Dear Sami,

Congratulations are due you and The Independent Monitor on the start of the third anniversary of publishing an Arab American newspaper and surviving in these economic stagnations & financial difficulties.

The Independent Monitor has the advantage of being a consistent publication in English language, serving the Arab American communities in the United States. Its articles are well reasoned and informative.

I have read almost all the twenty-five issues and I have a couple of observations:

1) The Independent Monitor covers the Palestine issues very extensively. As a chief editor you may want to enlarge the coverage for other dominant issues in the Middle East.

2) I noticed on page 26 of the July issue, your notice of “Can You Help?” ending your appeal urging the reader to contribute articles and news to be published in The Monitor. I was one of the first readers who congratulated you for starting the publication of The Independent Monitor, requesting 2-year subscription and offering any help needed by the publication. I just renewed my 2-year subscription.

Over the past few years The Monitor received 10-12 press releases with pictures via email about major political and cultural issues affecting Arab Americans and their standing with or against the power center of Washington, DC.

To my knowledge The Independent Monitor never published any of them. I am enclosing the latest letter outlining the most successful ADC Annual Convention with the surprise keynote speaker President Bill Clinton and the moving speech of his Excellency Hilarion Capucci, the Archbishop of Jerusalem.

I look forward to hear from you.

Best regards,
Raymond Jallow, PhD

_____

Dear Dr. Jallow,

Please accept our sincere appreciation for your kind words. We will never forget that you were our first subscriber. We are now in our third year of publishing and although we have not yet achieved financial sufficiency, we remain determined and hopeful that our community will see in The Independent Monitor newspaper a free, authentic and independent voice embodying the news, views and aspirations of Arab Americans-all Arab Americans.

We are pleased to report that we have increased our pages to 36 and our distribution to 19 states. We will continue to grow until we cover all of the United States and truly become the National Newspaper of Arab Americans.

We publish in English to ensure that English-speaking Arab Americans and our Americans brethren are well informed about Arab Americans Affairs and issues. We do so because the so-called “mainstream” media censors positive coverage of Arab Americans and emphasizes negative coverage of our community.

You are right about our partially unintended overemphasis on Palestinian issues. On one hand, the Zionist occupation of Palestine is a central and seminal factor, which reverberated into attacks on and adverse consequences to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab countries. Additionally, although we welcome submissions from non-Palestinian fellow Arab Americans, these submissions are scant. I would like to extend an invitation to all Arab Americans to submit articles pertaining to all Arab Americans.

Please accept our sincere apology for failing to publish your submissions. It is a very delicate balance that we have to achieve in deciding what to publish between competing stories.

We promise you that we will publish some of your submissions in the future.

Best,
The Independent Monitor
Sami Bishara Mashney

Published in The Independent Monitor August 2009 issue.