Washington Report on Middle East Affairs | September-October 2010

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2010 CONGRESSIONAL HALLS OF FAME AND SHAME

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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. 7

September/October 2010

Telling the Truth for 28 Years…

Interpreting the Middle East for North Americans

■

Interpreting North America for the Middle East

THE U.S. ROLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE 8 Obama’s Middle East Policy Trapped in Contradictions—Rachelle Marshall 12 King Abdullah Seizes the Initiative—Patrick Seale 14 The Big Lie: That Israel Is a Strategic Asset for the United States—Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. 16 The Hariri Assassination: Israel’s Fingerprints Surface—Rannie Amiri 18 Prime Minister David Cameron Forthrightly

20 Angry Gazan Accuses Hamas of “Protecting the Borders With Israel”—Mohammed Omer 22 Amiri Told CIA Iran Has No Nuclear Bomb Program—Gareth Porter 23 Did British Petroleum Encourage the Early Release Of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi?—Andrew I. Killgore 40 Turkey’s War Against the PKK—Patrick Seale

Describes Gaza as a “Prison Camp”

—Delinda C. Hanley

CONGRESS AND THE 2010 ELECTIONS

19 Ban Ki-moon Engages Israeli Politicians, as Israel Remains Mum on Kosovo Precedent

—Ian Williams

24 Seven Senators, 25 Representatives in 111th Congress’ “Hall of Fame”—Shirl McArthur

SPECIAL REPORTS 11 “People’s Lawyer” Lynne Stewart Resentenced to Ten Years in Prison—Jane Adas 38 Two Decades of Working to Improve North-South Relations—Marvine Howe

75 Sen. Robert C. Byrd (1917-2010) —James G. Abourezk 78 Ambassador James E. Akins (1926-2010) —Andrew I. Killgore

COURTESY JERUSALEM FUND

42 The Other “Jewish National Home”—in Siberia —John Gee

IN MEMORIAM

Najib Joe Hakim’s exhibition “Born Among Mirrors” at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery documents his father Elias’ photos of their family’s emigration from Lebanon to the U.S. in 1956 (above) and Najib’s homecoming after Israel’s 2006 assault on Lebanon (see story p. 56).

ON THE COVER: A Hazara Afghan woman sits on the ground as she visits a shrine in Bamiyan, Aug. 2, 2010.

The town was home to two nearly 2,000-year-old Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001.

AFP PHOTO/SHAH MARAI

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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

Compiled by Janet McMahon

NGOs Are “the Enemy Within,”

Guess Who Wants to Kill the Internet?, Maidhc Ó Cathail,The Khaleej Times

OV-1

Thomas Keenan & Eyal Weizman, Le Monde diplomatique

The Collapse of Israel’s “Periphery Doctrine,” Leon T. Hadar, http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com

OV-2

Analyst: Israel’s Next War Could Be Lebanon, Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service

OV-4

Red Team, Mark Perry, http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com

OV-5

Israel Paves the Way for Killing By Remote Control, Jonathan Cook, The National

OV-7

OV-11

When Does Conciliatory Become Obsequious?

Abbas Meets the Pro-Israel Lobby, Ira Glunts, www.lobelog.com

OV-13

Fadlallah’s Inspiring Life, Rami G. Khouri, Agence Global

OV-14

Nasr Firing Is Yet Another Shameful Capitulation to The Lobby,

A Parliamentary Mob, Uri Avnery, www.gush-shalom.org

Scott McConnell, http://mondoweiss.net

OV-8

Israeli Shabak Interrogates Israeli Activist Over BDS & Bil’in Protests, Adam Horowitz, http://mondoweiss.net

OV-15

Can’t Digest This Occupation, Jerrold Kessel & Pierre Klochendler, OV-10

Inter Press Service

OV-15

DEPARTMENTS 5 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

52 ARAB-AMERICAN

69 OTHER PEOPLE’S MAIL

ACTIVISM: ADC Chicago Hosts 7 PUBLISHERS’ PAGE

Journalist Anisa Mehdi 71 THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE

44 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE: Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) Continues to Put Israel’s Interests First

—Pat and Samir Twair 46 NEW YORK CITY AND TRISTATE NEWS: The True Story of The Gaza Freedom Flotilla

52 MUSLIM-AMERICAN

MIDDLE EAST — CARTOONS

ACTIVISM: Dr. Akbar Ahmed Discusses His Research on Muslim Americans

72 BOOK REVIEW: Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of

54 HUMAN RIGHTS: Isobel Coleman on Women’s Rights in

Power in the Middle East

—Reviewed by Jeffrey Blankfort

Mideast’s Major Theocracies

—Jane Adas 73 NEW ARRIVALS FROM THE 48 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE: Grandmothers Against the War Rally in San Francisco’s Union Square

—Elaine Pasquini

55 MUSIC & ARTS:

AET BOOK CLUB

Photo Exhibit by Saudi Arabian Women 74 BULLETIN BOARD 57 WAGING PEACE: AMAF Hosts Forum for New

50 ISRAEL AND JUDAISM: Doubts Growing About Whether Israel Can Simultaneously Be Jewish and Democratic

—Allan C. Brownfeld

Perspectives on Afghanistan

76 2010 AET CHOIR OF ANGELS

68 DIPLOMATIC DOINGS: Egypt’s National Day Reception

51 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.

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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

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

LetterstotheEditor A Shameful Representative As I read through the August 2010 issue, I am once again overjoyed with the clarity and “outside-the-box” objectivity of your publication. It helps to dim my disappointment that this issue did not contain my usual “Other Voices” supplement—I must have neglected to extend its subscription.

So I have sent in under separate mailing a renewal for “Other Voices” to add to my current subscription. However, if it is not inconvenient, would you please use the $15 of my happy $115 contribution to pay for a replacement copy of the August “Other Voices”? I would most appreciate it.

To give you an example of what we are up against in upholding the rights of the Palestinian people and any criticism of Israel, I received from my congressman, Jim Gerlach (R-PA), a reply to my polite dissent from the lack of U.S. support of the Security Council decision regarding Israel’s actions against the flotilla. Guess what he said, in effect? Israel is totally justified in its actions in suppressing the protestors because they were “provoking” the Israelis! He reflects the incredibly blind prejudice U.S. officials show in favor of Israel. Needless to say, I shall campaign for Mr. Gerlach’s ouster in November 2010. Do continue your marvelous work for objectivity and fairness.

Norman K. Smith, Exton, PA You will not be surprised to learn, then, that Gerlach’s 100 percent pro-Israel voting record has landed him in the Washington Report’s 2010 Congressional “Hall of Shame.” Angels—and all Americans—deserve better! Along with the laudable members of this year’s “Hall of Fame,” the Israel-related voting records of every member of the House and Senate can be found beginning on p. 24. We know our readers will put this information to good use come November.

Getting Back in the Game It has been a long time since I have subscribed to your excellent magazine. When I share your publications with people (usually those who are used to the other side of U.S.-Israeli policy and media), they always ask for more because the fresh point of view, with concomitant facts, makes them feel like they have discovered a new world.

I want to get back to helping this world!

I’ve never really stopped, but perhaps deTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

spondency infected my mind, because I felt like each new issue of the Washington Report had just been more of the same— not redundancy on your part, but of the politics and players involved. Every day a murder, a racial assault, a suicide bombing, a blockade, an attempt at colonial domination gone wrong, the hubris, the mercenary, the martyr! I felt like I knew intuitively what was on the agenda for all sides…and yet today, I realized that the supplement you sent out years ago, “On Palestinian Diplomacy” by Afif Safieh, has had such a profound impact on my life, my understanding. It has changed my soul! I

want to bring that type of wisdom to others and so, I am asking for your current subscription information and booklist, so I can get back in the game to see what I’ve missed…I know it’s not pretty!

Davide Massette, Corcoran, CA As Ambassador Safieh said at a recent appearance at the Palestine Center here in Washington, DC (see p. 62), the Palestinian nakba, or catastrophe, was not a finite event—rather, it is ongoing, as Israel continues its 62-year-and-counting campaign of dispossession of non-Jewish residents of the Holy Land. (Safieh, a Christian, said he is able to stay overnight in Jerusalem, where he was born and grew up, only because he has a Belgian passport.) However, the situation in this country is changing, as more and more Americans, including Jewish Americans, are daring to speak out against Israel’s human rights abuses and flouting of international law. We’re confident you’ll find many eyes and ears ready to be opened.

Hamas’ Record In two pieces published recently in The Seattle Times (June 6, 2010 by Gideon Lustig, Israel’s deputy consul general to the Pacific Northwest, and June 9, 2010 by Wendy Rosen, director of the American 5

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Jewish Committee’s Seattle Regional Office), the authors identified Hamas as the problem rather than Israel’s attacks on civilian ships flying the flag of Turkey—a country with whom Israel has full diplomatic relations—in international waters.

Rather than debating further the Gaza Flotilla incident, why not examine the record in the American and Israeli mainstream press that questions the veracity of the authors’ portrayal of Hamas as Israel’s intractable foe?

In a June 20, 2007 New York Times oped, “What Hamas Wants,” written by Ahmed Yousef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the offer of a 10-year cease-fire was made “to create an atmosphere of calm in which we can resolve our differences.”

In the Nov. 9, 2008 issue of the Israeli daily Haaretz, “Haniyeh: Hamas Willing to Accept Palestinian State with 1967 Borders,” Prime Minister Haniyeh, in front of 11 members of the European Union Parliament visiting Gaza, said that he would accept the 1967 borders with Israel and offered a long-term hudna (truce) in return for Israel’s recognition of Palestinian national rights.

In a story in the Wall Street Journal’s July 31, 2009 edition, “Hamas Chief Outlines Terms for Talks on Arab-Israeli Peace,“ exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshal, speaking from Damascus, offered an immediate cease-fire, including prisoner swap (specifically naming Israeli POW Gilad Shalit) and the acceptance of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with Israel. This offer was conditional with the right of return for Palestinians (a guarantee to all refugees under international law) and that East Jerusalem become the capital of the Palestinian state.

The above three references show that,

over a two-year period, Hamas made serious offers that could have started real negotiations toward a just resolution of the conflict.

Where were the Israeli counter-offers?

More, importantly, where was the pressure from the United States to lead Israel to the negotiating table?

David-Israel Sandler, Seattle, WA For starters, we hope voters in November will apply their considerable electoral pressure to their “representatives” in Congress.

Sociocide vs. Genocide Anyone who has followed the news since 2001 had to learn piecemeal of the damage done to Iraq by massive U.S. bombing, followed by 10 years of crippling sanctions, a full-scale invasion, and finally, an occupation administered by officials with no knowledge of, or concern for, Iraq’s people, history or culture. Thanks, therefore, to Jeremy R. Hammond for describing so clearly the cumulative impact of those ruinous actions (August 2010 Washington Report, p.

43). In his review of Mike Otterman’s book, Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage (available from the AET Book Club), Hammond cites Otterman as aptly calling the result, “sociocide.” Sadly, we are seeing Israel attempt to carry out the same crime in Gaza.

Rachelle Marshall, Mill Valley, CA Not to minimize the horrific death and destruction to which Iraqis have been subjected by the U.S. (for the benefit of Israel), we would suggest that the U.S. goal of “regime change” did not include the expulsion of Iraqis from their homeland. (That was, of course, a terrible consequence.) To quote an Aug. 14, 2009 editorial in The Forward entitled “Save Sudan” (see November 2009 Washington Report, p.

67): like the people of Sudan, the Palestinians’ suffering can be described as “the result of a systematic offensive to drive…

Other Voices is an optional 16civilians from [difpage supplement available only to ferent] ethnic groups subscribers of the Washington off their land and Report on Middle East Affairs. For to destroy their lives. an additional $15 per year (see In other words, an postcard insert for Washington act of genocide.”

Re port subscription rates), sub-

scribers will receive Other Voices bound into each issue of their Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Back issues of both publications are available. To subscribe telephone 1 (800) 368-5788 (press 1), fax (202) 265-4574, e-mail <circulation@wrmea.com>, or write to P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009.

6

trayal of an utterly failed mission in Afghanistan. The documents include 144 attacks which have resulted in the killings of scores of civilians, and military strikes which often missed their intended targets and caused hundreds of deaths.

Extremely troublesome are references to the actions of Task Force 373 — a James Bond 007/Rambo/Charles Bronson vigilante-type killer unit which acts as judge and jury and assassinates or detains suspected terrorists. Inevitably mistakes have been made and large numbers of innocent civilians reportedly have been killed.

Reaper drones are increasingly being used. These are fraught with human errors and misjudgments, and often miss their targets.

It is apparent that the U.S. military has been whitewashing the war in Afghanistan for years and has systematically covered up civilian casualties. Contrary to Pentagon reports, the war has emboldened Taliban recruitment. The leaked reports demonstrate that the Taliban have become more resilient and appear to be winning the war on the ground.

According to the documents, Pakistan’s internal security agency, the ISI, has been playing a “double game”—accepting U.S. tax money while cavorting with the Taliban. Predictably, the Pentagon and the Obama administration have vilified the messenger, WikiLeaks, and launched a concerted effort to plug the “leaks,” with no concern of the underlying message— namely, that the war in Afghanistan is an unmitigated disaster and fraught with actions which border on war crimes.

Jagjit Singh, Los Altos, CA The leaks certainly make it more difficult to follow the first part of a suggestion made during the Vietnam War: that the U.S. “declare victory and leave.” The operative “leave,” however, remains as valid as ever.

The Back of the Bus In the July 2010 “Publishers’ Page,” you imply that Israel’s Arab citizens are required to ride in the back of buses. Is this literally true, or were you being metaphorical?

Failed Afghan James Grodd, via e-mail Mission We confess to the latter. However, we did T h e m a s s i v e read in the June 25, 2010 issue of the Jewtrove of classified ish weekly Forward about the 322 autobus military records mehadrin running to and from Tel Aviv: released by the “The phrase autobus mehadrin…literally whistleblower means beautified bus. It refers to a route Web site Wiki - that meets Haredi standards of modesty: Leaks reveals an Men sit at the front and women at the unvarnished por- back.” Shared values, indeed! ❑

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

publishers_7v3_Sept-Oct 2010 Publishers page 8/5/10 3:21 PM Page 7

American Educational Trust

Publishers’ Page

Rumors of War.

Strike While the Iron Is Hot.

The early days of August 2010 saw renewed fighting on the Israeli-Lebanese border and an increase in the drumbeats for a military attack on Iran. Just as with Iraq, the calls for war, no matter how often discredited, refuse to go away. And despite extensive coverage in the mainstream media, one thing Americans won’t learn is that it’s all…

Clashes broke out Aug. 3 near the IsraeliLebanese border when Israeli soldiers attempted to uproot trees from Lebanese territory. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah ordered his fighters to stand down—this time. Reports of imminent war have been circulating for at least the last year, with Israeli leaders threatening to target all of Lebanon in the next round of fighting (as if they hadn’t done just that in the summer of 2006). While minimally easing its devastating four-year blockade of Gaza in the wake of international criticism of its May 31 attack on the humanitarian Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Israel launched deadly air strikes against Gaza in late July and early August, killing and wounding scores of civilians.

Since he’s well aware that Israel is not capable of hitting all its potential targets in Iran, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is banking that the U.S. once again will come to its aid after it launches another “pre-emptive” attack, as it did in 1967.

In a video taped nine years ago and recently shown on Israeli TV, Netanyahu bragged about how he had deceived President Palestinian Ambassador Afif Safieh (second from r) visited Bill Clinton into believing he the Washington Report office, where he met with (l-r) interns (Netanyahu) was helping im- Karina Kainth, Imaan Ali and Jacoub Sleibi. Not pictured is plement the Oslo accords when intern Ian McInerney. he actually was undermining them. ”America is something that can be advertisers and subscribers. Ian McIneasily moved…in the right direction,” Ne- erny, from Allegheny College, PA, spent tanyahu said. “They won’t get in our way.” his second summer with us, tirelessly Israeli columnist Gideon Levy wrote that the migrating information from our old Web video shows Netanyahu to be… site onto the new one (and assembling furniture for good measure). Jacoub “A Con Artist”…

Sleibi, who studies computer informa”Who thinks that Washington is in his tion systems at Bethlehem University, pocket and that he can pull the wool over its created the map on p. 42 of this issue eyes.” Netanyahu has not broken the Israeli and a YouTube video about the Washmold, however—he is merely the latest Israeli ington Report. Of course, all the interns prime minister to demand American taxpayer did more than their share of stuffing endollars and diplomatic cover for any act of velopes, answering phones and helping war or violation of international law Israel us manage day-to-day details for the chooses. As Veteran Intelligence Professionals magazine and bookstore. Now they’ve for Sanity (VIPS) noted in an e-mail we circu- headed back to school, making us feel lated as an action alert, “Blindsiding has long like “empty nesters”—but confident that the next generation of leaders and been… writers is committed to creating a peace“An Arrow in Israel’s Quiver.” ful and just future.

It’s imperative that Americans speak out and demand that Washington no longer Looking for a Magician. allow this country to be another Israeli In addition to new interns, we are now arrow. Let’s put the interests of our own looking for a magician/office manager country—and the rest of the world— who can run the place, keep up with bills, ahead of Israel’s alone. Then it’s… sell ads, and write.

A Master of Timing…

On to November.

As it demonstrated in Operation Cast Lead, launched two days after Christmas 2008 and concluded two days before Barack Obama’s inauguration, Israel is more than aware of the upcoming congressional elections—as well as of the fact that, once the U.S. returns power (of the non-electrical variety) to the Iraqis, that country’s airspace no longer will be available to Israeli warplanes headed to Iran. It would be foolhardy not to think that the Jewish state will not…

Incredible Interns…

For the Benefit of Israel.

Several factors make this a dangerous moment in history. Domestically, President Barack Obama appears to have decided not to stand up to Israel prior to the November congressional elections. (You’d think Israel was giving the U.S. $7 million a day in aid instead of the other way around!) H.R. 1553, has been introduced in the House of Representatives expressing support for Israel’s right to use “all means necessary…including…military force” against Iran. Meanwhile, back in its own neighborhood, once again…

Israel Is Running Amok.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

The Washington Report enjoyed hosting four hard-working interns this summer.

Thanks to the enthusiastic efforts of Karina Kainth, from Seton Hall University, NJ, and Imaan Ali, a Norwegian attending Ohio State University, we were able to cover more events here in Washington, DC than is usually possible with our tiny staff. They also worked on vital outreach projects targetting potential THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

We Value Your Help.

Volunteers around the world pass around the Washington Report not only at events but at private gatherings. There also are helpful articles on our Web site that are of special electoral interest. We hope you can use them, along with this issue and the next one, to help elect representatives who will truly work for justice and peace—not to mention Americans! The next generation deserves nothing less. Help us all....

Make a Difference Today!

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Obama’s Middle East Policy Trapped in Contradictions SpecialReport

AFP PHOTO/MASSOUD HOSSAINI

By Rachelle Marshall

Afghan demonstrators hold placards and march behind a banner during an Aug. 1 rally in Kabul to protest recent civilian casualties caused by an alleged NATO strike in the country’s Helmand province.

The contradictions at the heart of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan were evident at the American Embassy’s July 4 celebration in Kabul. On the day when Americans were celebrating their independence from British colonial rule, Gen. David H. Peyear after President Barack Obama traeus assumed his post as commander of spoke in Cairo and pledged to take a an American occupation army whose presmore positive and even-handed approach ence is opposed by a majority of the to the Arab and Muslim worlds, his good Afghan people. Surrounded by red, white intentions lie buried under a web of con- and blue banners, Petraeus seemed obliviflicting statements and actions. In Afghan - ous to any irony as he declared, “We must istan he remains committed to remaining demonstrate to the people and to the Taluntil the Taliban are defeated, a policy at iban that Afghan and [coalition] forces are cross purposes with his pledge to begin here to safeguard the Afghan people and withdrawing U.S. troops in July 2011. He that we are in this to win.”

The new commander took over at the claims to favor a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but refuses to crit- low point of a war that the U.S. is no closer icize Israel for prolonging the occupation to winning, and at a time when the resistance is steadily increasing—facts conand building more illegal settlements. firmed by a WikiLeaks release on July 25 Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor liv- based on classified government documents ing in Mill Valley, CA. A member of A Jew- compiled between 2004 and December ish Voice for Peace, she writes frequently on 2009. The documents describe in detail a the Middle East. war effort hamstrung by lack of troops and Somebody needs to get it straight what the hell we’re going to do, without a doubt, come July.—Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, June 29, 2010.

A

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

resources, an incompetent Afghan government and army, and a Pakistani ally with ties to the Taliban. There is no evidence the situation is improving. More U.S. troops died in June than in any month since the war began. Despite the administration’s claim to be fighting on behalf of the Afghan people, Afghanistan remains after nine years of American occupation one of the poorest and most corrupt nations in the world.

In an effort to bolster the government of President Hamid Karzai, high-level diplomats from the U.N. and 70 donor countries met in Kabul on July 21 and agreed to channel 50 percent of their aid to the central government rather than to individual ministries or nongovernmental organizations, with the aim of enhancing the government’s authority. Karzai in turn promised to reduce corruption and assured the gathering that Afghan forces would be able to take charge of security by 2014— promises he will have a hard time fulfilling.

Afghan officials and their relatives curSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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rently amass fortunes collecting bribes and skimming off foreign aid. It is no secret that at least $1 billion a year leaves the country in suitcases full of cash headed for Dubai and other banking centers. Corruption pervades every level of the Afghan economy.

According to Nation investigator Adam Roston, Karzai’s cousins Ahmad and Rashid Popal own a security company that is part of a network of warlords that provides security for U.S. supply trucks. One of the warlords, Commander Ruhallah, told a congressional subcommittee that for each truck he pays $1,500 in bribes to “governors, police chiefs, and army generals” to guarantee their safe arrival. As Roston points out, these costs are borne by U.S. taxpayers.

The Pentagon’s efforts to train a reliable Afghan army have also run into obstacles.

Some 90 percent of recruits are illiterate, and many show a noticeable reluctance to fight. Too often they join up for the pay, then sell their weapons to the insurgents and desert. In two incidents in July, Afghan soldiers turned on members of the allied forces they were accompanying and shot several of them to death.

Petraeus is attempting to solve the security problem by establishing local militias to fight the Taliban, a strategy similar to the one he used in Iraq, where the U.S. paid Sunni fighters to turn against alQaeda in Mesopotamia and other insurgents. But the vaunted success of the Awakening Councils has come into question as more and more of their members become the target of revenge killings and the Iraqi government fails to protect them or provide them with jobs. Karzai opposes setting up local militias for fear they will undermine his authority and lead to a return of the warlordism that plagued Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew.

In view of such realities, there is little chance Obama can begin withdrawing troops in 2011, as he has promised, and at the same time be sure that a government capable of defending itself will eventually be able to take over. Equally self-contradictory are U.S. policies regarding civilian casualties. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was fired for his rude comments about the Obama administration to a Rolling Stone reporter (such as calling Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, a “clown”), instructed troops not to call in air strikes if there was a chance of endangering civilians. Civilian casualties create popular resentment and increase the number of militants, but soldiers complained that McChrystal’s order prolonged battles and cost American lives.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

At his Senate confirmation hearings Petraeus testified that preventing civilian deaths would remain a top priority. A few days later, however, he said protecting his troops was a “moral imperative” and assured soldiers that “in tough situations we must employ all assets to ensure your safety.”

There is an inherent contradiction involved in fighting a war while safeguarding the lives of soldiers and civilians alike. The difficulties involved were made clear three days after Petraeus assumed command, when a NATO helicopter called in by soldiers during a firefight mistakenly killed five Afghan soldiers. The next day artillery fire aimed at insurgents killed six Afghan civilians.

The Obama administration’s decision to increase the number of drone missile attacks against militants camped in the mountains bordering Afghanistan runs directly counter to the policy of sparing civilians. The drone attacks, combined with actions by the Pakistani army, so far have forced more than three million Pakistanis to flee their homes—more than triple the number of refugees in the Republic of Congo.

It is not surprising that popular opposition to the war in Pakistan is growing, or that the government is seeking an accommodation with the powerful Haqqani clan, which once fought the Soviets and is now allied with the Taliban. Petraeus’ insistence that the Haqqanis and other Taliban leaders be listed as terrorists puts him at odds with both Karzai and the Pakistanis, who see reconciliation with the insurgents as the only way to end the war.

The U.S. originally went to war against the Taliban charging that it was sheltering al-Qaeda. CIA director Leon Panetta recently put the number of al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan at fewer than 100, however, so their diminished presence raises the question: why are 130,000 American troops still fighting in Afghanistan when the terrorist network responsible for 9/11 has evidently moved elsewhere?

At least part of the answer may lie in the Pentagon’s announcement in early June that Afghanistan is the potential source of $3 trillion worth of essential minerals, including gold, cobalt, copper and lithium.

A Pentagon task force has been helping the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development, while a team from J.P. Morgan is in the country exploring investment opportunities. Afghanistan, which today is one of the poorest countries in the world, could someday be as great a source of corporate profits as the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The presence of U.S. troops would asTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

sure the investments were protected.

Although Obama claims to favor a political solution to the war, key members of his administration are in effect demanding unconditional surrender. Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Panetta said there could be no reconciliation with the Taliban until they are “convinced that the United States is going to win and that they’re going to be defeated.” During her July visit to Pakistan Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she supported negotiations but only if insurgent groups first renounce violence, sever ties with al-Qaeda, and agree to abide by the Afghan constitution—conditions the Taliban will not accept short of defeat.

Selig S. Harrison, a specialist on Afghanistan at the Center for International Policy, maintains that Karzai is eager to make peace with the Taliban and that, together with Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, he may be considering some sort of accommodation, such as allowing the Taliban continued control of their local strongholds. According to Harrison, Washington opposes these overtures. If so, the one certainty is that the war will continue until Congress responds to public opinion and demands that it stop. Meanwhile, every drone missile attack, every misfired artillery shell, makes more enemies of America.

Peace or Surrender?

Contradictions have paralyzed Obama’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well. He promised to act as an evenhanded peace broker, yet hasn’t dared to defy a Congress dominated by supporters of Israel’s right-wing government. After Israel refused Obama’s demand that it halt settlement construction he quickly backtracked and has since been silent on the issue. When a U.N. human rights commission condemned Israeli war crimes in Gaza, the U.S. stood firmly by Israel at the U.N. Security Council.

On July 1, the day after Israel issued demolition orders against dozens of Palestinian homes in the Jordan Valley, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, spoke out, saying, “Settlements and the demolition of Palestinian homesites are illegal under international law, an obstacle to peace, and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible.”

The fact that Israel is violating international law did not prevent Obama from embracing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House five days later.

“The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable,” the president de9

marshall_8-10_Special Report 8/4/10 8:56 PM Page 10

clared, and expressed faith that Netanyahu was committed to peace. Obama again urged the Palestinians to agree to direct talks with Israel, saying they would “create a climate” that would lead to a solution.

But in fact the “climate” Israel is creating will prevent any solution short of the Palestinians’ surrender. The indirect talks brokered this spring by Middle East envoy George J. Mitchell have only deepened differences between the two sides. The Palestinians want to discuss final borders and provisions guaranteeing mutual security.

The Israelis refuse to discuss borders until the Palestinians agree to demilitarize completely, recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and accept an Israeli buffer zone in the Jordan Valley.

The Israelis know these demands are unacceptable to the Palestinians, and undoubtedly intend them to prevent serious negotiations. Shortly before Netanyahu left for Washington his national security adviser, Uzi Arad, urged that Israel abandon peace negotiations altogether. “In trying to make peace,” he said, “we are embracing an adversary who is conducting a very effective battle against us internationally...

Maybe we should be less zealous to champion the Palestinians and more eager to defend our own ranks.”

Obama’s faith in Netanyahu as peacemaker nevertheless remained intact even after the prime minister said the 10-month construction freeze would not be resumed.

In fact, settlement construction during what Netanyahu promised was a 10-month freeze proceeded more rapidly than ever, since the government had hastily authorized thousands of new housing starts in the West Bank in anticipation of the freeze.

The Israeli army recently began driving hundreds of Palestinians from their homes in the Hebron hills and the Jordan Valley to make way for settlements. According to B’Tselem, Israeli settlements now claim jurisdiction over 42 percent of West Bank territory.

The expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem has escalated as well. A week after Netanyahu’s visit to Washington Israel announced that construction would begin on 52 new houses in Pisgat Zeev in East Jerusalem. In late June Mayor Nir Barkat announced plans to demolish 22 homes in Silwan, each housing large extended families, to make way for King David Gardens, a collection of upscale shops and apartments for Jews only.

Lawyers for the Popular Committee for Silwan say the plans actually call for demolishing 88 homes, not 22.

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Israel holds nearly 11,000 Palestinian prisoners, including increasing numbers of nonviolent activists arrested for “incitement.” Yet despite popular pressure to do so, the government has refused to agree to Hamas’ demand for the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Gilad Shalit, the young soldier captured by Hamas in 2006. The government finally did release four Hamas parliament members who had been held for four years as bargaining chips for Shalit. Although all were natives of Jerusalem they were ordered either to move to Gaza or the West Bank or be returned to prison.

On July 10 Israel began construction of a segment of its separation wall that will completely surround the West Bank village of Walajeh. The barrier will curve deeply into the West Bank in order to keep several Israeli settlements, including Har Gilo and the Gush Etzion bloc, on the Israeli side. In 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled, with only the American judge abstaining, that the wall’s route through the West Bank created an illegal border, and ordered Israel to tear down the parts of it built on Palestinian territory. Israel rejected the order.

A house belonging to Omar Hajajla lies

just outside the wall and consequently will be surrounded entirely by an electric fence. “My children need to cross four gates to get to school,” Hajajla said. “It will be hell for my entire family.” Like the other residents of Wallajeh, Hajajla is now cut off from his fields and the village is destined to die.

The suffering inflicted on the Palestinians is an integral part of Israeli policy, according to David Shulman, professor of Humanistic Studies at Hebrew University.

In an article in the July 15 issue of the New York Review of Books Shulman writes that Israel’s government is dominated by rightwing extremists whose policies call for “the further entrenchment of the occupation, with the primary aim of absorbing more and more Palestinian land into Israel,” and restricting the Palestinians to isolated enclaves. It is a process, he writes, “that we see advancing literally hour by hour and day by day in the West Bank.”

Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery describes Israel’s government as an “Israeli version of fascism.” That a president of the United States who is dedicated to the advancement of human rights should express unqualified support for such a government is the greatest contradiction of all. ❑

Israel’s Self-serving Fantasy Some called it an act of piracy, others an act of war. Either way, government leaders and ordinary citizens across the globe agreed that Israel’s May 31 commando raid in international waters on boats carrying hospital beds, medicines, and clothing to Gaza was a crime (see August 2010 Washington Report, pp. 12-16). In the mirror image world of Israeli fact-spinners, however, the pre-dawn attack that killed nine Turkish aid workers was not a crime but an act of heroism.

According to an Israeli military investigation, the commandos who rappelled onto the ships firing stun grenades and live ammunition “operated properly, with professionalism, bravery, and resourcefulness.” Their use of fire power against unarmed civilians was justified, the investigators found, saying that “All the shooting was either when the soldiers were in immediate danger or when they had to rescue fellow soldiers.” The investigators faulted only Israeli military intelligence, for not knowing that “at least 65 Turkish militants armed with metal rods and knives were on the flotilla’s main ship.”

Such conclusions have their parallel only in a situation where a gang of thieves firing pistols and wielding clubs breaks into a house where a family is sleeping, and kills any inhabitant who picks up a poker or a kitchen knife to defend his home. To the Israelis, the gang in this case would be the heroes, and family members the villains.

In fact, the passengers on the vessel Mavi Marmara were not “militants” but members of a well-established Turkish charity called the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH). Ten of those aboard were members of parliament. Contrary to Israel’s claims that the IHH has links to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the IHH was founded as a charity to aid Bosnian war victims in the 1990s, and now works in more than 100 countries. The IHH provided aid to New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina, and last January sent 33 tons of aid to Haiti.

These facts did not deter 87 U.S. senators from sending a letter to the White House on June 21 urging the administration to investigate whether the charity should be listed as a foreign terrorist organization. There is nothing the Israelis would like better, as they seek to cover up their crime at sea and erase it from the record of history. —R.M.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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“People’s Lawyer” Lynne Stewart Resentenced to Ten Years in Prison SpecialReport

By Jane Adas olding signs praising her as “the peo-

porters filled the area set up for them by police outside the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan prior to Stewart’s re-sentencing on July 15, 2010. There were so many that police directed some 200 people to a juror assembly room equipped with two large screens to observe the proceedings. Because the courtroom camera was focused only on the attorneys and the judge’s bench, the overflow crowd heard the applause from the courtroom before they could see Stewart enter, dressed in a dark blue prison suit. Then they, too, burst into cheers and applause, as though willing Stewart to hear them eight floors above.

Stewart had served as a court-appointed lawyer for the appeal by Omar Abdel Rahman, “the blind Sheikh,” of his 1995 conviction as a leader of the Egyptian Islamic Group for seditious conspiracy to blow up New York City landmarks. In 1998 the government imposed on Rahman a new legal tool, Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). Designed to prevent any communication with the outside world, SAMs in effect keep the prisoner in total isolation.

As his attorney, Stewart was required to sign a statement agreeing to abide by their restrictions. In February 2000, the FBI began videotaping Rahman’s meetings with his lawyers and taping their phone conversations, thus nullifying attorneyclient privilege. In June 2000, at Rahman’s request, Stewart disclosed a press release indicating the sheikh’s withdrawal of support for the Islamic Group’s cease-fire with the Egyptian government. Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who became better known during the Scooter Libby trial, initially barred Stewart from seeing her client, then in May 2001 allowed her to resume visits, requiring her to sign another SAMs agreement.

In April 2002, following 9/11 and the onset of the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” then-Attorney General John Ashcroft went on the “David Letterman Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

STAFF PHOTOS J. ADAS

Hple’s lawyer,” Lynne Stewart’s sup-

ABOVE: Supporters of Lynne Stewart gather outside the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan on July 15, 2010. INSET: Stewart at the Feb. 24, 2009 New York screening of “Lynne Stewart: An American Story.”

Show” to announce indictments of Stewart and two co-defendants for conspiring to defraud the U.S. by providing material support to terrorist activity. The case went to trial in June 2004 before Judge John Koeltl of the Southern District of New York. It lasted seven and a half months, resulting in convictions on all counts and Stewart’s automatic disbarment. In October 2006, Judge Koeltl sentenced Stewart to 28 months, although the Justice Department had asked for 30 years.

