Washington Report on Middle East Affairs July 2010 - Vol XXIX No. 5

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THE MULTIPLE LESSONS OF FAISAL SHAHZAD

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Because when others say nothing can be done, we see people like you helping us make a better life for families in the Middle East.

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On Middle East Affairs Volume XXIX, No. 5

July 2010

Telling the Truth for 28 Years…

Interpreting the Middle East for North Americans

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Interpreting North America for the Middle East

THE U.S. ROLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE 8 Obama Sends a Warning to Israel—But With No “Or Else”—Rachelle Marshall 11 The Multiple Lessons of Faisal Shahzad —Patrick Seale 12 Should the U.S. Impose a Middle East Peace Plan?—Two Views

—Amjad Atallah, Rami G. Khouri 14 Is a Two-State Solution Still Possible?—Two Views —John J. Mearsheimer, Uri Avnery 17 Dr. Strangelove, Made in Israel—Philip Giraldi

22 Rumors of War—Patrick Seale 23 The Next 9/11—Made in Israel?—Maidhc Ó Cathail 24 Sanctioning Iran Is an Act of War—Rep. Ron Paul 25 With Few Exceptions, Obedient Congress Continues to Do AIPAC’s Bidding—Shirl McArthur 27 Although Leaving Office, Rep. Brian Baird Vows to Continue to Fight for Justice—Delinda C. Hanley 28 New York State Capital Takes Stand Against Pre-Emptive Prosecution of Muslims

—Stephen Downs, Esq.

20 A Third U.S. Speaking Tour, as Israeli Warplanes Drop Leaflets and Missiles on Gaza

—Mohammed Omer

SPECIAL REPORTS 31 Hypocrisy on the March—From the U.S. and Israel to France and Morocco—Ian Williams 36 A New Wind Blows in Egypt—Rannie Amiri 38 Malaysian Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim Plays The Israel Card—John Gee

KHALIL BENDIB

70 Kuwaiti Dogs Looking for Loving Homes in Washington, DC—Michael Keating

ON THE COVER: In Ramallah, a Palestinian girl with a picture of a relative held in an Israeli jail takes part in the annual Prisoner Day commemoration, held in solidarity with the more than 7,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, April 17, 2010—the day after a Palestinian died in his Israeli prison cell. The Arabic writing on the girl’s face reads, “Freedom to the prisoners.”

AFP PHOTO/ABBAS MOMANI

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(A Supplement to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs available by subscription at $15 per year. To subscribe, call toll-free 1-800-368-5788, and press 1.

For other options, see page OV-3 in this issue.)

Other Voices Papering the War Against Iran, Philip Giraldi, www.antiwar.com Obama’s Nuclear Weapons Conference Fatally Flawed Before It Began, William Pfaff, www.antiwar.com The Palestinians Are Winning The Legitimacy War: Will It Matter?, Richard Falk, www.redress.cc Sly Maneuver, Editorial, Arab News

Compiled by Janet McMahon

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A Chill in San Francisco, Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman, The Forward

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The Ongoing Torture of Syed Fahad Hashmi, Bill Quigley, www.counterpunch.com

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License to Kill?, David Cole, The Nation

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U.S. War-Fighting Numbers to Knock Your Socks Off, Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com

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The Puppet Tries to Cut His Strings, Eric Margolis, www.ericmargolis.com

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Why There Are No “Israelis” in The Jewish State, Jonathan Cook, www.dissidentvoice.org

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Ignorance of Afghan Society Led to Botched Raids, Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service (IPS)

Labeling NGOs, Choking Gaza, Jasmin Ramsey, Le Monde diplomatique

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Bringing Compassion to the Middle East, Karen Armstrong, www.huffingtonpost.com

DEPARTMENTS 5 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

7 PUBLISHERS’ PAGE

33 OTHER PEOPLE’S MAIL

35 THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST — CARTOONS

40 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE: San Francisco Police Chief Apologizes for

44 NEW YORK CITY AND TRISTATE NEWS: Bill Fletcher, Jr. Discusses Settler States and the Palestinian Gandhi—Jane Adas 47 ISRAEL AND JUDAISM: “Delegitimization” of Israel: The New Buzzword of Pro-Israel Activism—Allan C. Brownfeld 50 ARAB-AMERICAN ACTIVISM: U.N. Ambassador Rice Addresses AAI’s 25th Anniversary Party

56 WAGING PEACE: Independent Media in the Middle East: Challenges and Opportunities

65 DIPLOMATIC DOINGS: A Conversation With the Jordanian Ambassador

66 BOOK REVIEWS: Yemen: Dancing on the Heads Of Snakes

—Reviewed by Adam Chamy

Offensive Comments on Afghans, Yemenis

—Elaine Pasquini

51 HUMAN RIGHTS: Craig and Cindy Corrie Meet With Supporters in Iowa

67 NEW ARRIVALS FROM THE AET BOOK CLUB

68 BULLETIN BOARD 42 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE: John Ging Headlines KinderUSA Program, Corries, Richard Falk at Rebuilding Alliance

—Pat and Samir Twair

52 MUSIC & ARTS: Celebrating Syrian Culture, Ancient and Modern 54 MUSLIM-AMERICAN ACTIVISM: Keynote Speech by Islamic Scholar Tariq Ramadan

69 2010 AET CHOIR OF ANGELS

24 INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

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Publisher: Executive Editor: Managing Editor: News Editor: Book Club Director: Circulation Director: Art Director: Editorial Assistant:

ANDREW I. KILLGORE RICHARD H. CURTISS JANET McMAHON DELINDA C. HANLEY ADAM CHAMY ANNE O’ROURKE RALPH U. SCHERER ANDREW BLAKELY

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (ISSN 8755-4917) is published 9 times a year, monthly except Jan./Feb., May/June and Sept./Oct. combined, at 1902 18th St., NW, Washington, DC 20009-1707. Tel. (202) 939-6050. Subscription prices (United States and possessions): one year, $29; two years, $55; three years, $75. For Canadian and Mexican subscriptions, $35 per year; for other foreign subscriptions, $70 per year.

Periodicals, postage paid at Washington, DC and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009-9062.

Published by the American Educational Trust (AET), a non-profit foundation incorporated in Washington, DC by retired U.S. foreign service officers to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states. AET’s Foreign Policy Committee has included former U.S. ambassadors, government officials, and members of Congress, including the late Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright, and Republican Sen. Charles Percy, both former chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Members of AET’s Board of Directors and advisory committees receive no fees for their services.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs does not take partisan domestic political positions. As a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, it endorses U.N. Security Council Resolution 242’s land-for-peace formula, supported by seven successive U.S. presidents. In general, it supports Middle East solutions which it judges to be consistent with the charter of the United Nations and traditional American support for human rights, selfdetermination, and fair play.

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CONTACT INFORMATION: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Editorial Office and Bookstore: P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009-9062 Phone: (202) 939-6050 • (800) 368-5788 Fax: (202) 265-4574 E-mail: wrmea@wrmea.com bookclub@wrmea.com circulation@wrmea.com advertising@wrmea.com Web sites: http://www.wrmea.com http://www.middleeastbooks.com Subscriptions, sample copies and donations: P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009-9062 Printed in the USA

JULY 2010

LetterstotheEditor Pinpointing the Problem The problem? Iran is not the problem.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the problem. The mullahs are not the problem. The Revolutionary Guard is not the problem.

Nuclear weapons are the problem. And Israel, not Iran, has ‘em. If the pro-con Zionist shills would use their influence working toward a nuclear-free Middle East, that could help solve the problem—both for Iran and Israel (not to mention Uncle Sam).

Paul Richards, Salem, OR Unfortunately, Israel not only doesn’t want a nuclear-free Middle East, it also doesn’t subscribe to the Cold War—but historically successful—doctrine of nuclear deterrence. Instead it insists on being the region’s only nuclear power so it can continue to act with impunity.

Bad for One, Bad for All After reading Allan Brownfeld’s “Rising Extremism—and Racism—in Israel Ignored by American Jewish Organizations,” (April 2010 Washington Report, p. 38) and “Rabbinic Text or Call to Terror?” (April “Other Voices” supplement) my blood boils. To quote Dr. Chaim Herzog, one-time Israeli ambassador to the U.N., “If terror is bad, it is bad for everyone, on every occasion. It is bad whatever race, color, and creed of the terrorist. It is bad whatever race, color, or creed of the victim.”

Howard S. Yee, Minneapolis, MN We suspect that the late Dr. Herzog’s words are rarely cited in Israel these days—but that he and Dr. Richard Goldstone share the same values.

Rounded Up Your magazine has served us, your readers, well by publishing Katherine Hughes’ review of Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Muslim Entrapment After 9/11, by Shamshad Ahmed (see May/June 2010 Washington Report, p. 62). I urge your subscribers to read this book [available from the AET Book Club].

There are many similar cases, many unknown to most people, even well-read civil rights activists. I was shocked when I first heard of Dr. Rafil Dhafir’s case (see May/June 2007 Washington Report, p. 12).

Convicted of an act of charity (sending aid to Iraq during the period of sanctions), he was treated as a terrorist by the media and elected officials.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

MacGregor Eddy, Salinas, CA, chair, Dr. Dhafir Support Committee, <www.dhafir trial.net> We can only console ourselves with the fact that so many Americans like you are working tirelessly to right these wrongs. One of those Americans is Steve Downs, whose article on p. 28 of this issue discusses local and national initiatives against the pre-emptive prosecutions of Muslims in America.

From a Friend…to an Angel I was introduced by a friend to your publication. Although I have been in the USA since 1958, I had never heard of it.

Anyhow, I am so impressed by the kind of work and publication you are providing that I would like to get reports in the future and to show a token of my appreciation by sending a check for $1,000. Please send me the necessary required acknowledgement.

Dr. M.T. Amirana, Las Vegas, NV We welcome you to our Choir of Angels and are most grateful for your generous contribution. We shall put it to good use by, among other things, continuing to keep track of pro-Israel PAC contributions to your congresswoman, Rep. Shelley Berkeley (DNV)—who, with a career total of $309,555, has received more than any of her House colleagues. We have no doubt that, when we update the 2010 race in our next issue, her total will be even higher.

Support for Peace—or for Israel?

Enclosed is our check from the LouVin Foundation to the American Educational Trust Library Endowment.

We are hopeful that our president will muster enough courage to force Israel to end its brutal occupation of the Palestinians at the top of his “To-Do” list. He could easily do this by reporting the true costs to American people, not just in taxpayer money, but by the sacrifice of American 5

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men and women. While Americans are being killed, our so-called “friend and ally” is building more and more settlements on Palestinian lands which our government officially says is illegal.

Last year, Christian Century magazine listed the 10 most peaceful nations in the world. We called to find out the source of their information and were given the Web site. Of the 144 nations listed, Israel was the 141st least peaceful. And we give them $10 million every day!

Thank you for your tireless efforts for peace.

Vince and Louis Larsen, Billings, MT After nearly three decades of publishing the Washington Report, we believe we finally are seeing a shift in Americans’ understanding of the nature of Zionist Israel and its cost to this country and the world. Without the continuing support of angels like you and everyone who has helped us over the years, we may not have made it to this day.

We thank you most sincerely.

beg Hillel members to challenge the facts of his presentation. This now being a different planet, as you say, Finkelstein begged in vain.

Talks Are Cheap Thank you for transmitting to your Action Alert list the article, “To achieve Mideast peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip,” by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz, Washington Post, April 11, 2010.

However, I’m “underwhelmed” by the authors’ opinions who, despite their credentials, seem very naive. What is needed to resolve the issue is not “talks” between the victims and their oppressors, but insistence (backed up by real intentions of applying sanctions and withholding American taxpayers’ funds if Israel does not comply) that Israel implement all United Nations resolutions, starting with 242 and 338, and dismantle all their illegal colonies.

Talks have gone on for 60 years or so, and all they have done is buy Israel a lot of time to take hold of all the land; and their leaders have openly stated on many occaA Different Planet sions that they are happy to talk forever Yesterday author and journalist Reese and keep taking Palestinians’ lands. (You Ehrlich spoke here (very good!), and dur- don’t have to trust me, just trust your own ing the question period I asked very deli- eyes: e.g., East Jerusalem.) So, unless Prescately if it wouldn’t help if the U.S. cut off ident Obama is ready to withhold our all aid to Israel until Israel returned to its money and military “aid” to Israel, he will 1967 borders. Many in the audience achieve nothing. The Israelis are an clapped, and when Reese Ehrlich agreed apartheid state and continue to thumb their wholeheartedly, they practically cheered. noses at international law because they can!

These authors, Mr. Brezinski and Mr. Not one person objected out of about 100 Stephen Solarz (who, if the latter is the residents. We’re on a different planet! same person, as a congressman was an unRachelle Marshall, Mill Valley, CA We recently heard author and scholar Nor- questioning supporter of all dastardly Isman Finkelstein say that at a recent appear- raeli policies before he was finally voted out ance at Brooklyn College—where he first of office, and has no credibility on the subtaught, in the face of vitriolic hostility from ject for me) apply a huge double standard. the campus Hillel organization—he had to They are concerned for Israel’s “security,” but not at all concerned about Other Voices is an optional 16Palestinians’ security; whereas it is page supplement available only Palestinians who to subscribers of the Washington are murdered Report on Middle East Affairs. For daily by Israeli an additional $15 per year (see bullets and mispostcard insert for Washington siles, not the other Re port subscription rates), way around. The subscribers will receive Other authors use the same tired “both Voices bound into each issue of sides”—when one their Washington Report on side has all the Middle East Affairs. power and the Back issues of both publicaother has none. tions are available. To subscribe telephone 1 (800) 368-5788 Their sugges(press 1), fax (202) 265-4574, e-mail <circulation@wrmea.com>, tion for a demilior write to P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009. tarized Palestine is fine, as long as Is6

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

rael is also demilitarized. Every people has the right to freedom and to defend themselves when their freedom has been usurped. If you want to end resistance, stop the occupation. No Justice, No Peace!

Laila P. via email Brzezinski served as national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter and is a trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Former New York Rep. Stephen Solarz—who, while in Congress, certainly was one of Israel’s most ardent advocates—now is a member of the board of the International Crisis Group.

Bantustan Alert?

I am disappointed that you consider the Brzezinski-Solarz op-ed, which is essentially the projection of a Palestinian Bantustan, worthy of an e-mail alert. It seems that you are endorsing such an outrageous proposal, which explicitly gives away the Palestinian right of return, preserves a racist Jewish state, legitimizes illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and calls for a non-sovereign demilitarized Palestinian “state” with no control of any of its borders (Israeli troops along the Jordan River?!?). This article is so nauseating that it even talks of a “political cover” for the illegal and undemocratic Vichy-government in Ramallah. If that was not enough, it endorses the normalization of Arab governments with Israel even BEFORE Israel makes a single concession.

Ziyaad Lunat, via e-mail Perhaps our admiration for Dr. Brzezinski caused us to hope that his Zionist coauthor—one of many who, like former AIPAC head Thomas Dine, have not ceased their albeit less visibile efforts to influence U.S. policy on Israel’s behalf—realized that the train was about to leave the station without him. We are encouraged by the opening up of dialogue about how the U.S. can influence Israel’s actions—although we suggest treating it like the foreign country it is, and ending Washington’s unconditional military and diplomatic support. In other words, the opinion was theirs, not ours.

Positive Enhancement Your magazine very positively enhances my “Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East” and “Violations of Human Rights” classes. Our college’s Palestine Club and Amnesty International Club also benefit greatly from your articles.

Thank you!

Prof. A. A. Samad, New York, NY We extend our regards to members of the next generation, and thank you for educating them! ❑ JULY 2010

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American Educational Trust This Page Has Moved...

From the back of the bus to the front, so to speak—something, we might add, that the 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are Arabs (compared to 13 percent of African-Americans in this country) have yet to be allowed to do. We have every confidence, however, that…

They Shall Overcome.

Judging by its actions, we’re quite sure Israel increasingly fears that this very outcome—which, after all, means no more or less than equal justice for all—may come to pass. In the face of nonviolent resistance in the tradition of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Israel is arresting more and more leaders in such West Bank towns as Bil’in, firing tear gas at, and sometimes killing, demonstrators against its illegal West Bank wall. Apparently it’s not even enough to be Jewish, as Israel has banned such Jewish Americans as Norman Finkelstein and Adam Shapiro from entering. The real criterion, apparently, is that…

Publishers’ Page

example—would not stand for that.) But then perhaps he, like Israel, has…

No Sense of Humor…

As evidenced by the fact that, after interrogating him for six hours on April 26, Israel denied entry to Spain’s most famous clown, Ivan Prado, “for security reasons.” Prado, director of the International Clown Festival in Galicia, had planned to go to Ramallah to help organize a similar festival. Prado at least remains a free man, however, unlike the heroic…

Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.

On May 11 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Vanunu, 56, who served 18 years in prison for revealing information about Israel’s nuclear program, must serve an additional three months for meeting a foreign national. The Christian convert has been prohibited from leaving the Jewish state or communicating with foreigners, restrictions imposed on him by the military upon his release from prison in April 2004.

One Has to Be a Zionist.

Ambassador for Which Country?

Both Finkelstein and Shapiro are allowed into Gaza, however. The former traveled there in June 2009, following Israel’s murderous “Operation Cast Lead,” while the latter is setting sail May 24 as part of the Free Gaza Movement’s international flotilla bringing much-needed humanitarian aid to the besieged Mediterranean prison. Israel, by contrast, seems to be on a…

Former Australian and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin S. Indyk, currently director of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, commenting on President Barack Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world and Jewish Americans, advised the president that his “real charm offensive needs to take place in Israel. I would accept it was a charm offensive if he caught a plane and went over there, which he needs to do. He’s lost the Israeli public.

If he were to go over there and explain to the Israeli public, it would be hugely beneficial to his objectives.” Never mind the objectives of 300 million Americans.

Deportation Roll.

On April 13 Israel announced a new military order defining as an “infiltrator” anyone stopped in the West Bank without a West Bank ID—including Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, citizens of countries (such as the U.S.) with friendly ties to Israel, as well as Israeli citizens, whether Arab or Jewish. The order affects Gazans living or attending school in the West Bank, Jordanians married to West Bankers, expatriates working with NGOs, and Jerusalemites working in the West Bank, who will be forced to decide whether the city or its suburbs are their “center of life.” The second such deportee, 19-year-old Fadi al-Azazmeh, is pictured on the following page as he awaits his forced return to Gaza. (We suspect Manhattanites working in the Bronx—like New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez, for JULY 2010

U.S. Senator or Knesset Member?

Meanwhile, in the Israeli-occupied territory otherwise known as Capitol Hill, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) proposed a new law that could strip Americans of their citizenship if they’re involved with foreign terrorist organizations as defined by the State Department. (Perhaps the senator doesn’t realize that among those organizations so defined are the Jewish Kach and Kahane Chai.) But we know the senator cares deeply about the citizens of a certain foreign country. As he explained to a radio interviewer, “You know, my name….comes THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

from the word shomer, guardian, watcher.

My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov. And I believe Hashem (God) actually gave me that name. One of my roles, very important in the United States Senate, is to be a shomer—to be the shomer Yisrael. And I will continue to be that with…

“Every Bone in my Body.”

Meanwhile, an anonymous Israel-firster in the Senate has put a hold on the nomination of Robert Ford to become the first U.S. ambassador to Syria in four years, after Israeli President Shimon Peres on April 12 accused Syria of transferring Scud missiles to Hezbollah. It was Peres, of course, who, in a desperate attempt to actually win election as prime minister, launched the deadly 1996 attack on the U.N. peacekeeping outpost in Qana, Lebanon, killing more than 100 civilians who were taking refuge there from Israeli bombardment. And, just as in the case of “Operation Cast Lead” against Gaza, it was Washington that gave Israel the money and weapons to carry out that earlier massacre—courtesy of American taxpayers…

Whether They Like It or Not. New and Improved—and Temporarily Free—Web Site Upgrade A digital, flip-page copy of the Washington Report may actually reach your computer mailbox before it arrives at your door. Take a look at the new feature—free for the July issue—and pass it along to your friends.

You’ll have the opportunity to subscribe to the new Internet version of the Washington Report on our Web site or when you respond to our upcoming biannual donation appeal (hint, hint). While the digital issue will never replace the paper magazine—we hope!—it should appeal to both new subscribers around the world who prefer reading their news online, and thousands of readers who visit our Web site, <www. wrmea.org>, in search of older articles.

(Some of our cybervisitors are not even aware that we publish an international magazine!) Please help us continue to provide you with news you need so that together, we can …

Make a Difference Today!

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Obama Sends a Warning to Israel—But With No “Or Else” SpecialReport

AFP PHOTO/MUMAHMUD HAMS

By Rachelle Marshall

Fadi al-Azazmeh (r), 19, sits in a tent at the Erez crossing between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip, April 28, 2010 after Israel deported him from the occupied West Bank to Gaza, where he had not set foot in more than 10 years. Azazmeh was the second West Bank resident to be deported as an “infiltrator” under a recent Israeli military order. he message President Barack Obama

Tdelivered at his April 13 press conference was crystal clear: The White House no longer regards Israel as a vital strategic ally but as a hindrance to U.S. policy in the Middle East. Experts have argued for four decades that Washington’s unstinting support for Israel and its ongoing occupation of Palestine undermines U.S. relations with Arabs and Muslims worldwide, but it took the military to convince a sitting president that a change in policy was necessary.

National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones said in a speech last year that ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was essential to easing tensions in the region. Gen. Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Mill Valley, CA. A member of A Jewish Voice for Peace, she writes frequently on the Middle East.

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David H. Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, went further this March when he told the Senate Armed Service Committee that America’s perceived favoritism for Israel created a hostile environment in the region for U.S. troops and made it easier for al-Qaeda and other militant groups to mobilize support.

Petraeus’ implicit message, that American soldiers were imperiled by the U.S. alliance with Israel, was backed by Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, who oversees the training of Palestinian security forces in Jordan. Dayton said that in searching Iraqi army barracks after the 2003 U.S. invasion he found numerous copies of a drawing of the alAqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Surrounding the dome was a serpent labeled “Israel.”

Obama in his press conference linked the stalled Middle East peace process to the safety of Americans, saying such conflicts THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

“are costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.” It was an unmistakable warning to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Israel’s stalling tactics are detrimental to U.S. interests. But warnings are meaningless if they carry no penalty, and there is not likely to be one if Obama listens to the advice of his Middle East adviser, recent pro-Israel lobbyist Dennis Ross, and waits for Israel and the Palestinians to come to a mutual agreement.

The Israelis are in no hurry to do so, of course. Instead of introducing the confidence-building measures Obama has requested, such as easing travel restrictions and freeing more Palestinian prisoners, Israel has done its best to provoke Palestinian anger. All seven members of Netanyahu’s inner cabinet announced publicly in late March that there would be no restrictions on Jewish housing in any part JULY 2010

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of Jerusalem, and no further concessions to the Palestinians of any kind. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called concessions “pointless;” another senior cabinet member, Benny Begin, said concessions would only “bring about a hardening in the policy of the Arabs.”

Disregarding such statements, Obama pressed both sides to begin “indirect” peace talks at which Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would talk to a mediator but not to each other. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who had insisted that Israel freeze settlement building in East Jerusalem before he would resume negotiations, agreed to take part in the talks after Netanyahu quietly assured Obama’s special Middle East envoy George J. Mitchell that such construction would halt. Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, quickly came back with the opposite message, however. “There is no freeze,” he declared during a visit to Washington on April 28. Barkat has the authority to approve building projects in Jerusalem without informing Netanyahu.

Seldom mentioned in the controversy is that such projects are a clear violation of international law. Jerusalem had the status of an international city when Israel captured and annexed it in 1967. The Israelis then extended the city’s boundaries to take in a stretch of the West Bank containing several Palestinians villages. The U.N. and most of the world today regard these annexations as illegal. Israel has nevertheless proceeded to destroy Palestinian homes in Jerusalem to make way for Jews and, thanks to Washington’s use of the veto, has avoided U.N. sanctions.

How long Netanyahu’s promised halt will last is anyone’s guess. Despite his announcement last November of a 10-month freeze in the West Bank, more construction is underway today than a year ago, much of it financed by American contributors.

Housing starts in the last three months of 2009 were up by almost a third over the same period in 2008. Israel also has violated its pledge to dismantle the “unauthorized” settlements that began as ramshackle trailers set up on private Palestinian land and today are thriving settlements with electricity, water, and paved roads supplied by the Housing Ministry.

Such settlements are likely to remain.

With ultra-religious Israeli nationalists getting a disproportionate share of government spending on education, more and more Israeli youths are being indoctrinated early, and are pledging at their induction into the army not to take part in any evacuation of settlers from the West Bank.

Many of the 18-year-olds are graduates of religious prep schools where they learn the JULY 2010

West Bank is sacred Jewish land.

Israel ratcheted up tensions even further on April 13, when it imposed a new rule that could result in the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank.

The measure that went into effect on April 13 extends a 1969 military order aimed at “infiltrators” from Arab countries to now include anyone without an Israel residence permit. A person “without the right paperwork,” according a military spokesman, can be deported without a hearing, or subject to a seven-year prison term.

The chief victims are likely to be lawabiding families in which one spouse is from Gaza, or from abroad, and the other from the West Bank. Such couples may no longer live together, which means that wives and husbands must separate, and parents must often leave their children.

Since neither the permit nor the requirements for obtaining one were specified, the Israelis can also use the order to get rid of anyone they don’t like, including international peace activists, foreigners considered critical of Israel, and Palestinian advocates of nonviolent resistance.

The latter already are treated as criminals. On March 28, after Palm Sunday Mass at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, a group of Israelis, Palestinians and international peace activists marched peacefully to an Israeli checkpoint to protest restrictions on Palestinians’ right to worship in Jerusalem. On the way they were attacked by Israeli police, and 15 were arrested, including Ahmad Al Azzeh and Marwan Farjah, who are leading advocates of nonviolence. On April 24, marchers celebrating the fifth anniversary of protests at the Bi’lin wall were met as they approached the wall by Israeli soldiers firing tear gas, sound grenades and smoke bombs. Many of the participants were seriously wounded, including Emad Rezqa, who suffered a fractured skull. Many more were arrested.

Israelis who speak out against crimes against the Palestinians are vilified, and routinely called “traitors.” A bill currently before the Knesset that has a strong chance of passing would outlaw any Israeli organization that provides information abroad against government officials or military officers accused of war crimes. Ten Israeli human rights groups said the bill would “reduce [democracy] to ashes.” Anat Kamm, a young journalist who gave to Haaretz documentary accounts of illegal killings by the army that she had obtained during her miltary service, currently is awaiting trial on charges of “aggravated espionage.”

Justice Richard Goldstone, who oversaw THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

a U.N. report detailing war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas in Gaza last year, is widely condemned by right-wing Israelis as “a traitor” and was temporarily barred from attending his grandson’s Bar Mitzvah in South Africa.

While Hamas has carefully avoided actions that would provoke Israeli retaliation, Gazans who protest peacefully against Israel’s rule against farming within several hundred yards of the border are routinely fired on if they come too close. Several demonstrators were seriously wounded in April, and two were killed. Five more Palestinians died on April 28 while trying to smuggle desperately needed fuel into Gaza through a tunnel from Egypt. When Egypt blew up an adjoining tunnel the flames spread and ignited the fuel.

A Timely Accusation In suggesting that continuing support for Israel has a detrimental effect on U.S. security interests, Obama and Petraeus were mainly referring to Israel’s long-standing occupation. A day after Obama delivered this message, however, Israel laid another land mine under the administration’s Middle East policy by charging that Syria was providing Hezbollah with Scud missiles that could reach Tel Aviv.

The accusation came just as the Senate is preparing to vote on the confirmation of Robert Ford, the career diplomat whom Obama has nominated to be the first U.S. ambassador to Syria in five years. Syria and Lebanon denied that Scud missiles had been sent to Hezbollah, and U.S. officials have found no evidence that they were.

The resumption of diplomatic relations with Damascus is high on Obama’s agenda, but Israel’s latest accusation may give the Israel lobby enough ammunition to scuttle Ford’s nomination and see to it that Syria remains isolated.

In keeping the threat of a potential attack on Israel alive, Netanyahu continues to follow the playbook provided him by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith in 1996 at the start of his first term as prime minister.

The two pro-Israel hawks who advised President George W. Bush to invade Iraq had five years earlier urged Netanyahu to put peace with the Palestinians on the back burner, and aim instead at establishing a Hashemite regime in Iraq and “seiz[ing] the strategic initiative along [Israel’s] northern borders by engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.”

There is no evidence that the Iranians are developing a nuclear weapon or intend to, but the repeated assertion that Iran poses an “existential threat” to Israel serves to rally support inside Israel for the Ne9

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tanyahu government and enable pro-Israel zealots in the U.S. to divert attention from Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. The emphasis on Iran as a nuclear threat also prevents Obama from mending U.S. relations with Arab nations urging that the Middle East become a nuclear-free zone.

Israel’s image as a small nation surrounded by enemies, diligently promoted by its supporters, forces Washington into the role of hypocrite as it turns a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Obama has made strengthening the Non-Proliferation Treaty a key principle of his nuclear strategy, but Egypt and other Arab nations refuse to support stricter inspections until Israel signs the treaty. “To be able to deal with the Iranian issue, you have to deal with the nuclear capabilities of Israel,” pointed out Egypt’s U.N. Ambassador Maged A. Abdu-

laziz. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a prominent figure at the conference of 189 nations held in New York in May to discuss reducing nuclear arms. The Israelis were notably absent.

A recent BBC poll showed Israel to be among the least favored nations in the world, along with Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. The results reflect the stark truth that others are aware of but Americans are led to ignore: that Israel is depriving three million Palestinians of their most basic rights and has created in Gaza a giant prison in which everyone down to the smallest infant is made to suffer.

An editorial in Haaretz following Obama’s April 13 press conference referred to the fact that U.S. friendship and support “are vital to [Israel’s] existence.” If so, then Obama has the means to effect a change in

Israel’s policy, including a cut-off of U.S. aid, an end to tax exemption for contributions to settlement construction, and an end to use of the veto at the U.N. Security Council to protect Israel from the imposition of international sanctions.

The testimony provided by his generals has provided Obama with the incentive to end an unhealthy relationship that has allowed Israel to damage American interests with impunity. Moderate Israelis and Palestinians, along with most of the world, have long supported a Middle East peace agreement that provides for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with control over its own borders and a capital in East Jerusalem. Obama has the power to impose such a solution and end a conflict that could have ended years ago—if he would only use it. ❑

Unreliable Allies Thwart Obama’s War Plans The hope that U.S. troops will leave behind a newly elected government when they withdraw from Iraq later this year is being rapidly eroded by Iraqi President Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who is using every means at his disposal to undo the results of the March 7 election.

Early in the campaign al-Maliki’s police threw hundreds of prominent Sunnis into prison. Once the campaign was underway a government election commission with dubious authority eliminated 500 Sunni candidates from the ballot, claiming they were Ba’athists sympathetic to Saddam Hussain.

After Al-Maliki’s party won two fewer seats than that of his closest rival, Ayad Allawi, the prime minister demanded a recount of votes cast in Baghdad province, where he could count on the most voter support. Several weeks later the election commission, backed by a three-judge court, disqualified 52 more Sunni candidates, including seven who had won seats. The court, like the election commission, claimed those disqualified were supporters of Saddam Hussain. Alawi has responded by calling for new elections.

The delays in announcing final election results and the political vacuum that has resulted caused a resurgence of violence, including a wave of bombings on April 23 that killed 67 people in Baghdad. The volatile situation could pose a dilemma for Obama, who intends to remove all combat troops from Iraq this summer and shift many of them to Afghanistan.

Tensions increased even further in late April, when U.S. officials and Iraq’s human rights minister disclosed the existence of secret prisons holding hundreds of Sunni prisoners, many of whom were systematically tortured, according to reports documented by Human Rights Watch. Al-Maliki responded by calling the reports “lies,” and at the same time pointing to Abu Ghraib. The secret prisons were controlled by the Baghdad Operations Command, which, like the elite Counterterrorism Task Force, was created by the prime minister and is accountable directly to him. Al-Maliki answers charges of human rights abuse by echoing former President Bush and asserting that as commander-in-chief he has the right to take whatever steps he thinks necessary to defend his country.

In Afghanistan the U.S. is at odds with President Hamid Karzai, whose feelings were ruffled by accusations that his reelection was tainted by fraud. He in turn accused Washington of obstructing his efforts to reach an agreement with the Taliban and complained that too many civilians were being killed by U.S. troops. Karzai met in March with leaders of three insurgent groups who said they would work with the present Afghan government until new elections could be held, but only if all foreign troops agree to leave. Karzai called a

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meeting of tribal heads in May to discuss reconciliation with the Taliban.

The U.S. and NATO have largely ignored Karzai’s peacemaking efforts and are proceeding with a large-scale offensive in Kandahar province aimed at delivering a crippling blow to the Taliban in its home base. The Taliban must be sufficiently weakened, U.S. officials say, before peace talks can begin. The stepped-up fighting has so far had the opposite effect, however, and may end up strengthening the insurgency. The city of Kandahar has become so dangerous that U.N. employees were evacuated or advised to leave. Night raids by U.S. and Afghan troops are killing more civilians, and many people said they are more afraid of NATO checkpoints and convoys than of Taliban bombs.

Villagers also complain that men working in the fields are humiliated when helicopters swoop down on farmers and hover close to the ground while the crew demands that they take off their clothes and hold up their arms to prove they are not armed. In late April an angry mob burned 12 NATO fuel trucks in retaliation for allied military operations.

NATO members stipulated at their April meeting that a competent Afghan police force and a reliable Afghan government must be in place before allied troops can withdraw from the country. Neither goal is anywhere in sight. According to a report in the March 20 issue of Newsweek, the $6 billion-a-year effort by the U.S. to train Afghan police has been “a disaster.” Too many recruits are illiterate and undisciplined, and those on the job are often guilty of extortion, assault, and rape.

The Afghan government is no more popular. “The first thing Afghans fear is the coming of more foreign troops, and the second thing they fear is the empowering of the current leadership and administration,” said Shahabuddin Akhunzada, a tribal elder in Kandahar. A similar sentiment was expressed by Hajji Muhammed Ehsan, a member of Kandahar’s provincial council, who concluded, “The only way out of this conflict is to talk with the opposition, bring them into the system and give them an equal portion.”

After nine years of war, and as the number of U.S. deaths reached a total of 1,037, the Pentagon released a report on the last six months in Afghanistan that portrays a spreading insurgency, a government with little credibility, and a nonexistent judiciary. The Taliban, after its alleged defeat by U.S. forces in Marjah last winter, has gradually retaken control of that province. “The Taliban are everywhere,” a tribal elder in Marjah said.

