Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - March/April 2022 - Vol. XLI No. 2

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THE MILITARIZATION OF THE MIDDLE EAST

DISPLAY UNTIL 4/30/2022

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TELLING THE TRUTH SINCE 1982

On Middle East Affairs Volume XLI, No. 2

March/April 2022

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

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As Israel Plots Endgame in Occupied Golan, Bennett Must Remember Lessons of the Past—Ramzy Baroud

10 12 15

Settlers or Squatters? Palestinian Land Under Siege —Dr. M. Reza Behnam Israeli Police Ran Over a Palestinian Anti-Occupation Protester—Then Fled the Scene—Gideon Levy and Alex Levac

Unraveling of American Zionism Sharply Divides Jewish Americans—Allan C. Brownfeld

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AIPAC Makes It Official: It’s All About the Benjamins —Walter L. Hixson

20 22 24 26 40

What to Make of AIPAC Entering the World of Political Contributions—Dale Sprusansky The Palestine Conflict and the Militarization of the Middle East—John Gee As Congress Moves to Enshrine Abraham Accords, a Look at the Promised “Peace”—William Hartung When an American Christian Zionist Can’t Even Say the Words “Occupation” or “Justice”—Daoud Kuttab No Way for Gazans to Keep Warm or Dry —Mohammed Omer

SPECIAL REPORTS

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CAIR Calls for Investigation of Steven Emerson’s Hate Group—Delinda C. Hanley

30 32

Hasbara and a Stone: Israel’s Ambassador Brings Both to the U.N.—Ian Williams

Congress Passes Final FY ’22 NDAA, Including More Millions for Israel—Shirl McArthur

34 36

Palestinian Mother Issues Challenge to Canadian Government—Candice Bodnaruk

42 44 48 50

Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon Deserve to Live With Dignity—Ali Hweidi Will 2022 Be Another Turbulent Year in Already Troubled North Africa?—Mustafa Fetouri Food, Culture and Identity: On the Importance of Rolling Grape Leaves—Toqa Ezzidin Two Decades in Office, Erdogan’s AKP Comes Full Circle—Jonathan Gorvett

British Parties Rewind the Clock—Jonathan Cook

ON THE COVER: People ask, “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi who opts for a non-violent struggle?” The answer is he or she can be found everywhere, in Israeli prisons, in exile or even herding sheep in the hills of Hebron. Suleiman Hathaleen, an elder of the anti-occupation protest movement, was always peaceful, never even using his walking stick to ward off Israeli attacks. In January, he was hit and mortally wounded by an Israeli police-operated tow truck, which fled the scene. (See p. 12.)

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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 1-888-8815861.)

Other Voices

Compiled by Janet McMahon

It’s Not the Settlers, It’s the State, Gideon Levy, Haaretz

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Why Is Israel Amending Its Open-Fire Policy?

Three Possible Answers, Ramzy Baroud, www.ramzybaroud.net

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Israel’s “War of Attrition” Against Palestinian Children, Marwa Kocak and Amy Addison-Dunne, www.aljazeera.com OV-3 This Filmmaker Dares to Question the Figure of 6 Million Jewish Victims In WWII, Nirit Anderman, Haaretz

OV-5

State Archive Error Shows Israeli Censorship Guided by Concerns Over National Image, Ofer Aderet, Haaretz

OV-7

“I Showed Palestinians the Footage That Israel Looted. They Started To Cry,” Nirit Anderman, Haaretz OV-8 Palestinian Embroidery Added to UNESCO Cultural Heritage List, Al Jazeera Staff, www.aljazeera.com

OV-11

What Is Behind Algeria and Palestine’s Footballing Love Affair?, Linah Alsaafin & Ramy Allahoum, www.aljazeera.com

OV-12

U.S. Troops in Iraq & Syria With Unclear Mission Attacked Again, Paul R. Pillar, www.responsiblestatecraft.org

OV-13

GITMO at 20: A Token of Impunity, Alex Jordan, www.responsiblestatecraft.org

OV-14

Life, and Death, In Guantanamo, Clive Stafford Smith, www.aljazeera.com

OV-15

DEPARTMENTS

6 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 52 MUSIC & ARTS: Tima Shomali Discusses Her Groundbreaking Netflix Show 52 MUSLIM AMERICAN ACTIVISM: CAIR Kansas Calls for Removal of Racist Language from Land Deeds 53 HUMAN RIGHTS: Understanding Violence Against Women in Egypt 55 WAGING PEACE: Palestinians Vying to Share Their Narrative 62 MIDDLE EAST BOOKS REVIEW

68 THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST— CARTOONS 69 OTHER PEOPLE’S MAIL 71 OBITUARIES 73 2021 AET CHOIR OF ANGELS 51 INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

Palestinians living in the Shatila refugee camp out‐ side Beirut are running out of electricity and hope.

See story p. 42.

PHOTO COURTESY ALI HWEIDI

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American Educational Trust

Publishers’ Page

Conference is Back

PHOTO BY HAZEM BADER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

the region to undermine the dignity and rights of PalesOur annual conference on tinians and their supporters; the Israel lobby will be held We explore Israel’s new inion March 4 at the National tiative to double the Jewish Press Club in Washington, population in the annexed DC. For nearly a decade, Golan Heights (p. 8). Some this conference has stood say it’s too depressing to out from others in its willingread about these developness to name and dissect ments. We say they are too the power of the American important to go undocuIsrael Public Affairs Commitmented. tee (AIPAC) and other proIsrael groups. Countless ex- Israeli troops order Palestinian merchants to close their shops in the occupied perts have used the event to West Bank town of Hebron, on Jan. 29, 2022.

Special May Issue testify to the unprecedented We hope you will either join influence of the Israel lobby over U.S. doDepartment that the agency has approvus in-person or virtually for the March 4 conmestic and international policy. Their ingly cited Amnesty’s reports on a myriad ference (see p. 39 for information on speakspeeches have reached millions of Amerof other countries. He asked spokesman ers and tickets). Regardless, our next issue icans via C-SPAN and multitudes across Ned Price why the department seems to will feature full transcripts from the conferthe world thanks to YouTube. Based on have an Israeli exception, in which no ence, allowing you to digest these powerthe overwhelming feedback we’ve reamount of evidence of Israeli wrongdoing packed speeches and easily share them ceived, we know this event transforms seems to ever warrant a meaningful rebuke with those interested in learning more about the way many think about Israel and the from Washington. Of course, Price had no the lobby. The conference issue is always role of its lobby. good answer. Meanwhile, Ian Williams (p. a hit with those hosting local events on 30) notes that Israel’s hasbara campaign at Israel, in addition to panel discussions at Hold Outs the U.N. continues unfettered, with the academic institutions. Those interested in country’s ambassador to the body strongly obtaining free extra copies to distribute in Despite the evidence presented at the conrebuking stone throwing Palestinians in a their community or classroom should email ference (and in this magazine), some conrecent speech. Lacking any shame, he demultiplecopies@wrmea.org. tinue to downplay or dismiss the power of livered these remarks as Israeli authorities the Israel lobby. Be it fear of being labeled Thanking All Angels were demolishing Palestinian homes in an anti-Semite or simply a refusal to be open East Jerusalem and the West Bank. to the data, the intransigence of such indiThis issue lists everyone who made a conviduals is regrettable and disappointing. It tribution in 2021 to help this publication Knowledge is Power seems no amount of evidence can sway continue its work (p. 73). Without your supthose who doubt the lobby’s influence. This port, we would have very little hope of surWe can’t force our government to do the hardheadedness is also evident in the U.S. viving in an environment that is hostile right thing in the Middle East, but we surely government which, in large part due to prestoward those who challenge the elite concan make leaders feel uneasy about their sure from the lobby, refuses to accept and sensus. But with your support, we are able decision to perpetuate the unjust status acknowledge… to circulate far and wide the voices of quo. That’s why we work relentlessly to reason and justice who are calling for a bring you the news, commentary, perspecThe Reality of Israeli Apartheid new path in the Middle East. As we dive tive and history you need to effectively into 2022, we continue to rely on your engage elected officials and your neighOn February 1, Amnesty International abundant and generous support to fund bors alike. In this issue, we dissect what joined Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem this work. Our May issue will list those who you need to know about AIPAC’s decision as the third major humanitarian group to donated beginning on January 1. Why to enter the world of political fundraising label Israel an apartheid state. (Of course, wait until the end of the year to make your (p. 18); We delve into the origins of the milPalestinians have been telling the world contribution? You can visit our website, itarization of the Middle East (p. 22) and about this reality for decades.) Predictably, <www.wrmea.org>, at any time to donate. what the current regional arms race looks the report was met with derision, scorn and Together we can... like (p. 24); We note how Americans, for aghast rebukes by the powers that be. As religious (p. 26) and political (p. 28) reareaders can see in this issue’s postcard, sons, are colluding with powerful forces in one reporter wisely pointed out to the State Make a Difference Today!

MARCH/APRIL 2022

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Executive Editor: Managing Editor: Contributing Editor: Contributing Editor: Other Voices Editor: Middle East Books and More Director: Finance & Admin. Dir.: Assistant Bookstore Dir.: Art Director: Founding Publisher: Founding Exec. Editor: Board of Directors:

DELINDA C. HANLEY DALE SPRUSANSKY WALTER L. HIXSON JULIA PITNER JANET McMAHON NATHANIEL BAILEY CHARLES R. CARTER JANNA ALADDIN RALPH-UWE SCHERER ANDREW I. KILLGORE (1919-2016) RICHARD H. CURTISS (1927-2013) HENRIETTA FANNER JANET McMAHON JANE KILLGORE

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (ISSN 87554917) is published 7 times a year, monthly except Jan./Feb., March/April, June/July, Aug./Sept. and Nov./Dec. combined, at 1902 18th St., NW, Washington, DC 20009-1707. Tel. (202) 939-6050. Subscription prices (United States and possessions): one year, $29; two years, $55; three years, $75. For Canadian and Mexican subscriptions, $35 per year; for other foreign subscriptions, $70 per year. Periodicals, postage paid at Washington, DC and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, P.O. Box 292380, Kettering, OH 45429.

Published by the American Educational Trust (AET), a nonprofit 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 new Board of Advisers includes: Anisa Mehdi, John Gareeb, Dr. Najat Khelil Arafat, William Lightfoot and Susan Abulhawa.

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 nine 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, self-determination, and fair play.

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LetterstotheEditor U.S. HYPOCRISY CONCERNING THE GOLAN HEIGHTS The Israeli government has announced a plan to double the population of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights by 2030, thereby achieving a clear Jewish majority in light of the absence of any right of return for those driven out in 1967.

I wish that some journalist would have the career-risking courage to ask President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken or the White House or State Department spokespersons to explain the principle on which the U.S. government (i) condemns and refuses to accept or diplomatically recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, while (ii) accepting and recognizing the Israeli annexations of expanded East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights (achieved by war and in defiance of the wishes of all the people who lived there prior to their conquests and occupations).

Of course, as always, what matters is not the nature of the act but, rather, who is doing it to whom. There are no principles involved.

John Whitbeck, Paris, France

FEW CONSEQUENCES FOR KILLERS OF PALESTINIAN-AMERICAN This January in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers dragged Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad, an 80-year-old PalestinianAmerican citizen from his car, handcuffed, gagged and blindfolded him and then beat him, leaving him to die on the ground while they drove away. It is an outrage that a foreign military that we give billions of dollars to every year can commit this atrocity against an American citizen and yet neither President Joe Biden nor U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides have condemned this murder nor called for a fair and thorough investigation. We must demand that the killers be brought to justice, tried, and if found guilty, spend the rest of their lives in prison. No more Israeli cover-ups.

Barbara Gravesen, Lady Lake, FL In late January, the Israel Defense Forces released a statement on the inci-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

dent saying, “The soldiers did not identify signs of distress or other suspicious signs concerning As’ad’s health. The soldiers assessed that As’ad was asleep and did not try to wake him. The investigation concluded that the incident was a grave and unfortunate event, resulting from a moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers.” Two of the soldiers involved were fired and a third was “reprimanded.”

The Middle East Monitor was spot-on in noting, “The punishment issued is far more lenient than those handed down to Palestinians, including minors convicted of throwing stones. Even if no harm or damage is caused, they face penalties of up to 20 years in prison.”

HOLD ISRAEL ACCOUNTABLE FOR ITS VIOLENCE The article by Dr. M. Reza Behnam in your Jan./Feb. 2022 issue about Palestinian life under Israeli Zionism was deeply moving. The article made clear the daily humiliation the Zionist regime imposes on Palestinians by naming public spaces after Zionist terrorists who have committed multiple atrocities, and proclaiming these racist terrorists national heroes.

Once again, secure in the knowledge that Western governments will not hold them accountable, the Israelis are accelerating their theft of Palestinian land and making more and more innocent indigenous people refugees in their own land.

I hope the Washington Report will continue to print strong articles like this to expose the truth and counter Israeli propaganda. The Palestinians continue to fight and we must join them in the name of justice, democracy and peace.

Charles Dunaway, Portland, OR

PALESTINIANS MUST NOT BE DETERRED FROM NON-VIOLENCE In response to Ramzy Baroud’s article in the Nov./Dec. 2021 issue on political prisoner Zakaria Zubeidi: Zubeidi’s disillusionment with both “peaceful diplomacy” and armed force for overcoming MARCH/APRIL 2022

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Israeli domination isn’t unique. tors” crafted. He was kept sleepKEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS When I advocated for non-violess. They put him in a small COMING! lence at a local college forum, a coffin-sized box for hours, Send your letters to the editor to the Washington Report, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 young Palestinian responded that overnight. He couldn’t move. or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>. no matter what they try, Israel They hung him by the cell bars crushes them. But they haven’t with his feet dangling off the given non-violent resistance a fair trial. ground. ready are [resisting non-violently]....VioThough Palestinian leadership wanted The CIA’s determination to keep torlent resistance and non-violent resisthe First Intifada to be non-violent, ture secret backfired and has brought tance share one very important thing in Palestinian violence increased as the Ingreat shame and dishonor to America. common—they are both a form of thetifada wore on. Overall, 179 Israelis Abu Zubaydah should be released imater seeking an audience to their cause. were killed and 3,100 were injured. This mediately and Guantanamo should be If violent actors are the only ones conand greater subsequent Palestinian vioclosed. We do not want our tax dollars stantly getting front-page covers and atlence badly damaged their cause by obto be used for such barbarism. The pertracting international attention to the scuring the fact that they’re the victims petrators of these monstrous crimes, Palestinian issue, it becomes very hard and Israel is the aggressor in the overall including President George W. Bush for non-violent leaders to make the case conflict. Palestinian violence has aland Vice President Dick Cheney, must to their communities that civil disobedience is a viable option in addressing lowed Israel to turn this on its head so it be prosecuted. their plight....I believe that the most imappears to be the victim and the PalesJagjit Singh, Los Altos, CA ■ portant thing is to understand tinians the aggressor. This is simple, bethat if we don't pay attention to cause real-time overt violence overshadthese [non-violent] efforts, they ows long-term seemingly low-level vioare invisible, and it’s as if they lence by the colonizer, and because Isnever happened. But I have rael generally tends to be viewed as the seen first hand that if we do, victim in the conflict. they will multiply. If they multiThrough this role reversal, Israel ply, their influence will grow in whitewashes its brutal repression of the overall Israeli-Palestinian Palestinian violence—and all of its conflict.” wrongs against the Palestinians—on the basis of security. By ceasing violence, ANOTHER STORY OF the Palestinians can make it crystal ATROCIOUS TORTURE clear that they’re the victims. This would The Supreme Court justices regreatly amplify international grassroots cently heard oral arguments on and governmental support for, and colthe CIA’s treatment of Abu laboration with, Palestinian strikes, boyZubaydah, who is currently cotts, security de-cooperation and other being held at Guantanamo Bay. non-violent resistance. When this soliTwo psychologists, James darity becomes strong enough to generMitchell and Bruce Jessen, ate sanctions upon Israel, its colonial crafted a torture program to renapartheid enterprise will be finished. der Abu Zubaydah’s life a living Free at last, the Palestinians will be able OTHER VOICES is an optional 16-page suphell. Abu Zubaydah was waterto determine their own future, be that plement available only to subscribers of the boarded over 80 times while two states, one democratic state, or being held at a CIA black site in some other alternative.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. For Poland.

Gregory DeSylva, Rhinebeck, NY an additional $15 per year (see postcard All the justices on the Court In a 2011 TED Talk, filmmaker Julia insert for Washington Report subscription described Abu Zubaydah’s Bacha addressed the topic of violent rates), subscribers will receive Other Voices treatment as “torture.” There and non-violent Palestinian resistance. inside each issue of their Washington Report were no euphemisms, no Her conclusion was that the media’s on Middle East Affairs. equivocation. Everyone underpenchant for only covering violence stood that what happened to gives legitimacy to aggression and unBack issues of both publications are him was gut-wrenching torture. dermines the work of non-violent moveavail able. To subscribe, telephone (800) Government cables obtained ments in Palestine. She said: “I believe 607-4410, e-mail <circulation@wrmea. by the media confirmed waterthat what's mostly missing for non-vioorg>, or write to P.O. Box 292380, Ketterboarding was almost benign lence to grow is not for Palestinians to ing, OH 45429. compared to other more barstart adopting non-violence, but for us to baric treatments the “good docstart paying attention to those who alMARCH/APRIL 2022

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From the Diaspora

As Israel Plots Endgame in Occupied Golan, Bennett Must Remember Lessons of the Past

PHOTO BY MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Ramzy Baroud

Farm workers harvest Cabernet Sauvignon grapes for the Bazelet HaGolan Winery near the El Rom settlement in the Israeli‐annexed Golan Heights by the border with Syria, on Oct. 5, 2020.

WITH SYRIA STILL embroiled in its own war, Israel has been actively rewriting the rule book regarding its conduct in this Arab country. Gone are the days of a potential return of the illegally occupied Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty in exchange for peace, per the language of yesteryears. Now, Israel is set to double its illegal Jewish settler population in the Golan, while Israeli bombs continue to drop with a much higher frequency on various Syrian targets.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book , co‐edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellec‐ tuals Speak Out. Dr. Baroud is a non‐resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro‐Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is <www.ramzy‐ baroud.net>.

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Indeed, a one-sided war is underway, casually reported as if a routine, everyday event. In the last decade, many “mysterious” attacks on Syria were attributed to Israel. The latter neither confirmed nor denied. With the blanket support given to Israel by the Donald Trump administration, which recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights of 1981, Israeli reluctance to take credit for the frequent and increasingly destructive and bloody air raids has dissipated.

Briefly, some in the Israeli government were concerned by the possible repercussions of the advent of Joe Biden to the White House in January 2021. They worried that the new president might reverse some of the pro-Israel decisions enacted by his predecessor, including the recognition of the “sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” due to the “strategic and security importance to the State

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of Israel.” Biden, a long-time supporter of Israel himself, did no such thing.

The initial concern about a shift in U.S. policy turned into euphoria and, eventually, an opportunity, especially as Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s government coalition is eager to break Netanyahu’s Right’s historic dominance over the Jewish settlement movement in occupied Palestinian and Arab lands.

“This is our moment. This is the moment of the Golan Heights,” Bennett declared triumphantly at an Israeli government cabinet meeting held specially to officiate plans regarding the further colonization of the Golan on Dec. 26, 2021.

The following statement by Bennett speaks volumes about the context of the Israeli decision, and its future intentions: “After long and static years in terms of the scope of settlement, our goal today is to double settlement in the Golan Heights.”

The reference to “static years” is an outright rejection of the occasional freezing of settlement construction that mostly took place during the so-called “peace process.” Bennett—who, in June 2021, was embraced by Washington and its Western allies as the political antithesis to the obstinate Binyamin Netanyahu— has effectively ended any possibility of a peaceful resolution to Israel’s illegal occupation of the Golan.

Aside from predictable and clichéd responses by Syria and the Arab League, Israel’s massive push to double its settlement activities in the Golan is going largely unnoticed. Not only Israel’s right-wing media, but the likes of Haaretz are also welcoming the government’s investment— estimated at nearly $320 million. The title of David Rosenberg’s article in Haaretz tells the whole story: “Picturesque but Poor, Israel’s Golan Needs a Government Boost to Thrive.” The article decries government “neglect” of the Golan, speaks of employment opportunities and merely challenges Bennett’s government on whether it will “stay the course.” The fact that the occupation of the Golan, like that of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, is illegal under international law is absent from Israeli media coverage.

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Namely, Israel’s main focus currently is to normalize its occupation of Arab land entirely. But if that mission has failed over the course of 54 years, can it succeed now?

For Israel, the illegal settlement enterprise, whether in the Syrian Golan or in occupied Palestine, is synonymous. It is inspired by deep-rooted ideological and religious beliefs, compelled by economic opportunities and political interests and assuaged by the lack of any meaningful international response.

In the case of the Golan, Israel’s intention was, from the onset, to expand its agricultural space, as the capture of the fertile Syrian territory almost immediately attracted settlers, who set the stage for massive agricultural settlements. Although the home of merely 25,000 Jewish settlers, the Golan became a major source of Israeli apples, pears and wine grape production.

Local tourism in the scenic Golan, dotted with numerous wineries, thrived, especially following the Israeli annexation of the territory in 1981.

The plight of the steadfast Golan Arab Druze population of nearly 23,000 is as irrelevant in the eyes of Israel as that of the millions of occupied Palestinians, whether under siege in Gaza or living under a perpetual occupation or apartheid in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Golan population is equally isolated and oppressed but, like the Palestinians, continues to resist despite the heavy price of their resistance.

Their hardship, however, is likely to increase with the expected doubling of the Jewish settler population.

Israel is, of course, aware that popular uprisings will eventually be mounted in response to its latest colonial endeavors, but various factors must be giving Bennett the confidence to continue with his plans. A major source of reassurance is that it could take Syria years to achieve any degree of political stabilization before mounting any sort of challenge to the Israeli occupation. Another is that the Palestinian leadership is in no mood for confrontation, especially now that it is, once again, on good terms with Washington, which resumed its funding of the PA soon after Biden’s inauguration.

Moreover, in Israel, the anti-settlement movement has long subsided, crystallized mostly into smaller political parties that are hardly critical in the formation or toppling of government coalitions.

More importantly, Washington has no interest to initiate any kind of diplomatic efforts to lay the ground for future talks involving Israel, the Palestinians and certainly not Syria. Any such attempt now, or even in coming years would represent a political gamble for Biden’s embattled administration.

Israel understands this absolutely and plans to take advantage of this opportunity, arguably unprecedented since the Madrid talks over 30 years ago. Yet, while Bennett is urging Israelis in their quest for settlement expansion, with such battle cries as “this is our moment,” he must not underestimate that the occupied Palestinians and Syrians are also aware that their “moment,” too, is drawing near. In fact, all popular Palestinian uprisings of the past were initiated during times when Israel assumed that it had the upper hand, and that people’s resistance had been forever pacified. ■

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Special Report

Settlers or Squatters? Palestinian Land Under Siege

By Dr. M. Reza Behnam

PHOTO BY MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

the Indigenous people, for example, cannot be described as the acts of a democratic state.

It was an affront to democracy that Israel, a country that has shown such contempt for human rights and international law, was invited to attend President Joe Biden’s December 2021 virtual “Summit for Democracy.”

Zionists, who have illegally seized Palestinian land, cannot be characterized as “settlers.” The terms squatter or colonist more accurately describe their intrusive actions.

And “settlements” should be cast as colonies; what they truly are.

Israel’s political culture of settlerism, militarism and ethos of supremacy were further solidified with the June 2021 accession of Naftali Bennett as prime minister—an exarmy commando who proudly boasted, “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there’s no Israeli squatters gather on Dec. 30, 2021 at a makeshift yeshiva (religious school) in the former problem with that.” colony of Homesh, demolished in 2005. Right‐wing extremists and former Homesh squatters Just two days after Bennett took office, are trying to rebuild the illegal colony, west of Nablus in the West Bank. hundreds of Israeli supremacists marched through the streets of occupied East ISRAEL TELLS ITSELF and the world that it is a democracy. ProJerusalem chanting “death to Arabs” and “a second Nakba is fessed democratic values, however, are merely a cover for the councoming.” try’s continued predatory policies.

Israeli colonists have forged a powerful movement, with the poThe Israeli regime has no intention of giving up one inch of stolen litical muscle to collapse a government. In Bennett they have a Palestinian land. staunch ally. Described as Israel’s “settler-in-chief,” he has called After more than seven decades, Israel is the only modern state for the annexation of most of the West Bank. that refuses to define its territorial limits. Since its founding as a setColonization is the sine qua non of the Israeli state. According to tler-colonial state in 1948, Israel has been expanding into Palestinian a recent report by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Israel and Syrian territories, altering its borders by brute force and treating now controls 85 percent of historic Palestine. occupied areas as its own sovereign territory.

More than 680,000 Zionists (46 percent in East Jerusalem) now To secure control over its ill-gotten gains, Israel has made sure live on occupied land outside the internationally recognized borders to populate the land with and give support to Zionist colonists. of Israel. The population of Jewish colonists in the West Bank and “Settlerism” is a tool of domination, and violence is its defining East Jerusalem continues to grow at a faster rate than that of Israel characteristic. proper. All of this colonization in an area approximately the size of Terminology has always been problematic in how Israel is prethe state of Delaware. sented to the world. Colonizing, occupying, exploiting and brutalizing The illegality of Israel’s colonies is clearly outlined in Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which forbids an occupying power from transferring its population into the territory it occuDr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East. pies. In a meager attempt to describe the colonists who have 10

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stolen Palestinian land, the United Nations has used the term “illegal intruders.”

And while the international community has focused on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, it has yet to fully address the question of the very legitimacy of Israel itself.

Since the Zionist War of 1947-48, some 3.3 million Jews have immigrated to Israel.

Although Israel likes to portray itself as a haven for Jewish immigrants, its actions have been consistent with colonial aggression. The regime uses immigrants as pawns to establish the numerical superiority it feels it needs to realize a Jewish state.

The Second World War provided Zionist leaders with their hoped-for demographic superiority. They worked diligently to ensure that Holocaust survivors immigrated to Palestine, often preventing relocation to places the refugees may have preferred. By 1948, European refugees made up more than half of the Jewish population in Palestine.

Israel’s 1950 Law of Return expedited immigration, especially of Jews from Muslim countries, known as Mizrahim, who comprise the majority (65 percent) of the Jewish population of Israel.

Conservative, religious and often marginalized within Israeli society, they have filled the ranks of the Likud party. Many of the working class Mizrahim live in West Bank colonies in government subsidized housing.

After the 1967 War, Israel claimed that its colonies in the West Bank were only temporary. But from the outset, the regime set in motion its plan to establish “facts on the ground,” to erase the Green Line, which delineates the West Bank from Israel. Ever more Palestinian land was seized to build squatter-only highways, connecting the Jewish colonists to cities on the Israeli side of the Green Line.

In June 1991, the U.N. Economic and Social Council reported that from 1967 to 1990, Israel had confiscated a total of 715,529 acres in the West Bank; a first step in its ongoing plan to establish permanent Jewish colonies in the occupied territories.

In contravention of international law, MARCH/APRIL 2022

PHOTO BY JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

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Masked Israeli colonists attack olive farmers from the Palestinian village of Hawara near the Israeli colony of Yitzhar in the occupied West Bank on Oct. 7, 2020.

Israel finances, builds and provides material incentives to encourage Jewish colonization. There are currently more than 475,000 Israeli squatters in the West Bank and over 250,000 in East Jerusalem. An estimated 60,000 squatters are American-born, with some among the most aggressive in the colonization movement.

Israel is currently attempting to annex three large Jewish colonies in the West Bank to the Israeli-defined boundaries of Jerusalem; thereby, consolidating control over the city and weakening the Palestinian presence.

As recently as December 2021, Israel announced that it intended to double the number of Jewish colonists in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, adding to the roughly 25,000 already squatting there. Some 7,300 housing units, plus infrastructure, are to be constructed on land that is home to thousands of Syrians. (See p. 8) In addition to using the Golan to dump its waste, the regime’s plan to turn the area into a renewable energy center for Israel by constructing a large wind turbine farm will further damage the environment by altering the unique landscape.

Throughout, President Biden has remained silent as Israel expands its ex-

ploitative and colonizing activities in Syria and Palestine.

The Israeli squatters, who reside in the West Bank, cite religion, history and Israel’s security as reasons for living there. They use the ideology of biblical “chosenness” and divinely sanctioned ownership of the land to violently dispossess the Palestinians. To legitimize and whitewash their colonizing ambitions, Zionists claim to be “redeeming” their native home. Armed with a sense of entitlement and AK-47s, they see Palestinians as obstacles to a Greater Israel.

The colonist movement has grown ever more violent, with vigilantism on the rise.

During the first ten months of 2021, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there were 410 attacks by squatters against Palestinians.

Many of the assaults occurred in “Area C,” which is under complete Israeli civil and security control. The number and severity of squatter attacks increased in 2021, especially in Nablus and Hebron.

Israeli authorities have failed to enforce Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires that people under the control of an occupying power “shall be protected…against all acts of violence or Continued on page 38

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Special Report

Israeli Police Ran Over a Palestinian AntiOccupation Protester—Then Fled the Scene

PHOTO BY MAMOUN WAZWAZ/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac

Some 15,000 Palestinians attended Suleiman Hathaleen’s funeral in his hometown of Umm al‐Khair, two weeks after he was—allegedly deliberately—run over by an Israeli tow truck. Hathaleen was present at this Sept. 29, 2021 protest and every other demonstration in the Hebron governorate. His resistance against occupation forces was always peaceful; he did not use the stick he always carried or stones.

IN THE INTENSIVE CARE ward at Al-Mizan Hospital in Hebron, Suleiman Hathaleen lies sedated and intubated, a gash in his head.

No one is allowed to enter his room, not even his two wives or his three daughters and seven sons—though one of the latter managed to sneak in for a moment. It’s not clear how old Hathaleen is. His ID card says 65, but he has said for some time that he passed the 70year mark a while ago and that the ID data is wrong.