The government appealed and on Nov. 17, 2009, the U.S. Court for the Second Circuit affirmed the vibrant 70-year-old activist’s conviction, demanded that she begin serving her sentence, and remanded the case back to Judge Koeltl for re-sentencing. The appellate court instructed the judge to reconsider the “fortuitous fact” that no person was harmed by the conspiracy and ordered him to take “terrorism enhancement” into account. Introduced in THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing, terrorism enhancement in sentencing guidelines allows judges greatly to increase sentences if the offense promoted terrorism.

In her statement at the re-sentencing, Stewart said that, as a criminal lawyer, she knew prison was an alienating experience, but that the reality is worse than she could have imagined. “Over the last eight months, prison has diminished me,” she acknowledged. “Daily, I face the prospect of death, losing pieces of my personality.

My sense of inquiry and compassion have turned to weariness, my thoughts regimented, my world, once filled with love and laughter and family, slipping away from me.” Stewart observed that the women prisoners around her are so needy, but institutional rigidity precludes opporContinued on page 13 11

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King Abdullah Seizes the Initiative SpecialReport

AFP PHOTO/STR

By Patrick Seale

Saudia Arabia’s King Abdullah (l) waves as Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad (r) shakes hands with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman upon their arrival at the Presidential Palace at Baabda, east of Beirut, July 30, 2010. ing Abdullah bin Abdulaziz’s four-na-

Ktion tour in late July must be seen as a

bold attempt to defuse a dangerous regional situation and assert the autonomy of Arab decision-making free from external interference.

According to Arab and Western diplomatic sources, the Saudi monarch’s visits to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan have had several ambitious aims: to head off the threat of renewed civil war in Lebanon; to consolidate Syrian-Lebanese relations; to encourage Fatah-Hamas reconciliation at a decisive moment in Palestinian fortunes; and to signal to Washington the Arabs’ disillusion with President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, still grossly biased toward Israel.

The volatile Lebanese situation seems to have been the immediate trigger for the King’s wide-ranging diplomatic initiative.

Hezbollah and its local opponents, notably Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press). Copyright © 2010 Patrick Seale. Distributed by Agence Global.

12

diehard Christians and hard-line Sunni members of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Forward Movement, have engaged in a war of words—which seemed in imminent danger of degenerating into violence. At issue were their different attitudes toward the U.N. Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

According to some alarmist reports, the STL is preparing to indict a number of Hezbollah members for the murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on Feb. 14, 2005. Pointing to the recent uncovering of several Israeli spy rings in Lebanon—notably in the sensitive communications sector—Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, denounced the STL as an Israeli plot and vowed pugnaciously never to surrender any of his members to its jurisdiction (see p. 16). Hezbollah’s opponents, on the other hand, claim that unless the STL brings Rafiq Hariri’s murderers to justice—whoever they may be—there can be no internal peace.

The issue extends far beyond Lebanon because Hezbollah clearly sees the reports as a sinister bid to blacken the resistance movement, spark internal fighting, and provide Israel with an opportunity to attack Lebanon, as it did in 2006, in a furTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ther attempt to destroy Hezbollah.

A tripartite summit in Beirut of King Abdullah, Syria’s President Bashar AlAssad and Lebanon’s President Michel Suleiman—together with numerous side meetings—has somewhat reduced tensions and calmed fears of war. Among the implicit consequences of these contacts are Saudi Arabia’s recognition of the legitimacy of Syria’s involvement in Lebanon, as well as a warning to Israel that any further aggression would face a united Arab front.

At the same time, American attempts to limit Syria’s influence in Lebanon, to sanction it for its ties with Iran and Hezbollah, and to pit Riyadh against Damascus, have earned Washington a rap on the knuckles.

In a sharp statement, the Syrian Foreign Ministry declared that “The United States has no right to define our ties with the countries of the region and to interfere in the content of the talks which the Saudi King will have in Damascus. Syria and Saudi Arabia know better than others the interests of the people of the region and how to achieve them without outside interference...”

Another key Arab leader to preach peace and reconciliation in Beirut this weekend was the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, whose country is financing the reconstruction of villages in south Lebanon destroyed by Israel in 2006. As sponsor of the 2008 Doha accords—which gave Lebanon its first stable government, ending 18 months of political deadlock—Qatar is also a major external player in Lebanon.

This flurry of Arab diplomatic activity is meant to bring home to hotheads in all factions that Lebanon’s external Arab sponsors will not tolerate a renewed resort to violence. Another lesson of the gathering—and of the highly symbolic joint visit to Beirut by King Abdullah and the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad—is that SyrianLebanese relations are set fair, and that their entente enjoys the blessing of the 87year old Saudi King, the biggest political gun on the Arab scene.

In earlier talks with the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Saudi King was evidently anxious to encourage him to pursue his mediation between rival Palestinian factions, on the lines of the Saudisponsored Mecca Agreement of February SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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2007. In the absence of a united Palestinian front, the Palestinian cause will continue to languish. But relations between Fatah and Hamas remain hopelessly deadlocked, with Hamas totally opposed to negotiations with Israel under present conditions.

Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, faces the difficult dilemma of whether or not to proceed from proximity talks, mediated by Obama’s special envoy George Mitchell, to direct talks with Israel’s hard-line Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The trouble is that Mitchell’s proximity talks have yielded nothing; Netanyahu’s 10-month partial settlement freeze has not prevented large-scale Israeli construction, notably in Arab East Jerusalem; while Washington, apparently concerned only with Israel’s well-being and indifferent to that of its Arab neighbors, has failed to give Abbas the guarantees he has sought.

Arab leaders are all too aware of President Obama’s reluctance, or inability, to exert the slightest pressure on Israel before the congressional midterm elections in November—or even possibly after them. It is this evident American paralysis that has led

the Saudi monarch to step into the arena and call on the Arabs to close ranks. ❑

Lynne Stewart…

Continued from page 11

tunities for her to reach out to them. She became most emotional in talking about her fear of losing touch with her loved ones, whom she is allowed to see for one hour once a week, after which she “shrinks again.” Her 15-year-old grandson was so upset by a visit in December that he refuses to return to the prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Dember, speaking from a podium—out of camera range—accused Stewart of giving “aid to the pro-violence faction of a vicious terrorist organization.” Dember gratuitously alluded to “Palestinian stone-throwers” and twice mentioned a fatwa calling for “the murder of Jews everywhere,” while admitting that neither Rahman nor Stewart had anything to do with it. He concluded his lengthy statement by describing Stewart as “just another criminal who refuses to accept responsibility.”

Judge Koeltl then read a 45-minute prepared statement addressing the technical issues of sentencing. He mentioned the mitigating factors of Stewart’s age and poor health as a cancer survivor still undergoing chemotherapy; the fact that she committed the offense 10 years ago and has done nothing suspicious in the interim; her “remarkable record” as a lawyer for the poor, disadvantaged, and unpopular, without a view to personal profit; and the unprecedented 400 letters submitted on her behalf.

“This is an exceptional case,” he concluded. Nevertheless, the judge determined that the mitigating factors were not enough to overcome the severity of the charges.

Noting that terrorist enhancement increased the statutory maximum sentence from 151 to 360 months, Koeltl then revised Stewart’s sentence from 28 to 120 months.

Stewart’s supporters collectively gasped; some in the overflow room sobbed. Stewart’s counsel requested and was readily granted a 10-minute break. Then Stewart gave her statement: “I am somewhat stunned by the swift change in my outlook,” she said. “I just feel that I’ve let a whole lot of my good people down.” ❑

(Advertisement)

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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The Big Lie: That Israel Is a Strategic Asset For the United States

By Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr.

Interesting question. We must thank the Nixon Center for asking it. In my view, there are many reasons for Americans to wish the Jewish state well. Under certain circumstances, strategic advantage for the United States is not one of them. If we were to reverse the question, however, and to ask whether the United States is a strategic asset or liability for Israel, there would be no doubt about the answer.

American taxpayers fund between 20 and 25 percent of Israel’s defense budget (depending on how you calculate this). Twenty-six percent of the $3 billion in military aid we grant to the Jewish state each year is spent in Israel on Israeli defense products.

Uniquely, Israeli companies Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. at the Nixon Center. are treated like American companies for purposes of U.S. defense ent of American giveaways since World procurement. Thanks to congressional ear- War II. The total would be much higher if marks, we also often pay half the costs of aid to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and supspecial Israeli research and development port for Palestinians in refugee camps and projects, even when—as in the case of de- the occupied territories were included. fense against very short-range unguided These programs have complex purposes missiles—the technology being developed but are justified in large measure in terms is essentially irrelevant to our own mili- of their contribution to the security of the tary requirements. In short, in many ways, Jewish state.

Per capita income in Israel is now about American taxpayers fund jobs in Israel’s military industries that could have gone to $37,000—on par with the UK. Israel is our own workers and companies. Mean- nonetheless the largest recipient of U.S. forwhile, Israel gets pretty much whatever it eign assistance, accounting for well over a wants in terms of our top-of-the-line fifth of it. Annual U.S. government transweapons systems, and we pick up the tab. fers run at well over $500 per Israeli, not Identifiable U.S. government subsidies counting the costs of tax breaks for private to Israel total over $140 billion since 1949. donations and loans that aren’t available to This makes Israel by far the largest recipi- any other foreign country.

These military and economic benefits are not the end of the story. The American Chas W. Freeman, Jr., former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and principal deputy government also works hard to shield Isassistant secretary of state for African af- rael from the international political and fairs, delivered these remarks at a July 20, legal consequences of its policies and ac2010 Nixon Center debate with Robert Sat- tions in the occupied territories, against its loff, executive director of the pro-Israel neighbors, or—most recently—on the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, high seas. The nearly 40 vetoes the United on the topic, “Is Israel a Strategic Asset or States has cast to protect Israel in the U.N. Liability for the United States?”

Security Council are the tip of the iceberg.

14

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

We have blocked a vastly larger number of potentially damaging reactions to Israeli behavior by the international community. The political costs to the United States internationally of having to spend our political capital in this way are huge.

Where Israel has no diplomatic relations, U.S. diplomats routinely make its case for it.

As I know from personal experience (having been thanked by the then government of Israel for my successful efforts on Israel’s behalf in Africa), the U.S. government has been a consistent promoter and often the funder of various forms of Israeli programs of cooperation with other countries. It matters also that America—along with a very few other countries— has remained morally committed to the Jewish experiment with a state in the Middle East.

Many more Jews live in America than in Israel. Resolute American support should be an important offset to the disquiet about current trends that has led over 20 percent of Israelis to emigrate, many of them to the United States, where Jews enjoy unprecedented security and prosperity.

Clearly, Israel gets a great deal from us.

Yet it’s pretty much taboo in the United States to ask what’s in it for Americans. I can’t imagine why. Still, the question I’ve been asked to address today is just that: what’s in it—and not in it—for us to do all these things for Israel?

We need to begin by recognizing that our relationship with Israel has never been driven by strategic reasoning. It began with President Truman overruling his strategic and military advisers in deference to personal sentiment and political expediency. We had an arms embargo on Israel until Lyndon Johnson dropped it in 1964 in explicit return for Jewish financial support for his campaign against Barry Goldwater. In 1973, for reasons peculiar to the Cold War, we had to come to the rescue of Israel as it battled Egypt. The resulting Arab oil embargo cost us dearly. And then STAFF PHOTO DELINDA HANLEY

s Israel a strategic asset or li-

Iability for the United States?

What TheySaid SpecialReport

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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there’s all the time we’ve put into the perpetually ineffectual and now long defunct “peace process.”

Still the U.S.-Israel relationship has had strategic consequences. There is no reason to doubt the consistent testimony of the architects of major acts of anti-American terrorism about what motivates them to attack us. In the words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is credited with masterminding the 9/11 attacks, their purpose was to focus “the American people…on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people….” As Osama bin Laden, purporting to speak for the world’s Muslims, has said again and again: “we have… stated many times, for more than two-anda-half-decades, that the cause of our disagreement with you is your support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine….” Some substantial portion of the many lives and the trillions of dollars we have so far expended in our escalating conflict with the Islamic world must be apportioned to the costs of our relationship with Israel.

It’s useful to recall what we generally expect allies and strategic partners to do for us. In Europe, Asia, and elsewhere in the Middle East, they provide bases and support the projection of American power beyond their borders. They join us on the battlefield in places like Kuwait and Afghanistan or underwrite the costs of our military operations. They help recruit others to our coalitions. They coordinate their foreign aid with ours. Many defray the costs of our use of their facilities with “host nation support” that reduces the costs of our military operations from and through their territory. They store weapons for our troops’, rather than their own troops’, use. They pay cash for the weapons we transfer to them.

Israel does none of things and shows no interest in doing them. Perhaps it can’t. It is so estranged from everyone else in the Middle East that no neighboring country will accept flight plans that originate in or transit it. Israel is therefore useless in terms of support for American power projection.

It has no allies other than us. It has developed no friends. Israeli participation in our military operations would preclude the cooperation of many others.

Meanwhile, Israel has become accustomed to living on the American military dole. The notion that Israeli taxpayers might help defray the expense of U.S. military or foreign assistance operations, even those undertaken at Israel’s behest, would SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

be greeted with astonishment in Israel and incredulity on Capitol Hill.

Military aid to Israel is sometimes justified by the notion of Israel as a test bed for new weapons systems and operational concepts. But no one can identify a program of military R & D in Israel that was initially proposed by our men and women in uniform. All originated with Israel or members of Congress acting on its behalf. Moreover, what Israel makes it sells not just to the United States but to China, India, and other major arms markets. It feels no obligation to take U.S. interests into account when it transfers weapons and technology to third countries and does so only under duress.

ur relationship with O Israel has never been driven by strategic reasoning.

Meanwhile, it’s been decades since Israel’s air force faced another in the air. It has come to specialize in bombing civilian infrastructure and militias with no air defenses. There is not much for the U.S. Air Force to learn from that. Similarly, the Israeli navy confronts no real naval threat.

Its experience in interdicting infiltrators, fishermen, and humanitarian aid flotillas is not a model for the U.S. Navy to study.

Israel’s army, however, has had lessons to impart. Now in its fifth decade of occupation duty, it has developed techniques of pacification, interrogation, assassination, and drone attack that inspired U.S. operations in Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Somalia, Yemen, and Waziristan. Recently, Israel has begun to deploy various forms of remotecontrolled robotic guns. These enable operatives at far-away video screens summarily to execute anyone they view as suspicious. Such risk-free means of culling hostile populations could conceivably come in handy in some future American military operation, but I hope not. I have a lot of trouble squaring the philosophy they embody with the values Americans traditionally aspired to exemplify.

It is sometimes said that, to its credit, Israel does not ask the United States to fight its battles for it; it just wants the money and weapons to fight them on its own.

Leave aside the question of whether Israel’s battles are or should be America’s. It is no longer true that Israel does not ask us to fight for it. The fact that American apologists for Israel were the most energetic promoters of the U.S. invasion of Iraq does THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

not, of course, prove that Israel was the instigator of that grievous misadventure. But the very same people are now urging an American military assault on Iran explicitly to protect Israel and preserve its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Their advocacy is fully coordinated with the government of Israel. No one in the region wants a nuclear-armed Iran, but Israel is the only country pressing Americans to go to war over this.

Finally, the need to protect Israel from mounting international indignation about its behavior continues to do grave damage to our global and regional standing. It has severely impaired our ties with the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. These costs to our international influence, credibility, and leadership are, I think, far more serious than the economic and other burdens of the relationship.

Against this background, it’s remarkable that something as fatuous as the notion of Israel as a strategic asset could have become the unchallengeable conventional wisdom in the United States. Perhaps it’s just that as someone once said; “people… will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one.” Be that as it may, the United States and Israel have a lot invested in our relationship. Basing our cooperation on a thesis and narratives that will not withstand scrutiny is dangerous. It is especially risky in the context of current fiscal pressures in the United States. These seem certain soon to force major revisions of both current levels of American defense spending and global strategy, in the Middle East as well as elsewhere. They also place federally-funded programs in Israel in direct competition with similar programs here at home. To flourish over the long term, Israel’s relations with the United States need to be grounded in reality, not myth, and in peace, not war. ❑ (Advertisement)

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amiri_16-17_Special Report 8/5/10 3:29 PM Page 16

The Hariri Assassination: Israel’s Fingerprints Surface SpecialReport

AFP PHOTO/HEZBOLLAH PRESS OFFICE

By Rannie Amiri

A picture released by the Hezbollah Press Office shows Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah (l) meeting in Beirut with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, son of assassinated Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, June 7, 2010. n the Middle East, the link between po-

Ilitical machinations, espionage and as-

sassination is either clear as day, or clear as mud.

As for the yet-unsolved case of the February 2005 murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, mud might be giving way to daylight.

A crackdown on Israeli spy rings operating in Lebanon has resulted in more than 70 arrests over the past 18 months. Included among them are four high-ranking Lebanese army and General Security officers—one having spied for the Mossad since 1984.

A significant breakthrough in the ongoing investigation occurred in late June and culminated in the arrest of Charbel Qazzi, head of transmission and broadcasting at Alfa, one of Lebanon’s two state-owned mobile service providers.

According to the Lebanese daily AsRannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator. A version of this article was first posted on the July 23-25 edition of CounterPunch, <www.counterpunch.com>.

Reprinted with permission.

16

Safir, Qazzi confessed to installing computer programs and planting electronic chips in Alfa transmitters. These could then be used by Israeli intelligence to monitor communications, locate and target individuals for assassination, and potentially deploy viruses capable of erasing recorded information in the contact lines. Qazzi’s collaboration with Israel reportedly dates back 14 years.

On July 12, a second arrest at Alfa was made. Tarek al-Raba’a, an engineer and partner of Qazzi, was apprehended on charges of spying for Israel and compromising national security. A few days later, a third Alfa employee was similarly detained.

Israel has refused to comment on the arrests. Nevertheless, their apparent ability to have penetrated Lebanon’s military and telecommunication sectors has rattled the country and urgently raised security concerns.

What does any of this have to do with the Hariri assassination?

Outside the obvious deleterious ramifications of high-ranking Lebanese military officers working for Israel, the very legitiTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

macy of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is now in question. The STL is the U.N.-sanctioned body tasked with prosecuting those responsible for the assassination of the late prime minister. On Feb. 14, 2005, 1,000 kilograms of explosives detonated near Hariri’s passing motorcade, killing him and 21 others.

It is believed the STL will issue indictments in the matter as early as September—relying heavily on phone recordings and mobile transmissions to do so.

According to the AFP, “A preliminary report by the U.N. investigating team said it had collected data from mobile phone calls made the day of Hariri’s murder as evidence.”

The National likewise reported, “The international inquiry, which could present indictments or findings as soon as September, according to unverified media reports, used extensive phone records to draw conclusions into a conspiracy to kill Hariri, widely blamed on Syria and its Lebanese allies...” [Last year, lack of evidence and recanted witness testimony led to the release of four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals suspected of having plotted to kill Hariri.

They had been jailed without charge for nearly four years.]

In a July 16 televised speech, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah speculated the STL would use information gleaned from Israeli-compromised communications to falsely implicate the group in the prime minister’s murder: “Some are counting in their analysis of the [STL] indictment on witnesses, some of whom turned out to be fake, and on the telecommunications networks which were infiltrated by spies who can change and manipulate data.

“Before the [2006] war, these spies gave important information to the Israeli enemy and based on this information, Israel bombed buildings, homes, factories and institutions. Many martyrs died and many others were wounded. These spies are partners in the killings, the crimes, the threats and the displacement.”

Nasrallah called the STL’s manipulation SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

amiri_16-17_Special Report 8/5/10 3:30 PM Page 17

an â&#x20AC;&#x153;Israeli projectâ&#x20AC;? meant to â&#x20AC;&#x153;create an uproar in Lebanon.â&#x20AC;?

Indeed, in May 2008 Lebanon experienced a taste of this. At the height of an 18-month stalemate over the formation of a national unity government under thenPrime Minister Fouad Siniora, his cabinetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision to unilaterally declare Hezbollahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fixed-line communication system illegal pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

Recognizing the value their secure lines of communication had in combating the July 2006 Israeli invasion and suspecting that state-owned telecoms might be compromised, Hezbollah resisted Sinioraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plans to have its network dismantled.

Their men swept through West Beirut and put a quick end to the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plan.

Two years later, their suspicions appear to have been vindicated.

Opposition MP and Free Patriotic Movement head Michel Aoun has already warned Nasrallah that the STL will likely indict â&#x20AC;&#x153;uncontrolledâ&#x20AC;? Hezbollah members, to be followed by â&#x20AC;&#x153;â&#x20AC;Ś Lebanese-Lebanese and Lebanese-Palestinian tension, and by an Israeli war on Lebanon.â&#x20AC;?

Giving credence to Nasrallah and Aounâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s assertions, Commander-in-Chief of the Israel Defense Forces Gabi Ashkenazi predicted â&#x20AC;&#x153;with lots of wishesâ&#x20AC;? that the situation in Lebanon would deteriorate in September after the STL indicts Hezbollah for Haririâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s assassination.

Ashkenaziâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gleeful, prescient testimony to the Knessetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Foreign Affairs Committee betrays what Israel hopes the fallout from the STLâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s report will be: fomentation of civil strife and discord among Lebanonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sectarian groups, generally divided into pro- and anti-Syria factions. Ashkenazi anticipates this to happen, of course, because he knows Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unfettered access to critical phone records will have framed Hezbollah for the crime.

Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s agents and operatives in Lebanon and its infiltration of a telecom network have been exposed. At the very least, the STL must recognize that evidence of alleged Hezbollah involvement in Haririâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s death (a group that historically enjoyed good ties with the late premier) is wholly tainted and likely doctored.

The arrest of Qazzi and al-Rabaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;a in the breakup of Israeli spy rings should prompt the STL to shift its focus to the only regional player that has benefited from Haririâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s murder; one that will continue to do so if and when its designs to implicate Hezbollah are realized.

It is time to look at Tel Aviv. â?&#x2018; SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

17

hanley_18_Special Report 8/5/10 1:39 PM Page 18

Prime Minister David Cameron Forthrightly Describes Gaza as a “Prison Camp” SpecialReport

By Delinda C. Hanley

where it is very difficult to get in, it is very difficult to get out. So I think the [prison] description is warranted.”

Britain’s new prime minister—and preThis isn’t the first time Cameron has sposumably after holding strategy discussions ken out on behalf of Gazans, he reminded with President Barack Obama—the new the press. In the House of Conservative leader visited Commons on June 28 he said, Turkey. Unlike Obama who, “Everybody knows that we quite frankly, can’t criticize Isare not going to sort out the rael for domestic reasons problem of the Middle East (namely, November’s mid-term peace process while there is, elections), Cameron can exeffectively, a giant open prison press his opinions. In a July 27 in Gaza.” speech to business leaders in In a Financial Times interAnkara, Cameron criticized Isview published on March 31, rael’s deadly assault on the before Britain’s elections, Gaza Freedom Flotilla and comCameron approved of Obama’s pared the blockaded Gaza Strip “robust line” on settlements to a “prison camp.” and said, “Unlike a lot of At the age of 43, Cameron is politicians from Britain who the youngest British prime visit Israel, when I went, I did minister in 198 years. He led stand in occupied East the Conservatives to victory in Jerusalem and actually rethe country’s May 2010 genferred to it as occupied East eral elections, but, falling 20 Jerusalem.” He added, “it is seats short of an overall majordepressing how little progress ity, had to form a coalition govis being made right now.” ernment—Britain’s first since Even now goods and people WWII—with Liberal Democcertainly are not flowing in rat leader Nick Clegg. and out of Gaza. In response to Coincidentally, a year ago the international outcry folCameron, who studied philoslowing Israel’s deadly May 31 ophy, politics and economics at raid on the humanitarian Oxford, earning a first-class flotilla, on June 20 Tel Aviv rehonors degree in 1988, discovlaxed its ban on mattresses, ered his Jewish roots when Dr. Yaakov Wise, a specialist in British Prime Minister David Cameron addresses the media in towels, toys, nuts, spices, chocolate, fruit juice, sweets, Jewish history, enlightened Ankara, July 27, 2010. jam, toilet paper, notebooks, him about his great-greatgrandfather, Emile Levita, a German émi- ized, but still stifling, blockade. “Let me newspapers, musical instruments and other gré banker who became a British citizen in also be clear that the situation in Gaza has goods it had prohibited from entering 1871. Cameron, Dr. Wise told him, could to change. Humanitarian goods and people Gaza for the past four years. The blockade also be a direct descendent of the prophet must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot forced thousands of Gazan factories to shut Moses, revered by Jews, Christians and and must not be allowed to remain a prison down due to the shortage of raw materials—which are still prohibited for induscamp.”

Muslims alike.

Later that day, in a joint press conference trial and food production. Israel has also Will a modern-day Moses try to free the with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip refused to permit exports of anything but Palestinian people?

“Let me be clear,” Prime Minister Erdogan in Ankara, Cameron told reporters small seasonal shipments of strawberries Cameron told his Turkish audience. “The that he stood by his earlier remarks, and flowers.

Israel now will permit construction maIsraeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was com- adding that his views on the blockade of pletely unacceptable. And I have told Gaza aren’t new: “The fact is we have long terials such as cement, steel cables and conPrime Minister [Binyamin] Netanyahu we supported lifting the blockade of Gaza, we crete into Gaza—but only for projects suhave long supported proper humanitarian pervised by international aid agencies. ReDelinda C. Hanley is news editor of the access. Even though some progress has pairs of Gaza’s schools, sewage treatment Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. been made, we are still in the situation Continued on page 21 week after David Cameron’s first offi-

will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous.”

While he stopped short of calling for an international probe, Cameron didn’t hold back criticism of Israel’s recently liberal-

AFP PHOTO/ADEM ALTAN

Acial visit to Washington, DC as

18

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

williams_19_United Nations Report 8/4/10 9:06 PM Page 19

Ban Ki-moon Engages Israeli Politicians, as Israel Remains Mum on Kosovo Precedent

By Ian Williams

United Nations Report

he endless trail of Israeli politicians

U.N. secretary-general continues, with Defense Minister Ehud Barak arriving at the end of July. One wonders whether it is a form of masochism on their part, since Ban Ki-moon’s public statements on Gaza, on settlements, or the flotilla assault can scarcely offer them much comfort, and he is reputed to be unsparingly direct in private conversation. Even as Barak turned up, the consequences of the Goldstone Report rumble on and the Human Rights Council appointed yet another inquiry into Israel’s May 31 attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

Even so, Ban clearly keeps an open door for the motley ministers who turn up at his office, and almost certainly sees more Israeli politicians than those of any other nationality. If one were cynical, one might wonder whether or not a visit to the U.N.’s New York headquarters allows Israeli ministers to deduct expenses for a trip to meet potential American donors to electoral campaigns back in Israel. On another level, however, it demonstrates the bipolar relationships between Israel and the world organization. After all, the state’s legitimacy derives far more from the U.N. partition resolutions and its admission to the General Assembly than from any deeds by Moses—which even the most assiduous title search might have difficulty producing. It seems Israeli politicians will do anything to get the U.N.’s blessing—except, of course, abide by the organization’s decisions and resolutions!

The other aspect of the ability to believe several impossible things before breakfast is the Israeli tendency to dismiss all U.N. agencies as irredeemably anti-Israel, while happily demanding that the U.N. take action against Iran, Lebanon and Syria for alleged breaches of U.N. resolutions. And there is this, almost pathetic, wish to be accepted, which manifests itself in the need to be photographed with Ban Ki-moon.

Ban has parlayed it well. The U.N. is more involved in the Middle East question than ever before. At the beginning of AuIan Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations and has a blog at <www.deadlinepundit.blogspot.com>.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

AFP PHOTO/ANP/GERALD VAN DAALEN

Tbeating their way to the door of the

The members of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stand prior to the trial on Kosovo’s declaration of independence, July 22, 2010 in The Hague, Netherlands. By a vote of 10-4, the ICJ decided that Kosovo’s declaration “did not violate international law.” gust he even persuaded Israel to accept an international fact-finding inquiry into the flotilla assault, with former Prime Minister of New Zealand Geoffrey Palmer as chair and, as vice-chair, the outgoing president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe—who, when he was awarded B’nai B’rith’s premier international honor, the Presidential Gold Medallion for Humanitarianism, spoke of his “deep feeling of respect and admiration for Israel.” They will be joined by a Turkish and an Israeli representative. The panel is the result of the Security Council presidential statement, supported—and, indeed, diluted—by the U.S., and Israeli acceptance resulting from intense pressure from Ban. It would of course be naïve to think that it was the moral standing of the U.N. alone which won over Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. More sober-minded Israelis are desperate to woo Turkey, so Ban was able to leverage pressure from inside Israel as well. It shows that Ban’s work with Israel does have positive results, and already, as a consequence of it, the U.N. has a much more active part in what passes for a peace process. It took a lot of pressure for Israel THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

to allow Washington to allow the U.N. even a walk-on part when Boutros Ghali, one of the architects of the original Camp David agreement, was secretary-general.

And then the U.N. was smuggled in to become part of the Quartet, with the EU, Russia and the U.S. Israeli leaders had traditionally resisted U.N. involvement because it was the world’s institutional memory: all the resolutions that it wanted to force the Palestinians to forget stood against the Jewish state’s expansionist ambitions. But, conversely, the U.N. must ratify any agreement reached if Israel is ever to gain the full legitimacy it craves. Israel might have cemented its hold on the U.S., but that is showing welcome signs of crumbling. Along with short-term behavior, Israeli leaders have a long-term view, and can see Washington’s relative decline and the increasing importance of China and the EU. World opinion is tiring of aggressive, heavily armed self-proclaimed victims. It takes a lot of effort to make fundamentalist Islamist militant bigots like Hamas the objects of sympathy, but Israel has managed it!

Continued on page 41 19

omer_20-21_Gaza on the Ground 8/5/10 1:40 PM Page 20

Angry Gazan Accuses Hamas of “Protecting the Borders With Israel” Gazaon the Ground

AFP PHOTO/STR

By Mohammed Omer

A wounded young girl is carried into Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, July 30, 2010. She was one of three children injured, along with 14 adults, in a nighttime Israeli strike on a police college in Gaza City. In two pre-dawn raids Aug. 1, Israeli warplanes also attacked tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip. he anger prompting a controversial e-

Tmail from a Gazan calling himself “Mr.

Joker” was unmistakable. After all, it was sent at the very time Israel was coming under heavy international criticism for its deadly May 31, 2010 attack on the humanitarian Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Despite requests from the U.N., Turkey and other countries and international organizations for an independent investigation of the assault, Netanyahu’s right-wing government was showing little intention of cooperating with, much less undertaking, such an investigation.

As the furious e-mail was circulated, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was declaring ad nauseam that, no matter what Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or anyone else says, the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem will continue—this despite the fact that, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention and numerous U.N resolutions, settlement-building in the occupied West Bank and the forced dispossesAward-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports on the Gaza Strip, and maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be reached at <gazanews@yahoo.com>.

20

sion of non-Jewish East Jerusalemites are illegal. Many Palestinian Muslims and Christians consider Israel’s actions akin to a declaration of war and a clear indication that it does not want peace.

Nevertheless, as a demonstration of their willingness to re-enter peace talks with Israel, leaders of Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement were aggressively cracking down on militia groups launching homemade rockets into Israel—creating controversy among Gaza’s various factions. As Fatah-affiliated parties in the West Bank continue to attempt to challenge Hamas’ authority in Gaza, and Israel continues to flout international law, some Gazans have begun to view Hamas as complacent—and, even worse, as furthering the Jewish state’s agenda.

“Mr. Joker” Like many Palestinians, Mr. Joker sees Israel’s actions against Jerusalem, along with its Muslim and Christian holy sites and residents, as justification for attacks on Israel.

He also considers the efforts by Hamas to prevent the launching of rudimentary rockets from Gaza as akin to treason.

While most Palestinians today do not THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

agree with his assessment, the minority supporting Mr. Joker’s indignation grows with each day of Israel’s four-year siege, each attack on Gaza, each home demolition, and each new settlement for Jews only. They see Hamas making concessions—and Israel thumbing its nose in disrespect.

As a result, Gaza’s Hamas leadership finds itself in a conundrum, wedged between extremists determined to continue their resistance and its own desire to remain in power and, by adhering to Quartet demands to halt the rocket attacks, seek an end to the siege, and work toward a long-term truce with the Israeli occupation. At the same time, Hamas must contend with competing Palestinian factions seeking its overthrow, and an occupying power that has yet to show good faith or an inclination toward peace, and which continues to inflame the situation through its actions.

The latest virtual shouting match began with Mr. Joker’s widely distributed e-mailhammering Hamas for not allowing Palestinian militia groups to launch home-made rockets from Gaza into Israel. The incident which enraged him took place on a night in the last week of July.

According to the e-mail, at 11 p.m. that night, a group of Palestinian militants transported two rockets to the border between Gaza and Israel with the purpose of launching them into Israel. Members of the Al Qassam Brigade (AQB), Hamas’ military wing, then arrived on the scene escorted by Hamas police, arrested the militants and confiscated the rockets, and transported the militants to an undisclosed location for interrogation, Mr. Joker reported, claiming that the police escort attacked the militants.

The AQB members stayed behind to guard the border, the e-mail continued, and at 1:20 a.m., militants who claimed to be part of rival Islamic Jihad’s Al Quds Brigade and “who were in clashes against the Israeli armed forces who were attempting to attack East Gaza City” came under attack by the AQB, Mr. Joker charged.

In truth, his e-mail reads more like a complaint to God about the squelching of SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

omer_20-21_Gaza on the Ground 8/5/10 1:41 PM Page 21

retaliation and resistance by “those who are protecting the borders with Israel, while Al Aqsa mosque is bleeding.” Mr. Joker accuses both Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority of protecting Israel’s borders rather than the AlAqsa mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam.

Politically Motivated?

A Google search revealed that the majority of sites and forums displaying the Mr. Joker’s e-mail are affiliated with Hamas’ rival, Fatah—raising the question of possible political motivation. According to Israeli media reports, Hamas leader Dr. Mahmoud Al Zahar has expressed dissatisfaction with recently renewed rocket fire, hinting it is aimed at undermining Hamas rule in Gaza.

In response to the Israeli reports, Hamas issued a press release criticizing “the media for the use of erroneous and misleading interpretation of [Dr. Al Zahar’s] statements.”