—R.M.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

JULY 2010

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The Multiple Lessons of Faisal Shahzad SpecialReport

By Patrick Seale ow to explain the case of Faisal

can who attempted to blow up a car in New York’s Times Square on May 3? He had a master’s degree in business administration and had worked for various American companies, including the cosmetics firm Elizabeth Arden. His wife, Huma Mian, born in Colorado, had a degree in accountancy.

His father, Bahar ul-Haq, was a retired high-ranking Pakistani air force pilot. Her father, Mohammad Asif Mian, had earned two master’s degrees from the Colorado School of Mines and was the author of four books.

To all appearances, Faisal and Huma were part of Pakistan’s expatriate elite. They came from solidly middle-class families, were American citizens, had two small children, and seemed fully integrated into American life. But evidently they were not—or at least had decided, in recent months, that they were not.

Many explanations have been suggested for Faisal Shahzad’s attempt in May to strike a blow at America, his adopted country. The family seem to have had financial difficulties, victims like so many others of the economic crisis. Their house was repossessed and they moved into rented accommodation. That may have been the start of it. As a Muslim, Faisal may also have been radicalized by the online lectures of Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric known for his harsh criticism of America’s war against Islamic militants in Yemen and elsewhere.

The most likely explanation is that Faisal Shahzad was outraged by the campaign which the Pakistani army—under intense American pressure—has been waging against militant groups in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, flanking Afghanistan.

Faisal is said to have traveled to Pakistan 13 times in the past seven years, and to have visited the tribal areas. He would have seen at first hand the terrible impact NATO’s Afghan war has had on Pakistan.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad elSolh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2010 Patrick Seale. Distributed

by Agence Global.

JULY 2010

AFP PHOTO/AAMIR QURESHI

HShahzad, the young Pakistani-Ameri-

In Peshawar, Pakistan, a policeman sits in the back of a pick-up truck as a donkey-pulled cart passes in front of the locked residence of Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, May 5, 2010, following Shahzad’s arrest in New York for an attempted car bombing in Times Square.

America’s drone attacks against Taliban targets in the tribal areas have aroused particular fury, as well as fierce anti-American feeling, because of the civilian casualties they have caused and because they are seen as intolerable infringements of Pakistan’s sovereignty. The Pakistan army has been widely criticized for fighting what is seen as America’s war. Faisal may well have come to think that the drone attacks had to be avenged.

His case offers a classic example of the way South Asian tensions have been imported into the United States (and perhaps into the United Kingdom as well, as was seen by the 2007 attacks on the London Underground). Pakistan lies at the heart of these tensions—and has done so since the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.

Pakistan and India have fought four wars since then—in 1948-49, 1965, 1971 and 1979—but the immediate cause of tension between them is the proxy war they are now fighting over Afghanistan. America’s war against the Taliban has thus been grafted onto the longer-lasting and deeper Indo-Pakistan conflict.

To fight India in Kashmir, the ISI, Pakistan’s military intelligence service, set up and maintained close ties over the years with jihadi groups, whose role was to bleed and destabilize India. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s, these IsTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

lamic militants were mobilized to fight them, before turning their guns on the Americans when, after 9/11, they in turn invaded the country to overthrow the Taliban—who had, in fact, been put in power

by Pakistan in 1996.

In its conflict with India, Pakistan sees Afghanistan as its “strategic depth.” For Pakistan, jihadi groups in Afghanistan, such as the Taliban, are important because it believes it will need them to keep India’s growing influence at bay, once the United States and its NATO allies depart—as they must one day. The Taliban are in fact Pakistan’s potential allies. For this reason, in spite of American urging, the Pakistan army has been extremely reluctant to fight the Afghan Taliban, even when they cross the border to find shelter in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The Haqqani network, for example, operates on both sides of the porous border.

Jihadi groups, believed to have been trained and armed by shadowy elements in Pakistan, have mounted numerous attacks against India in the last decade, of which the most spectacular was the November 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai that killed more than 160 people. Arriving by boat, the commando group attacked a train station, two hotels, a Jewish center and a bar.

In May the lone survivor of the group was Continued on page 16 11

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AFP PHOTO /POOL/BAZ RATNER

Should the U.S. Impose a Middle East Peace Plan?

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at a May 12 Jerusalem Day ceremony marking the 43rd anniversary of Israel’s capture of the city’s Arab eastern half. Addressing the ceremony, he vowed that construction of Jewish settlements would continue unabated in all of Jerusalem.

Obama Just Won’t Give Up on Peace, Dammit!

By Amjad Atallah

he Washington Post and The New York

TTimes are both running stories that

seem to indicate President Obama remains absolutely committed to seeing an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict, and not necessarily in the half-step of a borders-first strategy or an “economic peace.” Both pieces recount a recent meeting of former national security advisers hosted by current National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones.

President Obama popped in on the March 24 meeting and the group ended up discussing what was obviously considered the greatest priority among the group—resolvAmjad Atallah is co-director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation. This article was first posted on <www.huffingtonpost.com>, April 8, 2010.

Reprinted with permission.

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ing the Israeli-Arab dispute.

David Ignatius’ piece [in the Post] points out that the White House is “considering detailed interagency talks to frame the strategy and form a political consensus for it.” Ignatius quotes an unnamed official admitting, “[i]ncrementalism hasn’t worked.”

Helene Cooper’s piece in The New York Times further notes that Colin Powell chimed into the conversation rightly reminding the president that he would need to have his next steps planned out when the parties balked at the terms of an American presented peace plan, or I might add, when they present their “14 reservations” as former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did with President Bush’s ill-fated 2003 road map.

What the conversation taking place in the White House shows is that the president is still being Obama. He has always been an idealist, but not an ideologue, pushing through his ideas very pragmatically. For a progressive watching his camTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

paign and his administration, there have been a lot of flashbacks to growing up as a Chicago Bulls fan: lots of emotional ups and downs, expecting a win, wishing the team would play harder, wondering why Michael Jordan wasn’t playing for that matter, and rejoicing when MJ finally decided to get in there and win the game.

When some in his administration, and certainly in the Democratic Party, wanted to cut tail and run after the Massachusetts elections, the president issued new marching orders and went in for the win, determined to get some version of health care reform through. Now, perhaps the same thing is happening with peace for Israel and the region.

The administration seems to fall into three categories: there are those who wish to maintain the status quo, those who are afraid of the political capital that will inevitably need to be spent before peace can be had, and those who probably lack ideas of how to make this happen—but it seems that Jones and others never gave up on the necessity of ending this conflict. Now the president is once again pushing forward just when the Israelis are settled into their own version of the old Arab “three no’s.”

Before all the Arab states formally accepted in 2002 to normalize relations with Israel once the latter ended the occupation of Arab territory, they were famously tied to the slogan “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel.” Today, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has his own version: no to a halt in settlements, no to a shared Jerusalem, and no to a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian territory.

You can expect neoconservatives who support a continuation of the status quo to paint any consideration by the administration of how to finally end this conflict as “undue pressure” on Israel. Instead, they will argue for the “waiting for Godot” strategy of waiting for Israelis and Palestinians to come to an agreement entirely on their own. They will shout and scream that efforts to make peace by ending the occupation are an outrage and threat to Israel.

The opposite is true. The president deals with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and the rest of the Middle East every day. He has looked and seen the JULY 2010

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abyss. He knows what lies in store for Israel and for the United States if the status quo continues. In the last month, General Petraeus, Admiral Mullen, and Secretary of Defense Gates have all emphasized in one way or another that the U.S.-led resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict would improve America’s ability to deal with all its Middle East challenges, including those with Iran.

The president knows good (if obvious) advice when he hears it, and he’s idealistic and visionary enough to believe in a future where Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs are at peace and where the U.S. isn’t constantly picking at this sore.

For Palestinians, it will no doubt be frustrating that the American imperative for a solution comes not primarily from a concern about Palestinian rights or overarching themes of justice, but from a coldhearted calculation as to what is in Israel’s and America’s best interests. Any U.S.-presented peace parameters will no doubt reflect this. Without a Palestinian national movement embodied in an ANC-like organization, the Palestinian ability to mobilize international and American support for a rights-based approach remains limited.

Ask other oppressed groups who are not even on the radar screen of American or Israeli interests.

For Israelis and American Jews who want normalcy and security, there must be a desire for President Obama to succeed.

Recent polls reinforce this. To those convinced of the benefits of eternal war, the president’s promise of peace must seem threatening.

The problem this administration has always faced has been matching the president’s idealism and vision with practical tactical steps. Undoubtedly, as with any administration, there are kinks to work out. But the first step remains the president’s leadership. And he hasn’t been willing to surrender that to those enamored with the current mess.

An American Middle East Peace Plan

By Rami G. Khouri

he Obama administration is indicating

Tthat it may offer its own version of a

reasonable Palestinian-Israeli peace plan, if the parties themselves cannot agree to start Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. Copyright © 2010 Rami G. Khouri.

Distributed by Agence Global.

JULY 2010

the U.S.-mediated “proximity talks.” This may be useful, but it must be carefully thought out—much more carefully than all other American-organized Middle East peace moves in the past generation.

One of the ironies in seeking a negotiated Arab-Israeli peace agreement is that only the Americans seem capable of playing the mediator’s role, but also that the Americans are woefully unqualified to do so, to judge by their own legacy. Other than the Jimmy Carter-mediated Camp David agreements in 1978 and the disengagement accords negotiated by Henry Kissinger in the mid-1970s, major American-mediated peace efforts have been a recurring failure. (Consequently, many people question why someone like State Department Ambassador Dennis Ross continues to hold important positions related to Middle East policy, when his track record is defined by colossal failure.)

My advice to the U.S. government if it offers a blueprint for Arab-Israeli peace: Review all the failed mediating efforts of the past 30 years, and chart a new strategy that avoids repeating all the mistakes of the past.

This could include the following principles: 1. Do not offer an “American plan” for Arab-Israeli peace, but instead use the vast American experience and inside knowledge of recent mediations to forge a united international position that would have a much better chance of being accepted and negotiated. An unambiguous major lesson of this generation is that Arabs and Israelis alike (along with Turks, Iranians and others) routinely defy and actively resist the United States when it operates unilaterally.

2. So, this is the time to bury the derelict “Quartet” and come up with a new mechanism that brings together the key international parties who will be needed to push all the parties toward agreement on a comprehensive peace. Russia, the European Union, China, Turkey, Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Japan, and India strike me as parties that should be involved in this process from the start.

3. The United Nations must be the neutral mechanism within which multinational diplomacy takes place—not a subordinate to Israeli-dictated American foreign policy as it has been in the Quartet. U.N. resolutions remain the only common reference points for a legitimate peace agreement.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference, OECD and NATO also can be used to provide wider frameworks within which the parties might feel comfortable negotiating seriously.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

4. All recent American-mediated negotiations have failed for two main reasons, I believe: the United States has not been an impartial mediator but usually has tilted wildly towards the Israeli position on key issues, and, a permanent peace was sought through incremental advances via “confidence-building measures.” Any chance of success today, therefore, requires a more even-handed American position (we may be seeing some novel signs of this with the Obama position), and peace-making proposals that directly, substantively and quickly address the core demands of both sides.

5. These core demands are: The Palestinians need recognition of the role of Israel and its pre-state Zionist groups in generating their exile and refugeehood in 1947-48; resolution of this problem through implementing international law and U.N. resolutions on refugee compensation, restitution, return, resettlement and other options, in a negotiated manner acceptable to and respecting the bottom line needs of both sides; and, ending the occupation of 1967 and the creation of a viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state. The Israelis need to receive formal, unambiguous recognition of their existence as a Jewish-majority state in the region that is fully accepted by all other states; formal affirmation of the end of conflict and the end of all Arab claims against Israel; security guarantees for Israel as for all other states; and, normal, open relations with all states in the region. Most American-mediated peace efforts have sought to achieve these goals as the final point of a negotiating process, without success. It is time to place these issues as the starting point of a diplomatic process, making it clear what an agreement will offer.

6. Finally, any plan proposed by the United States and the international community that hopes to have a chance of success must be anchored firmly in the dictates of international law and legitimacy, not in the current power balance or the domestic political pressures of Israel or an Israeli-manipulated American Congress.

These are tough conditions. But successful peace-making is a tough business that requires serious men and women who operate according to a combination of political realism, even-handed persistence, independence of action, and moral and legal legitimacy. American mediators have largely lacked those qualities for over a generation. They should try to regain them before they venture out again on the treacherous stage of Arab-Israeli diplomacy that more often discredits rather than validates the work of American diplomats. ❑ 13

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Is a Two-State Solution Still Possible?

A Palestinian imam stands inside a mosque set afire a few days earlier in the West Bank village of Lubban Ash-Sharquiy, south of Nablus, May 7, 2010.

Israel’s Fated Bleak Future

By John J. Mearsheimer

resident Barack Obama has finally

Pcoaxed Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. He and most Americans hope that the talks will lead to the creation of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. Regrettably, that is not going to happen. Instead, those territories are almost certain to be incorporated into a “Greater Israel,” which will then be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa.

There are four possible futures regarding Israel and the occupied territories. The outcome that gets the most attention is the two-state solution, where a Palestinian state would control 95 percent or more of the West Bank and all of Gaza, and territoJohn J. Mearsheimer teaches political science at the University of Chicago and is the coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (available from the AET Book Club).

This op-ed first appeared in the Chicago Tribune, May 9, 2010. Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune. Reprinted with permission.

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rial swaps would compensate the Palestinians for those small pieces of the West Bank that Israel would keep. East Jerusalem would be its capital.

The alternatives to a two-state solution all involve creating a Greater Israel—an Israel that effectively controls Gaza and the West Bank. In the first scenario, it would become a democratic binational state in which Palestinians and Jews enjoy equal political rights. This solution would mean abandoning the original Zionist vision of a Jewish state, since Palestinians would eventually outnumber Jews.

Israel could also expel most of the Palestinians from Greater Israel, preserving its Jewish character through ethnic cleansing.

Something similar happened in 1948, when the Zionists drove 700,000 Palestinians out of the territory that became Israel.

The final alternative is some form of apartheid, whereby Israel increases its control over the occupied territories, but allows the Palestinians to exercise limited autonomy in a set of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves.

The two-state solution is the best of these alternatives, but most Israelis are opTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

posed to making the sacrifices that would be necessary to create a viable Palestinian state. There are about 480,000 settlers in the occupied territories and an extensive infrastructure of connector and bypass roads, not to mention the settlements themselves. A Hebrew University Truman Institute poll in March of West Bank settlers found that 21 percent believe that “all means must be employed to resist the evacuation of most West Bank settlements, including the use of arms.” They needn’t worry, however, because Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is committed to expanding the settlements throughout the occupied territories.

Of course, there are prominent Israelis like former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who do favor a two-state solution. But that does not mean that they would be willing or able to make the concessions necessary to create a legitimate Palestinian state. Olmert did not do so when he was prime minister, and it is unlikely that he or Livni could get enough of their fellow citizens to back a genuine two-state solution. The political center of gravity in Israel has shifted sharply to the JULY 2010

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right over the past decade, and there is no sizable pro-peace political party or movement they could turn to for help.

Some advocates of a two-state solution believe the Obama administration can compel Israel to accept a two-state outcome. The United States, after all, is the most powerful country in the world and should have great leverage over Israel, because it gives the Jewish state so much diplomatic and material support.

But no American president can pressure Israel to change its policies toward the Palestinians. The main reason is the Israel lobby, a powerful coalition of American Jews and Christian evangelicals that has a profound influence on U.S. Middle East policy. Alan Dershowitz was spot on when he said, “My generation of Jews…became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy.”

Consider that every American president since 1967 has opposed settlement building, yet none has been able to get Israel to stop building them. There is little evidence that Obama is different from his predecessors. Shortly after taking office, he demanded that Israel stop all settlement building in the occupied territories. Netanyahu refused and Obama caved in to him. The president recently made it clear that he wants Israel to stop building in East Jerusalem. In response, Netanyahu said that Israel would never stop building there, because it is an integral part of the Jewish state. Obama, under pressure from the lobby, has remained silent and certainly has not threatened to punish Israel.

The best Obama can hope for is to push forward the so-called peace process, but most people understand that these negotiations are a charade. The two sides will engage in endless talks while Israel continues to colonize Palestinian lands. The likely result, therefore, will be a Greater Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. But who will live there and what kind of political system will it have?

It will not be a democratic binational state, at least not in the near future. The vast majority of Israel’s Jews have no interest in living in a state dominated by Palestinians. Ethnic cleansing would guarantee that Greater Israel retains a Jewish majority, but that murderous strategy would do enormous damage to Israel’s moral fabric, to its relationship with Jews in the Diaspora, and to its international standing. No genuine friend of Israel could support this crime against humanity.

The most likely outcome is that Greater JULY 2010

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Israel will become a full-fledged apartheid state. There are already separate laws, separate roads and separate housing in the occupied territories, and the Palestinians are essentially confined to impoverished enclaves. Indeed, two former Israeli prime ministers—Ehud Barak and Olmert—have made just this point. Olmert said that if the two-state solution collapses, Israel will face a “South African-style struggle.” He went so far as to argue, “as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”

Olmert is correct. A Jewish apartheid state is not sustainable over the long term.

The discrimination and repression that underpin apartheid are antithetical to core Western values. How could anyone make a moral case for it in the United States, where democracy is venerated and segregation and racism are routinely condemned? It is equally hard to imagine the United States having a “special relationship” with an apartheid state. It is much easier to imagine Americans strongly opposing that racist state’s political system and working hard to change it. An apartheid Israel would also be a strategic liability for the United States.

This is why, in the end, Greater Israel will become a democratic binational state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens. This will mean the end of the Zionist dream.

What is truly remarkable about this situation is that the lobby is effectively helping Israel destroy its own future as a Jewish state. On top of that, there is an alternative outcome that would be relatively easy to achieve and is clearly in Israel’s best interests: the two-state solution. It is hard to understand why Israel and its American supporters are not working overtime to create a viable Palestinian state and why instead they are moving full-speed ahead to build an apartheid state. It makes no sense from either a moral or a strategic perspective.

A Fantasy

By Uri Avnery

ADMIRE Prof. John Mearsheimer. His

Irigorous logic. His lucid presentation.

His rare moral courage.

I was very honored to host him and his colleague, Prof. Stephen Walt, in Tel Aviv, after their book about the Israel lobby in the U.S. provoked a furor.

And I don’t agree with his conclusions.

On April 29, Professor Mearsheimer deUri Avnery is a former member of the Israeli Knesset and a founder of Gush Shalom (<www.gush-shalom.org>).

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

livered an impressive lecture in Washington, DC [summarized in his op-ed]. He presented a profound analysis of the chances of Israel surviving in the long term. Every Israeli who is concerned about the future of his state should grapple with this analysis.

The professor does not hide his opinion that the two-state solution is by far the best. But he believes that it is “dead.”

Greater Israel, ruling over all the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, already exists. It is an apartheid state that will steadily become more consolidated and more brutal—until its collapse.

This is a frightening prognosis. It is also very logical. If current developments continue in a straight line, this is exactly what will happen.

But I do not believe in straight lines.

There are very few straight lines in nature, and there are no straight lines in the life of nations and states.

In the 86 years of my life, innumerable unforeseen things have happened, and innumerable expected things have not come about. The fate of nations is governed by unexpected factors. They are shaped by human beings, who are by nature unpredictable creatures.

Who foresaw in 1928 that Adolf Hitler would come to power in Germany? Who in 1941 foresaw that the Red Army would stop the invincible Wehrmacht? Who in 1939 foresaw the Holocaust? Who in 1945 foresaw the creation of the State of Israel?

Who in 1989 foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union? Who foresaw, the day before it happened, the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Who foresaw the Khomeini revolution?

Who foresaw the election of a black U.S. president?

Of course, one cannot build plans on the unexpected. But it should be taken into account. It is irrational to discount the irrational.

I do not accept the professor’s judgment that “most Israelis are opposed to making the sacrifices that would be necessary to create a viable Palestinian state.” As an Israeli living and fighting in Israel, I am convinced that the great majority of Israelis are ready to accept the necessary conditions, which are well-known to all: a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, the 1967 borders with minimal land swaps, a mutually acceptable solution for the refugee problem.

The real problem is that most Israelis do not believe that peace is possible. Dozens of years of propaganda have convinced them that “we have no partner for peace.” Events on the ground (as seen through Israeli eyes) 15

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have confirmed this view. If this perception is dissolved, everything is possible.

In this, President Obama could play a big role. I believe that this is his real mission: to prove that it is possible. That there is a partner out there. That there is a guarantee for the security of Israel. And— yes—that the alternative is frightening.

Can the settlements be removed? Will there ever be an Israeli government that will have the guts to do so? Where is the leader who will undertake this Herculean task?

The professor is right that “there is nobody with that kind of standing in Israeli politics today.” And that “there is no sizable pro-peace party or movement.”

Yet history shows that exceptional leaders often appear when they are needed. I have seen in my own lifetime a failed and generally detested politician called Winston Churchill become a national hero.

And a reactionary general called Charles de Gaulle liberate Algeria. And a grey Communist apparatchik called Mikhail Gorbachev dismantle a huge empire without a drop of blood being shed. And the election of a guy called Barack Obama.

I have also seen a brutal general called Ariel Sharon, the father of the settlements, destroying a series of settlements. His intentions may be debatable, but the facts cannot be disputed: he challenged the settlers’ movement—which Professor Mearsheimer describes in all its fearful menace—and won easily. In face of the total opposition of the settlers and their allies, he evacuated some 20 settlements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Not a single military unit mutinied. Not a single person was killed or seriously injured.

Sure, there is a quantitative and qualitative difference between Sharon’s “separation” and that task in front of us. But it is a big mistake to view the “settlers” as a monolithic structure. They are split into several different sectors—the inhabitants of the East Jerusalem neighborhoods do not resemble the West Bank settlers, the buyers of cheap apartments in Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim do not resemble the zealots of Yitzhar and Tapuach, the Orthodox in Modi’in-Illit and Immanuel do not resemble the “Youth of the Hills.”

If a peace agreement is achieved, it will be necessary to approach the evacuation job with determination, but also with finesse. For the inhabitants of the East Jerusalem neighborhoods, a solution will be found in the framework of the agreement about Jerusalem. A large number of settlers near the Green Line will remain where they are in the framework of a fair exchange of territory. Another large part will return home, if they know that apartments are ready and waiting for them in 16

the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. For some of them there may be a possibility to find an accommodation with the Palestinian government. In the end, the hard core of Messianic settlers will not give up easily. They may use arms. But a strong leader will stand the test, if the great majority of the Israeli public support the peace agreement.

The two-state solution is not the best solution. It is the only solution.

The alternative is not a democratic, secular binational state, because such a state will not come into being. Neither people wants it.

As the professor rightly maintains, in the absence of peace, Israel will rule from the sea to the river. The present situation will go on and become worse: the sovereign State of Israel holding on to the occupied territories.

Except for a tiny group of dreamers, who can be gathered in a medium-sized room, there are no Israelis who dream of living in a binational state, in which the Arabs constitute the majority. If such a state came into being, Israeli Jews would just emigrate. But it is much more plausible that the reverse would happen: the Palestinians would emigrate long before that.

Ethnic cleansing does not have to take the form of a dramatic expulsion, as in 1948. It can take place quietly, in a creeping process, when more and more Palestinians simply give up. That is the great dream of the settlers and their partners: to make life for the Palestinians so miserable that they take their families and leave.

Either way, life in this country will turn into hell. Not for one year, but for dozens of years. Both sides will be violent. The idea of Palestinian “nonviolent resistance” is a pipe-dream. The professor’s hope that in the putative binational state, the Palestinians would not treat the Jews as the Jews are treating them now has been disproved by the Jews themselves—the persecution they have suffered throughout the ages has not inoculated them against becoming persecutors themselves.

There is a gap in the professor’s analysis: he does not explain how the violent Israeli apartheid state will “develop” into an ideal binational state. In his opinion, this will come about “eventually,” after “some years.” How many? And how?

OK, there will be pressures. World public opinion will turn against Israel. The Jews in the Diaspora will distance themselves. But how will all this bring about a binational state?

Any comparison with South Africa is unsound. There is no real similarity between the situation that prevailed there and the situation that exists—or will exist in the future—here. Except for some methTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ods of persecution, all the circumstances, in all fields, are vastly different.

(To mention just one: the apartheid regime was finally brought down not by international pressure, but by the massive and crippling strikes of the black work force. In this country, the occupation authorities do everything to prevent Palestinians from coming to work in Israel.)

In the end, it is a matter of logic: if international pressure does not succeed in convincing the Israelis to accept the two-state solution, which does no harm to their national identity, how will it compel them to give up everything they have—their state, their identity, their culture, their economy, all they have built in a huge endeavor of 120 years?

Is it not much more plausible to assume that long before their state collapses under all the pressures, Israelis would embrace the two-state solution?

I completely agree with the professor: the main obstacle to peace is psychological.

What is needed is a profound change of perceptions, before the Israeli public can be brought to recognize reality and accept peace, with all it entails.

That is the main task facing the Israeli peace camp: to change the basic perceptions of the public. I am certain that this is possible. We have already traveled a long road from the days of “There are no Palestinians!” and “Jerusalem united for all eternity!” Professor Mearsheimer’s analysis may well contribute to this process.

An apartheid state or a binational state?

Neither. But the free State of Palestine side by side with the free State of Israel, in the common homeland. ❑

Faisal Shahzad…

Continued from page 11

sentenced to death by an Indian court.

Under intense American and international pressure, Pakistan has in the past year finally mounted attacks on homegrown jihadi groups—such as the Tehrik-iTaliban Pakistan, or TTP, who, angered at Pakistan’s alliance with the United States, started to make war on the Pakistani state.

In response, the Pakistan army has mounted large-scale campaigns against TTP sanctuaries in Swat and South Waziristan, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians and driving TTP leaders to seek shelter in North Waziristan—an area Pakistan seems very reluctant to assault, since it harbors many of its own jihadi allies.

It may be in just such an area that Faisal Shahzad picked up the rudiments of bomb-making, as well as learning to hate America. ❑ JULY 2010

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Dr. Strangelove, Made in Israel SpecialReport

By Philip Giraldi defense and security establishment. According to a highly reliable source, Dr. Lani Kass is now the principal adviser to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen regarding the Middle East.

She recently was involved in a very important meeting—one that concerned Israel.

ne would expect the Air Force’s top

has spent some time in the U.S. military or who has a very particular education, or skill set that brings something special to what is, after all, a very senior and sensitive position. Not so. Dr. Lani Kass, senior special assistant to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, was born, raised, and educated in Israel and then served in that country’s military, where she reached the rank of major. She has a Ph.D. in Russian studies but advises Air Force generals on cyberwarfare, terrorism, and the Middle East.

Dr. Lani Kass is married to Norman Kass, a former Pentagon deputy assistant secretary of defense, and resides in McLean, Virginia. She has been naturalized as a U.S. citizen and is presumably a dual national who now holds both American and Israeli passports. Her three children were all born in Israel. While it is perhaps not unusual for American citizens to volunteer with the Israel Defense Forces, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel did in 1991, it would have to be considered unprecedented for a senior Israeli military officer to obtain a high level position at the Pentagon. In fact, it is hard to imagine that anyone carrying out a security background investigation would approve such a transition under any circumstances, suggesting the possibility that Kass’ ascent to high office might have been aided or even godfathered by friends in key positions who were able to override or circumvent normal procedures.

Indeed, Kass appears to have close and continuing ties to her country of birth, frequently spicing her public statements with comments about life in Israel while parroting simplistic views of the nature of the Islamic threat that might have been scripted in Tel Aviv’s Foreign Ministry.

Information has come to light on Kass that heightens my concern about her high position in the United States government’s Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and a fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance. This article is a synthesis of two of the author’s articles first posted on Antiwar.com, <www.antiwar.com>, April 15 and 21, 2010. Copyright © Antiwar.com 2010. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

JULY 2010

WWW.AF.MIL/SHARED/MEDIA/BIO/HI_RES/KASS_L.JPG

Ocivilian adviser to be someone who

to be important enough to move it up the chain of command. In February, he met with Admiral Mullen and briefed him on his findings [see May/June 2010 Washington Report, p. 11]. Mullen was accompanied only by Dr. Lani Kass, who was described to Petraeus as his special assistant for the Middle East.

Mullen expressed some dismay at the implications of the findings, while Kass disputed Petraeus’ conclusions and said that the concerns being expressed were greatly exaggerated. Petraeus nevertheless presented his report to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17 together with his judgment that the failure to address the Palestinian issue was putting U.S. soldiers in danger because it was inflaming anti-American sentiment and giving groups like al-Qaeda an unnecessary propaganda victory.

You Can Take the Girl Out of Israel…

Israeli-born-and-raised Dr. Lani Kass, senior special assistant to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz.

The meeting took place because of concerns that the United States has been losing the “war of ideas” in the Muslim world. At the end of last year, Gen. David Petraeus sent a special emissary out on a fact-finding mission to meet with the heads of state and top military officers in all of the Muslim countries considered to be friends or allies of the U.S. for a frank exchange of views.

The emissary, an Arabic speaker, learned that no country any longer trusts the United States because it is widely believed that all American policies in the Near East region are subject to veto by Israel. It was also commonly observed that Washington is complicit in the genocide against the Palestinians because of its failure to do anything to restrain Israel, making it extremely difficult to rally popular support in any Muslim country for U.S. policies.

Petraeus was surprised by the unanimity and emotion of the views that were confidentially expressed, and thought the issue THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Dr. Kass’ full first name is Ilana and her maiden name is Dimant. She has a 1971 B.A. in political science and Russian area studies, summa cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a 1976 joint Ph.D. from the Kaplan School of the Hebrew University and Columbia University in international affairs. She apparently met her husband, Norman, at Columbia.

Both she and her husband are fluent in Russian and Hebrew. After completing her Ph.D., she served in the Israeli Air Force, achieving the rank of major. For those who are unfamiliar with the military, the rank of major is a senior rank that normally would be awarded to a career officer.

Her first job in Washington was with the Advanced International Studies Institute (AISI), a Washington, DC area-based think tank. After being recommended by someone at the Pentagon, she was hired for her Russian-language skills in an unclassified program funded by the Department of Defense called Soviet Watch. Her fellow employees understood that she was a former major in Israeli intelligence. Some months after she departed AISI, one of her colleagues received a call from a personnel manager at the Industrial War College asking to confirm Kass’s employment with AISI. The Industrial War College was, as the name implies, an institute set up to coordinate industrial production with Defense Department needs. Some of its work was classified. Kass’ colleague told the 17

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caller that Kass was an intelligence officer who thought of herself as an Israeli and added that putting her in any position of influence would be a bad idea.

A few months later she moved on to Beltway bandit Booz Allen Hamiltonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Russian Research Center, where she worked between 1979 and 1981. Between 1985 and 2005 she held the position of professor of military strategy and operations of the National War College. In 1992 Dr. Kass obtained a senior position at the Pentagon as special assistant to the director, Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate (J5). Dick Cheney was secretary of defense at the time. She returned to the Pentagon under Secretary William Cohen and stayed on during 2000â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2001 as senior policy adviser and special assistant for strategic initiatives to the director, Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate (J5) under Donald Rumsfeld.

Kassâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; powerpoint demonstration â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Warfighting Domain,â&#x20AC;? dated Sept. 26, 2006, is more than a little Strangelovean in its language and appeal. It includes a map taken from an obscure Jihadi Web site showing the entire world depicted as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;United States of Islam,â&#x20AC;? in which everyone will have to follow shariah Muslim law, and defines the â&#x20AC;&#x153;missionâ&#x20AC;? as â&#x20AC;&#x153;to fly and fight in the Air, Space, and Cyberspace.â&#x20AC;? She boasts, â&#x20AC;&#x153;as Airmen we are the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s premier multi-dimensional maneuver force, with the agility, reach, speed, stealth, payload, precision, and persistence to deliver global effects at the speed of sound and the speed of light.â&#x20AC;? Her objective? To â&#x20AC;&#x153;foster a force of 21st century warriors, capable of delivering the full spectrum of kinetic and non-kinetic, lethal and non-lethal effects in the Air, Space, and Cyber domains.â&#x20AC;?

In early November 2006, U.S. Air Force officials formed the Air Force Cyberspace Command that had the â&#x20AC;&#x153;authority to launch wars in cyberspace.â&#x20AC;? The command was reported to be â&#x20AC;&#x153;largely the brainchild (Advertisement)

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of Dr. Lani Kass, director of the Air Force Cyberspace Task Force.â&#x20AC;?

In a speech at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho on July 9, 2007, Kass said radical Muslims hate the Western world because Europe took their dominant political position away and they want it back.

She also compared all Americans to sheep and sheepdogs. The former keep their heads down hoping that someone else will be eaten by wolvesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a.k.a. terroristsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; while the latter fight back. Kass sees herself as a sheepdog. For her Air Force audience she concluded that the long war against the Islamists will end â&#x20AC;&#x153;when they learn to love their children more than they hate us,â&#x20AC;? a comment originally attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

A Two-Decade Ascent From there and then to here and now has taken more than 20 years, proceeding through a number of Defense Department positions with ever-increasing responsibility and access. It would not be out of place to observe that if the report that Kass was truly an intelligence officer for the Israel Defense Forces is correct, the Department of Defense security screeners should have erred on the side of caution based on the supposition that she was still in touch with her former employers. She should never have been given a security clearance and provided access to United States classified information in the first place, which again raises the issue of just if and how thoroughly her background was actually investigated.

And it is also not unreasonable to stop and consider whether Kass might well be an agent working for the Israeli government, which aggressively spies against the United States. She left Israel and began her journey through the U.S. Defense Department in 1981, when Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was still active. Israeli intelligence certainly was then and is now capable of what is referred to in intelligence jargon as a seeding operation, in which â&#x20AC;&#x153;a moleâ&#x20AC;? is placed in an innocuous position and expected to rise higher, eventually obtaining access to top secret information and even sometimes winding up in a position in which it is possible to direct policy as a socalled agent of influence. Kass started her ascent by working on Russia for AISI, followed by Booz Allen Hamilton, quite likely for completely innocent reasons, but also possibly because it was a non-threatening way to ease her entry into the world of government contractors.

In seeking to discover how she wound up THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

where she is now, it is fair to ask how exactly she obtained the positions that she has held with the Pentagon and who sponsored her through the bureaucracy. How did she manage to obtain a clearance in spite of the obvious red flags in her background? In light of legitimate security concerns, has she been polygraphed, what questions about her relationship with her former country were asked, and what were her answers?

Was any deception indicated? Has she been re-polygraphed recently? This is not intended as harassment or as any accusation against Kass, but rather to determine if she has been subject to normal and appropriate security measures. CIA officers are, for example, required to undergo polygraph exams every five years and the questions concentrate on possible unreported relationships with foreign governments.

