Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - March/April 2021 - Vol. XL No. 2 by American Educational Trust

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WHAT 70 NEW MEMBERS OF CONGRESS REVEAL ABOUT PRO-ISRAEL POLITICS

DISPLAY UNTIL 4/30/2021

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TELLING THE TRUTH SINCE 1982

Volume XL, No. 2

On Middle East Affairs

March/April 2021

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

16 18

The Plan to Make UNRWA and the Palestine Refugee Disappear—Jonathan Cook

B’Tselem’s Historic Declaration: Israel’s Open War on Its Own Civil Society—Ramzy Baroud

Israel and America: Allied in Racism—Walter L. Hixson What the 70 New Members of Congress Reveal About Pro-Israel Politics in the United States —Dale Sprusansky

116th Congress Passed Defense, Appropriations Bills Before Adjourning—Shirl McArthur

Redeﬁning Anti-Semitism: A Challenge to Free Speech—Allan C. Brownfeld

Palestinian Evangelicals in Confrontation with Christian Zionism—Rev. Alex Awad

Arson Attack at Mount of Olives Church is Part of Campaign Against Christians—Jeffery Abood

Parkour Provides New Joyful Moments for Gaza Athletes—Mohammed Omer

Palestinian Children Under Attack—Two Views —Asya Abdul-Hadi, Walter L. Hixson

Gaza Airport: The Legacy of a Palestinian Dream —Hind Khoudary

As Americans Reckon with Racism, In Israel Jewish Privilege and Supremacy Reigns —Dr. M. Reza Behnam

SPECIAL REPORTS

Biden Puts (Most of) the Wheels Back on the U.N. Wagon—Ian Williams

Where’s Palestine? The Nakba is Missing From the Canadian Museum for Human Rights —Candice Bodnaruk

Working to Erase the Scars of the Past in Beirut —Dr. Mai Abdul Rahman

46 48 50

Ibrahims on the Road: Encounters with Syrian Refugees in Turkey— Lisa Dupuy, Photos by Daniel Maissan

Turkey Looks for a Regional Reset, While Neighbors Doubt Sincerity—Jonathan Gorvett

Demystifying Arab Views of Ancient Egypt—John Gee

ON THE COVER: Palestinians enjoy their time at a beach in Gaza City before sunset on Dec. 31, 2020, on the

last day of the year. Somehow, Palestinians living under occupation find joy as they go about their daily lives. PHOTO BY MAJDI FATHI/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

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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 1-888-881-5861.)

Other Voices

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Not “Apartheid in the West Bank.” Apartheid, Gideon Levy, Haaretz OV-1

A Lesson in Cyber Spying vs. Cyber Attack, Anatol Lieven, www.responsiblestatecraft.org

OV-9

Why Israel Is a Settler-Colony, Asa Winstanley, www.middleeastmonitor.com

OV-2

A Post-Trump Palestine, Ahmed Abu Artema, www.aljazeera.com

NY Times Tries But Fails to Clean Up Multiple Failures by “Jihadism Terror” Reporter Rukmini Callimachi, James North, http://mondoweiss.net

OV-10

OV-3 In Lebanon Israeli Warplanes Terrify a Traumatized Population, Anchal Vohra, www.aljazeera.com

OV-11

OV-6

Israel Panics, Shoots After Lebanese Chicken Crosses the Border, Middle East Monitor, www.middleeastmonitor.com

OV-13

OV-6

Peace for Peace? Israel-Morocco Deal Is Occupation in Exchange For Occupation, Noa Landau, Haaretz

OV-13

OV-8

Ancient Egypt: A Pyramid Scheme That Worked, Khaled Diab, www.aljazeera.com

OV-14

Canary Mission Is Dangerous to Your Professional Health, Elizabeth Berger, http://mondoweiss.net

OV-4

NYT Covers up Warnock Flipflop Under Pressure From Israel Lobby, Philip Weiss, http://mondoweiss.net Why Should the U.S. Be Afforded The “Power of Assassination”?, Clive Stafford Smith, www.aljazeera.com Reckless Threats and “Restoring Deterrence,” Daniel Larison, theamericanconservative.com

DEPARTMENTS 6 letters to the editor 52 WagiNg PeaCe:

Israeli Apartheid: Calling It Like It Is

60 huMaN rights:

Canada Marks One Year Since

Downing of Airliner Over Iran

61 arab aMeriCaN aCtiVisM:

Introducing “20 Under 20” and “40

Under 40”

62 Middle east books reVieW

68 the World looks at the Middle east —CArtOOnS 69 other PeoPle’s Mail

71 obituaries 72 2020 aet Choir oF aNgels 7 iNdeX to

adVertisers

These children are playing in Kavalcik, just outside of Reyhanli, Turkey in a dilapidated pool at an abandoned house, one of the last before the border crossing into Syria. See story p. 46.

PHOTO DANIEL MAISSAN

5 Publishers’ Page

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This issue is full of mustread articles, detailing Israel’s descent into apartheid. Instead of the touted “only democracy in the Middle East,” hard at work “making the desert bloom,” in reality Israel is demolishing homes, trees and lives. Please send the postcard in this issue to our new and old leaders, especially the new members of Congress, who need a reality check (see p. 18). Despite their many trials, Palestinians somehow still manage to enjoy sparks of joy and life (see this issue’s cover and p. 38).

PHOTO BY JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Read all About It

American Educational Trust

ileged receive vaccinations, in Israel, the U.S. and elsewhere, COVID-19 variants will plague the world for the rest of our lives.

Quiz Answers

Palestinians try to return an olive tree to its place after an Israeli bulldozer yanked it out, in a field in the West Bank city of Salfit, near the Israeli settlement of Ariel, on Oct. 26, 2020.

Washington Report Quiz

Contestants on a National Public Radio Saturday weekly game show are asked to guess which is the real news story and which is a fabrication. These are the stories we wish were contenders:

A. Israel Builds Settlements in

Albuquerque

This article, which won’t surprise Palestinians, declares that “an increasingly bold Israel announced Tuesday that it had begun building settlements for its citizens in downtown Albuquerque, NM.” A photo shows a bulldozer demolishing a building in the central business district. The article adds that Israel will build a wall around the new houses, and IDF troops will patrol to protect the new subdivision. And by the way, the article concludes, “the U.S. government has pledged to provide Israel with an additional $3 billion in military aid to help the nation defend its new territory.”

B. Soldiers Moonlight as Armed Robbers

Armed robbers, in uniform, tried to steal a generator in broad daylight in the South Hebron Hills. As the robbers loaded the generator into their vehicle, its rightful owners, three unarmed shepherds, tried to MARCH/APRIL 2021

Publishers’ Page

save their property with their bare hands. The generator is a lifeline for these shepherds, whose Palestinian village is not allowed to connect to the water or electricity supply. The robbers, Israeli soldiers, shot the shepherds, critically wounding a 24year-old, before taking off with their loot. C. Israel’s COVID-19 Vaccinations Hold Lessons for the U.S.

This story has led nightly news broadcasts and grabbed headlines. It must be true. But a UK article fills in some gaps. “As the world ramps up what is already on track to become a highly unequal vaccination push—with people in richer nations first to be inoculated—the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories provides a stark example of the divide. Israel is transporting batches of vaccine deep inside the West Bank, but they are only distributed to Jewish settlers, and not the roughly 2.7 million Palestinians living around them.” Lesson learned: Americans should deny vaccinations to Black and Brown Americans. Of course, if only the privOur friends and colleagues at Americans for Middle East Understanding (AMEU) are seeking an executive director/editor-in-chief of The Link, published five times a year. Please visit AMEU’s website, www.ameu.org for more information. To apply, please send cover letter and CV to ameu@aol.com.

A. Article published on Jan. 27, 2021 in the online satirical publication, the Onion. For now a joke. B. Article by Gideon Levy, published in Haaretz, Jan. 2, 2021. Truth. C. Article published in The Guardian, Jan. 3, 2021, with the Washington Report adding our thoughts, which we doubt will be mentioned in your nightly news reports.

Missing Washington Report

We’d like to apologize to our loyal readers who received the January/February 2021 issue of this magazine late—in most instances, very late. Despite moving up our production timeline by one week in an effort to avoid the Christmas holiday’s slam on the U.S. Postal Service, the issue apparently still got buried under piles of mail. It began to arrive in mailboxes in late January and early February—more than a month and a half after it was mailed! We hope this issue reaches you in a much more timely manner. As a non-profit that depends on the USPS to deliver this magazine, receive donations and ship orders from our bookstore, we hope lawmakers will deliver much-needed postal reforms in 2021.

Our Angels Came Through!

We thank our 2020 angels, those listed and those who preferred to be unidentified. Without your help the Washington Report would vanish, like so many other publications facing crises due to rising paper costs, postage as well as economic troubles. We’ll begin publishing the 2021 donors next issue, so please continue to help us ride out the pandemic and...

Make a Difference Today!

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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

DELINDA C. HANLEY DALE SPRUSANSKY WALTER HIXSON JULIA PITNER JANET McMAHON NATHANIEL BAILEY CHARLES R. CARTER 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 and Aug./Sept. combined, at 1902 18th St., NW, Washington, DC 20009-1707. Tel. (202) 9396050. 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 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056. 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. Material from the Washington Report may be reprinted without charge with attribution to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Bylined material must also be attributed to the author. This release does not apply to photographs, cartoons or reprints from other publications. Indexed by ProQuest, Gale, Ebsco Information Services, InfoTrac, LexisNexis, Public Affairs Information Service, Index to Jewish Periodicals, Ethnic News Watch, Periodica Islamica. CONTACT INFORMATION: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Editorial Office and Bookstore: 1902 18th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009-9062 Phone: (202) 939-6050 • (800) 368-5788 Fax: (202) 265-4574 E-mail: wrmea@wrmea.org bookstore@wrmea.org circulation@wrmea.org advertising@wrmea.org Web sites: http://www.wrmea.org http://www.middleeastbooks.com Subscriptions, sample copies and donations: P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056 Phone: (888) 881-5861 • Fax: (714) 226-9733 Printed in the USA

LetterstotheEditor THE MYTH OF THE “JEWISH AND DEMOCRATIC” STATE

Emphasis is always placed on the requirement for “Arab diplomatic recognition of Israel,” yet I have never seen the opposite: calls for Israel’s recognition of Palestine as an Arab state. Right from the git-go (the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947), Israel fought against a Palestinian state, and consistently and persistently stole more and more of its land, to the point where now there is no possibility of a viable Palestinian state. The only solution now appears to be a federation such as in Belgium, with the Walloons and Flemish sharing power, since surely Israel, despite its best efforts, will not be able to get rid of half the population. Israel’s violation, with impunity, of its own 1948 Declaration of Independence, in which it promised equal rights to all, apparently gave it the green light for other international law violations, including violations of just about all of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions. Mention of a “Jewish and democratic state”—in which half its inhabitants are oppressed—is an oxymoron. Israel needs to either give equal rights to Palestinians or else admit it is a racist/fascist state. Doris Rausch, Columbia, MD You are not alone in this assessment. In January, B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights group, made history by declaring Israel to be an apartheid regime, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River (see pp. 12-13).

PAY ATTENTION TO ISRAELI INTERFERENCE

Those in the media who harp about Russian interference in U.S. elections fail to mention the foreign nation that most interferes with America. They call on the U.S. to stop all trade with Russia and to stop all Russian investments in the U.S., failing to provide any evidence about so-called Russian influence in U.S. elections. Our government has also made accusations against Russia, saying that “national security” prevents it

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

from backing up its claims, which former CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls a “red herring.” Diverse voices, including scholar Noam Chomsky and Harvard Professor Stephen Walt, have shown that Israel, not Russia, openly interferes in U.S. elections and Congress. Even worse, current Pentagon official Douglas Macgregor stated that the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. is trying to drag America into war in Iran, like they did in Iraq. The U.S. should dialogue and trade with all countries, including Russia and Iran, while favoring no nation, especially apartheid Israel. Ray Gordon, Venice, FL This issue includes an in-depth look at what new members of Congress have said about Israel (see pp. 18-25). The findings support your assertion that Israel’s lobby holds significant sway over the U.S. Congress.

ISRAELI CONDEMNATION OF HEZBOLLAH’S U.N. VIOLATIONS

Israeli officials are claiming that Hezbollah’s violation of a 2006 United Nations resolution somehow justifies the intimidating presence of low-altitude Israeli war planes in Lebanese air space. The 2006 U.N. resolution forbade Hezbollah “from building up its military capabilities and operating near the Israeli border.” U.N. resolutions notwithstanding, foreign aircraft that violate Israeli air space have a low survival rate. The context for these Lebanon overflights is Israel’s ongoing policy of bombing Iran-backed forces in southern Syria. While that is understandable from a purely military perspective, Israel’s resort to the U.N. resolution defense is remarkably hypocritical considering its long history of indifference to the international body. Before continuing, I’ll take a moment to protect myself from possible anti-Semitic accusations emanating from those who have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition” of that concept. According to their expansive interpretation, any who dare offer MARCH/APRIL 2021

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even an accurate critique of Israeli threaten military action and impose KEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS state violence are somehow expunishing sanctions on the country, COMING! pected to simultaneously oppose which have harmed average IraniSend your letters to the editor to the Washington Report, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 the sins of every other nation. ans more than the country’s rulers. or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>. Therefore, I also condemn the onAll of this for a fanciful “better deal” going state terror of Morocco, that would, at best, provide a marSudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, force is ever enjoyed in genuine peace. ginally better result? Iran, Myanmar, China, Russia and the This truth is irrelevant to Prime Minister Let’s also not forget that every U.S. “ally” United States. Binyamin Netanyahu and his supporters in the region that Iran could conceivably I return now to the bizarre notion of in Israel and the United States. attack has enough U.S.-provided military Israel’s official outrage at Hezbollah’s failThe so-called peace process remains firepower to make such an assault a death ure to obey the United Nations, since an Israeli expansion tactic and its recent knell for Tehran. Iran’s regional behavior Israel is the world leader in ignoring U.N. pacts with certain Arab states are cynical is unquestionably determinantal to peace, resolutions. The State of Israel, with full public relations stunts creating illusory but does sanctioning the country while U.S. support, has blithely ignored nearly goodwill while transferring high-tech arming its adversaries (who are no saints) 70 U.N. resolutions, mostly pertaining to weapons and surveillance gear to brutal really move the region closer to peace? its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory autocrats determined to silence dissent. It Trump inflated and manufactured the and mistreatment of Palestinians both takes a real talent for Orwellian Newspeak threat posed by Iran. The U.S. and the within Israel proper and those under marto call that a peace deal. Middle East are worse off for it. Here’s to tial law in the Occupied Territories and Morgan Duchesney, Ottawa, Canada hoping the new administration will put reaGaza. In this issue, U.N. correspondent Ian sonable diplomacy back on the agenda. History shows that nothing taken by Williams provides a fascinating look at David Harding, West Palm Beach, FL how the U.S. and Israel have a As Israel stokes fears about Iran racing one-sided relationship with intertoward a nuclear weapon, few ever mennational law (see pp. 14-15). He tion that Israel is the only country in the concludes, “if the new Biden adMiddle East to possess such weapons. ministration is to be consistent in Given the sordid U.S. history with Iran, its support for the U.N. Charter we endorse a piece of advice recently ofand principles,” it must begin by fered by Jarrett Blanc, the former lead State rethinking Trump-era policies reDepartment coordinator for the Iran nuclear garding Jerusalem, the Golan deal. “If there is one thing we should take Heights and Western Sahara. out of the last four years and the complexity of our politics, it is some humility about preENOUGH WITH FAILED dicting, let alone believing, that we can inHAWKISH IRAN POLICY fluence the course of other countries’ poliA recent Wall Street Journal tics,” he said. (See p. 53.) ■ editorial, “Biden’s Iran Policy vs. Reality in Tehran,” stressed the need for the U.S. to maintain “leverage” over Iran so that Alalusi Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Washington can force Tehran Al-Mokha Coffee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 to negotiate a “better deal.” American Friends of Birzeit . . . . . . 10 Why is a “better deal” necesAmerican Near East Refugee Aid OTHER VOICES is an optional 16-page supple sary? According to most nuclear (ANERA) . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover ment available only to subscribers of the Washingarms experts, the 2015 nuclear 2021 Annual Conference . . . . . . . . 20 agreement effectively prevented ton Report on Middle East Affairs. For an additional Tehran from developing a nuKinder USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 $15 per year (see postcard insert for Washington clear weapon. The deal was an Land of Canaan Foundation . . . . . 73 Report subscription rates), subscribers will receive act of “not trusting and verifying,” Other Voices inside each issue of their Washington Middle East Children’s Alliance . . . 15 since U.S. intelligence agencies Report on Middle East Affairs. Mondoweiss. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 already believed Iran stopped Back issues of both publications are available. Palestinian Medical Relief Society . . 71 pursuing a nuclear weapon in To subscribe telephone 1 (888) 881-5861, fax 2003. Playgrounds for Palestine. . . . . . . . 42 (714) 226-9733, e-mail circulation@wrmea. org>, Instead of securing this arms Unitarian Universalists . . . . . . . . . . 13 control victory, the Trump adminor write to P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809United Palestinian Appeal istration deemed it necessary to 1056. (UPA) . . . . . . . . . Inside Front Cover wage economic war on Iran,

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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The Nakba Continues

The Plan to Make UNRWA and the Palestine Refugee Disappear

By Jonathan Cook

PHOTO BY SAID KHATIB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu views the U.N. agency as a threat, proclaiming that a diplomatic resolution of the refugee issue might see them being returned to lands that are now in Israel. Netanyahu has argued that “UNRWA must disappear,” accusing it of perpetuating “the narrative of the so-called ‘right of return’ with the aim of eliminating the State of Israel.” Having stymied any hope of negotiations, Israel has grown increasingly confident that it can secure widespread backing for dissolving the U.N. refugee agency. That would effectively strip more than five million Palestinian refugees languishing in dozens of camps across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza of the right—enshrined in U.N. Resolution 194—to return to their historic lands. Israel also appears to have spurned comproPalestinian refugee Mahmoud Abu Deeb, 82, who now lives in Gaza’s Khan Yunis refugee mises from the Palestinian leadership that would camp, holds a key to his home in Beersheba in southern Israel, on May 14, 2020, as he limit the refugees’ right to live only in a future marks the 72nd anniversary of his expulsion during the Nakba (Catastrophe). Palestinian state established in what are now the occupied territories (rather than in all the terA REPORT that the United Arab Emirates is secretly colluding with ritory from which Palestinians were expelled in 1948). In large part, Israel on a plan to eradicate the United Nations agency that cares it seems, that is because Israel has no intention of allowing such a for Palestinian refugees—in a move that could prevent those state to be founded. refugees ever returning home—should be taken seriously. Senior Israeli officials have repeatedly urged that UNRWA be According to the late December report in the French daily Le abolished and Palestinian refugees handed over to the global U.N. Monde, Emirati officials are considering “a plan of action aimed at refugee body, the UNHCR. That would quickly disappear Palestinian making UNRWA progressively disappear, without conditioning this refugees into the ever-swelling tide of displaced people spawned on any resolution of the [Palestinian] refugee problem.” The UAE’s by global conflicts, especially in the Middle East. foreign minister did not respond to Le Monde’s request for comment The likely upshot of eradicating UNRWA is that, rather than being on the matter. able to return home, refugees would ultimately be forced to natuUNRWA was created in late 1949 to support Palestinian refugees ralize in their host Arab states. with jobs, essential food, healthcare and education in special disFrom Israel’s point of view, the refugees comprise the last outplacement camps in the region. A year earlier, some 750,000 Palesstanding Palestinian issue of significance that has yet to be resolved tinians had been ethnically cleansed from their homes—and disin its favor. persed across the region—to make way for the self-declared Jewish Israel has used its illegal settlements to expand its borders with State of Israel. impunity, eating up the remnants of Palestinian territory and thereby pre-empting any negotiations with Palestinians over statehood. Western states appear to have no appetite to challenge this land theft. Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth and a winner of the The previous Trump administration’s “peace” plan, unveiled nearly Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. He is the author of a year ago, even indicated a willingness in Washington, DC to ultiBlood and Religion and Israel and the Clash of Civilisations (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More). mately allow Israel to annex these territories. And, with the relocation 8

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

MARCH/APRIL 2021

of the U.S. Embassy in 2018, Washington has effectively rubber-stamped all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Winning the UAE—and the rest of the Gulf—over to the destruction of UNRWA, stranding most refugees permanently in a handful of the weakest, most volatile Arab states, would be crucial to Israel realizing its Greater Israel plans. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence to support Le Monde’s report of UAE complicity. The assault on UNRWA’s future began in earnest in 2018 when the U.S. ended all of its $360 million annual funding to the U.N. body, depriving it of a third of its budget. That was the moment, it seems, when efforts were stepped up to recruit Arab states, especially those in the Gulf, to support the Trump administration’s so-called “deal of the century.” That “peace” plan was premised on Israel annexing swaths of the West Bank, making a viable Palestinian state impossible. In turn, it left refugees in no position to claim any kind of right of return. Notably, this same period marked a dramatic shift in funding for UNRWA from the UAE and other Gulf states—just as the U.N. agency needed financial assistance more than ever before. The Emirates’ generous $52 million aid for UNRWA in 2019 was slashed to a paltry $1 million in 2020. Saudi Arabia cut its own funding by some $20 million between 2018 and 2020, while Qatar reduced its contribution by more than $30 million. As a result, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, warned in November that his agency was “on the edge of a cliff,” unable to cover its expenses for the first time in its history. In addition, its health and education services have been stretched to the breaking point by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is perhaps telling that the UAE’s foreign affairs minister, Anwar Gargash, did not respond to Le Monde concerning the allegations of Emirati collusion with Israel in undermining UNRWA. But there are larger reasons to suspect that the UAE is plotting with Israel to extinguish UNRWA and the wider Palestinian national cause. It would be naive in the extreme to imagine that the UAE’s decision, along with MARCH/APRIL 2021

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Palestinians protest against food aid cuts by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, Jan. 20, 2021. Bahrain, to sign the so-called Abraham Accords back in September—normalizing relations with Israel—was not viewed in entirely transactional terms. As with most agreements between states, the guiding principle is “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.” Both sides want to gain for themselves as much as they give away. It is clear what the Emirates is gaining. Primarily, they will get access to arms and intelligence from the U.S. and Israel that were long denied them under a doctrine ensuring Israel’s regional “qualitative military edge”. For aiding a treasured ally of the U.S., Emirati officials can expect an even more sympathetic hearing in Washington. Future U.S. administrations will doubtless be even readier to turn a blind eye to the UAE’s human rights abuses, spinning its autocratic monarchies as beacons of Arab reform and progress. But if the advantages are clear, what price exactly has been extracted from the UAE in return for normalization? What is Israel set to gain? Most benefits mentioned so far have been relatively modest. Behind closed doors, Israel and the Gulf states have long been cooperating against Iran, so there is no significant strategic dividend for Israel on that score. The UAE will be helping to launder money, through the Abraham Fund, to pay for Israel’s architecture of oppression

against Palestinians under occupation, including an upgrade of checkpoints. That will further lift the financial burden of occupation from Israel’s shoulders. But still, it is a minor outlay, and has come—at least in the short term—at the cost to Israel of forgoing formal annexation of parts of the West Bank. The accords should also open up new markets in the Arab world. But again, that seems like a relatively trivial advance when there are much larger markets for Israel in Europe, India and China. More significantly, the agreement with the UAE could pave the way for Saudi Arabia to go public and normalize relations with Israel—the ultimate prize. But getting the Gulf states onside is only of significant benefit for Israel if their recruitment ultimately leads to the eradication of the Palestinian cause in Arab capitals. Otherwise, the accords amount to little more than a public relations exercise for Israel. This is where attention ought to be primarily focused. Israel’s immediate aim is to formally erode the Arab states’ commitment to the 2002 Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative, which promised normalization with Israel only in return for it agreeing to create a viable Palestinian state. Normalization on the terms agreed by the UAE—that is, without any Israeli commit-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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ment to Palestinian statehood—makes those signing up explicit collaborators in the occupation. In fact, it does to the Arab world what Israel earlier did to the Palestinian leadership via the Oslo Accords. Today, the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestinians’ permanent government-inwaiting led by Mahmoud Abbas, serves primarily as a security contractor for Israel. The Palestinian security forces’ “sacred” duty is keeping Israel safe, ensuring compliance from ordinary Palestinians and preventing them from resisting the occupation. Now, any Arab state signed up to the Abraham Accords will need to act similarly—as a regional contractor for Israel. They will use their leverage to keep the PA compliant and stop it mounting any diplomatic resistance that threatens the normalization pact, leaving Israel with a free hand. And as refugees are a regional issue, the Gulf states are well positioned to help resolve the matter in Israel’s favor, ending any right of return. This will not necessarily be plain sailing. At the moment, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria have no incentive to naturalize the large numbers of Palestinian refugees they host. Beirut and Damascus in particular have long feared further fuelling ethnic and sectarian tensions by absorbing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Reflecting these concerns, the Arab League issued a statement at the end of December warning that the crisis in UNRWA’s finances had taken “a dangerous turn,” and called on donors to make good on their promised contributions. According to recent figures, some 90 percent of Palestinian refugee households in Syria are living in absolute poverty, and a similar proportion in Lebanon are in desperate need of sustained humanitarian assistance. UNRWA has praised Jordan for its recent strenuous efforts to help raise money for the agency. But increasingly, Arab states appear divided on UNRWA’s future, with the Gulf states’ savage funding cuts suggesting that they may wish to forge a different path—one desired by Israel. In January, UNRWA staff in Gaza threatened protests as the agency warned it 10

would not be able to pay already-late November salaries in full, to its 28,000 Palestinian employees. Abdul Aziz Abu Sweireh, a Gaza union leader, accused unnamed countries of seeking to “liquidate” UNRWA. Unlike the three Arab states hosting many of the refugees, the Gulf enjoys vast oil wealth that, Israel may hope, can be used to strong-arm a new regional and international consensus on the refugees’ future. That could lead to UNRWA being gradually strangled into submission through a continued denial of funding, as the Gulf donors close ranks and the U.S. and Europe—reeling from the pandemic’s economic blows—grow ever charier of committing to the seemingly endless burden of funding the agency. If Israel gets its way, the renewal of UNRWA’s mandate in 2023 could become a turning point. Or the crisis could arrive sooner, with donors due to meet in the coming weeks to discuss the next round of contributions. In a new article in Middle East Quarterly, the house journal of the pro-Israel right in the U.S. allied to Netanyahu, two scholars argue that just such “a moment of truth” has arrived for UNRWA. They urge the agency’s donors to scrutinize, through audits, how their money is being used to “empower reform” of the refugee system, noting that Arab states “seem less inclined than ever to make their national interests captive to the whims of the Palestinian leadership.” They conclude: “UNRWA must take real measures toward the ultimate resettlement of refugees in the host states...so as to transform them from passive welfare recipients into productive and enterprising citizens of their respective societies.” Similarly, writing in January in the Israel Hayom daily, widely seen as Netanyahu’s mouthpiece, David Weinberg of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, urged Gulf leaders to use their influence to push the Palestinian leadership toward “moderation and maturity.” In this regard, he highlighted “replacing UNRWA with other humanitarian funding routes.” Whether this can be made to work will depend in large part on whether Israel can pressure the new Biden administration to continue on the path forged by President

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Donald Trump. In late November, Ron Prosor, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. and veteran diplomat, called on Joe Biden to continue the hostile policy toward UNRWA initiated by Trump. As Le Monde’s report suggested, the backing of Gulf states will be critical to whether Israel succeeds in abolishing UNRWA and the rights of Palestinian refugees. Netanyahu has left no doubt about his approach to international relations. In a 2018 tweet, he observed of his guiding philosophy: “The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.” The only strength Palestinian refugees have is the U.N. agency that has preserved their rights for more than seven decades. Sweep it away, and the path will be clear to erasing the refugees from history. ■ (Advertisement)

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From the Diaspora

An Israeli woman holds a sign that reads “Don’t Make Apartheid Great Again” as she protests her government’s plan to annex parts of the West Bank, on June 23, 2020 in Tel Aviv. Israeli rights group B’Tselem released a report on Jan. 12, 2021, highlighting systematic discrimination and rampant human rights violations, and calling Israel a wholly apartheid, undemocratic regime. “A REGIME OF JEWISH SUPREMACY from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid,” was the title of a Jan. 12, 2021 report by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. No matter how one is to interpret B’Tselem’s findings, the report is earth-shattering. The official Israeli response merely confirmed what B’Tselem has stated in no uncertain terms. Those of us who repeatedly claimed that Israel is not democratic, governed by an apartheid regime, and systematically discriminates

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of palestine chronicle. His latest book is these chains Will Be Broken: palestinian stories of struggle and defiance in israeli prisons (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More). 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.ramzybaroud.net>. 12

against its ethnic and racial minorities, in favor of the country’s Jewish majority, purportedly have nothing to learn from B’Tselem’s declaration. Thus, it may seem that the report, which highlighted racial discrimination in four major areas—land, citizenship, freedom of movement and political participation—merely restated the obvious. In actuality, it went much further. B’Tselem is a credible Israeli human rights organization. However, like other Israeli rights groups, it rarely went far enough in challenging the Israeli state’s basic definition of itself as a democratic state. Yes, on numerous occasions it rightly accused the Israeli government and military of undemocratic practices, rampant human rights violations and so on. But to demolish the very raison d’etre, the basic premise that gives Israel its legitimacy in the eyes of its Jewish citizens, and many more around the world, is a whole different story. “B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military

Washington RepoRt on Middle east affaiRs

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PHOTO BY AMIR LEVY/GETTY IMAGES

B’Tselem’s Historic Declaration: Israel’s Open War on Its Own Civil Society By Ramzy Baroud