Hathaleen is a shepherd and a well-known occupation resister and activist in his unrecognized village of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills.* There is barely a demonstration or act of resistance in this beleaguered and remote area that takes place without his participation. “He is the village’s clock,” his son Eid says of him, in his fine Hebrew.

Hathaleen has been in a vegetative state since he was hit by a tow truck working in the service of the Israeli police on Jan. 5, on

Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and author. Alex Levac is a pho‐ tojournalist. *This article was first published in Haaretz, Jan. 14, 2022, right before Suleiman Hathaleen’s death. © Haaretz.

Reprinted with permission.

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the road leading to his village. The truck had come to haul away Palestinian cars without license plates— mashtubas, in the local parlance. A video clip taken by a villager documented the police officer, who accompanied the tow truck in an armored military vehicle, throwing stones earlier at the cars’ windows so he could reach inside and open their doors, like a practiced car thief.

Hathaleen wanted to bodily stop the tow truck after it had already loaded three cars, but its driver accelerated, hit him and dragged his body for several meters on the sandy shoulder of the road, until Hathaleen fell from the heavy truck and lay bleeding. The two police vehicles then sped away without summoning assistance for Hathaleen, like the worst hit-and-run offenders, leaving him by the side of the road,

blood oozing from his head.

Though it’s not clear whether Hathaleen was hit deliberately, it’s obvious that if the perpetrators were not police officers and if the injured man were a Jew, the offenders would have been brought to trial at least on a charge of leaving the scene of a hitand-run accident. But those involved in this case were a police officer and a soldier in an army jeep, with a civilian driver working for the police in a tow truck, and the person hit was an older Palestinian. Consequently, the law—actually, no law—applies to the driver or his escorts.

Umm al-Khair lies below the settlement of Carmel, in the southern West Bank, its tents abutting the settlement’s fence.

Electricity is provided to the settlers via a cable that descends to their state-of-the-art chicken coop and crosses what remains of the land belonging to Umm al-Khair after swaths of it were taken over by the settlers. The chickens have electricity, but not the 36 families, some 200 souls, of the hamlet.

Suleiman Hathaleen was born on this land, which his father purchased in 1962 from residents of the nearby Palestinian town

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of Yatta. Hathaleen’s grandfather had been forced to wander here with his family and flocks, like the rest of the Jahalin Bedouin tribe, which was expelled from Tel Arad in 1948 by the fledgling State of Israel. The Civil Administration in the occupied territories has demolished the locals’ tents 16 times—almost every structure there has a demolition order hanging over it now– yet the village is still here.

For about six years a large-scale struggle was waged here over a small stone oven. The aroma issuing from the tabun was displeasing to the settlers in Carmel’s relatively new southern neighborhood, and they demanded that it be demolished. After the settlers sued them and demanded compensation, the shepherds of Umm al-Khair sought to prove to the court that the tabun’s smoke does not cause cancer—as was alleged by Carmel’s delicate but impudent settlers— because the villagers burn only organic sheep waste to fuel it. Half the senior command of the Israel Defense Forces showed up at one point to see the tabun,

which was finally demolished in 2014, but like almost everything else here, was rebuilt, of course.

Suleiman Hathaleen accompanied all the struggles bodily. After years of working as a manual laborer in settlements and in Israel, and taking no interest in the occupation, the occupation came to him and made his life miserable—and Don Quixote Hathaleen set out to tilt against it.

The turning point came after the Second Intifada erupted in the early 2000s, when the settlements denied entry to workers from the area.

Hathaleen found himself in dire straits and became the occupation’s big troublemaker in the South Hebron Hills. He manned the barricades and blocked bulldozers, climbed onto the buckets of backhoe loaders, protested on behalf of prisoners and hunger strikers. There is virtually no local demolition, confiscation operation or arrest in recent times that he didn’t try to prevent physically. The police and army troops had heard all about him and knew that before anything else, upon

arriving on the scene, they had to remove Hathaleen. He was always there, leaning on his cane, sometimes holding a Palestinian flag. He was taken into custody dozens of times but was always released after a few hours (with one exception, when he was incarcerated for 10 days), because, as his son Eid notes, he never resorted to violence, so there was nothing to charge him with.

In the meantime, his herd also diminished. The expansion of the settlements and illegal outposts in the area, and the settlers’ seizure of more and more land, on top of the areas lost to IDF-declared firing zones, left little grazing room for Hathaleen's sheep. From 1,500 sheep some years ago, his extended family now has only 200. And that, too, spurred Hathaleen to continue to wage his struggle.

Eid, 38, a shepherd like his father, sports a man bun and speaks storybook Hebrew. No one can offer a more vivid description of the older man, who is now fighting for his life in the hospital. During the past few years, Eid tried to get his fa-

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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ther to stop provoking the occupation forces, but to no avail. He told Suleiman that he was no longer young and that he was endangering his health—indeed, his very life. But it did no good.

“He’s a very stubborn guy,” Eid says, “and also a very nice guy. Different, but smart. He’s not violent but resists all the time. He always says that he wants to disturb the forces of the occupation the way they disturb his life.”

On Wednesday, Jan. 5, Suleiman attended the funeral of a relative in a nearby pastoral community. He returned at midday and went to tend the sheep. “He never sits still,” Eid tells us during our visit to his tent this week. “He feeds the sheep, cleans their pens, feeds the sheepdogs, never sits.” While at home, after the afternoon prayers, Suleiman suddenly noticed a police vehicle and a tow truck, already carrying three confiscated cars, descending from the direction of the village school to the main road. Members of his family warned Suleiman against going out, but naturally he ignored them.

Eid was in the wadi with the sheep at the time. He says he’ll never forgive himself for not being home—maybe he would have been able to dissuade his father from heading out. The mashtubas rarely leave the confines of the villages because their drivers know they will be confiscated

by Israeli authorities. Dragging them from the alleyways of out-of-the-way villages is yet another means of tormenting Palestinians and of demonstrating control.

Suleiman crossed the wadi and climbed up toward the police jeep and the tow truck belonging to Shai Cohen Ltd. They were parked on the sides of the road, the truck on the left, the jeep on the right, a few hundred meters from Suleiman’s home.

Suleiman stood on the shoulder, opposite the tow truck. Suddenly the vehicle began moving—slowly at first, because it had been parked on a slight incline. Did the driver notice Suleiman? Eyewitnesses from the village are certain he did.

After all, Suleiman was standing in front of him. The police officer-jeep driver 14

would have seen him, too, eyewitnesses say. The police would claim afterward that stones were being thrown at the time and the driver of the tow truck tried to flee for his life. Eid says that serious stone throwing began only after his father was hit, an incident that everyone in the area saw and that enraged the villagers.

Don Quixote Hathaleen set out to tilt against the occupation

A video clip shot from a distance shows the two vehicles quickly fleeing the scene, toward the main highway: The truck knocked Suleiman to the ground, ran him over and dragged him for a few meters, his head banging against stones, until he fell to the ground and the vehicle sped away. From the wadi Eid heard gunshots: The soldier in the police jeep fired into the air to drive off the furious villagers; the officer with him opened the door of their jeep for a moment but closed it immediately.

The two vehicles disappeared. By the time Eid reached the site, his father had already been taken to the hospital.

Kareem Issa Jubran, director of field research for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, visited the scene the following day and found not only bloodstains by the roadside, which were still visible this week, but also fragments of Suleiman’s skull and a few of his teeth. It was a brutal sight. A private car rushed the wounded man to a clinic in Yatta, and from there he was taken in a Palestinian ambulance to the hospital in nearby Hebron.

Immediately after the incident, an Israeli police communiqué was issued stating that “a Palestinian who apparently ran toward the tow truck was injured and taken for treatment by the Red Crescent [ambulance service].” The following day, the police clarified that “during enforcement activity against mashtuba vehicles, carried out by police forces together with a tow truck in the service of the police, near the village of Umm Daraj, a violent disturbance by ri-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

oters, who are local residents broke out against the forces. The movement of the tow truck and of the police vehicle was blocked, and stones were thrown at the police officer and at the tow truck driver in a way that endangered the force. In response, an IDF fighter who was posted in the police vehicle fired into the air.

“As the forces moved to leave while stones were being thrown at them, one of the rioters jumped on the tow truck, fell to the ground and was hurt. In the situation that was created, in which a militant mob concretely tried to harm the force in question, it was impossible to stop and assist the injured person. The Israeli police and the IDF take a very grave view of this attempt to harm the security forces and hamper routine activity and will act with determination to impose governance.”

Not a word about anyone actually being run over.

Eid Hathaleen refutes the claims of the police. “Let’s say they didn’t hurt Suleiman deliberately. So, call the army and summon an ambulance! I don’t understand how police can flee the scene of a road accident. Let’s imagine it was a Jew who was hurt, God forbid. What would they do? Summon medical assistance. You call an ambulance. A helicopter. The family is certain that he was deliberately hit. I don’t know. It must be investigated. So why aren’t they investigating? The police have body cameras.

The tow truck needs to be examined. But the police want to cover up the incident.”

The family is now outside Suleiman’s room in the hospital, in around-the-clock shifts. His skull was fractured, his backbone injured, a rib is pressing on his lung and he has a broken hip. The doctors thought he would die immediately, Eid tells us now.

“We are ready as a family for any scenario. We have prepared ourselves,” he adds. “When I heard that Suleiman had been hit, I thought the mirror of the truck had struck him. When I reached the scene, I was told, ‘Your father was run over and died.’” ■ MARCH/APRIL 2022

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Israel and Judaism

MOHAMMED ABED/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Unraveling of American Zionism Sharply Divides Jewish Americans

By Allan C. Brownfeld

Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu (c) visits a house in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on May 28, 2008. U.N. human rights observers led by Tutu met survivors of a 2006 Israeli bombing that killed 19 Palestinian civilians, including five women and eight children, in their homes, leading the South African cleric to say the group was “devastated” by what they learned.

WIDESPREAD ATTENTION is being focused on the decline of Zionism within the American Jewish community. An article in The New York Times Magazine (Nov. 7, 2021) by Marc Tracy, appropriately entitled, “Inside the Unraveling of American Zionism,” has stimulated much discussion. This came shortly after the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem used the term “apartheid” to characterize Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as did Human Rights Watch.

Increasingly, the term “apartheid” is being used to identify Israeli policy. The death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African advocate of non-violence and racial justice, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, focused attention upon his characterization of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In a speech in Boston on April 13, 2002, (see June/July 2002 Washington Report, pages 56-58), he declared: “In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disen-

Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.

MARCH/APRIL 2022

franchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust center in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.”

What Tutu found “not so understandable, not justified” was what Israel “did to another people to guarantee its existence. I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about…I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis… My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history, so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?”

Today, many prominent Israelis agree with Archbishop Tutu’s assessment. In December, Amos Schocken, the third generation of his

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family to run the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, declared that “The product of Zionism, the state of Israel, is not a Jewish and democratic state, but instead has become an apartheid state, plain and simple.”

The fact that so many Jewish Americans are turning against Zionism and are increasingly disillusioned with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, has produced a backlash among those who defend Israel’s behavior, whatever it may be. Consider Rabbi Wendi Geffen of North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Illinois. After Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, she gave a sermon about what she called “the new anti-Semitism,” as reported in Mondoweiss, Nov. 26, 2021, in which she declared that “Anti-Zionist Jews are Jews in name only,” who must be kept “out of the Jewish tent.”

Rabbi Geffen told her congregation: “There are boundaries to that tent. And those begin when a person engages in words or action that seeks to destroy Israel or the Jewish people, or enables or condones violence in support of extremist ideology. There is no place for any of that in the big tent.”

In Rabbi Geffen’s view, “The vast majority” of Jews support Israel and Jews who oppose Zionism and say that Zionism and progressive values are a contradiction “are more dangerous” to the Jewish people than

the right-wing anti-Semites who attack synagogues. Philip Weiss noted that, “The rabbi had nothing to say about a matter that has caused great disaffection among Jews: the lopsided conflict that ended a week earlier in which Israeli missiles leveled office buildings and killed 256 people in blockaded Gaza, while Palestinian militants killed 13 in Israel…That onslaught helped fuel a survey…showing that 38 percent of young Jews believe that Israel practices apartheid and 20 percent say Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state. Those are Geffen’s ‘Jews in name only.’”

In May 2021, a letter was signed by 93 rabbinical students during the Israeli onslaught on Gaza which declared that Israel maintains “apartheid” in the occupied territories and called on American Jews, who have taken on structural racism in the U.S., to oppose “racist violence in Israel.” This produced an extreme response from many in the Jewish establishment. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York and previously executive director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, wrote an article in the Dec. 2, 2021 edition of The Times of Israel with the headline, “For the love of Israel, we need to say: The Reform movement is Zionist.”

He wrote: “We have a communal responsibility to clarify what it is that the Reform

movement believes. What are our values and principles…For the record, the Reform movement is a Zionist movement. Every single branch of our movement…are Zionist and committed ideologically and theologically to Israel. We are theologically committed to the centrality of the Jewish people and the Jewish state…What higher responsibility does a Jewish leader have than to love and protect fellow Jews…Some American Jews…provide Jewish cover to forces that seek not coexistence with Israel, but Israel’s destruction.” What is agitating Rabbi Hirsch and others is that young Jewish Americans, as the letter from the rabbinical students indicates, are returning to Reform Judaism’s prophetic tradition.

Using the term “anti-Semitism” to characterize criticism of Israel is a tactic long used

by Israeli advocates to silence criticism. Discussing this phenomenon, Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, notes that, “The problem is that their definition of antiSemitism rests on a distinction between criticism of Israel, which they consider legitimate, and opposition to the country’s existence as a Jewish state, which they deem bigoted. But the validity of that distinction rests on what Jewish statehood actually means for the Palestinians under Israeli control—the very subject that its highest-profile defenders evade. It’s a sleight of hand. The trick is to enforce a set of bound(Advertisement) aries around criticism of Israel without investigating whether those boundaries bear any relationship to reality on the ground.”

In her 2019 book, AntiSemitism: Here and Now, Deborah Lipstadt, who PresiPalestinian Medical Relief Society, a grassroots dent Joe Biden has nominated community-based Palestinian health organization, founded in to be his special envoy to mon1979 by Palestinian doctors, needs your support today. itor and combat anti-Semitism, Visit www.pmrs.ps to see our work in action. insists that, “We must carefully differentiate between camVisit www.friendsofpmrs.org to support our work and donate. paigns that disagree with Israeli policy and those that esMail your U.S. Tax-Deductible check to our American Foundation: sentially call for the elimination of the Jewish state. There is a Friends of PMRS, Inc vast difference between being PO Box 450554 • Atlanta, GA 31145 opposed to the policies of the Israeli government and being For more information call: (404) 441-2702 or e-mail: fabuakel@gmail.com an anti-Semite.”

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According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), it is “offensive” to accuse Israel of practicing apartheid. The reason, according to the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt, is that “Deriding Israel as an apartheid state is not a just critique but part of a broader effort to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state.”

Ironically, Deborah Lipstadt used the same logic against the BDS movement. She said, “If you look at the founding documents of the BDS movement, you see an effort to destroy the state of Israel. That I find anti-Semitic.”

Jewish critics of Israel who use the term “apartheid” to characterize its treatment of Palestinians are growing in number and calling them “anti-Semitic” only seems to be increasing their voices. Consider Ronnie Kasrils, a leading South African Jewish antiapartheid activist who served as a minister in Nelson Mandela’s government. He wrote an article in The Guardian (April 3, 2019) with the headline, “I fought South African apartheid. I see the same brutal policies in Israel.” He noted that, “Israel’s repression of Palestinian citizens, African refugees and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza has become more brutal over time.

Ethnic cleansing, land seizure, home demolitions, military occupation” remind Kasrils of the years of apartheid in South Africa.

He declares that “I’m also deeply disturbed that critics of Israel’s brutal policies are frequently threatened with repression of their freedom of speech, a reality I’ve now experienced at first hand. Last week, a public meeting in Vienna where I was scheduled to speak in support of Palestinian freedom, as part of the global Israel Apartheid Week, was canceled by the museum hosting the event, under pressure from Vienna’s City Council, which opposes the international BDS movement from Israel.”

Kasrils recalls that, “South Africa’s apartheid government banned me for life from attending meetings. Nothing I said could be published because I stood up against apartheid. How disgraceful that despite the lessons of our struggle against racism, such intolerance continues to this day, stifling free speech on Palestine.

During the South Africa struggle, we were accused of following a Communist agenda, but smears didn’t deflect us. Today, Israel’s MARCH/APRIL 2022

propaganda follows a similar route, repeated by its supporters—conflating opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism. This must be resisted.”

The more extreme Israel’s actions, the more virulent and irrational the charges of “anti-Semitism” on the part of Israel’s defenders has become. Consider Alan Dershowitz, a long-time defender of Israel’s right-wing, now embroiled in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking affair. Dershowitz was Epstein’s attorney and is currently being accused of rape by Virginia Giuffre. Still, after the death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he found time to launch a bitter attack. Dershowitz posted a statement on Dec. 30, 2021, with the headline, “Bishop Tutu was the most influential anti-Semite of our time.”

He wrote, “Tutu has a long history of ugly hatred toward the Jewish people, the Jewish religion, and the Jewish state. He not only believes in anti-Semitism, he actively promoted and legitimated Jew-hatred among his many followers and admirers around the world.” Dershowitz’s examples of alleged “anti-Semitism” on Tutu’s part include nothing more than quotes from him such as, “Zionism has very many parallels with racism.” There is no evidence that Dershowitz’s assault on Tutu met any resistance on the part of Israel’s defenders.

The older moral and

ethical Jewish tradition is reasserting itself The idea that criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is “anti-Semitic” would have to include increasing numbers of American Jews as well as an increasing number of Israelis. Former Israeli Attorney General Michael Benyair recently declared, “Calling it apartheid in the West Bank only is a mistake. The apartheid regime is in all areas controlled by Israel, between the Sea and the Jordan River. The distinction between democratic Israel and the West Bank it controls is wrong…The solution to this is one of two things: granting equal rights to the disenfranchised in the entire controlled area and the loss of the Jewish majority, or

ending the control of the disenfranchisers… and granting self-determination to each community in its own territory. The passage of years does not help to resolve the dilemma, but to exacerbate it.”

More and more prominent Jewish Americans are also speaking out. In a Dec. 24, 2021 statement for Jewish Voice for Peace, actor, playwright and essayist Wallace Shawn, whose father, William Shawn, was longtime editor of The New Yorker, declared: “Jews have suffered so much over the centuries and have felt the cruelty of which humans are capable. Although I’ve had good luck so far in my own life, I feel that what has happened to my relatives and ancestors has affected me and given me an opportunity, as a person with Jewish heritage, to be a few minutes quicker than others to identify with those who are persecuted and oppressed. Conversely, I am particularly horrified—and yes, I take it personally—when Jews draw the wrong lesson from the history of Jewish suffering, and instead of feeling, ‘We understand what it is to be hunted down and tormented, and so we need to stand up for those who are hunted down and tormented,’ they concluded instead, ‘We know what can happen to Jews, so in fighting on behalf of Jews, no tactics should be considered impermissible or immoral.’”

Shawn laments that when he pays his taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, “…the State of Israel gets to buy weapons that are used to subjugate, terrorize and kill Palestinians... At this particular moment, the Palestinian people need our support more than ever before, because it seems that an increasing number of Jews in Israel have made the choice, impossible as this may seem, to simply accept the hideous status quo as a normal condition that may never change.”

As Zionism unravels in the American Jewish community, the idea that AIPAC and other establishment Jewish organizations speak for large numbers of Jewish Americans becomes increasingly difficult to promote. The older moral and ethical Jewish tradition is reasserting itself. Calling it “anti-Semitic” shows us how much Zionism has distorted the very nature of Jewish identity. ■

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History’s Shadows

PHOTO COURTESY WIKIWANT.COM

AIPAC Makes It Official: It’s All About the Benjamins

By Walter L. Hixson

AIPAC is expanding its Washington, DC offices and building a new 11‐story building next door, nearly tripling the pro‐Israel organization’s office space.

IN 2019 the Israel lobby smeared Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) with the baseless charge that she had invoked “anti-Semitic tropes” by stat-

History’s Shadows, a regular column by contributing editor Wal‐ ter L. Hixson, seeks to place various aspects of Middle East poli‐ tics and diplomacy in historical perspective. Hixson is the author of Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy and Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Gener‐ ation of the Palestine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor.

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ing the obvious, that the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Congress was “all about the Benjamins.”

Now, three years later, AIPAC has announced the formation of a new PAC and super PAC enabling the pro-Israel lobby to engage in direct funding of political candidates, which AIPAC had previously farmed out to smaller PACs. The move confirms that when it comes to maintaining a compliant Congress, it truly is all about those Benjamins that the lobby regularly pours into propaganda and political campaigns. AIPAC’s entry into direct lobbying provides a good opportunity to probe the historical trajectory of the preeminent pro-Israel lobby organization.

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From its inception to this day, the primary focus of the Israel lobby, encompassing AIPAC (officially formed in 1959) and myriad other Israel affinity organizations, has been to secure and to strengthen the grip on Congress. AIPAC has been stunningly successful in that effort, thereby ensuring the smooth flow of annual multi-billion-dollar American welfare checks to a tiny aggressor state located some 7,000 miles from U.S. shores.

Over the years AIPAC has evolved, becoming larger, richer, more domineering and more right-wing. For years AIPAC was directed by liberal Democrats who today express outrage over the lobby’s illiberal tactics and behavior. These critics, notably Thomas Dine and M.J. Rosenberg, are hypocrites insofar as they advanced, especially in the 1980s, many of AIPAC’s most effective lobbying tactics and techniques. Nonetheless, their criticism—well presented in the Israelimade and appropriately entitled documentary on AIPAC, “The Kings of Capitol Hill”— underscores the rightward shift.

The lobby suffered a few setbacks in the 2020 elections, not the least of which was the defeat of Donald Trump, who had given Israel everything that it wanted—including the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, as well as the torpedoing of the Iran nuclear agreement. In another blow to AIPAC, Rep. Eliot Engel, a longtime lobby mouthpiece and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lost his seat in New York to Jamaal Bowman. AIPAC’s affiliates also targeted and invested millions trying to unseat several critics in Congress, including Omar, who like most of the others weathered the lobby storm.

These failures are probably a big part of the AIPAC decision to take up direct lobbying. Lobby elites may also be concerned about losing ground because of the COVID-inspired cancellations of AIPAC’s annual policy conferences in 2021 and 2022. Those signature events provide a regular opportunity to trumpet AIPAC’s domination of Congress, as they invariably feature a parade of representatives and senators from both political parties, prostrating themselves before the lobby throng, to gush their undying support for Israel.

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As the famous French saying goes, however, the more things change the more they remain the same. Last November, nowcongressman Bowman, who had criticized Engel’s slavish support for Israel during the campaign, posed for photographs alongside Prime Minster Naftali Bennett during a trip to Israel. Another in a series of warrior, and often war-criminal, Israeli prime ministers, Bennett boasts of personally killing “lots of Arabs,” opposes a Palestinian state and describes himself as “more right-wing” than Binyamin Netanyahu.

Continuing AIPAC domination of Congress was further displayed this past September in a typically lopsided 420-9 House vote proposing to provide Israel with another $1 billion (in addition to the $3.8 billion it receives annually for militarism in general) for the Iron Dome. The missile defense system enhances Israel’s ability to bombard the captive Gaza Strip or Hezbollah or Syrian territory while sharply reducing the threat of incoming missiles to its own population. Only Omar and a few other mostly progressives voted against American financing of ongoing Israeli militarism. Some progressives, including Bowman, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who otherwise have been highly critical of Israel’s actions, lacked the courage to vote against the Iron Dome (AOC voted “present”).

Much as Omar was subjected to vitriolic

contempt in 2019 over her “Benjamins” comment, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) drew outrage during the Iron Dome debate for boldly denouncing Israel on the House floor as an un-democratic apartheid regime.

Tlaib accurately characterized Israel, which is a racist, militarist, undemocratic and rogue state, that regularly violates international law and violently deprives Palestinians of basic human rights. This description is not rhetorical—those are demonstrable facts—unlike the mendacious propaganda that AIPAC regularly disgorges.

AIPAC, of course, knows what the true facts are, and it therefore raises and invests millions of dollars in a ceaseless campaign to deny and distort reality. Those who deny the crucial role of the lobby should ask themselves why AIPAC continues to raise and spend millions of dollars and why it has dramatically expanded its work force as well as its physical facilities at its sprawling but unmarked office building on H Street.

While in some ways AIPAC today is more formidable than ever, in others its ability to command the broader narrative is in mortal jeopardy. More and more Americans, including importantly Jewish Americans, are recognizing, and condemning Israeli aggression and apartheid.

It remains to be seen how long a lobby that rests on a foundation of lies and disinformation can hold out against the everchanging forces of history. ■

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Special Report

What to Make of AIPAC Entering the World of Political Contributions

By Dale Sprusansky

ZOOM SCREENSHOT

However, McMahon and her peers at the Washington Report have been diligently tracking and reporting on the activities of these groups for decades by scouring through Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.

While following PAC donations gives one an indication of which candidates the lobby favors, PACs are just the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of the vast sums being spent on pro-Israel politics, McMahon noted. This is because of two growing phenomena.

The first is a tactic known as “bundling,” in which a group of people send individual contributions directly to a candidate all at (Clockwise, l‐r) Grant F. Smith, Walter L. Hixson and Janet L. McMahon discuss AIPAC’s new political once to demonstrate their collecaction committees and the implications for America on Dec. 22, 2021. tive financial power and passion THE ISRAEL LOBBY network received a major shakeup in Defor a particular issue, like Israel. Such contributions are recorded cember when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) by the FEC, but are not officially logged as stemming from a group announced its intention to launch a political action committee (PAC) with a political agenda. and a super PAC. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs There is also the rising prominence of “dark money” groups, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) held McMahon noted. “Dark money” groups are permitted to engage in a webinar on Dec. 22, 2021 to dissect the ramifications of this news. political activities such as buying advertisements, but they are proJanet L. McMahon, the former managing editor of the Washington hibited from directly contributing to individual campaigns. Unlike Report and editor of the “Other Voices” supplement, noted that while PACs, “dark money” organizations are not required to disclose their AIPAC has long coordinated pro-Israel activism and policies, it has donors, since they are registered as non-profits with the Internal never directly contributed to political campaigns. Instead, it has Revenue Service. This makes figuring out who is pulling the levers served as the nexus of pro-Israel activity in the U.S., sending cues behind large political influence campaigns difficult. to the more than 100 pro-Israel PACs that do directly support indiIndeed, often times voters don’t even know the advertisement vidual political campaigns. they are consuming is from a “dark money” group, especially when McMahon noted that the vast majority of these pro-Israel PACs that group is pro-Israel. This, McMahon explained, is because prohave “very innocuous names” that few Americans would associIsrael groups tend to attack Israel’s critics on unrelated “scandals” ate with Israel, such as the Joint Action Committee for Political and issues. “When the lobby goes after a candidate, they don’t Affairs, Desert Caucus PAC and Hudson Valley PAC. “There’s no usually say it’s because of that person’s record on Israel, it’s a difway you would know what their agenda is,” McMahon observed— ferent issue entirely,” McMahon noted. The reason for this is clear: and this is intentional. “The idea is that they are not visible, AmerUnlike the megadonors funding these ads, very few voters are raticans are not aware of the activities of these PACs,” she noted. tled by a candidate questioning the actions of a foreign country such as Israel.

Grant F. Smith, the director of IRmep, estimated that about $6 billion is donated to “dark money” pro-Israel groups every year. He beDale Sprusansky is managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. lieves AIPAC’s new PAC and super PAC have the potential to raise 20

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this much money. “All they have to do is efganizations such as the recently launched Walter L. Hixson, the author of several fectively reach out to that existing pool of Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI). In books on the Israel lobby and a contributing donors and become the filter through which recent elections, DMFI has spent millions editor at the Washington Report, noted that that money flows,” he said. to influence outcomes and promote the AIPAC views its mission as more important Smith found it intriguing that AIPAC’s continuation of pro-Israel politics within the than ever in light of growing criticism of PAC will be run by Marilyn Rosenthal, the Democratic Party. “AIPAC may feel it needs Israel. “The role of the lobby is to distort this group’s current progressive engagement to be more directly involved in electoral polknowledge of the illegal settlements, the ildirector. He believes AIPAC will use its PAC itics to be relevant,” Smith said. He also belegal occupation, the apartheid state and to primarily process contributions from leftlieves AIPAC is concerned with the trajecthe blatant violation of human rights,” he wing donors, so that public FEC records will tory of recent initiatives, such as the noted. The lobby has historically been “exshow large amounts of “liberal” cash flowing Abraham Accords Israel signed with sevtremely successful” at this, hence the bilto pro-Israel causes. In light of growing superal Arab governments, and is accordingly lions in annual unconditional U.S. aid to port for Palestine among the Democratic seeking ways to increase its power.