Critics note that while Kass is genuinely an expert on Russia, she has little background to qualify her as an authority on the currently fashionable cyberwarfare, where she has somehow turned herself into a major spokesman through mastery of the necessary buzzwords and talking points.

Nor does she have any genuine expertise on the Middle East or on terrorism to share with Mullen and others, apart from her own Israeli perspective. Her access to the highest levels of the Air Force also raises the questions of just what is she advising and what does she know? Does she support an air war against Iran, for example, and is she actively promoting that option? Does she know how the Obama administration will react if Tel Aviv tries to stage a unilateral attack on Iran? Such information would be pure gold for the Israeli government.

There are indications that Dr. Kass is a major player in shaping U.S. security policy. She has been described as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;key participantâ&#x20AC;? in the development of the national strategy for combating terrorism, as well as the national military strategic plan for the Global War on Terrorism.

One might argue that Dr. Lani Kass is just another Israel firster who has risen to high office in the U.S. government, not really unlike Dennis Ross, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and Douglas Feith. And that might well be true. But at the same time, one must challenge the judgment of those who enabled her rise to a position of great responsibility and power, and there should be serious questions about whether her bellicose and racially tinged viewpoint comes from objective and honest analysis of the genuine challenges confronting the United States or from her loyalty to her country of birth. â?&#x2018; JULY 2010

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A Third U.S. Speaking Tour, as Israeli Warplanes Drop Leaflets and Missiles on Gaza

Gazaon the Ground

By Mohammed Omer pected to encounter some hurdles. To my surprise, however, when I handed the customs officer my brand-new Palestinian passport (a treasure in itself), he treated me with respect and genuine curiosity. “Oh you are from that part of the world?” he asked.

ing the bridge of mutual understanding. As a champion of freedom of expression, the United States is where I have chosen to anchor the pylons of perception and comprehension necessary in building that bridge.

So it was that I arrived in Chicago on a sunny April day to speak about my work and my reflections on life and war in the Gaza Strip during the four-year-long siege imposed by Israel on 1.6 million Palestinians.

I was somewhat surprised to find myself in this vibrant Midwest city, for just seven days earlier it seemed I wouldn’t be allowed to enter the U.S., due to an unexplained mandatory hold on my visa application.

Some of my American sponsors had seriously considered canceling my engagements, others decided to broadcast my talk on The author being interviewed on “Democracy Now!” Skype and video, when, after much pressure from thousands of peoLowering his voice, he added in a serious ple worldwide, the U.S. Consulate in Ams- tone, “How are we doing down there?” terdam finally granted me entry.

Without hesitation I replied, “Well, there I remain amazed and grateful at the are two answers to that: the real answer and amassing of support and resources on my the diplomatic. Which would you prefer to behalf. Many showed their care and con- hear?” cern by writing letters, leveraging Facebook “The real answer,” he said. “You are a and Twitter networks, and sending e-mails journalist.” protesting the withholding of my visa.

So I told him that things were “going Those who helped coordinate my trip, in- pretty badly, overall.” cluding the University of Houston, the Uni“Yes, I thought so,” he said, “but hopeversity of New Mexico and Jewish Voice fully we can change that, and maybe your for Peace, activated their networks. The speaking tour will help, too. We need to support of the Lannan Foundation was cru- work together and keep the faith.” cial in providing a platform where I could Smiling, he stamped my passport and address American citizens on the situation handed it back, saying, “There you go, have and experiences of a war correspondent a nice trip.” from Gaza.

I couldn’t help compare this pleasant, Nevertheless, arriving at Chicago’s non-stressful welcome with my first trip to O’Hare airport I was apprehensive. Given the U.S., when the customs officer kept conthe difficulties in obtaining my visa, I ex- fusing Palestine with Pakistan!

Each time I travel to the United States I Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer marvel at the beauty and diversity of its soreports on the Gaza Strip, and maintains the ciety. In Chicago I met with relatively liberal Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be audiences. In Texas, conservative. Reaching reached at <gazanews@yahoo.com>.

New Mexico, my audiences were of mixed 20

views, with multicultural, multiethnic backgrounds. Each state has its own rhythm and unique feel, but with an underlying unity of purpose.

At a discussion with author Ali Abunimah, founder of the Electronic Intifada (<www.electronicintifada.net>), at Chicago’s Newberry Library, sponsored by Haymarket Books, I could see that Americans’ perception of the situation in Gaza is changing. People are getting the message about occupied Palestine through social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and other nontraditional media outlets As a result, many who attended my presentations in Chicago, Houston, Albuquerque and Santa Fe were well versed on the suffering of the Palestinians. Still, reactions ran the gamut.

Some in the audience clearly were shocked and horrified to learn what is actually going on in Gaza.

Others were angered that it is paid for by their tax dollars. Often this realization—that, as Americans, they are underwriting the carnage—comes as a revelation, especially to those who depend for their information on the mainstream media, which frequently omits or minimizes such facts or otherwise misinforms the citizenry.

One of the many e-mails and letters I received from attendees came from a woman in Santa Fe, who wrote: “You are as real as anyone I have ever met or heard. I couldn’t sleep last night. I watched the sun come up and a deep chill was still upon my soul.”

It is because of Americans such as my Santa Fe correspondent that I conclude each tour of the United States with a renewed sense of hope. Americans are good, kindhearted people, I have learned, who, once informed, act in the interests of justice and compassion—regardless of their political or religious background. This tour, more than any other, confirmed that thesis—although the primary obstacle to the ending of the siege and a lasting peace exists within my COURTESY M. OMER

sincerely believe that international dia-

Ilogue among people is the pillar support-

JULY 2010

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chosen profession. This, too, became painfully clear on my tour.

The iPad and the Cheese Factory As Ali Abunimah and I were walking in Chicago one evening, I saw a beautiful young woman camped outside the local Apple store, hoping to be the first to buy the new iPad. What struck me as odd was not the fact that she was camping out waiting to purchase a product. It was the importance the U.S. media attached to this event.

Her story not only was broadcast on all the local TV and radio stations, but also appeared on Google, which featured a large newspaper headline reading, “iPad Launch: Cheline Lundin, 25, First In Line In Chicago; Hopes It Will Be ‘A Best Friend.’”

At the same moment, back home in Gaza City’s Al-Sabra neighborhood, an Israeli missile destroyed a dairy and cheese factory (the second such target), killing and injuring several people while eliminating yet another source of nourishment for the nearly 900,000 children trapped behind walls in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The cheese factory was a small familyowned business which supported Motassem Dalloul and his seven children. While not a multi-billion dollar corporation like Apple, its destruction had a far greater impact on Dalloul’s family and the people of Gaza than could the debut of an electronic device that facilitates reading and Tweeting.

From Apple to Fox While in Texas, just prior to my departure for New Mexico, I was invited to appear on “Democracy Now” with Amy Goodman.

Also appearing was Ayman Mohyedien, an Al Jazeera correspondent based in Gaza. Together we discussed the challenges journalists encounter reporting from the Gaza Strip.

I have always had a high regard for ”Democracy Now!” and Al-Jazeera. It was ironic, then, that in the Green Room where I waited the television was tuned to Fox News. Even abroad, Fox’s reputation preceded it, so my curiosity forced me to watch.

I wanted to know what Fox News did to earn the scorn of so many, yet the strong loyalty of its disciples. I found its programming, coverage and analysis disturbingly disappointing. It literally made me nauseous, I reluctantly explained when Goodman and co-host Juan Gonzalez asked me.

Fox’s major story that day focused on the nicotine-addicted Qatari diplomat who furtively attempted tto smoke a cigarette in an airplane bathroom, provoking airport security. Fox actually sent reporters to the airport and spent much air time dissecting the event.

JULY 2010

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks had released 2007 film footage of American soldiers firing into a Baghdad crowd from two Apache helicopters, killing a Reuter’s cameraman, several civilians and two children in cold blood. The jovial banter from the cockpit made the murders seem like a video game.

That wasn’t news for Fox, however—certainly not compared to an Arab diplomat sneaking a cigarette on a plane.

Indeed, with a few exceptions, American media focus on superficial, non-stressful entertainment, with sensationalism, celebrity and products promotion disguised as news. I’ve been told that this is because such programming garners higher ratings. Yet this contradicts my own experience, which is that Americans are starving for facts, analysis and truth. They want to know—and they know they need to know. The fact that, of the United States’ 330 million residents, fewer than 5 million rely on Fox for their news would seem to confirm that.

Thankfully, such alternative media as Link TV and Free Speech TV, coupled with available foreign news networks, provide outlets for unbiased journalism and investigative reporting.

In Gaza, the Israeli Siege Continues Arriving at the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I finally spoke with friends and family back in Gaza and asked them how they were. Little had changed. They were without running water, again—this time going on four days—and electricity was limited and sporadic. They remained caged in Gaza, unable to leave for medical treatment and denied vital life-sustaining basic necessities.

Looking around the Albuquerque airport I saw an abundance of food, water and supplies. As people waited only for departing flights or arriving passengers, they sipped lattes, thumbed through newspapers and texted on smart phones. Meanwhile, 8,000 miles away, an American-made warplane, captained by an Israeli pilot, dropped leaflets on Gaza warning of yet another possible strike that, more than likely, won’t qualify for mention in America’s mainstream media.

Why bother to warn, one might wonder.

For the Israeli government, the leaflets provide cover: if any Gazans are killed or wounded, Israel can argue that, since they were warned, it’s their own fault. Never mind that Israel has sealed the borders of Gaza—and hence any possibility of escape.

Fortunately, Americans seem to be waking up to the reality of Israel and Palestine, and I thank God I have had the privilege to be part of that awakening. ❑ THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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seale_22_Special Report 5/13/10 12:43 PM Page 22

Rumors of War

By Patrick Seale

AFP PHOTO/ALI DIA

SpecialReport

Residents of the southern Lebanese village of Abbassiyeh, some holding national flags, try to dismantle a barbed wire fence erected by Israel three days earlier in a “disputed” border area, April 16, 2010. here is no denying the mood of acute

Tanxiety in the Middle East: Many fear

that war could break out this summer. The scenario most often evoked is that of another Israeli assault on Lebanon—an expanded version of the 2006 attack—which this time could grow into a wider conflict, dragging in Syria, and even Iran, as well.

Jordan’s King Abdullah has warned of the danger of a regional war, while the Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblat has said that Israel was waiting for the right conditions to attack the Arab world.

Certainly, Israeli leaders have not hesitated to stoke the fires of war. President Shimon Peres—Israel’s wolf in sheep’s clothing—heightened regional tensions this month by publicly accusing Syria of delivering SCUD missiles to Hezbollah in Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad elSolh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2010 Patrick Seale. Distributed

by Agence Global.

22

Lebanon—an accusation so far unproved, but which has earned Syria a sharp rebuke from Washington.

An unnamed Israeli minister was quoted

by Britain’s Sunday Times as saying that, if Hezbollah dared to launch a missile at Israel, “we will return Syria to the Stone Age—crippling its power stations, ports, fuel storage and every bit of strategic infrastructure.” So much for good-neighborly sentiments!

Peres has also issued a dark warning to Iran of Israel’s military “capabilities”— drawing an expression of regret for such arrogant belligerence from the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz. Needless to say, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, like Peres himself, never misses an opportunity to demonize Iran, portraying the Islamic Republic as a deadly threat, not only to Israel but to the whole world. Netanyahu has repeatedly hinted that, if the United Sates failed to halt Iran’s nuclear program, Israel would have to do the job itself.

Iran, meanwhile, has not been idle. It has sought to rally international opinion against the tougher sanctions the United THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

States is seeking to impose on it. It has also denounced as “nuclear terrorism” America’s new nuclear posture— which singled out Iran and North Korea as potential targets for nuclear attack.

In April, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps carried out large-scale war games in the Gulf and in the Strait of Hormuz, including the testing of missiles, with the declared aim of “maintaining security for oil routes”—a way of saying that the security of this vital region could not be left to an external power like the United States. Iran would dearly like to see U.S. forces removed from its immediate vicinity.

Three Prime Motives What lies behind Israel’s shrill war propaganda? There would seem to be at least three prime motives. First, by threatening its neighbors with war, Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government seems anxious to shift Washington’s attention away from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and toward an alleged threat from Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. Israel has been disturbed by reports from Washington that U.S. President Barack Obama, anxious to break the current deadlock, might publish his own peace plan and seek to impose it on the parties.

This is Netanyahu’s greatest fear. He immediately rejected any form of an “imposed” settlement, while dismissing Obama’s call for a building freeze in Arab East Jerusalem. Like the far-right members of his ruling coalition, Netanyahu is a Greater Israel ideologue, totally opposed to Palestinian nationalism and to the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. He may well calculate that a small war could weaken the Arab camp and win time for Israel to continue its seizure of Palestinian territory.

Continued on page 26 JULY 2010

cathail_23_July 2010 Template 5/13/10 12:44 PM Page 23

The Next 9/11â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Made in Israel?

SpecialReport

By Maidhc Ă&#x201C; Cathail

iting the possibility of a terrorist orga-

Cnization getting hold of a nuclear

weapon as the greatest threat to U.S. security, President Barack Obama persuaded 46 other countries at the recent Nuclear Security Summit to agree to secure the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s loose nuclear material. Those leaders who came to Washington might have done more to avert a nuclear attack, however, if they had asked the U.S. president to account for Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own loose nukes.

Of course, President Obama may not even be aware of the egregious failure of the United States to secure its nuclear materials and know-how from the predation of its alleged â&#x20AC;&#x153;closest ally.â&#x20AC;? But since Obama is unwilling to even â&#x20AC;&#x153;speculateâ&#x20AC;? about which country in the Middle East has nuclear weapons, he could hardly be expected to acknowledge how it got them.

In a recent Antiwar.com article aptly titled â&#x20AC;&#x153;Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Loose Nukes in Israel,â&#x20AC;?

Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) and author of Spy Trade: How Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lobby Undermines Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Economy (available from the AET Book Club), shows how â&#x20AC;&#x153;the U.S is a sieve for Israeli nuclear espionage.â&#x20AC;?

The massive arms smuggling network set up by David Ben-Gurion in the United States in the 1940s had acquired a nuclear branch within a decade, according to Smith. The 1955 purchase of the Apollo Steel Company plant in Pennsylvania was financed by David Lowenthal, a close friend of Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first prime minister and a former member of the Haganah, the precursor to the Israeli army. The following year, Dr. Zalman Shapiro, head of a local Zionist Organization of America chapter, incorporated the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) at Apollo. Before long, NUMEC was receiving large quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium from Westinghouse and the U.S. Navy for nuclear reprocessing.

By the 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) became suspicious of secuMaidhc Ă&#x201C; Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan. To read more of his writing, visit <http://maidhcocathail.wordpress.com>. A version of this article first appeared in the online Islam Times.

JULY 2010

rity lapses at NUMEC, and even considered suspending its â&#x20AC;&#x153;classified weapons work.â&#x20AC;? A 1965 AEC audit discovered that 220 pounds of highly enriched uranium were unaccounted for. The following year the FBI launched its own investigation, code named Project Divert, to monitor NUMECâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s management and its frequent Israeli visitors. Nevertheless, the diversion of nuclear material to Israel continued unabated. After a Sept. 10, 1968 visit by four Israelis, including Mossad agent Rafi Eitan, a further 587 pounds of highly enriched uranium went missing.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;T

he U.S is a sieve for Israeli nuclear espionage.â&#x20AC;?

Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nuclear espionage against the United States didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t end with its accession to the nuclear club in the 1960s, however.

As former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds revealed, its smuggling network received crucial assistance from three high-ranking officials in the George W. Bush administration. All three have close ties to Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s military-industrial complex.

According to the FBI whistleblower, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith provided Marc Grossman, the third highest-ranking official in the State Department, with a list of Defense Department employees with access to sensitive data, including nuclear technology. The list also included highly sensitive personal details, such as sexual preference, problems with gambling or alcoholism, and how much they owed on their mortgages. Grossman then passed on the information to Israeli and Turkish agents, who used it to â&#x20AC;&#x153;hookâ&#x20AC;? those Pentagon officials. In addition, as Edmonds testified in an Ohio court case, the foreign operatives had recruited people â&#x20AC;&#x153;on almost every major nuclear facility in the United States.â&#x20AC;?

After Israel and Turkey took what they wanted from the pilfered secrets, their agents offered what was left to the highest bidder. As Edmonds has told the Sunday Times, American Conservative and Military.com, nuclear information was sold on the black market, where anyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;even alQaedaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;could buy it.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

So then, it would seem that those who shout loudest about the threat of terroristsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;namely, neoconservatives like Perle, Feith and Grossman and their Israeli counterpartsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;are the very ones who are aiding them, at least indirectly, to acquire those much touted weapons of mass destruction.

But why, one might reasonably ask, would Israeli agents help their supposed enemies get hold of the bomb?

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Very Goodâ&#x20AC;? for Israel Consider: what would be the likely outcome if Obamaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worst fears of a nuclear attack on the United Statesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or one of its alliesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;are realized?

Regardless of the facts, some Islamic countryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;most likely Iran or Pakistanâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;would be blamed for aiding the terrorists. And it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t require an advanced degree in game theory to predict what Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reaction would be. The retaliation would be so swift and devastating that the designated evildoers might envy the fate of post-invasion Iraqisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;also victims of an Israeli misdirection.

If, as Binyamin Netanyahu admitted, 9/11 was â&#x20AC;&#x153;very goodâ&#x20AC;? for Israel, a nuclear 9/11 might be even better. As the spellbinding effects of that traumatic event nine years ago have begun to wear off, and with Americans increasingly questioning the costs of a one-sided alliance, it may even be considered necessary. â?&#x2018; (Advertisement)

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paul_24_What They Said 5/13/10 12:47 PM Page 24

Sanctioning Iran Is an Act of War

By Rep. Ron Paul

What TheySaid rise in opposition to this

conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary onetrillion-dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

We hear war advocates today on the Floor scaremongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).

United States. Where have We need to see all this for what it is: Prowe heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were paganda to speed us to war against Iran for going to fly over the United States and at- the benefit of special interests.

Let us remember a few important things. tack us? These “drones” ended up being pure propaganda—the U.N. chief weapons Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proinspector concluded in 2004 that there was liferation Treaty, has never been found in no evidence that Saddam Hussain had ever violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable developed unpiloted drones for use on of enriching uranium to the necessary enemy targets. Of course by then the pro- level to manufacture nuclear weapons. Acpagandists had gotten their war, so the cording to the entire U.S. intelligence community, Iran is not currently working on a truth did not matter much.

We hear war advocates on the Floor nuclear weapons program. These are facts, today arguing that we cannot afford to sit and to point them out does not make one a around and wait for Iran to detonate a nu- supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. clear weapon. Where have we heard this Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or before? Anyone remember then-Secretary distort these facts to serve their agenda, of State Condoleezza Rice’s oft-repeated though, so it is important and necessary to quip about Iraq, that we cannot wait for point them out.

Some of my well-intentioned colleagues the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom may be tempted to vote for sanctions on cloud?

Iran because they view this as a way to Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) made this statement avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether on the House Floor on April 22, 2010. the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those push24

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

HTTP://WWW.HOUSE.GOV/PAUL/MEDIA.SHTML

Imotion to instruct House

ing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to “work”— to change the regime—war became the only remaining regime-change option.

This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran.

The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war. ❑

IndextoAdvertisers Alalusi Foundation. . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) . . . . . . . . . . . 49 American Friends of UNRWA. . . . . 18 American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) . . Inside Front Cover Casa del Rio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Exquisia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Helping Hand USA. . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Kinder USA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Muslim Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 United Palestinian Appeal (UPA) . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover JULY 2010

mcarthur_25-26_Congress Watch 5/13/10 2:53 PM Page 25

With Few Exceptions, Obedient Congress Continues to Do AIPAC’s Bidding CongressWatch

By Shirl McArthur he March 21-23 annual meeting of the

TAmerican Israeli Public Affairs Com-

mittee (AIPAC) came on the heels of Israel’s public humiliation of visiting Vice President Joseph Biden with the announcement of 1,600 new apartment units for Israeli colonists in East Jerusalem, and President Barack Obama’s administration’s strong, and public, denunciation of that act (see May/June 2010 Washington Report, p. 10).

As usual, AIPAC’s meeting drew hordes of Israel supporters (including more than half the members of Congress), who scheduled more than 500 meetings on Capitol Hill to lobby for Israel’s, as opposed to their own country’s, interests. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the conference. Clinton firmly repeated the administration’s position that continued Israeli construction in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, damages prospects for peace. However, Netanyahu defiantly declared that he had no intention of halting construction in East Jerusalem.

AIPAC then geared up its formidable pressure machine on members of Congress, resulting in more than three-quarters of the members of Congress signing nearly identical House and Senate letters—remarkably similar to AIPAC’s talking points memo—to Clinton. The letters implicitly took Israel’s side in the dispute by urging Clinton to ensure that the announcement of construction in East Jerusalem not derail U.S.-Israel relations [note the emphasis on the announcement, rather than the construction itself], and that any differences between the two countries be resolved privately rather than in public. In addition, no fewer than nine senators and 49 representatives made statements on the House and Senate floor, or submitted statements for the record, reaffirming the U.S.-Israel relationship.

The House letter, originated by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), was sent on March 26 with 333 (of a possible 435) signatures. The Senate letter, originated by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Johnny Shirl McArthur is a retired U.S. foreign service officer living in the Washington, DC area.

JULY 2010

Isakson (R-GA), was sent on April 13 with 76 (of a possible 100) signatures.

Letters Urge “Tough and Decisive Measures” Against Iran Prior to its annual meeting, AIPAC wrote to all members of Congress calling for Congress to demand that the U.S. government fully implement existing Iran sanctions laws, impose “crippling” new sanctions on Iran, and work to impose “tough new multilateral sanctions.” Obediently, more than four-fifths of the members of Congress signed letters to Obama essentially making those points, assuring him of bipartisan support for “tough and decisive measures,” and urging him to “reaffirm boldly and unambiguously that the U.S. can and will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.”

The House letter, originated by Reps.

Jesse Jackson (D-IL) and Mike Pence (RIN), was sent April 14 with 366 signatures.

The Senate letter, originated by Sens.

Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), was sent April 15 with 80 signatures.

In addition, Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, announced in a March 25 press release that he intended to “offer an amendment to each of the 12 appropriations bills to ensure that no federal funds go to companies doing business with Iran.”

This was in response to a March 7 New York Times article claiming that $107 billion of U.S. taxpayer money has gone to firms doing business in Iran.

Previously Reported Iran Sanctions Bills Make Little Progress…

As reported in the May/June issue, on March 11 the Senate passed H.R. 2194, the “Iran Petroleum Sanctions” bill that the House passed in December, after replacing its text with that of S. 2799, the irresponsible, punitive and counterproductive “Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment” bill introduced by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) in November, and described in more detail in previous issues of the Washington Report. The Senate then returned the bill, as H.R. 2194, to the House and requested a conference to reconcile the differences between the two bills.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Both the House and the Senate have appointed conference committee members, but during the House debate on the motion to go to conference, Rep. Ileana RosLehtinen (R-FL), one of Israel’s most ardent acolytes, moved to instruct the House conferees to insist on the provisions in the House-passed version of H.R. 2194, which could complicate the work of the conference committee—especially since RosLehtinen was named as one of the House conferees. Her motion passed on a roll call vote of 403-11, with three voting “present.” It also called for the conferees to present a conference report no later than May 28, 2010.

Two of the three bills, all with the short title of the “Iran Human Rights Sanctions Act,” introduced in February and described in the May/June issue, have gained a few co-sponsors. In the Senate, S. 3022, introduced by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), still has 15 co-sponsors, including McCain. However, the identical H.R. 4647, introduced by Rep. Michael McMahon (D-NY), has gained 11 co-sponsors and now has 25, including McMahon. The bills would require the public posting on the Web sites of the Treasury and State Departments the names of persons “who the president determines are complicit in human rights abuses committed against citizens of Iran or their family members on or after June 12, 2009” [the date of the Iranian elections]. It would also bar those persons from getting visas to the U.S. and would impose some financial sanctions on them. Both the McCain and McMahon bills include a presidential waiver provision and a provision that the president may authorize exceptions to comply with international agreements.

The other “Human Rights Sanctions Act,” H.R. 4649, introduced by Ros-Lehtinen, is very similar to S. 3022 and H.R. 4647—except it does not include the provisions authorizing presidential waivers and exceptions to comply with international agreements. It has gained 31 co-sponsors, and now has 43, including Ros-Lehtinen.

While Four New Anti-Iran Measures Are Introduced…

On March 10, pro-Israel PAC darling Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), with 15 co-sponsors, introduced H.R. 4807, which would amend 25

mcarthur_25-26_Congress Watch 5/13/10 12:48 PM Page 26

the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 (ISA) to require that the General Accountability Office publish monthly a list of “potential ISA violators.” On March 20, Ros-Lehtinen, with 29 co-sponsors, introduced H.R. 4896 “to authorize the president to utilize the Proliferation Security Initiative and all other measures for the purpose of interdicting the import into or export from Iran by the government of Iran or any other country, entity, or person of all items, materials, equipment, goods and technology useful for any nuclear, biological, chemical, missile, or conventional arms program.”

A new resolution is H.Res. 1181, introduced on March 12 by Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), with 12 co-sponsors. It would call on the U.N. General Assembly “to reject the Islamic Republic of Iran’s bid to join the United Nations Human Rights Council.” Another new resolution is H.Con.Res. 256, introduced by Rep. James Himes (D-CT), with seven co-sponsors, on March 22. It would express the “sense of Congress that any official within the government of Iran at the level of deputy minister or higher or officer within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is presumptively ineligible for a travel visa” to the U.S.

But Positive Measures Languish.

Of the relatively positive measures previously described, only H.R. 4303, the “Stand with the Iranian People Act,” introduced in December by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), has made any progress. It would impose restrictions against Iran’s human rights abusers, prohibit federal procurement contracts with persons who provide censorship or surveillance technology to the government of Iran, and authorize U.S. nonprofit organizations to provide humanitarian and people-to-people assistance to the Iranian people. It has gained three co-sponsors and now has six, including Ellison. But H.R. 4301, the “Iran Digital Empowerment Act,” introduced in December

by Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), which would enhance the ability of the Iranian people to access the Internet and communications services, still has 11 co-sponsors, including Moran. And S. 3008, introduced in February by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), “to establish a program to support a transition to a freely-elected, open democracy in Iran,” still has 21 co-sponsors, including Cornyn.

McGovern Introduces a New Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal Bill On April 14 Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) introduced H.R. 5015 to require that the president “submit to Congress a plan for the safe, orderly, and expeditious rede26

ployment of U.S. Armed Forces from Afghanistan, including military and security-related contractors, together with a timetable for the completion of that redeployment and information regarding variables that could alter that timetable” not later than Jan. 1, 2011, or 90 days after the enactment of the bill, whichever is earlier.

The bill also includes recommendations on contractor oversight. It has 33 co-sponsors, including McGovern.

Regarding Yemen, there has been no movement on S. Res. 400, introduced in January by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), which would request the Obama administration to prepare a joint, comprehensive strategy to address instability in Yemen. It is still on the Senate calendar, after being reported out of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and still has six co-sponsors, including Kerry.

More Resolutions to Support Israel, Recognize Its 62nd Anniversary On April 13 Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) introduced H.Res. 1241 “supporting the right of Israel to defend itself against terrorists and the Israeli construction of new security fences along the border of Egypt.”

It has 38 co-sponsors, including Garrett.

Also on April 13, Ros-Lehtinen introduced H.Con.Res. 260 “recognizing the 62nd anniversary of the independence of the State of Israel, and reaffirming unequivocal support for the alliance and friendship between the U.S. and Israel.” As a poke in the eye to the Obama administration, the “whereas” clauses include pro-Israel quotes from Obama, Biden and Clinton, including a June 2008 Obama statement that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.” The measure has 137 co-sponsors, including Ros-Lehtinen.

Interestingly, while previously such resolutions congratulating Israel on its existence have routinely been brought to the House floor and passed nearly unanimously, this year that didn’t happen. Instead it was referred to the House Foreign Affairs committee, and Israel’s April 20 anniversary passed without any action on the resolution, although on April 21 a large herd of Israel’s congressional groupies spoke on the House and Senate floors congratulating the Jewish state.

Yet Another Jerusalem Resolution While the previously described H.R. 3412 and S.2737, which would strip the presidential waiver authority from the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 and require the U.S. Embassy in Israel to be esTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

tablished in Jerusalem, have made no progress, that didn’t stop Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) from trying a different approach. On March 18 he introduced the non-binding H.Res. 1191 reaffirming “that Jerusalem is and should continue to be the undivided capital of the State of Israel” and calling upon the president to fully implement the Jerusalem Embassy Act and immediately begin to relocate the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. It has 22 co-sponsors, including Lamborn. ❑

Rumors of War… Continued from page 22

In accusing Syria of delivering advanced weapons to Hezbollah, a second Israeli motive could be to sabotage any U.S.-Syrian rapprochement. The U.S. Senate has been debating whether to confirm the appointment of Robert Ford as American ambassador to Damascus—the first in five years. Pro-Israeli senators have tried to delay or cancel the ambassador’s appointment, objecting that it would reward Syria’s “bad behavior.”

In beating the war drums, a third Israeli aim would seem to be to disrupt the Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis, which Israel sees as a challenge to its strategic hegemony over the region. It is evident to most observers that neither Iran nor Syria—still less Hezbollah—would consider attacking Israel, as they are well aware that the Israeli response would be devastating. But they do want to be strong enough to dissuade Israel from attacking them. That is called deterrence. And that, in Israeli eyes, is where the threat from them lies.

Israel does not want any of its neighbors to be in a position to defend itself. That is why it has made such a fuss over the alleged delivery of missiles to Hezbollah. It wants to be able to hit, but never to be hit back.

Israel’s concern is that its 60-year military dominance over the Arabs may be coming to an end. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have acquired considerable quantities of modern armaments. Hezbollah has acquired an arsenal of rockets which provides it with a certain deterrent capability. And Iran’s rise as a regional power threatens to restrict Israel’s freedom of action.

It would, therefore, not be wholly surprising if some Israeli hawks dream of a war which, like the 1967 war, would restore Israel’s hegemony for the foreseeable future, and allow the Greater Israel project to proceed unchecked. ❑ JULY 2010

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Although Leaving Office, Rep. Brian Baird Vows to Continue to Fight for Justice SpecialReport

By Delinda C. Hanley

Ctered politics in 1998 for the same reason he went into the field of clinical psychology: to answer the call to service.

“Constitutional democratic republics don’t work unless people are willing to step forward and serve,” he told the Washington Report on April 29. “I felt I had something to offer and had disagreements with the incumbent.”

This past December, however, Baird announced that he will not run for re-election.

“I’m retiring in order to spend more time with my two five-year-old boys and my wife,” he explained. “It’s been tough flying out to the West Coast almost every weekend and keeping in touch with my constituents in a large geographical district.”

Baird is confident he would have been re-elected this fall. But, he noted, “Even if my re-election had been guaranteed I’d still have had to raise $1.5 to $2 million for my campaign and spend time away from my family—time I couldn’t get back.”

Baird first became interested in the Middle East as a junior in high school, when he joined a Model U.N. representing Kuwait during the first oil embargo. He contacted the Embassy of Kuwait and began learning about the Middle East from the perspective of other countries.

Middle East issues are of interest in any campaign, Baird acknowledged, especially at the federal level. “People raise the issue the minute you start running for office,” he said. “You’ve got the AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] perspective, and people in my district [including Rachel Corrie’s family] are also very concerned about peace and justice issues and the human rights of Palestinians.”

In February 2009, a month after Israel’s three-week Operation Cast Lead, Representatives Baird and Keith Ellison (D-MN) visited Gaza. Baird said his most unforgettable memory is the utter destruction of the American International School, whose motto was “leadership through peace and understanding.” “Here was an institution dedicated to educating the leaders of tomorrow with progressive values, using English-language materials,” he said, “and Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

JULY 2010

PHOTO COURTESY OF CONGRESSMAN BAIRD’S OFFICE

ongressman Brian Baird (D-WA) en-

On a February 2009 trip to Gaza, a month after Israel ended its brutal 22-day assault, Rep. Brian Baird uncovers a yearbook in the rubble of the American International School. this beautiful facility had been pancaked, irreparably destroyed through no fault of anyone in the institution by weapons made and sold by the United States. It was very troubling.”

Baird and Ellison interviewed the principal, and were struck by “the grief of this man, who lost an employee, the watchman, and had witnessed the destruction of his entire life’s work. I’ve watched a video of this interview, available on my Web site, more than 20 times and I still tear up when I see it.”

Baird dug out of the rubble a yearbook like one found in any American high school—full of bright, shiny faces with aspirations for the future. He also found a wrinkled and rain-damaged scholastic book—a teachers’ edition about baseball.

“I’m an avid baseball player and fan,” he THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

revealed. “I happened to open it up to a story about Jackie Robinson with a sticky note saying ‘what about this paragraph teaches the meaning of the word prejudice?’ It was astonishing,” he recalled.

“How could I find that book in that building in that place and open it up? When evidence of prejudice was right there before me as graphically as it possibly could be.”

Baird has traveled to Gaza three times— “if I go two more times I get a toaster,” he joked. He has also visited East Jerusalem and communities in the West Bank, including Bethlehem. He visited Sderot, Israel, which borders Gaza, as well. “It’s important to tell that part of the story, too,” he emphasized. “It’s unacceptable to shoot rockets at civilians.”

In Gaza, Baird has toured Al Quds HosContinued on page 37 27

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New York State Capital Takes Stand Against Pre-emptive Prosecution of Muslims SpecialReport

PHOTO DANIEL W. VAN RIPER

By Stephen Downs, Esq.

Members of Albany’s Muslim Solidarity Committee and citizen-representatives from several area peace, justice, and civil liberties organizations march to City Hall April 5, 2010, when the Common Council approved a resolution calling for the Justice Department to investigate the convictions of “pre-emptively prosecuted” Muslims. n April 5, 2010, the Common Council

Oof Albany, New York voted 10-0 in

favor of a resolution calling for the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to review the cases of Muslims entrapped in terrorism-related cases (see box on facing page). Albany thus became the first city in the U.S. to challenge the federal government’s unjust pre-emptive prosecution program, which has entrapped, framed, and sent hundreds of innocent Muslims to jail for long prison sentences.

Before its historic vote, the Common Council heard from almost two dozen speakers, including mothers and children from cases like the Newburgh 4 and the Fort Dix 5, about the suffering of Muslim families and communities ripped apart by these pre-emptive prosecutions. Twelveyear-old Lejla Duka told the Council that she was the oldest of four children, and that her father and uncles who worked in Stephen Downs, retired chief attorney with the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct, is a founder of Project SALAM (Support and Legal Advocacy for Muslims).