Appearing on Al Alam TV, Al Zahar reiterated that “The enemy wants to respond to rockets from the Gaza Strip, with the justification of self-defense, at a time when it’s under fire by the Quartet.”

Meanwhile, though he did not comment on Mr. Joker’s e-mail or similar criticisms, Dr. Ahmed Yousef, deputy minister of foreign affairs in Gaza’s de facto Hamas government, accused Israel of abusing Internet technologies to recruit collaborators in Gaza, whom he has dubbed “electronic collaborators.”

Dr. Yousef disclosed that the security establishment in Gaza has discovered that some groups planning to launch rockets on Jewish-only settlements are not actually “coming from Palestinian resistance groups, some are suspicious groups” which he described as providing “justification for Israeli aggression.”

“These rockets…did not hurt anyone on the other side,” he pointed out, as they are usually “fired into empty spaces.”

Dr. Yousef also stated that his government’s current priority is to reconstruct the Gaza Strip following Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 “Operation Cast Lead” massacre.

“There is a total national consensus from all Palestinian factions to reinstall a period of quietness and [not contribute to] Israel's policies of attempting to demonize Hamas, in order to justify Israeli aggression on Gaza,” he stated.

Whether the rocket attacks represent grass roots resistance or collaborators’ provocation, however, political partisanSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

ship doesn’t seem to be a factor in Mr. Joker’s fury—which he bestows equally upon Hamas and the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah leaders. As he summed it up in his e-mail: “All of you can go to hell!” ❑

David Cameron…

Continued from page 18

plants and homes have been on hold since 2006—even before Israel’s devastating 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead.

According to Sari Bashi of the Israeli human rights group Gisha, the benefit to Gazans of lifting some of these restrictions will be limited. “Gaza residents can now purchase Israeli-made products,” she pointed out, “but they are still prevented from engaging in dignified, productive work and from traveling.”

Even under its “new” Gaza policy, there will be no easing of restrictions on the passage of people to and from Gaza. Israel will continue to permit travel only in “humanitarian and exceptional” cases, mainly relating to medical needs. Israel has prohibited Gazan students from traveling to the West Bank to study since 2000.

Following Cameron’s remarks in Ankara, Israeli Ambassador to London Ron Prosor blamed the Palestinians’ situation on Hamas. “The people of Gaza are the prisoners of the terrorist organization Hamas.

The situation in Gaza is the direct result of Hamas’ rule,” he charged.

Israeli President Shimon Peres, 86, provoked fury in the U.K. after remarking that there is more anti-Semitism in the U.K. than is acknowledged. In an interview with Israeli historian Benny Morris published in the Jewish magazine Tablet on the same day Cameron spoke in Turkey, Peres said, ”There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary.” He charged that some British lawmakers have turned to anti-Israel politics to appease Muslim constituents.

While Cameron’s “prison camp” comments also infuriated some of his fellow Conservatives, others were pleased. The Conservative Web site’s home page recorded passionate views from both sides of the debate, including this post: “For once I agree with Cameron. It’s about time a leader had the guts to stand up to this terrorist state and condemn it for its brutal actions.”

Tory MP Mike Freer urged the Jewish community not to over-react. ”David Cameron remains a friend of Israel, but THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

friends can still criticize if and when they feel they get things wrong...Governments have disagreements. That’s grown-up politics. The community needs to be mature enough not to take his comments out of context.”

Cameron’s remarks in Turkey may have outraged some Israelis and diaspora Jews, but the rest of the world agrees that Israel’s commando raid against the aid flotilla was outrageous and that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank must end.

Even America’s pro-Israel mainstream media were shocked—if briefly—by the deaths of eight Turks and a Turkish-American dual national aboard the Mavi Marmara. While the death of a U.S. citizen by violence, or a humanitarian crisis overseas or at home, usually prompts a response from the federal government, politicians and the media, if Israel is the perpetrator it’s usually the victim’s fault and things get very quiet in the “land of the free.”

Only Britain’s Financial Times paid serious attention to Prime Minister Cameron’s criticism of Israel in Turkey.

Another, bigger Gaza Freedom Flotilla is planning to sail to Gaza before the end of the year. The network of organizations involved in the effort is growing and now has support groups around the world, including in Europe, Canada, the U.S., India, South Africa, and parts of the Middle East.

Like Cameron, the coalition agrees that Israel’s recent reluctant steps have not been enough. After an Aug. 4 meeting in Stockholm of the umbrella Freedom Flotilla Coalition, organizers released a statement saying, “Israel’s alleged easing of the closure on Gaza has been purely cosmetic, intended only to deflect criticism from its illegal policies. Expanding the list of items permitted into Gaza does not address the most fundamental concern of the people there—freedom of movement.”

Dror Feiler, a spokesman for the Swedish group Ship to Gaza, says flotilla organizers are in the process of buying and licensing ships for the new operation. They also plan to travel to Israel at the end of August or early September to reclaim ships seized

by Israel in the first flotilla, he said.

A coalition of U.S. organizations is raising funds to send a boat named The Audacity of Hope, after President Obama’s second autobiographical book, to take part in the international flotilla. Israel has vowed to stop all future foreign flotillas. Perhaps flotilla organizers should ask Moses’ descendant—and President Obama—to sail on The Audacity of Hope ship and at long last set the Palestinians free. ❑ 21

porter_22_Special Report 8/4/10 8:50 PM Page 22

Amiri Told CIA Iran Has No Nuclear Bomb Program SpecialReport

AFP PHOTO/ATTA KENARE

By Gareth Porter

Standing with his son, Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri addresses journalists upon his arrival at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport, July 15, 2010. ontrary to a news media narrative that

CIranian scientist Shahram Amiri has

provided intelligence on covert Iranian nuclear weapons work, CIA sources familiar with the Amiri case say he told his CIA handlers that there is no such Iranian nuclear weapons program, according to a former CIA officer.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counterterrorism official, told Inter Press Service (IPS) that his sources are CIA officials with direct knowledge of the entire Amiri operation.

The CIA contacts say that Amiri had been reporting to the CIA for some time before being brought to the U.S. during hajj last year, Giraldi told IPS, initially using satellite-based communication. But the contacts also say Amiri was a radiation safety specialist who was “absolutely peripheral” to Iran’s nuclear program, according to Giraldi.

Amiri provided “almost no information” Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006. Copyright © 2010 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

22

about Iran’s nuclear program, said Giraldi, but had picked up “scuttlebutt” from other nuclear scientists with whom he was acquainted that the Iranians have no active nuclear weapon program.

Giraldi said information from Amiri’s debriefings was only a minor contribution to the intelligence community’s reaffirmation in the latest assessment of Iran’s nuclear program of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate’s (NIE) finding that work on a nuclear weapon has not been resumed after being halted in 2003.

Amiri’s confirmation is cited in one or more footnotes to the new intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear program, called a “Memorandum to Holders,” according to Giraldi, but it is now being reviewed, in light of Amiri’s “re-defection” to Iran.

An intelligence source who has read the “Memorandum to Holders” in draft form confirmed to IPS that it presents no clearcut departure from the 2007 NIE on the question of weaponization. The developments in the Iranian nuclear program since the 2007 judgment are portrayed as “subtle and complex,” said the source.

CIA officials are doing their best to “burn” Amiri by characterizing him as a valuable long-term intelligence asset, according to Giraldi, in part in order to sow THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

as much distrust of him among Iranian intelligence officials as possible.

But Giraldi said it is “largely a defense mechanism” to ward off criticism of the agency for its handling of the Amiri case.

“The fact is he wasn’t well vetted,” said Giraldi, adding that Amiri was a “walkin” about whom virtually nothing was known except his job.

Although an investigation has begun within the CIA of the procedures used in the case, Giraldi said, Amiri’s erstwhile CIA handlers still do not believe he was a double agent or “dangle.”

What convinced CIA officers of Amiri’s sincerity, according to Giraldi, was Amiri’s admission that he had no direct knowledge of the Iranian nuclear program.

A “dangle” would normally be prepared with some important intelligence that the U.S. is known to value.

Amiri’s extremely marginal status in relation to the Iranian nuclear program was acknowledged by an unnamed U.S. official who told The New York Times and Associated Press on July 16 that Amiri was indeed a “low-level scientist,” but that the CIA had hoped to use him to get to more highly placed Iranian officials.

Giraldi’s revelations about Amiri’s reporting debunks a media narrative in which Amiri provided some of the key evidence for a reversal by the intelligence community of its 2007 conclusion that Iran had not resumed work on nuclear weapons.

An April 25 story by Washington Post reporters Joby Warrick and Greg Miller said the long-awaited reassessment of the Iranian nuclear program had been delayed in order to incorporate a “new flow of intelligence” coming from “informants, including scientists with access to Iran’s military programs….”

They quote Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair as explaining in an interview that the delay was because of “information coming in and the pace of developments.”

Warrick and Miller reported that Amiri had “provided spy agencies with details about sensitive programs including a longhidden uranium-enrichment plant near the city of Qom.” Their sources were said to be Continued on page 43 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

killgore_23_Special Report 8/3/10 6:46 PM Page 23

Did British Petroleum Encourage the Early Release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi?

SpecialReport

By Andrew Killgore ibyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset

LAli al-Megrahi was convicted on the

flimsiest of evidence of destroying Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 18, 1988, killing 270 people, including 189 Americans. Last year Megrahi, suffering from prostate cancer, was released

by Scottish authorities on compassionate grounds after doctors decided he had as little as three months to live.

Now, the American media (which paid almost no attention to the Lockerbie trial, which took place in the Netherlands under Scottish law) is in a small uproar because the currently unpopular BP (British Petroleum) is being accused of urging Megrahi’s early release in order to obtain an oil drilling lease in Libya’s Gulf of Sidra. According to the Financial Times, on July 16 BP acknowledged that it had been concerned over a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, but that it did not specify Megrahi. In the same article, Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to Washington, said he believed Megrahi’s release had been a “mistake.”

With BP being blamed for the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, American politicians are ready to believe the worst about one of Britain’s most profitable companies. The same Financial Times article reported that Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called for a July 29 committee hearing—now postponed to September—to examine what Kerry’s fellow senators call “deep circumstantial evidence” that Megrahi was released in exchange for an oil contract for BP. The committee said it would call government experts and BP officials to testify.

The families of British victims of the Lockerbie tragedy will find the gungho American actions surprising in light of the fact that the British media, unlike its U.S. counterpart, covered the Lockerbie disaster well—and, as a result, many, perhaps most, Britons do not believe that Megrahi is guilty. The

Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had ruled that Megrahi may have suffered “a miscarriage of justice.” In fact, had Megrahi not fallen ill, there was certainly the possibility that his pending appeal might have resulted in a verdict of “not guilty,” or at least “not proven,” as allowed under Scottish law, on retrial. Megrahi dropped his appeal upon his release.

any, perhaps most, M Britons do not believe that Megrahi is guilty.

Dr. Jim Swire, a distinguished physician, former British army officer, and explosives expert who lost his daughter Flora at Lockerbie, found the narrative of Megrahi’s guilty verdict “a cock and bull story.” Dr. Robert Black, former professor

of criminal law at Edinburgh University and creator of the idea of trying Megrahi and his co-defendant Lamen Fhimah in the Netherlands under Scottish law, thought similarly. Dr. Hans Koechler, United Nations observer at the Lockerbie trial, thought that there were no grounds for finding Megrahi guilty.

All Libyans believed that Megrahi is innocent. When he arrived home in Tripoli, he received a hero’s welcome. Poorly informed Americans who witnessed his arrival in Tripoli saw his reception as a cynical defiance of convention.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who called on President Barack Obama on July 20, repeated an earlier statement that the release of Megrahi was a mistake. In fact, the conviction of Megrahi for bombing Pan Am 103 seems to be the real mistake. ❑

(Advertisement)

Andrew Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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Seven Senators, 25 Representatives in 111th Congress’ “Hall of Fame” CongressWatch

By Shirl McArthur

(D-MA) and Ron Kind (D-WI), wrote to Obama urging him to continue his efforts to move the Career Pro-Israel Career Pro-Israel PAC Donations Senate PAC Donations parties toward a two-state soluWashington Report is Senate tion. Also, 106 representatives pleased to present its Bingaman, Jeff (D-NM) $ 272,425 Bayh, Evan (D-IN) $110,250 scorecard for members of Byrd, Robert (D-WV) 67,500 Bond, Christopher (R-MO) 166,700 co-sponsored H.Res. 130 sup147,342 Chambliss, Saxby (R-GA) 84,500 porting the appointment of the 111th Congress (2009- Feinstein, Dianne (D-CA) Tom (D-IA) 552,950 Coburn, Tom (R-OK) 2,500 George Mitchell as a special 2010). This Congress saw Harkin, Patrick (D-VT) 143,911 Crapo, Michael (R-ID) 44,000 several major efforts by Leahy, Rockefeller, John (D-WV) 235,700 DeMint, Jim (R-SC) 28,470 envoy for Middle East peace. the American Israel Pub- Sanders, Bernie (I-VT) 4,000 Hatch, Orin (R-UT) 57,700 Signers of the letters and the Kyl, Jon (R-AZ) 165,525 resolution’s co-sponsors are reclic Affairs Committee Lieberman, Joseph (I-CT) 367,851 ognized in Column 1.

(AIPAC) to pressure memLincoln, Blanche (D-AR) 63,027 2. Gaza Assault. After Isbers of Congress to sign McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) 485,141 Nelson, Bill (D-FL) 127,221 rael’s December 2008-January on to letters and other Risch, James (R-ID) 13,500 2009 assault on Gaza, the House measures of interest to IsSchumer, Charles (D-NY) 64,635 rael, especially after PresThune, John (R-SD) 54,730 passed H.Res. 34 supporting Israel and placing exclusive blame ident Barack Obama had House for the crisis on Hamas. Five repthe temerity to publicly House resentatives voted “no,” howcriticize Israel on a couple Baldwin, Tammy (D-WI) 4,000 Andrews, Robert (D-NJ) 78,525 of occasions.

Blumenauer, Earl (D-OR) 3,000 Bachman, Michele (R-MN) 25,000 ever, and 22 abstained, and they 7,600 Berkley, Shelley (D-NV) 315,555 are recognized in Column 2.

For the House, five DeFazio, Peter (D-OR) Blackburn, Marsha (R-TN) 1,000 3. Gaza Humanitarian. positive and five negative Delahunt, Bill (D-MA) John (D-MI) 10,700 Bonner, Jo (R-AL) 8,650 The same day that H.Res. 34 issues were chosen. Dingell, Edwards, Donna (D-MD) 3,500 Brown-Waite, Ginny (R-FL) 15,800 Three of the latter were Ellison, Keith (D-MN) 1,000 Burton, Dan (R-IN) 135,500 was passed, Reps. Lois Capps 10,150 Calvert, Ken (R-CA) 2,000 (D-CA) and John Olver (D-MA) AIPAC-drafted letters, Farr, Sam (D-CA) Raul (D-AZ) 1,000 Coble, Howard (R-NC) 22,350 led the sending of letters to and most representatives Grijalva, Hinchey, Maurice (D-NY) 4,280 Engel, Eliot (D-NY) 247,418 apparently felt it wasn’t Kaptur, Marcy (D-OH) 2,750 Gallegly, Elton (R-CA) 48,250 then-President George W. worth it to resist AIPAC’s Kilpatrick, Carolyn (D-MI) 4,500 Garrett, Scott (R-NJ) 40,200 Bush and incoming Secretary 14,500 Gerlach, Jim (R-PA) 18,200 of State Hillary Clinton urging hardball tactics. Still, 25 Kucinich, Dennis (D-OH) Barbara (D-CA) Hensarling, Jeb (R-TX) representatives registered Lee, McCollum, Betty (D-MN) 5,750 Hoekstra, Peter (R-MI) 2,500 that the U.S. work to alleviate either in all five positive McDermott, Jim (D-WA) 1,000 Holden, Tim (D-PA) 11,500 the humanitarian situation in 8,193 King, Peter (R-NY) 26,500 Gaza. Also, in December 2009, columns with no more Miller, George (D-CA) Gwen (D-WI) King, Steve (R-IA) 3,000 33 representatives, led by than one negative mark, Moore, Jim (D-VA) 3,000 Kirk, Mark (R-IL) 284,186 or in four positive Moran, Olver, John (D-MA) 19,500 Klein, Ron (D-FL) 59,024 Reps. Jim Moran (D-VA), and columns with no nega- Rahall, Nick (D-WV) Lamborn, Doug (R-CO) 1,500 Bob Inglis (R-SC), wrote to 12,750 Lance, Leonard (R-NJ) 7,000 Clinton expressing concern tive marks, and they are Stark, Pete (D-CA) John (D-MA) 2,000 Latta, Robert (R-OH) about Israel’s travel ban belisted in the “Hall of Tierney, Waters, Maxine (D-CA) 14,575 LoBiondo, Frank (R-NJ) 24,750 tween the West Bank and Fame.” The 38 represen- Woolsey, Lynn (D-CA) 8,750 McClintock, Tom (R-CA) McHenry, Patrick (R-NC) 43,700 Gaza. And in January 2010, 54 tatives who registered in McMahon, Michael (D-NY) 8,000 representatives, led by Reps. all five negative columns McMorris Rodgers, Cathy (R-WA) with no positive marks Miller, Candice (R-MI) 2,000 Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Jim are listed in the “Hall of Moran, Jerry (R-KS) 6,600 McDermott (D-WA), wrote to Poe, Ted (R-TX) 5,000 Obama expressing concern Shame.”

Price, Tom (R-GA) 2,000 about the crisis in Gaza. SignFor the Senate, four Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana (R-FL) 202,740 positive and four negaSherman, Brad (D-CA) 64,390 ers of these four letters are Shimkus, John (R-IL) 14,500 shown in Column 3. tive issues were chosen, Weiner, Anthony (D-NY) 35,050 4. Goldstone Report. After Because it was difficult Wilson, Joe (R-SC) 250 Judge Richard Goldstone isfinding positive issues, Wolf, Frank (R-VA) 72,000 sued his October 2009 report two of the four positive accusing Israel (and Hamas) of columns recognize those “war crimes as well as possible crimes senators who did not sign AIPAC’s letters. mark, are listed in the “Hall of Shame.”

The House and Senate issues are enumer- against humanity” during Israel’s assault on Seven senators registered in at least three Gaza, Israel’s congressional defenders impositive columns with no more than one ated below: mediately passed H.Res. 867 calling the renegative mark, and they are shown in the port “biased” and “unworthy of further “Hall of Fame.” The 15 senators who regis- HOUSE: The Positives 1. Peace Process. In June 2009, 86 repre- consideration.” The 58 representatives who tered in three negative columns with no positive marks, or in all four negative sentatives, led by Reps. Charles Boustany (R- voted against the resolution or abstained are columns with no more than one positive LA) and Steve Cohen (D-TN), signed a letter recognized in Column 4.

5. Afghanistan. In March 2010, Rep. to Obama applauding his intention to proShirl McArthur, a retired U.S. foreign service vide strong U.S. leadership to resolve the Is- Dennis Kucinich’s (D-OH) H.Con.Res. 248 officer, is a consultant based in the Wash- raeli-Palestinian conflict. And in May 2010, directing the president “to remove the U.S. ington, DC area.

61 representatives, led by Reps. Bill Delahunt armed forces from Afghanistan” was ith an eye to this fall’s rapidly apW proaching elections, the

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brought to a vote. It was defeated by a vote of 65-356. The 65 voting yes, plus Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), who was absent but issued a statement supporting the resolution, are recognized in Column 5. Previously, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) introduced H.R. 3699 prohibiting any increase in the number of troops in Afghanistan. And in April 2010 Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) introduced H.R. 5015 to require a plan for the expeditious redeployment of U.S. armed forces from Afghanistan. Co-sponsors of these two bills also are shown in Column 5.

HOUSE: The Negatives 6. Settlements. In May 2009, after Obama told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he wanted a stop to all settlement building, Reps. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD) sponsored an AIPAC-drafted so-called “Peace Principles” letter saying there should be no U.S. pressure on Israel. The letter was sent on May 28. Its 330 signers are shown in Column 6.

7. Jerusalem. After Israel publicly humiliated visiting Vice President Joseph Biden in March 2010 by announcing new apartments for Israeli colonists in East Jerusalem, the Obama administration strongly and publicly denounced that act.

Again, AIPAC geared up its lobbying machinery, and Cantor and Hoyer again sponsored a March 26 letter to Clinton taking Israel’s side in the dispute and urging that differences between the two countries be resolved in private rather than in public. The letter’s 333 signers are shown in Column 7.

8. Flotilla Assault. After Israel’s May 31, 2010 attack on the aid flotilla bringing humanitarian supplies to Gaza, and the consequent international denunciations of Israel, numerous Congress members immediately leapt to Israel’s defense. A letter was sent to Obama on June 29, sponsored by Reps.

Gary Peters (D-MI) and Ted Poe (R-TX) and signed by 338 representatives, who are

identified in Column 8.

9. Iran Sanctions. More than a dozen measures imposing sanctions on Iran were introduced in the House, but the one that gained the most support and was the most far-reaching was H.R. 2194, which became law after being combined with the Senate’s S. 2799. H.R. 2194 was passed by the House on Dec. 15, 2009 with 344 co-sponsors, who are named in Column 9.

10. UNRWA. Two measures were introduced attacking UNRWA. In January 2009 Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ) introduced H.Con.Res. 29, and in April 2010 Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) introduced H.R. 5065, which would essentially gut UNRWA and transfer responsibility for Palestinian refugees to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Co-sponsors of these two measures are shown in Column 10.

SENATE: The Positives A. Peace Process. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) initiated a February 2009 letter to Clinton urging her to use her forthcoming visit to Israel and the West Bank “to underscore your personal commitment, and that of President Obama,” to achieving IsraeliPalestinian peace. The letter’s 32 signers are recognized in Column A. B. Cluster Munitions. Feinstein also introduced S. 416, in February 2009, that would prohibit the use of cluster munitions unless they “do not result in more than 1 percent unexploded ordnance” and “will only be used against clearly defined military targets.” The bill’s 27 co-sponsors are shown in Column B. C. Settlements. The Senate version of the AIPAC-drafted so-called “Peace Principles” letter, sent in May 2009 after Obama told Netanyahu that he wanted to see a stop to all settlements building, was sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and signed by 76 senators. Those NOT signing are recognized in Column C.

D. Jerusalem. The AIPAC-drafted Senate letter, following Israel’s public humiliation of Biden in March ’10 by announcing new apartments for Israeli colonists in East Jerusalem, urged that any disputes between the two countries be resolved in private.

The letter, sponsored by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA), was signed by 76 senators. Again, those NOT signing are recognized in Column D. SENATE: The Negatives E. Gaza Assault. S. Res. 10, introduced

by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) with 35 cosponsors after Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 assault on Gaza, was passed in January 2009. The co-sponsoring senators are named in Column E. F. Flotilla Assault. The Senate letter to Obama defending “Israel’s right to self defense,” following Israel’s May 31, 2010 attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, was sponsored

by Sens. Reid and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and signed by 87 senators, who are named in Column F. G. Iran Sanctions. Dodd’s S. 2799 was the Iran sanctions bill that was passed by the Senate and ultimately became the basis, with H.R. 2194, for the measure signed into law on July 1, 2010; however, it was passed by voice vote with no co-sponsors. Previously, the bill gaining the most support was S. 908, introduced in April 2009 by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN). Its 78 co-sponsors, plus Dodd, are shown in Column G. H. Freeman Nomination. Congressional opposition was a major factor in Ambassador Chas Freeman’s March 10, 2009 withdrawal of his nomination as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Specifically, all seven Republican members of the Intelligence Committee wrote to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair expressing their opposition, and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) expressed his concerns directly to Blair.

These eight are named in Column H. ❑

REPORT CARD FOR THE 111th CONGRESS POSITIVES

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Aderholt, Robert (R) Bachus, Spencer (R) Bonner, Jo (R) Bright, Bobby (D) Davis, Artur (D)

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Griffith, Parker (R) Rogers, Mike (R) Alaska Young, Don (R) Amer. Samoa Faleomavaega, Eni (D) Arizona Berry, Marion (D) Boozman, John (R) Flake, Jeff (R) Franks, Trent (R) Giffords, Gabrielle (D) Grijalva, Raul (D) X Kirkpatrick, Ann (D) Mitchell, Harry (D) Pastor, Ed (D) Ross, Mike (D) Shadegg, John (R) Snyder, Vic (D) X California Baca, Joe (D) Becerra, Xavier (D) Berman, Howard (D) Bilbray, Brian (R) Bono Mack, Mary (R) Calvert, Ken (R) Campbell, John (R) Capps, Lois (D) X Cardoza, Dennis (D) Chu, Judy (D-sworn in 7/16/09) Costa, Jim (D) X Davis, Susan (D) X Dreier, David (R) Eshoo, Anna (D) X Farr, Sam (D) X Filner, Bob (D) X Gallegly, Elton (R) Garamendi, John (D) Harman, Jane (D) Herger, Wally (R) Honda, Michael (D) X Hunter, Duncan (R) Issa, Darrell (R) X Lee, Barbara (D) X Lewis, Jerry (R) Lofgren, Zoe (D) X Lungren, Daniel (R) McCarthy, Kevin (R) McClintock, Tom (R) 26

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California

McKeon, Buck (R) McNerney, Jerry (D) Matsui, Doris (D) Miller, Gary (R) Miller, George (D) Napolitano, Grace (D) Nunes, Devin (R) Pelosi, Nancy (D) Radanovich, George (R) Richardson, Laura (D) Rohrabacher, Dana (R) Roybal-Allard, Lucille (D) Royce, Edward (R) Sanchez, Linda (D) Sanchez, Loretta (D) Schiff, Adam (D) Sherman, Brad (D) Speier, Jackie (D) Stark, Pete (D) Thompson, Mike (D) Waters, Maxine (D) Watson, Dianne (D) Waxman, Henry (D) Woolsey, Lynn (D) Colorado Coffman, Mike (R) Degette, Diana (D) Lamborn, Doug (R) Markey, Betsy (D) Perlmutter, Ed (D) Polis, Jared (D) Salazar, John (D) Connecticut Courtney, Joe (D) DeLauro, Rosa (D) Himes, James (D) Larson, John (D) Murphy, Christopher (D) DC Norton, Eleanor Holmes (D) Delaware Castle, Michael (R) Florida Bilirakis, Gus (R) Boyd, Allen (D) Brown, Corrine (D) Brown-Waite, Ginny (R) Buchanan, Vern (R) Castor, Kathy (D) Crenshaw, Ander (R) SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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Johnson, Timothy (R) Kirk, Mark (R) Lipinski, Daniel (D) Manzullo, Donald (R) Quigley, Mike (D-4/21/09) Roskam, Peter (R) Rush, Bobby (D) Schakowsky, Janice (D) Schock, Aaron (R) Shimkus, John (R) Burton, Dan (R) Buyer, Steve (R) Carson, Andre (D) Donnelly, Joe (D) Ellsworth, Keith (D) Hill, Baron (D) Pence, Mike (R) Visclosky, Peter (D) Boswell, Leonard (D) Braley, Bruce (D) King, Steve (R) Latham, Tom (B) Loebsack, David (D) Jenkins, Lynn (R) Moore, Dennis (D) Moran, Jerry (R) Tiahrt, Todd (R) Chandler, Ben (D) Davis, Geoff (R) Guthrie, Brett (R) Rogers, Harold (R) Whitfield, Ed (R) Yarmuth, John (D) Alexander, Rodney (R) Boustany, Charles (R) Cao, Joseph (R) Cassidy, Bill (R) Fleming, John (R) Melancon, Charlie (D) Scalise, Steve (R) Michaud, Michael (D) Pingree, Chellie (D) Sablan, Gregorio (D) Bartlett, Roscoe (R) Cummings, Elijah (D)

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Maryland

Edwards, Donna (D) Hoyer, Steny (D) Kratovil, Frank (D) Ruppersberger, Dutch (D) Sarbanes, John (D) Van Hollen, Chris (D) Massachusetts Capuano, Michael (D) Delahunt, Bill (D) Frank, Barney (D) Lynch, Stephen (D) McGovern, James (D) Markey, Edward (D) Neal, Richard (D) Olver, John (D) Tierney, John (D) Tsongas, Niki (D) Michigan Camp, Dave (R) Conyers, John (D) Dingell, John (D) Ehlers, Vernon (R) Hoekstra, Peter (R) Kildee, Dale (D) Kilpatrick, Carolyn (D) Levin, Sander (D) McCotter, Thaddeus (R) Miller, Candice (R) Peters, Gary (D) Rogers, Mike (R) Schauer, Mark (D) Stupak, Bart (D) Upton, Fred (R) Minnesota Bachman, Michele (R) Ellison, Keith (D) Kline, John (R) McCollum, Betty (D) Oberstar, James (D) Paulsen, Erik (R) Peterson, Collin (D) Walz, Timothy (D) Mississippi Childers, Travis (D) Harper, Gregg (R) Taylor, Gene (D) Thompson, Bennie (D) Missouri Akin, Todd (R) Blunt, Roy (R) 30

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REPRESENTATIVES

Missouri

Carnahan, Russ (D) Clay, Wm. Lacy (D) Cleaver, Emanuel (D) Emerson, Jo Ann (R) Graves, Sam (R) Luetkemeyer, Blaine (R) Skelton, Ike (D) Montana Rehberg, Denny (R) Nebraska Fortenberry, Jeff (R) Smith, Adrian (R) Terry, Lee (R) Nevada Berkley, Shelley (D) Heller, Dean (R) Titus, Dina (D) New Hampshire Hodes, Paul (D) Shea-Porter, Carol (D) New Jersey Adler, John (D) Andrews, Robert (D) Frelinghuysen, Rodney (R) Garrett, Scott (R) Holt, Rush (D) Lance, Leonard (R) LoBiondo, Frank (R) Pallone, Frank (D) Pascrell, Bill (D) Payne, Donald (D) Rothman, Steven (D) Sires, Albio (D) Smith, Christopher (R) New Mexico Heinrich, Martin (D) Lujan, Ben Ray (D) Teague, Harry (D) New York Ackerman, Gary (D) Arcuri, Michael (D) Bishop, Tim (D) Clarke, Yvette (D) Crowley, Joseph (D) Engel, Eliot (D) Hall, John (D) Higgins, Brian (D) Hinchey, Maurice (D) Israel, Steve (D) King, Peter (R) Lee, Christopher (R) Lowey, Nita (D) McCarthy, Carolyn (D) SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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McMahon, Michael (D) Maffei, Daniel (D) X Maloney, Carolyn (D) Meeks, Gregory (D) Murphy, Scott (D-4/29/09) X Nadler, Jerrold (D) Owens, Wm. (D-11/6/09) X Rangel, Charles (D) X Serrano, Jose (D) Slaughter, Louise McIntosh (D) Tonko, Paul (D) X Towns, Edolphus (D) X Velazquez, Nydia (D) X Weiner, Anthony (D) Butterfield, G.K. (D) Coble, Howard (R) Etheridge, Bob (D) Foxx, Virginia (R) Jones, Walter (R) Kissell, Larry (D) McHenry, Patrick (R) McIntyre, Mike (D) Miller, Brad (D) Myrick, Sue (R) Price, David (D) X Shuler, Heath (D) Watt, Melvin (D) Pomeroy, Earl (D) Austria, Steve (R) Boccieri, John (D) Boehner, John (R) Driehaus, Steve (D) Fudge, Marcia (D) X Jordan, Jim (R) Kaptur, Marcy (D) X Kilroy, Mary Jo (D) X Kucinich, Dennis (D) X LaTourette, Steven (R) Latta, Robert (R) Ryan, Tim (D) X Schmidt, Jean (R) Space, Zachary (D) Sutton, Betty (D) Tiberi, Patrick (R) Turner, Michael (R)

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REPRESENTATIVES

Ohio Oklahoma

Wilson, Charles (D) Boren, Dan (D) Cole, Tom (R) Fallin, Mary (R) Lucas, Frank (R) Sullivan, John (R) Oregon Blumenauer, Earl (D) X DeFazio, Peter (D) X Schrader, Kurt (D) X Walden, Greg (R) Wu, David (D) X Pennsylvania Altmire, Jason (D) X Brady, Robert (D) X Carney, Christopher (D) Critz, Mark (D-5/20/10) Dahlkemper, Kathleen (D) X Dent, Charles (R) Doyle, Michael (D) X Fattah, Chaka (D) X Gerlach, Jim (R) Holden, Tim (D) Kanjorski, Paul (D) Murphy, Patrick (D) Murphy, Tim (R) Pitts, Joseph (R) Platts, Todd (R) X Schwartz, Allyson (D) Sestak, Joe (D) X Shuster, Bill (R) Thompson, Glenn (R) Puerto Rico Pierluisi, Pedro (D) Rhode Island Kennedy, Patrick (D) Langevin, James (D) S. Carolina Barrett, J. Gresham (R) Brown, Henry (R) Clyburn, James (D) Inglis, Bob (R) X Spratt, John (D) Wilson, Joe (R) S. Dakota Herseth Sandlin, Stephanie (D) Tennessee Blackburn, Marsha (R) Cohen, Steve (D) X Cooper, Jim (D) X Davis, Lincoln (D) Duncan, John (R) SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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Gordon, Bart (D) Roe, David (R) Tanner, John (D) Wamp, Zach (R) Texas Barton, Joe (R) Brady, Kevin (R) Burgess, Michael (R) Carter, John (R) Conaway, K. Michael (R) Cuellar, Henry (D) Culberson, John (R) Doggett, Lloyd (D) Edwards, Chet (D) Gohmert, Louie (R) Gonzalez, Charles (D) Granger, Kay (R) Green, Al (D) Green, Gene (D) Hall, Ralph (R) Hensarling, Jeb (R) Hinojosa, Ruben (D) Jackson Lee, Sheila (D) Johnson, Eddie Bernice (D) Johnson, Sam (R) McCaul, Michael (R) Marchant, Kenny (R) Neugebauer, Randy (R) Olson, Pete (R) Ortiz, Solomon (D) Paul, Ron (R) Poe, Ted (R) Reyes, Silvestre (D) Rodriguez, Ciro (D) Sessions, Pete (R) Smith, Lamar (R) Thornberry, Mac (R) Utah Bishop, Rob (R) Chaffetz, Jason (R) Matheson, Jim (D) Vermont Welch, Peter (D) Virgin Islands Christensen, Donna (D) Virginia Boucher, Rick (D) Cantor, Eric (R) Connolly, Gerald (D) Forbes, Randy (R) 34

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Sessions, Jeff (R) Shelby, Richard (R) Begich, Mark (D) Murkowski, Lisa (R) Kyl, Jon (R) McCain, John (R) Lincoln, Blanche (D) Pryor, Mark (D)

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Boxer, Barbara (D) X Feinstein, Dianne (D) X X Colorado Bennet, Michael (D-sworn in 1/21/09) Udall, Mark (D) Connecticut Dodd, Christopher (D) X Lieberman, Joseph (I) Delaware Carper, Thomas (D) X Kaufman, Edward (D-1/15/09) Florida LeMieux, George (R-9/10/09) Nelson, Bill (D) Georgia Chambliss, Saxby (R) Isakson, Johnny (R) Hawaii Akaka, Daniel (D) X Inouye, Daniel (D) Idaho Crapo, Mike (R) Risch, James (R) Illinois Burris, Roland (D-1/12/09) Durbin, Richard (D) X X Indiana Bayh, Evan (D) Lugar, Richard (R) Iowa Grassley, Chuck (R) Harkin, Tom (D) X X Kansas Brownback, Sam (R) Roberts, Pat (R) Kentucky Bunning, Jim (R) McConnell, Mitch (R) Louisiana Landrieu, Mary (D) X Vitter, David (R) X Maine Collins, Susan (R) X X Snowe, Olympia (R) X X Maryland Cardin, Benjamin (D) X X Mikulski, Barbara (D) X Massachusetts Brown, Scott (R-2/4/10) Kerry, John (D) Michigan Levin, Carl (D) X Stabenow, Debbie (D) X Minnesota Franken, Al (D-7/7/09) X Klobuchar, Amy (D) X X Mississippi Cochran, Thad (R) X Wicker, Roger (R) Missouri Bond, Christopher (R) X McCaskill, Claire (D) Montana Baucus, Max (D) Tester, Jon (D) X Nebraska Johanns, Mike (R) Nelson, Ben (D) X 36

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Ensign, John (R) Reid, Harry (D) New Hampshire Gregg, Judd (R) Shaheen, Jeanne (D) New Jersey Lautenberg, Frank (D) X Menendez, Robert (D) New Mexico Bingaman, Jeff (D) Udall, Tom (D) New York Gillibrand, Kirsten (D-1/26/09) Schumer, Charles (D) N. Carolina Burr, Richard (R) X Hagan, Kay (D) N. Dakota Conrad, Kent (D) Dorgan, Byron (D) X Ohio Brown, Sherrod (D) X Voinovich, George (R) X Oklahoma Coburn, Tom (R) Inhofe, James (R) Oregon Merkley, Jeff (D) X Wyden, Ron (D) X Pennsylvania Casey, Robert (D) X Specter, Arlen (D) X Rhode Island Reed, Jack (D) Whitehouse, Sheldon (D) X S. Carolina DeMint, Jim (R) Graham, Lindsey (R) S. Dakota Johnson, Tim (D) Thune, John (R) Tennessee Alexander, Lamar (R) Corker, Bob (R) Texas Cornyn, John (R) Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R) Utah Bennett, Robert (R) Hatch, Orrin (R) Vermont Leahy, Patrick (D) Sanders, Bernie (I) Virginia Warner, Mark (D) Webb, Jim (D) Washington Cantwell, Maria (D) X Murray, Patty (D) X W. Virginia Byrd, Robert (D-died 6/28/10) Rockefeller, John (D) X Wisconsin Feingold, Russell (D) X Kohl, Herb (D) Wyoming Barrasso, John (R) Enzi, Michael (R) SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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Two Decades of Working to Improve North-South Relations SpecialReport

PHOTO M. HOWE

By Marvine Howe

Among the participants and former North-South Prize winners attending the North-South Center’s 20th anniversary celebration in Lisbon were Jorge Sampaio, U.N. High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations (front row, third from left); former Moroccan Prime Minister Abderrahmane Youssoufi (behind Sampaio to the right, with gray tie). Also in the front row are Maud de Boer-Buquicchio (gray suit), Deborah Bergamini (white dress) and Nawal al Saadawi (with pink scarf). Standing behind Bergamini and el Saadawi is Iceland President Olafur Gaguar Grimsson. s Europe finds itself buffeted by fi-

Anancial and economic crises and new

gusts of xenophobia, a modest offspring of the Council of Europe is struggling to find answers to the challenges of global interdependence. The Lisbon-based NorthSouth Center, currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, has gained increasing relevance as a forum for intercultural dialogue and cooperation.

