DNC: From An Arab Prism
It has been a dizzying week trying to watch most of the speeches at the DNC while they are talked over by network anchors, then sliced and diced by their "best political teams." CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Company took center stage in the arena like sportscasters, while other network anchors reported from skyboxes, each offering his or her take on the performance of the speakers in a party-like atmosphere.
Arab media was no exception. Several Arab networks dispatched their best anchors to Denver to beam a sliver of American politics to more than 300 million viewers in the region.
"Will Obama end the nightmare that Bush created in the Middle East?" debated their own pundits and "best political teams" on television. Al Jazeera promised its viewers an in-depth coverage of the US election, but it always comes down to the Palestinian-Israeli litmus test. Arabs no longer question U.S. support to Israel. They no longer have illusions that a new American president would somehow do a 180 degree turn and change U.S. policies in their favor. Instead, they now measure things based on "how pro-Israel" the candidates are.
In the U.S., Obama's choice of Biden as a vice-presidential running mate was seen by some critics as tacit admission that he lacked sufficient experience in the area. Not in the Arab media. This was seen as a shrewd maneuver to woo American Jewish voters and pro-Israeli groups in the U.S.
Within minutes of last Saturday's announcement that Democratic senator and former presidential candidate Joe Biden would be Barack Obama's running mate in the 2008 presidential election, I started to receive emails linking to an interview Biden had on the Jewish cable television network Shalom TV in March 2007. The Senator from Delaware expressed strong support for Israel, calling it "the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East" and emphatically declaring that "you don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist."
Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter's "no speech" at the DNC was a big story in the Arab press.
According to several Arab pundits, democrats were determined not to allow the former president to spoil their Denver party with talk of evenhanded policies in the Middle East. So, after a video of Carter's work helping to rebuild homes in Gulf Coast areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was screened, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, holding wife Rosalynn's hand, did a quick stroll on stage and waved without a word. Carter spoke at the 2004 convention. However, this was before the publication of his controversial book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and his subsequent claims that pro-Israel activists were trying to silence him and any efforts to debate U.S. support for the Jewish state.
"Did the self-proclaimed Zionist, Biden, pull the plug on Carter, or was it Obama?" argued an Egyptian analyst on the Iranian Arabic-speaking Al Alam TV. When asked about why he did not speak at the convention by Amy Goodman, Carter simply replied, "Well, I was on the program."
Jamal Dajani produces the Mosaic Intelligence Report on Link TV
For more Huffington Post coverage of the Democratic National Convention, visit our Politics @ the DNC page, our Democratic Convention Big News Page, and our HuffPost bloggers' Twitter feed, live from Denver.
Follow Jamal Dajani on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamaldajani
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OK-- Now how does the media in the Middle East portray Sarah Palin? her qualifications? Her pregnant 17 year old daughter? her troopergate?---Tell us please Jamal...I can't wait!
Mr. Dajani, this was excellent. Its nice to get a truly different perspective from the homogenous US media.
Great piece! Not to be missed by those closely following events in the Middle East.
Puh leeeeeze.
The journalists and leadership in the Middle East use the poor martyred Palestinians to distract their populations from their own failures and Americans generally don't know the meaning of the word Zionist.
Futbol anyone?
Does Biden actually know the meaning of Zionism? ---taking someone's else land to create a state for a particular race and a particular religion?
Anybody know WHY the dems have their convention before the republicans?
Biden is acutally one of the few Senators NOT living off of U.S. taxpayers, he brings home 150,000 a year and his wife is a teacher (nuff said). That is, to the best of my knowledge, all that he and his family live off of. And the Israeli/Palestinian crisis isn't going to resolve itself, I would advise Obama/Biden not to worry about it too much.
You're right-however, he sat for years on Senate Appropriations Committee and voted every year to waste our tax money to support Israel, Egypt and other countries. Israel has a national health plan but the US does not and yet we write them a 3.5 billion dollar check every year!
The conservati
If any of you out there listening really paid attention to the end of Hillary Clintons speech, basically she was saying, if you want a taste of freedom DON"T BE AFRAID.
My personal feeling is that the dems are currently the party to invest in for a myriad of reasons, but the republican party is absolutely going to change as well. So, if you want to help create change, donate some money to help elect the people who are pushing for it, because breaking free of special interests isn't going to be easy or cheap.
I hope that you're right. Obama talks great about change and so on but unless we stop being the cash cow to interest groups and start paying attention to the needs of the citizens of this country it will all remain talk...and talk is cheap.
I agree that the republican party will change, too. I think it will be virtually non-existent, as we know it, within the next four to eight years.
Fear. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
......Yoda
This is the most repressed Democratic convention ever. No spontaneity. It's like a Scientology birth. Couple that with an underlying neoconservative point of view in foreign policy, Obama's new FISA position, etc., and we're in trouble, America.
Many of the "undesirable" speakers were either edited or like Carter were totally silenced. Those who were permitted to speak but were not "big stars" were talked over by anchors and pundits. When the little man or women get some respect?
You should have watched the streaming video on the DNC site or c-span. NO need to listen to the pundits talking over the "little people"-- who actually included Kerry. You still can find any of the talks on a menu on the DNC website. I recommend many of them, such as the group of soldiers that spoke around 3 PM or so on Thursday.
I am very sorry to say, but I am forced to agree with you. I can't retreat to my comfortable cynicism yet, but the FISA deal was where my trust in this "Change" election died. I went from enthusiastically optimistic to cautiously pessimistic in an instant...
Don't worry about the FISA bill. Remember that Obama *knows* the Constitution. The bill is unconstitutional.
Article 1, Section 9
"No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Ex post facto means "retroactive"
Noooo.... YOU'RE in trouble.
The gravy train has derailed.
Time for you to pay the bill for your filthy war.
Obama did go to Ramallah and did at least meet with Palestinian leaders. I am a former peace activist who lived in a Palestinian refugee camp and I know the pain of all of this from an "arab point of view' but Obama can't do anything more than simply keep his own mind open at this point but if he speaks it then the election is over. One does not have to be too fair minded to realize the pain of the Palestinian's despite the Israeli noise. I met many a good Jew in Jerusalem who had protested themselves against the situation in Gaza and the West Bank.
Aren't there as many gays in America as there are Jews? When do WE get the strongest lobby on Earth? When do WE get our own mafia? When do WE get preferential treatment? When do WE get proper representation? Just askin'.
When you organize, get your people into positions of power, and decide to vote as a block on what you define as your core issues.
Since when do gay people have it so bad here? Oh I forgot that civil unions aren't good enough, and you need the word "marriage" or else its a civil rights violation!
Why don't you go to Saudi Arabia or any other arab or muslim country and see how gay people are treated?
You don't have to go far to be treated badley as a gay person. What about middle America?
"When do WE get preferential treatment? "
This is the crux of the issue, isn't it. Your candor is refreshing. It isn' t equality you want because you already have that. It is being validated by others that is your big goal. You need to get over it. What you perceive as an antigay attitude is really nothing more than boredom with your issues and a complete lack of interest.
How else can Obama get elected? He went to AIPAC, he went to Israel and visited Sderot and ignored Gaza but he was not able to ease the fears of Israel's supporters. He made the right choice with Biden...at the expense of the Palestinians but who cares!
I am voting for Obama but I'm disappointed in him still pandering to interest groups. Where is the CHANGE he's talking about? Biden is no change from the same old same old senators and congressmen living of US taxpayers.
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