Two cars owned by Arab students at the Safed Academic College were set alight following a campus event to promote dialogue between Jews and Arabs. Anti-Arab graffiti also was spray-painted on the walls of the college following Tuesday night\’s event, according to reports. \”Arabs get out,\” \”Death to Arabs\” and \”Kahane was right\” were among the epithets.
Yemen\’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, blamed Israel for planning and funding protests in several Arab states. \”There is an operations rooms in Tel Aviv with the aim of destabilizing the Arab world,\” Saleh reportedly said Tuesday during a speech at Sanaa University, adding that the operations room is \”run by the White House.\”
Hosni Mubarak’s resignation Friday from Egypt’s presidency following three weeks of intense street demonstrations raises a host of questions not just for the future of Egypt and its peace treaty with Israel, but for the entire Middle East. The most remarkable feature of the developments in Egypt — and, several weeks before it, the ouster of the longtime dictator of Tunisia amid similar protests — is the introduction of a major new power player in the Middle East: the Arab street.
Every July 23 for the past 58 years, Egypt, my country of birth, has celebrated its “July revolution” that overthrew King Farouk and ended the monarchy and British occupation once and for all. It was no revolution: It was a coup staged by young army officers. And so it has been with a series of “revolutions” around the Arab world in which a succession of military men went on to lead us in civilian clothes — some kept the olive drabs on — and rob generations of the real meaning of revolution. For years I looked at the Iranians with envy — not at the outcome of their 1979 revolution, but because it was a popular uprising, not a euphemism for a coup.
Divorce, dissolution, divestment: These are words that spell the end of a relationship and of what might have been — through time and patience — a meaningful and inspiring marriage.
Overall, though, Jewish-Muslim relations are strained, and tensions will likely worsen before getting better, predicts Rabbi John Rosove, senior rabbi at Temple Israel of Hollywood.
Peace Child Israel was founded in 1988 by the late Israeli actress Yael Drouyanoff and uses theater and other art forms to encourage dialogue between teens who might otherwise never meet. So far, seven groups have been formed, pairing Jewish and Arab towns throughout Israel, among them Misgav-Sakhnin, Raanana-Qalanswa, and East and West Jerusalem.
Georgetown\’s Middle East outreach program is one of 18 affiliated with federally designated national resource centers, each of which receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds under Title VI of the Higher Education Act.
More than any other Arab leader — and even more than his father, the late King Hussein — Abdullah has attached his fate to the West.
It was not clear what form the new Israeli-Russian cooperation would take.
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