Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - Vol. XXXII, No. 5 | June/July 2013

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UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTS OF WAR

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Nurturing mind, body and soul Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza face many obstacles: 10% suffer from chronic malnutrition. 25% do not attend primary school. UPA supports Palestinian children through education, health and nutrition and recreation projects.

Help Palestinian children in need. Donate to the UPA Children’s Fund:

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Contributions are tax-deductible according to applicable laws.

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On Middle East Affairs

Volume XXXII, No. 5

June/July 2013

Telling the Truth for More Than 30 Years…

Interpreting the Middle East for North Americans

■

Interpreting North America for the Middle East

THE U.S. ROLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE 8 Arabs Revive Their 2002 Peace Initiative But Rejectionist Israel Still Isn’t Buying

—Rachelle Marshall 11 Terrorism and the Other Religions—Juan Cole 12 Israel, the U.S. and Syria—Two Views —Patrick Seale, George S. Hishmeh 14 From Twitter to Capitol Hill, Yemeni Activist Exposes Reality of U.S. Drone War

—Dale Sprusansky 15 Dangerous and Unconstitutional Acts of War in the Middle East—Paul Findley

19 What Next for the Peace Process?—Two Views —The European Eminent Persons Group, John V. Whitbeck 22 Palestinian Prisoners: Broken Heroes, Broken Generations—William Parry 24 Fishing in a Shooting Gallery off the Coast of Gaza —Mohammed Omer 26 No Surprises for Middle East Countries; Sequestration Hits Aid to Them All—Shirl McArthur 34 Critics Object to Israel Hosting European Under-21 Soccer Championship—Jonathan Cook 37 On 65th Anniversary of Nakba Palestinians and Israelis More Separate—and Unequal

—Delinda C. Hanley

17 Diyaar: Ensuring the Right to Return —Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf

SPECIAL REPORTS 28 Sound Familiar? Morocco Rejects Human Rights Probe of Territory It Occupies—Ian Williams 30 Disarray in Egypt: The New Regime, the Opposition and the Judiciary

—Esam Al-Amin

SAIF DAHLAH/AFP

32 No One Satisfied After Malaysia’s Most Hotly Contested Election Yet—John Gee

An amusement park in Jenin. See story p. 36.

ON THE COVER: A dispossessed Palestinian refugee holds the deeds to his land and wears a house key around his neck during Nakba commemorations in the occupied northern West Bank city of Nablus, May 15, 2013, 65 years after the establishment of the state of Israel.

JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP/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

The Truth Is That After Israel’s Airstrikes, We Are Involved, Robert Fisk, Independent

OV-1

The Israeli-Jihadist Alliance, Justin Raimondo, www.antiwar.com

OV-2

Peddling Islamophobia, Charlotte Silver, www.aljazeera.com

OV-3

Spellbound by Terrorism, Paul R. Pillar, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar

OV-4

What if the Tsarnaevs’ Motive Was Revenge for U.S. Foreign Policy?, Sheldon Richman, http://fff.org/explore-freedom

OV-5

277 Million Boston Bombings, Robert Scheer, www.truthdig.com

OV-6

U.S. Visa-Free Travel Plan for Israelis Angers Some Americans, Taimur Khan, The National

OV-7

Israeli Cloud Hovers Over Green Energy, Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service

OV-7

Gazan Heads to Oxford University on Unusual Scholarship, Jon Donnison, BBC News

OV-8

Mohammed Assaf’s Star Soars as the Voice of Gaza in Arab Idol, Hugh Naylor, The National

OV-9

Friends of Israel Defense Forces Raises $27 Million Under N.Y. Media’s Radar, Jeff Blankfort, CounterPunch

OV-10

Nothing Charitable About JNF, Yves Engler, Inter Press Service

OV-13

American Jewish Committee Cuts Israel Staff Amid Tensions, Nathan Guttman, The Forward

OV-14

Church of Scotland: Jews Do not Have a Right to the Land of Israel, Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz

OV-15

The Nuclear New-Boy We Should Be Watching Is India, Eric S. Margolis, http://ericmargolis.com

OV-16

DEPARTMENTS 5 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 7 PUBLISHERS’ PAGE

50 ARAB-AMERICAN ACTIVISM: Nader, Amanpour, Kasem and CDF Receive Kahlil

40 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE: Jonathan Kuttab Kicks Off Memorable Friends of Sabeel/L.A. Conference

—Pat and Samir Twair 42 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE: Egyptian Delegation Visits Silicon Valley, CIT Minister Shares Vision of “New Egypt”—Elaine Pasquini

Gibran Awards

57 WAGING PEACE: Conference Explores Religion And Pluralism 68 THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST — CARTOONS

51 DIPLOMATIC DOINGS:

69 OTHER PEOPLE’S MAIL

Lunch With Rula Jebreal 71 BULLETIN BOARD 51 HUMAN RIGHTS: Congressional Briefing on

72 BOOK AND DVD REVIEWS:

Indefinite Detention at

Mayflower Arab: A Memoir

Guantanamo

—Reviewed by David Johnson Tears of Gaza

44 NEW YORK CITY AND TRISTATE NEWS: “The Attack”: A Genuinely Human and Profound Film—Jane Adas 47 ISRAEL AND JUDAISM: Israel Has Abandoned Ben-Gurion’s Assurance That American Jews Are “Americans”—Allan C. Brownfeld

53 MUSIC & ARTS:

—Reviewed by Andrew Stimson

Filmmaker Annemarie Jacir Visits DC

54 MUSLIM-AMERICAN

73 NEW ARRIVALS FROM THE AET BOOK CLUB 74 2013 AET CHOIR OF ANGELS

ACTIVISM: CAIR Inaugurates Maryland Chapter

18 INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

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Publisher: Managing Editor: News Editor: Book Club Director: Admin. Director: Art Director: Assistant Editor: Executive Editor:

ANDREW I. KILLGORE JANET McMAHON DELINDA C. HANLEY ANDREW STIMSON ALEX BEGLEY RALPH U. SCHERER DALE SPRUSANSKY RICHARD H. CURTISS (1927-2013)

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

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

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs does not take partisan domestic political positions. As a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, it endorses U.N. Security Council Resolution 242’s land-for-peace formula, supported by 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, selfdetermination, and fair play.

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JUNE/JULY 2013

LetterstotheEditor Tapuach Terrorism In the wake of the increase of violence in the occupied West Bank following the stabbing death of an armed Israeli settler at the Tapuach junction, it is worth taking a look at the recent political activities taking place in and around the settlement of Kfar Tapuach, right around the corner from the junction.

Kfar Tapuach has been a base for the followers of extremist Meir Kahane, and the Tapuach Fund is listed by the U.S. government as an alias of the designated terrorist groups Kach and Kahane Chai. According to an article from Arutz 7, a settler news organization, the “Strategy Unit” of the Samaria Regional Council (a civilian offshoot of Israel’s military occupation authority in the occupied West Bank) claims to have brought “60 EU parliament members, 5 U.S. congressmen and 2 senators” to settlements in the West Bank.

976 Magazine reports that in March, farmers from the nearby village of Yasouf who received limited permission to tend to their land adjoining the settlement of Kfar Tapuach were met with hooded, stone-throwing settlers who at first blocked the farmers and then stole a farmer’s donkey and plowshare. The donkey and plowshare were returned, but the settlers’ actions went unpunished, a pattern of impunity which the author terms “another day in the West Bank, another day of injustice, endorsed by the State of Israel.”

While some settler activists may be too young to have any memory of Meir Kahane, his followers are still delivering his message.

In the wake of the stabbing at Tapuach junction, Baruch Marzel, whom Arutz 7 describes as an “iconic nationalist activist” and an Israeli police investigation identified as the head of the outlawed Kach party, called for the killing of “terrorists.” Marzel went on to relate, “When I was in the army we never took prisoners. We always tried to bring the enemy to a state of a lifeless body, so that neither he nor his children will do more harm to the people of Israel.”

Such a call is very much in line with Kahane’s advocacy of violence for political ends, and is likely to contribute to the spiral of violence now escalating in the West Bank.

DC Investigative Journalism Collective, Washington, DC For more information on Kach and Kahane Chai, and their tax-exempt U.S. affiliates, we refer readers to your articles in the Jan./Feb., March and November 2007, August 2008 and July 2011 issues of the Washington Report.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

The Marathon Bombing Some of us wonder why Americans are seeking answers to why we were bombed so viciously in Boston. It was a tremendous blow to this annual event and the people who attended, also deadly to the few who gave their lives.

Those who are better read will see that there is a kind of perverted motive for this horror. It is that the foreign news produces more of the truth about the Middle East: that the United States has committed violent and brazen activities against so many Muslim countries.

Those Muslim countries have people with feelings similar to ours. They do not want invasions. They do not wish to live in panic—the panic that all of us in the Boston

area witnessed in April. They do not want their homes bombed, their cities destroyed, their families murdered in cold blood, their economies brought down to nothing. Did we have a real reason to bring havoc and murder onto Iraq? The destruction that the Iraqis and other citizens of other countries have lived through due to this country’s perverted priorities is now coming home by extreme violence to the country which has done the “other” so much harm.

Carol Rae Bradford, Somerville, MA We know that many Americans think car bombs are a common occurrence in Iraq, for example—but how many realize that before the U.S. invaded in 2003 there were no car bombs terrorizing and killing Iraqis? For another perspective, see Prof. Juan Cole’s article on p. 11 of this issue. Also see p. 72 for a review of your remarkable memoir, Mayflower Arab.

Google Recognizes Palestine Did you guys see THIS??? <www. google.ps>.

YAY!!! Congratulations Palestine!!

Thanks for all you do.

Geraldine Vaccaro, via e-mail As the BBC reported on May 3: “Internet giant Google has changed the tagline on the homepage of its Palestinian edition from 5

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‘Palestinian Territories’ to ‘Palestine.’

“The change, introduced on 1 May, means google.ps now displays ‘Palestine’ in Arabic and English under Google’s logo.”

In his article, “The State of Palestine’s Decree No. 1 and the Two-State Solution” (see March 2013 Washington Report, p. 10), John V. Whitbeck wrote that, following the Nov. 29 decision by the U.N. General Assembly to admit Palestine as an observer state: “The only legally, politically and diplomatically correct ways to refer to the 22 percent of historical Palestine occupied in 1967 are now “the State of Palestine,” “Palestine” and “occupied Palestine.” We are glad to see Google acknowledge this new political reality, and hope others will follow suit.

Bedouin Action Alert This press release [from Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights] speaks of Jewish justice and Jewish fairness, and evokes the fictional eviction of Jews from their homes in “Fiddler on the Roof”….but forgets to mention who is evicting the Bedouin.

My coworkers guessed Swedes because they are known for their insane xenophobia. When did you last hear of a Muslim in Sweden? I think maybe Burmese Buddhists, because they are in conflict with Muslims, and I think that means all Buddhists are Islamophobes. I also suspect that there are no Bedouin in Burma.

I wonder why the rabbi does not know who is evicting the Bedouin? Seems like he might have heard rumors.

Very mysterious. Maybe it is dolphins.

James Sanchez, via e-mail The action alert we circulated on May 6 urged recipients to sign a petition against the forced removal of 40,000 “Israeli Bedouin

citizens.” The rabbi does acknowledge that “successive Israeli governments have desired for years to move the Negev Bedouin out of villages where they have lived before the creation of the state, or in some cases from villages into which Israel had forcibly moved them during the first years of the state.” But his ultimate concern appears to be for the moral well-being of the Jewish state: “This is an emotional appeal asking you to help save the soul of our country,” Ascherman writes.

Other Alerts Appreciated Thanks for all the alerts, such as Benghazi vs. USS Liberty (we act on them!) and for introducing us to Mohammed Assaf... wonderful.

Frank and Linda de Kort, via e-mail Readers can sign up to receive action alerts on our website, <www.wrmea.org>.We look forward to sending out an action alert announcing that Gaza’s wonderful singer Mohammed Assaf has won this year’s Arab Idol competition! See this issue’s “Other Voices” supplement to read more about him.

Seeking Home for Archive I was introduced to your wonderful magazine way back in 2000, by a young Afghan teenager when I bumped into her at the local library. I had seen the magazine before, but not read it, since I wasn’t sure if it was biased or not. I subscribed immediately, as a way not only to educate myself about the issues, but to support your efforts to give voice to Palestinian and other perspectives that seem to be absent or maligned in mainstream media.

Being somewhat of a hoarder, I have kept all issues. I can’t bear to throw them out, even in this digital age with all archives online. I used to read coverto-cover of every issue, but alas, three children Other Voices is an optional later, I find it impossible (or very 16-page supplement availdifficult) to get able only to subscribers of through even one article. Also, I the Washington Report on have moved and Middle East Affairs. For an no longer have s p a c e fo r my additional $15 per year (see archives. postcard insert for Wash All of this is a long introduction ington Re port subscripto my actual question rates), subscribers will tion — in the March 2013 issue, receive Other Voices bound into each issue of their there is a letter Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. from an imam at a correctional camBack issues of both publications are available. To subpus asking for scribe telephone 1 (888) 881-5861, fax (714) 226-9733, m o re i s s u e s. I wonder, do you e-mail <circulation@wrmea.org>, or write to P.O. Box think they’d have 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056. a place for my archives? I’d be

6

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

happy to ship them down, but I would like them to go to a good home and archived, rather than being thrown out.

Sadly, I can’t renew my subscription right now, but please find enclosed a check as a donation to help keep the Washington Report going.

Kathy Bullock, Ontario, Canada We would be happy to hear from Imam Aquil Talley (whose letter appeared in our March 2013 issue) or any other prison library or other institution that would like to provide a good home to past issues of the Washington Report. We thank you for your offer, as well as for your donation, which is equal to the cost of a year’s subscription to Canada. Our “invisible” angels are just as important to our survival as those whose names appear on p. 74 of this issue!

An Ostensibly Cynical Angel Here is $250 for your lost cause.

The Israelis have no intention of leaving any of Palestine to the Palestinians. This will further enrage the Arab/Muslim world, but the Israelis do not care because they control us, the most powerful country in the world. We share Israel’s unpopularity and its enemies in a world-wide war, Judeo-Christendom vs. Islam, drones against terrorists. Seldom has so much trouble for so many been caused by so few.

Charles W. McCutchen, Bethesda, MD What’s left unsaid in your letter is that you—and we—refuse to give up the fight!

Mutual Indebtedness Please accept my donation to American Educational Trust in the amount of $500 in memory of Dick Curtiss and in honor of Andy Killgore. We are indebted to both of them and to you for extraordinary work.

With grateful thanks, Betty Sams, Washington, DC We are grateful for the longtime support—financial and moral—you and your family have given the Washington Report over the years. The work of you and your late husband, Jim Sands (see March 2006 Washington Report, p. 76), has made a difference to organizations throughout the country, and it is an honor to count you as an ally in the fight for justice in the Middle East.

