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| ==Early life == | ==Early life == | ||
| Moor was born in the Rafah refugee camp in the ].<ref name=myrights /><ref name= beast>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Old Problems and New Realities|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/22/old-problems-and-new-realities.html|publisher=The Daily Beast|accessdate=21 December 2013|date=22 Nov 2012}}</ref> In regards to living in Palestine, Moor wrote in a September 2009 Electronic Intifada article that the "occupation looms large over everything in Palestine" and armed men "patrol your neighborhoods, detain your family and neighbors and dictate exactly when you can leave your house.... You learn before long that the men with guns are Jews — and the people living in the beautiful homes on the hills behind barbed wire are Jews. The language on your milk carton is Hebrew. Not long after that, you begin to ask why things are the way they are."<ref name=myrights /> Further, Moor wrote that his grandfather had lived in ] in May of 1948 and had been driven out of his house at gunpoint by ] who he said "Judaized" the village and renamed it Beer Sheva. Moor rejected the "soft Zionists" who take the position that there is "nothing wrong with Israel's existence, even at the expense of another people."<ref name=myrights /> | Moor was born in the Rafah refugee camp in the ].<ref name=myrights /><ref name= beast>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Old Problems and New Realities|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/22/old-problems-and-new-realities.html|publisher=The Daily Beast|accessdate=21 December 2013|date=22 Nov 2012}}</ref> In regards to living in Palestine, Moor wrote in a September 2009 Electronic Intifada article that the "occupation looms large over everything in Palestine" and armed men "patrol your neighborhoods, detain your family and neighbors and dictate exactly when you can leave your house.... You learn before long that the men with guns are Jews — and the people living in the beautiful homes on the hills behind barbed wire are Jews. The language on your milk carton is Hebrew. Not long after that, you begin to ask why things are the way they are."<ref name=myrights /> Further, Moor wrote that his grandfather had lived in ] in May of 1948 and had been driven out of his house at gunpoint by ] who he said "Judaized" the village and renamed it Beer Sheva. Moor rejected the "soft Zionists" who take the position that there is "nothing wrong with Israel's existence, even at the expense of another people."<ref name=myrights /> | ||
| ==Views and commentary== | |||
| ===An academic boycott of Israel=== | |||
| Moor expressed support in March 2010 for an academic boycott of Israel on the basis that "we seek to coerce Israeli thought leaders, a large portion of whom are academics, into behaving humanely towards their neighbors by more closely binding their individual activity to that of their state" and that "we seek to enforce parity across scholarship. The Zionist Israeli state is largely responsible for the extant disparities, and we are obliged to treat its academics in the same way."<ref name=aletho>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Ahmed Moor: Why I am for academic boycott|url=http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/ahmed-moor-why-i-am-for-academic-boycott/|publisher=Aletho News|accessdate=21 December 2013|date=12 March 2010}}</ref> | |||
| ===Racism=== | |||
| "The specter of racism," wrote Moor in a May 2010 article for the Huffington Post, "leers menacingly over Western Europe today. More and more Europeans are reacting to Europe's changing racial profile in ever more illiberal ways, typically under the guise of lawful legislative intervention." He cited a Swiss ban on ]s, a woman fined in Italy for wearing ], and Belgian efforts to ban niqab as evidence of anti-Muslim bias in the continent.<ref name=huffington>{{cite news|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Europe's Anti-Muslim Racism|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-moor/europes-anti-muslim-racis_b_565651.html|publisher=Huffington Post|accessdate=21 December 2013|date=6 May 2010}}</ref> | |||
| Moor was one of over 100 signatories of an October 2012 open letter that declared support for "freedom, justice, and equality" and opposition "to all forms of racism and bigotry, including, but not limited to, ], Islamophobia, Zionism, and other forms of bigotry directed at anyone, and in particular people of color and indigenous peoples everywhere." The letter also opposed "the cynical and baseless use of the term anti-Semitism as a tool for stifling criticism of Israel or opposition to Zionism."<ref name=electronic>{{cite web|title=The struggle for Palestinian rights is incompatible with any form of racism or bigotry: a statement by Palestinians|url=http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/struggle-palestinian-rights-incompatible-any-form-racism-or-bigotry-statement|publisher=Electronic Intifada|accessdate=21 December 2013|date=12 Oct 2012}}</ref> | |||