Israel and Washington’s robust diplomatic Party base, AIPAC likely (Advertisement) support for Israel. Their feels the need to do whatability to keep such supever it can to push the port flowing in the midst of image of a “grand progresglaring violations of intersive initiative” that supnational law, human rights, ports Israel, Smith said. and even U.S. law proves While PACs can only rethat the Israel lobby is unceive a limited amount of questionably the most inmoney from individual fluential foreign lobby in donors, super PACs can Washington, Hixson said. accept unlimited funds The lobby’s power is from both individuals and most clearly manifested corporations. Super PACs in its ability to steer legiscannot contribute directly lation on Capitol Hill. to individual campaigns, “Israel effectively owns but, like PACs, they do the U.S. Congress,” he have to report their funders said. “Since the post-war to the FEC. However, period, Israel found that since non-profits can give by targeting, rewarding to super PACs, it’s possi[and] punishing members ble for someone to route of Congress, it could their super PAC contribueffectively control ConPlaygrounds for Palestine is a project to build playgrounds tion through a non-profit in gress—and it does.” for our children. It is a minimal recognition of their right order to prevent their idenWhile some downplay to childhood and creative expression. It is an act of love. tity from being recorded in or outright deny the Israel any FEC filing. In this inlobby’s influence, Hixson Playgrounds for Palestine (PfP) is a registered 501(c)3 nonstance, super PACs can implored Americans and profit organization, established in 2001. We’re an all-volunfunction as quasi “dark academics to assess the teer organization (no paid staff) that raises money throughmoney” entities. Smith copious and widely availout the year to construct playgrounds and fund programs suspects AIPAC may able evidence of the for children in Palestine. route some “dark money” lobby’s power. He warned into its super PAC, and Selling Organic, Fair Trade Palestinthat AIPAC has no intent to ian olive oil is PfP’s principle source of that the overall flow of relinquish this power. In fundraising. This year, PfP launched cash into its super PAC will addition to launching its AIDA, a private label olive oil from likely be “much more sigPAC and super PAC, Palestinian farmers. Please come by and nificant” than what goes Hixson noted the group is taste it at our table. through its PAC. expanding its office space We hope you’ll love it and make it a staple in your pantry.

As to why AIPAC is joinand staff in Washington, ing the PAC game, Smith an indication they intend to For more information or to make a donation visit: https://playgroundsforpalestine.org • P.O. Box 559 • Yardley, PA 19067 believes the group fears it continue advancing their is losing ground to new orwork. ■ MARCH/APRIL 2022

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Special Report

PHOTO COURTESY BETTMANN/CONTRIBUTOR VIA GETTY IMAGES

The Palestine Conflict and the Militarization Of the Middle East

By John Gee

A Haganah mortar group unit lines up on May 28, 1948, in Acre, Palestine, ready for the battle on the Lebanese frontier. The Israeli fighters are using British‐type equipment.

THE STOCKHOLM International Peace Research Institute has found that, from 2016-2020, five of the top ten arms importing states were Arab Middle Eastern and North African states: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Qatar and the UAE. As a result of past, current or anticipated conflicts or domestic control uses, Middle Eastern states generally have armies that are over-sized in relation to their population, compared to other regions.

The Egyptian army is 340,000 strong; Israel’s regular armed forces number 169,500 with 465,000 reservists on stand-by when needed.

The Middle East is recognized today as one of the most heavily militarized regions of the world, but it was not so 75 years ago. Various factors have contributed to its transformation, but a big initial impetus was given by the violent foundation of the State of Israel and its successive wars since.

John Gee is a free‐lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.

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On June 16, 1948, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, described the war between his state and the Arab “belligerents” as one in which “700,000 Jews are pitted against 27 million Arabs— one against 40.” Despite the apparently overwhelming odds, on the ground, the Israeli forces were more than equal to the Arab armies and the volunteers facing them. The Arab states and their armies were not united in their goals. Israeli organization was superior and so, for the most part, was their training. The number of Arab soldiers committed began as roughly equal or slightly to Israel’s advantage in May 1948, and tilted increasingly in Israel’s favor as the 1948 war continued.

Israel’s fighting forces may have been at a disadvantage in armaments during the first fortnight of the war, but not after that.

Weaponry streamed in from Czechoslovakia and other sources— A nascent local arms industry produced new weapons or refurbished old armaments used by the Jewish Brigade that fought in WWII or those left behind by the British.

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Parts of the Arab world remained under direct colonial rule of Britain and a large part of the armies of the rest were not deployed in the Arab armies’ fight against Israel. Their retention within their home countries was due both to their governments’ anxieties about internal security and, in most cases, only half-hearted governmental commitment to support for the Palestinian Arabs, and only that meager effort in response to public sentiments. Yet, even if a more determined commitment had been made, the outcome in 1948 would most likely have been little different. The fact was that the Arab armies were relatively small, poorly equipped, and primarily suited to internal security uses.

Egypt’s army was the Arab world’s largest, with an effective force of 29,000 troops, followed by Iraq’s with 21,000. Transjordan (later Jordan) had what the Israeli military regarded as the most effective army among its neighbors, in the form of the Arab Legion, but it was led by British officers and numbered 7,400 men in all. The Syrian and Lebanese armies were small and Saudi Arabia did not have a regular army. In the aftermath of the 1948 war, a trend toward ever greater investments in armaments and the expansion of the region’s armed forces was initiated.

Many of the soldiers and officers who experienced defeat in Palestine in 1948 felt that they had been let down by the political leaderships in their countries. In The Philosophy of the Revolution, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser wrote of how, in 1948: “We were fighting in Palestine, but all our thoughts were concentrated on Egypt. Our bullets were directed at the enemy behind the parapets of his trenches, but our hearts were hovering over our distant motherland, left an easy prey for hungry wolves to ravage it.”

Later, he writes of how, in a position surrounded by Israeli forces, “I often said to myself: “Here we are besieged in these dugouts. We have been duped—pushed into a battle for which we were unprepared.

Vile ambitions, insidious intrigues and inordinate lusts are toying with our destinies, and we are left here under fire, unarmed.”

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Nasser was not alone in such feelings. The Free Officers Movement, which overthrew the Egyptian monarchy in 1952, took shape during the 1948 war in Palestine. In other Arab states, the disaster of 1948 brought discredit upon existing regimes and fuelled internal rivalries and opposition to them. Syria entered a period of chronic instability with a military coup on March 30, 1949, by Husni alZaim, who was himself overthrown a mere four and a half months later.

Militarization has

brought little benefit to the peoples of the Middle East Subsequently, several regimes which were regarded as being aligned with the Western countries that supported Israel, were destabilized after large-scale Israeli attacks upon neighboring states (which is not to say that other issues played no part). In 1955, Iraq joined with Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Britain in the Baghdad Pact, a Middle Eastern counterpart to NATO, which pursued a hostile policy toward the Soviet leaning Egypt, which did its own government no good. Within two years of Britain, France and Israel colluding to attack Egypt in 1956, the Iraqi monarchy (installed by Britain) was also overthrown in a coup. Following the 1967 war with Israel, in 1969, the Libyan monarchy was overthrown in a military coup, by Colonels Muammar Qaddafi and Abdel-Salam Jalloud, and the civilian government of Sudan was overthrown in a military coup by Jaafar Numeiry.

In each of these cases, the new regimes sought to assert their nationalist credentials and distance themselves from their colonialist past, in order to gain popular support and, not surprisingly, expanded the armed forces and promoted military personnel within the apparatus of government to ensure their own longevity. The existing old (mostly monarchist) regimes responded by devoting increased resources to their militaries, while seeking to tighten control over them by the promotion and appointment of officers whose loyalty was considered reliable.

Meanwhile, from the late 1960s onward, successive U.S. governments undertook to ensure that Israel was supplied with weaponry that would sustain its military superiority over all the Arab armies. Within Israel, the army maintained a status as a revered national institution and “security” provided legitimization for discriminatory and repressive practices toward Palestinian citizens, as well as the quelling of Jewish dissent.

There were certainly disputes between Arab countries, as well as between Arab and neighboring states that fueled militarization and not solely the conflict with Israel.

Indeed, over time, these other conflicts assumed a greater relative importance; the Iran-Iraq war, for example, consumed more lives than Palestine-related wars ever have.

However, the creation of Israel as a belligerent settler state kick-started regional military expansion. It also influenced governance and decision making, as did Israel’s “peripheral strategy” of cultivating ties with regimes and movements that were in conflict with Arab states (Turkey, Iran, Ethiopia, Kurdish and South Sudanese nationalists).

The enhanced power of the military and, in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Sudan, the representation of military leaders as the embodiment of nationalist values, operated to suppress dissident opinions and weaken civil society. This allowed Israel’s partisans to frequently portray it as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” and yet Israeli actions over decades did much to create conditions for repressive regimes to maintain power regionally. Israeli leaders were clearly disturbed in 2011 when the Arab Spring uprisings seemed poised to establish governments more accountable to their people.

Militarization has brought little benefit to the peoples of the Middle East but has done tremendous harm by sustaining repressive elites, allowing the dispossession of the Palestinian people to continue, recycling oil revenues to arms-supplying countries (including Israel) and diverting national resources into weaponry and armies. It seems certain that change for the better will entail a shrinking of military forces, arms expenditures and military participation in states’ economies and political lives. ■

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Special Report

As Congress Moves to Enshrine Abraham Accords, a Look at the Promised “Peace”

PHOTO BY GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

By William Hartung

Israeli military equipment is displayed at the Israeli Pavilion at the Dubai Airshow in the Gulf emirate, on Nov. 14, 2021. A year after signing the Abraham Accords, Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit Systems, Sinbad, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and other Israeli companies pitched their drones, drone domes, fighter aircraft, space‐based systems and other products to the public in the UAE‐based airshow. More than 80,000 visitors were expected to attend.

THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS—an initiative that has normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan —was greeted with great fanfare when it was kicked off with its signing by Israel and the UAE in September 2020.

The brainchild of then President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, it was billed as a novel approach to bringing peace and economic cooperation to the region while improving the conditions for Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied territories.

William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His work focuses on the arms industry and the U.S. military budget. This article was first posted on <www.responsiblestatecraft.org>. Copyright ©2022 Quincy Insti‐ tute for Responsible Statecraft, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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Others, including this author, expressed concerns that the Accords might degenerate into a rationale for pouring more arms into the region in exchange for minimal or nonexistent benefits in fostering peace and stability in the Middle East and North Africa. And a New York Times Magazine piece now reports that “sales of Pegasus [spyware] played an unseen but critical role…in negotiating the Abraham Accords.” The sale has enhanced the UAE’s ability to monitor dissidents and human rights defenders at home and abroad.

The Accords’ origins in the sale of weapons and tools of repression should give pause about their true value and intent.

The future of the Accords has gained new relevance now that there is a move in Congress to enshrine them in U.S. law via the Israel Relations Normalization Act, or (IRNA), which could come up

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for a vote in the next few weeks. There are also now newly-formed Abraham Accords caucuses in both houses of Congress. But members should think twice before providing uncritical support for the agreement or the U.S. could be entangled with a network of autocratic regimes for the foreseeable future, with serious negative consequences for U.S. interests in peace and stability in the Middle East and North Africa.

One indicator of the true nature of the Abraham Accords comes in a new report by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), a hardline neo-conservative Washington think tank. As my colleague Eli Clifton has documented, the report was authored by eight former military officers and diplomats, seven of whom have ties to the arms industry, including companies that have sold arms or otherwise done business with the UAE, the first signatory of the Accords. The report is open and honest about the implications of the agreement, noting that “Crucial to the [Trump] administration’s success was its readiness to supply the Accords’ Arab participants with significant—and in some cases controversial—inducements in terms of their bilateral relations with the United States....This included arms sales to the UAE.” Arms sales indeed—in parallel to the UAE’s accession to the accords, the Trump administration offered the monarchy $23 billion in U.S. weaponry, including F-35 combat aircraft, armed drones, and $10 billion worth of bombs. These are not instruments of peace. The deals prompted resolutions of disapproval in the Senate that generated 46 and 47 votes respectively, a sign of just how controversial they were.

The deal is now tied up over the UAE’s concerns about the conditions under which the F-35s are being offered, including possible limits on how they can be deployed. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken has provided assurances that Washington remains committed to making the deal happen.

The arms sales linked to the Accords are one sign of what’s wrong with them. Not only have they reinforced the status quo in terms of Israel’s occupation and repression of Palestinians, but they also threaten to furMARCH/APRIL 2022

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Yemeni pro‐government fighters from the UAE‐trained Giants Brigade, gather on the out‐ skirts of Ataq city, east of the Red Sea port of Aden, on their way to the frontline facing pro‐ Iran Houthi fighters, on Jan. 28, 2022.The clashes are part of a major escalation in the seven‐ year war after the Iran‐backed Houthis, following a series of territorial defeats, launched a deadly drone‐and‐missile attack on the UAE in January. ther tie the United States to a network of autocratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa in ways that will undermine the ability of the Biden administration or a future president to scale back the U.S. military presence in the region—a move that is long overdue. There is also a danger that the Accords could foster an anti-Iranian bloc that will deepen divisions in the region and increase the prospects for war.

The UAE’s inclusion in the arrangement is particularly troubling given its dismal human rights record and reckless conduct in the region. The UAE has been a full partner with Saudi Arabia in its devastating war in Yemen, which has resulted in the killing of thousands of civilians in indiscriminate air strikes and resulted in the deaths of nearly a quarter of a million people more as a result of the destruction of critical infrastructure, including roads, health facilities and even schools. While the Houthi opposition also bears responsibility for the carnage in Yemen, Saudi air strikes and the Saudi blockade of food, fuel and medical supplies destined for the country are the primary causes of the devastation there. The UAE has tried to disguise its role in the conflict by reducing its troop presence on the ground, but it continues to arm, train and finance extremist militias that have engaged in severe human rights abuses while running a network of secret prisons where ex-

treme acts of torture have been carried out.

The UAE has also been an irresponsible steward of U.S.-supplied weaponry, transferring small arms and armored vehicles to the militias they are backing, some of which include current or former members of alQaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Yemen is far from the only place where the UAE has waged war in violation of international norms and U.S. interests. The UAE has intervened in the civil war in Libya on behalf of anti-government forces led by the warlord Gen. Khalifa Haftar in violation of a United Nations arms embargo, and has launched drone strikes that have killed large numbers of civilians. The UAE has also supplied drones to the government of Ethiopia that it has used in the civil war there.

Other questionable relationships fostered by the Abraham Accords include links with antidemocratic forces in Sudan, which was removed from the U.S. terrorist list in exchange for signing the agreement; and Morocco, where the Trump administration endorsed that regime’s illegal occupation of the Western Sahara in exchange for it joining the Accords.

Given the dangers to peace, security, and human rights associated with the Abraham Accords, this is no time to attempt to make them permanent, much less expand them. ■

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Christianity and the Middle East

When an American Christian Zionist Can’t Even Say the Words “Occupation” or “Justice”

By Daoud Kuttab YOU WOULD THINK that Joel Rosenberg’s own identification is enough to turn off any non-Israeli Middle East leader. He prides in his Christian Zionist evangelical ideology and boasts of his newly adopted Israeli citizenship, brought about most likely because his father is of the Jewish faith. He is similarly proud that his two sons have served in the Israeli army, one in a special unit.

Yet reading his latest book, Enemies and Allies, one is taken back by how leaders of major Arab countries, kingdoms, and emirates open the doors for him for repeated visits and audiences with their own top leaders.

Rosenberg, his family and different delegations of pro-Israel white evangelical leaders have been invited and have met the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Ironically, these very visits and meetings with Arab heads of state probably helped him to visit the previous president of the United States in the Oval Office with the help of thenVice President Mike Pence.

Primarily a sensational New York Times bestselling novelist, Rosenberg’s books talk of wars and assassinations, all conspired by the enemies of the U.S. and Israel and all thwarted by the courageous Israelis and some of their Arab friends and, of course, with eminent help from America.

It is not clear how he made it into all those capitals. Was it his sensational anti-radical Islam novels or his strange dual citizenship and contacts with both Israeli and American leaders or simply perfect timing? Is it the fact that conservative Gulf leaders wanted something from the anti-Iran Trump administration,

Award‐winning Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab is founder and di‐ rector general of the Community Media Network in Amman, Jordan.

His book, Sesame Street, Palestine: Taking Sesame Street to the Children of Palestine, describes the ups and downs of producing a world‐famous children’s program for children enduring Israeli occu‐ pation.

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including the right to buy F-35 American fighters, or Sudanese, who wanted to be removed from the terror list, or the Moroccans, who wanted Washington to recognize their sovereignty over the Western Sahara? Rosenberg was the perfect messenger to help those countries improve their standing with Donald Trump and company.

On more than one occasion you get the sense that Rosenberg himself is surprised by his own success. He can’t believe that an American Israeli whose sons serve in the Israeli army is enjoying multiple visits and meetings with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) or Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Zayed (MBZ) or being flown by royalty over Jordanian lands.

The author himself is often surprised by the convergence of fiction and nonfiction as he walks into a Jordanian palace that was targeted in one of his novels or in the Oval Office where American foreign policy was being cooked up.

This is not to say that the author is not genuine in his faith, and in the messages that he is trying to send to proIsraeli American evangelicals, of the existence of Arabs who are nice and generous and actually don’t hate Israel.

Rosenberg also acts as the semiofficial messenger of America’s evangelicals, rarely giving an indication that his role as an unelected spokesman of white pro-Israel evangelicals is nowhere close to being representative of their flock. He talks about the 600 million worldwide evangelicals or the 60 million white American evangelicals as if their political opinions, and often divergent views of the world, are one and the same as his own. Rosenberg talks on behalf of American evangelicals in absolute terms, such as this line from his conversation with MBS: “I told him that the vast majority of the 60 million evangelical Christians in the United States love and strongly support the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I wanted him to know how deeply we care about Israel and why this was a deeply held theological—not political—conviction of ours that would never change.”

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Ironically, U.S. public opinion polls show that this so-called evangelical majority is dwindling. Furthermore, the very idea that people “will never change” is rather presumptuous.

But while one can argue about issues of evangelical representation, it is even harder to take Rosenberg seriously regarding peace and justice in the Middle East. The author bends over backward and carries out intellectual somersaults trying to vindicate his new friend MBS. Does he really think anyone believes him or believes that the brutal murder of the respected Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (who was a professional colleague and friend of mine) can happen by Saudi employees without the crown prince knowing about it?

When it comes to Israel and Palestine, the book fails to even tell his readers about the reality facing Palestinians. Although he talks warmly about his Palestinian friends, he admits that when he and his wife meet with Palestinians, they don’t talk politics!

The word occupation appears only twice in his 400-some page book, and both are within quotations of a reference by a British member of parliament.

While it is natural as an Israeli American that he mentions Israel 864 times, Egypt 446 times, Jordan 293, and Saudi Arabia 177, the word “Palestine” is mentioned only 13 times—and none of those by the author—it is either part of a quote or an of-

ficial name such as American Task Force on Palestine or the Palestine Liberation Organization. But for a man of “peace,” who mentions that word 475 times, it is shameful that the word “justice” doesn’t appear a single time in a book that supposedly documents his and his group's peace efforts?

What is further infuriating is that this Christian leader, who lives in Jerusalem, doesn’t let his readers know that Palestinian Christians exist. He mentions only twice the term “Arab Christians” in reference to believers of Christ in Jordan and Egypt but never once does the term “Palestinian Christians” appear in his exhaustive study as a Christian leader in the Middle East. In fact, Palestinians, whether Christians or Muslims, are treated only within the biblical commands that Israel must be kind to its neighbors. Even Palestinian Christian evangelicals are never referred to in the entire book.

Politically, the author fails to provide a single line about what Palestinians want and even when mentioning the Arab (Saudi) peace plan he commits forgery by saying that it seeks to find a solution to “disputed lands” (a common right-wing Israeli term) and not the correct and internationally recognized term, which appeared in the document he was referring to, “occupied Arab territories.” Rosenberg also commits forgery when saying that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Pales-

tinians a capital in East Jerusalem (unless he means that the village of Abu Dis, where some Israeli leaders plan to have a Palestinian capital, is East Jerusalem?) Also, the population of the West Bank (even without East Jerusalem) is 3.2 million and not 2 million, as he states.

Never once is the two-state solution mentioned and there is no discussion of an independent state or the right of selfdetermination. The West Bank is never mentioned and instead he uses the religious Jewish settler term of “Judea and Samaria.”

Rosenberg buys the entire Israeli narrative without any question and repeatedly says that the problem is that Palestinians don’t want to have direct talks with Israel when, in fact, any neutral observers would clearly argue that Israel, under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and now under Naftali Bennett, has been the obstacle to peace. They have either lied about wanting to have negotiations (Netanyahu) or have said outright (as Bennett has stated more than once) that they don’t want to meet or talk to the Palestinian leader, let alone discuss the idea of a Palestinian state. Rosenberg repeats the “three Arab Nos” (no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel and no peace with Israel, an Arab League resolution signed in 1967), despite the fact that the one saying “no” now is Prime Minister Bennett, not the Palestinians. ■

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Special Report

CAIR Calls For Investigation of Steven Emerson’s Hate Group

By Delinda C. Hanley

PHOTO BY ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

mants. After his termination in December, the Columbus office discovered “suspicious purchases” from ammunition and gun retailers made on a credit card that was administered by Iqbal, according to Whitney Siddiqi, community affairs director for CAIR-Ohio.

Soon after Iqbal’s exposure, the second man, Tariq Nelson, 48, voluntarily came forward to admit and apologize for working for IPT from 2008 to 2012. Nelson was once an active member of Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, VA. Nelson released a tax form showing that Emerson’s for-profit corporation paid him over $30,000 for just one of his many years of spying. He also supplied other damning evidence of his work for IPT. Both men received (L‐r) Council on American‐Islamic Relations national executive director Nihad Awad, then‐U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D‐MN) and Gold Star father Khizr Khan discuss President Donald Trump’s Muslim travel thousands of dollars from Emerson’s corporation for spying. ban at a Feb. 1, 2017 press conference in Washington, DC. John Sugg, editor of the Weekly THERE’S A MOLE inside your organization, warned the tipster in an Planet in the 1990s, and a senior editor of Creative Loafing Newspaemail sent last year to the Council on American-Islamic Relations pers until he retired in 2008, has had lots to say about Emerson over (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group. Soon the e-mailer, the years. “Emerson collects money through a [501(c) (3)] non-profit, a whistleblower from the DC-based Investigative Project on Terrorism the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, and then funnels (IPT), led CAIR to a trove of recordings and transcripts. CAIR’s national that money to his for-profit SAE (as in Steven A. Emerson) Producoffice hired an outside forensic specialist to investigate the evidence. tions,” Sugg wrote in an article published in the January/February In November, the specialist reported to CAIR that two Muslim in2011 Washington Report. Sugg quoted remarks by Ken Berger, pressiders had been sharing information, “including surreptitiously ident of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog group, to a Nashville recorded conversations, strategic plans and private emails,” with paper: “Basically, you have a nonprofit acting as a front organization, the IPT, the anti-Muslim hate group founded by Steven Emerson, a and all that money going to a for-profit. It's wrong. This is off the charts.” self-styled “terrorism expert.” For years, Emerson paid Muslim inAt a Jan. 12 news conference, CAIR executive director Nihad Awad formants to hand over details of private conversations held by CAIR said his organization had reached out to the FBI about the longtime and other Muslim community leaders to IPT. spying efforts because it was concerned that laws had been broken On Dec. 16, CAIR named Romin Iqbal, the longtime Columbus, and because some of the leaked documents showed that Emerson Ohio CAIR chapter’s executive and legal director, as one of the inforwas communicating with Israeli government officials. Edward Ahmed Mitchell, an attorney and former journalist who serves as CAIR’s national deputy director, showed e-mails from Emerson telling his staff Delinda C. Hanley is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. to help provide Israeli intelligence officers with research about Students 28

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for Justice in Palestine. The Israeli government wanted any evidence they could find linking individual American college students to Hamas.

The anonymous IPT whistleblower told the Washington Post he decided to warn CAIR because, “I felt I was working for a [pro-Israel] lobbying organization and not against terrorism.”

On Feb. 1, American Muslim organizations and religious leaders joined CAIR for a virtual news conference to call on the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate whether the IPT hate group violated any federal laws by using paid spies to infiltrate, record and undermine Muslim organizations, houses of worship and leaders, including then-Rep. Keith Ellison, for the benefit of a foreign government. Earlier that day, 83 Muslim civil society organizations and mosques sent a joint community letter to the Justice Department urging it to investigate the actions of IPT. The Department of Justice Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with a foreign government. It is readily apparent, from the evidence CAIR has acquired, that the Department of Justice must require IPT to register as a foreign agent for Israel.

Emerson has had a decades-long grudge against CAIR. Like clockwork each year, a small band of protesters screamed abuse at Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) supporters as they entered the annual fundraising banquet at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, VA. Emerson, the producer of the controversial 1994 PBS program “Jihad in America,” also heckled speakers at a CAIR news conference in 1996, bringing a camera crew that “led organizers to believe they represented PBS.” CAIR suspected Emerson was filming scenes for his next show.

MARCH/APRIL 2022

PHOTO SCREEN SHOT FROM C-SPAN

EMERSON HAS TARGETED CAIR FOR DECADES

Emerson also had a problem with the first Muslim member of Congress. IPT compiled a 40-plus-page dossier on Keith Ellison, who represented Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019. IPT’s dossier included his speeches and interviews, but Emerson was particularly focused on anything Rep. Ellison said about Palestinian human rights. Nelson admitted that he recorded private remarks made by thenRep. Ellison, at a fundraising dinner in a private home in 2010, suggesting U.S. Middle East policy was “governed” by Israeli interests. Ellison has said the publicly released 36-second clip was taken out of context. Six years later, in 2016, that recording was used by opponents of Ellison’s campaign at the time to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison lost.

In a statement to the Washington Post, now Minnesota’s Attorney General Ellison, addressed the issue of surveillance of the Muslim community. “The truth about the long campaign of disinformation—spying on Muslims engaged in legitimate First Amendment activity, paying people tens of thousands of dollars to conduct smear campaigns based on deception—continues to come out...If the last 10 years have shown us anything, it is that the so-called ‘Muslim scare’ was always deliberate disinformation pitting Americans against each other.”

Much of that Muslim scare was fomented

by IPT, most likely with Israeli input, according to Sugg and other serious journalists.

Yet the mainstream media rarely questioned Emerson’s claims and guilt-by-associationand-innuendo tactics. As a result of the recent exposure of IPT’s spying, reporters are finally looking at Emerson’s background, associations, financing and motives.

CAIR’S ISLAMOPHOBIA REPORT

CAIR released a new Islamophobia report on Jan. 11, 2022, titled “Islamophobia in the Mainstream,” listing 35 charitable institutions and foundations that funneled almost $106 million to 26 anti-Muslim groups between 2017-2019. The anti-Muslim hate groups listed in the report include: The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), Gatestone Institute, Center for Security Policy, Middle East Forum, Middle East Media Research Institute, David Horowitz Freedom Center, Clarion Project and, of course, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, among many others.

According to the report, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism Inc., Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Schwab Charitable Fund, Marcus Foundation, the Adelson Family Foundation and the Jewish Communal Fund were among the top funders of the U.S. Islamophobia Network between 2017-2019. (It should be noted that Fidelity and Schwab Charitable Funds accept donations from all kinds of individuals and send funds to a wide range of truly upstanding public charities. They should be advised to look into which of these charities are actually hate groups.)

Islamophobic attitudes and policies are propagated by special interest groups, like IPT, with deep sources of funding. IPT and other hate groups continue to work to negatively influence U.S. public opinion and government policy about Muslims and Islam.

CAIR supporters hope that a thorough U.S. government investigation into IPT Steven Emerson warns about the growth of Islamic radi‐ calism within the United States on C-SPAN on Nov. 28, will begin to curb funding for other ex2009. tremist hate groups. ■ WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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United Nations Report

Hasbara and a Stone: Israel’s Ambassador Brings Both to the U.N.

By Ian Williams

PHOTO BY LEV RADIN/PACIFIC

Even so, hasbara practitionFOR YEARS ISRAELI repreers know how much the sentatives at the U.N. have market can stand and official competed in an Orwellian spokespeople have the socompetition to see which of phistication to resist the tempthem could invert reality in a tation to go too far. That fear of way that most affronts comblowback restrained their critmon sense and common deicisms of, for example, South cency—and which would lend African leaders Desmond Tutu the most advantage to their or Nelson Mandela, leaving domestic political careers in the more hysterical and insupIsrael. Based as they are in portable accusations to the New York with large crowds likes of the Anti-Defamation of uber-Zionist donors within League’s Abe Foxman (who “earshot,” Israeli diplomats was just appointed to the U.S. have few incentives to stay Holocaust Memorial Council within the bounds of reason.

by President Joe Biden).

They tend to have the diploHowever, in January Israel’s matic skills and finesse of the Permanent Representative to heralds who started the Thirty the U.N., Gilad Erdan, went Years’ War. further than most, toting a rock However, one cannot deny into the Security Council and the effectiveness of the hydemanding a resolution conperbolic hasbara this exemdemning what he called plifies, which is aided and “Palestinian terrorism,” since abetted by their complaisant Security Council audience, Ambassador Gilad Erdan, Permanent Representative of Israel to the the locals sometimes throw United Nations, demands a U.N. resolution on Jan. 19, 2022, condemn‐ stones at occupiers’ vehicles. who tend to be too polite to ing Palestinian terrorism or rock throwing.

Even by his own lax stanshout, “taurine excreta!” To be dards, it was an unconvincing charitable, they are perhaps performance. The accusation coincided with yet another expulsion cautious that the media would pillory any such ripostes—no matter of a family from Sheikh Jarrah, which even the U.S., let alone the how justified they are by reality—as anti-Semitic. rest of the world roundly condemned. If Security Council members At the beginning of February, we saw some of this when Whoopi could rein in their diplomatic politeness, they could reasonably have Goldberg had to grovel in a latter-day auto-da-fé for raising entirely asked if the stone he brandished was from the rubble of the Palesrational objections to the standard Zionist talking point. In no way tinian homes that Israel had demolished that week. did she challenge the existence or the barbarity of the Holocaust And then, overall, there is the typical solipsistic trait which but quibbled about the orthodox Israeli creed that seems to have weighs a stone hurled at occupiers as much heavier and more deosmosed into public dogma. structive than air strikes and bulldozers. Logistical constraints perLike the Red Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, who shouted in haps inhibit the Palestinian delegation from driving a bulldozer or pain five minutes before the open brooch pricked her, Israeli supporters a tank into the Security Council chamber, let alone sending in a shout “anti-Semitism” pre-emptively about anticipated injuries—and it drone, but one wishes... usually works. Would-be critics know that a world of pain on the pillory In particular, Erdan overlooked the contrast between his awaits anyone who dares to depart from the approved script. overblown charges and the national narrative of David and Goliath, in which a shepherd boy lays low a heavily armored Philistine giant.