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occupation (beyond it),” the Israeli rights group concluded, based on the fact that the “bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.” Let’s be clear on what this actually means. Israel’s leading human rights organization was not arguing that Israel was turning into an apartheid state or that it was acting contrary to the spirit of democracy or that Israel is an undemocratic apartheid regime only within the geographic confines of the occupied Palestinian territories. None of this. According to B’Tselem, which has for decades diligently documented numerous facets of Israeli government practices in the realm of politics, military, land-ownership, water distribution, health, education, and much more, Israel is, now, wholly an apartheid, undemocratic regime. B’Tselem’s assessment is most welcomed, not as a belated admission of a self-evident reality but as an important step that could allow both Israelis and Palestinians to establish a common narrative on their relationship, political position and collective action in order to dismantle this Israeli apartheid. Relatively, Israeli groups that criticize their own government have historically been allowed much larger margins than Palestinian groups that have done the same thing. However, this is no longer the case. Palestinian freedom of speech has always been so limited and the mere criticism of the Israeli occupation has led to extreme measures, including beatings, arrests and even assassinations. In 2002, a government-funded organization, NGO Monitor, was established precisely to monitor and control Palestinian human rights organizations in the occupied territories, including Addameer, al-Mezan Center, alHaq, PCHR among others. The Israeli army raid on the Ramallah-based offices of the Palestinian human rights group Addameer, in September 2019, was one of many such violent examples. However, Israeli government actions of recent years are pointing to an unmistakable paradigm shift; Israeli civil society orMARCH/APRIL 2021

ganizations are increasingly perceived to be the enemy, targeted in myriad ways, including defamation, financial restrictions and severing of access to the Israeli public. The latter point was put on full display on Jan. 17, when Israeli Education Minister, Yoav Galant, tweeted that he had instructed his ministry to “prevent the entry of organizations calling Israel ‘an apartheid state’ or demeaning Israeli soldiers, from lecturing at schools.” Oddly, Galant demonstrated B’Tselem’s point. Its report challenged Israel’s very claim to democracy and freedom of expression, by curtailing Israeli human rights workers, intellectuals and educators’ own right to express dissent and to challenge the government’s political line. Simply stated, Galant’s decision is a functional definition of totalitarianism at work. B’Tselem did not back down. To the contrary, the group expressed its determination “to keep with its mission of documenting reality,” and making its “findings publicly known to the Israeli public, and worldwide.” It went even further as B’Tselem director Hagai El-Ad met with hundreds of Israeli students on Jan. 18 to discuss the inconsistency between military occupation and the respect for human rights. Following the meeting, El-Ad tweeted “The @btselem lecture did take place this morning. The Israeli government will have to contend with us until the apartheid regime ends.” The B’Tselem-Galant episode is not an isolated spat, but one of many such examples, which demonstrate that the Israeli government is turning into a police state against not only Palestinian Arabs, but its own Jewish citizens. Indeed, the decision by the Israeli Ministry of Education is rooted in a previous law that dates back to July 2018, which was dubbed the “Breaking the Silence law.” Breaking the Silence is an Israeli civil society organization of army veterans who became vocal in their criticism of the Israeli occupation, and who have taken it upon themselves to educate the Israeli public on the immorality and illegality of Israel’s military practices in occupied Palestine. To silence the soldiers, former Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett ordered schools to

bar these conscientious objectors from gaining access and directly speaking to students. The current government’s decision, taken by Galant, has merely widened the definition, thus expanding the restrictions imposed on Israelis who refuse to toe the government’s line. For years, a persisting argument within the Palestine-Israel discourse contended that, while Israel is not a perfect democracy, it is, nonetheless, a “democracy for Jews.” Though true democracies must be founded on equality and inclusiveness, the latter maxim gave some credibility to the argument that Israel can still strike the balance between being nominally democratic while remaining exclusively Jewish. That shaky argument is now falling apart. Even in the eyes of many Israeli Jews, the Israeli government no longer possesses any democratic ideals. Indeed, as B’Tselem has succinctly worded it, Israel is a regime of Jewish supremacy “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” ■

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United Nations Report

Biden Puts (Most of) the Wheels back on the U.N. By Ian Williams Wagon

PHOTO BY MICHAEL REYNOLDS/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

of the region and the U.S., but without being a party pooper, we clearly need to restrain the euphoria at Joe Biden’s inauguration. Four years of mutual petting and canoodling between the most atavistic wing of the GOP and Likud might have stretched the ties between Israel and the Democrats, but they have not broken them. Until Trump, both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama held the world records for pandering to Israeli expansionism. (Although just to maintain a sense of perspective, over in Britain, Israeli lobbyists, and even avowed security agents, now seem to have taken a relentless chokehold on both major parties.) While one cannot say that this timely decease will totally reverse U.S. policy toward the Palestinians, at least the absence of Adelson’s checkbook and the Kushner influence is likely to stop U.S. Middle East policy from getting worse. And that is the objectively balanced approach to the handover. To finish the quotes, as was said of the United Nations, this inauguration stops us from going to hell but does not necessarily get us to heaven. Nobody who has followed the sycophancy of leading Democrats like Biden can expect the new administration to do the completely right thing in the Middle East, but we can reasonably foreLinda Thomas-Greenfield speaks before the Senate Foreign Relations see Washington expecting Israeli governments to honor their own Committee hearing on her nomination to be the United States Ambas- commitments occasionally. U.S. politicians will still pander to sador to the United Nations, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Jan. Israel, but possibly the only public service rendered by the Adel27, 2021. son/Kushner/ Netanyahu axis is the nausea it generated among most American Jews and even more Democrats. Following in their muddy footsteps, AIPAC’s embrace of the most primitive Zionist LIKE MOST OF THE REST OF THE WORLD, I was deeply renationalism and Trumpism has made opposition to the lobby relieved when the 45th President boarded Air Force One for the last spectable for previously intimidated Democrats. time to Florida, especially since his pusillanimous last-minute putsch One definite change is going to be U.S. policy towards the U.N., attempt on the Capitol ensured that his destination was closer to St. which has always suffered collateral damage from Israeli refusal to Helena than Elba. He is not coming back. honor international law. Trump was no ideologue and so did not You will have noticed that inaugurations always elicit quotations, harbor his allies’ deep-seated theological obsession against the so I will join in. The January 6 coup attempt recalled what one of United Nations. No doubt he had an underlying suspicion that his Napoleon’s generals said of a particularly vicious murder, “It was real estate holdings in Manhattan would suffer if the U.N.’s diplomats worse than a crime! It was a blunder.” Even so, as the Duke of and staff were pulled out, thus as a small mercy he retained enough Wellington said of Waterloo, Trump’s exit “was a damned near-run contact with reality to eschew ideas of black helicopters ferrying in thing.” And still in quotation mode, the death of Sheldon Adelson, blue berets to take over the U.S. Trump’s mentor and moneyman, also recalled Mark Twain’s obserMany of the tirades from more liberal pro-Israeli factions have a vation that, while he “wished no man dead,” he “often read obituaries perverse form of balance. They sincerely want the U.N. to do its work with great pleasure.” (In my case even more so since I learnt the in constructing a rule-based world order, but do not want those rules news from none other than John Bolton, during an interview!) to apply to Israel (or for that matter to the U.S.). But constant pressure The departure of Adelson, and indeed Jared Kushner, from the works. As recent Israeli envoys to the U.N. have successfully proved, White House advisers’ circle should be a good thing for the politics each footling complaint of bias and anti-Semitism might initially evoke U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of UNtold: the Real eye rolling and shrugs from everyone, but it has a dampening effect Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from on discourse; U.N. officials and diplomats must be prepared for a Middle East Books and More). 14

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flood of complaints if they point out Israel’s manifest breaches of international law. So even countries that have enough tattered shreds of integrity to query Israeli violations, feel the need to “balance” their complaints with commentary about too many one-sided resolutions against the perpetrator or with admonitions about much less frequent “terrorism” on the part of Palestinian factions. For many years, I have suggested here that there are too many anti-Israeli resolutions and suggested they be consolidated, not diluted. Looking at the success of Israel’s attritional kvetching, I might reconsider and suggest that every Israeli barbarity should appear on the agenda of the various U.N. bodies. In the meantime, the U.S. is letting the adults into its U.N. room for the first time for some years. The new U.S. Permanent Representative, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, is a career diplomat, which after years of lobby pressure and conditioning is no guarantee of probity. But at least her appointment ensures a better and less offensive quality of explanation for inexcusable policies, particularly after the recent string of donor-driven, politically ambitious Trump appointees. Richard Mills, presently chargé d’affaires during the interregnum, is also a professional and so had to obey orders in the first speech of the Biden administration at the Security Council’s regular meeting on the Middle East. He promised that the U.S. “will maintain its steadfast support for Israel. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. will continue its long-standing policy of opposing one-sided resolutions and other actions in international bodies that unfairly single out Israel.” If one may editorialize, one hopes the new administration does not pursue a policy of conducting one-sided impeachments that unfairly single out former presidents who fomented a putsch on Capitol Hill, or one-sided prosecutions of mass school shooters without looking for potential juvenile delinquents among their victims! However, the good news is that Mills declared that the U.S. is against Israeli policies such as “annexation of territory, settlement activity [and] demolitions.” Noting that relations with the Palestinians have “atrophied over the last four years,” he said that the United States will support a mutually agreed two-state solution, one in which Israel lives MARCH/APRIL 2021

in peace and security alongside a viable Palestinian state. It is pathetic that this is an actual improvement over recent U.S. policy since it is, in fact, a return to the pious fiction that there can be equal negotiations and consent between two parties, when one is a highly subsidized military superpower occupying the other with the aid of the U.S. The United States has recently been using its diplomatic, military, and financial power to peel away any potential allies for the Palestinians under the guise of normalization of relations. The idea of negotiating without reference to international law is like putting a heavyweight boxer in the ring with a paraplegic telling them that the Marquis of Queensberry rules do not apply. However, let us look on the bright side. The Biden administration seems to be in the process of rejoining or resuming support for the various agencies, which TrumpKushnerite vindictiveness had cut off. The WHO, UNESCO, and others, particularly UNRWA, seem set to resume funding. But the core to the U.S. resuming its place as one of the founders of the post-War international legal order, is the expedient positions of the Golan Heights, the settlements and East Jerusalem, which hinge on the U.N. premise of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force. This principle has been overlooked and put on the back burner sometimes over the decades, but until Trump and the Golan Heights and to some extent Jerusalem, followed by West-

ern Sahara, it had never been explicitly disavowed. Jerusalem is more complex, since the international community’s reticence to build embassies there is due, not so much to its “occupied” status, as to the U.N. partition resolutions that set it aside as a U.N. administered corpus separatum. But the settlements, the Golan, and Western Sahara are unequivocally occupied territories, designated as such by U.N. bodies and international courts. The Western Sahara is particularly complex in its politics, but the principles are clearer, even if it shows the corrosive effects of the Israeli exception. Morocco occupies the Sahara, builds a separation wall, ignores U.N. demands for self-determination and a referendum, and then effectively traded its formerly covert but now overt relations with Israel to secure Trump recognition of its claims. Luckily, a Trump tweet is not a binding instrument in international law, and even if it were in a more formal mode, it takes more than a unilateral declaration by a U.S. president to rescind the U.N. Charter and international law. This administration owes absolutely nothing to Adelson, Netanyahu or Kushner. But if the new Biden administration is to be consistent in its support for the U.N. Charter and principles, it has to restate the former U.S. position on the status of those occupied territories. Watch those spaces. ■

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History’s Shadows

Israel and America: Allied in Racism

By Walter L. Hixson

PHOTO BY SAUL LOEB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

recent events have shown, the United States is not to be outdone when it comes to de facto racial discrimination. In some ways, you might even say on the basis of the nationstate law, which officially stamped Israel as a Jewish state rather than a democracy, as well as Netanyahu’s many blatant appeals, that Israel at least is more open about its racism than is the United States. It is going to take journalists followed by historians a long time to sort through the record to gain full command of the A supporter of then-U.S. President Donald Trump holds a Confederate flag outside the Senate chamber after sordid history that has breaching the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. unfolded in the United States in the very recent past. It is safe to say, however, that racism has played a powerful LET’S JUST BE HONEST about it: one reason the United States role in the rise of the reactionary right-wing in the country. Donald and Israel get along so well is because they are both racist counTrump, of course, claimed to be the least racist person in the world, tries. just as every impeachable utterance he made was actually “perfect,” The machinations of AIPAC and the broader Israel lobby play a but it is clear that racism is deeply implicated in the Trump cult of permassive role in the daily operation of U.S.-Israeli relations, no doubt sonality—which 74,223,744 Americans willingly embraced in the about that, but underlying the special relationship is a bedrock of 2020 election, the most votes for any presidential candidate in Amershared racism—the deeply rooted marginalization and often violent ican history not named Joe Biden. repression directed at the darker-skinned “other” in each society. Trump, it will be recalled, built his national following in part by Israel is more blatant about its racism, to be sure, and unlike the challenging the legitimacy of the first Black president in American United States, the Zionist state embraced de jure ethnic supremacy history, Barack Obama, whom he falsely claimed was not even through passage in 2018 of the Jewish nation-state law. Yet as an American citizen. Much of what transpired under Trump was History’s Shadows, a regular column by contributing editor Walter a racist reaction to the United States having gone so far as to L. Hixson, seeks to place various aspects of Middle East politics and elect and reelect an African American president. Masses of Amerdiplomacy in historical perspective. Hixson is the author of archiican white supremacists simply could not abide or take in stride tects of Repression: how israel and its lobby put Racism, Violence and injustice at the Center of Us Middle east policy and the empowerment of an African American leader. The Trump israel’s armor: the israel lobby and the first generation of the presidency was thus a reactionary response to the racial progress palestine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), that Obama personified. Tellingly, Trump literally tried to undo viralong with several other books and journal articles. He has been a tually everything that the Black man, who broke into the White professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished House, had done. professor. 16

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Trump got his start with the “birther” Big Lie, then vilified Muslims, separated Hispanic families at the border, all of it culminating with the Big Lie about the election followed by the wrenching events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. There, as many people have pointed out because it was so blatantly obvious, the massive American security state allowed a mob of overwhelmingly white reactionary zealots to storm the Capitol armed with zip ties, Confederate flags, and nooses. Just a few months earlier, the overwhelmingly peaceful Black Lives Matter protests prompted arrests and U.S.-military backed repression in Washington, DC. On June 1, 2020, Trump—like the slave masters of old—had wielded the whip with one hand and held the Bible in the other, as the anti-racist activists were put back in their place. Israel regularly engages in much worse racial repression, gunning down unarmed Gaza and West Bank protesters; assassinating more people than any country in the world; and in general, acting as a rogue state rather than the “sole democracy” of the Middle East that its propaganda so often touts. The United States chooses to enable and massively aid this reactionary little country of nine million people and, moreover, even to solicit police training from it. Israeli specialists schooled many American police forces in the methods so conspicuously on display against George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and scores of other African Americans—and so conspicuously not on display against the Capitol-sieging, overwhelmingly white mob.

LIBERAL ENABLERS OF ISRAELI RACISM

Reactionary racists are one thing—most are poorly educated, which makes them easy prey for a demagogue like Trump—but what about American liberal support for Israeli racism? Instead of condemnation, congressional liberals line up with conservatives in support of the annual billions of dollars in allocations that enable Israel to be an even more violent, reactionary and racist society. What sense does it make to condemn American racism on the Senate floor, as MARCH/APRIL 2021

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Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian during a protest against the prevention of Palestinian farmers from ploughing their lands seized by Jewish settlers, in the village of Aqraba, east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on Jan. 13, 2021.

passionately and rightfully as Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), to cite a prominent example, has often done, yet in that same forum repeatedly proclaim virtually unconditional support for the apartheid-state of Israel? The answer is it makes no sense at all. Here, of course, is where AIPAC and the broader Israel lobby do their work to keep liberals like President Joe Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senator Booker and scores of other liberal Zionists firmly in tow. So, as we take up the badly needed work of combating racism at home—of putting back under their rocks the reptilian forces that Trump has lured into the open with his demagoguery—it is also crucial to call out the liberals, as well as the conservatives and the far right, for their unquestioning support for Israeli apartheid. Liberals were rightfully outraged that so many Republicans enabled Trump as he methodically tore down our democracy. The same craven Republicans then refused on the evening immediately after the siege of the Capitol to acknowledge Biden’s electoral victory. Such anti-democratic hypocrisy leaves a permanent stain on the record of those Republican enablers and it deserves no-uncertain condemnation. But condemning racism while at the same time kowtow-

ing to the Israel lobby by arming and enabling a racist apartheid state is the liberal hypocrisy shared by many Democrats in Congress as well as Biden. Liberals and reformers should act on the knowledge that racial justice is a universal and not merely a national human right. Efforts to make Black Lives Matter will be more effective if they acknowledge that brown lives in Palestine and throughout the world matter just as much. ■

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Special Report

What the 70 New Members of Congress Reveal About Pro-Israel Politics in the United States

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) leads a protest against police brutality, on June 12, 2020 in University City, MO. A long-time activist, Rep. Bush is the only newly-elected member of Congress to endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. THE POLITICS OF ISRAEL on Capitol Hill are simultaneously contentious and unifying. Politicians from both parties—many of whom have received campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups— rarely challenge the U.S.-Israel “special relationship.” When they do, they are summarily attacked and often hit with spurious charges of anti-Semitism. Recent years have seen notable changes in how Israel is discussed in Washington, DC. A new generation of progressive legislators, such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (DMN), have fearlessly challenged the assumptions underpinning long-standing U.S. support for Israel. Polls show their approach has a large base of support with their constituents. The emergence of this vocal minority within the Democratic Party has in turn motivated Republicans to deepen their pro-Israel rhetoric. Eager to draw a dichotomy between their party and the Democratic Party, Republicans now regularly portray Democrats as Israel-hating and anti-Semitic. This, even though most Democrats, particularly those in leadership positions, regularly appear with Republicans at

Dale Sprusansky is managing editor of the Washington Report. 18

pro-Israel lobby events, such as the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference. Most Democrats also join Republicans in condemning the non-violent Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Recently much attention has been placed on the so-called “liberal Zionist” movement led by J Street, which seeks to maintain the critical underpinnings of the U.S.-Israel relationship while challenging some of the more concerning elements of Israeli policy, such as settlement expansion and the demolition of Palestinian homes. While this “liberal Zionist” movement can be refreshing to those weary of AIPAC’s unwavering hardline positions, many accuse “liberal Zionism” of being a wolf in sheep’s clothing. With all this in mind, this report seeks to better understand how the dynamics of pro-Israel politics in the U.S. are reflected in the positions taken by new members of Congress. Constituents can use this report as they meet with members of the 117th Congress, particularly the freshman class, to discuss their concerns. Traditional Pro-Israel Talking Points are Alive and Well. For decades, pro-Israel politicians have uttered the same basic talking points propagated by the lobby: Israel and the U.S. share the same

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MARCH/APRIL 2021

PHOTO BY MICHAEL B. THOMAS/GETTY IMAGES

By Dale Sprusansky

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values, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel has the right to defend itself from threats, etc. Unsurprisingly, the congressional freshman class has by and large regurgitated these talking points in unison, with very few dissenters. Below are a few examples of the talking points recycled by Congress’ newest members. “Israel is the one standing country that comports with our values as Americans,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS). “I support Israel’s right to self-defense, and believe that Israelis, like citizens of all countries, have the right to live in safety and peace, free from terrorist threats and attacks,” Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-GA) said in a position paper. “It is critically important for the state of Israel to always maintain a qualitative military edge,” Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) told Jewish Insider. The freshman class also has its fair share of Christian Zionists, who claim that their faith demands unconditional support for Israel. Echoing this line of thinking, Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) told the JNS, “The Bible is very clear—those who bless Israel will be blessed. That’s one of the things that’s fundamental to my faith.” BDS is Portrayed as the Epicenter of Anti-Semitism. While pro-Israel, anti-BDS organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, have produced studies showing that anti-Semitism is much more pervasive among the political right than the left, most new members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, discussed anti-Semitism almost exclusively through the lens of the non-violent BDS movement. Time and again, BDS was depicted as a progressive anti-Semitic plot to undermine Israel. “Anti-Semitism has become an all-toocommon occurrence in politics among the Democrat base and the far left who see Israel as nothing more than an extension of phantom corruption and colonialism,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) said in 2019, when he was a member of the House of Representatives. “It is that type of loose, cheap, anti-Semitic rhetoric that led to the rise of MARCH/APRIL 2021

the Third Reich,” he added. Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) told the JNS that BDS stands for “bigotry and hatred,” a pithy, provocative, and yet common sentiment expressed by many of her peers. Perhaps the most predominant supporter of Israel among freshman Democrats, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), described BDS as “beyond the pale” in an interview with Israel’s i24NEWS television network. BDS, he maintained, inappropriately singles-out Israel. “That’s not criticism, that’s extremism, that’s hate, and we as a Democratic Party should be against hatred and extremism,” he said. He also told Jewish Insider, “There is a deep rot of anti-Semitism at the core of BDS…I am concerned about the normalization of BDS within the progressive movement, and I worry deeply that BDS has the potential to poison progressivism.” Many of the new members support legislation to criminalize BDS, with a few having worked to pass such laws during their time in state government. Even new members who pledged not to target BDS legally—on the basis that it is protected First Amendment speech—nonetheless accused BDS of anti-Semitism or otherwise expressed their opposition to the movement. Members taking this position include Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA). “I strongly oppose the BDS movement and its anti-Semitic underpinnings, including its supporters’ refusal to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist,” he wrote in a widely distributed oped. His counterpart, Sen. Jon Ossoff (DGA) said in his position paper, “I oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate and delegitimize Israel. I want Israel’s economy to thrive and I want U.S.-Israel trade to grow.” Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL), one of the few new members of Congress to openly criticize Israel, acknowledged the legitimacy of the BDS movement, but still declined to endorse the cause. “I support the right of the Palestinian people and their supporters to use non-violent means to oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza,” she said in her policy

paper. “However, I believe the best way for the conflict to be resolved is to ultimately come to the discussion table and begin talks.” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) took a similar position, saying that while, as a Black American, he can “connect to what it feels like for Palestinians to feel the presence of the [Israeli] military in their daily lives in the West Bank,” he ultimately does not support BDS. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) was the only new member of Congress to express her support for BDS. Attacked on the topic by her primary opponent, incumbent Rep. William Lacy Clay, Bush doubled-down on her support for the movement. “In these times, it is important to be specific with our language and direct in the actions we take,” she said on her campaign’s website. “In our current geopolitical economy, money talks far louder than speech alone. This is why non-violent actions like the BDS movement are so important—and why the effort to mischaracterize and demonize the BDS movement by its opponents is so urgent.” (Advertisement)

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This is a Young, Pro-Israel Class. Of the 70 new members of Congress, 11 are in their 30s, and one, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), is 25 years old. While polls show that younger Americans (including young Jews, conservatives and evangelical Christians) tend to be more critical of Israel than their elders, this congressional freshman class does not match this trend. Of the 12 new members in their 20s or 30s, this analysis determined eight to be “diehard Zionists,” two to be “liberal Zionists,” and two to have strong, but not outspoken, pro-Israel views.

Given that U.S. politicians tend to be among the last groups in society to embrace new ways of thinking (perhaps due to the prevalence of entrenched and powerful special interest groups), it should not be surprising that the youngest members of this freshman class are not representative of their demographic peers when it comes to Israel. Building on Pro-Israel Legacies. Three new members of Congress have notable ties to, or favorable associations with, former members of Congress who were outspoken supporters of Israel.

Web Conference:

End Unconditional Support for Israel? Session 1 - Saturday, April 17, 2021 Session 2 - Saturday, April 24, 2021

While Congress wrangled over modest emergency pandemic relief for Americans, the nation of Israel receives $3.8 billion annually—and even more covert aid—with barely a whisper of debate. Any member of Congress who might question the annual U.S. subsidy for Israeli militarization knows that he or she will incur the wrath of AIPAC and other Israel lobby groups. The lobby patrols the Congress to ensure that Israel, a small country of some nine million people, remains by far the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. U.S. aid enables Israeli apartheid, new settlements in illegally occupied territories, and ongoing violent repression of Palestinians. Meanwhile, American citizens who question illegal Israeli policies and engage in nonviolent protest movements such as BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) are accused of being anti-Semites, and their free speech rights threatened. This web-based conference considers whether the United States should cut off aid to Israel or make any such assistance conditional on negotiation of a genuine peace settlement, respect for Palestinian human rights, and adherence to international law. Wrapping around the annual meeting of the Israel lobby group J Street, the webinar will address U.S. financial support of Israel, the strengths and weaknesses of “liberal” lobby groups like J Street, prospects for a one- or two-state solution, and the progress of free speech organizations, the BDS movement and other forms of resistance, including solidarity between Palestinian activism and the Black Lives Matter movement.

WASHINGTON REPORT On Middle East Affairs

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) was a longtime staffer to former House Foreign Affairs Committee Charmain Rep. Ed Royce (RCA). Kim did not address the topic of Israel on the campaign trail, but she was endorsed by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC). In an interview with the JNS, Rep. Kai Kahele (D-HI) sought to link himself with late Hawaiian Sen. Daniel Inouye (D), who vociferously supported Israel. “My position is the same…and that’s an unconditional commitment to Israel,” he said. In remarks to Jewish Insider, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) was described by Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks as a “charismatic, patriotic, pro-Israel congresswoman in the tradition of” former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R), the diehard supporter of Israel who previously occupied Salazar’s congressional seat. Dissidents are Few and Far Between Among Congressional Freshman. There are only three members of this freshman class who have in any significant way challenged the longstanding pro-Israel status quo on Capitol Hill. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who helped lead the response to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in 2014, stood firm when she was attacked during her primary campaign for associating with Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour. “We have to not only show up for what our own issues are, but we have to show up for people who are oppressed differently than us,” she told Jewish Currents when asked about her refusal to abandon her support for BDS in response to political attacks. (While Bush’s support for BDS is well documented, it’s important to note that she did not issue any policy positions about Israel/Palestine during her campaign.) Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL) said in her policy paper that she supports conditioning aid to Israel. “The United States should not provide funding to the Israeli government which supports

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the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Israeli blockade of Gaza,” she wrote. “Furthermore, I support H.R. 4391 [introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN)], which prohibits U.S. assistance to Israel from being used to support the military detention, interrogation, or ill treatment of Palestinian children in violation of international humanitarian law.” She also affirmed the Palestinian right of return and expressed her opposition to illegal Israeli settlements. She also made a stir shortly after being sworn into office by criticizing Israel for failing to provide COVID-19 vaccinations to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “The Netanyahu administration has a moral and humanitarian obligation to ensure that both Israelis & Palestinians have access to vaccines,” she said in a tweet. Newman did state that she supports “the right of Israel, as a democratic Jewish state, to exist in peace and security within its borders before June 4, 1967.” However, she made it clear that she also expects Israel to treat all of its citizens equally. “Within the State of Israel, the civil, political, and economic rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel must be protected from all forms of discrimination and be allowed to vote,” she said. Of the three individuals credited with deviating from the status quo, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has done so with a fair amount of equivocation. His campaign website said he “support[s] a two-state solution and believe[s] in democracy and selfdetermination for the Israeli and Palestinian people.” He added, “I believe firmly in the right of Israelis to live in safety and peace, free from the fear of violence and terrorism, and support continued U.S. aid to help Israel confront these security challenges.” Nonetheless, he stands out for not being afraid to address Palestinian rights. “We must also have honest conversations about our government’s role in enabling the continued occupation of the Palestinian people,” he said. “Our taxpayer dollars should not be going toward subsidizing settlement expansion, home demolitions, the detention of Palestinian children, or in any MARCH/APRIL 2021

way supporting the threatened Israeli ‘annexation’ of the West Bank.” In an op-ed in The Riverdale Press, he said he can also “understand the crushing poverty and deprivation in the Gaza Strip.” Bowman expressed similar sentiments in an interview with City & State New York. “As a humanitarian leader, we need to be more involved to say more about what’s happening in Kashmir, what’s happening in China with the Uyghur Muslims and what’s happening in Palestine with the Palestinians,” he wrote. “One stark contrast between myself and Congressman [Eliot] Engel is I’ve been critical of occupation, annexation and detaining Palestinian children—where Congressman Engel has not.” Engel served as the unwaveringly proIsrael chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee before Bowman defeated him in the Democratic primary. In the same interview, however, he did again make a point not to come across as too critical of Israel. “It doesn’t mean that, you know, I’m not pro-Israel. I am in full support of Israel,” he said. “I’m also in full support of the human rights of the Palestinian people.” While Newman and Bowman are far from unequivocal supporters of Palestinian rights, and Bush has not discussed her views in detail, in this congressional class, they stand out for being willing to express— without any retractions and in the midst of Israel lobby pushback—views outside of the mainstream. Shifting Positions After Lobby Attacks. By and large, this congressional freshman class didn’t do much flip-flopping on Israel. However, two members highlight how pressure from the pro-Israel lobby can dramatically alter a candidate’s tone. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is returning to Congress for a second stint, having previously served from 2001-2019. Issa began his political career willing to criticize Israeli policies. In fact, in 2001 he warned that Israel was at risk of becoming “an apartheid state” if it didn’t reach peace with Palestinians. However, as his career went on, he became increasingly vocal in his support for Israel.

These days, Issa has seemingly evolved into a full-fledged supporter of Israel. During his 2020 campaign, he accused his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, who is of Palestinian descent, of helping to produce “anti-Israel propaganda” and charged that he does not want “Israel to exist as a Jewish state.” Interestingly, during the March 2020 primary race, it was Issa who was accused by American Unity PAC of having poor proIsrael credentials. “Darrell Issa claims he’s a conservative, but every time he talks about Israel he sounds more like Ilhan Omar than President Trump,” the group said in an attack ad. The ad cited Issa’s 2003 meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his apartheid warning. While Issa appears to have “learned his lesson” and now goes above and beyond to support Israel, political neophyte Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) quickly pivoted after learning the political risk of expressing solidarity with Palestinians. Warnock received heavy criticism in his high-profile Senate race for a 2018 sermon in which he criticized Israel for firing at unarmed Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers “shoot down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey,” he told his congregation. “It’s no more anti-Semitic for me to say that than it is anti-White for me to say that Black lives matter. Palestinian lives matter.” After visiting Israel and Palestine with other ministers in 2019, Warnock also co-signed a letter comparing the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the occupation of Namibia by apartheid South Africa. Accused of being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic for making these comments, Warnock quickly began to walk them back. In an oped titled “I Stand with Israel,” he said, “I wholeheartedly and unabashedly echo Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s declaration that ‘Israel’s right to exist as a state in security is incontestable.’” He continued, “Claims that I believe Israel is an apartheid state are patently false—I do not believe that….Without reservation, you can count on me to stand with the Jewish community and Israel in the U.S. Senate.”

