Arab Americans

I'm Angela Rye, your host for today.

We're talking about Black and Arab relations.

B, as you know, this has been right in the middle of the news cycle.

Everybody's social media posts, um, came to a head recently, uh, when, um, Rula Jabrio was on with Waj and talked about Hakeem Jeffries being an APAC monkey.

Uh, there is a state representative candidate by the name of Kimberly Fisher out of Detroit who sat with, uh, US Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, um, and talked about what she was seeing in the hood.

Let's roll this clip.

Um, but when you spoke about the Arab American and Black relations, that's evident in the district that I'm seeking to serve.

We, in the last month, we've had two gas stations get closed down because of selling paraphernalia to children.

And the focus of the piece was the way you make this unrealizable.

Mr. about to be prime minister is you target nearby Arab states and you essentially work to dissolve them to make them fall apart.

And Syria was a main focus of that particular paper, but they also said one way of going at Syria was to work to oust Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Oh, and one of the signers of this paper, one of the people who participated was, of course, Richard Pearl, who became Rumsfeld's choice for the head of the Defense Policy Board.

And, you know, the ultimate outcome of that would, of course, be, you know, a bunch of micro states in the Middle East fighting each other constantly and just sort of dissolving the region into chaos.

But, you know, the idea being that that would work to Israel's benefit.

I mean, yeah, Wormser in two different, well, one really long study and another book called Tyranny's Ally that was published by American Enterprise Institute, where a lot of these people are affiliated, has devoted his intellectual work to the necessity of breaking down these Arab states that are hostile to Israel.

And not just Arab states, because now you've been seeing in the last, you know, maybe year, a new push on the part of the anti-Iran people to talk about how Iran is just a collection of different nationalities and it can somehow be broken up or at least...

She served as the Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama and was... earlier Massachusetts' first ever Homeland Security Advisor.

The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she was the first Arab American to lead a state's Homeland Security effort.

Juliet, wonderful to have you on as well.

Thank you so much.

We've had tremendous successes, obviously eradicating al-Qaeda, the rise of ISIS and that changing over time.

But, you know, the domestic terrorism, rise of right-wing terrorism, left-wing terrorism, assassination and political violence, all of those feel very, very different now.

than that unified aspect that both Megan and Nick were talking about just to end on this point as an Arab American and someone who identifies with the community.

What Bush did was sort of beyond, like you can't conceive of it now.

Here's more from the president.

In 55 days, Americans will be going to the polls in one of the most important elections in our country's history.

Your vote will decide whether our country stumbles at the starting gate of the next 250 years or surges forward and never, ever looks back.

I mean, Mo, is there some compelling part of that message that it's like, you know, stay the course after the first two years of a second term, don't make a change now because, you know, give us time?

And you talked about leadership.

We had a big test of leadership for COVID, and all of our institutions really failed.

And by failed, I mean in the sense losing trust of Americans that they were doing leadership.

How many times were we told, we know what stops COVID? And now you have Anthony Fauci testifying since then that the six feet thing, he doesn't know where that came from.

The HUAC era from the 50s into the 60s, the primary target was political dissidents, student activists, and suspected communists.

Post 9-11 era, Muslims, Arab Americans, South Asians, and immigrants.

The government mechanism, the government fucking machine behind these things.

In the 50s and 60s, direct production, the government The HUAC directly edited, narrated, and distributed Operation Abolition as an official state media.

Andrea Ritchie noted that, quote, gender and sexually specific forms of racial profiling and discriminatory policing include failure to respect individuals' gender identity and expression when addressing members of the public and during arrest processing, searches, and placement in police custody, end quote.

invasive searches should never be used for the sole purpose of determining gender identity and an individual's gender identity should be respected in lockups and holding cells to the extent that the facility allows for gender segregation and witness linda sarsour spoke to howe An issue plaguing and deeply impacting Arab American and American Muslim communities across the country is racial and religious profiling by local, state, and federal law enforcement.

We have learned through investigative reports, Freedom of Information Act requests, and lawsuits that agencies target communities by religion and national origin." two point thirteen point one action item the bureau of justice statistics should add questions concerning sexual harassment of and misconduct toward community members and in particular lgbtq and gender nonconforming people by law enforcement officers to the police public contact survey two point thirteen point two action item the centers for disease control should add questions concerning sexual harassment of and misconduct toward community members and in particular lgbtq and gender nonconforming people by law enforcement officers to the national intimate partner and sexual violence survey 2.13.3 action item the u s department of justice should promote and disseminate guidance to federal state and local law enforcement agencies on documenting preventing and addressing sexual harassment and misconduct by local law enforcement agents consistent with the recommendations of the international association of chiefs of police 2.14 Recommendation.

The U.S. Department of Justice, through the Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services and Office of Justice Programs, should provide technical assistance and incentive funding to jurisdictions with small police agencies that take steps toward shared services, regional training, and consolidation.

Pretty much as soon as the towers fell and it was determined to be a terrorist act, people were talking about Pearl Harbor, Day of Infamy, and making all those parallels.

And of course, there was that immediate fear of backlash against Arab Americans.

But what's the point of preventing? It's not going to bring the people who've died back.

It's not going to prevent future attacks, in my opinion.

Because I, I think, I think, like, younger people, and particularly younger progressive people, will not understand this the way that I understand it from the time.

But, you know, one of the things that happened in the 2000 election was that George W. Bush, um, gained a lot of support, uh, from Arab Americans.

Mm-hmm.

Um, specifically on civil libertarian grounds, uh, because they felt that Clinton administration, um, counterterrorism proposals had been too, too anti-privacy, too, uh, you know, surveillance heavy and, and tilting toward racial and ethnic profiling.

We're back.

Um, you know, one thing that I remember from this time, it was considered, like, like, a far-right take at the time, but Ann Coulter was, like, a big person for saying, "How come we're, like, making it so much more of a hassle for everybody to go through airport security all the time?" Like, we know it's not, like, white grandmas hijacking planes, right? Like, we know who we need to target th- these measures against.

And I don't wanna say... 'Cause, like, I, I wanna be clear 'cause I know that there are Arab Americans, Muslim Americans whose communities were profiled and who feel that this, this did not go well for them.

But that was not the main thrust of the Bush administration's policy response.