| ===Commentary on President Obama and U.S. politics=== | |||
| On the first anniversary of U.S. President ]'s June 2009 speech in Cairo,<ref name=whitehouse>{{cite web|last=Obama|first=Barack|title=Remarks by the President on a New Beginning|url=http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09|publisher=Office of the Press Secretary|accessdate=21 December 2013|date=4 June 2009}}</ref> Moor noted that "Islam is not a terrorist religion: peace; fist clench; hand open; assalaamu alaykum….Celestial choirs punctuated every sentence with a rising crescendo of harmonious hymning. And at the climax, we climaxed. We’re Arabs, and Barack is the New America, and we like one another." But President Obama, he argued, had proven a "disappointment," justifying "Israeli death-dealing" and "play golf while Gaza burned."<ref name=intifada>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Obama's Cario Speech one year later|url=http://electronicintifada.net/content/obamas-cairo-speech-one-year-later/8869|publisher=Electronic Intifada|accessdate=21 December 2013}}</ref> | |||
| In an April 2010 op-ed piece for ''The Washington Post'' Moore rejected Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz's statements in a post op-ed that "the majority of Palestinians favor a two-state solution" and "an imposed peace, which largely undermines non-negotiable historic Palestinian rights."<ref name=post>{{cite news|last=Brzezinski|first=Zbigniew|title=To achieve Mideast peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040903263.html|publisher=The Washington Post|accessdate=21 December 2013|author2=Stephen Solarz|date=11 April 2010}}</ref> Moor stated that "any plan that seeks to sacrifice our inalienable human rights to ensure race-based majorities in Israel will fail." The only solution that will "satisf basic American liberal values of freedom of speech, race-blindness, equality under the law," is "the one-state solution." He asked "why Jews can live alongside Palestinians in America, but cannot fathom living alongside Palestinians in Israel." He advised President Obama "to accept reality for what it is" and recognize that "Palestinians will struggle for equal rights in our country in the same way blacks in America fought for their rights....It would be a tragic irony if America's first black president leaves office with a legacy of supporting the world's last apartheid state.<ref name=case>{{cite news|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=The Case for a One-State Solution|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-moor/the-case-for-a-one-state_b_543301.html?view=print&comm_ref=false|publisher=The Huffington Post|accessdate=21 December 2013|date=19 April 2010}}</ref> | |||
| Moor maintained that Israel had no right "to continue as a race-exclusive state." in September 2010. In addition, he claimed that Obama was right to return an Oval Office bust of ] to the British government, because "Churchill was a rabid colonialist."<ref name=subject>{{cite news|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Israel's Jewish Character Is Subject for Debate|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-moor/israels-existence-is-subj_b_742784.html|publisher=Huffington Post|accessdate=21 December 2013|date=30 Sep 2010}}</ref> | |||
| Writing for Al-Jazzera in 2011, Moor equated the conservative writer and commentator ] with the terrorists ], ], and ], saying that they share the values of "militarism, conformism, chauvinism and jingoism.<ref name=jazeera>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Norway's attacks reveal world of hatred|url=http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/07/201172412744740495.html|publisher=Al Jazeera|accessdate=21 December 2013|date=24 July 2011}}</ref> " In a July 2011 post op-ed piece for The Blaze, Jonathon Seidl stated that Moors claims were "laughable" and that " Beck….doesn’t advocate violence. He regularly calls for peace and even held a non-political event in Washington D.C. last year to encourage people to find God." | |||
| In a June 2012 article for Al Jazeera, Moor wrote that the influence of the Israel lobby in ] can make it "hard to remember" that the U.S. "is a sovereign country." Israelis, he claimed, "are helping write US laws, funding US campaigns, and helping craft US war-making policy," while Americans are fighting the wars.<ref name=lobby>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=How the Israel lobby erodes US sovereignty|url=http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/06/2012625111756468675.html|publisher=Al Jazeera|accessdate=23 December 2013}}</ref> | |||
| "Something is unravelling in America," Moor claimed in a November 2011 article for ''Al-Jazeera''. "The dream, the purpose and the drive are worn and tired. The people are under siege." He held up Occupy Wall Street as a salutary development in this context, an "organic," "homegrown," "viral," and "near-spontaneous" movement by the "pauperized American worker and the indigent American family" in reaction to "a government at war against its people," ruled by "a venal class of politicians and financiers" who had staged "a stealthy coup."<ref name=dream>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=As the American dream unravels|url=http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111211422979710.html|publisher=Al Jazeera|accessdate=23 December 2013}}</ref> | |||
