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Jordan is many different things and there's many different parts of it. We don't ever really get to see a modern Arab city, a part of the Arab world where people are seemingly living their lives like everywhere else and also just a part of the Arab world that's surprisingly Americanized, with fast-food joints everywhere and shopping malls. Over the 30 years I've been traveling there, I really saw it grow and become modernized and much more Americanized in a way that surprised me as an Arab-American.
Cherien DabisI think the Arab world has no personality cult situation going on that they have in much of the Western world, South America included. They are a culture of words and religion, and you won't see manycsa charismatic people on Al Jazeera, except for the ones who are now learned presenters. You see Arab leaders getting on TV - which was very hard for me working out how to do the part, since Arab leaders are looking somnambulant, staring into their microphone, almost as if someone's got a hand up their back.
Alexander SiddigBy accident of geography, the world's major oil resources are in Shi'ite-dominated areas. Iran's oil is concentrated right near the gulf, which happens to be an Arab area, not Persian. Khuzestan is Arab, has been loyal to Iran, fought with Iran not Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. This is a potential source of dissension. I would be amazed if there isn't an attempt going on to stir up secessionist elements in Khuzestan.
Noam ChomskyAn Arab activist can take pride in the Arab heritage of mathematics and science or he can take pride in his religion, and there's pride to be taken in both. But one of them could be exploited much more easily and has been in the context of world conflict. And the other is very difficult to do on the grounds that science and literature and mathematics have been among the uniting factors in the history of the world.
Amartya SenSome people say that the West has a cruel history. These people also may see the achievements of Western countries - in terms of the economy, education, health, and social achievements - as a result of exploitation of poorer countries, including Arab countries. Western nations get rich by using resources such as Arab oil. Meanwhile, the countries supplying them raw materials remain poor. Due to such injustices, jealousies are created.
Dalai LamaThe anchors of the Arab consensus have long been Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and both are now weakened forces in Arab politics and diplomacy.
Elliott AbramsIt is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workersโฆ and familiesโฆ but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high that the Arab community and the Arab military forces will not be willing to pay it.
Moshe DayanWhat outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq....They target and kill journalists ... uh, from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al -, like Arab news services like Al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity.
Linda FoleyThe issue of Palestine has been there since more than 60 years. But more important since 1967 when the war was, ended in the defeat of some Arab countries.
Al-Waleed bin TalalThese [Arab] youth who have been inspired by universal values are idealistic enough to imagine a magnificent future and, at the same time, realistic enough to balance this kind of imagination and the process leading to it - not using violence, not trying to create chaos.
Wadah KhanfarA Christian state should be established [in Lebanon], with its southern border on the Litani river. We will make an alliance with it. When we smash the Arab Legion's strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo.
David Ben-GurionWe also have to intensify our air strikes against ISIS and eventually support our Arab and Kurdish partners to be able to actually take out ISIS in Raqqa, end their claim of being a Caliphate.
Hillary ClintonOur ability to effectively engage China and the Arab world rests on shared economic and political interests and mutual understanding.
Rick LarsenThe majority of Arab people would side with Russia and China, not with the West. And they'd throw their 'elites' groomed in and by the West, straight out the window.
Andre VltchekGabriel Levin's book is a journey through time and through entrenched animosities of the Middle East. What's astonishing and refreshing is his ability to combine the reporter's perspective with a deep knowledge of poetry, including pre-Islamic Arab poems. A brilliant poet is at work here-a poet in the rugged landscape of conflict and pain.
Adam ZagajewskiThe problem of ISIS is not recent. Ever since the Second World War, people in this region have been, and are today, living under brutal dictatorships governed by nationalistic fervor. As for the Kurdish question: nobody from the Arab world is serious about fighting ISIS. It's only the Kurdish people who are standing firm against ISIS. And I think Europe, the United States, and most other democratic countries of the world are beginning to look at the Kurds in another way. The Kurds are really becoming their partners in the region.
Mano KhalilPublic spending on infrastructure has fallen to its lowest level since 1947. And the U.S., which used to have the finest infrastructure in the world, is now ranked 16th according to the World Economic Forum, behind Iceland, Spain, Portugal and the United Arab Emirates.
Ray LaHoodIf the Egyptian people can create a democracy in the heart of the Arab world, it will be a more significant contribution to civilization than the great pyramids.
Lindsey GrahamThe day of my arrest I was first put in a room where there were already several other prisoners, most of them Arabs. They laughed when they saw me. Then they asked what I was in for. I said I'd killed an Arab and they were all silent
Albert CamusMany occasions I've sat down with Israelis to say, where do you see your country in 10 years time, and work me back, so we can figure out the synergies and the connections between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. No Israeli has ever been able to answer that question.
Abdallah IIWe do not have many intellectuals who can speak out for us internationally. We have no writers who are recognized, respected and loved outside the Arab world.
Tahar Ben Jelloun[E]ncouraging the Muslim world, and particularly the Arab Muslim world, which is the heart of the global terrorist threat - to adopt democratic ways and to shine the light of liberty into its culture of medieval darkness is a pragmatic necessity for the future security of the civilized world. That is the reality behind the President's address. Only people in serious denial can be blind to this fact. Only liberals.
