New York City, N.Y., Oct 14, 2016 / 06:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).-
Christianity is at a crossroads in the Middle East, and only a
dedicated campaign of aid and activism can help Christians survive as a
merciful, forgiving leaven in the region, said the head of the Knights
of Columbus Wednesday.

“Either Christianity will survive and offer a witness of forgiveness,
charity and mercy, or it will disappear, impoverishing the region
religiously, ethnically and culturally,” Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight
and CEO of the Knights of Columbus, said Oct. 12.

His remarks came at the awards banquet for the Path to Peace Award.   Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the apostolic nuncio heading the Holy
See’s permanent observer mission to the U.N., conferred the award in
recognition of the Knights of Columbus’ work in the Middle East and
their humanitarian work throughout the world. The award is granted by
the Path to Peace Foundation, which supports the Holy See’s U.N.
mission.

Anderson outlined three steps to aid the Christians of the Middle East. “The first step on the path to peace in this region has been taken,”
he said. “Christians have forgiven their persecutors. The second step
must be a level of government funding directed to those communities that
have faced genocide, so that they, and their witness, can survive. The
third step must be the creation of real equality regardless of religious
belief.”

Beirut is to get a new modern art museum with a design inspired by Italian campaniles and Arabic minarets.

BeMA, the Beirut Museum of Art,
will feature a slender tower rising 124 metres into the sky, according
to designs by the winner of an architectural competition revealed on
Thursday.

An international jury has selected the Paris-based Lebanese architect
Hala Wardé to oversee the complex on what the project backers describe
as “a symbolically charged site that once marked the dividing lines in
the Lebanese civil war”.

The art will be drawn from 2,300 works from the early 1900s to 2015
including pieces by 470 Lebanese artists collected by Lebanon’s ministry
of culture, and the first exhibition is scheduled to open in 2020. One
thousand works have been chosen to form the basis of the museum’s
permanent collection.

A mother-of-three, Um Omar is in her mid-40s but the wrinkles and sad
look on her face make her seem like a much older, tired woman. She
wants to tell the story of her son but is fearful of retaliation by the
Lebanese military establishment in case she is discovered. Her name
has been changed to protect her identity.

Um Omar’s son was detained and tortured for three years, and then released at the age of 24 with no charges against him. She shares a grievance with many Sunni Muslims in the Middle East these days, not only in Lebanon.

“We
are victims in the war against terror,” Um Omar says, adding that in
her view Lebanese Sunnis have no leader to protect them.

“We are
oppressed – the Sunni leaders are only focused on their interests and
political gains, and they don’t protect us. [Hezbollah leader Sheikh
Hassan] Nasrallah protects the Shia Muslims. Walid Jumblatt protects
his people – the Druze – and our leaders only call for tolerance while
we face a constant crackdown by the government,” she protests, accusing
the military and state security apparatus.

By  Alex Lockie

In the early-morning hours of October 12, the USS Nitze fired a salvo of Tomahawk cruise missiles at
radar sites in Houthi-controlled Yemen and thereby marked the US’s official entry into the conflict
in Yemen that has raged for 18 months. The US fired in retaliation to previous incidents
where missiles fired from Iranian-backed Houthi territory had
threatened US Navy ships: the destroyers USS Mason and USS Nitze,
and the amphibious transport dock USS Ponce.

After more than two decades of peaceful service, this was likely
the first time the US fired these defensive missiles in combat. “These strikes are not connected to the broader conflict in
Yemen,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said. “Our actions
overnight were a response to hostile action.”

But instead of responding to the attack with the full force of
two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, the Navy’s
response was measured, limited, and in self-defense.

Jonathan Schanzer, an expert on Yemen and Iran at the
Foundation for Defending Democracies, said the US’s response fell
“far short of what an appropriate response would be.”

By Julia Tierney

The Syrian conflict has divided and destroyed many of the
country’s most important cities. Should the fighting cease, they will
require massive reconstruction. Yet I spoke with urban development
specialists at the National Agenda for the Future of Syria who fear that
the war-torn cities of Homs and Aleppo will never be rebuilt. Instead,
they will be razed to the ground and another Solidere will be rebuilt in
their place.

Their references to Solidere are intriguing.
Solidere is the name of the private company contracted to rebuild
downtown Beirut after the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). However,
Beirut’s reconstruction had wide-ranging political and economic
repercussions that offer an object lesson in how not to rebuild a
devastated city.

Beirut- Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) announced Tuesday that an operation to smuggle 3.5 million Captagon pills has been foiled. The thwarted drug sneak in was completed under security collaboration among Lebanese and Saudi authorities. Lebanon’s Central Anti-Drug Office of the Judicial Police thwarted the operation, working in cooperation with Saudi authorities, the ISF said […]

Nemr Abou Nassar is widely known as “Lebanon’s
King of Comedy.” By far the most famous comedian in his country, Nassar —
who’s often billed as simply “Nemr” — regularly performs for crowds all
over the world. He’s recorded five standup specials, been on the Axis
of Evil Comedy Tour and graced the cover of Rolling Stone Middle East. His show A Stand Up Revolution
was a ratings juggernaut for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, but
ended after one season beecause of incompatibility with the network.
While his notoriety has spread across the Middle East and into Europe,
Nassar is still being introduced to American audiences. Eschewing
overtly religious or political material, Nassar aims to bridge cultural
divides with humor.

Westword caught up with Nemr
ahead of his one-night-only special headlining engagement at Comedy
Works South on October 12 to discuss his comedic influences,
 introducing himself to American audiences and finding unity in
laughter.

Westword: Will there be your first trip to Denver?

Nemr Abou Nassar: Yes, sir. Never been before. I’m very excited, to be honest.

After
fleeing civil war with your family, you spent part of your childhood in
the States. I know you were pretty young, but do you have any memories
of this period?

Of the time I spent in America, you
mean? I left America when I was eleven, so I definitely have a lot of
impressions of that time because it was very formative for me. But if
you’re asking if I have any memories of the civil war in Beirut, I was
two, so obviously I don’t. But I remember when I did get to San Diego.
My earliest memories are not happy ones, I can tell you that much. When I
think back on it, and I’ve been asked to often, it feels like a bit
blocked off. Not like a trauma or anything, but I could tell that my
parents weren’t happy. When you’re around a household that doesn’t have
happiness, when there’s a lot of stress, it kind of makes things dark
for everyone else around, you know what I’m saying?

By Syed Hamad Ali 

Andrew Arsan is a historian at Cambridge University specialising in
modern Middle East and French and British imperialism. His book,
“Interlopers of Empire: The Lebanese Diaspora in Colonial French West
Africa”, won last year’s Gladstone Prize, an annual award from the Royal
Historical Society for the best first book in non-British history.

“We
tend to think about the Middle East only in terms of the flow of
refugees,” Arsan tells Weekend Review as we sit in his office at St
John’s College, Cambridge. “People who are forced out by war, by
dislocation, by conflict. Yes, there is clearly a truth to that,
especially at the moment. But we tend to forget the ways in which Middle
Eastern people moved about freely, for economic reasons — as economic
migrants, as labour migrants … in the late 19th, early 20th century,
people who were moving across the Indian Ocean, and also people who
moved out to the US, South America, West Africa. So I was interested, in
a sense, in not treating the Middle East as an exception, as very
different to other parts of the world, but trying to think about it as a
region, like other regions, which fits into a general pattern of global
history in the 19th and 20th centuries.”