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Since 2013, Professor Franklin P. Lamb has traveled extensively throughout Syria. His primary focus has been to document, photograph, research and hopefully help preserve the vast and irreplaceable archaeological sites and artifacts in Syria.
Like Iraq, Syria is the cradle of civilization, and as such it has been a rich source of our shared global culture and historic heritage. Already endangered from illegal excavation, looting, international trafficking and iconoclasm; the theft and destruction of these sites has greatly increased as a result of the conflict in the Middle East.
Many of the endangered archeological sites and artifacts are over 7,000 years old. The oldest remains found in Syria are from the Paleolithic era (c. 800,000 BCE). The most endangered artifacts and archaeological sites currently are in Tell Halaf, the north of Syria near the Turkish border with Syria. These archaeological sites date as far back as 5,500 BCE. They include archeological sites and artifacts of the Babylonian, Sumerian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Aramaic, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Ayyubid and Ottoman civilizations and empires.
Professor Franklin Lamb has also been working, sometimes under dangerous circumstances, to record and photograph the war damage done to religious icons, images, monuments, and ancient structures that span pre-Roman civilizations, and structures such as Islamic mosques, Christian churches and Jewish synagogues.
Professor Lamb is working tirelessly to record and photograph these sites and artifacts because they are in danger of complete destruction for religious, political and illegal trafficking reasons, especially due to the ongoing wars in the Middle East.
Professor Franklin Lamb's website and his latest book, "Syria's Endangered Heritage, an International Responsibility to Preserve and Protect" presents exclusive and never published before photographs, records, data, articles, and interviews from across the whole of Syria. His book can be purchased at his website http://www.syrian-heritage.com/.
In addition to Dr. Lamb's urgent archaeological work he is also deeply committed to rescuing and aiding refugee children in Syria. He is a volunteer with the Lebanon, France, and USA based "Meals for Syrian Refugee Children, Lebanon (MSRCL)", which seeks to provide hot nutritional meals to Syrian and other refugee children.
Lamb says that the goal of MSRCL is to be able to provide one meal a day to 500 children. More donors are needed in order for him to reach that goal. At $2.25 per meal x 500 children per day ($1,225), the budget for a month (30 days) requires approximately $36,000. Over 95% of each donation goes directly towards the cost of each meal. The MSCRL volunteer teams give their time, energy and even their own money to help the refugee children so that they will not become part of the "lost generation" of Syria.
Lamb's books and publications include "Pollution as a Problem of International Law"; "International Legal Responsibility for the Sabra Shatila Massacre"; "Israel's 1982 War in Lebanon: Eyewitness Chronicles of the Invasion and Occupation", "The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons against Civilians in Lebanon in addition to the three volume set, "Palestine, Lebanon & Syria Palestine, Lebanon & Syria (Commentary and Analysis 2006-2016)." Due out during Fall 2016, in English and Arabic, is "The Case for Palestinian Civil Rights in Lebanon: Why the Resistance Sleeps."
Dr. Lamb's most recent book is "Syria's Endangered Heritage: An International Responsibility to Preserve and Protect". www.Syrian-heritage.com
Lamb's Academic Credentials include: BA, and Law Degrees from Boston University, Master of Law (LLM) Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy from the London School of Economics (LSE); Diploma in International Air & Space Law from the University College of London; Post-Doctoral Studies at Harvard University Law School of East Asian Legal Studies Center, specializing in Chinese Law; International Legal Studies at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Studied Public International Law at The Hague Academy of international Law, at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, Netherlands.
Lamb's Professional and Political Activities include Assistant Professor of International Law, Northwestern College of Law, Portland, Oregon and Assistant Counsel to the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, During the Administration of President Jimmy Carter, Lamb was elected for a four year term to the Democratic National Committee, representing the state of Oregon. Lamb served on the Democratic National Committee Judicial Council with California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi as well as the Platform Committee on East-West Relations. Professor Lamb served on the presidential campaign staff for Presidential Candidate Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 12, 2011 'US MUST STOP FUNDING ISRAELI CRIMES'
Press TV: As violent as that video we just aired was, it really shouldn't come as a surprise because, well, this type of behavior by Israeli forces is pretty much done on a weekly basis in the occupied territories. But you tell us what you think based on the video that has been released by human rights activists.
(11 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 7, 2016 Has the battle for Aleppo birthed Foreign Legions preparing a Sunni-Shia endgame?
Aleppo. Syrian government forces & their Russian and Shia allies from Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere have now captured 75% of East Aleppo and will soon unite all of Aleppo, which eastern part rebels have held since 2012.
Having captured two days ago Tariq al-Bab. This morning, 12/7/2016, government troops and their militia allies are massively bombing rebel-held parts of the Old City
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 15, 2013 Why Obama is Declaring War on Syria
Obama was apparently serious earlier about a negotiated diplomatic settlement pre-Qusayr and there were even some positives signs coming from Damascus, Moscow, and even Tehran John Kerry claimed. But that has changed partly because Russia and the US have both hardened their demands.
SHARE Sunday, November 6, 2011 Libya's Liberation Front Organizing In The Sahel
Some International Criminal Court observers are encouraged by the ICC Prosecutor's office pledge this week and as reported by the BCC: "to investigate and prosecute any crimes committed both by rebel and pro-Gadhafi forces including any committed by NATO."
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 1, 2012 Netanyahu to Obama on election: When we say jump, you say how high?
Presidential candidate Barack Obama is being targeted by the US Israel lobby from A to Z, (Ackerman, Gary & Aipac to Zuckerman, Mort & the Zionist Organization of America) as no American president seeking re-election has been in the country's 236 year history.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, October 2, 2017 Israel faces 'catastrophic defeat' in next Hezbollah War", IDF officials say.
The view of many analysts in the Israeli and American military leadership Israel must ensure that the next war is short---Hezbollah's forces have a history of disciplined and skilled high-risk fighting techniques...And they are preparing expecting, preferring and intending to pursue a longer war.
(9 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 22, 2017 Trumps "Syria Minus Iran" overture to Putin & Assad may restore Washington-Damascus Relations
No one knows, least of all this observer, how the foreign policy of the Trump administration will take shape. Or how his priorities may twist and turn as he encounters the assured torrent of events and mayhem from a plethora of crises just around the corner that will wreak havoc. What is known is that the Mideast expects big changes under Trump. They may well happen.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 1, 2011 Panic from the Houses of Congress and Aipac?
What AIPAC operatives reportedly told the conferees was that Netanyahu is once again furious with President Obama and outraged.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 24, 2014 "Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently"
All shop owners in Raqqa must close their stores immediately upon the announcement of prayer and go to the mosque, a decree posted by ISIL on 4/27/14 read, "Any violators after the issuance of this announcement will face consequences."
SHARE Tuesday, September 26, 2017 Hezbollah has launched the initial phase of the next Israel-Hezbollah War
For Israel, the initial phase of its next long predicted war with Hezbollah is focused on neutralizing Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah while destroying factories allegedly under construction to build long-range missiles. Some Israeli recently bombed sites are also claimed to have been housing chemical weapons.
(10 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 2, 2017 Russia, US, Iran and Israel War for Syria
It appears to me that Assad and his Baathist Alawi dominated regime will remain. Iran wants Assad so as to guarantee its Persian Gulf to Mediterranean Sea Shia Crescent.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 6, 2017 Israel's Coming 6th war on Lebanon
For Israel, it's widely predicted 6th war on Lebanon won't be a repeat of June 1967, June 1973, or July 2006.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 16, 2010 On the Road with Ahmadinejad in Lebanon
An eyewitness account of the Iranian Presidents historic two day visit to Lebanon and its impact on bi-lateral relations, the region and beyond
SHARE Friday, May 26, 2017 Palmyra Update: Major restorations ready to launch as global partners await security
On any given Monday morning, at approximately 7:30 a.m. a car carrying highly trained archeologists and two Palmyra National Museum security guards, on weekly rotation, departs the Homs, Syria HQ of Syria's Directorate-General for Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) along the previously dangerous 160 km Homs-Palmyra road east to Palmyra (Tadmor), the site of wanton destruction the past few years.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 21, 2015 Two more 'EverySyrian' heroes murdered while protecting our shared cultural heritage
As a nephew of Mr. Assad explained yesterday from Palmyra via Skype, "After holding and torturing my uncle for three weeks, Da'ish realized that he knew nothing about where the Museum treasures had been hidden or if he did, as they suspected, that my uncle would say nothing." They therefore decapitated the octogenarian.
SHARE Thursday, March 23, 2017 Who Ordered the killing of Imam Musa Sadr and Why?
The Musa Sadr Trilogy. Part 2: Who Ordered the killing of Imam Musa Sadr and Why?
Part One see "When, Where, and How Imam Musa Sadr was Assassinated"].
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 6, 2016 Team Clinton focusing on demise of Hezbollah
Israel has made clear via its new Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman , leader of the fascist Yisrael Beiteinu party, that Israel will not return one centimeter of its recently occupied Syrian territory "until we sign a peace agreement with the new government of Syria. All Muslims must know that we Israelis are their friends and that we are on the right side of this Syrian war."
SHARE Sunday, May 3, 2015 Will Lebanese Allies Open the Gates to Fight Hezbollah?
Manal explained that Nusra is waxing dramatically and now has taken even the urban centers of the Idlib governorate including Jisr al-Shoghour and is preparing to "liberate" what remains of government controlled areas of Aleppo during May and if necessary, June. Aleppo is Syria's second largest in terms of population and formerly the country's economic juggernaut. Some are speculating that "As goes Aleppo, goes Syria.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 5, 2011 As Tahrir Square goes so goes the Middle East?
The US-Israel imperative appears designed to immediately regain control and co-opt the Tahrir uprising and quickly channel the uprising into a political cul de sac until Egypt can be returned to "normal", meaning US-Israel shared hegemony.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, March 11, 2016 Why I bought 4 Syrian children off a Beirut street
All of us must do what we can to get these children from Syria a safe environment, a chance to play and to be children. Dear reader, if you happen to be in this area and come upon by chance a need such as I did, please make these angels feel protected and safe, make them warm, get them clean clothes, feed them, get them a medical examinations, contact authorities or NGO's buy them a doll to love
SHARE Thursday, October 29, 2015 Syria's 'Monument Citizens' taking risks saving the future of our past
"From an archaeologist's vantage point, all the major players in Syria's proxy war are but a blip on history's radar. Islamist fundamentalists, even superpowers like Russia and the United States are newcomers compared even to the youngest monuments in Syria." I believe most Syrians would agree.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, June 19, 2015 Why are so many Sunni Muslims in Lebanon switching to Da'ish (ISIS)?
The IS vision is working as Da'ish metastasizes in Lebanon and in much of this region. A new political power chapter has arrived here of which the latest events in Yemen are only the most recent, but surely not the final, example.
It is not anymore a question of whether or when Da'ish and/or al Nusra will activate their sleeper cells in Lebanon.
They already have.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 2, 2017 Lebanon facing Long 'Independence' odds given Iran's regional Triumphalism
Most of Lebanese Sunni, Christians, Druze and the growing body of agnostic or non-religious in the country reportedly believe that Iranian influence, through its militia Hezbollah, is the greatest impediment to achieving Lebanon's independence.
(51 comments) SHARE Friday, October 14, 2016 Political Defamation campaign targets Rescue Workers in Syria
"Attacking hospitals and medical workers is a non-negotiable red line. As such, it must be set out -- in clear and simple terms - in all military manuals, rules of engagement and standard operating procedures. Too often, unverified intelligence, or opaque claims that a hospital is a quote "command and control center," is justification enough for an attack.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 31, 2014 Will Seif al Islam lead the expulsion of the ISIS affiliate, Al Fajr Libya?
According to Seif, and former regime officials, several NATO countries have sent messages claiming they did not intend for his father to be killed but were searching during the summer of 2011 for a refuge for his father in Africa. Seif does not believe them.
SHARE Sunday, July 8, 2012 "Israel disses US while seeking "bi-lateral alliance' with Russia
Two interpretations by the participants themselves, of what significant international meetings achieved, the first on 6/25/12 and the second five days later, remind us about subjectivity in the eyes of the beholders.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 15, 2016 Syrian Twins Condemned to Death
One-month old conjoined twins Narwas and Mou'az Al-Hashash died needlessly this month in a Damascus hospital because they were the innocent victims of what International Humanitarian Law defines as War Crimes.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 10, 2017 Israel's Coming 6th war on Lebanon: What Price will Hezbollah pay?
Part 2---The price Hezbollah will pay during Israel's coming 6th war on Lebanon will likely be less militarily consequential long term, than the near certain acceleration of the Party of God's loss of its "Resistance" brand. The latter already being eschewed by much of its Shia base for economic, social and political reasons.
SHARE Thursday, April 14, 2011 Interview with Franklin Lamb in Beirut on the latest Wilkileaks from US Embassy Beirut and the Special Tribunal for Leba
Lebanon, for well-known geostrategic reasons is fixed in the cross-hairs of the conflict of the Middle East. Some analysts believe that there is more foreign intervention in Lebanon than is any Middle East country except Iraq. As tensions rise between Iran and America for influence in Lebanon, the issue of loyalty to Lebanon or Israel has entered the public discourse with new intensity.