At a May 18 ceremony in the Portuguese National Assembly, the North-South Center presented its annual awards to two very distinct personalities: Mikhail Gorbachev, the Russian statesman, for his contribution to the end of the Cold War, and Rola Dashti, Kuwaiti parliamentarian and a leader in the struggle for women’s rights in the Arab world (see box). Introducing the prize winners, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Council of Europe deputy secretary-general, noted: “What they have in common is a deep-rooted commitment to the univerMarvine Howe, former New York Times bureau chief and author of Morocco: The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges (available from the AET Book Club) is researching a book on immigration and integration issues in Iberia.

38

sal values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law and a desire to make change happen whether it be at a global, national or local level.”

Unable to attend for health reasons, Gorbachev addressed the assembly by video.

He urged Europeans to consider Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for a new pan-European security treaty. “We now have a chance for a new beginning in building a European security architecture,” the Nobel Peace laureate said, blaming primarily the United States for squandering past opportunities. “The united Europe will be able to prove its right to leadership in addressing the main challenges of our time: demilitarizing international politics, narrowing the gap between wealth and poverty, and saving our planet from environmental disaster.”

Dashti recalled that barely 20 years ago, women in Kuwait and most of the Arab world did not enjoy basic rights. She recounted how she and male and female colleagues struggled to free women in the region from “the discriminatory barriers created by collective misconception of women’s role in society” and “the deliberate misinterpretation of religious tenets.” Declaring that Kuwait has made major advances in THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

women’s rights, she noted that women won the right to vote in 2005 and the country’s first four female parliamentarians were elected in 2009. “Our experience has started to be taken as an example by neighboring Gulf countries,” she stated.

Lisbon hosted its first North-South conference in 1984, under the auspices of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, and aimed essentially at Africa and the Middle East. Portugal and Spain, former colonial powers and Western Europe’s youngest democracies, enthusiastically embraced the Council’s vision of a concerted European approach to cooperation with the developing world. In 1988 Spain, led by King Juan Carlos I, launched a European campaign for North-South Interdependence and Solidarity. This culminated in an appeal to the Council of Europe to accept Lisbon’s proposal for a North-South meeting place.

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall the following year, however, some Europeans feared that in the euphoria over new EastWest relations, the South would be forgotten.

Nevertheless, on Nov. 16, 1989 the Council of Europe’s ministerial committee approved a resolution establishing the European Center for Global Interdependence and Solidarity. There were 10 founding states, led by Spain, Portugal, France and Italy, and membership was open to all Council of Europe states. The Center’s originality was its “quadripartite” structure, composed of representatives of governments, parliaments, local and regional authorities, and non-governmental organizations, giving it a broader outreach than most official bodies. The mission was an ambitious one: to provide a framework for European cooperation and solidarity on issues of global interdependence. But it was set up as a pilot project for only three years (1990-1993).

Now, 20 years later, the North-South Center is taking stock. Its principle activity has been in the fields of education and training through workshops aimed at youth organizations in European cities.

Specifically, the Center organized the first University on Youth and Development at Mollina, Spain, with Spanish support. It has cooperated with the Council of EuSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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rope’s programs such as the European Youth Campaign against Racism, Xenophobia, Anti-Semitism and Intolerance. Events organized by the Center include the Lisbon Forum on Human Rights and debates on freedom of conscience and religion, gender equality, and abolition of the death penalty. The Center has attracted international attention with the North-South Prize—now in its 15th year—which has been awarded to prominent figures like musicians Peter Gabriel and Bob Geldof, Irish President Mary Robertson, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and less well-known defenders of human rights.

As part of the 20th anniversary celebrations, the Center called on former NorthSouth Prize winners and other specialists to participate in a roundtable discussion on “The 21st Century, a Century of Global Interdependence and Solidarity.” A number of speakers highlighted the increasing imbalance between the North and South and the rising xenophobia in Europe toward immigrants.

Taking up the issue of cultural globalization, Jorge Sampaio, U.N. High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, noted that Europe has achieved much in human and social rights, but was now suffering from “a growing malaise.” The former president of Portugal emphasized that “ethnocentric attitudes are on the rise,” describing them as “a time bomb.” Europeans, he said, must face “the huge challenge that cultural diversity is inseparable from human dignity.”

Directly addressing the immigration issue, Vera Duarte, former minister of education of Cape Verde, compared the saga of clandestine African boat people today to the black slave trade of the past. Declaring that North-South relations must be based on “justice, equality and respect for human rights,” Duarte said: “The Center has a role in listening to the voices of the South, not just the Euro-centrists as in the past.” Deborah Bergamini, chair of the Center’s executive council, pointed out that despite immigration problems, Italy has set up the first network of Intercultural Cities, where issues like minority language and religious symbols are discussed.

Much of the debate was devoted to the unfinished business of women’s rights.

Nyamko Sabuni, Sweden’s minister for integration and gender equality, said that despite recent progress, women were still second-class citizens and “discrimination and oppression remain deeply rooted.” Two months earlier, the Council of Europe had approved a resolution against gender disSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

crimination, but, she stressed, “To vote is not enough. We need the meaningful participation of women.”

According to Bogaletch Gebre, founder of the Kembatta Women’s Welfare Center in Ethiopia, women of her country and in much of Africa are victims of “gender apartheid” and accept violence. “We women live in peril, in the fields, in the bedroom, in school,” she declared, making an emotional appeal to the North-South Center to initiate a movement to liberate women.

Former Moroccan Prime Minister Abderrahmane Youssoufi focused on the problem of urgent concern to many participants—the lagging development in the South and the deteriorating economies in most of Africa.

Emphasizing that development problems in the South should be reexamined, Youssoufi argued that “what is needed is international good governance, international coordination and strategic planning.” He asserted: “We need a radical rupture of the economic model, a civic mobilization.”

Egyptian writer and psychiatrist Nawal al Saadawi also called for a new develop-

ment model. Still a rebel at 79, Al Saadawi angrily denounced “the corrupt governments” that dominate her world. Emphasizing that past development conceptions have resulted in more poverty, more wars, unimpeded immigration, and more fundamentalists, she said: “We should use our creativity to develop a new political, economic and social model based on equality, justice and real democracy.”

The keynote speaker, Iceland President Olafur Gaguar Grimsson, pointed out fundamental changes in North-South relations over the past two decades, noting that climate change was now “the most critical” aspect of interdependence. He emphasized that the future of Bangladesh and the Maldives depends on what is happening in the Arctic.

Asked to summarize the North South Center’s main achievements, executive director Denis Huber declared succinctly: “The Center has placed intercultural dialogue as a top priority on the international political agenda; we don’t have the option of not succeeding.” ❑

Kuwaiti Parliamentarian Rola Dashti Rola Dashti—one of Kuwait’s first women parliamentarians—describes herself as “a social activist…something broader than feminist.”

She came to Lisbon in May to receive the 2009 North South Prize for her work in defense of women’s rights in Kuwait and the Arab world.

I met Dashti on the eve of the awards ceremony at the stately Hotel Ritz. She was wearing her preferred attire, jeans and a T-shirt, her long dark hair unfettered by any veil. The first four women elected to the Kuwaiti Parliament a year ago were longtime friends, she recounted—two veiled, two uncovered, all graduates of American universities, who share the same goals. Radicals had tried to force her to wear the hijab, or headscarf, in parliament, but she had taken the matter to the Constitutional Court and won.

The case was dismissed because the court found she was not in violation of the election law and, under Islamic practice, a woman has freedom of choice.

“Westerners must understand the difference between the hijab and the burqa; it’s a fine line between freedom of choice and the notion of security,” Dashti insisted when I asked her views on European moves to ban the burqa, or full-body veil, and headscarf.

“A covered face does not mean a closed mind,” she emphasized, while agreeing on the need to see a person’s face for security reasons. Kuwait, she pointed out, bans women from driving in burqas. But she could not understand the hostility to the hijab, which she described as “a person’s religious right—like a nun’s habit.” The European campaign against Islamic veils, she warned, “would only radicalize some Muslims and polarize the situation even more.”

Dashti, 45, comes from a complex background. Her father is a Kuwaiti of Persian descent, married to four women and father of 23 children. Her mother is a member of a prominent Lebanese family from Sidon. After Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Dashti volunteered to work with Lebanese refugees for the International Red Cross.

She lived in the United States for 10 years, graduating with a Ph.D. in population economics from Johns Hopkins University. Before embarking on her political career, she worked as a financial consultant and held senior positions at the National Bank of Kuwait and the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research.

—M.H.

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Turkey’s War Against the PKK SpecialReport

AFP PHOTO/KAYHANOZER/ANATOLIA

By Patrick Seale

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (c) speaks with Chief of the Turkish General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug (l) during his June 20 visit to the Turkish city of Hakkari on the border with Iraq. Turkish forces pushed into northern Iraq that day, killing four people, including a 15-year-old girl, as they hit back against Kurdish rebels after they killed 11 Turkish soldiers the previous day, in the deadliest spell of violence in two years. enewed fighting between the Turkish

Rstate and rebels of the Kurdistan

Workers Party (PKK) carries grave political risks for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Both his domestic and foreign policies seem bound to suffer.

On June 19, a PKK force of some 250 men attacked a barracks in the region of Semdinli, in the extreme southeast of the country, killing 23 people, including 11 soldiers. This brought the total number of Turkish military casualties to over 50 in the past four months. Turkish commandos, backed by helicopters, struck back, penetrating up to 10 kilometers inside Iraq in an attempt to surround and destroy the PKK bands. The Turkish army claims to have killed more than 130 rebels since March.

The outbreak of violence marks the failPatrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press). Copyright © 2010 Patrick Seale. Distributed by Agence Global.

40

ure of Erdogan’s attempt, launched last year, to put an end to Kurdish terrorism by offering the Kurds broader cultural and civil rights. It also rules out any possibility of direct talks with the PKK, and of a political settlement with its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Instead, Turkey must now brace itself for more PKK terrorist attacks, while Kurdish areas of the country, as well as PKK bases in northern Iraq, will face new ground and air onslaughts by Turkish forces.

Erdogan’s outreach to the Kurds has aroused bitter criticism from diehard Turkish nationalists. He has been accused of pursuing policies which have weakened the struggle against the PKK. Some have called for emergency rule to be re-imposed on Kurdish-inhabited areas. For the opposition, any expression of Kurdish nationalism is anathema, since it carries with it a potential threat to the territorial integrity of Ataturk’s Turkish Republic. Since Erdogan faces elections in the coming year, he cannot afford to ignore this nationalist groundswell.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

In a ceremony at Van to commemorate the fallen soldiers, Erdogan delivered an emotional speech. “Our sorrow is immense,” he declared. “Our grief is as high as the mountains. We will not bow. We will bury our grief in the depths of our hearts and will not make those traitors happy. I am putting it very clearly: They will not win. They will not gain anything.

They will melt in their own darkness.

They will dry up in their own swamps.

They will drown in their own blood. We have never been daunted, and will never be so. We will never surrender to violence and acts of terror.”

Questions are being asked why the military failed to step up security at border outposts. Turkey’s National Security Council (MGK)—attended by President Abdallah Gul, Prime Minister Erdogan, Chief of General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug, and other senior figures—met to agree on new measures against the PKK. It decided to increase the number of units in the border region, improve intelligence sharing with other countries, tighten security in cities, and dry up financial sources of the PKK, notably from the Kurdish diaspora.

The PKK started its armed campaign against the Turkish state in 1984. But after a 25-year insurgency, which claimed some 40,000 victims, the PKK declared a unilateral cease-fire in April 2009. According to Murat Karayilan, Abdullah Ocalan’s deputy, this move was intended to encourage a political solution. But last March, the PKK announced that it was ending its cease-fire, claiming that the Turkish state had not responded.

Two events seem to have tipped the balance away from a peaceful settlement. Last October, a group of PKK fighters entered Turkey from northern Iraq to surrender to the authorities. But the triumphal reception they received at the border by tens of thousands of sympathizers angered Turkish opinion. Instead of being granted an amnesty, they were brought before a court and sentenced. In March, Turkey’s Constitutional Court outlawed the Democratic Society Party (DTP) on charges of being the political wing of the PKK. Many of its prominent members were arrested.

This prompted the PKK leader Murat Karayilan to declare: “The base for a politSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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ical solution is being destroyed. Kurds are being forced into war.”

One result of the violence will be to worsen still further Turkey’s already severely strained relations with Israel. In late June, in what seemed to be a thinly-veiled reference to Israel, Erdogan declared that “the Turkish nation knows very well on whose behalf the terror organization works as a subcontractor.” Sedat Laciner, head of a Turkish think tank, the International Strategic Research Organization, was quoted by Turkey’s English-language newspaper Today’s Zaman as saying that Mossad agents and retired Israeli military personnel had been sighted providing training to the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Israel has a long history, extending over several decades, of arming and training the Kurds in Iraq in order to weaken the Baghdad government. Since it is now at odds with both Iran and Turkey, it would not be surprising if it had extended its clandestine backing to Kurdish rebels in both these countries.

Military operations against the PKK could undermine Turkey’s ambitious regional policy of “zero problems with its neighbors,” and will cast a shadow over its negotiations for European Union membership. The violence cannot but disrupt the close economic relations which Ankara has established with the Kurdish Provisional Government in northern Iraq.

Some commentators go so far as suspecting that the ultimate goal of the renewed violence—whether or not it is fomented from outside—is to damage the Erdogan government and eventually bring it down. ❑

United Nations Report…

least as they wrestled with the various arbitrary taboos of assorted Israeli governments about which Palestinians they could speak to. Indeed, especially in the early days, some Palestinians were reluctant in case they were tainted as collaborators with the occupiers.

In Lisbon, where the effect of new media was being considered, the U.N. had assembled a respectable spectrum of Israeli media and society, along with those from Palestine who could get out. Gazans were under-represented, naturally, because the Israeli government does not allow them to travel.

And that highlighted one of the points: despite a decade and a half of such “bridge building,” and despite an encouraging relaxation of tensions, it appeared that in general, the Palestinians followed events in Israel far more closely than vice versa. Despite the unprecedented accessibility that new media gave to the Palestinian press and media, few Israelis avail themselves of it, even on Hebrew-language sites. In that sense, the wall has worked. Even many Israeli journalists seem oblivious to what is happening on the other side, of the daily humiliation of occupation. A young Palestinian journalist’s account of in effect groveling to get a permit to attend a press conference in Jerusalem, crossing innumerable checkpoints, with arbitrary and capricious delays, and having to return by five was compared by an Israeli editor, sympathetic and personable, to the security the rest of us endure at airports—i.e., something necessary and excusable. It was a stunning lack of personal and professional empathy, all the more telling for being unconscious and in contrast to his apparent benignity.

Continued from page 19

The ICJ Decision on Kosovo

So what is the U.N. doing about it all?

For years U.S. congressional apologists for Israel have railed against the U.N. programs that expound its own decisions—including those the U.S. itself voted for! But these programs have persevered, and in July I was in Lisbon for one of them. The media seminars on the Middle East issue used to be just Third Worldish jamborees, but under Boutros Ghali and his head of information, Samir Sanbar, the seminars became more deliberative and less declarative, inviting Israeli journalists and politicians from across the political spectrum, along with Palestinian counterparts and international journalists and academics.

Of course, there was much reticence on the part of some Israelis to take part, not

Recognizing the pain of others is, of course, one of the building blocks of a global society, and Israelis certainly are not alone in thinking that the people they drop bombs on do not understand them.

On July 22, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion asked for by the General Assembly, at Serbia’s request, on the legality of the Kosovar declaration of independence. There was no international law against declaring independence, the court ruled—which is hardly surprising, since most members of the U.N. are there because at some point or other they had declared their independence.

Belgrade had covered its bases, but not really in glory, by pre-emptively stating that it would not be bound by the decision. It is symptomatic of the self-regard-

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ing state of Serbian nationalism that its government can ask for a court ruling while telling the court that it will only accept a favorable decision. For decades Serbia had treated Kosovo as if it were its own West Bank, regarding the actual inhabitants as unwanted complications to its alleged historical claims, and of course it is a hot button issue in Serbia, where growing pragmatic acceptance that Kosovo is not going to return to the bosom of its persecutor does not detract from nationalist outrage. The Serb government, a prisoner to nationalist sentiment, used the U.N. and the ICJ to stall the issue domestically, not because it expected—or even wanted—a resolution of the issue.

It is an interesting dilemma, because Serbia does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of joining the EU, as it wants, if it maintains claims against a country now recognized by the EU and a majority of its members. Currently 69 U.N. members recognize Kosovo, and the ICJ’s decision will almost certainly open the floodgates.

However, there is an interesting omission. Serbia complains that the EU and U.S. have been putting pressure on countries to recognize Kosovo. One would expect, therefore, that Washington’s closest ally, which owes so much to American diplomatic support, would be one of the first to step up to the plate. But Israel has not recognized Kosovo, and it will be interesting to see whether it will now. Ask not what you can do for the U.S., but what can the U.S. do for you!

Apart from keeping lines open to China, Russia and other powers, Israel clearly is thinking of the legal precedent offered by Kosovo for the threatened Palestinian (re)Declaration of Independence. Unlike Kosovo, the United Nations General Assembly authorized the establishment of an Arab Palestinian state in the same 1947 partition resolution, and has progressively upped the status of the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations so that it has almost all the prerogatives and opportunities of a member state. It is only a paragraph or two from being recognized as a full member—with, of course, profound implications.

One can already hear the objection that it would be wrong to recognize a state without clear international boundaries, but that of course is precisely what happened with Israel, which had exceeded what it was allowed in the partition resolution. In fact there is a clear corpus of U.N. decisions on the Palestinian state’s boundaries. No wonder Israel is holding back on Kosovo. ❑ 41

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The Other “Jewish National Home”—in Siberia SpecialReport

By John Gee

GOOGLE MAPS

function. A Yiddish newspaper, the Birobidzhaner Stern (“Star of Birobidzhan”), was founded— and still exists, but as a mainly Russian paper with some Yiddish content. (Yiddish was taught in Birobidzhan’s schools.) Stories of Jewish migrants engaging in work on the land and in factories were presented as part of Soviet Jews’ break with the past and emergence into a bold new socialist future. The imagery appears as a deliberate counter to that of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

The Jewish Autonomous Region never did attain a Jewish majority. The 1939 census probably reflects conditions at the peak of Jewish settlement: 17,695 Jews made up 16 percent of the population. Yet, once the area had been named and given a role in the Soviet Union’s nationality policy, it stuck, despite the subsequent decline of both the numbers and proportions of Jews in its population.

While Birobidzhan was almost certainly doomed to fail as an alternative Jewish homeland, its prospects were not helped by changes in Soviet policy. After 1935 the regime’s interest ebbed, and some local leaders fell victim to the purges of the late 1930s.

After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, it seemed advantageous to contrast positive images of the status of Jews under Soviet rule with their fate under Nazi Germany, and Birobidzhan was cited as evidence for the superiority of the Soviet system. Pamphlets and articles circulated by communist parties abroad gave glowing accounts of life in the Jewish Autonomous Region.

From 1947 until the death of Stalin in 1953, a strain of anti-Semitism in official policy, crystallized in the “Doctors’ Plot,” led to closure of institutions and loss of government support. (1947 was the same year in which the Soviet Union voted in favor of the partition of Palestine, and it had friendly ties with Israel until it aligned itself with the U.S. over the Korean War— one of a number of examples of a regime simultaneously implementing anti-Semitic policies while supporting Zionism.) The Jewish presence in the region gradually

n June, The New York Times reported

Ithat a Chinese company was considering

making a deal with Russian firms for iron ore to be extracted from a potential opencast site at Kimkan in Siberia. China is very interested in partnerships that will give it access to a wide range of Siberian resources.

Among the areas likely to feel the impact of increased Chinese spending will be one officially called the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (usually translated to English as “region”) and loosely termed Birobidzhan, after its main town. Kimkan is in this area. There are probably fewer than 2,500 Jews still living in the region, but the town of Birobidzhan has two functioning synagogues, and is home to the Jewish National University. The university teaches Hebrew for reasons of research and religion; local Jews speak Yiddish and Russian, Yiddish having been the main language of Jews across Eastern Europe before the Second World War. The collapse of the Soviet Union allowed freer communication with the outside world, and contacts with overseas Jewish organizations and communities have grown markedly in the past 20 years.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Southeast Asia, and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.

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The idea of establishing a territory where Soviet Jews would congregate was already under discussion in the mid-1920s.

From 1925 to 1927, some rural Jewish settlements were established in the Crimea, supposedly as the vanguard of a movement of hundreds of thousands. The Zionist leadership in Palestine, however, was alarmed at the prospect of a Jewish republic being established so close to areas where many of the Soviet Union’s three million Jews lived, and shocked by the enthusiastic response of Jewish workers internationally, at a time when migration to Palestine was at a low level. It therefore came as a relief when the Soviet leadership lost interest in promoting a Jewish national republic in the Crimea.

Instead, a Jewish region was initiated much further afield—in Siberia. Stalin was the driving force behind the new initiative, proposed in 1928. Most Soviet Jews had no desire to go there, however, regarding the area around Birobidzhan as a remote, isolated and backward region with nothing to commend it.

As a result, the Jewish Autonomous Region was not launched until 1934—and even then it was far from having a Jewish majority. Nevertheless, while it was a favored project, the Soviet authorities were prepared to commit resources to making it THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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declined. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s realization that foreign Jewish interest in the region could be to its advantage have made the past 20 years a period of increased inward investment and cultural development—although it hasn’t halted the decline of the region’s population, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. The 2002 census found only 2,327 Jews in a population of 190,915.

Birobidzhan was controversial from the start, and not only because of its inhospitable location. For those who considered Jews to be people linked by a religion rather than a national character, it seemed irrelevant. The Zionist movement had little to fear from it, and was much less troubled

by Birobidzhan than the earlier toying with a Crimean Jewish republic, which it saw as practical and popular. All the same, it disliked a project that was so at odds with its own goals and hoped for its early failure.

Now, nestled in a curve of the Amur river on the border with China, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast stands to gain economically from Chinese investment and spending. A bridge across the Amur will soon make trade and travel easier. The Jewish community that has remained in Birobidzhan stands to experience a prosperity that must have seemed unattainable for most of its history. ❑

Shahram Amiri…

Continued from page 22

“current and former officials in the United States and Europe.”

Warrick and Miller could not get CIA officials to discuss Amiri. Instead they quoted the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI) as saying that Amiri “has been associated with sensitive nuclear programs for at least a decade.”

NCRI is the political arm of Mujahideene-Khalq (MEK), the anti-regime Iranian terrorist organization which has been a conduit for Israeli intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program.

On June 8, David E. Sanger of The New York Times cited “foreign diplomats and some American officials” as sources in reporting that a series of intelligence briefings for members of the U.N. Security Council last spring amounted to “a tacit admission by the United States that it is gradually backing away” from the 2007 NIE. Sanger referred to “new evidence” that allegedly led analysts to “revise and in some cases reverse” that estimate’s conclusion that Iran was no longer working on a nuclear weapon.

Sanger cited “Western officials” as confirming that Amiri was providing some of the new information.

Three days later, The Washington Post ran another story quoting David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security, as saying that the intelligence briefings for Security Council members had included “information about nuclear weaponization” obtained from Amiri.

Albright said he had been briefed on the intelligence earlier that week, and the Post reported a “U.S. official” had confirmed Albright’s account.

Subsequently, ABC News reported that Amiri’s evidence had “helped to contradict” the 2007 NIE, and McClatchy Newspapers repeated Albright’s allegation and the conclusion that the new assessment had reversed the intelligence conclusion that Iran had ceased work related to weaponization.

In creating that false narrative, journalists have evidently been guided by personal convictions on the issue that are aligned with certain U.S., European and Israeli officials who have been pressuring the Barack Obama administration to reject the 2007 estimate.

For the Israelis and for some U.S. officials, reversing the conclusion that Iran is not actively pursuing weaponization is considered a precondition for maneuvering U.S. policy into a military confrontation with Iran. ❑

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twair_44-45_Southern California Chronicle 8/3/10 10:18 PM Page 44

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) Continues to Put Israel’s Interests First

By Pat and Samir Twair roving his allegiance to Israel, Rep.

PBrad Sherman (D-CA) stated during a

year’s Washington Report congressional “Hall of Shame” (see p. 24) went so far as to boast of passing up a chance to serve on the House Ways and Means Committee, which deals with funding for critical do-

Southern California Chronicle flotilla was carrying thugs who were intent on killing as many Israelis as possible.

The San Fernando Democrat is running for his eighth term, and since he’s a member, with fellow Democrats Henry Waxman, Howard Berman and Jane Harman, of Southern California’s pro-Israel congressional quartet, it looks like he’ll be a shoo-in.

STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR

June 4 press call organized by The Israel Project that all American citizens aboard the humanitarian aid flotilla to Gaza should be arrested and prosecuted for supporting Hamas.

In response, indignant outcries by humanitarian organizations were heard around the world. On June 10, a conAmbassador Ed Peck Retingent from CODEPINK calls Israeli Assault on called Sherman’s bluff and Gaza Flotilla showed up at his Capitol Hill office loudly pronouncing “When we saw those they were ready to be armasked, armed Israeli comrested (see August 2010 mandos invading our ship, Washington Report, p. 64). we knew they weren’t there On June 19, about 30 noisy to feed the pigeons,” exprotesters assembled outside plained Ambassador Edward Sherman’s 27th congressional Peck, who was aboard the district office in Sherman Greek passenger ship that Oaks brandishing signs readwas part of a six-vessel ing “Brad Sherman Is Loyal flotilla taking humanitarian to Israel Not Us” and “Huaid to Gaza. manitarian Aid is Not TerrorNo one was murdered ism.” As criticism of Sheraboard Peck’s ship, the man’s anti-flotilla stance filled Picketers protest outside Rep. Brad Sherman’s July 11 town hall meeting Sfendoni, but nine civilInternet sites, the Democratic at Reseda High School. ians—including one Americongressman sought support can—were killed and more from his Jewish constituents at a selective mestic issues, so that he could retain his than 50 wounded on the Mavi Marmara “town meeting” July 7 in Temple Ramat seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, when elite Israeli troops landed, firing, on where he can best protect Israel’s interests. the deck of the Turkish humanitarian aid Zion in Northridge.

Four days later, on July 11, Sherman met vessel May 31.

The July event clearly was not intended to discuss general concerns of his con- several hundred more of his constituents at The retired U.S. career diplomat was the stituents, but to enroll support for his pro- a town meeting at Reseda High School. In featured speaker June 19 at a Muslim PubIsrael policies. The session was not an- response to his statement that he voted for lic Affairs Council program launching a nanounced on Sherman’s Facebook page— the stimulus program to stop the economic tional campaign to counteract Israel’s probut an advertisement in the July 2 Jewish free fall, several people called out, “Stop paganda cover-up of its brutal military ocJournal promised that Israel’s deputy con- the war.” cupation of the Palestinian people.

Audience members selected at random in sul in Los Angeles would be there as his When he was asked to be one of the 700a lottery drawing stood at two microphones plus participants in the flotilla to deliver guest.

Hundreds of synagogue members in at- to voice their concerns about local issues. critically needed food, medicine and matetendance applauded Sherman when he Amazingly, question after question dealt rials to the blockaded Gazans, recalled the stressed his efforts to suppress criticism of with why Sherman supports the apartheid former U.S. chief of mission in Iraq during Israel on local university campuses such as state of Israel, why there hasn’t been an the Carter administration, he decided it University of California Irvine (see August open investigation of Israel’s bloody1967 was time to stop talking about the Israeli2010 Washington Report, p. 45). A handful attack on the USS Liberty, and why he is for Palestinian impasse and see if delivering of brave dissenters who tried to question Israel’s draconian boycott of Gaza. aid would help.

Sherman replied to the rowdy crowd Sherman on his flotilla statements were vo“I was in Gaza to monitor the 2006 electhat Gazans are not going hungry—in fact, tions—they were honest—but the U.S. ciferously booed.

Incredibly, Sherman, a member of this he claimed, they’re in better health than government said the wrong party [Hamas] many Americans. He justified Israel’s Jews- was elected,” he continued.

Peck’s ship sailed from Greece nearly one Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journal- only highways as a means to stop terrorism, and alleged that one ship in the Gaza week before it met up with five other aid ists based in Los Angeles.

44

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

twair_44-45_Southern California Chronicle 8/3/10 10:19 PM Page 45

STAFF PHOTOS S. TWAIR

host families during the recuperation vessels May 30. Thereafter the period. flotilla was harassed and then surIf there were such a thing as a lotrounded by an Israeli fleet of four tery for host families, one could say battleships, three helicopters, two Abdallah won the jackpot on Feb. 18, submarines and 30 Zodiac speedwhen he entered the Yorba Linda boats. home of George and Joan Abuhamad Among the 53 other passengers on and their children, Sami, 11, Angel, the Sfendoni, commandeered by the 8, Cierra, 4, and Alison, 17. There’s Israelis in international waters, was also a sheep dog, a cat, a turtle and a Joe Meadors, a survivor of Israel’s rabbit. Abdallah was responsible for 1967 attack (also in international wafeeding the rabbit and cleaning its ters) on the USS Liberty. More than cage.

