A Syrian in the Middle East sent me this (regarding American students in Syria): "On the subject of the American student in Damascus. You gotta love the white man's whining. Here in the UAE they call it 'whinging'. You hear/read it everywhere: the telecom company was one day late to install his/her broadband connection; the helpline took 10 more minutes to respond to her/his call than they'd have done back in his/her home country; the police man unfairly fined him/her; the fabric on the chair of the dressing table, delivered by a big time furnishing company, didn't match the fabric on his/her sofa set. You can literally read all those complaints on the pages of newspapers like the 7days. If anything, these people are discriminated for and not against. When you visit the municipality clinic in Dubai you could say a queue of hundred Indian workers waiting for their blood samples to be taken (for the purpose of issuing a work permit), while the white man breezes by unhindered. Nightclubs have been reproached for their racist entry policies (charging none-white people for entry while allowing white people in for free) so now they've invented something called 'free entry for face members'. You don't need to think hard to realize what color those faces might be. And Marcy is right, the Palestinian people are probably the hardest hit when it comes to travel difficulties in the Middle East. They're the soft underbelly of the Arab people as they've got no government or a leader who would stand up for them. (or as much as you'd expect a mercenary like Dahlan or the religious demagogues of Hamas to help). A Palestinian living in Syria can't visit Lebanon without half a dozen clearances from intelligence agencies. A Palestinian living in Syria or Lebanon can't get a work permit anywhere in the Gulf except the in the UAE. That is only to mention a few. Somebody needs to document all these hardships and bring it out for the world to see."