SHARE Wednesday, October 18, 2017 Lebanon's economy is in crisis. Granting Palestinians the right to work will help fix it
The growing list of US sanctions targeting Iran's Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is only part of a broader American, Israeli and Western strategy of roll-back of Iran's activities in the Northern Middle East than one seeking direct military confrontation. Although the latter may be one of the unintended consequences as Iran begins to retaliate.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 11, 2016 Aleppo Update: What is becoming of Syrian families fleeing East Aleppo?
A major urgent need is Education facilities for approximately 15,000 lovely children, between the ages of 3-17 years who survived the siege of their neighborhoods in East Aleppo risked their lives fleeing to West Aleppo. West Aleppo public schools cannot accommodate any of these 15,000 arrivals as they are already overcrowded according to local officials.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 6, 2015 It's time to sanction OFAC--not the civilian populations of Syria and Iran
As Congress pursues more civilian life disrupting sanctions for Syria, Iran and Russia, one of the main weapons will continue to be the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of Treasury. This oft-described pro-Zionist highly politicized agency will continue to act as judge, jury and hangman as more US led-sanctions target the Syrian and Iranian civilian populations.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 7, 2016 SYRIA: New Panic From Outbreak of Meningitis in Madaya "Death Town"
Here is Damascus the evidence is found in hospitals such as Al-Mouwasat and others, of the consequence of the fact that children are suffering not as a result of an accident of war, but rather as the foreseeable consequence of an intentional tactic -- surrender or starve. And that tactic is directly contrary to the law of war and subject to individual criminal responsibility for the perpetrators.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 11, 2011 Panetta to Netanyahu: "Israel may not survive the current Arab/Islamic awakening"
The CIA Report noted that Israeli officials felt emboldened in taking Palestinian land by the myriad support Israel was receiving from the leadership of Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and three other Arab leaders.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 5, 2012 Iran/Israel locked in Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) deterrence status
There is little credible discussion of just what constitutes the Iranian threat, though we do have an authoritative answer, provided by U.S. military and intelligence. Their presentations to Congress make it clear that Iran doesn't pose a military threat.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 2, 2017 Is Israel winning "the war between the wars" with Iran/Hezbollah?
Israeli commanders, stationed along Syria's southern border and the Golan Heights and Quneitra Valley, with some of their forces now operating daily more than 14 km inside Syrian territory.
SHARE Wednesday, December 24, 2014 Looting has become the greatest threat to our cultural heritage in Syria
Can the worst patrimonial disaster since World War II be stopped?
During the 45 months of the Syrian crisis, war damage inflicted from all sides has created massive damage to our shared global cultural heritage that has been in the custody of the Syrian people for more than ten millennia.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, January 12, 2018 What's Behind the 'Disappearance' Of 420,000 Palestinians in Lebanon?
Lebanon is a country where demographics have long been a politically sensitive subject to be approached with extreme caution. For the past nearly 85 years (since 1932) Lebanon's leaders have refused to allow a count of the population out of feelings of terror that a rival sect, among the 17 other rival sects, might gain power at their expense were there to be an honest count.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 18, 2017 When, Where, and How Imam Musa Sadr was Assassinated
A brief excerpt from a soon to be published Manuscript which details the results of a several year investigation in four countries into the fate of "Vanished Imam," Musa Sadr and his colleagues Sheikh Mohammad Yaacoub and journalist Abbas Badreddine.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 12, 2011 CONGRESSMAN PETER KING'S GREAT MUSLIM SCARE
King comes across as a prejudiced lawmaker determined to demonize American Muslims as violent radicals. At a time when the U.S. needs the goodwill of domestic Muslim communities to safeguard homeland security, King is reinforcing fear and lack of trust and while potentially weakening mutual respect among Americans.
SHARE Friday, September 23, 2016 The 34th Commemoration of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre...
The Israelis communicated with the Phalange terrorists and blocked the Palestinian refugees from fleeing Shatila camp, while at the same time they ushered in reinforcements of Phalange forces who then committed more carnage.
(11 comments) SHARE Friday, October 7, 2016 The day after the fall of Aleppo will International Humanitarian Law still be Relevant?
Global demands to stop the bloodshed in Aleppo and across Syria have reached a crescendo unseen since the days of the 2003 U.S. non-UN sanctioned invasion of Iraq. UN Resolution 2139 recently demanded access to besieged areas in Syria and compliance with International Humanitarian Law including safe passage for civilians from conflict zones and the unimpeded passage for aid workers into those zones.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 4, 2014 Will Lebanon Survive in 2014?
One angel intervened and said, "Lord, isn't that unfair to the rest of the world?"
"Actually no" God replied, "Just wait and see the neighbors I shall give them."
Hopefully God will review and amend his work so Lebanon survives 2014. It is not apparent that the Lebanese are capable of doing so.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 31, 2014 No American Arms for Lebanon To Fight ISIS until Civil Rights for Palestinians
For Palestinians, a microcosm can be said to be that Lebanon's sects continue to deprive them of the basic civil right even to work and pressure are building not just for an intifada but for a jihadist revolt across Lebanon.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 23, 2015 US-Syria cultural heritage cooperation? Laws targeting history-theft are being strengthened but more cooperation is
"If the US can work with the Iranians over the nuclear file, surely we can work with Syria to preserve the cultural heritage that belongs to all people regardless of politics. Our mutual heritage is bigger than today's political differences and we must work together. And I think the White House is ready and this may happen soon."
SHARE Saturday, September 3, 2016 Syria: A Children's Story, Part 1 (Updated)
[Franklin Lamb emailed an updated version of his article from Syria "How Two Sisters, Ten Year Old Ghina and 8 Year Old Nagham, Survived Three Sniper Bullets in Syria"]
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, June 23, 2014 Will ISIS Create al-Sham Caliphate & Liberate Palestine?
Time will reveal if DAASH achieves one or both of its objectives. Many believe if they eject the Zionist regime from Palestine, the expanding Islamist group will set in motion historic currents that in all likelihood will be rather different from the Ehud Omert-Condeleeza Rice fantasy of "a New Middle East."
(13 comments) SHARE Friday, September 9, 2016 SYRIA: Can Government-Rebel Reconciliation End the Bloodshed?
September 8, 2016
Franklin Lamb reporting from on the ground in Syria.
Al-Moaddamiyeh, Damascus Countryside, Syria.
... a long hot tense day at the border-crossing at al-Moaddamiyeh, at town roughly ten kilometers southwest of Damascus.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 14, 2011 The tide has turned in favor of the Assad government
One expected to see fear, tension, and people hiding in homes, ubiquitous police and partially hidden and disguised security personnel in the shadows, watching from behind tinted glassed cars, curtained windows and from roof tops. I expected to see military vehicles, empty streets after dusk, reticence to discuss politics, tense faces on the streets.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 5, 2017 Hezbollah's Premature "Mission Accomplished" Boast
History repeats, more often than many of us prefer, especially in geopolitical contexts wherein regional hegemony is the objective being sought. This appears to be the case with respect to Syria and recent several, some disparate, declarations of victory by foreign "Resistance" armies.
(16 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 13, 2018 Students face Kafkaesque impediments challenging Iran's theocracy
On several occasions, meeting with brilliant, tech-savvy Iranian university students who are thoroughly charming, fearless and outspoken, this observer is presented a very different picture of what Iranians are facing than what is being offered by some pro-regimen internet bloggers and water carriers.
SHARE Sunday, March 27, 2011 Time for Nasrallah and Obama to talk?
The "good wing-bad wing" pretense is favored by some in the US Intelligence Community as it allows political cover for desired engagement much as was the case for other "terrorist' groups such as the PLO, the ANC and the IRA. For that reason John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism adviser recently discussed the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 3, 2015 "If Da'ish (ISIS) doesn't liberate Palestine who will?"
In the early days of the crisis in Syria, many Palestinians fleeing to Lebanon quickly returned to their fate in Syria when they saw the conditions in Lebanon's camps. But as the fighting between Syrian rebels and government forces intensified in Damascus, they became trapped, alongside their fellow Palestinians in Lebanon sinking ever deeply into dire poverty.
SHARE Saturday, November 10, 2012 Resisting Hell's Maelstrom
One highly respected governmental official told this observer recently, "I said to UNCHR's local administration, 'We have noticed the many fine vehicles that you flew into Syria, and we have met some of the well-paid staff that you have brought to help us, but please can you show us that you have to date delivered even one loaf of bread to our desperate people?'"
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 27, 2017 Playing the Jerusalem Card in Lebanon with deft Hypocrisy
Since Trumps announcement, plenty of anti-Palestinian politicians seeking to cash in politically, including Lebanese President, Michel Aoun who is only in that post because Iran installed him by instructing Hezbollah to break its deadlock of Parliament, are wringing their hands and seeking political advantages from Trumps provocative action.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 5, 2014 UPDATE: Did Israel Offer ISIS $10 Million to Free Steven Sotloff?
Over the last 48 hours Mr. Sotloff's 'fixer' has reportedly disappeared from public view, and is no doubt himself being hunted and marked for death as Israeli and perhaps American agents track him.
SHARE Tuesday, May 8, 2012 The Lutfallah II Arms-Smuggling Scandal
Who funded the shipment discovered in the cargo bay of the Lutfallah II? Who had custody over the original 12 containers of what was planned, according to the jailed owner, as a shipment of over two million tons of "general merchandise"?
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 31, 2013 Is Anything Left? Privacy Rights
With words likely to become part of Law School curriculum, Mr. Snowden said that "this disappearance of privacy is important because privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be."
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 15, 2017 35 Years after the Sabra-Shatila Massacre where's "The Resistance"?
This week commemorates the 35th anniversary of the Wednesday, Sept. 15 to Saturday, Sept. 18, Sabra-Shatila Massacre in the Fakhani neighborhood of Beirut. For many of the families and loved ones of the victims, as is certainly the case with this observer, it seems as though the Sabra-Shatila Massacre was committed at most four or five years ago. So vivid still in our memories are the horror images of that orgy of slaughter.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 22, 2017 Easter Sunday for Refugee Children of Syria
Here at the "Meals for Syrian Refugee Children, Lebanon" (MSRCL) our volunteers work tirelessly to help feed the hungry refugee children from war-torn Syria.
SHARE Saturday, January 11, 2014 Pressures Mount for a Palestinian-Hezbollah War in Lebanon
The Sunni and the Shia, just as with the Palestinians and Hezbollah, need each other for many reasons, including confronting growing Islamophobia, anti-Arab hate propaganda, and the deepening and broadening apartheid occupation of Palestine.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 14, 2015 What we can do now to help stop Iconoclasm by Da'ish (IS)
Visitors sometimes hear this point of view and they are reminded, as this observer was recently, surprisingly by a Syrian university professor in Aleppo, "Sir, what matters most now is the condition of people not old stuff!"
SHARE Wednesday, April 1, 2015 Should Syria's smuggled antiquities be repatriated before the conflict ends?
This observer has to date detected no widespread support for this argument in Syria which if adopted could seriously delay repatriation of Syria's antiquities. Syrian officials and scholars interviewed overwhelming reject this point of view as does the Syrian public. Some have noted that using the destructive frenzy by Islamic State extremists to lobby against repatriation seeks to justify discredited colonialist practices
SHARE Friday, May 15, 2015 Protecting & Restoring Syria's Trains as Part of Her Cultural Heritage
One barely teenage Da'ish (ISIS) tryout, deselected when he lied to recruiters about his real age which was 13, explained to this observer recently that in the for sure to be established Caliphate, camels, donkeys and horses, and other 7th century modes of transportation should be required via fatwa in order to render us all more religious and nearer to what he imagines Allah would really want us to be.
(18 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 20, 2016 US-led sanctions targeting Syria risk adjudication as War Crimes
The clear effects of the US-led sanctions targeting the civilian population of Syria which are being studied today in Syria by this observer and others, as well as noted in the OCHA) study noted above, are increasingly seen as constituting War Crimes requiring indictment.
SHARE Sunday, September 9, 2012 Sure Obama caved again on Palestine but will he benefit?
Obama erred politically and humiliated himself and his partly needlessly with his sell-out in Charlotte. He gained nothing in the way of Zionist support because the lobby has made clear form Tel Aviv to New York that it will never trust him on Israel as they increasingly coalesce around the Romney-Ryan ticket.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, December 19, 2011 Anatomy of a NATO War Crime
On June 19, the day before the bombing attack on the Hamedi family at Sorman, NATO was obliged by its own regulations and by the international law of armed conflict to conduct a "potential for collateral damage review" of this mission.
There is no evidence that this was ever done.
SHARE Sunday, May 10, 2015 Return to Yarmouk Martyr's Day
A Syrian army commander, headquartered on the edge of Yarmouk advised this observer on 6/7/2015 that the Syrian government and UNWRA will relocate hundreds of recently escaped camp residents to secured housing in the coming week.
SHARE Friday, July 29, 2016 "Don't cry for us Syria".the truth is we shall never leave you!"
"Don't cry for us Syria" has recently become a motto/logo of sorts for many physically and psychologically brutalized youth around this ancient land. They are the youngsters who represent a new generation of Syrians, many of whom were born in this century. It is into their patriotic hands that the Syria's Torch has been passed.
