Mideast suspicion of US foreign policy fertile grounds for rumors
By Daoud Kuttab
Initially it seemed like a true story. A blogger reports on a lecture given by an advisor to the republican presidential nominee making outrageously radical statements. It should have raised some eyebrows but it didn’t. The blog starts by the name of the writer and the story quoting Carnegie endowment fellow Robert Magen’s talk at New York University and saying that the republican presumptive nominee plans to declare the Kingdom of Jordan as the Palestinian state. The report was so cleverly written that it included a supposed Jordanian student of Palestinian origin complaining during the lecture that was supposedly attended by thousands of student and faculty. Continue Reading »

Local community radio breaks Arab sound barrier Sun, 12-11-2006

By Dale Gavlak, The Associated Press

AMMAN, November 12 — The breathless caller was desperate, with nowhere else to turn: “Help me get a bedouin and his camels and sheep out of my street,” he pleaded. “The herd nearly attacked two neighborhood boys.”

Another caller wanted help rescuing his three Lebanese nephews stranded on the Syrian border because they did not have the proper papers. Continue Reading »

Jordanian lower house sues Radio Al-Balad for “insulting” chamber

LENGTH: 405 words

Text of report in English by privately-owned Jordan Times newspaper on 5 March

[Report by Mohammad Ghazal: “Radio Al Balad banned from broadcasting Lower House sessions”]

AMMAN -The Lower House has filed a lawsuit against Radio Al Balad, formerly Ammannet, and banned it from broadcasting its sessions for allegedly insulting the chamber of deputies, House Secretary General Fayez Shawabkeh said.
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There is no avoiding land for peace
Daoud Kuttab

After Israel’s crushing defeat and occupation of Arab lands in 1967, the United Nations introduced the concept of land for peace into the conflict by unanimously enacting Security Council Resolution 242.

Much has been said about whether the resolution demands Israel to withdraw from all “the territories”, in accordance to the French version, or just “territories”, a formulation that without the “the” has caused Israel and its supporters to claim that the country has a right to retain some occupied land. But in both cases, the concept as specified in the preamble was the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security.”
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Obama’s promises fail at the AIPAC conference
By Daoud Kuttab
It was so sad. To see a grown tower of a man come to his knees. Just like everyone before him, the presumptive democratic followed the suit of all US political leaders before him and bowed down at the footsteps of the pro Israel lobby. What happened to the anti lobby nominee.
On the day his nomination had been sealed, at a time when his chances of being elected had been all but ensured Barack Obama failed the test. What happened to the nominee who was going to change the way Washington was run. What happened to the promise of “I will tell you what you have to hear not what you love to hear.”
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It ended rather quickly. After punching in the grades on the special peoplesoft web site of the university my last formal activity at Princeton University was over. In the span of this year I taught upper class students a seminar entitled New Media in the Arab world, ran a freshman seminar class entitled Authentic Arab Voice and taught helped a few more upper class with their Arabic in the Arabic Media III class.

My journey to Princeton started years ago when NY Times reporter Chris Hedges urged me to apply for a Ferris Journalism Professorship. He encouraged me again when I met him three years ago at a human rights event in Italy , I finally decided to apply and sure enough I was chosen one of the 2007 Ferris.
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published in the Huffington post

The Kippa, the Keffiya, Green and Orange
by Daoud Kuttab

Upon arriving for my freshman orientation at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania back in 1971, I was asked to wear a cardboard beanie. Having just come from Jerusalem I was rather upset at having to wear that head covering. The beanie that I was given looked very much like the kippa that Jewish settlers wear in the occupied Palestinian territories. I later discovered that there was no connection between the two head coverings. Since then I have seen that small rounded item put on the head on different individuals include the Catholic Pope and the Anglican Bishop.
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