Remembering Misty Gerner Enclosed please find a check for a one-year subscription to the Washington Report.

My daughter, Dr. Deborah Gerner, served on your editorial board before her untimely death.

Dorthy Gerner, Indianapolis, IN Through her work and her life Misty Gerner left an indelible impact on her many friends, students, fellow academics, Palestinians, Quakers—the list is endless (see Sept./Oct. 2006 Washington Report, p. 76).

We remember her with such affection and respect, and miss her to this day. ❑ JUNE/JULY 2013

publishers_7_June July 2013 Publishers page 5/16/13 3:43 PM Page 7

American Educational Trust

Publishers’ Page Please Help Us Continue.

Soon our readers—and lapsed subscribers—will find our biannual donation appeal in their mailboxes. We can’t emphasize enough how much your support, both financial and moral, means to us. Without your contributions we could never have continued to publish the Washington Report year after year, for more than three decades.

We also rely on your e-mails, phone calls, and notes for suggestions on how to improve this magazine—which is, after all, your publication.

Significance of Private Property.

But can Americans even envision the possibility that, 65 years from now, residents of post-Sandy Long Island and New Jersey still are forcibly kept from returning to their homes? Denied construction materials needed for rebuilding? Forbidden to go into New York City? Forced to pass through military checkpoints to go from one town to another? Or live in refugee camps throughout the region? Are these …

“Values” America Shares With Israel?

This country, of course, has its own painful history of slavery, segregation and unequal treatment under the law, as news editor Delinda Hanley reminds us beginning on p.

36 of this issue. But we continue to try to overcome these failings—not always successfully, of course. Today our Muslim fellow citizens too often find themselves demonized and shunned—or imprisoned as the result of FBI sting operations. Indeed, on the very day this issue went to press, police described 29-year-old Californian Robert Wilson, arrested for possessing a cache of pipe bombs and other explosives, as a “hobbyist, lone wolf, tweaker.” Apparently that’s the post-9/11 version of…

COURTESY USSLIBERTY.ORG

The Nakba Continues.

For more than 65 years—the dispossession of Palestinian Muslims and Christians having started well before May 15, 1948, when Israel declared its statehood—millions of men, women and children have not been allowed to return to their homes in historic Palestine.

Some of these homes now have Jewish residents, others—indeed, entire villages—were demolished. But their original owners still hold on to their deeds and keys, since they, like Americans, understand the…

Victims of Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty being taken ashore.

A Matter of Principle.

World-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking had agreed to headline Israeli President Shimon Peres’ “Facing Tomorrow” conference in Jerusalem. But he had a change of heart, informing Peres in a letter of his decision to “respect the boycott, based upon [my] knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of [my] own academic contacts there.” Predictably, Hawking, who denounced Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2009, faced an avalanche of abuse for…

His Brave Decision.

Two Ships, Two Generations—One Attacker.

Of course, in Israel many Christians are not welcome, either. And that’s just fine, according to the latest bill written for Congress by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It would enable Israelis to enter the United States without a visa—even though, unlike the other 37 nations enjoying this privilege, Israel is unwilling to reciprocate. Instead it insists on the right to refuse entry to some U.S. citizens (read: Arab Americans or peace activists). AIPAC is lobbying for a special exemption so Israel can freely…

June 8 marks the 46th anniversary of Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty in international waters. Its survivors—of whom there are fewer with every passing year—continue to hope that their government will show the same interest in them and their 34 crewmembers who were killed as its does regarding the four Americans killed in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. Where is Congress’ insistance on finding out what happened and who is to blame for abandoning the dead Americans in Libya? A more recent Israeli attack—also in international waters—on the Turkish aid ship Mavi Marmara, in which one American and eight Turkish citizens were killed, has come under the scrutiny of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has announced a preliminary investigation into the May 2010 attack. The ICC investigation comes at the request of the island nation where the Mavi Marmara was registered. We suggest that Washington…

Discriminate Against Americans.

Follow the Lead of Comoros!

“If You’re White, You’re Alright.”

JUNE/JULY 2013

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Bagging “Other Voices.”

One change we’re implementing with this issue, in response to complaints of missing supplements (and we don’t mean Vitamin C), is to polywrap issues that include “Other Voices.” Subscribers of this increasingly popular 16-page supplement to the Washington Report, especially those in Canada, have told us that sometimes “Other Voices” is not included with their magazine. We’ve taken our printer’s advice to stop gluing it to the back page and instead send it in a bag accompanying the magazine. Let us know what you think. And remember, “Other Voices” articles are not posted on our website, so the only way to read them is to subscribe at an extra $15 per year. If you want to see what you’re missing, check the second page of this issue’s table of contents.

Whiz Bang Digital Magazine!

Another dramatic change we’ve made is to make the digital version of the current issue available to our paid magazine subscribers while the pages themselves are still on the printing presses! All you need to do is register for an account on our website, <www. wrmea.org>. Paid subscribers pay nothing for this advance preview. If you have any trouble setting up your account or viewing our flippage version on your computer or tablet, please e-mail <webmaster@wrmea.org>.

Go Forth and Multiply.

Finally, two of our readers decided to donate multiple subscriptions to libraries, universities and friends in memory of Washington Report co-founder Richard Curtiss. We agree it is a wonderful way to build on his legacy.

If every subscriber donated one subscription a year we could change U.S. foreign policy— before it’s too late. So please dig deep into your pockets, spread the word and…

Make a Difference Today!

7

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Arabs Revive Their 2002 Peace Initiative But Rejectionist Israel Still Isn’t Buying SpecialReport

MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Rachelle Marshall

A Palestinian boy walks by a damaged Palestinian bus after Israeli settlers attacked the vehicle with stones in the occupied West Bank village of Hawara during an April 30 protest following the killing of an armed Israeli settler by Palestinian Salam Zaghal, 24, who had recently spent three years in an Israeli prison for throwing stones. Evyatar Borovsky, 31, a father of five, was the first Israeli to be killed in the West Bank since September 2011, an 18month period during which seven Palestinian children were killed in the West Bank by IDF gunfire and unexploded mortar shells. t was tempting to sympathize with newly

Iappointed Secretary of State John Kerry

as he made his first attempts to deal with a problem that has frustrated his predecessors: how to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It is to Kerry’s credit that he understands the importance to U.S. national security of a just solution to the conflict, but neither he nor President Barack Obama has explained how an agreement can be forged between an Israel determined to maintain an illegal occupation, and a Palestinian people equally determined to achieve independence. Compounding the problem is a U.S. Congress that is virtually unanimous in its support of Israel—regardless of its actions.

Kerry in late April publicly embraced a Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Mill Valley, CA. A member of Jewish Voice for Peace, she writes frequently on the Middle East.

8

proposal by a Qatar-led delegation of Arab states to revive the peace plan initiated by the Arab League in March 2002 and endorsed by the Palestinians and every Arab nation. The original plan offered Israel full normalization of relations in return for Israel’s withdrawal to its pre-war 1967 borders. The renewed offer allows for slight border changes with mutually agreed land swaps. Israel dismissed the original proposal out of hand, and shows no eagerness to accept the modified version.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu repeated his demand that negotiations begin without preconditions and insisted that any peace agreement with the Palestinians be put to a referendum in Israel. He opposes basing peace talks on the pre-1967 borders. The two most powerful members of his government, Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, oppose any division of Jerusalem and favor annexing the large setTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

tlement blocs. Bennett, whose Jewish Home party represents the settlers, even rejects the idea that the West Bank is occupied territory. “I desire peace with the Arabs no less than anyone else,” he claimed, “but handing over territory to our enemies is not right.”

The one positive Israeli statement came from Justice Minister Tsipi Livni, who said it was important for the Palestinians to know they have the support of the Arab world for a negotiated agreement with Israel, and “imperative for the Israeli public to know that peace with the Palestinians means peace with the entire Arab world.”

She criticized holding a referendum as a way to forestall decisions.

Odds are even greater against Kerry’s proposal to improve the Palestinian economy as a step toward promoting agreement. A viable economy, he maintains, would give the Palestinians more of a stake in the peace process. Kerry provided no details on how to strengthen the Palestinian economy, except to say that his initiative would combine private investment with U.S. government aid programs. He did not explain how an economy could flourish in an area under military occupation.

Typical of the many problems Palestinians face in trying to restore a functioning economy is the plight of Beit Jala, a oncethriving town of 16,000 next to Bethlehem. On one side of town is a barbed wire fence separating Beit Jala from the illegal settlement of Har Gilo. The other side is sealed off by a section of the illegal apartheid wall that cuts the town off from the nearby Jewish-only highway to Jerusalem. Residents of Beit Jala complain that unless its route is changed, the wall will deprive the town of its last remaining farm land. Israeli officials say that site at Beit Jala is necessary to keep Palestinians from sneaking into Israel to seek work.

In March the Palestinians presented a paper to President Obama describing several economic projects they consider important for building a Palestinian state.

Most of them, however, are in the 60 percent of the West Bank that Israel controls under the terms of the 1993 Oslo agreement. One of the proposed projects is development of tourism along the north shore of the Dead Sea, but the Israelis are not likely to give up control over an area so close to the Jordan Valley, which they JUNE/JULY 2013

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AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

claim is necessary for Israel’s security. The city of Jericho, which is still controlled by the Palestinians, was once a major tourist attraction, but Israeli border restrictions have greatly reduced travel to the city.

The reality Kerry seems to ignore is that in the West Bank, and to a greater degree in Gaza, Israel has followed a policy of what Harvard Middle East scholar Sara Roy calls “de-development.” By stifling economic growth in the occupied territories with restrictions on travel, construction and the use of water, and border restrictions that cause produce to rot before it can be exported, Israel has deliberately eliminated the Palestinians as competitors and turned them into customers for Israeli goods and a source of cheap labor. Today, the difficulty of getting into Jerusalem has made even low-paying jobs in A young member of the Ghaith family holds his bicycle as he stands near other household items Israel out of reach. removed from his family’s home before it was demolished by Jerusalem city workers in the Arab Kerry was caught off guard in East Jerusalem neighborhood of al-Tur, April 29, 2013. mid-April when Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad resigned his post. an afterthought, they will drive out anyone people. They have only to look to Gaza, Fayyad, an economist highly respected in who wants to work with them.” where the inhabitants continue to suffer the West, did not give his reasons but reAccording to some Palestinians, Fayyad’s from the isolation and misery imposed by portedly was fed up with power struggles departure has provided an opportunity for Israel and the West after Hamas won free within the Palestinian Authority. Although reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, and fair parliamentary elections in 2006. he was renowned for developing compe- since Fayyad’s ties to the West made him Ignored by Western nations, Gazans tence within the Palestinian government, unpopular with Hamas. Under a plan pre- were recently hit by an additional hardFayyad was not a miracle man. As Ahmed viously agreed to by both sides, President ship. Because years of Israeli occupation folAwaida, chief of the Palestinian stock ex- Mahmoud Abbas would appoint an interim lowed by its six-years-and-counting blockchange, points out, “No government in the government composed of technocrats that ade have destroyed their economy, most of world can plan economic development would rule for 90 days. At the end of that the population relies on aid from the when it has no control over borders, lands, period the election of a unity government United Nations Relief and Works Agency or water resources, and it cannot make would take place. “This is what everybody (UNRWA). In early April a $67 million trade agreements. This is the reality.” is expecting,” West Bank business man deficit in contributions forced UNRWA to Fayyad was, in the end, more popular in Munib al-Masri said. “Without ending the cancel its monthly cash grants to the poor the West than at home in Palestine. His division we do not have a country.” of $10 per person every three months. In campaign to professionalize the police The prospect of reconciliation became response to the protests that broke out, the force and other public services by hiring greater in early April with the re-election agency suspended food aid as well. employees based on merit and eliminating as head of Hamas of Khaled Meshal, who is Gaza’s plight briefly came to the fore bribes caused resentment by ending a a member of Hamas’ more pragmatic wing, when Kerry offended the Turks by urging long-standing system based on tribal rela- and whom Israel tried to assassinate in Jor- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan to tionships. But the main reason for his un- dan in 1997. Meshal says he would accept postpone his planned visit to the beleapopularity was the sharp decline in the a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but he guered territory in May. A Turkish governeconomy that followed the Palestinians’ will not renounce violence. (Note: No one ment spokesman called the request a dissuccessful bid last fall for U.N. recognition. has asked Israel to renounce violence.) He play of arrogance that was “diplomatically Israel punished the Palestinian Authority is on cordial terms with Abbas and has objectionable, wrong and incorrect.” by withholding their much-needed tax rev- close ties to Qatar, Egypt and Turkey. Last Turkey recently accepted Israel’s apology enues, and Washington canceled several aid year Meshal and Abbas agreed to a plan for for its attack in May 2010 on the Turkish programs, including funds for school books an interim unity government, but the deal ship Mavi Marmara as it was carrying reand police training. The loss of hundreds of collapsed because of opposition by Hamas lief supplies and a boatload of peace acmillions of dollars crippled the economy hard-liners and senior Fatah members. tivists to Gaza, but Turkish officials said and forced Fayyad to raise taxes and impose Reconciliation between Hamas and that only when Israel lifted its embargo on austerity measures. “The U.S. may be un- Fatah is even more strongly opposed by Gaza would their diplomats return to Israel. happy that Fayyad is leaving but they the U.S., Israel, and the European Union, Kerry was followed to the Middle East in pushed him into that corner with their poli- which consider Hamas a terrorist organiza- late April by Defense Secretary Chuck cies,” a Palestinian official said. “The United tion. The election of a Palestinian Author- Hagel, who was undoubtedly chastened by States and Israel must reap what they sow. ity that included Hamas would undoubt- the 8-hour bullying he had endured during If they continue to treat the Palestinians as edly come at high cost to the Palestinian his confirmation hearings, at which his inJUNE/JULY 2013

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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terrogators referred to Israel 166 times and to China 5 times. He lost no time assuring the Israelis of America’s undying support and pledged that the U.S. would never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb.

Hagel cautioned Israel against an immediate military strike on Iran, but emphasized Israel’s “sovereign right to decide for itself” whether to take such action. The Israelis have made it clear they might attack Iran whether or not the U.S. gives them a green light. When Israel Radio asked Israel’s military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz whether Israel’s military had the ability to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities alone, Gantz replied, “Unequivocally, yes.” Neither Hagel nor Obama has said what the U.S. will do if Iran struck back—as it undoubtedly would.

Hagel brought more than promises to the Middle East. He came with a $10 billion arms package intended both to further increase Israel’s military superiority in the region and bolster the armed forces of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Gulf states will receive defensive missiles and F-16 warplanes. The Israelis will get missiles designed to take out air- defense sites, V-22 Osprey troop-transport aircraft, and for the first time refueling tanker planes that can be used in a long-range strike—aircraft that former President George W. Bush had refused to send them. The U.S. will not give Israel the Massive Ordnance Penetrator weighing 30,000 pounds it requested.