SHARE Tuesday, October 10, 2017 Hamas can achieve elementary civil rights for Palestinians In Lebanon by reconciling with Fatah and Iran
Hamas' willingness to relinquish its authority in Gaza, shown by its agreement to disband its Administrative Committee there, increases the chances of a successful reconciliation. Hamas' governance of Gaza has become costly, as the siege has been tightened on the strip, external financial support has been cut, and as the Palestinian Authority (PA) recently imposed more sanctions.
(8 comments) SHARE Monday, May 18, 2015 We can still save Palmyra (Tadmur) but we must move fast
The exists ample international customary law and international conventions in force, including Chapter 7 of the UN Charter that allows and even calls for action on the facts of the Palmyra emergency. The UN Security Council has the resources and the responsibility to act and its 15 member states must not veto a resolution that is expected to be submitted this coming week to save Palmyra.
SHARE Friday, May 29, 2015 Is Da'ish (ISIS) open to a deal on Palmyra?
Meanwhile, it is worthwhile to bear in mind UN Resolution 2199 adopted by the Security Council on February 12th, 2015, stating "that countries ensure that their nationals and those in their territories not make assets or economic resources available to ISIL (Da;ish) and related terrorist groups " and "Condemning the destruction of cultural heritage in Syria, particularly by ISIL (Da'ish) and the Al-Nusrah Front".
SHARE Friday, April 14, 2017 Lebanon's Outlawing of Palestinian Civil Rights Risks Igniting Powder Kegs
It's half a century overdue for Lebanon to grant Palestinian refugees, now the fourth post-Nakba generation, the most elementary civil rights to work and home ownership. Both fundamental rights are mandated by international law and enjoyed by every refugee on our planet. Sauf Lebanon.
SHARE Monday, June 27, 2016 How 100 Syrians, 200 Russians and 11 dogs out-witted ISIS and saved Palmyra
Something just didn't feel quite right to Syrian army brass as they penciled in final plans to liberated Palmyra in early March 2016 and as they debated how best to drive Daesh (ISIS) out of Palmyra and deep into the surrounding unwelcoming Syrian desert. This, according to army intelligence officials and commanders who this week briefed this observer at various locations around Palmyra.
SHARE Friday, April 3, 2015 A path toward Hamas-Fatah reconciliation: Grant Palestinian refugees the right to work in Lebanon
It is submitted that if Hamas and Fatah were to put aside their political differences, even just long enough to help their fellow refugees in Lebanon achieve dignity and elementary civil rights this mutual reconciliation effort would likely soon lead to wider Hamas-Fatah unity and intensify solidarity among the Palestinian refugee community and accelerate return to their homeland, Palestine.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 1, 2015 As Aleppo goes so goes Syria?
One can only wish Envoy De Mistura and like-minded proponents of the immediate establishment of a "freeze zone" in Aleppo, to be replicated across Syria as strongly favored by army commanders with whom this observer recently discussed the subject, the very best of luck in the New Year.
SHARE Wednesday, September 6, 2017 The "Musa Sadr is Alive" Hoax has Deceived Lebanon's Shia for 39 years
Every year during late August, this observer receives emails from people who love and admire the Iranian born Imam Musa Sadr and his colleagues Sheik Mohammad Yacoub and journalist. Abbas Baddredinne. The three disappeared on August 31, 1978 in Tripoli, Libya.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 20, 2017 An Inevitable Post-Christian Middle East With or Without ISIS?
Christians are being targeted in this region and pushed out of Christianity's birth place of 2000 thousand years ago and there is no Richard the Lion Hearted on the horizon to protect them. According to some analysts in approximately twenty years Christians will be virtually extinct in the Middle East.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 22, 2010 Australia Rejects Israeli Ordered Media Censorship of Al Manar
Given the chance that American justice is not dead yet, it is hoped that, judicial review, on a case by case basis, will shed light on the disgrace that is the US Treasury Department's over broad and likely to be found illegal corralling of citizens who might object to aspects of American foreign policy in the Middle East.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 2, 2014 Sunni-Shia Bellum Sacrum Fault Lines Deepen Gloves Come Off in Lebanon
Where this all ends is anyone's guess, but a ceasefire in the Syrian conflict, even one limited to certain areas as Washington, Tehran and Moscow are discussing, would perhaps help. Yet as various analysts and scholars postulate, the latest Sunni-Shia manifestation of Bellum Sacrum may well take a long time to heal--tens of years, or even centuries.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 25, 2013 Why Washington and Tel Aviv Want Hezbollah to Keep Fighting in al-Qusayr
The dangers for Hezbollah are obvious - that it may be drawn ever deeper into a bottomless pit of conflict in Syria that could leave it severely depleted and prey to a hoped for death-blow from Israel.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and other party officials have dismissed that possibility.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, August 15, 2011 NATO'S Massacre at Majer, Libya
Family members, eyewitnesses and Libyan government officials claim that NATO's air-strikes at Majer killed 85 people, including 33 children, 32 women and 20 men. Reporters and visitors were shown 30 of the bodies in a local morgue, including a mother and two children. Officials and residents explained that approximately 50 bodies were taken to other locations for family burial and most of the injured rushed to hospitals.
(12 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 1, 2017 "Aleppo Park" Kids Can Now Enjoy 4 Hours of Activities Every Sunday
Once a week a variety of activities for Syrian refugee children are now available from 2 to 6 pm on Sundays giving them an opportunity to express themselves and encouraging them to discover their passions, be active, enjoy sports, and simply have a good time
SHARE Thursday, March 16, 2017 Meals for Syrian Refugee Children Update March 15, 2017
On any given day in Lebanon there are literally hundreds of Syrian Refugee Children who are not in school but pass their days wandering the streets, alleys and roads selling chewing gum, pencils, packs of tissues, small bottles of water or flowers for "chump change" as its known in WDC..in order to help their families buy food.
SHARE Friday, October 8, 2010 The Four Conflicts: Bracing for Israel's Next Attack on Lebanon
For the past three years, Israel has been instructing the White House and Congress, as Ehud Barak told Bill Clinton on 9/21/10 at the opening of the Clinton Global Initiative in NYC: "This time Hezbollah must be totally eradicated from Lebanon. We don't even want to find their residue after the next operation!"
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 2, 2012 AIPAC: Israels Agent Feeling Squeezed?
What is confusing much of the American Jewish community appears to be the same as what perplexes a growing segment of the non-Jewish American public. And that is Netanyahu's nonsense over Iranian progress in having nuclear weapons and the history of this "the sky is falling-we must cry wolf!" canard.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 19, 2017 Life and Death Struggle for the Children of Syria
Meals for Syrian Children Refugees acknowledges that no one can help every Syrian child during the continuing carnage in their beloved country. But we aver that everyone can have the honor of fulfilling the solemn duty of each of us--to help someone.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 28, 2011 Is the Arab Spring spreading to US Congressional staffs?
With 41 applause interruptions and 29 standing ovations, even with some appearing half-hearted and somewhat forced, Congress sent a message that the Legislative branch, increasingly under the control of a foreign power, and not the Executive branch, will continue to determine American policy toward Israel and the Middle East.
SHARE Friday, May 12, 2017 Syrian War and its Legal Ramifications (Excerpt 1)
The Syrian Law Journal May 2017 edition published an interview with Franklin P. Lamb, LLB, LLM, PhD., Legal Adviser to The Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program, Shatila Camp, and one of the founders of Meals for Syrian Refugee Children: Lebanon (MSCRL). Dr. Lamb has given OpEdNews.com an exclusive right to publish his excerpts from that interview.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 13, 2010 Is the American public about to toss Israel?
Ever so slowly over the past two decades, and gaining momentum since
the April 2002 Israeli destruction of the West Bank town of Jenin, American
attitudes toward Israel appear to be changing according to some public
opinion analysts.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, July 4, 2011 Libya's Neighbors Prepare for NATO's Boots Countdown to Invasion
In summary, the MOH compilation documents that during the first 100 days of NATO targeting of civilians, 6121 were killed or injured. The statistical breakdown is as follows: 3093 Men were injured and 668 were killed. Women killed number 260 and 1318 injured. Children killed number 141 and 641 injured.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 22, 2011 The Battle for Tripoli may not be over
The claim of the NTC representative this morning that the rebels control 95% of Tripoli seems farfetched. This is a very spread out city and its clear rebel forces are not deployed everywhere.
(9 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 21, 2016 Will proxy politics bring death for Madaya siblings Manal and Mohammed-Kamal?
But I do think that NGO, MSRCL noted above, can meet our required burden of proof that Manal and Mohammad-Kamal's is a "humanitarian case." Those with the final say for who gets on the evacuation lists, Syria, Russia and Iran, must be strongly and constructively encouraged to apply the same standard to all four villages when the evacuations continue, today in all likelihood. And that standard is "humanitarian cases".
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 10, 2015 The Noose is Tightening Around Syria's Palestinians
Every Palestinian refugee on earth from the Nakba or Naksa and her offspring is invested at birth with the Full Right of Return and this right is inalienable and cannot to ceded, relinquished, bargained away or abolished by political leaders, neither by PA officials negotiating with the Zionist apartheid regime or by anyone else. A Palestinians Full Right of Return is individual and vested in perpetuity--at birth.
SHARE Wednesday, June 29, 2016 Driven into the desert, Daesh (ISIS) barbarity still haunts Palmyra
Daesh (ISIS) is gone from Palmyra, hopefully for good. But the area is still haunted. One imagines a long period of healing, cathartic reconstruction, restoration and healing will be required by its returning residents before this ancient town will feel cleansed of Daesh butchery, desecration and filth.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 21, 2012 How many walls will secure the Zionist regime in Palestine?
In a scathing commentary in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's biggest-selling newspaper, defense analyst Alex Fishman recently wrote: "We have become a nation that imprisons itself behind fences, which huddles terrified behind defensive shields." It has become, he said, a "national mental illness".
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 7, 2017 From Aleppo Park to Ramlet el Baida Beach for the Summer
Meals for Syrian Refugee Children, Lebanon (MSRCL) was able to feed 159 Syrian Refugee Children this weekend. It's not enough but as we continue our efforts to secure a permanent Kitchen-Dining Room where we can serve a hot nutritional meal to refugee children every day of the week it's what we donated funding to achieve.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 18, 2013 Bibi and Bandar Badger Obama: Better Six Billion than Six Trillion!
According to sources on the US Foreign Relations Committee, the White House is being heavily pressured by the US Zionist lobby and the Netanyahu government to take "remedial measures" for the "catastrophic historic mistake" it made in defusing the Iranian nuclear issue and refusing to bomb Damascus.
SHARE Tuesday, August 27, 2013 Prince Bandar and Zionist lobby partnering to force Obama into prolonged war with Syria
For Israel and its agents, the worst of all is victory by the Assad/Iranian/Hezbollah axis, which a brief but fiery barrage of cruise missiles is liable to bring about. A global power thousands of miles away cannot calibrate stalemate to ensure that neither party wins; we have to prioritize the most negative outcomes and use our assets to prevent them.
SHARE Saturday, May 13, 2017 Inside the Syrian War and its Legal Ramifications (Excerpt 2)
Excerpt Two: Syrian Law Journal May 2017 Interview with Franklin Lamb The Syrian Law Journal May 2017 edition published an interview with Franklin P. Lamb, LLB, LLM, PhD., Legal Adviser to The Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program, Shatila Camp, and one of the founders of Meals for Syrian Refugee Children: Lebanon (MSCRL) .
SHARE Wednesday, July 20, 2011 Libya's Palestinian Refugees and the current crisis
Five months ago, when the events of February 17, 2011 erupted in Benghazi near the eastern shore of the Gulf of Sidra, this country's nearly 75,000 Palestinian refugees who are dispersed all over the country, were as shocked as most Libyans and foreigners here. Virtually every Palestinian interviewed for this report mentioned that they saw no advance signs that the normal domestic tranquility would be suddenly shattered.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 22, 2017 Another small step for Syrian Refugees in Beirut's "Aleppo Park"
This observer swears that last weekend he even witnessed the Sheik smiling at puppy Aleppo and he actually started to reach out his hand to pet him! But he apparently thought better of it and quickly withdrew his hand as he looked over his shoulder and out of the corner of his eye saw two chador donned women watching him.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, May 16, 2011 Majesty and massacre at Maroun al Ras
On Nakba ("Catastrophe") Day, Sunday May 15, 2011, Maroun al Ras welcomed approximately 27% of all the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, this time coming from the opposite direction heading back toward their homes in Palestine. Palestinians in Lebanon now number approximately 248,000, approximately half of whom live in 12 squalid camps and as many "gatherings", although 423,000 remain registered with UNWRA.
SHARE Thursday, October 26, 2017 Granting Palestinians the right to work can salvage Lebanon's economy
Those who have lived in Palestinian camps and followed this issue know of the absurdity of this proposition. With every Palestinian birth in Lebanon the resolve for Full Return deepens. Wishfully thinking were the occupiers of Palestine's prediction that "the old will die and the young will forget." Let them come to the camps of Lebanon and Syria and interview the youth about this prediction.
SHARE Sunday, December 22, 2013 Winter Solstice in the Levant: Displacement, Death and Dershowitz
To one public international law class Professor Dershowitz is reported to have sneered, "And you can forget about claims of human rights based on international law and universal standards of morality. You'll never win s--- with that malarkey."