U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of UNtold: the In the Book of Samuel, it did not mention that David had drones, Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More). tanks and artillery, rather, “David prevailed over the Philistine with a 30

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sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.”

Erdan was also busy on other fronts at the U.N. In January, Israel steered through a General Assembly resolution commemorating the Holocaust, deploying hasbara’s most abused—and potent—weapon. The resolution passed with no dissent, because, of course, every moral human condemns the Shoah—except that Likud’s allies in Poland and Hungary tend to do so much less forcefully than most. But most people also condemn attacks on Gaza, house demolitions, shooting children and the rest of Israel’s Goliathish behavior, and can wince at the contradiction between its diplomats’ shrill protests and the reality on the rubblestrewn ground.

In occupying the spotlight on the U.N. stage, Erdan ironically described hasbara techniques and identified their sources. He announced unblushingly, “It is said that ‘A lie which is half a truth is the blackest of lies.’

And so, Holocaust denial became Holocaust distortion…Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s chief propagandist, once said, ‘If you tell a big lie enough times, people will eventually come to believe it.’” Erdan later added, “Today, this pandemic of distortions and lies uses social media to spread across the globe in the blink of an eye.” The equation of terrorism with children throwing stones during armed enforcement of apartheid, is indeed a lie.

Perhaps accusations of anti-Semitism against Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, the “Squad” or of “terrorism” against Palestinian kids might qualify. But not enough people rise to point out the similarity.

Erdan added Panglossian optimism to his self-absorption when he claimed, on Israeli Radio, that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres “effectively recognized” the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antiSemitism. One speculates that Erdan and his supporters in the U.N. Secretariat thought they had previously secured such endorsement. But they had not. Most of the definition is indeed not controversial, but experience with the IHRA definition shows that Israel supporters consistently misinterpret it, pushing the envelope to brand as anti-Semitism any criticism of Israel. Most MARCH/APRIL 2022

MUAMMAR AWAD/XINHUA VIA GETTY IMAGES

williams_30-31r.qxp_UNITED NATIONS REPORT 2/3/22 4:43 PM Page 31

The rubble from a home demolished by Israel in East Jerusalem, on Jan. 19, 2022, the same day Erdan brandished his stone. politically astute leaders are aware of this tendency and carefully disclaim any intention of outlawing such criticism. It seems that people in the secretary-general’s office kicked back.

Guterres is indeed careful to limit criticism of Israel (and of almost anyone else, from China to the USA!) but even he did not jump into Erdan’s trap and instead simply acknowledged “the efforts of countries that have agreed on the common definition of anti-Semitism,” without, for example, invoking the increasingly challenged IHRA. Undaunted, again, by reality, Erdan went ahead with a pre-prepared statement that said he was “pleased to hear (Guterres) today adopting and applying the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in the U.N. bodies,” and milked it for the little it was worth claiming the resolution would help shield Israel from criticism in U.N. bodies.

However, in a spectacular case of bad timing, within days Amnesty International released its meticulously documented report on Israeli apartheid, which optimists suggest would provide yet more ammunition for international legal action against the state. More predictably within hours, to use his own words, we saw the “pandemic of distortions and lies us(ing) social media to spread across the globe in the blink of an eye,” vitriolic accusations of anti-Semitism against Amnesty. Hasbara hath no fury like a lobbyist scorned.

For many years Amnesty and Human Rights Watch tempered their criticism of

Israel for fear of such outbreaks, which of course threatened their donor bases. I personally argued with Amnesty about their refusals to give Mordechai Vanunu prisoner of conscience status for revealing Israel’s nuclear weapons program. It is good to see them redeeming themselves.

I do not want to risk falling foul of the IHRA by suggesting that Erdan and Israel have a monopoly on feigned outrage. It was a bad week for hypocrisy at the U.N. Israel’s current MiniME at the U.N., the UAE, unblushingly demanded a condemnation of the Houthi-led government, that controls Sana’a and most of the country, for a missile strike on a UAE airport. With an Erdanesque sense of timing, shortly after, Saudi and UAE forces bombed and killed over 70 people in Yemen, targeting a reservoir and three medical facilities.

In a sense, Israel’s allies had prepared for the move by successfully getting the U.N. Human Rights Council to terminate the mandate of the Group of Experts reporting on all violations of human rights. But while the blame there lies squarely with the unelected feudal chieftains in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, there are tacit accomplices.

Would the perpetrators there, or in Israel, get away with such barbarities if the U.N. Secretariat or the Permanent Five were to denounce them, let alone stop providing the weapons they use?

For my part, donations to Amnesty and HRW will in a small way help to counter hasbara’s attempts to choke off their finances. ■

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Congress Watch

Congress Passes Final FY ‘22 NDAA, Including More Millions for Israel

By Shirl McArthur

$30 million over five years for “U.S.-Israel cybersecurity cooperation.” These amounts are in addition to the $3.8 billion or so provided in the regular Foreign Operations Appropriations bill.

ANOTHER BILLION FOR ISRAEL STILL STUCK IN THE SENATE JACK GUEZ/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

As reported in previous Washington Report issues, congressional Zionists failed several times to get another $1 billion appropriated for Israel by calling it “Iron Dome replenishment” and slipping it into other, unrelated measures. So House Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Rosa DeAn Israeli Iron Dome anti‐rocket system (r) and an U.S. Patriot missile defense system (l) are exposed during a joint Israeli‐U.S. military exercise at the Hatzor Airforce Base on March 8, 2018. The U.S. has Lauro (D-CT) in September introduced H.R. 5323, the contributed $7 billion to Israel’s missile defense systems, in addition to $4 billion in aid annually. stand-alone “Iron Dome Supplemental Appropriations” bill to appropriate the $1 billion for Israel. It passed the House on Sept.

THE SENATE FINALLY passed a revised version of S. 1605, the 23 under “suspension of the rules” by a vote of 420-9, with two voting National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2022. The bill “present.” started in the House as H.R. 4350, and was passed in that form by But H.R. 5323 has not moved in the Senate where it has been the House on Sept. 23. But that went nowhere in the Senate. After blocked by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) who wants it to be paid for by much behind-the-scenes negotiations, a new version was inserted cutting funding for Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. On Dec. 15, Sen. into a previously-introduced, obscure bill, S. 1605, and the new verRichard Blumenthal (D-CT) for the fourth time sought unanimous sion was passed by the House on Dec. 7, passed by the Senate consent to bring the bill to the floor to be voted on, and for the fourth on Dec. 15, and signed by President Joe Biden on Dec. 27 as PL time Paul objected. He had introduced S. 2944, the “Funding Iron 117-81.

Dome by Defunding the Taliban” bill in October. In arguing for his Notably, the final bill does not include the provision, included in bill on the Senate floor, Paul raised the objections of many House the earlier version, authorizing $1 billion in supplemental funding for members who do so privately rather than publicly so as to not be Israel to replenish the short-range Iron Dome missile defense labeled “anti-Semitic.” He said, “the billion dollars under considerasystem used during the May 2021 fighting between Israel and tion today is on top of the more than $1.6 billion the United States Hamas. However, it does authorize $200 million in procurements has already given for Iron Dome, and that is not all. The United for Israel, comprised of $108 billion for Iron Dome, $30 million for States provides Israel with just under $4 billion in aid annually. To David’s Sling and $62 million for Arrow 3. In addition, it authorizes date, the United States has provided over $146 billion in aid to Israel. $300 million for so-called “U.S.-Israel cooperative programs,” and In addition to Iron Dome the United States has helped Israel fund other missile defense systems as well. We spent $2 billion on Shirl McArthur is a retired foreign service officer. He lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

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United States has contributed $7 billion to Israel’s missile defense systems....”

Interestingly, Paul has not been attacked by members of Congress for blocking the Iron Dome bill, as were the few House progressives who objected to the funding or voted “no” or “present” on H.R. 5323.

None of the several other bills to provide funding for Iron Dome introduced by Republicans grandstanding for their Zionist donors and voters has gained further support.

HOUSE PASSES FLAWED ANTI-ISLAMOPHOBIA BILL On Dec. 9 and 10 the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) marked up H.R. 5665, introduced in October by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), “to establish in the Department of State the Office to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia” worldwide. During the markup sessions Republican members tried to shift the debate to be about anti-Semitism. Ironically many of the comments and amendments submitted clearly demonstrated the Islamophobia the bill was intended to attack, as well as some outrageous personal attacks on Omar. The full House passed the amended bill on Dec. 14 by a party-line vote of 219-212. When passed, the bill had 56 cosponsors, all Democrats.

One amendment included in the HFAC version reported out and passed by the full House, unfortunately, was a provision that no funds may be made available pursuant to the bill to promote or endorse a boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel or Israel-related individuals or organizations.

Seeing that her bill was being gutted in the committee, Omar on Dec. 9 introduced H.R. 6204, a “clean” version of H.R. 5665 that doesn’t include the anti-BDS language.

It has 56 cosponsors.

OTHER POSITIVE MEASURES MAKE SLIGHT PROGRESS H.Res. 751, introduced in October by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) “Condemning the repressive designation by the Government of Israel of six prominent Palestinian human rights and civil society groups as terrorist organizations,” has gained a cosponsor and now has 11. The six organizations are Addameer, Al-Haq, Defense for Children InterMARCH/APRIL 2022

national-Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Bisan Center for Research and Development and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees. The designation makes the groups subject to several punitive actions, including freezing their assets and even forcing them to shut down.

H.R. 2590, the “Palestinian Children and Families” bill, introduced in April by McCollum, has also gained cosponsors and now has 32. It is “to promote and protect the human rights of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and to ensure that U.S. taxpayer funds are not used by the Government of Israel to support the military detention of Palestinian children, the unlawful seizure, appropriation, and destruction of Palestinian property, and forcible transfer of civilians in the West Bank, or further annexation of Palestinian land in violation of international law.”

The new two-state solution bill, H.R. 5344, has gained some support. Introduced in September by Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) “to preserve conditions for, and improve the likelihood of, a two-state solution that secures Israel’s future as a democratic state and a national home for the Jewish people, a viable, democratic Palestinian state, an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, and peaceful relations between the two states, and to direct the Department of State and other relevant agencies to take steps to accomplish these ends,” it now has 44 all-Democratic cosponsors. This bill could be cause for optimism, but there is little chance that it might be passed.

PRO-ISRAEL BILLS CONTINUE TO PROGRESS The companion bills “to encourage the normalization of relations with Israel” continue to gain support. H.R. 2748, introduced in April by Rep. Bradley Schneider (D-IL), now has 329 cosponsors. Its companion bill, S. 1061, introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), still has 72 cosponsors.

The bills objecting to reopening the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem have gained cosponsors. S. 3063 introduced by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) in October “to prohibit the use of funds for a U.S. Embassy, Consulate General, Legation, Consular Office, or any other diplomatic facility in Jerusalem other than the U.S. Embassy to the State of

Israel,” now has 40 cosponsors. The identical H.R. 6004, introduced in November by Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN) now has 123 Republican cosponsors.

The previously described U.S.-Israel cooperation bills have made scant progress.

H.R. 5148, the “U.S.-Israel Artificial Intelligence Center” bill introduced in September by Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), has gained cosponsors and now has six. The identical S. 2120, introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in June, still has eight cosponsors. The “U.S.-Israel PTSD Collaborative Research” bills that were introduced in the House and the Senate in February, have not moved. S. 221, introduced by Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), still has nine cosponsors, and H.R. 852, introduced by Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), still has 65 cosponsors. H.R. 5302, introduced in September

by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), to “amend the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 to establish a United States-Israel Operations-Technology Working Group,” still has seven cosponsors.

The companion bills that would again try to equate Israel’s colonies on the West Bank or Gaza with Israel have gained no support. H.R. 5356, introduced in September by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), still has four cosponsors, and S. 2489, introduced in July by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), still has eight cosponsors. H.Res. 557, introduced in July by Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), which specifically equates criticizing Israel with anti-Semitism, still has four cosponsors.

NEW IRAN SANCTIONS BILLS INTRODUCED H.R. 6089, the “Stop Iranian Drones” bill, was introduced Nov. 30 by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX). It was ordered reported out to the full House on Dec. 10. It has 68 cosponsors. The Senate companion bill, S. 3421, was introduced Dec. 16 by Sens.

Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Jim Risch (RID). Sen. Patrick Toomey (R-PA) on Dec. 8 introduced S. 3347, “to identify and impose sanctions with respect to persons who are responsible for or complicit in abuses toward dissidents on behalf of the Government of Iran.” It has two cosponsors.

Continued on page 38

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Canada Calling

PHOTO COURTESY MATTHEW BEHRENS

Palestinian Mother Issues Challenge to Canadian Government

By Candice Bodnaruk

Jihan Qunoo (r), a Palestinian refugee from Gaza, living in Ottawa, Canada, her husband (l), three daughters and Matthew Behrens (center).

LAST MAY, when Israel attacked Gaza, killing 260 people, 129 of them civilians, including 66 children, Jihan Qunoo saw video footage of her own three children running to escape the bombing and screaming for her. The Ottawa-based mother immediately took to YouTube, posting a message to both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, begging them to issue temporary residency permits for her children to come to Canada, or she would return to

Candice Bodnaruk has been involved in Palestinian issues for the past 14 years through organizations such as the Cana‐ dian BDS Coalition and Peace Alliance Win‐ nipeg. Her political action started with fem‐ inism and continued with the peace move‐ ment, first with the No War on Iraq Coali‐ tion in 2003 in Winnipeg.

34

Gaza herself to retrieve them. It was a desperate attempt to rescue her daughters.

Veteran activist Matthew Behrens heard Qunoo’s pleas and decided to try to contact her, knowing that his experience working with the Ottawa-based Rural Refugee Rights Network could be a benefit to the family.

Behrens, the founder of Homes Not Bombs, has been at the forefront of social justice advocacy and nonviolent direct action in both Canada and the U.S. for more than 40 years. During the Israeli attacks, Behrens was live-casting direct action podcasts focusing on the history of Canada’s complicity in Israeli apartheid and anti-Palestinian violence.

“In the midst of this, I heard the story of Jihan Qunoo, an Ottawa refugee who applied for her kids to visit her over the

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

summer because it had been two years since they had seen one another,” he said.

Behrens connected with Qunoo through social media and they began working on a Temporary Resident Application so her family could live in Canada while their permanent residence application was processed (a procedure that Behrens said, on average, can take 39 months).

Rural Refugee Rights Network also presented a petition with 25,000 signatures addressed to Prime Minister Trudeau’s office and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

Qunoo’s bold challenge to the Canadian government and media campaign paid off.

She had the permits 36 hours after she had broadcast her message. In June, Qunoo was reunited with her husband and daughters.

“This inspired a dozen other families long separated from one another to reach out and seek our assistance,” Behrens said.

The Rural Refugee Rights Network spent the summer helping families put applications together; a lengthy, intense and traumatizing process, requiring affidavits detailing the background of each family’s separation.

The Canadian government could have issued special immigration measures to waive these requirements, but in Behrens’ opinion, officials don’t think Palestinian lives are important enough for them to do that.

“We have won 13 permits for reunification so far, and continue to work on others, who have come forward asking for assistance in their reunification,” he explained.

Behrens said the large amount of attention the Rural Refugee Rights Network received last spring was really the first time Canadian media had presented extended, sympathetic coverage of Palestinians.

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once the bombing stopped in May, our advocacy proved very effective,” and his organization was able to reunite many families.

Behrens says the way Canada awards permits for immigrants and refugees needs to change. The Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the IRCC need to make the system fair and equitable for those seeking asylum in Canada.

“We advocate for a complete overhaul of the system,” he said, adding that what is needed in Canada is a “Department of Welcoming.” Instead the CBSA and IRCC act like police and try to prevent people from accessing asylum in Canada and employs twice as many people on the enforcement end of immigration, working to deport the most vulnerable back to the countries they fled.

He estimates 14,000 people work at the CBSA, who are meeting arbitrary quotas, throwing refugees into prison on the flimsiest grounds and preventing migrants from getting to Canada in the first place. Meanwhile, Behrens said, the IRCC has just over 7,000 staff, who are regularly finding excuses to delay or reject applications.

Behrens added that the issue of family separation is particularly relevant for Canada. “It’s an important issue because Canada was founded on family separation via genocide against Indigenous peoples,” he explained.

When asked if he has faced criticism for his work, Behrens emphasized Canadians’ changing views on Israel, especially since last attack on Gaza. “I think there was a definite shift in perceptions about Israel apartheid over the past year, especially after the May slaughter. I lost a few friends on Facebook but gained some remarkable friendships with folks from Gaza, who have taught me so much,” he said.

He explained that his organization seeks specific institutional changes, such as an end to all deportations and immediate status for all who do not currently have it.

Behrens said the Canadian government has not directly responded to the Rural Refugee Rights Network’s demands but added that their success in pressuring the government for permits, stands as a reMARCH/APRIIL 2022

minder that people have more power than they realize to effect change.

Last spring, the Rural Refugee Rights Network received countless unsolicited offers from people who saw the group’s posts and volunteered to collect furniture for reunified families with new apartments, teach ESL classes or engage in political advocacy on the families’ behalf. Lawyers also came forward to offer assistance in uploading applications, commissioning affidavits and offering to read submissions.

“There has been a beautiful outpouring of support from so many different community members,” Behrens said.

The Rural Refugee Rights Network is now holding monthly vigils to demand immediate reunification of long-separated refugee families.

UNRWA UNDER ATTACK BY CANADIAN CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS ALIKE Canada continued a time-honored holiday tradition at the U.N. General Assembly in December 2021 by voting against all resolutions supporting Palestine except for one—the right to Palestinian self-determination. Michael Bueckert, vice-president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), called it a “token vote for Palestine.” According to CJPME, in 2019 Canada ranked 14th in the world in terms of its donor support to UNRWA. Although Canada renewed its UNRWA funding in 2020, committing to $90 million dollars over three years, Canada voted “no” on the two UNRWA resolutions at the General Assembly in December 2021.

Specifically, Canada voted against the resolution that the effective functioning of UNRWA remains essential in all fields of operation. As well, Canada voted against the resolution that affirms the necessity for the continuation UNRWA’s work.

In the mid-2000s, under both Liberal and then Conservative leadership, Canada was voting “yes” to these resolutions.

“We are opposed to any initiative within the United Nations and other multilateral forums, that is specifically aimed at criticizing Israel,” Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie

Joly said, in a Dec. 7 debate in the House of Commons.

Bueckert noted that this policy indicates Canada has repeatedly chosen to vote against resolutions which are consistent with international law. “Protecting Israel from criticism should not be a goal of Canadian foreign policy,” he said. Bueckert added that Canadians expect their government to stand up for what is right.

Meanwhile, the federal Conservative Party of Canada is once again signaling that Canada should end funding for UNRWA altogether. Conservative Party Member of Parliament Marty Morantz recently proposed that Canada end its funding for UNRWA because he believes it promotes anti-Semitism through its school curriculum. He referenced a recent European Union decision to make funding for UNRWA conditional on immediate changes to Palestinian school curriculum to promote coexistence with Israel and asked if Canada will follow their example.

FM Joly responded that Canada expects neutrality from UNRWA when it comes to education and schooling material for Palestinian children.

Morantz went on to criticize Global Affairs Canada (GAC) funding of the Union of Agricultural Work Committee (UAWC), which Israel has accused of being affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The UAWC had been receiving tax dollars from GAC as an implementing partner, under an existing U.N. food and agricultural project that is set to end in 2022. Israel recently designated the UAWC as a terrorist organization, along with several human rights organizations, calling it the “agricultural arm” of the PFLP. Canada has listed the PLFP as a terrorist organization under Canadian law. Morantz said he hoped the government would do the same with the UAWC. FM Joly’s response was that Canada remains a steadfast ally of Israel and friend to the Palestinian people.

Morantz and Joly declined to speak with the Washington Report when asked for their comments. ■

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From Across the Pond

British Parties Rewind the Clock

By Jonathan Cook

PHOTO CREDITS MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

a beacon of democracy in defiance of his own party’s recent motion declaring it an apartheid state. Starmer denounced all activism that favors boycotts, even those targeting Israel’s illegal settlements.

• And then, in a move promoted by senior figures in the party as “tackling anti-Semitism,” the Conservative government announced efforts to outlaw Hamas “in its entirety,” including its political wing, and threatened anyone offering its leaders a platform, a jail sentence of up to 10 years.

Notably, Labour’s frontbench team supported the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization, even though it represents a huge chunk of Palestinians living under belligerent Israeli occupation.

The significance of this all-out, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely gives a press conference on Nov. 3, 2015, in the Lipski plastic factory near the Israeli settlement of Ariel in the occupied West Bank, on the European Union's bipartisan assault on the rights of (EU) decision to label goods made in Jewish settlements. The appointment of the hard‐right Hotovely Britons to stand in solidarity with as Israel’s ambassador to the UK was met with dismay.

Palestinians, must be put in a historical and political context as the BRITISH POLITICS are lurching backward when it comes to Israel. hard-won victories over decades are now being quickly reversed.

Gains won over many decades that made it possible to critique Israel Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, activists began to challenge and its belligerent rule over Palestinians, are being undone almost the media’s widespread presentation of Israel’s military occupation overnight on both sides of the supposed political divide. of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as benevolent and enA rash of recent incidents illustrate how quickly the rot has set in: lightened. The realization that the occupation was ugly and brutal • Both the rightwing ruling Conservative party and the leftwing opwas finally driven home by Israel’s policy of “breaking the bones” of position Labour vehemently denounced a street protest in NovemPalestinians who participated in the mass, non-violent uprising ber against Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s hard-right ambassador to the UK, against the occupation that began in 1987. a champion of its illegal settlements and denier of Palestinian history.

That trend coincided with the increasing visibility of a boycott Senior politicians from each side of the aisle claimed the protest movement against Israel, like the one that targeted apartheid South was anti-Semitic and, in a moment of peak cognitive dissonance, Africa. Similarly, there was a growing awareness that Israel had an attack on free speech. been aided by vigorous lobby groups that sought to shield it from • Shortly afterward, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer shared a platcriticism in major Western capitals. form with Hotovely in support of Israel. He blurred the distinctions After Israel stymied the Oslo peace talks in 2000 and then savbetween criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, referring to Israel as agely suppressed a Palestinian uprising, the focus shifted to Israel itself. Questions were raised for the first time about whether there Jonathan Cook is a journalist now based in the UK and a winner of might be inherent political, legal and moral problems with a state the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. He is the author declaring itself “Jewish”—defining itself in ethnic and religious terms. of Blood and Religion and Israel and the Clash of Civilisations (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More).

This long, slow process culminated in 2021 with reports by two 36

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major human rights groups—one Israeli (B’Tselem), the other international (Human Rights Watch)—that classified Israel as an apartheid state.

For a brief moment, it looked like the debate about Israel had finally attained a degree of lucidity in the UK. But inevitably there have been countervailing pressures.

Working with the British establishment and the billionaire-owned media, pro-Israel groups scored a major success against Jeremy Corbyn, after his election as Britain’s Labour leader in 2015. A stalwart champion of anti-racist causes, Corbyn was pilloried as an anti-Semite for backing justice for the Palestinians. His successor, Keir Starmer, suspended him from the party.

On the back of that campaign, proIsrael groups were able to push through a new definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance—one originally advanced behind the scenes by the Israeli government— that switched the focus away from protecting Jews from hatred to protecting Israel from criticism.

Decades of small victories in support of justice for Palestinians soon unraveled.

The result? Israel’s apartheid character, its vigorous lobby and support of a boycott are all off the table. But worse, both major British parties are once again reluctant even to criticize the occupation.

ISRAEL’S CONTROVERSIAL AMBASSADOR That was underscored in November when both parties fervently denounced a protest against Israel’s ambassador Hotovely outside the London School of Economics.

After giving a lecture, she was hurried to a waiting car as onlookers shouted “Shame on you!” and “Free Palestine!”

There was good reason why the protesters were outside the LSE. Hotovely holds extremist views even by the standards of Israeli politics.

Her appointment as ambassador to the UK last year was so controversial that many hundreds of British Jews took the unprecedented step of openly opposing it. In October, Na’amod, a Jewish anti-occupation group, staged a silent protest at an event marking Hotovely’s first year, holding MARCH/APRIL 2022

placards saying “racism isn’t kosher” and “stop hosting Hotovely.”

Before she became ambassador, Hotovely had served as Israel’s first settlements minister. Like the rest of the Israeli right, she sees these illegal, Jewish-only colonies as a weapon to dispossess Palestinians and deprive them of any hope of Palestinian statehood.

Hotovely is openly Islamophobic and denies the history of the Palestinian people.

She supports hardline racial purity groups, such as Lehava, that try to stop relationships between Jews and non-Jews. And she flaunts a religious Jewish supremacism that claims title to all of historic Palestine. In a 2015 speech, she rejected a two-state solution, saying: “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologize for that.”

Liberal Jewish community leaders were appalled at the prospect of Hotovely becoming ambassador. Jeremy Beecham, a Labour peer, warned that her appointment would “do nothing to win friends in the UK— or indeed any other reasonable country.”

How wrong that assessment looks now.

Hotovely has been embraced as a respected ally by both the Labour and Conservative parties.

Home Secretary Priti Patel expressed “disgust” at the protest, equating it with antiSemitism: “Anti-Semitism has no place in our universities or our country. I will continue to do everything possible to keep the Jewish community safe from intimidation, harassment and abuse.”

It should hardly need pointing out that protesting against the racist views of an Israeli government official has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, or making the Jewish community unsafe.

Patel’s assumption that Hotovely represents British Jews—and the implication that she is in the UK to help protect them—is itself anti-Semitic. An attack on Hotovely is not an attack on British Jews because Israel does not represent British Jews. The British government does. Israel represents Israelis.

And yet Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour’s shadow home secretary, echoed Patel: “Anti-Semitism has no place in our society.” Lisa Nandy, the Labour shadow

foreign secretary, called Hotovely’s treatment “appalling.”

Days later, Labour leader, Keir Starmer, offered more support to Hotovely, joining her at an event staged by Labour Friends of Israel, a lobby group inside his party that uncritically supports Israel.

STARMER TURNS BACK THE CLOCK His speech’s main themes were reminiscent of those nearly 40 years ago and were also in open defiance of a motion passed by his own conference two months earlier declaring Israel an apartheid state and demanding sanctions against Israel’s settlements. Starmer claimed credit for Labour’s colonial tradition that led to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Britain’s promise to aid European Jews in colonizing and dispossessing the native Palestinian population. He noted, “From our earliest days—even before the Balfour Declaration—we backed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.”

Echoing Hotovely, Starmer appeared to deny the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the new Israeli state in 1948. He spoke of the founding generation that oversaw those systematic expulsions as “comrades in the international struggle for equality, peace and freedom,” and glibly dismissed Israel’s destruction of hundreds of villages in 1948. He mentioned only the planting of forests, over Palestinian homes to prevent any return, as making “the desert flower”— a piece of historic Zionist spin only the Israeli right still clings to.

Ignoring the work of B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch, as well as his party’s motion, Starmer instead celebrated Israel as a “rumbustious democracy,” with a “commitment to the rule of law.” That would be news to Israel’s large internal Palestinian minority. Hotovely’s party’s 2018 NationState Law formally gives them secondclass rights.

Israel’s 15-year blockade of Gaza and intermittent destruction of its infrastructure under the Israeli army’s Dahiya doctrine of sending the overcrowded enclave back to the “Stone Age,” was reduced by Starmer to a “humanitarian crisis” that Israel was supposedly going to “tackle.”

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Those who prioritized the struggle to liberate Palestinians from Israel’s occupation were in the grip of a “Manichean view” preventing them from being “pro-Israel, proPalestine and pro-peace.” What they were instead, Starmer strongly implied, was “antiSemitic”—a word littered throughout his speech.

Ironically, that supremacism was precisely the reason the two leading human rights organizations classified Israel as an apartheid state and the conflation put Starmer firmly in the camp of the most fanatical wing of the pro-Israel lobby, which seeks to silence Israel’s anti-Zionist critics in the party, by suggesting they are secret anti-Semites.

Such a conflation is the driving force behind a continuing purge of left-wing Labour members, accused of anti-Semitism, many of them Jews who supported Corbyn.

In his speech, Starmer stated: “Anti-Zionist anti-Semitism is the antithesis of the Labour tradition. It denies the Jewish people alone a right of self-determination.”

That statement rightfully elicited angry responses from left-wing British Jews, such as journalist Rivkah Brown. She called the Labour leader “an anti-Semite,” explaining: “In his not-so-subtle conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, he implies that all Jews want a nation-state, and those of us who don’t must hate ourselves.”

It did not end there. Echoing his earlier argument against “anti-Zionist anti-Semitism,” Starmer accused those behind the boycott movement of “targeting alone the world’s sole Jewish state.” He thereby implied that it was anti-Semitic for Labour delegates to vote—as a majority did—in favor of a boycott of the settlements as a non-violent way to punish Israel for refusing to engage with peacemaking.

Meanwhile, the rightwing Conservative government began a fresh crackdown on Hamas, one of the two largest political movements representing Palestinians, declaring it a terror organization “in its entirety”—that is, including its political wing.

This latest move slams shut the door on efforts to emulate the peacemaking of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland in the 1990s. A peace was accord signed in 1998, only after Blair enticed all parties, including Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, to the negotiating table.

After he was appointed peace envoy to the Middle East in 2007, Blair met Hamas leaders in a bid to replicate that success.

But for today’s Conservative and Labour parties, putting pressure on Israel to make any kind of political concession to the Palestinians now seems off the agenda. ■

Settlers or Squatters?

“settlers” and colonization cast as a “conflict.”

The country’s leaders would do well, therefore, to reflect upon the words of Nelson Mandela in 1962, during his trial before the apartheid court of South Africa: “…no power on earth can stop an oppressed people determined to win their freedom. History punishes those who resort to force and fraud to suppress the claims and legitimate aspirations of the majority of the country’s citizens…. Government violence can do only one thing and that is breed counter-violence.” ■

S. 3209 “to require the Secretary of State to submit annual reports reviewing the educational material used by the Palestinian Authority in schools.”