40 years later, there still has been no Throughout his stay, Abdallah reofficial investigation of this deliberceived tutoring twice a week from a ate assault resulting in the deaths of visiting teacher from the Placen34 Americans, but Liberty survivors tia/Yorba Linda School District. His stand by the motto: “Not one step host mom, a registered nurse, back.” arranged for three gratis treatments “There has been so much misinfrom the family dentist for Abdallah, formation over the years that it who never had been to a dentist. won’t be easy to raise awareness in For three-and-a-half years, AbdalAmericans of what’s going on,” Peck lah had no choice but to hop or rely stated. “Americans only hear about on crutches to be mobile. He could the Judeo-Christian tradition, and only watch other boys play soccer in not the three Abrahamic faiths: JuGaza or watch Sami and his friends daism, Christianity and Islam. Jesus play baseball in Yorba Linda. Someis mentioned multiple times in the times tears rolled down his cheeks as Qur’an but, of course, not once in he sat alone watching the Abuhamad the Torah.” youngsters climb a ladder to their tree Leena Barakat discussed the Boyhouse. cott, Divestment and Sanctions All that ended the third week in (BDS) movement. She alerted the auMay when, after two adjustments dience never to buy a product were made on the fit of his proswhich has 729 as the first three thetic foot, Abdallah returned from numbers above the bar code. “BeChildren’s Hospital determined to do ware,” she said, “729 means the item everything 11-year-old boys do. was made in an illegal Israeli settleWithin days, he was riding a biment, even if the label says it comes cycle, playing baseball and climbing from Jordan.” to the tree house. On June 20—FaThe audience gave a standing ovather’s Day—George and Joan reluction to musician/composer Rich tantly drove Abdallah to the L.A. InSiegel, who sang in flawless Arabic as well as performing his composi- TOP: Ambassador Ed Peck (l) and Leena Barakat shared ternational Airport. Everyone tion, “In Palestine.” He grew up in a the podium at MPAC’s June 19 program. ABOVE: Enjoy- cried—but then had to contend Zionist family, the artist said, but ing a California barbecue are (l-r) Abdallah al-Athamna with the red tape of security x-raying the Palestinian boy’s prosthetic when he investigated facts on the 11, and George and Sami Abuhamad. foot to make sure no terrorist device history of Israel/Palestine, he was shocked to discover he’d been lied to all his whose foot was severed from his right leg was hidden inside it.

Lufthansa kindly allowed Abdallah’s exlife. “In Palestine” can be heard at <www. and intestines spilling from a gaping vimeo.com/6630724>. wound in his side—to a taxi to transport cess baggage with no charge. The boy arthem across the Rafah border to medical rived in the U.S. with only an overnight Thanks to PCRF, Abdallah is Walking valise—but was returning with three large care in Cairo.

Again After two unsuccessful surgeries on Ab- suitcases filled with clothing, toys and Abdallah al-Athamna, 11, has experienced dallah’s leg stump, the Palestinian Chil- gifts for his family. He’ll be back at least more tragedy, pain and surgical procedures dren’s Relief Fund (PCRF) arranged for his two more times to have new prostheses fitthan most Americans five times his age. His travel to Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles ted until he stops growing.

“We gained a second son and we’ll mother, two sisters and 15 members of his for double surgeries that capped the tibia always remain in touch,” vowed Joan, extended family were killed when an Is- and fibula bones.

PCRF annually brings up to 20 young vic- while husband George says he’s talked to raeli tank shelled his home in Beit Hanoun, Gaza in November 2006 (see July 2010 tims of violence in Iraq, Lebanon and Pales- Abdallah’s father numerous times since tine to the U.S. for medical care. Its volun- the boy safely returned to Gaza via the Washington Report, p. 41).

His frantic father carried Abdallah— teers serve as translators in hospitals and as Rafah crossing. ❑ SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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adas_46-47_New York City and Tri-State News 8/4/10 9:09 PM Page 46

The True Story of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla

By Jane Adas

New York City and Tri-StateNews

STAFF PHOTO J. ADAS

and she could see the faces of very young, frightened me n , “ j u s t l i ke American soldiers in Iraq.” Before boarding, the Israelis lobbed stun grenades at the boats, producing huge flashes and smoke designed, Wright explained, to disorient. Some male passengers on deck tried with pipes and broom handles to prevent Israeli commandos Gaza Freedom Flotilla organizer Adam Shapiro and survivor Col. rappelling out of Ann Wright. helicopters from taking over the t two New York City events in June, Mavi Marmara, Wright acknowledged, Gaza Freedom Flotilla participants de- but added that, after five minutes, the scribed what happened in international ship’s captain and the director of the Turkwaters on May 31, when Israel commandos ish aid organization IHH (Foundation for attacked their ships bringing humanitarian Humanitarian Relief) ordered them to stop. aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. Retired U.S. This, she noted, was not on the brief video Army Col. Ann Wright had just returned clip that Israel released to the world.

Meanwhile Israeli soldiers quickly subfrom Istanbul—with only her passport and the clothes she was wearing—when dued the other five ships, confined the she spoke in Manhattan June 9 to an over- passengers in small cabins, and confiscated flow crowd who had come on two days’ all electronic devices—none of which have notice. Wright was on the American- been returned, Wright complained, inflagged ship Challenger II, which had left cluding the expensive equipment of the Crete with Challenger I. In what did not more than 60 journalists aboard the flotilla. seem to be a strange coincidence, Wright The IDF soldiers took the hijacked ships’ observed, within 12 hours both ships de- passengers to specially prepared tents in veloped steering problems and had to re- Ashdod where the flotilla volunteers were turn to Crete for repairs. The Challenger processed and charged with entering Israel passengers were then offloaded onto the illegally, then transferred them to a prison Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara. Twelve in Beersheba so new that the detainees had hours before the Israeli attack, Wright ex- to “sweep out the construction dust.” One changed places with some European mem- female guard, Wright recalled, answered bers of Parliament who wanted to be on every question with one word—“Shalit,” the bigger ship. So it was that Wright was for the Israeli tank soldier captured four on Challenger I, which had rejoined the years ago and still held in Gaza. After three flotilla, some 150 meters behind the Mavi days, the Turkish government sent three Marmara and 70 miles offshore when the charter planes to take the flotilla volunteers from Ben-Gurion airport to Istanbul. pre-dawn attack began.

For more than an hour, Israeli Zodiac Wright recognized the controversial nature speedboats trailed the flotilla, Wright said, of the flotilla’s mission: to defy the Israeli and U.S. governments’ policy of holding a Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the population hostage.

New York City metropolitan area.

Free Gaza organizer Adam Shapiro

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agreed that the objective of the flotilla was not only to deliver humanitarian aid, but also was a political act to challenge the political blockade and open Gaza to the world. Palestinians in Gaza are not starving, he added, because they have figured out themselves how to get around the embargo via the tunnels into Egypt. Instead, he said, “Gazans need freedom more than wheelchairs, medicine and food.” Shapiro pointed out that the Free Gaza Movement’s eight previous boats were largely ignored, whether they made it through to Gaza or not. The lesson this time, he concluded, is that people pay attention when violence is used: we are now seeing a “global intifada,” triggered by “outrage and disgust with Israeli brutality against Palestinians and now against foreigners.” Shapiro announced that Free Gaza intends to send another ship before the end of summer. A member of the audience suggested it be named The Audacity of Hope, after the book by President Barack Obama.

Organizers, led by al-Awda-NY, of a June 17 event at Brooklyn’s House of the Lord Church learned at literally the last moment that their featured speaker, former Turkish MP and IHH activist Ahmet Faruk Unsal, was not present. At a poorly attended June 14 rally in Times Square held at the behest of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Democratic members of Congress from New York had demanded that the State Department investigate the visa applications of Gaza Flotilla activists for ties to terrorism. The flotilla event organizers were not too worried, however, because a State Department spokesman already had announced that IHH is not designated a “foreign terrorist organization,” and Unsal has a valid U.S. visa that he already had used twice. They therefore were shocked to learn that U.S. authorities had revoked Unsal’s visa and prevented him from boarding his plane in Turkey.

In his welcoming remarks, the Reverend Herbert Daughtry told of many hostile calls demanding that the church cancel the event.

To each he replied, “I am for the oppressed, not the oppressors. If the situation were reversed, I would open the door to Israelis.”

The two speakers who were able to appear both had been passengers on the Mavi Marmara. Kevin Ovenden, a Viva SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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Palestina organizer, witnessed two male passengers shot from above on either side of him when there were no Israeli commandos in the area. He predicted that Israel’s internal investigation of such incidents would be a huge whitewash that will not work, “because when whitewash is put on too thickly, it peels off.” Ovenden suggested that while Israelis kill Palestinians daily to no very great outrage, the murders on the Mavi Marmara might mark a turning point, just as the 1964 killing in Mississippi of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney transformed the American civil rights movement. As the “outrageous enforced absence of our friend from Turkey” demonstrates, Ovenden stated, ”Israel is attempting to terrorize Palestinians and those who support them. But we are not afraid.” The way forward, he concluded, is more collective action to squeeze Israel and challenge its lies.

Filmmaker Iara Lee then showed the incredible 62 minutes of uncut footage she was able to smuggle out, which she also has made available on YouTube: “Israel’s Attack on the Mavi Marmara//raw footage.”

Jewish Perspectives on BDS

tinian Authority unable to take action.

Therefore, in 2005 Palestinian civil society inaugurated the global BDS campaign with three demands: end Israel’s military occupation; equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel; and the right of return for refugees. The campaign is rights-based, Mermelstein emphasized, committed to opposing all racism—including against Jews—and takes no position on the one- or two-state solution. While recognizing that many Jews feel fear when Palestinians demand justice, she added that Jews’ need for a safe space should not require an antidemocratic, separatist nation that takes away security for other people.

Arguing against BDS were J Street board member Kathleen Peratis and J.J. Goldberg, senior columnist for the Jewish weekly Forward. Both support a democratic Jewish-majority state of Israel and oppose the Palestinian right of return. Peratis applauded BDS for being nonviolent, but warned that its real aim is to punish Israel for existing as a Jewish state. She characterized the academic and cultural boycotts as blacklists that delegitimize and demoralize the left in Israel and deprive the world of Israeli talent. As an alternative, she suggested Americans lobby our own government by, for example, addressing the issue of tax-exempt U.S. dollars sup-

STAFF PHOTO J. ADAS

A respectful dialogue between opposing views on “Jewish Perspective on the Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) Campaign” took place in Manhattan on June 15. The venue was a Lutheran church, because synagogues and Jewish community centers contacted refused to host the event. Moderator Esther Kaplan, editor of the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, established that all the panelists support Israel ending the occupation, observing international law, and recognizing Pales- BDS activists Hannah Mermelstein and Yonatan Shapira. tinians’ right to self-determination. The disagreement, she explained, is whether BDS is an porting settlement development.

Goldberg claimed that because the coleffective tactic.

Hannah Mermelstein of Adalah-NY de- lapse of the peace process and the second scribed the genesis of the campaign. In intifada have convinced Israelis they are not 2004 the International Court of Justice is- safe, they won’t be convinced by Palestinisued an advisory opinion that Israel’s sep- ans saying “lots of us are not violent.” Asaration barrier and its supporting appara- serting that sanctions generally don’t work, tus are illegal and should be dismantled, he described South Africa as an exception with compensation paid to affected parties. because the ruling regime was a minority, For a year, she noted, nothing happened— whereas Jews are a strong majority in Israel. the U.N. had no means of enforcement, and Mermelstein countered that this was only governments were unwilling and the Pales- made possible through ethnic cleansing.

Israeli refusenik and former Air Force helicopter pilot Yonatan Shapira joked that he needed to talk fast “before we all are criminals,” because the Knesset was just then in the process of passing a law criminalizing BDS actions. Wondering why American Jews who enjoy the separation of church and state want Israelis to live in a state defined by religion, he said that in his opinion this is hypocritical, because “a Jewish state cannot be democratic.” Even if the occupation were ended, Shapira continued, Israel would still be an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than non-Jews.

The helicopter pilots who dropped the commandos onto the Mavi Marmara were from Shapira’s squadron, he said, and he had even trained some of them. Nevertheless, he said, “These acts of my friends were criminal, a war crime.” His squadron mates, who represent the so-called Israeli left, “vote Meretz, then go bomb Gaza,” Shapira said. The real left in Israel, he maintained, supports the Boycott From Within (see <www.boycottIsrael.info>).

Israel’s blockade of Gaza is an act of violence, he explained, therefore “we are boycotting the boycotter.” As for the cultural boycott, Shapira said the Israeli public has slept through everything, only waking up when the Pixies and Elvis Costello refuse to perform in Israel.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Shapira said that in all his years as a “good Zionist pilot,” then as the author of the 2003 Pilots’ Letter publicly refusing to fly missions over Palestinian territories, and as a co-founder in 2005 of Combatants for Peace, he felt he was a leader. The huge difference with the BDS campaign, he concluded, is that Palestinians are the leaders, and he is proud to be a follower. “This is not about us, the Jews,” he said. “Palestinians are the oppressed, and will determine how to liberate themselves.” ❑ 47

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Grandmothers Against the War Rally in San Francisco’s Union Square

STAFF PHOTOS PHIL PASQUINI

By Elaine Pasquini

Northern California Chronicle sulate in San Francisco’s financial district to protest Netanyahu’s visit. Originally scheduled for June 1, the White House meeting was postponed following the previous day’s brutal assault by Israeli commandos on six unarmed civilian aid vessels sailing to Gaza from Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus.

Referring to a New York Times article on U.S. tax-exempt donations funding illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Richard Becker, author of Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire (see April 2010 Washington Report, p.

32), said: “That’s one reason we’re here today—to denounce Obama’s meeting with Netanyahu and demand the cessation of all U.S. aid to

ABOVE: Grandmothers Against the War hold their banner in San Francisco’s Union Square to call attention to the war in Afghanistan. RIGHT: Eyad Kishawi speaks outside the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco July 6. BELOW RIGHT: Other protesters outside the Israeli Consulate. he Berkeley-based Grandmothers

TAgainst the War took their anti-war

message to downtown San Francisco on June 17. Standing on the corner of Union Square at Powell and Geary during the busy lunch hour, about a dozen members handed out some 300 leaflets and talked to passersby about why the U.S. should end its almost nine-year war in Afghanistan and bring the troops home now.

“We came to San Francisco to reach a larger number of people and also tourists,” Marjorie Lasky told the Washington Report. “We fear that escalating the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is as disastrous as has been the U.S. military presence in Iraq.”

Their flyers pointed out that, since 2001, California residents alone have spent $37.9 billion on the Afghanistan war. The same amount of money would have provided for 491,969 elementary school teachers, 4,534,351 scholarships for university stuElaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

48

dents for one year, or 405,844 law enforcement officers. And, as of Aug. 1, according to <www.ica sualties.org>, 1,216 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan since the war began.

Calling their action a “reach out” to remind people that there is still a war going on, and that taxpayer money for the war would be better spent at home, the grandmothers plan to be at the same location every Thursday at noon for the foreseeable future. For more information, visit <http:// www.gawba.org>.

Activists Rally to End the Israeli Siege Of Gaza On July 6—the day President Barack Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the White House Oval Office—some 250 human rights defenders gathered outside the Israeli ConTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

pasquini_48-49_Northern California Chronicle 8/4/10 9:13 PM Page 49

Israel.â&#x20AC;? The Jewish stateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aidâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;receives about $15 million each day from American taxpayers.

Palestinian-American Eyad Kishawi reminded the crowd of the history-making blockade of an Israeli ship at the Port of Oakland on June 20, 2010. Blocking four entrances to the Stevedore Services of America terminal at the Port of Oakland, some 800 protesters formed a picket line, which members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10, refused to cross. The blockade prevented a Zim Israel Navigation Company ship from unloading cargo for 24 hours.

Since Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s May 31 attack on the civilian aid flotilla headed to Gaza, Northern California activists have initiated a myriad of protest actions, including the appearance of a series of posters condemning the attack and Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ongoing blockade of Gaza and its illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem which were posted at public bus stops and other locations throughout San Francisco (see August 2010 Washington Report, p. 65). â&#x20AC;&#x153;700 Kidnapped, 9 Murdered, and Israel says it is the victim. Sound familiar? Same story since 1948,â&#x20AC;? reads the text below a huge fist descending on a passenger ship. The poster calls for ending the blockade of Gaza and holding Israel accountable.

carried out by Israel, including the occupation of the Palestinian territories, the denial of human and civil rights to Palestinians, and the blockade on Gaza,â&#x20AC;? CS4AF asserted. â&#x20AC;&#x153;No democratic state or community can function fully under the conditions of censorship, and especially censorship that

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California Scholars Urge Knesset to Reject Anti-Free Speech Bill In a statement issued July 21, California Scholars for Academic Freedom (CS4AF) urged Israeli Knesset members to reject a recent bill calling for fines to be imposed on Israeli citizens who initiate or incite boycotts against the Jewish state. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This measure is fundamentally contrary to democracy and inconsistent with freedom of speech and dissent,â&#x20AC;? stated CS4AF, which takes no collective position on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Devoted to the defense of academic freedomâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;particularly, but not exclusively, with regard to discussion of Middle East affairsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the organization of scholars believes the passage of such a measure would â&#x20AC;&#x153;represent an infringement of the rights of free speech and gravely impact the rights of academics in particular to express dissent, to advocate nonviolent political practices, and even to engage in debate.â&#x20AC;?

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Doubts Growing About Whether Israel Can Simultaneously Be Jewish and Democratic Israel andJudaism

By Allan C. Brownfeld

AFP PHOTO/MENAHEM KAHANA

Sand of Tel Aviv University, author of the widely discussed book The Invention of the Jewish People (available from the AET Book Club): “The peculiar character of Israel’s supra-identity, whose primeval code was inherent in Zionism, from the start, is what makes it doubtful that a ‘Jewish’ state can also be democratic. The Jewish nationalism that dominates Israeli society is not an open, inclusive identity that invites others to become part of it, or to coexist with it on the basis of equality and in symbiosis. On the contrary, it explicitly and culturally segregates the majority from the minority, and repeatedly states that the state belongs only to the majority... moreover, it promises eternal proprietary rights to an even greater human mass that does not choose to live in it.”

What, then, can such a state be called? Sand calls it an “ethA Palestinian woman (r) holding her child and national flag, stands in front of her home in the East nocracy” and states that, more Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah a year after she and her family were evicted by the Jewish set- than this, “it is a Jewish ethtlers exiting her house, Aug. 2, 2010. nocracy with liberal features—that is, a state whose An early figure in this protest against main purpose is to serve not a civil-egalisraeli leaders frequently refer to their state as one which is both “Jewish” and Jewish exclusivity was the writer and tarian demos but a biological-religious eth“democratic.” In the eyes of more and translator Anton Shammas. A bilingual in- nos that is wholly fictitious historically, more observers, however, this may be a tellectual and author of the novel but dynamic, exclusive, and discriminaArabesque, which deals with his divided tory in its political manifestation. Such a contradiction in terms.

A whole generation of Palestinian intel- national identity, he issued a challenge to state, for all its liberalism and pluralism, is lectuals has pointed out that the state of Is- Israeli society: “Let us all be multicultural committed to isolating its chosen ethnos rael into which they were born, in which Israelis, and create a common national through ideological, pedagogical and legthey constitute 20 percent of the popula- identity that will not erase our identities of islative means, not only from those of its tion—compared to the 13 percent of U.S. origin but aim for an Israeli symbiosis be- own citizens who are not classified as Jews, not only from the Israeli-born children of citizens who are African American—and tween its Jewish and Arab citizens.”

But such an idea found little support foreign workers, but from the rest of huof which they formally are full citizens, was not really their state but belonged to a among Israeli Jews, even those on the manity.”

In 1990 sociologist and Haifa University different people, Europeans, most of whom Zionist left. A.B. Yehoshua, one of Israel’s leading writers, rejected the proposal, de- Prof. Sammy Smooha borrowed the term remained abroad. claring that “Israel must remain the state of “ethnic democracy” from Juan Jose Linz, Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated colum- the dispersed Jewish people, and must not a political sociologist at Yale University, nist and associate editor of the Lincoln Re- become the state of all its citizens. The Law and applied it to Israel. Over the years, Smooha developed and perfected an analyview, a journal published by the Lincoln In- of Return is the moral basis of Zionism.”

Today many thoughtful Jewish voices— sis that placed Israel very low in the hierstitute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the in Israel and elsewhere—are challenging archy of democratic governments. ComparAmerican Council for Judaism. this exclusivist idea. Declares Prof. Shlomo ing it with liberal, republican, consocia-

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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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tional and multicultural democracies, he concluded that Israel did not fit into any of these categories. Instead, along with states like Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia, it could be classified as an “incomplete” or “lowgrade democracy.”

Liberal democracy traditionally represents the whole society that exists within a country’s boundaries, with complete equality between all citizens, irrespective of their origins or cultural affiliations. In Smooha’s view, Israel cannot be included in the above categories. While a kind of democracy does exist within the pre-l967 boundaries, the absence of basic civil and political equality sets it apart from Western democracies.

As Professor Sand points out: “Britain is the state of all its citizens—English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Muslims who immigrated and became citizens, even Orthodox Jews who acknowledge only the divine sovereign. In the eyes of the law, they are all Britons, and the kingdom belongs to all its citizens. Were England to declare that Britain is the state of English, as Israel is of the Jews, then before the children of Pakistani immigrants began to protest, the Scots and the Welsh would break up the United Kingdom. Furthermore, Britain is a multicultural country, and its principal minorities have long enjoyed considerable autonomy.”

For many younger American Jews, the very idea of a state calling itself “Jewish” is antithetical. Writing in the June 18 Forward, Max Strasser, a freelance journalist now living in Cairo, Egypt, notes that, “Liberal young American Jews are growing increasingly distant from Israel....I have a strong Jewish identity...I attend services (albeit sporadically), fast on Yom Kippur and keep kosher for Passover. I fully intend to raise my children Jewish.

Yet...identification with the state of Israel is not an important part of my identity, and I feel comfortable criticizing Israel when I see its injustices.”

Beyond this, continues Strasser, “...there’s something else, and I’m afraid this is going to be a hard pill for the older generation to swallow: the idea of a state that is officially defined as ‘Jewish’ is in conflict with the worldviews of many in my generation. Americans my age are a globalized group...Most college students I know spent at least a semester studying abroad. The Internet allows us to access global perspectives...The public schools I attended celebrated diversity. ‘All people are equal’ was drilled into our heads...A state that is predicated on ethnic nationalSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

ism, a state that privileges one group of citizens over another because of ethnic identity, as Israel does through its policies on housing, immigration and a number of other issues, is not a state that will be wholeheartedly embraced by young American Jews like me.”

A study by social scientists Ari Kelman and Steven M. Cohen found that, among American Jews, each new generation is more alienated from Israel than the one before it. Among those born after 1980, only 54 percent feel “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state.” The reason, Cohen later explained, is an aversion to “hard group boundaries” and to the notion “that there is a distinction between Jews and everybody else.”

A Growing Concern Even among strong supporters of Israel, the fact that Arab citizens are not treated equally is evincing growing concern. Brandeis University Prof. Jonathan Sarna, writing in the June 11-17 edition of The International Jerusalem Post, noted that, “I think we will say that it was deeply unfortunate that although the Arabs were made citizens of Jerusalem in 1967, Israel did not truly equalize the Arab and Jewish communities, giving them equal city services, equal educational benefits and so forth...Once Jerusalem became part of Israel, all its citizens should have been treated alike, and to the extent that they weren’t, I can understand the unhappiness of the Jerusalem Arabs.”

There can be little doubt that Arabs are second-class citizens in Israel’s “Jewish” and “democratic” society. The average wage of Arabs in Israel is about one-third that of their Jewish counterparts. Arabs constitute 20 percent of the population, but only 8 percent of the labor force. The Education Ministry allocates 40 percent less to Arab pupils than to Jewish students.

Writing in the June 7 Jerusalem Report, prominent Israeli Arab broadcaster and journalist Zuheir Bahalul noted that “Discriminatory laws are being enacted in this Knesset with such alarming alacrity that Arabs in Israel are beginning to feel that the Knesset’s sole purpose, as far as they are concerned, is to deprive them further of their remaining civil rights...One of the proposed laws even tries to suppress their historical narrative, threatening to punish organizations which mark Israel’s day of independence as their day of catastrophe, or Nakba.”

In Bahalul’s view, “The inherently Jewish character of the state perpetuates a reality in which the native Arab inhabitants have become strangers in their own country, feelTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ing threatened by the specter of mass expulsion or transfer of some of their villages to a future Palestinian state. To them, their very existence as a distinct national minority in Israel seems to be under threat...Most Arabs in Israel are law-abiding citizens...But when it comes to feelings, there is a seething lack of identification with the state, coupled with a sense of profound alienation and separateness...As the Israeli writer Sayid Kashua asks: How can Israeli Arabs sing Hatikvah (Israel’s national anthem) when it talks about the ‘Jewish soul’?”

“No minority can be expected to be loyal to its country when its people are treated as second class citizens,” declared Dalya Levy, executive director of ARZENU, the umbrella organization for Reform and Progressive Zionists, in the Summer 2010 issue of Reform Judaism. “I find it remarkable that so many Israeli Arabs put up with the status quo. My fear is that their patience will run out; my hope is that we will recognize what great citizens they are and give them more opportunities to be and feel equal.”

According to Haifa University’s recent annual “Index of Arab-Jewish Relations,” the number of Arab citizens of Israel who believe that Israel is a democracy for them “has fallen from 63.l percent to 50.5 percent.” It also found that only 66.9 percent of Jewish Israelis support preserving the right of Arab citizens to vote.

“This is, for us, the worst Knesset since the establishment of the state of Israel,” said Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa Center, one of many Israeli nongovernmental organizations that advocate for Israeli Arabs. “Twenty-three laws have been submitted in one year by Knesset members that further the discrimination against our community.” ❑

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Journal of Palestine Studies . . . . . . 49 Kinder USA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Pro Bono Attorney Wanted . . . . . . 53 Radio Baladi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 United Palestinian Appeal (UPA) . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover 51

activisms_52-68_Sept/Oct 2010 Activisms 8/3/10 6:53 PM Page 52

pers, magazines and Internet sites. Founder and president of Whetstone Productions, a New Jersey-based production and consultADC Chicago Hosts Journalist Anisa ing company, Mehdi is also adjunct proMehdi fessor of communications at Seton Hall Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) University.

“My father was very active in the Chicago was proud to host a July 20 membership night meeting and dinner at the 1960s,” she recalled. “He would often Bawadi restaurant in Bridgeview, IL with bring us to protest the actions of the govAnisa Mehdi, a daughter of the late Iraqi- ernment of Israel in New York, and we American journalist Dr. M.T. Mehdi, her would work with him handing out flyers sisters Laila and Janan, and their mother, and urging Americans to understand the real issues regarding Palestine,” Mehdi told Beverlee.

The event, featuring Mehdi, an Emmy the crowd.

Mehdi related how she, her sisters, Award-winning journalist specializing in religion and the arts, drew many new ADC mother and father were harassed because members. Mehdi had just returned from a of their activism. M.T. Mehdi produced 2009-2010 Fulbright Scholarship in Jor- the popular English-language ACTION dan, where she worked training TV news Newspaper, which was distributed nationand documentary filmmakers in advanced ally throughout the American-Arab comstorytelling techniques and styles. She also munity. His daughter recalled the family worked with Jordan Radio & Television, being ostracized and even attacked many the Royal Film Commission, and the Jordan times because of their outspoken support of the Palestinian cause.

Media Institute.

“It was frightening,” she said. “There Mehdi, artistic director of “Documentary Voices: Pulling Focus,” Dubai 2008 were times we had to sleep in a hotel be<www.documentaryvoices.com>, is also cause of the threats....We faced the same media consultant to the Abraham Path Ini- kind of intimidation at school and in the tiative <www.abrahampath.org>. For neighborhood where we lived. It was a difmore than 20 years she has reported, writ- ficult time period. We’d sometimes be the ten, directed and produced television news only people protesting, and then there and documentary programs for major would be a hafli [party] and we would see American media outlets, including Na- all these American Arabs and wonder, tional Geographic, PBS, ABC News, and where were they?”

Hatem Galal, ADC Chicago president, CBS. Her commentaries have been heard on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and she said that many of today’s generation of has written perspective pieces for newspa- American Arabs have forgotten how difficult it was back in the 1960s to advocate for the rights of Palestinians. “It was a much smaller community,” he said, “but they were often more unified and focused on issues.”

M.T. Mehdi was one of the first real role models for those in the Arab community who aspired to pursue mainstream journalism as careers, attendees said.

His informative ACTION Newspaper was one of the few publications available in the 1970s. In those days ac(L-r) Anam alJabali, Janan Mehdi, student journalist Leena tivists working for the Saleh, Laila Mehdi, Beverlee Mehdi, Anisa Mehdi, Universal rights of Palestinians School Dean Jehad Matariyeh, Chicago ADC President Hatem were targeted by the Galal, Ray Hanania, Al Mustaqbal Newspaper publisher Man- government and were sour Tadros, Saffiya Shillo and George Mohamed. the subjects of FBI rePHOTO COURTESY ADC CHICAGO

Arab-American Activism

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ports and investigations. Some reports cited receipt of ACTION Newspaper as a reason why the investigations were originally initiated.

The Mehdis, along with the National Arab American Journalists Association, host the annual Dr. M.T. Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award competition [the Washington Report won the first award in 1999].

For more information on the ADC Chicago event, visit the chapter’s Web site at <www.ADCChicago.com>.

—Ray Hanania, ADC national board member

Muslim-American Activism Dr. Akbar Ahmed Discusses His Research on Muslim Americans After traveling to 75 cities and over 100 mosques interviewing Muslim Americans, Dr. Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, spoke at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC on June 23 about his research and the importance of cultural understanding.

Ahmed’s new book, Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam, which is based on his research, addresses three levels of issues.

The first, explained Ahmed, is “straightforward ethnography.” The second level addresses theoretical questions, such as how Muslim Americans assimilate. The third level, he said, deals with how “problems over there [in Islamic countries] affect us over here.”

How the United States reacts to the Muslim-American community is “a test for America,” said Ahmed, challenging “the core notions of the very dignity of the American citizen.”

Ahmed and his team received much positive feedback during their research. Many Muslims, especially those interviewed in Utah, said that “for us, this is the best place to be living.” They found that Utah’s Mormons reached out to the Muslim community there, heightening these Muslim Americans’ experience of assimilation.

“What was discouraging,” said Ahmed, “was that there were just too many stories,” adding that possible sources of homegrown terrorism include the bullying and discrimination that young Muslim Americans face.

In response to an audience member’s question as to why the discrimination faced by other ethnic and religious groups does not result in terrorism, Ahmed pointed to the histories of other immigrant groups as compared to that of Muslim Americans. Most Muslims are fairly recent immigrants who SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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women’s progress in the Muslim world in a two-panel conference on ‘’Islamic Feminism and Beyond: The New Frontier.” In a panel moderated by Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, Amaney Jamal, Nayereh Tohidi and Lilia Labidi spoke on citizenship, gender, and representation, addressing the historic as well as current situation of women’s rights in Iran and the Arab world in general, and Tunisia in particular.

According to Jamal, a particular point of regional concern was the lack of political decision making, witnessed in its lowest percentage of women in parliament (9.5 percent) of all the world’s regions. She cited Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa’s suggestion that women’s status in the Arab world will improve only when they hold important decision-making positions. Similarly, Tohidi noted the important link between politics and women’s rights, arguing that the latter is “connected to a patriarchal power game rather than the [Islamic] religion.”

Personal status codes are important not merely in defining women in relation to men, Jamal said, but represent the biggest challenge to gender equality in the region.

Labidi elaborated by describing how reforms and additions to the personal status code have improved women’s conditions in Tunisia. She also touched upon the social effects of the region’s demographic shift— how women, unable to get married as rising prices and foreign opportunities drive potential husbands away, are constructing new, religiously devout roles for themselves in order to become legitimate members of society, aside from their established roles as wives and mothers.

The panelists agreed upon the necessity

Dr. Akbar Ahmed, author of Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam. have slipped into America’s middle class, often unnoticed by the general public.

After 9/11, according to Ahmed, an onslaught of negative stereotypes and misconceptions flooded Americans’ minds, causing an abrupt, unparalleled surge of hostility.

While on the subject of the benefits of cultural awareness, Ahmed addressed the mistakes the United States has made in Afghanistan due to a lack of understanding of the region, saying, “We cannot win the game if we do not understand that game.”

Describing recently resigned Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as being “one finger in the dike,” Ahmed opined that had McChrystal been at the forefront at the beginning of the war, the conflict would not have been prolonged. “We are literally pumping money into a huge black hole,” he said, arguing that instead the United States should have focused on creating strong judicial and civil service systems, with the police forces and army acting as support, rather than the other way around.

Withdrawing troops at this point, in Ahmed’s view, will not contribute to a solution. “All the Taliban has to do is wait it out,” he explained. Organizations in countries such as Afghanistan are accustomed to biding their time during the invasions of imperial powers, he noted, until these powers eventually leave.

—Karina Kainth

of working within the system; the strategy of refusing to deal with Islam when promoting women’s rights; and that greater foreign influence could be detrimental instead of helpful. As an example, Jamal argued, “the number of U.S. troops in any given country is directly correlated with the regression in women’s rights.” Tohidi also warned that calling for women’s rights without resolving regional tensions—such as the Israeli occupation of Palestine and other issues such as poverty—is counterproductive. One has to start at the grassroots, “deal with people on their terms,” and think about “new ways to engage religious society,” Jamal summarized.

In the second panel, moderated by Zainab Al-Suwaij, Binnaz Toprak, Souad Eddouada and Margot Badran discussed the concepts of equality, family and society as they relate to women’s rights. According to Badran, there are many lessons to be drawn—irrespective of gender, and across religious affiliations— from Egyptian women’s early struggle for rights, when Muslims and nonMuslims, religious and secular, worked together for the same cause. She criticized contemporary Islamic feminist movements for being exclusivist, driven only by Muslims, and called for more clarity in defining what constitutes a family, considering the region’s new reality.

Explaining how the quest for women’s rights can gain legitimacy in Middle Eastern societies through religious discourse (and how it is delegitimized by its secular equivalent), Eddouada used Morocco’s 2004 reforms of its family code as an example. In linking the legal status of men and women “to the religious foundation of political power,” the new family code was able to gain acceptance among religious forces. Un-

(ABOVE, L-R) Amaney Jamal, Haleh Esfandiari, Nayereh Tohidi and Lilia Labidi; (BELOW, L-R) Binnaz Toprak, Zainab Al-Suwaij, Souad Eddouada and Margot Badran.

A majority female audience gathered June 15 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC to hear distinguished local and international scholars discuss Islamic feminism and

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Women’s Rights in the Muslim World: Achievements and Challenges

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fortunately, she said, new and well-meaning laws have not benefitted all Moroccan women, as many of them remain ignorant about their new rights.

Toprak began her remarks by thanking the few men attending the conference, noting that “men are not usually interested in women’s issues”—which she found “strange,” as they affect all. She went on to cite points of progress and discuss the revised and new laws promoting women’s status in Turkey, stressing the importance of secular women’s NGOs in gaining these rights. Describing the extent to which the changes have been accepted by the people, she assured the audience that, despite “creeping conservatism,” such gains are difficult to rescind.