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 6, 2014 EU Sanctions Target Humanitarian Aid and Hinder Restoration of Global Heritage in Syria
Today, a civilization that used to lead the world and for centuries was the beacon of learning, tolerance and trade, and that still protects our global cultural heritage is damaged--and only the Syrian people can rebuild it for all of us. We need to help them.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 14, 2015 Is the Phoenix Rising From the Ashes in Syria?
What local communities are doing today in Syria to protect and preserve our shared cultural heritage is not going to solve their and our archeological crisis. But rarely, one imagines in the midst of war have citizens undertaken such Phoenix like preservation and restoration work for the benefit of mankind.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 8, 2013 US and Israel Lobby reel from Hezbollah al-Qusayr victory
One congressional staffer who attended the meeting winced at the thought of
US marines again being sent to Lebanon given their previous experience there
nearly 30 years ago.
SHARE Sunday, January 18, 2015 The American people need to help preserve our shared cultural heritage in Syria
These days, when many Americans are questioning the evident defects in our democracy, an excellent way to improve it for us and our children would be for us to insist on our government following our wishes and taking a lead in preserving and protecting our cultural heritage in Syria.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 8, 2014 Resisters of Sykes-Picot Land Grab Perform Key Fighting Roles in Syria
"Many of the "Gulfies' are in fact heavily addicted to strong heroin-like drugs. They crave them, and sometimes they even fight with their fellow militiamen to get their "fixes.' We are told by some we capture that sometimes, when one of their comrades is killed, the fallen fighter's "friends' will descend on his body, not particularly to pray over it, but to rummage his pockets for his drugs."
SHARE Tuesday, March 25, 2014 President Assad and Ayatollah Khomeini are keeping their word. Will President Obama keep his?
If the White House truly wants to normalize relations with Iran and with Syria as it claims, it needs to do a lot better. A good start would be by calling off OFACs attack dogs who service other than the American people. Also it should honor its oft touted "Humanitarian sanctions against Iran and Syria that exempts medicines and medical equipment".
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 16, 2011 What now for Lebanon?
Informed Congressional sources in Washington DC today
are confirming that the White House has informed Congressional Committee
Chairpersons and American allies that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon
(STL) will indict Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Wali al
Faqui (jurisconsult or Supreme Religious Leader) for issuing the order to
assassinate Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
SHARE Saturday, August 13, 2016 As our cultural heritage in Syria hemorrhages, Villagers work to restore it
The people of Syria do not need nor do they seek the arrival of western "Democracy projects" asserting a Kiplingesque 'White man's burden" obligation. Nor will they accept rebranded Sykes or Picot or Balfour wannebees. Nor revanchists suffering delusional fantasies of another Persian, Ottoman, Soviet, or American-led Western hegemonic project. No more so than Syrians I have become friends would accept a Caliphate of any sort.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 17, 2013 Will Les Clinton Scuttle US/Iran Rapprochement?
Though the Clinton estate has rapidly expanded since the White House days and is now valued at tens of millions of dollars, the former president is reportedly often short-tempered and grouchy these days.
SHARE Monday, January 12, 2015 In fewer than 48 hours Syria can achieve relief for her endangered citizens seeking lifesaving refuge in Lebanon
The case for Syria applying the essential legal principle and pillar of bi-lateral international relations, Reciprocity, in order to encourage Lebanese officials to meet their international legal obligations and thereby spare the lives of countless Syrian and Palestinian refugees being denied life-saving refuge at Syria-Lebanon borders is a strong one.
(10 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 12, 2017 Whatever is Obama's Legacy, It Includes stellar effort to Preserve Our Cultural Heritage in Syria
But there is one major, if not widely heralded, Obama Administration achievement which relates to Syria and the Middle East that has not gained much public recognition but for which the Obama Administration deserves great credit. That subject is Obama's leadership and achievements, working with a divided Congress, in taking measures with respect to Protecting and Preserving Syria's Endangered Heritage.
SHARE Friday, November 13, 2015 The Sunni-Shia bellum sanctum returns to Hezbollah's security zone
All are victims of the 6 p.m. rush hour terrorist bombings in Hezbollah's security zone on 11/12/2015 that targeted civilians who were shopping at street markets or gathering at the local Husseiniyeh (Mosque) for the fourth of the five daily prayers, Salat al-Magrib, held in the early evening just after sunset.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 7, 2011 Israelis Rush for Second Passports
"Perhaps as many as half of the Jews living in Israel will consider leaving Palestine in the next few years if political and social trends continue."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 1, 2017 Our Shared Cultural Heritage in Aleppo Urgently Requires Protection and Restoration
As this observer meanders through the ruins of war-torn Aleppo these days, he develops a feeling that somehow he ought to be wearing a hospital gown with gloves so as not to contaminate crushed ancient artifacts as he tries to avoid stepping on them. One feels obliged to avoid contaminating a cultural heritage crime scene.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 9, 2015 The Bravenhearts of Wadi Al Nasera, Syria
This observer is of the opinion that the current suffering and atrocities being committed against Christians in Syria will not break the will of Al Wadi Nasera, the Valley of the Christians. Rather, it will fortify their resolution and beliefs in the New Testament. I agree with the sages whom I have met among this close-knit, vital, highly educated,family community that the future of the Christians in this great country.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 13, 2011 Does America have a Muslim Problem?
Whatever becomes of the truly pathetic "Pastor" Terry Jones and his plans to appear later this month at the largest Mosque in Michigan to condemn Islam and to generate some media attention while provoking all decent Americans and people of good will everywhere with his hate speech will not be of much lasting import to Muslim and American
(11 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 28, 2014 Syria Sends a Strong Team to Geneva
We will likely learn soon whether Syria's negotiating team in Geneva can work through a myriad of opposing and deeply antagonistic adversaries to achieve a sustainable cease-fire, reconciliation, and reconstruction. Syria's long-suffering people demand and deserve no less.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 11, 2014 OFAC Jeopardizes Air Traffic Safety While Congress Prepares Sanctions Coup de Grace on Iran
International air travelers in flights over Asia could well be in danger from a recent policy change enacted by the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), this as the latter puts Israel's "death to Iran" policy seemingly ahead of even airline passenger safety.
SHARE Monday, September 5, 2016 Syria: A Children's Story, September 5, 2016
All donations to Meals for Syrian Refugee Childre will be immediately receipted and our accountant will regularly issue financial status reports. We are committed to complete transparency.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 10, 2016 Palestinian Social Fabric Frays in Lebanon's camps as Drug Dealers target Children
The past few years have witnessed an alarming increase in drug distribution in several of Lebanon's 12 Palestinian camps, as dealers reportedly target children and teenagers, becoming increasingly brazen in pushing their narcotics.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 9, 2011 Where have Libya's children gone? Long time missing"
NATO's arguable act of piracy earlier this week in commandeering the fuel tanker ship Cartagena off the coast of Malta that was bringing gasoline to Tripoli and sending it instead to Rebel militia based close to Benghazi is yet again explained from NATO HQ as necessary for "protecting the civilian population of Libya."
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 19, 2014 Avoidable Humanitarian Crisis at Lebanon Border Crossing Sparks Anger in Syria
Among the many reasons Lebanon should immediately desist in the targeting of Syrian and Palestinian refugees is that they are pushing many toward supporting those that the Lebanese government claims to be opposing.
SHARE Wednesday, July 20, 2016 A Road-map for Lebanon to grant civil rights for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon
Today the government of Lebanon has the opportunity to come into compliance with internationally mandated human rights and to redress nearly seven decades of violations of Palestinian civil rights.
Lebanon can redress its humanitarian shortfalls by implementing the following proposed essential remedial measures.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 1, 2014 Return to Seyeda (lady) Zeinab—now secured and in protective hands
Such incidents make plain that Seyeda Zeinab is still of target of some jihadist types given its great importance to Syria and the region and among Muslims globally. But across sectarian divides here, where there are growing signs of the great majority of the exhausted populations being ready to a degree, to forgive and forget at least some of the events of the past nearly 36 months.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 30, 2011 Ma'a as-salaamah Mohammad".. May Allah protect you!
Most of the churches here currently have volunteers working to help their Muslim sisters and brothers during this cataclysmic period. My friend Mohammad is one whose life they may have saved.
Bands of young rebel "freedom fighters" are still roaming some of Tripoli's streets, itching it seems, to kill some "African mercenaries", meaning, it appears, any black man they can find .
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 13, 2014 The Germans rebuilt Dresden and the Syrians will rebuild Aleppo!
All people of good will who accept their personal duty to join the people of Syria in preserving, protecting and restoring our shared global heritage can take solace from what this observer witnessed an exhilarating demonstration of the sublime capacities of our shared human spirit as we help to salvage our cultural heritage.
SHARE Friday, July 31, 2015 Return to Ma'loula
But there is good news from this incomparable community. The group of 13 nuns abducted by Jabhat al Nusra Islamic rebels who have been freed in a prisoner exchange are they now regularly visiting Ma'loula to help restore the Nunnery and St. Teccla Monastery as well as the orphanage that they operate.
SHARE Friday, November 5, 2010 What Were They Thinking?
What were the International Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) investigators imagining as they walked into Dr. Iman Charara's private obstetrics and gynecology clinic this week demanding personal information on her patients? 
SHARE Saturday, January 14, 2012 Will a pro-Gadhafi "Green Revolution" topple the NTC?
All of us know that misinformation and disinformation are common during armed conflicts, often politically motivated. But such grossly exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy theories only aid the aggressors, in this case, NATO.
SHARE Thursday, August 18, 2011 TRIPOLI ON THE CUSP
At nearby Green Square, crowds began to gather by 2 p.m. and rally against "NATO rebels" and I was told thousands of Libyan citizens were ready to move to the edges of town, man check points, and support army units and repulse any advances from Al Zawieh to the West, Gheryan and several villages from the South or Brega and closer villages from the East.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 1, 2016 How Two Sisters,Ten Year Old Ghina and 8 Year Old Nagham, Survived Three Sniper Bullets in Syria
Ghina and Nagham were very lucky to survive the sniper's bullets last month and are today out of harm's way. But this is not the case for the 40,000 entrapped residents of Madaya who remain imprisoned by the war in Syria, as do nearly one million other besieged civilians across Syria today.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 24, 2011 Tripoli Port Notes
During the early afternoon of 8/23/11, power and Internet were cut from our hotel and again the sealed windowed rooms heated up fast and had to be essentially vacated unless one stayed in the bathtub filled with tepid tap water. We currently have no local or international phone service or information from outside Libya or any knowledge of what is being reported internationally about Libya.
SHARE Saturday, August 16, 2014 SOS! Hospital Ships Needed to Save Gaza's Children
Five Hospital ships are urgently needed along Gaza's shoreline at the following locations: opposite Jabaliya and North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 27, 2011 Ahmedinejad and Obama at the UN: Of statesmanship and political pandering".
The two appearances could be handicapped along the lines that Obama's tough job was to try to shore up Israel whose days as a dominate force in the Levant rapidly grow fewer as history corrects the nearly incalculable injustice that resulted from the West's implantation of the racist state and as history inexorably deconstructs the world's last 19th Century colonial enterprise.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 29, 2016 Accusation claims Syrian and Russian troops are looting Palmyra! INDICTMENT NOT PROVED
Writing in the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, while conceding that the retaking of Palmyra was "an important victory for our cultural heritage" (Dr. Parzinger's words), he continued: "Despite the liberation, we shouldn't act like everything is alright now. And this victory has not made Bashar al-Assad and his backers the saviors of cultural heritage".
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, January 23, 2012 Lebanon's Maid of Darkness facing US hate crimes investigation
Increasingly a marionette of the US Zionist lobby, Ms. Brigitte Gabriel has enjoyed a few lucrative and unobstructed years of increasingly hysterical Muslim and Arab bashing. Recently however, she has attracted the attention of the FBI investigating her organization, "Act for America!" (act for america@donationnet.net ) for possible hate crimes and financial irregularities, according to US Congressional Judiciary
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 18, 2014 Mossad Targets Nuclear Engineers in Damascus
Consequently the sanctions will remain and be intensified according to the House Committee on Financial Services. Meanwhile the Mossad is watching closely Iran's activities in Iraq, Syria and now Lebanon and has once more telegraphed its intentions to continue its serial violations of those countries sovereignty while implementing other projects in order to eliminate what it sees as Iran's threat to its existence.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 22, 2014 "Coalition of the Willing" Promotes No Fly Zone
Among those currently petitioning the Obama Administration for a NFZ, which would quickly devolve into thousands of bomb runs across Syria that would likely decimate its air force and tank corps are the so-called "rebels.' They tend to agree with France that problems lay ahead for them given April's fast approaching Presidential election.
SHARE Thursday, May 21, 2015 The Battle to save Palmyra shifts to the UN
The ancient city of Palmyra (Tadmur) has been in existence for 30 centuries, and is one of the world's most cherished archeological and cultural heritage sites. Will it be cease to exist during the next 30 days?
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 28, 2017 Update from Madaya
The United Nations has recently reported that nearly one million Syrians now live under siege, a figure that is up from 393,000 Syrians at the same time last year. "Horror is now usual," UN Emergency Relief coordinator Stephen O'Brien said in a November statement before the UN Security Council in New York. people."
SHARE Wednesday, June 8, 2011 Israelis prepare to emigrate and Palestinians to Return!