The weapons sales send “a very clear message to Iran,” Hagel said. But the message Iran is likely to receive is that a military strike either by Israel or by the U.S. and Israel together is inevitable unless Iran gives up its uranium enrichment program entirely, whether or not it intends to build a bomb. Backing up that message was the Navy’s decision to equip its ships in the Persian Gulf with laser attack weapons designed to cripple Iran’s patrol boats and

blind its surveillance drones. Given their location so close to Iran’s borders, such weapons can only be intended to destroy Iran’s ability to defend itself from a preemptive attack.

After talks with Iran on the nuclear issue ended in an impasse in early April, chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili said Iran was willing to meet the key demand of Western negotiators by cutting back its highest grade uranium enrichment production, but only if the crippling sanctions on their oil trade and financial transactions were lifted. The U.S. and its allies are willing only to lift sanctions on gold transactions and some petrochemicals, and the Senate is currently preparing a list of additional sanctions.

Imposing more sanctions is not likely to work and may backfire, concluded a bipartisan panel of former high-ranking U.S. officials in an assessment released on April 17. The panel included Lee Hamilton of Obama’s intelligence advisory board; Anne-Marie Slaughter, Obama’s first director of policy planning; and former Sen. Richard Lugar, who was an early foreign policy mentor to Obama.

The former officials found plenty of evidence that the sanctions are hurting ordinary Iranians. The prices of imported goods, including cancer medicines, have skyrocketed, and prices of food and beverages have risen by 60 percent. But there is no evidence that Iran’s leaders will change their position. On the contrary, the panel said, the sanctions are likely to convince Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the ultimate goal of the U.S. and its Western allies is not simply to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear capability but to overthrow its current rulers. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki responded to the report by saying the administration would stick by its policy of combining serious sanctions with negotiations. “The onus is on

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Iran to take the next step and move the process forward,” she said.

Following reports in late April that a small amount of sarin gas had been used in Syria, Senate Republicans led by John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina pressured Obama to actively intervene in Syria by arming the rebels and establishing a no-fly zone. As Obama waited to find out which side had used the gas, and whether its use was deliberate or accidental, the senators, together with some Israeli officials, argued that failure to act in Syria would convince Iran it could safely proceed with its nuclear weapons program.

Israel in any case didn’t wait for the U.S. to act but during the first week of May launched missile attacks on two military research centers in Syria, one close to Damascus and the other a facility 10 miles from the Lebanese border that Israel had bombed last January. At least 100 Syrian soldiers were killed in the latest attack and several homes were damaged. Israeli officials said the targets were weapons shipments intended for Hezbollah. Instead of condemning Israel’s act of aggression, Obama defended it. “The Israelis are justifiably concerned about the threat posed by Hezbollah obtaining these advanced weapons systems,” a White House spokesman said. Hezbollah in fact has never attacked Israel—it has fought back against two Israeli invasions of Lebanon.

Obama clearly is reluctant to repeat the mistakes of the Bush administration, which invaded Iraq 10 years ago in order to end a presumed nuclear threat. The U.S. invaders found no nuclear weapons, but as a result of that war Iraq today is a near-failed state, headed by an authoritarian strong man, Nouri al-Maliki, who has fomented continuing sectarian violence by arresting scores of Sunni political opponents.

A significant effect of the U.S. invasion was to increase hatred of America, as images of naked prisoners at Abu Ghraib being led around like dogs, civilian corpses in the streets and the wanton destruction of Iraqi cities—there were no car bombs to fear in Iraq before the U.S. invaded in 2003—spread around the world. The lessons of that war make it urgent that Washington avoid what would be an even worse catastrophe. Nevertheless, pressure for action against Iran is mounting from many of the same voices that urged war a decade ago. As Jonathan Schell writes in the April 1 Nation, Obama resembles “a man caught on an escalator leading to a disastrous landing he does not wish to reach but does not yet quite know how to avoid.” We can only hope he gets off in time. ❑ JUNE/JULY 2013

cole_11_Special Report 5/16/13 12:37 PM Page 11

Terrorism and the Other Religions SpecialReport

By Juan Cole

ontrary to what is alleged

Cby bigots like Bill Maher,

KELVIN MA/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Muslims are not more violent than people of other religions.

Murder rates in most of the Muslim world are very low compared to the United States.

As for political violence, people of Christian heritage in the 20th century polished off tens of millions of people in the two world wars and colonial repression. This massive carnage did not occur because European Christians are worse than or different from other human beings, but because they were the first to industrialize war and pursue a national model. Sometimes it is argued that they did not act in the name of religion but of nationalism. But, really, how naive. Religion and nationalism are closely intertwined. The British monarch is the head of the Church of England, and that still meant some- Firefighters in position on Boylston Street near the finish line of the April 15 Boston Marathon, after two thing in the first half of the explosions went off along the final stretch of the race, killing three people and injuring more than 250.

20th century, at least. The Swedish church is a national church. dhists in Asia—and millions more in colo- independence from France, 1954-1962, at a time when the population was only 11 Spain? Was it really unconnected to nial wars).

Belgium—yes, the Belgium of straw- million!

Catholicism? Did the Church and Francisco I could go on and on. Everywhere you Franco’s feelings toward it play no role in berry beer and quaint Gravensteen casthe Civil War? And what’s sauce for the tle—conquered the Congo and is estimated dig in European colonialism in Afro-Asia, goose: much Muslim violence is driven by to have killed off half of its inhabitants there are bodies. Lots of bodies.

Now that I think of it, maybe 100 milover time, some 8 million people at least. forms of modern nationalism, too.

Or, between 1916-1930 Tsarist Russian lion people killed by people of European I don’t figure that Muslims killed more than 2 million people or so in political vio- and then Soviet forces—facing the revolt of Christian heritage in the 20th century is an lence in the entire 20th century, and that Central Asians trying to throw off Christian underestimate.

As for religious terrorism, that too is unimainly in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) (and then Marxist), European rule—killed and the Soviet and post-Soviet wars in an estimated 1.5 million people. Two boys versal. Admittedly, some groups deploy terAfghanistan, for which Europeans bear brought up in or born in one of those terri- rorism as a tactic more at some times than tories (Kyrgyzstan) just killed four people others. Zionists in British Mandate Palestine some blame.

Compare that to the Christian European and wounded others critically. That is hor- were active terrorists in the 1940s, from a tally of, oh, let’s say 100 million (16 million rible, but no one, whether in Russia or in British point of view, and in the period in WW I, 60 million in WW II—though Europe or in North America, has the slight- 1965-1980, the FBI considered the Jewish some of those were attributable to Bud- est idea that Central Asians were mass-mur- Defense League among the most active U.S. dered during WW I and before and after, terrorist groups. (Members at one point Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Colle- and looted of much of their wealth. Russia plotted to assassinate Rep. Darrell Issa [Rgiate Professor of History at the University when it brutally conquered and ruled the CA] because of his Lebanese heritage.) Now of Michigan, and author of Engaging the Caucasus and Central Asia was an Eastern that Jewish nationalsts are largely getting Muslim World (available from the AET Orthodox, Christian empire (and seems to their way, terrorism has declined among them. But it would likely re-emerge if they Book Club). This article was first posted on be re-emerging as one!).

Then, between half a million and a mil- stopped getting their way. In fact, one of his “Informed Comment” blog, <www.juanlion Algerians died in that country’s war of cole.com>.

Continued on page 33 JUNE/JULY 2013

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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views_12-13_Three Views - June/July 2013 5/16/13 12:38 PM Page 12

Two Views Israel, the U.S and Syria

URIEL SINAI/GETTY IMAGES

Israeli soldiers in the occupied Golan Heights take part in a military exercise near the Syrian border, May 6, 2013.

How Israel Manipulates U.S. Policy in the Middle East

By Patrick Seale

n April 23, a senior Israeli officer,

OBrig. Gen. Utai Brun, head of research

at army intelligence, made a serious accusation against Syria. In a lecture at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, he declared: “To the best of our professional understanding, the Syrian regime has used lethal chemical weapons against gunmen in a series of incidents in recent months…”

General Brun gave no evidence for his accusation and produced no physical proof, but he added that the Israel Defense Forces believed Syria had used the nerve agent sarin on several occasions, including a specific attack on March 19.

As it happened, General Brun made his accusation against Syria during a three-day visit to Israel by America’s new defense secretary, Chuck Hagel—a man whose appointment Israel’s supporters in the United States had sought to prevent. Some Jewish organizations had come close to calling him anti-Semitic. Only by eating humble pie did Hagel manage to have his appointment confirmed.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad elSolh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press). Copyright © 2013 Patrick Seale. Distributed by Agence Global.

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He now clearly hopes to put an end to his quarrel with America’s pro-Israel lobby.

On this his first visit to Israel as defense secretary, he announced that Israel was to receive a rich haul of advanced U.S. weapons—air-refueling tankers, cuttingedge radar, and the V-22 Osprey “tiltrotor” aircraft, an advanced plane so far denied to all other U.S. allies. But Hagel’s generous gesture was to no avail. Although Israel was evidently delighted with the weapons, this did not inhibit it from accusing Syria of using chemical weapons—clearly in the hope of provoking a U.S. attack on that country.

Unpleasantly surprised by General Brun’s claim that Syria had used chemical weapons, Hagel declared the very next day—on April 24—that he had discussed Syria’s chemical weapons with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, but that neither of them had said that Syria had actually used such weapons. “They did not give me that assessment,” he said. Clearly, Hagel was angry that Israel was putting pressure on the United States to intervene in Syria. The Israeli authorities may well have thought that Hagel, still recovering from the beating pro-Israelis had given him in Washington, would not dare dispute Israel’s assessment.

What was Israel trying to achieve by inciting the United States to attack Syria? It would undoubtedly like President Bashar alAssad to be replaced by a more pliant figure.

But Israel is also worried that Jabhat alNusra, a violent branch of al-Qaeda, might THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

come to power if Bashar were to fall. By accusing Syria of using chemical weapons, Israel’s goal seems to have been to trigger an early American armed intervention with the double objective of ousting Assad from office, while preventing his replacement by the redoubtable Jabhat al-Nusra.

Israel is well aware that Obama—having pulled American forces out of Iraq and planning to do much the same in Afghanistan by 2014—is most reluctant to commit U.S. troops to yet another war. Nevertheless, by accusing Assad of using chemical weapons, Israel was clearly hoping to lure Obama into a Syrian campaign. Obama had, in fact, laid himself open to just such pressure by saying that any Syrian use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line.”

Moscow was quick to leap to Syria’s defense. On April 28, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the Russian journal Global Affairs, wrote: “Moscow does not believe that Assad may use chemical weapons: he is not a madman to ask for such trouble.”

In fact, Israel’s objectives may have been even wider than triggering an American attack on Syria. For the moment, it is greatly satisfied that most of its Arab neighbors are in deep trouble.

• Syria is in the grip of a civil war, which has already claimed more than 70,000 lives.

• Iraq seems to be on the verge of major Sunni-Shi‘i clashes, while still struggling to recover from America’s long occupation.

• Iran is under painful sanctions because the United States suspects it—on little evidence—of developing nuclear weapons.

• Egypt is on its knees, wholly preoccupied with its own economic problems, and in no mood to endanger its peace treaty with Israel.

• Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states seem more worried by Iran than by Israel.

• Israelis are also delighted that, thanks to President Obama’s mediation, the United States-Israel-Turkey coalition has been restored, and is set to be a powerful force in Middle East affairs.

All this is very good news for Israel.

Nevertheless, its dominance is not total.

It still faces something of a challenge from the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis. Iran may be facing severe sanctions, but it is far from defeated. Assad’s Syria may be in dire straits, but it is fighting back, and continues to enjoy strong Russian support.

Hezbollah, Lebanon’s robust Shi‘i moveJUNE/JULY 2013

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ment, may be under intense pressure from militant Sunni groups, but it remains the most powerful force in Lebanon.

Aware that their attempts have—for the moment—failed to push the United States into an armed confrontation with Syria, Israeli spokesmen are already back-tracking.

In New York, Yuval Steinitz, minister of strategic and intelligence affairs, was reported as saying on April 29: “We never asked, nor did we encourage, the United States to take military action against Syria.”

Iran, he declared, not Syria, was the “problem No. 1 of our generation.”

These exchanges demonstrate Israel’s efforts to incite the United States against Israel’s enemies—and also the speed with which it withdraws when its covert efforts fail to produce the hoped-for results. Israel is well aware that the United States is at present extremely reluctant to attack either Iran or Syria. Israel may, therefore, have to content itself with continued U.S. pressure on these two countries—short of actual war. The truth is that Israel may well think that its most threatening enemy today is neither Iran nor Syria, but rather Hezbollah in Lebanon. It was Hezbollah that fought Israel to something like a draw in 2006 and which, to this day, represents its most dangerous neighbor.

It is interesting to note that Israel’s armed interventions so far this year in the Syrian civil war were attacks on convoys allegedly making their way to Hezbollah in Lebanon from Syria’s chemical weapons facility, the Scientific Studies and Research Center at Barzeh, near Damascus. Israel’s evident fear is that any acquisition by Hezbollah of Syrian chemical weapons would give the Lebanese Shi‘i movement considerable immunity from attack.

By insisting that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons, General Brun’s aim seems to have been to persuade the United States to destroy both the Syrian regime and its Hezbollah ally. Israel wants no limits on the extraordinary freedom it has long enjoyed to attack its neighbors at will and never be hit back. From Israel’s point of view, if America could be persuaded to do the job for it, so much the better. If not this time, another occasion will surely arise.

What Is Netanyahu Up To?

By George S. Hishmeh

srael’s unexpected aggressive bombardISyrian ment of two military sites near the capital in early May has complicated matters both regionally and internationally, raising serious doubts about the JUNE/JULY 2013

intentions of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who immediately after the two-day raids left directly for Beijing for talks with the new Chinese leaders.

Netanyahu’s trip followed immediately after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had concluded his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who revealed a four-point proposal for settling the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The proposal endorsed full Palestinian sovereignty on the basis of the 1967 armistice lines and East Jerusalem serving as the Palestinian capital, underlying the fact that this “is an alienable right of the Palestinian people and the key to the settlement of the Palestinian Question.” At the same time, the four-point proposal said, “Israel’s right to exist and its legitimate security concerns should be fully respected.”

Whether the Chinese proposal that has also endorsed the amended 2002 Arab Peace Initiative will be a catalyst in the anticipated negotiations remains to be seen.

The amendments were revealed in Washington during a visit by an Arab League delegation in order to placate the Israelis.

