Arab

Twenty years ago, tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets of Moscow, just as Egyptians, Tunisians and Syrians have this year — rejecting the old order, demanding freedom and democracy. That August, the Russian democrats prevailed because their will was greater than that of those who plotted the coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The dynamics of the Arab Spring are strikingly similar. I was there that day, as the ABC News correspondent in our Moscow bureau.

I have noticed a strange difference in how the media (including the FOX propaganda channel) cover similar events - and no, I'm not talking about the budget nonsense or any other Washington stupidity. I mean the way you refer to the young people taking to the streets in Arab countries like Syria and Tunisia as "rebels" engaged in a "revolution," while young people in England doing exactly the same things are called "criminals" engaged in "riots. " Methinks your double standard is showing.

The Quartet for Middle East peace met in Washington last week, and after the meeting a senior U.S. administration official said, "there are still gaps [between the Israelis and Palestinians]," and "more work needs to be done. " A new path to peace and better lives for Israelis and Palestinians are desperately needed, and the pro-democracy movements sweeping across the Middle East point the way. A key lesson of the Arab Spring - that everyday people can and must play a critical role to achieve fundamental change in the Middle East - also applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Regarding your editorial "Obama and the Arab Spring" (May 20), your assessment that the president laid out a "pragmatic, nuanced approach to the region" is not borne out by the realities on the ground. The region is still embroiled in chaos and conflict. Most recently Coptic Christians and Islamists have clashed in Egypt. Libya seems mired in stalemate. Bahrain and Syria continue repression and murder of protesters on the streets. And Saudi Arabia's royal family is not even remotely ready for democracy.

The most surprising aspect of President Barack Obama's speech Thursday on U.S. policy in the Middle East may have been his strongly worded call for a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on Israel's boundaries before 1967. Observers had been speculating for weeks about whether Mr. Obama would offer his own plan for a Mideast peace agreement as the White House scrupulously declined to comment on the subject. Yet the outline for peace unveiled by the president Thursday was surprising not so much because it was anything new but because, as the president acknowledged, everybody has known all along that's what ultimately has to happen - even though they've spent decades pretending otherwise.

Consider these two comments if you want to know who is our ally and who is our enemy. Hamas, which controls the Gaza strip and regularly fires rockets into neighboring Israel, has condemned the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden and said it "mourned him as an Arab holy warrior," according to news reports. "We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood," said Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas in Gaza. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the U.S. operation a "resounding victory for justice, freedom and the values shared by all democratic countries fighting shoulder to shoulder against terror.

Kathryn McNeal didn't believe the news scroll. The Ruxton resident didn't pay too much attention during the 11 p.m. news when she heard that President Barack Obama would give an important announcement. She assumed it would be about Libya or the latest unrest in Arab countries. Then she read the words that Osama bin Laden was dead — bin Laden, the man who had orchestrated the World Trade Center attacks that killed her 29-year-old son, Daniel McNeal, nearly a decade ago. "I thought this could not happen, not in my lifetime," McNeal recalled Monday.

When revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt erupted earlier this year quickly forced out long-time autocratic rulers, many in the West hoped that the pro-democracy demonstrations there would unleash a tidal wave of change across the Arab world. To an extent, those hopes were borne out. In the months since the ouster of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Libya and Syria demanding democratic reforms and an end to dictatorship.

The "lamestream" U.S. media has been conspicuously silent about who has been supplying weapons to the Arab dictatorships which are currently being used to suppress and kill their own people. The guilty include the USA, the Russians, the French, the Belgians and the British just to name a few. The same nations who are now wringing their hands about the ruling elite's brutality using the very weapons they supplied! The British are especially hypocritical when it comes to Libya. According to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, in the third quarter of 2010 (the most recent period for which figures are available)

Sit in on an Arabic Express class at Howard Community College, and you'll learn much about the current protests in the Middle East and North Africa. Tony Rahi, HCC Arabic Express professor, scribbled an Arabic word on the white board, which he later said would be spelled "jorthan" in English. The word means "rats. " "This is what [Moammar] Gadhafi called the protesters today," Rahi said during a recent class, referring to the Libyan leader whose 40-plus-year reign is being challenged by the types of political protests that have been seen this year in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and elsewhere in the region.