None of the previously described antiPalestinian/anti-UNRWA bills introduced “to withhold U.S. contributions to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)” has gained cosponsors, but a new one, H.R. 6155, modestly titled the “No Tax Dollars for the United Nation’s Immigration Invasion” bill, was introduced Dec. 7 by Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX). It has 19 all-Republican cosponsors.

Continued from page 11

threats thereof.” Terrorist acts by squatters go unpunished and are, without fail, unreported in the U.S. media. In many cases, Israeli occupying forces take no action and actively support and protect the squatters.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, in December 2021, referring to the number and severity of attacks and attention they were receiving, called the violence a “stain on Israel”—not a crime against Palestinians. However, Prime Minister Bennett countered, “They are a protective wall for all of us, and we must strengthen and support them in words and deeds.” Right-wing Minister of Religious Affairs Matan Kahana shamelessly referred to those committing the violence as “pioneers.”

Palestinians have no legal protections, no redress in Israeli courts, and have little if any access to weapons, having to use rocks and kitchen knives to defend themselves. All forms of resistance to military occupation are violently suppressed by the foreign occupier.

Israel has established in Palestine a violent colonial state disguised as a democracy, with Zionist colonists portrayed as 38

Congress Watch Continued from page 33

NEW ANTI-PALESTINIAN, ANTI-UNRWA BILLS S. 3318, introduced Dec. 6 by Cotton, would try to use the banking system to attack the Palestinians. Its stated purpose is “to deter foreign financial institutions from providing banking services for the benefit of foreign terrorist organizations and from facilitating or promoting payments for acts of terrorism,” It has 15 cosponsors. On Nov. 15 Sen John Kennedy (R-LA) introduced

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

MEASURES DISAPPROVING ARMS SALES TO SAUDI ARABIA GO NOWHERE Companion joint resolutions were introduced disapproving proposed commercial sales of weapons and munitions to Saudi Arabia. H.J.Res. 63 was introduced Nov. 12 by Omar with 16 cosponsors, and S.J.Res.31 was introduced by Paul on Nov. 18 with eight cosponsors. A Dec. 7 motion to discharge S.J.Res. 31 from the SFRC to be brought to the floor for a vote was defeated by a vote of 30-67, effectively killing the resolution. ■ MARCH/APRIL 2022

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Gaza on the Ground

No Way for Gazans to Keep Warm or Dry

PHOTO BY MAHMUD HAMS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Mohammed Omer

Palestinian UNRWA school pupils cross a flooded street in the heavy rain in Gaza City, on Jan. 15, 2022.

RASHA SAWALHA warms her son’s hands, holding them between her own, in the bitter cold. The moment she releases them, the cold beckons sharply, invading his small fingers in seconds. She touches his hands. His fingers are freezing again.

Toes fair no better. Keeping her eight family members warm in Gaza, where electricity is often cut, and fuel for heat and cooking is scarce, is a cold reality she faces and often can’t overcome. Rotating between children, using her body’s warmth, she attempts to comfort and provide a shield against the freezing temperature. She dreams of a plastic tarp, something large enough to enshroud their makeshift hovel and prevent the drip-drip-drip of winter rains on the blankets the family uses as they sleep.

“I put on some logs of wood for cooking and to try to keep the room warm,” she explains, quiet and weary.

Her husband’s income, like many in the besieged Strip, is gone.

He cannot afford even a tarp to try to seal the zinc metal roof. When the winter rains come, Sawalha rushes about the room, distributing pans and dishes to collect the seeping rainwater. It’s a tiresome

Award‐winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports regularly on the Gaza Strip.

40

game, one exacerbated by the possibility of the roof blowing off or falling in during a rainstorm.

AFTER THE BOMBING The Gaza Strip is home to approximately 2.1 million people, the majority of whom are under the age of 30. The size of Manhattan Island in New York City, Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world with an average of 5,800 individuals per square kilometer. The Gaza Strip has been under military occupation since 1967, and under complete military blockade (air, land and sea) since 2007.

Life wasn’t always this difficult. Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip in May 2021 destroyed infrastructure, businesses and hundreds of homes, forcing many families like the Sawalhas into temporary shelters made up of scavenged materials. Building materials are hard to come by because most are stopped at the border and prevented from entering. What is allowed through by Israeli officials is often too expensive. The price of plastic in Gaza can vary from 1 NIS to 15 NIS (30 cents to $4.70), depending upon its quality. Gaza’s families living below the poverty line, many employed by the government, have not received their wages from the Palestinian Authority,

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which itself has had to wait for the release of taxes paid to the State of Israel.

Wages aren’t the only hinderance. Without supplies to repair bombed infrastructure, it is allowed to deteriorate. Sewage and water pipes burst, sometimes flooding the streets used by Gaza’s school children, who can be seen wading through water up to their waists. The Health Ministry has documented multiple cases of children falling into drainage wells and reservoirs, which are often left open during winter to collect the maximum amount of rainwater for the dry summer months.

Bombed to bits, and aged due to the lack of materials for repairs and maintenance, Gaza’s sewage system can’t cope with the rainwater, or the needs of its 2 million residents. This creates toxic flash flooding and dangerous situations for people and animals.

Raid Al-Dahsan, spokesman for the civil defense teams, noted his teams rescued 152 people in just two days in mid-January.

More flooding is expected during the rainy winter months.

Gaza City Mayor, Dr. Yahya Sarraj, notes the condition of his municipality’s more than 30-year-old equipment. Maintenance crews can no longer provide support, particularly in areas where Israeli missiles cratered into the buildings and streets just west of Gaza City. This area includes Rimal and three major universities. “Further delaying of the reconstruction of Gaza infrastructure will create new humanitarian and environmental crises,” warns Dr. Sarraj.

For Sawalha and her family, pleas for reconstruction help provide no comfort. From an opening in their hovel, they watch the fire department go from house-to-house rescuing people with boats. The water has risen that high.

FAMILY FARMERS IN NUSSIRAT For family farmers in Nussirat, in the central Gaza Strip, winter is usually good news because they can worry less about watering crops. This year, however, totals have reached 155 mm (6 inches) more than average and winter is only half over.

Rain is good news for farmers, until it

isn’t. Too much rain drowns crops. Over the past decade, several crops have become more difficult to grow due to climate change.

Add to this the decades-long occupation, toxic remnants of explosives, the restrictions on exports and today, the once-thriving agricultural enclave barely subsists, straddling famine and extreme poverty.

Now the very crops it depends upon, to feed its people and supply work, are in danger.

Rainwater isn’t the only threat to flooding.

The Nussirat municipality announced, in a statement in January, that Israel is opening the Wadi Gaza Dam to allow excess waters to drain into the already saturated farmlands. Residents in the path of the runoff have been warned to be extra cautious.

This isn’t the first time flooding has been manmade. Each year, when Israel opens its dams, Gaza’s family farmers complain that doing so destroys their crops. The protestations fall on deaf ears.

It is yet another reminder of occupation, like the electricity outages and living in homes without heat. ■

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Special Report

PHOTO BY ALI HWEIDI

Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon Deserve to Live with Dignity

By Ali Hweidi

As Lebanon plunges deeper into one of the world’s worst economic meltdowns, Palestinians living in the Burj Barajneh refugee camp, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, endure extreme poverty, overcrowding and a lack access to basic services.

LEBANON IS ONE of five locations, along with Jordan, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with Palestinian refugee camps where the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) provides health, education and emergency assistance services. Even before the influx of refugees from Syria, it was one of most challenging countries for

Writer and researcher Ali Hweidi is a Palestinian refugee living in Beirut, Lebanon.

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UNRWA to work in—and for Palestinians to reside.

In 2020, around 470,000 Palestinian refugees were registered with UNRWA in Lebanon, with 45 percent of them living in the 12 official Palestinian refugee camps, and the rest in 150 other communities throughout the country. While UNRWA recognizes the refugees living outside the camps, it cannot officially recognize the areas in which they live, in accordance with its agreement with the Lebanese state. Therefore, UNRWA schools, offices and clinics are exclusively inside the overcrowded camps.

Historically, Lebanon has made it clear that the Palestinian refugees have no right to permanent settlement. UNRWA noted, “Palestinians in Lebanon do not enjoy several important rights; for example, they cannot work in as many as 39 professions and cannot own property (real estate).

Because they are not formally citizens of another state, Palestine refugees are unable to claim the same rights as other foreigners living and working in Lebanon.” Because of this UNRWA has become the refugee lifeblood.

However, UNRWA is itself under fire and underfunded as it remains mired in controversy over who and how many are considered a Palestinian refugee. Some speculate that the defunding of UNRWA by the Trump administration, and the United Arab Emirates dramatically reducing its contributions after signing the Abraham Accords, is part of Israel’s strategic plan to “disappear” its refugee problem. Unfortunately, the price is paid by the refugees’ dignity and denial of basic human rights.

DECADES OF SUFFERING

For decades, the Palestinian refugees’ hardships in Lebanon have accumulated. In general, all the Palestinian camps suffer from overcrowding, unemployment, poor housing conditions, inadequate infrastructure, as well as a lack of access to justice. The Lebanese restrictions placed on the refugees from having economic and social rights has made it more difficult to improve their situation or to participate in public life, even before the current series of crises.

After the Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993, the Palestinian National Au-

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thority (PNA) became more focused on the needs of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. This led to a decline in the provision of services at all levels, including Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) hospitals in the camps, the payment of doctors’ and nurses’ salaries, and shortages of staff, medical services and equipment. PRCS now mostly relies on the support of INGOs (international nongovernmental organizations), which is not enough to cover all the needs. In addition, due to its financial crisis, UNRWA cannot provide enough services.

OVERCROWDED CAMPS NGOs, political factions and popular committees denote the existence of around 29,000 Palestinian refugees displaced from Syria now living in the existing camps.

The arrival of new refugees to live in already overcrowded areas is a major health and quality of life concern. For example, Ein El Hilweh Camp in southern Lebanon is an area of 1.7 sq. km (roughly 0.657 sq. miles), where more than 100,000 people live, out of whom 80 percent are Palestinian refugees from 1948 and the rest are Palestinian refugees from Syria or Syrian refugees. Consequently, there are not sufficient areas for children to play or for families to have privacy and recreation.

According to a field study done by UNRWA with funding by Japan in 2015, one third of the Palestinian refugees suffer from chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma and respiratory diseases. Even then, the unemployment rate had reached 56 percent and the poverty rate 71 percent. It has gotten worse since the study was done.

Often more than one family lives in the same house, making COVID-related health issues, as well as the social and economic situation, worse for all. There is no possibility for families to add rooms. In 1997, building materials were prohibited in five camps in southern Lebanon—Rashidieh, Burj Shemali, El Buss, Ein El Hilweh and Mieh Mieh—without obtaining a permit from the Lebanese army. Any attempt by a refugee to bring a cement bag into any of these camps will result in arrest and accusations MARCH/APRIL 2022

of smuggling; they will be forced to pay large amounts of money.

Even if a refugee has the means to live outside the camp, the Lebanese parliament ratified Law No. 296, in which a Palestinian refugee is deprived of the right to own real estate. The law also deprives any refugee from the inheritance of properties registered in their name prior to 2001.

SYRIAN REFUGEES COMPLICATE THE CRISIS Syrian refugees are registered in Lebanese records with UNHCR, while Palestinian refugees displaced from Syria are registered only in UNRWA records. Both Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and from Syria depend mainly on UNRWA services.

According to UNRWA’s recent report “Palestine Refugees in Lebanon: Struggle to Survive,” about 73 percent of Palestinian refugees live below the poverty line and 58 percent have had to reduce the size and frequency of their meals. 87.3 percent of the Palestinian refugees from Syria living in Lebanon were already living below the absolute poverty line in 2020, and 11.3 percent exist in a state of abject poverty.

Currently, the unemployment rate among Palestinian refugees is about 90 percent, as per estimations of civil society organizations acting together with the Palestinian popular, local and political committees and factions.

Although the Lebanese Minister of Labor, Moustafa Bayram, talked about facilitating work for Palestinian refugees, it needs to be legitimized by the Lebanese parliament.

But Bayram’s suggestion was rejected by the former Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil and the former Minister of Labor Sejaan Kazzi, who saw it as paving the way for the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and argued that it is contrary to the Lebanese constitution.

AN INCREASE IN DEPRESSION Amid the accumulation of suffering, with no end in sight, cases of depression are increasing, as is the divorce rate and acts of violence. Parents are running out of options to increase income or decrease expenses, and the rates of child labor, school

dropouts and early marriages are rising.

Families are also searching for any means of immigration abroad, especially to Europe. They’re selling everything to pay illegal smugglers, knowing that most attempts fail. They are looking for security, stability and a better life.

Because of the growing hardship, there has been an increase in deep depression, especially among the youth. They are facing a lot of difficulties for their future, such as lack of motivation for education and no hope to work because of restrictions. There is fear that they are vulnerable to exploitation by political factions or criminals both inside or outside the camps, potentially threatening the fragile civil peace in Lebanon.

LIVING IN DIGNITY HAS BECOME ONLY A DREAM Palestinian refugees in Lebanon unanimously agree that the international community has let them down by keeping them as refugees for more than seven decades.

It is their right to live with dignity as human beings until they return to their country. This right is a dream they imagine day and night. Yet, sorry to say, there are no indicators to give them hope that this dream will come true soon. ■

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Special Report

PHOTO BY PRESIDENCY OF ALGERIA /HANDOUT/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

Will 2022 Be Another Turbulent Year in

By Mustafa Fetouri Already Troubled North Africa?

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune casts his ballot at a polling station in Algiers, Algeria on June 12, 2021. Algeria held its first parliamentary elections since the departure of long‐serving President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019 amid tight safety measures due to COVID‐19.

THE YEAR 2022 is not expected to be less troubling than the previous year for the North African countries, particularly Libya, Tunisia and, less so, Algeria. The common denominator between the three is the public discontent and stalled political processes in each. Morocco managed to avoid the public eruptions seen in the other three countries. On the other hand, Algeria had its own share of problems with street protests, known as Hirak also called “Revolution of Smiles,” starting in February 2019, and continuing through April 2021. The removal of the former president, organizing of elections, the election of a new president as well as a new parliament appear to have eased the social tensions for now. Most of the old elite were either jailed or are being prosecuted for corruption charges, which was a top demand of the protesters.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, elected in December 2019, came in with a reform agenda enjoying broad public approval. It is not everything the Hirak leaders wanted but it does include most demands for reform and fighting corruption. This helped the country

Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan academic and freelance journalist. He is a recipient of the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize. He has written ex‐ tensively for various media outlets on Libyan and MENA issues. He has published three books in Arabic. His email is mustafa fetouri@hotmail.com and Twitter: @MFetouri.

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avoid much of the chaotic and violent scenes witnessed during the “Arab Spring” in neighbors Tunisia to the north and Libya to the east.

The current challenges facing all three countries, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, are very similar, centering on democratic transition, unemployment, and security threats from different extremist groups— particularly in Libya. Yet each of the countries has its own internal problems, with the COVID-19 pandemic at the top across the region. Despite that, the three countries failed to develop a common strategy in dealing with the pandemic’s shared health threat although Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia have been members of the Arab Maghreb Union since the 1980s. Unfortunately, that organization has been moribund thanks to endless quarrels between Algeria and Morocco.

INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGES FACE ALGERIA Algeria entered 2022 on a positive soul-lifting note thanks to its national football team, which won the Arab World Cup in Doha, Qatar, last December. Such events are always welcomed by the authorities as they provide a distracter from everyday pressing issues like unemployment, which in Algeria has been hovering around 13 percent.

The country’s 2022 economic growth is expected to be around 6.5 percent, depending on world energy prices, since oil and gas are the largest GDP drivers. Economic growth, though, is useless if it is not reflected in more job creation and an increase in per capita income. Corruption remains the main hurdle facing Algeria, despite the recent measures that saw dozens of former officials jailed for corruption and squandering public funds.

This year Algeria faces at least two new troubling diplomatic agenda items, both of which have the potential to hamper its diplomatic return after years of absence from the regional and international stage. First, the country was to host the summit of the League of Arab States (LAS) in March, which brings together heads of states and governments into what has been, increasingly, merely a LAS debating club, with little substance. That summit was delayed due to COVID-19.

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President Tebboune, participating for the first time since his election, has already vowed to host what he calls an “inclusive” successful summit. When they meet, there are already a few contentious issues on the agenda, such as Syria’s return to the League; a cause Algeria has been championing since Damascus was expelled from the League a decade ago. But some LAS members feel it is wrong to welcome Damascus back into the Arab fold after all that has happened in Syria since 2011. They believe such a move would amount to rewarding Bashar al-Assad, even though some LAS key members like Saudi Arabia and Egypt have already taken steps to normalize ties with Syria.

In the same context, last August Algeria severed its ties with neighboring Morocco, another LAS member. The surprising Algerian decision came as a result of Morocco’s normalization of ties with Israel, among other things. Former U.S. President Donald Trump urged Morocco to normalize with Israel in return for the U.S. recognition of Rabat’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, which is at the heart of decades-long tense relations between Rabat and Algiers. Algeria was further angered when it learned that Morocco had already bought Israeli drones and counter drones systems. It will be interesting to see if the kingdom is invited to the summit at all.

POWER STRUGGLES IN TUNISIA For next-door Tunisia, 2022 is likely to be a decisive year for the country’s democratic process, interrupted last July when President Kais Saied suspended parliament, dismissed the government, and took over a wide range of powers without any checks from any elected authority. He promised to return to the democratic process only after a new amended constitution has been voted on, in a referendum planned for July.

The next legislative elections, according to President Saied’s confused roadmap, will take place on Dec. 17, 2022—the anniversary of the Tunisian “Arab Spring” in 2010, which ended the rule of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. MARCH/APRIL 2022

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A Tunisian protester faces riot police during a demonstration held on the 11th anniversary of the fall of late Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, under a heavy security forces deployment, on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis, Tunisia, on Jan. 14, 2022. Protesters oppose President Kais Saied’s suspension of parliament and Tunisia’s economic woes.

Starting in January, President Saied launched what he termed a “public consultation,” mainly through the Internet, to collect citizens’ feedback on a range of issues including a new constitution, new electoral laws and other reforms. President Saied aims to bring back the presidential system but with more powers for the president instead of the hybrid presidential-parliamentary system, which many Tunisians believe has failed the country.

Tunisia was once considered the jewel of the messy “Arab Spring,” but a decade later all the enthusiasm has given way to despair, economic hardship and political turmoil due to an endless power struggle between the president and the parliament.

Differences inside the parliament itself intensified even further last year, effectively paralyzing the country, and prompting President Saied to take over. Riding on huge public support, he decided to take state matters into his own hands, promising reform and the eradication of corruption, but he has been very slow and unclear about what remedies—if any—he will offer Tunisians yearning for jobs and stability.

In the meantime, different political factions, mainly members of the suspended parliament, dominated by Islamist Ennahda

Party, have opposed the president’s plans from the start. Notably, late last year, they managed to rally support from a large section of Tunisians who think Saied has no real plan to salvage the country. Many think Saied cannot solve Tunisia’s economic stagnation—at the heart of all difficulties facing Tunisians—and charge that he is on the road to becoming a dictator. The eruption of violence is not far away, as a number of high-profile arrests have taken place, including among them top political leaders and former officials.

LIBYA’S ELECTIONS POSTPONED Tunisia’s eastern neighbor, Libya, remains in turmoil as it has been for over a decade.

The Dec. 24 elections were quietly forgotten, as the fighting political elite failed to agree on the road ahead and even reversed what they had already signed up to do. The presidential elections became even more complicated when some controversial figures registered to run, including Saif alIslam Qaddafi, U.S.-Libyan dual citizen General Khalifa Haftar and the current corruption-implicated Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah. Furthermore, every major opinion poll predicts Qaddafi junior as the likely winner of presidential elections. The

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Court to face charges related to suppressing the revolt against his father’s government in 2011. While that’s a fact, from a legal angle, Libya is not party to the court and is not legally obliged to meet its demands. Instead, the ambassador was condemned by Libyans, who called for her removal from the country, forcing the parliament to declare her persona non grata.

With the Dec. 24 elections suspended, Libyans took to social media to also vent their anger and frustration over the delay and demand the immediate announcement of a new election date.

The issue went back to the divided parliament while U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres reappointed his former envoy to Libya, Stephanie Williams, as his Libyans demonstrate against the postponement of the elections in the city of Benghazi on Dec. 24, 2021. Libyans have voiced a mix of frustration and anxiety after elections, part of top adviser to the country. Faced with the a U.N.‐led peace process, were postponed. Some had hoped elections would help turn the resignation of his envoy for Libya, Slovak page on a decade of violence. diplomat Ján Kubiš, and a U.N. Security Council divided on selecting a new envoy, Guterres had no alternative but to bring UK Ambassador to Libya, Caroline Hurnlate Muammar Qaddafi’s son has spent the back American diplomat Williams, but dall, took to Facebook, on Dec. 5, to remind last decade either in jail or out of the public under a different title that does not need Libyans that Saif al-Islam Qaddafi still faces eye until he emerged in Sebha to register U.N. approval. Williams is credited with extradition by the International Criminal as a candidate for president. bringing Libya its first unity governThe elections commission, under ment—the current Government of Naenormous pressure to disqualify tional Unity headed by Dbeibah.

Qaddafi, went to court to have the Since her appointment on Dec. 6, former leader’s son kicked out of the Williams has been actively seeking race. After the court’s decision, forces consensus among Libyan factions on loyal to Haftar, stationed in Sebha, a new election date, different rules govclosed the courthouse to prevent erning eligibility of candidates, and reQaddafi’s lawyer from appealing his vamping laws governing the vote disqualification. Qaddafi’s appeal went whenever it takes place. To a degree ahead and he was reinstated. In the she appears to have revived the politiend it became so embarrassing and cal process announcing, on Dec. 11, distracting that both the elections comthat elections are likely by June. It has mission and his political foes had to yet to be seen how far she will be able face up to the fact that Qaddafi’s son to go but it is unlikely she’ll give up is a very serious contender and could before reaching some kind of goal. well win the country’s first ever presiHowever, Williams has always believed dential elections. that Libyans, themselves, should step This was too much to bear for cerup to the responsibility of rebuilding tain countries and their local proxies. If their country. One thing is clear, howelections had taken place and Qaddafi ever uncertain the political process will won, as expected, it would have been be, another civil war in Libya, ending a slap in the faces of countries like the the 2020 ceasefire, is very unlikely.

U.S., UK and France, among others, Experts agree that 2022 will be anwho supported the toppling of Muam- Saif al‐Islam Qaddafi, the second son of late Libyan mar Qaddafi in 2011. leader Muammar Qaddafi and his second wife Safia other unsettled year in this unsettled region. ■ Worried about such a scenario, the Farkash, at his former home in Vienna, Austria.

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Special Report

Food, Culture and Identity: On the Importance of Rolling Grape Leaves

By Toqa Ezzidin

JEFF GREENBERG/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Burger joints and fried chicken restaurants have been expanding at an exponential pace in recent years across the region.

These “restaurants” are no longer solely run by big corporations, such as KFC and McDonald’s, which started penetrating the market in the 1990s. Rather, local entrepreneurs have begun emulating their business philosophy by opening their own fast-casual concepts. These restaurants are willfully steering toward a model that is efficient, capable of mass production and requires little to no culiThe Texas Chicken fast food restaurant in a Dubai mall food court in the United Arab Emirates. nary mastery.

A GROWING BODY of evidence shows that food—and the methThere are multiple elements that explain the rise of fast-food ods we use to prepare it—is an inseparable part of personal identity, restaurants in lieu of traditional food. Studies have shown that culture, politics and history. This is an important reality for the people younger generations have different eating habits than those of their of the Middle East to reflect on, given the recent massive influx of elders—a result of globalized mass media and immigration flows, Western eating habits into the region. among other factors.

The association of a dish or cuisine with a country or even locality In an increasingly fast-paced world, there is also a fading urge to is common. It’s more than just taking pride in traditional food—it also invest large amounts of time in preparing and cooking food. Syrian influences domestic policies and global politics. But what happens food researcher and writer Antonio Tahhan told the Washington when food is simply about money and convenience?

Report that the process to prepare traditional Middle Eastern food Envision this: A food menu that is tens of pages long with countis rather lengthy. For instance, it takes a lot of time to roll warak enab less food items that are largely unrelated and lack relatedness to (stuffed grape leaves), a popular Middle Eastern dish. Given the one single cuisine. This style of menu is obviously not uncommon growing adherence to the “time is money” capitalistic mantra, many across restaurants in the United States. However, this U.S.-centric now view rolling warak enab as a waste of time, or simply an unexperience has been steadily gaining traction in the Middle East. necessary inconvenience.

The rise of fast food is doing more than merely diversifying the cuisine of the region—it is also changing the way people engage Toqa Ezzidin earned her master’s degree in intercultural and inter‐ with each other. Tahhan points out that the preparation of traditional national communication from American University’s School of In‐ dishes usually happens over family gatherings. While cultures ternational Service (SIS) in Washington, DC. Ezzidin, now living in Egypt, is interning with the Washington Report. across the Middle East have historically embraced large extended 48

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families, there is a growing trend to place more emphasis on immediate family members. This growing Western view of family has contributed to lessening the desire to cook traditional meals and the growing dependence on fast food.

Egyptian food anthropologist Dahlia ElOrabi seconds Tahhan’s point on the growing focus of the nuclear family. “Restaurants now do not have the capacity to host large families,” she told the Washington Report.

“If the number of people at a restaurant is six-plus, there will have to be arrangements and different logistics to fit the number.”

Indeed, the Middle East seems to have not only liberally borrowed the Western fast food model, but also much associated with it, including the solitude that accompanies eating fast food. The reality of more people eating alone in the name of convenience and expediency could help explain the increasing number of mental health issues, such as depression, El-Orabi said.

Capitalism is an imperative factor in why Middle Eastern food habits have changed.

Not only has it altered the food production processes, but also the way people prepare and experience food. El-Orabi believes the paradox of capitalism is clear when it comes to food. On the one hand, the way we experience food is becoming more rapid, allowing us to circle back to “productivity.” On the other hand, the food we consume is appreciably less healthy—hence causing major health implications that negatively influence productivity.

Diverting to more Western-style food is also changing language, according to ElOrabi. Social class has become an integral part of the food experience and the rise of fast food restaurants, particularly in the case of Egypt. The middle and lower classes want to be acquainted with the Western food scene to gain a sense of social ascension, she noted. As such, people typically learn to speak some English in order to be able to consume Western food.

However, since many are now familiar with American food terms, some restaurants are now publishing menus in other languages, such as French, to provide an aura of exclusivity and distinctiveness. French toast, for instance, is becoming “pain perdu.”

Language isn’t the only change on some MARCH/APRIL 2022

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Syrian chef and refugee Anas Qatorji serves patrons at a restaurant in Gaza City on Dec. 4, 2021. menus. In Egypt, for instance, menu options for meals such as brunch have also changed.

People no longer order foul (fava beans) and falafel. Rather, menus are becoming more Westernized, and are usually comprised of items like pancakes that are not an inherent part of Middle Eastern cuisine.

On how to preserve traditional food, Tahhan said the idea is not to go backwards in time or resist modernization, because this is unlikely to happen. Rather, it is important to preserve traditional food without the Western element of attempting to “elevate” the dish—meaning to make it more about status and convenience than culture.

Tahhan suggests simple ways for people to preserve their food culture, such as supporting local farmers selling their goods on the streets, sharing a meal with friends, or employing social media to spread awareness. Although he is not necessarily a proponent of nationalism, Tahhan still acknowledges the imperative of food as part of the national identity. “[Traditional food] is worthwhile to save,” he said. It is not only a way to stave off cultural colonization, but it is also “integral to identity and social relations.”

El-Orabi believes the way we perceive and talk about cooking could be changed.

While it is not uncommon to believe that the time used to cook is wasted time, she says the opposite is actually true. “When cooking, you have to be organized, you have to be safe and aware. It is an entire process, and it is so powerful,” she noted. “One of

my favorite things is when I cook and eat.

It is an empowering process and you know you are in control. It is not a waste of time; it is a set of skills that is so freeing.” ■ (Advertisement)

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Talking Turkey

PHOTO BY ADEM ALTAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Two Decades in Office, Erdogan’s AKP Comes Full Circle

By Jonathan Gorvett

People queue outside a currency exchange shop on Sakarya Street in Ankara on Dec. 20, 2021, as Turkey’s troubled lira nosedived after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cited Muslim teachings to justify not raising interest rates to stabilize the currency. Erdogan pushed the central bank to sharply lower borrowing costs despite soaring inflation.

AFTER MONTHS of financial turmoil and the collapse of the ruling coalition government—by then beset by allegations of corruption and cronyism—there was once a time when Turks voted for change, ousting their former rulers in a landslide election.

Voting in that election took place against a background of rampant inflation—at just under 40 percent—while the currency, the Turkish lira, had lost a third of its value against the dollar in the financial chaos of the previous year. Austerity measures, introduced to combat that crisis, had cut incomes, curtailed job opportunities and left many struggling to make ends meet.

The victors of that election, however, promised that they would deliver prosperity, be the “guarantor of secularism” and go full speed ahead for European Union membership. At least, that is what the victorious Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), said back then, after triumphing at the polls in November 2002.

Jonathan Gorvett is a free‐lance writer specializing on European and Middle Eastern affairs.

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Now, 20 years later, there is a distinct feeling of déjà vu when considering Turkey’s current woes.

Inflation is now once again officially just under 40 percent, while the Turkish lira lost 44 percent of its value against the dollar last year.

The level of poverty has recently been increasing—at least for many, as income inequality has also grown. As for corruption, Transparency International’s Corruption Index for the country rose from 32 points in 2002 to 40 in 2020.

