Franklin P. Lamb

Lawyer and former Board member of the Sabra-Shatila Foundation ; Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace (Beirut-Washington D.C.) ; Former Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon.

23 articles

عربي 1 English 19 français 2 Español 1

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Libya: France Says NATO Bombing Has Failed

by Franklin P. Lamb

Tripoli (Libya) | 11 July 2011
French Defense Minister Gérard Longuet
One of the jokes heard at this week’s massive pro-government Friday post prayer rally at Green Square (in most of the other Arab countries Fridays are days of rage against the government du jour but in Libya Friday prayers are followed by massive pro-Qadaffi rallies, attended two weeks ago by close to 65% of Tripoli’s population) is about how each morning Libya’s leader, following early morning Fajr prayers dons his formal uniform, complete with those (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Libya’s neighborhoods prepare for NATO boots

by Franklin P. Lamb

Tripoli (Libya) | 1 July 2011
Franklin Lamb in Tripoli © Voltaire Network
At ten a.m. Tripoli time on 6/28/11 the Libyan Ministry of Health made available to this observer its compilation entitled Current Statistics Of Civilian Victims Of Nato Bombardments On Libya, (3/19/11-6/27/11).
Before releasing their data, which will be made public this afternoon, it was confirmed by the findings of the Libyan Red Crescent Society and also by civil defense workers in the neighborhoods bombed, and then vetted by researchers at (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

“After You Brother!” Qadaffi Stays And Obama Leaves?

by Franklin P. Lamb

Tripoli (Libya) | 29 June 2011
The 6/27/11 International Criminal Courts (ICC) arrest warrants issued for Muammar Gadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, and Libya intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanoussi, however pleasing to the “rebels” and NATO, probably won’t have much effect on negotiating a settlement between the two camps and certainly the warrants will not facilitate a voluntary regime change. Quite likely, the warrants effects will tend toward the obverse, with the Libyan government ignoring, but ridiculing the (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

From South Lebanon via Queens with Hate…. When Hanan met Peter

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 20 June 2011
Hanan is the Islamophobic Lebanese woman, Hanan Qahwaji who as a child lived in the South Lebanon village of Maryoun overlooking the Lebanon-Palestine border during three years of the on again off again Lebanese Civil War before she became an Israeli collaborator and fled to Israel. Hanan, repackaged as “Rachael”, soon quickly landed a job with Israeli TV and specialized in telling stories about how Muslims terrorized her and her Christian neighbors.
Later, repackaged as “Nour Semaan”, a name (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Israelis Rush for Second Passports

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 4 June 2011
Perhaps historians or cultural anthropologists surveying the course of human events can identify for us a land, in addition to Palestine, where such a large percentage of a recently arrived colonial population prepared to exercise their right to depart, while many more, with actual millennial roots but victims of ethnic cleansing, prepared to exercise their right of Return.
One of the many ironies inherent in the 19th century Zionist colonial enterprise in Palestine is the fact that this (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Is Arab Spring Spreading to US Congressional Staffs?

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 29 May 2011
By unanimously applauding the lies of the Prime Minister of an apartheid regime, the Congress of the United States coveyed to the world the image of a totalitarian and monolithic body. However, this impression masks a more complex reality, emphasizes former Congressional aide Franklin P. Lamb. This unanimity is merely a facade, contrived under AIPAC pressure. Not even the applause breaks were spontaneous; they were marked in the speech which was distributed in advance.

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Obama’s Middle East Speech and Nakba Day 2011

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 21 May 2011
Human march to Palestine; May 15, 2011
No sooner had President Obama turned from his teleprompter at the State Department on 5/19/11 than the AIPAC founded Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Robert Satloff, fumed that the President’s insistence that a solution to the Question of Palestine needs to start with the June 4, 1967 armistice line “constitutes a major departure from long-standing U.S. policy and a dire threat to Israel.”
Satloff: “That departure is not for the better. One (...)

63 years of Israeli occupation

Palestine: To the Edge of Their Lands

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 17 May 2011
From the Lebanon-Palestine border, Franklin Lamb gives a poignant testimony of the both majestic and tragic events which marked the commemoration of the Nakba Day on 15 May. Among the tens of thousands of Palestinians who peacefully amassed on the border, the majority were sighting their occupied homeland for the first time. Braving Israeli gunfire, their message to the world was that this new generation of Palestinians is no less determined to return to its stolen land no matter the sacrifices required.

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Has the Tide Turned in Favor of the Assad Government?

by Franklin P. Lamb

Damascus (Syria) | 14 May 2011
Dmascus, calm and busy.
As many of us observe the great Arab and Islamic awakening of 2011 in stunned amazement, as it rapidly spreads across the region, this observer agrees with those who declare,“ well it’s about time—Godspeed to the rebels and goodbye to the despots.”
Indeed, most of the despots had been installed and propped-up by the US government and its allies without many American citizens’ awareness or liking.
What I continue to find in Syria and what I saw during my first 24 (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Panic in the Houses of Congress and AIPAC?