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It is important to note that Warnock retained a shred of his solidarity with the Palestinian cause. “I am a true friend to Israel, which is why I know how important it is to express my strong reservations and concerns over settlement expansion and creeping annexation that ultimately impede our hopes for peace,” he wrote in the op-ed. There are (Small) Differences Between “Liberal Zionists” and “Traditional Zionists.” So-called “liberal Zionists,” individuals who support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship but are more willing than the likes of AIPAC to speak about Palestinian rights and criticize specific Israeli policies, are hoping to play a major role in shaping President Joe Biden’s Israel policy. Of the 70 new members of Congress, 12 were endorsed by J Street, the country’s leading “liberal Zionist” advocacy group. As a whole, this group of 12 are more willing to challenge Israeli policies than their peers, especially when it comes to illegal settlements and efforts to annex the West Bank. However, these 12 individuals are hardly a monolith, with one, Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL), being among Israel’s harshest critics in this freshman class, and another, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), being one of the preeminent Zionists in the entire 70person freshman class. Of the 12 J Street endorsees, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Rep. Sara Jacobs (DCA) likely best fit the “liberal Zionist” mold. Ossoff has praised the deep security, trade and cultural ties between the U.S. and Israel and supports a two-state solution—all traditional, mainstream pro-Israel talking points. However, he has also said that he opposes “acts by the government of Israel or Israeli settler groups which involve the expropriation or annexation of land, demolition of homes or civilian infrastructure, arbitrary detention or torture, unlawful settlement construction, or the displacement of civilians.” Rep. Jacobs is one of the few new members of Congress who believes U.S. aid to Israel should be reconsidered if Israel were to annex large parts of the Palestinian West Bank. “That should be considered a red line that has us rethink some of the ways we engage,” she told Jewish Insider. 22

On the other side of the spectrum, fellow J Street endorsee Rep. Auchincloss told the JNS that he views conditioning aid to Israel as a “red line.” This, despite acknowledging on his campaign website that “the current Israeli government has been at best ambivalent about a two-state solution” and expressing concern that “settlement expansion activities in the West Bank obstruct the path towards a two-state solution.” Auchincloss, however, is not at all reluctant to condition aid to the population occupied by Israel. He supports restoring aid to Palestinians, “insofar as these funds encourage cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security officials in the West Bank and meet critical humanitarian needs, and are not directed towards violence.” Another stratum of J Street endorsees

7 of the 12 winning

candidates endorsed by J Street were also endorsed by Democratic Majority for Israel are those who have taken “moderately” proIsrael positions. Rep. Mondaire Jones (DNY) gave representative voice to this tepid camp in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I want equal treatment under the law and humanitarian assistance for Palestinians, and my ardent support of a two-state solution is beneficial for Jews and Palestinians and the strategic interests of the United States,” he said. “But it does disappoint me when I see some people suggest without evidence that somehow I’m going to be non-friendly to Israel. It’s just not true.” Other J Street endorsees include Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), whose aforementioned pivot toward “standing with Israel,” also earned him the endorsement of the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), a group frequently referred to as more hawkish than J Street. In fact, in Feb. 2020, J Street lambasted DMFI for attack ads tar-

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geting Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign. “Like their partner organization AIPAC—which recently ran vitriolic attack ads echoing Republican smears against progressive Democrats—DMFI’s right-leaning positions on Israel and U.S. foreign policy are completely out of touch with the vast majority of Democrats and American Jews,” J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami said in a statement. However, J Street and DMFI both endorsing Warnock was not an odd, one-off overlap between the allegedly unaligned groups. In fact, 7 of the 12 winning candidates endorsed by J Street were also endorsed by DMFI. This begs the question: Just how outside of the traditional pro-Israel mold are J Street and its candidates, really? Republicans Embrace Being the “Party of Israel.” Being that 49 of the 70 new members of Congress are Republicans, they fall outside of the intra-Democratic J Street/DMFI dynamic assessed above. Given the growing partisan divide on the issue of Israel, it should be no surprise that Republicans have much less divergence in their views of Israel. While Democrats at times disagree over how much to balance their pro-Israel rhetoric with references to Palestinian rights, Republicans only tend to differ in the extent to which they are willing to express their filial devotion to Israel. Their remarks on the campaign trail were mostly a hodgepodge of describing BDS as a progressive anti-Semitic plot, affirming their Christian Zionist views, and cheering Israel’s flouting of international law. As the Republican-Israel love affair is widely acknowledged, just two poignant examples of this phenomenon will be provided. Asked by the JNS about Israel’s desire to annex land in the West Bank, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), who served as President Trump’s ambassador to Japan, said “I’m supportive of that. Israel has a right to defend itself. This is an area where a lot of the hostility comes from and Israel needs to secure that area.” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), who served as President Trump’s White House physician, told Jewish Insider that he’s inMARCH/APRIL 2021

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clined to permit Israel to act as it pleases. “I don’t think that we’re in the business of telling the Israeli government how to conduct themselves,” he said. “I don’t think that we should use it [U.S. aid] as a tool to micromanage them and their government. That’s not our role.” Israel Lobby Trips Work. Many new members of Congress noted that they have long-standing relationships with pro-Israel groups, dating back to their days as local or state leaders. In many cases, these relationships provided them with an opportunity to visit Israel on junkets organized by pro-Israel organizations. Time and again, these trips were cited as foundational to their understanding of the Israel-Palestine issue. Jay Sanderson, president and chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles told The Forward about Sen. Alex Padilla’s (D-CA) first trip to Israel. “We took Alex on his first trip to Israel about a decade ago,” he said. “His eyes lit up; he totally understood how important Israel was, and not just for the Jewish community but for the United States.” Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX), then the mayor of Irving, TX, visited Israel in 2016 to attend a conference of mayors, hosted by the American Jewish Congress and the American Council for World Jewry, in collaboration with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “It is incredible to see the religious diversity in Israel, people from all religions, and none, coming together without conflict or animosity,” she said after her trip. “They have a spirit of innovation and togetherness that I just have not seen anywhere in the world.” Some even dismissed the severity of illegal Israeli settlements after returning from their trips. “‘Settlement’ is the wrong word to use,” Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), then the mayor of Miami-Dade County, said after traveling to Israel with the American Jewish Committee in 2011. “If you want to describe it to Americans, it is really a development,” he insisted. “We spoke to someone who lived in a settlement. Just a normal person, basically just someone who wants to live in a suburb.” Upon returning from Israel in Jan. 2020, MARCH/APRIL2021

Jake LaTurner (R-KS) dismissed the idea that West Bank Jewish-only settlements pose any threat to peace, justice or the international legal order. According to The Wichita Eagle, LaTurner “contended that the name ‘settlement’ is an unfair description of the communities, which he compared to Kansas towns.” Then Kansas’ state treasurer, LaTurner’s trip was in part organized by the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. In 2013, Sen. John Hickenlooper (DCO), then the governor of Colorado, traveled to Israel on a trip arranged by Colorado businessman Larry Mizel, a large Republican donor who serves on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition and is chairman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Upon returning, Hickenlooper minimized the reality facing Palestinian refugees. “I thought

“We spoke to

someone who lived in a settlement. Just a normal person, basically just someone who wants to live in a suburb.” also that the camps, the Palestinian camps, I thought they were tents,” he told The Colorado Statesman, a now defunct paper that was owned by Mizel at the time. “They’re not, they’re stone buildings. They’re houses and apartment buildings. They call them camps. But I’ve never heard of camps with stone buildings. Just all the stuff you saw was different than what you had thought.” There is, of course, no way to know the extent to which the above comments were genuine observations or simply the remarks of pandering politicians aspiring for higher office. They do, however, unquestionably demonstrate that the recruitment of politicians by the Israel lobby often begins long before they file their paperwork to run for federal office.

Iran Looms Large. Many candidates produced extensive position papers on Israel-Palestine. Almost every such paper included an extensive missive on Iran. That the U.S.-Iran relationship was discussed almost exclusively through the prism of Israel speaks volumes about the influence the Israel lobby has over U.S. policy across the Middle East. Dylan Williams, J Street’s senior vice president, summed up this reality on a Jan. 21 webinar co-hosted by his organization. “Many lawmakers…view this issue [of Iran] at least partially through the lens of pro-Israel policy and politics,” he said. Israel is Depicted as a Guarantor of U.S. Security. “Israel’s enemies are our enemies,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) pronounced in his campaign’s “Blueprint to Stand With Israel.” Rep. Nancy Mace’s (RSC) campaign website stated that “support for Israel is a part of our security strategy.” The notion that U.S. and Israeli security interests are intricately or inseparably linked was a common theme professed by many candidates. More than a mere talking point, it was used to emphasize the importance of steady U.S. aid to Israel. As told by many of these new members of Congress, the billions in annual taxpayer dollars sent to Israel are not a mere handout, but rather an investment in U.S. security. Israel, they maintain, is fighting common enemies on our behalf. “Israel is a critical ally in the war on terrorism... Israel provides us with valuable intelligence to fight against radical Islamic terror,” Ashley Hinson (R-IA) wrote on her campaign website. “We must eliminate the scourge of terror in all corners of the earth and end the threat it poses to the United States and all other peaceful nations. This cannot be done without restoring a strong partnership with Israel,” Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-NM) said in a position paper. Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-NC) position paper said, “As a wave of tyranny sweeps across the Middle East, propagated by religious extremists, it is incumbent upon both the United States and Israel to stand resolute together and face the

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coming storm. This nation cannot afford to allow states like Syria or Yemen to become hotbeds for terror; this nation cannot well afford to ignore the growing geopolitical threat originating from the Iranian regime, and this nation has very little hope of effectively solving these problems without help from our one ally in the region, Israel.” This idea was not limited to Republicans. Reflecting on his time in the Marines, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) said on his campaign website, that he has “learned from experience just how important it is for a strong, reliable ally to have your back. That is the kind of alliance the U.S. and Israel have enjoyed for decades, and one that I am committed to protecting and deepening.” There is Little Appetite for New Wars. While most new members expressed support for Israeli militarism and a desire to rein in Iran’s regional ambitions, there was a general bipartisan consensus that the U.S. should not expand its military footprint in the Middle East. In an interview with the JNS, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL), an ardent Trump supporter who pledged to place an Israeli flag in front of her office to taunt PalestinianAmerican Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), reportedly “expressed support for a strong U.S. military and for U.S. military assistance to Israel, [but said] she is against U.S. ground forces in the Middle East and elsewhere.” Many opposed to new wars are veterans. Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI), one of ten House Republicans to vote in favor of impeaching Donald Trump this January, said his time in the military taught him the limits of a military-first approach to foreign policy. “I definitely came in as a hawk,” he told Jewish Insider. “I came away that, when we lead with a military-first international engagement, it doesn’t make us more secure. It doesn’t make us safer. And it only increases risks and dangers for our allies throughout the world. I want us to be leading with a diplomacy and intelligence-first approach.” Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) has also eloquently spoken out against the U.S. “war on terrorism.” “On patrol through Tal24

iban villages, the falsehoods and the jingoism that beat the drums of war back home were quickly made hollow, and all that was left was roadside bombs, scared villagers and demoralized young Marines,” he said in a January 2020 op-ed. “Afghanistan was not the ‘Good War’—it’s just that it wasn’t quite as bad as Iraq. War with Iran would be worse than either.” Not all veterans were dovish, however. Asked about Iran by the JNS, Rep. Kai Kahele (D-HI) said he believes “ultimate diplomacy” is needed between the U.S. and Iran. However, he said the U.S. military “is the best thing we have to stabilize” the Middle East. Members Claim their Constituents Strongly Support Israel. Many of the new members of Congress insisted that their support for Israel reflects the views and priorities of their constituents. This was most frequently conveyed by noting their relationship with local Israel lobby groups and proIsrael religious institutions—both Christian and Jewish. However, some went beyond this standard line of reasoning to make other justifications for their position. Support for Israel “is without a doubt a key issue for Kansas voters,” Rep. Jake LaTurner (R-KS) told The Wichita Eagle. (Polls have consistently found that Israel ranks low on the priorities of U.S. voters, even those often perceived as having a keen interest in the issue, such as Jewish and Arab Americans.) Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL) said Miami’s Cuban community is in solidarity with Israel. “Cuban-Americans identify very closely with Israel,” he told The Jerusalem Post in 2011. “We were basically without a country and know what it is like to be persecuted for your beliefs.” In the same interview, he said of his trip to Israel, “It is always good to put yourself in other people’s shoes and walk in them for a while, to look at things from their perspective and see how they think.” Giménez apparently failed to walk in the shoes of Palestinians—the people left “without a country” after Israel’s founding in 1948. In her position paper on Israel, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM) drew a

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connection between New Mexico’s indigenous community, historical anti-Semitism and Israel. “I recognize the importance of home and homeland,” she wrote. “The people, land, and culture of northern New Mexico are part of me, and I believe that all people should have access to this connection to homeland. I have lived these beliefs in my 30 years of work building community in northern New Mexico and promoting tribal sovereignty on behalf of Native American tribes. This lens and experience inform my position on the U.S.Israel relationship.” She continued, “We must remember, so as to never repeat, the centuries of attacks, expulsions and attempted extermination of the Jewish people from the Roman Empire, Spain, Germany, Russia and beyond. Northern New Mexico was a refuge for Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition. Today we are enjoying an acknowledgement and reclaiming with pride of this Jewish heritage, religion and history in New Mexico.” Fernandez never mentioned the Nakba, which drove an estimated 700,000 indigenous Palestinians off their land in order to facilitate Israel’s creation. Members Believe Education and Bridge-Building Will Increase Support for Israel. A fair number of new members expressed hope that they will be able to “build bridges” or “educate” other members on the topic of Israel. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), a “liberal Zionist,” said she hopes to bridge the growing divide between the Democratic establishment and progressives on Israel. She told Jewish Insider she views herself as a “progressive bridge” between the activist left and the pro-Israel establishment, “really trying to break those barriers…that are creating division.” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), much less willing to criticize Israel than Jacobs, said he also wants to be a bridge builder on this issue, though his comments suggest he’s actually more interested in burning the progressive bridge that leads toward greater concern for Palestinian rights. “I hope to be a bridge between progressives and moderates within the Democratic Party, and I MARCH/APRIL 2021

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hope to be a model of pro-Israel progressives,” he told i24NEWS. He said he’s “living proof” that one can be both progressive and pro-Israel. “I’m pro-Israel not despite my progressivism, but because of my progressivism,” he said. Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) posited that growing criticism of Israel stems from a lack of education on the topic. “It’s really important that we start every conversation from an educational standpoint, though it comes back to being willing to stand up and call out folks that are really coming from a place of ignorance,” she told the JNS. A former journalist, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) said she sees anti-Israel bias in the media and believes it also stems from a lack of education. “I would say I think that comes down to education,” she told the JNS. “You need the full perspective on a story; sometimes, that may be missing. Making sure that everybody understands the full context of what they’re reporting on—the relationships between countries and history.” As for her own education on the issue of Israel, Hinson said she has been “educated” by discussions with pro-Israel groups. “Through the campaign, it’s been an education,” she said. “I sat down with some folks from AIPAC, for example, and the Republican Jewish Coalition. I’ve learned about the issues that are important, many of which we’ve talked about.” One doubts that these discussions left her with “the full perspective” she believes one needs to understand an issue. Wild Odds and Ends. The following comments don’t serve any analytical purpose, other than showing that the issue of Israel prompts no shortage of outrageous comments from elected officials. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), known for her sympathy toward QAnon conspiracy theories and her insistence on carrying a firearm into the Capitol, erroneously claimed in an interview with the JNS, “there’s not too many places outside of Israel where an Arab woman can vote.” In an interview with the JNS, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, posited that BDS should not be protected MARCH/APRIL 2021

as free speech because it violates the First Amendment right of Jews to freedom of religion. “For people to unfairly target a religion and, thus the BDS situation that we’re in, that in essence is also a violation of the First Amendment,” she said. Asked by the JNS about his opposition to BDS and concern about anti-Semitism, Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-IA) emphasized the importance of free speech and history. “We have to talk very openly about history and about what has occurred in the past,” he said. “We can learn from the past how important it is on how we treat people. This includes what Israel has been through and our country, and that we respect freedom of speech and the rule of law. We want to promote the voices of people.” This is ironic, since as a member of Iowa’s state senate, Feenstra helped pass anti-BDS legislation that quells the First Amendment rights of Israel’s critics. It’s also worth observing that Feenstra doesn’t seem particularly interested in learning Palestinian history. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) told Jewish Insider that he objected to the way activists responded to his 2015 trip to Israel as a member of New York City’s city council. “I had activists from Jewish Voice for Peace accusing me of pinkwashing, accusing me of aiding and abetting apartheid,” recalled Torres, who is gay. “I even remember coming across an activist with a shirt that read ‘queers for Palestine.’ I remember telling the activist, ‘Does the opposite exist, are there Palestinians for queers?’ It was partly a joke but partly a serious observation. I found it utterly baffling that you had LGBT activists doing the bidding of Hamas, which is a terrorist organization that executes LGBT people. And then I came to realize that the reason is intersectionality, that the BDS movement uses intersectionality to penetrate a whole host of self-proclaimed progressive movements.” Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) told Jewish Insider, in Sept. 2020, about some of his brief encounters with Palestinians during a visit to Israel. “When we were there, it was very clear to me that a lot of the [Palestinian] people were just good people, but that their leaders were whip-

ping them up into an aggressive state, which is unfortunate,” he said. His dismissive reaction to legitimate Palestinian grievances aside, it’s interesting to note that Cawthorn addressed a crowd of Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, telling them, without any evidence, that their votes had been stolen. One might even say Cawthorn whipped the crowd up into an aggressive state, since they besieged the Capitol shortly after his speech. Rep. Jerry Carl (R-AL), like most other freshman Republicans, accused the left of embracing anti-Semitism. However, he went one step further, accusing Arab Americans of fomenting of anti-Semitism. “I think so much of that has been driven by the Arab community. It’s almost like a cancer,” he told the JNS in an interview. Conclusions. This overview speaks for itself. The newest members of Congress are, on average, just as zealous about their support for Israel as their seasoned peers. While much has been made about growing support for Palestine within the Democratic Party, manifestations of this grassroots reality are scarce among this freshman class. It’s clear that BDS is nearly universally demonized, with Republicans using it to spread spurious accusations of pervasive anti-Semitism within the left, and most on the left unwilling to spend the political capital necessary to challenge this mendacious notion. They look at a Sen. Raphael Warnock, for instance, and conclude that ruffling feathers with the pro-Israel lobby isn’t politically advantageous. On the margins, there are undoubtedly meaningful differences between how “AIPAC-style Zionists” and “liberal Zionists” think and talk about Israel. However, it’s abundantly clear that in a Congress that is bitterly divided, support for Israel remains a source of bipartisan agreement. ■

For complete profiles of every new member of Congress, visit www.wrmea.org/k3uhr

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Congress Watch

116th Congress Passed Defense, Appropriations Bills Before Adjourning

By Shirl McArthur

PHOTO BY TOM WILLIAMS/CQ-ROLL CALL, INC VIA GETTY IMAGES

through FY 2028, as provided for in the U.S.Israel Memorandum of Understanding, and $9 billion in loan guarantees. In addition, it includes dozens of measures and millions of dollars via various U.S. departments and agencies for U.S.-Israel cooperation programs. The Defense Department portion of the consolidated appropriations bill includes $500 million for so-called “Israeli cooperative programs.” It also includes $500 million for Jordan to “enhance security along its borders,” and $250 million to be split among Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), center, incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is seen on the Jordan, Lebanon, House steps of the Capitol on Dec. 4, before a group photo with congressional members of the Alpha Phi Alpha Egypt, Tunisia and Fraternity. Oman for enhanced border security. At least $150 million of this pooled money must go IN THE FINAL DAYS of the 116th Congress, Congress managed to Jordan. to pass two required bills, H.R. 133, the Consolidated Appropriations The foreign aid portion of the consolidated appropriations bill inAct, and H.R. 6395, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). cludes economic aid of $112.5 million for Lebanon and $75 million Both houses of Congress passed the “consolidated” appropriations for the West Bank and Gaza. It also includes $5 million for “refugees bill on Dec. 21, and then-President Donald Trump signed it on Dec. resettling in Israel.” 27 as PL 116-260. In early December, both houses passed the conThe military aid portion of the consolidated appropriations bill inference report on the NDAA but Trump vetoed it on Dec. 23. Then, cludes earmarks for: on Dec. 28, the House voted to override Trump’s veto by a vote of Israel—$3.3 billion 322-87, and the Senate on Jan. 1, 2021, overrode the veto by a Egypt—$1.3 billion vote of 81-13, with the measure becoming PL 116-283. Jordan—$425 million Perhaps the most significant thing for the Middle East in the NDAA Iraq—$250 million is the inclusion of the previously described text of S. 3176, the “U.S.Tunisia—$85 million, and Israel Security Assistance Act of 2020,” introduced by Sen. Marco Morocco—$10 million Rubio (R-FL) last January. It is a cornucopia of goodies for Israel, In addition, the military aid portion stipulates that the $3.3 billion starting with the codification of the annual $3.3 billion military aid in grants for Israel shall be disbursed within 30 days of enactment of the act, and not less than $795.3 million shall be available for proShirl McArthur is a retired foreign service officer. He lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. curement in Israel of defense articles and services. 26

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REP. GREGORY MEEKS TO CHAIR THE HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

On Dec. 3, House Democrats elected Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) for the 117th Congress, replacing Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), who was defeated in his primary election. In another significant leadership change, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) will chair the House Appropriations Committee, succeeding retiring Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY). While Engel has been one of Israel’s strongest supporters, Meeks, instead, will likely look to promote U.S. national interests in the Middle East. In a November statement to the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” Jewish organization J Street, Meeks said he looks forward to a new administration that will reverse the destructive course of four years under President Trump’s administration, including the attempts to legitimize settlements and frustrate the potential for achieving the creation of a viable Palestinian state. In the Washington Report’s Nov./Dec. 2020 issue’s “Report Card for the 116th Congress,” Meeks registered two positive marks and no negatives. In the 2018 “Report Card for the 115th Congress,” Meeks registered three positive marks with one negative. DeLauro, in the Washington Report’s “Report Card for the 116th Congress,” registered three positive marks with no negatives.

150 REPRESENTATIVES URGE BIDEN TO RETURN THE U.S. TO THE IRAN NUCLEAR AGREEMENT

On Dec. 23, 150 representatives, led by Reps. Meeks, David Price (D-NC), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Joaquin Castro (D-TX), Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), and Brad Sherman (D-CA), signed a letter to President Joseph Biden, expressing support for both Iran and the U.S. returning to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran nuclear agreement. The signers say they endorse Biden’s “call for diplomacy as the best path to halt and reverse Iran’s nuclear program, decrease tensions in the

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region, and facilitate our nation’s reincorporation into the international community.” All the previously-described measures regarding Iran died with the end of the 116th Congress.

SOME MEASURES WERE DEALT WITH BEFORE THE 116TH CONGRESS ADJOURNED

The non-binding H.Res.1062, introduced by Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) in July “affirming the nature and importance of the U.S.Iraq bilateral relationship, including security and economic components of the relationship,” was passed by the full House, by voice vote, on Nov. 18. When passed, it had 20 cosponsors. H.R. 4644, the “Libya Stabilization” bill, which would provide for sanctions and assistance related to the conflict in Libya, was introduced Nov. 11, 2019 by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL). It was passed by the full House, by voice vote, on Nov. 18, but was not taken up by the Senate. When passed by the House, it had 14 cosponsors. On Dec. 22, the Senate passed, by voice vote, S.Res.682, which was introduced in August by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) “recognizing the devastating explosion that rocked the Port of Beirut on August 4, 2020 and expressing solidarity with the Lebanese people.” When passed, the measure had seven cosponsors. The other previously described Lebanon-related measures were not dealt with and died with the end of the 116th Congress. Four joint resolutions disapproving the proposed sales of 50 F-35 stealth aircraft and 18 MQ-9B drones with associated supplies and equipment to the UAE, were introduced in the Senate on Nov. 18 by Menendez. Of these, two, S.J. Res.77 and S.J. Res.78, were voted on and defeated by the full Senate. S.J. Res.77 was defeated by a vote of 46-50, and S.J. Res.78 by a vote of 47-49. Four similar joint resolutions disapproving of the sales were introduced Nov. 19 by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), but they were not acted on. All the other measures concerning the arms sales to the UAE died with the end of the 116th Congress. In the final hours of his

term, President Trump on Jan. 20 signed an official agreement with the UAE for the sale of the 50 military jets and 18 drones.

SOME NEW MEASURES INTRODUCED NEAR THE END OF THE 116TH CONGRESS

It’s hard to say why new measures continued to be introduced as the 116th Congress was winding down, with little or no chance that they would be acted on. Perhaps the sponsors just wanted to get on the record supporting, or opposing, certain issues or actions. All the previously described measures introduced after press reports that China helped Saudi Arabia build a secret yellowcake processing plant were not acted on. However, two new ones were introduced. In the Senate, Sens. Edward Markey (DMA) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), on Dec. 2, introduced S. 4946 “to inhibit the development of nuclear weapons by Saudi Arabia.” And, on Jan. 1, 2021, Menendez introduced S.J.Res.82 to disapprove of the proposed sales of certain defense articles to Saudi Arabia. On Dec. 1, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and three cosponsors introduced S. 4939, the “Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation” bill. In the House, Reps. Josh Gottheimer (DNJ) and Brian Mast (R-FL), on Nov. 9, introduced H.R. 8733, “to authorize the president to take actions to ensure Israel is prepared for all contingencies if Iran seeks to develop a nuclear weapon.” The bill would authorize giving Israel the largest non-nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal. On Nov. 19, Rep. Peter DeFazio (DOR), with 32 cosponsors, introduced H.Con.Res.123 directing the president “to remove U.S. Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Republic of Yemen.” And on Dec. 10, Rep. Joe Wilson (RSC), with no cosponsors, introduced H.R. 8931, which would require “the president to impose visa- and property-blocking sanctions against specified persons that assist or support Syria in malign activities and crimes against its own people.” All the other previously described bills and resolutions died with the end of the 116th Congress. ■

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Israel and Judaism

Redefining Anti-Semitism: A Challenge to Free Speech By Allan C. Brownfeld IN RECENT MONTHS, the campaign to redefine anti-Semitism has achieved notable success. In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism at a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Winter Stadium, or Velodrome d’Hiver, when French police detained 13,000 Jews for deportation to Nazi death camps in Eastern Europe. The French president declared, “We will never surrender to the expressions of hatred. We will not surrender to anti-Zionism because it is a re-invention of anti-Semitism.” Just a month before, in June 2017, the European Parliament had voted to adopt a resolution calling on member states and their institutions to apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism. In addition to defining anti-Semitism as “Rhetorical and physical manifestations...directed toward Jewish individuals...toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities,” it adopted the following declaration, “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” At a Hanukkah party in the White House in 2019, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that, in effect, redefined Judaism as a nationality or race, rather than a religion. He did this so that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which does not protect against religious discrimination, could be applied to Jews. What the president was seeking to do was limit criticism of Israel at universities by defining it as “anti-Semitism” and placing this in the category of prohibited discrimination. The New York Times editorially called this executive order an assault on the First Amendment and freedom of speech. Elan Carr, the Trump administration’s anti-Semitism envoy, equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and considered support for Israel a key tenet of Judaism. On a visit to Jerusalem in November 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, appearing with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, compared the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to cancer and said that opposition to Zionism, by its very nature, is anti-Semitic. Advocates of the BDS movement, which includes large numbers of Jews, call for a peaceful boycott of Israeli goods; and divestment from Israel until it makes concessions to Palestinians and compare the movement to a similar campaign against apartheid South Africa.

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. 28

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, argues that the organized American Jewish community constantly tries to blur the distinction between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, cautioning that it is a “slippery slope.” It is not a new phenomenon. Professor Noam Chomsky points out that former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, “equated antiZionism with anti-Semitism in an effort to exploit anti-racist sentiment for political ends,” citing a statement by Eban in 1973: “One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.” In 2002, Chomsky wrote that the conflation of antiZionism with anti-Semitism was being extended to Israeli policies, not just criticism of Zionism. He concluded, “That is a convenient stand. It cuts off a mere 100 percent of critical comment.” Recently, controversy has grown in Germany over what academics, writers and others believe is a limitation on free speech, as criticism of Israel and Zionism is categorized as “anti-Semitism,” which has led to selfcensorship and the stifling of artistic expression. The New York Times, on Dec. 11, 2020, reported: “In May, a prominent Cameroonian philosopher was disinvited from addressing a high-profile arts festival in Germany for drawing parallels between the situation of the Palestinians and apartheid in South Africa in his writing. The striking of Achille Mbembe from the program of the Ruhrtriennale in May led to months-long public debate in which the relationship of genocide and colonialism to the Holocaust and Germany’s special relationship to Israel came into question. It also sparked the cultural leaders’ decision to go public with their fears that the discussion was taking an unwelcome turn.” In May 2019, the German Parliament designated the BDS campaign as anti-Semitic. The advisory declaration called on all of Germany’s states and municipalities to deny public funding to any institution that “actively supports the movement or questions the right of Israel to exist.” Critics in Germany charge that instead of stifling anti-Semitism, the resolution has stifled the open exchange of ideas in the public sphere and freedom of expression in the arts, both of which are guaranteed by Germany’s constitution. In an open letter, one of the signatories, Johannes Ebert, the secretary general of the Goethe Institute, an organization that promotes German culture abroad, noted that, “Cultural exchange does not work by deciding who we are allowed to talk about, and who we aren’t, especially in international cultural exchange. You have to listen closely. You have to be willing to speak to people whose positions you don’t share.” The directors of the Berliner Festspiele, the Humboldt Forum, and

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the Federal Cultural Foundation along with the leaders of theaters, museums, and institutes for Jewish Cultural studies from across the country are among those who signed the appeal. Months after the 2019 resolution was passed, the director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, Peter Schafer, quit his post amid criticism that he had become too politically involved with the battle over the BDS movement. Barbara StollbergRilinger, director of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, an interdisciplinary research institute, said the resolution limited the mandates of organizations like hers, which encourage the free exchange of ideas among scholars. She declared that “if we were to take this resolution literally, then we could not invite many Jewish and Palestinian Israeli intellectuals who oppose the human rights violations of their own government.” Yehudit Yinhar, a Jewish Israeli student at the Weissensee Art Academy in Berlin, learned how the resolution could be interpreted when she found herself, along with the other members of a project she jointly organized called “School for Unlearning Zionism,” facing accusations of anti-Semitism. “We want to do our own homework, teaching ourselves about power and privilege,” she said of the events, which consisted of 12 online lectures and public discussions with titles such as “Zionism as Settler Colonialism.” After accusations of the project’s links to the BDS movement appeared in the Israeli and German media, their academy-hosted website was taken offline. “No taxpayer money should be used to delegitimize Israel,” declared the American Jewish Committee’s Berlin office. In December 2020, a statement and set of principles was signed by more than 100 Palestinian and Arab academics, journalists and intellectuals regarding the definition of anti-Semitism by the IHRA and the way this definition has been applied. They state that, “the fight against anti-Semitism should not be turned into a stratagem to delegitimize the fight against the oppression of the Palestinians, the denial of their rights and the continued occupation of their land...AntiSemitism must be debunked and combated. Regardless of pretense, no expresMARCH/APRIL2021

sion of hatred for Jews as Jews should be tolerated anywhere in the world. We also believe the lessons of the Holocaust, as well as those of other genocides of modern times must be part of the education of new generations against all forms of racial prejudice and hatred...It should be part and parcel of the fight against all forms of racism and xenophobia, including Islamophobia and hostility to Arabs and Palestinians...” Many Jews from around the world embraced this declaration, including Dror Feiler of European Jews for a Just Peace, Sweden; Donna Nevel, Jews Say No, U.S.; Sheryl Nestel, Independent Jewish Voices, Canada; David Comedi, International Jew-

“I believe it is because

the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts.”

ish Anti-Zionist Network, Argentina; Marilyn Garson, Alternative Jewish Voices, New Zealand, and Vivienne Porzsolt, Jews Against the Occupation, Australia. The effort to silence criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitic” has a long history, and no one is immune. In 2007, for example, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Prize winner for his fight against apartheid, was disinvited from speaking at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota because of complaints from the local Jewish community. He was attacked because of statements he made criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, which critics said were “anti-Semitic.” The university rescinded the ban after a strong backlash led by Jewish Voice for Peace. Marv Davidov, an adjunct professor with the Justice and Peace Studies program at the University of St. Thomas said: “As a Jew who experienced real anti-Semitism as a child, I’m deeply disturbed that a man like Tutu could be labeled anti-Semitic and silenced like this. I deeply resent the Israeli lobby trying to silence any criticism of its policy. It does a great disservice to Israel and to all Jews.”

Dr. Joel Beinin, professor of history at Stanford University, writes: “Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing viewpoints? I believe it is because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts. An honest discussion can only lead to one conclusion: the status quo in which Israel declares it alone has rights and intends to impose its will on the weaker Palestinians, stripping them permanently of their land, resources and rights, cannot lead to a lasting peace. We need an open debate and the freedom to discuss uncomfortable facts and explore the full range of policy options. Only then can we adopt a foreign policy that serves American interests and one that could actually bring a just peace to Palestinians and Israelis.” The effort to redefine criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism has been going on for many years. One of the leading practitioners for the effort to silence criticism of Israel by calling it “anti-Semitic” has been Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, which was originally published by the American Jewish Committee. In an article titled, “J’Accuse,” published in September 1982, Podhoretz accused America’s leading journalists, many of them Jewish, and leading news organization with “anti-Semitism” because of their reporting of the war in Lebanon and their criticism of Israel’s conduct. Since those early days of redefining antiSemitism to include criticism of Israel and opposition to Zionism, the movement has grown and gained official sanction in an increasing number of countries. It completely ignores the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism and it is evident that the sole purpose in promoting this definition is simple and transparent: to silence criticism of Israel and its policies. But in this they are failing, and this failure is most dramatic among Jews, who are increasingly outspoken in their dismay over those who violate Judaism’s humane values in their name. Sadly, we have seen examples of real anti-Semitism in recent days. Any comparison of real anti-Semitism with the criticism of Israel and its policies, shows us how irrational and ahistorical such claims really are and dangerous in their potential to disguise actual anti-Semitism. ■

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Christianity in the Middle East

Christian volunteers harvest grapes for the Israeli family-run Tura Winery, in vineyards located in the Har Bracha settlement in the occupied West Bank, on Sept. 23, 2020. The Evangelist Christian non-profit organization HaYovel has provided 1,800 volunteers in the past 12 years to help Jewish settlers, with the aim of fulfilling the prophetic restoration of the Land of Israel, believing that the road to redemption passes through the vineyards of Samaria.