In terms of the old government’s main challengers, the most popular candidate to run against Erdogan nowadays, is the secularist Ekrem Imamoglu, of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), who is also mayor of Istanbul—Erdogan’s old job in the early 1990s. The CHP also wants to revitalize the country’s moribund EU membership bid.

“Both in terms of the economy and the political culture,” Erdem Aydin, from consultancy RDM Advisory, told the Washington Report, “we’ve come full circle.” Yet, how this will play out in the short term remains highly uncertain, with over a year to go before parliamentary and presidential elections.

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Meanwhile, there is increasing concern in opposition circles that, with his popularity flagging, an increasingly autocratic President Erdogan may well mount a major crack down before anyone gets a chance to vote.

GOOD TIMES AND THE BAD Whatever the similarities, in many respects, the Turkey of today is quite different from that of 2002.

The economy has grown significantly— from a GDP of $240.253 billion in 2002 to $719.955 billion in 2020. This has reflected in Gross National Income (GNI) per person, which rose from $3,590 in 2002 to $9,050 in 2020. Major cities, such as Istanbul and Ankara, have been transformed by new infrastructure and housing.

The country has also projected economic power abroad, and pursued an increasingly independent foreign policy, sending troops to Syria and Libya while also spreading influence in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Yet, a closer look at the trends also reveals another pattern—and one that is far less impressive. Economically speaking, while the numbers are up when comparing 2002 and 2020, within the last few years, those same numbers have been heading steadily downward.

In GDP, for instance, while the 2020 figure is higher than that of 2002, it is lower than that of 2013, when it was $957.783 billion. The same is also true of GNI per person, which peaked at $12,630 in 2014.

For the last few years, standards of living have therefore been getting measurably worse for most Turks. A January 2021 survey, by two trade unions, showed that 7 out of every 10 people were in debt, while the number of those in poverty had gone up 8.4 percent between 2017 and 2019 alone.

More recent numbers suggest around 20 percent of Turks are now living below the official poverty line, with the 2019 figure having been around 15 percent, according to the World Bank.

NUMBERS AND PRICES This financial squeeze has been getting worse, too.

MARCH/APRIL 2022

New Year’s day saw major price hikes in energy, some food, alcoholic beverages and transport. That was after major price hikes in a wide range of commodities, caused largely by the devaluing lira, during 2021. That devaluation made many imports more expensive, with many Turkish export businesses also dependent on imports that are used to manufacture their products.

A January Metropoll poll found that price rises may therefore be far higher than the official 36 percent rate, with around 90 percent of Istanbul respondents saying they believed the true rate was over 50 percent, with two-thirds thinking it over 100 percent.

President Erdogan’s unorthodox economic policies have been widely blamed for this, too, with these also now threatening public finances.

In an effort to shore up the lira in late December 2021, the government guaranteed lira deposits in Turkish banks against depreciation. The move resulted in a huge, overnight surge in the currency’s value.

Yet, the surge was short lived, and if the lira keeps declining—in early January, it was still on a downward slope—Turkey’s treasury could end up with a very large bill.

Meanwhile, the independence of state economic and financial institutions is now largely non-existent, with the central bank following Erdogan’s policy demands and the state banks funding them.

“What we have in Turkey,” Murat Somer, from Koc University in Istanbul, told the Washington Report, “is more of a governance crisis than an economic one. We have seen checks and balances and bureaucratic autonomy suspended, so policy decisions have purely political goals in mind.”

POLLS THREATENED With the economy in trouble and his—and the AKP’s—popularity declining, presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June 2023 now pose a major challenge for Erdogan.

The concern is that his answer to this may be more repression of the opposition rather than a new approach to the economy. With Imamoglu consistently polling ahead of Erdogan recently, as a potential presidential

candidate, the Justice Ministry has launched an investigation into the mayor’s Istanbul Municipality, with Erdogan accusing it of becoming an “apparatus for terrorist organizations” on Jan. 12. He then also accused Ankara Municipality—also headed by a CHP mayor—of the same thing.

Meanwhile, a case to shut down the country’s third largest party, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic (HDP), is also progressing, along with moves to remove parliamentary immunity from many of its deputies.

After January’s street protests against price hikes in Kazakhstan, Erdogan warned against the opposition staging any such thing in Turkey, saying that they would be met with force.

So far, though, the opposition has refused to be baited into providing an excuse for a violent crackdown. “Solutions do not only lie in what the government will do,” says Somer, “but in what opposition parties will do and not do.”

The CHP is now in an unusual alliance with the right wing IYI Party, the Islamist Saadet and a range of smaller center-right groups. If this holds together, Turkey could be in for a major political change next year, two-decades after the current government promised—and largely failed to deliver— many of the same things.

“They had their chance to carry the country forward,” says Aydin. “But instead, they just chose the easy way.” ■

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MUSIC & ARTS Tima Shomali Discusses Her Groundbreaking Netflix Show

trays, these girls cannot go to their teachers or parents for help due to the “dialogue gap between family” and the stigma around mental illness.

One of the show’s most controversial plot lines includes the murder of one of its main characters in an honor killing, at the hands of her brother. While Shomali depicted this crime against women on the show, she also wanted to highlight the factors that brought the character’s brother to the point of murder. She explained, “he is a human who loves his sister,” but he is also a victim of society and ultimately succumbs to patriarchal norms.

The discussion concluded with Shomali sharing some of the challenges directors

and what questions they want to pose. For women, it might be even harder to gain recognition and—in Shomali’s experience—female directors have to work even harder than their male counterparts.

—Janna Aladdin

JUAN NAHARRO GIMENEZ/GETTY IMAGES FOR NETFLIX

On Jan. 11, the Middle East Institute held its “Creators’ Corner” series—which offers a platform for Arab artists and creators— MUSLIM AMERICAN ACTIVISM with Jordanian actress, director and writer Tima Shomali. The actress has become CAIR-Kansas Calls for Removal of one of Jordan’s most prominent performRacist Language from Land Deeds ers in recent years thanks to her well-received role in the popular YouTube The Kansas chapter of the Council on comedy “Female Show.” She also directed American-Islamic Relations (CAIRthe new Netflix show “AlRawabi School for Kansas) is calling upon the state’s DemoGirls,” one of the first shows produced for cratic Governor, Laura Kelly, to issue an Netflix written in Arabic. executive order mandating the removal of Shomali spoke primarily about the insulting, degrading and racist lanprocess leading to her latest show’s guage from property records across inception, from its very beginnings as the state. The organization has taken an idea, to her research collecting stoparticular issue with the small eastern ries across Jordan for its multiple plots.

Kansas town of Roeland Park, which This Netflix project was long in the has repugnant discriminatory lanmaking and stemmed originally from guage in its property records.

Shomali’s own adolescence. ThroughDiscrimination in property conout her career, she felt that she could tracts, homeowner association docnot relate to most television offerings uments and other official real estate and wanted to create a program that instruments is reflective of the Jim better represents Jordanian women.

Crow era, when developers and muAs Shomali noted, “the way we tell the nicipalities enforced racial segregastory matters,” especially when dealing tion and discrimination in housing to with themes such as gender dynamics keep neighborhoods, towns and and adolescence. cities White.

“AlRawabi School for Girls” centers One document in Roeland Park around four students at a fictional, states that properties, “shall never be elite Jordanian high school, which, at conveyed, devised, leased, rented, first glance, appears to be perfect used, owned or occupied by anyone and glamorous. However, corruption, of Negro blood.” A similar document bullying and intimidation begin to from the Buena Vista Heights neighbreak its pristine image. Deciding on borhood of the city goes even further an elite setting was an intentional deby targeting anyone “more-than one Tima Shomali attends the world premiere of the Netflix cision for Shomali, as she wanted to fourth of the Semitic race, blood, original series "Jinn," which she directed, on June 12, break stereotypes attached to certain 2019 in Amman, Jordan. origin or extraction.” It specifies “Arclasses while demonstrating that menians, Jews, Hebrews, Turks, Permany social issues including sexism, pasians, Syrians and Arabians” as having and script writers face. “We are in a time triarchy and violence are present across uncouth genetics. when everything changes so fast” and our all of Amman’s segments.

Thankfully, such racially restrictive collective attention spans have become so During the discussion, Shomali spoke covenants were prohibited when Conshort, she noted. Therefore, script writers extensively on one of the show’s main gress passed the 1968 Civil Rights Act. must keep with the times and find ways to social foci: bullying. Unlike her own high The act was further amended by the Fair attract viewers. Moreover, she emphasized school days, Shomali noted that now “you Housing Amendments Act in 1988. Nevthat scriptwriters must read a lot, research, are bullied everywhere,” including on social ertheless, the hateful and racist language study film and take online courses. They media outlets. Moreover, as the show porof a bygone era, while unenforceable, is must figure out what stories they want to tell 52

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A view of the Buena Vista Heights neighborhood in Roeland Park, Kansas, where buyers and sellers of real estate may not be aware of racially restrictive covenants included in their property deeds.

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the cities in my district still have these on the books and I’m fully in support of whatever we can do to get them off.”

Governor Kelly did not respond to an email inquiry from the Washington Report for comment.

—Phil Pasquini

HUMAN RIGHTS Understanding Violence Against Women in Egypt The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) held a virtual panel discussion on Dec. 9, 2021 titled, “Violence Against

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still present across the country in many older property records.

CAIR’s call for an executive order from the governor would allow for a quick remedy to this stain, by bypassing the myriad statewide municipal legal complexities and allowing the state’s Register of Deeds offices to redact such language in one sweeping action. To date, more than 21 states have enacted anti-covenant legislation.

If Governor Kelly fails to issue such an executive order, it will then fall to the state legislature to introduce a bill calling for the removal of the offensive language. Resorting to the legislative process for resolution, however, would hinder immediate changes due to the complexity of the legislative process. CAIR-Kansas Board Chairman Moussa Elbayoumy told the Washington Report that the preferential solution would be the universal removal process via executive order.

“It is unacceptable that racist, discriminatory language continues to be present in property documents,” Elbayoumy said.

“Governor Kelly should immediately issue an executive order allowing for the swift removal of such content from property documents in Roeland Park and statewide.

Doing so would be a step toward ensuring equal housing opportunities for all citizens.”

Kansas State Representative Rui Xu, whose district includes the city of Roeland Park, told the Washington Report, “A lot of

Women in Egypt: Between Policy and Practice.”

According to Nada Nashat, advocacy coordinator at the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, one of the major issues facing Egyptian women is the 101-year-old personal status law, which governs family issues. The law, she said, reveals exactly how the country views women: as subservient to men, “not as citizens, people with full power.”

Nashat pointed to the issue of divorce as one poignant example of how the law is unfair to women. Under the Islamic personal status law (there is a separate personal status law for Christians), a man can say to a woman, “you are divorced,” and just like that the couple is religiously divorced. The civil law then gives the man one month to formally document the divorce. Under this system, the woman is entitled to post-divorce compensation, but the process often takes years to settle in court.

“A man, if he wants to divorce his wife, it takes him only 15 minutes to do it legally, 15 minutes at the marriage registrar and done, the marriage is over,” Nashat explained. “But for a woman, it takes her three to four years [of legal proceedings] if she wants to get her post-divorce financial rights.” Furthermore, if a divorced mother wants to retain custody of her children, she must remain unmarried and devote herself solely to her job as a mother.

A woman carries a tray of fresh bread outside of a local bakery in Shubra Al Khaymah, north of Cairo, on April 3, 2020.

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despite a law prohibiting the disclosure of victims’ identities. Information such as the victim’s phone number and address is also often leaked to the perpetrator’s family, who then track and threaten the woman.

Those who leak this information almost always go unpunished.

Habiba Abdelaal, a nonresident fellow at TIMEP, also emphasized the number of challenges facing those who file complaints, which often cause them to withdraw their accusations. She posed this poignant rhetorical question: “You know how many women are willing to report sexual assault or harassment and go through this draining process of having to tell their stories over and over in front of male officers who are smiling at their cases, or even making fun of them or even blaming them?” Even when a report is written, it’s often filed “under theft or robbery or whatever, but not under sexual assault,” she added.

The panel discussion coincided with the recent case of 17-year-old Basant Khaled, who committed suicide after fake photos of her were published and two individuals subjected her to digital blackmail. The incident sparked massive social debate in Egypt.

Before Khaled’s suicide, she received little support from her surrounding community.

Rather, she was bullied by one of her teachers, and nothing was done to take the necessary steps to protect her. No action was taken until it was too late, after her death,

which is typically what happens with women’s issues: steps taken in reaction, but without any proactive solutions.

—Mona Ali

Activists Bemoan Guantanamo’s 20th Anniversary Twenty years after the opening of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, activists are still calling for its closure. On Jan. 11, a small group gathered in Lafayette Square across from the White House asking President Joe Biden to uphold his campaign promise to close the infamous prison and torture site. Several activists wore orange prisoner jumpsuits with black hoods and carried signs calling for the shutdown of the facility.

“These people, not accused of terrorism, are alleged to have participated in a fight against us two decades ago in Afghanistan,” said Thomas Wilner, a Washington, DC-based attorney who has represented a number of the detainees.

“The only justification for holding people without charges or trial in that way is if there is still ongoing conflict.”

The Third Geneva Convention of 1949 states, “Prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities.” Since the last American soldier left Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, “there is no longer any legal justification for holding these

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Should a woman seek to initiate a divorce, she must undergo a lengthy legal process, since only men have the prerogative to divorce their wives via verbal decree.

The personal status law also allows a husband to view his wife as an entity with no sexual rights, someone who must only satisfy his sexual desires, which is why there are no articles that criminalize marital rape. Sexual violence, as long as it is within the framework of marriage, is thus legally and socially acceptable.

There is currently a new draft personal status law being considered by the Egyptian parliament. Women’s rights organization have looked favorably on some of its provisions, but have generally spoken out against the proposed legislation largely due to its language allowing men to exercise guardianship rights over women in a number of areas. In a March 2021 statement, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies described the proposed revised law as being “replete with restrictions or negations of women’s rights.”

Lobna Darwish, head of the gender and women’s rights department at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, focused on violence against women in the public sphere, specifically the issue of sexual harassment. For many decades, there were no laws against sexual harassment, and harassment was socially referred to as mu‘akasa (flirting).

Over the past few years, the trend of using the term “sexual harassment” has taken hold due to increasing outrage surrounding incidents of mass harassment against women, particularly on holidays.

“The law did not have a proper description for sexual harassment until the proper description was introduced in the penal code in 2016,” Darwish noted.

However, this new law was not subject to sufficient social debate, as it was issued and passed in only four days, without the input of women or groups involved in women’s issues. Although it criminalizes harassment, it remains difficult for women to file complaints, especially due to the social stigma surrounding the issue. Some staff at police departments, Darwish pointed out, leak information about victims,

Activists gather in front of the White House to call for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

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people—none,” Wilner argued. “These people should go home. We could stop this tomorrow.”

Presently, 39 men—the majority of whom have never been charged with a crime— remain incarcerated within the 45-squaremile U.S. Naval base. Eighteen have been cleared for release, but without a definitive release date, they remain incarcerated indefinitely. One obstacle to release is finding a country—either a detainee’s home country or a third one—with both the willingness and the required security guarantees to accept a discharged prisoner.

Since taking office, President Biden has released only one inmate, 56-year-old Abdul Latif Nasser, a Moroccan who was never charged with a crime.

To close the rally, the names of the remaining 39 detainees were read aloud.

—Elaine Pasquini

WAGING PEACE Palestinians Vying to Share Their Narrative Palestine Deep Dive held its first-ever inperson event on Nov. 15, 2021 at the Knickerbocker Club in New York City.

Titled “Distant Voices No More? Giving Rise to a New Generation of Palestinian Journalists,” the meeting highlighted the importance of expanding Palestinian representation in the media.

Mohammed El-Kurd, Palestine correspondent for The Nation, explained how he has used social media to put a global spotlight on Israel’s ongoing efforts to forcibly remove Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. “The news cycle is informed by social media,” he noted. “By penetrating social media, we were able to penetrate the news cycle and force Palestine to the center of the news.”

El-Kurd’s successful online efforts have made him, as well as his sister, Muna, the faces of the resistance against ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah. He said this notoriety is a blessing since it gives him a platform to defend his community, but it’s also an onerous burden.

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Mohammed El‐Kurd asks media organizations to listen to—and trust—what Palestinians have to say about their own oppression.

“There are not many Palestinians in the public eye, so what I say is kind of representative of Palestinians,” El-Kurd said. The reality, he explained, is that while he is wellequipped to discuss Sheikh Jarrah, he is not an expert on all that happens in Palestine.

Him being the “voice of Palestine” is thus more a reflection of the dearth of Palestinian voices in the mainstream media, he said.

El-Kurd hopes powerful voices from Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere in Palestine will also gain access to the media.

“I think the next phase in this is to empower other Palestinians, because we exist across disparate geographies, disparate legal statuses,” he said. “We are facing this dispossession differently—if you’re not getting demolished, you’re getting bombed, if you’re not getting bombed, you’re getting evicted, if you’re not getting evicted, your residency is getting revoked—and you need people who are able to narrate that with authority.”

Not only do media organizations need more Palestinian voices, they also need to listen to them, El-Kurd emphasized. He expressed exasperation that mainstream outlets only recently began acknowledging the reality of Israel’s apartheid polices after it was noted by groups such as Human Rights Watch. “These organizations reached these miraculous epiphanies decades after Palestinians had already articulated them,” El-Kurd said.

Having made his way around the media recently, El-Kurd noted that his personal witness is often treated with skepticism. “At

worst, you’re ‘angry’ if you go on TV and say your opinion, and at best you’re ‘passionate,’ but they never consider that you’re a reliable narrator,” he noted. “I am facing oppression, and I should not be the defendant in a conversation when I’m speaking about my oppression.”

Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi pointed out that, from the beginning, Zionists have placed an emphasis on being “discursive, telling a story.” This has allowed the movement to ingratiate itself with the mainstream media. “Before he became the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion was in New York City working for four years during World War I, building up the financial and the propaganda basis of the Zionist movement’s success in the United States,” he noted.

Palestinians must learn from this and begin to insist on planting their own story in the media, Khalidi said. “What we never had was the permission to narrate,” he noted, adding that this is beginning to change with the rise of El-Kurd and other younger Palestinians.

Khalidi offered two pieces of advice to the next generation, though he also cheekily warned them “not to listen to old people.”

The first is to learn and understand history, which makes it easier to confront and uproot the arguments made by Zionists and their supporters. “They say the exact same things,” he noted. “I’ve been listening to the same lines since I was 12.”

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The second piece of advice will likely be harder for some to accept, Khalidi acknowledged. “In order to win, you don’t divide up your own ranks,” he said. Instead, “you divide the ranks of the enemy.

That means that sometimes you ally yourself with people with whom you are not a hundred percent in agreement with.

Sometimes you accept difference and disagreement in your own ranks.”

Breaking down and changing the status quo “requires having allies who you sometimes don’t agree with fully, and that’s a very hard lesson to learn,” he added.

Pam Bailey, the founder of We Are Not Numbers, an organization dedicated to helping Palestinians share their stories with the world, said many young people she’s interacted with in Gaza tend to doubt the world cares about what they have to say.

“The first step is to let them know they have a truth that’s worth listening to,” she explained. Her organization “finds these budding writers who maybe didn’t know they were writers, didn’t know they were storytellers, didn’t know they had a voice.”

While the media tends to only report on Palestine during times of war, Bailey said she encourages her writers to share their everyday narratives, since their lives should not be defined by war.

Bailey encouraged the world not to relegate Palestinians to war pawns. “Please don’t pay attention only during a war, only when there’s loss of lives or legs,” she implored. “We should be sustaining this attention every day.”

—Dale Sprusansky

Administrative Detention: The Case of Hisham Abu Hawash Following a four-month hunger strike, countless appeals from Palestinian human rights groups and global public outcry, Israeli courts in January agreed to end the arbitrary administrative detention of Palestinian prisoner Hisham Abu Hawash on Feb. 26. While this was a welcome decision, Abu Hawash now faces considerable health issues, and many other Palestinians continue to languish in Israeli custody without ever having faced trial or received an official sentence.

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Palestinians gather outside the house of prisoner Hisham Abu Hawash, on Jan. 4, 2022 in the West Bank village of Dura. Abu Hawash, held under Israeli administrative detention since October 2020, agreed to end his months‐long hunger strike in early January, in ex‐ change for Israel agreeing release him from prison in late February.

American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) presented a webinar on Abu Hawash’s case, and on the broader Israeli practice of administrative detention, on Jan. 14.

Yumna Patel, Palestine news director for Mondoweiss, started the conversation with some context on what exactly administrative detention is and provided the basic details of Abu Hawash’s case.

Israeli forces raided Abu Hawash’s home in the middle of the night in October 2020, placing him under arrest and then under administrative detention, initially with an order of six months. However, his detention was extended, as is the case with most Palestinian prisoners. Further still, the Israeli Supreme Court refused to listen to any of Abu Hawash’s appeals until he served at least two years in administrative detention.

When it became obvious that the courts could not provide legal redress for Abu Hawash, he began his hunger strike, garnering him media attention and support. As Patel explained, prisoners facing administrative detention often view hunger strikes as their only means of resistance.

Palestinian freelance journalist Shatha Hammad spoke in Arabic (translated by Sikander Rahman) during the webinar and offered a historical perspective on administrative detention in Israel, which originates from a 1945 British Mandate ruling. As of 2021, the number of Palestinian detainees

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under administrative detention has gone up, reaching 500 prisoners. The prisoners have engaged in mass protests in recent months, but as Hammad noted, their efforts can only gain traction with continued support from the outside world.

Both Hammad and Patel pointed out that administrative detention violates international law. For example, Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that no one can be arbitrarily arrested. Palestinian detainees are also denied the right to a public court, as administrative detention cases are handled in closed courts with only the detainee’s lawyer present.

After learning about Abu Hawash’s case, some might wonder what they can do on behalf of Palestinian prisoners. Part of Abu Hawash’s successful hunger strike was the outcry it generated over social media, as well as the broader changing tides surrounding pro-Palestine solidarity in the U.S. Patel noted that in the past several decades, the ability of groups and individuals to question Israeli actions has grown, even though activists still face an abundance of backlash. There is a “total world of difference in terms of what we are seeing, in terms of solidarity worldwide and pro-Palestine action and activism on university campuses” compared to just a decade ago, she said. Hammad, too, MARCH/APRIL 2022

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stressed the importance of ongoing solidarity, awareness and participation in an economic, cultural and political boycott of Israel. As she exclaimed toward the end of her discussion, Palestinian protesters are fighting not just for their rights but for the “rights of all occupied people around the globe.”

—Mariam Marwan

Israel has recently renewed its efforts to be added to the United States Visa Waiver Program, which would allow its citizens to enter the U.S. for up to 90 days without the need to apply for a visa.

On Jan. 18, Americans for Peace Now hosted a webinar to discuss why Palestinian-American activists oppose Israel’s admittance to the program. The event featured Dr. Hanna Hanania, a dentist and activist, and comedian and actress Maysoon Zayid.

Palestinian-Americans oppose Israel joining the program on the grounds that they suffer extreme discrimination, humiliation and trauma when trying to visit Palestine. Hanania, who was born in Palestine, has a Palestinian passport which means he and his whole family are not permitted to use the Tel Aviv airport and must instead travel first to Jordan and then cross into the West Bank via a heavily trafficked bridge staffed by the Israeli border control. This process often takes several days and can leave travelers stranded overnight. Even after making it to the West Bank, these Americans are banned from accessing Jerusalem and other parts of Israel (historic Palestine), meaning they are precluded from visiting family members, beaches and holy sites.

Because Zayid, who was born in New Jersey, does not have a Palestinian passport she is allowed to fly into Tel Aviv but suffers a different kind of abuse and uncertainty. She explained how airport security singles out Palestinians, Muslims and even Sephardi Jews with “Muslim sounding names,” detains them arbitrarily, denies them access to the country after they have landed, and even holds them in jail for several days. She said she is often not allowed MARCH/APRIL 2022

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Israel Makes Another Push to Join Visa Waiver Program

Maysoon Zayid, joined by her cat, expresses outrage at Israeli policies that target Palestinian‐Americans attempting to visit their ancestral land. to travel on flights departing Tel Aviv with any carry-on luggage (such as electronics, books or medicine) except for her passport and a credit card.

Zayid and Hanania insist that these practices are discriminatory and not about security. For instance, non-Palestinian American citizens traveling to West Bank settlements are not denied access to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and do not face similar discrimination and abuse. Zayid, who is a well-known celebrity, said she is proof that the border policies are not about security.

“It’s 100 percent clear that I am not a security threat” she explained. Yet, “they have literally been stripping me since I’m five years old. I remember being five years old and having to take off my pantyhose and having cerebral palsy and not being able to put them back on.”

Hanania described how even those who are not politically active are targeted

by Israeli border agents. “PalestinianAmericans who have never been there, who are not involved in the issue and so on, seem to be harassed the most…in a way telling them ‘don’t come back again,’” he said.

Fear of humiliation, discrimination and of being denied access to Palestine keeps many Palestinian-Americans from speaking out against Israel and organizing in the United States. Zayid explained that she doesn’t use her platform to be vocal about the BDS movement, “because I want to visit my father’s grave.”

As the event wrapped up, the moderator pointed out that Israel is a sovereign nation that is allowed to decide its own entry practices. Zayid acknowledged this reality as it pertains to access to the Tel Aviv airport, but added that discriminatory practices against its own citizens should not be ignored by Washington. “If they do that, then the United States of America should not reward them with the Visa Waiver Program.

If your citizens are being abused by a government that chooses to have supremacist, bigoted, hateful practices... America should not be supporting that, allowing that, or turning their back to what is happening to their own citizens.”

The event ended on a note of hope. Although Zayid is convinced Israel will eventually be added to the Visa Waiver Program, Palestinians have been gaining more recognition in the media. She spoke about how Palestinian-American superstars, like Bella and Gigi Hadid, have been using their enormous platforms to speak out and bring these issues to new and younger audiences who are better at organizing and are less afraid. Zayid also added, “The conversation is louder now because we’ve made incredible, incredible connections with the Black community in the United States, the Indigenous communities worldwide who have suffered similar genocides and displacements,” as well as an influx of support from both American churches and American Jews.

—Elisabeth Johnson

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Protesters gather outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC on Jan. 23, 2022 to protest the continual demolition of Palestinian homes.

Palestinians Continue to Suffer in Lebanese Refugee Camps In 1948, some 110,000 Palestinians fled to Lebanon after being violently forced from their homes by Jewish militants seeking to create the State of Israel. With Israel still refusing to allow these displaced individuals to return home, they remain trapped in Lebanon’s poverty-ridden refugee camps.

On Jan. 25, the Balfour Project, a UKbased organization which stands for

peace, justice and equal rights in Israel and Palestine, held a webinar with two members of Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) to discuss the plight of Palestinians in Lebanon.

“Today, there are around 450,000 Palestinian refugees registered in Lebanon with UNRWA [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East], living in 12 official camps,” noted Rohan Talbot, the London-based ad-

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In response to Israel escalating its demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, some 200 human rights supporters protested outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC on Jan. 23. The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) sponsored the rally in solidarity with sit-ins held across North America.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 19, Israeli forces cut electricity to the Salhiya family home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. They then fired teargas as they broke into the home, beating and arresting several of the 18 family members, including 9-year-old Ayah. The home, targeted by settlers for years, was demolished by the Israeli government. The occupying soldiers also fired rubber bullets at journalists and prevented ambulances from entering the area.

On the same day, Israeli forces also demolished the home of Saleh Erqeiq in occupied Hebron. Twelve villages near Hebron are slated for demolition so that Israel can construct a firing range and training ground for its military.

Between 2004 and 2020, Israel destroyed more than 1,000 Palestinian homes, leaving thousands—half of them minors— homeless, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Calling on Congress to withhold its annual $3.8 billion in unconditional military aid to Israel, speakers at the rally implored President Joe Biden to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to immediately stop the illegal military operations.

“Despite decades of displacement and dispossession the Palestinian story has proven to be one of perseverance against occupation, apartheid and colonization,” one PYM member, who wished to remain anonymous, told the crowd. “We call out any and all U.S. organizations funding the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the guise of charity who must be held accountable for concealing their crimes. Silence is complicity and we will not be silent.”

—Elaine Pasquini

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Protesters Decry Israeli Home Demolitions

A woman in Tyre, Lebanon’s Burj al‐Shemali refugee camp walks past a mural expressing the desire of Palestinian refugees to return home, on Dec. 11, 2021.

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A Palestinian contingent participates in the “Car Caravan for Social Justice” in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Los Angeles, CA on Jan. 17, 2022.The event was hosted by the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice. vocacy and campaign manager for MAP. “The history of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is marked by repeated tragedy, conflict, discrimination and marginalization,” he said. Under Lebanese law, Palestinian refugees are classified as “foreigners” and face severe institutionalized discrimination and exclusion from many key aspects of social, political and economic life. This designation prevents them from accessing many public services and from owning or inheriting property or moving around freely, among other restrictions. They are barred from working in 39 key professions, Talbot noted, such as law, engineering and most health care jobs.

“This situation resigns most Palestinian refugees to very insecure and poorly paid labor, high rates of poverty and unemployment—with severe implications for their humanitarian welfare and their right to health,” Talbot lamented.

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ings are old and risk collapse at any time, with inadequate infrastructure, poor water quality and non-existent waste management,” she said. In addition, there are no safe places for the many children in the camps to play.

Evidence suggests that functional disability among Palestinian refugees is twice as high as that for the Lebanese population, Dakwar reported. Communicable diseases are also common among refugees due to the poor housing conditions and lack of proper sanitation in the camps. “This is especially desperate with the COVID-19 crisis where physical distancing and isolation are almost impossible in this context,” she noted.

Mental health is also an issue. A 2015 study by the American University of Beirut revealed that over half of the Palestinian refugees surveyed reported poor mental health, Dakwar said.