Several studies in Israel and one conducted by AIPAC and another by the Jewish National Fund in Germany show that perhaps as many as half of the Jews living in Israel will consider leaving Palestine in the next few years if current political and social trends continue.
SHARE Tuesday, December 6, 2016 Aleppo Update: An inspiring return to the oft-bombed National Museum
DGAM launched an immediate and massive rescue operation across the country soon after the conflict began here and within months emptied the museums of all portable artifacts. Today virtually all remain packed, protected, and hidden in secure guarded sites, most deeply underground.
SHARE Saturday, January 1, 2011 Any respect for International law left in the US Congress?
This week marks the second anniversary of among the most savage criminal slaughters of human life in long memory. The 522-hour indiscriminate carnage, "Cast Lead" that killed 1,417 Palestinians, mostly civilians, 352 of them children, injuring for life more than 5,300, indicts Israel as well as those countries that continue to supply it weapons, diplomatic cover and to enforce Israel's illegal siege on sealed Gaza.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 3, 2014 Continuing slaughter of Palestinians another nail in Zionism's coffin?
In aggregate, Americans still see Israel favorably but in smaller numbers while more are viewing Israel as illegitimate. "Delegitimisation", says Einat Wilf, a former Israeli parliamentarian and one of the authors of a three-year, as-yet-unpublished study of the topic at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) in Jerusale
SHARE Tuesday, January 24, 2017 Aleppo Park: A modest victory for Syrian Refugees in Lebanon
So Syrian refugees in Lebanon waiting to return to their beloved but devastated country have another spot to relax at and MSRCL hopes, if it can gain partners, to use the site to feed Syrian refugee children, set up trash cans and just maybe, two or three portable toilets and a water faucet. And why not a garden so the tykes can have their own small plots and learn to grow vegetables and flowers?
SHARE Sunday, May 14, 2017 Inside the Syrian War and its Legal Ramifications (Excerpt 3)
The Syrian Law Journal May 2017 edition published an interview with Franklin P. Lamb, LLB, LLM, PhD., Legal Adviser to The Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program, Shatila Camp, and one of the founders of Meals for Syrian Refugee Children: Lebanon (MSCRL) .
SHARE Wednesday, September 16, 2015 33 years after Sabra-Shatila, Takfiri plans for "Intifada!" waft in Lebanon's camps
Lebanon's politicians generally do not want this and neither does Da'ish (ISIS). Both groups seek to keep the Palestinian's in Lebanon oppressed for their own political advantage. Eschewing justice and elementary civil rights is subverting peace in this region and one may be sure that the "terrorist-takfiri" are today manipulating this reality in Lebanon's camps.
SHARE Sunday, November 4, 2012 Flooding Syria with Foreign Arms
The intervention in Syria by more than three dozen countries supplying weapons must be stopped. Both sides of the Syrian crisis need to manifest by actions, not just words, a serious commitment to meaningful dialogue. The above noted arms supplying countries, and others off stage, have a solemn obligation to their citizens and to the world community to immediately halt the shipment of arms.
SHARE Thursday, December 18, 2014 Claims that Aleppo's Synagogues have been destroyed are false
In February of 2011, coincidentally the month before of the beginning of the current Syrian crisis, President Assad signed an executive order to repair the Al-Raqi Synagogue in the old Jewish quarter of Damascus by the end of the month as the renovation of 10 other synagogues in Syria's major cities continued.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 18, 2016 U.S. financial regulations increase starvation among Syria's children
OFAC regulations to stop banks from providing services to charities and others that do business in targeted countries like Syria are in fact having an unanticipated serious impact on relief efforts. This according to more than a dozen interviews with aid directors, senior bankers, lawmakers and industry experts interviewed by Bloomberg.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 22, 2011 Targeted For Assassination By NATO?
Information arriving from family and friends of our client Seif al Islam leaves no doubt that NATO has ordered his killing. His planned and we believeassassination is meant to spare NATO the international accountably that awaits them as the World learns from eyewitness accounts and reliable, evidence compiled over the past six months, exactly what NATO has wrought on Libya over the past nearly nine months.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 15, 2014 The Politicization of Humanitarian Relief How Not to Get Aid into Homs
Suspicions are being raised in Geneva, Syria and among certain UN aid agencies in Homs and elsewhere that those they are trying to save from starvation, were "set-up' to fail as a result of power politics and influences emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, October 3, 2014 Shell-Shocked Syrian Town Freed After Savage Massacre
She added:
"We woke up at dawn with the sound of bullets" we saw men carrying black flags of Jaish al-Islam and Jabhat al-Nusra. Some of them were singing 'Alawites we have come to cut off your heads' song, and this was the song they first sang at the start of the war in Idlib."
SHARE Thursday, June 9, 2016 What 4 "bought" Syrian refugee children have achieved for humanity in Lebanon
Organizing even one meal for a starving Syrian or Palestinian refugee child--or for any malnourished youngster displaced by the war in Syria isn't everything that matters right now in this region. For many of those working among them and to feed them it's the only thing that matters.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 27, 2011 Libya Dispatch Revulsion, Resistance & Angry Words From Tripoli University
Suha complained about "the views of NTC leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil toward women and that with the already announced repeal of the marriage law, Libyan women have lost the right to keep the family home if they divorce. It is a disaster for Libyan women. Under Gadhafi leadership women in Libya had more rights than in any other country in the Middle East."
SHARE Friday, July 15, 2016 Lebanon escalates its denial of civil rights for Palestinian Refugees
The justice for Palestine struggle continues on many fronts and it must and will do until the human right of Full Return is achieved. One front that requires our vigilance and action in these turbulent times are the ever deteriorating civil rights of Palestinians in Lebanon.
SHARE Sunday, October 14, 2012 Women Demand Civil Rights in Lebanon
- All of the main political parties their MPs to express reservations regarding the draft bill, because, according to KAFA "they all agree that women have no rights over their bodies.
SHARE Saturday, May 19, 2012 US envoys losing Lebanon--visit by visit?
The two gentlemen used 67% of the same key words but their meanings appear vastly different and that's why some of us, certainly this observer, could use some help from a serious student of the subject.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 5, 2014 Syria: Engaging the Opposition with More than Weapons
There is growing evidence here that the government and the rebels are trying to collaborate in various ways in order to save an entire generation of their children from being denied education due to the ravages of ongoing civil war. This massive catastrophe for Syria and the region can be ended if the above noted trend continues.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 14, 2014 Syrian Students Restore Our Global Cultural Heritage
Will Syria become like Iraq or Somalia ? Or worse ? This is what me and all my friends worry about and we feel powerless to stop or even influence what is happening out there. Like all Syrians we are exhausted from these years of war. We are so tired and just want it all to end. Are we mistaken ? What do you think ?
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 3, 2011 "Victory by Ramadan" Scenes From Tripoli
Since the beginning of NATO operations a total of 12,887 sorties, including 4,850 strike sorties have been conducted. On Monday June 27, 2011 there were 142 sorties and 46 strike sorties. A total of 17 NATO ships are patrolling the central Mediterranean sea off Libya. To date 1,546 ships have been intercepted and 127 boardings made.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 1, 2013 Countdown to Apocalypse Now? A View From Tehran
"How can the American people accept this double standard, where its ok and your government will help to gas Iranians and your enemy's population?" is a common question put to this observer.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 21, 2013 31 Years After the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila
The partially revealed archival record illustrates the magnitude of deception that undermined American efforts to avoid bloodshed. Working with only partial knowledge of the reality on the ground, the US feebly yielded to false arguments and stalling tactics, thus allowing a massacre that was already in progress to proceed.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 29, 2011 Hezbollah is the New Government of Lebanon. Now What?
Hezbollah has become the new government of Lebanon with all that means to the country, the region, and American middle east policy. This article describes briefly how this historic change came about and what might be the consequences.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 5, 2011 Any Respect for International Law Left in the US Congress?
The US administration, as revealed in a State Department cable posted by Wikileaks, has been working overtime with Israel to parry further condemnation of Israeli crimes documented in the Richard Goldstone and Richard Falk Reports, among others
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 22, 2012 Rebel controlled Yarmouk Palestinian Camp empties pending government counter-attack
During the morning of 12/19/12 the news got even worse regarding Souha. Someone from Reuters sent me a published photo showing her stuck on a bus at Maznaa for over 12 hours. According to one report she was forced to return to Damascus. Wherever Souha is she is hopefully someone is helping her.
SHARE Thursday, January 13, 2011 WHY HEZBOLLAH WALKED
Lebanon's resistance movement, led by Hezbollah may well now be the government of Lebanon. how did it happen and what might it mean for Lebanon and the region
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 8, 2014 The Twice Betrayed Christians of Ma' loula
One comment, signed by a lady from Boise, Idaho and still legible, reads:
"This is a very beautiful place to visit and also very inspirational to know that Christians have existed in this area continuously for so many years. May the work here in God's name continue and help to bring peace and understanding to all people in the Middle East and the world, regardless of who or by what means...
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 26, 2011 The Troubling Case of Saif Gadhafi
Despite the claims of the National Transitional Council of Libya (NTC) that Saif al Islam Gadhafi, the apprehended subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant that ordered his transport to The Hague, is in a secure hidden location near Zintan, Libya, a town approximately 85 miles southwest of Tripoli, this is not the case.
SHARE Saturday, October 11, 2014 It's Not Too Late to Save Syria's Cultural Heritage
In Syria today, within government controlled areas scores of community groups are working to preserve our global heritage. One example is a citizen's national campaign to inform the general public about the value of protecting archeological sites by placing large posters showing endangered treasures.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 28, 2011 "After you Brother!" Gadaffi stays and Obama leaves?
Gaddafi has survived assaults of various types from US Presidents' Ford, Carter, Reagan, George Bush 1, Clinton, George Bush 2, and Obama. Vegas book makers are giving odds he'll be the leader of Libya's Fatah Revolution after the voters retire Obama, whose broken promises included telling them that the US would be involved in Libya for days, not more.
SHARE Monday, October 8, 2012 Fall Semester Brings New Hope for Lebanon's Palestinians
Against a backdrop of many such problems and challenges, more Palestinian refugees in Lebanon than in recent memory will enter university this fall semester. Preparing, as many insist, to take up their national resistance duties and reconstruct their country and reclaim much of their purloined culture upon returning to Palestine.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 29, 2013 Pushing Al Qaeda to Take on Hezbollah
The Times adopts the views of Islamophobe, Daniel Pipes, who recommends that
the US try to keep the two sides in Syria fighting as long as possible until
they destroy each other.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 25, 2015 Daesh (ISIS) Heritage Destruction in Syria is a War Crime and Crime against Humanity. The UN must consider R2P
Time is quickly running out for all of us to answer Kofi Annan's question and if we reply in the affirmative, to petition our governments and the UN to create a highly mobile, competent, short tethered wide international participation coalition force of fixed duration, perhaps subject to 90-day UN renewal, and to act on our shared international responsibility to preserve and protect Syria's Endangered Heritage.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 11, 2013 The West to pay a high price for targeting the Syrian government, Security experts claim
In both the Makhlouf and Mamlouk's cases, both were blacklisted and sanctions were imposed on them by the United States and Europe, preparatory to transferring them to the International Criminal Court. However, this did not detour either gentleman from continuing to combat terrorist organizations funded by the West to fight President Bashar Al-Assad's regime.
SHARE Sunday, June 24, 2012 Are Palestinians Being Scapegoated Over Army Killings in Lebanon?
The ball is in the Lebanese Parliaments court. Time is running out for impunity relative to Lebanon's refusal to grant elementary civil rights for their sisters and brothers from occupied Palestine.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 7, 2014 A Hard Won Victory The Story of 68 Palestinian Families in Lebanon
GS relented and agreed to allow Palestinian students in Lebanon a one-time 19-day visa to take their BACC exams and return to Lebanon. The handcuffs came off. Apologies. Handshakes. Smiles all around and a few kisses on foreheads by the grateful American.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 31, 2013 Has the Arab League mortally wounded itself by declaring war on Syria?
This week the global community saw that the Charter and by-laws of the
Arab League, despite its mission to bring together Arabs, has been ignored
with respect to the Syrian crisis from the beginning. Rather it has been
actively working to prevent coming together especially with respect to
Syria.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 10, 2011 Are Libya's Palestinians ready for the post-Gaddafi era?
Whatever one thinks of the "brother leader" these days, the social status and economic conditions of Palestinian refugees in Libya, as in the other Arab countries has been determined by each country's leadership and by the degree to which the leaders plays the Palestinian card domestically and internationally for their own benefit.
SHARE Friday, April 15, 2016 Restoring Our Cultural Heritage in Syria --the Debate Over Why, How, When, by Whom, In What Order, & Who Pays? Intensif
"It was a place to connect to your history, to your identity and to tell others, who were not from Aleppo or Syria: "This is where we are from. This is who we are." This is where you come to encounter your roots. It was a place that existed forever, a place we thought would exist long after we were gone. But we were wrong." (Amal Hanano, Lessons from the Minaret , 2013)
SHARE Saturday, August 3, 2013 A Formula for Palestinian Survival in Damascus
The overwhelming sense among Palestinians here with whom this observer has discussed the proposal, is that there can be no progress with respect to returning Palestinian refugees to their homes in Yarmouk until a political solution is reached among all the major parties to the Syrian Crisis. And some predict that may take decades.
