Who is Fatina Abdrabboh?

The greatest thing about the internet is Google. You can find out a lot about people, like New York Times Op-Ed contributor Fatina Abdrabboh. Thanks to Google, it didn't take me long to figure out that Abdrabboh has been paranoid about "being watched" since September 11, 2001, and dislikes a certain Jewish instructor at the University of Michigan, from which she graduated earlier this year.

From the Detroit News (September 11, 2002):

Fatina Abdrabboh worries about the new powers of surveillance that government investigators won in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Abdrabboh fears that she, a Palestinian American, and other Arab Americans will become the target of unwarranted wiretaps, monitoring and secret hearings solely because of their ethnicity. She has tucked away most of her favorite "I am Muslim" T-shirts and changed the "Free Palestine" screen saver on her computer.

"My freedom of identity and expression are gone," said Abdrabboh, 21, of Dearborn. "I get the feeling that I'm being watched."

I'd like to know how her freedoms of identity and expression are gone, given her contribution to today's Op-Ed page of the NY Times and feelings expressed in the Detroit News. And maybe she's being watched by her fellow Muslims at Harvard, since she led Ramadan celebrations at the Divinity School last year.

From the Detroit News (October 8, 2001)

Fatina Abdrabboh, 20, dropped out of an honors political science class at the University of Michigan because she felt a Jewish instructor "was extremely nasty to me." The aspiring lawyer said: "I already have three strikes against me: I'm Palestinian, my name is obviously Arab and I wear the hijab." Her father insisted she take off her hijab for safety, and she now removes it off campus.

Gotta get in a jab at the Jews, of course. She's also gone back to wearing the hijab, but in the NY Times she now complains about people staring at her at the Harvard University campus in Cambridge MA, of all places. Given that the Cambridge community is overwhelmingly liberal--and thus more tolerant (heh)--I find her staring allegation hard to believe.

So who is Fatina Abdrabboh? Just another whiny, Harvard grad student who hates Jews and George Bush.