28

the family roofing business had all been sentenced to life imprisonment in an elaborate sting. “They were set up. This case is a lie,” she said. “Really, please, we need all the help we can get.” Some Council members were moved to tears and expressed shock at what the federal government was doing to Muslims. A video of the emotional and often eloquent meeting is available at <www.projectsalam.org/rally.html>.

What Is Pre-emptive Prosecution?

The FBI’s “pre-emptive prosecution” program grew out of the hysteria following 9/11 and drew inspiration from then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s “1 Percent Doctrine”: if there’s a 1 percent chance that a person might engage in terrorism in the future, the government must pre-empt it now by convicting the person of some contrived crime. Pre-emptive prosecution strips away the protections of the Bill of Rights on the theory that it’s better for many innocent people to be incarcerated than to allow even one potential terrorist to remain free. The April 5 testimony about the suffering of many Muslim families THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

showed why pre-emptive prosecution is illegal, unjust, and cruel.

Typically, pre-emptive prosecutions start with governmental suspicion about one or more Muslims based on secret surveillance; on associations of Muslims with others who are suspicious; or on tips. The government then concocts a plan to incarcerate the suspicious Muslim on some pretext to prevent a possible crime in the future. If no existing violation can be used as a pretext to incarcerate the target, an agent provocateur may be assigned to entrap or frame the suspicious person. Often before a pre-emptive prosecution trial, the government gives the judge secret evidence from its illegal surveillance program that the defense is not allowed to see, in order to create prejudice and get favorable rulings from the judge.

Secret evidence is thus a critical part of most pre-emptive prosecutions.

In all prosecutions, the government has a legal and ethical obligation to do justice (not merely seek a conviction), to provide a fair trial (not a prosecution knowingly based on false evidence or arguments), and to provide pre-trial disclosure of all information which indicates that the defendant might be innocent or which might assist the defense (“exculpatory” information).

Such information discovered during a classified surveillance operation must still be provided to the defense, or the government must drop the charges. The defendant may not be penalized because the exculpatory information is classified. Because so many pre-emptive prosecutions are based on classified information, the issue of disclosure of classified exculpatory information is always critical in such cases.

Aside from classified exculpatory material, any information indicating that the charge was a pretext, or that a defendant was deliberately entrapped or framed by the government, would also constitute exculpatory information which, under law, must be disclosed to the defense. All pre-emptive prosecutions raise the possibility that the defendants were entrapped or framed to “preempt” the possibility of a crime later on. Obviously the prosecutor cannot be trusted to turn over exculpatory information showing that the case being brought is, in fact, a fake and a pretext. Only an independent review JULY 2010

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of the case can establish this.

The Albany resolution was inspired in part by a July 10, 2009 report by Inspector General Glenn Fine of the U.S. Department of Justice about secret surveillance programs. The report found that there were no procedures for locating or providing exculpatory information to defendants in criminal cases arising out of such surveillance. It recommended that the Justice Department “carefully consider whether it must re-examine past cases [italics added] to see whether potentially discoverable but undisclosed [exculpatory information] was collected under the [surveillance programs], and take appropriate steps to ensure that it has complied with its discovery obligations in such cases” (p. 19).

The Justice Department never implemented these recommendations or attempted to re-examine any past cases.

The Aref Case Example Albany was confronted with a classic preemptive prosecution in 2004 when a local

imam, Yassin Aref, and a member of his mosque, Mohammed Hossain, were arrested by the FBI and charged with terrorist-related crimes (see Sept./Oct. 2007 Washington Report, p. 19). The men supposedly laundered money from the sale of a missile that would be used to assassinate the Pakistani ambassador to the U.N. (The FBI acknowledged that Hossain was not a terrorist threat, but they wanted to use him to get to their real target, Aref.) Malik, an agent provocateur, first entrapped Hossain by offering to loan him a significant amount of money supposedly made by selling a missile to terrorists. Then Aref was drawn in to gratuitously witness the loan.

The government generated such fear and hysteria against the two men that even the governor of New York pronounced at a news conference that “terrorists are living among us.” However, the entire plot was actually an FBI “sting” engineered by Malik to pre-emptively convict Aref because the government found his “ideol-

ogy” suspicious. The government claimed, for example, that a poem written by Aref in Syria 10 years earlier showed his terrorist ideology because it used the word jihad (struggle), even though the poem was about the struggle to overthrow Saddam Hussain and thus agreed with U.S. policy at the time.

There was little evidence that Aref was told––or understood––anything about the missile plot. The government’s evidence was so weak that Aref was acquitted by the jury of all the charges prior to his last conversation with Malik on June 10, 2004.

In this last conversation, Malik used a code word, “chaudry,” for “missile”––but the government failed to produce any evidence that Aref knew the meaning of this code word, and so he could not have understood the conversation or anything about the plot. Nevertheless, the jury convicted Aref for the counts associated with this last conversation, and he was thus successfully framed for a crime he didn’t commit and indeed didn’t even know about. Both Aref

Resolution Urging the U.S. Department of Justice to Review the Convictions of Muslims Who Were “Pre-emptively Prosecuted” to Ensure Their Fair Treatment Under the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights WHEREAS, the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are the cornerstone of our democracy; and WHEREAS, since 9/11 some Muslims in the United States have been targeted by the U.S. government for increased scrutiny, surveillance and prosecution; and WHEREAS, the United States government created a warrantless electronic surveillance program which obtained secret classified information on Americans, apparently in violation of various laws including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution; and WHEREAS, the Department of Justice and the FBI created a program called “pre-emptive prosecution” in which Muslims who are not involved in criminal activity are targeted and prosecuted based on “secret evidence,” often derived from warrantless electronic surveillance; and WHEREAS, there is a substantial probability that the activities and programs of the U.S. government which target a religious minority in such a manner violate their civil rights as Americans; and WHEREAS, in 2003 the Albany Common Council voted unanimously to object to the PATRIOT Act because of the dangers that this act posed to the civil rights and liberties of all Americans; and WHEREAS, in 2009 the Albany Common Council voted to support immigrant rights in the City of Albany so that immigrant families would not live in constant fear of repression, jail, or deportation; and WHEREAS, because of excessive secrecy by the U.S. government about its warrantless eavesdropping and pre-emptive prosecution programs, substantial doubt remains as to whether hundreds of Muslims were pre-emptively prosecuted, and guilty of crimes, and whether the defendants received their civil rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitu-

JULY 2010

tion, including the right to receive exculpatory information and a fair trial; and WHEREAS, after Senator Ted Stevens was convicted of bribery, the Justice Department did an independent assessment of how his case was prosecuted, determined that exculpatory information had been withheld by prosecutors, and dismissed the case; and WHEREAS, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, in a July 10, 2009 report on U.S. surveillance programs, recommended “that Department of Justice carefully consider whether it must re-examine past [terrorism] cases to see whether potentially discoverable but undisclosed Rule 16 or Brady material was collected under the President’s Surveillance Program, and take appropriate steps to ensure that it has complied with its discovery obligations in such cases” (report p. 19).

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Common Council of the City of Albany requests that the U.S. Department of Justice implement the recommendation of its own Inspector General, and establish an independent panel within the Department of Justice, similar to what was done in the Stevens case, and to what was recommended by the Inspector General, to review all of the convictions of Muslims who were “pre-emptively prosecuted” to determine if these defendants were properly given exculpatory information and other rights of discovery to which defendants in criminal prosecutions are entitled, and whether these prosecutions in all ways met the high standards of truth, openness, fairness, and justice that are embodied in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Common Council of the City of Albany requests that the Clerk of this Council forward copies of this resolution to United States Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer and United States Representative Paul Tonko

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and Hossain were sentenced to 15 years in prison, leaving two wives and a total of 10 young children behind. Project SALAM has since filed an amicus brief (available at <www.projectsalam.org>) with the court about the obvious frame-up in Aref’s case.

At a post-sentencing press conference on March 8, 2007, the government prosecutors gave this classic description of “preemptive prosecution”: “Did he [Aref] actually engage in terrorist acts? Well, we didn’t have the evidence of that, but he had the ideology…Our investigation was concerned with what he was going to do here, and in order to preempt anything else we decided to take the steps that we did take.”

The FBI also said that it was afraid to show Aref a (dummy) missile, which he would have immediately recognized as something illegal: “If Aref saw the missile,” an FBI agent stated, “he may have been spooked”––meaning Aref might have recognized that he was being involved in illegal activity and withdrawn, thus ruining the FBI’s frame-up (see “It took patience to set the trap in terror sting” by Brendan Lyons in the Oct. 12, 2006 Albany Times Union).

Pre-emptive Prosecutions Across U.S. This pattern of framing or entrapping innocent Muslims supposedly to prevent another terrorist attack has been repeated all across America. For example: • The Newburgh 4 were entrapped by the same agent provocateur—Malik—who framed Aref; he promised large sums of money, up to $25,000, to gain help in conducting a terrorist attack, and eventually was able to ensnare four recent converts to Islam: men who were homeless, addicted to drugs, or had mental problems.

• The Fort Dix 5 were framed by two agents provocateurs after a store clerk

thought that a home video made by members of a vacationing Muslim family speaking Arabic and shooting guns at a rifle range was a terrorist cell in training. The five young men in their 20s, some with wives and children, were sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years.

• Syed Fahad Hashmi was charged with terrorism for allowing a friend to leave a bag of clothes in his apartment for a week; the clothes eventually found their way to an alQaeda official, although not through Hashmi. After being kept in strict solitary confinement in Manhattan for almost three years, awaiting trial under conditions so harsh that it amounts to torture (see this issue’s “Other Voices” supplement), Hashmi pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy in return for a maximum prison sentence of 15 years—as opposed to a possible 70 years.

• Ghassan Elashi, founder of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in America, was sentenced to 65 years in jail after the government claimed that his non-terrorist charitable works in Palestine had enhanced the prestige of Hamas, the de facto government of Palestine at that time, and so constituted material support for a terrorist organization.

• Sami Al-Arian, a university professor and outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, also was charged with giving material support to Hamas through his speeches.

Although the government could not get a jury to convict him, he finally agreed to plead guilty to a minor charge in order to get out of jail and leave the U.S. Then the government broke its promise and brought new charges against him in order to keep him locked up. After serving still more time in prison, he has been living under house arrest for nearly two years.

• Physician Rafil Dhafir, founder of a charity called Help the Needy that sent hu-

manitarian aid to Iraqis impoverished by the U.N. embargo in the 1990s, could not be charged with enhancing the prestige of a terrorist organization because no terrorist organizations were permitted to exist under the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussain. Instead, the government framed Dr. Dhafir for Medicaid fraud and for violating the embargo against Iraq.

The Justice Department now claims over 390 terrorist convictions in the U.S.––many, if not most of them, phony “pre-emptive” prosecutions—and the list continues to increase. Each of these cases represents families destroyed and mothers left to raise young children without spouses and without adequate support. Each fake prosecution results in an innocent Muslim man incarcerated, often in special “Muslim” prisons known as Communication Management Units (CMUs) that harshly restrict communication with families and the outside world far beyond what ordinary prisoners endure (see May/June 2007 Washington Report, p.

12). On March 30, with the help of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Yassin Aref and six other plaintiffs sued the U.S. government to close down the CMUs as illegal (see box; the text of the lawsuit is available at <www.ccrjustice.org/cmu>).

As its own inspector general recommended, the Justice Department must establish an independent prosecutor to review all the Muslim terrorism cases to determine if the defendants received discovery, justice, and a fair trial. This is what the Albany Common Council resolution calls for. It is the first government entity to call for a re-examination of these cases based on law, not on fear. Other communities must pass similar resolutions to pressure the Justice Department into restoring the rule of law that pre-emptive prosecution has stolen from our justice system. ❑

CMUs: The Federal Prison System’s Experiment in Social Isolation In 2006, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP or “Bureau”) secretly created the Communications Management Unit (CMU), a prison unit designed to isolate and segregate certain prisoners in the federal prison system from the rest of the BOP population. Currently, there are two CMUs, one located in Terre Haute, Indiana and the other in Marion, Illinois. The CMUs house between 60 and 70 prisoners in total, and over twothirds of the CMU population is Muslim, even though Muslims represent only 6 percent of the general federal prison population.

Unlike other BOP prisoners, individuals detained in the CMU are completely banned from any physical contact with visiting family members and friends, and other types of communication are severely limited, including interactions with other prisoners

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and phone calls with friends and family members.

Individuals detained in the CMU receive no explanation for their transfer to the unit or for the extraordinary communications restrictions to which they are subjected. Upon designation to the unit, there is no meaningful review or appeal process that allows CMU prisoners to be transferred back to the general population. Many CMU prisoners have neither significant disciplinary records nor any communications-related infractions. However, bias, political scapegoating, religious profiling and racism keep them locked inside these special units. The Bureau’s purpose and process for designating federal prisoners to the CMU remain undisclosed.

—Center for Constitutional Rights

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JULY 2010

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Hypocrisy on the March—From the U.S. And Israel to France and Morocco

By Ian Williams

United Nations Report

active part in the anti-apartheid struggle, they tended not to include strong Zionists and pro-Israel supporters. Judge GoldYediot Ahronot broke the news that, while stone, by contrast, was embraced by Nelhe was an appeals court judge in apartheid son Mandela and Desmond Tutu. So who South Africa, Richard Goldstone was in would you rather have validating your some way linked to rejecting the appeals of anti-apartheid credentials: 28 death sentences.

Mandela or Lieberman? Tutu Alan Dershowitz once wrote or Dershowitz? a book called Chutzpah (not Indeed, hearing the chorus available from the AET Book of “gotcha!” and “Told you Club), and in his response to so!” from American pro-Israel the allegations he and Israel’s types reminds me of the conodious Foreign Minister Avigversation I had with Rabbi dor Lieberman personified it, Arthur Herzberg about the jumping up and down in rightLobby that dare not let you eous glee that Goldstone had speak its name. Most Ameribeen proven unfit to sit in can Jews and American blacks judgment on a democratic state opposed apartheid, of course. like Israel. Some of the usual How, I asked Herzberg, had suspects went even further in the issue of the South Africadeep psychoanalytic studies of Israel connection never been a why Goldstone was expiating matter of public discourse, his deep guilt by beating up on even among liberals in the Israel and thus currying favor U.S.? He paused, and compliwith the U.N. Human Rights mented me on my acuity, beCouncil. fore telling me that the Jewish At no point did any of this caucus and the Congressional newly principled mob raise Black caucus leaderships had any new evidence to rebut or essentially agreed on a pact. In refute the generally irrefutable return for the CBC not raising Goldstone Report. Indeed, the the issue, they were assured of fervor of their ad hominem atfull support from the Jewish tacks suggests that they can’t caucus for their domestic find any. agenda.

Even by the usual hypocritiGoldstone does not need cal standards of Israel and its any ethical validation from supporters, this is chutzpah on so many levels, one hardly Ahmed Bujari, representative of the Western Sahara’s Polisario Front, people who still support knows where to begin. For a speaks to reporters on April 20, 2010, following the Security Council decision apartheid in Israel and the occupied territories. start, however, although to extend the mandate of the MINURSO peacekeeping force by one year.

Lieberman promptly circulated Human Rights Hypocrisy the news to Israeli embassies across the supplying the apartheid regime, its biggest world, it was the newspaper that dug it customer, with weaponry? Its collusion in Hypocrisy is always a good theme for a colup—probably inspired by the same South buying yellowcake from South Africa, and umn, so let’s move to the northern tip of African Zionists who tried to stop Gold- their mutual assistance in developing nu- the African continent from the U.N. Secustone from attending his grandson’s bar clear weapons and means of delivery? The rity Council—where we had the France of mitzvah. sole purpose of the Boer Bomb, after all, Sarkozy fighting tooth and nail to keep a So why had Israel’s famed secret services was to kill untold millions of black human rights monitoring clause out of the not done a background check on Gold- Africans if the white redoubt ever was se- current resolution to extend the mandate stone and unearthed this earlier? Could it riously threatened. Or maybe they did not of MINURSO in Western Sahara, even in be because they regarded him—as indeed want to remind people of years in which the face of calls from its European allies sanctions were violated by blood dia- like the UK and Spain.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based monds from South Africa being exported weighed in that he “remains very conat the United Nations and has a blog at and processed in Israel?

While many South African Jews took an cerned about alleged violations of human <www.deadlinepundit.blogspot.com>. he first week in May saw a media storm

he regarded himself—as a friend of Israel, and as such to be excused a few executions?

Or could it be that wiser heads in the Israeli Foreign Ministry had not wanted to stir up memories of Israeli’s vital role in

U.N.PHOTO/ESKINDER DEBEBE

Tin Israel when the Hebrew tabloid

JULY 2010

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rights” and that “his Personal Envoy, Christopher Ross, and the Secretariat will continue to work to promote the human rights of Sahrawis.” The U.S. faced firmly in both directions and claimed that it is “deeply concerned about the allegations of human rights abuses by the parties.” However, reports from within the Council suggest that Washington’s concern did not run so deep as pressuring France—which was otherwise almost totally isolated—from backing Morocco. The UK, Mexico, Uganda, Austria, Brazil, Spain and Nigeria all favored a monitoring exercise. Russia, China and other countries with human

rights issues seemed to have sat out this battle, which is almost a shame, since if they had joined with Paris it might have led to even more public ignominy for the latter.

There is, of course, only one reason Morocco and its French patron do not want to include a human rights monitoring machinery in the Western Sahara peacekeeping mission—the only one in the world without one. It is the same reason Israel refuses to mount a credible investigation into Operation Cast Lead: because they know what any such mission will find.

There was a minor success in the resolution—920, for the record—the preamble of

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

which read, “Recognizing that the consolidation of the status quo is not acceptable in the long term.” But, of course, it did not answer the question so familiar and equally unanswered on resolutions about the other scofflaw state at the opposite end of the Mediterranean: “So what are you going to do about it?”

The answer, of course, is to call for negotiations with no preconditions—which in the case of both the Sahrawis and the Palestinians implies abandoning their legal rights to self-determination and their occupied territories.

Nukes, Nukes, Who’s Got the Nukes?

And, while hypocrisy is under discussion, the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to New York for the review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty was not a bad example. It is worth recording that his human rights record is deplorable, that he may have stolen the last election and, even if he didn’t, he certainly acted as if that was what he was doing. On the nuclear issue, however, he almost certainly is speaking for the majority of Iranians. While some might long for the good old days when the GOP, Israel and Iran colluded to arm the Contras, Iran’s president has now, of course, become a pariah in the U.S.—and not, one might add, for his human rights record.

In fact the Iranian president called the possession of nuclear arms “disgusting and shameful,” and added, “Even more shameful is the threat to use such weapons.”

But while Iran was in the pillory for standing there and renouncing any attempts to build nuclear weapons, there was the stunning sound of silence regarding North Korea, whose human rights record makes Iran seem a civic paradise, not to mention Pakistan, India and, of course, Israel—all of whom actually do have nuclear weapons.

There does seem to be some movement, however. The Permanent Five, including the U.S., expressed support for a nuclearfree Middle East. Once again this is greeted with surprising silence—perhaps because for the pro-Israel camp to vent its customary indignation against the Obama administration’s allegedly anti-Israeli stance would involve publicly admitting that peace-loving, defenseless Israel actually has nuclear weapons.

And then we complete the circle, since there is strong evidence that Israel’s nuclear arsenal was built up with help from apartheid South Africa. Go fulminate, Alan Dershowitz. ❑ JULY 2010

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Other People’s Mail Compiled by Kate Hilmy and Andrew Blakely No Worries for Netanyahu To The International Herald Tribune, March 30, 2010 Many observers say that the U.S. Congress has never been as divided as it is today, but almost all Democrats and Republicans agree on limitless support for Israel.

So long as that remains a fact, Israel will keep building its settlements—worry-free.

This is bad news for peace in the Middle East and the ‘’war on terrorism.’’

Panos Kakaviatos, Strasbourg, France

Palestinian Nonviolence To The New York Times, April 9, 2010 “Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance” seems to propagate the notion that the Palestinian struggle has been only violent. Just because the media choose to ignore the long history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance does not mean it hasn’t always existed.

Saying that “nonviolence has never caught on here” does a great disservice to the many Palestinians who have been killed since the early 1900s while nonviolently resisting injustices and ignores the Palestinians, Israelis and others who have acted nonviolently for years.

Israel has increased harassment of nonviolent protesters in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem with nighttime raids and arrests of both leaders and participants, including children. These people, and those who came before them, deserve to be acknowledged and supported, not erased from history.

Edith Garwood, Concord, NC

Wishes on Israel’s Birthday To The New York Times, April 20, 2010 Your article about what Israelis felt during their Independence Day does not seem to quote any Israeli Arabs. Or do they not count, even though they make up roughly 20 percent of the population?

Maybe the mood will brighten when everyone over there can celebrate Palestinian Independence Day. Robert Haufrecht, New York, NY

Israel and the Peace Process To the Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2010 The government of Israel is just that—a government. It is not the nation itself or the Jewish people, any more than the federal JULY 2010

government in Washington is the same as the American people. And like any government, Israel’s can be corrupt, incompetent and blind to the best interests of its own people.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is right to criticize the Israeli government, and Israel ignores her criticism at its own risk. Many American Jews are tired of the endless wars in the region and want a two-state solution and peace. Large numbers of Israelis feel the same way, and many of them have voted with their feet, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have emigrated to the U.S. and other countries.

If Israel doesn’t take some positive steps on its own toward a two-state solution, it will continue to exist in a state of siege that will damage its economy even more than it has been damaged already.

Stanton J. Price, Glendale, CA

Israel, U.S. and the World To The International Herald Tribune, April 7, 2010 Roger Cohen is correct that we are witnessing a shift to the good in U.S.-Israel relations. For many years the realist wing of the foreign policy elite in the United States (Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski and others) has argued that there is a link between the recruitment of terrorists and a festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now, with the recent statement by Gen. David Petraeus to the Senate Armed Services Committee, we see that American military leaders also see that link.

Between these two groups it is clear that the United States can no longer accept the status quo in Israel-Palestine. It is time for the United States to stop rewarding Israeli actions that undercut negotiations. A good place to start is in the U.N. Security Council, where the United States should stop using its veto to shield Israel from the consequences of its actions.

Jeff Warner, La Habra Heights, CA

Israel’s Security Problem To the Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2010 I’ll make a suggestion: While bombing Iran might halt its nuclear program, a simpler way to ensure that Iran does not attack Israel is to tear down the checkpoints and security wall, allow Palestinians the right of return and integrate them fully as citiTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

zens of Israel. Ahmadinejad would then have a hard time justifying destruction of the “Zionist entity.”

What about it, Mr. Morris? Are you willing to try peace rather than war to solve your security problem?

Sarah S. Forth, Los Angeles, CA

No Complaints for Diplomacy To The Washington Post, May 7, 2010 Jackson Diehl got it exactly backward. If it had not been for President Obama’s clarity and firmness (Diehl calls it “bullying”) with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the settlement issue, George Mitchell and Richard C. Holbrooke would not have been able to achieve, through “quiet diplomacy,” agreement on holding proximity talks. Mr. Obama’s disagreement with Mr. Netanyahu was not “pointless,” as Mr. Diehl stated but, rather, exactly to the point. Settlements have always been the primary issue.

Regarding Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the situation is similar. Quiet diplomacy clearly had not stemmed Mr. Karzai’s rhetoric and, indeed, actions. President Obama’s personal intervention had the right effect. It made what Mr. Diehl calls a “changed” approach possible.

In both cases, Mr. Obama’s firm approach, taken in coordination with the State Department, had positive results. Mr. Diehl should applaud, not complain.

Robert Huesmann, Bethesda, MD

Afghanistan’s Government To The New York Times, May 2, 2010 ‘’Mr. Karzai Might Even Agree’’ correctly stresses the importance of fostering ‘’competent local governance’’ in Afghanistan.

But it must be understood that this does not mean to establish the kind of government Westerners imagine: the rule of law, honest civil servants, no cronyism and so on. This is simply a bridge too far.

What we can get is the kind of governance Chicago (and New York City) had, say, a hundred years ago: local leaders (call them aldermen or tribal chiefs) who settle disputes in line with local norms and traditions; provide a social network in return for loyalty; and favor their cadres and relatives but also take care of all others.

The problem is largely with the ‘’national’’ government, which is, in effect, dominated (especially the Afghan army) by 33

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tribesmen other than the Pashtuns, and it is the Pashtuns who are the main supporters of the Taliban. Also, often the representatives of the national government have neither local roots nor affiliations and hence are much more exploitative than the locals.

Finally, the notion that we can buy the loyalties of the Pashtuns by granting them goodies is utterly uninformed. The Taliban are their relatives, tribe members and co-believers. The Pashtuns will take our handouts and here and there return a favor, but their basic commitment will not waver.

Amitai Etzioni, Washington, DC

Obama and Afghanistan To The New York Times, May 5, 2010 Contrary to your editorial “The Way Out,” I don’t believe that President Obama made a convincing case last December for sending more troops to Afghanistan.

Far from it. No matter what the president does or does not do, his record is forever tarnished by his sending thousands of soldiers to be destroyed physically, mentally or both for a political purpose in a war that cannot be won.

Arthur Laurents, director and playwright, New York, NY

How Safe Are We?

majority of peace-loving American citizens of Pakistani origin. These were the kind of soothing words needed at this juncture.

Pakistan has sacrificed more people in the fight against terrorists and extremists than most nations in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 tragedy. The Pakistani army, intelligence agencies and many ordinary citizens have played a crucial role. We need to win the battle of hearts and minds in the Islamic world. That is the best way to counter terrorists and extremists.

Raza Khan, Melbourne, Australia

Nothing “Apparent” in “Massacre” To The Toronto Star, April 8, 2010 This Associated Press story about a video showing 12 Iraqis killed in what justifiably could be called a “gunship massacre” contains some odd wording, and it matters.

The lead paragraph refers to “the apparent” killing of two Reuters employees by U.S. Apache helicopter crews. The word “apparent” will be puzzling to anyone who views the video on the Star’s Web site. Declared “authentic” by the U.S. military according to the Star in a news item the day before, the video shows dramatically and conclusively the bloody destruction of the 12 people, in-

To the Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2010 There is no doubt that as long as we are over there bombing and killing, they will find a way to bomb us over here.

Common sense would dictate that after all these years of war in Afghanistan, we would get that message. It’s time for our citizens to yell loud and clear: “Enough!”

Gabriella Kolias, Placentia, CA

WRITE OR TELEPHONE THOSE WORKING FOR YOU IN WASHINGTON.

Times Square Bomb Suspect

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Department of State Washington, DC 20520

To The New York Times, May 4, 2010 I condemn the recent terrorist plot to bomb Times Square and am relieved that there were no casualties. It is good to see that ordinary citizens and law enforcement agencies combined to prevent a tragedy.

I am a Muslim of Pakistani origin, and it angers and pains me to see that the suspect, Faisal Shahzad, is Pakistani (though a naturalized American citizen).

Attempts to spread terror do great harm to the image of Pakistan and Islam. If the bombing attempt had been successful, what could have been achieved by killing innocent people from all across the world who crowd Times Square?

I want to praise Mayor Michael R. Bloom berg, who said after Mr. Shahzad’s arrest that no backlash should be tolerated against Pakistanis or Muslims and spoke about the 34

President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20500 (202) 456-1414 White House Comment Line: (202) 456-1111 Fax: (202) 456-2461

State Department Public Information Line: (202) 647-6575 Any Senator U.S. Senate Washington, DC 20510 (202) 224-3121 Any Representative U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-3121

E-MAIL CONGRESS AND THE WHITE HOUSE E-mail Congress: visit the Web site <www.congress.org> for contact information.

E-mail President Obama: <president@whitehouse.gov> E-mail Vice President Joe Biden: <vice.president@whitehouse.gov>

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

cluding the two Reuters employees.

In the fourth paragraph, AP refers to “the family of the Reuters photographer killed in the air strike.” That’s an improvement in straightforwardness concerning a photographer only “apparently” killed three paragraphs earlier.

But the report continues: “They [the family] burst into tears as they saw what appeared to be the crews of the helicopters kill their son.” Now their son once again is only apparently killed.

There are times when words such as “apparently” and “allegedly” are highly appropriate. When they are not, as in this case, they confuse, at best. This Lazaruslike verbiage should have been caught and corrected by the Star’s editors.

Barrie Zwicker, Toronto, Canada

For Iraqis, Syria is a Haven To The Washington Post, April 6, 2010 The March 30 editorial “What the Iraqis are building” praised Iraq’s recent election and favorably compared Iraq’s political system with that of its neighbors.

The editorial maligned Syria as an alleged hereditary fiefdom, but Syria was more of a haven for the dispossessed of Iraq than Iraq’s so-called democracy.

I’ll buy into the new Iraqi system of democracy when the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis living in Syria vote with their feet and return to Iraq. Until then we should remember that Syria is more secular than Iraq.

In Iraq, democracy is being used as an instrument of majority rule without minority protection. Unchecked, this is a form of systemic injustice that is worse than despotism.

Ayman Hakki, Washington, DC

French Ban on Full Veil To The New York Times, May 7, 2010 I’m not sure if Jean-François Copé is aware that in the United States we have a holiday where people of different ages and faiths come out and visit their neighbors, often wearing masks that fully cover their faces, and they seem to have no trouble getting along and communicating and being fully active members of society.

As for saying that the niqab is a potential security threat, people in the United States have made similar statements against baggy pants, saying they can hide guns. Like their French counterparts, such people’s supposed concern for the public good masks their cultural prejudices and insensitivities.

Fares Alhassen, San Francisco, CA ❑ JULY 2010

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CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

National

China Daily, Beijing

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

New York Times Syndicate

WWW.BENDIB.COM

Morning Herald, Sydney

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

The Muslim Observer, Livonia

National Post, Toronto

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Al Ahram, Cairo

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A New Wind Blows in Egypt SpecialReport

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By Rannie Amiri

Egyptian Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei (c), former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is greeted by supporters as he visits the Nile Delta town of Mansura to campaign for political reforms, April 2, 2010.

“Western policy towards this part of the world has been a total failure, in my view. It has not been based on dialogue, understanding, supporting civil society and empowering people, but rather it’s been based on supporting authoritarian systems as long as the oil keeps pumping.

“If you bet on individuals, instead of the people, you are going to fail. And Western policy so far has been to bet on individuals, individuals who are not supported by their people and who are being discredited every day.”

—Former IAEA Director-General and potential Egyptian presidential candidate Mohammed ElBaradei, in his first Englishlanguage interview since returning to Cairo in February (The Guardian, March 31, 2010) r. Mohammed ElBaradei is quickly

Dbecoming the Middle East’s most prominent progressive voice. Candidly and Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator. This article was first posted on <www.counterpunch.com>, April 9, 2010.

Reprinted with permission.

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calmly articulating beliefs long held by average citizens, he does so not from a faraway think tank in the United States or Europe, but from the heart of the Arab world.

Defying the Egyptian government’s ban on non-state-sanctioned public gatherings, ElBaradei is attracting increasingly large crowds as he takes his message of reform to Cairo’s streets and, most recently, to the Nile Delta. Decrying the West’s support for the region’s authoritarian regimes in the midst of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s security services is also no small undertaking, but ElBaradei has done it with poise and courage.

As Egypt gears up for its 2011 presidential election, ElBaradei has called on fellow countrymen to join his newly established National Front for Change. He also asked them to add their names to a petition calling for reforms that would, for example, overturn constitutional roadblocks erected

by Mubarak curtailing the ability of independents like himself from running. ElBaradei has yet to announce whether he will stand as a candidate in the upcoming ballot, however.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

In his first public appearance outside Cairo near the provincial capital of Mansoura, he said to a crowd of 1,500 supporters, “You are the owners of this country.

Whatever our belief or religion is, every one of us has a piece of this country and has the right to lead a decent life...it does not make sense that until now 40 percent of the people are below [the] poverty line and 30 percent are illiterate. Social justice is almost non-existent in Egypt, and the gap between the rich and poor is widening...”

Emphasizing that basic constitutional reforms are the key to political change in Egypt (such as lifting Emergency Law, which prohibits exactly the type of gathering at which he spoke), ElBaradei succinctly stated his mission: “We seek peaceful reform...we seek constitutional amendments and free and fair elections. The Egyptian citizen has the right to choose his president.”

As the opening quote illustrates, ElBaradei clearly identifies why U.S. and European Middle East policy has failed. Although neoconservatives have hijacked the narrative of bringing democracy to the region by ending the rule of repressive regimes, what makes ElBaradei different is that he actually understands the “Arab street” and has tapped into its deep, reverberating feelings: “I see increasing radicalization in this area of the world, and I understand the reason. People feel repressed by their own governments, they feel unfairly treated by the outside world, they wake up in the morning and who do they see—they see people being shot and killed, all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur.”

Unlike the “neocons,” ElBaradei appreciates that if people were politically empowered, they would have little in common with the self-styled, pro-Israel “liberators” of the Middle East.

During the 2008-2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza—in which Egyptians were prevented from demonstrating, raising money, or even blogging in support of besieged Gazans—if the Arab masses were not muffled into silence by governments that felt their best interests lie in siding with the U.S., the line of people rushing to Gaza’s JULY 2010

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aid would have extended from Morocco to Iraq.

With a reputation as an even-handed, fair-minded diplomat working solidly in his favor, ElBaradei has the ability to dramatically alter the trajectory of Middle East politics. Speaking forcefully and compellingly against an entrenched and selfperpetuating political system, if successful, what he does for Egypt will resonate throughout the Arab world.

For this reason, and notwithstanding the political system rigged against him, all the region’s authoritarian rulers hope he will fail in his quest to galvanize the Egyptian masses into action, for fear their own rule will be jeopardized.

“The state may be a centralized power but the people are stronger,” ElBaradei said.

As the new wind brought by ElBaradei blows across Egypt’s political landscape, the outcome of the 2011 election will determine if his truism becomes reality. ❑

Rep. Brian Baird…

Continued from page 27

pital, a mental health clinic, UNRWA food distribution centers, and a water treatment facility. He said he was shocked to see a major industrial zone outside Gaza City that Israel had completely obliterated—after all combat had ended and the area was secured. Despite the fact that there were no snipers or rockets, Israel used bombs and bulldozers to level buildings. Baird met with Ohio-trained Palestinian professionals who’d watched all their investments flattened.

“One factory had made menacing items—biscuits and ice cream for children.

Bulldozers pushed a brand-new U.S.-made $140,000 Caterpillar generator off the roof and flattened it. That evening we went to Israel,” he recounted, “and asked ‘why did you do it? Why destroy civilian infrastructure? It’s illegal and not in Israel’s best interests.’ Their answer was ‘Gaza is Hamasstan.’ They felt it was utterly justified simply by saying that.”

Baird and Ellison visited an UNRWA school where students were using the UNRWA curriculum and studying human rights. “It’s ironic that in the United States we hear all the kids in the Middle East get their education at Western-hating madrassas,” he noted, “but these UNRWA schools are progressive. The irony of ironies is they are learning about international human rights, including the Holocaust.

