinians, and by pointing to legal, symbolic and material means of dehumanization, Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian explores the production of racialized and violent forms of surveillance and fear that results in human suffering. In connecting the structures of Israeli power with the invisible and mundane lives of the colonized Palestinian people, the talk shares data, including photos, videos, and relevant laws, to show how the personal has become profoundly politicized. Moving from the dead to the newborn, from the graveyard to the womb, from the attack on home to homeland, Shalhoub-Kevorkian discusses the way in which intimate agonies are political sites of colonial governance. Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
  
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian's lecture on "Israel's Politics of Fear and the Palestinians".

Date:

May 10, 2017

1st Segment: Dr. Faiza Zalila
We will speak live with Dr. Faiza Zalila, President of the Arab American Cultural & Community Center (ACC) in Houston about the center, and the new community-wide needs assessment survey the ACC is conducting to obtain feedback from the community and constituents, Arabs and friends of Arabs, about social service needs and cultural programs you want to see offered at the ACC Center, as the ACC is looking to align its services and programs with the community needs and interests in order to better serve the community. We will also talk about the upcoming free Family Health Fair for the community at large, to be held Saturday, May 13th, where the ACC in partnership with other organizations will be offering free screening of vital health signs, vision, cholesterol, blood pressure, fitness tests, in addition to smoking cessation, mental health counseling, dental exams, and much more.
    

2nd Segment: Mustafaa Carroll
We will speak live with Mustafaa Carroll, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Houston) about the new civil rights report titled "The Empowerment of Hate" released yesterday, May 9, 2017, by CAIR documenting a spike in Anti-Muslim bias incidents. The report reveals a 57 percent increase in 2016 anti-Muslim bias incidents over 2015. This was accompanied by a 44 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the same period. Other issues covered in the report include public officials conditioning American audiences to fear Muslims, flying while Muslim, closure of bank accounts linked to Muslim names, the FBI, the impact of Islamophobia in educational institutions, watch lists, and workplace discrimination. We will also talk about the new Texas Senate Bill 4 signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott banning "sanctuary cities" in Texas and requiring local police to cooperate with federal immigration authorities and allowing police to inquire about the immigration status of people they lawfully detain.

Date:

May 3, 2017

1st Segment: Houston Palestine Film Festival
We will speak live with Mayk Chahine, Board Member with the Houston Palestine Film Festival (HPFF) about the 11th Annual Houston Palestine Film Festival (It's time to share stories from and about Palestine)! The festival will be held Friday, May 5 through Sunday, May 7 at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Rice University Media Center. Click here for more details and Program Lineup.
    

2nd Segment: The Israel Lobby and Fake Peace Processing by Khalil Jahshan
We will listen to the speech titled "The Israel Lobby and Fake Peace Processing" delivered by Khalil Jahshan at The Israel Lobby and American Policy Conference, which was held on March 24, 2017 at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. The conference was sponsored by the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep).
 
Khalil Jahshan has been serving as Executive Director of Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) since its inception in 2014. Between 2004 and 2013, Jahshan was a lecturer in International Studies and Languages at Pepperdine University and Executive Director of Pepperdine’s Seaver College Washington DC Internship Program. Previously, Jahshan served as Executive Vice President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Director of its government affairs affiliate, NAAA-ADC. Throughout his career he has held numerous positions, including Vice President of the American Committee on Jerusalem, President of the National Association of Arab-Americans, and National Director of the Association of Arab-American University graduates. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science and French from Harding University in 1972. Mr. Jahshan has served on the board of directors and advisory boards of various Middle East-oriented groups including ANERA, MIFTAH and Search for Common Ground. He has appeared on various media outlets such as Al-Jazeera, Al-Hurra, CCTV, Al-Arabiya, C-SPAN, and Charlie Rose.

Date:

April 26, 2017

Joe Catron
Organizer with Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. We will speak live with Joe about the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners including children, women and legislative council members held in Israeli jails, and the latest on the massive hunger strike that started 10 days ago on April 17, 2017 (Prisoner's Day) by nearly 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails and detention centers, amidst resentment of Israel’s cruel policies towards Palestinian political prisoners.
 
We will also talk with him about the hearing held yesterday in a Detroit U.S. District Court where a plea agreement was reached to revoke Palestinian American Rasmea Odeh's U.S. citizenship and deport her from the U.S.!

Date:

April 19, 2017

"Beyond the Arab Muslim Ban: Feminist Futures and Joint Struggle" by Professor Nadine Naber
The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and The Arab-American Education Foundation Chair in Modern Arab History at the University of Houston held the Nijad and Zeina Fares Arab-American Educational Foundation Annual Distinguished Lecture in Modern Arab Studies on March 21, 2017, at the University of Houston. The lecture was titled "Beyond the Arab Muslim Ban: Feminist Futures and Joint Struggle", and the speaker was Professor Nadine Naber.
   
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Professor Naber's lecture on "Beyond the Arab Muslim Ban: Feminist Futures and Joint Struggle".
    
Professor Nadine Naber is a leading Arab-American feminist scholar, author, and social justice advocate. She is an associate professor in the Gender and Women's Studies Program and the Global Asian Studies Program and the director of the Arab American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Professor Naber is author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism and editor of Race and Arab Americans; Arab and Arab American Feminisms (winner of the Arab American Book Award 2012); and The Color of Violence.

Date:

April 12, 2017

Philip Giraldi
Former CIA Officer and Army Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism cases. He is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues. He writes regularly on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues, and appears frequently on national and international broadcasts. He holds a BA with honors from the University of Chicago and an MA and Ph.D. in Modern History from the University of London.
  

A live conversation with Mr. Giraldi about the recent U.S. missile attack on Syria after a horrific poisonous gas attack in Khan Shaykhun, south of the Syrian city of Idlib that killed dozens of civilians.
  
Mr. Giraldi is one of several prominent former intelligence and other officials with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (from virtually every branch of the U.S. national security state) that have released a statement saying "Trump Should Rethink Syria Escalation", and also asking Trump to pull back from his dangerous escalation of tensions with Russia.

Date:

April 5, 2017

               

Spring Fund Drive

Date:

March 29, 2017

The 3rd Annual Lebanese Festival
A live conversation with Hiba Elroz and Fred Davis, members of the Lebanese Festival Committee, about the 3rd Annual Lebanese Festival that will be held Friday through Sunday, March 31-April 2 at Jones Plaza in Downtown Houston.
 
There will be entertainment, food, different activities, great festivities, enjoyable atmosphere for both adults and children, door prizes, music, folkloric dances, performances, and much more. This will not just be a festival...it will be a one of a kind experience as attendees are whisked away on a memorable and exquisite journey to explore all that Lebanon has to offer. The 3rd Annual Houston Lebanese Festival will be unlike any other festival before. It will be filled with surprises that take you to the streets, the sights, and the sounds of Lebanon. This event is hosted by the American Lebanese Cultural Center (ALCC) in Houston. 
              

Spring Fund Drive

Date:

March 22, 2017

1st Segment: The 7th Annual Houston Palestinian Festival
A live conversation with Ruba Afifi, Festival Chair and Board Member with the Palestinian American Cultural Center (PACC-Houston) and Alma AlQuqa, Festival Co-Chair about the 7th Annual Houston Palestinian Festival scheduled to be held March 25-26 at Jones Plaza in Downtown Houston. We will also speak with Dalal Abu Amneh who will be performing live at the Festival. Dalal is a Palestinian singer singing classical and folk music of the Arabic musical heritage, and also a neuroscientist from Nazareth. She is committed to achieving humanitarian goals through her art and draws from the rich culture of Palestine, and aims to develop this art and spread the Palestinian culture to the wider world. Dalal is crafting a global Palestinian identity and advocating for the Palestinian cause through her music. She has participated in many international and Arab festivals and has represented Palestine in several Arab operettas and also participated in many local and International cultural events. In addition to her participation with her own band, Dalal is the lead singer in the international orchestra MESTO where she performs Arab and Palestinian folk, accompanied by Western musicians and orchestral arrangement. A surprise to many of her fans, besides music and singing, Dalal is studying for a Ph.D. in neuroscience in the Faculty of Medicine at the Technical Institute in Haifa.
  