A FEW MILESTONES in my personal life have led to my confrontation with Zionist Christianity. I was born in Jerusalem and grew up in the embrace of conservative evangelical missionary churches. I’ve always been active in my evangelical church, where I learned about God's love and salvation for me and the whole world, and the principles of love for neighbor and enemy as well as the command to seek peace, justice and goodness for all. When I graduated from high school, I decided to attend a Bible College in Switzerland to prepare for service in the church in Palestine. During my theological studies in Europe, I noticed that my fellow

Rev. Dr. Alex Awad is a retired United Methodist Missionary. He and his wife, Brenda, served in Jerusalem and in Bethlehem for more than 25 years. Rev. Awad served as pastor of East Jerusalem Baptist Church, dean of students at Bethlehem Bible College, and director of the Shepherd Society. Awad has written two books, Through the Eyes of the Victims and Palestinian Memories. Rev. Awad is a member of the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace (PCAP). 30

students and teachers believed that the land of Palestine was promised by God to the Jewish people. I also learned that my colleagues and their teachers were convinced that believers in Christ should contribute to the realization of these biblical prophecies, which relate to the second coming of Christ, by supporting the State of Israel. During my second year of college, the 1967 war between Israel and the Arabs, called the Six-Day War, broke out. I was shocked to learn that the students in my college received news of Israel’s victory over Egypt, Jordan and Syria with joy and cheers while another student from Syria and I were afraid for our families, loved ones, churches, institutions and our countries. Now our homelands, in full or in part, were under the control of the Israeli army. This incident, and the reactions I observed, were the beginning of my confrontation with what is today called Christian Zionism. When I finished school in Europe and tried to return to my occupied homeland, the Israeli authorities denied my right to return to Bethle-

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PHOTO BY MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Palestinian Evangelicals in Confrontation with Christian Zionism By Rev. Alex Awad

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hem, where my family lived at the time. I felt like a "man without a country." The Swiss authorities asked me to leave their territory and the Israeli authorities prevented me from entering my homeland. But when those doors shut, a door for me to travel to the United States opened, and I enrolled at Lee University in Cleveland, TN. I soon realized that the teachings of Zionism had spread to most evangelical churches and a good number of non-evangelical churches in the U.S. Over time, these teachings spread from houses of worship and lecture halls of colleges to become a formidable political force. Christian Zionists even played a role in the election of Donald Trump as president and the transfer of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Arabs and the Palestinians have not only lost the balance of power militarily, but they have lost the hearts of evangelical Christians—most of whom adhere to the following Zionist beliefs: 1. The contemporary State of Israel is an extension of biblical Israel. 2. The promises of God in the Old Testament concerning the land—Palestine— are now being fulfilled in the State of Israel. 3. God interfered in the 1948 war and the 1967 war in favor of the State of Israel in miraculous ways. 4. The nation that provides support to Israel will be blessed by God, and punishment will fall on the states and nations that oppose Israel. 5. The Christian Zionist support for the State of Israel must not be conditioned on the Jewish people’s faith in Christ or by the moral conduct of the Israeli people or by the way they treat Palestinians. 6. Many Jews will believe in Christ at the time of the second coming of Christ, but many of them will be killed during the Great Tribulation. 7. Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are fundamental obstacles to the way of the fulfillment of prophecies because of their adherence to the right of Palestinians to remain on the land of the promise (Palestine). When a Palestinian evangelical rejects these teachings, he or she soon realizes that they are at odds with leadership. PalesMARCH/APRIL 2021

tinian Christians understand that the mother church is suffering from a serious theological disease and he or she must expose this epidemic and provide the appropriate vaccine, which is a serious study of the word of God. This is indeed what happened to me and to several of my colleagues at Bethlehem Bible College and its branch in Galilee, Nazareth Evangelical College. Our confrontations with Christian Zionism were triggered by daily events in the West Bank and Gaza, such as the confiscation of Palestinian land, the construction of segregated Jewish settlements, the demolition of Palestinian homes, the construction of the separation wall, the humiliation of young men and women and the imprisonment of two million people in the Gaza Strip. As Palestinians, we could not but reflect on the injustices, the killing and looting that was going on around us, and mourn the fact that our Zionist Christian brothers and sisters were at the forefront of the people who supported the oppressors. The number of evangelical Christians around the world who embrace the Zionist ideology has mushroomed in the United States, Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea. When some Christian Zionists visit Palestine, they have shown open hostility to Palestinian brothers and sisters. For example, at a ceremony in Bethlehem, an American Christian Zionist woman relayed that the Lord had given the promised land to the Jews and that Palestinian Christians should leave for Jordan or other Arab countries, but if they refused, the Lord would pour on them the same curses that would be poured on the Muslims living in Palestine. Christian Zionists work overtime to prevent Palestinian Christians from sharing their stories and perspectives with those who want to hear them. Fortunately, a growing number of Palestinian evangelical leaders in the West Bank and Israel, as well as other denominational leaders and organizations, have invested time and effort in defending the church against the teachings of Christian Zionism. These include Anglican Canon Naim Ateek and the Sabeel Center in Jerusalem, Greek Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna, Catholic Patriarch Emeritus Michael Sabah,

Lutheran Bishop Munib Yunan and Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb. Bethlehem Bible College fully supported the Kairos Palestine Document. In addition, international experts on Christian Zionism such as Dr. Colin Chapman, Dr. Gary Burge, Rev. Dr. Donald Wagner, Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer, Dr. Mark Braverman and other intellectuals have come to stand in solidarity with Palestinians. These scholars helped us, through their valuable writings, to understand the history of the Christian Zionist movement. In 2010, Bethlehem Bible College and the Nazareth Evangelical College held an international conference entitled “Christ at the Checkpoint.” Hundreds of evangelical, nonevangelical and Christian Zionists came to Bethlehem to attend the conference. The main goal of the conference was to give Christians the opportunity to witness the current occupation, the walls, confiscation of land, the settlements, all other injustices, and then open the Bible and ask the question, “What does the Word of God say about these things?” The Christ at the Checkpoint conference angered some high-ranking Israeli officials and newspapers, which accused the conference and its leaders of anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, the conference continues every two years and between the conferences, the leaders and faculty in Bethlehem and Nazareth continue to challenge Christian Zionism in Palestine, Israel and around the world. We have found that we can agree on so much, including our belief that God does not favor one people or race over another and that God’s kingdom is not in a geographic locality. True peace between Palestinians and Israelis is possible and depends on both sides seeking justice and co-existence rather than the use of violence to deprive the legitimate rights of the other. Confronting the goliath of Christian Zionism is not easy, but Palestinian evangelicals will meet the challenge as we call on all evangelicals to reexamine the claims of Christian Zionism. Left unchallenged, Christian Zionism will continue to do harm not only to Palestinians and the church in Palestine but also to the church and the mission of Christ all over the world. ■

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Christianity in the Middle East

Arson Attack at Mount of Olives Church is Part of Campaign Against Christians

A priest examines burnt pews after a man poured and lit flammable liquid inside the Basilica of All Nations. Christian donors from America are financially and politically supporting the Jewish settlers and government extremists that are attacking their Christian brethren in the Holy Land. THE BASILICA OF ALL NATIONS, next to the Garden of Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem, marks the spot where Christians believe Jesus prayed the night before his arrest. The church itself houses the rock on which Jesus prayed and sweated blood. Still alive in the orchard outside are some of the same olive trees, which can live for centuries, that may have borne witness to that night. On Dec. 4, a 49-year-old Jewish Israeli settler from Gilo attempted to burn down the basilica. The arsonist was stopped from doing further damage by a church guard and two young Muslim Palestinians at work near the church. Greek Patriarch Theophilos lll described

Jeffery Abood is author of A Great Cloud of Witnesses: The Catholic Church’s Experience in the Holy Land. 32

the attack as “a crime inspired by an extreme ideology that seeks to drive Christians from the Holy Land. This attack at a site of great significance to Christians worldwide reveals the threat that radical groups pose.” This latest arson is unfortunately not an isolated incident. Prior to this, churches and Christians in the Holy Land have been subject to many other trials, including the confiscation of church lands, destruction of church properties, denial of religious freedom, and discriminatory actions against Christians and their schools. Many of these have been documented in the recent book, Is Peace Possible? Christian Palestinians Speak. In 2018, the situation for the Christian community and churches had become so bad that the Heads of Churches in the Holy Land took the near unprecedented step of closing the Church of the Holy

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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PHOTO BY AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Jeffery Abood

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Sepulcher to the world. They did this to protest a “systematic campaign against the churches and the Christian community in the Holy Land.” The heads of churches have spoken out about their treatment on numerous occasions, including after the arson at the Latrun Monastery, the ongoing desecrations of convents and cemeteries, and the 2015 burning of the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish. The increasing attacks on Palestinian Christians and their properties have become part of the settler movement’s “price-tag policy” to punish any rumored compromise in peace negotiations and drive Palestinians off their land. In 2014, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal stated, “All of you are well aware of the recent acts of vandalism against Christians, Muslims and Druze. There has been a marked increase of ‘price-tag’ provocations within Israel.” Recent “price-tag” attacks also include: the vandalization with anti-Christian graffiti of the Benedictine Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem on five different occasions. In

2014, an assailant also tried to burn the Abbey down. New acts of racist vandalism were also recently committed in the Christian Palestinian village of Taybeh, where Hebrew graffiti was sprayed on a wall and a car was torched. Vandals shattered stainedglass windows and destroyed a statue of Mary in St. Stephen Church in the Beit Jamal Salesian Monastery in 2017. Christian cemeteries are consistently vandalized. In 2019, Armenian Apostolic Orthodox seminarians in Jerusalem’s Old City were targeted by Jewish extremists who spat on them, saying “Death to the Christians” and “We will wipe you out of this country.” This is also a common phenomenon clergy must endure. The attack on the Basilica of All Nations, along with other “price-tag” attacks, have been routinely condemned by the hierarchy of the various Churches in Jerusalem on multiple occasions. According to the Catholic News Agency, “The Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land’s re(Advertisement)

quests to discuss the attacks with the Israeli authorities, including the prime minister, have been repeatedly denied.” More than 25 years ago, the Vatican and the State of Israel signed the Fundamental Agreement, which would have established the rights, legal status, and secured the properties of the Catholic Church in Israel. To this day, while signed, the Knesset has never enacted it, leaving the official status of the Church in Israel in a continuous limbo. With the future of the Church in limbo, one can imagine how much more precarious is the future of the faithful who live there. While this time, a larger tragedy was narrowly averted at the Basilica of All Nations, arson attacks are only one symptom of a much larger “systematic campaign” aimed at the erasure of the indigenous Christians from the Holy Land. [For more information see Jeffrey Abood’s previous article, “Israel’s ‘Systematic Campaign’ Against Christians,” in the June/July 2018 Washington Report, pp. 38-39.] ■

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Two Views

Palestinian Children Under Attack

PHOTO BY MAHMUD HAMS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

ing caused heavy damage to the hospital compound, a rehabilitation center, a mosque, homes and a factory. Dozens of sick children and their mothers, who were staying at AlDurra Hospital for Children, were terrified by the bombing. Palestinian sources reported that the bombing caused a state of panic, hindered the provision of health services, and shattered windows, scattering glass inside the patients’ rooms. Jood, who was hospitalized for chronic asthma, has been suffering from anxiety and fear since the strikes. “This affected his appetite and since what happened he’s scared to leave the room or sleep with the light off,” said his mother. Director of Al-Durra Hospital for Children, Dr. Majed Hamada, called on all humanitarian, international and health organizations to put an end to what he described as “barbaric assaults” on Palestinian children. A Palestinian man checks damage caused by an overnight Israeli air strike on Gaza City, on “The occupation and many international Dec. 26, 2020. organizations know that this place is a special hospital for children, but the enemy did not take into account any moral or human value,” stated Dr. Hamada. Mohammad Abu-Assi, a 4-year-old, woke up crying and terrified when he heard the strikes. He was hospitalized for a fever and diBy Asya Abdul-Hadi arrhea. His grandmother, Hidaya el-Ramlawi, who accompanied him in the hospital, said that his paranoia and fear caused him to FATMA EL-DEEB was staying with her ill 5-year-old, Jood el-Deeb, have urine incontinence. “He’s scared to leave the room and he at Al-Durra Hospital for Children in the Gaza neighborhood of alkeeps saying there’s shooting here and above us,” she said. ElTuffah, when suddenly she heard airstrikes after midnight on ChristRamlawi and her grandson, Mohammad, had to leave the hospital mas. “I was still up browsing the Internet around 1:00 a.m. on Dec. against medical advice after the strikes. 26 when I heard the first strike. I didn’t take it very seriously until it The Palestinian Ministry of Health issued a statement condemning was followed by much stronger strikes and I could see fragmentsof the Israeli attacks in the vicinity of the hospital and warned of what the missile hitting the window,” said El-Deeb, who carried her terrified it described as the “dangerous psychological repercussions on sick and screaming child and ran out of the room. “Jood was sound children, who were in the hospital.” asleep and he woke up to the sound of the strikes and ran to me In fact, according to a study conducted by the UNICEF in 2019, screaming and hugged me,” she added. more than 25,000 children affected by violence in Gaza need mental Israeli warplanes fired a series of missiles on Saturday, Dec. 26 health support. In another study done by the Palestinian Statistics in the eastern, northwestern and central parts of the Gaza Strip, inCenter, around 62 percent of Palestinian children suffered from decluding open farmland, wounding a six-year-old girl and a young pression and anxiety in 2020. man, according to the Palestinian News Agency, Wafa. The bombAdding to an already stressed social and economic situation with incredible levels of unemployment, according to the Palestinian MinAsya Abdul-Hadi, a Palestinian-American translator and interpreter istry of Labor, 35 workers also became jobless as a result of the living in Maryland, was born in Gaza. She worked for newsweek, Dec. 26 Israeli missile attacks on a factory producing nylon and plasal-hayat, the independent and ABC News before becoming a Gaza bureau chief for the Jerusalem Media Communications Center. tic pipes. Those workers are breadwinners for about 250 people.

Israel Delivers Deadly and Enduring Christmas Gifts to Sick Gazan Children

Washington RepoRt on Middle east affaiRs

MaRch/apRil 2021

The director of the media department at Gaza Electrical Company, Muhammad Thabet, stated that the assault destroyed transformers and automatic circuit breakers as well as modern networks installed only two months earlier. The electric company estimated the losses to be $21,740. There was already a severe power crisis, with residents of the enclave receiving only up to six hours of electricity per day. During the month of December, Israeli attacks targeted three Palestinian hospitals; Al-Durra Hospital for Children in Gaza, the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah, and Thabet Thabet Hospital in Tulkarm. Those Israeli attacks in Gaza and the West Bank were launched at a time when Palestinian hospitals face an extreme state of alert and are overwhelmed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila condemned the raids and described them as “a new Israeli crime that violates all international treaties and Geneva conventions.” She called on the international community to intervene to protect the Palestinian people and put an end to the Israeli violations.

PHOTO BY HAZEM BADER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

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Palestinian students attend a class on Oct. 19, 2020 at a school in the Masafer Yatta area in the South Hebron Hills, which Israel has declared “Firing Zone 918.” Dozens of Palestinian families have been living in the area for years, since before Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967. They face the threat of demolition and displacement by the Israeli army, as well as daily harassment by Israeli settlers.

Raided and Razed: The Settler Assault on Palestinian Childhood Education By Walter L. Hixson

THE TITLE OF A RECENT WEBINAR—“Raided and Razed: West Bank Education Under Attack”—aptly summarizes an ongoing Israeli assault on childhood education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Held on Jan. 11 and sponsored by the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) as well as the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the webinar focused on efforts spearheaded by Zionist settlers to disrupt and frequently to demolish schools and community facilities, especially in Area C, which comprises more than 60 percent of the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Led by Sarah Anne Minkin of the FMEP, the webinar analyzed a recent NRC study that detailed scores of raids on schools, arrests of students, school demolitions, and attacks on buildings, buses and other facilities from 2018 to 2020. The worst of these assaults centered on Hebron, but they also took place in and around East Jerusalem, Nablus and other areas of the West Bank. The outmoded Oslo occupation framework, which was established in the early 1990s as a step in the comprehensive “peace process,” has instead enabled an ongoing and illegal occupation. The occupation, in turn, has allowed the Zionist settlers, backed by the Israeli government, to “maximize control of the land and minimize

Contributing editor Walter L. Hixson is the author of Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation 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. MARCH/APRIL 2021

responsibility for the people,” explained Khaled Elgindy, an author and analyst at the Middle East Institute. Palestinians in the West Bank and especially Area C, more than half of which is under settler control, are forced to exist under “mob rule” rather than under the rule of law, he said. Settlers often follow, block the path, verbally assault and threaten students, fire weapons near school grounds, and vandalize facilities, among other actions, noted Priscilla Wathington, the author of the NRC study. In an incident near Nablus in Oct. 2018, to cite but one example, a settler mob backed by Israeli military forces shattered the windows of a school while classes were in session, injuring several students in the process. Settlers sabotage Palestinian construction projects in the OPT, including European Union-funded schools, which are targeted and sometimes destroyed. The assault on education is particularly hard on Bedouin communities, about a third of which have no schooling at all, with the remainder attempting to learn under completely deficient conditions. Pervasive Israeli government and settler hostility creates an extremely challenging environment for teachers, who are often held up at checkpoints and “discouraged in every way” from doing their jobs, Wathington said. At the same time, they suffer the psychological impact of witnessing what is being done to the children. “My heart really goes out” not only to the students but “to the teachers continuing to work in this climate,” she declared. In addition to educating students, schools double as Palestinian community centers, thus attacks on school facilities undermine the ability of entire communities to function. “The threat is ongoing,” noted Netta Amar-Shiff, a human rights attorney. All of the discussants emphasized that the egregious assault on childhood education carried out under the illegal occupation will continue absent concerted international pressure to reassert the rule of law and basic human rights. The international community, Wathington emphasized, has an “obligation to hold Israel responsible for acts that are violating international law and humanitarian law.” ■

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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By Hind Khoudary

Palestinian workers lay down asphalt at Gaza International Airport in Rafah City, Oct. 27, 1998. The Palestinian government opened its first airport Nov.24, 1998 in the presence of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and world leaders, including U.S. President Bill Clinton. IT WAS 7 A.M. on June 2, 1996, in Cairo when Captain Zeyad alBada received a surprising phone call from Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. Arafat told al-Bada, then a 39-yearold Palestinian Airlines captain and Arafat’s personal pilot, that he would be the first to land at the newly built Gaza International Airport. “There were no aerial maps, no radars, the Gaza airport wasn’t even globally recognized,” said al-Bada, now the airline’s general director. Cairo International Airport refused to create a flight plan to Gaza until Arafat asked then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to intervene and order the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority to issue one. Al-Bada worried that he would be landing on an “asphalt street” rather than a high-quality runway. His hands and legs were shak-

Hind Khoudary is a TV reporter based in Gaza. She has a special interest in political, humanitarian and social issues. This article was printed in Al-Jazeera. Reprinted with permission. 36

ing during the flight, and he burst into tears of joy as he made his descent to the airport. “As I was landing I saw crowds of people dancing. I spontaneously grabbed a small [Palestinian] flag from Yasser Arafat’s closet and raised it out of the window, greeting the crowds.” Al-Bada flew 55 trips to different destinations in and out of Gaza International Airport after its official inauguration in 1998 as part of the Oslo Accords, before flights were halted on Oct. 7, 2000, following rising tensions between Israel and Palestine. Those who worked on the airport in the Palestinian enclave— which has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since 2007— recall the pride they took in its construction and the pain that remains almost 20 years on from its destruction. My father—who passed away eight years ago in December— was among those who helped build this profound Palestinian symbol in a territory under siege.

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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PHOTO BY FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Gaza Airport: The Legacy of a Palestinian Dream

Gaza on the Ground

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Arafat initiated the airport project in 1994; it was just outside the southern town of Rafah, near the border with Egypt. My father, Usama el-Khoudary, was a Palestinian subcontractor engineer who won the tender to construct the runway and the airport apron where the planes are parked. He bid low, a bid that did not make him a profit. “Usama didn’t care about the price of the bid, he wanted to be part of the Gaza International Airport, he wanted to be part of this history,” his wife, and my mother, Marwa elKhoudary said. “He was in his 30s when he won the bid; I remember his eyes sparkling the day he was announced as a tender winner.” I, the only daughter among nine children, was five months old when my dad began working on the project. My father believed that the birth of each of his children won him a new tender. Hammam, my eldest brother, told me, “Your gift to dad was the airport bid.” In order to minimize expenses, he decided to build the runway in 45 days, half the expected time. “I don’t think I saw him for more than an hour during the 45 days,” my mother recalled. The project started in early 1996 with approximately 150 workers and only four vehicles, laying about 3,000 to 3,500 tons of asphalt per day. My father worked in cooperation with NORCO, which was the only asphalt and paving company in Gaza when it was established in Jabalya in 1993. Saleem al-Atwneh, 66, was an asphalt worker who helped build the runway. He said that Israel had tried to stall the building of the airport, blocking materials and impeding vehicles accessing the site they were working on day and night. “We worked 24/7, but we were happy, it was a dream we were making true with our own hands,” al-Atwneh told me. “We, the asphalt workers and engineers, were there to celebrate the first time the plane landed in the Gaza International Airport,” he said. “The plane landed for the first time without any cracks, everyone was so proud of us!” The 1998 opening of the airport seemed to suggest a move toward Palestinian stateMARCH/APRIL 2021

PHOTO CREDIT SAID KHATIB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

A RUNWAY IN 45 DAYS

This photo, taken June 24, 2019, shows the Gaza Strip’s Yasser Arafat International Airport, built at a cost of $22 million, funded by several countries and destroyed by Israel in 2001.

hood. It became known as Yasser Arafat International Airport. Israeli bulldozers first tore the runway up in 2001 during the second Intifada. “Usama and I went to the airport in the morning following the Israeli demolition. We were very sad but we didn’t lose hope,” Yasser Rehan, NORCO’s owner, told me with a trembling voice. My father and Rehan fixed the runway. But Israeli forces carried out air raids in 2001 and subsequent years that completely destroyed the airport and the runway. My father’s engineering and construction company had been established in 1985 and carried out 58 projects across Gaza, including The Fish Market, Al Karama Towers, and Qattan Centre for the Child, as well as several school, infrastructure and housing projects. But he left the Gaza Strip in 2007. He passed away in December 2012 at the age of 51, leaving behind more than $2 million in debt due to a hospital construction project that was abandoned due to the blockade. Meanwhile, there are still debts related to the airport project 20 years on. Due to a disagreement, the Palestinian Authority has still not paid the contractors for the project, who in turn still owe the subcontractors $615,000 for work on the airport’s runway. Meanwhile, Rehan sold NORCO in 2007 and has been forced to halt all his work due to the blockade, which has crippled Gaza’s construction industry. Asphalt worker alAtwneh has been unemployed for 10 years—just one of the many thousands without work in the Gaza Strip.

Five of my brothers and I left the Gaza Strip looking for a better life. Three of my brothers remain in Gaza with my mother. Our father’s death was a turning point in my family’s life, especially for me being my father’s only daughter. I got my strength from my father to become a successful journalist. We are especially proud of his work on the Gaza airport because it was more than a project. It was a symbol of freedom for Palestinians. Flying the Palestinian flag in the sky was the dream of every Palestinian. Bombed out buildings are nothing extraordinary in the Gaza Strip. But the airport is different; the dream of Palestine is completely ruined. A runway that was built in 45 days with passion and hope is now a pile of sand. You cannot even imagine that a plane ever landed there. Every time I was in Rafah and passed by the ruined airport, all I felt was heartache. But Captain al-Bada told me that he is helping to draw up plans to establish a new airport at a different site in Gosh Gatif, in the southern Gaza Strip. He said he will seek construction approval with the PA after the planning and designing stages are completed and funds are sourced. Although many believe that Israel will never allow Gaza to have a new airport, alBada remains optimistic of reviving this Palestinian dream since it was achieved before. “I landed the first plane there without any facilities and navigation in 1996,” alBada said. “I believe I will fly again from Gaza to the world.” ■

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Gaza on the Ground

Mohammed Elwiah, 18, who was shot in the foot by Israeli soldiers during the “Great March of Return” two years ago, shows his skills in parkour on concrete blocks in Gaza City, Gaza on Dec. 13, 2020. IT HAS TAKEN PAIN and trauma for 18-year-old disabled Mohammed Elwiah to obtain the acrobatic skills required in the sport of parkour. His strength and determination help him move in every direction to compete as a parkour athlete. The sport of parkour has become popular in Gaza—where the bombed architecture of war-torn homes become the obstacle racecourse. Started by David Belle in France in 1988, parkour includes running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, rolling, crawling and other movements. Parkour is an activity that can be practiced alone or with others and is mainly carried out in urban spaces, although it can be done anywhere. Parkour involves seeing one’s physical environment from a new perspective, and imagining the potential for navigating it, by movement—around, across, through, over and under its features.

Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports regularly on the Gaza Strip. 38

“I started parkour as a baby takes its first steps,” Elwiah says, indicating that this sport has made him realize the beauty of life, and to have victory over his own pain and trauma two years after his injury. In 2018, while taking part in Gaza March of Return—a mass peaceful protest calling for an end to the blockade on Gaza—an Israeli sharpshooter’s bullet hit his leg resulting in the loss of that limb. But he is determined to overcome the loss. “It is true a bullet took my leg and disabled me, but it never killed my spirit,” he says, as he prepares for another day of parkour in Shejayeh, an area east of Gaza City, devastated after several Israeli assaults. His injury brought him new skills and introduced him to innovative activities and sports. Today, he also joins a group of persons with disabilities performing dabke, the national Palestinian dance. Palestinian figures from 2019 show there are 93,000 people with disabilities. The majority live in Gaza and are children and teenagers.

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

MARCH/APRIL 2021

PHOTO BY MUSTAFA HASSONA/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

Parkour Provides New Joyful Moments for Gaza Athletes By Mohammed Omer

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“Initially, when l saw others doing parkour, I was sad that I could not take part,” he says, adding “I went through a difficult, challenging time, moving from ‘I cannot do this’ to ‘I can and will.’” For this young man, the challenge was uplifting. “But here I am, with one leg, doing parkour. Using my sticks, arms and leg to swing through the air,” he says, expressing the joy he gets doing a sport he never tried even with two legs. “This is our hard life. What else are we to do. Stop trying and give up?” asks Elwiah, with his stylish haircut and rolled-up jeans.