—Imaan Ali

Human Rights Isobel Coleman on Women’s Rights In Mideast’s Major Theocracies

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Isobel Coleman, author of Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East, spoke July 20 at the Women’s National Democratic Club in Washington, DC about a new movement comprising feminists who “are looking at the Qur’an and…working with Muslim scholars.”

These women are “focusing on the progressive passages” and “contextualiz[ing]” the “difficult” passages, Coleman explained.

In many Middle Eastern countries, feminism often is associated with such Western concepts as “colonialism, communism” and “atheism,” according to Coleman.

“I am a secularist,” she admitted, “but in

Isobel Coleman discusses her book, Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East.

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the book I focus on…theocracies.” In Coleman’s opinion, “when you have an overlay of religion, it [gaining women’s rights] is extremely difficult indeed.”

Speaking on the failures of feminist movements in the past, she pointed to the fact that many feminists have “approached it [the issue of women’s rights] from a secular, elitist perspective.” As a result, these activists are “discounted or ignored by many powerful people in their countries.”

Emphasizing the role of men in women’s rights movements, Coleman considers them crucial in “providing intellectual cover for the women.” The first part of Coleman’s book, which describes the beginning of the women’s rights movement in the Muslim community, details the achievements of the movement’s forefathers, including Indian-born Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, and Qasim Amin, an Egyptian jurist and one of the founders of the Egyptian national movement and Cairo University.

Coleman agreed with a recent review of her book which characterized it as “cautiously optimistic,” noting the many strides that are being taken in the name of women’s rights. With regard to education, girls outnumber boys at secondary institutions in Jordan, and 70 percent of college graduates in Iran are women, she pointed out.

The progressive changes in Morocco’s mudawana, or family code, also signal hope for more progress, Coleman said.

These changes, the justifications of which were based on the Qur’an (which allows multiple wives only if a man can treat them all equally—an impossible task, according to activists), led to the outlawing of polygamy.

On the question of whether bottom-up or top-down policies are best when dealing with women’s rights, Coleman considered a combination of the two to be ideal. “In today’s open, global world,” she argued, a top-down policy requires “heavy-handed authoritarianism…that is not sustainable.”

“Ataturk was a great example of topdown,” she elaborated. The modernizing changes he implemented were “for the people, despite the people…but look at Turkey today—there’s still a backlash.”

—Karina Kainth

Carnegie Endowment Hosts Panel On Human Rights in the Arab World The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Heinrich Boll Foundation cosponsored a June 30 panel discussion entitled “Human Rights in the Arab World: An

Administration Perspective,” at the Carnegie Center in Washington, DC. The panel, moderated by Carnegie Endowment senior associate Michele Dunne, examined the U.S. policy toward human rights in the region, as well as the degree to which Arabs perceive U.S. strategies as successful.

Panel members included Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Tamara Cofman Wittes; Bahey El Din Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies; and Amal Basha, chairperson for Sisters’ Arab Forum for Human Rights.

Introducing the panelists, Dunne noted that they represented a powerful mix of “both the functional and bureaucratic arms of the State Department and regional representatives.” She summarized the question to be addressed as, “Is the U.S. government engaging in a fruitful way in Arab civil society?”

Posner opened the discussion by describing the Obama administration’s strategy for promoting human rights around the world.

The plan has three major components, he said: principle engagement, single universal standard, and commitment to help societies change from within. According to Posner, former executive director, then president, of Human Rights First, the plan is designed to take, “a 365-days-a-year approach to democracy and human rights.”

“We do not accept the notion that there is a difference between pursuing democracy and pursuing human rights,” stated Wittes, previously with the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy. “Our role is to empower and bolster civil society groups in these countries.” Wittes described U.S. efforts in Yemen and Egypt, where Washington is supplying aid in the form of dollars and manpower to help advocacy groups and government agencies. “The most powerful shaping force in the Arab world is demographics,” she said. “It is our job to help the next generation have access to the tools to help them succeed.”

The two Arab panelists, however, both believed that the U.S. is not doing enough in the region. Hassan and Basha argued that it is the region’s governments, not their citizens, that are being empowered by U.S. policy. “In the past year, the region has experienced increased intensification of oppression by governments,” Hassan noted. “The USA made three negative decisions: to unconditionally support the corrupt Yemeni regime, to do nothing about the rigged elecSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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with the thought-provoking photos, Abdelrazek includes vignettes about the experiences of female photographers living in Saudi Arabia.

Washingtonians enjoyed their rare glimpse of the Kingdom and its talented women. In reply to the accolades for her own photos, as well as those taken by her talented students, Abdelrazek positively glowed when she said, ”the success of a teacher is in her pupils.”

For more information on Rania Abdelrazek’s work, or to contact her, please visit her Web site at: <www.raniarazek.com>.

Her book will soon be available from Amazon.com and—we hope—the American Educational Trust Book Club.

—Delinda C. Hanley

(L-r) Amal Basha, Michael Posner, Michele Dunne, Tamara Cofman Wittes, and Bahey El Din Hassan.

Nail Al-Jubeir, director of communications at the Saudi Embassy, hosted a World Affairs Council Embassy Series event on May 20, 2010 at the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC. He answered audience questions about his country’s long relationship with the United States and the challenges they’ve faced, together, after the attacks on 9/11. There are 23,500 Saudi students studying in the United States, and those numbers are expected to increase to 30,000 over the next few years.

The Saudi Arabian Embassy held an opening reception July 27 for a fascinating photography exhibition called “Photography Through the Eyes of Saudi Arabian Women.” Nail Al-Jubeir, director of communications at the Saudi Embassy, welcomed guests, saying the 37 photographs, on display from July 27 through Aug. 6, were taken by both amateurs and professionals, many of them photography students at Dar Al-Hekma College in Jeddah.

He introduced the curator, photographer Rania A. Razek, who has been teaching photography and video editing courses there for more than eight years. Razek, who received an M.A. in Film and Video Production from the American University in Washington, DC, also has helped found the first women’s photography club in the Kingdom—which, she said, men are now asking to join.

The photos from the exhibit are featured in a unique book entitled Photography Through the Eyes of Saudi Arabian Women, which Abdelrazek published in English “to help increase awareness, pride and appreciation for our cultural heritage.” Along

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Photo Exhibit by Saudi Arabian Women

Photographer and author Rania Abdelrazek (r) is interviewed in front of one of her photographs, “The Unknown,” by Middle East Broadcasting (MBC) TV.

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The Foundry Gallery in Washington, DC featured from June 2 to 19 a solo exhibition, “Baghdad Revisited,” by Ahmad Alkarkhi, a young Iraqi artist who arrived in Washington, DC with his wife and two young children in August 2009. Alkarkhi and other artists, as well as playwrights, actors and musicians, fled their homeland and traveled to Damascus when militias began targeting Iraqi intellectuals in 2006.

Alkarkhi filed papers for refugee status with the United Nations, and waited for his family and his papers, painting and selling 240 paintings in Damascus galleries.

People took notice of his stunning paintings of Iraq after they were featured at a U.N.-sponsored exhibit, and he and his family were finally accepted as refugees to the United States.

Americans have an image of war-torn Iraq, roadside violence and desolate ruins,

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Music & Arts

An Iraqi Refugee Artist Paints His Home

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tion in the Sudan, and [to allow] the Egyptian government to continue its poor human rights policies.”

Hassan and Basha felt that Obama has not lived up to the lofty goals he set during his June 2009 speech in Cairo. “It all sounded nice,” acknowledged Basha, “but look at the reality.”

The discussion concluded with a question-and-answer session following a brief comment by Dunne. “Despite the U.S. government’s strategy and belief that it is making progress,” he observed, “it seems that a gap exists between what the U.S. government is doing and how it is perceived by the Arab world.”

—George Wilson

Iraqi artist Ahmad Alkarkhi at his opening reception on June 4.

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Outside the Egyptian Embassy on July 7, protesters tell Egyptian National Day guests about a controversial police brutality incident in Egypt. Two Egyptian policemen are in jail awaiting trial on Sept. 25 for allegedly beating Khaled Said to death on June 6 in Alexandria, Egypt. but Alkarkhi’s watercolors, oils and acrylics depict peaceful scenes: his memories of Iraq include palm trees, bright markets, sparkling rivers and portraits of gentle people. He gave one portrait to Marjorie Ransom, an art-loving retired American diplomat who had served in Syria and who has tried to help Alkarkhi find his way in his new country. Ransom’s small watercolor features an old woman whose eyes have seen a great deal of difficulty in her life. “This is a mother to all of us who left Iraq,” Alkarkhi explains. ”When you look at it, you look into your mother’s eyes. The eyes of this woman reflect the eyes of the mothers of everybody who left home.” For more information visit <www.alkarkhi. com> or contact the artist at <alkar.2003@ yahoo.com>.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Half a century later, Najib was back: “I returned to Lebanon barely three months after the war destroyed much of the country—over a thousand killed, 15,000 homes leveled, every major bridge and highway damaged or destroyed—and perhaps most damning, millions of unexploded cluster bombs holding the future hostage.”

He documents with contained fury the horrors, such as the destruction of the vast Haret Hyrek neighborhood in a foiled “targeted assassination” that left hundreds dead and thousands homeless.

But more often, the poetry triumphs, the

ravishing beauty pushes aside the heartbreak. “Fish Market Wall” combines a torn poster of assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri with souvenirs from the sea; the photograph is lushly colored and ripe with portent. Another, “Love, Forgiveness, Respect,” seems to gather in a net a catch of graffiti rich in symbol.

Sometimes the search for symbols teeters perilously close to the precious: In “Eloquence,” an open book lies tattered amid the ruins. But Hakim is most powerful when photographing what he loves best: those survivors, those citizens of Lebanon.

Looking at the “Bar Couple” swathed in red light, one can hear late-night jazz and smell heady perfume. In his portrait of boatbuilder Elia Barbour, one can almost feel the old man’s dry fingertips as he rests them against the boat’s frame.

There’s a doubly dual quality to “Born Among Mirrors.” Not only do Najib Hakim’s photos share a space with his father’s, they are accompanied by his own commentary, which is always pithy, alternately ironic and tender.

“Hussein & Muhammad” depicts two boys “rummaging through possibly toxic debris for copper wire in a pit that used to be an apartment building.” A horror, of course—yes. And yet: The boys exude good health and humor, the light is bright and clear, the sun warm, and the street above the pit is congested with cars engaged in the business of the city.

A sad-eyed old photographer holds an oversized image of Beirut past. An airplane, bottom-lit by city lights, prepares to land.

A security guard uses a mirror to see the sky and hopes to see nothing. These are sin-

“Born Among Mirrors,” an exhibit of photographs by Najib Joe Hakim that was on view from May 14 to June 25 at the Jerusalem Fund gallery in Washington, DC, is a gorgeous volume of love poetry disguised as photojournalism.

It’s a dual exhibit, actually. Photographs

by Hakim’s father, Elias, show his family in 1956 as they are about to climb aboard the Cleopatra and depart Lebanon for America.

The square images are muted in black and white, and in each a round-faced boy—the young Najib—watches the camera’s twin lenses, one viewing, one taking.

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The Beauty of Shattered Mirrors: Photographs by Najib Joe Hakim

“Love, Forgiveness, Respect,” Najib Joe Hakim’s photograph of graffiti on the wall of the Hotel Dieu, a French hospital in the Maronite neighborhood of Ashrifiyeh.

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gular images, journalistic yet wrapped in the stuff of dreams and romance.

“Pink Scene” shows the earlymorning return of a fishing boat. “I couldn’t help thinking,” writes Hakim, “that the pink boy saw his fate playing out before him.” Those melancholy reflections, however, are juxtaposed against a scene suffused in a delicate light that softly delineates every detail, while the focus gradually and lovingly disintegrates as the eye moves to the far end of the boat—a device that concentrates at- “Nightjar” by Anna Kipervaser. tention on the contemplative child.

Not only does Hakim excel at recording <www.onlookfilms.com>. The project is the colors and tastes and textures of his re- sponsored by the Hartley Film Foundation discovered homeland, sometimes he’s best at with support from the National Geographic what’s not seen. “Fish Market” was taken All Roads Film Project. Individual donamid-morning after the market had quieted. tions are welcome to enable the completion Somehow, Hakim captured the melancholy of the project.

In addition to the film, the exhibit feaempty space that enwraps these men.

To get a sense of Hakim’s exhibit and to tures selections from Kipervaser’s paintings view future offerings, visit <www.the- with related themes. “Keffiyeh Birds” dejerusalemfund.org> and click on “The picts birds wearing Palestinian keffiyehs (traGallery.” Dagmar Painter, curator of the ditional head-coverings). The artist chose gallery, has presented another satisfying song birds fabled for bringing omens to the show.

—Michael Keating people. The small, colorful works are done in oil on 6 inch-square panels. The other seAnna Kipervaser Show at the ries include “imyouandyouareme” and “inJerusalem Fund Gallery union.” These oils on shaped panels rangThe Jerusalem Fund Gallery in Washington, ing up to 45 by 35 inches present mostly DC is showcasing the works of Anna Kiper- Bedouin heads layered one in front of the vaser through Sept. 10 in a special exhibit other. To emphasize the theme of unity, entitled “the light thread . the dark thread.” Kipervaser includes her own image in a few Kipervaser was on hand at the July 16 of the pieces. She chose the subjects of birds opening to discuss her recent paintings as and Bedouins, she explained, because they both symbolize freedom to her. well as her upcoming film.

Born in L’vov, Ukraine, Kipervaser reThe exhibit title refers to the Qur’an’s instructions about Ramadan, “You may eat ceived her BFA from the Art Academy of and drink until the white thread of light be- Cincinnati in 2003. She has had numerous comes distinguishable from the dark thread solo and group exhibitions, and been the reof night at dawn.” Visitors to the gallery can cipient of many grant awards and residenview footage from her documentary film, cies. Inspiration for her socially relevant “Voices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo.” This works comes from her fascination with culmulti-media project includes an audio ture and her extensive travels, including archive, multi-media library and art instal- time spent with the Bedouins of Egypt’s lation which seeks to document a 1,400- Sinai Peninsula.

For more information and prices contact year-old oral tradition that soon will be erased forever. Five times a day, muezzins Dagmar Painter at the Jerusalem Fund cry out the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, Gallery <dpainter@thejerusalemfund.org>. from mosques throughout Cairo. The Additional images can be found at <www.

Egyptian government now says that, start- annakipervaser.com>. —Anne O’Rourke ing Aug. 11, it will implement the Tawheed Al Adhan (Adhan Unification Project) to reWaging Peace place this symphony of thousands of voices with one pre-recorded message broadcast from a state radio station. Advocates claim AMAF Hosts Forum for New this controversial action is needed to pro- Perspectives on Afghanistan mote noise control.

The new Afghan government established Related footage can also be viewed at by the peace jirga is a “cleptocracy, not a SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

democracy” according to Indiana University Prof. Nazif Shahrani, who spoke about “Afghanistan’s Puzzling Future” at the American Muslim Alliance (AMA) Foundation’s monthly policy forum at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC on July 12. Noting his relatively small audience on the hot summer evening, Shahrani, who teaches anthropology and Central Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, admitted that he was not as popular as some other Afghanistan experts. “I push for unusual solutions in Afghanistan,” he explained.

The country’s governmental structure is, in Shahrani’s view, a “product of an inappropriate constitutional framework” with a “hyper-centralized executive system,” especially “for a war-torn, multiethnic society such as Afghanistan’s.” While Iraqi and Afghan societies are both multiethnic, he pointed out, the U.S.-implemented Iraqi constitution is based on a federal structure, while Afghanistan’s constitution is based on a centralized government.

“If [President Hamid Karzai] is part of the problem, he cannot be part of the solution,” argued Shahrani, who berated the fact that Karzai had excluded many critical groups from the peace jirga.

“I’m not for ethnic federalism,” Shahrani explained, “but I advocate enshrining the principle of community self-governance.”

In his opinion, it is the community shuras that provide the raw material for this type of structure.

Moeed Yusuf, South Asia adviser at the U.S. Institute of Peace Center for Conflict Prevention and Analysis, described the conflict from Pakistan’s perspective. “Pakistan is no longer vying for an Afghan-Taliban government,” he said. It wants a quick end to the conflict, with the Afghan Taliban groups leaving Pakistan and returning to Afghanistan as soon as possible.

If a “sustainable solution” is to be reached in Afghanistan, said Yusuf, “Pakistan must be on board.” While it risks a possible breakdown of talks with the Taliban, as well as a possible intervention by India, in short-term solutions such as these “we will have to deal with imperfection,” said Yusuf. Political solutions are necessary before “mega 20-year projects” such as those Shahrani suggested, he added.

Following these two perspectives, the audience was treated to a screening of “The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, a Torch for Peace,” a documentary directed 57

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of the recent introduction of lucrative minerals in the region, Bijlert concluded, even if NATO forces leave, a certain degree of international presence may remain.

—Karina Kainth

(L-r) Indiana University Prof. Nazif Shahrani, California State University Prof. Agha Saeed, filmmaker T.C. McLuhan, and U.S. Institute of Peace adviser Moeed Yusuf.

Afghanistan Today: Karzai, Reconciliation, and Western Strategy Afghan President Hamid Karzai has internalized the international community’s deepening mistrust of his leadership, according to expert Martine van Bijlert, who spoke at the New America Foundation’s June 29 event on “Afghanistan Today.”

“He’s been talked up as a strong leader,” she pointed out, “but deep down there’s this mistrust.”

Co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an NGO based in Kabul, Bijlert discussed the reconciliation process in the context of Karzai’s role and the global community’s policies.

When the international community declared its support for the Afghan government during the reconciliation process, she said, “we put ourselves in a straightjacket.”

According to Bijlert, an “independent international presence” could have taken on a larger role as a broker in the peace process.

As it stands, she said, “the population who suffers from the insurgency, possibly even the fighters” will not be included in the reconciliation. When asked what could be done to ameliorate the situation, Bijlert recommended that government officials be 58

urged to stop tribal targeting. Parliament, she argued, while having “a level of independence” and the potential to enforce accountability during the peace process, also has a “level of randomness” and is “very much a part of the patronage system.”

Noting the uncertainty that dominates U.S. policies in Afghanistan, Bijlert pointed out that “we’re not even sure whether we should stay or leave.” The country’s political climate is characterized by numerous factions and constantly shifting relationships between them. According to Bijlert, because politics are conducted differently in the U.S., American officials in Afghanistan are operating on limited understanding of the culture.

When the U.S. and other international forces leave Afghanistan, various factors will prevent the country from unraveling completely, Bijlert predicted. In addition to the fear of returning to its long history of civil strife, Afghanistan has become “much more connected to the rest of the world,” she added. This includes an economic connectedness that may be negatively affected by a reversion to internal conflict. Because

STAFF PHOTO K. KAINTH

by T.C. McLuhan. The film chronicled the achievements of Khan, a Pashtun leader in the nonviolent resistance movement that led to India’s independence. One of Khan’s greatest accomplishments was uniting his historically fragmented people in a peaceful campaign for national independence.

Following the screening, McLuhan, who made six trips to the Khyber Pass, spoke about her experience creating the documentary. “When I began to immerse myself in the details of his [Khan’s] life, I began to transform myself,” she said. The documentary was a reminder that peace and the cooperation of multiple peoples can be a potent force in resolving conflict.

—Karina Kainth

Martine van Bijlert discusses reconciliation in Afghanistan.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Turkish “Undelight” at First Annual Conference on Turkey Israel’s May 31 attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla clouded the Middle East Institute’s first annual Conference on Turkey, which took place at the University Club in Washington, DC on June 18. In a series of three panels and four keynote speeches, Turkish parliamentarians, advisers and representatives, and other experts discussed the opportunities and challenges of Turkey’s perceived changing geopolitics.

The message from the four keynote speakers—Ömer Çelik, Turkish parliamentarian and Deputy Vice President of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP); Dr. Ibrahim Kalın, chief adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoˇgan; Turkish Ambassador to Washington Namık Tan; and Dr. Suat Kınıklıoˇglu, AKP deputy chairman of external affairs was clear: Eight Turkish civilians and one American of Turkish descent were killed by a “friendly state” in peacetime, as a result of the illegal boarding and seizure of a ship in international waters, hence Israel should issue an official apology, in addition to allowing an independent international commission to investigate the incident.

Failure to do so could jeopardize one of Israel’s few friendships in the region, a “five centuries long friendship…inherited from our forefathers,” as described by Ambassador Tan. Nor did the incident go unmentioned in the first panel, on “Turkey in the Middle East,” as former Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL), now president of the Washington-based Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation, presented an opposing view, calling the flotilla attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza a ”dangerous act,” and claiming that Israel was able to produce a more critical investigation and report of the incident than would any international commission.

While describing the loss of lives as “deeply regrettable,” Wexler claimed the massacre was the result of actions that got out of hand, saying, “Israeli soldiers [who sought] in a peaceful way to enforce the blockade” were met by “those that wish not to act peacefully.” When Wexler later was asked about Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty and its parallels to the flotilla incident, he simply ignored the question, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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Dr. Ibrahim Kalın, chief adviser to the Turkish prime minister.

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AKP deputy chairman of external affairs Dr. Suat Kınıklıoˇglu.

Turkish parliamentarian Ömer Çelik.

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and went on to request outrage for unrelated actions of Hamas.

Turning to another major issue, panelists explained the disappointment caused by the rejection by Washington and most EU states of the deal negotiated with Iran by Turkey and Brazil. Turkey’s “no” vote in the Security Council was explained in detail: “After working so hard to get this agreement, it was dismissed within hours,” Dr. Kalın noted. The panelists stressed that a vote for sanctions would mean an end to Tehran’s trust in Ankara, thus effectively ending the talks, which Çelik said were “still on the table.” Assuring the audience that “We, along with the United States, do not want a nuclear Iran,” Dr. Kınıklıoˇglu underscored, as did the other speakers, that Turkey differs on the method of preventing this, rejecting sanctions and supporting the diplomatic track.

Refuting what many perceive is a Turkish shift toward the East at the expense of the West, the speakers agreed that it is not necessary to choose between the two.

“Turkey has moved beyond the thinking of oppositional identities,” Kalın said.

“That is, we don’t think that our historically Turkish Muslim cultural identity is in any essentialist way contradictory to our attempts to embrace…values that have originated from the West but that have become universal values shared by all people.” One element of the Western critique of Turkish foreign policy, he noted, is “Euro-centrism in world politics,” resulting in the lack of recognition of rising nonWestern powers. “[S]ome people still have difficulty reconciling with the fact that other nations of the world have equal rights and deserve equal respect from us,” he elaborated. “This is what we try to do in our foreign policy in our part of the world.”

Nevertheless, Ambassador Tan re-emphasized Turkey’s commitment to the West, saying that “Turkey’s Westernization is an irreversible process. We are long past the point where anyone might have thought of the possibility of a change of course.”

Another hot topic discussed in the day’s first panel, “Turkey in the Middle East,” was the diminishing popularity among Americans of Turkey and Prime Minister Erdoˇgan. According to Cengiz Çandar, columnist for the Turkish daily Radikal, “It seems like the main reason for his diminishing popularity…has something to do with the name, the title of the conference, Turkey’s new geopolitics”—something he viewed as a natural response to a

STAFF PHOTO I. ALI

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Ambassador Namık Tan. changing world. Former Congressman Wexler, however, rebutted this idea, claiming that the inflammatory nature of the THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Turkish government’s condemnations of Israel’s attacks on the flotilla and its assault on Gaza last year were the main reason for the “public relations debacle” the country has suffered in the U.S. Addressing this issue in his keynote address, Dr. Kınıklıoˇglu described Prime Minister Erdoˇgan as “a very emotional man.” The fact is, he said, that we all “happen to be human, and we feel.” It is “important for [Turkey] to be on the right side of history,” Dr. Kınıklıoˇglu added.

Carnegie Endowment associate Karim Sadjadpour discussed Turkey’s successes, as opposed to Iranian failures, in the region, but warned that Ankara “has begun taking some cues from Iran,” and as such is in danger of alienating the U.S. in the process.

Arguments ensued when the second panel attempted to discuss Turkey in Eurasia, and especially the Armenian issue, with both panelists and audience members expressing what appeared to be irreconcilable differences on the matter. While panelist Amberin Zaman, The Economist’s Turkey correspondent, supported a U.S. congressional resolution on the controversial 1915 incident in the then-Ottoman Empire, while Dr. Tuncay Babalı, a fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, warned that “if you want to really derail U.S.-Turkish relations, pass the resolutions.”

The day’s final panel addressed Turkey in transition, touching upon its authoritarian legacy, constitutional problems, and whether or not Turkey is flirting with Islamism. Dr. Ergun Özbudun and Dr. Metin Heper, both professors at Bilkent University, agreed that Turkey is not turning its back to the West, nor is it becoming an Islamist state. “In Turkey, people would not bring to power a political party which would favor a state based on Islam,” Heper asserted. Dr. Henri J. Barkey, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, had a slightly different view, however, describing the ruling AKP party as an Islamist movement, praising it for embracing the European Union as well as for its marketoriented economic views, but flunking it on matters of cultural tolerance.

Today, all eyes are on Turkey. Several speakers and panelists philosophized over how very different a day-long conference about the country would have looked 10 years earlier: for one thing, it likely would not have taken place at all, and in the best case scenario it would have drawn 10 or 12 devoted followers. All the disagreement about Turkey’s changing directions aside, 59

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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

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as to the effectiveness of discussion on “Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal: Esthese sanctions. “You pionage, Opacity and Future” on July 7, at first have to say ‘no a fitting venue—the International Spy Mudeal,’” Adler argued in seum, in Washington, DC. Panelists tackdefense of this policy, led the vital questions that mainstream “and then there’s some- American media choose to ignore: What do thing to work out.” newly declassified documents about In response to the weapons grade uranium and dual-use techopinion that the new set nology diversions from the U.S. reveal of U.N. sanctions is weak about the role of espionage in building Isin comparison to previ- rael’s secret nuclear arsenal? Did Israel’s ous ones, Adler ex- proposed nuclear weapons sales to plained that U.N. sanc- apartheid South Africa signal the weapons Michael Adler, public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Cen- tions are largely “a green are still for sale if the partner and price are light” for “unilateral right? Do FBI and CIA cover-ups of invester, predicts long-term settlement of U.S.-Iran nuclear standoff. sanctions,” such as those tigations into Israeli nuclear espionage ineveryone can agree that Turkey has taken imposed by the European Union. Because dicate official U.S. government approval or a serious stance on the Palestine of the U.S. administration’s view that con- political acquiescence? Did cooperating issue—and, whether their motivations are taining a nuclear Iran is not an option, up- with Israel’s policy of “strategic ambigusincere or calculated, that is more than coming sanctions are even more crucial to ity” ever make sense for the United States? a possible deal in the future, he insisted.

Is the era of “nuclear opacity” now coming much of the world has done.

“A military attack is not imminent,” he to an end? Are Israel’s nuclear weapons of For more information visit the Middle East Institute’s Center for Turkish Studies added, explaining that the threat of a nu- strategic benefit to the U.S.? clear Iran is not so urgent as to warrant Moderator Jeffrey Blankfort described www.mei.edu/TurkishCenter —Imaan Ali this. He cited the fact that Iran’s P-1 cen- the devolution of the U.S. position on the trifuges, which are often breaking down, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)’s Adler Gives Reasons for Possible Suc- have caused enrichment production to international call for a Middle East free of cess in U.S.-Iran Nuclear Negotiations stall. Adler also mentioned that, according nuclear weapons. He also recounted firstMichael Adler, Woodrow Wilson Center to U.S. intelligence estimates, it will take 18 hand experiences with an Anti-Defamation public policy scholar, expressed carefully months to 2 years for Iran to develop League/apartheid South Africa intelligence optimistic predictions for the long-term re- enough highly enriched uranium for one agent targeting U.S. activists.

—Karina Kainth Sasha Polakow-Suransky, editor of Forsults of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations at bomb. eign Affairs magazine at the Council on the center’s July 19 event, “Iran: Is a NuForeign Relations, reviewed apartheid clear Deal Still Possible?” in Washington, Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal—Espionage, Opacity and Future South African sales of yellow-cake uraDC. “There is a surprising chance for settle- The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern nium to Israel’s military establishment and ment which will not be immediate, but Policy (IRmep) held an informative panel argued that the American Israel Public Afcould be in the months and the years to come,” said Adler, a former Vienna-based correspondent for Agence France-Presse.

As the issue comes to a head, he noted, both sides are becoming increasingly flexible.

According to Adler, Washington has three major concerns that must be clarified: namely that the amount of low-enriched uranium (LEU) in Iran is limited, that these limits are monitored effectively, and that concerns about weapons development are cleared.

On the Iranian side, Adler pointed out that, although the country feels it has been targeted more than other signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Jamal Abdi, policy director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), wrote an “Iran has been open to intrusive inspecopen letter of complaint to the American Values Network (AVN), the faith-based advocacy tions in the past.” Tehran will be flexible group which placed provocative billboards and ads on the sides of buses around the country on other points of negotiation “as long as (above, one of many spotted in June in the nation’s capital). In fine print the ads touted clean their right to enrichment is honored,” energy legislation, but the big picture and the caption, ”Iran makes a KILLING every day Alder predicted. we wait,” insulted nearly 1 million Iranian Americans and seemed to advocate war against When he drew attention to the fact that Iran. By late July 2010, after a meeting between NIAC and AVN, most of the billboards the U.S. administration plans on six more had been removed. months of sanctions, questions were raised

PHOTOS WILLIAM HUGHES

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(L-r) Grant Smith, Jeffrey Blankfort and Prof. John Mearsheimer.

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Journalists in Palestine: The Greatest Challenge Is Israel Shireen Abu Aqleh, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel, and former New York Times Gaza correspondent Taghreed El-Khodary shared experiences with and answered questions from an attentive crowd in a June 23 event hosted by the Jerusalem Fund in Washington, DC and moderated by the American University’s Dr. Edmund Ghareeb. In his introduction, Dr. Ghareeb reminded the audience about the complex, controversial, and emotional nature of the Palestinian conflict, reflected in media coverage. “[T]hat is why it is so important to hear from these two ladies,” he stated.

Speaking of her own experience, Abu Aqleh said that the challenges faced by journalists are increasing: in dealing with three authorities, the right to freedom of expression is even less accessible than before, she noted, as “no one is tolerating the other point of view.” El-Khodary explained how, as a journalist, she learned in Gaza how “to implement whatever [she] studied in American universities,” but that at the same time there were multiple challenges—the biggest being Israel. Recalling a situation in which a Qassam member had asked her not to cover a story on the execution of collaborators, she said that a big challenge is to keep the

focus; maintain the trust the different factions have in you and your work; and keep going. As a journalist, an observer, and a Palestinian, she added, the situation is very frustrating, as one sees “the place that is Gaza getting worse and worse.”

The two journalists agreed on the problems and benefits of being a Palestinian covering the conflict, noting that they are better able to fully understand the complex situation and know the people and how to deal with them. This is not always advantageous, however, Al-Khodary pointed out, as one could be forever “tainted” by having belonged to one faction, with the result that the other “will never trust you.” Both emphasized that being Palestinian is never an advantage when dealing with Israel. During the Gaza assault, Abu Aqleh’s colleagues from the West Bank “all lost their press cards” and were prevented from traveling.

Discussing how the conflict is portrayed in the American media, Abu Aqleh criticized the lack of humanitarian stories from Gaza, despite the fact that American news usually is humanized. Instead of asking why people have to die because of lack of access to hospitals or medicine, she complained, the mainstream media focus instead on the prevention of weapons and arms imports to Gaza. She described the U.S. media as “very far from being objective” in this respect.

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fairs Committee (AIPAC) contributed to U.S. policymaking. Polakow-Suransky is author of the 2010 book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, which is available from the AET Book Club Grant F. Smith, director of IRmep and author of the books Spy Trade, America’s Defense Line and Foreign Agents, all available from the AET Book Club, explored how collaborating in Israeli “strategic ambiguity” has undermined the rule of law and governance in the United States. He reviewed the newly declassified report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) regarding the 1965 Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) nuclear diversion case, in which more than 200 pounds of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium vanished from the NUMEC plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania. Most analysts agree the material was clandestinely diverted to Israel for use in its nuclear weapons program, either with or without the acquiescence of the U.S. government.

John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, referenced Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, the killing of peace and justice activist Rachel Corrie, and Israel’s recent assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. “There is no accountability for Israel on any issue,” stated the West Point graduate. Mearsheimer, author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, and co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, also available from the AET Book Club, discussed why Israel acquired a nuclear arsenal and the danger it presents to U.S. interests.

Listeners can download audio files of the “Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal” panel presentations, or watch an HD video online by visiting <www.irmep.org>.

—Delinda C. Hanley

(L-r) Al Jazeera’s Shireen Abu Aqleh, American University’s Dr. Edmund Ghareeb, and former New York Times correspondent Taghreed El-Khodary.

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Al-Khodary, on the other hand, said that the Western media fail when portraying Gaza only as a humanitarian issue, as it indeed is a political one. Al-Khodary, who ended up leaving The New York Times after the son of bureau chief Ethan Bonner joined the Israel Defense Forces, was asked whether she was censored, and whether one gets the full picture of the conflict in American media. Asserting the necessity of presenting both narratives, both to keep readers and remain objective, she urged the audience not to rely on a single source, but to read and listen to several news outlets to get the full picture. “There is nothing that is objective,” she argued, and while she “did her part” in covering Gaza, what is needed is a greater amount of in-depth news.

Finally, both journalists agreed that active readers are important to making a difference, and advised readers not to delay in sending feedback to newspapers and to comment on Internet articles, as journalists often read these as well.

—Imaan Ali

The Nakba is an Ongoing Process According to Ambassador Safieh

PHOTO WILLIAM HUGHES

The eloquent former PLO ambassador to the United States, Afif Safieh, spoke to a full house about his new book, The Peace Process: From Breakthrough to Breakdown July 8 at the Palestine Center in coordination with the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Palestine Center, welcomed

the many friends and journalists who had gathered to see Safieh, who served as PLO ambassador to the United States from October 2005 to May 2008, and his wife Christ’l. Safieh is now Palestinian Roving Ambassador for Special Missions, based in London. In August 2009, Ambassador Safieh was elected to the Fateh Revolutionary Council—the parliament of the Fateh movement, and in October 2009, Safieh was appointed Deputy Commissioner for International Relations.

Washington Report summer intern Jacoub Sleibi, who attends Bethlehem University and hopes one day to be a diplomat like Safieh, described the frustrations of daily life under occupation. Young people need hope and inspiration from leaders like Safieh, Sleibi said, as he welcomed the ambassador to the stage.

