The usually debonair George Clooney looks discomfitted, here with his new wife, Amal Alamuddin
I wonder why?
Here's the scoop on her, from last March 2014 (I collected these from a variety of sources - there may be more to add):
- She’s Druze, which is an offshoot of Islam.
- She is defending Julian Assange, of the Wikileaks fame in his extradition case with Sweden
- Her mother, Baria, is a foreign affairs editor at Al Hayat, a Lebanese newspaper
- She attended NYU School of Law
- After graduation, she joined the New York firm Sullivan & Cromwell, where she worked for three years before moving to London
- She clerked for Sonia Sotomayor when the future Supreme Court justice was a judge at the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which covers New York
- She's worked as an adviser to the UN Special Envoy, Kofi Annan, on Syria
- She has been been Counsel to the inquiry launched on the use of drones in counter-terrorism
- She's the legal advisor to the King of Bahrain
- Sh has written on international criminal law
- She has edited a book entitled The Law and Practice of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon
- At the Doughty Street barristers' chambers, she represented Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian Prime Minister
- She represented Abdullah Al Senussi, former Libyan intelligence chief and Muamar Gaddafi’s right-hand man in a case of alleged crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court
Alamuddin with Julian Assange
Clooney looks peaked and stressed. I don't think it is the new life as a married man, as the new life as a man married to Alamuddin. I wonder what they talk about? The terrible United States, with all those war criminals? The wonderful Middle East, blighted and maligned by the West?
Alamuddin looks like she's close to her family. Family dinners must be something special. Debbie Schlussel writes this about her experience with the family:
Over the past few months, actor George Clooney’s been photographed all over the place with Amal Alamuddin, a very anti-Israel Lebanese Arab who worked for the United Nations and represented Wikileaks’ anti-American former chief, Julian Assange. The Lebanese legal book she authored is extremely anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. Alamuddin, who was Clooney’s date to the Obama White House last month, is not Muslim. I’m familiar with Ms. Alamuddin (pronounced “Ah-lah-muh-DEEN”) and her family because I met her and them at the wedding of her cousin in the mid-1990s. They are extremely anti-Israel, and I was subjected to their absurd, non-stop anti-Israel questions and comments as the only non-Arab (other than the bride and her family) at a dinner the night before the wedding.Clooney, I think, is in over his head. His Druze-lawyer-anti-Israeli wife will be nothing but a handful. What a stupid man.
I went to law school with Alamuddin’s cousin (who has the same last name) and the cousin’s wife. I was friends with the cousin’s wife (who is not an Arab), and when they were dating in law school, I repeatedly heard from him about how he hated Israel and sided with the Palestinians and the P.L.O. Later, when I was invited to the the Alamuddin wedding, I was on the receiving end of more of that. As I noted, I was the only non-Arab at the pre-wedding dinner at Chicago’s now-defunct “Uncle Tonoose” restaurant. They all knew I was Jewish, and the conversations and questions directed at me were a mix of myself as both Jewish museum exhibit and target of anti-Israel questioning. Clooney’s future girlfriend was there, too, and she was in her late teens at the time (I was in my mid-20s).
The situation with the Alamuddin family was surreal, as I was asked repeatedly about “Jewish Europeans” “invading” Israel, er . . . “Palestine.”
And one strange thing. He wore the same suit he wore to his wedding at the Golden Globes. Yes he was there for Golden Globes' lifetime achievement award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, but doesn't that warrant its own "special" suit?
This is the confident and debonair Clooney of a couple of years ago.
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat