from the Globe and Mail December 27, 2007
Backward, Christian soldiers, marching as to peace

Daoud Kuttab

During the run-up to the 1998 Christmas celebrations, U.S. president Bill Clinton, along with his wife, Hillary, and daughter, Chelsea, visited the Palestinian town of Bethlehem to light up the Christmas tree in Manger Square, outside the Church of the Nativity. With that symbolic visit, and the understanding that Mr. Clinton was showing to the needs of the region, Palestinians of all faiths had high hopes that the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict might soon end. It didn’t.
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Why Evangelical Support for Israel is shrinking?

By Daoud Kuttab

An unexpected result has emerged in the US following the one-day Annapolis meeting aimed at kick starting Palestinian Israeli negotiations. Christian Zionists admitted that their power has started to weaken. “The evangelical support for Israel is shrinking,” stated the Jerusalem Connection International in its latest newsletter entitled ”Post Annapolis where do we go from her?” Wikipedia says that Christian Zionism “is a belief among some Christians that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is in accordance with Biblical prophecy and, furthermore, that bringing the Jews home will hasten the Second Coming.. This belief is primarily, though not exclusively, associated with Christian Dispensationalism, mainly in English-speaking countries outside Europe. British theologian and preacher John Nelson Darby who lived in England in the 19th century is regarded as the father of dispensationalism and its prodigy, Christian Zionism.
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By Daoud Kuttab

A decision by the outgoing Bakhit government rejecting an application for a radio license has exposed one of the major weaknesses of the current Jordanian Audio Visual Law. The applicant (author of this article) had requested permission to initiate a community radio station for the third largest city in Jordan, Zarqa. The request was made for the category of stations that would not broadcast news or political programming. No explanation for the rejection is made in the written decision made in the November 13 session. Clause 18b of the 2004 Audio Visual Law allows the council of ministers to refuse any request for a frequency without giving any explanation.
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Google in Arabic to find out

It might be fashionable these days to attack Islam and Muslims (Islam’s” Silent Moderates” December 7), but Ms. Ayaan Hisi Ali’s article fails on two important counts. Taking a religious passage out of context might please certain circles, that are bent on dehumanizing an entire people and region, but fails to contribute to real understandings of the challenges facing today’s Muslims and Arabs.

If we would followed the words of Joshua 6:21 in the Old Testament we would legitimize in the name of the Lord the destruction of every living thing including “men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” In John 2:15 of the New Testament the apostle tells us that Jesus “made a whip of cords and drove all from the temple.” No one attacks Judaism or Christianity today based on these scripts taken out of context.

Her argument that “moderate Muslims” are silent about what recently happened in Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh is far from true. A true reflection of what Muslims think will be seen in what they say in their own language and not just what is published in the English language media. A Google search in Arabic (which is not a strong search engine in Arabic) for Gillian Gibbons (the British school teacher who named a teddy bear Muhammad) produces 58,000 results reflecting a variety of opinions including many opposed to what happened to her. Similar results are found by searching in other languages where the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims live. Scanning independent Arabic language Satellite TV and blogs and you can see many opposed to these religious rulings.

Most independent Muslims have been on the right side of these issues denouncing misuse and abuse of the Quran and Islamic theology. But these independent minded Muslims are not given a chance to speak either on local (state run) media for domestic reasons nor by the western media which just loves to quote the tiny percentage of radicals. Furthermore, the problem is with official Islam in many of the countries that Ayaan refers to. The Islamic clergy in these dictatorial regimes (who are often allied with the US) are used as puppets to justify the latest small battle their paymasters want them to fight irrespective of whether it is representative of Islam or reflective of accepted theology.

Zuckerman’s factless facts
Mortimer Zuckerman lists in “Perilous path to peace” Daily News Monday the 3rd of December as “hard facts” items that are not so. Fatah has not “virtually ceased to exist in the West Bank.” Fatah did not lose to Hamas the Ramallah mayoral elections. The mayor Janet Mikil although not a Fatah member is a left wing Christian nationalists. Fatah whose leader has met with the Israeli leader more than any previous leader does ‘recognize Israel’ but can’t do better than Israelis who have not decided what is the nature of their state. The best that most Israelis can agree to is that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state. Palestinian secular leaders prefer to talk about a state for its citizens (which is what a democratic state is) and don’t want to give Islamists a political gift by inserting this sensitive religious issue in this conflict. The nakbeh or catastrophe that Abbas talked about is not referring to the creation of Israel but the dispersion of Palestinians. The unsourced claims by Zuckerman to oppose peace efforts by Bush Olmert and Abba are not facts and are certainly not hard facts.

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Published in the Daily Princetonian 

By Daoud Kuttab
Guest Columnist     As Palestinian and Israeli leaders were meeting in the Annapolis Naval Base last week for yet another attempt at peacemaking, I remembered how my journalistic career led me to cover the Madrid peace conference back in 1991. I vividly remember how then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker ’52 had kept everyone in the dark about the location of the international meeting. Once he declared Madrid as the site, many of us Palestinians felt a sense of jubilation at the looming discussions, yet the exact nature of the Palestinian delegation was also unknown until the last minute.

    While there are some differences, some issues are still the same. Continue Reading »

following is a chapter in a book published by Hoover

Daoud Kuttab

 It might seem like a contradiction to pose the question of howthe United States can deal with international terror in a civilizedway, but there are many nonviolent things that can bedone short of, or alongside, violent responses. To understandwhat these might be, we must first recognize the nature of the

main actor: the United States.

 America the Exceptional In a unipolar world, in which the United States has lonesuperpower status on the political, financial, and military levels,much more is expected of America than of any other

country.

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Your editorial “This Time?” published on November 28  misrepresented the Palestinian point of view. Your editorial quotes unspecified reports that Palestinian negotiators didn’t want to refer to Israel as a Jewish sate because “that might undercut the Palestinian’s right to return to Israel.”

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