he makes fun of Thomas Friedman a lot because of his level of Arab language comprehension, among other things.

The reason I quote Prof Abu Khalil so much is that he is one of the few Arabic bloggers around.  There are many who blog about the Middle East but they are American or Jewish and have a biased opinion which does not reflect that of the majority of the population.

He also reads a lot of the area's media, gets a lot of e-mail from various sources, and knows the culture.

IF the NYT had correspondents like this more often, and removed their Zionist slant, perhaps they could be considered credible in the far future.

But come on, their editorials by Cohen over the revolt in Egypt had "Israel, Israel, Israel" all over them.  Who can take that seriously?  Seriously.