| In a letter to ''The Los Angeles Times'', Moor wrote that Israel's "coloniz" of the West Bank, among other offenses, had rendered a two-state solution "impossible," that some Israelis had now begun to understand "that the deep, irreversible colonization of territory comes with a price: the end of the Jewish state as it is," and that "America's obsequious coddling turns out to have been a curse for the Jewish state." He criticized President Obama for "stay mum" about Israel's killing of "1,400 Palestinians in Gaza... in Operation Cast Lead" and cited "Richard Goldstone's damning report."<ref>{{cite news|last=Goldstone|first=Richard|title=Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israel-and-war-crimes/2011/04/01/AFg111JC_story.html|publisher=The Washington Post|accessdate=23 December 2013|date=1 April 2011}}</ref> Further, Moor stated that Palestinians "want...to live as free human beings in our country, in the absence of a foreign military occupation. We want to return to our towns and cities that were ethnically cleansed of us in 1948. We want to vote for our government....We want a united Jerusalem."<ref name=latimes>{{cite news|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=What Israel wants from the Palestinians, it takes|url=http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/17/opinion/la-oew-moor-israel-palestine-20100917|publisher=Los Angeles Times|accessdate=23 December 2013|date=17 September 2010}}</ref> | |||
| In regards to going to war with Iran on behalf of Israel, Moor wrote that the U.S. should not go to war. "The mongrel dogs of war are foaming at the bit. For years they've cowered in their damp trenches, bristling in the heat. But they're back now. They've gathered their sagging flesh and cast their milky, crusty eyes at Iran. The mongrel dogs of war are planning another war."<ref name=post>{{cite news|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=America Cannot Go to War for Israel|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-moor/america-cannot-go-to-war-_b_682467.html|publisher=The Huffington Post|accessdate=27 December 2013|date=18 Aug 2010}}</ref> | |||
| Moor described the U.S., Israel, and Iran in a January 2012 article for Al Jazeera as "the axis of instability" in regards to Iran’s goal of obtaining a nuclear weapon. Moor wrote that "earlier this month, an assassin attached a magnetic explosive device to his car in Tehran" killing Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a 32-year old Iranian nuclear scientist. "In the civilized world," Moor noted, "the lives of scientists and other civilians are formally protected from directed inter-state violence" and that "the act of deliberately targeting civilians… is terrorism." Moor went on to write that "while the interests of Iran, the US, Israel and the Gulf states are clear enough, the behavior of leaders in those countries remains difficult to predict."<ref>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Israel, Iran and the US: Axis of instability|url=http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201212194348390751.html|publisher=Al Jazeera|accessdate=27 December 2013|date=24 June 2010}}</ref> | |||
| ===Israel=== | |||
| In an August 2010 Huffington Post article, Moor wrote that "Israel continues to lurch and stagger in the darkened bog of tribal chauvinism" and that its "further descent into the bellicose murk is being felt by the country's minorities," with "Home destructions and deportations" portending "a bleaker future for non-Jews in Israel." Describing Israel as "an apartheid state" that is guilty of "ethnic cleansing," Moor argued that Zionism...is anachronistic in the 21st century," calling it "illiberal" and "racist" to relegate "non-Jews who have lived on the land for generations...to second-class citizenship." He maintained that "Western liberals have engaged in willful denial about the true nature of Israel," blinding themselves to the fact that a self-designated "Jewish state" cannot also be "liberal and democratic."<ref name=both>{{cite news|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Israel Cannot be Both Jewish and Democratic|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-moor/israel-cannot-be-both-jew_b_671548.html|publisher=The Huffington Post|accessdate=27 December 2013|date=9 Aug 2010}}</ref> | |||
| Moor noted in a September 2011 piece for Al Jazeera that Israel's global position has eroded and that "an increased awareness of Israeli apartheid around the world has worked to undermine the historically sufficient 'security' argument used to justify the occupation of Palestine." This is especially true, he wrote, in Egypt under the new Morsi regime, where the people consider Israeli "apartheid" an "atrocity" and are unsympathetic to "the argument that it was necessary to ethnically cleanse Palestine in order to establish Israel."<ref name=pressure>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Israel under pressure|url=http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/09/201191113575692724.html|publisher=Al Jazeera|accessdate=27 December 2013|date=13 Sep 2011}}</ref> | |||