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 1 May 2011
On April 13, 2011, more than a dozen Israel “First, last and always” US congressional leaders from both houses of Congress held an urgent conference call organized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Their purpose was to discuss how best to promote Israel during next month’s US visit by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and more importantly how to confront the rapidly changing Middle East political landscape. One consensus was that no one saw it coming and that is was (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Why the “Obama Doctrine” Won’t Help the Shia Majority in Bahrain

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 16 April 2011
Secretary Clinton Delivers Remarks at U.S.-Islamic World Forum
Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi passed through Beirut a couple of weeks ago and gave a terrific lecture at the American University of Beirut entitled “Preliminary Historical Observations on the Arab Revolutions of 2011.”
In response to a student’s question, Khalidi disputed that there wasn’t any “Obama Doctrine” worthy of that label and he predicted the White House would be much more tolerant of human rights abuses in (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Does America have a Muslim problem?

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 9 April 2011
“Pastor” Terry Jones
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 relations.
Even as Jones prepares to act as grand inquisitor and plans to prosecute the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) for various imagined (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

They came, They Saw And Now It’s Time to Act

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 5 April 2011
Meeting with Lebanase President Michel Suleiman
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.
It was a quick 48-hour trip filled with tightly scheduled briefing, mainly from Lebanese politicians, including President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Time for Nasrallah and Obama to Talk?

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 29 March 2011
An experienced Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius , to his credit not among the most biased Israeli Hasbara spewers from the Zionist daily, dropped by our Hezbollah neighborhood known as Dahiyeh the other day. During an hour meeting with Hezbollah Foreign Relations Officer Ammar Moussawi and his brilliant assistant, and friend to many Americans, English Literature scholar Hussein Haider, the WP reporter came away apparently impressed with the quality of the discussion with the (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Has The Lebanon Tribunal Drama Become Farce?

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 26 March 2011
Mohammad Raad
This observer had a wild day in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley yesterday. Then again, for one reason or another, it seems that every time I go to the Bekaa it turns into a wild day. It was to be on a quick trip to the city of Zahle to attend a trial of a friend in the Mahkama Genaeya (Criminal Court). All I had to do was make a brief appearance to testify as a character witness for a member of the Bekaa Valley’s largest tribe.
The defendant is a sometimes “journalist” who has done (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Congressman Peter King’s Great Muslim Scare

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 12 March 2011
"Kings, ‘Muslim Terrorism” hearings are the first and hopefully the last of its kind to focus on a single religious group. His false assumptions are being roundly rejected across America and Europe. Counterterrorism experts, veteran’s organizations, interfaith leaders, local leaders and editorial boards, and most importantly the American public are rejecting King’s racist calumny. "
Half a century ago, during the late Senator Joseph McCarthy fueled “great red’ scare” that terrorized many in (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

In Re Barak, Bullahs, BlackWater, Bounties & the STL

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 26 February 2011
Erik D. Prince
When the US marines were in and out of Lebanon in 1983-1984, some of those I met, when visiting their barracks with American journalist Janet Stevens to discuss Israel’s use of American cluster bombs against civilians, had the habit, as did sailors from the USS New Jersey, of referring to the Lebanese Capital simply as “Root.”
Or sometimes they would call it: “The Root” as in, “We came to “The Root” to kick some butt!”
The Marines were responsible for unexploded ordnance clearance (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

As Tahrir Square goes so goes the Middle East?

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 8 February 2011
Tahrir Square (Cairo)
It is difficult to overstate the potential for Egyptian citizens advancing universal aspirations for freedom, dignity and basic human rights now spreading from the determination of those who for more than a week have risked their lives while inspiring much of the World at Cairo’s Tahrir (“Liberation”) Square. Tahrir public plaza near central Cairo has been the traditional site for numerous major protests and demonstrations over the years, including during the 1977 (...)

« Saturday Middle East Report »

Hezbollah and The New Government of Lebanon. Now What?

by Franklin P. Lamb

Beirut (Lebanon) | 1 February 2011
New prime minister Nigib Mikati with former prime minister Saad Hariri
This observer tends to get a haircut about every four months whether I need it or not. But this morning I got more than a trim from my Hezbollah friend and barber, Abass, named after Abass ibn Ali, the brother of Hussein, both martyrs and heroes of the epic 680 a.d. internecine Muslim battle at Karbala in present day Iraq. The Battle of Karbala, for Hezbollah members and Shia Muslims generally, symbolizes the triumph (...)

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