Safieh’s remarks and his latest book reflect his long-term involvement with the peace process, through perceived successes and consequent disappointments. Although the ambassador denied being of the optimistic school of thought, calling the current situation “painful”; noting that the Israelis have not withdrawn, but rather expanded the occupation through the building of new settlements; he offered some hope for the future, saying that supporting the cause of Palestine has finally become “rewarding” because of the recent “expressions of sympathy [the cause is] getting from across the world.”

Melinda Thompson (l) and Paul H. Verduin of Sabeel DC picket Ulta Cosmetics in Silver Spring, MD on June 26 to urge managers to take Ahava Dead Sea cosmetics off their shelves. Protesters spend several hours each Saturday passing out flyers and respectfully asking shoppers to join the international boycott of the Ahava line of “stolen beauty” products. The boycott of Ahava products is part of a campaign to call attention to illegal Israeli settlements stealing Palestinian resources and marketing them as their own. Ahava products are marked “made in Israel,” but are actually made in occupied Palestine.

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Ambassador Afif Safieh at the Palestine Center.

Yet, the main hindrance to peace remains not terrorism, but territory. “We can satisfy Israel’s hunger for peace if Mr. [Yitzhak] Shamir abandons his appetite for territory,” Safieh recalled saying in a speech he gave after the Madrid conference in 1991; a statement that would be just as applicable today by changing Shamir’s name to the current Israeli Prime Minister’s.

Discussing America’s role in the peace process, he described the superpower as having the “political weight of Luxemburg, or even worse, Liechtenstein” when it comes to pressuring Israel, also noting that AIPAC has “hijacked” American Middle East policy. “Why is Israel reluctant to become the fifty-first state in America?

[Because] they will have to satisfy themselves with only two senators [then],” he joked. The ambassador was careful to underscore his admiration for the American society, however, calling it a world “au miniature,” as well as the commitment of many Jews to the civil right movements, human rights, and even the Palestinian cause itself. He pointed out his friend in the audience, registered nurse Ellen Siegel, who is a tireless member of the Jewish peace movement in Washington, DC, and who worked at Gaza Hospital in Lebanon during the massacre at Sabra and Shatila.

“Israeli behavior…is becoming a source of embarrassment for Jewish communities in Europe and in America,” Safieh said.

Wrapping up before an advance copy book signing, Ambassador Safieh gave the audience a brief introduction to The Peace Process: From Breakthrough to Breakdown, which won’t be available until fall in the UK and winter in the U.S. His book consists of a selection of lectures given between 1981 and 2005, and follows “the SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

Huge Turkish and Palestinian flags flanked a banner charging “Israel Murdered 9 Aid Workers.” James Bergland stated from his wheelchair that “all humanity should get in this battle to lift the siege of Gaza.”

Commented ANSWER’s Muna Coobtee: “People are gathering in many U.S. cities today to protest Netanyahu’s meeting with President Obama. The whole world is aware of Israel’s brutality against the Palestinian people and Netanyahu shouldn’t be welcomed here. Not one more U.S. cent should go to fund the suffering Israel inflicts on the Palestinians.”

—Pat McDonnell Twair

ANSWER Protests Bibi Visit

Gaza Flotilla Co-founders Feted

On July 6 Los Angeles’ Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) coalition joined demonstrators in other major U.S. cities to protest the arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to meet with President Barack Obama. More than 100 protesters held giant banners in front of the Westwood Federal Building in Los Angeles.

Emotions ran high as protesters chanted a litany of imaginative slogans: “Gaza, Gaza, Don’t You Cry, Palestine Will Never Die,” followed by “Hey Obama You Will Learn, the Refugees Will Return” and “Killing Children Is a Crime, Free, Free Palestine.”

When Greta Berlin and Mary HughesThompson returned from Cyprus where they’d handled press relations for the Free Gaza flotilla, they were honored July 3 by Women In Black activists at a patio party in Hughes-Thompson’s Los Angeles home.

“Four and a half years ago, no one would have dreamed there would be a flotilla of eight ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza,” Berlin told the assembled peace proponents.

In the beginning activists kept off Mossad radar by naming themselves the Liederkrantz Singers of Fresno. They assumed monikers of flowers or musical instruments as they exchanged e-mail between cities in Australia, England and the U.S. West Coast. Eventually, they took the name of Free Gaza Movement (FGM).

The FGM first broke the Israeli blockade when two fishing boats arrived in Gaza on Aug. 23, 2008. All in all, there were five successful voyages and four which were violently stopped by Israel—the last of these

by Israeli commandos boarding six ships on May 31, killing nine passengers, including a U.S. citizen, and taking the confiscated vessels to its port of Ashdod.

There would have been eight ships, but the Rachel Corrie was sabotaged in Ireland when its propeller pin was sheared. Then the captains of the Challenger I and Challenger II experienced steering problems off the coast of Cyprus. Steering lines for both ships had been tampered with and were losing hydraulic fluid.

“That’s when Israeli generals boasted they’d disabled the ships,” Berlin stated.

“Nonetheless, Israel spent millions on propaganda against the flotilla before it sailed, and millions more on spin after it pirated the boats. Against all this Zionist hype were four women [Berlin, Hughes-Thompson, attorney Audrey Bomse and Hedy Ep-

STAFF PHOTO SAMIR TWAIR

evolution of Palestinian political thought” through the early beginnings of the prenegotiations, the talks themselves, the resulting breakthrough, the disillusionment, and the consequent breakdown.

Following the conclusion of his speech, it was not hard to witness the effect of the ambassador’s words on the audience: the crowd waited patiently in a line stretching from Safieh to the Palestine Center’s door to get their brand new copy of The Peace Process: From Breakthrough to Breakdown signed by the popular Palestinian diplomat. Visit <www.thejerusalemfund.org> for transcripts or to watch Safieh’s speech.

—Imaan Ali

Protesters at a July 6 ANSWER demonstration decrying Binyamin Natanyahu’s visit to the U.S. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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Greta Berlin (l) and Mary Hughes Thompson. stein] aged 65 to 85 who were telling the truth to the world press in Cyprus.”

Berlin stressed that for at least 36 hours, nothing was heard from the 600 passengers in Israeli custody—many of whom were beaten by Israeli troops and guards. All were deprived of adequate food and water.

“Of the more than 50 passengers who were wounded by Israeli gunfire on the Mavi Marmara, five are still in the hospital and two are not expected to survive—so that will make 11 fatalities,” she concluded. “We estimate Israel stole more than $1 million in computers, cameras, phones and other private property of the passengers. We insist our boats be returned.”

—Pat McDonnell Twair

Wright and Zomlot Speak in Cambridge United for Justice and Peace met at the Friends Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts on June 19 to explore responses to Israel’s continuing siege of Gaza in the aftermath of Israel’s May 31 massacre of peace activists taking part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

The meeting featured a panel discussion with Col. Ann Wright (U.S. Army, ret.), a distinguished foreign service officer who resigned in protest from the State Department in March 2003 just prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Palestinian scholar and diplomat Husam Zomlot. Zomlot, who served as PLO representative to the UK from 2003 to 2008, currently is a research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Retired machinist, union leader and activist Jeff Klein of Dorchester People for Peace moderated the discussion.

“The sequence of events has been quite remarkable in the last two years,” noted Wright. “The international community is putting pressure on the Israelis and the Egyptians and the American government to 63

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playing into the hands of those who do not wish us well.”

As Palestinians move toward national unity, they are adopting a policy of nonviolent popular resistance, said Zomlot.

“It’s a universal Palestinian conclusion that nonviolent resistance that is popular and peaceful—the best example is the flotilla and what happened—is the most effective way of confronting Israel.”

Third, said Zomlot, is naAnn Wright and Husam Zomlot at a United for Justice and tional institution building.

Peace strategy conference.

“The most important end the siege of Gaza...It’s a citizens’ action thing right now is to try and empower that is forcing governments to listen to the Palestinians to continue living on their land by creating institutions for health, educapeople.

“I’ll tell you what: When the citizens of tion, etc., that will enable Palestinians to the world start getting together on these survive, to be steadfast where they are.”

“And last, and most important in my things, well, things happen,” she continued. What happened with the Gaza opinion, is you—all of you,” he said. “That Flotilla, where we had six ships that finally is, the International Solidarity Movement, started sailing toward Gaza, was tragic. All justice groups, peace groups. This new were attacked in international waters 70 movement that we see everywhere in Eumiles off the coast of Gaza in an act of rope, in the U.S., in Australia, in Asia, and piracy, an act of kidnapping, an act of mur- in Africa is forming and taking a very solid der, an act of theft—all crimes by anyone’s shape,” Zomlot explained.

“This movement is growing,” declared estimation. …

“The tragedy on the Mavi Marmara was moderator Klein, “not as big or as fast as we that the Israeli commandos killed people. would like, but nevertheless it is clear that They could have stopped the boat in a vari- this movement is growing.”

Klein reminded his audience that it wasn’t ety of other ways, but the Israeli government chose to have a major confrontation so long ago that many activists who recogthat has really backfired on them.” Govern- nized the importance of a just resolution of ments around the world, including “by the Israel-Palestine conflict were reluctant some miracle” the U.S. government, are fi- to speak out and engage on the issue in the nally saying that the siege of Gaza is “un- larger peace movement and at the big antiwar rallies. sustainable,” Wright concluded.

“I’m happy to say I think that’s largely Zomlot offered his heartfelt thanks for all the people who have given their lives for over with. The Palestine issue has become the sake of a resolution of the humanitarian one of the core issues of the activist comcrisis in Palestine, and condolences to their munity on the Left, and that’s a big step forward,” said Klein.

—Michael Gillespie families.

“The attacks on the flotilla and what happened with Ann and her group have really Protesters Face Heat, Christians broken through to the core of the issue of United for Israel the blockade of Gaza,” he said. “These Christians United for Israel (CUFI) held its heroic acts of universalism, people coming fifth annual “summit”—billed as the “pretogether as civilians to break the siege, one mier pro-Israel event of the year”—from of the most draconian sieges of modern his- July 20 to 22 at the Washington, DC contory, are already bearing fruit. The siege, as vention center. The nearly 4,000 attendees we speak, is crumbling.” hoped to deliver a “powerful pro-Israel The Palestinian scholar and diplomat message in a time of crisis” when, accordidentified four principles as a way forward. ing to CUFI’s Web site, <www.cufi.org>, Palestinians, he said, are moving toward na- Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are threatening tional unity: “Everybody realizes that frag- Israel’s survival, and “relations between Ismentation of our polity and our land is only rael and the United States have reached 64

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their lowest point in decades.”

On the steaming hot evening of July 21, human rights activists from CODEPINK, Jewish Voice for Peace and other organizations tried to deliver a pro-peace message to CUFI attendees as they were streaming past on their way to hear banquet speeches

by Israel’s American-born-and-raised Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren and CUFI founder Pastor John Hagee.

Protesters handed CUFI attendees a press release which said, “No matter what your faith, you should not support Israel’s policies of annexing East Jerusalem, constructing the Apartheid Wall, and laying siege to Gaza.” CUFI now is the largest proIsrael organization in the United States with over 400,000 members nationwide— including chapters on college campuses throughout the U.S. Several members of Congress spoke at the summit castigating the Obama administration’s treatment of Israel. Rep. Shelly Berkley (D-NV), who leads the House in pro-Israel PAC contributions and finds her place, as usual, in this year’s congressional “Hall of Shame” (see p. 24), was critical of current Israel policy. “When the administration seized every opportunity to criticize Israel for building apartments for its people in the undisputed neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, creating a crisis that was unnecessary, unwise and bad for Israel—I spoke out and condemned the actions of the administration,” said Berkley, who serves as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee.

“What has become painfully obvious to many Americans is that this administration has become the most anti-Israel administration in American history,” charged Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), who just missed being inducted into this year’s “Hall of Shame” and obviously is seeking more pro-Israel PAC contributions. Pence has written several pro-Israel amendments, including one to protect Israel’s right to build a separation wall in “disputed territories.”

Also addressing the CUFI summit were House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE), and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA).

—Delinda Hanley and William Hughes

Faith in Cooperation: Evangelicals And Muslims An unlikely blend of believers, among other interested, gathered at Georgetown University in Washington, DC June 16 and 17 for an event titled “The Global Leadership Forum 2010: Evangelicals & Muslims, PerSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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examples of “proselytiza- teraction to overcome fear and ignorance; tion” that were not reli- before he met Vietnamese people, he was giously motivated, in- afraid of them, he recalled. Now, however, cluding a home visit by a they are among his best friends, the Texan window seller, phone Evangelical said. Similarly, he added, he calls made by a party rep- used to think, “Thank God I don’t have to resentative trying to in- work with Arab Muslims,” but after workfluence his vote, and a ing with them, he explained, he “began to new grocery store giving love Muslims.” Sayyid M. Syeed, national away food “as induce- director of the Islamic Society of North ment.” Discussing the America’s Office of Interfaith and Commu“somewhat superficial,” nity Alliance, discussed the cooperation in “somehow controversial” America between Christianity and Islam, topic of jihad as a mission, noting that the “generosity of Christians” Intisar Rabb, a Ph.D can- who opened their churches to Muslims, didate at Princeton Uni- helped facilitate the beginnings of a Muslim versity, noted its invalid- community in America.

With regard to the possibility of the two ity in the contemporary world, describing it as religions’ followers being partners in reconlargely of medieval rele- ciliation, Institute of Global Engagement A “Bibi” protester greets attendees at this year’s Christians vance. president Chris Seiple explained the imporUnited For Israel (CUFI) summit.

The day’s second tance of speaking on the other’s terms in panel, on Evangelical- order to show love. Arguing that inflammaspectives on Mission and Partnership.” Four Muslim cooperation, was arguably the most tory language against the other is like sinpanels addressed the topics of faith and popular. The panelists’ honest and inspiring ning, he called Muslims “the Samaritans in identity, mission and dawa, partnership de- stories from both sides on mutual coopera- our own country” and apologized on behalf spite “irreconcilable” theological differ- tion and solidarity demonstrated the effec- of the society for not having treated them ences, and mutual reconciliation and con- tiveness of dialogue, and of the statement well. According to scholar Louay M. Safi, a flict transformation. Panel chair John Voll, by Imam Yahya Hendi, Georgetown’s Mus- faculty member at Indiana and Purdue uniintroducing the second day’s events, re- lim chaplain, that “the clash of ideas is the versities, Muslims and Christians can and called the interest and surprise he encoun- sound of freedom.” All agreed that there is should be partners. Religion is not the cause tered on his way to the conference from var- both room and need for cooperation despite of conflict or tension between the groups, ious people. As a result, “it took a while to irreconcilable theology. “God gets the he added, but the minority exclusionists are get here,” said Voll, professor of Islamic his- credit,” said St. Joseph’s University Prof. the ones we more often hear from. Safi detory at Georgetown and associate director of David Johnson for interreligious coopera- scribed the majority in both religions as the its Prince Alwaleed bin talal Center for tion, praying that such groups would be- “humble people” and “peacemakers.”

Muqtedar Khan, associate professor of poMuslim Christian Understanding. Judging come “tangible sources of hope.”“We need by the size of the audience, they were to love each other to be people of faith,” litical science and international relations at the University of Delaware, disagreed on the added Hendi. equally intrigued.

Northwoods Church senior pastor Bob issue of justice, one of Safi’s three points of Panelists agreed on the importance to both religious traditions of seeking out new Roberts underscored the importance of in- cooperation. “Evil often camouflages itself in followers. However, they noted, this often creates tension. Nevertheless, they concurred, there should be no rules, either in Muslim- or Christian-majority states, hindering the spread of each message. “May the best faith win,” challenged Suhail Khan, senior fellow for Christian-Muslim understanding at the Arlington, Virginia-based Institute for Global Engagement. He cited a quote from the Qur’an that “there is no (L-r) Prof. John Voll, Intisar Rabb, Rick Love, Knox Thames and Suhail Khan. compulsion in religion.” Peace Catalyst International president Rick Love suggested possible steps toward mutual cooperation and respect, expressing the belief that “the wise, noble-minded, and forward-looking Muslims and Christians will join [him]” in these efforts.

Calling proselytization the simplest form of persuasion, Knox Thames, director of policy and research at the U.S. Commission (L-r) Prof. Yvonne Haddad, Prof. David Johnson, Imam Yahya Hendi, Pastor Bob Roberts on International Religious Freedom, offered and ISNA director Sayyid Syeed.

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PHOTO WILLIAM HUGHES

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justice,” he claimed, and “when you move toward the higher level of humanity” there is no need for justice. The shadow of the Palestine problem is so overwhelming, Khan explained, that it hinders Islamic theoretical thought—even concepts such as justice— and demonstrates how “profound the Palestinian situation is on the Muslim psyche.”

Fittingly, the event concluded with both a Muslim and a Christian prayer. Witnessing such a “lovefest“ among committed followers of these two faiths makes it difficult indeed to claim that religion is the root of all evil.

—Imaan Ali

California Peace Activist Speaks in Des Moines

Anthony Manousos at the Des Moines Valley Friends Meetinghouse.

Anthony Manousos of Culver City, California spoke to Iowa peace and social justice activists at the Des Moines Valley Friends Meetinghouse on June 28.

“I study the Qur’an and I hang out with Muslims,” said Manousos, flashing an infectious smile.

The Quaker activist speaks with unabashed enthusiasm about his continuing interest in other religions and his involvement in interfaith activism. “After 9/11, I felt led to fast during Ramadan. That was my entrée into the Muslim community. I told Muslims I was fasting and they were so excited. They invited me into their homes.

I decided to continue fasting during Ramadan and have done so now for 10 years,” said Manousos.

The former English teacher and editor is touring the U.S., speaking about the growing interfaith movement and his experiences at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, which convened in Melbourne, Australia in 2009.

Manousos, author of a pamphlet published by the Friends Bulletin titled Islam from a Quaker Perspective and Friends and the Interfaith Movement (updated 2008), told his Des Moines audience that he had spoken about the Israel/Palestine crisis and his experience in the Holy Land in the context of his presentation about the Listening Project at the 2009 Parliament.

When he heard that the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions, the world’s largest interreligious gathering, would convene in Melbourne, he had to go, Manousos said.

“The Parliament is kind of like the Olympics of interfaith,” he explained. “It’s held every five years and it attracts major religious and spiritual leaders.”

The Parliament features hundreds of lectures, workshops, forums, and panel discussions by people from all the various religions. Several American religious leaders at-

tended the 2009 Parliament, Manousos noted, including Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun and internationally renowned author and lecturer on peace and justice, spirituality, and women’s issues, and Rabbi Michael Lerner, political activist and editor of Tikkun magazine, a progressive Jewish and interfaith journal.

And now, added Manousos, we have a chair of the board of trustees of the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions who is a Muslim: Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid.

Manousos says he is encouraged that so many people from so many different faith traditions are interested in the rapidly expanding interfaith conversation.

The 2009 Parliament, the theme of which was “Helping each other, healing the earth,” said Manousos, “drew about 6,000 people, which was very good given the [distant] location and the economy. A lot of conferences were cancelled, but…there was a lot of strong feeling, especially since 9/11, that this one needed to go on.”

Acknowledging that “you can’t turn around the whole world overnight,” Manousos concluded: “What we can do is be supportive when people are moving in the right direction.”

For more information read Manousos’ blogs at <http://LAQuaker.blogspot.com>.

—Michael Gillespie

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USIP Panelists Emphasize Need for Youth Empowerment The need for inclusive youth empowerment groups, especially during the reconstruction process, was the crux of the Youth at War, Youth Building Peace, Youth on the Margins book launch and panel discussion held July 13 at the United States Institute of Peace, in Washington, DC. Author Stephanie Schwartz, leader of the Institute’s Youth and Peacebuilding

Working Group, emphasized that many youth-targeted groups in existence today are “adult-dominated,” usually aimed at children under 18, and often provide short-term solutions.

She pointed to the aftermath of the Bosnian conflict as an example of youth as a catalyst for change. The surge of youth energy in this case resulted in the formation of the Kosovo Youth Network, a youth-dominated organization with the mission of sharing post-war experiences and preventing domestic conflict.

Panelist Siobhan McEvoy-Levy, assistant professor of political science at Butler University, in Indianapolis, IN, analyzed the issue of marginalized youth in the context of Northern Ireland. Many youths are at the forefront of riots without a certainty about “where the physical manifestation of [their] misery is,” she said, but continue to riot based on issues of the past. A lack of counseling and the prevalence of dysfunctional families lead to the perpetuation of this phenomenon.

A representative of Lebanese youth, Wissam Samhat, a fellow at the United Nations Population Fund, described his experience in creating an organization for refugees in Lebanon. In 2006, during Israel’s assault on his country, Samhat became a refugee of war and was forced to move to Beirut. Wanting to give back and support the approximately 800,000 newly homeless Lebanese refugees, he started a makeshift organization with some friends.

Samhat kept the youths motivated by telling them, “What is happening around you is because of you.” According to Samhat, many of these young refugees said they would have resorted to violence if they had not been encouraged to participate in this project.

These types of youth empowerment projects, however, often are not encouraged by the government. “The political parties in my country are not supporting me,” said Samhat, which is why he decided to appeal to the United Nations for a “safe space” away from the politics of Lebanon.

Joanna de Berry, social development specialist at The World Bank, mentioned that reconstruction needs to be “socially and economically viable” and “politically palatable” for youth. We often underestimate the level of political activity of youth, she explained, and must take this into account when devising programs for them.

“Policies over programs” was the mantra for Marc Sommers, associate research professor of humanitarian studies at the Institute of Human Security at Tufts UniverSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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(L-r) Stephanie Schwartz, Siobhan McEvoy-Levy, Wissam Samhat, Marc Sommers and Joanna de Berry discuss youth and peacebuilding.

Blogs and Bullets at United States Institute of Peace International bloggers and technology experts gathered in Washington, DC July 8 for the third installment of the United States Institute of Peace’s (USIP) “Blogs and Bullets” series to evaluate the impact of new media on conflict.

Sheldon Himelfarb, executive director of USIP’s Center of Innovation for Science, Technology, and Peacebuilding and the moderator of two panels, introduced the event, which was shaped around a report assessing the role of new media in contentious politics. Given recent events—in Iran, in particular—the impact of new and social media on movements of political and social change has been a subject of debate, he explained. On one hand there are the “cyber utopians,” who claim that last year’s Iran street protests would never have occurred without Twitter. On the other there are the “cyber skeptics,” who underscore the fact that the Tehran mullahs’ regime remains in power, and that it has even utilized technology to track and crack down on opponents. Himelfarb conSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

cluded, as did most of the panelists, that the reality lies in between.

Panelists Marc Lynch, associate professor at George Washington University and director of its Institute for Middle East Studies; Alec Ross, senior adviser for innovation for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and Ethan Zuckerman, senior researcher at the Berkman Center, all underscored the need for thorough analysis on the matter, and pointed out the importance of seeing the wider picture. Many look at the 2005 social media-fueled protests in Egypt, for example, and don’t consider the entire context: two elections, constitutional reform, an aging president, and U.S. pressure for reform might have generated protests anyway, Lynch argued. We have to look beyond “somebody tweeted on Tuesday, then they overthrow the government on Wednesday,” Ross argued.

Describing the social media as sources used actively by Western news outlets during the Iran protests, Lynch illustrated how they were successful in attracting external attention to the issue. Zuckerman recalled “a certain point of the coverage [of the protests] where all CNN really did was stand up and say, ‘let’s read Twitter to you,’”—because the international news outlet had no reporters on the ground. According to Zuckerman, social media played a limited role domestically in the early days of the Green movement, however, as Iranians Twittering about it only ranged between several dozen and a couple of hundred. Unfortunately for the movement, however, Zuckerman declared, “Michael

STAFF PHOTO I. ALI

sity’s The Fletcher School, in Boston, Massachusetts. Programs can include only so many youth, he pointed out, which may “exacerbate the feeling of exclusion.”

Somers drew upon his expertise regarding the youth population of Sierra Leone, where, he said, many youth have “a sense that nepotism determines [whether one is admitted into a youth group].” This exclusion “makes youths feel more desperate and fatalistic,” Somers said.

He also pointed to the issue of class as playing a key role in youth programs, especially those abroad. For example, those who travel to the United States for training programs will be met with resentment from their peers when they return to their home country, and thus will not be regarded as leaders.

As a supplement to youth programs, Somers advocated that we “find out what youth priorities are” and formulate policies that are in accordance with these objectives.

—Karina Kainth

Jackson may have been responsible for ending the Green revolution,” as studies showed a profound drop in media coverage of Iranian activism after the celebrity’s death.

Ross argued that, although the tools are new, the “correlation between access to information and political power is nearly as old as time itself,” citing Ayatollah Khomeini’s use of cassette tapes as indirectly impacting the overthrow of the shah by its effect on public opinion.

In the day’s second panel, international bloggers expressed mixed opinions regarding the effects of the new media. “The role, especially…of Twitter, has been exaggerated here in the U.S.” said Golnaz Esfandiari, senior correspondent with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)’s Central Newsroom. With regard to the new media’s role in Iran, she suggested that more credit was due to YouTube. Iraq-born political analyst Raed Jarrar and Naseem Tarawnah, Jordanian contributor to Global Voices, a world community of more than 300 bloggers (who had King Abdallah showing up in his comments field one day), both agreed that mobile technology, in the forms of texts and multimedia messages, has far more impact than the Internet in the Arab world, exposing videos of torture and human rights abuses by the Iraqi government, among other subjects.

Nevertheless, technology loses out to the mobilizing powers of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, which, according to Tarawnah, can gather a crowd of 10,000 in a few hours, or Moqtada al Sadr, whose Web site has a mere 20 hits per day, but whose protests, according to Jarrar, can pull up to 1 million to 3 million people.

Madagascar-born blogger Mialy Andriamananjara discussed the importance of the new media when countries “don’t exist on the radar of mainstream media.” Not only do they provide information to the outside world, but the new media have been used to organize protests, and activists have

(L-r) Sheldon Himelfarb, Marc Lynch, Alec Ross and Ethan Zuckerman discuss the impact of new media.

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position to his appointment. been freed as a result of online peIn response to Satloff’s argutitions. Believing that the new ment that Washington should supmedia can lead to dialogue, Armeport the only democracy in the nia-based journalist and blogger Middle East, Freeman charged that Onnik Krikorian optimistically Israel is becoming increasingly less spoke about his bridge-building democratic and tolerant, and he social networking with the Azeri went on to describe Israel’s treatcommunity in Russia—friendment of its Muslim, Christian and ships that would be nearly impossecular Jewish population. sible without the use of technolAs for Israel’s army sharing its ogy since people of Armenian descent are not allowed to enter (L-r) Dr. Robert Satloff, Gen. Charles G. Boyd and Ambas- expertise for America’s use in Iraq, sador Charles Freeman debate a formerly taboo subject.

Freeman countered that Satloff Azerbaijan. may consider as assets on the The bloggers also warned about the dark sides of the new media. Jarrar Near East Policy, had quite different views ledger Israel’s pacification, interrogation and assassination techniques, including mentioned how message boards, widely on the topic.

Dr. Satloff called the special U.S.-Israeli the use of robotic instruments of death— popular in the Arab world, also are “extremely fertile ground[s] for terrorists,“ relationship “a strategic bonanza for the all perfected during Israel’s 40-some-years and criticized the early overwhelming U.S. U.S.: not just an asset, but a downright of occupation—but Freeman counts those media attention to Iraqi blogs in which bargain.” We “share ways of governing, lessons learned from Israel as a liability. He happiness about the occupation was ex- ways of ordering society, ways of viewing also pointed out that Tel Aviv has helped pressed. “These blogs do not really reflect the role of liberty and individual rights, itself to U.S. weapons stockpiled in Israel.

When Satloff argued that Israel didn’t what is happening in the streets,” he ar- and ways to defend those ideals,” he empress the United States into a war in Iraq, gued, but are used as tools to push some phasized.

According to Satloff, Israel is on the Freeman responded that while that may be political agenda. “Iranian security forces can…read Facebook [too],” said journalist front line, facing many of the same threats so, with regard to Iran, “it’s fully coordiand researcher Hamid Tehrani regarding Americans face. He listed military advan- nated—it’s out in the open” that Israel’s Iranian protest announcements on the so- tages that Israel brings to the U.S., includ- supporters are urging an attack on Iran in ing storing American war reserves in Israel order to defend Israel. “Iran poses no direct cial networking site.

Concluding the day, Adam Conner of and sharing “effective counterterrorism threat to the United States,” Freeman Facebook and Colin Rule, director of the and counterinsurgency tactics,” which he added.

Numerous journalists listened to the exonline dispute resolution of eBay and Pay- said have played an important role in Pal, gave their insights on new media and America’s fight in Iraq. “Israel’s intelli- citing debate, but, not too surprisingly, conflict resolution. “Technology is not an gence, its technology, lessons learned from few reported on it. Read Freeman and Satendpoint,” said Conner, as individuals its own experience in counterterrorism loff’s opening remarks or watch the event with access to information spread it on- and asymmetric warfare, have saved Amer- on the Nixon Center’s Web site, <www. ward. In the case of Iran, he pointed out, ican lives,” Satloff contended. “Our rela- nixoncenter.org>. —Delinda C. Hanley news from Facebook or text messages were tionship with Israel is not communicated from the rooftops. Sum- just good for Israel, it’s ming up the general consensus, Rule af- good for America,” SatDiplomatic Doings firmed that “technology is not good or loff concluded. “What bad—it’s a tool.”

—Imaan Ali we really need in the Middle East are more IsFreeman vs. Satloff: A Debate To raels...strong, democratic, Remember reliable, pro-American alThe Nixon Center in Washington, DC was lies.”

Ambassador Freeman, the scene of a rare debate, on July 20, about whether Israel is really a strategic an expert on both the asset or a strategic liability for the United Middle East and China, States. Gen. Charles G. Boyd, a Nixon Cen- effortlessly proved Israel ter fellow, moderated the debate on a sub- to be a liability to the U.S. ject which he described as often discussed (see p. 14 for his complete privately but rarely in public. [After days remarks). Freeman, who of waiting, the Nixon Center finally per- was President Barack mitted the Washington Report to attend the Obama’s pick to chair the Intelligence debate, held in a small conference room National with a few select audience members.] Am- Council, withdrew his bassador Charles Freeman, Jr., former U.S. name from consideration envoy to Saudi Arabia and China and now after the American Israel Egypt’s Ambassador to the United States Sameh Shoukry, chairman of Projects International, and Dr. Public Affairs Committee his wife, Suzy, and other embassy staff welcome guests to Robert Satloff, executive director of the (AIPAC) stirred up conEgypt’s July 7 National Day reception.

AIPAC-spinoff Washington Institute for gressional and media op-

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Other People’s Mail Compiled by Kate Hilmy and Andrew Blakely Turkey’s New Diplomacy To The International Herald Tribune, June 21, 2010 I take exception to Thomas Friedman’s two “Letters from Istanbul.” It is common practice for states in conflicts to use the media in attempts to discredit, or even demonize, their adversaries.

In Mr. Friedman’s two columns he praises Turkey’s characteristics and achievements in generous terms, then strives in a few key sentences to discredit Turkey’s elected leader. It seems Mr. Friedman’s objective is to have us believe that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a dangerous Islamist proclaiming insanities simply to garner Muslim votes. A thoughtful reader will reject this attempt to manipulate popular opinion. Mr. Erdogan is one of very few leaders unafraid to call a spade a spade. Is it not possible that Mr. Erdogan simply speaks for human rights and international justice and that it just so happens that the vast majority of Turks think this is admirable?

Ronald Barbour, Volonne, France

Wasteful Projects in Iraq To The New York Times, July 19, 2010 The article about incomplete, poorly built and underperforming infrastructure projects in post-invasion Iraq raises the critical questions: Who is responsible for these colossal lapses, and why haven’t they been held accountable for them?

The people of Iraq, to whom promises and commitments were made, deserve answers, as do United States taxpayers, who have financed the waste of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

Tracy Leverton, Vienna, VA

Time for Real Talks With Iran To The Washington Post, July 15, 2010 In their July 9 op-ed, “A show of force for Iran,” former senator Charles S. Robb and retired Gen. Charles Wald outlined a triple-track strategy that involves the simultaneous pursuit of diplomacy, sanctions and visible, credible military readiness activity to stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The latter two tracks have an obvious purpose—putting sufficient pressure on Iranian leaders to cause them to be open to the first track, i.e. diplomacy. But the authors gave no idea of what they have in SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

mind for that track. It is time for the United States and the “five plus one” partners from the European Union and the U.N. Security Council simultaneously to accompany that pressure with a signal of their readiness to renew a dialogue with the Iranians at Geneva on genuine diplomatic and security quid pro quos in return for suspension of their nuclear enrichment timetable.

In that strategy, there should be ample room for genuine diplomatic dialogue, recalling President Obama’s publicly announced readiness for dialogue with Iran, based on mutual interests and mutual respect. That kind of dialogue is long overdue.

Bruce Laingen, Bethesda, MD (the senior official among 52 Americans seized in 1979 and held hostage in Tehran for 444 days)

The Iran Agenda To The International Herald Tribune, July 9, 2010 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must be applauded for her strong message of support for civil society and the human spirit as she traveled to countries where the trend toward semi-authoritarianism seems to be on the rise. Examples include Azerbaijan, with its Soviet-style bureaucracy stifling innovation, dissent and the human spirit, to Georgia and Ukraine, where the Soviet ghosts still roam.

As she was making her whirlwind tour of the countries on the periphery of Iran, imagine if she had actually landed in Tehran in a bold move to engage in the direct negotiations that President Obama had so eloquently suggested a year-and-a-half ago.

Iran has close relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. An engaged Iran could be of immense help in bringing the Armenians and Azeris together. Further, an engaged Iran could assist the United States in so many ways in Afghanistan (as it did in 2001) and Iraq and extricate America from two costly wars.

The question is, with so much at stake, why is such a bold move not on the U.S. administration’s agenda?

Fariborz S. Fatemi, McLean, VA

Secretary Clinton’s Remarks To Pakistan’s Dawn, July 30, 2010 I felt humiliated when the U.S. secretary of state said that if another incident such as what Faisal Shahzad had attempted in New York were to be traced back to Pakistan, it THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

would be “devastating” for this country. Is there no one in the government to tell her that Faisal Shahzad was an American citizen who visited Pakistan as a tourist?