2nd Segment: ESCOWA's New Report: Israel is guilty of apartheid 
We will talk about a new report published a few days ago by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, ESCOWA, which directly accuses Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people. The report also urges governments to "support boycott, divestment and sanctions activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives." What did the U.N. do when the report was released? Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ordered the report be withdrawn and removed from the web! Rima Khalaf, the head of the U.N. agency ESCOWA, responsible for this report resigned in protest!

Date:

March 15, 2017

Trump’s Foreign Policy Positions on Palestine and the Middle East
The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. held an event titled "Trump’s Foreign Policy Positions on Palestine and the Middle East" on February 7, 2017. Panelists Dr. Nathan Brown, Dr. Shibley Telhami, and Professor P.J. Crowley will examine in this panel the foreign policy positions of President Donald Trump with regard to Palestine and the Middle East. Among the many issues related to the subject of this panel are President Trump's campaign promise to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and his appointment of David Friedman, a pro-settlement lawyer with no foreign policy experience, as US ambassador to Israel. The panelists will discuss these issues, while examining the widespread regional and global effects the Trump administration will bring.
  
Today, on Arab Voices, we will listen to that panel.
 
Dr. Nathan Brown is a professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies as well as Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Washington University. From 2013 to 2015, he was President of the Middle East Association–the academic association for scholars studying in the region. In 2013, Dr.Brown was named a Guggenheim Fellow. Four years earlier he was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. For the 2009-2010 academic year, he was a fellow at the Wilson International Center for Scholars.
  
Philip J. (P.J.) Crowley is a professor of practice and distinguished fellow at the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communications at George Washington University, after serving a long career in the U.S. Department of State. He is a specialist on national security and from 2011- 2012 he was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress where he authored detailed analyses on security issues including Safe At Home —a national security strategy to protect the American homeland, improve national preparedness and rebuild the US standing in the world.
  
Dr. Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development and the Director of the University of Maryland critical issues poll. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His best-selling book, The Stakes: America and the Middle East, was selected by Foreign Affairs as one of the top five books on the Middle East in 2003. His recent book, The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East, was published in 2013. Dr. Telhami was selected by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, along with the New York Times, as one of the “great immigrants” for 2013.

Date:

March 8, 2017

1st Segment: President Trump's new "Muslim Ban"
President Trump signed on Monday, March 6, 2017 another executive order to ban Muslims and Arabs from 6 Muslim countries from entering the United States. This is his second attempt at this after his first executive order to ban Muslims from 7 countries was stopped in courts. Several national organizations voiced opposition and concerns about this second attempt at banning Muslims from entering the United States.
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to statements and reactions to this latest executive order from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). We will also listen to a news conference held by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
       

2nd Segment: Dr. Michael Fares 
Instructional Assistant Professor of Arabic at the University of Houston. He joined the department of Modern and Classical Languages at UH in 2012. Michael grew up in the Middle East and has spent time in several Arabic speaking countries. He teaches beginning and intermediate Arabic, and is working to develop the curriculum for these courses as part of the department’s newly created Arab Studies Minor. Prior to teaching at the University of Houston, Michael worked as a teaching assistant for the Arabic Flagship Program at the University of Texas. He also served as an instructor of advanced Arabic for the University of Texas Arabic Summer Institute. Michael is interested in foreign language acquisition, as well as Medieval Arabic philosophy and literature. He also has several publications and projects, including University of Houston Arabic Speaking Faculty Interview Series, Online Beginning Arabic “Catchup” Lecture Series, The Phenomenon of Interlanguage and its Importance for Teaching Arabic as a Second Language, and Ghassan Kanafani’s “The Stolen Shirt”: A Translation and Introduction.
  
We will speak with professor Fares about the Syrian refugees and the upcoming “Sketches of the Syrian Diaspora: A night of Music and Storytelling” event that will be held at the University of Houston on March 22, 2017.

Date:

March 1, 2017

Dr. Ramzy Baroud
US-Arab journalist, media consultant, author, internationally-syndicated columnist, founder and editor of Palestine Chronicle, former managing editor of the London-based Middle East Eye, former editor-in-chief of The Brunei Times, and former deputy managing editor of Al Jazeera online. He is the author of several books including Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle, and My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story. He is also the co-author, with Samah Sabawi and Jehan Bseiso, of the poetry collection I Remember My Name. His work has been published in hundreds of newspapers and journals worldwide, and is regularly translated and republished in several languages. He has contributed to and was referenced in hundreds of books and academic journals. Baroud has been a guest on many television and radio programs nationally and internationally, and he has been a guest speaker at many top universities around the world. Baroud has a Doctorate of Philosophy in Palestine Studies from the European Centre for Palestinian Studies at the University of Exeter.

Date:

February 22, 2017

1st Segment: Building Resistance: Japanese Imprisonment and the Fight Against a Muslim Registry
Produced by Making Contact (02.14.2017)
 
This year is the 75th anniversary of we now call Japanese Internment. And every year since 1942, Japanese Americans have tried to get the rest of us to remember what happened. To notice the scar that mass incarceration left, not just on the Japanese community, but on all of us. We found ourselves at similar crossroads in 2001 when the Bush Administration used the chaos of 9/11 to push through drastic changes, including the creation of a Muslim registry called NSEERS, the National Security Entry Exit Registration System. But, people fought it. And won. Today, as President Trump moves to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. and threatens to build another registry we are faced with similar choices. So, what can we learn from our history? And how do we fight back?
 
Featuring:
Satsuki Ina, documentarian; Mutsu Homma, Roy Ebihara, George Murihiro, Matsuo Watanabe, survivors; Joseph Arsinoe, US soldier; War Relocation Authority. Lara Kiswani, Executive Director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center; Anirvan Chatterjee, Alliance of South Asians Taking Action Liz Ouyang, attorney; Mohammad Sarfaraz Hussain; Anirvan Chatterjee, Alliance of South Asians Taking Action; Jason Prado, Sophie Xie, DoBetter.Tech
     

2nd Segment: Lawyers, activists organize against Trump’s Muslim ban
A podcast produced by The Electronic Intifada (02.03.2017)
  
Immigration attorneys and immigrant rights groups continue to fight the Trump administration’s so-called Muslim ban but the executive branch of the US government remains intransigent in its refusal to comply with federal court orders against the ban. The executive order banning persons from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US was signed by President Donald Trump last Friday. On Saturday, thousands of activists poured into airports around the US to demand that Customs and Border Protection (CPB) release people it had detained under the ban. By the evening, a federal court in New York had issued an immediate order against the ban.
 
“What I saw at the protests at SFO [San Francisco International airport] was an organized and focused crowd of protesters … to respond and protest to the immediate implementation of Trump’s executive order,” said The Electronic Intifada’s Charlotte Silver in an interview for the podcast.
 
On Wednesday, immigration attorneys in Southern California told The Electronic Intifada that the US Marshals Service is failing to enforce federal court orders against the CPB at Los Angeles International airport, Silver reported.
 
There have been ”several” instances in the past few days where CBP agents “are telling lawyers, telling congress people, telling activists that they are specifically not complying with the court order, that it is not applying to them,” Silver explained.

She said that there are “serious reasons to be concerned about the Trump administration and its federal agency’s willingness to comply with court orders.”
 
Featured audio: Lara Kiswani, Executive Director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, speaking to crowd at SFO, 28 January; crowd chanting and drumming via Palestinian Memes

Date:

February 15, 2017

Panel Discussion about "Immigration Ban Statement"
The Arab American Cultural and Community Center (ACC) in Houston held a panel discussion of local immigration lawyers and experts on February 11, 2017 to help address the community's concerns and help clarify questions in regards to the immigration ban that was put in effect January 27, 2017. The Panel included:
 
Wafa Abdin, Esq.
Vice President for Immigration and Refugee Services at Catholic Charities. She oversees the Cabrini Center for Immigrant Legal Assistance, the largest non-profit provider of immigration legal services for low-income and indigent non-citizens and Refugee Resettlement Program. She has more than 15 years of experience in immigration law and is a frequent lecturer at immigration conferences and has also written several articles and papers on immigration law topics. In recognition of her outstanding work and dedication, she was awarded the Chrys Dougherty Legal Services Award in 2010 by the Texas State Bar.

Norma Ayoub
Attorney at the law firm of Ayoub & Associates, PC. She has been practicing law for about 18 years. Earlier in her career she handled international corporate matters while working overseas. Upon returning to the US, she opened her own office and has handled strictly immigration matters for the past 16 years and is licensed in both New York and Texas. She is admitted in various appellate courts. She speaks fluent Arabic.