But the motive behind Israel’s aggressive actions in Syria, which the Obama administration said was undertaken without prior consultation with the White House, had been seen as an attempt by the Netanyahu government to shelve any talks about a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, and focus all attention on the bloody upheaval in Syria.

The Israeli prime minister was reported earlier this month to be worried that the U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, who seemed determined to focus immediately on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, has been “drifting” toward the Arab League stance on the two-state solution.

“The prime minister’s advisers are not keen about the Arab League’s announcement,” the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

“Netanyahu and his advisers believe it would have been better had this announcement not been made.”

Israel has reportedly been dissatisfied with the Arab announcement underlying the new amendment that revealed Arab willingness to make “small shifts” in Israel’s 1967 armistice lines; in other words “minimal” land swaps. At present there are more than 500,000 Israelis who settled illegally in the occupied West Bank.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, now justice minister in the Netanyahu cabinet in charge of the peace process, had in the past accepted land swaps of 6-10 percent of the Israeli-occuTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

pied West Bank’s areas. The Palestinians were reported ready in the past to exchange 1.9 percent of the West Bank’s area.

Haaretz reported: “The fact that Kerry stood beside Qatar’s prime minister while he was reading the announcement [about the ”small shifts” in the 1967 Israeli armistice line] increased Netanyahu’s aides’ suspicions toward Kerry.”

The Arab League officials who were in Washington had assured Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden that the League was still committed to the plan it first proposed more than 10 years ago in 2002. Once the agreement is signed, all Arab states are committed to normalize relations with Israel. This position was reportedly made to President Barack Obama during his visit to Ramallah last month.

Israel’s public dissatisfaction with the amended Arab League initiative has prompted the Israeli government to launch its attacks on Syria in a bid to divert international attention to the presence in Syria of caches of Iranian missiles bound for Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group that controls the Lebanese-Israeli armistice lines. Israeli leaders have apparently forgotten that Hezbollah has not had any confrontation with Israel since the severe 2006 clashes; hence their exaggeration should be dismissed outrightly.

Although the Obama administration is still uncertain about its next step toward Syria, Israel’s blatant raids carry enormous risks. “Instead of prodding Russia into calling for Assad’s ouster, it could bring greater Arab sympathy for Assad and prompt deeper involvement from Iran and Hezbollah,” the Associated Press acknowledged in a dispatch from Moscow. In fact, the Arab League has already denounced the two Israeli airstrikes.

In an obvious attempt to improve the political atmosphere, the Israeli army radio station claimed that Netanyahu subsequently ordered a freeze on publishing tenders for new West Bank settler homes to avoid hampering U.S. efforts to renew peace talks. But a quick response from Peace Now’s Hagit Ofran exposed the farce: “This is not a settlement freeze, because construction in the settlements is continuing, but you could say it is a show of restraint by Binyamin Netanyahu, who does not want to be accused by the Americans of being responsible for the failure of their efforts to restart negotiations with the Palestinians.” ❑ George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He was the former editor-in-chief of The Daily Star of Lebanon.

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From Twitter to Capitol Hill, Yemeni Activist Exposes Reality of U.S. Drone War SpecialReport

STAFF PHOTO D. SPRUSANSKY

By Dale Sprusansky

Farea al-Muslimi at the May 3 AAI briefing on Capitol Hill. rone strikes are nothing new to 23-

Dyear-old Yemeni youth activist and

writer Farea al-Muslimi.

Over the past few years, Muslimi has visited several Yemeni villages struck by U.S. drones and witnessed the suffering and anti-American backlash the attacks have caused. Disturbed and angered by what he’s seen, Muslimi has become a critic of drone strikes and written several articles asking Washington to reconsider its notso-secret drone war.

Muslimi’s words fell on deaf ears, however, and on April 17 his own village paid the price. That day, a U.S. drone struck his tiny farming village of Wessab, located in western Yemen. According to reports, five people were killed, including the strike’s target, alleged al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Hamid Radman al Manea (better known as Hamid al-Radmi).

As soon as Muslimi (who was in Sana’a enjoying a meal with American friends at the time of the attack) got word of the Dale Sprusansky is assistant editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

14

strike, he sent off a barrage of tweets to his more than 5,000 followers, relaying to them the latest information from his village. His tweets—and subsequent testimony at an April 23 Senate hearing—not only provide an important and infrequently heard perspective on drone strikes, they also offer evidence that the Obama administration has been untruthful about how it decides to carry out such attacks.

Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in April 2012, CIA director John Brennan, at the time President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, said the U.S. strongly prefers to capture suspected al-Qaeda militants. “Our unqualified preference is to only undertake lethal force when we believe that capturing the individual is not feasible,” he told the audience.

But Muslimi’s account of the April 17 attack on his village calls Brennan’s claim into question. According to Muslimi, alRadmi easily could have been captured.

“Al-Radmi was in continuous contact with government officials, he prayed Maghrib [evening prayer] with the [general] secretary of the local council tonight,” Muslimi THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

tweeted. The two had just returned from another village, he said, when a drone struck al-Radmi’s home. “He [al-Radmi] was ACTUALLY with a governmental official at the moment he was droned,” an astonished Muslimi tweeted.

During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, Muslimi challenged the decision to kill, rather than capture, al-Radmi. “Many people in Wessab knew [al-Radmi], and the Yemeni government could have easily found and arrested him,” he said.

Recently reported figures show that the decision to kill al-Radmi is hardly an anomaly; in fact, it appears to be the administration’s modus operandi. According to The New York Times, about 3,000 individuals have been killed in drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia since President Obama took office in 2009. During that same time span, only a handful of suspected militants have been captured by the U.S. government, the Times reports.

While details about most of those 3,000 killed are hard to come by, it stands to reason that a fair number—certainly more than a handful—could have been captured. As the al-Radmi example shows, it appears that the U.S. favors the convenience of deadly drone strikes over the complexity of capturing a suspect. Given the growing humanitarian crisis at Guantanamo Bay, it is hardly surprising that the Obama administration seems to prefer death over detention.

It also comes as no surprise that the administration declined an invitation to explain and defend the moral, legal and strategic rationale behind its drone program at the April 23 Senate hearing. Subcommittee chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) and ranking member Ted Cruz (R-TX) both expressed their displeasure with the administration’s decision to shun the hearing—the Senate’s first on the topic of drones.

During his opening remarks, Senator Durbin warned the administration that the secrecy surrounding the 11-year drone war must come to an end. “More transparency is needed to maintain the support of the American people and the international community,” he said.

Continued on page 16 JUNE/JULY 2013

findley_15-16_Special Report 5/15/13 7:47 PM Page 15

Dangerous and Unconstitutional Acts of War in the Middle East SpecialReport

By Paul Findley ur initial involvement with only U.S.

O“advisers” in Vietnam illustrates how

a minor military intrusion abroad can mushroom into a major national tragedy.

We must not suppose that our recent war measures—our violent, deadly adventure in Libya, the lethal bombings by drone aircraft in at least four nations in the Middle East, and our current support of rebels in the civil war now underway in Syria—are trivial affairs. All are fraught with danger.

Moreover, they were undertaken and sustained without congressional approval.

The Libyan morass and fallout remain in headline and television news. So do deaths

by U.S. drone warplanes. The most recent estimate of total deaths is 4,700. Because most of them were accomplished by invasion of sovereign territory, they thus are acts of war.

Each killing creates anti-American rage among Muslims similar to the anti-Muslim fury U.S. families still feel a decade after 9/11 and less than a year after three U.S. deaths in Benghazi. Drone killings are few in total when contrasted with the deaths of many tens of thousands of Muslims caused by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. They violate the constitutional guarantee of judicial—not executive—due process.

The control of war powers is imbedded in our constitutional history. At the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, the status of the king of England as commanderin-chief of the armed forces was conferred upon the president of the United States, but the king’s prerogative to “declare” or authorize war was vested in Congress. The records of the convention show that the intent was to deny the president any power to use the country’s armed forces in military operations except to repel sudden attacks on American citizens, military, commerce or territory, unless Congress should Paul Findley served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1961 to 1983, serving most of that time on the Forign Affairs Committee. He was a principal author of the War Powers Act and is the author of four books on Middle East policy (all available from the AET Book Club). He served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during the World War II and resides in Jacksonville, IL. JUNE/JULY 2013

authorize him to act.

As president, George Washington considered it his duty to issue an executive proclamation of neutrality in conflicts between Britain and France in order to preserve peace, unless and until Congress should declare war. Not only did Washington keep us out of a war which was none of our business, but he was sustained by the Neutrality Act of 1794, which is still on the books today. It prohibits a private citizen from warlike acts against a foreign power with which the United States is at peace.

he Neutrality Act of T 1794 is still on the books today.

When John Adams served as president, Congress authorized war on a limited basis against the French Republic until peace was restored by treaty. In his first annual message as president, Thomas Jefferson reported that he had ordered our navy to defend our merchant fleet on the Mediterranean Sea against North African pirates, but added that he could not go further until Congress had authorized him to make war. When Jefferson subsequently landed U.S. Marines “on the shores of Tripoli,” he was authorized to act by a resolution of Congress.

The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution These vital constitutional principles were threatened at the time of the Vietnam War. In 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats reportedly attacked our Navy in the Gulf on Tonkin but were repelled, and President Lyndon Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes on the ports from which the enemy craft reportedly launched their attack. Congress reacted by passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which approved the retaliatory attacks after the fact, and warned the North Vietnamese that the United States and our allies were prepared to react further under the SEATO Treaty.

But it did not authorize the president to undertake additional military operations.

At the time, I was a member of the United States House of Representatives, and the intent of the resolution is vivid in my memory. Before I voted, Gerald Ford, THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

then Republican leader in the House, and later president, assured me the resolution did not authorize war.

Johnson nevertheless used this resolution as a false pretext to order a huge build-up of American armed forces and fight a hopeless land war in Vietnam that cost the lives of more than 50,000 American troops. Thousands more suffered permanent disabilities. The economic costs were astronomical.

The War Powers Act of 1973 In order to prevent recurrence of any such tragedy and to restore the intended meaning of the Constitution, I joined colleagues in Congress from both parties in framing the War Powers Act of 1973. I was one of those instrumental in securing its passage over the veto of President Richard Nixon.

The Act prohibits warfare by the president abroad without authorization by Congress, save in very limited circumstances which the framers of the Constitution themselves recognized. If the president engages armed forces of the United States in hostilities abroad, he must report details in writing to leaders in Congress within 48 hours, and then terminate operations within 60 days unless Congress authorizes a continuance.

It is a necessary and proper law to implement and coordinate the powers of Congress and the president on the always-dangerous business of going to war. Since the War Powers Act of 1973 was passed, compliance has been generally satisfactory. Before our military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq began, President George W. Bush secured war powers resolutions from Congress, supported by large bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate.

Obama’s Intrusion in Libya When first campaigning for president, then-Sen. Barack Obama complained that Congress should never have authorized our invasion of Iraq, and won broad support on the promise that he would avoid needless military entanglement abroad. In Libya, however, acting against the advice of his own lawyers in the Justice Department and the Pentagon, Obama ignored the War Powers Act and ordered a military intrusion in Libya without approval of Congress.

15

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He ordered bombardment of military facilities of Muammar Qaddafi’s government.

And after 60 days the president continued his executive war measures, although he had no congressional authority to do so.

The House of Representatives then passed a resolution of disapproval, but Obama ignored it. In the wake of this military intrusion, America was confronted with last year’s infamous episode in Benghazi, including the murder of the U.S. ambassador and two of his aides. Questions concerning our involvement linger.

Pending Trouble in Syria Recent statements by President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Con-

U.S. Drone War… Continued from page 14

Misplaced Priorities Muslimi used his five minutes of oral testimony to inform senators of the anti-Americanism that has taken root in Wessab since the drone strike. “There is now an intense anger against America in Wessab,” he said.

“The drone strikes are the face of America to many Yemenis.”

This was not always the case. Before April 17, everything the residents of Wessab knew about America came from Muslimi, who attended a year of high school in the U.S. through a State Department scholarship. “The friendships and values I experienced and described to the villagers helped them understand the America that I know and that I love,” he explained. “I went to the U.S. as an ambassador for Yemen and I came back to Yemen as an ambassador of the U.S.” Muslimi proceeded to express disbelief at the two sides of America he has witnessed. “I could never have imagined that the same hand that changed my life and took it from miserable to promising would also drone my village,” he lamented.

Speaking at a May 3 Arab American Institute (AAI) briefing on Capitol Hill, Muslimi urged the U.S. to shift its focus from AQAP to Yemen’s real issue: its humanitarian crisis.

“Drones are not Yemen’s biggest problem,” he said, noting that half the country, including many in his “miserably poor” village, goes to bed hungry each night.

On Twitter, Muslimi said he has seen more than 10 women die in Wessab while giving birth due to the village’s poor medical infrastructure. “You could have spent money [to] build a hospital,” he tweeted.

16

gressman Mike Rogers (R-MI), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggest the U.S. government may suddenly become engaged in another unconstitutional and counter-productive war, this time in Syria—a theater in which, like Libya, America’s national interests are not substantially involved. Moreover, the Syrian scene is so unsettled we might find ourselves supporting an unintended side of the conflict.

In an April 26 public television interview with Charlie Rose, Rogers stated his strong support for Obama to provide “non-combat” leadership—whatever that is—of insurgency efforts to topple the regime of Syrian Presi-

dent Bashar al-Assad. Rogers is misguided if he thinks Obama can bring down Assad without deploying thousands of U.S. troops on Syrian territory. Rogers said in his interview that he was alarmed at unconfirmed reports that Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons. Obama and Kerry both have said that use of these chemicals by Assad’s forces would be a “game-changer.” These statements suggest dangerous and unconstitutional involvement by our government in the Middle East.

Congress must rise to its constitutional duty by promptly passing a resolution opposing war measures in Syria and prohibiting further deployment of drone warplanes. ❑

At an October 2012 Atlantic Council event, Sana’a-based journalist Laura Kasinof said Kuwait has successfully used this soft power approach in Yemen for years.

Having constructed several hospitals in the country, she said, Kuwait has been able to provide humanitarian relief while simultaneously building good will. “If you say the word Kuwait in Yemen, Yemenis think hospitals,” Kasinof noted.

Instead of learning from Kuwait’s tactical and compassionate model, the U.S. remains foolishly committed to its drone war. This, despite mounting evidence that the war is actually strengthening AQAP and contributing to Yemen’s many crises.

“Since drones started, AQAP is more powerful than it ever was,” Muslimi told congressional staffers at the AAI event.

AQAP, he explained, derives its strength not from numbers, but from being able to convince others of its worldview. Drone strikes therefore play right into AQAP’s

hand, Muslimi said: “When you use drones, you’re affirming their logic that the U.S. is at war with Yemen.”