David HorowitzWe did not adopt socialism out of books, abstractions, humanism, or pity, but rather out of need for the Arab working class is the mover of history in this period.
Michel AflaqOur enslavement to oil has required the repression of millions of Arab people. As they shake off their bonds, so must we.
Naomi KleinMany European countries are fascinated with minorities from the United States. They still see this country as a world power and they covet that power...I was approached by a professor once at the Sorbonne in Paris and asked about racism in this country, and when I reflected on racism on the streets of Paris - you know, I'd be considered an Arab there -well, she didn't want to address that...It just goes to show it was easier for Europeans to study racism in the United States than it is from within the belly of the beast.
Ana CastilloI want to tell you that Israel is a democracy and every citizen is automatically registered to vote. There's a commitment in our declaration of independence, guaranteed under Israel's law, that all our citizens, Arab and Jews, alike, have the right to vote.
Benjamin NetanyahuIt is obvious that putting the Arab-Israeli dispute on a resolution track would be an important element of overcoming the confidence problem in the region.
Recep Tayyip ErdoganThere's enough of a willingness in the West to do sympathetic movies about Arab roles.
Alexander SiddigThe Arab leaders, they don't have a love affair with the Palestinians or the Palestinian leadership, but the publics have, and they cannot feel safe in their own chairs if they accept Israel, the mistress, so to speak, to acknowledge her as a main, the Unter den Linden, the main road, as long as we are not moving forward with the Palestinians.
Ehud BarakI miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical moments in these places.
Zaha HadidMy early childhood was spent living by the Pacific Ocean. I carry with me something imprinted by that wide, limitless horizon, which I learned connected us to different people and cultures, including my own family's origins in the Arab World and Northern Europe. I understood early that my world was only a small part of a much larger one. That captivated me.
Queen Noor of Jordan[Barack] Obama administration looking at taking a more aggressive stance and some of the Arab countries coming together.
Juan WilliamsWell I haven't seen any free elections in the Arab world. They may be coming someday, except for in Israel. In Israel, Arabs have a chance to participate in free elections. Nowhere else really.
Moshe ArensIf you are accused of being associated with terrorism, which could mean you are an Arab- American and you've sent e-mails to a relative in the Middle East, you should get your day in court, and I think you should get a lawyer and a trial, and I think most Americans agree to that.
Rand Paul[Roots of terrorism] come out of a long dialectic of U.S. involvement in the affairs of the Islamic world, the oil-producing world, the Arab world, the Middle East - those areas that are considered to be essential to U.S. interests and security.
Edward SaidThe Arab leadership, after so many years of Obama, they're positively giddy about the arrival of Donald Trump. And when they are giddy, like any other leaders, they might over step. And the danger, of course, is initiating a confrontation with Iran that the U.S. really doesn't want to be involved with at any given moment. They have enough to worry about on the North Korea file.
Jeffrey GoldbergAll the children in the world, when they go to school, have the right to study in their mother tongue. But we go to school and run into literary Arabic as children. It sounds like a foreign language. The words for "house" or "table" or "lamp" are not the same as the words we use at home, and most of the other words are alien to children at school. Classical Arabic is one of the prisons of the Arab world.
Hassan BlasimWhat you have is have equal rights, you don't have equal obligations. Not all Arab citizens have the same obligation, namely defending the country. That's important and it needs to be corrected. Part of the integration is also taking it on themselves the burden, if you will, or the obligation to defend their country.
Moshe ArensWe are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy. We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called 'isolationism.'
Pat BuchananI'm not much interested in prizes, whether from the Arab world or from the Western world. Writing is a very difficult process and I want to continue my work.
Hassan BlasimWe have to be vigilant on two fronts: (1) to not let our anti-imperialism lead to the defense of authoritarian regimes in the region and (2) to not let our enthusiasm for rebellion lead to cheering on the cruise missiles from US warships. These two sirens should worry us as we make our hesitant way alongside the rebirth of a New Left in the Arab world.
Vijay PrashadThere is always the risk that a conflagration in the Middle East becomes larger and more dangerous. In this scenario, we discover that the Arab Spring was merely the prelude to a deeper and much farther-reaching upheaval in the region that has greater impact on countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Ian BremmerAnd if you listen to Irish music, they say that kilts came from the middle east. So really I'm an Arab. If you listen to the way someone like Sinead O'Connor sang. It could be Muslim. You know that angst that sort of ****. That wail. I think it's in our genes. I think certain stuff is in our genes, like nobody can dance like a black guy. It's in their genes. So we don't have oil, but we have poetry.
Gavin FridayThe participation if women in some armies in the world is in reality only symbolic. The talk about the role of Zionist women in fighting with the combat units of the enemy in the war of 5 June 1967 was intended more as propaganda than anything real or substantial. It was calculated to intensify and compound the adverse psychological effects of the war by exploiting the backward outlook of large sections of Arab society and their role in the community. The intention was to achieve adverse psychological effects by saying to Arabs that they were defeated, in 1967, by women.
Saddam Hussein