Nejd Jill Yaziji
Attorney at Yaziji Law Firm. She has been practicing Immigration & Asylum Law for more than a decade. She represents clients from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, Egypt, Ukraine and other countries. She is a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, and is Editor-in-Chief of The Houston Lawyer magazine (2016-2017), the official publication of the Houston Bar Association.
 
Today on Arab Voices we will listen to the remarks made at the panel discussion on refugees, asylum and non-immigrant visa. We will also listen to some of the questions and answers raised during the event such as could a Muslim registry be enforced, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), what do undocumented immigrants need to do, what to do if targeted by ICE, what can we do to counter hate speech and hate crimes, what will happen to TPS, when can one apply for asylum, what is the legality of agents asking for and searching smartphones and laptops at airports, what is the status of DACA, and more.

Date:

February 8, 2017

1st Segment: Wafa Abdin
Vice President for Immigration and Refugee Services at Catholic Charities. She oversees the Cabrini Center for Immigrant Legal Assistance, the largest non-profit provider of immigration legal services for low-income and indigent non-citizens and Refugee Resettlement Program. Ms. Abdin has more than fifteen years of experience in Immigration Law and is a frequent lecturer at Immigration conferences and has also written several articles and papers on Immigration law topics. In recognition of her outstanding work and dedication, Ms. Abdin was awarded the Chrys Dougherty Legal Services Award in 2010 by the Texas State Bar.
 
We will speak live with Wafa about President Trump's executive order, the lawsuits filed to stop it, where does it legally stand now, and more.
  

2nd Segment: Ussama Makdisi
Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. In 2012-2013, Makdisi was an invited Resident Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin). In April 2009, the Carnegie Corporation named Makdisi a 2009 Carnegie Scholar as part of its effort to promote original scholarship regarding Muslim societies and communities, both in the United States and abroad. Professor Makdisi is the author of Faith Misplaced: the Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001. His previous books include Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East, which was the winner of the 2008 Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association, the 2009 John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association, and a co-winner of the 2009 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize given by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Makdisi is also the author of The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon and co-editor of Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa. He has published widely on Ottoman and Arab history as well as on U.S.-Arab relations and U.S. missionary work in the Middle East. Among his major articles are “Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: An Interpretation of Brief History” which appeared in the Journal of American History and “Ottoman Orientalism” and “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity” both of which appeared in the American Historical Review. Professor Makdisi has also published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and in the Middle East Report. Professor Makdisi is now working on a manuscript on the origins of sectarianism in the modern Middle East to be published by the University of California Press.
  
We will speak live with professor Makdisi about President Trump’s Muslim ban executive order, what it means to U.S. relations with the Arab and Muslim world, President Trump's exempting Christians from his ban, and more. Professor Makdisi published an article last week titled "Trump's executive order pits Muslims against Christians" in which he says "The cynical executive order is not only blatantly discriminatory, but it plays Muslim against Christian, demonizing the former while pretending to be sympathetic to the latter. Trump's politics of sectarian sympathy and the purported protection of minorities has a long history. It has led to more persecution, not less."

Date:

February 1, 2017

Arsalan Safiullah
Staff Attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas Houston). He earned his undergraduate degree from McGill University in Montreal and holds a Master of Biotechnology (M.Biot.) and a Juris Doctorate (J.D.) from Texas A&M University. In his current position, Arsalan focuses on employment discrimination, civil liberties issues, hate crimes, and know your rights community education.
         

Yolanda Rondon
Staff Attorney for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC National), where she works on legal cases and policy issues related to surveillance, racial and religious profiling, hate crimes, employment discrimination and immigration. She has provided written and oral testimony to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on surveillance, privacy and profiling concerns of the Arab American community, and has provided written testimony and reports to the United States Commission on Civil Rights on religious violations of prisoner rights and religious accommodation issues in immigration detentions. She has also addressed the United States compliance with the Convention Against Torture and privacy issues related to surveillance at the U.S. Department of State – Universal Periodic Review. She has also provide written testimony to U.S. Congressional committees on issues ranging from profiling and countering violent extremism to the refugee crisis and the visa waiver program, as well as oral testimony to the U.S. Department of Education on implementation of the Elementary & Secondary Education Act, resource equity, and accountability for English Language Learners.
   

We will speak live with Arsalan and Yolanda about President Trump's executive order to ban Muslims from 7 countries entry to the US, the effect of that on Houston and the nation, the nationwide stay issued by a federal judge halting part of Trump's immigration ban (after ACLU files emergency lawsuit), how should travelers deal with this ban and questioning by authorities at airports, the Texas Muslim Capitol Day that drew the largest crowd ever (held yesterday in Austin), the rise of attacks and hate crimes against Muslims in the US, and more.
   
    
We will also listen to the remarks of Sylvester Turner, Mayor of the City of Houston and Art Acevedo, Chief of the Houston Police Department (HPD) in the wake of President Trump's executive order on Immigration, and their message to the community.

Date:

January 25, 2017

           

Winter Fund Drive

Date:

January 18, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump said at the AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference last year: "In Palestinian textbooks and mosques, you've got a culture of hatred that has been fermenting there for years, and if we want to achieve peace, they've got to go out and they got to start this educational process. They have to end education of hatred. They have to end it, and now".
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to an interview Arab Voices conducted with Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Lecturer in Language Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an award-winning Israeli peace activist, poet and author, and one of the founders of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. Nurit is the daughter of Israeli General Matti Peled. In 2001 she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Human Rights and the Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament. She is also the author of the book Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education. We will speak with Nurit about Palestinian and Israeli textbooks. Please note that her book is available as a Thank-You Gift today on Arab Voices during KPFT's Winter Fund Drive at the $200 pledge level (call 713-526-5738 or email ArabVoices@hotmail.com).
   

We will also listen to an interview Arab Voices conducted with Sut Jhally, Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, a leading scholar on advertising, public relations, and political propaganda. He is the author of several books including The Codes of Advertising; Enlightened Racism; and The Spectacle of Accumulation. Professor Jhally is the Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF), a documentary film company that looks at issues related to U.S. media and public attitudes. He is the producer, director, or executive producer of dozens of MEF films, including Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict; Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire; Reel Bad Arabs (featuring Jack Shaheen); Edward Said On Orientalism; Dreamworlds: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video; and Advertising & the End of the World.
 
We will speak with professor Jhally about his new film The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in The United States, featuring Roger Waters, Amira Hass, M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen M. Walt, Noam Chomsky, Rula Jebreal, Henry Siegman, Rashid Khalidi, Rami Khouri, Yousef Munayyer, Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Phyllis Bennis, Norman Solomon, Mark Crispin Miller, Peter Hart, and Sut Jhally. This film is available as a Thank-You Gift today on Arab Voices during KPFT's Winter Fund Drive at the $120 pledge level (call 713-526-5738 or email ArabVoices@hotmail.com).
         

Winter Fund Drive

Date:

January 11, 2017

"The Terrorism Label: an Examination of American Criminal Prosecutions" by Wadie Said
The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. held its annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture on October 7, 2016. The speaker was Wadie Said, professor of law at the University of South Carolina School of Law, where he teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, and human rights law. Before joining the South Carolina faculty, Said represented terrorist suspects as an assistant federal public defender in Tampa, Florida, serving as counsel in United States v. Al-Arian, one of the largest terrorism prosecutions in American history. A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, he clerked for Chief Justice Charles P. Sifton of the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He is also the author of the recently published book, Crimes of Terror: the Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions, which provides a comprehensive legal analysis of the criminal terrorist prosecution in the United States. His scholarship also appears in many prestigious law journals and reviews.
 
Professor Wadie Said spoke on the issue of terrorism and the ways in which it’s produced and dealt with in the American legal system. The lecture was titled "The Terrorism Label: an Examination of American Criminal Prosecutions".
   
Today, on Arab Voices, we will listen to that lecture and some of the questions and answers that followed his talk.