JULY 2010

“I sat in a room with 11- or 12-year-old young ladies with bright sparkling faces, articulate, sharp, self-confident. They had wonderful aspirations—they wanted to be doctors, lawyers, teachers and scientists. I wish my colleagues in Congress, especially the women, could see these young girls with their aspirations and then ask themselves if they still feel good about voting for resolutions condoning the bombing of those very same girls.

“I wish my colleagues could go and see the things I’ve seen and meet the people I’ve met,” he said. “I think it would have a profound impact. But of course they don’t.

They could. They woefully choose not to.

And, frankly, our friends the Israelis don’t make it easy.”

Asked if he’d continue to be a voice for peace after he retires from Congress, the 54-year-old Baird replied, “I’m absolutely committed to it. First of all, it’s a matter of justice. The standard explanation for why one should care about this is ‘if we don’t work to change conditions on the ground people will become desperate and desperate people will become terrorists and terrorists will hit us.’ That’s a legitimate but self-interested explanation. My explanation is different. When you meet Palestinians you discover these are really extraordinarily talented, skilled, reasonable and progressive people. They deserve justice and freedom just like anyone else.

“It is righting the injustice and indignities they suffer that is my primary motivation, but this issue also has profound national security and geopolitical consequences for the entire region. Wherever you go, this issue stands out as an example of the inconsistency of American policy with American values.”

Baird recommended three critical actions voters should take to help elect leaders who care about this issue: “Ask members of Congress to go to the region, and not just take the traditional AIPAC trip. They need to go to Jerusalem to meet people like Rev. Mitri Raheb [pastor of the Evangelical Christmas Lutheran Church] and other peace activists. They should go to Jenin, see the wall, the checkpoints and crossings, see what they mean on a daily basis.

Not just see one side.

“While they’re in Israel they should meet with Israeli human rights groups and journalists,” he added. “There is more freedom of speech in Israel than there is in the U.S. Congress—and members of Congress need to hear that speech. They need to meet many people with different perspectives, not just hear one side.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

“Second,” Baird continued, “there is a real need for financial participation. It’s important to send letters, visit and talk to members of Congress about how you feel, but it’s also important to write the check, volunteer in the campaign. Let the member of Congress know why you’re doing it.

Speaking out as I and others have done has substantial financial consequences in terms of funding political campaigns. It can cost $100,000-$200,000 or more in contributions, and can easily bring five times that amount to one’s opponent. There’s a need of some balance to redress that.

“Finally,” the Washington Democrat said, “members of Congress get elected by voters, and many citizens don’t have access to information about these issues. Write letters to the editor, gather information, reach out to church groups and social organizations.

Most Americans would be shocked and troubled if they knew where their tax dollars have gone. Insist that candidates for Congress know. Vigorously, respectfully ask questions, ask members of Congress to study this issue in an open-minded way. Other lobby organizations do it. If only one side is heard, that’s the side that gets support.”

Baird related one final story before he had to leave for a vote on the House floor.

“Dr. Tawfiq Nasser, director of Augusta Victoria, the main cancer hospital in Jerusalem, told me about a 7-year-old child in Gaza with a brain tumor. After many weeks the Israelis gave permission for the child to travel to East Jerusalem. His parents were denied permission to accompany him—not because of any record of criminal or terrorist activity, but because they were of a certain age group that is not allowed to leave Gaza. The Israelis basically said, ‘Your child, who may be dying of cancer, can leave, but you can’t go with him—but you can send, in this case, an infirm grandparent.

“I ask my friends in Congress, and the average American, how would you feel if, through no fault of your own, your entire community was surrounded by a military blockade and a physical wall and the people who did that to you could decide that your child can die or go through painful or life-threatening surgery without you.

Someone else has made that determination.

What would that do to you?

“I found that profoundly troubling. Our policy aids and abets that. Our policies aid and abet the confiscation of Palestinian property and the expansion of Israeli settlements,” Baird concluded. “It’s inhuman, unjust—and it’s a threat to our national security.” ❑ 37

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Malaysian Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim Plays the Israel Card

By John Gee

Islam and the Near East in theFar East

AFP PHOTO /SAEED KHAN

non-class, non-ideological entity.

Anwar claimed that Israel was given access to channels for influencing Malaysian policies through APCO Worldwide, a consultancy hired by the Malaysian government.

The company worked for the Israeli government, he said, and had helped to create the 1Malaysia concept. APCO Worldwide promptly issued a statement denying both claims and saying that Prime Minister Najib had spoken about the 1Malaysia concept before the company was hired by the government.

The Malaysian government was embarassed by the revelation that it had paid APCO 77 million ringgit ($24 million) for its services, but was unapologetic about hiring the comMalaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim dons his coat as he makes his way to a Kuala Lumpur court- pany, claiming that the firm room, May 10, 2010, as his trial on sodomy charges resumed after a long delay. Anwar says the allega- was playing a key role in helptions were trumped up in an effort to end his political career and neutralize the threat he poses to the rul- ing Malaysia to build stronger ing Barisan Nasional coalition. ties with the U.S. In an April 17 article entitled “Najib Prime Minister Najib Razak has been ince its independence, Malaysia has held a position strongly critical of Is- seeking to rally support around the concept Walking a Tightrope on U.S. Ties,” Straits rael and supportive of Palestinian rights. of 1Malaysia, which stresses the unity of the Times correspondent Leslie Lopez noted: “Besides, Malaysia had little choice as Media coverage of the Palestine conflict country’s diverse peoples. It is presented as ebbs and flows with its international im- a non-partisan idea, but the opposition sees Jewish-American firms were among the pact, but tends to focus on Israeli violence it as a means to rally electoral support to the most effective in lobbying the United and gives a highly sympathetic account of governing Barisan Nasional coalition, using States government,” Datuk Nazri Aziz, the the Palestinians. Because there is not much the banner of patriotism. For its part, the minister in the Prime Minister’s Departeffort to analyze Israeli politics or society government presents itself as simultane- ment, argued earlier this week. “‘In the U.S., there is a lobby culture...So in depth, Israel generally appears two-di- ously upholding Malay rights and trying to mensional and rather undifferentiatedly preserve tolerance and coexistence among if we want to lobby for something in the U.S. administration, do you think we can bad. Malay Muslims, in particular, feel Malays, Chinese and Indians.

Speaking in the Malaysian parliament in succeed if we want to use an Islamic comstrongly about the issue—and, although in private non-Muslims may not be particu- March, Anwar claimed that the 1Malaysia pany”’ he added.”

Nazri’s statement to reporters that the larly interested, those in the political arena idea was derived from that of One Israel, generally go along with Muslim sentiment. the name of the electoral alliance under government was trying “to make up for 28 In this environment, any association of a which Ehud Barak campaigned in 1999. years of not-so-good foreign policies under politician with Israel would be very dam- The similarity is superficial, however. One the reign of the two former prime minisaging, and therefore when opposition Israel was not promoted as a concept for ters” produced an angry rejoinder from leader Anwar Ibrahim accused the govern- the nation as a whole, but for an electoral former prime minister Dr. Mahathir Moment of having associations with Israel, he coalition. It was Barak’s attempt to rally hamad, the main target of that barb. There support to an Israeli Labor party whose po- is no love lost between the two: in Decemknew he was stirring up a hornet’s nest. litical support was dwindling; he hoped it ber, Nazri labelled Mahathir’s blog “bloody John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in could gain votes by downplaying the racist” for the attitudes it expressed toward Southeast Asia, and the author of Unequal “Labor” name, with its socialist associa- non-Malays.

Anwar’s claims against APCO seem to tions, and play to national sentiments as a Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.

S

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JULY 2010

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rest on very flimsy evidence. Headquartered in Washington, DC, APCO Worldwide has offices in Tel Aviv, but also in Dubai. Some of its employees are supportive of Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but it is not obvious that it differs from other U.S. companies in this respect.

APCO founder Margery Kraus sits on the board of the Teuza Fund, an Israel-based technology venture, where one of her colleagues is Moshe Arens, a former Israeli minister of defense, minister of foreign affairs and ambassador to Washington. Another is Dr. Zvi Meiri, awarded two Israel Defense Prizes for his role in developing major weapons systems for Israel. These are the sort of personalities who hold posts in many Israeli technology companies, given the purchasing power and interest of the military in high-tech weaponry and systems with military applications.

This does not prove very much, however. Kraus doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a track record of showing a special interest in Israel, and her other business associations are with nonIsraeli companies. In fact, both her own and APCOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s past suggest an interest in making money without being too choosy about business associates. Notoriously, in the 1990s APCO advised the American tobacco company Philip Morris in its efforts to counter the message that â&#x20AC;&#x153;smoking is bad for your health.â&#x20AC;? It is seen by those who seek its services as having a particular aptitude for lobbying on sensitive political issues.

In time, no doubt, it will become known how APCO Worldwide is earning its ringgits.

Even after the APCO allegations, Anwar still had one more accusation to make about Israeli links, saying he had police documents showing that two Israeli former military intelligence officers entered the Malaysian federal police headquarters in 2008 and had access to the police communication system. They were said to work for a technology company registered in Singapore but with a parent company in Israel. A company hired by the police to upgrade its computer system was reported to have subcontracted work to a company that employed the two Israelis. Anwar named the company as Asiasoft. Again, the government denied the charges.

While Anwarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s claims did arouse public interest, there was also a fair amount of skepticism about why he was making them at this timeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;following as they did a series of defections from his Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) to the government, and just ahead of a key parliamentary by-election to fill a seat previously held by the PKR. â?&#x2018; JULY 2010

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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San Francisco Police Chief Apologizes for Offensive Comments on Afghans, Yemenis

Northern California Chronicle

By Elaine Pasquini

meeting to address community members’ concerns. “We are very grateful to the chief for coming here today, but we understand that this is just the beginning, rather than the end,” he said. “The dialogue starts here.”

STAFF PHOTOS P. PASQUINI

Sonoma, Aswan Children Create Art To Save the Environment The Sonoma-Aswan Sister City (SASC) Committee of the Sonoma Sister Cities Association held its first meeting of 2010 at the Sonoma Community Center on March 15. Egyptian Consul Heba Zaki from the San Francisco-based consulate was the keynote speaker, and delighted the audience with her talk on her country’s culture.

Festive gatherings of friends and family are an integral part of Egyptian culture, she told her audience, as are vibrant

ABOVE: Honorary Consul of Yemen Mansoor Ismael (r) introduces San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón (c), standing next to Shaykh Qaid, the religious leader at Masjid Tawheed. INSET: A large audience listens to the police chief’s apology. ollowing an April 2 prayer service held

Fat the Van Ness Holiday Inn, San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón apologized to members of the Bay Area Muslim and Arab community for comments he had made the previous week implying that Yemenis and Afghans in San Francisco posed a terrorist threat to the city.

“I am very sorry that I offended you, that I offended the Afghan community, as well as other Middle Eastern and Muslim communities; that was never my intent,” the chief averred. “The San Francisco Police Department is committed to the safety of your community and I have the utmost respect for the Yemeni and Afghan communities.”

Responding with cheers and applause, the majority of the audience of some 2,000 was pleased with his remarks, although a few did not feel the chief’s response was adequate. At a March 24 meeting with city officials and others regarding earthquake safety and a seismic retrofit bond, Gascón had commented that the Hall of Justice was susceptible not just to an earthquake, but to an Oklahoma City-style explosion Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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by members of San Francisco’s Middle Eastern community— specifically those of Afghan and Yemeni origin—parking and blowing up a van outside the building.

More than 20 organizations, including the Arab American Grocers Association, Arab Film Festival, Arab Cultural and Community Center, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Asian Law Caucus and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), demanded an immediate apology, and two days later the chief met with Honorary Consul of Yemen Mansoor Ismael and Arab-American community leaders to express his regrets.

Presenting a copy of the Qur’an to Gascón at the April 2 event, Consul Ismael accepted the police chief’s apology. “We look forward to working together to make San Francisco a safer place for all communities,” he told the large crowd seated on the floor of the room, many taking photos and videos with their cell phones.

Adel Syed, civil rights coordinator for CAIR’s Sacramento chapter, extended an invitation to Gascón to attend a town hall THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

dance, music and art, and soccer—or football, as it is called almost everywhere outside the U.S. While many women work and support their families, she noted, many also choose to stay home and take care of their children fulltime. Like many young people around the world, however, the younger generation of Egyptians has become “slaves to their cell phones and laptop computers,” Zaki lamented. “We sometimes feel that the younger generation is becoming distant from the classical old families.” And, like Americans, Egyptians are concerned about the environment, particularly pollution and how it affects water sources. “We share the same concerns over global warning with everyone,” she said.

Arlene Sukolsky, chair of the SASC subcommittee on arts/culture/tourism, and George McKale, chair of the education subcommittee, discussed “Our Beautiful Water,” their art project for children deJULY 2010

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Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, including being fitted—for the third time—with a prosthetic leg. The first surgery, performed in Oakland in 2007 to fit Abdallah with an artificial leg, and the second, performed in Dubai in 2009, were both unsuccessful.

The spunky youngster, now 11 years old, was the honored guest at the second annual fund-raising dinner benefiting the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), the organization that paid for his transportation from Palestine to the U.S. and arranged for his free medical Egyptian consul Heba Zaki speaks at a meeting of the treatment.

Sonoma-Aswan Sister City Association.

Nadiah Mshasha and Rima Qaru co-hosted the April 18 signed to raise awareness of the importance dinner at the Sunnyvale restaurant Dishof water in children’s lives and of their re- dash, owned and operated by Mshasha sponsibility to preserve and improve the and her husband, Emad Ibrahim.

Qaru discussed the PCRF’s efforts to proquality and sustainability of the water in their communities. McKale implemented vide free medical care for children in Palesthis project with the Sonoma Boys and tine, Iraq and refugee camps in Lebanon, Girls Club and displayed examples of their and other projects, including the Women drawings. “Today’s children, as tomorrow’s Empowerment Project, summer camps for leaders, will be those responsible for pro- children in Gaza, the West tecting and conserving the planet’s re- Bank and Lebanon, and projects providing children sources,” he pointed out.

Sukolksy, who launched the project in with eyeglasses and wheelAswan, described her experience meeting chairs. Encouraging audiwith Dr. Osama Abdel-Maguid, director of ence members to get inthe Nubian Museum, and children from the English Language School of Aswan RIGHT: Abdallah Al-Athwho participated in the project. After pro- amna, 11, traveled from Los viding the students with art supplies, she Angeles, where he is receivasked them to make drawings on the subing medical treatment project of water conservation and how they vided by the PCRF, to atsee and understand the importance of tend its benefit dinner in major water sources in their lives. “The Sunnyvale. BELOW (l-r): children enthusiastically agreed to particiEmad Ibrahim, Nadiah pate,” she exclaimed. “They were so exMshasha and Rima Qaru. cited they immediately began drawing before I stopped talking.”

While showing digital images of the Egyptian students’ drawings, Sukolsky read their short descriptions accompanying their artwork. “I think the next war will be the water war,” one child wrote.

Another penned: “Please save me by protecting the water.”

volved, the longtime PCRF supporter commented, “Being a host family for a child gives the child a warm feeling of not being alone, especially with the horrible situation in Gaza. Even if a child returns home, they stay in contact with their host family and know there are people who care about them.”

Unexpectedly overwhelmed with shyness, Abdallah declined to give his prepared words, letting Fatima Rasheed, his host mother in 2007, thank the audience on his behalf.

The audience also viewed a short video about Mariam Al-Shafei of Beit Lahia, Gaza, whom PCRF brought to the Bay Area for ophthalmic care provided by ocularist Raymond Rendon. Miriam was critically injured and lost an eye from shrapnel fired from an Israeli tank into her home on Jan. 4, 2009.The teenager received a prosthetic eye and returned to Gaza last month.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, Shireen Qaru is also working with the PCRF chapter in Northern California and talked about one of her favorite PCRF programs, “Sponsoring a Child.” “This program allows individuals to make a huge impact on a child’s life,” she said. An individual can make a one-year commitment to provide $50 monthly to a child who needs special medication or medical treatment.

PCRF is not supported by government grants or foundations, but relies on donations from individuals. Readers wishing to help may send tax-deductible donations to PCRF, P.O. Box 1926, Kent, OH 44240. For more information, call (330) 678-2645, e-mail <PCRF@pcrf.net> or visit <www.pcrf.net>. ❑

On Nov. 8, 2006, the Israeli military shelled Abdallah Al-Athamna’s family home in Beit Hanoun, killing 18 members of his family, including his mother and two younger sisters, and severing part of his right leg. Four years later the young Gazan is receiving medical treatment at Shriners

STAFF PHOTOS P. PASQUINI

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund Benefit

JULY 2010

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John Ging Headlines KinderUSA Program, Corries, Richard Falk at Rebuilding Alliance

By Pat and Samir Twair

Southern California Chronicle

legal, he emphasized, nothust arriving after a 24ing is being done to protect flight from the rights of Palestinian Gaza—rerouted to avoid refugees who were driven ash clouds from Iceland’s into Gaza 62 years ago. volcano—John Ging, direc“Israel replaced its settletor of UNRWA’s Gaza operaments in Gaza with the tions, delivered a dynamic blockades,” he declared. keynote address at At the close of his KinderUSA’s annual fundspeech, Ging commented to raiser April 17 in Orange the Washington Report: County.

“History will prove the The Irish diplomat shares Palestinians have been an admirable distinction steadfast as a beacon of rewith Justice Richard Goldsilience—despite their dire stone and U.N. Special Rapcircumstances, they’ve reporteur on Palestinian tained their humanity.”

Rights Richard Falk of being on Israel’s most deRebuilding Alliance spised list. As he managed Triple-Header to survive the deluge of Israeli missile attacks on Gaza The Rebuilding Alliance during the winter of 2008outdid itself at its annual 09, Ging dispatched impasPeacemakers Awards dinsioned reports of Israel’s ner April 24 when it honrelentless assault on Gaza’s Featured at KinderUSA’s April 17 program were (l-r) Dr. Laila al-Marayati, ored U.N. Special Rappordefenseless civilian popula- keynote speaker John Ging and Dr. Jess Ghanam. teur Dr. Richard Falk, tion.

Cindy and Craig Corrie, Ging’s exclusive appearance for the care is on its knees, dialysis machines are and Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA). More than KinderUSA benefit was a thank you to the out of action, there is no rehabilitation of 300 guests gathered at the Red Rock charitable organization’s unflagging med- the infrastructure.”

Chateau in Silverado, CA for an Arab banThe man-made humanitarian disaster quet hosted by Nabhan and Yola Simaan. ical and food assistance to beleaguered means that 90 percent of Gaza’s water is Gazan families.

In accepting his award, Professor Falk “Inhumane, illegal and insane” were the undrinkable and must be treated in the noted that it is a sad commentary when adjectives Ging used to describe the world home. Israel purposely bombed sewage one is commended for being courageous in turning a blind eye on Israel’s 22-day plants, so 60 million liters of sewage now standing up for justice in the Middle East. blitzkreig on Gaza and ongoing blockade of are pumped daily into the Mediterranean. Before touching upon three new developMore than 208,000 children attend ments affecting the region, the educator all but the barest necessities into the Gaza’s 226 UNRWA schools, Ging said, quoted the late U.S. Secretary of State John coastal strip.

“We don’t even have soup kitchens for where “We teach these students that even Foster Dulles, who complained about his the most destitute,” the U.N. official stated, though illegal acts are being perpetrated disappointment that “Arabs and Jews noting that one million of Gaza’s 1.5 mil- on them, this doesn’t justify violent acts on couldn’t sit down together like good Chrislion residents are refugees from what is their part.” He then thanked KinderUSA tians.” now Israel. “Eighty percent of Gazans are for its assistance in providing badly The first new development, Falk said, is food dependent,” Ging continued. “This needed recreation programs for children a greater awareness on the part of Washmeans 300,000 are totally destitute and this past summer. ington that its unconditional support of Is“My concern is over the contradictory rael is endangering the lives of U.S. troops 800,000 are totally dependent on food handouts. We can’t offer three square narratives and the contradictory statistics,” in Iraq and Afghanistan. meals daily, but only staples which fail to he added. “I tell the world to come to Gaza “This concept is reinforced by military and see the facts. This misery must be ad- leaders who emphasize the urgency of meet the basic caloric intake.”

He went on to remark that “Gazans dressed. Despite the unrelenting oppres- finding a solution to the Palestinian/Israeli aren’t dying on a daily basis, but their sub- sion that grows worse daily, Gazans prac- impasse,” he said. sistence existence shortens lives. Health tice a stoicism that makes them reject givA more troublesome development, acing up.” cording to Falk, is that it’s no longer clear if Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalDespite the fact that the Geneva Cona two-state solution is possible. A de facto ists based in Los Angeles. ventions define collective punishment as il- one state currently exists, with half the STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR

Jhour

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more information, visit population living under an <www.rebuilding alapartheid situation. liance.org>.

Thirdly, he stressed, the Palestinians have shifted their Winograd for Congress tactics to nonviolence, so that Fund-Raiser their struggle is being waged symbolically on a global California’s June 8 primary scale. election will feature the first “The Boycott, Divest, Sanccontest between an AIPAC tion movement has spread Goliath — Jane Harman — dramatically since Israel’s Opand a progressive David— eration Cast Lead,” he obMarcy Winograd—for Caliserved. “By relying on soft fornia’s 36th Congressional power, the Palestinians have Democratic seat (see May/ seized the moral high June 2010 Washington Reground.” port, p. 24).

Closing with a comparison Among the many conto the Vietnam War, Falk said stituents who appreciate U.S. military supremacy was Winograd’s call for an end of irrelevant in a power strugIsrael’s military occupation gle with a people seeking of the West Bank and its self-determination. ”We blockade of Gaza are Lily must recognize this is our and Karim Karam, who struggle,” he insisted. “We opened their Palos Verdes supply the arms (to Israel) Estates home for a March and it’s our responsibility 27 fund-raiser for Winoto demand justice (for the grad.

Palestinians).”

In 2006, while Harman In accepting the Peacewas praising the U.S. invamaker award on behalf of sion of Iraq, Winograd Representative Baird, Craig challenged the 16-year inCorrie explained how cumbent and won 38 perdeeply his congressman cent of the vote. There’s a was affected upon hearing good chance she can defeat of the death of the Corries’ Harman in the June pridaughter Rachel. She was mary if peace advocates crushed to death in April and voters seeking a 2003 by an Israeli bullchange in the education dozer intent on demolish- TOP: Rebuilding Alliance award recipients (l-r) Dr. Richard Falk, Cindy system and a shift from ing a Palestinian home in and Craig Corrie. ABOVE: Congressional candidate Marcy Winograd (c) military expenditures to a with hosts Lily and Karim Karam.

Rafah in the Gaza Strip. green economy come out to “We may not have alsupport her. ways agreed with Congressman Baird on phase of the couple’s civil suit in a Haifa They and other concerned Americans his views of Israel,” Corrie said, “but he al- district court probing the circumstances can learn more by visiting <www.Wino ways did right about Rachel.” This meant leading to Rachel’s death (see p. 51). grad4Congress.com>. ❑ The achievements of Rebuilding Alenabling the Corries to speak to Congress (Advertisement) and urge that a full investigation be made liance since it was founded six years ago were outlined by its executive director, into the circumstances of her murder.

In February 2009, following Israel’s 22- Donna Baranski-Walker. It built a threeday assault on Gaza, Rep. Baird made three story kindergarten in al-Aqaba village in Winner Best Weekend Escape 2003 trips there, inviting other legislators to Area C of the West Bank. When Israel isArrington’s Bed and Breakfast Journal view Israel’s systematic devastation of the sued demolition orders for the village, the area. He subsequently publicly denounced organization succeeded in having the U.S. Gracious lodging on the Israel’s actions during “Operation Cast Embassy stop the bulldozers. RepresentaChama River in the midst of O’Keeffe country tives of 15 embassies have since visited the Lead.”

Unfortunately, after seeing the light on village.

P.O. Box 702 The alliance hopes to build a birthing U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, Abiquiu, NM 87510 Baird has decided not to seek re-election to center and provide the first ambulance for (505) 753-2035 the congressional seat he’s held since 1998. Area C. It is working in Washington, DC to (800) 920-1495 Let’s hope his successor will be as enlight- invoke the Leahy Law to safeguard playgrounds it builds in Palestine, and plans to ened as the current incumbent. www.casadelrio.net Cindy Corrie then discussed the first construct a community center in Rafah. For

Casa del Rio

JULY 2010

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Bill Fletcher, Jr. Discusses Settler States and The Palestinian Gandhi

New York City and Tri-StateNews

Bill Fletcher, Jr. n an April 13 talk at Columbia Univer-

Isity, Bill Fletcher, Jr., the executive edi-

tor of BlackCommentator.com and a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, placed the issue of Israeli apartheid in historical context. With the 1973 Convention Against the Crime of Apartheid, he noted, the U.N. generalized the concept of apartheid beyond South Africa to comprise any system of racial injustice, racial discrimination, and racial segregation. But what is “racial,” Fletcher asked, and is it appropriate in the Palestinian context? Yes, he explained, because race is not a biological, genetic concept. Rather, according to Fletcher, it is a socio-political construct that began centuries ago, with the British in Ireland, as the delineation between a settler and an indigenous population.

Fletcher maintained that all major settler states—such as the U.S., South Africa and Israel—share certain traits. They have quasi-religious foundation myths, as opposed to the indigenous, “who never hear Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.

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from God that they are supposed to move.”

They believe the land was sparsely populated when they landed, after which “all those black people arrived.” Or they believe the indigenous don’t deserve the land because they don’t make good use of it.

Thus, removing them might be morally challenging, but is worth it for the sake of progress. Because of these shared assumptions and similar histories, Fletcher argued, settler states have an inherent sympathy for Israel.

Settlers assume themselves to be superior to the barbaric indigenes, he elaborated, giving the settlers the right to use violence in “self-defense,” whereas any form of indigenous resistance is demonized. “The poorest settler can stomp on the richest indigene,” Fletcher explained. As an example, he recalled being encouraged to learn of the Black Panther movement of Israelis of Arab descent—only to learn that they were radically anti-Palestinian.

Palestinians have had many Mahatma Gandhis and Martin Luther Kings, Fletcher asserted, but the Western media portray them as terrorists. It is important to remember, he added, that when Gandhi and King were active, they were considered troublemakers rather than paragons of social justice.

A question from a worried audience member—how will Palestinians treat Jews who choose to remain in any future Palestinian state?—caused Fletcher to recall white South African fears: “Will blacks drive whites into the ocean?” But both the African National Congress and the Palestinian liberation struggles are against racist systems, not against whites or Jews, he responded.

Fletcher concluded by stating that the task of Americans in solidarity with Palestinians is to make military aid to Israel an issue, since Israel does not need to be more militarized, and to “flip the script”—meaning to convince the public that Palestinians and Arabs are human beings.

Norman Finkelstein on the Aftermath of the Gaza Invasion Speaking to a standing-room-only audience at New York University (NYU) on April 19, Dr. Norman Finkelstein gave an inspiring talk on “The Aftermath of the Gaza Invasion.” Fifteen months after the assault, he THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

pointed out, Operation Cast Lead remains an issue; Israel cannot evade the ghost of Gaza. In describing the run-up to the offensive, Finkelstein chose to begin with Hamas’ January 2006 legislative victory in Palestinian legislative elections. Israel’s re-

STAFF PHOTO J. ADAS

STAFF PHOTO J. ADAS

By Jane Adas

Dr. Norman Finkelstein at NYU. sponse to the free and fair elections, backed by the U.S., was to impose economic sanctions against the people of Gaza. Five months later, Finkelstein continued, when Hamas foiled a coup by Israel, the U.S., and some members of the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s response, again backed by the U.S., was to tighten the blockade. Finkelstein quoted former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who wrote after a visit to Gaza, but before Israel’s attack, that the Palestinians’ “whole civilization has been destroyed. I’m not exaggerating. It’s almost unbelievable that the world doesn’t care while this is happening.”

In June 2008 Egypt brokered a cease-fire that placed obligations on both sides: on Hamas to stop the rockets, and on Israel to gradually lift the blockade. Even according to Israeli sources, Finkelstein noted, Hamas was careful to maintain the cease-fire—but JULY 2010

Israel reneged on easing the blockade. The cease-fire was broken on Nov. 4, 2008, with Israeli airstrikes on and incursion into Gaza. Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said about the siege, “Our modest, homemade rockets are a message to the world,” which Finkelstein interpreted as, “SOS—we are dying.”

Although the media and even a Human Rights Watch report referred to the “Gaza war,” Finkelstein cited an Israeli military analyst’s report that not a single battle was fought during the 22 days of Operation Cast Lead. The Israeli air force flew 3,000 combat missions without a single plane being the least damaged. In testimonies to Breaking the Silence, soldier after soldier said they didn’t see a single Arab, and that nothing moved except livestock.

Several of them referred to Israel’s “insane use of fire power.” One soldier likened the operation to a play-station computer game, another to “an infantile little kid with a magnifying glass looking at ants, burning them.” Finkelstein admitted to doing this as a child, but said he was never so delusional as to think he was at war with the ants. The kill ratio was 100 Gazan combatants to one Israeli soldier, and 400 non-combatants to one Israeli civilian. There was no “Gaza war,” Finkelstein deduced; it was a slaughter.

The Goldstone Report, commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Commission, concluded that Israel deliberately used disproportionate force designed to punish, humiliate, and terrify Gaza’s civilian population. Israeli President Shimon Peres reacted by calling Richard Goldstone “a small man”; Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., American-born-and-raised Michael Oren, said Justice Goldstone was worse than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmandinejad; Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz accused him of being evil, an absolute traitor.

“Why the hysteria?” Finkelstein asked— after five reports from Human Rights Watch, two from Amnesty International and others from United Nations, Israeli, and Palestinian human rights groups all came to similar conclusions. Goldstone, a South African Jewish Zionist who became a human rights lawyer because of the Nazi Holocaust, “neutralized all the usual Zionist weapons,” Finkelstein concluded. Israelis and their supporters panicked because Goldstone, forced to choose between his JULY 2010

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TOP: Adam Horowitz (l) and Abed Ayoub.

ABOVE: Josh Ruebner. liberal values and defending Israel, opted to uphold the rule of law.

The only rational reason to be involved in this issue, Finkelstein said, is that people are suffering. The goal is not to score points and not to vanquish, but to end the conflict so everyone has human dignity intact and restored. This, he asserted, can only be accomplished by applying and enforcing basic principles of international law.

Tax-exempt Donations to Israeli Settlements, U.S. Military Aid to Israel Israel’s special relationship with the United States gives it many perquisites in spite of behavior our government penalizes in other countries. Two campaigns are underway to expose specific examples of such double standards. For people who understand that continuing these policies harms not only Palestinians, but Israelis and Americans as well, both campaigns provide opportunities to become involved.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) have joined forces to chalTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

lenge the tax-exempt status of U.S. organizations that send donations to Israeli settlements in the occupied territories—where all such settlements are illegal under international law. In New York on March 24, JVP National Director Rebecca Vilkomerson moderated a discussion of the tax project with ADC legal adviser Abed Ayoub and Adam Horowitz of Mondoweiss.

In investigating the Central Fund for Israel, a New York-based non-profit foundation that has raised millions of tax-exempt dollars in the U.S. to support Israel’s settler movement, Horowitz discovered that the organization’s address was the Marcus Fabrics store on 6th Ave. in Manhattan. Proprietors Arthur and Hadassah Marcus, along with their son Jay, who lives in the Efrat settlement near Bethlehem, divide their time between fabrics and the fund.

Some of the recipients of the Central Fund’s charitable donations are organizations such as Amitz, Magen Yehuda, and Uri Karzen Security, which provide equipment and training for “early response teams”—a euphemism, Horowitz explained, for settler security militias. If these were Muslim organizations, Washington would freeze their assets and shut them down, as it did with the Holy Land Foundation. Central Fund also channels donations to the Guardians of Yesha, an organization that trains “rapid response teams” throughout the West Bank and has a noArab policy, a violation of U.S. federal law stipulating that organizations granted 501(c)(3) non-profit status, allowing donations to be tax-deductible, may not in any way discriminate by race. Another Central Fund recipient is the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva in Yitzhar settlement.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, head of the yeshiva, recently wrote a book in which he deemed it permissible to kill non-Jewish babies because they will grow into evil people like their parents.

The Central Fund for Israel is but one of dozens of such organizations. The Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund, for example, recently held a controversial fund-raiser in the New York Mets’ baseball stadium. Some of the biggest U.S. supporters, Ayoub noted, are Christian organizations, such as the Colorado-based Christian Friends of Israeli Communities that has an “adopt-a-settlement” program. These organizations’ 45

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tax-exempt status, he added, has cost the U.S. government millions in lost revenue, even while every administration has called for a settlement freeze and stipulated that U.S. aid funds may not be used in the occupied territories.

The goal of the campaign is twofold, Ayoub explained: to make the issue public, and to bring it to Congress as a tax issue, rather than a foreign policy or political one, making it harder to ignore. The ADC is filing complaints about deceptive fund-raising with the Internal Revenue Service, which it hopes will lead to further investigation and audits. The most pressing need now, Ayoub said, is more research, and “the ADC needs help.” To that end, it has prepared a guide sheet for “Researching and filing complaints about tax-exempt organizations that support Israeli settlements.” To get involved, contact Ayoub at <aayoub@adc.org>.

“Can We Afford Military Aid to Israel?” asked Josh Ruebner, national advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, at Columbia University on April 5. From 1949 to 2007, the U.S. gave $101 billion in military aid to Israel, he noted, with another $30 billion slotted for

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2008-2017. Ruebner listed some of the U.S. weapons and delivery systems provided to and used by Israel: F-16s, Apache helicopter gunships, APCs and tanks, Tow and Hellfire missiles, Bunker Busters, naval littoral combat ships, M825 155mm smoke projectiles, A1155 white phosphorus-producing shells made in Pine Bluff, AR, and, in a $77 million deal with Boeing, a new weapon: GBU-39, a small-diameter bomb that apparently produces shock waves that destroy internal organs. All of these wreaked havoc on Palestinian civilians in Gaza during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead assault just over a year ago.

Not only does U.S. military aid to Israel tarnish the image the U.S. would like to project of itself as a promoter of human rights in the world, Ruebner continued, but it is contrary to our own laws governing arms transfers. According to the Arms Export Control Act (PL 80-829), U.S.-supplied weapons may be used only for internal security or legitimate self-defense. This would not include external military occupations or illegitimate blockades, he pointed out. The Foreign Assistance Act (PL 97-195) forbids aid to the government of any country with a consistent pattern of

gross violations of human rights—a description that, even according to the U.S. State Department’s own human rights reports, applies to Israel. The Leahy Law, attached since 1997 to all Foreign Operations Appropriations Acts, also stipulates that no funds may be provided to any unit of security forces that has committed gross violations of human rights.