GIRLS BREAK THE CHAINS

Parkour and Gaza seem to be a perfect match. This sport is bringing new hope for a generation of injured, war-torn young people who wish to engage in sports but who lack access to gyms and other facilities. They’re able to transform the bombed-out chaos around them into a creative stadium. Gaza’s parkour is not restricted to boys. Young women and girls have also taken the

spotlight—a dramatic move for a conservative society like Gaza. Wedad said she finds a freedom that she never knew before, in her 19 years of growing up in Gaza. She now does parkour in the ruins of demolished homes or other urban spaces. Gaza is so crowded that those deserted ruins are about the only open spaces left amidst crowded refugee camps and neighborhoods. “When I started, both my family and my community were critical of me, because everyone sees this is a tough sport,” she says. “But that did not stop me because I feel freedom, fun and excitement while practicing this sport,” she said, adding, “and more girls joined in later on.” Wedad knows the sport can be dangerous; a sudden twist in the spinal cord or back could cause her physical damage. Yet, she enjoys the challenge and moving above and beyond conservative social traditions and norms, which guide what a woman can and cannot do. It was particularly important for her to change the mindset on sports for (Advertisement)

women and now she has been joined by 15 other girls doing parkour in Gaza. Gaza’s first ever parkour gym was opened last December by Abu Sultan, who used to practice at a cemetery. It’s equipped with wooden boxes over which youngsters can soar in twists and flips, with padded mattresses to land on. Wedad hopes that the gym will give an opportunity for other young women to excel and reach international competition level in Gaza. Now, Gaza girls can practice their niche sport on safer ground—no longer on the ruins of demolished homes. Wedad knows this gym is a great first step, but more are required. Already 70 athletes, boys and girls, aged 6 to 26 years, have enrolled for courses in the past three months, with dozens more on the waiting lists. Others may try to crush the Palestinian youth under the ruins of war. But these youths choose to rise above that and turn the destructive threat into a creative freedom. ■

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Canada Calling

Where’s Palestine? The Nakba is Missing From the Canadian Museum for Human Rights By Candice Bodnaruk

PHOTO COURTESY KRISHNA LALBIHARIE

museum was even built, the CMHR put out a request to Canadians for content ideas. Abdulla, who is an artist, Palestinian Canadian activist, and co-owner of the Yafa Cafe restaurant with her daughter Sarah in Winnipeg, was one of many Canadians who submitted their human rights stories. Abdulla’s story, as the child of Palestinian refugees, was rejected at the time. Beginning in 2011, Abdulla started writing letters, sending emails, making phone calls and requesting meetings with CMHR officials. At the time the requests by Abdulla, a recipient of a Human Rights Commitment Award, went unanswered. Abdulla persevered and in 2013, she began collecting the stories of other Palestinian Canadians. “As the opening comes closer, I become more and more concerned that the lessons of the Palestinian experience, nobody’s going to hear it,” Abdulla said in an interview about the museum with CBC TV in 2013. After that interview aired, the head of the museum’s stakeholder relations, Clint Curle, finally reached out and agreed to meet with her and also apologized for not responding to her previous requests. Abdulla, who represented the Palestinian Canadian Congress (PCC) at the meeting with Curle, presented samples of Palestinian personal histories and eye-witness accounts. She offered to donate materials and ideas to support Palestinians’ displays. At one of the meetPalestinian protesters, including Rana Abdulla’s daughter, Sarah (center), at the September ings she attended, she was also accompanied 2014 opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. by two Nakba survivors. Dr. Ismail Zayid, from Halifax, presented another Palestinian submission about Canada Park and Canada’s RANA ABDULLA has waited nine long years to have her story told in complicity in war crimes. Canada Park is an Israeli national park the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR). Before the built on top of three ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages. Yet, AbCandice Bodnaruk has been involved in Palestinian issues for the dulla said that this clearly had no effect on Clint Curle. past 14 years through organizations such as the Canadian BDS “We are looking for equal reference to the cases that are being Coalition and Peace Alliance Winnipeg. Her political action started featured,” Abdulla said, adding that she and the PCC offered to with feminism and continued with the peace movement, first with the No War on Iraq Coalition in 2003 in Winnipeg. work with the museum on building a credible human rights museum, 40

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which is truly inclusive and equitable in all aspects. Even though Abdulla said she believed she was making progress in her communications with the CMHR, she eventually learned that she had received a standard form letter also sent to other groups that were meeting with the museum about content. In the end, Abdulla felt the meetings she had with the CMHR had no impact. She confirmed there was no substantial standing exhibit on Palestinian human rights issues at the museum’s eventual opening in September 2014 and asserted that the displays were skewed to favor the Conservative government’s narrative on human rights. “The ideas the museum presented lacked a true depiction of the realities of Palestinian human rights violations in history,” she lamented. At the time, the museum seemed to be more interested in stories about Palestinian and Israeli children playing soccer together than they were about a detailed account of the Nakba and stories of the survivors. Curle’s proposal was to focus on a “conflict” and “dialogue” instead of the occupation, which sidesteps the issue and blurs human rights concerns. Abdulla argued the Palestinian human rights case must be present in the CMHR because it reflects the history not only of Palestine and Israel, but also the complicity of Canada and other U.N. member states in allowing human rights violations. The CMHR was a dream of Winnipeg business mogul Israel Asper, who died in 2003. The museum was established under an amended Museum Act, as a national self-governing Canadian crown corporation during Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2008. While the CMHR was initially intended to be a Holocaust museum, today it does include other human rights stories. Asper’s daughter, Gail Asper, currently sits on the CMHR board of directors and is also president of the Asper Foundation, which originally spearheaded the creation of the CMHR. Asper also serves on the Executive MARCH/APRIL 2021

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(L-r) Rana Abdulla, Suzanne Berliner Weiss and Harold Shuster in March 2020, speaking at a Winnipeg book launch of From Holocaust to Resistance My Journey, by Weiss. of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Currently, “Examining the Holocaust” is the largest gallery within the CMHR, while the stories of Palestinians and the Nakba are noticeably absent. The Ukrainian Holodomor, Armenian Genocide, Rwandan Genocide and Srebrenica Genocide in Bosnia are also presented in a separate gallery called “Breaking the Silence.” (Ironically, this is the name of the project that encourages Israeli soldiers to talk about their military’s violations of Palestinian human rights.) The Holocaust is also included in those exhibits. Before the museum officially opened its doors in 2014, museum staff did say it might address Palestinian issues through an art project or include a story about someone who fights for Palestinian rights, but today the institution still refuses to use the term Nakba in any of its exhibits. Over the course of three years, Abdulla succeeded in collecting a Toronto-sized telephone book of memoirs and eye-witness testimonies that could be used by the CMHR in an exhibit on Palestine. That has yet to happen. “Palestinian Canadians feel we have been shut out of the museum,” she said. When the museum finally opened in Winnipeg in September 2014, there were celebrations and protests. At the time it was not only Palestinians, but other groups who

believed the CMHR was not inclusive. For example, members of Canada’s Indigenous community protested the fact that many of their communities live without clean drinking water. The Indigenous protesters also pointed out that the CMHR, which is the first national museum to be built outside Canada’s capital region, OttawaHull, was built on the remains of an Indigenous village. Before construction of the building began archaeologists pushed to excavate the proposed museum site located at the Forks National Historic site. Although an excavation did take place, it was cut short so that construction could begin and, as a result, only 3 percent of the site was excavated. According to Dr. E. Leigh Syms, curator emeritus of the Manitoba Museum, “There had been some public concern at the time that the museum should not have been there at all.” Canada and Manitoba lost an opportunity to recover, develop and present a unique and remarkable record of First Nation’s history and heritage. Although in 2019 the CMHR officially recognized that genocide was committed against Canada’s Indigenous peoples, in June 2020, the CMHR was called out for its anti-Indigenous racism. Indigenous staff members also reported instances of harassment and mistreatment by management. Additionally, there were reports of prevalent

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hingya that featured huge nameless phopresented that way in the museum’s galanti-Black racism, sexual harassment, and tographs of victims, about which she comleries. accusations that CMHR staff were asked to plained to management. “In fact, most of the management is shield exhibits about LGBTQIA rights from The recent management overhaul has simply White. Class, race and gender and school tour groups. put a new CEO in place to lead the the hiring practices that go with reproducJohn Young, who was the museum’s museum. Isha Khan is Canadian Pakistani ing privilege, especially in roles in which CEO at the time, resigned because of the and the first woman and person of color to decisions are made, need to be changed,” controversy, and while the CMHR searched hold the position on a non-interim basis. she said. for a new senior executive, they hired a She said the purpose of the museum She explained that at museums in Arlawyer, Laurelle Harris, to complete an outshould not be to become a complete catgentina there is an effort to curate at a side review to address racism, homophobia alogue of human rights atrocities around grassroots level with respect and dignity. “I and sexual harassment at the institution. the world. Instead, Khan said, the goal of never saw that there (at the CMHR). It was In August 2020, the CMHR issued a the museum is to inspire all people by more of a showoff, of resources, design and report entitled “Rebuilding the Foundation,” sharing diverse examples of stories that iltricks than careful consideration for the ethoutlining its immediate steps to address the luminate different human rights themes. ical implications of the exhibits,” she said, inequities at the museum. There were 44 She pointed out that the CMHR does, in referring to a recent exhibit about the Rorecommendations in the report including an (Advertisement) fact, reference the Nakba, alaction-based apology to Black though not by name, in a and Indigenous people, creattimeline in its introductory ing a Black Canadian History gallery, and contains an extour at the museum, as well as hibit in the “Rights Today” specifying that tours about Ingallery about Dr. Izzeldin digenous content are to be deAbuelaish, the Gaza doctor livered only by Indigenous who lost three daughters and people. There was no mention a niece when Israeli shells hit of Palestine in the report. his home in 2009. “It was supposed to be an “As we consult further with example for the rest of the Palestinians and other comworld of the way in which munities, I believe we will find Canada could become an exthat there are many opportuample for human rights. As a nities for us to lift up the stofederal museum, its mandate ries of many,” Khan said. is a fundamental part of how Abdulla is hopeful about this institution would represent Khan’s appointment and has the fabric of a society, its already written to the new values, and aspirations. I don’t CEO about including Palesbelieve management, or the Playgrounds for Palestine is a project to build playgrounds for our tinian content in the museum. board, has a new understandchildren. It is a minimal recognition of their right to childhood and creative expression. It is an act of love. She said that given the ing of what that meant given CMHR’s new leadership, she what was done,” said Gabriela Playgrounds for Palestine (PfP) is a registered 501(c)3 non-proﬁt is ready to meet yet again to Aguero, who began working organization, established in 2001. We’re an all-volunteer organization (no paid staﬀ) that raises money throughout the year to contalk about meaningful Palesas an interpretive program destruct playgrounds and fund programs for tinian representation within veloper at the CMHR in 2018. children in Palestine. its walls. Aguero, an Argentine artist, Selling Organic, Fair Trade Palestinian olive “Canadians deserve the experienced harassment while oil is PfP’s principle source of fundraising. opportunity to form a balworking at the CMHR and also is year, PfP launched AIDA, a private anced view, rooted in a fundeveloped PTSD. “This is a label olive oil from Palestinian farmers. damental understanding of clear example of colonization Please come by and taste it at our table. the human rights charter and at its best,” she said. We hope you’ll love it and make it a staple in your pantry. philosophy. The Palestinian Aguero added that although story is an opportunity to the CMHR does recognize the For more information or to make a donation visit: build such understanding,” genocide against Canada’s https://playgroundsforpalestine.org • P.O. Box 559 • Yardley, PA 19067 Abdulla concluded. ■ Indigenous peoples, it is not 42

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Working to Erase the Scars of the Past in Beirut LEBANON IS DEAR to me. It is where I attended twelve years of boarding school as well as the birthplace of my favorite teacher and second mother. Amal Ksaifi was a devout Maronite Christian. She took me to midnight mass and also made sure I kept my fast during the month of Ramadan. She was effortlessly kind and generously loving. Last year, Amal died in Boston, and in her loving memory, I decided to dedicate 15 days of service to the people of Lebanon. Five months into the COVID-19 pandemic and during a Lebanese national financial crisis that predates the pandemic, an enormous explosion shook the Beirut capital on Aug. 4, killing more than 200 individuals, injuring another 6,500 and displacing 300,000 residents. The intensity of the blast left the country’s main port and surrounding area in ruins. It was felt and heard hundreds of miles away on the island of Cyprus. Immediately after the explosion, volunteers from all over the world flocked to Beirut to rebuild and renovate its shattered homes and shops. And so did I. Dec. 13 was my first day preparing food for the victims of the blast. Karantina is a mixed-use residential and commercial neighborhood in northeastern Beirut, just east of the port where the blast took place. I worked 500 feet from the epicenter of that blast in a makeshift kitchen that was set up by a Christian Maronite priest. Abouna (Father) Hani Touk travels 22 miles from Jbail (Byblos) to Beirut five days a week to feed the families that were displaced by the explosion, as well as the foreign and local volunteers renovating Karantina’s destroyed homes and shops. With the help of a small group of volunteers, Abouna Touk prepares and cooks 620 meals to serve Karantina’s Muslim and Christian survivors of the recent blast and Lebanon’s cruel civil war. During the Lebanese civil war, the Karantina neighborhood witnessed several massacres. Historically, it is where the central offices of the right-wing Christian Maronite Kataeb Party (Phalange) is located, one of several armed militias that terrorized Karantina’s Muslim community. So while it is not surprising that some of the volunteers working at Father Touk’s makeshift kitchen either took part or were victims of Lebanon’s sectarian civil war, it is most surprising to find the people who feared and avoided one another casually meeting face to face to ease the hardships they share. But that took deliberate effort. According to Father Touk, it took him two weeks to convince his local volunteers to agree to serve Karantina’s Muslims. They no longer need convincing. Five days a week, they

Dr. Mai Abdul Rahman, founder of the American Palestinian Women’s Association (APWA), is an Emergency Medical Technician volunteer at Riverdale Heights Volunteer Fire Department (Engine 13). MARCH/APRIL 2021

PHOTO COURTESY M. ABDUL RAHMAN

By Dr. Mai Abdul Rahman

Abouna Touk’s volunteers making tabouleh to serve Muslim and Christian port blast survivors in Beirut’s Karantina neighborhood. stand shoulder to shoulder to plate and serve their former enemies. It is not that sectarianism is dead in Lebanon—it still exists. However, there are some encouraging signs. During the Christmas season, a choral festival at Mar Mikhael Maronite Church featured Muslim and Christian singers. Apha Association, an NGO led by Father Azar, a Maronite priest, is raising money to build trust and friendship among the Christian and Muslim youth of Burj al-Barajneh while reconnecting with the natural environment. Burj al-Barajneh is a southern suburb where both Shia and Sunni Muslim Lebanese live, along with Maronite Christians and Syrian, Iraqi and Kurdish refugee populations, many of them living in and around the local Palestinian refugee camp. While the Maronite efforts are small and limited in scope, they are promising. For Lebanon to heal, Muslim and Christian leaders must be deliberate in creating spaces across Lebanon to erase the sting of past tragic massacres and wars. It is in the interest of all Lebanese to strategically and purposefully create opportunities for people of different faiths to work together. This could erase hatred of “the other” and usher in the rebuilding of a forward-looking Lebanon that serves the interests of all its people. It won’t be easy to forget the deep wounds of past conflicts, but it is possible for the Lebanese people to begin trusting one another. The fate of the country depends on leaders like Abouna Touk and people of every faith working together. ■

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As Americans Reckon with Racism, In Israel Jewish Privilege and Supremacy Reigns

By Dr. M. Reza Behnam

PHOTO BY AYMAN NOBANI/XINHUA VIA GETTY) (XINHUA/AYMAN NOBANI VIA GETTY IMAGES

Washington’s inexorable, unqualified advocacy of Israel has been at the heart of America’s disastrous policies. Policymakers have remained stubbornly resistant to challenging the Israeli narrative. To infuse soul into America’s policy in Palestine, the story that Israel has sold the people of the United States must finally be demystified. Even though its national objectives more often than not run counter to U.S. interests, Israel has been extremely influential in determining American policy in the Middle East. Decades of appeasement and generIsraeli soldiers confront a Palestinian protester during clashes following a demonstration against the expansion ous subsidies have conof Jewish settlements in the West Bank village of Beit Dajan, east of Nablus, on Dec. 11, 2020. vinced Israel’s leaders that they will always have JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR. became the 46th president of the United America’s financial and military support. Consequently, with U.S. States on Jan. 20, aspiring to “restore the soul of America.” Although backing and through force, Israel has become the hegemonic his message was aimed at domestic restoration, the new adminispower in the region—its goal from the start. tration, if it is to lay claim to principled policies, must apply the same A question the Biden administration should be asking is whether standard to America’s morally bankrupt policies in the Middle East, the United States has benefited from its role as Israel’s champion especially regarding Palestine. and security guardian. Israel continues to capitalize on the myth of Applying Biden’s aspirations to the Palestine/Israel catastrophe a “nation under siege” to justify and legitimate its aggressive actions would finally end decades of humiliation and bring justice to in the Occupied West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and against Iran. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and in imprisoned Gaza. For Israel, the issue is whether the Zionist plan—framed as far A new Biden policy—should there be one—would benefit the back as 1895—of systematically seizing Palestinian land and disentire region and strengthen America’s moral standing in the possessing its people can be sustained without continuous, devasworld. tating invasions and wars. Israel’s founders understood that illegally confiscating Palestinian M. Reza Behnam, Ph.D., is a political scientist whose specialities land would be seen unfavorably. A way had to be found to make an include American foreign policy and the history, politics and illegitimate undertaking seem legitimate and rational in the eyes of governments of the Middle East. 44

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the world. The Zionist plan involved not only planting the Israeli flag on the land but planting it in the hearts and minds of the American people and the international community. They embraced the idea of selling Israel biblically, harnessing the power of religion as well as history and race, to build the Jewish state. Although Zionism began as a secular movement, the ideological influence of the Jewish religion on Israeli policies and politics has been significant. Jewish nationalism and religious exclusivity—claims to be God’s chosen people—run through Jewish history and Israeli state practices. That Judaism and Zionism have become increasingly congruent is reflected in the messianic religious right’s considerable power and influence within Israeli politics. The government uses the Bible as an attested historical record to assert its claims over Palestine as the ancestral home of the Jewish people. It exploits stories of biblical ancestors and ancient archeological sites to validate land claims and to legitimize its colonial, expansionist practices. Israel’s representation of the past predictably erases all traces of the ancient and continuous Palestinian presence on the land. Sacred, ancient terms such as the “redemption of Zion” are employed to legitimize Jewish settlement expansion, and to fortify the belief of many Israelis that God promised Palestine solely to the Jews. Jewish ideology demands that no part of Israel can belong to non-Jews. Consequently, as an exclusive Jewish state, its leaders have been unwilling to conceive of autonomy or equality for non-Jews living inside Israel, or for Palestinians living in Gaza and the occupied territories. Zionism’s historical objective has always been Palestinian capitulation and removal. The Talmud—the primary source of Jewish theology and religious law—is ambiguous as to the precise geographical definition of the term “Land of Israel.” The Israeli government has never accepted definite territorial limits in its realization of a Greater Israel. And it formally uses the MARCH/APRIL 2021

Hebrew biblical terms Judea and Samaria in all references to the West Bank. Preserving its Jewish nature and character has been a paramount objective of the state of Israel from its inception. Intermarriage and assimilation are seen as threats to survival of the Jewish state. That fear is reflected in the country’s labyrinthian marriage laws. Matrimonial law in Israel is religious, not civil, and only marriages performed by an Orthodox religious body are recognized by the state. Marriage to a non-Jew is forbidden in traditional Jewish law. Consequently, when a couple wants to marry, they are required by law to prove their Jewishness. Marriage with Muslims or Christians is not legally acknowledged by the state, and children born to a non-Jewish woman are not considered Jewish. Israel is an ethnic state for the Jews, not for all its citizens. Since ethnicity determines all rights, resources and power, Israel cannot rightfully be described as a democracy. And it cannot be a democracy while maintaining military control over and denying equal rights to 4.8 million Palestinians under occupation and the 1.9 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Supremacy is discordant with democracy. Jewish privilege and supremacy were written into the 1948 Declaration of Independence and in subsequent Basic Laws— Israel’s de facto constitution. The 1985 amendment to the Basic Law regarding the Knesset states that no candidate or party whose program denies the existence of Israel as the state of the Jewish people is allowed to participate in the elections to the Knesset. The 2018 nation-state Basic Law reaffirms Israel’s founding principle. It states unequivocally that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people only. Under the law, only Jews have nationality rights; only they are entitled to first-class citizenship. With no national rights, the 20 percent of Israel’s population that is not Jewish face uncertainty regarding all of their rights. Ironically, Americans would never accept the United States being designated an ex-

clusive Christian state, with national rights and protections only for citizens defined as Christians. And some Jews in the U.S., those of whom have been the staunchest supporters of civil rights, tolerate the violation of those same rights by the Israeli government. While the United States and the rest of the world are attempting to reckon with their colonial, racist pasts, there is no such reckoning in Israel. It has, instead, institutionalized and codified discrimination against the Palestinians, whether citizens of Israel or non-citizens in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel continues, with little or no opposition, to annex land and make life unbearable for the Palestinians. Forty-two percent of the West Bank is presently controlled by Jewish-only segregated settlements. It has stubbornly resisted envisioning alternatives to its ideology of an exclusive Jewish state. Through its unwavering support, the U.S. has given its blessing to the plan of Zionist founders such as David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, who told a meeting of the Jewish Agency in 1938: “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.” Compulsory “transfer” was a euphemism for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Israel’s dependence on the United States has allowed it to nurture its exclusivity and to remain an intruder in the Middle East. If it were untethered from Washington, the Israeli government would be forced to seek reciprocity rather than domination of its neighbors. It would no longer have to buy-off or shop for regional friends and allies. Stability requires that the two peoples living on the same land—Palestine/Israel— share the same privileges and rights. However thorny, Israel can choose a different narrative, a different fate and future, one that is clearly compatible with democracy. It is an idea whose time has come and one Biden’s “soul restoring” administration should be promoting. As the new president signs executive orders to increase racial equity at home, he should re-examine financial and military support for an ethnic state with rights only for its Jewish citizens. ■

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Ibrahims on the Road: Encounters with Syrian Refugees in Turkey By Lisa Dupuy, Photos By Daniel Maissan

Ibrahim Yan Aslan, 50, shows us how fighter planes fly over Kilis, in southern Turkey, into Syria. “I REMEMBER THE PLANES flying over. I could almost feel the engines, as if the sound trembled through the fields,” Ibrahim Yan Aslan, 50, said. “It made us feel badly for the people over there.” Aslan did not need to point very far from his farmland to indicate the Syrian border. He is a farmer in the backlands of Kilis, in southern Turkey. As the war rages in Syria, Ibrahim said his customers moved away and his income has plummeted. Millions of refugees have fled to Kilis, and Ibrahim said he hired some as farm hands because, “you know, they lighten the work. And to support them, as well. Generally speaking, every person has good intentions, whether they’re Syrians or Turks.” Traditionally, Kilis is the classical border town, facilitating the transport of goods and people alike. In recent years, it has seen refugees

Lisa Dupuy is a freelance journalist based in the Netherlands. She writes daily news and is interested in how conflict shapes people, places and culture. Daniel Maissan is a freelance photographer, also based in the Netherlands. He works for NGOs and foundations. His focus lies in capturing people and their stories. Lisa Dupuy and Daniel Maissan received a working grant from the Dutch Foundation BJP for this autonomous project. 46

pass one way, and Turkish troops and their equipment, in large quantities, the other. The war in Syria has brought to Kilis humanitarians, victims and profiteers. The city itself has swelled with new arrivals looking for refuge at several points in the conflict’s timeline. It is the same in other cities in southern Turkey, like Antakya and Reyhanli. I visited these places last October, on a reporting trip with photographer Daniel Maissan. We wandered through this region which has seen an enormous influx of refugees, 3.5 million, since the civil war in Syria started in 2011. Speaking to some refugees, I got the sense of a community that exists in the cities’ undergrowth, a collective shadow living in this border region. The refugees have their own cultural centers, economy and social structures that are self-managed by online communities. We spoke to the man who oversees a “Syrians in Kilis” Facebook page, with tens of thousands of members. It’s full of stories of furniture swaps, dental and educational referrals and charity requests. The site functions like a coping mechanism, a way for individuals to continue to exist, even for those who have endured a lot. Let me tell you about Ibrahim. I’m not referring solely to the farmer who showed us his fields, but to several Ibrahims; men and boys of

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that name, a common one in Turkey and its neighboring countries. Daniel and I are tracing Abraham’s Path, which connects Ur in Iraq to the Sinai. The route follows the travels of the prophet Abraham, recognized by the large monotheisms, which are known as the Abrahamic religions. Abraham/Ibrahim is known in many communities as a symbol of hospitality and tolerance. Harvard researchers study the legends of his life and the long tradition of his worship as useful tools in conflict resolution. The Abraham Path Initiative, a non-profit organization, aims to install hiking trails for visitors to come and experience the Middle East. The initiative seeks to find common ground, literally, in the territory that Ibrahim inhabited. (See www.abrahampath.org) In walking our own version of these idealistic pathways, we hope to peek behind the headlines of the news coverage and examine peace-building and reconciliation. We are gathering these stories as slow travelers and over-thinkers. While hiking, we look for Ibrahims for a portrait series that provide a cross-section of the communities we meet. We want to know how these people succeed in re-settling, and how they feel at home in places and with each other. This is a tricky project to plan because we come in peace, but peace is far from many of the states in the region that we are aiming to cross. Our version of Abraham’s Path is almost 2.5 thousand miles long (see www.meetingabraham.com). We have divided it up in 10 separate hikes, each of which will take several weeks to finish. With our freelancer work schedules (and frankly, budget) as well as risk assessments, the logistics are a real challenge. In the last year, of course, our planning was further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We were awarded a working grant for our trip a mere weeks before the Netherlands went into a lockdown, casting doubts over our travel plans. But in the end, the timing worked out neatly. So, in autumn we hiked through rural villages, with the road’s dust coating our legs and our hot breath caught in diligent facemasks. We learned how the pandemic is impactMARCH/APRIL 2021

ing the community of Syrian refugees. In Reyhanli, we visited a rehabilitation care home for refugees who are granted temporary status in Turkey for healthcare. The center has 285 beds, 159 of which were occupied. Due to COVID-19 fewer people have been allowed over the border for the duration of their medical treatment. “We can tell that people are very afraid of losing their place,” said head nurse Lamah, who studied medicine in Aleppo. “These people have already become refugees. Mentally they have become used to constant instability. But for their medical treatment, they are willing to wait for months, if necessary.” Some also stay, like 7-year-old Ibrahim. The continuous strikes at his home, in the northern region of Jabal al-Zawiya, caused the boy to lose his hearing. He was a toddler at the time, just learning to speak. He is catching up, with the aid of a hearing aid. His father accompanies him to the rehabilitation center. They’ve been in Reyhanli for 10 months, while Ibrahim receives remedial lessons. “An older son died in the bombings,” his parent explains. “Due to Ibrahim’s deafness my wife and I could no longer communicate with him. That was very painful. It made us feel like we had lost a second child.” There are many echoes to Ibrahim’s father’s story. The conversation partners we meet on our treks slip in little reminders of what they have lost, possessions and people, and wistfully shared memories. One man in Kilis told us, “In the places where we dwell in Turkey, at least we can feel Syria as it drifts toward us from time to time, with the winds.” The two of us can walk about 12 and a half miles at a time and on days when we are changing “headquarters” we do so with full backpacks. On our walks, Syria looms on the horizon. We catch glimpses of a newly constructed border wall, like a whitewashed, concrete snake that winds its way across a forested hillside to the very south of Antakya. Amazingly, we have met Ibrahims at several points on these treks: an engineer who was inspecting an irrigation system just outside of Suruç; the Kurdish Ibrahim harvest-

Ibrahim, 7, who is deaf due to the bombing in his hometown in Syria, now lives in the rehabilitation home in Reyhanli. ing his pomegranates in the outfields; an Ibrahim taking his wife shopping in Birecik; and the Syrian refugee who writes poetry about his lost home. We even spoke to an Ibrahim on the phone, after his brother suggested we call him at his place of work on the other side of the country. There is something powerful in taking down the details of each life, in short bullet points: family name, age, place of birth. There is a future and a past to each Ibrahim we encounter. Their communities bring us in, take hold of us. I think that among our favorite and most impressive experiences on these reporting hikes are our chance encounters. All it takes for us, really, is to have faith in the hospitality that is associated with the legendary figure. We’ve found people are curious and we entertain them. You can imagine this scene, the two of us, sweaty and strange, arriving in a random village, straining to ask people: “Excuse me, do you know an Ibrahim?” “You are looking for Ibrahim? Ibrahim… who? Which Ibrahim? What does he do?” “Oh, we don’t know, just—any Ibrahim, an old man, a baby…” Anyone with a bit of time and hospitality, in fact, will do. ■

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Talking Turkey

People pose for photographs with a large snowball at Süleymaniye Mosque after a snowstorm on Jan. 18, 2021 in Istanbul, Turkey. RECENT TIMES have seen a wide range of about-faces around the Middle East, from the Gulf states’ public re-embracing of Qatar to a cluster of Arab countries recognizing Israel. Now, Turkey seems intent on boarding this bandwagon too, with Ankara announcing an ever-widening new friendliness in relations with nations it had only recently been condemning. It began with Israel, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had accused of “genocide” against the Palestinians back in 2018. By Dec. 25, 2020, Erdoğan was ready “to bring our ties to a better point,” he announced, after top adviser Mesut Hakki Caşın had told Voice of America that, “If Israel comes one step, Turkey maybe can come two steps.” Next, it was France’s turn. With Paris having been Ankara’s rival from the Sahel to Syria, as recently as Dec. 4, Erdoğan had been urging the French leader, Emmanuel Macron, to undergo “mental checks,” while loudly backing a boycott of French goods. By Jan.

Jonathan Gorvett is a free-lance writer specializing on European and Middle Eastern affairs. 48

15, however, Erdoğan was reported to be exchanging letters with Macron, while wishing him a happy new year. In the meantime, Ankara has also reached out to the EU—and Germany—after years of disputes over issues ranging from Turkish human rights abuses to refugees and maritime limits in the Eastern Mediterranean. By Jan. 18, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu was announcing that, “A forward-looking development path with permanently constructive relations,” was now in the cards with Brussels. Meanwhile, in the Gulf, Turkey has also been making nice with both Saudi Arabia and the UAE; rivals for power and influence from the Horn of Africa to the Western Desert. The Jan. 5 Al-Ula deal ending the blockade of Qatar—a strong Turkish ally—was praised by Erdoğan, with the regional rumor mill now suggesting everyone from the Qatari emir to Lebanese prime minister-designate, Saad Hariri, may be about to mediate a Gulfwide reconciliation with Turkey. Finally, even Greece was invited in from the cold. On Jan. 12, Çavuşoğlu announced that the two countries would resume talks—

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Turkey Looks for a Regional Reset, While Neighbors Doubt Sincerity By Jonathan Gorvett

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suspended since 2016. These talks took place on Jan. 25 in Istanbul, and concluded with both sides agreeing to another round of talks in Athens. Yet, despite the Turkish foreign ministry’s hyper-active start to the new year, serious doubts remain as to the sincerity of Erdoğan’s volte face. Indeed, many suspect that these moves may not signal a real change of heart in Ankara, but rather, a combination of domestic pressures and one major international change: the new U.S. presidency of Joe Biden.

DOMESTIC DILEMMAS

While Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) remains the most popular single party in Turkey—a January poll by Istanbul Economic Research gave them around 31.6 percent of the vote—it has also recently been losing support. “The AKP faces a generational challenge,” says Özgür Ünlühisarcıklı, the German Marshall Fund’s Ankara director. “Young and first-time voters are less likely to vote AKP, so there is therefore a chance Erdoğan might lose the next election.” While that is not scheduled until 2023, Erdoğan is clearly concerned at this erosion of popular support—with the economy another major factor driving this political development. Last year, “Turkey experienced a neardeath situation,” says Ünlühisarcıklı. Back then, Erdoğan had insisted on un-conventional economic policies regarding interest rates, triggering a major currency depreciation and rocketing inflation. At the same time, Erdoğan’s more confrontational foreign policy has led to Turkey clashing with many key trading partners, such as the EU, and global powers, such as the U.S. This has had economic consequences, too, as the threat of sanctions from both the EU and U.S. has impacted investor confidence in Turkey, hampering the crucial foreign investment flows and credit lines that finance much of the country’s economic growth. Faced with imminent economic meltdown, Erdoğan eventually made a major about-turn, firing the finance minister—his MARCH/APRIL 2021

son-in-law—and the central bank governor in early November 2020. Both were replaced with more conventional figures. “This happened almost simultaneously with the start of the new foreign policy approach and talk of democratic reform,” says Ünlühisarcıklı. Indeed, along with the start of reconciliatory remarks about Turkey’s neighbors, Erdoğan also began talking of a new era of judicial and democratic reforms for the country.

DEVIL IN THE DETAIL

Yet, within days of that announcement, Erdoğan fired Bülent Arinç, one of the last “big beasts’” of the early AKP, which Arinç had helped found. Arinç’s misdemeanor appeared to have been his call—under the new spirit of democratic and judicial reform—for the release of the imprisoned co-chair of the proKurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtaş, and human rights activist Osman Kavala. Likewise, on the economic front, after tolerating interest rate hikes for two months, on Jan. 15, Erdoğan returned to his old position, slamming such moves—and giving the Turkish currency its biggest one-day fall against the U.S. dollar since late November. Under such circumstances, trust is also likely to be a factor when it comes to dealing with Erdoğan’s new foreign policy friendliness. Indeed, “The initiative looks more like an exercise in Turkish diplomacy and a kind of face lift for Erdoğan,” says Ekavi Athanassopoulou, assistant professor of international relations at the University of Athens. Similarly, Gallia Lindenstrauss from the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, says that for Israel, “There is also a high level of mistrust” for Erdoğan’s outreach, given his history of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic rhetoric, and continued support for Hamas. Given Turkish understanding of the control the Israel lobby has over U.S. foreign policy in general, too, there is also a suspicion in Israel that “With a Democrat administration entering office in the U.S., it is better to repair relations with Israel,” says Lindenstrauss.