Date:

January 4, 2017

Noam Chomsky: With Trump Election, We Are Now Facing Threats to the Survival of the Human Species
On December 5, 2016, Democracy Now! held a special celebration event for its 20th anniversary at the historic Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York. More than 2,300 people attended the event. There were several speakers, including Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author. He is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of more than 100 books.
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Noam Chomsky’s remarks at that event on “Trump and the decline of the American Superpower”, and will also listen to the conversation that followed his talk that Amy Goodman and Juan González of Democracy Now! had with Noam Chomsky and Harry Belafonte, who also spoke at the event. Harry Belafonte is a longtime civil rights activist who was also a popular singer and actor. He was one of Martin Luther King’s closest confidants and helped organize the March on Washington in 1963.

Date:

December 28, 2016

1st Segment: Dr. Riyad Mansour
Ambassador and Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, and the non-resident Ambassador of the State of Palestine to Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. He joined the Permanent Observer Mission of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to the UN, New York, in 1983 as Deputy Permanent Observer, and has since represented Palestine in several committees and bodies of the UN. Dr. Mansour has published several studies and articles about the Palestinian community in the US, lectured in several American universities, and has participated in numerous international conferences, symposia, seminars and panel debates as a representative of Palestine. He is also a member of senior officials committees of the State of Palestine and the PLO.
 
We will speak live with Ambassador Mansour about the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 that was adopted last Friday, December 23, 2016 stating that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem have no legal validity, constitute flagrant violation of international law, and demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligation as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. It was the first UNSC resolution to pass regarding Israel and Palestine in 36 years, and the first to address the issue of Israeli settlements with such specificity since Resolution 465 in 1980. We will also get his reaction to today's speech by Secretary of State John Kerry about Israel and Palestine.
  

2nd Segment: Paul Butler
Director of ANERA's (American Near East Refugee Aid) Palestine programs overseeing the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2011. He is based in Jerusalem and supervises ANERA’s programs in health and education services, sustainable community development, water rehabilitation, agriculture, microfinance and emergency relief and medical aid. He is a veteran development professional with over two decades’ experience in the Middle East. He has directed programs in emergency relief, medical aid and economic development in some of the region’s most vulnerable places: Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt. A fluent Arabic speaker, Paul has first-hand experience in the difficult political and economic situations of the region. He travels to Gaza regularly and was instrumental in ANERA’s relief efforts after the most recent war.
 
We will speak live with Mr. Butler about his experience on the ground in Palestine, an update on the humanitarian conditions there and what is being done to address them, the priorities for humanitarian relief and development work over the next few years, how has Gaza reconstruction progressed since the last war, how do the residents of Gaza cope with poverty and the blockade, how can development work advance peace in the region, and more.

Date:

December 21, 2016

Said Arikat
Journalist, author, and political analyst. He is the Washington, DC Bureau Chief for the daily Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds (based in occupied Jerusalem), for which he is a writer, columnist, and analyst. He is also an adjunct professor at the American University in Washington, DC where he teaches a course on "The Role of the Media in the Arab World". He also served as spokesman and director of public information for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq from 2005 to 2010.

Date:

December 14, 2016

Liz Jackson
Founding Staff Attorney for Palestine Legal and Cooperating Counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights. Her work includes representing students, professors and activists on free speech and academic freedom issues, documenting the chilling effect of repression campaigns, and educating activists on their rights. She advised the successful divestment campaign at UC Berkeley, and helped students respond to Title VI complaints, which were dismissed, rejecting the theory that Palestine activism creates a hostile environment for Jewish students. She has defended the right to advocate for Palestine on campuses from New Mexico to Southern Florida, Boston, New Jersey, and California. She has organized for Palestinian human rights as a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, as a Jewish solidarity activist, and as a former Co-Chair of the National Lawyers Guild Free Palestine Subcommittee. Liz has advocated for First Amendment rights to speak about Palestine in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Electronic Intifada podcast, the Real News Network, Al Jazeera, and more.

We will speak with Liz about the controversial and unconstitutional "Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2016" that passed the U.S. Senate earlier this month, but failed to pass the U.S. House of Representatives last week despite intense lobbying by Israel advocacy groups. Will this be the end of it, or will we see it again during the next session? We will also talk about the efforts by some lobbying groups to restrict speech on U.S. campuses that are critical of Israel; the attacks on advocacy for Palestinian Rights; the rights of students advocating for justice in Palestine on university campuses; and more.

Date:

December 7, 2016

“Semitism and the Palestinians" by Joseph Massad
The United States Senate silently passed a dangerous piece of legislation last week called “The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2016”. It was introduced by senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Bob Casey (D-PA). This new piece of legislation requires the Department of Education to apply the State Department's definition of anti-Semitism in evaluating complaints of discrimination on educational campuses across the United States. It threatens the First Amendment rights and academic freedoms of students and faculty across the country by equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
 
Arab Voices will be discussing this in more details on the show with experts on the subject matter within weeks, but today, we will listen to a lecture held a few years ago at the James A. Baker III Institute at Rice University in Houston titled “Semitism and the Palestinians”, delivered by Dr. Joseph Massad, who is now Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He is a historian, political scientist, a leading scholar of Arab culture, and author of several books and articles. This lecture addresses questions such as: What is Semitism and what does it have to do with the Palestinians? What is the relationship that Palestinians have to the Semite? Does the history of Semitism have anything to do with Palestinians? If so, what is it?

Date:

November 30, 2016

Sam Kadi
Director/producer of the award winning American feature drama THE CITIZEN. THE CITIZEN received five awards on the festival circuit before being released theatrically worldwide in 2013. The film was named among the "Best 10 Films of 2013" by Examiner.com. Kadi has been recognized by the prestigious Cinema For Peace organization for raising awareness of human rights issues through motion pictures, and was asked to speak on the same subject before the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands in June 2012. In 2013, Kadi was presented with a Humanitarian Service Award by the Life for Relief and Development Organization. Kadi is a member of the Directors Guild of America, where he serves on the Directors Guild Asian American Committee.

We will speak with Sam Kadi about the ongoing catastrophe in Syria; the war that has devastated the country and left hundreds of thousands dead and millions refugees. We will talk about the horrific situation in Aleppo; and the path for peace. We will also talk about the new award-winning documentary film "Little Gandhi" that will be screened in Houston on December 1 and 2.

Date:

November 23, 2016

Dr. Emran El-Badawi
Program director and associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Houston. He founded the Arab Studies program at UH and has designed, implemented and assessed degree programs in the Humanities and Sciences. He has consulted for various industries, including government, law and oil & gas, and he is also active in program development and fundraising. Dr. El-Badawi is founding executive director and treasurer of the International Qur'anic Studies Association, which is the world's first learned society of its kind. He has published in English as well as Arabic and has made dozens of national and international media contributions or appearances including for The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, Forbes, Christian Science Monitor and Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne (ARTE). His current research projects include a book on 'Arab Liberalism' between secular nationalism and political Islam, as well as a project documenting the evolution of Eastern Church/Canon Law to Shariah Law. Dr. El-Badawi has received numerous awards for his work and research including honorable acclaim by the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize for his book on The Qur'an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions. Furthermore, his professional management and scholarly projects have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for several organizations.

We will speak with Dr. El-Badawi about several issues including the U.S. election results, populism, immigration, globalization; Trump's impact on minority groups in the US; Muslims, Arabs, South Asians in America (contributions and challenges); Middle East policy, and more.

Date:

November 16, 2016

Khalil Jahshan
Executive Director of the Arab Center Washington DC, a non-partisan, non-profit think tank focusing on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as furthering economic, political, and social understanding of the Arab World in the United States. He is a Palestinian-American activist and media commentator. He previously served as Executive Director at Pepperdine University, Executive Vice President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and director of its government affairs affiliate (NAAA-ADC), Vice President of the American Committee on Jerusalem, President of the National Association of Arab Americans, National Director of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG), Assistant Director of Palestine Research and Educational Center, and Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Chicago Extension and at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Mr. Jahshan has served on the boards of directors, and advisory boards of various Middle East-oriented groups, including ANERA, MIFTAH and Search for Common Ground.

We will speak with Mr. Jahshan about the U.S. elections, Trump’s victory and what we might expect in terms of foreign policy, the recent Arab Public Opinion Poll about the U.S. elections by the Arab Center Washington DC, and Trump’s rhetoric during the campaign about Muslims and other minority groups and its impact.
 