SHARE Sunday, January 8, 2012 Muslim Brotherhood Strongest Contender in Libya's Coming Elections
The coming government will likely be
heavily influenced, if not controlled by Libya's new arrival in force, the
Muslim Brotherhood. The consequences for Libya and the Muslim Brotherhood's
effect on America's withdrawal from the region is presumably being closely
watched from Tehran to Washington DC and Tel Aviv.
SHARE Sunday, September 18, 2011 29 Years After the Massacre at Sabra Shatila
As a young Palestinian lady in Sabha told this observer, and sounding very much like Miss Hiba Hajj in Lebanon's Ein el Helwe camp: "Every Palestinian must visit this site you told us about of this mass murder of our brothers and sisters. I will do it soon. I promise you. It is not an option, it is an obligation."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 8, 2015 Their unpardonable crime is that they are Syrian
Syrian refugees have been denied the right to seek asylum and some have been forcibly returned to Syria by the Lebanese authorities and without even a grace period. The new unannounced changes led to families being separated. Again in violation of international refugee law.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 24, 2015 Palmyra Update: What will remain after Eid al-Fitr?
The year, the date is unusually important to many for other reasons. According to Da'ish (ISIS) members and even a spokesman, who seem increasingly willing to discuss their seemingly inextricably intertwined religious-political views with confessed heretics like this observer, Ramadan requires a month of accelerated attacks on Islam's enemies.
SHARE Wednesday, February 11, 2015 We Can Help Stop the Destruction
Nowhere else has the world witnessed this complex and unique meeting of states, empires and faiths as Syria. Who can imagine that the great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus was originally a temple to Jupiter? Later converted to a Christian basilica to John the Baptist, and in turn became what some consider the fourth-holiest place in Islam.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 25, 2015 How AIPAC-OFAC are working to maintain sanctions targeting Iran and her students
Meanwhile, AIPAC is arranging for a new version of a 2012 Federal Law (H.R. 1905) to be submitted to Congress. The new version will exclude Iranian students from being able to receive a U.S. student visa to study in America if the student is seeking to participate in higher education in preparation for a career in Iran's petroleum, natural gas, nuclear energy, nuclear science, or any related nuclear engineering fields."
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 3, 2013 Syria Countdown: an Update from Damascus
Washington's ill-considered criminal attack will aid and abet these largely Gulf financed militia and provide justification, in their minds for literally hundreds of often competing jihadist groups to spread carnage across Syria. The innocent in the USA and the West will also eventually suffer a severe pay back price as was the case on 9/11/2001 and a decade later on 9/11/2011. And on and on it goes.
SHARE Monday, August 29, 2011 The Hunt for Gaddafi
Rumors and repeated rumors ricochet like shell casings off concrete walls this morning and depending on what one is inclined to believe, Libya's former leader Colonel Gaddafi is safely in Algeria, his hometown of Sirte, Libya's vast southern desert, in one of the labyrinthine tunnels very deep below his Bab al Azzia (splendid gate) barracks or in a south Tripoli flat with his sons.
SHARE Monday, July 15, 2013 AIPAC & OFAC Ratchet-Up US Sanctions Targeting Syria and Iran's Populations
How can the US Treasury OFAC agency be so seemingly totally unaware
of the business realities of the parties it regulates who want to send medical
equipment and food to the suffering people of Syria and Iran? Can the agency
be that deaf to the business realities of the parties it regulates? Does it even
care or understand its own regulations? Does the Obama administration
even care?
SHARE Wednesday, May 30, 2012 Egypt's election results: Palestinian victory & Zionist defeat?
The Prime Minister of the Palestinian government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, declared on Thursday that "The Egyptian presidential election results will have a very positive affect on the course and future of the Palestinian cause as well as the role and place of the Muslim people in the world."
SHARE Monday, June 20, 2011 Lebanon's Sarah Palin Meets Captain America
The new team is said by one King staffer to share a vision of "defeating Radical Islam in America and defeating it before it's too late." And they intend to show their fellow Americans just how to do it.
This past week in Washington, King held the second of what it planned as a series of "Congressional Hearings" designed to warn Americans about various threats from Muslims in their midst.
SHARE Tuesday, March 1, 2011 In Re Barak, "Bullahs," Blackwater, Bounties & the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL)
Despite a series of publicly announced "disassociations" periodically issued from the media offices at the Pentagon and State Department, plus a couple of image polishing name changes including currently, Xe Services LLC ( Xe being short for Xena, the mythical goddess of war) the hydra headed Blackwater (BW), founded in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark is still quite active.
SHARE Wednesday, November 2, 2011 Confusing Syria With Libya? Fact-Checking Amnesty International's "hospitals Investigation"
In it's just released report: |"Health Crisis: The Syrian Government Targets the Wounded and Health Workers," Amnesty International falls far below an objective standard and fails to shoulder its burden of proof for the charges it levels at Syria's medical community.
SHARE Friday, June 22, 2012 Imam Musa Sadr's Remains Discovered in Libya
But serious questions remain. Why after nearly a year into the post-Gadhafi period was the case not solved with help from Lebanon despite several trips by officials allegedly for the purpose? Is it because some Lebanese politicians do not want the truth to be known?
SHARE Wednesday, January 26, 2011 Fatal Detraction? The increasingly volatile pre-trial phase of the Lebanon tribunal
It appears that no acceptable compromise regarding the divergent Lebanese political stances relative to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) will be achieved. Support for this hypothesis can be found in the past 24 hours activities of the would-be mediators.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 8, 2015 It's time to re-open the American and Iranian embassies and promote reconciliation
The rationale for opening both Iran's and America's embassies is compelling and goes back to the reasons for The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 of which 190 countries are signatories. Embassies contribute to the achievement of international peace and security and facilitate the work, cultural exchanges, business, travel, and development of both countries.
SHARE Friday, April 8, 2016 Iran and Russia join the global alliance to preserve Syria's Endangered Heritage
All of us, because we want to preserve and restore our past for the future will applaud these Russian and Iranians initiatives. And the joining of both countries with many other nations, to protect our cultural heritage which has been under Syrian custody for ten millennia is to be applauded and supported emphatically.
SHARE Saturday, January 18, 2014 The Siege of Yarmouk
But there is hope that relief may come. Against the backdrop of accusations and condemnations being circulated, many are looking to Russia to step in and, much as it did when it induced the Assad government to get rid of its chemical weapons, pressure the government to at least lift its own part of the siege.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, January 10, 2011 2011: The year Lebanon Allows Palestinians Some Elementary Civil Rights?
Were the international community to cease averting its eyes and actually give some meaning to the more than 100 UN Resolutions on Palestine and the more than 500 conference declarations over the past half century dealing with Palestinian refugees, Lebanon's six decades of shame would be lifted.
SHARE Wednesday, November 16, 2016 R2P Palestinian Children: Proposals to combat Drug dealers targeting Lebanon's camps
Each of us is obliged to help organize, join and work with, and to assure the success of the proposed R2P (Responsibility to Protect and Rescue) Palestinian children from drug dealers Movement. We as adults owe this to vulnerable Palestinian as well as to all other youth in Lebanon.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, October 17, 2011 Lebanon's Palestinians require UN action to obtain civil rights
But to hear the refugee's new friends report on the current prospects for Palestinians internationally, conditions are coming up roses for the camp inhabitants in Lebanon as well. Bit the facts are quite the opposite for refugee prospects here in Lebanon.
SHARE Wednesday, August 3, 2011 End Game for Benghazi Rebels as Libyan Tribes Prepare to Weigh In?
A former senior member of Britain's Liberal Democratic Party, Sir Menzies Campbell has just urged the UK government to rethink its involvement in the war on Libya. Campbell said Britain must undertake a "wholesale re-examination and review" of its involvement in the NATO conflict in Libya after the murder of the opposition figure and Britain "must think about the end-game of the conflict in Libya.
SHARE Saturday, June 29, 2013 White House threatens aid cut-off if Palestine joins the ICC
"Gone are the days when those who commit international crimes
could be cleansed of their atrocities through a mere hand shake and
a scribble of their initials on a piece of paper which purports to bind
them to conditions that they have no intention of ever observing."
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 13, 2013 François Hollande's Missteps put France on Levant sidelines
According to French daily Le Monde, Hollande told Netanyahu that he was flabbergasted by Obama's hesitation to bomb Syria, and complained: "If Obama does not strike Iran, how can we believe he would help Israel in case of Iranian aggression?"
SHARE Saturday, July 20, 2013 Are Palestinian Students in Lebanon Being Pressured to Choose Kalashnikovs Over College?
Education cannot be ethnically cleansed, stolen, tortured, jailed, uprooted, bulldozed, massacred, murdered, bombed or burned down. Rather, staying in school and pursuing ones dream is what your cherished for-bearers, who were forced from their homes and lands into Lebanon and trekked from Palestine
SHARE Thursday, July 18, 2013 The Bomb in My Neighborhood
A reliable Hezbollah source, acting Health Minister, Amal MP Ali Khalil, has just advised that 54 have Bir al-Abed residents been wounded and so far no confirmed fatalities have been reported
SHARE Sunday, April 8, 2012 Lebanon's wretched triad: Domestic workers"Women "Palestinians
University students surveyed last month in Lebanon on the subject of how to improve their society and move it in the direction of meeting international human and civil rights norms identified three groups most in urgent need of immediate Lebanese governmental action.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 4, 2012 Is the Syrian Crisis Being Leveraged to Weaken Hezbollah?
Pressures, often intense, resulting in being sucked into the vortex of the powerful maelstrom and violent whirlpool of Lebanese and regional politics can't be bringing much pleasure to Lebanon's National Resistance led by Hezbollah and that includes this observers Dahiyeh neighborhood.
SHARE Saturday, April 2, 2016 Why is Lebanon holding Hannibal Gaddafi hostage?
At some point Lebanon will have to dismantle its sectarian system which paralyses it and corrupts its government. But the problem remains that the current corrupt system here enriches precisely those whose leadership for reform has been required.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, July 25, 2011 Seeking context and understanding from Libya's youth
Our "Libyan Forum 101" as we agreed to title it, asked the Libyan students to formulate and table for discussion key questions that they believe must be answered in order to understand and resolve what it called here, "Our crisis."
SHARE Sunday, January 29, 2012 30 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatilla Lebanese politicians still block Palestinian rights
Lebanese politicians, including every party and religious grouping bar none, except the Druze and the National Syrian Socialist Party, use voter's fear of naturalization (in America think immigration) to undercut growing human rights pressure for Lebanon to give Palestinians elementary human rights.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 23, 2011 Tawtin or Return: Divergent Views from Lebanon, but one Common Goal
Lebanese opponents of civil rights for Palestinian Refugees often use
less objective and more crude wording to define "tawtin"
("settlement") than is normally employed in civil society discussions.
SHARE Saturday, July 9, 2011 NATO's War Against Libya's Civilians
Briefly noted below are five recent instances of undisputed NATO bombings on Libyan civilians selected because they still among the most frequently discussed by residents of Tripoli.
SHARE Saturday, June 22, 2013 Hezbollah's Palestinian problem"""and vice versa
Some Palestinians are also said to be carrying guns for the Saida, Lebanon based, Salafist cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Asir, the imam of Sidon's Bilal bin Rabah Mosque, while supporting his anti-Hezbollah-Assad regime movement which is trying to unite Sunnis, who make up roughly 85% of the world's Muslim population, to eliminate Shia Muslims.
SHARE Saturday, May 11, 2013 Lebanon greets the Special Rapporteur for Palestine with an ear full
Mousab Kerwat, Islamic Relief's Middle East institutional funding manager, said: "It's better for countries to stay away from donor conferences than to attend and make pledges they don't intent to keep. As a minimum, they should communicate where their pledges have gone in a transparent process.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, June 2, 2014 Syrians Working to Preserve Jewish Cultural Heritage
The view expressed by my hosts that day--and I believe them--is that Jewish cultural heritage in Syria is being respected, protected and preserved with the same care as Muslim, Christian, and pagan antiquities.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 6, 2010 Lebanon's Merry Month of May
Lebanon's Merry Month of May--will Lebanon grant civil rights to her Palestinian Refugees?
SHARE Thursday, March 31, 2016 The wounded Phoenix of Palmyra stretches its wings from ISIS rubble
Once DGAM has UNESCO's approval, Dr. Addulkarim estimates that Syria we will need five years to restore the structures damaged or destroyed by ISIS. Abdulkarim told AFP. "We have the qualified staff, the knowledge and the research. With UNESCO's approval, we can start the work in a year's time."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 4, 2016 Social Control is emerging as ISIS (Da'ish) motive for erasing our Cultural Heritage in Syria
This observer submits that there is a forth and even more sinister reason that has not been much considered with respect to the Islamic State brand, which admittedly is an ambitious and seductive vision that has proven to be a fairly major social media success, that the destruction and looting of our heritage underpins an intricate scaffolding of intense micro-managed social control over its captive populations.
SHARE Sunday, November 20, 2011 Bad Moon Rising Over Great Sirte Bay
The fighters thought there was no possibility that any rebel militia would give up its arms anytime soon. One of the group insisted, "I will not turn in any of my weapons, and I, like my friends, have hidden a lot of them including shoulder-fired missiles. I will keep them until I am convinced that the new government truly serves the people."