Lebanon’s severe economic crisis over the last two years has led to rising prices, spiraling inflation, soaring unemployment rates, infrequent electrical services, food insecurity and fuel shortages across the country. These issues make life even more difficult for refugees, Dakwar noted. “The most vulnerable communities, including

Palestinian refugees, are at risk of further marginalization in the absence of an effective protection scheme,” she said.

MAP is supporting the Palestine Red Crescent Society hospitals by providing them with the medical supplies and personal protective equipment they need to provide hospital care for the most vulnerable. The group also provides food parcels for pregnant women, the elderly and the poorest families, Dakwar said.

For this crisis to ultimately be solved, the right of Palestinians to return to the lands they were forced from during the 1948 Nakba must be acknowledged, Talbot stressed. “The right of return is a legal right, not just for Palestinians, but for all refugees,” he said. “This issue is not going away.”

—Elaine Pasquini

The Evolution and Endurance of Stereotypes About Iranians The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) held a webinar on Jan. 18 to discuss a recent report published by the organization titled, “Othering Iran: How Dehumanization of Iranians Undermines Rights at Home.”

Panelists noted that Iranians tend to be depicted in several damaging but also sometimes contradictory ways.

Historian John Ghazvinian, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, noted the enduring portrayal of Iranians as conniving and untrustworthy.

This Orientalist depiction, seen in popular films and books (such as The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Isfahan), characterizes Iranians as “unctuous, slippery, unreliable carpet traders,” he noted. Yet, this portrayal is often coupled with depictions of Iranians as mystical, intriguing and exotic. Such fabricated portrayals exemplify the completely “alien” ways Orientalist thinking depicts Iranians and others in the Middle East, Ghazvinian said.

These mythical representations are not limited to popular media, NIAC senior research fellow Assal Rad said. As just one example, she noted that in 2013 Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman told Congress that “deception is a part of [Iran's] DNA.” Sher-

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Regional Recalibration: Where Do Gulf States Stand?

The stars of the reality television show “Shahs of Sunset” pose for a picture at an event in Carson, CA on May 11, 2013. Neda Maghbouleh argues that the now‐canceled show, which followed the hyper‐Westernized lives of a group of Iranian‐Americans, served as an unhelpful counterweight to the common depiction of Iranians as religious extremists. man later expressed regret over the statement in 2018.

Such remarks show how stereotypes about Iranians impact not just the culture, but also U.S. foreign policy. “Dehumanizing Iranians, demonizing the entire country of Iran, its people…has affected our own community, our loved ones in Iran and U.S. policy,” Rad said. “In the world of foreign policy we don’t as much discuss the role of prejudice or bias,” she added, arguing that the relationship between bigotry and policy ought to be examined to a greater extent.

Neda Maghbouleh, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto, expressed concern at the extreme ways Iranians are often depicted in the West. On the one hand is the post-1979 Islamic Revolution conception of Iranians as terrorists with a radical religious agenda. This presents Iranians as an “other” that can’t be trusted to assimilate or accept Western values, she said.

On the other extreme, some cultural outlets have propagated hyper-Westernized images of Iranians, she noted, spreading the idea that proper assimilation requires indulging the culture. The former reality television show “Shahs of Sunset” is the ultimate example of this, Maghbouleh said, as 60

it followed a group of Iranian-Americans who were ensconced in the dramatic world of “money, sex and booze.”

Niaz Kasravi, director of the Avalon Institute for Applied Research, noted the tendency of some Iranian-Americans to rebuff stereotypes by noting positive aspects of their community, such as their high level of education. This strategy of depicting the community as the “model” minority group is ultimately dangerous, she argued, because it implies that discrimination is legitimate unless a group can conjure up data to rebuff prejudicial thinking.

Moderator Yara Elmjouie, a video producer with AJ+, concluded the discussion on a positive note, celebrating the recent trend of Iranian-American actors being cast in roles that have nothing to do with their heritage. These performers simply being asked to play everyday Americans introduces a uniting “human element” to the screen, he said. “We are human beings, ordinary folks just like everyone else, slotting ourselves within the diverse tapestry of American society.”

The full report, written by Rad, can be found at: <niacouncil.org/news/otheringiran>.

—Dale Sprusansky

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

On Jan. 13, the Gulf International Forum held a virtual panel discussion entitled “Regional Recalibration: Where Do Gulf States Stand?” which featured the following guests: Dr. Lina Khatib, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House; Alex Vatanka, director of the Middle East Institute’s Iran Program; and Dr. Ali Bakir, a research assistant and professor at Qatar University’s Ibn Khaldon Center for Humanities and Social Sciences.

The panel discussion focused on recent diplomatic efforts around the Gulf, and whether these talks signal a regional desire to put aside conflicts and seek de-escalation. This diplomatic trend can be seen in recent dialogues between Saudi Arabia and Iran (hosted by Iraq), Turkish rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the UAE’s attempt to bring Syria back within the Arab fold and the end of the rift between Qatar and its neighbors.

In this context, Dr. Lina Khatib noted that the Biden administration seems less interested in the Middle East, as threats from China and Russia have taken precedence.

Khatib termed this as “U.S. disengagement” from the region. Some argue that the decline of U.S. involvement in the Middle East has prompted regional actors to become more proactive, but Khatib disagrees with this notion. As she sees it, the rise of powerful regional actors, such as the Gulf nations, came about organically as a result of their adoption of pragmatic policies based on self-interest.

Dr. Ali Bakir focused on Turkey’s trends, in light of the regional “de-escalation moment.” Ankara, which has relied upon hard power in recent years, has recently started meeting at the negotiation table as part of its “shift back to [an] economic-oriented agenda,” he said. This can be seen in its re-normalization of relations with Egypt and the UAE. It is expected that EmiratiTurkish relations will continue to warm, especially in light of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s February visit to the UAE. While there have been attempts at rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and MARCH/APRIL 2022

Turkey since 2020, progress is slow. Bakir explained this is likely a function of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman having some ill-will toward Erdogan due to Turkey’s prominent role in exposing the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul Consulate. However, Erdogan’s visit to Saudi Arabia in February is expected to be “crucial in terms of determining whether the two countries will be able to take relations to the next level,” Bakir said.

With regards to Turkish-Iranian relations, Ankara has many reservations about Iran’s role in Iraq and Syria. Tehran likewise has concerns about Turkey’s waxing influence in the Gulf, Caucasus and Central Asia. If Iran is able to conclude a nuclear deal with the U.S., this would be a “game changer” in terms of relations between Ankara and Tehran, Bakir argued, as it would likely expand Iranian influence in Iraq and Syria and increase the likelihood of disputes between Iran and Turkey.

Alex Vatanka cautioned observers not to put too much stock in the recent change in civil power in Tehran: “Iran watchers have been saying all along, ‘don’t pay too much attention to [new President Ebrahim] Raisi; he isn’t the decision maker.’” Coming from a judicial background, Raisi does not pos-

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Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (l) and Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed (r) hold a meeting in Abu Dhabi, on Dec. 15, 2021. sess any experience in foreign policy and is extremely loyal to the clerical regime.

Thus, according to Vatanka, “the idea that Raisi would come in and Iran would take a turn to the right or to the left hasn’t happened, and it will not happen.”

To understand Iranian foreign policy, one must look toward Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Vatanka expects a “limited deal” to be reached with the U.S., but believes Iran will avoid a broader deal, as it does not wish to discuss issues such as its missile program or Middle East agenda. The 82-year-old

Khamenei also wishes to prepare his successor as an extension of himself, but entering into a broader deal would hinder that plan.

Even though the main focus of the panel discussion was on de-escalation, it is debatable whether the region is seeing an ease in tensions, especially in light of the intensification of Houthi attacks against the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Given the multiple powers involved in the region, their clashing interests and the presence of non-state actors, one is allowed to be weary at pronouncements of an impending détente.

—Mona Ali

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Middle East Books Review All books featured in this section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1101

The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a MultibillionDollar Institution

By Lila Corwin Berman, Princeton University Press, 2020, hardcover, 280 pp. MEB $35

Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson This original and important study traces the rise and influence of the multi-billion dollar “American Jewish philanthropic complex.” The author, a history professor at Temple University, analyzes the evolution of the financial and political complex, which became “thoroughly embedded in the American state.”

As Berman, who is Jewish, notes, Jewish financial power has been under-studied and its influence “grossly underestimated,” in large part because scholars have allowed “fears about anti-Semitism to guide them away from the topic.” Berman’s deeply researched and well-organized academic study thus fills an important gap in the historical literature as it sheds light on the evolution and growing influence of Jewish philanthropy.

Berman’s exhaustive research illuminates the critical role played by locally organized but increasingly nationally connected Jewish federations and their alignment with

Contributing editor Walter L. Hixson is the author of Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy (available from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor.

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American state capitalism. In successive chapters the study analyzes the steady growth of the philanthropic complex since World War II, including chapters on regulation, taxation, politics, finance and Jewish identity. Berman’s research explains the roles of Jewish elites such as Norman Sugarman, a Cleveland-born tax attorney, and Max Fisher, an oil executive and politically connected “master fundraiser” from Detroit.

The rise of the philanthropic complex culminated in the 1980s, as the unfolding of the “Reagan Revolution” enabled Jewish philanthropies to exploit “incredibly significant and favorable tax policies” to generate massive wealth and cement their position within the American state. The Jewish philanthropic complex “mirrored the structure of America itself, in its wildly uneven distribution of capital and its dependence on a very few and empowered private entities.” By the late 20th century the complex, fueled by the “astronomical growth in philanthropic assets,” exercised unprecedented influence over state policy.

Homing in on the rise and accumulation of wealth by Jewish philanthropic organiza-

tions, Berman’s study focuses more on the financial than the overtly political nature of the complex. She avoids the term “lobby” and pays scant attention to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other lobby entities, while emphasizing that over time Jewish wealth and power became concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Berman thus chronicles the accumulation of wealth by Jewish philanthropies more fully than she chronicles its usage in politics and foreign policy.

Beyond question, the Jewish philanthropic complex supported the rise of American funding and support for Israel—and for like-minded political candidates. Berman notes that the Boston-born super rich casino mogul Sheldon Adelson provided massive funding for Birthright, a movement that emerged in the 1990s to give every Jewish young person a free 10-day trip to Israel. Birthright, as Berman points out, was “tied closely to advocating Jewish and American support for Israel.” By that time the Jewish federations, which had previously concentrated on domestic fundraising, leaving raising money for Israel to United Jewish Appeal, began to directly fund Israel and its U.S. lobby.

Berman’s book makes an important contribution by demonstrating the process by which the philanthropies accumulated wealth. The book reflects critically on the centralization of power in increasingly few hands, as embodied not only by the philanthropic complex but by the American state.

Readers will leave this carefully researched book better informed about the accumulation of wealth and power on the part of American Jewish elites and philanthropies.

Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment

By John Lyons, Monash University Publishing, 2022, paperback, 96 pp. MEB $20

Reviewed by Dale Sprusansky The Israel lobby is without question the most powerful foreign policy lobby in the United States. However, its influence does not solely exist in congressional districts from Key West to Hilo. As Australian journalist John Lyons highlights in his new book, Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest MARCH/APRIL 2022

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Assignment, the lobby is alive, active and effective across the Western world, and Australia is no exception. Having spent six years as a foreign correspondent based in Jerusalem for The Australian and decades more in Australian journalism, Lyons has come face-to-face with the Israel lobby on many occasions. Now he’s ready to tell all.

To Americans who have followed the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other U.S.-based

pro-Israel groups, the revelations in Dateline Jerusalem will hardly be shocking.

However, Lyons provides an invaluable service by confirming in detail what we have long known via scattered anecdotes and off-the-record accounts: The Israel lobby works diligently to prevent Western readers from consuming negative (but factual) reporting about Israel.

A pocket-sized book with fewer than 100 pages of text, Dateline Jerusalem is less a thorough investigation of Australia’s Israel lobby as it is an accumulation of one journalist’s seemingly endless encounters with his country’s brazen pro-Israel lobby. As Lyons makes clear, any journalist, columnist or editor on the continent who broaches the topic of Israel in a critical way knows they will be met with a barrage of public and behindthe-scenes criticism by the Melbournebased Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), among other pro-Israel groups. This criticism is not just in the form of letters to the editor objecting to the pre-

Dale Sprusansky is managing editor of the Washington Report.

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sentation of facts. Rather, it mostly manifests as hostile accusations of bias and anti-Semitism, resulting in editors receiving a deluge of angry emails, calls and other communications—not to mention in-person scoldings

by Israel lobby representatives and even Israeli Embassy officials. The result, Lyons notes, is predictable: Newsrooms inevitably decide it’s not worth the hassle to provoke the powerful lobby and they ultimately scaleback their critical coverage of Israel.

However, Lyons notes the lobby does more than carry sticks. It regularly tries to win over newsrooms by taking journalists (and politicians) on propaganda junkets to tour Israel. Foreign reporters based in Israel are also swiftly and regularly contacted by Israeli government handlers tasked with encouraging them to write puff pieces, or at least tone down any critical coverage of Israel’s actions. Ironically, Lyons notes that the Israeli press does not face these same pressures and freely and frequently discusses issues considered beyond the pale for foreign reporters to note, such as the ongoing occupation of the West Bank, the un-

fettered violence of Jewish settlers and the regular detention and abuse of Palestinian children by the Israeli military.

Between the newsrooms that have given into lobby censorship and coercion, and those naturally predisposed to side with Israel (such as outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp), the reality is that Australians receive very little honest coverage about the situation in Israel and Palestine. It’s likely for this reason that, in the midst of recounting his Israel lobby encounters, Lyons deftly intertwines facts about the “conflict” that Western citizens rarely see in their media, such as the illegality of Jewishonly settlements under international law, the growing international consensus of Israeli apartheid and the regular demolition of Palestinian homes by Israeli authorities.

Such context serves as a refresher for the reader well initiated on this topic, but importantly makes the book imminently approachable and informative to readers new to the issue. Indeed, interspersing historical facts and present realities in between narratives of lobby intimidation and coercion

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delivers a double whammy to readers: Not only do they learn of human rights violations being committed by Israel, they also discover the pernicious reason they have never heard about these offenses. Any person of goodwill who cares about human dignity and values free speech will be jarred by the revelations in this book.

At some points the neophyte reader of Dateline Jerusalem may be inclined to question Lyons’ account. Is he misquoting or selectively quoting people? Can things really be this debased, this bad? Lyons acknowledges the narrative he shares is shocking, that the interests of a small country on the other side of the planet so palpably taint the integrity of the Australian media landscape. It’s this disturbing reality and his belief that “Australians deserve better” that convinced him to write this book.

Readable in just one sitting, Dateline Jerusalem is a valuable reference for students of the Israel lobby. Perhaps more critically, it is an eye-opening exposé on the corruption of power that every Western citizen ought to read.

My First and Only Love: A Novel

By Sahar Khalifeh, Translated by Aida Bamia, The American University in Cairo Press, 2021, paperback, 394 pp. MEB $20

Reviewed by Delinda C. Hanley Delinda C. Hanley is executive editor of the Washington Report.

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A deep, burning sense of injustice can inspire a writer to compose Pulitzer Prize-winning work and produce enduring classics. Novelist Toni Morrison’s Beloved and other fiction were inspired by true stories depicting the injustice of racism and slavery. Francis McCourt’s memoir, Angela's Ashes, describes growing up in terrible poverty during the Great Depression in Limerick, Ireland.

Non-Arabic readers have to wait far too long for translations of great works by important writers from the Middle East, who also describe unrelenting injustice and pen prize-worthy fiction.

Hubbi al-Awal (My First and Only Love), by the popular Palestinian historical novelist Sahar Khalifeh, is well worth the 10-year wait. This is the second book of her trilogy, which begins with Of Noble Origins: A Palestinian Novel. Each book follows members of the highly respected Qahtan family in the years before the creation of Israel in 1948. My First and Only Love continues their story, but it is also a stand-alone page-turner.

As a child, Nidal Qahtan, the main character in the novel and the youngest member of this Palestinian family, watches her relatives confront British and Zionist occupiers. Observing the gradual and increasing illegal Jewish immigration and land appropriation, the Qahtans realize they have been betrayed by the British, a power that “fulfilled their promises to the Jews and reneged on their promises to the Arabs.”

Khalifeh’s characters struggle to save their threatened homeland, and carry on with their normal lives. One uncle leads freedom fighters and another uses his pen to fight this battle.

We first meet Nidal in her early 70s, a strong accomplished painter, when she returns to Nablus after years of exile to fix up her family home, reflect on her own life and paint in peace. She introduces her readers to present-day life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, enduring curfews, raids and shortages. Scenes from Nidal’s everyday life entrance readers, as she replants flowers, rebuilds her treasured home, deals with nosy neighbors and reconnects WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

with her “first love,” who is either a former freedom-fighter or Palestine. Either way, Nidal shows us Palestinians are rightfully determined to live their lives on their own land, despite every obstacle, no matter how much time passes.

Khalifeh’s novel deftly moves from the present to the past and back again as a flood of childhood memories transport Nidal and her readers to pre-1948 Palestine. When she rediscovers her childhood paintings as well as her uncle’s poems, photos and memoirs, we get to know her uncles—the resistance fighter and the respected journalist—and her first love.

She also recalls some strong-willed women, including her beloved vision-seeing grandmother, and her own not-so-loving mother, a misunderstood nurse.

Khalifeh’s novel effortlessly provides some little-known history lessons for Western readers who may be unaware that Palestinians belatedly organized to fight off Jewish settlers determined to take their land and resources and drive them into the sea. Palestinian freedom fighters were vastly under-fire-powered as the British give weapons and air support to the Jews to help pave the way for the future Israeli state. One haunting scene follows her uncle’s trip to Syria with a beloved Palestinian leader who begs for weapons from the Arab League and his exiled fellow Palestinians. Their traitorous refusal dooms the resistance and their heroic leader.

Like Nidal, Khalifeh was born in Nablus in 1941 and experienced the occupation firsthand. She writes, “Whether this occupation is British or Israeli, it is all the same, the same atrocities, the same cruelty, and the same rebellions and revolutions.” Khalifeh helps readers understand the terrible injustice endured by Palestinians. Like famous Irish and Black writers before her, Khalifeh captures her people’s losses and the tragedy of occupation.

This book’s skillful translator, Aida Bamia, professor emeritus from the University of Florida, also from Nablus, helps Khalifeh’s stories come to life for English-readers. Not surprisingly, Bamia also translated Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz’s works into English.

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In an interview with Tugrul Mende for ArabLit Khalifeh said, “I tried to capture our past which leads to our present. I am a committed writer or maybe I am an obsessed writer. I am obsessed by occupation because I live it. I witness the atrocities of occupation. I witness and live through those atrocities and still am living them. My characters represent what I experience, what I feel, what I think and believe. My characters, in a way, are me. I am them, whether in this novel or the previous ones or after.”

After reading My First and Only Love, this reviewer can’t wait to read all her previous and future novels and watch her receive a well-deserved international literary prize.

God’s Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State

By Nada Moumtaz, Oakland: University of California Press, 2021, paperback, 304 pp.

MEB $35

Reviewed by Janna Aladdin What is a waqf? For readers without a background in Islamic legal history or studies, the term is often translated into “charitable endowment,” to denote a donated asset imbued with religious and pious intent. Historically, a waqf was usually an endowed school, mosque or landed property, however, it takes on

Janna Aladdin, assistant director of Mid‐ dle East Books and More, is earning her Ph.D. in History and Comparative Litera‐ ture and Society at Columbia University.

MARCH/APRIL 2022

N E W A R R I VA L S Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine by Mohammad Sabaaneh, Street Noise Books, 2021, paperback, 128 pp. MEB $15. This graphic novel by Mohammad Sabaaneh, a Palestinian cartoonist and a former political prisoner, reflects on what freedom looks like from inside an Israeli prison. A bird perches on the cell window and offers a deal: “You bring the pencil, and I will bring the stories.”

Those stories concern intergenerational Palestinian trauma from ongoing settler-colonialism. Sabaaneh helps us see that the prison is much larger than a building, far wider than a cell; it stretches through towns and villages, past military checkpoints and borders. But hope and solidarity can stretch farther, deeper, once strength is drawn from stories and power is born of dreams.

Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future by Gil Z. Hochberg, Duke University Press, 2021, paperback, 208 pp. MEB $25. In Becoming Palestine, Gil Z. Hochberg examines how contemporary Palestinian artists, filmmakers, dancers and activists are using archives to radically imagine Palestine’s future. She shows how artists such as Jumana Manna, Kamal Aljafari, Larissa Sansour, Farah Saleh, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme approach archival film and cinematic footage, as well as archaeology and musical tradition not to unearth hidden knowledge, but to imagine a Palestinian future. By urging readers to think about archives as a break from history rather than as history’s repository, Hochberg presents a fundamental reconceptualization of the archive’s liberatory potential.

Beirut 2020: Diary of the Collapse by Charif Majdalani, Other Press, 2021, paperback, 192 pp. MEB $14. At the start of the summer of 2020, in a Lebanon ruined by economic crisis and political corruption, with an exhausted Beirut rising up for true democracy, amid a world paralyzed by the coronavirus, Charif Majdalani set about writing a journal. He intended to bear witness to this terrible, confusing time, and perhaps help himself to endure it more easily by putting it into words. Using small, everyday interactions—with fellow restaurant patrons, repairmen, the father of his wife’s patient, a young Syrian refugee—as openings to address elarger systemic problems, he explains how events in Lebanon’s recent history led to this point.

Then, on Aug. 4, the explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate in the port of Beirut devastated the city and the country. Majdalani’s chronicle suddenly became a record of the catastrophe and the massive public outcry that followed. In the midst of the senseless chaos and grief, however, he continues to find cause for hope in the kindness and resilience of those determined to stay and rebuild.

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many guises including laptops, iPhones, chocolate shops and malls today. Given its longstanding history and the many forms it may take, this seemingly straightforward legal construct has occupied scholars of Islamic law, historians, state officials and everyday Muslims alike.

Anthropologist Nada Moumtaz takes up precisely this question in her recent monograph, God’s Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State, as she follows the waqf within an evolving Islamic tradition from Ottoman Lebanon into the modern period.

Throughout the monograph’s introduction, five chapters and conclusion, Moumtaz weaves together an intricate story in which the waqf moves as one way to get closer to God, to a means of evading merchant debt, to a more contemporary method of keeping property within a family. Moumtaz draws on the method of historical anthropology to trace the “grammar” of waqf, that is, Moumtaz does not claim to offer a single definition of waqf, but rather, focuses on its “meaning in use—at specific moments…” while keeping such concepts firmly grounded in an impressive understanding of the Islamic legal tradition.

Thus, Moumtaz’s methodology involved both conducting ethnographies and reading archival materials including shari’a (Islamic legal) court records.

Chapter one, for example, begins in 19th century Ottoman Lebanon and intervenes in debates on capitalism, Islamic law and secularization by arguing that the practice of waqf—that is, recording property as inalienable and with a set beneficiary— bound religion to economy, rather than separated them.

At the same time, as chapter three demonstrates, establishing waqf allowed some form of protection from debt foreclosure, which raised the question: is the waqf truly a waqf without pious intent? At the heart of the debate were such questions as: how could the modern state access a believer’s true intention, or their interiority; how can society and state define public utility?

As Moumtaz demonstrates, when the Ottoman state decided to take responsi66

bility over public utility, their endeavors “coupled with the state’s duty to preserve these individual acts done according to the shari’a, created deadlocks that resulted in endless lawsuits.”

Further, the establishment of the French colonial mandate over Lebanon codified the state’s alleged role to maintain the public benefit, thereby subjecting all waqfs to the administration and dictates of the modern state under the banner of personal status. Yet far from ushering a secular legal regime, the state’s management of the waqf pulled the state and religion even closer together, allowing the state to define the very boundary between the secular and religious.

In chapters four and five, the process of maintaining and defining a waqf became even more complicated during the reconstruction of downtown Beirut during the early 1990s, following the Lebanese civil war. At that time, certain development groups, including Solidere, sought to take ownership of—and eventually build over—certain waqf establishments.

What was unique about these sets of debate, however, were two contesting ideas of “public” around the reconstruction of Beirut; on the one hand waqfs were meant for the public benefit (of all), and on the other, some argued waqf meant to protect the benefit of the “(religious) community.” This debate became even more pressing during the latest and ongoing Lebanese revolution, which calls for— among other demands—an end to sectarian rule, and many protesters have called to “tax the waqf” (due to its contemporary association with certain religious establishments) as a gesture to hold certain religious classes accountable to the public.

In God’s Property, Moumtaz draws an extensive picture of how concepts can change over time, acquire new meaning and practices. Although not many waqfs exist in Beirut today, the process of defining a waqf still remains pressing and draws many people into ongoing political, social, and religious debates. The monograph will surely be of note to those interested in the history of Lebanon, Islamic studies and the anthropology of Islam.

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

B O O K TA L K S Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11

By Maha Hilal, Broadleaf Books, 2022, paperback, 336 pp. MEB $30

Report by Elaine Pasquini Two decades after former U.S. President George W. Bush launched the “war on terror,” Islamophobia continues to threaten Muslims in the U.S. and abroad. In her new book, Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11, Dr. Maha Hilal explores how the official U.S. narrative following 9/11 led to the creation of an extensive national security apparatus and the normalization of American violence across the world.

On Dec. 2, 2021, the author spoke with Khury Petersen-Smith of Washington, DC’s Institute for Policy Studies about the book and her work as co-director of the Justice for Muslims Collective, a group dedicated to closing the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay. “My desire to write about this topic stemmed from what I saw as a lack of understanding of the real measurable ways

Elaine Pasquini, a recipient of the Fairness & Integrity in Media Award from the Council on American‐Islamic Relations, is a correspon‐ dent for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine, Nuze.ink online news service and Pakistan Link newspaper .

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Islamophobia was entering into policy and discourse and how that was impacting Muslims,” she stated. “To me this book is about how we understand the war on terror, specifically through the lens of Islamophobia, and what we can do to...intervene in such problematic and destructive policies.”

False moral equivalencies frequently come into play in discussions about U.S. actions, Hilal pointed out. When the bombings of hospitals, weddings and neighborhoods by the U.S. come to light, the government’s narrative is often that it was “unfortunate, but there is no comparison between what Americans do, what the American military does, and what terrorists do,” she noted. “Whenever there is [state] violence, the phrase is always ‘this is not us,’ even with evidence to the contrary.”

Hilal pointed to the United States’ 20year military presence in Afghanistan as one example. This occupation basically required Afghans to choose between the United States or the Taliban, she explained, “as if they had to be limited to those two options of violence.” The U.S., she added, never “had the right to impose this dichotomy on them.”

Downplaying the violence of the United States, which has bombed Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and myriad others, is a disturbing pathology that downplays Muslim victimhood, Hilal stated. “How much will it matter to you whether it is the United States or a terrorist group…if your family is wiped off the face of the earth?” she asked. “Those who are not considered human…can’t be victims. But if you treat people as humans, then conceivably you would try to redress the injustice and take accountability.”

The United States’ legitimization of its aggressive polices does not happen in a vacuum, Hilal warned. Rather, Washington’s actions serve as a model for “other equally violent countries” to follow. Israel, for example, has “taken this blueprint and ran with it,” she said.

On a positive note, Hilal has observed a growing desire, especially among young Muslims, to reject the status quo.

“I think there is a lot more resistance toward the state,” she said. “I think that is very promising.” ■ MARCH/APRIL 2022

N E W A R R I VA L S The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights by Paulo Lemos Horta and Yasmine Seale, Liveright, 2021, hardcover, 816 pp. MEB $45.

A cornerstone of world literature and a monument to the power of storytelling, The Arabian Nights has inspired countless authors, from Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe to Naguib Mahfouz, Clarice Lispector and Angela Carter.

Now, in this lavishly designed and illustrated edition of The Annotated Arabian Nights, the acclaimed literary historian Paulo Lemos Horta and the brilliant poet and translator Yasmine Seale present a splendid new selection of tales from the Nights, featuring treasured originals as well as later additions, including the Hanna Diyab stories. For too long, the English-speaking world has relied on dated translations by Richard Burton, Edward Lane and other 19th-century adventurers. Seale’s distinctly contemporary and lyrical translations strip away the deliberate exoticism of Orientalist renderings while reclaiming the vitality and delight of the stories.

In the Country of Others: A Novel by Leila Slimani, Penguin Books, 2021, hardcover, 320 pp. MEB $25. In her first new novel since The Perfect Nanny, Leila Slimani draws on her own family’s inspiring story for the first volume in a planned trilogy about race, resilience and women’s empowerment. Mathilde, a spirited French woman, falls in love with Amine, a Moroccan soldier in the French army during World War II. After the war, the couple settles in rural Morocco, trying to run Amine’s family farm.

Mathilde goes from being a farmer’s wife to offering medical services to the rural population. As tensions mount between the Moroccans and the French colonists, Amine and Mathilde find themselves caught in the crossfire. All of them live in the country of others and with this novel, Leila Slimani issues the first salvo in their emancipation.

Yara’s Spring by Jamal Saeed and Sharon McKay, Annick Press, 2020, paperback, 264 pp. Ages 10-14 MEB $9.95. Growing up in East Aleppo, Yara’s childhood has long been shadowed by the coming revolution. But when the Arab Spring finally arrives at Yara’s doorstep, it is worse than even her Nana imagined: sudden, violent and deadly. When rescuers dig Yara out from under the rubble that was once her family’s home, she emerges to a changed world. Her parents and Nana are gone, and her brother, Saad, can’t speak—struck silent by everything he’s seen.

Now, with her friend Shireen and Shireen’s charismatic brother, Ali, Yara must try to find a way to safety. With danger around every corner, Yara is pushed to her limits as she discovers how far she’ll go for her loved ones—and for a chance for freedom. Crafted through the focused lens of Jamal Saeed’s own experiences in Syria and brought to life by acclaimed author Sharon E. McKay, Yara’s Spring is a story of coming of age against all odds and the many kinds of love that bloom even in the face of war.