Since Trump's victory last week, we have seen a significant increase in violent hate rhetoric and crimes targeting Arab and Muslim American communities, and communities of color. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, more than 500 incidents of hateful harassment and intimidation have been reported in the U.S. following the election results (higher than the immediate post-9/11 backlash), and according to Campus Safety magazine, a series of racially-motivated incidents have been reported at schools at all levels across the U.S. following Trump’s victory. A new report released on  November 14, 2016 by the FBI reveals that law enforcement agencies across the country reported 257 anti-Muslim incidents in 2015, up 67 percent from the year before (many attribute that to the anti-Muslim rhetoric that came out of the presidential campaign).

Date:

November 9, 2016

1st Segment: Reactions to Trump's Election
We will listen to the reaction of several national U.S. Muslim and Arab organizations and interfaith organizations to the election of Donald Trump as the nation’s 45th president. The comments will include: Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), Muslim Alliance of North America, National Council of Churches USA, Islamic Circle of North America, American Muslims for Palestine, Muslim American Society, and others.
        
2nd Segment: Hani Al-Masri
Director General of Masarat, the Palestinian Center for Policy Research & Strategic Studies, and Policy Advisor at Al Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network. He founded and was director general of the Palestinian Media, Research and Studies Centre, Badael, between 2005 and 2011. He has published hundreds of articles, research and policy papers in Palestinian and Arab magazines and newspapers including Al-Ayyam and Al-Safir. He previously served as General Manager of the Printing & Publication Department at the Ministry of Information and as a member of the Committee on Government in the Commission of Dialogue held in Cairo in 2009. He is also a member of the board of trustees at the Yasser Arafat Foundation.
  
Please note that Dr. Hani Al-Masri will be speaking at the Arab American Cultural and Community Center in Houston on Sunday, November 13 at 5 p.m. Click here for more details.

Date:

November 2, 2016

Sheila Carapico
Editor of the newly released Arabia Incognita: Dispatches from Yemen and the Gulf, who is widely recognized as a leading expert on Yemen. She is the author of Civil Society in Yemen: The Political Economy of Activism in Modern Arabia and numerous other books, book chapters, and articles about Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula, and the region. Carapico acquired her reputation as a Yemen expert through her time as a Fulbright research scholar in the country and consultancy work she did there for bodies such as Human Rights Watch, the Royal Netherlands Embassy, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. During 2010 and the crucial spring of 2011, she was Visiting Chairperson of the Department of Political Science at the American University in Cairo. She teaches Political Science and coordinates the International Studies program at the University of Richmond and is a long serving member of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) collective.

Date:

October 26, 2016

ACC's Annual Unity & Friendship Gala
The Arab American Cultural & Community Center (ACC) in Houston held its 23rd Annual Unity & Friendship Gala on October 1, 2016. This year's theme was "Raising Hope", and it highlighted the Culture and People of Tunisia. The Gala Chairs were Mrs. Shiraz Ghedira Goucha and Mrs. Aicha Limayem Lassoued. The Mistress of Ceremonies was Kaitlin McCulley, Reporter at KTRK ABC 13 News in Houston.
 
This year's ACC honorees were the Levant Foundation for outstanding community service, Dr. Mohamed Rabie for the ACC lifetime achievement award, and Minuteman Press Southwest for the ACC business community award.
  
Today on Arab Voices we will listen to most of the remarks made at the Gala, including the remarks of Dr. Kamal Khalil, ACC President, Sylvester Turner, Mayor of the City of Houston, and Ambassador Fayçal Gouia, Tunisia’s Ambassador to the United States.

Date:

October 19, 2016

Date:

October 12, 2016

Ann Wright
Former US State Department official/diplomat, retired US Army Colonel, and a long-time CODEPINK activist. She resigned from the US government in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. Since her resignation, she has travelled to Gaza seven times, helped organize the 1,300 person Gaza Freedom March in 2009, was a passenger on the Challenge 1 in the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, was an organizer for the 2011 US Boat to Gaza and a boat leader on the 2015 Gaza Freedom Flotilla. She was also an organizer for Gaza’s Ark. Ann Wright was an organizer and the boat leader for the 2016 Women’s Boat to Gaza that began to sail on September 14, 2016 from Barcelona in an effort to break the Israeli naval blockade on Gaza. The boat, Zaytouna-Oliva, was hijacked in international waters by the Israeli military on October 5, 2016 a few miles of the coast of Gaza, and all 13 women on board, including Ann Wright, were kidnapped by force by the Israeli military and taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod. On board with her were three parliamentarians from New Zealand, Sweden and Algerian, an Olympic athlete from South Africa, and Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire, from Northern Ireland.

We will speak live with Ann Wright about her recent attempt to break the siege on Gaza, and her firsthand account of her kidnapping from international waters by the Israeli military.
   

Fall Fund Drive

Date:

October 5, 2016

     

Fall Fund Drive

Date:

September 28, 2016

Dr. Mohamed Rabie
Distinguished Professor of International Political Economy who taught at several Arab and American universities, including the University of Houston and Texas Southern University in Houston, Georgetown University, The Johns Hopkins University, and The American University in Washington. Dr. Rabie published 43 books in English and Arabic including The Politics of Foreign Aid; A Vision for the Transformation of the Middle East; The US-PLO Dialogue; Conflict Resolution and the Middle East Peace Process; and Global Economic and Cultural Transformation: The Making of History. He also drafted the original document that guided negotiations and coordinated secret contacts between the US and the PLO. Dr. Rabie received several awards and recognitions over the years including the prestigious 2015 State of Palestine Honorary Award for his contributions to the humanities and social sciences fields.

We will speak live with Dr. Rabie about various topics including the current situation in the Middle East and the wars that are destroying several Arab countries; the U.S. involvement and its foreign policy towards the Middle East; the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli problem; and the prospects for peaceful resolutions to what's happening in the Middle East.
 
Note: Dr. Mohamed Rabie is currently in Houston and on Saturday, October 1, 2016, he will be the recipient of the Arab-American Cultural & Community Center's Lifetime Achievement Award at the ACC's annual gala.

Date:

September 21, 2016

Edward Said - Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights
This week marks the 13th anniversary of Professor Edward Said's death, and on this occasion, we will air today on Arab Voices one of the last major speeches he delivered few months before he died. The talk was titled "Memory, Inequality, and Power: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights". He delivered that speech at the University of California, Berkeley on February 19, 2003.
 
Professor Said is an internationally renowned writer, author, and scholar, whose writings about the Middle East and its relationship with the West have gone far to open new roads in academia and to influence public opinion. Dr. Edward Said was a giant figure in the Arab-American community, and for Arabs in the Middle East and across the world. During the course of his life, he articulated a vision of Palestine and the Arab world that not only recalled the significant contributions of the region’s people but also offered hope for the future. Edward W. Said was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He died on September 25, 2003, in New York.

Date:

September 14, 2016

1st Segment: Israel's Netanyahu redefines “ethnic cleansing”!!!
Comments and reactions to the latest remarks by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that those who want to create a Palestinian state are seeking “ethnic cleansing” of Jews from the occupied territories. We will also listen to the reaction of the US State Department, and a talk about ethnic cleansing by Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe.
    

2nd Segment: Gareth Porter on Syria
An American historian, investigative journalist, author and policy analyst specializing in U.S. national security policy. He has written several books about the potential for peaceful conflict resolution in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, including Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. Porter has reported extensively on Middle East conflicts including Syria. Porter's analysis and reporting have appeared in academic journals, news publications, and periodicals for four decades, and in 2012 he was the winner of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.
 
We will speak live with Gareth about the latest ceasefire in Syria, and the probabilities of it succeeding.

Date:

September 7, 2016

US student politics “rapidly shifting” despite Israel lobby efforts
Podcast produced by The Electronic Intifada.
 
We will listen today to a Podcast by the Electronic Intifada titled “US student politics “rapidly shifting” despite Israel lobby efforts”. It features interviews with Omar Zahzah and Rahim Kurwa, both graduate students at UCLA and members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Charlotte Kates of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoners Solidarity Network, who was denied entry to Palestine by Israel. Kates was travelling to accompany a delegation of European parliamentarians and lawyers in support of Bilal Kayed, who ended a 71-day hunger strike last month. Charlotte was interrogated about her activism with the BDS movement.