Muslimi told Congress that AQAP’s logic has suddenly become believable to many of Wessab’s outraged residents. “What the violent militants had previously failed to achieve,” he said, “one drone strike accomplished in an instant.”

The U.S., it appears, is providing AQAP with the very instability it needs to survive. Washington would be well advised to heed the message of Farea al-Muslimi and his peers. Indeed, Muslimi himself is evidence that soft power works. He came to America, experienced the country at its best, and relayed his wonderful experience to his uneducated villagers. A single scholarship created good will toward America in Wessab. A single drone strike destroyed it.

As Muslimi told the AAI audience, “You [the U.S.] should issue an apology and you should stop this [drone war].” ❑

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shapiro-arraf_17-18_Special Report 5/30/13 12:07 PM Page 17

Diyaar: Ensuring the Right to Return

By Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf

SpecialReport

n 2012, after about a decade of putting

sire to start a family on hold, we were able to establish a home and start planning on having children. It was late July when I came home from work in Dublin, Ireland and my wife, Huwaida, told me the news that would change our lives forever: that after 10 years of marriage (much of it spent apart) and months of trying, she was pregnant. We were both ecstatic, excited.

At the same time, we were nervous about the potential risks of the pregnancy, since we were both past a certain age and thus in the “at-risk” category. We worried about providing security and stability for a baby, unsure about where to live and raise a child, and a million other concerns all parents face.

Not more than a few days later, though, I started thinking about where our child should be born—and why. While finding a location that provided excellent medical care was an absolute condition, it was not the only, or perhaps even primary, one.

Huwaida is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, as well as a U.S. citizen. She was born in Detroit, shortly after her father—a Palestinian citizen of Israel—and her mother— a West Bank Palestinian with a Jordanian passport—moved to the United States. As for my Jewish family, we had been in the U.S. since before World War I. As my thoughts invariably turned toward the future our child would face, one question nagged me: Given that I was denied entry to Palestine, and that Huwaida was a high-profile activist who often has been arrested and detained for engaging in popular protest, how could we guarantee that our child would have access to his/her homeland, to his/her ancestors and family in Palestine?

For that, there was only one answer, and one course of action. Because of Israeli law governing the passing of citizenship among Palestinian citizens, we had only one option—to have the baby born there, even if it meant that I could not be present.

Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf are human rights activists, co-founders of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

This article is compiled from Shapiro’s report published in Al Jazeera on March 8 and e-mails from Arraf, with their permission.

JUNE/JULY 2013

PHOTO COURTESY ARRAF AND SHAPIRO FAMILY

Iour relationship, our careers and our de-

Huwaida Arraf and Diyaar, who was born April 7 at Maqassed Hospital in East Jerusalem.

His father, Adam Shapiro, was forbidden by Israel from being present at his birth.

Huwaida, a lawyer, explains the couple’s conundrum: Under Israeli law, citizenship can only be passed down for one generation of children born outside of the country. My father gave it to me [in Detroit], so I cannot give it to my child if he is not born here. This law, while not specified as being applicable only to Palestinian citizens of Israel, is in effect meant to limit the number of Palestinians who can claim citizenship. For Jews, the fact that a child is born to a Jewish mother or has a Jewish grandmother trumps this law, and by virtue of the Jewish “Right of Return,” that child could claim citizenship no matter where he or she is born.

Because I’m Palestinian, and not a Jewish citizen of Israel, our child would not have the automatic right to visit the country or to claim citizenship. The only way for me to pass down my citizenship to our son is to give birth in Israel. As such, we chose Maqassed Hospital in East Jerusalem—a Palestinian hospital, but one that is able to register births with the Israeli authorities.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Over the years Israel has denied thousands of people doing Palestine human rights work entry into the country (including to the occupied Palestinian territory).

This is in addition to the many Palestinians seeking to enter either to visit or be reunited with family here; which is also in addition to the millions of Palestinian refugees denied the right to return to their country.

While Adam could claim citizenship based on this Jewish “Right of Return,” we weren’t sure whether or not there would be opposition from Israel to allowing Adam to claim this based on his politics and activities. Ultimately the Ministry of Interior has discretion to deny that right, even to a Jewish person, if he/she is deemed a threat to the state.

But, more importantly, Adam has been morally opposed to using this discriminatory law to gain access to the country when millions of Palestinians who were kicked out of their homeland (or had their parents or grandparents kicked out), and have a legitimate right to return, are denied the right simply because they are not Jewish.

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Adam continues: Huwaida and I see eye-to-eye when it comes to issues of justice, accountability, international law, human rights and dignity. Both of us devoted our careers to striving for justice, speaking out and to acting as our consciences demanded.

It was in the course of engaging in nonviolent activism that I was first arrested and deported by the Israeli government in 2002 for filming a popular protest at Huwara, near Nablus. [A few months earlier Adam had entered President Yasser Arafat’s besieged compound in Ramallah as a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and as a medical volunteer to assist two men who had been shot.]

As someone who was persona non grata to the Israeli government, I was tuned into the Palestinian experience of exile. And my activism, filmmaking and advocacy have been driven by that empathy brewed by shared experience. Most importantly, I knew how important passports, documents and identity papers were to Palestinians in terms of being able to cross borders, own property, vote, ensure fundamental human security and enable personal and professional opportunities.

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On March 3, Huwaida and Adam boarded a plane from New York to Tel Aviv to try to enter the city in the 35th week of Huwaida’s pregnancy. After waiting for hours while immigration in Tel Aviv “checked something,” they were informed that Israel had issued a 10-year travel ban against Adam in 2009. That was when he, Huwaida and other volunteers aboard the “Spirit of Humanity,” a Free Gaza-organized boat transporting symbolic amounts of reconstruction materials and school supplies to Gaza, were violently stopped in international waters and dragged to Ashdod.

As an Israeli citizen, Huwaida was released the next day. Israel never informed Adam about the travel ban, even after a formal inquiry to the Ministry of Interior as to Adam’s ability to enter the country in 2010.

After Adam was denied entry into Israel on March 4, he was placed in a holding cell. His attorney filed for an injunction to stop the deportation. The court hearing, held in Lod District Court on March 5, lasted only 30 minutes and Shapiro was on a plane departing Israel the next night.

••• Huwaida continues: The judge refused to consider the reasonableness or rationale of imposing the ban in the first place, or any alternative measures that could be taken to temporarily allow Adam to stay in the country on conditions, in order for him to be present for the birth of his son.

Had a U.S. Embassy official picked up the phone and advocated on our behalf, I’m sure the Ministry of Interior would have agreed to a compromise. But the American Citizens Services staff said they couldn’t do that.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is busy introducing resolutions such as the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013 which, among other things, contains a provision for including Israel in the U.S. Visa Waiver ProTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

gram. In other words, while Israel continues to prevent hundreds of U.S. citizens from visiting Palestine or Israel due to their religious and ethnic background and/or their political views, Congress wants to exempt Israeli citizens from having to get visas to visit the U.S. Adam wasn’t with us when Diyaar, which means “homeland,” made his entry into this world. He first saw his son on a video that our friends recorded in the hospital as he was sitting in Dublin. It was six weeks before Diyaar’s papers and passport were issued and we were cleared by our doctor to travel.

On the evening of May 16, Adam flew into Jordan from Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was investigating threats to women human rights defenders, and met Diyaar and me at the Jordan River Crossing (Sheikh Hussein Bridge) outside of Irbid. Only then was Adam able to meet and hold his son.

So many others cannot hope for the same, particularly the spouses and children of Palestinian and other political prisoners, and of martyrs. I have not been able to stop thinking about Dalal, the young pregnant widow of Arafat Jaradat, the Palestinian prisoner who died of torture in Israeli custody a couple of weeks ago. Dalal not only will not have her husband by her side for the birth of their child, their child will never know his/her father...

So, we continue to work on the larger picture. If our situation can be used to help shed more light on the pervasive racism and inhumanity rampant here (as well as Israel’s contempt for human rights defenders), with the goal of changing the system someday for the future of all the children of this region, that would be one of the best things that we could hope for and something we are proud to have Diyaar play a small role in. ❑

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Two Views What Next for the “Peace Process”?

By the European Eminent Persons Group

e, the under-signed memW bers of the European Eminent Persons Group on the Middle East Peace Process, are writing to you to express our strong concern about the dying chances of a settlement based on two separate, sovereign and peaceful states of Israel and Palestine.

The Eminent Persons Group is composed of a number of former presidents, prime ministers, ministers and senior officials of EU member states who have decided to concert their efforts to encourage a lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

We have watched with increasing disappointment over the past five years the failure of the parties to start any kind of productive discussion, and of the international community under American and/or European leadership to promote such discussion. We have also noted with Back to the hamster wheel. frustration and deep concern the deteriorating standards of humanitarian through you to the members of the Council and human rights care of the population in of Ministers, to recognize that the Peace the occupied territories (OT). The security Process as conceived in the Oslo agreements and long-term stability of Israel, an essen- has nothing more to offer. Yet the present tial objective in any process, cannot be as- political stalemate, while the situation desured in such conditions, any more than teriorates on the ground, is unsustainable, the legitimate rights and interests of the given the disturbed politics of the region Palestinian people. and the bitterness generated by the harsh President Barack Obama made some of conditions of life under the occupation. these points during his March 2013 visit to The concern of the European Union at the region, particularly in his address to this deterioration, clearly expressed in a the people of Israel, but he gave no indica- series of statements, not least the European tion of action to break the deep stagnation, Council Conclusions of 14 May 2012, has nor any sign that he sought something not been matched by any action likely to other than the re-start of talks between improve the situation. The aspirations of West Bank and Israeli leaders under the Palestinians and Israelis and the interests Oslo Process, which lost its momentum of the European Union, prominently relong ago. ferred to in those Conclusions and in other We are therefore appealing to you, and relevant EU documents, cannot be met by the current stagnation.

This open letter was posted on the European It is time to give a stark warning that the Council on Foreign Relations website, <www. occupation is actually being entrenched by ecfr.eu>, April 19, 2013. the present Western policy. The Palestinian JUNE/JULY 2013

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Authority cannot survive without leaning on Israeli security assistance and Western funding and, since the PA offers little hope of progress toward self-determination for the Palestinian people, it is fast losing respect and support from its domestic constituency. The steady increase in the extent and population of Israeli settlements, including in East Jerusalem, and the entrenchment of Israeli control over the OT in defiance of international law, indicate a permanent trend toward a complete dislocation of Palestinian territorial rights.

We have reached the conclusion that there must be a new approach. Letting the situation lie unaddressed is highly dangerous when such an explosive issue sits in such a turbulent environment.

A realistic but active policy, set in the context of current regional events, needs to be composed of the following elements: • a sharper focus on the essential need for a two-state solution, as the most likely outcome to offer lasting peace and security for the parties and their neighborhood and the only one recognized by U.N. resolutions as just and equitable; • an explicit recognition that the current status of the Palestinian territories is one of occupation, with responsibility for their condition falling under international law on the occupying state; • an insistence that Israeli settlements beyond the 1967 lines are illegal, must cease being expanded and will not be recognized as one of the starting points in any new negotiations; • a stipulation that any representative political organization with a valid claim to participate in negotiations must renounce the use of violence outside established U.N. norms; • the renewal of efforts to establish a unified Palestinian representation of both the West Bank and Gaza, without which a comprehensive peace cannot be successfully negotiated and the absence of which serves as an excuse for inaction; JAVIER AGUILAR/LA VANGUARDIA (BARCELONA) WWW.GARANCE-ILLUSTRATION.COM

A Letter to EU High Representative Catherine Ashton

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• the encouragement of reform of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, including representation of all the main Palestinian parties committed to nonviolence and reflecting the expressed wishes of the resident Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza; • a vigorous international drive for the implementation of much improved humanitarian and human rights conditions in both the West Bank and Gaza, monitored by the United Nations, whatever the state of peace negotiations might be at any time; • a reconsideration of the funding arrangements for Palestine, in order to avoid the Palestinian Authority’s present dependence on sources of funding which serve to freeze rather than promote the peace process; • a clear and concerted effort to counter the erasing of the 1967 lines as the basis for a two-state outline. This should include a clear distinction in EU dealings with Israel between what is legitimate—within the 1967 lines—and what violates international law in the occupied territories; • a clearer willingness within the EU to play a political and not just a funding role and to resume a more strategic dialogue with the Palestinians.

For all the good sense of EU statements on this issue over the years, the EU’s inactivity in the face of an increasingly dangerous stagnation is both unprincipled and unwise. European leaders cannot wait forever for action from the United States when the evidence accumulates of American failure to recognize and promote the equal status of Israelis and Palestinians in the search for a settlement, as accepted in United Nations resolutions.

Later generations will see it as unforgivable that we Europeans not only allowed the situation to develop to this point of acute tension, but took no action now to remedy the continuing destruction of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. We regard it as essential for EU interests that the Council of Ministers and you take rapid action to correct this unacceptable state of affairs.

We are sending copies of this letter to members of the Council of Ministers and to the U.S. secretary of state.

Members of the EEPG send you their respectful greetings.

Signed, Guiliano Amato, former prime minister of Italy Frans Andriessen, former vice president of the European Commission Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, former vice-prime minister of the Netherlands John Bruton, former prime minister of Ireland 20

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, former European commissioner and former foreign minister of Austria Teresa Patricio Gouveia, former foreign minister of Portugal Jeremy Greenstock, former UK ambassador to the U.N. and co-chair of the EEPG Lena Hjelm-Wallén, former foreign minister and deputy prime minister of Sweden Wolfgang Ischinger, former state secretary of the German Foreign Ministry and cochair of the EEPG Lionel Jospin, former prime minister of France Miguel Moratinos, former foreign minister of Spain Ruprecht Polenz, former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag Pierre Schori, former deputy foreign minister of Sweden Javier Solana, former high representative and former NATO secretary-general Peter Sutherland, former EU commissioner and director general of the WTO Andreas van Agt, former prime minister of the Netherlands Hans van den Broek, former Netherlands foreign minister and former EU commissioner for external relations Hubert Védrine, former foreign minister of France and co-chair of the EEPG Vaira Vike-Freiberga, former president of Latvia

Success Requires Consequences For Failure

By John V. Whitbeck

or almost two decades, the seemingly

Fperpetual Middle East “peace process”

has been like a hamster-wheel for Palestinians and a merry-go-round for Israelis. All the movement has been a form of running or turning in place. Nothing ever really changes.

With Secretary of State John Kerry shuttling around the Middle East, ostensibly to “kick-start” a resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations—with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu insisting that any new negotiations must be “without preconditions” and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas insisting, among other things, that any new negotiations must be time-limited—it is worth recalling a prior negotiations resumption ceremony held at the White House on Sept. 2, 2010.

