Tuesday, May 20, 2008
..featured in the New York Times:
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Jane Novak, a 46-year-old stay-at-home mother of two in New Jersey, has never been to Yemen. She speaks no Arabic, and freely admits that until a few years ago, she knew nothing about that strife-torn south Arabian country.
And yet Ms. Novak has become so well known in Yemen that newspaper editors say they sell more copies if her photograph — blond and smiling — is on the cover. Her blog, an outspoken news bulletin on Yemeni affairs, is banned there. The government’s allies routinely vilify her in print as an American agent, a Shiite monarchist, a member of Al Qaeda, or "the Zionist Novak."
Ms. Novak, working from a laptop in her Monmouth County living room "while the kids are at school," has started an Internet petition to free Mr. Khaiwani...
...Nor does she have any background in Middle East studies. One of her opponents in Yemen accused her of being a Zionist member of Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "I had to Google it," Ms. Novak said with a chuckle. "I didn’t know what it was."
It was after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that Ms. Novak, who used to work not far from the World Trade Center, first took an interest in the Arab world. "I thought it would be a good idea to write in the English-language Arabic press on subjects we could all agree on, freedom of the press, equality, stuff like that," she said.
In 2004, she started her blog, www.armiesofliberation.com, adorned with a Stars and Stripes logo, and soon wrote an article defending Mr. Khaiwani, who was in prison. He wrote her a letter of thanks, addressing it to "Jane Novak, the American journalist and political analyst."
Sign the Petition to Protect Media Freedom in Yemen
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About two weeks ago I posted about Cotillion sister Jane Novak, who has become an outspoken advocate for a Yemeni journalist, Abdul Karim al-Khaiwani, who is facing execution for sedition. Since then, so many have signed the petition and blogged this ... Read More
Jane is Bullshit, she is just paid and they write or she writes in retur or else how can a person write about a country he or she has not visited before. She is only a SARTAM as Israelis say in Hebrew.
Salim - I don't speak Hebrew, so I googled the word 'SARTRAM' and found links to Israeli surnames and a large-eared cat. None of these links indicated what the word meant.
What is the definition, as you know it, of 'sartram'?
Yemen is currently being attacked, not by US or Israeli troops, but by Saudi al Qaeda militants. Americans have also suffered Saudi/al Qaeda attacks.
Your government won't blame the Saudis for their attacks against Yemen because they are so accustomed to being toadies to the KSA. Our government does the same thing. No matter what the Saudis do, your government will beg, whine and plead for favors from their Saudi 'friends'. Just like our government. So, it's not so hard for Americans, even housewives from Jersey, to understand Yemen's predicament.
sorry, the word is SARTAM - I got it right in google, but misspelled it here.
Nappy reads it as a typo; sartan was intended. Sartan means cancer -- the astrological sign and animal (crab), tropical latitude and the diseases.