Regarding relations with Brussels, meanwhile, “There is rhetoric, but so far not followed by substance, on the EU,” says Ioannis N. Grigoriadis, an associate professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Bilkent University in Ankara and head of the Turkey Program at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Athens. In March, the EU is due to examine sanctions against Turkey, over Turkish hydrocarbon activities in Eastern Mediterranean waters, which are claimed by EU-members Greece and Cyprus. Ankara’s dismal human rights record has also caused consternation in Europe, as did Turkey’s weaponization of the refugee issue last February, when refugees and migrants were shipped to the Greek border and ordered to cross in an effort to pressure the EU over Syria. Regarding the U.S., under Trump, Erdoğan was often protected from congressional and judicial enquiries and economic sanctions over the purchase of Russian anti-aircraft missiles. Now, there is a fear in Ankara that this will come to an abrupt end under Biden. “Biden is one of only two living senators who voted for an arms embargo against Turkey in 1974,” says Ünlühisarcıklı, recalling the U.S. response to Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus that year. “Biden is interested in the Eastern Mediterranean and knows it well.” That is certainly causing alarm in Ankara. Whether it will also cause a real shift in policy, however, remains to be seen—with plenty of skepticism about this new friendliness to overcome currently around the region. ■

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Special Report

Demystifying Arab Views of Ancient Egypt

A picture taken on January 4, 2021 shows the Ramses II complex at the ancient Egyptian temple of Abu Simbel, some 695 miles south of the Egyptian capital Cairo. IN WESTERN CULTURES, there has long been an embedded perception of ancient civilizations in the Middle East and Europe as having given way to societies inferior both in achievement and interest. Ancient Greece has been long revered as the birthplace of European civilization, with great accomplishments in the creative arts, in philosophy and political practices, including democracy, to its credit. Everything that came after in Greek history, from the Byzantine Empire right up to the present suffered by comparison. Italy might have won appreciation for its role in the Renaissance, but otherwise, much of its history has until recently tended to be seen as a comedown from the great days of the Roman Empire. If anything, prevailing Western attitudes to the civilizations of the Middle East have been more negative, especially concerning the centuries following the Arab conquest in the seventh century CE. For most of the public, they’re a complete blank. Those who have read or heard anything about it have often absorbed narratives colored by hostility to both Arabs and Islam. One theme in the misun-

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel. 50

derstanding and misrepresentation of Egypt is the supposed negative attitudes and destructive behavior of the Arabs toward the Ancient Egyptian past and its monuments. Some of what passes for fact is simply false; some represents only part of the picture. One tenacious myth is that, when the Arab conquerors of Egypt captured Alexandria, they burnt all the books in the great Library. Their commander, Amr Ibn al-’As, was said to have written to the Caliph ’Umar to ask what should be done with the books, to which ’Umar replied, “If these writings of the Greeks agree with the Qur’an, they are useless and need not be preserved. If they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed.” And so, Amr had the world’s greatest collection of ancient knowledge burnt. In fact, nothing of the kind happened. Records of the Library simply vanish toward the end of the third century and it was probably lost to plunder, fires and neglect. Had it still existed by the early sixth century reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, it would most certainly have been mentioned, since Justinian sought to destroy the last vestiges of paganism in the Byzantine Empire and the Library had been a great store of pagan writings. The first surviving written account purporting to describe the Arab destruction

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of the Library was written nearly 600 years after the event. There are numerous examples of defacing the representations of gods and people in Ancient Egyptian monuments, which have been casually ascribed to Islamic fanaticism. But, as early accounts of the establishment of Christianity in Egypt testify, much of the damage was done by Christians who, as they gained in strength, waged war on statues and other images of the ancient gods, particularly attacking their faces. Wherever old cities grew or new cities were established, Ancient Egyptian temples and other stone structures were normally used as sources of building materials: the vast ancient city of Memphis and most of the limestone casing of the pyramids of Giza disappeared into medieval Cairo. From a historical perspective, that’s certainly a matter for regret, but it was not out of keeping either with the treatment of ancient buildings elsewhere (including those of the Roman cities of Western Europe) nor with prior practice; the Ancient Egyptians themselves tore down many old buildings and reused their stones. The best-preserved Middle Kingdom (c 2050-1710 BCE) building that now exists is the beautifully carved White Chapel of Senusret I. It

has survived because it was demolished and its stones used in the construction of the third pylon of the Karnak temple during the New Kingdom. It was recovered and reassembled in the 1930s. Far from having a hostile attitude to Ancient Egypt, medieval Arabs and Muslims, whether they lived in Egypt or came as visitors, were often deeply impressed by its still standing monuments. Ibn Jubayr, who visited Egypt in 1183 while travelling to Mecca from Spain, described what he saw, including leaving a description of the then intact temple of Min at Akhmim, with its many columns and vividly painted ceiling, which can only leave a modern lover of Ancient Egypt with a sense both of wonder and of profound regret at what has since been lost. (See his description below.) The great medieval historian Al-Idrisi (who died in 1251) wrote a history of Egypt that covered the ancient past, according to the state of knowledge of his time, as well as a six-chapter volume about the pyramids. Al-Baghdadi, a historian and philosopher who was a near contemporary of Saladin, deplored the destruction of ancient monuments in Alexandria and Memphis for re-use. In a book dedicated to what he saw when visiting Egypt, he devoted a whole

IBN JUBAYR’S DESCRIPTION OF THE TEMPLE OF MIN AT AKHMIM

The most remarkable of the temples of the world talked of for their wonder is the great temple east of the city and below its walls. Its length is 220 cubits, and its breadth 160. The people of these parts know it as birba, and thus too are known all their temples and ancient constructions. This great temple is supported by 40 columns, beside its walls, the circumference of each column being 50 spans and the distance between them 30 spans. Their capitals are of great size and perfection, cut in an unwonted fashion and angulated in ornate style as if done by turners. The whole is embellished with many colors, lapis lazuli and others.The columns are carved in low relief from top to bottom. Over the capital of each column and stretching to its neighbor is a great slab of carved stone, the biggest of which we measured and found to be 56 spans in length, 10 in width, and 8 in depth. The ceiling of this temple is wholly formed of slabs of stone so wonderfully joined as to seem to be one single piece; and over it all are disposed rare paintings and uncommon colors, so that MARCH/APRIL 2021

chapter to descriptions of the Ancient Egyptian monuments he visited. Al-Maqrizi, who died in 1440, was a prolific writer who was interested in all aspects of Egypt, including its ancient past. The main limitation faced by medieval Muslim writers on Ancient Egypt was the very one that European writers encountered up until the early 19th century—they could not read Ancient Egyptian. Some tried to make sense of hieroglyphs, with the 9th-10th century writer Ibn Wahshiyah having made the most ambitious effort. It’s clear that many of the assumptions made about past Arab attitudes toward Ancient Egypt are not justified in reality. Someone who has done much to challenge long established thinking on this subject is Egyptologist Okasha El-Daly. He wrote a groundbreaking study of early Arab writing on Egypt (Egyptology: The Missing Millennium, subtitled Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings, UCL Press, 2005). He describes many writers and the topics in which they were interested. I have drawn upon this book for the latter part of this article. Some of El-Daly’s conclusions may be disputed, but he’s certainly pointed to a gap in understanding of Egypt’s history and pointed the way to further research. ■

the beholder conceives the roof to be of carved wood. Each slab

has a different painting. Some are adorned with comely pictures

of birds with outstretched wings making the beholder believe they

are about to fly away; others are embellished with human images, very beautiful to look upon and of elegant form, each image

having a distinctive shape, for example holding a statue or a weapon, or a bird, or a chalice, or making a hand sign to some-

one, together with other forms it would take too long to describe and which words are not adequate to express.

Within and without this great temple, both in its upper and its

lower parts, are pictures, all of varied form and description. Some

are of dreadful, inhuman forms that terrify the beholder and fill

him with wonder and amazement. There was hardly the space of an awl or needle-hole which did not have an image or engrav-

ing or some script which is not understood. This remarkable decoration which can be wrought from hard stone where it cannot

be worked in softwood, covers the whole of this vast and splendid

temple, in wonder at which the beholder might conceive that all of time spent in its adornment, embellishment, and beautifying would be too short.

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WAGING PEACE Israel rightfully should be labeled an apartheid state—not simply for the purpose of applying an epithet, but rather to grasp more fully the scope of oppression that prevails between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, panelists in a recent webinar argued. The recent decision by B’Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights organization, to apply the term “apartheid” to Israel prompted the Jan. 21 webinar, sponsored by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. “Calling the Thing by Its Proper Name: ‘Apartheid’ Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea” emphasized the need to conceptualize the entire area between the river and the sea as one entity, rather than separating out “democratic Israel” from the “occupied territories.” Three panelists agreed that Israel is a repressive apartheid regime and cannot be considered a democratic state. The 14 million or so people living in the area from the river to the sea are about evenly split between Jewish and Palestinian residents, but ethnic Jews have rights and privileges that Palestinians do not share. Therefore, as Hagai El-Ad of B’Tselem explained, “The state is neither Jewish nor democratic” and is best understood as an apartheid regime. Sawsan Zaher of the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel pointed out that although Palestinians living within Israel’s borders might vote, serve in the legislature or as judges, the 2018 Jewish nation-state law mandates “ethnic supremacy” by defining Israel as a “Jewish state” in which Hebrew is the official language. “Discrimination and segregation and ethnic supremacy” have thus been enshrined in the constitution. Ironically, Zaher added, the basic law “helped us a lot” because it “elevated reality to the constitutional level.” The third panelist, Jerusalem-based journalist and author Nathan Thrall, emphasized the many intimate linkages between Israel and the occupied territories, citing 52

Israeli forces arrest a Palestinian for confronting Jewish settlers attempting to seize agricultural lands in the occupied West Bank city of Salfit, on Nov. 30, 2020.

highways, businesses, access to Ben Gurion Airport, national parks, municipal buildings, courthouses, shopping centers, schools and more. However, it is only Jewish settlers—and not Palestinians— living in the occupied territories who have access to this infrastructure. “The [Jewishonly] settlements are integrally connected to the State of Israel,” he noted. The settlements in the occupied territories, though illegitimate under international law, are part of the “national project of the State of Israel.” Considering Israeli control over Area C, which comprises 62 percent of the West Bank, Thrall estimates that Israel fully dominates 90 percent of the land between the river and the sea. While “the degree of subjugation varies” inside Israeli boundaries and in Areas A, B and C, overall, “There is one regime” and it is an apartheid regime of ethnic Jewish supremacy. “Let’s not play this game,” Thrall declared, “of there is apartheid in the West Bank and there is good green line democratic Israel and apartheid will be resolved through the two-state solution that J Street is going to urge [President Joe] Biden to fulfill in the next four years.” This long-standing but fictional narrative is promoted by the “peace process industry eager to whitewash apartheid,” Thrall added. It is “an inexcusable effort to justify present policies.” The “Big Lie” of Israel being a democracy

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rather than an apartheid state is “not just factually wrong but morally bankrupt,” ElAd declared. Israeli ethnic supremacists will not change of their own accord, he added, making it “incumbent on international actors” to compel the deconstruction of Israeli apartheid. —Walter L. Hixson

Morocco-Israel Normalization: Implications for Western Sahara and Palestine

The recent normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco was accompanied by U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. What these actions mean in terms of international law, human rights, regional dynamics, Palestinian statehood and U.S. foreign policy was the focus of a webinar hosted by the Arab Center Washington DC on Dec. 17. Western Sahara, officially the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, is recognized as an independent country by some 80 countries. The former Spanish colony, occupied by Morocco since 1975, covers 102,700 square miles, contains rich phosphate reserves and quality fishing waters off its 660-mile Atlantic coastline. “The U.S. acknowledged Morocco’s claim of sovereignty in the Western Sahara essentially in exchange for Moroccan normalization of relations with Israel,” said InMARCH/APRIL 2021 JUNE/JULY 2020

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Israeli Apartheid: Calling It Like It Is

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istration is going to be figuring out how they get on the American agenda,” Munayyer said. “The opportunities to engage on Israel-Palestine are extremely limited. I think the Palestinian leadership is going to have to figure out how to have realistic expectations vis-à-vis Washington and have an alternative plan for how to advance Palestinian national interests.” —Elaine Pasquini

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Revitalizing Diplomacy with Iran

U.S. Ambassador to Morocco David T. Fischer (l) and his wife Jennifer stand before a State Department-authorized map of Morocco that recognizes Western Sahara as part of Morocco, in Rabat on Dec. 12, 2020.

tissar Fakir of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “For Morocco, this is their most prized recognition…and essentially gives its control over the area and its use of the resources legitimacy.” Noting that the U.S. proposed a $1 billion arms deal—including four Reaper drones—to Morocco following the Dec. 10 announcement of normalization, Allison McManus, research director at the Freedom Initiative, said that “this is looking like payoff for Morocco.” In addition, “this sort of emboldens Morocco at a time when it is escalating its abuses of human rights in the territories,” she said. Freedom of assembly, association and of the press are virtually non-existent. “Public and private gatherings in homes are highly surveilled and often met with force from the Moroccan security services,” McManus stated. “Trump’s proclamation is in direct contradiction to a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions and a landmark World Court ruling calling for self-determination,” said Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco. While Trump had previously broken precedent by recognizing Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights, “this annexation is of an entire country, which has been recognized as an MARCH/APRIL 2021

independent state by no less than 80 nations at one time or another, so it is a particularly dangerous precedent,” he argued. “It can’t be something that Morocco can impose by military force or that the president of the U.S. can recognize with the stroke of a pen.” While United Nations’ efforts to resolve the conflict between the parties have failed, a special visiting mission from the U.N. to Western Sahara in 1975 reported that the vast majority of Sahrawis supported independence. “What the United States is saying is that the right of self-determination of a non-self-governing territory no longer exists,” Zunes explained. “There are few rights that are more fundamental than the right of self-determination.” This is a very dangerous precedent in terms of Palestine, Zunes said, because “with the United States recognizing Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara, what is stopping the United States from recognizing the annexation of large swaths of the West Bank by Israel?” Yousef Munayyer, senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, tempered any expectation that the new U.S. administration will rein in Israeli aggression and expansionism. “For the Palestinians, I think the biggest challenge they face with the Biden admin-

Re-engaging with Iran on the 2015 nuclear deal, which former President Donald Trump exited in 2018, is one of President Joe Biden’s initial foreign policy challenges. On a Jan. 13 webinar hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center, Jarrett Blanc, the former lead State Department coordinator for the Iran nuclear deal, said the new administration is eager to turn the page on President Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy toward Iran. “I think the most urgent goal is de-escalation of the crisis that the Trump administration has chosen over four years to create and accelerate,” he said. Both sides seem open to a compliancefor-compliance return to the nuclear deal. “The United States wants Iran to pull back from the breaches—the increases of its nuclear stockpile and level of enrichment,” said Robin Wright, a Wilson Center fellow. “In turn, Iran wants the United States to lift sanctions.” Whether or not the U.S. should maintain strict sanctions—the primary form of leverage the U.S. has over Iran—is an ongoing debate in Washington. Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, believes that many Washington insiders continually overstate the efficacy of sanctions. He addressed this issue on a Jan. 21 webinar co-hosted by J Street, the National Iranian American Council, the Friends Committee on National Legislation and the University of Denver’s Center for Middle East Studies. Parsi noted that despite the deluge of sanctions the U.S. placed on Tehran under the Trump administration, the country is now closer to a nuclear weapon than it was prior to the U.S. unilaterally abandoning the

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Iranian and U.S. officials meet in Vienna, Austria on June 30, 2015, as part of nuclear negotiations. Rob Malley (far left) has been named by President Joe Biden as special U.S. envoy for Iran. When news broke of Malley’s consideration for the job, hawks launched a smear campaign accusing him of being sympathetic to Iran and holding anti-Israel views. nuclear deal. Yet, he noted, hawks continue to push the notion that Iran is on the brink of a sanctions-induced collapse that will force the country to capitulate to all U.S. demands. The U.S. must “hold the line,” they insist. Those who push this philosophy fail to acknowledge that Tehran has its own leverage over Washington. Parsi elaborated on this point by revisiting the geostrategic game the U.S. and Iran played before the 2015 deal was reached. “What is oftentimes forgotten is that there was a very intense competition between the U.S. and Iran at the time on who could pressure the other the most,” he said. As the U.S. progressively intensified its sanctions, Iran in turn increased its nuclear activity. U.S. negotiators knew that their sanctions could not take root faster than Iran’s ability to advance its nuclear program, Parsi said. “The bottom line is that the Iranian nuclear clock actually ticked faster than the sanctions clock.” This realization led the U.S. to make a key concession: accepting some nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil. This announcement satisfied a core Iranian demand and paved the way for negotiations to move forward. Parsi emphasized that the lesson from this history is not that full Iranian capitulation could have been achieved had President Barack Obama held the sanctions line. Rather, it’s that both sides had much to lose had they made no concessions and by54

passed negotiations in favor of continued escalation. Going forward, the timeline for the Biden administration will be a challenge, as Nowruz, the Persian New Year celebration, begins March 21 and the Iranian presidential campaign starts ramping-up in April. “There needs to be a burst of activity to get a negotiation process moving,” Wright noted. Since Iranian President Hassan Rouhani does not want to be seen as a failure, “they [the Rouhani administration] will move heaven and earth in the little timeframe they have to try to see if they can come to a deal,” she said. While many are eager to address Iran’s ballistic missile program, regional actions and human rights abuses, Blanc, currently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said getting Iran’s nuclear program “back into a box” is the first step. If this occurs, then the possibility of “a much broader diplomatic process” that addresses other concerns is possible. As the U.S. steps back from its “maximum pressure” campaign in favor of renewed diplomacy, Blanc believes there is an important lesson to be learned. “If there is one thing we should take out of the last four years and the complexity of our politics, it is some humility about predicting, let alone believing, that we can influence the course of other countries’ politics,” he said. —Elaine Pasquini and Dale Sprusansky

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Prospects for Peace in Yemen

The Gulf International Forum held a virtual event on Jan. 27 to discuss how President Joe Biden’s administration can work to bring an end to the catastrophic war in Yemen. Abdul-Ghani Al-Iryani, senior researcher at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, believes an increasing number of leaders in both Saudi Arabia and Yemen want to see a drawdown in hostilities. “I think the moderates from both sides are prepared and willing to make peace, but they need help,” he said. He believes Washington is “best positioned” to facilitate a détente between the Saudis and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. “The U.S. has an interest in the security of Saudi Arabia, and this war will continue to corrode Saudi stability and security and the legitimacy of the ruling family, and could cause, over time, serious problems for Saudi Arabia, for the region, and for the U.S.,” he said. Al-Iryani criticized the Trump administration’s heavily pro-Saudi stance, describing it as selling “the Saudis the rope by which they will hang themselves.” Biden should not abandon Riyadh, he emphasized, but rather practice “tough love” in order to resolve the conflict. He suggested Washington hold weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and encourage the country to stop funding warring parties on the ground in Yemen. He also said the U.S. should push for an equitable U.N. resolution that outlines a reasonable path to peace, noting that the current resolution is overwhelmingly favorable toward Saudi Arabia. David Des Roches, a professor at the National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies, said the Saudis are aware the maximalist demands they outlined at the start of the conflict are no longer feasible. Riyadh’s initial war aims were to restore Yemen’s internationally recognized government, ensure the security of its border, decrease Iran’s influence in Yemen, and to increase the stability of the Bab el-Mandeb (the strait that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden). “All four of those objectives are further away now than they were at the start of the Saudi intervention,” he observed. MARCH/APRIL 2021

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cluding remittances, which he said are a lifeline for many families. The Biden administration is reportedly reassessing the Houthi terror designation, though no decision is imminent. —Dale Sprusansky

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U.S.-Pakistan Relations in the Biden Era

Houthi supporters protest the U.S. decision to designate the group a foreign terrorist organization, on Jan. 25, 2021 in Sana'a, Yemen. Humanitarian organizations fear the designation will hinder their ability to provide desperately needed supplies to most of the country’s population.

Des Roches believes Saudi Arabia’s largest concern right now is ensuring that any peace deal does not leave the Houthis, who control Yemen’s capital Sana’a, with the ability to project their military power into Saudi Arabia’s interior. This poses a major dilemma in negotiating a settlement, he noted, as it would require Yemen’s de facto Houthi government not to control any seaports or airports, which are an essential part of national infrastructure, but also the primary entry points for weapons. Barbara Bodine, the former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, said even if Saudi Arabia ended its war efforts in the country and Iran stopped providing military support to the Houthis, the country would still face the tough challenge of piecing itself back together. In addition to the power struggle between the Houthis and the internationally recognized government in exile, there is also the issue of the Southern Transitional Council, a separatist group that claims to independently govern large areas of the country’s south, including the port city of Aden. “This is really a circular firing squad,” she said of Yemen’s fractured socio-political landscape. “It’s not just the ceasefire, it’s not just getting the guns to stop,” Bodine explained. “It’s putting together a new economy and a new social contract which allows Yemen as a country to move forward, and Yemen as MARCH/APRIL 2021

a state to be rebuilt.” The speakers also expressed concern about the Trump administration’s lastminute decision to sanction the Houthis by designating them as a foreign terrorist organization. While humanitarian waivers to the sanctions have been issued, Des Roches said such sanctions typically end up harming ordinary people. “This idea of finelyhoned sanctions is a fallacy…it is inevitable that if sanctions persist, there will be humanitarian damage to the broader Yemeni population,” he said. With resources becoming increasingly scarce due to sanctions, he said Houthi leaders will “grab a greater percentage of a shrinking pie,” providing fewer services to the people under their control. Mohammed Zaher Sahloul, co-founder and president of MedGlobal, noted that 70 percent of Yemen’s population lives in areas controlled by the Houthis. With 80 percent of the country’s population already in need of humanitarian assistance and malnutrition rampant, he fears these U.S. sanctions could devastate Yemenis by driving up food prices and limiting the ability of basic supplies to reach people. He also noted that history shows that financial institutions tend to “over comply” with such sanctions, in order to steer clear of any trouble with Washington. This could further cut off Yemenis from outside assistance, in-

On Jan. 21, Michael Kugelman, deputy director and senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center, engaged in a candid conversation with Moeed Yusuf, Pakistan’s national security adviser and special assistant to the prime minister on national security and strategic policy planning. “Today, U.S.-Pakistan relations are crisisfree, but they face an uncertain future under the Biden administration,” moderator Kugelman put forth in opening remarks. Going forward, the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan should be candid, honest and “realistic on what we can achieve,” Yusuf said. “Both sides have faltered on this in the past.” The Biden administration should not focus on Pakistan only through the lens of Afghanistan, Yusuf stressed. “We are available to facilitate peace in Afghanistan and ultimately we do not want any violence or terrorism in our region,” he said. However, when trouble arises in Afghanistan, Pakistan should not be blamed as the “reason for all evils,” he stressed. “That is the old conversation that we have to get away from if we want a real relationship that’s a broader relationship that really can benefit both sides.” Yusuf said the Biden administration should be prepared to primarily engage Prime Minister Imran Khan on economic issues, rather than security concerns. “Pakistan is squarely in an economic security paradigm now,” he explained. “It is talking about its geo-economic location, not a geostrategic location. We are talking about ourselves as a geo-economic melting pot that is ready to consolidate global positive economic interests in our territory...and providing the world with economic bases, not military bases. This is where we are going. We’re not 100 percent there, but it is a very different approach than in the past.”

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) greets Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan at the U.S. Capitol, on July 23, 2019.

Given this reality, Yusuf believes investment partnerships should be the first topic of discussion between Washington and Islamabad. “The conversation about CPEC [the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure project] is not always positive in Washington,” he said. But he emphasized that the U.S. should not feel threatened by Pakistan’s economic cooperation with China. “How about an American reprocessing zone?” he asked. “How about American companies coming, investing money, reprocessing for export? How about doing things economically where there can be Pakistan-U.S.-China co-investment?” Yusuf also pointed out areas of shared interests, including climate change, energy, agriculture and infrastructure development. “Why can’t we all co-invest in Pakistan and Afghanistan?” he asked. “That is the approach we should be thinking of. There definitely should be conversations.” Turning to India, which is a constant topic of conversation between the U.S. and Pakistan, Yusuf said, “Today, you are dealing with an India that is vocally and publicly talking about unilateral decisions to resolve problems, including the illegally occupied territory of Kashmir….One of the longeststanding U.N. disputes is Jammu Kashmir, illegally occupied by India,” he said. “We have seen what has happened there in the 56

last two years. I have asked for normalization, human rights and following international law as a resolution.” Pakistan also has a very clear principled stand on Palestine, Yusuf stated, “which is identical to its stance on Kashmir: obey international law, give people the rights that international law has given them, and, in Palestine’s case, it is a respectable twostate solution. Move away from that and Pakistan will not be on board. The prime minister of Pakistan has made it absolutely clear where we stand.” In conclusion, Yusuf pointed out that Pakistan “is totally 100 percent open to improving relations with the U.S. and moving forward on a very new agenda. We expect the same from the other side and I am sure that the new administration is already thinking along these lines…and recognizes the importance of Pakistan.” —Elaine Pasquini

Tunisians on Successes, Failures of the Jasmine Revolution

On the tenth anniversary of the Tunisian revolution, the Washington, DC-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) hosted a Jan. 14 virtual discussion on the successes, failures and challenges of the popular uprising. “The revolution itself was a success by the very fact that President Ben Ali was ousted,” said Amna Guellali, Amnesty In-

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ternational’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. While the democratic transition started off well by laying a foundation for a new system of government, eventually figures from the old regime began to return. “Although the new constitution and the democratic process were, from a procedural point of view, going in the right direction, there were political actors that prompted some backsliding,” Guellali explained. Presently, Tunisia is under lockdown due to COVID-19, but also a political lockdown of sorts, in which democratic institutions exist, but are failing to address the needs of the people. “We lost sight of the reasons why the people of Tunisia rose against the regime, which is more linked to economic and social rights,” Guellali lamented. “And the people today, despite all of the progress on the political side, are facing a very difficult economic situation and social rights have not been addressed so far.” Saida Ounissi, a parliament member who represents the overseas constituency of the Tunisian diaspora in France, known as France Nord, pointed out the country’s new freedom of speech and the democratization, although slowly, of political institutions. “But, definitely, it’s still a challenge on social justice and economic equality,” she acknowledged. Achref Aouadi, founder of I-Watch, an anti-corruption watchdog organization, contended that Tunisia simply adopting democracy and permitting the rise of a vibrant civil society makes the revolution successful. But, he pointed out, many challenges remain, such as getting rid of torture and police brutality and the need to create a fully independent judiciary. “To me it is a process that has not ended yet and we need to invest more in it,” Aouadi said. “We failed in managing people’s expectations and we were not honest with the Tunisian people. A revolution comes with a lot of expectations, dreams and high hopes and politicians just kept feeding into that hope.” One major challenge is Tunisia’s economic situation. Tourism, a backbone of the Mediterranean country’s economy, is drastically down due to the global pandemic, and the value of its currency has MARCH/APRIL 2021

A young man who was injured during Tunisia’s 2010-2011 revolution speaks at an antigovernment sit-in, on Jan. 14, 2021, in the capital Tunis. Many Tunisians believe their government has not done enough to address the core grievances of the revolution. of the worst experiences with authoritarianism I’ve ever had,” she said, referring to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s Egypt. Bishara spoke about the need to create a “division of labor” between different sectors of society that would fulfill the responsibilities of a transition to democracy. He said that the goal of the revolutions was to “unchain the Arab” from not only one regime, but an entire system of oppression. Despite the promise of the revolution, he continued, “we failed to understand what it

also declined. “I think we try to find a reason to believe in democracy and in the revolution,” Aouadi asserted. “We still have a lot of opportunities to fix things. The revolution has been 70 percent successful. I think we are making baby steps toward a success.” —Elaine Pasquini

Ten Years Later: A Retrospective on the Arab Spring

On Jan. 14, the University of Pennsylvania’s Middle East Center hosted an online discussion featuring experts from around the region to reflect on the tenth anniversary of the Arab Spring. The panel featured Bahraini human rights defender Maryam alKhawaja, Egyptian journalist and chief editor of Mada Masr Lina Attalah, Al Jazeera senior political analyst Marwan Bishara, dean of Northwestern University in Qatar Marwan Kraidy, and Tunisian politician and activist Jawhara Tiss. Each panelist discussed lessons they have learned over the past decade. Attalah lamented the devolution of the independent media scene in Egypt. A decade ago, the country “had an up and coming independent media landscape,” she noted, but now very few platforms remain. “As someone who has worked [in media] before and after the revolution, this is certainly one MARCH/APRIL 2021

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would take to transition to democracy” and “unfortunately we are back to square one— the Arab is chained again.” Bishara also thinks people in the Middle East misunderstood “the capacity of regimes for a response to revolution.” Kraidy offered several lessons learned. First, having young people in the streets is not enough, as there are outside regional, global and economic forces that influence the outcome of revolutions. Second, getting rid of one person or regime does not change the underlying system of power. He argued that Egypt going from deposed President Hosni Mubarak to el-Sisi did not change the system in Egypt. Third, the role of media and technology in facilitating change became de-romanticized due to the emergence of ISIS. “The technologies that were allowing the activists to topple regimes,” he remarked, “were the same technologies that allowed terrorists to terrorize all of us.” Fourth, activism is “generational,” meaning the generation of activists who took part in the Arab Spring are now older, with many largely scattered outside of the region, so a new generation of activists will need to lead the next movement. Tiss blamed the failures of the Arab Spring on the “ideological ghettos” that activists found themselves in, and warned that “ideology is something to be consumed in moderation, like alcohol.” Once regimes were

An overpass in Cairo’s Nasr City displays a giant electronic image of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, on Jan. 15, 2021. Many believe el-Sisi, who came to power via a semipopular coup in 2013, has ruled in a more authoritarian manner than President Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed by mass protests in 2011. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

toppled, ideological disputes among revolutionaries began to supersede collective progress, she observed, meaning “the success of the revolution was shaken.” More broadly, the Tunisian politician said “identity politics…is a poison to any transition” that can bring the hope of change to a halt. In general, Al-Khawaja, the Bahraini activist, believes that the human rights and civil society situation in Bahrain and the GCC countries has “gotten worse” since 2011. She spoke about lessons learned from the perspective of civil society organizations (CSOs). Because of the way CSOs are funded, Al-Khawaja explained, they are largely beholden to people in the West. Going forward, she emphasized the need for “stronger cross-border collaboration and solidarity” with global activists. She also advocated for activists to establish a system through which they support other activists dealing with the trauma of imprisonment and human rights violations. Al-Khawaja also expressed concern about how readily terms and narratives peddled by governments are reproduced. For this reason, she said, “deconstruction and reconstruction of state-produced discourse and terminology” is important, using the example of governments labeling activists as terrorists. “Who gets to decide who the terrorists are?” she asked. —Alex Shanahan

Can Egypt Synergize it Economic and Environmental Policies?