None of the Obama administration’s goals—halting settlement expansion, ending the blockade on Gaza, and achieving a just and lasting peace—are possible, Ruebner asserted, as long as the U.S. continues to provide massive military aid to Israel. He concluded that every appropriation is a trade-off reflecting value judgments. Phosphorus bombs or affordable housing? F-16s or community health centers? Bunker Busters or job training programs?

The U.S. Campaign has established an interactive Web site, <www.aidtoIsrael.com>, where one can see exactly how much one’s state and congressional district contributes to Israel’s lethal arsenal. Armed with that information, Americans can make a strong case to their representatives and senators for reducing the amount of U.S. military aid to Israel. ❑

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“Delegitimization” of Israel: The New Buzzword of Pro-Israel Activism Israel andJudaism

By Allan C. Brownfeld he new buzzword in the world of pro-

This term, used to describe an array of criticisms of Israel and its policies, such as the continuing construction of settlements in occupied territories, has become a major rallying point for established Jewish organizations.

Supporters of this emerging strategy point to the campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction (BDS) Israel as a marker distinguishing “delegitimizers” from genuine critics.

“The delegitimization and BDS movement is nationally coordinated, and it requires a national response,” said William Daroff, vice president for public policy of the Jewish Federations of North America.

“We need to move forward as a community to counter this cancerous growth.”

In fact, the campaign against “delegitimization” is an effort to ignore the fact that criticism of Israel is based on specific policies of the Israeli government, which increasingly are at odds with both international law and U.S. interests in the Middle East. “To be frank, the ‘delegitimization’ issue is a fraud,” declares historian Tony Judt, director of New York University’s Remarque Institute. “I know no one in the professional world of political commentary, however angry about Israel’s behavior, who thinks that the country has no right to exist...‘Delegitimization’ is just another way to invoke anti-Semitism as a silencer, but sounds better because it’s less exploitative of emotional pain.”

The very idea of “delegitimization” came from a report issued by the Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank, entitled “The Delegitimization Challenge.” According to this report—which is now the basis for the activism by American Jewish groups—the main global threat facing Israel is not Iranian military nuclear capability or Palestinian terrorism, but the international campaign in the West, including on American Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.

JULY 2010

AFP PHOTO/PATRICK KOVARIK

TIsrael activism is “delegitimization.”

Pro-Palestinian activists in Paris demonstrate against the opening of the Ben-Gurion esplanade, named after Israel’s first prime minister, at its April 15 dedication by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe and visiting Israeli President Shimon Peres. campuses, aimed at boycotting Israel through divestment and sanctions. In response, the Israeli government has not only mobilized American Jewish groups on its behalf but has initiated a campaign to turn every Israeli into a traveling public relations officer, with the Information and Diaspora Ministry issuing pamphlets to passengers on Israeli airlines, coaching them on how to counter the alleged antiIsrael campaign.

“I think it is puerile,” Prof. Shlomo Avineri told The New York Times. “Some of the information is ridiculous, and behind it I find a Bolshevik mentality—to make every citizen an unpaid civil servant for the policy of the government. There is never any intimation that some of our problems have to do with actual policies.”

The fact is, of course, that it is Israel’s policies which have led to its increasing isolation, not only in the world, but among the majority of American Jews as well.

While Jewish organizations speak of “delegitimization,” and are highly critical of the THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

policies of the Obama administration, they are hardly representative of American Jewish opinion.

In March, in the aftermath of the impasse exposed during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel (see May/June 2010 Washington Report, p. 10), J Street commissioned a poll of American Jews and their views on the Middle East conflict, including America’s role in resolving the conflict.

We learn that American Jews, by a 4-1 margin (82 percent-18 percent) support Washington playing an active role in helping the parties to resolve the conflict; and by a 63 percent to 37 percent margin, those who support American activism say they would continue their support even “if it means the U.S. exerting pressure on Israel to make the compromises necessary to achieve peace.”

To charge that the mounting criticism of Israel is part of a campaign of “delegitimization” is to ignore reality.

Nevertheless, American Jewish opinion is sharply divided. At AIPAC’s annual meeting in Washington, DC, reported The 47

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Washington Post’s Dana Milbank on March 23, “The crowd got...raucous when Netanyahu...took a shot at the Obama administration. ‘Jerusalem is not a settlement— it’s our capital,’ he said. The unrepentant prime minister nodded, waved and thanked the crowd for the extended applause...The audience was rather less enthusiastic as Hillary Clinton defended her criticism of Israel...It remained quiet as she called for a settlement ‘based on the ‘67 lines with agreed swaps of territory’...In the audience, the majority just sat and stared at their old friend.”

In contrast, the new Jewish lobbying group J Street urged the administration to “turn this crisis into an opportunity for progress on two states” by addressing the need to establish a border between Israel and the future Palestinian state. “Bold American leadership is needed now to turn this crisis into a real opportunity to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” declared J Street.

According to Newsweek, one recent study found that only 54 percent of nonOrthodox Jews under 35 are “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state” (as compared with more than 80 percent of those over 65). “If you want examples of the shift in sentiment,” wrote columnist Jacob Weisberg in the magazine’s March 29, 2010 issue, “read just about any Jewish columnist for a major newspaper. Thomas Friedman of The New York Times spent last week arguing that Biden underreacted to Israel’s announcement about the new housing units in East Jerusalem, comparing Israel’s policies to drunken driving. Richard Cohen of The Washington Post is writing a book that argues that the founding of Israel

was a well-intentioned mistake. One might fill a book with the possible explanations for rising liberal—and, in particular, Jewish liberal—qualms about Israel. But it has to start with Israel’s occupation of Arab lands and its settlements policy—Decades of harsh occupation have made dispossessed Palestinians, the majority of whom have long favored a two-state solution, the sympathetic victims in the conflict.”

In Weisberg’s view, “Revisionist Zionism—the biblically based claim that Israel has a right to the territories—has wrought tremendous damage to Israel’s moral standing. Encouraging religious and political extremists to settle in those territories set a wedge between Israel and its liberal supporters, who see annexation as both impractical and immoral...American liberals are an external part of Israel’s conscience, and when it disdains them, it becomes a harder and more isolated place.”

A New Mantra In the face of all of this, it is unusual to see the word “delegitimization” being used as a new mantra to discount the widespread criticism of very specific Israeli policies and actions. In an open letter to President Obama from Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, published as a full page advertisement in the April 15 Washington Post, it is stated that, “Jews around the world are concerned today...

We are concerned that the Jewish state is being isolated and delegitimized.”

Around the world, Israel’s defenders, ignoring the very legitimate criticisms of Israeli policies which are widespread, particularly within the Jewish community it-

self, repeatedly use the Israeli-coined term of “delegitimization.”

South African Jewish leaders, for example, initially threatened disruptions to the May bar mitzvah ceremony of the grandson of Judge Richard Goldstone if the author of the Goldstone Report and currently visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center were to attend. Mooneyeen Castle, chairwoman of the South African Zionist Federation’s Western Cape Council, said that the anger at Goldstone was so great that it would “result in an almost certain barrage of protestors” on the day of the ceremony. Using the officially approved language, Warren Goldstein, the chief rabbi of South Africa, stated that the U.N. has an “anti-Israel agenda,” and the investigation of war crimes in Gaza was “merely a cover for a political strategy of delegitimizing Israel.”

Goldstone’s friends rushed to his defense. Justice Arthur Chaskalson, who served with him on South Africa’s Constitutional Court, said the threats “reveal a level of bigotry and intolerance meant to shut down any diversity of opinion.”

The charge of “delegitimization,” it is clear, is simply a well-coordinated campaign to avoid a real discussion of the Israeli policies which have led to a rift with the U.S. and are contrary to any movement toward real place. Just as the repeated charge of “anti-Semitism” has failed to silence critics, so will the robotic use of the term “delegitimization.” The stakes are too high—for the U.S., for the Palestinians, for the real best interests of Israel—to permit any such effort to stifle free and open discussion to succeed. ❑

Rabbinic Letter to Judge Richard Goldstone Dear Judge Goldstone, As rabbis from diverse traditions and locations, we want to extend our warmest mazel tov to you as an elder in our community upon the bar mitzvah of your grandson. Bar and Bat Mitzvah is a call to conscience, a call to be responsible for the welfare of others, a call to fulfill the covenant of peace and justice articulated in our tradition.

As rabbis, we note the religious implications of the report you authored. We are reminded of Shimon Ben Gamliel’s quote, “The world stands on three things: justice, truth, and peace as it says ‘Execute the judgment of truth, and justice and peace will be established in your gates’ (Zekharya 8:16).” We affirm the truth of the report that bears your name.

We are deeply saddened by the controversy that has grown up around the issuing of the report. We affirm your findings and believe you set up an impeccable standard that provides strong evidence that Israel engaged in war crimes during the assault on Gaza that reveal a pattern of continuous and systematic assault against Palestinian people and land that has very little to do with Israel’s claim of security. Your report made clear the intentional

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targeting of civilian infrastructures such as hospitals, schools, agricultural properties, water and sewage treatment centers and civilians themselves with deadly weapons that are illegal when used in civilian centers.

This is the ugly truth that is so hard for many Jewish people to face. Anyone who spends a day in Palestinian territories sees this truth immediately.

Judge Goldstone, we want to offer you our deepest thanks for upholding the principles of justice, compassion and truth that are the heart of Jewish religion and without which our claims to Jewishness are empty of meaning. We regret that your findings have led to controversy and caused you not to feel welcome at your own grandson’s Bar Mitzvah. We believe your report is a clarion call to Israel and the Jewish people to awaken from the slumber of denial and return to the path of peace.

Rabbi Everett Gendler Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb Rabbi Brant Rosen Rabbi Brian Walt

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Rabbi Haim Beliak Rabbi Michael Lerner Rabbi Arthur Waskow and 23 others

JULY 2010

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girls, like my daughter and like children selling author Dave Eggers spent three everywhere, should have the freedom to years writing about Abdulrahman and his dream without limits and should only be wife Kathy’s tragic but uplifting experiU.N. Ambassador Rice Addresses limited by their abilities.” Ambassador ence in the aftermath of the storm. After AAI’s 25th Anniversary Party Rice concluded by asserting that “Tomor- listening to Dr. James Zogby’s eloquent praise of this admirable couple and Eggers’ Ambassador Susan Rice, U.S. permanent row need not look like yesterday.”

This year’s recipients of AAI’s Kahlil Ji- book Zeitoun (available from the AET Book representative to the United Nations, gave the keynote address at the Kahlil Gibran bran awards included Mayor Richard Club), this writer read it. It’s my new fa“Spirit of Humanity” Awards Gala in Daley of Chicago (“a world-class mayor of a vorite, and I believe it should be in every Washington, DC on April 21, 2010. Mem- world-class city”), who was recognized for home, classroom and library. The Zeitouns bers of Congress, foreign dignitaries and his role in promoting Sister City relation- and the other awardees challenge every other distinguished guests marked the ships in the Arab world and the strong re- one of us to be the best we can be.

—Delinda C. Hanley Arab American Institute’s (AAI) 25th an- lationship he maintains with his city’s viniversary, and honored four individuals brant Arab-American community. “Chiand one corporation for their work pro- cago was founded by immigrants who Arab American Heritage Month moting inclusion, cultural understanding built the city with their hands and brains,” Celebrated and cooperation across ethnic, racial and Daley said. “This city understands cultural Montgomery County, MD kicked off its andiversity.” The mayor called for schools to nual Arab American Heritage Month with religious lines “Let there be no doubt: President emphasize language training in order to at- a March 31 dinner reception at the ExecuObama and all of us in his administration tract global job opportunities.

United Arab Emirates businessare determined to reach a comprehensive peace in the Middle East—central to man and philanthropist Juma Al which is a two-state solution,” Rice stated. Majid was prevented from traveling While highlighting other issues of strate- to the U.S. to accept his award due gic importance, Ambassador Rice identi- to airline delays caused by volcanic fied the Arab-Israeli conflict, Lebanon and ash. Accepting the award on his beIraq as issues “high on our agenda.” Refer- half, UAE Ambassador Yousef Al ring to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, she Otaiba explained that Al Majid beechoed the comments of President Obama, lieves that education is the cornerGeneral Petraeus and Secretary of State stone of civilized society. AAI honClinton in noting that resolving the con- ored him for his cultural contributions, including building a referflict was a “vital U.S. interest.”

“We don’t accept the legitimacy of con- ence library, research institute, a tinued settlement activities,” she declared, school and college to increase access and called for a halt to Israel’s evictions to education in his country.

The Corporation for National and and demolition of Palestinian homes.

Ambassador Rice described as “unfor- Community Service (CNCS) was recgettable” her visit to a United Nations Re- ognized for its support of commulief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school nity service programs like Amerifor Palestinian refugees last year and meet- Corps, Senior Corps, Learn and ing with students there. “They told of Serve America, and Arab Commu- Arab American Heritage Day organizer Samira their desire to contribute, to build their na- nity Center for Economic and Social Hussein (l) with designer Nime Jamal, whose fashtion, and to serve,” she recalled. “Those Services (ACCESS), which now ion show featured her own “Nime’s Creations,” a serves Arab communi- stunning collection of evening and bridal gowns. ties in 11 states.

Jamal’s elegant woman’s pancho created from a kefAfter accepting her fiyeh (inset) was soon sold out. award, Syrian-American Judge Rosemary Barkett tive Office Building in Rockville honoring said Arabs brought a sense of Arab Americans. Speakers at the event family to the United States. were Montgomery County Executive Isiah Barkett, who has served for 16 Leggett, Mazan Basrawi, counsel to the asyears in the Eleventh Circuit sistant attorney general for civil rights at Court of Appeals, said the the U.S. Department of Justice, and Zeina melting pot is not a good anal- Seikaly of Georgetown University’s Center ogy for America. Here people of Contemporary Arab Studies. are allowed to be different, Throughout the month of April, she said: “Diversity is our Rockville Community College held a combadge and banner.” munity dialogue series and film screenings.

Another Syrian-American, Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney Katz issued a Abdulrahman Zeitoun, was proclamation during an April 5 City Coun(L-r) Dr. James Zogby, and Hurricane Katrina/war on ter- honored for his heroic work cil meeting recognizing the Arab-American after Hurricane Katrina. Best- community and celebrating its achieverorism survivors Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun.

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it—reasoning that, although the decision was unconventional, an appeal would be time-consuming and probably unsuccessful.

Time has been an issue in the legal action from the outset. The family is seeking the “thorough, credible, and transparent investigation” that then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised then-President George Bush shortly after Rachel’s death.

Corrie noted that high-level State Department officials have said, written, and testified before members of Congress that the Israeli investigation of Rachel’s killing has not been thorough, credible, or transparent.

Students model traditional dresses from the Arab world.

Corrie said she feels that the family’s legal team—which has brought to light irments and contributions to the fabric of family from demolition.

“We went in March of this year to Israel regularities in the Israeli investigation of Gaithersburg society.

Arab Americans and others enjoyed a for the civil trial in Rachel’s case,” Cindy the killing, and in the autopsy performed free festival on April 11 hosted by the Corrie said. “We arrived on March 6. The by Dr. Yehuda Hiss—is doing a good job.

A press release issued by the Rachel CorGaithersburg’s Multicultural Affairs Com- trial was in the Haifa District Court. We mittee and by Arab Americans of Mont- were there until March 29. Craig was the rie Foundation reported that an Israeli milgomery County, MD. The theme for this last to testify on our side of things. He tes- itary police investigator testified on March 22 that his interview of a military reservist, year’s fair was “In Unity, We Build a Car- tified on March 24. “[On] March 16, which was the seventh Edward Valermov, who was in the bulling Community,” and featured poetry readings, arts and crafts, dance and music, anniversary of Rachel’s killing, we were in dozer, was interrupted by an officer of the Middle Eastern food, cultural exhibits, Ramallah when a street was named for unit involved in Rachel’s killing.

According to an April 7 article in vendors, and henna painting and calligra- Rachel, which I have to say was more movphy booths. Mayor Katz told Gaithersburg ing to me than I had anticipated,” Corrie Britain’s Independent, “At 18:12 reserve Colonel Baruch Kirhatu entered the room constituents, “Diversity is truly our great- added.

Describing the family’s preparations for and informed the witness that he should est strength,” before gamely dancing the debke with Arab Americans and their the 18-day visit to Israel and the trial as not convey anything and should not write friends. A fashion show by New York de- “immense,” she said the couple was ac- anything and this at the order of the gensigner Nime Jamal, who creates dresses for companied by their daughter, Sarah, and eral of southern command,” according to an affidavit submitted in evidence.

Miss USA and Miss Teen USA, and who several members of the legal team.

The statement appears to implicate Is“We thought the whole thing would unoriginally is from Jericho, Palestine, also fold during this period in March,” Corrie rael’s Gaza commander at the time, Majorcreated quite a stir.

For more information on Gaithersburg’s explained, “but about a week before we General Doron Almog, in an attempt to obmulticultural outreach initiatives please left we got word from our attorney that the struct the official investigation of Rachel contact the Gaithersburg Community Ser- judge had granted a motion by the state of Corrie’s death. The military police investivices Division at (301) 258-6395 or visit Israel to allow the government to name its gator testified that he considered the acwitnesses and submit its affidavits 30 days tions an intervention into the investigation. <www.gaithersburgmd.gov>.

Almog, who has since retired from mili—Delinda C. Hanley after our last witness testified.”

Corrie said the family was shocked by the tary service, has denied that he attempted ruling, which differs from American legal to interfere with the investigation, which Human Rights practice, and considered appealing the de- would be a criminal act under Israeli law. cision, but attorneys advised against Craig Corrie described the alleged interCraig and Cindy Corrie Meet vention that halted Valermov’s teswith Supporters in Iowa timony during the investigation as “outrageous,” according to The InCraig and Cindy Corrie met with dependent. family members and supporters in In Iowa City, Craig Corrie exIowa City on April 20 to discuss the plained that, under pressure, the progress of the family’s civil lawsuit family agreed to an autopsy on the against the state of Israel for the unconditions that it not be perlawful killing of their daughter, formed by a military doctor and Rachel, in Rafah, Gaza, in March that a representative of the U.S. 2003. The 23-year-old American government be present. peace activist from Olympia, WA In testimony on March 14, Hiss, was crushed to death by an Israeli former head of the Israel Forensic Caterpillar D9 bulldozer during a Institute, admitted that he had viononviolent International Solidarity Movement (ISM) direct action to Craig Corrie listens as his wife, Cindy, speaks during an April lated an Israeli court order requiring that an official from the U.S. protect the home of a Palestinian 20 meeting with family and friends in Iowa City.

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est song ever written: the Embassy be present during the words and music for a hymn to autopsy, and disclosed for the the moon god’s wife from a clay first time that he had kept tissues tablet dating back to 1400 B.C. from Rachel’s body without inLater, Azmeh “moved along forming the family. In the past, 3,000 years” to a song he’d Hiss has been the subject of legal written after his first Thanksaction brought by Israeli families giving in the United States, to whom he failed to return body which blends jazz and oriental parts and tissue samples. rhythms. He dedicated his “It’s all very disturbing,” said haunting song “Airport” to all Cindy Corrie. “They kept tisthe people he’s met in the third sues from almost every organ in lane of the airport—not the Rachel’s body without telling lanes for citizens and visitors, us...So now we are in a process but the one reserved for Arabs of trying to bring whatever remains are in Israel back to the Composer and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and his friends perform at or Muslims waiting endlessly the Library of Congress. for special interviews in back United States.” rooms in order to enter the Corrie noted that the courtroom in Haifa was filled with local and in- men, including Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D- United States.

The audience gave a standing ovation ternational reporters and human rights ob- OH) and Brian Baird (D-WA), administraservers. Also attending the trial were three tion officials, former and current diplo- after the evening performances—for the representatives of the U.S. Embassy, in- mats, academics and journalists—attended talented Syrian speakers and musicians as cluding Consul General Andrew Parker. an April 23 event at the Library of Con- well as their country, which is too often During the trial, the Corrie family met gress celebrating Syrian culture, history, criticized instead of celebrated in Wash—Delinda C. Hanley with Parker and senior members of Vice architecture, music and food, as well as the ington, DC. President Joseph Biden’s staff in Jerusalem. nation’s 64th National Day. Biden’s adviser on national security, In their welcoming remarks Mary-Jane Hugh Pope Discusses Mideast Antony Blinken, reconfirmed the U.S. gov- Deeb, chief of the African and Middle East Politics, New Memoir ernment’s position that there has not been Division of the Library of Congress, and Longtime foreign correspondent Hugh a thorough, credible, and transparent in- Librarian of Congress Dr. James Billington Pope, currently director of the Turkey/ vestigation, and reiterated the U.S. govern- highlighted Syria’s rich 4,000-year history, Cyprus Project at the International Crisis ment’s endorsement of the family’s pursuit and invited guests to look at one of the Group, discussed his new memoir, Dining of justice for Rachel through the Israeli Middle East’s first printed books, as well as with al-Qaeda, at an April 23 event hosted court system, said Corrie. a Bible printed in Aleppo in 1706. by the New America Foundation, InternaCraig Corrie noted that several ISM Ambassador of the Syrian Arab Repub- tional Crisis Group, and Foreign Policy members who witnessed Rachel’s killing, lic Imad Moustapha proudly introduced Magazine. Pope, who has spent more and whom the family called as witnesses in his wife, Dr. Rafif Moustapha—“the dy- than three decades in the Middle East as court, had been banned by the Israeli gov- namo behind this event.” Dr. Nasser Rab- a traveler, journalist and student of Araernment from traveling to Israel. At the re- bat, professor of Islamic architecture at the bic, Persian and Turkish languages, said quest of the U.S. Embassy, and probably in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most important things he has part because of press coverage in Israel, the gave a glorious illustrated lecture on the ar- learned is that the Middle East is not a government relented and allowed the ISM chitecture of Syria, including Palmyra, monolithic “Islamic World.” With intelmembers to travel to Israel for the trial. considered one of the Middle East’s most ligence and wit, the British journalist “There was a concerted effort to help us important cities in the 1st in Israel...There was a lot of media atten- century AD, and the Umtion in Israel, which was really helpful,” mayad Mosque in Damascus, Corrie said. one of the oldest and largest This reporter asked Corrie if he felt the mosques in the world. Profescourt would make a good faith effort to get sor Rabbat emphasized that, at the truth. “I think the court in Israel is throughout the country’s hiscapable of rendering justice in this case,” tory, Syrian builders have he replied. synthesized past and contemThe trial is tentatively scheduled to re- porary traditions to create a sume in September. —Michael Gillespie unique hybrid architecture of its very own.

Classical clarinetist and Music & Arts composer Kinan Azmeh, one of Syria’s rising stars, perCelebrating Syrian Culture, Ancient formed with Dima Orsho, a And Modern Syrian soprano singer and More than 400 guests—members of the musician, and their friends.

Syrian-American community, congress- First they performed the old- Hugh Pope signs his new memoir Dining With al-Qaeda.

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were immune. There are different rules for fielded difficult questions concerning on- Ellen O’Grady Exhibit: “What Ham Palestinians, settlers and internationals, O’going political changes in the region.

Saw: Drawings from Palestine” Grady noted: “It’s like a gameboard: See a Clearly, war correspondence in the Middle East is not for the faint of heart. Pope’s Visitors had lots of questions for artist settler, go back two paces. Settlers setting a perilous assignments included reporting Ellen O’Grady on the opening night of her Palestinian home on fire or cutting down on the Lebanese civil war and the U.S. oc- exhibit of watercolor paintings, which an orchard, go back to the beginning and cupation of Iraq. Even as a polyglot, he en- were on display from April 9 to May 7 at start all over again.”

O’Grady, who lives in Durham, countered difficulty in finding reNorth Carolina, majored in theolliable and safe sources in a region ogy in college. After graduating dominated by autocratic, mediashe spent from 1989, during the sensitive regimes and a sometimes first intifada, to 1996 teaching art hostile Arab street. teachers and children in occupied The author of Dining with alPalestine and Israel. She returned Qaeda really did dine with a memin 2002 to teach and work as an ber of al-Qaeda soon after the 9/11 International Solidarity Moveattacks on the United States. At ment (ISM) volunteer and painted the time a foreign correspondent the pictures featured in her first for The Wall Street Journal, Pope book, which were on display at met in Riyadh with a young miliO’Grady’s previous Jerusalem tant who’d worked in Afghanistan Fund Gallery exhibit in 2006. and had helped prepare many of Outside The Ark takes the reader the hijackers for their deadly misalong on an unforgettable journey sion. from O’Grady’s childhood Sunday In addition to dangerous assignments, Pope said he’s faced Ellen O’Grady in front of her painting “Hebron (Palestinian School class to the streets and homes of her friends, children in editorial room intrigues as a result Home).” the occupied West Bank. of pressure by powerful pro-Israel “The drawings from What Ham Saw reflobbying groups and a media-sensitive the Jerusalem Fund Gallery in WashingBush administration. ton, DC. For one thing, why was the ex- erence my trip to Palestine and Israel in “Most journalists are honest,” Pope hibit titled, “What Ham Saw: Drawings April of 2008,” O’Grady said. “I returned to said, “and what you read in the newspa- from Palestine”? Ham was one of Noah’s the Middle East with the goal of creating an per is mostly right, but it is not the sons who saw his father naked and in a illustrated book in which the stories about whole story. You do have to search for sorry drunken state, O’Grady explained. the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were told by other sources of information to compare He told his brothers what he’d seen, and Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals and think about what you are hearing when Noah awoke he was furious with his who are living and responding to it. Each son, and cursed Ham and his descendants. of those I talked with—including a poet, and take a variety of points of view.”

What Ham Saw is also the name of O’- teacher, student, peacemaker and soldier— Expressing optimism about the changing narrative surrounding Israel and Pales- Grady’s upcoming book. If it’s anything offered a thoughtful perspective on the tine, Pope noted that several mainstream like her last, Outside The Ark: An Artist’s conflict, and each have at least one thing in media outlets have reported issues that Journey in Occupied Palestine, readers can common: a creative response to their inwould have been wholly taboo during his anticipate both a captivating story and an tense desire to see an end to occupation.”

Outside The Ark is currently available for tenure as a Wall Street Journal foreign cor- artistic treasure. O’Grady said she tried to respondent. Likewise—citing the example capture the lives and voices of people who, $20 from the AET Book Club (see p. 67); of Turkey and the power of the Internet on like Ham, are willing to speak out and ex- What Ham Saw will be available spring 2011.

—Delinda C. Hanley young people in the Middle East—he pose their leaders and injustice.

O’Grady’s paintings expose everyday inseemed cautiously hopeful about the gradual prospects for media, social, and politi- justice in intimate detail; people in occu- Islamic Art in the Cappella Palatina in cal freedoms in Ba’athist Syria, and with pied Palestine coping with walls, check- Palermo the prospect of elections in a post- points and searches. Her paintings for this The largest cycle of paintings known to book are much more detailed than the last, survive from the medieval Islamic world Mubarak Egypt.

As for his swashbuckling style of foreign she said, because “I put pressure on my- decorate the ceiling of the Cappella journalism, Pope—with his characteristic self. There is so much to tell. This is a qui- Palatina (Palatine Chapel) in Palermo, Sicily. smile—joked that a life like his would eter, more prayerful book. I filled in love Jeremy Johns, professor of art and archaeprobably be unrealistic in the future, given with every detail, caressing every piece, ology of the Islamic Mediterranean and dithe dangers, costs, and demise of tradi- every horrible scene. Even something so rector of the University of Oxford’s Khalili tional reporting, but praised the potential horrible is beautiful. It’s Palestine.”

Research Centre (KRC), visited the Freer She sat at a corner in Hebron, an inter- Gallery in Washington, DC on April 13 to of Twitter and bloggers as tools for future national observer making sure children discuss this unique site. journalists.

Pope’s memoir is available from the AET reached their school unaccosted. She The Cappella Palatina is a prime example Book Club for only $19. To order, call (202) painted soldiers, checking any Palestinian of hybrid artistic traditions with its Norman 939-6050 ext. 2 or visit <www.middleeast who walked by, but never Jewish settlers. architecture, Byzantine mosaics, and Islamic books.com>.

—Adam Chamy Settler children who terrorized Palestinians paintings. Located within the Palace of the JULY 2010

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The Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily.

Normans, it was built for Roger II, the first king of Norman Sicily, soon after his coronation on Christmas Day 1130 C.E. The ceiling decorations are the work of Muslim painters brought from Cairo.

As Professor Johns put it, these masterpieces are “puzzles of intent and interpretation.” Debate continues on issues including the extent of cultural fusion suggested by these works, perceptions of identity among Arab Christian communities in the Islamic Mediterranean, and characterizing these decorations as Fatimid art. Johns expressed confidence that the Cairo artists were stimulated by the aesthetic environment of Sicily, and challenged to place their art in a setting with different

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traditions and the physical scale of a ceiling more than 100 feet tall.

Although the paintings have been around for almost a thousand years, it took the untimely death of fashion designer Alexander McQueen in February 2010 to introduce these rarely seen works to millions of new viewers. The British paper The Guardian carried a picture of models wrapped in a red and gold mantle embellished with an image of lions and camels. Their faces look like exact replicas of the creatures in one of the 12th century ceiling paintings.

—Anne O’Rourke

Break the Silence Mural Project

The Rachel Corrie Foundation and Break the Silence Mural Project unveiled the Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural on May 8 at Labor Temple building, in downtown Olympia, WA. The mural (below) tells a tale of two cities linked through tragedy: Olympia, WA, where Rachel Corrie grew up and attended Evergreen State College, and Rafah, Gaza Strip, Palestine, where she was killed in 2003—crushed by an Israeli army Caterpillar. It is also the tale of people working together for a better world. The mural features an enormous olive tree with more than 150 leaves representing issues of environmental justice, racism, colonialism, rights of indigenous peoples, and anti-war movements.

The mural uses technology to include artists from Palestine who are forbidden to travel. Viewers can use a cell phone to call and listen to the creator of each leaf talk about its meaning and theme. For more information visit <www.olympiarafah mural.org> —Delinda C. Hanley

Muslim-American Activism Keynote Speech by Islamic Scholar Tariq Ramadan They waited for years and drove for miles to hear him speak. On April 27 Muslims and non-Muslims from near and far attended the Minaret of Freedom’s annual fund-raiser dinner at the Marriott Residence Inn in Bethesda, MD, where Prof.

Tariq Ramadan, professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University and president of the Brussels-based European think tank European Muslim Network, addressed the question, “Is Liberty an Islamic Value?”

“I follow him on Facebook,” Zahra Hussein, a Moroccan American who lives in Waldorf, MD, told the Washington Report.

“He speaks to me about what matters. Not about whether I wear a headscarf or not.

He speaks about what is important in Islam and how I can practice my religion in my country—America.”

Ramadan’s message makes sense: Islam and democracy are not in conflict; indeed, he argues, they complement each other. By opening up an intellectual and spiritual dialogue, Ramadan helps young European and American Muslims discuss Islam in non-Islamic nations.

Before introducing the keynote speaker, Minaret of Freedom Institute president Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D., vice president Aly Ramadan Abuzaa’kouk, and treasurer Shahid N. Shah spoke about the important work the think tank accomplishes on a shoestring budget.

The Swiss-born Ramadan, son of an Egyptian exile, and grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, is persona non grata in Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Syria because of his criticism of those governments. In-

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one who is smart, with a job, socially integrated, who participates in his community, and is educated about Islam doesn’t become an extremist, Ramadan emphasized. He called for a “new ‘we,’ based on a sense of belonging...We need Islamic scholars trained here,” he concluded, “who know the language and psychology of the West and live among us.”

—Delinda C. Hanley

The American mainstream media mostly ignored the summit, but it was attended by media outlets from around the world which featured stories about the role entrepreneurship can play in addressing common challenges and building partnerships.

More than 150 business leaders attended an April 30 luncheon at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel co-hosted by the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce (NUSACC) and the American Lebanese Chamber of Commerce (AmCham Lebanon). NUSACC president and CEO David Hamod introduced some of the delegates, who briefly described their (L-r) Prof. Tariq Ramadan, Aly Ramadan Abuzaa’kouk, work.

Dr. Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Dr. Essam Omeish and President Hosts Summit on Entrepreneurship Lebanon’s Ambassador to the United Ashraf Nubani, Esq. In his June 4, 2009 speech at States Antoine Chedid told guests that his deed, until Secretary of State Hillary Clin- Egypt’s Cairo University, President Barack country has weathered the recent ecoton lifted his visa restriction in January he Obama called for “a new beginning be- nomic storm. “Lebanon, like the legendary had been banned from traveling to the tween the United States and Muslims phoenix, has emerged from the ashes and United States for the past six years, pre- around the world.” During that speech is steadily regaining its former vitality,” he vented from taking up a professorship at Obama made a promise: “I will host a Sum- declared. “The private sector has played an the University of Notre Dame. Evidently, mit on Entrepreneurship this year to iden- active role in this process, especially the banking system, which has proved to Professor Ramadan spent a lot of that be safe and sound.” time writing: his most recent books Lorraine Hariton, the U.S. State Deinclude What I Believe; Islam, The partment’s special representative for West and the Challenges of Modernity; commercial and business affairs, gave Western Muslims and the Future of the keynote speech at the luncheon.

Islam; and Radical Reform: Islamic “The message I want to convey is that Ethics and Liberation. our focus on entrepreneurship is Ramadan leapt from one idea to meant to stimulate the kind of ecoanother, mesmerizing his audience: nomic growth and prosperity that “The essence of Islam is built on will contribute to the demand for human freedom and dignity...We U.S. products and services, economic enjoy freedom of expression in the prosperity for our partners, and staWest much more than in Muslim-mability for the world,” she said. “The jority countries...We need laws and Middle East/North Africa (MENA) rerules to protect our freedoms...No one can impose on a woman to wear (L-r) Lorraine Hariton, David Hamod and Salim Zeenni gion has enormous potential, and we look forward to working together to a headscarf or to take it off...By defi- discussed the role played by MENA entrepreneurs. reach that potential.” nition someone who is ignorant is Salim Zeenni, president of AmCham not free. Preventing knowledge is prevent- tify how we can deepen ties between busiing freedom....Spirituality is a liberating ness leaders, foundations and social entre- Lebanon, provided some impressive figprocess...” preneurs in the United States and Muslim ures. “Lebanon is experiencing exceptional economic growth,” he noted. At a Ramadan discussed the rights of immi- communities around the world.” grants: In Israel, he noted, if you come On April 26 and 27, 2010, more than 250 time when most economies shrank as a refrom the West you have immediate citizen- entrepreneurs from more than 40 countries sult of the worldwide recession, the econship; if, however, you’re Arab in Israel, on five continents came to that promised omy in Lebanon grew 8.5 percent in 2008 you’re a second-class citizen all your life. In summit, held in Washington, DC. Many, in- and about 9 percent in 2009, according to some Arab countries, immigrants don’t get cluding Reem Bsaiso, CEO of World Links Lebanon’s Central Bank. Lebanon also is citizenship even after living there 20 to 30 in Amman, Jordan, participated in six days increasingly seen as one of the region’s years—they’re always foreigners, Ramadan of non-stop events, before and after the most reliable safe havens for investment. observed. “There’s a lack of critical think- two-day summit. At a Capitol Hill event According to the Ministry of Tourism, 1.9 ing on this subject,” he explained.