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 22, 2010 Ahmadinejad galvanizes Lebanon's Palestinians
"The only solution to the Palestinian issue is for the invaders (Israelis) of the occupied Palestinian land to leave, and give the Palestinians their rights and return all the Palestinian refugees to their original land. Iran supports Lebanon's bitter struggle in confronting Israeli assaults. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bint Jbeil 10/15/10
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 6, 2014 Lifting the siege of Yarmouk one food parcel & one polio vaccination at a time
Given the 18,000 in need of urgent aid this cold winter morning inside Yarmouk camp, what has been allowed in so far has been a mere trickle, rather minor in a sense. But major for those getting the live saving food parcels and urgently required medical treatment.
SHARE Monday, September 24, 2012 New Challenges Grip Lebanon's Palestinian Camps
What is required without further delay is for an urgent stakeholders meeting to be convened. Including the PLO factions, local and international NGO's, Donors, the Palestine Red Crescent Society, UNRWA, EU and UN groups as well as local political parties in order quickly produce an executable plan avoiding duplications, to address these needs.
SHARE Friday, February 10, 2012 Why did Palestinian refugees come to Lebanon? Don't ask. Lebanese schools won't tell!
In most private and public schools in Lebanon, sensitive political subjects have long been culled from textbooks by polarized confessional watchdog committees seeking a proper education for their children. Even UNWRA schools are forbidden to teach Palestinian history in Lebanon or even their history in Palestine lest the Zionist controlled US Congress cut UNWRA funding.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, November 20, 2015 Political Salafism has failed Lebanon's Palestinians. Can Jihadist Salafism succeed?
Those who claim to want to preserve the relative quietude in the Palestinian camps here would do well to resist ISIS in a concrete form. One of the most effective ways would be by using their political power positively by taking 90 minutes in Parliament to grant Palestinians in Lebanon the six decade overdue most elementary civil rights to work and to own a home
SHARE Wednesday, February 22, 2012 Iranian Solidarity With Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon-More Than Words Are Needed.
if the Iranian government is to give meaningful achievement to its words it should facilitate for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon the right to work and to own a home. This decision would require only the cost of one phone call, or email, from Tehran to Dahiyeh.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 20, 2012 Grim reality but also hope for Lebanon's Palestinians this Eid al Fitr
Hiba and Hezbollah's other supporters who share Sayed Hassan Nasrallah's oft expressed views demanding basic human rights for Palestinians in Lebanon believe that the Resistance block will, on this 30th anniversary of the massacre at Sabra-Shatila, finally act on what the late Imam Khomeini declared was a central "moral, religious, and political" obligation of all people of good will.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 24, 2013 Fear Spreads through Palestinian Camps in Syria
As of morning on 8/23/13, many of the remaining Palestinians in Yarmouk are seeking somewhere to flee to, visibly afraid that chemical weapons will be used in Yarmouk in the coming days.
SHARE Monday, August 13, 2012 Is the Sinai Peninsula rejoining the resistance?
An American critic of Israel's influence over the U.S. Congress, who is an Assistant Staff Director on a Congressional Committee, emailed that "We are looking into what Israeli leaders knew about the Sinai attack and when they knew it, but no definite responsibility for this operation has been established."
SHARE Tuesday, March 8, 2016 The truce in Syria bodes well for salvaging our Cultural Heritage
There are also reports that in certain areas of Syria hosting archaeological sites, most also being tourist destinations, citizens and volunteer civil society organizations are ready to help restore them immediately when security conditions allow.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 5, 2013 Obama backing ElBaradei?
Once again, the Obama administration was caught by surprise as the enduring "Arab spring", still in its infancy, increasingly portends ill for Western installed potentates in artificially Sykes-Picot style created "countries".
SHARE Friday, April 15, 2011 Why the "Obama Doctrine" won't help the Shia majority in Bahrain
In response to a student's question, Khalidi disputed that there was any "Obama Doctrine" worthy of that label and he predicted the White House would be much more tolerant of human rights abuses in Bahrain than say, in Libya and some other countries whose despotism indexes are no worse than the 200 year ossified Al Khalifa dynasty's war against its majority Shia population.
SHARE Saturday, September 28, 2013 Passing the Torch to a New Generation of Syrians
For this ten millennium civilization and its thousands of priceless treasures, many partially destroyed, emergency efforts are needed today to preserve and protect the structures from thieves and war damage. Not many here would disagree with this priority of the Syrian government.
SHARE Sunday, April 15, 2012 "Mama, will Baba Roumieh visit us in Shatila camp?"
Still, the kids hope the Pope will come and he could indeed attend the Sabra-Shatila Massacre commemoration at Shatila's Martyr's burial site where more than 1,100 bodies were buried in haste as the world discovered the scope of the carnage on September 19, 1982.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 16, 2013 Will Washington grasp the hand being offered by the Iranian people?
Being in Iran during these tense times is to experience an epiphany. Which
is that Iranians and Americans have so very many needs and interests in
common -- yes even in our religious beliefs -- that both peoples should
immediately repair our countries relations and return to the days when
60,000 Iranian students studied in the US and thousands of Americans lived
SHARE Monday, December 5, 2011 A Tireless Advocate of Justice for Palestinians
Francis Khoo will be sorely missed by his friends and loved ones, he will be missed because he leaves a void for many of us who were and remain inspired by his work for Palestinian rights. Francis Khoo is an icon of countless others, who like himself, are neither Arab nor Muslim, neither from the Middle East nor culturally or politically connected to Palestine by birth, but who support the Palestinian cause.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 25, 2013 Palestinian Sisters as Keepers of Their Brothers Inside Emergency Damascene Shelters
Rather, it seeks to highlight the spirit of solidarity, resistance, and good will among Palestinians, forced from Yarmouk and other Syrian refugee camps, and of how they huddle together preparing for a harsh winter, a winter which one senses is not far off.
SHARE Wednesday, March 20, 2013 Sayyeda Zeinab: the 7th-Century Heroine of Karbala
No doubt to the relief of untold millions, the Heroine of Karbala is being protected by her own--Muslims from different sects as well as Christians like Miriam among others--for they, and all who are part of the culture of resistance to injustice, are truly among Zeinab's own. It is right that we should protect her for Zeinab bint Ali, like Karbala, belongs to all of us.
SHARE Sunday, November 13, 2011 Terror and Revenge Engulfs NATO's Libya
There appears to be a Tell Tale Heart paranoia settling in among some NTC elements who believe that if there is one Gadhafi supporter left in Libya it might mean the return of his ideas for Libya's role via a vis the West and its re-colonization of Africa plans, control of Libya's natural resources and its relations with the rapidly changing Middle East.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 2, 2013 The Oft-Predicted Fickle Syrian "Tipping Point' Has Tipped
What Washington fears, according to the same interlocutor from the Russian
embassy who spoke with this observer for nearly two hours, is the
confirmation that the Syrian opposition is ready to immediately enter into
negotiations with the Syrian government without preconditions and that
President Assad's departure or even his future status will not be part of the
process.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 6, 2013 Damascus Notes: Late Night "Town Meetings" before the American Attack
One can only wish the Syrian people well and join with them and all people of good will--as many Christians and, reportedly, more Muslims, will do--for the day of fasting and prayer that His Holiness Pope Francis has called to be observed on September 7, 2013.
SHARE Saturday, April 12, 2014 The Death of Yarmouk Palestinian Camp
However, after months of studying the political, social, military, and economic situation in Yarmouk camp, and based on insightful meetings with former camp residents and PLO stalwarts who have been active in the Palestinian cause going back to the 1980's, or earlier, Yarmouk's survival prospects appear fatally bleak.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 25, 2013 A Draft-Dodging, Zionist Friendly, Rightwing Texan Islamist to lead Syria?
And this week, according to Congressional staffers, both Tel Aviv and the White House are pinching themselves in disbelief over their good luck with installing republican leaning conservative Dixie businessman, the congenial, Ghassan Hitto, as Syria's new interim Prime Minister.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, February 12, 2016 Iranian students claim lifting US-led sanctions is a mixed bag
The fact of the matter is that neither Trump nor any US President is going to scrap the JCPOA and if one tried, America's global allies and likely the American public would strongly oppose its attempt. Nor will the Iranians scrape it.
SHARE Thursday, October 24, 2013 Shimon Peres Suffering From Portnoy's Complaint? Guilt-Edged Insecurity
Peres' Complaint to colleagues is that he has to say things to the public that are beginning to sound hollow after six decades of trying to parry and neutralize the Palestinian resistance to Zionist theft and colonization. Peres no longer believes what he used to "about the Zionist BS," as one congressional source put it.
SHARE Tuesday, February 22, 2011 From Tahrir Square To Shatila Camp: "Cry Hurriya!" (freedom!)
The Tahrir Square "Hurriya!" tremors spreading across the Middle East may or may not be impacting today's events in the historically liberal American state of Wisconsin and other areas of America, yet most of us would agree that the Tunisian-Egyptian revolutions are being felt far and wide and appear to be dramatically gaining steam. Lebanon's Palestinian refugees camps are no exceptions.
SHARE Wednesday, September 4, 2013 Which Americans will arrive first to Syria?
The Action Plan concludes: "We cannot necessarily stop them from doing what they intend to do, but we can make their aggression harm them far more than Syria and its people in the end. Herein lays the power, using the enemies momentum against him in the most powerful way possible.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 26, 2013 US-led Sanctions Contribute to the Destruction of Syria's Millenary History
I left the UNESCO office sort of crestfallen. Not because of the lady's roughness with me, but rather because of the realization, yet once again, that our species quite simply does not learn much from history and apparently will repeat it until the end of times. May God protect the people, everywhere, from the politicians.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 19, 2013 UN General Assembly vote reflects shift in Syrian public opinion
Over the past four months it has become increasingly clear that
public opinion in Syria is shifting for reasons that include the following:
While inflation at the grocery stores in probably the most common complaint
heard from a cross-section of society here, the population is adapting
somewhat to higher prices and it appears to credit the government for efforts control inflation and reduce the impanct of US sanctions
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, December 31, 2012 Will Syria Go on the Offensive at The Hague?
Moreover, unilateral US sanctions, without the imprimatur of the United Nations are blatantly illegal under International Law because they are in fact multilateral and impose penalties on any country which opposes the sanctions or does not choose to participate in them;
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 6, 2013 Four Decades after the Tishrin" War Self-Delusion
Commenting on the report's claim that Israel is now better off strategically than at any time in its history, the military analyst for the Ma'ariv newspaper, Amir Rapaport, observed wryly that "the last time we boasted that things were never better was in the autumn of 1973."
SHARE Monday, May 26, 2014 Syria's Palestinian Refugees to Lebanon
But time is short and refugees have few friends in Lebanon these days. A five minute phone call from the White House or Tehran to their respective surrogates could fix the problem for these students for whom the opportunity to educate themselves is a birthright.
SHARE Sunday, December 16, 2012 Syrian Students Condemn American-Led Sanctions that are inflating food prices" Damascus Street Notes
The results of a student-led survey of grocery stores in Damascus, completed on 12/12/12, shows the following increases in food prices that citizens here must pay against the backdrop of current unemployment figures currently estimated by economists as being between 40-60 percent of the population.
SHARE Thursday, July 14, 2011 France Says NATO Bombing Has Failed
Since the beginning of the NATO operation (3/31/11) the alliance has conducted nearly 15,000 sorties, including close to 6000 bombing missions according to NATO's media office in Naples, Italy ( oup.media@gmail.com ). The most recent attacks reported on 7/9/11 included 112 sorties and 48 bomb/missile attacks, and that is about average.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 24, 2011 Will the UN insist on Fair Trials for Ex-Regime Loyalists in Libya?
Ocampo's challenge will be to explain the legal steps to officials in Tripoli, and try to convince them that The Hague is the better option for the coming trials. Ultimately, it is up to the ICC judges backed by the UN whether to hand over the cases against Saif al Islam and Abdullah al Senussi to the NTC.
SHARE Tuesday, November 27, 2012 How the Hamas Victory in Gaza Can Bring Civil Rights to Palestinians in Lebanon
Indeed, if these forces will generate the political will, no more than 90 minutes of Lebanon's Parliamentary time will be required to truly make the victory in Gaza historic while at the same time lifting the shame off Lebanon for its massive violations of international and Lebanese laws by granting Palestinian refugees the most elementary civil right to work and to own a home.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 11, 2014 A Faux “Humanitarian Pause†in Homs?
It appears certain that in the coming few days the intentions of both sides will become clearer with respect to the Geneva process and their willingness to allow full humanitarian aid into Homs and the evacuation of those who want to exit the Old City.
SHARE Sunday, February 10, 2013 US officials confess to targeting Iran's civilian population
"It would be a defense lawyer's worst nightmare wouldn't it?
I mean to have one's clients, in this case the Vice-President of the
United States and the outgoing Secretary of state confess so publicly
to serial international crimes against a civilian population?"
SHARE Monday, March 31, 2014 Palmyrenes: Risking their lives to preserve our Global Cultural Heritage
Syria's Cultural Heritage, the cultural heritage of every one of us is also protected by a legal penumbra that emanates from and extends the 1949 Geneva Convention (IV) on the Protection of Civilians. Attacks on cultural heritage are also outlawed by post WW II bilateral and multilateral international treaties as well as international customary law.