| In a May 2012 article for The Daily Beast, Moor criticized the basis of Israeli journalist ]'s support for a one-state solution, writing that "Glick wants both the land and the Jewish dominance that goes with it".<ref name=glick>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Who's Afraid of Caroline Glick?|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/24/who-s-afraid-of-caroline-glick.html|accessdate=27 December 2013|date=24 May 2012}}</ref> | |||
| In November 2012, Moor, was cited by Rachel Gotbaum as "complaining that the U.S. designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization makes it difficult for U.S. citizens to send aid to help people in Gaza:"<ref name=wbur>{{cite web|last=Gotbaum|first=Rachel|title=Local Groups Mobilize Support For Israelis, Palestinians|url=http://www.wbur.org/2012/11/19/local-israeli-palestine|publisher=90.9 wbur|accessdate=27 December 2013|date=19 Nov 2012}}</ref> Moor wrote in November 2012: | |||
| :"The notion of a one-state solution may seem whimsical or even dangerous at this dark time, but it is precisely when conditions are bleakest that people on both sides require a positive vision for the future. Liberal democracy—the idea that everyone, Jew and non-Jew, is equal before the law—has served us well here in the United States. Could it serve Palestinians and Israelis equally well?"<ref>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Old Problems and New Realities|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/22/old-problems-and-new-realities.html|publisher=The Daily Beast|accessdate=27 December 2013|date=22 Nov 2012}}</ref> | |||
| ===Palestine=== | |||
| In a November 2010 Huffington Post article, Moor stated that it was time to dismantle the Palestinian Authority. He noted that the "Netanyahu-engineered ‘economic miracle’ is the predictable result of periodic cash injections into a closed economic space." In regards to "European donor funds" sent to rebuild the region, Moore stated that these funds were "meted out in salary form to sustain Fayyad’s repressive police state" and that these salaries are used to purchase "regular commodity goods" that, because of "Israeli impos anti-market, anti-competitive, protectionist economic policies," create a "badly developed Palestinian service economy whose primary function is to consume Israeli goods."<ref name=time>{{cite news|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=It's Time to Dismantle the Palestinian Authority|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-moor/dismantling-the-palestini_b_779866.html|publisher=The Huffington Post|accessdate=27 December 2013|date=6 Nov 2010}}</ref> | |||
| "On Palestine," wrote Moor in an October 2012 article for Al Jazeera, "change is underway. Despite the best efforts of Binyamin Netanyahu, Barack Obama and John Boehner, the Palestinian cause is gaining ground in the American mainstream - a necessary step for changing the reality on the ground."<ref>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Palestinian cause gains ground in the American mainstream|url=http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/20121021112143407608.html|publisher=Al Jazeera|accessdate=27 December 2013|date=24 Oct 2012}}</ref> | |||
| In a December 2012 article for Al Jazeera Moor stated that the "balance of legitimacy," thanks to movements such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, was tilting away from Israel and toward the Palestinians. "While Israel can destroy, demolish and colonize, it cannot resist the overwhelming morality of the Palestinian cause. It cannot prevent its deepening isolation and accelerating delegitimization." he wrote | |||
| When the Palestinian division of the Arab League urged Palestinians in Israel to vote in January 2013, Moor argued that this action "suggests that the Arab League understands that the Europeans are limp and that the Americans are partisans—and that desperate times call for imaginative thinking."<ref>{{cite web|last=Moor|first=Ahmed|title=Arab League Urges Palestinian-Israelis To Vote|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/21/arab-league-urges-palestinian-israelis-to-vote.html|publisher=The Daily Beast|accessdate=27 December 2013|date=21 Jan 2013}}</ref> | |||
| ==One State Conference== | ==One State Conference== | ||
Revision as of 01:46, 28 July 2014
| Ahmed Moor | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1985 Rafah refugee camp, Gaza Strip |
Ahmed Moor (born in the Gaza Strip c. 1985) is a Palestinian-American political commentator and activist who is an outspoken critic of Israel and supporter of the Palestinians. He is the co-editor of the book After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine which was published in 2012.