Bsaiso attended on April 29, co-hosted by million tourists visited Lebanon, shatterAccording to some Western experts, re- America-Mideast Educational and Training ing the 1974 (pre-civil war) record of 1.4 ligious extremism results from the lack of Services (AMIDEAST) and the Cisco Entre- million tourists.

American exports to the MENA region freedom in Muslim-majority states. Profes- preneur Institute, AMIDEAST’s president, sor Ramadan pointed out, however, that Ambassador Theodore Kattouf, said that, to are expected to rebound to nearly $75 bilthe London terrorist attacks were planned his knowledge, no U.S. president and sec- lion this year, up from $63 billion in by people born and raised in London— retary of state have each addressed a single 2009—representing an increase of almost 20 percent over last year. but who had no sense of belonging. Some- summit twice!

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media in the Middle East. The talk, which took place at the CAP headquarters in Washington, DC, featured Nabil Al Khatib, executive editor for Al Arabiya news channel based in Dubai Media City and partly owned by the Saudi broadcaster Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC).

Al Khatib noted that independent media in the Middle East has experienced rapid growth in (L-r) Nihad Awad, Agha Saeed, Michael Posner and Jumana the past 20 years. When he first Musa engaged in a sometimes heated discussion. entered the field as an employee of MBC TV, he recalled, virtually Michael Posner Speaks to Muslim crimination in immigration, the prison sys- no one in the Arab world had access to Americans tem and daily life, and those problems cut satellite equipment or was aware of indigenous independent media outlets. Now, he Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state deeply, Posner warned.

“It is incumbent on the United States to said, “19 years later, we are talking about for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, spoke at the Carnegie hold every government to a single stan- a region where we have 600 stations being Endowment for International Peace, in dard,” including Israel and Palestine, said broadcast via satellite.” This profusion of Washington, DC at an April 12 event spon- Posner. He proceeded to lose his audience, advanced communications technology is sored by the American Muslim Alliance however, by defending U.S. criticism of the apparent to any visitor to the region, who (AMA) Foundation. Prior to joining the Goldstone Report, saying it paid “dispro- is constantly bombarded by the ubiquity State Department on Sept. 23, 2009, Posner portionate attention to Israel,” with only of satellite dishes and cellular telephones.

The Al Arabiya editor went on to prehad worked in the international human 15 of 575 pages devoted to criticizing rights movement for nearly 30 years, and Hamas. Posner agreed that both parties dict that the presence of independent was founding executive director of Human must seriously review the report’s allega- media is likely to increase in the future.

Rights First. Nihad Awad, director of the tions against them, establish accountability “There is a huge desire for information among the population in Arab countries Council on American-Islamic Relations and try to resolve the conflict.

Questions and statements from the nowadays like never before,” Al Khatib ex(CAIR), AMA founder Dr. Agha Saeed, and Jumana Musa, policy director of the Rights mostly Muslim audience grew quite plained. Despite the rapid technological Working Group, joined in the discussion. heated, especially when the subject of pro- advances and the robust demand for inforPosner began by stating that President filing came up. One listener declared that mation in the region, however, access often Barack Obama is engaging with the world 26 percent of Americans don’t believe that lags behind. “People realize that there is a in a different manner than his predecessor, al-Qaeda is responsible for the attacks on large flow of information, but they do not emphasizing active, full, principled partic- Sept. 11, 2001. Another apologized to Pos- always have access to it,” he lamented.

In addition to the problem of access, Al ipation. Rather than forcing change from ner, “Be patient with us. We’ve had eight Khatib expressed concern regarding the the outside, Posner stressed, the Obama years of frustration.”

Posner replied, “I can’t begin to appreci- excessive power wielded by Arab governState Department is working to “reinforce agents of change“ from within countries, ate how difficult it has been. I feel it in the ments and their involvement in the media empowering women and encouraging room. I feel it when I speak to others.” The sphere. Citing a lack of protections codified NGOs working on freedom of speech, State Department official said he hoped the in Arab legal systems as particularly trou“politics of fear” would end, when peo- blesome, he cautioned, “There is an abtransparency, and rule of law.

The universal standards advocated by ple’s worst instincts are no longer rein- sence of laws in most Arab countries that the State Department apply to every coun- forced every day, 24/7, on TV, in news and would facilitate free media, and if they are try, including our own, Posner added. On films. It is not helpful, he added, to lump there, there is an issue of the rule of law.”

Other causes for concern are finances his second day in office, President Obama together conspiracy plots with real issues began to address abuses that had occurred that are genuinely wrong in the United and sponsorship, according to Al Khatib. during President Bush’s global war against States, especially when addressing some- While there is sufficient infrastructure for and interest in free media in the region, he terror. The United States, along with every one like him, who is sympathetic.

—Delinda C. Hanley said, many stations provide content biases government, is now required to submit a toward their financiers rather than remainreport card on its own civil and human ing objective. Al Khatib cited the media rights record to the United Nations in SepWaging Peace coverage of the recent Iraqi election as an tember. illustration of this phenomenon. Not one “As a democracy we are a work in of the Iraqi channels gave wide-ranging progress,” Posner admitted. While the U.S. Independent Media in the Middle coverage of the election proceedings, he has strong, admirable institutions and a vi- East: Challenges and Opportunities brant community, there is room for im- On April 8 the Center for American said. Rather, the Iraqi channels only aired provement in racial, religious, ethnic and Progress (CAP) and Internews co-hosted an news relating to the parties in their region human rights at home. There is still dis- event addressing the state of independent that sponsored them. Consequently, Al 56

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In his remarks at the summit, President Obama stated, “Throughout history, the market has been the most powerful force the world has ever known for creating opportunity and lifting people out of poverty...

Entrepreneurship is an area where we can learn from each other; where America can share our experience as a society that empowers the inventor and the innovator; where men and women can take a chance on a dream.” —Delinda C. Hanley

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professional and credible.

—Andrew Blakely

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ulations in dialogue, as “these groups will play a considerable role in determining the success of any agreement.”

Ambassadors’ RoundFrank Wisner, ambassador to Egypt table: The Obama from 1986 to 1991, explained that the IsAdministration, Arabraeli-Palestinian conflict carries a unique Israeli Peace significance among Egyptians. “There is On April 12 the Woodrow no issue in Egypt that has quite the imporWilson Center convened a tance as the Palestinian-Israeli issue,” he panel of distinguished said—but also noted that Cairo will never Middle East specialists, allow the issue to overwhelm Egyptian namoderated by Aaron tional interests. As a result, Wisner argued, Nabil Al Khatib (l), executive editor of Al Arabiya, and David Miller, to discuss “Egypt must—and the consensus is quite Howard Schneider, former Jerusalem bureau chief for the the state and future of the broad—maintain peace with Israel.”

Egypt’s self-interested approach to the Washington Post, discuss the opportunities for independent peace process. The pansituation is also evident in its handling of elists, four former U.S. ammedia in a region eager for information. bassadors and one consul the Gaza situation. Concerned about Khatib said, “Iraqis turned overwhelm- general, all spent considerable portions of nascent extremist tendencies, the government “remains deeply, deeply distrustful ingly to Al Arabiya” so that they might their careers in the region.

Daniel C. Kurtzer, ambassador to Israel of Hamas” fearing the pressures it might “listen to different voices on one channel.”

Al Khatib elaborated on his criticism of from 2001 to 2004, opened the discussion exert on domestic Egyptian politics. NevArab governments, noting that access to with an assessment of President Barack ertheless, because Egypt views itself as the data on government programs and policies Obama’s political capital. Criticism of “great nation of the Arab world…[it] must is too tightly regulated. The limited avail- Obama, he noted, is largely an “inside-the- be front and center in carrying the Palesability or complete lack of data makes it Beltway” phenomenon. Obama still has tinian cause forward [and] to lose control virtually impossible for opposition move- “superstar” status abroad, which would of that would undermine Egypt’s position ments and independent critics to make co- surely help him in any initiative to advance as she sees herself,” Wisner explained.

He concluded by agreeing with Ambasgent arguments, he pointed out: “The civil Middle East peace.

Ambassador Kurtzer was keen, however, sador Kurtzer that the Obama administrasociety organizations and the political parties, especially the opposition, would talk to highlight Obama’s initial mistakes over tion must be more active in defining an about dissatisfaction of policies, but would the past 15 months, particularly the ab- American policy. “There needs to be at this never be able to make an argument that sence of a clearly articulated American pol- stage in our relationships with the region, would convince people about where things icy and a smart strategy for its implemen- a clear articulation of American views,” he tation. The “mini-crisis” between the U.S. stressed. The administration, he added, are lacking.”

Government-owned media and propa- and Israel, according to Kurtzer, has high- should do more to convince the Arab ganda are also challenging issues for jour- lighted the glaring lack of such a policy. world that it knows how to translate its denalists like Al Khatib. The only regional so- “Negotiations are part of a strategy,” he ac- sire for peace into action.

Edward “Skip” Gnehm, ambassador to lutions to these problems, he suggested, knowledged, “but if that’s the only eleare the pan-Arab stations such as Al Ara- ment of strategy, then we are missing out Jordan from 2001 to 2004, highlighted the biya and the better-known Al Jazeera, and on a number of other factors that need to vital importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Jordan as well. This is because nascent citizen journalist movements. For be taken into account,” he noted.

Kurtzer also suggested that the Obama the state’s survival is at stake, Gnehm exthe pan-Arab stations to be an effective counterweight to government-based media administration make an effort to “bring the plained, and why King Abdullah strongly apparatus, he argued, they must have a Arab world into efforts more ambitiously.” believes in maintaining the peace treaty very strong and integrated presence in all Citing the potentially far-reaching, but as with Israel. “The treaty with Israel recogyet unaddressed, Arab Peace Initiative as a nizes the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” countries where they operate.

Citizen journalists and bloggers need as- potential source of dialogue, he also em- Gnehm pointed out, thus affirming the sistance, Al Khatib added, as “a gap re- phasized the importance of engaging the Jordanian character of the state and remains between the demand for information Palestinian refugee and Israeli settler pop- moving concern that a Palestinian state already exists within Jorand the expertise of indidan. viduals.” He and Al AraIt is for this same reabiya are teaming up with son, Gnehm continued, Internews, an internathat Amman has such an tional non-profit organiinterest in resolving the zation which empowers conflict. A comprehensive local media worldwide, Israeli-Palestinian peace on a project intended to that establishes a Palestinencourage the sustainable ian state would solve “the growth of free media in the Middle East and to (L-r) Ambassadors Frank Wisner, Theodore Kattouf, Daniel Kurtzer, modera- issue of Jordan more emempower citizen journal- tor Aaron David Miller, Ambassador Edward “Skip” Gnehm and Consul Gen- phatically than the treaty [with Israel].” Indeed, the ists by making them more eral Jacob Wallace.

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lasting protection of Jordan’s borders and failed Camp David talks, he warned that gressional district was home for a twosovereignty is, to a degree, dependent on a “high risk summitry is something we need week recess. Members of the Progressive to think about very carefully.”

Democrats East Bay (PDEB) Free Palestine resolution.

In the opinion of Theodore Kattouf, am- Action Coalition organized the protest to Furthermore, Gnehm noted, Jordan’s proximity to the West Bank and Jerusalem, bassador to Syria from 2001 to 2003, “an urge Lee—a member of the House State, along with the fact that 60 percent of Jor- Israeli-Syrian peace treaty, brokered by the Foreign Operations Subcommittee that apdanians have origins in Palestine, result in U.S., should be far easier to reach than an propriates military aid to Israel—to vote a strong bond between the two lands and Israeli-Palestinian agreement.” The charac- against military aid to the Jewish state that teristics of such an agreement are well illegally occupies Palestinian land and comthe two peoples.

Questioning notions about Arab willing- known, he pointed out, and would include mits human rights abuses against Palestininess to pursue peace, he described as “a a return of all occupied Syrian territory in ans on a daily basis. During Israel’s 22-day false conclusion” the idea that the Arab exchange for normalized relations between attack on Gaza in December 2008 and Janstreet does not wish to see peace. To the the parties and increased Syrian flexibility uary 2009, its military committed war contrary, Gnehm suggested, there is in- on “several issues vital to Israel’s political crimes—as detailed in Judge Richard Goldstone’s report for the U.N. Human Rights deed “a mood in the Arab street for peace,” and security needs.”

Kattouf criticized as too extreme the at- Council—using U.S. weaponry, including and President Obama should “capitalize on it.” Gnehm concluded by confirming the tempts by some past administrations to iso- white phosphorus artillery shells, 500remarks of his colleagues regarding the ab- late and humiliate the Syrian regime, and pound bombs and Hellfire missiles.

PDEB co-chairs Zaigham Kabir and Phil sence of a U.S. policy, noting the “need for the exaggeration by others of Damascus’ sense of importance and centrality to the Abraham met with Lee’s representative a policy and the need for enunciation.”

“It’s clear we are at a very uncertain mo- region. “A middle course between those Saundra Andrews to give her 30 postcards signed by passersby which urged Congress ment now in the Middle East,” Jacob Wal- two extremes is needed,” he maintained.

Finally, Ambassador Kattouf warned of to stop military aid to Israel and redirect lace, consul general in Jerusalem from 2005 to 2009, noted soberly. However, he ignoring the Syrians in favor of pursuing spending to domestic needs. Andrews said viewed the highly publicized crisis in rela- only the Israeli-Palestinian issue. “If Syria Lee was “receptive to their cause,” but did tions between the U.S. and Israel as not so is shunted aside for negotiations with the not directly answer why the congressmuch a crisis between the countries as a Palestinians,” he cautioned, Damascus woman votes to give military aid to Israel.

Members of the Ecumenical Peace Insticrisis in restarting the negotiation process. “will continue to play the spoiler role— While the situation may be bad, Wallace and it will play it very effectively.” In this tute, Women in Black and other peace went on to note, there are certain positive regard, Kattouf emphasized the linkage be- groups were also present at the rally. The developments that ought to be highlighted. tween the two tracks that the Syrians groups have been holding a weekly protest He praised the Palestinians’ “sustained and favor: pursuing U.S.-mediated peace nego- at noon every Thursday for many years serious” efforts in the West Bank, particu- tiations with Israel, from which Syria outside the Federal Building against the larly those set in motion by Prime Minister would regain the entirety of the Golan, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

—Elaine Pasquini Salam Fayyad, intended to improve secu- and normalization of relations with Washrity and economic conditions. The relative ington. In order to be realized, the ambascalm and stability in the West Bank, Wal- sador concluded, the two goals cannot be Bob Krause Speaks in Ames, Iowa —Andrew Blakely Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bob lace said, should provide a helpful context separated. for the resumption of negotiations. He Krause of Fairfield, Iowa spoke in Ames on warned, however, that the prolonged ab- Activists Urge Rep. Barbara Lee to April 17 at a backyard barbecue hosted by sence of talks similarly had the potential to End Military Aid to Israel John and Betsy Mayfield. destabilize the West Bank, leading to an in- Calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, ac“I think that we need to get out of crease in violence and unrest. tivists rallied outside the Oakland office of Afghanistan immediately,” Krause said to Unlike his fellow panelists, Wallace sug- Barbara Lee on April 8 while the Democra- the applause of some 50 supporters. “I’m a gested that “the Obama administration tic representative of California’s ninth con- retired military officer, and I have studied started off on the this,” he explained. right note.” While “It’s not a cut-andthe past 15 months run kind of thing. It’s have been “rough,” the fact that we are he acknowledged, it doing more to hurt was “correct of the our national security administration to by being in focus on the issue of Afghanistan than we settlements and to would if we got out. deal with it in a seri“The cost to this ous way.” Wallace country last year was also was in favor of $172 billion. That’s proximity (indirect) the size of the protalks as a strategy for posed phase two restarting negotiastimulus. That’s a lot tions between the Outside Rep. Barbara Lee’s Oakland office on April 8, protesters urge the congresswoman of money that we parties. Citing the to stop aid to Israel and redirect spending to domestic needs. could be spending 58

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Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bob Krause of Fairfield, IA.

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might not even solve the nuclear problem that we are trying to get through,” Krause warned.

“Ultimately, George Mitchell is doing the groundwork and defining the parameters,” he continued, “but at some point the president will have to enter into the negotiations aggressively. Bill Clinton waited until the last minute, and that was a mistake.…

If you look at what Carter did, yes, he was visible at the end that summer, but there had been a lot of [diplomacy] leading up to that, when he brought those two leaders together and accomplished what a lot of people at the time viewed as a near miracle.”

On April 19 Krause was endorsed by the Veterans’ Alliance for Security and Democracy, or VetPac, a national political action committee that works to elect veterans to public office.

—Michael Gillespie

Tax Day Protesters Defy Wind, Rain in Des Moines Four long-time Iowa activists defied the elements on April 15 to protest Washington’s

PHOTO M. GILLESPIE

here, and our safety as a nation would actually improve if we did that,” he maintained.

The former state representative and regional Department of Transportation representative during the Carter administration emphasized economic and education issues during his presentation, but afterward spoke to this reporter about Middle East foreign policy issues.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is fueling hostility in the region and needs to be defused, the candidate said. “The Obama administration is taking some positive steps to realize a solid two-state solution, which is critical to success. I was pleased when Vice President Biden [said] Israel needs to define those boundaries in conjunction with the international community so you do have two sustainable states,” Krause added.

Speaking positively about former President Jimmy Carter’s role in Middle East peacemaking, he explained, “Jimmy Carter is a man I’ve admired all my life.“ [Carter] was a visionary on the Camp David Accords. Everybody was startled when he was able to accomplish it. They thought he was a madman when he tried it, and then it happened, and the disappointment of his opponents was palpable when it occurred.

But it was probably the best thing that’s happened in the Middle East in the last 30 years,” said Krause.

Asked about the possibility of another breakthrough like the Camp David accords, Krause responded positively and offered two observations.

“I think a big question mark out there that’s causing a lot of friction is Iran,” he noted. “It would be a mistake for either the United States or Israel to unilaterally attack Iran. That would cause more problems than we can even imagine today, and it

use of their tax dollars to fund wars.

“We’ve been doing this for 20 years or more, just to point out to people what a lot of their tax money goes to,” explained Sherry Hutchison, standing under an umbrella in the rain on the sidewalk in front of the main U.S. Post Office in Des Moines, IA. “It goes to fund things like the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan,” she continued. “They’re cutting back on human services, and schools, and they’re not funding jobs the way that they should.”

“We’re spending far too many of our tax dollars on war in Iraq and Afghanistan,” agreed Eloise Cranke, holding the umbrella she shared with her friend. “Our national priorities are completely skewed and need to be changed.”

“It’s just ridiculous that we are spending all this money for war, and people are going along with it, it seems,” added Jane Magers, struggling to hold a pole attached to one end of a banner buffeted by a stiff wind. “You don’t see too many people refusing to pay their taxes. We know a few people who do. I’m not one right now, because I don’t make enough money to pay taxes, but I used to,” she said.

“I’m sorry that we haven’t done any better at getting the war budget down even with President Obama,” Magers said. “It’s just the same. We’re spending $7.3 billion a month just in Iraq.”

Magers said she is concerned that the U.S. economy will suffer and fall behind countries that are not wasting money on foreign wars. “I just spoke to somebody from Germany who was visiting,” she elaborated. “[The German government] pays $400 per month for each child…You know, we could do things like that if we weren’t paying for wars around the world.”

“This protest is something the Women’s

Sherry Hutchison, Eloise Cranke, Jane Magers and Kathleen McQuillen protested war funding in front of the main Post Office in Des Moines on April 15.

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International League for Peace and Freedom has been doing for a lot of years,” noted fellow tax day protester Kathleen McQuillen, Iowa program coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee.

“Our main message is to ask, ‘How do you define security?’ Having health care is a matter of security. Having homes that you’re secure in and that you’re not going to lose to foreclosure, that’s security. Having jobs, jobs that allow you to feed your family, that’s security. But all of our attention on security is going to wars overseas,” she stated, “so we’re calling for a redirection of our funding to support our families at home.”

—Michael Gillespie

Armenians Observe 95th Genocide Date

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place at the Armenian Martyrs Monument, where Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke.

On April 23 in Glendale, where one in every four residents is an Armenian American, a Genocide Commemoration was staged in the Alex Theater. Hollywood producer Robert A. Papazian was the keynote speaker. The Glendale Philharmonic performed under the baton of Mikael Avetisyan with featured numbers by Ruben Harutyunyan on the dudak and vocalists Narine Ojakhian and Arno Babadjanian.

Members of the Armenian Dramatic Alliance recited oral histories in three parts, entitled “March,” “Deportation” and “A Life in a New World.”

Glendale students participated in a 30-hour fast. Another group of Armenian youths walked 15 miles in the desert outside Lancaster in memory of their forebears who died in the forced march from Turkey to Deir ez-Zor, Syria.

—Pat McDonnell Twair

Palm Sunday peace activists Donnie Heyn-Lamb (l) and Rev. Bert Newton at Pasadena’s Paseo Colorado.

Drumming and guitar music drew large crowds to hear a litany “For the Healing of the Nations.” Colorful banners calling for an end to torture and to bring U.S. troops home impressed the message of peace upon passersby.

—Pat McDonnell Twair

Palm Sunday Peace Parade More than 150 interdenominational proponents of peace gathered March 23 at Messiah Lutheran Church in Pasadena for their eighth annual Palm Sunday peace parade.

After a rousing drumming prelude and introduction by the Rev. Bert Newton, the colorful procession walked one and a half miles to the city’s popular shopping mall, Paseo Colorado.

Anthropology Conference at UCLA

S. TWAIR PHOTO

An estimated quarter of a million Armenian Americans live in Los Angeles County—and it seemed like every one of them took part in April 23 and 24 observances to commemorate the 1915 Armenian genocide that claimed the lives of more than 1.2 million Armenians in Ottomanruled Turkey.

The biggest and noisiest event took place on April 24, when hundreds gathered in Hollywood’s Little Armenia for the annual march to the Turkish Consulate on Wilshire Boulevard. There, amidst protest signs, activists demanded that the Turkish government acknowledge the mass killings and forced death march of 95 years ago.

Caravans of honking cars draped in bunting in the red, blue and orange colors of the Armenian flag filled the streets of Los Angeles. A somber ceremony took

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Priests lead Armenian Genocide Remembrance procession in Hollywood's Little Armenia to an April 24 demonstration in front of the Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles.

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The Center for Near Eastern Studies hosted a two-day conference at UCLA on April 1 and 2 to review new contributions of collaborative research of ethnographic methodologies in the field of anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa.

Dr. Barbara Aswad chaired an opening panel entitled “Studies of Identity, memory and Conflict.” Sondra Hale of UCLA explored conflicts in Sudan with her paper, entitled “The Memory Work of Anthropologists: Gendered Studies of Conflicts and the ‘Heroic Life’ in MENA.” Steven Rousso-Schindler of California State University Long Beach presented excerpts from his paper, “National Narratives as Theoretical Intervention in Middle East Anthropology: How Jewish-Israeli Stories About Demography can Narrate the Nation In or Out of Being.”

“The Mashreq Unbound: Modernism and the Discovery of America by the Turks” was the title of a paper by Camila Pastor de Maria y Campos about Maronite Christians in Latin America.

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Middle East Anthropology panelists (l-r) Stephen Rousso-Schindler, Camila Pastor de Maria y Campos, Sondra Hale and Seteney Shami, with chair Barbara Aswad. search Council and Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study discussed “Identity and Difference in the Middle East and North Africa.”

For taped proceedings of the conference, visit <www.international.ucla.edu/cnes>.

—Pat McDonnell Twair

Palestinian Flag Flies Atop Argentina’s Aconcagua

a master’s degree in Middle Eastern history at Harvard University. After living among Palestinians I, too, have yearned for Palestinians to live free from occupation, in a state of their own.

Unfortunately, uncertainty as to the realization of this dream confronts the average Palestinian on a daily basis. Palestinians spend hours waiting in the hot sun, cold rain and all kinds of weather wondering if Israeli soldiers will allow them to pass through ubiquitous military checkpoints to get to work or school, visit family members, get to a hospital, farm their land or simply shop for food.

Uncertainty was a recurring theme throughout my expedition to Aconcagua.

Despite a measurable ascent of nearly 10,000 vertical feet from base camp to summit, many other uncertainties remained.

Temperatures varied wildly, ranging from

95 degrees (Fahrenheit) in the Vacas Valley approach to below zero on the summit.

The wind’s fierce gales could destroy tents at high camp, stymie progress, and subject unprotected skin to frostbite. Several expeditions were forced to retreat from high camp as their tents were shredded by such gusts. Surprisingly, Aconcagua demanded as many clothing layers as much colder mountains such as Mt. McKinley in Alaska.

Another uncertainty I faced on Aconcagua was not knowing how my body would acclimatize at elevations approaching 23,000 ft. (7,000 meters). Failure to adjust would sap a climber’s strength and put his expedition, and potentially his life, at risk.

While the uncertainties I faced on Aconcagua pale in comparison to those of ordinary Palestinians, thinking about the challenges and uncertainties they routinely face transformed an otherwise selfish climb into a poignant experience that helped me better appreciate—if only in a small way— the way Palestinians live today.

This Palestinian flag has now graced the highest points of North and South America, and over the next few years I intend to climb the high points of all seven continental peaks while carrying this flag with me to the summit. I am hopeful that an independent Palestinian state will become a certainty in the not-too-distant future.

—Dan Pingree

PHOTO COURTESY DAN PINGREE

I decided to carry a Palestinian flag to the top of Cerro Aconcagua, South America’s highest peak, and hoist it on the summit in January 2010 as a way of expressing soliRamallah Friends Meeting House darity with the Palestinian quest for stateCelebrates Its Centennial hood. I wanted to climb Aconcagua, 22,841 feet (6,962 meters), located in the dry, The Sandy Spring, MD Friends Meeting desert region of northwestern Argentina.

House, in the suburbs of Washington, DC, While not considered a technical climb, hosted a celebration on April 10 of the 100Aconcagua stands as the highest mountain year-old Ramallah Friends Meeting House outside Asia’s famous Himalaya range and in Palestine half a world away. Looking attracts climbing parties from around the full house, orgaall over the world, especially nizers said they “took a leap those whose goal is to reach of faith” when they planned each of the seven continental the celebration, wondering if summits. Climbers spend from anyone would come. John between two and four weeks Salzberg welcomed guests and on the mountain carrying Bette Hoover asked for a show backpack loads weighing up to of hands of people who had 65 pounds while contending visited the Ramallah Meeting with extremely high elevation.

House at some time in their Similar to what I had underlife. Hands shot up from many taken five years earlier on Mt. pews and faces glowed with McKinley in Alaska, (see memories.

Sept./Oct. 2005 Washington Quakers from the U.S. took Report, p. 66), I wanted to a leap of faith in 1867, when carry the Palestinian flag to the they first traveled to Ramallah top. In 1988, I spent part of my and built a school for girls in college freshman year studying 1869 and boys in 1905. The religion in Jerusalem and later Dan Pingree (l) and Ryan, an American student who offered to help Ramallah Meeting House was learned Arabic and completed hold up the Palestinian flag at the summit of Aconcagua. dedicated in 1910. Jean Zaru, JULY 2010

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tinian singer and composer Huda Asfour and Brian Falkowski playing the oud and kannoum.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Update From U.S. Central Command

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PHOTO M. KEATING

U.S. Central Command head Gen. David Petraeus described the challenges the U.S. faces in the region under his watch at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC on April 13, in a discussion moderated by the center’s chairman of the board, Ambassador Joseph Gildenhorn. The Central Command (CENTCOM) area includes 20 central Asian and Gulf states, from Egypt in the west to Pakistan in the east, from Kazakhstan in the north to Yemen and the waters off Somalia in the south.

“It takes a network to confront a network,” Gen. Petraeus said during his PowerPoint update on CENTCOM strategies, as he emphasized the complexity of issues Palestinian musician, singer and composer Huda Asfour. and U.S. responses.

Responding to Ambassador Gildenhorn’s who was born in Ramallah to a Quaker Meeting House on his first visit in 1958 family in 1940, and has been the presiding and on later visits, as Ramallah grew and question about deadlock in the Arab-Isclerk of the Ramallah Friends Meeting for the building became not only an historic raeli peace process and its effect on his area over 17 years, sent a video message. Au- landmark but a vibrant cultural center. He of command, Petraeus first acknowledged thor of Occupied with Nonviolence: A Pales- recalled Peter Yarrow (of the folk group that the lack of progress in resolving the tinian Woman Speaks (available from the Peter, Paul and Mary), who visited Israeli Arab-Israeli conflict does very much shape AET Book Club), Zaru is founding member and West Bank schools to teach respect for the environment in which he operates. and vice-chair of Sabeel, an ecumenical each other, putting on a concert for the Even moderate leaders say “insufficient progress toward comprehensive peace” is Palestine Liberation Theology Center in school.

Jim Fine, clerk of the new Friends Inter- their biggest concern, he noted, although Jerusalem. Her son, Saleem, spoke about growing up in the Ramallah Meeting, and national Center in Ramallah (FICR), de- Iran may be edging it out.

Petraeus went on to say that he’d like to learning important life lessons while he scribed the Ramallah celebrations he’d recently attended, and the center itself, clear up some inaccuracies that surfaced in picked up trash every week.

Arlene Kelly described filming children where people of every faith (including Is- the blogosphere which “mischaracterized” excited on the first day of school in Ramal- raelis, who are forbidden by their govern- his remarks after Vice President Joe Biden’s lah, during the second intifada. She later ment to visit) come together to talk, per- recent trip to Jerusalem. The general said he did not request, nor would he wish for, filmed their return to school after a long form and connect.

A delicious Middle Eastern meal, pre- the addition of Israel and Palestine (part of curfew during which schools were closed.

“The children came back flat, quiet, afraid pared by Nuha Haddad, was followed by a the European Command) to his area of to leave their parents.” One spunky 11th superb music performance by gifted Pales- command. Nor did he say that Israel’s settlements policy put U.S. solgrade girl asked her what diers at risk. she thought of suicide Ambassador Gildenhorn bombers. “I had no pat anasked what effect recent viswer for a people struggling olence surrounding elecwith violence when they tions in Iraq will have on asked ‘what would you do the plans for withdrawal of if you were us?’ I don’t U.S. troops. Noting that the know.” Americans don’t withdrawal is on schedule face armed soldiers and setdespite recent attacks, Petlers, Kelly acknowledged. traeus put the violence in “We adults are failing the context with a graph that children in Palestine...We showed a significant decline are called to be faithful, prein bloodshed in Iraq. He sent, be there, make a space emphasized the U.S. will where people can be tomove into an “advise and gether, open to possibilities, assist” role in Iraq as 96,000 open to the spirit.” “boots on the ground” Landrum Bolling of draw down to 50,000 in AuMercy Corps International gust. U.S. forces will not shared his memories of the Ambassador Joseph Gildenhorn (l) and Gen. David Petraeus.

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conduct unilateral combat missions unless there is an eminent threat, he said.

The legacy we leave in Iraq may not be democracy, Petraues added, but at least it’s a representative government—whereas when we leave Afghanistan the best we may hope for is some sort of functioning government.

Petraeus said he recognized the challenges that still remain and the need for the U.S. to serve the people and help host nations to do the same. People say, “if you can put a man on the moon, why can’t you turn on the electricity in Mosul? People will only tolerate us if they see there will be a brighter future for their families,” Petraeus said. “No one welcomes foreign forces on their land.”

Regarding Afghanistan, Petraeus recognized that the U.S. could not simply “kill or capture [its] way out of an industrialstrength insurgency.” Afghans, he said, need to be “part of the solution instead of a continuing part of the problem.” He also suggested that the Kabul government has a role to play in integrating the country’s population, and that “inclusivity and transparency are what needs to take place.”

As the conversation moved from Iraq and Afghanistan to other countries in the region and broader topics of U.S. strategy, Petraeus reiterated the need to take a comprehensive approach to problem-solving in the area. In regard to combating terrorism in particular, Petraeus said that the “appropriate intellectual approach is that of a comprehensive, whole-of-governments counterinsurgency campaign.”

Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) asked Petraeus whether he has the resources to focus on such a large area. The general expressed confidence that he did have enough resources and again emphasized the need and current effort to work with partners in the area rather than acting unilaterally. “You can’t get stuck in the mode of your nose against the glass fo-

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cused on one country or one area, sub-region, and lose sight of the broader regional picture,” he said. “We focus on the global networks.”

—Delinda C. Hanley

Poll Documents Changing Perceptions of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict On March 25 the Washington, DC-based New America Foundation hosted a panel to discuss a poll on American perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict commissioned by the Arab American Institute (AAI). Zogby International polled 2,471 Americans between March 17 and 19, 2010, after Israel’s “insulting” treatment of Vice President Joe Biden. John Zogby presented the poll’s findings, as AAI President Dr. James Zogby, the Middle East Task Force’s Amjad Atallah, and former director of Israel Policy Forum M.J. Rosenberg provided analysis of the poll results. Steve Clemons moderated the discussion.

Just one week after Gen. David Petraeus re-emphasized the centrality to U.S. national security interests of resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict, the Zogby poll showed significant American support for the Obama administration’s policies. While Americans still support Israel, the poll found, a great majority view the continued lack of resolution to the conflict to be harmful to U.S. interests. A plurality of those questioned oppose Israeli settlement construction and believe it weakens American leverage and credibility in the world.

Reflecting a trend characterizing almost every domestic issue, there is an increasing partisan divide, with Democrats overwhelmingly more favorable to the president’s policies and efforts to end the conflict.

Pollster John Zogby also compared the recent poll with one conducted last year.

In 2009, he noted, 71 percent of Americans had a favorable view of Israelis, with only 21 percent rating them unfavorably. In

2010, the favorable/unfavorable ratings have shifted to 65 percent/29 percent. According to Zogby, this is largely due to a significant drop among Democrats, who now hold a 42 percent favorable, 49 percent unfavorable view of Israelis. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s rating among Democrats is an even worse 20 percent favorable to 63 percent negative.

American attitudes toward Palestinians and President Mahmoud Abbas also have declined, Zogby said. In 2009 Palestinians were viewed favorably by 25 percent of the public, and unfavorably by 66 percent.