In announcing that resumption, Mr. John V. Whitbeck is an international lawyer who has served as a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Kerry’s predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, stated that that new round of negotiations should be “without preconditions,” as Mr. Netanyahu had insisted, and that both Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas had agreed that the negotiations should be subject to a one-year time limit or deadline, as Mr. Abbas had insisted.

That round of negotiations went nowhere, and the formally announced “deadline” proved meaningless—for one clear and critical reason.

Throughout this “peace process,” all deadlines, starting with the five-year deadline for achieving a permanent peace agreement set in the “Oslo” Declaration of Principles signed almost 20 years ago, have been consistently and predictably missed.

Such failures have been guaranteed by the practical reality that, for Israel, “failure” has had no consequences other than a continuation of the status quo—which, for all Israeli governments, has been not only tolerable but preferable to any realistically realizable alternative.

For Israel, “failure” has always constituted “success,” permitting it to continue confiscating Palestinian land, expanding its West Bank colonies, building more Jews-only bypass roads and generally making the occupation even more permanent and irreversible.

In everyone’s interests, this must change.

For there to be any chance of true success in any new round of negotiations, failure must have clear and compelling consequences which Israelis would find unappealing—indeed, at least initially, nightmarish.

In an interview published on Nov. 29, 2007 in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Mr. Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, declared, “If the day comes when the twostate solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.”

This article helpfully referred to a prior Haaretz article, published on March 13, 2003, in which Mr. Olmert had expressed the same concern in the following terms: “More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against ‘occupation,’ in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle—and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state.”

If Israeli public opinion could be brought around to sharing the perception JUNE/JULY 2013

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of Israel’s position and options reflected in Mr. Olmert’s perceptive public pronouncements, the Palestinians would be entering any new round of direct negotiations in a position of strength, intellectually and psychologically difficult though it would be for Palestinians to imagine such a dramatic role reversal.

All that the Palestinian leadership would need to do is to state at the time that any new negotiations are launched that, if a definitive peace agreement on a two-state basis has not been reached and signed within one year, the Palestinian people will have no choice but to seek justice and freedom through democracy—through full rights of citizenship in a single state in all of Israel/Palestine, free of any discrimination based on race or religion and with equal rights for all who live there.

The Arab League should then publicly state that the very generous Arab Peace Initiative, which, since March 2002, has offered Israel permanent peace and normal diplomatic and economic relations with the entire Arab world in return for Israel’s compliance with international law, remains on offer but will expire and be “off the table” if a definitive Israeli-Palestinian

peace agreement has not been signed prior to this one-year deadline.

Framing the choice before Israelis with such clarity would ensure that the Israeli leadership would be inspired—indeed, compelled—to make the most attractive two-state offer to the Palestinians which Israeli public opinion could conceivably find acceptable. At that point—but not before—serious and meaningful negotiations could begin.

Israel’s vast colonization program may already have made it too late to achieve a decent two-state solution (as opposed to an indecent, less-than-a-Bantustan one), but a decent two-state solution would never have a better chance of being achieved. If it is, indeed, too late, then Israelis, Palestinians and the world will know and can thereafter focus their minds and efforts constructively on the only other decent alternative.

It is even possible that, if forced to focus on the prospect of living in a fully democratic state with equal rights for all its citizens—which, after all, is what the United States and the European Union hold up, in all other instances, as the ideal form of political life—many Israelis might come to view this “threat” as less nightmarish than

they traditionally have.

In this context, Israelis might wish to talk with some white South Africans. The transformation of South Africa’s racial-supremacist ideology and political system into a fully democratic one has transformed them, personally, from pariahs into people welcomed throughout their region and the world. It has also ensured the permanence of a strong and vital white presence in southern Africa in a way that prolonging the flagrant injustice of a racial-supremacist ideology and political system and imposing fragmented and dependent “independent states” on the natives could never have achieved. This is not a precedent to dismiss. It could inspire.

Any new negotiations toward ending the occupation of Palestine on a two-state basis and achieving peace with some measure of justice must be subject to a genuine and credible “final” deadline for success and must have clear and unambiguous consequences for failure. Whether the future of the Holy Land is to be based on partition into two states or on full democracy in one state, a definitive choice must now be made. A fraudulent “peace process” designed simply to kill more time can no longer be tolerated. ❑

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JUNE/JULY 2013

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Palestinian Prisoners: Broken Heroes, Broken Generations

The Nakba Continues

By William Parry

decades-long occupation of Palestine, there is no reason to expect an end to these tactics.

PHOTO CREDIT

Right to Health

Following his hunger strike and eventual release from an Israeli prison, where his lung disease went untreated for years, Mohammed al Taj is visited in his hospital room by his mother, Dalal. don’t differentiate between medicine

“Iand politics. They’re connected. More

than connected—they’re inseparable,” said Prof. Ruchama Marton, founder and president of Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHR-I).

The Israeli government is aware of that, as are the 4,900 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons—including 168 administrative detainees (those detained without trial, potentially indefinitely, under secret, undisclosed charges) and 236 children.

Over the past year, and particularly the last few months, several Palestinian prisoners have successfully used hunger strikes in their struggle for justice. In April, hunger striker Samer al Issawi, 33, negotiated a deal that should see his release by the end of the year in return for ending his 250day hunger strike. A week before that deal, the Israeli government released anWilliam Parry is media and communications officer with the UK-based charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). His views here do not necessarily reflect those of MAP. His book, Against the Wall, is available from the AET Book Club.

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other prisoner, Mohammed al Taj, 41, on “humanitarian” grounds due to his serious medical condition.

Despite this handful of recent victories

by Palestinian prisoners, two pressing issues must be addressed for any real progress to be achieved, argue Palestinian prisoners and prisoner rights campaign groups. The first is adequate medical treatment for all Palestinian prisoners who require it. This would require a tsunamic shift in Israel’s culture of how Palestinian prisoners are perceived and treated.

The second issue is much broader, deeper and pervasive. Since 1967, Israel has detained some 800,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. This represents 20 percent of the population, and about 40 percent of the male population, according to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner rights and legal support group. Israel’s widespread and systematic use of military detention, solitary confinement and torture are very effective tools of its occupation, designed to “occupy” Palestinian minds and break any spirit of resistance. The two have gone hand-in-hand since 1967. As long as Israel is allowed to continue its THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

International law obliges Israel, as the occupying power, to provide appropriate treatment for ill prisoners. Articles 3, 37, 76, 81 and 85 of the Fourth Geneva Convention state that the detaining power must provide adequate medical care for detained persons. Articles 91 and 92 state that detainees shall have full rights and that they shall be allowed treatment to be administered by physicians of their own nationality. These articles also stipulate that detainees shall undergo medical examiniations at least once a month. Israel is failing spectacularly in meeting these obligations, according to Palestinian prisoners and regional human rights groups.

“The [Israeli] prison system [IPS] employs [Israeli] doctors, so a doctor is an employee of the prison authorities, which is a very unhealthy situation,” explained Professor Marton. “It’s [impossible] to have double loyalty in that case.” According to Professor Marton, this, coupled with the fact that Israeli prison doctors have only the most elementary medical training, means that “It’s almost logical that one will get the wrong diagnosis or no diagnosis at all.” Systematic medical neglect is “very common” in the IPS, she said.

Al Taj, who suffers from pulmonary fibrosis and heart hypertrophy, is a victim of this medical neglect, say human rights groups. He remains in stable condition, but will require a lung transplant. Although his symptoms first appeared in 2004, al Taj said he received no treatment for years, that he was tortured, and that the torture and conditions he experienced exacerbated his ailments.

Speaking with difficulty from his hospital bed, with Palestinian flags and keffiyehs draped behind him, he said: “I started going to the prison clinic but [the IPS] refused to give me treatment. They promised appropriate treatment but it never came.”

Only after his condition deteriorated drastically did the IPS begin to give him some medical treatment, al Taj said. “In JUNE/JULY 2012

parry-22-23_The Nakba Continues 5/15/13 7:49 PM Page 23

PHOTO W. PARRY

2010 they gave me a CT scan but told me that the test results were lost,” he explained, speaking faintly and slowly. “It continued the same way until 2012, when I had to go on hunger strike to receive treatment. That lasted for 77 days. On day 67 of my hunger strike I was transferred to the al Jalameh interrogation center and tortured. I was forced to stay in stress positions, naked, and I was badly beaten and consequently went into a coma.” He said he was transferred among several centers during this time and didn’t receive the medical treatment he required.

Al Taj said he was surprised by his early release, having served 10 years of a 15-year sentence. “When they told me Israel’s notorious Ofer prison, located near the West Bank city of Ramallah. that I would be released, I figtion from their identity and the Palestinian ured I would be ‘Martyr number 208,’ as you can’t just break one generation.”

Israel doesn’t release prisoners unless He said that children return after an av- cause. Imagine the impact this trauma had they’ve finished their sentence or are about erage of two to three months in prison on Mohammed, whose first time sleeping to die.” He regards Shimon Peres’ “presi- (most plead guilty even if innocent, as it away from home was this terrifying ordeal.”

Professor Marton put this practice on dential pardon” with contempt: “I was re- means less time in prison), charged usually leased because they didn’t want to give me with throwing stones, and display signs of Palestinian society into a broader perspeca lung transplant, they refused to pay for post-traumatic stress disorder: they suffer tive. “By torturing and imprisoning an it.” He also believes that Israel did not from nightmares and bedwetting, and amount of people within a society, it’s not want another Palestinian patient dying in show aggressive behavior, isolation, and a only the people who are arrested or torcustody, following the angry solidarity lack of concentration which leads many to tured who are damaged. The whole family and the whole society are damaged, too. demonstrations that filled streets in the drop out of school.

West Bank and Gaza after the death in Mohammed, from Asira al Qibliya, was People become afraid, silent, easy to be March of Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh.

15 when he was arrested and detained for controlled.”

Horton concluded our discussion with three weeks in June 2010, charged with Traumatized Heroes starting a fire near the Yitzar settlement, an observation at once mundane and illuBeyond the hospital rooms, Israel’s daily near Nablus. He was kept in solitary con- minating: “It’s not legal under internaarrests, intimidation, harassment and col- finement for a week, which severely trau- tional law, as it amounts to collective punlective punishment continue, breaking in- matized him. Mohammed always main- ishment, but from a military perspective it dividuals, families and Palestinian society, tained his innocence to his Israeli inter- is quite effective. It’s the system that enwith the aim of crushing any resistance to rogators, and ultimately was released with- ables all of those Israeli settlers to live in remarkable peace and quiet in the occupied the occupation. This widespread and sys- out charge.

“I was very, very afraid,” Mohammed West Bank, going to and from school and tematic detention, and threat of re-arrest and imprisonment, is what enables the oc- said in his family’s diwan. “I was con- work with very little incidence of violence cupation to continue with relative ease, stantly afraid that they would kill me and occurring. In the West we always see when day in, day out. Children who are arrested that no one would find me. I begged the there is an incidence of violence, it’s always and taken away from their homes in the guards to talk to me. I couldn’t sleep, I was on the front page. What we don’t see in the middle of the night, blindfolded with their anxious and extremely afraid. I was con- West is the story that 620,000 settlers went hands bound—around 800 last year, ac- stantly worried, thinking about my par- to and from work without a single incident, and how that’s been achieved.” cording to the YMCA—come back as he- ents and what they were thinking.”

That Israeli PR victory puts the costly His mother, Khadra, said: “The Israelis roes, but traumatized.

Gerard Horton, a human rights lawyer are planning far ahead. They want to crush victories of those prisoners enduring in Palestine who has worked for Defense any kind of resistance. They want to ter- hunger strikes, and the hundreds of thoufor Children International-Palestine (DCI- rorize the Palestinians, and they do it sands of individuals and families that have been broken through Israeli imprisonment, P) and contributed to several reports doc- through our children.”

Abu Majdi, Mohammed’s father, added: into bleak perspective. A great deal more umenting the arrest, interrogation and detention of Palestinian children, explained: “The Israelis want to instill fear in the chil- awareness-raising and action on an inter“From a military perspective, you have to dren’s hearts so that they move from the national level is required, say Palestinian break the generations one after another, land. They want to disconnect this genera- prisoners—now more than ever. ❑ JUNE/JULY 2012

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Fishing in a Shooting Gallery Off the Coast of Gaza

Gazaon the Ground

PHOTO M. OMER

By Mohammed Omer

Only small sardines are left for fishermen to catch in the three-mile limit which Israeli warships enforce off the coast of Gaza. eathered hands calloused from haul-

Wing in ragged lines, deep wrinkles

caused by years of sun and salt, and with a cigarette hanging from his lip, Salim Alfaseh has seen his share of Mediterranean sunrises and sunsets. Now 57, he’s been fishing off the coast of Gaza since he was 10. Due to Israeli restrictions and patroling warships, however, he can no longer disappear over the horizon, drop his net into deep water and follow the fish. Instead he and his fellow fishermen are allowed to fish only within three nautical miles of the coast, where the water is shallow, polluted and over-fished.

This is despite the fact that the Egyptianbrokered cease-fire agreement between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas government following Israel’s November 2012 military assault on Gaza doubled Gaza’s fishing zone to six nautical miles. Israel briefly honored the agreement, but by March 2013, according to Amjad Alsherafi, deputy head of the Gaza Fishermen’s Union, 43 Gazan fisherAward-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>.

He can be reached at <gazanews@yahoo. com>. Follow him on Twitter: @MoGaza.

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men had been arrested, 4 injured by direct Israeli gunfire, 8 fishing boats sunk and 11 others confiscated by the Israeli navy.

The United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs has likewise noted that in February 2013 alone, Israeli warships shot and injured two fishermen, one of them just 16 years old. The fishermen insist they were within the three-mile limit; Israel claims the incident occurred beyond the six-mile mark.

On the last day of his March visit to Israel, President Barack Obama brokered an Israeli apology to Turkey for its May 2010 killing of eight Turkish and one American passenger aboard the Mavi Marmara aid ship in international waters. Israel promised Turkey it would look into easing its marine blockade of Gaza, giving the Palestinian fishermen hope. But during the first week of April, Israeli gunboats fired without warning on fishermen within the three-mile zone off Gaza.

A Proud History The Gaza Fishermen’s Union counts 1,000 small boats and 200 larger vessels as constituting the Gaza Strip’s shipping fleet, which navigates the 25-mile coastline. Its 4,000 fishermen provide a living for 60,000 people.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

From the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993 until 2006, Israel allowed Gaza fishermen to go as far as 20 miles offshore, in deep waters where the fish are abundant.

Fishing, in fact, was Gaza’s second largest industry—behind agriculture—and one which provided a solid income. Alfaseh and his fellow fishermen refer to this time as “the Golden Years.” “In the old days we would export fish to Israel,” Alsherafi explained. “But now, Israel has closed those roads, and we are restricted to an area that is virtually fished out.”