Early life
Moor was born in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. In regards to living in Palestine, Moor wrote in a September 2009 Electronic Intifada article that the "occupation looms large over everything in Palestine" and armed men "patrol your neighborhoods, detain your family and neighbors and dictate exactly when you can leave your house.... You learn before long that the men with guns are Jews — and the people living in the beautiful homes on the hills behind barbed wire are Jews. The language on your milk carton is Hebrew. Not long after that, you begin to ask why things are the way they are." Further, Moor wrote that his grandfather had lived in Beer al-Sabaa in May of 1948 and had been driven out of his house at gunpoint by Zionists who he said "Judaized" the village and renamed it Beer Sheva. Moor rejected the "soft Zionists" who take the position that there is "nothing wrong with Israel's existence, even at the expense of another people."
One State Conference
Moor was an organizer of a "One State Conference" at Harvard University in March 2012. Its stated goal was "to educate ourselves and others about the possible contours of a one-state solution and the challenges that stand in the way of its realization." Penny Schwartz, writing for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said critics regarded the conference as "a thinly veiled assault on the legitimacy of the Jewish state", a view that the organizers regarded as amounting to "thinly veiled attempts to silence any criticism of Israel".
After Zionism
Moor is the co-editor of After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine (2012), which argues for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Time has run out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Jewish colonization of Palestinian land," reads the publisher's description of the book. "Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working together to forge a different, unified future."
He and his co-editor, Anthony Lowenstein, write in the book that they do not agree on everything, but that they share a belief "that Jews and Palestinians are destined to work together, whatever our differences in background, ideals and daily life. We are connected with our desire to see peace with justice for our peoples." Moor himself has said that he and his co-editor "adapted a one-state paradigm mainly because one state exists today. Israel/Palestine is an apartheid state." He has said that he and Lowenstein are primarily concerned not with questions of identity and different value systems but with "the empirical reality." Moor criticizes "the persistence of this two-state idea," describing it as "an article of faith" that "has very little to do...with the reality on the ground."
"The very title will be off-putting to almost all supporters of Israel," Publishers Weekly said in a review of After Zionism, but said that the book "offers valuable contributions to a debate that should be front and center, yet is confined to ever-smaller margins."
Business ventures and current academic enrollment
In November 2013, Moor announced the beta launch of his new website liwwa.com. Moor is listed as the Co-founder and CEO of the company. The website is described as a tool for "small business in need of capital with people who want to invest….all in conformity with Islamic financial regulations."
Moor is cited as a graduate student of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
References
- "Ahmed Moor". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
- ^ Moor, Ahmed. "My rights, my remedy". The Electric Intifada. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=requires|archive-url=(help) - Moor, Ahmed (22 Nov 2012). "Old Problems and New Realities". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
- "About us". One State Conference. 2012.
- ""One State" Conference at Harvard: Analysis of Speakers and NGO Involvement". One State Conference. 2012.
- Schwartz, Penny (6 March 2012). "One-state conference at Harvard signifies possible new front in campus Israel wars". JTA: The Global Jewish News Source. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
- "After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine". Amazon. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
- Smith, Amelia (29 Oct 2012). "After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine". Middle East Monitor. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
- ^ "Video and Edited Transcript Mr. Antony Loewenstein and Mr. Ahmed Moor Transcript No. 373". The Jerusalem Fund. 13 Sep 2012. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
- Moor, Ahmed. "The liwwa Vision". Liwwa. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
- "Liwwa Homepage". Retrieved 27 December 2013.
- Moor, Ahmed (29 June 2012). "How the Israel lobby erodes US sovereignty". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
- "Ahmed Moor Biography". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 27 December 2013.