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CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST

Cartoon Movement, Amsterdam, Netherlands

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

The Khaleej Times, Dubai, UAE

Wiener Zeitung, Vienna, Austria

WWW.OTHERWORDS.ORG

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore, Singapore

www.Otherwords.org

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Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon

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Other People’s Mail Compiled by Dale Sprusansky

DESMOND TUTU’S LEGACY ON PALESTINE To The Washington Post, Jan. 2, 2022 Regarding Redi Tlhabi’s Dec. 28 op-ed, “We must honor Tutu’s global struggle for justice”: South African Redi Tlhabi referred to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s commitment to ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

In 2008, I went to Boston with one of my daughters, a peace studies major, to hear Tutu address a FOSNA/Sabeel Conference on the theme “The Apartheid Paradigm: How Does It Apply to PalestineIsrael?” Frankly, I went more to see this amazing man than to hear the content of his speech. The speakers were informative and painted a devastating picture of what occupation looks like and feels like. I was hooked on supporting Palestinian rights after I heard Archbishop Tutu state that the situation for the Palestinians was worse in many ways than the situation had been in South Africa during the apartheid years.

The United States and Britain finally joined the effort to boycott and isolate South Africa to force an end to its system of apartheid. We’ve waited long enough to be convinced that the Palestinian situation is equally devastating to a people.

Courtney Petersen, Washington, DC

TELL YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS WHAT YOU THINK PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE. NW WASHINGTON, DC 20500 COMMENT LINE: (202) 456-1111 WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/CONTACT ANY MEMBER: U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES WASHINGTON, DC 20515 (202) 225-3121

rier wall, and go through numerous checkpoints along the way. The same would be true for any Palestinian Christian. (Maybe in some ways not so different from 2,000 years ago, when it was the Jews who were subject to the domination of Rome.)

Today, Palestinian Christians feel abandoned by Christians in America—a sort of modern day “because there was no room for them in the inn.” South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it clearly: “It is unconscionable that Bethlehem should be allowed to die slowly from strangulation.

Bethlehem’s residents increasingly are fleeing Israel’s confining walls, and soon the city, home to the oldest Christian community in the world (from some 90 percent of population in 1950 to 10 percent in 2020) will have little left of its Christian history but the cold stones of empty churches.”

Warren S. Wright, St. George, UT

ISRAELI AMBASSADOR ACCUSES IRISH JEWS OF ANTI-SEMITISM

To The Salt Lake Tribune, Dec. 26, 2021

To The Irish Times, Dec. 21, 2021 The Israeli ambassador to Ireland (Letters, Dec. 18) argues that criticizing the State of Israel is a form of “modern anti-Semitism.”

The opinion piece she is responding to was written by two members of the Jewish community in Ireland who say they are shocked by the price ordinary Palestinians are made to pay to enable Israel to exist as a Jewish state (“Anti-Semitism must not be elevated over other racism,” Opinion & Analysis, Dec. 16).

Consider the irony if Jesus were born today in Bethlehem and his parents wanted to take him to Jerusalem to visit a holy site—they would likely be barred from doing so. First, they would be living in a condition of Israeli occupation, required to apply for a permit, face a 24-foot-high bar-

I am pretty sure that the authors of the piece, Sue Pentel and Jacob Woolf, have no intention of holding Israel to a moral code which is unexpected of any other nation.

However, at a time when a former Israeli army general decides which members of

DON’T ABANDON PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS

MARCH/APRIL 2022

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 2201 C ST. NW WASHINGTON, DC 20520 PHONE: (202) 647-6575 VISIT WWW.STATE.GOV TO E-MAIL ANY SENATOR: U.S. SENATE WASHINGTON, DC 20510 (202) 224-3121

Gaza’s tiny Christian community can travel to spend Christmas in Bethlehem, they surely have a right to question why Israeli state policies have such a devastating impact on the lives of Palestinians.

The 45-mile journey from Gaza to Bethlehem should be relatively easy with modern transportation, instead whether they can travel or not is decided by the commander of a brigade which has been linked to a massacre in Gaza in July 2014.

People in Gaza have been mostly living under a blockade since 2007.

The ambassador’s own letter highlights how dangerous it would be for freedom of speech advocates if Ireland adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

Jewish Voice for Just Peace Ireland was set up to highlight that anti-Semitism is just as abhorrent as any other form of racism, but also to show that not all Jewish people support the illegal occupation of Palestine.

Were Ireland to adopt the IHRA definition, the two Jewish writers could be accused of anti-Semitism, when all they are seeking is equality and justice for the people of Palestine.

Ciaran Tierney, Rahoon, Galway, Ireland

CELEBRATING A FREE SPEECH VICTORY IN TEXAS To the Austin American-Statesman, Feb. 3, 2022 Eureka! A victory for free speech on the Israel-Palestine conundrum: The Jan. 28 Southern District Court of Texas decision supporting Houston businessman Rasmy Hassouna’s refusal to sign an anti-BDS loyalty oath as a prerequisite for a government contract determined that Texas’ antiBDS law violated Hassouna’s First Amendment rights.

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Those sympathetic to Zionism have every right to defend Israel, but as the ruling made clear, they should not have the right to enact legislation or prescribe oaths prohibiting pro-Palestinian speech.

George Aldridge, Belton, TX

THERE’S ALWAYS MONEY FOR MORE WEAPONS To the Post Bulletin, Jan. 1, 2022 Congress just passed a $778 billion military budget (the National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA) for year 2022 with bipartisan support by a vote of 36370 in the House and 88-11 in the Senate, a $37 billion increase over 2021. The NDAA includes at least $10 billion for new and bigger nuclear weapons. This was approved despite what happened in Afghanistan; despite increasing evidence of the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, from U.S. air strikes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen and despite the toll on U.S. soldiers with combat deaths and injuries, suicides, PTSD and moral injury.

In contrast, the Senate so far has not passed the Build Back Better (BBB) legislation at a cost of $175 billion annually for 10 years, compared to the $778 billion in one year for the military. BBB continues the child tax credit that lifts millions of children out of poverty, reduces drug costs for seniors, starts to address climate change and more.

More weapons and more war will not address the pressing needs of a surging pandemic, climate change and poverty in the midst of extreme wealth.

“Peace on Earth” the angels sang at Jesus’ birth. This huge military budget will not lead to the peace on earth that is so desperately needed.

Rich Van Dellen, Rochester, MN

U.S. RESPONSIBILITY FOR DEAD YEMENI CHILDREN To the Anchorage Daily News, Jan. 24, 2022 When I returned home after Vietnam combat, we were called “baby killers.” If there is combat in civilian areas, babies are going to be killed.

In Yemen, no one is safe from murder.

The U.S. has stopped direct support for 70

aggressive missions by the Saudis. However, American companies continue to supply equipment, intelligence and maintenance to the Saudi military. Our country continues to be complicit in the murders and starvation of babies, children, women and men who want nothing more than to live and care for their families.

Corporate responsibility for anything other than maximum profit is non-existent.

U.S. companies trade the lives of Yemenis for profit. Yes, America has become a nation of baby killers. As of October 2021, the United Nations reported that more than 10,000 children and 233,000 Yemenis have been murdered or maimed by Saudiled forces.

In 2019, a bipartisan Yemen War Powers Resolution was passed by Congress. This resolution was vetoed. A new resolution is needed to bar all U.S. support for the Saudi-led war.

As a veteran who knows firsthand the harm delivered by war, I call upon Congress to support a new Yemen War Powers Resolution to end the killing in Yemen.

Roy Wilson, Homer, AK

U.S. MUST LEAD ON AFGHAN AID To The Mercury News, Jan. 3, 2022 Kudos for publishing Sean Callahan’s appeal to address the catastrophic food shortages now threatening the majority of Afghanistan’s people (“The future of Afghanistan lies in our hands,” Page A13, Jan. 2).

After two years of extreme drought causing widespread crop failures, 23 million Afghans face hunger and outright starvation. Despite dire warnings from the U.N. and the World Food Program, our mainstream media have ignored this looming disaster, preferring to focus exclusively on reports of human rights violations by the Taliban. Meanwhile, our government has refused to permit the release of $9.5 billion in Afghanistan’s reserves desperately needed to pay the salaries of public sector workers. This has hamstrung Afghan efforts to prevent mass starvation.

It is unconscionable to use the suffering of millions of helpless people to gain leverage on the Taliban. We must immediately release Afghanistan’s reserves to its gov-

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ernment and take the lead in restoring humanitarian aid to its people.

Michael Dunlap, Oakland, CA

GIVE MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO AFGHAN REFUGEES To The New York Times, Dec. 31, 2021 Farah Stockman points out real advantages of private sponsorship for Afghan refugees. But ultimately, personal, neighborhood or broader community support can go only so far. Afghan doctors, lawyers, accountants and teachers without U.S. credentials are forced to take jobs well below their skills. Less educated arrivals get consigned to low-wage jobs.

Just as the U.S. has helped millions of Americans recover from the trauma of war through a chance to go to school under the G.I. Bill, Congress should consider a G.I. Bill for the Afghans who fought and worked alongside Americans during 20 years of war. Access to community colleges and public universities would go a long way toward helping them rebuild their lives and reimagine their futures. It would speed integration into their new country and enhance their ability to contribute to it.

Desaix Myers, Arlington, VA. The writer, a U.S. Agency for International Development retiree, is helping to resettle Afghans.

GITMO MUST BE CLOSED To the Portland Press Herald, Jan. 23, 2022 Jan. 11 marked the 20th year since the day when, in 2002, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp was opened by the United States. In this “military prison,” located within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, people are subjected to torture and abuse, and they’re held indefinitely. And without charge, without trial!

To be held in prison without trial and without charge? This is a travesty of justice.

It marks a sordid chapter in American history. It’s an abuse of human rights. It’s shameful.

We must shut down Guantanamo Bay for the sake of the 39 men still held there.

And for the sake of our own honor as citizens of the United States.

Yes—let us shut down the Guantanamo Bay facility!

Elaine G. McGillicuddy, Portland, ME ■ MARCH/APRIL 2022

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O• B • I • T • U • A • R • I • E • S

By Nathaniel Bailey and Delinda Hanley Baktash Abtin, 48, an Iranian poet and filmmaker, who had been jailed on security charges, died in a hospital after contracting COVID-19 on Jan. 8, 2022 in Tehran. Abtin, who was serving a six-year sentence for “anti-government propaganda,” died shortly after PEN America and 18 other rights groups voiced concern over his treatment in a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In October 2021, PEN America awarded Abtin, a board member of the Iranian Writers’ Association, and two other jailed Iranian writers the 2021 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award.

Abtin published books of poetry and the history and sociology of his country and directed films. After involvement with the publication of a book describing the history of the Iranian Writers Association, Abtin was charged on May 15, 2019, with “illegal assembly and collusion against national security” and “spreading propaganda against the state” and was sentenced to a total of six years imprisonment.

Majid Al Futtaim, 87, an Emirati billionaire businessman who helped build modern Dubai, died on Dec. 17, 2021 in Dubai. He founded the Majid Al Futtaim Group, a real estate and retail conglomerate. Al Futtaim built his first mall in 1995, bringing the Western-style consumer experience of blending shopping with dining, leisure and entertainment to the Gulf. A decade later, he opened the Mall of the Emirates at the height of the Gulf region’s economic boom. The Al Futtaim Group operates shopping malls, retail and leisure establishments in 13 countries across the Middle East and North Africa. His work earned him a spot on the Forbes top 10 richest Arabs list in 2021 with a net worth of $3.6 billion.

Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad, 80, a successful Palestinian-American Milwaukee grocer, was beaten, bound, gagged, blindfolded and MARCH/APRIL 2022

tossed to the ground on an icy night by Israel Defense Forces in Jiljilya, in the Ramallah District, on Jan. 12, 2022. The brutality he suffered resulted in a fatal heart attack. The soldiers left him on the ground without treating him or even reporting the incident.

Since returning from the United States 11 years ago to retire in Jiljilya, Omar and his wife, Mahani, had been unable to leave their village to visit their children and grandchildren back in the States. According to Haaretz, “their old ID cards had been confiscated due to their prolonged absence; even if they had somehow traveled abroad with their U.S. passports, they would not have been allowed to return...Their new ID

cards they had waited for all these years arrived—but Omar was no longer alive.”

According to an inquiry, overseen by the head of Israel’s Central Command, As’ad’s death was the result of a “moral failure’” and poor decision-making by the soldiers who detained him. The commander of the Netzah Yehuda battalion, responsible for his detention, was reprimanded, and the two platoon commanders who beat him were removed from their commanding roles for two years.

Edward G. Brooking, Jr., 95, died Aug. 29, 2021 of complications from melanoma and Lyme disease in Wilmington, DE. Brooking served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in Europe in WW II. Trained as a lawyer, he worked for the U.S. government in various capacities, and served as an officer and director of a number of corporations, including Fanny Farmer Candy Shops.

Brooking traveled extensively in the Middle East and had incredible recall of his experiences. Many of those memories included his numerous travels with Albert J. Meyer, who taught economics and Middle Eastern studies at Harvard from 1955 until 1983. Brooking’s world-wide journeys continued with another close friend from Harvard, John Goelet. He is remembered by the Washington Report as their favorite raconteur. We valued his storytelling, sense of humor, advice, encouragement and strong support. Ed Brooking is survived by his wife, Ruth, and children Elizabeth, Anne and Frederic Brooking.

Henry C. Clifford, 83, a distinguished advocate for peace in Palestine and Israel, died in Essex, CT, on Dec. 2, 2021, after suffering from a stroke earlier in the year.

Clifford was the chairman of the Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine. In 2012, using $25,000 of his own money, Clifford placed billboard ads in 50 Metro-North train stations in Westchester County, in suburban New York, Connecticut and Boston. He also placed the billboards in major subway stations throughout downtown Washington, DC during AIPAC’s annual meeting, in May 2013, to educate commuters.

His ad showed four simple, factual maps, illustrating the gradual expropriation of Palestinian lands from 1946 to 2010. (See Washington Report’s Sept.

2012 publisher’s page.) His billboards included the simple text: “4.7 Million Palestinians are Classified by the U.N. as Refugees.” In response to the inevitable charges of anti-Semitism, Clifford told FoxNews.com, “If the facts are inflammatory, then they are inflammatory. There’s always room for discussion of different sides of every story, but there is no room for discussion on fact.” Television, radio stations, newspapers and social media sites discussed Clifford’s billboards.

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Clifford was born in Staten Island, NY. After college, he served in the Marine Corps in Korea, and was wounded and held as a POW. After the war, he joined the New York City office of the investment banking firm White, Weld & Co., where he worked for 23 years. After his retirement, he studied history, with a particular focus on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Virginia Kathleen Hilmy (Kate), 90, an educator, died Dec. 27, 2021 in Highland, CA. After Hilmy retired from teaching English in Maryland, she compiled the Other Peoples’ Mail column in the Washington Report from 2004 until 2011. That involved scouring other publications for interesting letters to the editor in order to give our readers ideas for their own letter-writing campaigns.

She and her husband, Salman Hilmy, a former director of the Voice of America Near East, South Asia and Africa division (see “An Iraqi-Born Voice of America,” in the February/March 1994 Washington Report), who died in 2019, were longtime contributors to this magazine. In fact, Salman Hilmy’s story, “‘ID Card’ by Mahmoud Darwish: A Translation and Commentary,” remains one of our most popular articles.

Kate Hilmy attended many anti-war and pro-Palestinian protests, including one on May 17, 2008 to commemorate the ongoing Nakba on the National Mall. This writer recalls walking with her longtime friend (my mother, Donna Curtiss), and examining the huge quilt, each square commemorating a village, the number of Palestinians who lived there, and the date it was destroyed.

Hilmy died soon after spending Christmas surrounded by many of her chldren, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She spent her final days writing thoughtful Christmas cards, received by her many friends around the world, after news of her sudden death.

Asma Khader, 69, an internationally recognized advocate for human rights and one of Jordan’s leading campaigners for the rights of women and girls, died from pancreatic cancer on Dec. 20, 2021 in Amman.

Khader was born in 1952 in Zababida, a town in the West Bank, which at the time 72

was under Jordanian control. Khader earned her undergraduate law degree from the University of Damascus in 1977 and established her own legal office in 1984. At the time, she was one of Jordan’s few practicing female lawyers.

After years as an active member of the opposition, Khader joined the Jordanian government and worked for greater rights for women and freedom of the press. In 1998, Khader established and served as the executive director of the Solidarity is Global Institute to provide women in Jordan with legal services and educational programs, and to lead campaigns for legislative and policy reforms.

John Rosevelt McGillion, 78, the owner of Johnny Mac’s House of Spirits in Asbury Park, NJ, died on July 12, 2020. Born to Irish parents he and his family emigrated to the U.S. during WW II, aboard the converted troop ship, Mauritania. McGillion started with a paper route, drove a taxi, served as a paratrooper in Japan and North Carolina, graduated with an accounting degree and opened his first bar in 1968. He owned laundromats, a beeper store, a real estate office and numerous bars in New York. Whenever he was asked what prompted him to open his own businesses he would reply with a chuckle, “Because I was fired from all my other jobs.”

McGillion was known as a philanthropist in Asbury Park and an early investor in its redevelopment. He also loved to travel, visiting 177 countries and, perhaps because of his Irish origins, he was a firm believer in peace and justice in Palestine. We are grateful for McGillion’s generous financial support for the annual Israel lobby conference, cosponsored by this magazine and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy.

Iraj Pezeshkzad, 95, an Iranian writer and author of the satirical 1973 novel My Uncle Napoleon, died from a stroke on Jan. 12, 2022 in Santa Monica, CA. According to his translator, Pezeshkzad’s novel was “the most popular novel that has ever been written in Iran” and perhaps “the funniest novel in Persian.”

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Pezeshkzad was born in Tehran in the late 1920s. He studied in Iran and later in France, where he received a law degree.

After returning to Iran he became a judge but, unhappy in the profession, later worked in the Iranian Foreign Ministry under the shah. Pezeshkzad lived in exile in France since shortly after the 1979 revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as supreme religious leader of Iran.

Pezeshkzad began his literary career in his 20s translating works by French authors including the satirists Voltaire and Molière and trying his hand at magazine articles and stories of his own. In addition to My Uncle Napoleon, Pezeshkzad’s novel Hafez in Love, translated by Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Patricia J. Higgins, was published in English in 2021.

Dr. Sherif R. Zaki, 65, a pathologist and infectious disease detective who helped identify the COVID-19, Ebola, West Nile and Zika viruses and severe acute respiratory syndrome, died from complications from a fall on Nov. 21, 2021 in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Zaki joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1988 and became chief of the agency’s infectious diseases pathology branch in the early 1990s. Dr. Zaki’s work was critical to strengthening public health and saving lives and he was considered among the most influential infectious disease pathologists of his generation.

Dr. Zaki was born in Alexandria, Egypt.

His father worked for the United Nations’ International Labor Organization and his mother was a teacher. Growing up, Dr. Zaki spent time living in the U.S., the Caribbean, the Middle East and Europe. Dr. Zaki graduated second in his class of 800 from the Alexandria Medical School in Egypt in 1978 and earned a master’s in pathology from Alexandria University. At that time autopsies were not permitted in Egypt for religious reasons, leading Dr. Zaki to do his residency in anatomic pathology at Emory University in Atlanta, where he also received a doctorate in experimental pathology. After finishing his studies, Dr. Zaki went to work at the CDC and became a naturalized American citizen.■ MARCH/APRIL 2022

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AET’s 2021 Choir of Angels

The following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1, 2021 and Dec. 31 2021 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. Some Angels are helping us co‐sponsor the annual IsraelLobbyCon. Others are donating to our “Capital Building Fund,” which will help us expand and add coffee service to the Middle East Books and More bookstore. Thank you all for helping us survive the turmoil caused by the pandemic. We are deeply honored by your confidence and profoundly grateful for your generosity. The May issue will include all our Angels who donated in 2022.

HUMMERS ($100 or more)

Robin Abaya, Palm Springs, CA Mai Abdul Rahman, Hyattsville, MD Robert Abel, Wilmington, DE Marwan Ahmad, Arabesque Media, Manassas, VA Aglaia & Mumtaz Ahmed, Buda, TX Mohammad & Shaista Akbar, Orwigsburg, PA Peter Akras, Wading River, NY Hesham Alalusi, Hayward, CA M. & Janet Al Hussaini, Great Falls, VA Hani Ali, Beirut, Lebanon Hamid & Kim Alwan, Milwaukee, WI Nazife Amrou, Sylvania, OH Ali & Fatma Antar, Bristol, CT Anace & Polly Aossey, Cedar Rapids, IA Mr. & Mrs. Sultan Aslam, Plainsboro, NJ Salim Bahloul, South Yarra, Australia Nabil Bahu, Paleo Psychico, Greece Rick Bakry, New York, NY Linda Bergh, Syracuse, NY William L. Bigelow, Chicago, IL Nelson Borelli, Chicago, IL Dr. & Mrs. Sarkis Broussalian, Santa Monica, CA

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John Gordon, Santa Fe, NM Dixiane Hallaj, Purcellville, VA Laurie A. Hanawalt, Cleveland, OH Dr. Walid & Norma Harb, Dearborn, Hts., MI Susan Haragely, Livonia, MI James Hausken, Kensington, CA Edward & Joan Hazbun, Media, PA Clement Henry, Moorestown, NJ Les Janka, Hilton Head Isl., SC Marilyn & Harold Jerry, Princeton, NJ Janis Jibrin, Washington, DC Tom Johnson, Washington, DC Issa & Rose Kamar, Plano, TX Timothy Kaminski, Saint Louis, MO Basim Kattan, Washington, DC Robert Keith, Salt Lake City, UT Gloria Keller, Santa Rosa, CA Mazen & Martha Khalidi, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI Eugene Khorey, Homestead, PA Tony Khoury, Sedona, AZ Ronald Kunde, Skokie, IL Darryl Landis, Winston Salem, NC Edwin Lindgren, Overland Park, KS Yehuda Littmann, Brooklyn, NY Sherif Lofti, New York, NY

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By remembering the Washington Report in your will, you can: • Make a significant gift without affecting your current cash flow; • Direct your bequest to a vital purpose— educating readers about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East; • Receive a charitable estate tax deduction & Leave a legacy for future generations.

Bequests of any size are honored with membership in the American Educational Trust’s “Choirmasters,” named for angels whose foresight and dedication ensured the future of the Washington Report and Middle East Books and More. For more information visit www.wrmea.org/donate/bequests.pdf, contact us at circulation@wrmea.org, write: American Educational Trust, PO Box 292380 • Kettering, OH 45429, or telephone our toll-free number 800-368-5788 ext. 1105 • Fax: 202-265-4574.

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Jonothan Logan, New York, NY Charles Lutz, Richfield, MN Nidal Mahayni, Richmond, VA Dr. Rana Mahmood, Decatur, IL Dr. & Mrs. Aly A. Mahmoud, Oceanside, CA Tahera Mamdani, Fridley, MN Joseph A. Mark, Carmel, CA John Matthews, West Newton, MA Gwendolyn McEwen, Bellingham, WA Bill McGrath, Northfield, MN Janet McMahon, Washington, DC John Mearsheimer, Chicago, IL Susan Kay Metcalfe, Beaverton, OR Curtis Miller, Albuquerque, NM William Nadeau, San Diego, CA Claire Nader, Washington, DC Richard Nau, Longview, WA W. Eugene Notz, Charleston, SC Chalbi Ouahib, Eden Prairie, MN Eleanor Parker, Helena, MT Cindy Percak, Cinnaminson, NJ Jim Plourd, Monterey, CA Carol Rames, Mesa, CA Paul Richards, Salem, OR Nancy Robinson, Arlington, VA James F. Robinson III, San Angelo, TX Fred Rogers & Jenny Hartley, Northfield, MN Ambassador William Rugh, Hingham, MA Ramzy Salem, Monterey Park, CA Izzat & Jawad Saymeh, Charlotte, NC Richard Schreitz, Alexandria, VA Carolynne Schutt, Doylestown, PA William A. Shaheen III, Grosse Ile, MI Aziz Shalaby, Vancouver, WA Zac Sidawi, Costa Mesa, CA Ellen Siegel, Washington, DC Deborah Smith, Durham, NC MaryLou Smith, Chapel Hill, NC Les Sosnowski, Lake Forest, IL Ethel Sotorp, Palm Coast, FL William Stanley, Saluda, NC Viola Stephan, Santa Barbara, CA Karl Striedieck, Port Matilda, PA Mushtaq Syed, Santa Clara, CA Erik Thorp, Warwick, RI Thomas Trueblood, Chapel Hill, NC Letitia Ufford, Hanover, NH Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East, Cambridge, MA Benjamin Wade, Saratoga, CA Martin & Nancy Wein, N. Chesterfield, VA Hermann & Susan Weinlick, Minneapolis, MN Willard E. White, Phoenix, AZ Richard Wigton, Mechanicsburg, PA Nabil Yakub, McLean, VA Robert & Anne Younes, Potomac, MD Dr. & Mrs. Fathi S. Yousef, Irvine, CA Munir Zacharia, La Mirada, CA Hugh & Yasmin Ziada, Garden Grove, CA Mohammed Ziaullah, Montclair, CA Fred Zuercher, Spring Grove, PA 74

ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more)

Jeff Abood, Silver Lake, OH Geoffrey Abrams, New York, NY Ali Akbar, Oakland, CA Hani Ali, Athens, Greece Dr. Robert Ashmore, Jr, Mequon, WI Mary Ellen Bennett, Laguna Beach, CA Candice Bodnaruk, Winnipeg, Canada Edward Briody, Jackson Hts., NY Larry Cooper, Plymouth, MI** Dixiane Hallaj, Purcellville, VA Delinda Hanley, Kensington, MD*, #### Angela Harter, North Branford, CT Akram & Lubna Karam, Charlotte, NC Gloria M. Keller, Santa Rosa, CA Michael Ladah, Las Vegas, NV Erna Lund, Seattle, WA Corinne Mudarri, Manchester, MA John Najemy, Albany, NY Mary Neznek, Washington, DC Henry Norr, Berkeley, CA Hertha Poje-Ammoumi, New York, NY John & Peggy Prugh, Tucson, AZ Mazin Qumsiyeh, Largo, FL Paul Richards, Salem, OR Ramzy Salem, Monterey Park, CA Betty Sams, Washington, DC# Irmgard Scherer, Fairfax, VA Bernice Shaheen, Palm Desert, CA*** Mostafa Sherif, Happy Valley, OR Jukaku & Faiziya Tayeb, Shelby Township, MI Vita Wallace & Margaret Cuonzo, New York, NY## Mashood Yunus, New Brighton, MN

TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more)

Concerned Citizen, McLean, VA Diane Adkin, Camas, WA Mohamed Ahamedkutty, Toronto, Canada Sylvia Anderson De Freitas, Duluth, MN Dr. & Mrs. Roger Bagshaw, Big Sur, CA Majid Batterjee, McLean, VA James Bennett, Fayetteville, AR Ted Chauviere, Austin, TX Patricia Christensen, Poulsbo, WA Forrest & Sandi Cioppa, Moraga, CA Robert & Tanis Diedrichs, Cedar Falls, IA Raymond Gordon, Venice, FL Alfred R. Greve, Holmes, NY Dr. Wasif Hafeez, W. Bloomfield, MI Virgina K. Hilmy, Highland, CA Brigitte Jaensch, Carmichael, CA Dr. Muhammad M. Kudaimi, Munster, IN Alison Lankenau, Tivoli, NY Tom & Tess McAndrew, Oro Valley, AZ Darrel Meyers, Burbank, CA

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Audrey Olson, St. Paul, MN Bassam Rammaha, Corona, CA Estate of Thomas Shaker, Poughkeepsie, NY**** Darcy Sreebny, Issaquah, WA*, #### David Williams, Golden, CO

BARITONES & MEZZO SOPRANOS ($1,000 or more)

Asha A. Anand, Bethesda, MD Branscomb Family Foundation, La Jolla, CA Joseph Daruty, Newport Beach, CA Gary Richard Feulner, Dubai, UAE Dr. E. R. Fields, Marietta, GA### Ronald & Mary Forthofer, Boulder, CO Dorsey Gardner, Palm Beach, FL Ribhi Hazin, Plymouth, MI Judith Howard, Norwood, MA Ghazy M. Kader, Shoreline, WA Dr. Jane Killgore & Thomas D’Albani, Bemidji, MN# Jack Love, Fort Myers, FL Mr. & Mrs. Hani Marar, Delmar, NY Estate of Jean Elizabeth Mayer, Bethesda, MD James P. Moran, McLean, VA Anees Mughannam, Petaluma, CA Ralph Nader, Washington, DC Andrea Nobil, Selma Ankist Family Trust, Miami Beach, FL Mary Norton, Austin, TX Richard J. Shaker, Annapolis, MD**** Gretel Smith, Garrett, IN Dr. Imad Tabry, Fort Lauderdale, FL Donn Trautman, Evanston, IL Young Again Foundation, Leland, NC

CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more)

Anonymous, Palo Alto, CA## Dr. & Mrs. Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR *,# John & Henrietta Goelet, Washington, DC Dr. Letitia Lane-Abdallah, Greensboro, NC William Lightfoot, Vienna, VA Sahar Masud, Mill Valley, CA * In Memory of Dick and Donna Curtiss ** In Memory of Diane Cooper *** In Memory of Dr. Jack G. Shaheen **** In Memory of Thomas R. Shaker # In Memory of Andrew I. Killgore ## In Memory of Rachelle & Hugh Marshall ###In Memory of Jayne E. Fields ####In Memory of Virginia (Kate) Hilmy

Donations received on or after Jan. 1, 2022 will be listed in the May 2022 Washington Report.

MARCH/APRIL 2022

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American Educational Trust Washington Report on Middle East Affairs P.O. Box 53062 Washington, DC 20009

March/April 2022 Vol. XLI, No. 2

Children play in the snow on a street following an overnight snowfall in the West Bank city of Hebron on Jan. 27, 2022.

PHOTO BY MAMOUN WAZWAZ/XINHUA VIA GETTY IMAGES