Date:

August 31, 2016

     

Back to School Mini-Drive

Date:

August 24, 2016

Ghada Alatrash
Syrian-Canadian writer, author, poet, and certified translator based in Calgary, Alberta, in Canada. She is chair of the Syrian Women's Club of Calgary. She holds a Masters of English from the University of Oklahoma, with an emphasis on post-colonial studies, and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Calgary's Werklund School of Education in Canada. Ghada taught English at Abu Dhabi Women's College, Arabic at the University of Oklahoma, and is a Columnist for Gulf News. In 2012, she released her first work of translation "So that the Poem Remains", a collection of poems by Lebanese poet Youssef Abdul Samad, translated from Arabic to English. She also held a number of poetry readings set to music by Western and Eastern composers. Ghada just published her first book "Stripped to the Bone: Portraits of Syrian Women", a collection of seven short stories about Syrian women in war-torn Syria and the West, and it explores issues of identity, love, strife and courage.
   
We will speak with Ghada about her stories and work, poetry, Syrian women, women's issues, and her new book "Stripped to the Bone: Portraits of Syrian Women".

Date:

August 17, 2016

Rania Khalek
An independent journalist reporting on the underclass and marginalized; Associate Editor at the Electronic Intifada; and Co-host of the weekly podcast Unauthorized Disclosure. She's written for Extra, The Nation, Al Jazeera America, the Electronic Intifada, Truthout, Salon, AlterNet, Citizen Radio and more.
 
We will speak with Rania about last week's murder of  Khalid Jabara, a 37-year-old Arab-American man, who was shot and killed in front of his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma by his neighbor, Vernon Majors, who terrorized the victim’s family for years, referring to them as “dirty Arabs” and "filthy Lebanese". Majors shot and killed Khalid Jabara while he was out on bond from a prior hate crime where he intentionally drove his car into Khalid Jabara’s mother, despite a prosecutor telling the court that Majors was “a substantial risk to the public.” According to the Jabara family, Khalid called the police 30 minutes before he was shot and killed to report that Majors had a gun and that he was scared for what might happen, but the police came and told him there was nothing to be done!
 
We will also talk about the execution-style killings on Saturday of New York imam (religious leader) and his associate, as hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. continue to rise in an atmosphere filled with hateful rhetoric in politics and the society at large, and a growing climate of fear among Arabs and Muslims in the U.S.

Date:

August 10, 2016

Syrian Tragedy: Causes, Consequences, and Options
A fascinating overview and analysis of the history of Syria, from post-WWII to the current quagmire of war, the rise of ISIS, and the battleground of the world’s powerful military countries.
 
Featured Speaker: Stephen Zunes
Professor of politics and international studies and program director of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco. He has published scores of articles in academic journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspaper op-ed pages on such topics as U.S. foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics, Latin American politics, African politics, human rights, arms control, social movements and nonviolent action.
  
This segment is a production of Global Voices for Justice, a non-profit media organization.

Date:

August 3, 2016

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Khizr Khan's DNC Remarks, and Electronic Intifada Podcast on DNC Delegates Support for Palestinian Rights
Over the past week, the remarks of Khizr Khan at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia made, and continues to make headlines throughout the world. Khizr Khan (Muslim American) is the father of deceased Army Captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim U.S. soldier who was killed while serving in Iraq. Khizr Khan addressed the anti-Muslim rhetoric coming out of Donald Trump.

Today, we will listen to those remarks of Khizr Khan, as well as the remarks of Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, a Muslim American, former professional basketball player and advocate for racial and religious tolerance who also spoke at the convention condemning Trump's anti-Muslim speech.

During the second half of the program, we will listen to a Podcast by the Electronic Intifada titled “DNC delegates support Palestinian rights, even if Democratic Party doesn’t”. It features interviews with Rania Khalek, journalist and associate editor at Electronic Intifada; Josh Ruebner, policy director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation; and Jennifer Bing of the American Friends Service Committee.

Date:

July 27, 2016

KPFT Houston is currently in Summer Fund Drive, and Arab Voices needs your support to raise $800 during this drive. Arab Voices started in April 2002 (more than 14 years ago) with over 740 shows produced and hundreds of guests appearing on the show from around the globe covering a wide range of topics.
 
Please call during the show today, Wednesday between 7 and 8 pm central time and pledge your support (713-526-5738). Your donation qualifies as a charitable deduction on your federal income tax return because KPFT is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
 
Arab Voices will be offering several "Thank-You Gifts" during the drive, including:
 
• $120 "The Occupation of the American Mind" Film
Today, we will air portions of the interview conducted in May 2016 with the executive producer of the film, Professor Sut Jhally.
 
Israel's ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and its repeated invasions of the Gaza Strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world — except the United States. The Occupation of the American Mind takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S. Narrated by Roger Waters and featuring leading observers of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the film explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel's favor. The Occupation of the American Mind provides a sweeping analysis of Israel's decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people — a battle that has only intensified over the past few years in the face of widening international condemnation of Israel's increasingly right-wing policies.

• $150 "Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer" book by Phyllis Bennis

• $300 "Palestine 4 Film Pack" - FOUR documentaries (on DVDs)
Four films on the Israel-Palestinian crisis and history, some of which are multi-part series: 1 - "Al Nakba" (award-winning four-part series); 2 - "The Price of Oslo"; 3 - "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land"; 4 - "Occupation 101"

• $150 "Al Nakba" (award-winning four-part series) DVDs

• $85 "The Battle for Justice in Palestine" book by Ali Abunimah

• $250 Edward Said Tribute 6 CD SET

• $180 “The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine” book by Miko Peled

• $200 "Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East" book by Rashid Khalidi

• $150 “National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism” book by Melvin Goodman

• $200 “Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education” book by Nurit Peled-Alhanan
  

Membership Drive

Date:

July 20, 2016

Date:

July 13, 2016

Dima Khalidi
Founder and Director of Palestine Legal, and Cooperating Counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Her work includes providing legal advice to activists, engaging in advocacy to protect their rights to speak out for Palestinian rights, and educating activists and the public about the repression of Palestine advocates. Over the years, Dima worked on numerous cases that sought to hold Israeli officials and corporations accountable for Israeli violations of international law, including Belhas v. Ya’alon, Matar et al. v. Dichter and Corrie v. Caterpillar, as well as on CCR’s Guantanamo Bay docket. Prior to studying law, Dima worked at Birzeit University, heading a research project on the role of informal justice mechanisms in the Palestinian legal system. She has advocated on Palestinian rights issues in media forums such as the New York Times, the Jewish Press, The Hill, Huffington Post Live, The Real News Network, Al Jazeera English, Mondoweiss, Huffington Post, Law and Disorder Radio, and Radio Tahrir. She is fluent in Arabic and French. Dima is based in Palestine Legal’s Chicago office, and is admitted to practice law in Illinois.
 
We will speak live with Dima about the wave of bills that have been introduced in state legislatures across the U.S. aimed at punishing or suppressing boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns for Palestinian freedom. We will also talk about last month's Executive Order signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York directing state agencies and authorities to divest public funds supporting BDS campaign against Israel.
  

Rabbi Brian Walt
Founding Executive Director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, co-chair of the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Rabbinical Council, and co-founder of Jewish Fast for Gaza.
   
We will speak live with Rabbi Walt about the ongoing incitement to racism and violence against Palestinians from senior Israeli religious, political, and military leaders. We will talk about the endorsement of rape by Israel's new Military Chief Rabbi, Eyal Karim, who was named to that post yesterday. Rabbi Karim stated on a site in the past that it is permitted for Jewish soldiers to rape non-Jewish women during times of war. Furthermore, and according to the English edition of Israel's Yedioth Arnot newspaper: "The rabbi gave a more shocking answer on the same site when asked if soldiers were permitted to rape women during war. Karim replied that, as part of maintaining fitness for the army and the soldiers' morale during fighting, it is permitted to 'breach' the walls of modesty and 'satisfy the evil inclination by lying with attractive Gentile women against their will, out of consideration for the difficulties faced by the soldiers and for overall success.'"

