On 6 October 1973, the Yom Kippur war broke out between a coalition of Arab states and Israel. At 6 A.M. that morning, Kissinger, asleep in the Waldorf, was taken by surprise by the Arab attack – as were the CIA and the rest of the world.
I’m half Egyptian, and I’m Muslim. But I grew up in Canada, far from my Arab roots. Like so many who straddle East and West, I’ve been drawn, over the years, to try to better understand my origins.
Sudan is not Arab enough for Arabs and not African enough for Africans.
We’ve got a very difficult situation created by this embrace of the so-called Arab Spring. And that’s not getting better. It’s getting worse. The carnage for the people of Syria is horrific, and it’s quite frankly too little, too late to reverse a lot of that.
In Arab culture, music is for celebration. You don’t play music at funerals.
Well, it’s very clear that the Arab population is rising because they’d like to have a say in the running of their affairs, running of their government, and this is very legitimate.
The Arab population does not want to turn inward and be isolated.
In Arab capitals, the failure of the United States to stop Iran’s nuclear program is understood as American weakness in the struggle for dominance in the Middle East, making additional cooperation from Arab leaders on Israeli-Palestinian issues even less likely.
Social change doesn’t happen in the Arab region through dramatic confrontation, beating, or indeed, baring of breasts, but rather through negotiation.
Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing. And Egypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.
The fact is, that with the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Arab countries, almost all of whom left behind all their property for which compensation was never paid.
We want to be, I think, an example for the rest of the Arab world, because there are a lot of people who say that the only democracy you can have in the Middle East is the Muslim Brotherhood.
Two children of same cruel parent look at one another and see in each other the image of the cruel parent or the image of their past oppressor. This is very much the case between Jew and Arab: It’s a conflict between two victims.
The ‘Arab Spring’ is the most spectacular example of the dispersal of power.
Even if there is peace with all the Arab states, I don’t know if the terrorism against us will pass from this world.
Israel made peace with Egypt, the largest Arab State. There are militant Islamists there, but there is also law. There are agreements and also defense arrangements there.
Just as the 99% of Soviet citizens who supported the Soviet regime in 1985 was no indication of what the people inside the USSR really thought, the army of true believers that we think we see in the Arab world is an illusion.
Many Muslims consider the United States hostile to Islam and to Arab interests. In fact, the United States saved tens of thousands of Muslims in the Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
In many… cases, of course, the Arab Spring has brought about instability rather than greater stability. And rather than bringing about government that is more representative and more responsive to the people, you’re seeing, frankly, the opposite, or you’re seeing all-out war.
It’s moving in the right direction for Arab actors but very slowly.
The Palestinians, whose national cause guards the gates of Arab-Israeli peace, look forward like their Arab brethren to that comprehensive, just, and lasting peace based on ‘land for peace’ and compliance with international legitimacy and resolutions.
Egyptians are quite incredible people. They have everything: the culture, the music, the scenes. So much of Arab music and art started there.
Eastern Muslim countries, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, are relative success stories, as they are not afflicted by the Arab heritage of retreat and humiliation at the hands of the French, Spanish, British, Turks, and Persians.
I state in no uncertain terms: An order to uproot an Arab village or a Jewish settlement violates the most basic of human rights… It’s a difficult dilemma.
Ever since I was a kid and growing up and watching things like the ‘Naked Gun’ movies, there was always this stereotype about how Arabs were perceived and portrayed. I’ve never watched those Arab villains in the movie and felt like that was me.
Because 9/11 was carried out by 19 foreign-born Arab hijackers, many assume that all terrorists who attack the West are foreigners.
In the 1920s, big names in the Arab world spoke of Scheherazade as an example for intellectuals fighting for their rights. She was a fighter for the right of free expression.
In the West, you have always associated the Islamic faith 100 percent with Arab culture. This in itself is a fundamentalist attitude and it is mistaken.
I grew up with so much of the identity of being Muslim and being Arab tied around politics.
None of us is certain about the outcome of the Arab Spring.
There is a school in Israel called Hand in Hand which I support. There Arab and Jewish students study together on a daily basis.
It is a keen measure of the fall of American influence in the region when a Palestinian leader responds to intense American pressure to go to the negotiating table by waiting to see if Arab League foreign ministers will let him take that step.
I think Tunisia has a specific place in the Arab world and in Africa because it is a tiny Muslim country, but it’s very open minded. It’s the first country to start the Arab Spring, for example.
In the process of the Arab Spring, we have unfortunately seen a development in Syria where the regime has been oppressing its people.
What I see in the Arab world, in Egypt, everywhere is increasing radicalization.
The world is going on a high-speed connection; the Arab revolution is still dial-up. So we have to give it a little time to download. Regimes come and go, but art endures.
One of the greatest fears of the Arab world is a direct conflict between Israel and the Islamic State.
The one thing that shaped my life was when I was 15 or 16: I knew I wanted to be a journalist. And not just a journalist, but a journalist in the Middle East, and to go back to the Arab world and try to understand what it meant to be Lebanese.
The question was never whether the United States, E.U., NATO, Arab League, U.N. Security Council, and African Union could together using economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and military attacks to bring Qaddafi down. The question was always how much time, how much blood, and what damage to NATO.
I began my work as director of the Arab American Association of New York in the wake of the horrific attacks of 9/11.
I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.
The Arab world is mediatised in a way that gives too much space to these people – puritans, extremists, whatever you want to call them. There are a lot more people like me in the Middle East than you might think.
There’s a good lesson for policymakers: It’s not the presence of the U.S. that is a problem for many people in the Arab region; it’s the type of presence we bring.
Under the auspices of peace, our comprehensive renaissance will be built, and it will be a model for those who wish to emulate it in the greater Arab homeland.
My show in Egypt was called, ‘The Show,’ or, ‘Al Bernameg’ in Arabic. Basically, it was a political satire show. It started on Internet by three, four-minute episodes, and then it evolved into a live show in a theater, which was something that was unprecedented in the Arab world.
We have more difficult circumstances than most of the Arab countries but in spite of that Syria is stable. Why? Because you have to be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people. This is the core issue.
You in Lebanon, your power is no match to Israel. Israel, militarily, is more powerful than you and maybe it is more powerful than all the Arab countries, or most of them.
Bush II’s democracy crusade and Obama’s embrace of the Arab Spring have unleashed and empowered forces less receptive to America’s wishes and will than the despots and dictators deposed with our approval.
Egypt is the most populous Arab nation, the seat of Sunni Islamic doctrine, and has tremendous political, religious and social influence on the rest of the region. For better or worse, it will lead the rest of the Middle East by example. So goes Egypt, so goes the region.
We believe that the Arab world has been there for centuries, and thousands of years, and it’ll keep on continuing being there. All we have to do is work together.
I’m a Muslim Egyptian-American, born in Cairo. I grew up in Kuwait until the first Gulf War, when my family relocated to the United Arab Emirates. As an adult, I studied and lived in the U.K. before moving to Boston.
Hezbollah’s contempt for human suffering is total, as it showed once again this morning when its rockets murdered two Israeli Arab children in Nazareth.
No Arab ruler will consider the peace process seriously so long as he is able to toy with the idea of achieving more by the way of violence.