In 2006, after Hamas won free and fair elections in Gaza and the West Bank alike, Israel retaliated with its now seven-year blockade of the Strip. “The loss to Gaza’s fishing industry amounts to $2 billion,” Alsherafi told the Washington Report.

Today only Israeli fishermen are allowed to trawl the deep international waters.

Prior to the blockade, Alfaseh used to make 60 NIS ($16) a day. Now—if he’s lucky—he makes one-quarter that amount.

But he still goes out in his boat every day, while his family of 15 waits at home. The size of his catch determines how much food they will eat and what their daily income will be.

Alfaseh describes the area in which he and his fellow workers are allowed to fish as “virtually fished out.” Retrieved nets are often empty—with the exception of tiny sardines. “This is all you get when there is nothing left within three miles,” he explained, pointing to a small box of immature sardines. Young sardines cannot be left in the sea to mature because there are no other fish to catch—and families must eat. That’s assuming, of course, that the fish swimming in the polluted waters off Gaza are not poisoned and hence inedible.

Gaza’s infrastructure, including its water and waste treatment facilities, has been damaged by Israel’s frequent military assaults from land, air and sea. Further exacerbating the desperate situation, Israel prevents the necessary repair supplies and materials from entering the Strip, where 1.7 million people live in an area slightly larger than New York’s Manhattan Island.

Constant Fear In the harbor and along Gaza’s coastline the sound of machine gun fire from Israeli JUNE/JULY 2013

warships is nearly as common as the dull roar of the unmanned drones overhead.

These high-velocity weapons in the hands of Israeli forces pepper civilian fishing boats, terrorizing the fishermen and often disabling their engines. Indeed, Alsherafi explained, “The costs of engine repairs from Israeli attacks are triple the original cost of the boat.”

Despite being legally allowed to fish up to six miles offshore, Alfaseh uses GPS to stay within the three-mile limit. Even so, he said, “At times, Israeli ships shoot at us when we are well within the three-mile zone. It’s collective punishment, meant to starve the fishermen and their families.”

One April night Alfaseh and his crew decided to go out to sea again, hoping an evening haul would offset the day’s losses.

The boat sat anchored on a dark sea, and the soft swoosh of fishing nets dipping into the water could barely be heard over the growling generators. Ahmed Kabaja, 28, and his 37-year-old brother, Mohammed, nervously scanned the horizon for any sign of an Israeli gunboat.

Even though they were within the three-mile limit, nobody on the boat felt safe. As they repositioned the nets in the water, they strained to hear the sound of gunfire—the calling card indicating an Israeli naval ship was approaching. They were nervous and felt as if they were doing something illegal—even though they were doing nothing wrong.

But wrongdoing is not a prerequisite for a military encounter with an Israeli warship. Nor is the encounter in any way a contest. Should an Israeli ship materialize, Alfaseh’s only option is to stand on deck with his arms raised. His crew will have to reverse engines and run the 2.4 miles until it reaches shore or the shooting stops— whichever comes first. The unarmed fishing boat captain has no way to argue with or explain to his tormenters; as much as he might want to, he can only comply—a powerlessness which frustrates him greatly.

Alfaseh recalled an incident about a year ago, when he and his crew were fishing within the three-mile limit off the shore of Deir el Balah, a small town located in the central Gaza Strip. Without warning an Israeli gunboat fired directly on his vessel.

“We attempted to get back to shore,” he explained, “but it was too late. The boat sank in about five meters of water. The bullet holes were deep in the hull, and right then I wondered who would help or rescue us.”

He paused for a moment, shaking his head in disbelief over what happened next: “The Israeli navy then ordered JUNE/JULY 2013

WWW.PASSIA.ORG

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us—over loudspeakers—to undress, get into the water and swim back. We were 500 meters from shore!”

It took Alfaseh and Kabaja a year to make the boat seaworthy again. The owner of Alfaseh’s boat complains that he cannot afford the court fees necessary to sue the State of Israel for damages. He is relatively lucky, however, since the families of fishermen who are killed face enormous legal fees to get justice or compensation for their losses, according to the Gaza Fishermen’s Union’s Alsherafi. Since 2006, union records show, 15 fishermen from Gaza have been killed by direct Israeli gunfire.

Though fishermen in Gaza do receive THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

some support from international NGOs, Shaher Saad, head of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, said the best means of intervention is protection for fishermen. “We are all in favor of international intervention to pressure Israel to abide by the Oslo accords, which allow the fishermen 20 nautical miles, he told the Washington Report. “This is a greater priority than providing aid to fishermen.”

“The most painful part,” a weary Alfaseh confessed, “is when I have to say goodbye to my family each day before going to work.”

That’s because he is never sure if he will be alive to return home to greet them. ❑ 25

mcarthur_26-27_fixed_Congress Watch 5/16/13 9:24 AM Page 26

No Surprises for Middle East Countries; Sequestration Hits Aid to Them All CongressWatch

URIEL SINAI/GETTY IMAGES

By Shirl McArthur

President Barack Obama (c, holding jacket) and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (to his left) visit an Iron Dome missile battery at Ben-Gurion Airport, March 20, 2013. U.S. taxpayers have given Israel some $950 million in funding for the anti-rocket system, whose effectiveness has been questioned. fter Congress passed H.R. 933, the Continuing Appropriations Act apA propriating funds for the remainder of FY ’13, on March 20/21, President Barack Obama signed it on March 26 as P.L. 113-6.

As passed, the measure continues appropriations at the FY ’12 level for most Middle East countries, as described on p. 31 of the March/April 2012 Washington Report.

The one exception is funds for Israel, which were—of course—increased.

The big change for Israel is found in the Defense Department part of the bill. The so-called “Israeli Cooperative Programs” are earmarked at $479.7 million, instead of the $235.7 million reported in the March/April ’12 issue. The increase isn’t as much as it seems, because the new bill includes the $211 million for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system that previously was appropriated separately. Also, in the foreign aid portion of the bill, Israel’s military aid was increased slightly, from $3.075 billion to $3.1 billion, and the amount of those funds that can be spent in Israel (at the expense of U.S. firms) was inShirl McArthur is a retired U.S. foreign service officer based in the Washington, DC area.

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creased from $808.725 million to $815.3 million. That brings the total for Israel, including the $20 million for “refugee assistance” and the $2 million from the Energy Department, to $3.6017 billion.

No fewer than seven amendments to the bill were introduced in the Senate to cut or restrict funds for Egypt, but none were considered.

One provision regarding Syria was added: that “prior to obligating funds made available by this Act for assistance to Syria, the secretary of state shall consult with the Committees on Appropriations and Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committees on Appropriations and Foreign Affairs of the House.”

The well-publicized “sequestration” of funds for most government agencies and programs, caused by self-inflicted congressional incompetence, results in an acrossthe-board cut of 5 percent in all foreign aid, including the amounts for Israel described above. However, because Israel’s military aid was increased, the result will instead be a 4.2 percent cut from FY ‘12 levels.

AIPAC Pushes “U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership” Bills The two AIPAC-pushed “U.S.-Israel Strategic Ally” bills described in the previous issue—H.R. 938, introduced in March by THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

leading Israel-firster Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and S. 462, introduced in March by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)—continue to gain co-sponsors. Both bills would, among other things, authorize increased U.S. “cooperative activities” in the fields of energy, water, homeland security, agriculture and alternate fuel technologies. They would also expand U.S.-Israel cyber-security cooperation and extend authority to add to “foreign-based” defense stockpiles and to transfer “obsolete or surplus” Defense Department items to Israel. H.R. 938 has gained 101 co-sponsors and now has 211, including Ros-Lehtinen. Even under relentless AIPAC pressure, however, S. 462 has gained only 11 co-sponsors and now has 25, including Boxer.

The reasons for the lack of support for S. 462 are that, while H.R. 938 states that “it shall be U.S. policy to include Israel in the visa waiver program when Israel satisfies” the program’s requirements, S. 462 says that Israel would only have to meet the key requirement of granting full reciprocity to U.S. citizens “without jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel.” Israel consistently refuses to admit Arab Americans into the country. Also, S. 462 would exempt Israel from the requirement of a low refusal rate for non-immigrant visas. (Too many Israelis come to the U.S. on tourist visas and then stay on illegally.)

Meanwhile, the two previously described measures “to provide for the inclusion of Israel in the visa waiver program” have stalled. H.R. 300, introduced in January by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), has gained three co-sponsors and now has 76, including Sherman. S. 266, introduced in February by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), still has no other co-sponsors.

While the previously described “Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition” bills, H.R. 104 and H.R. 252, have also stalled, a new one, S. 604, was introduced

by Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) with three cosponsors on March 19. Like the previous two, S. 604 would require that the U.S. Embassy in Israel be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and would remove the presidential waiver authority included in the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995.

A new bill, H.R. 1130, the “Iron Dome Support” bill, was introduced March 13 by Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA) with 78 co-sponJUNE/JULY 2013

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sors. It would authorize the president to provide assistance to Israel for the “procurement, maintenance, enhancement, and sustainment of the Iron Dome anti-missile system.” Since the Iron Dome system is already funded in Defense Department appropriations, it is unclear why this bill was introduced—except perhaps to give Congress members yet another chance to put their names on a pro-Israel measure.

The annual “congratulate Israel on its anniversary” measure, H.Con.Res. 30, was introduced on April 10 by Rep. Trey Radel (R-FL) with 154 co-sponsors. After several questionable “whereas” clauses (e.g., “the people of Israel continue to seek peace with their Palestinian neighbors”), the most objectionable “resolved” clause states that “Congress expresses support for Israel’s right to exist as a democratic, Jewish State, defend itself, and protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people.”

Three Letters—One Relatively Positive—Prior to Obama’s Israel Trip Prior to his March visit to Israel, one House and two Senate letters were sent to Obama on March 19 commending his decision to visit Israel early in his second term. However, only one of them, initiated by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and signed by 27 senators, might be considered positive. In the first paragraph, the letter urges Obama “to take this opportunity to reiterate your commitment to the security of Israel and the negotiation of a two-state peace agreement to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during your presidency.”

A not-so-helpful Senate letter was initiated by Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Susan Collins (R-ME) and signed by 77 senators, including several who also signed the Feinstein letter. After noting the passage in 2011 of a Senate resolution supporting a negotiated two-state solution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, its next sentence says, “Palestinian efforts to bypass direct negotiations with Israel by taking unilateral steps for international recognition are, in our view, unacceptable.” It concludes by urging Obama to “reiterate the U.S. support for Israel, her right to defend herself, and the Iron Dome project.”

If anything, the House letter was worse.

Initiated by Reps. Peter Roskam (R-IL) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) and signed by 110 representatives, its first paragraph calls Israel “America’s major strategic partner and most important ally in the Middle East” and says, “now is an important time to send this message of solidarity to Israel.” It concludes with “reaffirming these commitments to Israel, in light of the very real threats we both JUNE/JULY 2013

face, demonstrates that there is no daylight between the U.S. and Israel.”

“Backdoor to War” With Iran Resolution Modified in Committee The previously described S.Res. 65 “strongly supporting the full implementation of U.S. and international sanctions on Iran and urging the president to continue to strengthen enforcement of sanctions legislation” was improved by the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 16.

Introduced in February by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and pushed by AIPAC, the resolution still includes “resolved” clause number 5 that, ignoring the Constitution’s giving to the president the authority to set foreign policy, “reiterates that the policy of the U.S. is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and to take such action as may be necessary to implement this policy.” However, the committee improved clause number 8, called the “Backdoor to War” clause by Americans for Peace Now because it originally would have seemed to give Israel a green light to attack Iran whenever it claims to be threatened, inevitably drawing in the U.S. The committee added the word “legitimate” to limit Israel’s ability to claim it is acting in self-defense and specified “against Iran’s nuclear weapons program” to limit possible Israeli targets. It also added the phrase “in accordance with U.S. law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force.”

The clause now reads: “If the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the U.S. Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with U.S. law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support” to Israel. The resolution’s last sentence still says that “nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization for the use of force or a declaration of war.”

It now has 89 co-sponsors, including Graham.

Also under AIPAC pressure, the problematic H.R. 850, introduced in February

by Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) “to impose additional human rights and economic and financial sanctions with respect to Iran” has gained significant support. Right up front the bill says that “it shall be the policy of the U.S. to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.” Several other sections impose economic and financial sanctions that would cause hardships to innocent Iranian citizens. The sections imTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

posing sanctions on foreign persons or firms dealing with Iran could harm U.S. relations with such countries as Turkey, India, South Korea and China, undermining multilateral efforts to convince Iran to suspend its nuclear weapons program. The section requiring that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps be declared a foreign terrorist organization could be construed as authorizing the use of military force against Iran, since the Revolutionary Guards Corps is an element of the Iranian government. The bill now has 296 co-sponsors, including Royce.

H.R. 893, the comprehensive “Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Accountability” bill introduced in February by Ros-Lehtinen, has gained only a few co-sponsors. Among its many provisions are those increasing sanctions on any person or entity transferring goods, services or technology for the chemical, biological or advanced conventional weapons programs of Iran, North Korea and Syria, and prohibiting assistance to any foreign government that has provided assistance to those countries, or has failed to prevent persons or entities under its sovereignty from aiding the three countries’ proliferation activities. In addition, it would remove the presidential waiver authority from the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996. It has 16 co-sponsors, including Ros-Lehtinen.

Similarly, H.Res. 98, introduced in March

by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), has gained only three co-sponsors and now has 32, including Gosar. Its only “resolved” clause says the House “fully supports” Israel’s taking “actions to halt Iranian aggression such as a strike against Iran’s illegal nuclear program.”

The more responsible H.R. 783, the “Prevent Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons and Stop War Through Diplomacy” bill introduced in February by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), has gained some support. Among other things, it says the U.S. should “pursue sustained, direct, bilateral negotiations with the Government of Iran without preconditions in order to reduce tensions, prevent war, prevent nuclear proliferation, support human rights, and seek resolutions to issues that concern the U.S. and the international community.” It would also direct the president to “appoint a high-level U.S. representative or special envoy for Iran.” It has gained seven co-sponsors and now has 18, including Lee.

Mixed Reaction to Reports of Syrian Use of Chemical Weapons After British, French and Israeli officials said that chemical weapons likely had been used in Syria, eight senators, led by Sens.

Continued on page 46 27

williams_28-29_United Nations Report 5/15/13 7:54 PM Page 28

Sound Familiar? Morocco Rejects Human Rights Probe of Territory It Occupies

FETHI BELAID/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Ian Williams

United Nations Report

Supporters of the Polisario Front independence movement hold a banner reading, “All for Palestine, all for Western Sahara” during a demonstration at the closing of the World Social Forum in Tunis, March 30, 2013. t is interesting to observe the creeping

Iextension of veto-power in the U.N. For

decades, the organization has suffered from an implicit Israeli veto in the Security Council, exercised by Washington on its behalf.