Date:

July 6, 2016

Hate Incidents & Attacks against Muslims on the Rise
Over the past ten days, hate incidents and attacks (including beatings and shootings) targeting Muslims and Islamic houses of worship have risen noticeably across the United States, as anti-Muslim sentiment continues to rise alongside the anti-Muslim political climate in the United Sates.
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to remarks delivered by several community leaders at a news conference held by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Houston) on July 4, 2016, urging additional security measures in light of the recent hate incidents. We will listen to the remarks of Mustafaa Carroll, Executive Director of CAIR-Houston; Dr. Shahid Hasnain, Representing the Greater Houston community doctors; Rev. Kimberly Orr, Associate Pastor for Windsor Village United Methodist Church; Deric Muhammad, Community Activist; David Atwood with Pax Christie; Dr. Yusuf Shere, President of CAIR-Texas; Arsalan Safiullah, Staff Attorney at CAIR-Houston; Shaykh Waleed Basyouni, Imam of Clear Lake Islamic Center; and a statement from the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice sent to the US Department of Justice.
 
We will also listen to the remarks made by Syeda Bokhari, the wife of Dr. Arslan Tajammul, who was shot outside a Houston mosque on Sunday, July 3, 2016.
        
Confronting Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the U.S.
A new report released on June 20, 2016, by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR National) and the Center for Race and Gender at UC Berkeley, reveals that 33 Islamophobic groups had access to at least $205 million in total revenue between 2008-2013 used mainly to make people afraid of Islam and Muslims. The report, titled “Confronting Fear,” also presents a four-point strategy designed to achieve a shared American understanding of Islam in which being Muslim carries a positive connotation, and in which Islam has an equal place among the many faiths that together constitute America’s pluralistic society. The report also documents the negative impact of Islamophobia in America, including the anti-Islam bills that became law in 10 states. At least two states, Florida and Tennessee, have passed laws revising the way they approve textbooks for classroom use as a direct result of anti-Islam campaigns.
 
We will also listen today to Corey Saylor, Director of the Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia at CAIR National, discussing this new report.

Date:

June 29, 2016

Melvin Goodman
Director of the National Security Project and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, and an adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He was an analyst at the CIA for 24 years; and a former analyst at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He is author of six books on US intelligence and international security, including "National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism" and "Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA". His forthcoming book is "Whistleblower at the CIA: An Insider’s Account of the Politics of Intelligence". His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Harper's, CounterPunch, and many others.

We will speak live with Mr. Goodman about the report released yesterday on the Benghazi attack in Libya that killed four Americans. He commented yesterday on that report by saying "This Benghazi report is of a continuing media circus that the Republicans have created. But we still have much to learn about the CIA's role in Benghazi; the interest of Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi; and the communications between the White House and the CIA in trying to explain the events of that terrible night." Mr. Goodman revealed before that the US consulate in Benghazi was a diplomatic cover for an intelligence operation.
  
We will also talk about American militarism around the world; US presidential candidates and their stance towards military spending and defense budget; US involvements in other countries; and more.

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June 22, 2016

Notes From the Left Forum in NYC: Medea Benjamin and Amy Goodman
   
Rage, Rebellion, Organizing Our Power was the theme of the Left Forum in New York City held at John Jay College of Criminal Justice May 20-22, 2016.
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to two remarks delivered at the forum by Medea Benjamin and Amy Goodman. Notes from the Left Forum is a new series produced by our sister station WBAI Radio in NYC.
 
Medea Benjamin, award-winning Peace Activist and co-founder of Code Pink addressed the conference. Speaking to the change that's needed out of a war economy, Benjamin said "We will only give peace a chance when we challenge those in power and replace the war economy with a local peace economy."
 
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, on a 20th Anniversary tour of the award-winning program, addressed the Left Forum. She spoke out about Donald Trump, "the man who has ripped open the underbelly of hate" and the importance of independent media, a media that covers power not a media that covers for power. She says "The media can be the greatest force for peace on earth, instead all too often it's wielded as a weapon of war."

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June 15, 2016

Local reaction to the Orlando massacre, and bigotry towards Islam and Muslims
 
There was outrage and denunciation to the recent massacre in Orlando, Florida from all over the world, including Houston, while some news media outlets, some politicians, a presidential candidate, and others ceased the opportunity to continue their attacks and hostilities towards Islam and Muslims. In Houston, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee along with Muslim, Christian, Hispanic and LGBTQ community leaders held a press conference on Sunday, June 12, 2016, to denounce the massacre. Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to some of those remarks from MJ Khan, President of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston; Deacon Sam Dunning, Director of the Office of Justice and Peace for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston; Mufti Mohammed Wasim Khan, Muslim Imam and Director and Dean of ISRA Foundation; and Mustafaa Carroll, Executive Director of the Houston Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
 
In addition, we will listen to some of the remarks delivered at the Annual Houston Ramadan Iftar Dinner on June 12, 2016, by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee; Congressman Al Green; Harris County Judge Ed Emmett; and Mayor of the City of Houston Sylvester Turner. They also talked about Islam, Muslims, and the Orlando massacre.
 
We will also listen to the speech delivered at Muhammad Ali's funeral on June 10, 2016, by Michael Lerner, a Jewish Rabbi and Editor-in-Chief for Tikkkun Magazine.

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June 8, 2016

1st Segment: Remembering Hedy Epstein
On May 26, 2016, Holocaust Jewish survivor Hedy Epstein, passed away in St. Louis, Missouri, at the age of 91. Hedy was an internationally renowned, respected and admired advocate for human and civil rights. Throughout most of her life, she fought for justice and freedom for the oppressed. Following the 1982 massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon, Hedy began her courageous and visionary work for peace and justice. Much of her later activism centered on efforts to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Hedy traveled to the occupied West Bank several times, and attempted several times to go to Gaza with the Freedom Flotilla, the Audacity of Hope, and the Gaza Freedom March.
 
Hedy Epstein was a guest on Arab Voices twice over the years. First in April 2005, where she talked about her experience in occupied Palestine, and the second time was on December 23, 2009, where she talked about her participation in the Gaza Freedom March at the Egypt/Gaza border. Today, we will re-air her last interview on Arab Voices.
   
2nd Segment: "The Nakba, the Naksa, and the future of Palestine"
Making Contact, an award-winning, weekly magazine/documentary-style public affairs program that is heard on 140 radio stations in the USA, Canada, South Africa and Ireland, produced a new program titled “The Nakba, The Naksa, and the Future of Palestine”.
 
In 1948, Zionist militias expelled over 700,000 Palestinians from their villages and towns. The event, and the ongoing destruction and occupation of Palestine are referred to as the Nakba – the catastrophe. How did the events of 1948 shape Palestine and its diaspora? And generations later, how are Palestinians fighting to return home?
 
In this edition, Making Contact reflects on the Nakba, the Naksa, and the future of Palestine.
 
Featuring: Rami Almeghari, FSRN reporter; Ghazi Misleh, author of I Am from There and I Have Memories; Rabab Abdulhadi, Professor of Ethnic Studies and Senior Scholar of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative at San Francisco State University; Dina from Rammun; Mohannad from Ramle; Remi Kanazi, poet and author of Before the Next Bomb Drops

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June 1, 2016

In Memoriam: Arab Voices interview with Dr. Clovis Maksoud
Dr. Clovis Maksoud, former ambassador and permanent observer of the League of Arab States at the United Nations and its chief representative in the United States for more than 10 years, passed away in Washington, D.C. on May 15, 2016, at the age of 89. He was a lawyer, journalist, and diplomat, and served as the League of Arab States’ Ambassador to India and Southeast Asia from 1961 to 1966 as well as the League of Arab States’ special envoy to the United States in 1974. He was also a member of the United Nations Development Program Advisory Board on the Arab Human Development Reports. Maksoud founded and served as director of American University’s Center for the Global South. He has authored several books on the Middle East and developing countries, including The Meaning of Nonalignment, The Crisis of the Arab Left, Reflections on Afro-Asianism, The Arab Image, and his memoir "From the Corners of Memory: A Journey on the Train of Arab Nationalism".
 
Arab Voices interviewed Dr. Maksoud more than once, and in his memory, we will re-air the last interview conducted with him last year. In that interview, we talked about the Middle East and what's happening in several Arab countries including Yemen, Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Egypt. We also talked about ISIS; the Arab awakenings; and more.

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May 25, 2016

Sut Jhally
Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, a leading scholar on advertising, public relations, and political propaganda. He is the author of several books including The Codes of Advertising; Enlightened Racism; and The Spectacle of Accumulation. Professor Jhally is the Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF), a documentary film company that looks at issues related to U.S. media and public attitudes.
 