SHARE Friday, December 10, 2010 Should "Embassy Beirut" Take a "Time Out"?
Barring new revelations or overt actions by the Embassy that green-light another Israeli aggression against Lebanon, some here believe that the US Embassy may well be closed down, and experience an imposed "time out" which, in the case of the US Embassy in Tehran, has lasted for 30 years.
SHARE Sunday, September 15, 2013 "Go Tell It on the Mountain, From the Peaks of Qasioun!"
One is Alaa, a United States social history buff, who, to my great enjoyment, sang a resistance song she is writing, asking me my opinion. The song is adapted from the Afro-American spiritual classic, written by John Wesley Work, Jr.
"Go Tell It on the Mountain, From the Peaks of Qasioun and Everywhere;
Go Shout It out from Adam's Cave-- Where Syria's Blessed Resistance Was Born!"
SHARE Sunday, October 24, 2010 Lebanon's Palestinian Civil Rights Campaign moves into the Christian heartland
Even though not even one work permit has been issued to one Palestinian in
Lebanon since the August 17, 2010 "right to work" law passed in Parliament
and even though Palestinians are still forbidden from owning a home, the
cause of Palestine Civil Rights in Lebanon endures.
SHARE Friday, July 22, 2011 Feltman brandishes the Dahiyeh Doctrine but seeks a fig leaf
Libyan civilians have learned a thing or two from three decades of Lebanon's experience with Israel's five wars against that Levant country. Indeed NATO is using the same bombing, media, political and diplomatic strategy in Libya that Israel employed most recently in Lebanon during its 33 day July 2006 war.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, July 28, 2014 Solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza begins in Lebanon's Camps
Gaza isn't the only open-air prison; Lebanon has 12 of its own. And the people there are denied the most elementary right to apply for a job in more than 50 professions.
SHARE Friday, August 9, 2013 Vows of "Occupation Until Martyrdom'
Jihadists are entering Syria at an accelerating pace, according to Syrian, UNWRA, and Palestinian officials as well as residents in the refugee camps here. For the now-estimated 7000 imported foreign fighters, Palestinian camps are seen as optimal locales for setting up bases across Syria.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 17, 2013 Targeting Hezbollah in Beirut
One of the more than two hundred active militias in Syria, which calls itself the Company of Aisha Umm al-Muminin (named for the Prophet Mohammed's favorite wife) is additionally claiming responsibility, while several other Syrian rebel groups, some with members now in Lebanon, have issued threats against Hezbollah and vowed to target it.
SHARE Wednesday, April 9, 2014 Will a Syrian victory at a posh London auction house accelerate Global Cultural Protections?
This observer submits that there is adequate Syrian law and international law and British law on the books, if applied, to makes things a bit tough legally for the auction houses of Bonham and Christie and many others. Their lawyers apparently agree. It's as though the Assyrian King might yet exact some sort of revenge on them from his grave.
SHARE Thursday, July 25, 2013 Livni Squeals, Kerry Deals and the EU Picks Up the Tab
Ms. Livni demanded three things from Kerry as the "price tag' of the Israeli government going thru the motions of appearing to be willing to resume negotiations and to state publicly that Israel will consider some sort of slow-down or temporary "time-out' for the frenzied construction project on the West Bank.
SHARE Wednesday, March 14, 2012 Perceptions of the Syrian uprising from Shatila camp
Shocked by what he was witnessing of his Palestinian neighbors squatting wherever they could find some vacant ground, often in appalling conditions, and unable to complete his original mission, Bisher focused on helping his countrymen as best he could.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 20, 2012 Damascus Street Notes
Claims are made in Washington and Europe that the increasing layers of sanctions target only the regime's leader and its policies. This is nonsense. As in Iraq where US organized sanctions have been found to be a main cause of nearly 500,000 deaths of children, those seriously affected here are not the government officials.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 1, 2012 An historic victory for Palestine-another rejection of Occupation
The UN action, which was backed by an overwhelm majority of UN members with a lopsided vote of 138 to 9, may well force the Zionist regime to seriously consider a just peaceful resolution of the conflict.
SHARE Sunday, November 18, 2012 Does Lebanon Really Want to Solve the Imam Musa Sadr Mystery?
"It is not too late to re-energize the moribund Sadr-Yaacoub-Badr Eddine inquiry employing proven and widely available investigative techniques. It's a question of whether there exists the political will on the Lebanese side."
SHARE Monday, November 18, 2013 Because it Exists Why Ain al Hilweh?
According to recent UNRWA-funded study and various recent estimates, school-dropout rates across Lebanon for Palestinian refugee children ten years and older average more than 40%, or ten times that of Lebanese children (CSUCS, 2007).
SHARE Monday, April 4, 2011 They came, they saw and now it's time to act
The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), in partnership with the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR) sponsored a delegation of British and EU MEPs to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon several weeks ago and the 10 member delegation has just released their findings.
SHARE Monday, February 21, 2011 Tawtin or Return: Divergent views from Lebanon, but one common goal
Lebanese opponents of civil rights for Palestinian Refugees often use
less objective and more crude wording to define "tawtin"
("settlement") than is normally employed in civil society discussions.
During last summer's debate in parliament, which failed to enact laws
that would allow the world's oldest and largest refugee community the
basic civil right to work and to own a home,
SHARE Sunday, December 9, 2012 Lebanese politicians continue playing the Palestinians
"Let us commit to ensuring that these disparities are addressed and that no Palestinian child is left behind because of where she or he happens to live or because of the situation of her or his family," she added.
SHARE Monday, March 7, 2011 Has the Lebanon Tribunal drama become farce?
It appears that any pretense of progress via dialogue over the past few years is now discarded and it's once again an all-out struggle between the U.S. backed March 14th minority and the new majority, March 8th alliance.
SHARE Saturday, January 19, 2013 Shedding Crocodile Tears While Collaborating With US-Led Sanctions
The
Organization of Islamic Cooperation suspended Syria's membership on
5/15/12 at a summit of Muslim leaders in Mecca. Saudi Arabia, the summit's
host, has led all Arab League and OIC calls for the Syrian rebel opposition
to be armed, which Foreign Minister Saud al-Fasial described in February
and since as "an excellent idea."
SHARE Thursday, May 23, 2013 How Lebanon's Palestinians Are Being Pulled Into Syria's War
This single act by Lebanon's Parliament, would help repair Shia-Sunni
relations globally and would dampen down -- and expose for what they are,
the extremist Salafist-jihadist-Wahhabist incitements to religious hatred,
both intra-Muslim and Muslim-Christian. It would also, according to several
Palestinian NGO's working in Lebanon, keep Palestinians out of the Syrian
conflict.
SHARE Tuesday, October 23, 2012 Why there won't be a ceasefire this Eid al Adha in Syria
Perhaps it's impolite since Eid is still days away and UN
envoy Brahimi might still pull a rabbit out of the hat, but this observer must reluctantly conclude that Brahimi has failed in his mission. Substantial evidence is garnered from discussions here over the past several days. Would that I be mistaken.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 22, 2013 When Will We Ever Learn?
It is certainly appropriate to honor the victims of the 1983 US Embassy
bombing but it is no less appropriate to honor the other tragedies in Lebanon
during this period under review that precipitated it. In her closing remarks
this week, Ambassador Connelly noted that in her opinion, "the bombing of
the US Embassy taught us the stakes of involvement in this region."
Has it?
SHARE Monday, December 31, 2012 Political Grinches Stealing Christmas From Palestinian and Syrian Refugees
Perhaps as a student, the Minister was absent from school the day when his teacher in his sectarian school was explaining that the monks of St Maron, who founded the Church in Antioch by the Orontes River, were persecuted by the Monophysites but given sanctuary by the Syrians, including many Muslims.
SHARE Monday, July 23, 2012 Now's not the time for Hezbollah to cut and run
The decision of Hezbollah to participate in Lebanese politics and government was the right decision when it was debated and decided in 1992 and it remains even more so today.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 28, 2013 Will the EU again Target the Civilian Population of Syria?
The practice of targeting a civilian population by outsiders in order to achieve political objectives such as regime change is fast heading for the dustbin of history given its blatant violation of all norms of international humanitarian law and common decency reflected in the values most societies.
SHARE Tuesday, September 6, 2011 Sanctioning messenger Dr. Bouthainia Shaaban assaults American values
According to State Department spokesman, Victoria Nuland, who two US Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers speculate may view Dr. Shaaban as a rival of sorts given their job descriptions, and Dr. Shaaban's stellar performances during meetings with US officials both in the US and Syria, the explanation for blacklisting a media advisor remains: "She (Dr. Shaaban) has served as the public mouthpiece for the repression of
SHARE Wednesday, September 12, 2012 The Pope and the Palestinians
Metaphorically speaking, perhaps for some who have actively worked to deny Palestinian refugees in Lebanon even the most fundamental human rights, this courageous act could be seen as a sort of " Full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction" as described in the first Book of Common Prayer, 1549.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 23, 2012 Is Yamouk headed for the same fate as Nahr al Bared?
Over the past ten weeks of intermittent shelling of the camp, more than 40 residents have been killed and each of the Yarmouks 28 schools, six hospitals and 15 mosques have been damaged. The Palestine Red Crescent Society has lost ten ambulances from various rockets and RPG's.
SHARE Thursday, December 1, 2011 Lebanon's Palestinians continue their descent on the 64th anniversary of UN Resolution 181
Following Israel's unilateral declaration of independence in 1948, it accelerated the land grab strategy to secure an absolute Jewish majority. The Zionists assailed, depopulated, and occupied an additional thirty per cent of the land which had been designated for the future Palestinian state under the UN plan.
SHARE Tuesday, February 28, 2012 Marie Colvin (1956-2012)
"You hear all this talk about the meaning of the media, the need for integrity etc etc," she said during a November 2010, talk at London's St Bride's Church -- the on Fleet Street at an event to honor fallen journalists.
"But isn't it quite simple? You just try to find out the truth of what's going on and report it the best way you can. And because we are kind of romantic, our sympathy goes towards the underdog."
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 14, 2013 How Damascene Jews hope to return".. to normalcy
The path to internal civil peace for Syria, and likely the region, in the view
of Damascene Jews, as well as others in Syria seeking a return to normalcy,
emphasize the following points.
SHARE Monday, April 1, 2013 Who's Playing with the Imam Sadr Case and Why?
Meanwhile, trying to involve Palestinians in the disappearance of the revered Lebanese trio, simply because they are an easy target these days and are trying to stay on the sidelines of the Sunni-Shia strife is a disservice to every Palestinian everywhere. And it sidetracks the pursuit of truth and justice for the Musa Sadr case which is in need of more cooperation from all concerned.
SHARE Saturday, January 12, 2013 "Mr. Obama, Tear Down These sanctions!"
As a result of the sanctions, food prices have soared beyond the means of much of the Syrian civilian population. Too many of the young, old, infirm, and impoverished are dying monthly, according to Nizar, an English literature major, as a direct and foreseeable consequence of these sanctions.
SHARE Thursday, March 22, 2012 How Many Violations of US Arms Laws are Too Many?
The US / Israel lobby accurately considers American arms control laws as meaningless. The prohibitions against Israel's use of American weapons against civilians have not, are not and in all likelihood will never be enforced against Israel given the regime's continuing occupation of much of the US government.
SHARE Thursday, August 1, 2013 The morning after blacklisting Hezbollah: is the EU experiencing "buyer's remorse'?
The best move for the EU now, as it tries to recover from the current self-inflicted debacle is to do nothing to inflame the situation by cooking up some dubious terrorist lists. Rather, in six months the EU should assure that this month's blacklisting decision acquiesced in under US-Israel pressure, lapses.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 9, 2013 Bashar Assad's night out at the Opera House
"Who is here so rude or unpatriotic that would not be a Syrian nationalist? "- Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak--for him
I have not intentionally or unjustly wronged. I pause for a reply."
SHARE Tuesday, December 27, 2011 * A Tale of Two Squares and Two Movements
In Abbasiya Square close to Noor Mosque, the attitudes and trappings are in opposition to what has been happening in Tahrir Square. Same souvenirs, candy, caps with the Egyptian flag on them, T-shirts, face painting, but with a different political message.
SHARE Thursday, April 11, 2013 When Yarmouk camp fled to Shatila
Today however, Palestinian refugees are being severely punished in Syria out
of revenge by jihadst factions and others, for not becoming involved in the
current Syrian civil war as they insist on staying out of this incredibly
tragic mess.
SHARE Monday, February 4, 2013 Syria's first line of Defense: Dial 133
One wonders if, given the process the past few weeks of sanctions having
the opposite of intended results, that foreign governments may now be
realizing they might have committed some "assessment errors" in Syria
and, in reassessing their objectives, may now be willing to come to the
negotiating table.
SHARE Wednesday, March 13, 2013 Despite the multifaceted crisis facing Syria and the Civilian-Targeting US Sanctions, Damascus University excels
Few food or medicine suppliers -- given the sanctions' language, the meanings of which is uncertain even for their own lawyers, some of whom have declared it incomprehensible -- want to risk the wrath of the US Treasury Department and be slapped with severe penalties including very expensive fines by dealing with anyone in Syria.