Besides the lapse on the Pakistani side to have allowed him to visit Waziristan, what has Hillary Clinton to say about the lapse on the part of the CIA and FBI knowing that a Pakistani-born American had visited Waziristan? Do they always wake up after the incident has taken place? What the secretary of state should have said was that greater coordination was required between the intelligence agencies of the two countries. To have given such a blatant threat to an ally is most un-diplomatic and shows she has yet to learn how to handle such highly sensitive matters.

Pakistan has bent over backwards to prove its sincerity to the U.S. government.

As far as the latest estimates go, approximately 33,000 Pakistanis have lost their lives in this war on terror as compared to the approximately 2,000 of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan. Isn’t this proof enough, or is there something else that the Obama government wants from us?

Finally, as long as Pakistan abides by IAEA laws we do not have to take dictation from any country regarding the setting up of nuclear power plants for our energy needs. China is our all-weather friend and at no cost must Pakistan break its ties with it.

Sardar Ahmed, Peshawar, Pakistan

Drone Attacks To the Columbia Missourian, June 25, 2010 Missouri Sens. Kit Bond and Claire McCaskill recently issued a joint news release which praised the planned deployment of MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft systems at Whiteman Air Force Base, in Knob Noster.

Both lawmakers emphasized the Predator’s killing effectiveness in carrying out strikes on terrorists, with McCaskill noting their usefulness in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No mention was made of the drone war in Pakistan, which has destroyed up to 1,000 people. Among those were an estimated 320 innocents.

Somehow, both senators believe that the use of the Whiteman-based aircraft will significantly undercut the insurgency in these war zones. Between Jan. 14, 2006, and April 8, 2009, 60 cross-border Predator strikes carried out by Afghanistanbased American drones were able to hit 69

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only 10 percent of their intended targets.

The strikes killed 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders along with 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. Needless to say, those strikes and similar attacks have caused widespread public anger in all the countries in which they have been used, and they have served to severely damage the campaign against the Taliban. Such attacks which indiscriminately kill and injure civilians simply add insult to injury in all three of the aforementioned conflicts, which serious analysts know cannot be “won.” The drone attacks unquestionably create more terrorists than they eliminate.

One has only to consider the outrage and militancy that would be created if another country attacked a public gathering or civic celebration in Columbia. Unfortunately, Bond and McCaskill fail to understand this most basic human response.

Shame on them both.

Bill Wickersham, Columbia, MO

Afghan Lessons To The New York Times, June 28, 2010 In “Worse Than a Nightmare,” Bob Herbert gets our dilemma in Afghanistan exactly right. We either fight the war aggressively, killing scores of civilians, angering Muslims throughout the Middle East and creating more terrorists; or we restrain our forces, thus appealing to Afghan hearts and minds, but risking more American lives and angering both our troops and the American public.

The only solution to this dilemma is to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.

Peter Schanck, Santa Fe, NM

America’s Wars To The Independent, June 29, 2010 The sacking of Gen. Stanley McChrystal gives the lie to the idea that the war in Afghanistan is a NATO operation. It is just one of America’s wars—“On Terror” or “On Drugs”—in various parts of the world that the rest of the world appears to have been conscripted into. These wars involve extra-judicial killings, torture, immense collateral damage to civilians, illegal imprisonment and much else that has no place in a civilized world. “Hearts and minds” are not won from a people looking down the barrels of foreign guns.

Barry Barber, Worcestershire, UK

Netanyahu’s Visit To The International Herald Tribune, July 10, 2010 Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel—and the Middle East itself—are as 70

much Europe’s problems as they are America’s.

Europe should stop being a bystander. It needs to reaffirm the rule of law in international affairs by acknowledging—embarrassing though it may be—Iran’s inalienable right as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. At the same time Europe should actively promote a nuclear-free Middle East.

Only war mongers would object.

Finally, Europe should find the courage to ask the Security Council to stick to its traditional job of dealing with threats to international peace and security. Threats to attack Iran from Americans and Israelis fall into this category.

Yugo Kovach, Winterborne Houghton, England

Points of Contention To The New York Times, July 6, 2010 I compliment you for reporting on this scandalous use of American taxpayers’ funds to support illegal and ill-conceived activities in the occupied territories of the West Bank. You clearly point out how the actions of groups of naïve American evan-

WRITE OR TELEPHONE THOSE WORKING FOR YOU IN WASHINGTON. 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 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Department of State Washington, DC 20520 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>

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gelists are obstructing any eventual peace process for the Middle East.

And while the total of $200 million in tax-deductible funds spent over the last decade is shocking, it pales when compared with the more than $30 billion in economic and military aid that the United States government has given to Israel over the last decade. This is much more than we have given the whole impoverished continent of Africa and is by far the largest single destination of official foreign aid.

This aid should be stopped immediately.

Richard L. Huber, New York, NY

A Test of Moral Courage To The New York Times, July 10, 2010 Nicholas D. Kristof gives a long-overdue voice to the valiant Israelis who advocate peace and human rights for the Palestinian people. Except during periods of active hostilities, the Israeli peace movement, calling for a two-state solution, similar to the Geneva Accord worked out with its Palestinian counterparts in 2002, represents majority opinion from both sides of this conflict.

The Israeli peace and justice declarants include leading intellectuals, religious figures, politicians, reservists, and former cabinet ministers and military and security officials.

After more than six decades, is it not time that they be invited for thorough congressional hearings in both houses, which an unmuzzled Congress could make happen at long last?

Ralph Nader, Washington, DC

Keeping the Faith To the Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2010 The controversy here in Temecula illustrates an embarrassing lack of education in our community. Fears that a mosque would turn this conservative city into a haven for Islamic extremists are unfounded. The “confrontational atmosphere” that Pastor Bill Rench predicts would not be an issue if he practiced what he preached. Loving your neighbor is one of the greatest lessons of Christianity.

Another common concern here is the need to preserve “traditional American values.” There are many military families in this town, and friends I graduated from high school with last month have signed up to serve this great country. The Times quoted a member of the local Republican women’s group saying that “our boys are over there fighting and dying for our freedom.”

Among our freedoms is the freedom to practice religion—any religion. God forbid our soldiers’ sacrifices have been in vain.

Samuel Leff, Temecula, CA ❑ SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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The Muslim Observer, Livonia

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The Economist, London

USA Today

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Oliphant Š 2010 Universal Uclick. Reprinted by permission

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore

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bookreview_72_Book Review 8/5/10 1:45 PM Page 72

Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East

By Geoffrey Wawro, Penquin Press HC, 2010, hardback, 704 pp. List: $37.95; AET: $24.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Blankfort

Jeffrey Blankfort is a West Coast-based radio producer and photographer who writes extensively on the Middle East.

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veloped a bullying reputation—pointing out that American Jews were concentrated in critical states with vital blocs of electoral votes and that they gave generously to friendly campaigns and not at all to unfriendly ones. It became difficult for American presidents to ‘reassess’ Middle Eastern policy or to ‘downgrade’ Israel U.S. assessments for the simple reason that there was a potentially lethal political price to pay.’

“During the Cold War,” points out Wawro, “Israel policy and lobbying involved driving a wedge between Washington and the Arabs,” a salient fact that has largely been ignored in the debate over the lobby’s power but of which Washington was well aware. “Domestically produced U.S. support for Israel created a strategic problem” writes Wawro, in which Israel was portrayed by Arab governments as an ‘American pawn,’ a conspiracy ‘minted on Wall Street,’ and so on. The fact that none of this was true—America seemed as much a pawn to Israeli intrigues as the other way around—did not diminish the canard’s effectiveness in pulling important countries like Iraq, Syria and Egypt into opposition to the West” which, given its proximity to the regions’ oil fields, “empowered Tel Aviv” since “Israel could now pose as the indispensable ally, committed to uphold not only the West’s influence, but its energy security as well.” (Emphasis added) Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Israel and its domestic lobby kept to the same game plan, only now, Wawro notes, “the threat is Arabs/al-Qaeda or Arabs/Hezbollah, and the Israelis labor to create the same polarization that worked Continued on page 77

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This is a book the Israel Lobby doesn’t want Americans to read. Although Wawro, who teaches military history at North Texas University, has a distinguished reputation in his field, his latest book, released in April, has yet to receive a single review or even a mention in the mainstream press.

Before writing Quicksand, Wawro had specialized in 19th century European military history, a relatively safe and often a rewarding field of study. Writing a history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East that paints a critical picture of Israel and its U.S. lobby is something else. That’s what Wawro has discovered to his surprise.

Unlike his works on European history that were warmly welcomed by the media, Quicksand has been ignored. It is not hard to figure out why. Clearly it is his shredding of popular myths about the establishment of Israel, his clear sympathy for the Palestinians, and his exposure of the workings of the Zionist lobby going back to the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, all of which Wawro expresses in terms that would ordinarily have Alan Dershowitz, the ADL’s Abe Foxman, and the American Jewish Committee’s David Harris frothing at the mouth. That they are not, at least not yet in public, is a sign of Quicksand’s potential to damage Israel’s image and their own before a broad American audience.

For one, there is no way that Wawro can be portrayed as a wild-eyed radical outside of the mainstream, and an “anti-Semitic” smear campaign on The Lobby’s part would quite likely backfire—although it is not out of the question. Before taking his current post, the telegenic Wawro was professor of strategic studies at the Naval War

College and became visible to a sizeable segment of the reading public when he hosted the History Channel’s book show, “Hardcover History,” and was the host and anchor of the History Channel programs, “History’s Business” and “History vs. Hollywood,” as well as “Hard Target,” “Global View,” and “History in Focus.”

Moreover, Wawro accepts the conventional narrative for the events of 9/11 and believes, as well, that Iran, despite its denials, is engaged in its own nuclear weapons program. It was, in fact, the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon which turned his attention from 19th century Europe to the Middle East and sent him on a quest to find out why people of that region bear such a degree of ill will toward the United States and the West.

Finally, this is not a polemic. Quicksand contains 60 pages of tiny footnotes, nine pages of bibliography, and a superb index, many of the former originating from documents in British and U.S. National Archives that had either been ignored or recently declassified. Taken together, they convinced Wawro that the main reason for anti-U.S. sentiments, as readers may have guessed by now, has been U.S. support for Israel and that this support has been engendered, to a large extent, by “the bluster” of the Israel [and pre-Israel] Lobby “to which every president since Wilson has succumbed.”

“The Truman instinct on Israel,” writes Wawro, “became the abiding American instinct. Every U.S. president after Truman tailored his electoral campaigns—as well as mid-term congressional ones—to the exigencies of what gradually came to be known as the ‘Israel Lobby’…The Israel Lobby deNorth Nor America’s selection off Palestinian products oducts thh73656-55674-1-9 A656-5 mer e 556 ica674-1-9 ’s most mos diverse sLOREM selec l Mtition PaMlestin le nian traditional tr t aditional pr 736 73656 55674 1 st 9 diverse LPSUM LeOREM LPSU

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New Fa l l 2 0 1 0 Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East

by Geoffrey Wawro, Penguin Press HC, 2010, hardback, 704 pp. List: $37.95; AET: $24. One of the most comprehensive historical studies of American involvement in the Middle East, “Quicksand should be required reading for everyone in Washington who has a hand in formulating policy toward the Arab and Islamic world,” says Prof. John J. Mearsheimer. Buy this with Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of US-Arab Relations, 1820-2001 by Rice University professor Ussama Makdisi (a $67 value) for only $36.50 plus shipping and handling.

Letters from Palestine: Palestinians Speak Out about Their Lives, Their Country, and the Power of Nonviolence by Kenneth Ring and Ghassan Abdullah, Wheatmark, 2010, paperback, 284 pp.

List: $26.95; AET: $17.50. Moving beyond stereotypes, this powerful collection of letters gives voice to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, who provide poignant and searing accounts of life in Gaza and the West Bank. Buy this with My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story by Ramzy Baroud (a $45 value) for only $29 plus shipping and handling.

The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars became Obama’s by Tom Engelhardt, Haymarket Books, 2010, paperback, 269 pp. List: $16.95; AET: $11.50. Fearlessly exposing the ugly truths of U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghan istan, blogger Tom Engelhardt explores American involvement in the Middle East from 9/11 to today, and its enormous costs, in this compelling new book. Buy this with Seth Jones’ seminal history of Afghanistan, In the Graveyard of Empires, (a $33 value) for only $22 plus shipping and handling.

Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations: 1820-2001 by Ussama Makdisi, Public Affairs, 2010, hardback, 432 pp. List: $28.95; AET: $19. Firmly rejecting the notion of an Islamic-Western civilization clash, Makdisi explores how America’s positive influence in the Middle East in the 19th and early 20th centuries bolstered a positive view of the United States throughout the Arab world. Drawing on both American and Arab sources, Makdisi shows how European colonial partition in the 1920s and the formation of Israel in 1948 systematically alienated Arabs from America. Pair this with Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East (a $67 value) for only $36.50 plus shipping and handling.

Born a Refugee by Dixiane Hallaj, CreateSpace Books, 2010, paperback, 336 pp. List: $12; AET: $10.50. The haunting yet beautiful story of a family of four brothers and their widowed mother living in a tiny house in the Kalandia Refugee Camp near Jerusalem as they face the struggle and hope of their daily lives.

Gripping, well-written, and engaging, Born a Refugee is a powerful look at Palestinian life. Order this with Ghassan Kanafani’s classic All That’s Left to You: A Novella and Short Stories (a $25 value) for only $19 plus shipping and handling.

War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column in America by James Petras, Clarity Press, 2010, paperback, 132 pp. List: $15; AET: $10.50. Prolific writer and academic James Petras discusses the Goldstone Report on Israel’s 2008-09 assault on Gaza, and U.S. complicity in blocking international condemnation of Israel. Straightforward and engaging, this is a must read for anyone interested in Israeli human rights abuses in the Gaza Strip. Buy this book along with The Punishment of Gaza by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy (a $31 value) for only $21.

Iraqi Jews: A History of Mass Exodus by Abbas Shiblak, Saqi Books, 2005, paperback, 180 pp. List: $19.95; AET: $16.50. Oxford research fellow and Palestinian Abbas Shiblak examines the sorry sequence of events that led to the mass exodus of Iraq’s Jewish population in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Honest, well-documented and impartial, Shiblak’s book follows how events from Zionist-financed bombings to police intimidation led to the disappearance of one of the world’s most deeply rooted Jewish communities. Purchase this with Eric Davis’ Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity (a $44.90 value) for only $31 plus shipping and handling.

Ramadan Moon by Na’ima Robert and Shirin Adl, Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2009, hardback, 33 pp. List: $17.95; AET: $12.50. Celebrate Ramadan with this colorful children’s book, full of beautiful illustrations and wonderful poetry explaining Islam’s holy month. A fantastic gift for a child learning to understand the meaning of Ramadan.

Order this with the colorful and fun children’s book Humpy Grumpy Camel Saves the Day by Julia Johnson and Emily Styles (a $34 value) for only $22 plus shipping and handling.

Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future by Stephen Kinzer, Times Books, 2010, hardcover, 288 pp. List: $25; AET: $17.

Kinzer proposes an astonishing plan for Middle East peace through the reconfiguration of U.S. foreign policy in the region by calling for engaging Iran and Turkey as new key partners.

Provocative, well-written and entertaining, Reset provides a startling and original alternative to the traditional power paradigm of the region. Buy this with Understanding the USIran Crisis by Phyllis Bennis (a $36 value) for only $24 plus shipping and handling.

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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bulletin_board_74_Bulletin Board 8/4/10 9:16 PM Page 74

Upcoming Events, Announcements, Awards —Compiled by Adam Chamy & Obituaries Upcoming Events The 15th Annual Arab-American Festival of Orange County, CA will be held at the The Village Green Park, 12762 Main St., Garden Grove, CA from Sept. 24 to 26th. For more information visit <www. aafestival.com> or call (714) 758-3507.

The 9th Annual National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC) Conference will take place at Rutgers University’s Newark, NJ campus on Sept. 24 and 25. With the theme “Learn, Adapt, Succeed,” the conference will feature workshops and panels, keynote speakers, a tour of local NNAAC organizations, and a Celebration of Community Dinner. For more information contact Arwa AlGharazi at <aalgharazi@accesscommunity.org” and (313) 843-2844 ext. 0, or visit <www.nnaac.org>.

The Boston Palestine Film Festival will be held Oct. 1 to 10 at locations throughout Boston. A full schedule will be available on the festival’s Web site in September. For information visit <http://bostonpalestinefilmfest.org> or call (617) 642-9640.

The American Task Force on Palestine’s 5th Annual Gala will be held Oct. 20, 7 p.m., at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, DC. For event details visit <www. americantaskforce.org/gala_2010>.

The Arab American Chamber of Commerce’s 18th Annual Building Economic Bridges Banquet will take place Oct. 22 in Dearborn, MI. For more information visit <www.americanarab.com> or call (313) 945-1700 The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations will be hosting its 19th Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference Oct. 21 and 22 on the theme “Arab-U.S. Relations: Going Where?” To register for or obtain more information on the event, to be held at the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center in Washington, DC, visit <www.ncusar.org> or call (202) 293-6466.

The 2010 Arab American Festival will be held at Indian Steele Park in Phoenix, AZ Oct. 23 and 24 from 12-9 p.m. For more information visit <http://arabamericanfestival.com/index.php> or call (602) 412-1525.

Announcements The Council for the National Interest (CNI) has named former journalist Alison 74

Weir, CNI board member and founder of If Americans Knew (<www.ifamericansknew.org>), as its new president. Weir, who succeeds former foreign service officer Eugene Bird, CNI president for the past 17 years, will divide her time between the two organizations. Founded in 1989, CNI advocates for “Middle East policies that serve the American national interest,” not that of a foreign country—namely, Israel.

CNI’s new executive director is former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, a specialist on international issues and regular contributer to The American Conservative and <www. antiwar.com>. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs has published articles by both Weir and Giraldi, and looks forward to working with them in the future.

The Arab American Museum calls for community help in funding a $10,000 sculpture of legendary Arab-American journalist Helen Thomas by the famous sculptor and former White House photojournalist Susan Tinsley McElhinney. To help fund the project, visit <www.arabamericanmuseum.org> and click on “Helen Thomas Sculpture Project.” Any size donation received by Friday, Sept. 10 is welcome.

The annual Arab Film Festival and Arab American National Museum introduces the 2010 AANM Short Film Contest, open to all filmmakers between the ages of 18 and 30. This year’s theme is “Trans-Ubuntu”— “Trans” indicating movement across, through or beyond, and “Ubuntu” based on an African philosophy meaning “a person is a person through other people.” Submission deadline is Friday, Oct. 15. For more information on the theme or submission requirements visit <www.arabamericanmuseum. org> and click on “Young Adult Short Film Contest with Cash Prizes.”

The American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights is calling for volunteers across the United States to host a Palestine Freedom Walk in their town on Oct. 2, 2010. To locate a walk or start one in your town, visit <www.aaper.org> or call (202) 683-8438.

Awards The 2010 Abraaj Capital Art Prize was awarded at the Art Dubai art fair to Kader Attia (Algeria), Hala Elkoussy (Egypt), and Marwan Sahmarani (Lebanon). The People’s Choice award was presented to Marwan Sahmarani (Lebanon). Established in 2008 and awarded annually, the annual Abraaj THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

BulletinBoard Capital Art Prize is the only art prize specifically for the Middle East, North Africa, and South Africa (MENASA) region. At $1 million in disbursements, it is the world’s most generous art prize. For more information, visit <www.artdubai.ae>.

The Arab American National Museum has announced its 2010 Arab American Book Award Winners. They include Master of the Eclipse by Etel Adnan (adult fiction), Angeleno Days by Gregory Orfalea (adult non-fiction), Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea by Dunya Mikail (poetry). Receiving honorable mention were Amreeka: Arab Voice, American Stories by Alia Malek and Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience after 9/11

by Louise A Cainkar. For more information visit <www.arabamericanmuseum.com>.

Obituaries Jack O’Connell, 88, former CIA station chief in Amman and American confidant to Jordan’s late King Hussein, died July 12 of congestive heart failure at the Virginia Hospital in Arlington, VA. Born in Flandreau, SD, he attended college at Notre Dame and Georgetown universities. His education was interrupted by World War II, the end of which occurred while he was serving on a minesweeper patrolling Nagasaki’s harbor after the Japanese surrender. By 1946 he graduated from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, from which he received a law degree in 1948. In 1952, he earned a degree in Islamic law through a Fulbright scholarship at the University of the Punjab in Pakistan. His friendship with King Hussein began during his first CIA assignment, when he was sent to Jordan to foil a military coup attempt on the then-22year-old monarch. After serving in Beirut, O’Connell became station chief in Jordan from 1963 to 1971, during which time he witnessed the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War and “Black September,” Jordan’s bloody expulsion of the PLO in 1970. Observers claim he had the closest relationship with King Hussein of any other American official before or since. He played a key role in the negotiating of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242—which, while still unimplemented, remains the key blueprint for Middle East Peace agreements to this day.

After 1971, Dr. O’Connell left Jordan to head a law firm in Washington, DC. He remained the personal lawyer and political confidant to the royal family until King Hussein’s death in 1999. ❑ SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

abourezk_75_In Memoriam 8/5/10 1:49 PM Page 75

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (1917-2010) InMemoriam

By James G. Abourezk first met Senator Byrd shortly after I was

tor from South Dakota. It was January 1973.

I knew Senator Byrd was from Beckley, West Virginia, because that is where my older sister, Helen Ramey, lived. When I was in elementary school in South Dakota, I started going to Beckley in the summers to stay with her. It was a way for my parents to get me out of their hair for a month or two.

I also knew that, when he was younger, Sen. Byrd had worked as a butcher in my cousin, Fred Mickel's, small grocery store in Beckley. I had also heard that Senator Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan when he was younger. He was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served a few terms before running for the U.S. Senate. Senator Byrd proved himself a very hard worker, which served him well in his political career.

I found out that he used to set aside a certain amount of time each evening, when his work in the Senate was done for the day, to call a few people in West Virginia personally, introducing himself and asking how things were going in the area where the constituent lived. As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, he made certain that West Virginia got its share of federal money, an activity now called “earmarking”—but back then it was called, “representing your state or your district.” His being a somewhat poor state, Senator Byrd’s earmarking was greatly appreciated by his constituents, so much so that he was re-elected time after time, for a record number of terms in the Senate.

It was said that he always knew where the bodies were buried with respect to Senate politics, which is why he ultimately ran for, and was elected to be, Majority Leader of the Senate after Sen. Mike Mansfield of Montana retired.

That was a traumatic election, to say the least. Not long after Senator Mansfield retired, the campaign to replace him began in earnest. Everyone knew that Sen. HuJames G. Abourezk is a former U.S. senator (D-SD) and founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He currently practices law in Sioux Falls, SD. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

AFP PHOTO/TIM SLOAN

Isworn in for my first term as a U.S. sena-

The late Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV). bert Humphrey (D-MN), Senator Byrd and Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina were going for the prize. I was conflicted in a major way. Senator Humphrey was a friend, someone who had helped me when I decided to run for the U.S. Senate.

(Humphrey was originally a pharmacist in South Dakota, where he was born and raised.) I was leery of supporting Senator Byrd because of his Ku Klux Klan background. That prompted me to call Senator Hollings to tell him that I supported him for Leader. I was told that he had to make a trip to China first before he would finally decide whether or not to run for the position.

While he was gone, the pressure from the Humphrey and Byrd camps was coming down heavy on the mostly undeclared senators. The liberal Democats, of course, liked Hubert Humphrey, as did I. But I also was aware that Hubert was the leader of the “Israeli Mafia,” as I called them, in the Senate. I did not want to see the strong supporters of Israel gain even more power in the Senate.

When Senator Hollings returned from China I called him and asked him to hurry and announce his candidacy. He begged off, saying he could not run under the then-current circumstances.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

So I called Senator Byrd and asked for a meeting with him. When we met, I told him that I was of a mind to support him, but that I wanted him to promise to support a couple of issues in which I was interested. I wanted to create a stand-alone Indian Affairs Committee. I asked for a seat on the Steering Committee, which names other senators to the substantive committees, such as appropriations, foreign relations, judiciary, etc.

He agreed to each of my requests, so I agreed to support him. He wanted to issue a press release immediately, for the obvious reason that announcement of my support would bring some of the liberal senators with me. As he issued the statement of support, the deadlock was broken, and the liberal senators, afraid of Senator Byrd as I had been, broke for him, giving him enough votes to win as Majority Leader.

He kept all of his promises to me, and we got along fine until I led the filibuster against the bill de-regulating natural gas in 1977. The Majority Leader controls the Senate—unless, that is, someone is filibustering, and that person takes control of the floor away from the Leader. Senator Byrd was understandingly not happy with what Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) and I Continued on page 77 75

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AET’s 2010 Choir of Angels Following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1, 2010 and July 29, 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.

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TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more) Mohamed Alwan, Chestnut Ridge, NY Dr. Joseph Bailey, Valley Center, CA Graf Herman Bender, North Palm Beach, FL Rev. Rosemarie Carnarius, Tucson, AZ Richard Curtiss, Boynton Beach, FL Shuja El-Asad, Amman, Jordan Douglas A. Field, Kihei, HI** Grace Guthrie, Falls Church, VA Salman & Kate Hilmy, Silver Spring, MD Ambassador Holsey G. Handyside, Bedford, OH Brigitte Jaensch, Carmichael, CA Trini Marquez, Beach, ND Rachelle Marshall, Mill Valley, CA Anees Mughannam, Petaluma, CA

Sen. Robert C. Byrd…

Continued from page 75

were doing. During the standoff, a great many bitter words were spoken back and forth, and it appeared that my friendship with Senator Byrd had come to an end.

But a few weeks after the filibuster ended, Senator Byrd approached me and invited me to meet with him in his private office. He said that he was inviting the Democratic senators to a dinner, and that he would entertain with his excellent fiddle playing. He then asked me if I would back him up with my guitar. I readily agreed. Although he was way above my class of guitar playing, I took it as a way for us to renew a friendship.

After I left the Senate, I watched, on television, what Senator Byrd had become.

He led the fight against the Iraq war, giving speeches that were brilliant in their analysis with respect to how our country would be injured by virtue of our invasion of Iraq. On more than one occasion I witnessed him dressing down the Israeli Lobby on the Senate Floor, something that no one had done since both Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-AR) and I left the Senate.

Senator Byrd gave more than one eloquent speech outlining what the U.S. Constitution meant when it came to entering battle against invented enemies. He became, in short, someone who would be described as a liberal, although if he was a liberal, he was one with courage, something that modern day liberals tragically lack.

What has impressed me more than anything about my friend is the way he grew, intellectually and morally, into what a United States senator—and more, what an American citizen—should be. Someone who has the courage of his or her convictions, who is not afraid to express them without regard to the political conseSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

Robert Norberg, Lake City, MN William O’Grady, St. Petersburg, FL Patricia & Herbert Pratt, Cambridge, MA Dr. Mohammed Sabbagh, Grand Blanc, MI Gay Schroeder, Boston, MA Mahmud Shaikhaly, Hollywood, CA Cheryl Tatum, Cincinnati, OH Donn Trautman, Evanston, IL

BARITONES & MEZZO SOPRANOS ($1,000 or more) A.J. & M.T. Amirana, Las Vegas, NV Asha Anand, Bethesda, MD Linda Emmet, Paris, France Dr. & Mrs. Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR Gary Richard Feulner, Dubai, UAE

quences. We have seen this all before, that a U.S. senator will speak out on an issue, causing a great deal of controversy, but with time, the nation sees the correctness of his or her position. That kind of senator is disappearing rapidly, to the great misfortune of our country. Sen. George McGovern (D-MN), Senator Fulbright and Senator Byrd come to mind as exceptions to the general rule.

Robert Byrd was a senator who started his adult life as a Klansman, but who educated himself on how to make the world a better place for all of us to live in. He went to night law school when he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He educated himself on the U.S. Constitution, on its war powers, and on how senators could best serve their country. We are sorely lacking this kind of dedication and this kind of patriotism. We can only hope that some young person, one with an interest in politics, will be inspired by Senator Byrd’s example. That kind of person is sorely needed by our country. ❑

Quicksand…

Continued from page 72

until the fall of the Soviets, this time pitting Washington and Tel Aviv against transnational terrorism and its state sponsors. Israeli and neocon connivance in Operation Iraqi Freedom has opened eyes in Washington to the perils of this isolating dynamic, but the ‘interdependence’ of Israel and America, forged in Congress and on the campaign trail, remains.”

Wawro is not sparing in his description of the manner in which five pro-Likud Jewish neocons—Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and Scooter Libby, all serving in critical positions in the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice power strucTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Evan & Leman Fotos, Istanbul, Turkey 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 ***In memory of James E. Akins

ture—transferred the “Clean Break” doctrine that Perle, Wurmser, and Feith had earlier helped to prepare for Binyamin Netanyahu in 1996, calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussain, into a collection of falsified “facts” that were used to justify the United States doing just that in 2003 with its all-too-visible attended costs. Although Wawro devotes considerable space to both U.S. wars in the Gulf, the reader doesn’t even get into them until the latter portion of Quicksand.

After sketching America’s earliest interest in the Middle East in the middle of the 19th century in his introduction, Quicksand takes us chronologically from World War One and the Balfour Declaration and the discovery of oil under the sands of the Arabian desert to last year’s clash between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. This is the only way, Wawro believes, “to convey the accumulating pressures that have lodged America in the Middle East.”

“Some readers,” he warns, may be perturbed or merely surprised by the portrait of Israel and Israel-U.S. relations…but the facts lead there; indeed my approach to Israel is no different from my approach to every other country in this book. It is solidly rooted in American and British archives, journalism—’the first draft of history’—and scholarly literature.” That the Saudis and other countries in or involved in the region’s history of the past century fare no better at Wawro’s hands will certainly not placate those for whom Israeli exceptionalism—or, to coin a word, exemptionalism—is sacrosanct.

In a blurb on the book’s jacket, Prof. John Mearsheimer writes, “Quicksand should be required reading for everyone in Washington who has a hand in formulating policy toward the Arab and Islamic world.” I would add that in the hands of those seriously engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy, it can become a powerful tool. ❑ 77

killgore_78_In Memoriam 8/4/10 9:18 PM Page 78

Ambassador James E. Akins (1926-2010) InMemoriam

By Andrew I. Killgore

East Expert and energy consultant James E. Akins died at his home in Mitchellville, Maryland on July 15. He was 83 years of age.

The son of a rubber plant worker in Akron, Ohio, he earned a B.S. degree in physics from Akron University in 1947, after spending the previous two years in the U.S. Navy. He then taught physics and chemistry at the American Community School in Lebanon from 1951-52.

Starting at the bottom in the Foreign Service in 1952, Jim worked as a clerk/typist for the U.S. Embassy in Paris and as a consular officer in Strasbourg, France. In 1954 he became a foreign service officer, , working as an Ambassador James E. Akins. economic officer at the American Embassy in Damascus, April 1969 turned Jim into a big star.

He was prescient enough to warn of Syria.

After his Damascus assignment, his an energy crisis before others could career followed the usual foreign ser- see it. When the United States resvice progression—two to three years cued Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli at each post and then on to a new as- war, the Arab states launched an oil signment: Beirut, Lebanon; Kuwait; embargo against the United States and Baghdad, Iraq—then the State De- others. Jim’s incisive analysis, entitled partment in Washington, DC. There “The Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf is was nothing unusual about Jim’s Here” and published in the journal career—expect that he was promoted Foreign Affairs, turned him into an instant and lasting star. He was transfaster than most.

Jim was very ambitious, and he ferred to the White House, where he was not happy when he told me at a wrote President Richard Nixon’s 1968 Christmas party that he was energy speech.

In August of 1973, in recognition of being assigned to the State Department Office of Fuels and Energy. He his prescience, boldness, and knowlknew that nothing much happened in edge of the Arabs and the Middle such a quiet office, so he feared that, East, Jim was appointed U.S. ambasin his words, he was being “side- sador to Saudi Arabia. Because Jim had studied Arabic in Beirut, Zionist lined.”

But the alignment of the stars was Robert E. Kaplan’s “get-em” book The such that his assignment there in Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite pegged Jim as a “rich Andrew I. Killgore, former U.S. am- WASP.” In fact, he was a poor Quaker. bassador to Qatar, is publisher of the But Jim always called the shots as he Washington Report on Middle East saw them, and he clashed with super Affairs.

Zionist and mega-egotist Henry 78

Kissinger, then secretary of state. Jim accused Kissinger of having approved the shah of Iran’s increasing oil prices after Kissinger agreed to sell Iran such a volume of weapons that increasing oil prices would have been the only way Iran could have paid for them. Jim also openly denounced Kissinger’s view that the U.S. should militarily occupy the Arab oil fields. As a result, Kissinger dismissed Jim in a humiliating way—via a newspaper article.

According to State Department practice, if an ambassador is not offered a new job, he must retire—and Ambassador Akins was not offered a new job. So Jim left the Foreign Service in 1976, at age 49. In retirement, however, Jim continued to shine. He served as a consultant/advisor in the Middle East, Germany, and Japan, and his views were sought by TV/radio programs, universities, and dozens of friends from around the world. He was an enthusiastic gardener (flowers and vegetables), and an excellent cook.

At nearly 6 feet 3 inches tall, with a leonine head, Jim Akins was a very good-looking man. Given his presence and bearing, some may have thought him arrogant. In fact, he was a quiet, dignified man—one beloved by his many friends.

Jim Akins was generous to a fault.

He helped this magazine many times, and fought valiantly against the Israeli lie that its 1967 bombing of the USS Liberty was an accident.

Survivors include his wife of 56 years, Marjorie Abbott Akins of Mitchellville; two children, Thomas Akins of Falls Church, Virginia and Mary Elizabeth Akins Calvill of Pittsburgh; two brothers, and three granddaughters. ❑

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

PHOTO COURTESY AKINS FAMILY

ormer Ambassador to

FSaudi Arabia, Middle

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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3/30/10

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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

cover4_cover4 8/4/10 9:20 PM Page c4

American Educational Trust The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs P.O. Box 53062 Washington, DC 20009

September/October 2010 Vol. XXIX, No. 7

An Israeli army bulldozer resumes its removal of trees from the Lebanese side of the border, near the town of Adaysseh, Aug. 4, 2010, the day after border clashes broke out between Israeli and Lebanese troops, killing two Lebanese soldiers, Lebanese journalist Assaf Abu Rahal, and an Israeli soldier.

AFP PHOTO/KIM JAE-HWAN