He is the producer, director, or executive producer of dozens of MEF films, including Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict; Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire; Reel Bad Arabs (featuring Jack Shaheen); Edward Said On Orientalism; Dreamworlds: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video; and Advertising & the End of the World.
 
Professor Jhally is executive producer of the just-released film The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in The United States, featuring Roger Waters, Amira Hass, M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen M. Walt, Noam Chomsky, Rula Jebreal, Henry Siegman, Rashid Khalidi, Rami Khouri, Yousef Munayyer, Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Phyllis Bennis, Norman Solomon, Mark Crispin Miller, Peter Hart, and Sut Jhally.

We will speak live with professor Jhally about his new film The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in The United States.
 
About the Film:
Israel's ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and its repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world — except the United States. The Occupation of the American Mind takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S. Narrated by Roger Waters and featuring leading observers of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the film explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel's favor. The Occupation of the American Mind provides a sweeping analysis of Israel's decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people — a battle that has only intensified over the past few years in the face of widening international condemnation of Israel's increasingly right-wing policies.

Date:

May 18, 2016

     

Membership Drive

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May 11, 2016

Houston Palestine Film Festival
We will speak live with Houston Palestine Film Festival's President Khalil AbuSharekh about the Houston Palestine Film Festival (HPFF). This year HPFF will be celebrating the tenth anniversary with its largest festival to date, showcasing a number of award winning and internationally acclaimed feature films, documentaries and shorts that address a variety of themes and narratives in Palestinian society.
    
The festival will run for three consecutive weekends in May and will be the largest and most varied edition in the organization’s history in terms of the number of films screened and number of days running. This year’s highlights include two Oscar-nominated films, director visits and Q&A sessions, evening receptions and plenty of surprises for audience members.
  
Screenings during the first weekend, May 13-15, will be held at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. For the second and third weekends, May 19-22 and May 26-28, screenings will be held at the Rice University Media Center.
 
Click here for more details and Program Lineup.
      

Membership Drive

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May 4, 2016

"The Hundred Year War in Palestine" by Dr. Rashid Khalidi
This lecture titled "The Hundred Year War in Palestine" was given by Professor Rashid Khalidi at the Centre for Palestine Studies at SOAS University of London on March 11, 2016. Professor Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and Chairman of the Department of History at Columbia University.
 
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 launched what amounts to a hundred years of war against the Palestinians. This war had a unique nature – it was formally sanctioned and authorized by the great powers of the day at different times during this century, and via different fora, such as the League of Nations and the United Nations, but it was mainly waged by other actors. A much distorted and maligned feature of this long war has been the Palestinians’ continuing resistance, against heavy odds, to what amounts to one of the last ongoing attempts at colonial subjugation in the modern world.
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Dr. Khalidi's lecture on "The Hundred Year War in Palestine".

Date:

April 27, 2016

Andrew J. Bacevich
Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University; a retired U.S. army colonel; and New York Times bestselling author. A graduate of the US Military Academy, he served for twenty-three years as a commissioned officer in the United States Army. He received his Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty of Boston University, he taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins. Bacevich is the author of the just released book America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (2016). His previous books include Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (2013); Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War (2010); The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008); The Long War: A New History of US National Security Policy since World War II (2007) (editor); The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005); and American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (2002). His essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of scholarly and general interest publications including The Wilson Quarterly, The National Interest, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and The New Republic. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Times, among other newspapers. In 2004, Dr. Bacevich was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He has also held fellowships at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
  

We will speak with professor Bacevich about his new book America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (2016); US wars in the middle East; US presidential candidates and their stance on wars, US foreign policy towards the Middle East; ISIS; the military-industrial complex; US-Israel relations; and more.

Date:

April 20, 2016

"Rousseau and Palestine: The Radical Tradition of Popular Sovereignty" by Professor Karma Nabulsi
The Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Arab History held a lecture on March 31, 2016, at the University of Houston titled "Rousseau and Palestine: The Radical Tradition of Popular Sovereignty". The speaker was Professor Karma Nabulsi of Oxford University.
 
Karma Nabulsi, D.Phil., is a distinguished Palestinian public intellectual, political theorist, historian, and former national representative. She is a senior faculty member and current director of undergraduate studies at the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University. She is the author of Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law and Palestinians Register: Laying Foundations and Setting Directions. Professor Nabulsi has been a columnist for the Guardian and is a regular contributor to a variety of publications including the Independent, The New Statesman, and the London Review of Books. She is Chair of Trustees and co-founder (with Bella Freud) of the HOPING Foundation.
  
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Professor Nabulsi's lecture on "Rousseau and Palestine: The Radical Tradition of Popular Sovereignty".

Date:

April 13, 2016

"America, Energy and War" by Toby C. Jones
The Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at rice University held a lecture on March 29, 2016, titled "America, Energy and War". The speaker was Toby C. Jones, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University.
 
"Over the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the United States waged what should reasonably be argued was a long war in the Middle East. At the heart of this history is a complex relationship between energy, American geopolitical anxiety, revolution, radicalism and shifting crises in an embattled region. While it is commonly posited that wars in the region can or should be understood as struggles for direct control over oil or that the militarization of the Middle East only reflects the pursuit of petrodollars, I encourage a new way of thinking. By examining the steady increase of violence in the Persian Gulf that began in the mid-1980s, my talk argues that that the distinction between energy and war were systematically erased, remade in a new material order of militarized-energy networks. The result has been a deeply entangled history of weapons, oil and war ever since."
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Professor Jones' lecture on "America, Energy and War".

Date:

April 6, 2016

The 2nd Annual Lebanese Festival
A live conversation with Mirna Makhoul, Fred Davis and Linda Bousaid, with the American Lebanese Cultural Center and members of the Lebanese Festival Committee, about the 2nd Annual Lebanese Festival that will be held on Saturday and Sunday, April 9-10 at Jones Plaza in Downtown Houston.
 
There will be delicious food, great festivities, enjoyable atmosphere for both adults and children, door prizes, music, folkloric dances, performances throughout the day, and much more.   

A Thousand and One Journeys: The Arab Americans
We will talk about the groundbreaking documentary film "A Thousand and One Journeys: The Arab Americans", which will be screened (free admission) at Rice University on Friday, April 8, sponsored by The Arab-American Educational Foundation. Following the screening, there will a question and answer session with the film Director.
 
This documentary provides viewers with a first-ever glimpse of the Arab Americans experience told through the eyes of famous and everyday people. Mapping the arc of American History, the film explores early and multiple waves of immigration along with the tremendous impact of 9/11 on the Arab American community and its challenges and dreams in light of the zeitgeist. A Thousand And One Journeys: The Arab Americans is the untold story of almost 200 years of the contributions of those who immigrated to the United States from the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf have made to the American fabric.

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March 30, 2016

Dr. As'ad AbuKhalil
Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the creator of and maintains the Angry Arab News Service blog. He is author of several publications including Historical Dictionary of Lebanon; Bin Laden, Islam & America's New "War on Terrorism"; and The Battle For Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power.
  

We will speak live with professor AbuKhalil about the Middle East (wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya); the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian crisis; US stance/foreign policy towards the Middle East; and more.

Date:

March 23, 2016

“What I would tell a visiting congressional delegation” by Gideon Levy
On March 18, 2016, a conference was held in Washington, DC called “Israel’s Influence: Good or Bad for America?”. It was co-sponsored by the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). Fourteen well-known expert panelists and keynote speakers analyzed the enormous impact Israel’s influence has on Congress, establishment media, academia and other major institutions. They explored the costs and benefits in terms of foreign aid and covert intelligence, foreign policy, America’s regional and global standing, and unbiased news reporting. There were 4-panel discussions at the conference:
  
 - Israel's Influence on Congress and Government Agencies
 - Israel's Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy
 - Responding to Israel's Influence on Campus and in Court
 - Israel's Influence on Mainstream Media
   
Today, we will listen to one of the keynote speeches delivered at the conference by Gideon Levy “What I would tell a visiting congressional delegation” - What politicians, members of Congress and media elites visiting Israel should know about the situation on the ground—as opposed to what they are told on hundreds of junkets organized by AIPAC. What harm is the relationship doing to the U.S.? We will also listen to the question and answer sessions that followed his talk. Levy is a journalist with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and former spokesman for former Israeli prime minister Shimon Perez.
   
For more information on this conference, visit www.israelsinfluence.org.

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