The Middle East Institute (MEI) held a webinar on Dec. 16 to discuss some of the environmental issues facing Egypt. Moderator Mirette Mabrouk, director of MEI’s Egypt program, noted that Egypt is particularly vulnerable to the reality of climate change. The country’s population is rapidly increasing, and there is a correlated expansion of economic activity. “That means already scarce resources are being stretched very thin,” she noted. Egypt, which is 96 percent desert, is one of the world’s most water scarce countries. Abla Abdel Latif, executive director of the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies, said the Egyptian government does not have a clear framework for tackling climate 58

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An aerial view of ongoing construction at Egypt’s new administrative capital, located 28 miles east of Cairo, March 13, 2020. Such megaprojects place a strain on Egypt’s fragile water supply. change. A key challenge, she explained, is the government’s focus on the immediate need to create jobs, which causes leaders to invest in short-sighted, fossil-fuel heavy economic activities, such as massive construction projects. “The issue of climate change would never be put as a top priority [in Egypt],” she said. “As a matter of fact, it’s being looked at as a luxury item. Why? Because we have a zillion other problems, because we’re still struggling with a lot of things. We’re struggling with poverty, we’re struggling with structural reforms, institutional reforms.” Sarah El-Battouty, founder and chairperson of ECOnsult, Egypt’s leading green building and sustainability consultancy, elaborated on this complex dichotomy between Egypt’s economic and environmental challenges. “Egypt is young, 60 percent of Egypt is young people,” she noted. “Where are you going to put all these people? They need somewhere to go. They need housing, they need schools, they need hospitals, they need drinking water, they also need food, they need employment.” “We have a fast and aggressive development plan for economic growth,” she noted. “We are building and building nonstop. The fastest growing sector is the con-

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struction sector, which happens to also be a very water-intensive sector, and also a very high carbon emitting sector….So, we are developing for needs, filling in specific gaps, but while we’re doing all of this, we have to realize that we are depleting water as a resource.” Leaders must look past the immediate and see the importance of sustainable growth programs that ensure long-term economic prosperity and prudent environmental management, Abdel Latif said. Economic expansion and sustainability don’t have to be in conflict, she emphasized. “The fact that we are interested in having fast growth does not necessarily [have to] mean that we deplete our resources too fast,” she said. Egypt’s central government ought to encourage and incentivize economic growth in sectors that aren’t resource intensive. For instance, she said manufacturing should be emphasized over construction, as it would put less stress on the country’s fragile water supply and would also help tackle Egypt’s trade imbalance. El-Battouty encouraged leaders in Egypt, and globally, to change the way they approach climate change. Responsibility for tackling this issue should not be outsourced to one government agency or to the private sector, she said. Rather, like the response MARCH/APRIL 2021

to COVID-19, she believes the climate crisis requires an urgent all-of-government and all-of-society collaborative response, because it, too, threatens to uproot every facet of society. In Egypt alone, she noted that rising sea levels threaten incremental damage to real estate and infrastructure in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. Warming temperatures also threaten soil erosion, flooding and drought throughout the country, she said. Left unaddressed, these realities could lead to a mass migration of domestic climate refugees from farming villages into Egypt’s already overcrowded cities. Such a reality would most endanger women, children and the elderly. This shows how economic and societal issues are “embedded” in climate policy, she said. While climate change is a global crisis, El-Battouty said the country must focus on indigenous solutions. “Creating appropriate technologies and appropriate solutions using local know-how, that’s the formula that is going to salvage many countries from the immediate effects of climate change,” she said. For Egypt, this means utilizing the country’s natural solar energy potential and its large stone reserves to build a sustainable future. If Egypt can forge a cohesive plan that correctly “allocates these [natural] blessings” and prudentially forecasts its usage of fragile resources such as water, it will be able to mitigate and manage the impacts climate change, she concluded. —Dale Sprusansky

Oman’s Sultan Haitham Begins to Pave His Own Legacy

On Jan. 12, the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW) hosted a virtual event to reflect on where Oman stands one year after the death of its longtime leader, Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Kristin Smith Diwan of the AGSIW moderated a discussion between the former U.S. Ambassador to Oman Marc Sievers and Omani journalists Fatma AlArimi and Turki bin Ali Al-Balushi. Diwan first asked about the country’s new Basic Law, which, among other things, established the position of crown prince. Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al-Said named his MARCH/APRIL 2021

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Sayyid Theyazin bin Haitham Al Said, the oldest son of Sultan Haitham, was recently named Oman’s crown prince, making him next in line to lead the country. Photo taken on Dec. 16, 2020 in Muscat.

eldest son, Sayyid Theyazin bin Haitham Al Said to the position. Sultan Qaboos had no children, which made the position of crown price unnecessary and led to much speculation as to who would succeed him. The establishment of a crown prince creates in Oman “a more traditional Gulf process than what had been in place in Oman,” Sievers said. Al-Balushi speculated that the new Basic Law, along with other decrees issued by Sultan Haitham, would give more power to the parliamentary Shura Council, allow for more government accountability, reduce government spending and centralize decision-making. The panelists next discussed the most significant steps taken by the sultan in his first year in power. Al-Arimi argued that one of the biggest steps has been restructuring the government. This restructuring, she explained, includes reducing the number of government agencies, letting many longserving government officials go and reforming state-owned enterprises. Al-Balushi described the sultan’s fiscal plan as “harsh” because it removed subsidies for electricity and water. The challenge for Oman looking forward, he said, is youth unemployment combined with an economic downturn due to low oil prices and the coronavirus pandemic. “As much as Sultan Haitham tried to restructure the government and the state administration, it is still challenging to revive the economy,” Al-

Balushi added. Sievers agreed that “Sultan Haitham has made the economy the center of his rule.” Due to the challenges of oil price collapse, the pandemic, and high debt levels, he continued, the government has made efforts to reduce expenditures and increase revenue in the form of new taxes and prioritizing attracting foreign investment. Al-Arimi added that “debt represents the third-highest level of spending in the 2021 budget” and that it will be difficult to raise the funds to pay back the debt without improving Oman’s credit rating. She is hopeful, however, that several pending laws will open up the economy and increase revenues from other sectors besides oil and gas. Sievers remarked that on foreign affairs, “There has been continuity, because Sultan Haitham announced early on that he would adhere to the broad outlines of Sultan Qaboos’ foreign policy.” Continuing the independence and neutrality of Omani foreign policy, he added, is “a very high priority.” This is evident, he continued, in the way Sultan Haitham is trying to reduce tensions within the Gulf Cooperation Council and working to end the war in Yemen. Concerning Israel, Sievers posited that normalization of relations is “not a priority.” While Oman supported other countries normalizing relations, it “balanced that with repeated public reference to Oman’s support for the Palestinian Authority, for a two-state

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Iraq’s Faltering Budget Process

On Jan. 6, the Atlantic Council hosted an online discussion about Iraq’s troubled financial situation. Ahmed Tabaqchali of the Asia Frontier Capital Iraq Fund began by noting that Iraq’s budget system, still conducted on old-fashioned paper, is outdated and susceptible to corruption. Such a method, he explained, hinders the efforts of reformers to make changes by limiting the ability to trace money across government ministries. The current system allows the different ministries to “pretty much stand alone as their own separate fiefdoms,” managed by whichever political party happens to control them, he said. “The whole paper-based system is a feature of the [corrupt] system” because it “perpetuates the autonomy that everyone has,” Tabaqchali noted. He is not sure how reforms can be implemented under the status quo system, especially when the Ministry of Finance “has no control over the finances of the government.” Iraq, Tabaqchali concluded, needs an “integrated financial management system,” which he described as “a system that links all ministries, so in theory…the Ministry of Finance would know where it’s spending and where everything is going.” Olin Wethington from Wethington International, a market research firm, discussed the “international dimensions of Iraq’s economic reform strategy.” In general, he sees “alignment” between the current Iraqi government’s economic reform goals and those of the international financial community. Like Tabaqchali, however, he observed that “the politics of implementation are the real issue.” 60

A man holds a sign at a Jan. 3 protest in Baghdad commemorating the one-year anniversary of the U.S. assassination of Iranian military General Qassem Soleimani on Iraqi soil.

Alia Moubayed of Jefferies International, a multinational investment banking company, warned that “Iraq’s public finances are on a very dangerous and unsustainable path.” In fact, she noted that “unlike other countries in the region, Iraq is one of the only countries where dependence on oil revenues has actually increased over the last few years.” Another reason for the instability, she added, is due to multiple “failed attempts at reform on the expenditure and revenue side.” In order to increase the sustainability of its public finances, Iraq must “improve the efficiency of spending increasingly limited resources,” she said. Finally, she observed

that Iraq has a lot to learn from its oil-exporting neighbors in terms of diversifying its economy, and cautioned that the country has been lagging behind other regional countries in reforming financial institutions and public finance after the recent oil price shock. —Alex Shanahan

HUMAN RIGHTS Canada Marks One Year Since Downing of Airliner Over Iran

Jan. 8, 2021 marked one year since Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752

Mourners gather in Toronto on Jan. 8, 2021 to commemorate the victims of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, which was shot down near Tehran by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in Jan. 2020. More than 130 of the victims had ties to Canada.

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solution, and for renewing negotiations,” he remarked. Al-Arimi agreed that the public does not support normalization and that it will not happen in the near future. Regarding the possibility of Oman again mediating talks between the U.S. and Iran, as it did in the buildup to the 2015 nuclear deal, Sievers argued that “should the new administration turn to Oman and ask for help, they would be more than happy to do what they can.” —Alex Shanahan

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was shot down over Tehran by two Iranian missiles. There were 176 passengers on board, with 138 of them having a connection to Canada. That number includes 55 Canadian citizens, 30 permanent residents and 53 people bound for Canada, including many Iranian students. Ralph Goodale, Canada’s former Minister of Public Safety, who is leading Canada’s response to the tragedy, recently rejected Iran’s offer of $150,000 in compensation for each family that lost a loved one on the plane. Iran has accepted blame for shooting down the civilian aircraft, saying that its officials mistook it for an incoming missile. The incident occurred at the height of tensions between the U.S. and Iran, triggered by President Donald Trump’s decision to extrajudicially assassinate Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, at Baghdad’s airport on Jan. 3, 2020. Iran responded on Jan. 8 by attacking U.S. targets in Iraq. This Iranian retaliation took place just hours before the civilian aircraft was downed. Members of the Association of Families of Flight PS752 held a virtual vigil on Jan. 8 to remember those who died in the tragedy. An Iranian student studying in Canada who knew some of the passengers on the flight commented on how family and friends of the deceased are feeling one year later. “It’s impossible to fully describe the feeling, but to summarize in a few words, it’s a mix of deep grief, anger and disbelief. I believe nobody has been able to fully deal with and process what happened to the innocent passengers on that flight,” the student, who wished to remain anonymous, said. The student thinks Canada’s plan to designate Jan. 8 as a national day of remembrance for the victims of all airline disasters is a good idea. “I believe remembering the tragedy is the least we as a nation can do to pay our respects to the victims and their families,” the student said, adding that Iran’s offer of compensation to the victims’ families cannot replace lost loved ones. “They should not have hit the U.S. military base. They should not have fired the second missile. They murdered 176 people,” the student concluded. —Candice Bodnaruk MARCH/APRIL 2021

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Laila Mokhiber, the communications director of the U.S. office of UNRWA, was named a “40 under 40” leader.

ARAB AMERICAN ACTIVISM Introducing “20 Under 20” and “40 Under 40”

On Nov. 8, 2020, a lovely brisk Sunday, the Arab America Foundation (AAF) welcomed guests from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia (the DMV) to an outside, socially-distanced, Arabic brunch and conversation to introduce “Rising Leaders,” at the Jerusalem Restaurant in Falls Church, VA. Organizers Amal and Warren David described AAF, a non-profit educational and cultural organization, and its new project to the several dozen guests. AAF’s mission is to promote Arab heritage and empower Arab Americans. The foundation educates Americans about Arab identity and culture, and connects Arab Americans to each other and to other communities. Warren David meticulously outlined current and future endeavors. Two impressive projects are “20 under 20” and “40 under 40.” The first project celebrates those young, accomplished Arab Americans who have achieved success academically or through extra curricular activities, including community service. The “40 under 40” project is for those who have achieved professional success and leadership. Awardees of Arab descent, who live and/or work in

the United States, are selected by judges from different states who review the applications anonymously, not knowing their names or ethnicity. One “40 under 40,” Samer Korkor, an attorney in Washington, DC, inspired attendees with his reflections. According to Korkor, “Minority communities, such as ours, are highly important to the tapestry that comprises the beautiful country we call home.” He applauded the work of the Arab America Foundation and encouraged attendees to support its work. Korkor emphasized the importance of the organization’s mission to educate and connect, and praised Warren and Amal David, and their entire team, for their hard work and accomplishments. AAF honored all 60 awardees for their initiatives on Dec. 10 at the “Connect Arab America: Empowerment Summit.” Political activist, author, lecturer, lawyer and former candidate for president of the United States, Ralph Nader, keynoted the Zoom event. Warren David acknowledged, “It gives me hope to see Arab Americans in Generation Z proudly promoting their Arab heritage and making their voices heard. One day, I look forward to seeing all the awardees in leadership positions, representing future generations in our global society.” Visit <arabamericafoundation.org> for descriptions of these outstanding Arab Americans. —Ellen Siegel

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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. 1

An Army Like No Other: How The Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation

By Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, Verso, 2020, hardcover, 448 pp. MEB $28

Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson

Haim Bresheeth-Zabner has written the definitive account of Israel’s thoroughly militarized society. He offers abundant evidence to support the central argument that military considerations dominate Israeli society and have made peace in the Middle East not only un-obtainable but “positively undesirable.” Bresheeth-Zabner argues persuasively that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are so powerful that “Israelis are unable to perceive peace, life without a military edge.” Racist demonization of presumed enemies and worst-case scenarios of insecurity dominate life in Israel. They are so pervasive that Israeli militarists and leaders—the two are virtually inseparable—cannot even imagine an existence beyond perpetual conflict and war. Like some previous studies, including the American journalist Patrick Tyler’s excellent Fortress Israel, Bresheeth-Zabner

analyzes the historical evolution of IDF domination of Israeli society. Today the small country spends about $15 billion annually, or some 8 percent of its GNP, on the military, whereas the United States—itself a heavily militarized society—spends less than 5 percent. Through these expenditures, subsidized by massive annual allocations from the United States, “the IDF has built an immense war machine—thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, fighter jets, missile boats, nuclear submarines, cyber-power networks and hundreds of nuclear weapons.” Israel has “developed an arms industry that is one of the largest in the world.” The Zionist state exports weapons advertised as “tried and tested” on the battlefield through violent interventions in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. The IDF and its related military-industrial complex are thus at “the heart of Israeli existence and have reached a phase of inflated growth that is clearly superfluous and unwarranted.”

“Crucial U.S. support” for militarization has allowed Israel “to turn the large and powerful IDF into a policing and punitive occupational army, a role it has fulfilled for seventy years.” At the same time, Israel and its lobby work tirelessly to keep the American largesse flowing. As Bresheeth-Zabner points out, “Israel is the only country that is supported to the hilt by the United States and is also allowed to influence (sometimes even sabotage and divert) U.S. policy, through its allies within the political elite in Congress and the Senate, not to mention the White House.” All of Israel’s major universities and research centers are complicit in the militarization of the society. Military considerations distort policymaking and cloud judgment, Bresheeth-Zabner argues, leading to repeated Israeli military and political blunders. Moreover, militarization has become so deeply entrenched that national insecurity has become necessary to prevent deep-seated social divisions from erupting in Israel. Domestic political divisions and social disarray, he explains, “can only be held at bay by the tried-andtested method of frequent periodic attacks on ‘enemies.’” An Army Like No Other draws on substantial research that goes beyond the narrow confines of conventional military history. The early chapters of the book systematically chronicle each of Israel’s wars from 1948 to the 21st century conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza. Following the military history, however, the middle chapters of the book focus on “the vast armed colonial-settlement project.” Israel built settlements, claiming they would provide security, but the opposite has proven to be the case. The heightened insecurity resulting from the expansion of the settler-colonial occupation then served as justification for further strengthening of the IDF grip on Israeli society. Following a chapter analyzing the Israeli military-industrial complex, the author turns to the contradictions of Zionism and the emergence of the unapologetically fullblown “Jewish state” under which “the soMARCH/APRIL 2021

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ciety sheds any last democratic vestiges.” So-called “liberal Zionism has never existed and cannot exist by definition,” BresheethZabner forthrightly explains. “There is no liberal colonialism, any more than there is a humane occupation.” A filmmaker and professor at the School for Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, Bresheeth-Zabner witnessed Israeli atrocities as a young solider in the IDF amid the June 1967 war. He now endorses the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and international pressure as the only possible hope for reining in Israel’s militarized society. Obviously, such views are anathema to Israel’s militarized security state regime. During the final stages of preparing An Army Like No Other, Bresheeth-Zabner recounts, his computer was professionally hacked, and the book’s files destroyed. Fortunately, he had a backup on another server, ensuring that this superior study received the enduring light of day that it richly deserves.

“Mayor”

Reviewed by Janet McMahon

Mayor Musa Hadid loves his city and loves his job. He describes local governance as “the most beautiful field of work in our country,” explaining, “people can’t do without our municipal services.” Being mayor of any city is difficult, but Hadid is mayor of Ramallah, in the Israelioccupied West Bank. This means that he has no control over many of the municipal services he wants to provide his constituents. Ramallah is in dire need of a sewage treatment plant, for example, but

Janet McMahon was for decades the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. She continues to compile “Other Voices,” and serves on the American Educational Trust’s board of directors. MARCH/APRIL 2021

Israel refuses to allow it. Another city official notes that it took 15 years for Israel to grant permission to expand the city’s cemetery— “15 years!” And this in “Area A” of the West Bank, nominally under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Hadid, a civil engineer in his second and final four-year term as mayor, nevertheless is determined to realize his ambitions for Ramallah, which include, in addi-

tion to fixing the doors in a local school, Christmas celebrations in the historically Christian city and the inauguration of a dancing water and light fountain in the plaza outside City Hall. Five days after American director David Osit began shooting footage for his film, the U.S. announced that it was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving its embassy there. An aide informs Mayor Hadid of this devastating development. “It’s about to be chaos here,” Hadid warns. “We’re doomed.” Although he lives surrounded by armed Israeli settlers and troops, the mayor does not have a security detail. He does have a driver, however, and goes to check out possible trouble spots as people protest the latest American outrage. Standing on a hilltop, he watches soldiers “shooting at the kids” before he is urged to get back in the car as the gunfire gets too close. When city officials determine that keeping the Christmas tree lit at night is too risky, one suggests hanging a banner reading, “Jerusalem is our capital.” But the

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mayor demurs. “Our job is to provide municipal services, then political messaging,” he states. “And our messaging needs to be extremely precise, especially in such a sensitive moment. We aren’t a replacement for the leadership.” Ramallah’s mayor is more than aware of the importance of messaging. “Our issue is we think we’re the only ones in the world with problems—and the problems define us!” he says at one point. “And the worst thing is that we think the whole world can’t sleep because they’re worried about us! Please man, nobody is!” Dejectedly, he adds: “We can’t find the appropriate tone to convey things, man. We can’t find it.” That does not mean Hadid does not try, however. He is seen hosting a German parliamentary delegation, speaking to the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine’s annual convention in Washington, DC, and visiting South Africa and England, among other countries, to explain his city’s dilemma. The visiting German delegation hopes to bring Israelis and Palestinians together “to educate the Israeli public” about the occupation. When Hadid, in Bonn, suggests exchanging German and Palestinian delegations, his German counterparts suggest cultural exchanges—or football. What becomes painfully clear is that Hadid’s international counterparts have no intention of taking action against Israel that might actually compel it to end even its most murderous actions. As a Westerner, I was embarrassed and ashamed. “Mayor” is not a painful film, however, and not only because of Hadid himself. It was easy for this reviewer to relate to some of the modern-day absurdities the mayor struggles to understand. The film opens with a staff meeting to discuss “city branding.” Failing to see why the large sign “WeRamallah” does not constitute city branding, the mayor finally leaves the meeting in resigned frustration. Later, he questions why there must be no space between the words We and Ramallah (the answer being so that R will also be pro63

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nounced as “are”). He ultimately agrees, but still does not get it. And in the most extreme situation, as Israeli troops surround his City Hall and Mayor Hadid stands in the exposed glass lobby—ordering that “Nobody comes here” and helping a journalist overcome by tear gas—a staff member urges him to livestream if the soldiers enter. “How do you mean?” asks Hadid. “You just open Facebook and start talking,” the aide explains. “You think I know how to do that?” the mayor asks, declining the offer to walk him through the process: “Not now.” Some of the most heartwarming scenes show Hadid walking through Ramallah and greeting its citizens. One young boy asks him if he is for Hamas or Fatah (a typical nine-year-old’s question). When the mayor replies that he supports the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the boy doubles over in laughter, exclaiming, “They don’t exist anymore!” “That’s right,” Hadid says wryly as he walks away, “there’s no one left to liberate us.” But Hadid’s words as he presides over the lighting of his city’s Christmas tree convey the real essence of “Mayor”: “We must make space for joy until we get freedom and independence.” For festivals and theaters offering the film visit <http://www.mayorfilm.com>.

Against the Loveless World

By Susan Abulhawa, Atria Books, 2020, hardcover, 366 pp. MEB $25

Reviewed by Delinda C. Hanley

You know things are not going to go well for the narrator when Nahr’s story begins locked in solitary confinement, in a 30square-foot cell she calls “the Cube,” in Israel. Frankly, this reader didn’t find the foul-mouthed Nahr very loveable in the opening pages as she is interviewed by a

Delinda C. Hanley is executive editor of the Washington Report. 64

Jewish reporter or human rights worker— she never knows which. But as her story unfolds, we discover the sensitive, yet unbreakable spirit behind Nahr’s tough facade. Soon this reviewer was turning pages, rooting for Nahr’s survival, not to mention yearning for her to actually find happiness. Nahr’s journey begins in Kuwait, one of many “Palestinians who had been chased out of their homes in Jerusalem, Haifa,

Yafa, Akka, Jenin, Bethlehem, Gaza, Nablus, Nazareth, Majdal...” and who built a new prosperous life there. She lives with her Haifa-born widowed mother, her shrewish paternal grandmother, Sitti Wasfiyeh, and her brilliant younger brother Jehad. Even though her family and other Palestinians remained an underclass, Nahr says, “I loved everything about Kuwaitis.” After becoming an “abandoned bride” before she turns 20, Nahr gets to know Um Buraq, another dumped first wife, an unapologetic confident older Iraqi woman, in a “pivotal” moment that alters the course of her life. Soon Nahr is dancing or providing other entertainment to strange men for money at parties with Um Buraq’s other girls. It’s hard to try and not judge Nahr as she drinks, and dons heavy makeup, a tight dress, along with a new name, “Almas,” which means diamond. “It wasn’t really me, but Almas,” she explains, as she begins to experience some fun and excitement working

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as an escort that, too quickly, leads to horror and tragedy. Nahr wants her brother to have educational opportunities and become the surgeon he dreams of being. She yearns “to be my family’s savior and protector,” but each customer “bought a little piece of me and took it away forever.” Then comes Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, which most likely saves Nahr’s life and returns her focus to her beauty-care profession. The U.S. invasion of Kuwait up-ends the lives of Palestinian families like hers, as young men like her studious brother are arrested, viewed as traitors because PLO chairman Yasser Arafat had sided with Saddam Hussein. After a harrowing escape to Jordan, the next part of Nahr’s life journey begins as she seeks a legal divorce from her missing husband in Palestine. Thus begins the truly lyrical half of Susan Abulhawa’s masterpiece. The writer brings to life Palestine’s unforgettable landscape “where rolling hills meet the sky.” After interrogations and waiting six hours at the border, Nahr arrives in her homeland. “Maybe it was finally getting through, or some spiritual call from my ancestors, but I was overcome with relief—and something akin to belonging...” She recalls stories from her mama, baba, neighbors and grandmother...“The ones I thought I’d discarded, tuned out, dismissed. They were all there to greet me, enfolding me in the embrace of our collective dislocation from this place where all our stories go and return. Here is where we began. Where our songs were born, our ancestors buried. The adnan sounded from unseen minarets. It floated through me, raised the hair on my arms, made me close my eyes and inhale the call to prayer.” Another unforgettable scene occurs when Nahr travels to Haifa to locate her mother’s beautiful stone home, on a hill overlooking the ocean. She can’t resist entering its garden, which used to have an ornate ceramic plaque that read “Home of El Haj Abu Ibrahim, Naser Jamal Nasrallah.” Nahr says, “I stepped into the lush MARCH/APRIL 2021

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space of our absence. These were the trees my great-grandfather had planted for his children and grandchildren. My grandfather would have planted some for me and Jehad had our destiny not been stolen.” She discovers the sycamore fig tree with special carvings reading Rashida, habibit Baba (Daddy’s girl) planted for her mother. “This tree was a member of my family. I belonged to it. All the trees in that garden were my family.” Naturally, Nahr climbs up and stuffs fistfuls of the fruit into her purse as she hears the noise of a middle-aged woman screaming at her in Hebrew. The irate Israeli “homeowner” slaps the fruit from Nahr’s hand and yanks her hair as she yells that the police are coming. So Nahr punches her, then again—and again. This reviewer hoped that at last Nahr would find belonging, acceptance and even love in Palestine, but her past catches up with her. “Palestine did not want me, nor I her any longer. I was again untethered and vulnerable, a stranger in a place that had felt like home.” Dejected, Nahr returns to Amman. Of course, our heroine has to return to her beloved homeland, where she witnesses the reality of life under occupation. “Israel rationed water to Palestinians, especially farmers, and would then move in to confiscate farms and groves of dying trees for being neglected.” Nahr’s friends wind up in prison for saving their beloved almond trees from encroaching settlers and their land and its people from enduring “these traumas of colonialism.” Those prisoners are “being harmed in ways we couldn’t bear to imagine. There was no charge. No trial. Both were held in ‘administrative detention.’ All of this just to secure a bit of water for the trees.” Later, Nahr joins the village to harvest olives, just as she imagines her ancestors had done. Settlers and their children attack the farmers. They are joined by a horde of armed Israeli soldiers in a cloud of teargas who shoot or arrest any Palestinians who don’t run away. “Can something expected still be a surprise?” Nahr MARCH/APRIL 2021

N E W A R R I VA L S Endings by Abd al-Rahman Munif, translated by Roger Allen, Interlink Books, 2020, paperback, 160 pp. MEB $15. “Drought. Drought again! When drought seasons come, things begin to change. Life and objects change. Humans change too, and no more so than in their moods!” It is not long before the reader of Endings discovers that this drought is not just an occasional, but an enduring condition faced by a community on the edge of the desert, the village of al-Tiba. Nowhere do we discover exactly where this village is on the map of the Arab world, and al-Tiba thus becomes a symbol for all villages facing nature unaided by modern technology. It is the people of al-Tiba, as a group, who discuss and argue about their past, present and future, and the forces of change. The portrayal of the desert environment and its customs is as vivid as the hunting of animals and the sandstorm that leads to a villager’s death. Parwana: Recipes and Stories from an Afghan Kitchen by Durkhanai Ayubi, Interlink Books, 2020, hardcover, 256 pp. MEB $35. Parwana tells one family’s story of a region long afflicted by war, but with much more at its heart. Author Durkhanai Ayubi’s parents, Zelmai and Farida Ayubi, fled Afghanistan with their young family in 1987, at the height of the Cold War. When their family-run restaurant Parwana opened its doors in Adelaide, Australia in 2009, their vision was to share an authentic piece of the Afghanistan the family had left behind—a country rich in culture, family memories infused with Afghanistan’s traditions of generosity and hospitality. These recipes have been in the family for generations and include rice dishes, curries, meats, dumplings, Afghan pastas, sweets, drinks, chutneys and pickles, soups and breads. Some are celebratory special dishes while most are day to day dishes. Each has a story to tell. You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat, Catapult Books, 2020, hardcover, 272 pp. MEB $25. A group of men outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem yell at a 12year-old Palestinian-American girl for exposing her legs. Their judgement will echo throughout her adolescence. When the narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter. Flashing between the U.S. and the Middle East—from New York to Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine—Zaina Arafat’s debut novel traces her protagonist’s progress from teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. Caught between cultural, religious and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings—for love and a place to call home. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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asks. “We knew that Israelis were especially menacing during the harvest season. They know olives have been the mainstay and centerpiece of our social, economic, and cultural presence for millennia, and it infuriated them—still does—to watch the unbroken continuity of our indigenous traditions. So they came with their big guns, and their colonial logic of interlopers who cannot abide our presence or our joy.” The New York Times rightly called Abulhawa’s Against the Loveless World, a “beautiful, urgent novel of the Palestinian struggle.” Her book helped launch the Mondoweiss podcast in December and its book club in January. It’s ironic that a book narrated from an Israeli prison cell has been published during a pandemic, when we are all locked up. Against the Loveless World is essential reading for people holding onto hope in a loveless world. Abulhawa’s latest masterpiece should be in every library—public and private.

A Passionate Pacifist: Essential Writings of Aaron Samuel Tamares

Edited, translated and introduced by Everett Gendler, Ben Yehuda Press, 436 pages. MEB: $24.95

Reviewed by Allan C. Brownfeld

There has been a long tradition of rabbinical opposition to Zionism, of which many are unaware. In this book, the essays and sermons of Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares (1869-1931), written in Hebrew between 1904 and 1931, are translated into English for the first time by Rabbi Everett Gendler. Serving as a rabbi in a small Polish town, Tamares addresses issues of ethics, morality and Judaism in relation to the world at large. A delegate to the World Zionist Congress in London in 1900, he

Allan C. Brownfeld is a Washington Reportcolumnist, associate editor of the Lincoln Review and the editor of Issues, a quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism. 66

became disillusioned with political Zionism and wrote extensively about his rejection of Jewish nationalism, his embrace of pacifism and what he saw as the unique Jewish mission in the world. The volume’s editor, Rabbi Gendler, now 92, has spent decades as a trailblazing environmentalist, peace activist and proponent of Jewish universalism. Active in the civil rights movement, Gendler led groups of rabbis at prayer vigils throughout

the South. He was in Selma, Alabama in 1965, and persuaded Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to participate in the march from Selma to Montgomery. He was recently awarded the Presidents’ Medallion from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Although Rabbi Tamares was originally sympathetic to Zionism, he came to believe that the Zionist focus on creating a territorial nation-state on the model of contemporary European nationalism amounted to a betrayal of the vital Jewish mission in world history: to be a non-political community spread across the world, serving as “a light unto the nations.” Rabbi Tamares’ belief that only a pure, non-political Judaism could offer humanity hope for a different future was reinforced in the first decades of the 20th century. He looked with scorn at the mass slaughter of World War l and was alarmed at Jewish attempts, through Zionism, to mirror what he perceived to be the worst attributes of European civilization. He wrote: “Jews

WaShiNGTON REpORT ON MiddlE EaST affaiRS

exist to spread the moral precepts of the Torah, including a pacifist aversion to bloodshed, to the rest of humanity. The Jewish mission must be accomplished without the use of force.” The Zionist dream of “normalizing” the Jewish condition—-including a return to national life—-was seen by Tamares as a betrayal of the Jewish mission in history: to impart ethical living and pacifist values to all humanity. He wrote: “For us, the Jewish people, our entire distinctiveness is the Torah and Judaism; the kingdom of the spirit is our state territory.” For Jews, he believed, “exile” was not punishment but purification. In his essay “Three Unsuitable Unions,” he notes that the early Zionists ignored the fact that Palestine was already fully inhabited by others: “The Zionists hid their eyes from the fact that the actual place was not a newly discovered, unsettled island located at the far ends of the earth, but was a place already inhabited by a people who was sure to feel the ‘nationalist’ aims as a needle in its living flesh.” In 1929, Tamares wrote that the very notion of a sovereign Jewish state as a spiritual center was “a contradiction to Judaism’s ultimate purpose.” He explained, “Judaism at root is not some religious concentration which may be localized or situated in a single territory. Neither is Judaism a ‘nationality,’ in the sense of modern nationalism, fit to be woven into the threefoldedness of ‘homeland, army and heroic songs.’ No, Judaism is Torah, ethics and exaltation of spirit. If Judaism is truly Torah, then it cannot be reduced to the confines of any particular territory. For as Scripture said of Torah, ‘Its measure is greater than the earth.’” Political Zionism, Tamares believed, imperils the character of Judaism, which has survived so long free from what he saw as “the defilement of nationalism.” Zionism, he noted, makes an idol of the land of Israel, replacing God—-a form of idolatry. Tamares may be seen as prophetic in his critique of Zionism. He would not be surprised by Israel’s occupation of the West MaRch/apRil 2021

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Bank and denial of basic rights to its indigenous population. Rabbis Gendler and Tamares are, in many ways, kindred spirits, separated by time. By making Tamares’ sermons and essays available to an English-language 21st century audience, Gendler has helped to bring Judaism back to its universal and spiritual origins. It shows, as well, how far many have strayed from Judaism’s humane moral and ethical tradition.