Today the favorable/unfavorable ratio is 21 percent to 73 percent, and Abbas is now seen favorably by only 14 percent of Americans. Panelists agreed that Israelis and the U.S. mainstream press are aggressively telling the Israeli side of the story, while Palestinians and the U.S. mainstream media are failing to express the Arab side.

According to the poll, there is a deep partisan divide, with two-thirds of Democrats opposed to Israeli policies compared to two-thirds of Republicans supporting whatever Israel does. The pro-Israel bent of the Republican side is largely due to the preponderance of Christian fundamentalists, while the Democratic side is made up of young voters, women and minorities (African Americans, Hispanics and Asians, who together form about one-third of the U.S. electorate) who, according to John Zogby, have a broader view of international issues.

The panelists agreed that activists need to take note of the one-third of those polled who have no clear view on any Arab-Israeli issues. “The bottom line is that this poll presents a challenge to engage and inform a public that is deeply concerned, but not yet certain how to respond to the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a challenge that must be met,” Jim Zogby concluded. For more information on the poll or to watch the presentation visit <www.newamerica.net>.

—Delinda C. Hanley

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

Keffiyeh: From Resistance Symbol to Retail Item?

(L-r) M.J. Rosenberg, Amjad Atallah, Dr. James Zogby and John Zogby.

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Ted Swedenburg, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas, gave an illustrated talk on the “Keffiyeh: From Resistance Symbol to Retail Item?” at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC on April 8. Swedenburg, a member of the editorial committee of the quarterly Middle East Report, teaches courses on the Middle East, race and ethnicity, gender and public culture.

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Megan wore hers during his 2008 presidential campaign. Then there was the storm in the coffeepot when conservative far-right commentator Michelle Malkin accused all-American talk-show host/TV food queen Rachael Ray of wearing the symbol “of murderous Palestinian jihad” in a Dunkin’ Donuts ad, which subsequently was pulled, in May 2008.

Urban Outfitters first carried the “antiwar woven scarf” in January 2007, but by winter 2009 had renamed it a ”houndstooth scarf.” By 2008 the keffiyeh became a provocative fashion trend, and London designer John Galliano’s sported keffiyeh designs even found their way into formal wear. Bill Cunningham’s wonderful series of street-fashion photos published in the Sunday New York Times Style section on Feb. 7,

2010 featured a young artsy middle class professional wearing a keffiyeh as scarf.

Swedenburg advised peace activists to stop complaining about people who wear a keffiyeh without a clue as to its symbolism.

“Use the moment to educate,” he urged.

“There are lots of opportunities and lots of benefits, new ways to wear a keffiyeh and promote the cause.”

For more information or to watch a video of the presentation visit <www.the jerusalemfund.org>, or search Swedenburg’s blog <swedenburg.blogspot.com> to see photos of keffiyehs on actors, models and ordinary people around the world. To buy a Palestinian-made keffiyeh of your own, visit the AET Book Club at <www. middleeastbooks.com>.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Swedenburg said he first became fascinated by the Palestinian keffiyeh, the traditional black and white head-covering, when he was researching his 2003 book, Memories of Revolt: The 1936-1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past (available from the AET Book Club). Using photos at the Palestine Center, he described the transformation of the keffiyeh, long a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and resistance, into a popular fashion trend available at major retail outlets.

Rural peasants and Bedouin wore the keffiyeh while upper class Palestinians wore the fez or tarbush, Swedenburg noted, but his talk focused on the history of the keffiyeh in the United States—or “keffiyeh spottings.” The keffiyeh is now ubiquitous, yet many of those who wear it may not know the meaning and symbolism behind this checkered cloth.

Swedenburg discussed the hipster keffiyeh (one of the stereotypical signs of the supposedly absurd, poseur hipster), the solidarity keffiyeh (worn by activists sympathetic to the Palestinian cause), designer keffiyehs (in every color and style), and the “tough guy” keffiyeh.

Matt Damon, he noted, wears it in the “Green Zone” “U.S. military-style”—as a scarf, kept inside the jacket—as does John Travolta playing an FBI agent in “From Paris with Love.” Denzel Washington wears one as he plays a wanderer through a postapocalypse U.S. in “The Book of Eli.” Peace activists never really took advantage of the keffiyeh fad, Swedenburg argued, but conservatives did get steamed up when Howard Dean wore a keffiyeh in January 2004 and John McCain’s daughter 64

STAFF PHOTO P. PASQUINI

Prof. Ted Swedenburg, wearing his favorite tie, gave a history of the keffiyeh.

Activists display the Palestinian flag outside San Francisco City Hall beneath the Israeli flag on Mayor Gavin Newsom’s balcony. The Israeli flag was raised to commemorate Israel’s “Independence Day,” the date on which the Israeli Knesset declared Israel a nation in 1948. An aide to the mayor told the activists the Palestinian flag could be raised on the balcony only if there was a Palestinian consulate in San Francisco.

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Diplomatic Doings A Conversation With the Jordanian Ambassador

sues not pertaining to the Middle East.

“One can make the argument,” Ambassador Al-Hussein continued, “that also we His Royal Highness Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid are a non-player when it comes to the larger Al-Hussein, ambassador of the Hashemite discussions occupying the international Kingdom of Jordan to the United States, community.” During the last 60 years, he addressed a capacity crowd at the Ronald pointed out, there has not been a single iniReagan Building and International Trade tiative proposed by either the Arabs or the Center in Washington, DC on March 31.

Israelis concerning an issue separate from The ambassador’s talk was part of the Nathe Middle East. “We as a region are really tional Council on U.S.-Arab Relations’ cona sorry bunch,” he said, “and perhaps if versation series. graded would clearly deserve a Ambassador Al-Hussein began big ‘F’ from that perspective.” on a cautionary note, remarking Prince Zeid concluded his reon the difficult and multifaceted marks by emphasizing the prestate of his country’s region. carious and dire situation in “[The] string of crises that Jerusalem. The holy city of the stretches from the Mediterranean three Abrahamic faiths is, he to South Asia has begun to wind worried, “a constant threat to the into a knot so complex and so international community.” With challenging,” he said, that efforts violent confrontation between Isto address and solve these reraeli military personnel and gional problems have been either Palestinians and continued buildineffectual or insufficient: “our ing of Israeli settlements in Arab collective will has not brought us East Jerusalem on the rise, the to a defining point.” potential for something to go Nevertheless, Ambassador Al“terribly awry” is far too great Hussein highlighted several refor comfort. Moreover, the amcent positive developments in the bassador worried that if settleMiddle East. He pointed to the ment activity in the city is not successful formation of the brought to an immediate halt, Lebanese government, the ballot- Jordanian Ambassador Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein. the conflict will arrive in a ing process in Iraq, and improved relations between the U.S. and Syria as rea- little the colossal crime that was the Holo- “state of terminal crisis” in which facts on sons for optimism in an otherwise uncer- caust, while on the other side there exists a the ground will prohibit any possibility for tain Middle East. The ambassador also large group of people who cannot yet grasp a peace agreement between the Palestinians praised the consistency and resolve of the the effect of an occupation and the degra- and the Israelis. “Acting decisively and seizing the moment now,” he insisted, is Arab states in their support for the Arab dation of another people?” he asked.

His blunt critique even extended to the the only option to ensure a future peace.

Peace Initiative, which was reconfirmed at —Andrew Blakely the most recent Arab League Summit in failure of Arabs and Israelis to engage on isSirte, Libya.

Ambassador Al-Hussein framed his praise, however, in the context of a serious critique of the historical patterns which have dictated Arab and Israeli actions since 1967. “How we [Arabs and Israelis alike] have responded to this conflict,” he lamented, “presents a rather sorry picture of ourselves.” Prince Zeid noted, in particular, the economic cost of the prolonged conflict, citing a 2009 report by India’s Strategic Foresight Group which estimated the cost of the past 20 years of conflict to (L-r) Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha, Ambassador Robert Keeley, Louise Keeley and Rafif Al-Sayed Moustapha at the Syrian Arab Republic’s National Day celebration on April 15 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, DC. JULY 2010

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

STAFF PHOTO A. BLAKELY

be $12 trillion. “It can be argued,” he stated, “that we are a burden unto ourselves and a burden unto the rest of the planet.”

The continued intransigence on both sides of the conflict and the long list of “lost opportunities” led the ambassador to question whether the region genuinely is deserving of a peace. “Can we claim a right to peace when one considers that large segments of one population is so ready to be-

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Books

Book Deal Alert! Want to read a swashbuckling memoir of a man shipwrecked off the coast of Yemen in the 1970s? Purchase Motoring with Mohammed: Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea by Eric Hansen with Victoria Clark’s Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes—a $40 retail value—for only $23.50 plus shipping!

Yemen: Dancing on the Heads Of Snakes

By Victoria Clark, Yale University Press, 2010, paperback, 328 pp. List: $20; AET: $13.50.

Reviewed by Adam Chamy Most of the world views Yemen as a small country in a remote and irrelevant corner of the Middle East. in h e r n ew wo rk , Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes, journalist Victoria Clark overturns this misperception, illuminating a Yemen both historically significant and increasingly present in international headlines.

Part history, part travelogue, Clark’s book weaves an intricate narrative from the 16th century to the present, based on the author’s extensive research and encounters with the entire spectrum of Yemeni society: from Shi’i to Sufi, Islamist jihadis to Marxists, tribesmen to former al-Qaeda operatives. Each footnote and character in her narrative helps to further reveal a Yemen

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that is rich in cultural history, fiercely isolationist, and historically divided.

From its sapping of Ottoman military strength in the late 19th century to the disproportionate role of Yemeni nationals in the Arab mujahideen during the fighting to evict Soviet troops from Afghanistan, Clark uncovers the hidden centrality of Yemen in the history of the Middle East. Particularly fascinating is the discussion of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s mid-1960s misadventure in combatting insurgents in North Yemen, resulting in the loss of 20,000 troops and ultimately crippling his military force. Clark describes it as Egypt’s “Vietnam” and alludes to Yemen being a major factor in Egypt’s ultimate defeat in the Six-day War. A bit too prone to overly detailed historical analysis, Clark is at her best in describing the modern concerns of Yemenis through the characters she meets on her journey. From a former al-Qaeda bodyguard turned taxi-driver to a pompous merchantcum-tribal elder, Clark portrays a nation of Adam Chamy is director of the AET Book Club. ingenious opportunists who change identi-

ties according to the shifting sands of power.

Through these absorbing personal encounters, Clark shows how modern Yemen is less a unified nation than a disparate collection of tribes and competing interests arbitrated by the surprisingly clever president-for-life Ali Abdullah Salih, who remains in power by “dancing on the heads of snakes”—appeasing and manipulating the varied tribes and interests to keep his enemies at bay and his country (somewhat) stable.

However, Clark warns that Salih’s quickstepping may be coming to an end. As the Arab world’s poorest state, Yemen’s stability depends on financially pacifying its citizens through oil profits, handouts, and international aid. Economists warn of the country’s impending collapse—with water set to run out by 2015, oil by 2011, and government salaries somewhere in the coming decade.

Worse, given recent U.S. military drone strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Yemen’s strategic position near the oil rich Gulf, Clark cautions that Yemen could become the next Afghanistan—or worse, a completely failed state like Somalia.

Add two secessionist movements to the mix and the growing ire of foreign governments at Salih’s rule, and Clark makes a convincing case. Describing Yemen as a ticking time-bomb, delicate to tackle but critical to diffuse—lest it erupt in violence its neighbors and Western benefactors are illequipped to handle. ❑

Tu uesday- Friday: 9-6 Saturday: 10-7

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AET Book Club Catalog Literature

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Music

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Film

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Monographs

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More

New Spring 2010 My Father Was A Freedom Fighter by Ramzy Baroud, Pluto Press, 2010, paperback, 320 pp. List: $18; AET: $12.50.

This touching memoir by acclaimed author and journalist Ramzy Baroud (Searching for Jenin, The Second Palestinian Intifada) following the daily lives of Palestinians from Ottoman times to today is centered around the story of Baroud’s own father and his search for a free, just, and democratic Palestine. Compelling and not to be missed. Mention this ad and get this book and Searching for Jenin for only $23.50 (a savings of more than $13)!

Veiled Voices by Brigid Maher, Typecast Films, DVD, 2009, 59 minutes, English & Arabic with English subtitles.

List: $24.99 AET: $20. Three personal stories of influential Muslim female leaders and their families in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. Filmed over the course of two years, the film provides insight into how Muslim women are redefining themselves through Islam by using it as a powerful transformative force for social justice and change. Interested in Muslim women’s rights? Buy this DVD along with Elizabeth Fernea’s acclaimed book In Search of Islamic Feminism (a $41 value) for only $28.50!

Jewish Terrorism in Israel by Ami Pedahuzur and Arie Perliger, Columbia University Press, 2009, hardback, 264 pp. List: $29.50; AET: $20. Bias-free and with no clear agenda, the authors explore the backgrounds, social networks and motives of terrorism within Israel. Extensive interviews, comparisons of Jewish terrorism to that of Muslim extremists, and in-depth socio-political analysis show that “religious terrorism is not a one-faith phenomenon.” Want information on the roots of Jewish extremism? Pair this with Israel Shahak’s groundbreaking Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (a $48.94 value) for only $34!

Translating Libya: The Modern Libyan Short Story edited

by Ethan Chorin, Saqi Press, 2008, paperback, 238 pp. List: $19.95; AET: $15.50. This unique work comes through the lenses of 16 Libyan short story writers and one American diplomat. Tracing the influence of the ancient Romans, Italian occupation, and the current influx of foreign workers from Africa and further afield, the stories in this volume open a window into modern Libya—a rapidly urbanizing country with rich oil reserves, renewed relations with the West and a nascent tourist industry. Purchase this with the film “Lion of the Desert,” following Qaddafi's fight against Italian colonialism (a $45 retail value) for only $32.50!

American Radical: the Trials of Norman Finkelstein

by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier, Typecast Films, DVD, 2010, 88 minutes, English. List: $24.99; AET: $20. Probing documentary of controversial scholar Norman Finkelstein— called a self-hating Jew by some and a revolutionary by others. This cinema verité documentary follows Finkelstein’s lectures and book signings across the country. Perfect for Finkelstein critics and supporters alike. Buy this DVD with Finkelstein’s book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (a $48 value) for only $33.50!

Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East by David Hirst, Nation Books, 2010, hardback, 496 pp. List: $29.95; AET: $20.

Hirst unravels Lebanon’s history, exploring its devastating relationship with Israel and other players in the region. A nation smaller than the size of Connecticut, Lebanon has served as the battleground for some of the most bloody conflicts in the modern Middle East. In clear, concise language, Hirst provides a powerful guide to Lebanon and its role in the Middle East’s fast-evolving political environment. Pair this with Hirst’s authoritative account on Israel-Palestine, The Gun and the Olive Branch, (a $48 value) for only $35!

Outside the Ark: An Artist’s Journey in Occupied Palestine by Ellen O'Grady, 55 Books, 2005, hardback, 48 pp. List: $25 AET: $20. It sometimes takes art to humanize struggles desensitized by polemics and politics.

Artist Ellen O’Grady paints and writes a heartbreaking, creatively illustrated story based on her observations of injustice, tragedy, and hope in occupied Palestine. The perfect volume for anyone interested in Palestinian activism or political art and narrative. Mention this ad and O’Grady’s book and Our Eyes, a photographic exploration of refugee camps by the children of the Lajee Center in Bethlehem, (a $42 value) for only $36! Give the set to your library.

The Punishment of Gaza by Gideon Levy, Verso, 2010, paperback, 160 pp. List: $15.95; AET: $11. Learn the true story of Israel’s 2008-09 assault on Gaza and its horrific effects from Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy’s compelling new book. From ordinary Gazans coping under the injustice of the Israeli blockade to the ambivalent stance of the international community, Levy omits no detail. Levy has won countless awards for his defense of human rights, but also has faced intense criticism at home, where he was labeled a security risk by a former cabinet minister.

Want to learn more about the historical struggles Gaza has faced? Buy Levy’s book with Life at the Crossroads: A History of Gaza (a $39.95 value) for only $28!

Dining with al-Qaeda: Three Decades Exploring the Many Worlds of the Middle East by Hugh Pope, Thomas Dunne Books, 2010, hardback, 352 pp. List: $26.99; AET: $19. The former Wall Street Journal correspondent recounts his career in the Middle East, from derring-do interviews with militants to his first Lebanese civil war assignments. Pope maintains a humorous lucid style throughout, while nonetheless criticizing American media, undue support for Israel and misinformation about Islam in the West. For another take on the Middle East pair this with Jeremy Salt’s The Unmaking of the Middle East (a $57 retail value) for only $36.50!

Shipping Rates Most items are discounted and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Orders accepted by mail, phone (800-368-5788 ext. 2), or Web (www.middleeastbooks.com). All payments in U.S. funds. Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express accepted. Please make checks and money orders out to “AET.”Contact the AET Book Club for complete shipping guidelines and options.

U . S . S h i p p i n g R a t e s : add $5 for the first item and $2.50 for each additional item. Canada & Mexico shipping charges: Please add $11 for the first item and $3 for each additional item.

International shipping charges: Please add $13 for the first item and $3.50 for each additional item. We ship by USPS Priority unless otherwise requested JULY 2010

L i b r a r y p a c k a g e s (list value over $240) are available for $29 if donated to a library, or free if requested with a library’s paid subscription or renewal. Call the Book Club at 800-368-5788 ext.

2 to order. AET policy is to identify donors unless anonymity is specifically requested.

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Upcoming Events, Appointments & —Compiled by Adam Chamy Obituaries Upcoming Events “Noble Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography from the Xavier Guerrand-Hermès Collection,” an exhibition featuring jewelry and historic photographs from Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia, remains on view through Aug. 8 at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, MI. For more information visit <www.arabamerican museum.org>.

The 2010 Palestine Investment Conference will be held June 2 and 3 at the Convention Palace in Bethlehem, Palestine under the patronage of President Mahmoud Abbas. This year’s theme is “Investing in Palestine: Empowering Small and Medium Enterprises.” For more information visit <www.pic-palestine.ps>.

The 15th Annual Dearborn Arab International Festival will be held July 18-21 in Dearborn, MI. The largest such festival, drawing more than 300,000 attendees, it features performances and events from throughout the region. For more information visit <www.americanarab.com>.

Appointments The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has announced the appointment of deputy executive director Nabil Mohammed as its new vice president. He joined ADC in 1998 as national organizing director and has more than 25 years of experience with various ArabAmerican community organizations. ADC has also announced that its new legal director is Abed A. Ayoub. The ADC Legal Department offers pro bono services in discrimination, profiling, immigration or citizen-related cases, as well as other issues.

For more information, visit <www.adc. org> or, to contact the Legal Department, e-mail <legal@adc.org>.

Marwan Muasher, former Jordanian foreign minister and deputy prime minister, will join the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to oversee the work of the Endowment’s Middle East program in Washington and its Middle East Center in Beirut. For more information about the Carnegie Endowment visit <www. carnegieendowment.org>.

Obituaries Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, 86, a leader of Neturei Karta, the Orthodox Jewish group that 68

opposes the Zionist state of Israel, and a longtime adviser to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, died May 2 at his home in Jerusalem. The son-in-law of Neturei Karta founder Rabbi Aharon Katzenelbogen, he was born in Brooklyn in 1923 and received his rabbinical training at a Lakewood, NJ yeshiva. He emigrated to Israel but never became an Israeli citizen. An adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted as saying, “We consider Rabbi Hirsch a part of the Palestinian people. He is one of the Palestinian Jews whom we give all respect, and this is to confirm that our problem is not with the Jews as a religion, it’s with Zionism.” Rabbi Hirsch is survived by three children and a brother.

Sheikh Ahmed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, 38, younger half-brother of United Arab Emirates’ ruler Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan and director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, died in a March 26 glider accident in Morocco. Ranked as the 27th most powerful person in the world by Forbes magazine, Sheikh Ahmed was the managing director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority—whose assets are estimated from $400 billion to $875 billion or more. Its $7.5 billion cash investment in Citigroup in 2007 drew much attention.

Known for his rather low-key persona, Sheikh Ahmed spoke out earlier this year warning of continuing weaknesses in global economic markets. Beyond his involvement in the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Sheikh Ahmed was also known for his charitable activities, and served as board chairman of the influential Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Charitable and Humanitarian Foundation.

Nimet Abudabbeh, 98, died March 10 of atrial fibrillation at her home in Washington, DC. Born in Tulkarm, Palestine, she and her husband, Naim Abudabbeh—a 1928 graduate of the University of California at Davis and the first horticulture expert in the Middle East—fled their homeland during the Nakba and raised their family in a series of countries, including Turkey, Lebanon and Libya. One of the first female Palestinian economists to work at the World Bank, she was an avid reciter of Arabic poetry. A friend described her as “a great lady and one of the smartest, wittiest, most elegant and cultured Arab women of her generation.” Her husband died in a 1974 automobile accident, and her younger daughter, Nural, THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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died of cancer in 1991. She is survived by her older daughter, Nuha, her son, Nedi, her grandson, Hayham Abdulhadi, three brothers, two sisters, and an adopted daughter, Rabiyeh Ercin of Istanbul.

David Kimche, 82, the controversial Mossad spy and former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, died March 8 of brain cancer in his home in Israel. He was best known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair and for the key role he played in the Lebanese Civil War. Emigrating from Britain to Palestine in 1946, Kimche, with his reputation as an urbane sophisticate among a rougher military crowd, quickly rose through the espionage ranks in the newly formed Israeli state. He played a key role in creating allies for Israel among periphery non-Arab groups in the region—particularly Iran, Christian minority groups, and the emerging states of sub-Saharan Africa. By the 1970s he was a key deputy in the Mossad.

Outside of Tel Aviv, he earned a particularly sinister reputation due to his involvement in Operation Wrath of God—the series of reprisals against the Palestinians alleged to be complicit in the 1972 Munich Olympics attacks. By the 1980s, Kimche had been elevated to the Foreign Ministry, and was a key architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Utilizing his earlier established personal links with Lebanese Christian groups, he helped set the stage for the Israeli backing of Phalange militias—which, under the watchful eye of Israeli troops, carried out the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps outside Beirut.

Kimche also was one of the key masterminds of the Iran-Contra affair, in which he drew upon his earlier Mossad ties with Iranian arms dealers and contacts in Panama. After leaving the Foreign Ministry in 1987, Kimche was known for his increasingly vocal public role in pushing for a sustainable peace with Palestinians.

He became deeply involved in such groups as the International Alliance for Arab-Israeli Peace, known as the Copenhagen group, and the Israeli Foreign Affairs Council. He protested against his country’s ill treatment of its Arab citizens and strongly criticized the policies of Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon. Most recently, he signed onto a campaign calling for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and for open dialogue with Hamas. ❑ JULY 2010

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AET’s 2010 Choir of Angels Following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1, 2010 and May 7, 2010 is making possible activities of the tax-exempt AET Library Endowment (federal ID #52-1460362) and the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. We are deeply honored by their confidence and profoundly grateful for their generosity.

HUMMERS ($100 or more) Sami Abed, South Lyon, MI Jeff Abood, Silver Lake, OH A.M. Al-Shadhan, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Mohammad Alhatou, MD, Orangeburg, SC Dr. Mohamad Alkhayat, Geneva, Switzerland Arthur Alter, Goleta, CA Hamid & Kim Alwan, Milwaukee, WI Michael Ameri, Calabasas, CA Dr. Nabih Ammari, Cleveland, OH Dr. Robert Ashmore Jr., Mequon, WI Khaled Bachour, Farrell, PA Donna Baer, Grand Junction, CO Jamil Barhoum, San Diego, CA Stanton Barrett, Ipswich, MA Antoine Boghossian, Belmont, MA Karen Ray Bossmeyer, Louisville, KY Abbey Bourghei, Van Nuys, CA Carole Brown, Branford, CT Katherine Bullock, Mississauga, Canada William Carey, Old Lyme, CT John Carley, Pointe-Claire, Canada Ted Chauviere, Austin, TX Jean & Donald F. Clarke, Devon, PA Basil Collins, Holland, MI Carole Courey, Cataumet, MA David D’Antonio, Amityville, NY Taher & Sheila Dahani, Alexandria, VA Hon. John Gunther Dean, Paris, France Ambassador Francois M. Dickman, Laramie, WY Robert & Tanis Diedrichs, Cedar Falls, IA Lee & Amelia Dinsmore, Elcho, WI Dr. David Dunning, Lake Oswego, OR Gloria El-Khouri, Scottsdale, AZ Kassem Elkhalil, Arlington, TX Barbara Erickson, Berkeley, CA M.R. Eucalyptus, Kansas City, MO Dr. Richard Falk, Santa Barbara, CA Paul & Lucille Findley, Jacksonville, IL Dr. Ramzi Freij, Nottingham, UK Donald Frisco, Wilmington, DE Joseph & Angela Gauci, Whittier, CA Dr. Abdollah Gilani, W. Los Angeles, CA Carl Greeley, Barefoot Bay, FL Herbert Greider, Dauphin, PA Daniel Grunberg, Amsterdam, Netherlands Nabil Haddad, North Wales, PA Erin K. Hankir, Ottawa, Canada Delinda Hanley, Kensington, MD Shirley Hannah, Argyle, NY Katharina Harlow, Pacific Grove, CA Dr. & Mrs. Sammy Hassan, Lake Oswego, OR Janice Hawwa, Gates Mills, OH Samir M. Hawwa, Prangins Vaud, Switzerland Alan Heil, Alexandria, VA JULY 2010

Rich Hoban, Cleveland Heights, OH Zaghloul Kadah, Los Gatos, CA Issa & Rose Kamar, Plano, TX Elias Kawas, Madisonville, KY Eugene Khorey, West Mifflin, PA Lafayette Kirban, Philadelphia, PA Donald Kouri, Westmount, Canada Raymond Joseph Kyriakos, Hatfield, PA Michael Ladah, Las Vegas, NV William Lawand, Mount Royal, Canada Joseph Louis, Los Gatos, CA Jeanie Lucas, Thebarton, Australia Anthony Mabarak, Grosse Pointe Park, MI Farah Mahmood, Forsyth, IL Richard Makdisi & Lindsey Wheeler, Berkeley, CA Eric Margolis, Ontario, Canada John McGillion, Greenwich, CT Bill McGrath, Northfield, MN Charles Murphy, Upper Falls, MD Jacob Nammar, San Antonio, TX Elaine Pasquini, Novato, CA Sam Rahman, Lincoln, CA Mr. & Mrs. Duane Rames, Mesa, AZ Howard A. Reed, W. Palm Beach, FL Paul Richards, Salem, OR Neil Richardson, Randolph, VT William Rives, Siler City, NC Denis Sabourin, Dubai, UAE Anthony Saidy, Los Angeles, CA Dr. Ahmed M. Sakkal, Charleston, WV Asha Samad, New York, NY Irmgard Scherer, Fairfax, VA Elizabeth Schiltz, Kokomo, IN Henry Schubert, Damascus, OR Kathy Sheridan, Mill Valley, CA David Shibley, Santa Monica, CA Glenn Smith, Santa Rosa, CA Mubadda Suidan, Atlanta, GA Gregory Stefanatos, Flushing, NY Mae Stephen, Palo Alto, CA Mubadda Suidan, Atlanta, GA Kristin Szremski, Plainfield, IL Dr. Joseph Tamari, Chicago, IL Dr. Yusuf Tamimi, Hilo, HI Charles Thomas, La Conner, WA Col. Lawrence Thompson, Arlington, VA Mary Abusharr Trolan, Dallas, OR Jane Voigt, Tucson, AZ Paul Wagner, Bridgeville, PA Nabil Yakub, McLean, VA Dr. Robert Younes, Potomac, MD Vivian Zelaya, Berkeley, CA Hugh Ziada, Garden Grove, CA Fred Zuercher, Spring Grove, PA

ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more) The Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund on behalf of Ronald & Mary Forthofer, THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Longmont, CO A.R. Armin, Troy, MI Mr. & Mrs. A.L. Cummings, Owings Mill, MD Richard Curtiss, Boynton Beach, FL Mervat Eid, Henrietta, NY Eugene Fitzpatrick, Wheat Ridge, CO* E. Patrick Flynn, Carmel, NY Michael Habermann, Hackettstown, NJ Salman & Kate Hilmy, Silver Spring, MD Fahd Jajeh, Lake Forest, IL Barbara LeClerq, Overland Park, KS Jack Love, Escondido, CA Rachelle Marshall, Mill Valley, CA Alice Nashashibi, San Francisco, CA John Parry, Chapel Hill, NC Frank & Mary Regier, Strongsville, OH Dr. Mohammad H. Said, Ephrata, WA Theodore Shannon, Green Valley, AZ Michel & Cathy Sultan, Eau Claire, WI Linda Thain-Ali, Guneykoy, Turkey Charles & Letitia Ufford, Princeton, NJ John Van Wagoner, McLean, VA

TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more) Mohamed Alwan, Chestnut Ridge, NY Graf Herman Bender, North Palm Beach, FL Rev. Rosemarie Carnarius, Tucson, AZ Shuja El-Asad, Amman, Jordan Douglas A. Field, Kihei, HI** Evan & Leman Fotos, Istanbul, Turkey Grace Guthrie, Falls Church, VA Brigitte Jaensch, Carmichael, CA Trini Marquez, Beach, ND Robert Norberg, Lake City, MN Patricia & Herbert Pratt, Cambridge, MA Gay Schroeder, Boston, MA Cheryl Tatum, Cincinnati, OH Donn Trautman, Evanston, IL

BARITONES & MEZZO SOPRANOS ($1,000 or more) A.J. & M.T. Amirana, Las Vegas, NV Dr. & Mrs. Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR Gary Richard Feulner, Dubai, UAE Hassan Fouda, Berkeley, CA Les Janka, Arlington, VA Vincent & Louise Larsen, Billings, MT

CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more) Richard & Donna Curtiss, Chevy Chase, MD* John & Henrietta Goelet, Meru, France Ambassador Andrew Killgore, Washington, DC John McLaughlin, Gordonsville, VA *In recognition of Rachelle Marshall **In memory of Rachel Corrie 69

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Kuwaiti Dogs Looking for Loving Homes in Washington, DC SpecialReport

By Michael Keating

PHOTO M. KEATING

penned in the desert, and finally they were shipped to the United States. “It shows you just how incredible dogs can be.”

When Kuwait’s only animal shelter in Safat was destroyed by an electrical fire on March 22, killing 39 animals, the Animal League Friends of Kuwait was faced with a crisis: 60 dogs with no place to go. As a temporary expedient, they had to be crated or kept in the greenhouse. Homes in Kuwait were found for two-thirds of the dogs. The Humane Society International swung into action and contacted the Washington Animal Rescue League about the remainder.

“Between 70-75 percent of our animals come from other shelters,” Weitzman said. Nonetheless, they had never accepted a shipment from so far away. If the League had any reservations, the Kuwaitis quickly allayed them.

“The people there made it so easy,” he said. They A survivor of the fire that destroyed the Kuwaiti shelter shows carefully crated the dogs, Edward Wilson, animal caretaker at the Washington Animal after veterinarians had Rescue League, that she knows the English words for “sit” thoroughly examined and “cheese.” them. All dogs had papers (in English and Arabic) dehese are some of the nicest dogs claring them in good health and free of diswe’ve ever taken in,” said Commu- ease. The long flights had to be postponed nications Officer Elise Ledsinger. It was a by the volcanic dust that hung over Eusentiment that was echoed throughout the rope, so instead of one shipment, the dogs Washington Animal Rescue League facil- were sent in batches. In the end, the Washity. Juanishia Lee, an adoptions coordina- ington shelter will receive about 30 dogs.

“These dogs are so sweet,” Weitzman retor, was impressed. So was Gary Weitzman, the organization’s president and CEO. peated. “Even when they first arrived after “Especially when you think of every- the long flight, they were all sweet and thing these dogs have gone through,” he friendly.”

They contrasted dramatically with other said. First there was the fire, then they were dogs at the shelter that had been taken in Michael Keating is editor of The Vietnam from Mississippi. Those animals had been Veterans of America and occasional writer taken from a “dog hoarder” who had kept for the Washington Report. over 175 dogs in her trailer and on her

“T

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

property. Those dogs had arrived hairless with mange and starving, their bellies swollen with parasites.

“We are here for animals with no other place to go,” Weitzman said. While the Kuwaiti dogs have caused a flurry of media attention, next week the shelter expects a shipment of dogs from West Virginia.

There has been a mixed reaction from people who’ve asked the shelter, aren’t there enough pets to deal with in your own neighborhood? “We want people to know there was nowhere else for these animals to go,” Weitzman emphasized. “We specialize in disaster rescues—we took dogs after floods in Cedar Rapids and New Orleans.”

The Washington Animal Rescue League is a handsome, well-considered facility with a 350-animal capacity. Natural light pours through skylights and through glass panels over which runs a constant stream of water.

The water softens the light and plays on the ground. The soft movement of water and the classical music help to keep the animals calm—a striking contrast to the hysterical barking common in most shelters.

The cages are entirely glassed. Half the floor of each cage is at ground level; the other half, which is heated, is one step up.

There is a complete veterinary medical center; care is provided at low or no cost for Washington, DC pets whose owners are in financial need. Its dedicated staff includes medical staff, adoption coordinators, and behavioral specialists.

The Washington Animal Rescue League receives no government money—it is completely funded by private donations, and gladly accepts financial assistance. Its Web site, <www.warl.org>, offers several donation options.

But for now, the shelter is focused on one thing: finding some good people who want some good dogs.

“Some of these dogs, I’m sure, had been attached to U.S. service members” who later let them go when they were redeployed, Weitzman said. In a way, he added, the Kuwait rescue effort allows us to “make good on our mistakes.”

While Animal Friends League of Kuwait has asked for nothing but loving homes for their dogs, readers can visit <www.ani malfriendskuwait.org> to help rebuild Kuwait’s only animal shelter. ❑ JULY 2010

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The eternal olive tree, first cultivated in Palestine thousands of years ago, is a perfect metaphor for Palestinians today.

Even though Palestinians have been living under military occupation for almost 43 years, they continue to resist unjust violations to their human rights and civil liberties, cruel demolitions of their homes, and systematic confiscation of their land.

However, just like this tree, Palestinians continue to be strong.

Their roots run deep, even through the rubble of their current conditions.

Those of us who believe in justice, equality and the rule of law must do whatever we can to support Palestinians.

Visit our website to see how you can help UPA support Palestinians.

United Palestinian Appeal, Inc. www.helpupa.com

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American Educational Trust The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs P.O. Box 53062 Washington, DC 20009

July 2010 Vol. XXIX, No. 5

As rain approaches at nightfall, a young Afghan boy watches two other boys play soccer near ruins in the old part of Kabul, April 20, 2010.

AFP PHOTO/MAURICIO LIMA