On Kabobfest – Residents of Muslim countries love looking for boy sex on the Internet:
Who is searching for boy sex?: Top 10 countries include Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, The United Arab Emirates and Indonesia. What about just plain old sex? Top 10 countries include Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
On Ynetnews – Palestinian supporters in the US need more Chutzpah – Choice quotes related to abysmal Arab lobbying efforts in the US include:
“… the Arab American Institute … is more of a cult honoring the personal charisma of Jim Zogby than a political lobbying organization.”
“The problem is the Arab American community. It’s not doing enough for the Palestinians… Without a strong, networked and coordinated grassroots constituency, AAI and ATFP can only do so much… Arab Americans are cheap. Worse, when an Arab tries to do something for the community, five other Arabs rush to do the same thing. Not to merge their voices in a show of strength, but to compete… Envy is the fastest way to push an apathetic Arab American off his laurels. You start a business, they start a business just to keep you from succeeding. You start a newspaper, they start a newspaper, just to keep your newspaper from getting enough advertising.”
“And yet knowing that tragic fact about the Arab American community, that they are often their own worst enemies… It’s too bad that the Arab American community is so divided and lacking in political maturity to be effective at all. There is so much they could do to help the Palestinians, but they can’t get past their selfish problems, rivalries, and inability to organize.”
This was written by Ray Hanania, a Palestinian American columnist, author and standup comedian. So it’s got to be true, right?
On The Webby Awards: Jdate is a better social networking Web site than myspace? Huh?? i don’t know about that, but I do know that on JDate’s recent and much ballyhooed trip to Israel, social networking between Israelis and diasporah Jews was less than spectacular:
JDate, the world’s biggest online Jewish personals community, has chosen Israel’s Independence Day for its first trans-Atlantic mixer. But as the Israelis and visitors keep their distance, and their differing manners become sharply evident, this month’s event seems more than anything to highlight how the two sides have gone their separate ways. A mass wedding, this gathering won’t produce… The JDaters, mostly Americans plus a few Canadians, Mexicans and Britons, kayaked on the Jordan River, floated on the Dead Sea and dined in gourmet restaurants. They met plenty of eligible Israelis, but were mostly interested in each other… “Israelis are really hot. They’d be fun for a fling, but there is no future,†said Cera Schachter, 24, from Edmonton, Alberta. Jaime Cojac, 30, from Charlotte, N.C., agreed. She’d like to meet a Jewish man but not to move to Israel. “You stick with what you know,†she said. “I would just feel more comfortable with an American.†Israeli daters seemed equally indifferent, finding too large a gap in mentality and wary of seeking a partner not committed to living in Israel. “I love Israel and I love Israeli women,†said Erez Kamai, 35, from Tel Aviv. “I didn’t come here looking for America.â€
OK, so it’s a slow news day. And I have to pack for the upcoming Jewlicious Taglit-birthright israel trip – they’re landing in less than 5 hours. So sue me.
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Ray Hanania is no native informant.
While I agree with some of his critiques, especially of the lack of a grassroots organization and effective organizing, his analysis is too simple and too much focused on the negative. We all know ADC, AAI, and others have problems.
Our oldest continual Arab-American political group basically goes back to the early 1980’s. There was AAUG, founded in 1967, but it is no longer (despite recent efforts to rebuild). Arab-Americans have only been active as Arab-Americans for a blip of time in US history.
That does not mean it’s all to shit, as Hanania suggests. We have accomplished a lot for a community that is so relatively new and widely vilified. We have a national museum, one of the premier ethnic community groups in ACCESS in Dearborn, a rich array of religious institutions, clubs (i.e. Ramallah Club), professional associations (NAAMA), and political groups. We have a burgeoning ethnic media, TV shows (i.e ART’s Downstairs Cafe), and musicians, writers, poets, and filmmakers.
So, we are not politically strong. That does not mean all of Arab America sucks, as Hanania takes as his basis. Sure we compete with each other and are jealous; that does not mean we have not accomplished anything.
Competing with each other is not always bad — it probably led to a proliferation of Arab restaurants and sheesha cafes throughout the US.
Arabs have been here since the end of the 1800’s, but they are largely assimilated. They did not retain the language and customs for the most part. The community, as an identifiable one, is new. And it is growing and changing.
The reason for Hanania’s views — and I don’t want to be personal but I feel like it explains his writing — is that few in the community agree with his wack ass politics. I’ve seen him bomb with his tired comedy routine in front of Arab crowds.
He is what I call a white guy’s Arab. He wears it well to the outside, but gets little love from the community because of his views and general disconnection from them.
He’s a nice guy and good-hearted, but he’s out of touch and now more interested in seeing his name in print than he is in building anything in the community. Such a bitter, negative force is ultimately destructive. Best of luck to him, but he’s going about this all the wrong way.
He needs to have legitimacy within the community before he projects himself publicly as “an Arab writer/comedian.” He won;t have support until he gains legitimacy.
IMHO the more Zogby the better. He’s as good as they’re going to get, and of course they really don’t know that or can’t stomach or acknowledge the thought. And a comedian doing political analysis & planning? Why didn’t we ever think of that?! Cheers, ‘VJ’