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A project of Common Dreams

For Immediate Release
Contact: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Obama in Cairo

WASHINGTON

HOSSAM EL-HAMALAWY
El-Hamalawy is a journalist and blogger in Cairo.
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HEDY EPSTEIN
Epstein, a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust, is author of Remembering Is Not Enough.
After World War II, she worked at the Nuremberg Medical Trial, which
tried the doctors accused of performing medical experiments on
concentration camp inmates.

She said today: "Of course it's good that Obama will be
commemorating the victims of the Nazis while in Europe. But in Cairo,
he should acknowledge the 700,000 people who were driven out of what
would become Israel in 1948. Some of those same Palestinian refugees
are now in Gaza and continue to suffer Israeli attacks. Current Israeli
military and economic policies are continuing the slow-motion ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians."
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ABDUL MALIK MUJAHID
Abdul Malik Mujahid is an Imam in Chicago, president of the Muslim
group Sound Vision and vice chair of the Council for a Parliament of
World Religions.

He recently wrote the piece "The U.S. and Pakistan's Aerial Bombing Will Kill Civilians and Make More Terrorists."

He also wrote that "President Obama visited churches and
synagogues in the U.S. during his election campaign, but not a mosque"
in a recent piece titled "Engaging American Muslims Will Give a Far Better Message to the Muslim World Than Speeches."

OSAMAH KHALIL
Khalil is a PhD candidate in U.S. and Middle East History at the
University of California, Berkeley focusing on U.S. foreign policy in
the Middle East. He spent three months in Egypt last year. He said
today: "The United States has an opportunity to redefine its
relationship with and role in the Arab and and Muslim World; that is
how President Obama will be judged, not by one speech. While his speech
is certainly a positive development, it must be followed by concrete
steps to demonstrate that it is not empty rhetoric designed to mask the
same failed policies.

"Of particular importance to most Arabs and Muslims is ending the
24-month siege of Gaza, the ongoing Israeli occupation and settlement
construction in the West Bank, as well as the occupation of Iraq, the
war in Afghanistan, and continued U.S. support of dictatorships who
have little popular support in their own countries, including his hosts
in Egypt and Saudi Arabia."

A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.