SUPPORT MIDDLE EAST BOOKSTORE/ COFFEE SHOP

Brick-and-mortar retailers are facing a challenge. Even before the pandemic, competition from Amazon forced a lot of independent bookstores to close. Thanks to your support, Middle East Books and More defied that trend! Come in and browse, shop, and eventually gather again for book talks, club meetings and film screenings in the bookstore. Of course, we always sell books—and more—online (www.MiddleEastBooks.com). We are also using this time to expand and add a coffee shop to the bookstore. Now that we’ve completed the architectural and engineering plans and selected the contractor, we’ve learned that renovations will cost more than $100,000. Please send a check to AET, 1902 18th St, NW, Washington, DC, with “bookstore” on the memo line to help make your favorite bookstore a special gathering place for our community. MARCH/APRIL 2021

N E W A R R I VA L S The Emperor is Naked: On the Inevitable Demise of the Nation-State by Hamid Dabashi, Zed Books, 2020, paperback, 208 pp. MEB $23. The invention of the nationstate was the crowning achievement of the Sykes–Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France in 1916. As a geostrategic move to divide, defeat and dismantle the Ottoman Empire during the World War I, it was a great success and so the modern colonial borders of the Arab nation-states eventually emerged in the course of World War II. Today, as nations are reconceiving of their own postcolonial interpolated histories, Arab states are becoming total states through violent trajectories. In The Emperor is Naked, Hamid Dabashi boldly argues that the category of nation state has failed to produce a legitimate and enduring unit of postcolonial polity. Considering what this liberation of nations and denial of legitimacy to ruling states will actually unfurl, Dabashi asks: What will replace the nation state, what are the implications of this deconstruction on global politics, and, crucially, what is the meaning of the postcolonial subject within this moment? Adrift: How Our World Lost Its Way by Amin Maalouf, translated by Frank Wynne, World Editions, 2020, paperback, 336 pp. MEB $18. The United States is losing its moral credibility. The European Union is breaking apart. Africa, the Arab world and the Mediterranean are becoming battlefields for various regional and global powers. Extreme forms of nationalism are on the rise. Thus divided, humanity is unable to address global threats to the environment and our health. How did we get here and what is yet to come? Worldrenowned scholar and bestselling author Amin Maalouf seeks to raise awareness and pursue a new human solidarity. In Adrift, Maalouf traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century, mixing personal narrative and historical analysis to provide a warning signal for the future. The Slave Yards by Najwa Bin Shatwan, translated by Nancy Roberts, Syracuse University Press, 2020, paperback, 302 pp. MEB $23. Set in late nineteenth-century Benghazi, Najwa Bin Shatwan's powerful novel tells the story of Atiqa, the daughter of a slave woman and her White master. We learn of Atiqa's childhood, growing up in the “slave yards,” a makeshift encampment on the outskirts of Benghazi for Black Africans who were brought to Libya as slaves. Atiqa’s cousin narrates the tragic life of her mother, Tawida, a Black woman enslaved to a wealthy merchant family who finds herself the object of her master's desires. Though such unions were common in slave-holding societies, their relationship intensifies as both come to care deeply for each other and share a bond that endures throughout their lives. Shortlisted for the 2017 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Bin Shatwan's unforgettable novel offers a window into a dark chapter of Libyan history and illuminates the lives of women with great pathos and humanity. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

cartoons_68.qxp_March/April 2021 Cartoons 2/4/21 12:04 PM Page 68

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST

Alaraby Jadeed, Amman, Jordan

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

Cartoon Movement, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore, Singapore

Correio do Povo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

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La Tribuna, Tegucigalpa, Honduras MARCH/APRIL 2021

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Other People’s Mail Compiled by Dale Sprusansky HOW TRUMP’S POLICIES IMPACTED IRANIAN AMERICANS

To the Sentinel Colorado, Jan. 26, 2021 Some of your readers may have mixed feelings about the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA). Let me assure you that our abandonment of it and subsequent Trump administration policies have had a huge negative impact on the lives of Iranian Americans in Aurora and across the state. Our community has had loved ones in Iran die from a lack of medical equipment and drugs directly resulting from our “maximum pressure” sanctions, which spare the regime’s leaders while asphyxiating the ordinary Iranian. Many of our community members have been separated from their families for years, with their parents often forced to witness the birth of their grandchild on Zoom rather than in person. And Iranian student visa holders at Colorado universities—typically conducting research in high economic impact fields like mechanical engineering or the biosciences—have had difficulty sustaining themselves in the face of financial transactions being blocked and U.S. bank accounts being frozen. Finally, in the absence of the deal, the Iranian government has ramped up its enrichment and is even closer to a nuclear bomb. We welcome President Biden’s repeal of the “Muslim Ban” and hope that he will soon return to the Iran nuclear deal without preconditions. Because on both a geopolitical level and on a human level here in Colorado, doing so best safeguards our interests while allowing Iranian Americans to flourish and contribute to creating jobs and boosting our state’s economy. Kevin Amirehsani, Denver, CO

ISRAEL’S USE OF A WEAPON LIKELY MADE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

To the New Hampshire Union Leader, Dec. 11, 2020 On Dec. 5, 2020, a Palestinian youth was killed by Israeli occupation forces near Ramallah, Palestine. He was a bystander at MARCH/APRIL 2021

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

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 MEMBER: U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES WASHINGTON, DC 20515 (202) 225-312

the weekly protest against the expansion of an illegal settlement near the town where he lived. His name was Ali Abu Aliya and he was shot in the stomach on his 15th birthday and later died at a hospital in Ramallah. At his home, there was a birthday cake and some presents waiting and a planned celebration with family and friends. The Israeli military for decades has fired tear gas canisters, rubber-coated steel bullets, a foul-smelling “skunk juice,” and live ammunition at peaceful protesters who by international law are permitted to resist their occupiers. The Israeli occupation has lasted for 53 years, replete with gigantic concrete walls and dehumanizing checkpoints for Palestinian drivers and pedestrians. Moreover, annexation of Palestinian land has been ongoing since the Six-Day War of 1967. Today, there are approximately 650,000 Jewish “settlers” or “colonists” living in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem on Palestinian land. The weapon that was used against Ali was a .22 caliber rifle, called a “sniper” rifle. This gun was likely manufactured in Newport, NH, at the Sturm, Ruger Arms plant there. Other young Palestinians have also been killed by the “sniper” rifle while others have suffered serious injuries. As a member of the New Hampshire Palestine Education Network, I call on our congressional delegation to investigate the export of these lethal weapons to Israel. Human rights must trump weapons sales. William Thomas, Auburn, NH

CLASSIFYING ISRAEL AS AN APARTHEID STATE IS SPOT-ON

To the Daily Camera, Jan. 25, 2021 I read with interest the recent position paper of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, which stated that Israel is an “apartheid state.” Many retired military and political leaders in Israel have said the same thing privately for years, but none dared to say it aloud. In 2016, when I traveled to the Holy Land, our group met with a staff member

ANY SENATOR: U.S. SENATE WASHINGTON, DC 20510 (202) 224-3121

of B’Tselem. Their headquarters had recently been destroyed by fire so when they met, it was in a coffee shop in a clandestine manner. The staff member told us that she had to be very careful, that she neither wore any clothing nor carried any materials that would identify her with B’Tselem because the organization was detested by ordinary Israeli citizens. It was scorned because it dared to criticize the Israeli government. I was awed then, and even more so, when I read the recent report. Anyone who has traveled to the Holy Land is acutely aware of the major difference in treatment of Israelis and the Palestinians who live in the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem. That has been revealed again recently by the major difference in distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. Until very recently none has been available to Palestinians while Israel itself brags of being a world leader in distribution of the vaccine. This is just the most blatant and recent example of the accuracy of B’Tselem’s charge that Israel is not a democracy as often proclaimed, but rather an apartheid state. Why the U.S. gives $3.8 billion a year to this country when the needs here at home are so obvious is a conundrum to me. Barbara Hanst, Boulder, CO

NO MIDDLE EAST PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE FOR PALESTINIANS

To The Register-Guard, Jan. 8, 2021 Mark Thiessen’s column (Jan. 4) on the 10 best things Trump did in 2020 missed the target when it came to the Abraham Accords. He declared that they transformed the Middle East with four peace accords and were worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, Thiessen ignored the root problem preventing peace in the Middle East: justice for the Palestinians. In violation of international law and U.N. resolutions, Israel has allowed and encour-

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aged an estimated 650,000 people to establish more than 200 settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank. Palestinians are routinely harassed at checkpoints and denied access to their olive trees and water resources. They can be imprisoned without trial, and their homes can be demolished with just a few minutes of warning. Peace will come to the Middle East when Israel does more than make economic deals with Arab nations. Any peace effort that skips over the Palestinians will never produce genuine peace. The United States must insist on justice for Palestinians. Fred Martin, Eugene, OR

MARGINALIZING PALESTINIANS WON’T BRING PEACE

THE LETTER PUBLISHED AROUND THE COUNTRY

While searching for letters to the editor, I kept on stumbling upon the same letter in newspaper after newspaper. It warned President Biden that Iran and North Korea would move enriched uranium from one site to another unless the U.S. insists on swifter inspections of nuclear facilities as part of any nuclear agreement. While identical letters being published is not uncommon, such letters are typically organized by advocacy groups who ask their members to sign the letter and submit it to their local papers. However, in this case, the same individual, Alex Sokolow, was listed as the writer of each letter. In each submission, Sokolow claimed to live in a different city. For instance, in the submission to Hawaii’s The Garden Island, the writer provided a PO Box address in Lihu’e, HI, while Sokolow posed as a resident of New Jersey to the Cape May County Herald. When reached by phone by an editor in Iowa, the writer even spontaneously provided a local address, later determined to be phony. In total, at least 68 local newspapers, from Hawaii to Maine, published the letter. The Washington Report reached out to the opinions page editors of many of the papers who fell victim to this ruse. Based on their helpful responses, we believe it’s likely Sokolow is a real person (rather than an invented identity) who lives in Santa Monica, CA. The Washington Report sent a message to the email address we know the writer used to correspond back and forth with various newspapers, but received no response. As we went to press, Sokolow’s letter was still appearing in new local papers, and the Washington Report continued contacting those papers letting them know about this ruse. While Sokolow’s apparent zeal for having his opinion heard is admirable, the editors we reached expressed frustration at being duped as to his true location. But, more importantly, we learned how eager and willing these editors are to publish letters on important issues, such as the Middle East. So, Washington Report readers: Have your voices heard! Send your letters to your local papers and move the public discourse in this country forward. —Dale Sprusansky

To The Daily Gazette, Dec. 21, 2020 It seems to me your headlines in the Dec. 11 Daily Gazette with regard to Israel tend to obfuscate the actual story. The headline “Israel, Morocco to normalize ties” should more appropriately have been “U.S. sells out self-determination of Western Sahara to bribe Morocco to recognize Israel.” The Daily Gazette Dec. 8 headline “New roads to drive massive growth of Israeli settlements?” should have been “Israel prepares to steal more land from Palestine.” Various other articles regarding Saudi and Emirati recognition of Israel were equally devoid of U.S. bribery and complicity in the theft of land from Palestine. You can’t have a lasting peace by imposing it on a country whose land you have stolen and then bribing others to recognize it. It is time for the United States to recognize this fact and stop blindly supporting Israel. Israel has become the apartheid South Africa of the Middle East. It is time for America, both government and people, to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, just as the world did with South 70

Africa. End Israel’s expansionist policies of land theft and we may have a chance of real peace in the Middle East. James Van Dijk, Saratoga Springs, NY

BIDEN MUST FINALLY CLOSE GUANTANAMO BAY

To The Davis Enterprise, Jan. 12, 2021 Jan. 11 marks 19 years since the first prisoners landed in Guantanamo. At that time, we were informed that these were “enemy combatants,” which meant that they somehow had no rights under the Geneva Convention, and in fact no rights at all, and so they were being sent to a place where the whole concept of human rights could be suspended indefinitely. I remember thinking that this was a really bad idea. That was 19 years ago. President Barack Obama promised to shut down this prison on first taking office in 2009. That was 12 years ago.

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

According to the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, there are 40 prisoners left in the prison at Guantanamo Bay for this 19th anniversary, most of whom have never been charged with any crime. Also according to NRCAT, we are spending about $13 million per prisoner per year to keep this prison open. After 19 years, this is still a bad idea. President Biden has a lot of issues to deal with on taking office, but I am hoping he can take a stand for human rights and respect for international law—and finally close down this prison which should never have been opened in the first place. Julia Menard-Warwick, Davis, CA

BIDEN SHOULD JOIN U.N. TREATY BANNING NUCLEAR WEAPONS

To The News Tribune, Jan. 21, 2021 Among the significant events of this week, on Friday a new international treaty goes into force to completely prohibit nuclear weapons—their design, production and use. The United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was ratified by the required 50th nation, Honduras, in October. The United States (and all nuclear states) will be in violation after Jan. 22. The Trump administration rejected the treaty, but the opportunity for our new president to make his mark on history awaits him in supporting this game-changing international agreement. The opportunity for a divided Senate to ratify this treaty and begin its session on a note of bipartisan unity also presents itself. President Biden would be well-supported by his Catholic faith and Pope Francis, who recently declared that even possession of such weapons is immoral. Here is an opportunity to take a step back from the brink of destruction. I urge everyone to contact their senators and tell them to lead the way. George Rodkey, Tacoma, WA ■ MARCH/APRIL 2021

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O• B • I • T • U • A • R • I • E • S Prof. Abdul Aziz Said, 91, a Syrian-born political scientist, educator, author, and editor of 25 books, and more than 100 papers, died on Jan. 22, 2021. He was a professor of international relations for 60 years at American University, in Washington, DC, where he was the founding director of the International Peace and Conflict Resolution department at the School of International Service. Prof. Said co-founded Nonviolence International in 1989 with Dr. Mubarak Awad and devoted his life to inspiring students to promote peace and global understanding. He was a great man with a gentle but determined spirit. “There are few people in the world who combined his academic, researchbased approach with such warmth and spiritual commitment,” said Dr. Awad. Their organization has started an internship program, including a scholarship in his name to perpetuate Said’s legacy, and give professional experience to students who seek a career promoting peace and global understanding.

Dr. Mary Shibli Zumot, 82, died Jan. 16 of COVID in Atlanta, GA. Born in Amman, Jordan, she came to study in the U.S. in 1961 and received her BA from Baylor University, an MA from Southern Methodist University, and her Ph.D. from Arizona State University. She loved teaching political science and mentoring students at Wayland College in TX, then at Grand Canyon College in Arizona and later at Mercer University’s Atlanta Campus. Mary Zumot met Fahed Abuakel in Arizona and married in 1980 in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Zumot was on the board of directors for the National Association of Arab Americans, a member of the AmericanArab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) as well as the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG). She was a founder of the Arab American Women’s Society of Georgia (AAWSG) MARCH/APRIL 2021

By Delinda C. Hanley

in 1985. She helped host the ALIF Arabic classes at Mercer and was one of the founders of the Arab American Business Association in Atlanta. She also helped her husband, Rev. Abuakel, in his ministry with international students (AMIS). She served on committees for the Presbyterian Church, USA. Dr. Zumot led educational tours to the Holy Land and Jordan. She was a member of the Northside Kiwanis Club and served as its first woman president. In addition to her husband, survivors include her sisters Seham Saba of Virginia, Samira Moore of Florida, Samia Zumot of Amman, Jordan, and her brother Yousef Zumot. Hashem Ahmad Alshilleh, 75, retired truck driver, died on Jan. 8 of COVID in Riverside, CA. As a young Palestinian refugee living in Jordan when his father died, out of necessity, Alshilleh had to learn how to prepare his body for burial. According to a deeply moving article in the Los Angeles Times, for more than 30 years, “Alshilleh helped to bury a generation of Southern Californian Muslims. He washed and shrouded the

corpses of men per Islamic customs and drove the bodies of men and women to cemeteries from Rosamond to Victorville, San Diego to Orange County.” He stayed with each body until it was lowered into the ground and made sure the deceased lay on his or her right side, facing toward Mecca.” Afterward, Alshilleh comforted the living. He never charged for his services, relying only on donations, some of which he used to pay for the funerals of strangers, Muslims, or others. His five children—two police officers, two construction contractors and a nurse—say they received over 300 calls from around the world when he died. Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Los Angeles office, said he’d seen Alshilleh helping at hundreds of funerals. Ayloush said he regretted that CAIR didn’t get to honor Alshilleh and recognize him while he was alive. “It breaks my heart. These pioneers are disappearing, people who were selfless and gave with no expectations when the community needed them the most.” ■

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AET’s 2020 Choir of Angels

the following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1, 2020 and dec. 31, 2020 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 conference “transcending the israel lobby.” 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. The May issue will list donors who gave in 2021. We are deeply honored by your conﬁdence and profoundly grateful for your generosity.

HUMMERS ($100 or more)

Fuad Abboud, Calgary, Canada Dr. & Mrs. Robert Abel, Wilmington, DE Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, Atlanta, GA Rizek & Alice Abusharr, Claremont, CA Justine Adair, Waxhaw, NC James C. Ahlstrom, Stirling, NJ Aglaia & Mumtaz Ahmed, Buda, TX Robert Akras, North Bay Village, FL Dr. & Mrs. Salah Al-Askari, Leonia, NJ Joe & Siham Alfred, Fredericksburg, VA Tammam Aljoundi, Saint Louis, MO Hamid & Kim Alwan, Milwaukee, WI Hanaa Al-Wardi, Alhambra, CA Nabil & Judy Amarah, Danbury, CT Edwin Amidon, Charlotte, VT Nazife Amrou, Sylvania, OH Anace & Polly Aossey, Cedar Rapids, IA Dr. Robert Ashmore Jr., Mequon, WI Ahmed Ayish, Arlington, VA Stanton Barrett, Ipswich, MA Allen & Jerrie Bartlett, Philadelphia, PA Imtiaz Basrai, Diamond Bar, CA Azizunnisa Begum, East Brunswick, NJ Joseph Benedict, Mystic, CT Linda Bergh, Syracuse, NY Lyle Best, Watford City, ND Essa Bishara, Greensboro, NC Bradley Bitar, Olympia, WA Dr. Nelson Borelli, Chicago, IL Karin Brothers, Toronto, Canada Elaine Brouillard, West Hyannisport, MA John V. Brown, Los Altos, CA James Burkart, Bethesda, MD Prof. Mireya Camurati, Williamsville, NY Lynn & Aletha Carlton, Norwalk, CT William Cavness, Falls Church, VA Ouahib Chalbi, Coon Rapids, MN Charlotte Chiba, Toronto, Canada Jeff Cooper, Los Angeles, CA John Cornwall, Palm Springs, CA Dr. & Mrs. Anton Dahbura, Baltimore, MD Robert & Tanis Diedrichs, Eugene, OR Dr. George Doumani, Washington, DC Ron Dudum, San Francisco, CA Sarah L. Duncan, Vienna, OH Dr. David Dunning, Lake Oswego, OR Beth & Warren Haas, Wilmington, DE Mr. & Mrs. Samer Habiby, Holmdel, NJ Laurie A. Hanawalt, Cleveland, OH Dr. & Mrs. Hossam Fadel, Augusta, GA Dr. E.R. Fields, Marietta, GA 72

Andrew M. Findlay, Alexandria, VA Joseph & Angela Gauci, Whittier, CA Ahmad & Shirley Gazori, Mill Creek, WA Claire Geddes, Cottonwood Hts., UT Burhan Ghanayem, Durham, NC Michael Gillespie, Maxwell, IA Sam Gousen, Arlington, VA Michael Haddad, Toronto, Canada Dr. Safei Hamed, Columbia, MD Ibrahim Hamide, Eugene, OR Delinda C. Hanley, Kensington, MD ** Dr. Walid & Norma Harb, Dearborn Hts., MI Prof. & Mrs. Brice Harris, Pasadena, CA Steven Harvey, Manchester, NH Mr. & Mrs. Sameer Hassan, Quaker Hill, CT Julester Haste, Oxford, IA Jim Hausken, Kensington, CA Joan & Edward Hazbun, Media, PA Gerald Heidel, Bradenton, FL Neil Himber, Youngsville, PA M.D. Hotchkiss, Portland, OR Barbara Howard, Piscataway, NJ Marvine Howe, Lexington, VA M. Al Hussaini, Great Falls, VA Mr. & Mrs. Azmi Ideis, Deltona, FL Abdeen Jabara, New York, NY Bilquis Jaweed, West Chester, OH Jerusalem Fund, Washington, DC Janis Jibrin, Washington, DC Issa & Rose Kamar, Plano, TX Timothy Kaminski, Saint Louis, MO Mr. & Mrs. Basim Kattan, Washington, DC Faroque Khan, Jericho, NY Javed Khan, Saratoga, CA M. Yousuf Khan, Scottsdale, AZ Eugene Khorey, Homestead, PA Alfred & Dina Khoury, McLean, VA Tony Khoury, Sedona, AZ Gail Kirkpatrick, Philadelphia, PA Raina Korbakis, E. Lansing, MI Edward I. Kuncar, Coral Gables, FL Ronald Kunde, Skokie, IL Alison Lankenau, Tivoli, NY David & Renee Lent, Hanover, NH Edwin Lindgren, Overland Park, KS Sherif Lotfi, New York, NY Erna Lund, Seattle, WA Angela Lyras, New York, NY Allen J. Macdonald, Washington, DC Donald Maclay, Springfield, PA Ramy & Cynthia Mahmoud, Yardley, PA Dr. & Mrs. Gabriel Makhlouf, Richmond, VA

Washington RepoRt on Middle east affaiRs

Tahera Mamdani, Fridley, MN Ted Marczak, Toms River, NJ Charles Marks, Altadena, CA## Martha Martin, Kahului, HI Stephen Mashney, Anaheim, CA Nabil Matar, Minneapolis, MN John Matthews, West Newton, MA Carol Mazzia, Santa Rosa, CA Shirl McArthur, Reston, VA William McAuley, Chicago, IL Gwendolyn McEwen, Bellingham, WA Stanley McGinley, The Woodlands, TX Ray McGovern, Raleigh, NC Bill McGrath, Northfield, MN Janet L. McMahon, Washington, DC Prof. John Mearsheimer, Chicago, IL Nijad Mehanna, Roseville, MI George Mendenhall, Spring Valley, NY Susan Kay Metcalfe, Beaverton, OR Robert Michael, Sun Lakes, AZ Peter Miller, Portland, OR Robert S. Miller, Winter Spgs., FL Shehad Mohammed, Orland Park, IL Maury Keith Moore, Seattle, WA Moe Muhsin, Honolulu, HI Isa & Dalal Musa, Falls Church, VA Dr. Eid B. Mustafa, Wichita Falls, TX Joseph Najemy, Worcester, MA Stephen L. Naman, Atlanta, GA Mary Neznek, Washington, DC Khaled Othman, Riverside, CA Edmond & Lorraine Parker, Chicago, IL Cheryl Quigley, Toms River, NJ Peggy Rafferty, Cedar Grove, NC Marjorie Ransom, Washington, DC Kenneth Reed, Bishop, CA Mr. & Mrs. Edward Reilly, Rocky Point, NY John Reinke, Redmond, WA Paul Richards, Salem, OR Nancy Robinson, Arlington, VA John Roche, Arlington, VA Dinky Romilly & Terry Weber, Cold Spring, NY Ambassador William Rugh, Hingham, MA Patricia Ryder-Christensen, Poulsbo, WA Hameed Saba, Diamond Bar, CA Rafi M. Salem, Alamo, CA James & Lisa Sams, Bethesda, MD Walter & Halina Sasak, Northborough, MA Judith Sayed, Richmond, VA Joan H. Seelye, Washington, DC Dr. Ajazuddin Shaikh, Granger, IN Yasir Shallal, McLean, VA

MaRch/apRil 2021

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Qaiser & Tanseem Shamim, Somerset, NJ Carl Shankweiler, Valley View, PA Dr. Mostafa Hashem Sherif, Tinton Falls, NJ Nancy Taylor Shivers, San Antonio, TX Zac Sidawi, Costa Mesa, CA Ellen Siegel, Washington, DC Nathaniel Smith, West Chester, PA Les Sosnowski, Lake Forest, IL Darcy Sreebny, Issaquah, WA** Viola Stephan, Santa Barbara, CA Rev. John J. Sullivan, Maryknoll, NY Corrine Sutila, Los Angeles, CA Mushtaq Syed, Santa Clara, CA Eddy Tamura, Moraga, CA Norman Tanber, Dana Point, CA Ghassan J. Tarazi, McLean, VA Doris Taweel, Laurel, MD J. Tayeb, Shelby Twp., MI Gretchen Theobald, Washington, DC Jeanne Trabulsi, Front Royal, VA Thomas Trueblood, Chapel Hill, NC UUs forJustice in the Middle East, Watertown, MA Tom Veblen, Washington, DC Majdy Wauwie, Rowlett, TX Edith I. Welch, Warner, NH Thomas C. Welch, Cambridge, MA Carol Wells, & Theodore Hajjar, Venice, CA Duane & Barbara Wentz, Kirkland, WA Michael Wilke, St. Charles, IL

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Falls Church, VA David Williams, Golden, CO Robert Witty, Cold Spring, NY Raymond Younes, Oxnard, CA Dr. Robert Younes, Potomac, MD Dr. & Mrs. Fathi S. Yousef, Irvine, CA Mashood Yunus, New Brighton, MN Munir Zacharia, La Mirada, CA Hugh Ziada, South San Francisco, CA Fred Zuercher, Spring Grove, PA

ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more)

Catherine Abbott, Edina, MN Mr. & Mrs. Sultan Aslam, Plainsboro, NJ Mr. & Mrs. L. F. Boker Doyle, New York, NY Syed & Rubia Bokhari, Bourbonnais, IL Sam & Nora Burgan, Falls Church, VA Duncan Clark, Rockville, MD William G. Coughlin, Brookline, MA Joseph Daruty, Newport Beach, CA Steve Feldman, Winston-Salem, NC Dr. William Fuller, Valdosta, GA Ken Galal, San Francisco, CA Doug Greene, Bowling Green, OH Erin K. Hankir, Nepean, Canada Susan Haragely, Livonia, MI Angelica Harter, N. Branford, CT Islamic Center of Detroit, Detroit, MI Rafeeq Jaber, Oak Lawn, IL Bilquis Jaweed, West Chester, OH (Advertisement)

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Zagloul & Muntaha Kadah, Los Gatos, CA Dr. Mazen Khalidi, Grosse Pt. Farms, MI Dr. Mohayya Khilfeh, Chicago, IL Dr. Muhammad M. Kudaimi, Munster, IN Matt Labadie, Portland, OR Michael Ladah, Las Vegas, NV Nidal Mahayni, Richmond, VA Richard Makdisi & Lindsay Wheeler, Berkeley, CA Joseph A. Mark, Carmel, CA Charles Marks, Altadena, CA Dr. Charles W. McCutchen, Bethesda, MD Tom Mickelson, Cottage Grove, WI Curtis Miller, Albuquerque, NM Yehia Mishriki, Orefield, PA Mr. & Mrs. Jan Moreb, WinstonSalem, NC Corinne Mudarri, Manchester, MA Museum of the Palestinian People, Washington, DC Claire Nader, Winsted, CT John Najemy, Albany, NY Sara Najjar-Wilson, Reston, VA W. Eugene Notz, Charleston, SC Merrill O’Donnell, New Westminster, Canada Nancy Orr, Portland, OR Hertha Poje-Ammoumi, New York, NY Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, Bethlehem, Palestine

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Amani Ramahi, Lakewood, OH Mary H. Regier, El Cerrito, CA Jeanne Riha, Brooklyn, NY Rotary Foundation, Evanston, IL Dr. Mohammed Sabbagh, Grand Blanc, MI Betty Sams, Washington, DC* Robert Schaible, Portland, ME Irmgard Scherer, Fairfax, VA Dr. Abid Shah, Sarasota, FL Bernice Shaheen, Palm Desert, CA**** William & Ursula Slavick, Portland, ME Yasser Soliman, Hamilton Township, NJ Dr. Joseph Tamari, Chicago, IL John K. Y. & Margot S. Taylor, New York, NY Letitia Ufford, Hanover, NH V. R. Vitolins, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI Benjamin Wade, Saratoga, CA Rev. Hermann Weinlick, Minneapolis, MN

TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more) Michael Ameri, Calabasas, CA Dr. John Duke Anthony, Washington, DC Dr. & Mrs. Roger Bagshaw, Big Sur, CA Ted Chauviere, Austin, TX Mr. & Mrs. Rajie Cook, Washington, Crossing, PA William G. Coughlin, Brookline, MA Andrew & Krista Curtiss, Wilmington, NC ** Raymond Gordon, Venice, FL Alfred R. Greve, Holmes, NY Dr. Wasif Hafeez, W. Bloomfield, MI

Masood Hassan, Calabasas, CA Virginia Hilmy, Silver Spring, MD Kandy L. Hixson, Akron, OH Brigitte Jaensch, Carmichael, CA Fahd Jajeh, Lake Forest, IL Jeanne Johnston, Santa Ynez, CA Gloria Keller, Santa Rosa, CA Sedigheh Kunkel, Santa Monica, CA Timothy Mansour, Poulsbo, WA Tom & Tess McAndrew, Oro Valley, AZ Suhail Nabi, The Woodlands, TX Anne O’Leary, Arlington, VA Audrey Olson, Saint Paul, MN Phillip Portlock, Washington, DC Fred Rogers & Jenny Hartley, Northfield, MN Ramzy Salem, Monterey Park, CA Sarah Saul, Portland, ME Lisa Schiltz, Houston, TX James G. Smart, Keene, NH William R. Stanley, Saluda, NC Anver Tayob, Saint Louis, MO Tom Veblen, Washington, DC Dr. James Zogby, Washington, DC***

BARITONES & MEZZO SOPRANOS ($1,000 or more)

Sylvia Anderson de Freitas, Duluth, MN Anonymous, San Francisco, CA Asha A. Anand, Bethesda, MD Lois Aroian, East Jordan, MI Barakat Family, Moorpark, CA### Graf Herman Bender, North Palm Beach, FL Karen Ray Bossmeyer, Louisville, KY

Harvie Branscomb, La Jolla, CA Edward Briody, Jackson Heights, NY G. Edward & Ruth Brooking, Wilmington, DE Forrest Cioppa, Moraga, CA William G. Coughlin, Brookline, MA Paula Davidson, Naples, FL Gregory & Nancy DeSylva, Rhinebeck, NY Nabila Eltaji, Amman, Jordan Mr. & Mrs. Majed Faruki, Albuquerque, NM Ronald & Mary Forthofer, Boulder, CO Hind Hamdan, Hagertown, MD Ribhi Hazin, Dearborn, MI Judith Howard, Norwood, MA Mohammed Jokhdar, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Ghazy Kader, Shoreline, WA Dr. Muhammad Khan, Jersey City, NJ Jane Killgore & Thomas D’Albani, Bemidji, MN* Damaris Koehler, Mannheim, Germany Tony Litwinko, Los Angeles, CA Jack Love, Kailua Kona, HI Hani G. Marar, Delmar, NY Roberta McInerney, Washington, DC Darrel Meyers, Burbank, CA Anees Mughannam, Petaluma, CA Ralph Nader, Washington, DC Clark Nobil, Miami Beach, FL Robert & Sharon Norberg, Lake City, MN** Mary Norton, Austin, TX Gretel Smith, Garrett, IN David J. Snider, Bolton, MA Dr. Imad Tabry, Fort Lauderdale, FL Donn Trautman, Evanston, IL Young Again Foundation, Leland, NC

CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more)

American Council for Judaism, Ponte Vedra Beach, FL Anonymous, Palo Alto, CA #

Dr. & Mrs. Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR*,**

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John & Henrietta Goelet, Washington, DC William Lightfoot, Vienna, VA Estate of Jean Elizabeth Mayer, Bethesda, MD

* In Memory of Andrew I. Killgore ** In Memory of Dick and Donna Curtiss *** In Memory of Eileen Zogby **** In Memory of Dr. Jack Shaheen # In Memory of Rachelle & Hugh Marshall ## In Memory of Amal Marks ### In Memory of Adil Barakat MARCH/APRIL 2021

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American Educational Trust Washington Report on Middle East Affairs P.O. Box 53062 Washington, DC 20009

March/April 2021 Vol. XL, No. 2

Israeli forces destroyed and uprooted more than 10,000 trees, on Jan. 27, in a nature reserve located the northern West Bank town of Tubus, in the Jordan Valley, on the grounds that they were planted in a military exercise area. The trees were part of a “Greening Palestine” project, funded by the Venezuelan consulate in Palestine. (Photo by Nedal eshtayah/aNadolu ageNcy via getty images)

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - March/April 2021 - Vol. XL No. 2

Articles inside

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - March/April 2021 - Vol. XL No. 2

letters to the editor