Mission & Justice

Hana Namrouqa; 23/7/08

Participants at the 28th annual International Arab Children’s Congress (IACC) have announced their recommendations which include the establishment of IACC associations in every participating country. National Centre for Culture and Performing Arts (PAC) Director General Lina Attel said in a ceremony late Sunday that supervisors of previous participating delegations will chair the associations, which will also consist of previous participants. “The associations will help fund and support social and cultural projects with the aim of enhancing knowledge and experience exchange,” Attel, the conference director, said during the event’s closing ceremony, which was attended by HRH Princess Sumaya. The associations will also help empower IACC youth in the decision-making process in their respective countries and boost communication and networking among them. Participants from various Arab and Islamic countries, Europe and the US took part in the week-long event, which opened on July 14, and discussed global issues affecting children and ways to promote cross-cultural dialogue.

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Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff; 23/7/08

The United States security coordinator for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, retired general James Jones, is preparing an extremely critical report of Israel’s policies in the territories and its attitude toward the Palestinian Authority’s security services. A few copies of the report’s executive summary (or, according to some sources, a draft of it) have been given to senior Bush Administration officials, and it is reportedly arousing considerable discomfort. In recent weeks, the administration has been debating whether to allow Jones to publish his full report, or whether to tell him to shelve it and make do with the summary, given the approaching end of President George Bush’s term

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Ahmad Mustafa; 23/7/08

Some of the Arab elite reacted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor’s notice to indict the Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir for genocide in an amazing way. They wrote, talked and issued statements supporting the decision and warning of resorting to “patriotism” to protect some rulers. That is really a very noble stand, except that it is not truly genuine. Nobody - progressive, modernist or otherwise - can condone torture, ethnic cleansing or genocide. Whether you agree to the definition of what is going on in Darfur (mainly the input of a rebel leader moving between Israel and France), or trust the UN Security Council (manipulated by the US, the UK and likes) is another thing. Crimes should not be ignored or justified by comparing them to other crimes. Progressive Arab elite is not always consistent in its stance when it comes to basic human rights. First, they are exactly like opportunistic politicians who adopt the calls of minorities and vocal fringe groups for pragmatic reasons. Take a simple example: they condemn resistance groups if they belong to a different political spectrum, and call them freedom fighters and support them if they adopt the same line that they follow at that time. It is exactly like a fanatic Israeli colonist who is being called an innocent civilian harassed by “terrorists”, and Palestinian women and children, who are killed by American arms at the hands of Zionists, are branded as “militants” or their affiliates.

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Rana Husseini; 23/7/08

The Criminal Court has sentenced three men to prison terms ranging from seven to 10 years after convicting them of killing their female relative for reasons related to family honour in June 2004. The court had previously handed Ismael M., 24, the death sentence for shooting his 17-year-old sister to death in a premeditated manner on June 21. But the court immediately reduced the sentence to 10 years after the victim’s father and husband dropped the charges against the defendant. A second brother and a cousin of the victim, who were charged with complicity in premeditated murder, initially were handed a 15-year prison term each for the charges. Their sentences, however, were also reduced, cut in half after the victim’s family dropped charges against them.

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Rana Husseini; 23/7/08

A pioneering study mapping women’s empowerment in Jordan revealed that Karak and Madaba lead the Kingdom’s governorates in the percentage of economically active women. The study also indicated that the governorates of Zarqa and Irbid scored the least percentages of women in this category. The study, conducted by the Department of Statistics (DoS) aimed at shedding light on the levels and variations in women’s empowerment across the Kingdom’s 12 governorates as well as progress during 2004-2007. The study’s findings were unveiled at a press conference yesterday at the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, attended by female senators, members of Parliament, the secretary general of the Jordan National Committee for Women and the National Council for Family Affairs, as well as representatives of civil society organisations and women’s groups in Jordan.

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23/7/08

I fully support the aims of World Youth Day and I applaud the Catholic Church for undertaking it here. But would someone remind Pope Benedict and Cardinal George Pell that it was a youth event? Attending Sunday’s papal Mass at Randwick, I felt as though I had stepped back in time 40 or 50 years when I heard Gregorian chanting, the Lord’s Prayer in Latin and hymns that I remember from primary school (and they were old-fashioned then). It was not a Mass for young people, and nor was the opening Mass at Barangaroo. I found it a disappointing finish to an amazing week. As a mother of two teenagers, my fear is that the Catholic Church still has a long way to go towards engaging young people in its life. Annette Spooner; Forestville

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23/7/08

Supporters of Israel write as though the Jewish state is isolated and reviled around the world for no other reason than irrational anti-Semitism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anne Bayefsky (”Australia must boycott the next racist hatefest”, July 22) continues this unfortunate trend. She paints Israel as a poor, defenceless nation in the heart of the Middle East that is likely to be devoured by the Arab world’s uncontrollable racism. In fact, it is Israeli actions that have led it to become an international pariah. Do Zionists really believe expanding illegal settlements in the West Bank can continue without paying a high diplomatic and military price? Bayefsky criticises Durban I as “a notorious anti-Semitic hatefest”, a view not shared by many Jews.

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James J. Zogby; 22/7/08

On Friday, July 11, 2008, a resident of Arlington, Virginian, was sentenced to two concurrent one-year prison terms for threatening my life and using hate-filled threats to violate my civil rights and those of my staff at the Arab American Institute. Upon release, he will be under supervised probation for three more years and be required both to perform community service and undergo psychiatric counselling. A simple enough story, on the surface. But there are a number of back stories here that need to be told. While the Department of Justice (DOJ) has not been well-led during the past eight years, the career attorneys in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and the FBI agents who work with them investigating rights violations deserve significant credit for tracking down and prosecuting hate crimes against Arab Americans and American Muslims. Arab Americans, myself included, have been subjected to threats and violence for decades, now. But never before have the agencies of the US government been so committed to hunting down these criminals and punishing them. Since 2001, in all, the Civil Rights Division has convicted 166 such criminals. I know of their work, first-hand, since three of these cases involved individuals who threatened me.

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Frank Brenan 22/7/08

It is very gratifying that Pope Benedict took the opportunity of his World Youth Day visit to apologise to the victims of sexual abuse by clergy and other church personnel. He ended his visit by celebrating mass with some victims, having already made his own courageous decision to say sorry for the pain and suffering endured. His apology was heartfelt and included a clear directive to the local church to extend compassion, care and justice to the victims. During his visit, some persons expressed dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church’s protocol Towards Healing, which sets out the principles and procedures for the Church response to complaints of abuse against Church personnel. Father Chris Riley went so far as to label it ‘a joke’, with the perpetrators being the only winners.

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Phillip Adams; 22/7/08

The remittance man was one of the wilder colonial boys, a miscreant sent to Australia in disgrace rather than in chains, perhaps a ne’er-do-well son of a well-to-do or even aristocratic family given a one-way ticket. In return the family would sustain him here by sending remittances. Now the term can be turned on its head to describe the money sent back to families by tens of millions of remittance men and women who have joined migrant workforces. And we are talking big money, enormous flows of cash to the developing world. Thanks to the efforts of a young Indian economist, a rising star in the World Bank, we know that the recorded remittances are but a fraction of the real figure, a key factor in the global as well as local economies. The total amount exceeds all the world’s international aid. Dilip Ratha is a remittance man himself. As he moved up in the world of international economics he sent money back to sustain his family and to help the village, with, he admits, mixed success. A brother squandered his income and his attempts to improve the local high school continue to be frustrated. But Ratha insists the overall impact of remittances is transformational.

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