But at the end of April, we had Morocco actually successfully veto a U.S. proposal in the Council. In a fit of living up to its ideals, the U.S. delegation had proposed incorporating a human rights monitoring and reporting function into the impending resolution to renew MINURSO, the long-lasting U.N. peacekeeping force in Western Sahara.

While the U.S. took the credit—before taking all the contempt for folding in the face of opposition from the perpetrator—it was U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who, in his annual report, has boldly cited “ongoing reports of human rights violations” and the “ever-pressing need for independent, impartial, comprehensive and sustained monitoring of the human rights situations in both Western Sahara and the camps.” To be fair, the secretary-general Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations who blogs at <www. deadlinepundit.blogspot.com>.

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also wanted human rights to be examined in the camps, which in the past would not necessarily have been to the benefit of the Polisario Front, the movement fighting for Western Sahara’s independence. But it is noticeably Morocco that objected.

Juan E. Méndez, the special rapporteur on torture for the Human Rights Council (HRC), had been to the territory last September and reported that there was “evidence of excessive use of force and a tendency to use torture in interrogation when national security is involved.” National Security is, of course, somewhat loosely interpreted.

But then Morocco said no to the resolution—and the U.S. crumbled at the last moment! As a result, Security Council Resolution 2099, extending the MINURSO mission for another year, did not task it with any human rights component.

To fully appreciate the outrage, it is necessary to remember a much overlooked fact: Morocco is occupying Western Sahara in defiance of resolutions from both the Security Council and General Assembly and is reneging on its own pledges to allow a referendum, an act of self-determination.

And that is not to mention an International Court of Justice ruling of four decades ago THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

rebutting Moroccan claims to the territory.

As a reporter at the U.N., I well remember when Johannes Manz, the Swiss diplomat charged with setting up MINURSO back in 1991, blithely announced that the mission would take only a year because the Spanish census conducted just before Madrid evacuated the territory enumerated all the possible voters. A mere 22 years later, Morocco’s obfuscation and resistance has meant that the Mission is still there, while the referendum is no farther along.

Indeed, Manz himself resigned in protest when then-Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar, in just one of many partisan decisions, tried to allow Morocco to pack the voting rolls with many of its own residents.

Of course, the main fault is Morocco’s, whose reaction to the suggestion of human rights monitoring was more than a little indicative of the real nature of its occupation.

Rabat has had many accomplices, however, above all France, which has in turn provided cover for much U.S. complicity behind the scenes. Many of the MINURSO staff over the years have been thoroughly subverted by Morocco, which has devoted a huge amount of money on maintaining its occupation.

JUNE/JULY 2013

williams_28-29_United Nations Report 6/19/13 4:26 PM Page 29

It is worth remembering the “original sin,” however. In his memoirs of his time as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Daniel Patrick Moynihan, later senator from New York, boasted, “China altogether backed Fretilin in Timor, and lost. In Spanish Sahara, Russia completely backed Algeria, and its front, known as Polisario, and lost. In both instances the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook.

The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.”

Moynihan’s notable example has indeed been emulated by many in Washington since. Sadly, although the plight of Western Sahara gets support in Africa, where many countries recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as the official government, the occupation is tacitly supported by the former sponsors, like Russia, which is exploiting fishing rights for which it pays Morocco. By one of those international anomalies, however, Morocco is selling rights it does not own, since it cannot register the 200-mile exclusive economic zone in the seas off Western Sahara since it does not have title to the land!

Sadly, there are many parallels between Western Sahara and Palestine, with their long-standing refugees, incoming settlers and the separation wall which Morocco built in the 1980s, well before Israel emulated its example. Despite these similarities, Arab media and governments have neglected the Sahrawi cause, thus suggesting that, for too many Arabs, it is the nonArabness of the oppressor that is more worrying than the actual oppression.

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There is, of course, one notable exception.

The other Polisario sponsor was and is Algeria, which not only is some decades past its youthful revolutionary fervor, but has been somewhat preoccupied with its own problems with Islamist opposition.

However, obscurely, the latter might bring Western Sahara back to prominence.

Ban Ki-moon has expressed his fears that the Islamist resurgence in the Sahel, and in particular Mali, might spread to the understandably frustrated and disgruntled youth who are only the latest of several generations to inhabit the arid refugee camps of Western Sahara. The danger of spillover into the Maghreb might compel attention where the mere plight of impoverished refugees did not. Frustrated fundamentalists might actually break the long established cease-fire.

Meanwhile, back where Arabs can all agree, UNCTAD, the U.N. agency for trade and development, has become yet another U.N. arm to earn Israeli wrath, with its May report detailing the dire economic situation of East Jerusalem. Putting numbers to allegations of apartheid, UNCTAD reported that 77 percent of non-Jewish households there lived below the poverty line compared with 25 percent of Jewish families. No less than 84 percent of Palestinian children were impoverished, compared to 45 percent of Jewish children.

The figures would be bad enough if Israel were just the occupying power violating its Geneva Convention responsibilities to the people in East Jerusalem, but of course Israel has annexed the city, and so is in violation of its own responsibilities as the actual government, albeit unrecognized by others. The report points out that its

Arab residents make up over 30 percent of the city’s population, but receive only 7 percent of its government spending.

Another U.N. report is as eagerly awaited as it is unlikely to appear. Damascus originally had asked for a U.N. probe into allegations of chemical warfare, but months later still refuses the inspectors unhindered entry. It does tend to reinforce suspicions, but with the fateful example of the Iraqi inspections behind it, no one in the U.N. is in any rush to reach the conclusions to which Bashar al-Assad’s behavior might otherwise seem to lead them. Ban Ki-moon has pointed out in the past that the U.N. cannot really negotiate, since it does not have a stake in conflicts, but that its role is to facilitate others negotiating. And to maintain balance, to predictable outrage from the usual suspect, Ban condemned Israeli air strikes inside Syria.

Despite such evenhanded approaches, rumors around the U.N. are that veteran “facilitator” Lakhdar Brahimi is about to follow the footsteps of his predecessor Kofi Annan—i.e., out the door. Brahimi clearly thinks that there is an absence of willing negotiators among the parties. His exit would put Ban Ki-moon in a quandary, however, since the secretary-general clearly wants the U.N. to be there, ready, in case the parties show any willingness to talk their way out of the cockpit that Syria has become. It would be difficult, moreover, to find someone of the calibre of the previous two U.N. emissaries who would be prepared to risk almost certain failure for the time being.

No one can see a clear exit for Syria, so it is not a U.N. failure—except insofar as it is the failure of the entire international community. ❑

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amin_30-31_Special Report 5/16/13 12:46 PM Page 30

Disarray in Egypt: The New Regime, the Opposition and the Judiciary SpecialReport

GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Esam Al-Amin

A supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood waves the Egyptian national flag as he stands atop a lamppost during an April 19 demonstration demanding a purge of the country’s judicial system. he unity displayed by all segments of

TEgyptian society and political factions

during the 18 days of revolution that led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 is long gone. Egypt is now deeply divided along ideological, political, and even generational lines. Many Egyptians in general, but particularly the youths who spearheaded the uprising in Tahrir Square more than two years ago, are disillusioned with the bickering and petty politics played by most of the political actors—supporters of the new regime and its opponents alike.

A poll conducted in April by the Egyptian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, Basira, found that a majority of Egyptians are dissatisfied with the performance of the government of President Mohamed Morsi (who received a 47 percent approval rating, down from a high of 78 percent last Esam Al-Amin is an expert on the Middle East and a contributor to many websites and publications. He is the author of the new book: The Arab Awakening Unveiled: Understanding Transformations and Revolutions in the Middle East (available from the AET Book Club). He can be contacted at <alamin1919@gmail.com>.

30

summer). Perhaps not surprisingly, the poll found that Egyptians also are disillusioned by the secular opposition led by the National Salvation Front (NSF), which garnered less than 20 percent approval. In fact, the poll showed that if presidential elections were held now, while Morsi would receive 37 percent of the vote (down from 51 percent), the major opposition figures, who were also the major candidates of the last elections—such as Hamdein Sabbahi, Mohammad Elbaradei, Amr Mousa and Abdelmoneim Abol Fotouh— each would receive between 1 and 3 percent, while Ahmad Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister and the loser in the second round, would get 8 percent.

Undoubtedly the public is disappointed in Morsi’s government because of the lack of economic development, a persistently high unemployment rate, higher prices of goods, deterioration of services such as electricity, worsening security, lack of transparency in decision making, and a deep political crisis that has oftentimes descended into violent demonstrations. Many critics charge that the pro-Muslim Brotherhood government is incompetent and lacks a coherent economic program and political THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

vision. As evidence, they point to many of the haphazard ways major decisions were made in the past six months, only to be reversed by the president or the government within days or even hours. Out of 21 senior advisers appointed by the president last fall, only a handful have not resigned, while over two- thirds left in frustration.

On the other hand, government supporters bitterly complain about the incessant attempts by the opposition, especially remnants of the former regime, to destabilize the government, ensure its failure, as well as frustrate the nascent democratic process and undermine its emerging institutions, regardless of the long-term detrimental consequences to the country.

Furthermore, the Islamists, led by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its political affiliate, the Freedom and Justice Party, charge that the public perceptions of confusion, incompetence and political chaos are solidified by the actions of the judiciary, especially the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), in undermining the will of the Egyptian people through routinely disbanding the democratic institutions of the state. They cite as just one example the dissolution on technical grounds of the lower JUNE/JULY 2013

amin_30-31_Special Report 5/16/13 12:46 PM Page 31

house of the parliament in June 2012, five months after its election by 62 percent of the Egyptian electorate. The SCC also dismissed the first Constituent Constitutional Assembly, charged with writing the new constitution, within three months of its appointment. It was also about to dismiss a second time its successor before President Morsi barred it by issuing his Constitutional Decree last November.

Other Islamist parties, such as the moderate Al-Wasat Party as well as the more conservative Salafist groups, fear that the Judiciary is also about to dissolve the upper house of parliament, and might even void the results of last June’s presidential elections and declare it fraudulent, thus engulfing the country in a deeper political crisis.

In fact, one of the leaders of the Movement for Independent Judiciary, Zakariyya Abdul Aziz, a renowned retired judge who bitterly battled with the Mubarak regime for many years, has recently said that as many as 90 percent of the judges in Egypt, especially senior Mubarak appointees, resent the changes brought about by the revolution, have sympathies toward the former regime, and are trying to undermine the new democratic institutions and power structure established after the revolution.

Other vocal voices, such as Esam Sultan, vice president of Al-Wasat Party, and former presidential candidate Hazem Abu Ismail, chairman of the pro-Salafist Al-Raya Party, publicly state that the judiciary must be purged of corrupt pro-Mubarak elements in the same way the other branches have been. They rhetorically ask why the judiciary should be exempt from purging former regime loyalists. They also point to the fact that, with very few exceptions, the convictions and long sentences received by many of Mubarak’s political cronies and corrupt elements in the lower courts have been vacated by the upper courts. Even Mubarak and his two sons would have been freed after their convictions were vacated last month by an appellate court, had the new general prosecutor not intervened and charged them with new crimes.

Consequently, the upper house of parliament—which was given the sole legislative powers in the new constitution pending new lower house elections—started to debate a new Judicial Authority Law that would have in effect forced the retirement of more than a quarter of Egypt’s judges. But the judges pushed back by threatening strikes and escalation in their confrontation with parliament. Shortly thereafter, President Morsi met with Egypt’s most senior judges in order to contain the crisis and promised not to sign JUNE/JULY 2013

any legislation that does not meet with the judges’ approval. Nevertheless, he urged the Higher Judicial Council, which is in charge of Egypt’s judiciary, to self-reform and purge the corrupt elements undermining the objectives of the revolution and its new democratic institutions.

The Opposition But if Egypt suffers from a weak government and a compromised judiciary, its opposition, led by the NSF, is even more dreadful. It represents neither a serious alternative to the government nor a thoughtful loyal opposition. What unites many of its disgruntled factions is not a coherent political and economic program, or the presence of a charismatic leadership, but their intense anti-Islamist (and in some cases anti-Islamic) passions. Their actions and political positions are guided by their determination to oust Morsi and his government, rather than by the strategic and national interests of the country. For months, the opposition refused to engage Morsi or the MB in serious negotiations by continuously insisting on pre-conditions before embarking on any meaningful dialogue. During this period the objective of the opposition generally, and the NSF particularly, was to delegitimize Morsi’s rule and the MB’s power in the distant hope that they could be ousted through street demonstrations and revolutionary fervor.

Many NSF leaders called for early presidential elections using such hyperbolic language as claiming that Morsi has become a new dictator, or disingenuously hinting that the presidential election that brought him to power was fraudulent.

Another major defect in the liberal opposition is its disdain for the will of the Egyptian electorate by continuously rejecting the results of the elections and referendums, prompting some liberal elites even to suggest that only the “educated class” should be allowed to vote, as the uneducated are easily manipulated by the religiously oriented parties.

Moreover, many voices within the liberal and secular opposition, such as Elbaradei and Mousa, actually called for the direct intervention of the army (which it summarily rejected) in order to take over the realm of power. Somehow the irony of calling for a military rule escaped those who consider themselves proponents of civil society.

These voices and many others, including such senior pro-former regime judges as Ahmad El-Zand, the chairman of the Judges Syndicate, even called for direct involvement of foreign powers—the U.S. in particTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ular—and international organizations, showing no regard for the important principle of national sovereignty or independence.

But perhaps more destructive to the country’s future and a significant factor in its continuous destabilization is the tacit alliance that has been taking place between many opposition groups and the remnants of the Mubarak regime that have been leading and financing the counterrevolution.

Many of these corrupt elements have been welcomed among these opposition groups, which in effect undermined the secular opposition’s credibility in the public’s mind as a genuine alternative entrusted with the realization of the objectives of the revolution.

Thus, after more than two years of upheaval, three political trends are emerging in the new Egypt. The first is led by the MB and its supporters, who desperately strive for stability in order to build the institutions of the state and hold elections that they believe they will easily win. Yet they increasingly demonstrate inexperience and an unwillingness to share political power.

Another is a liberal and secular opposition that is not serious about presenting a viable alternative but rather obsessed over overthrowing the Islamists regardless of consequences, even to the point of forming a tactical alliance with the most corrupt proMubarak loyalists against whom millions of Egyptians revolted a little over two years ago.

A third trend represents the frustrated Egyptian youths who were at the forefront of the revolution and are now seeing it slip away amid the political power struggle.

They want more involvement, recognition of their role, and fulfillment of their revolutionary demands.

What is clearly needed is for each party to step up to the plate and reach a compromise.

The president and the Islamist forces need to reach out and allay the fears of the opposition, including the Christian minority, of the false perception of an impending religious state. The president must also genuinely include many credible voices and competent individuals in the decision-making process, regardless of any ideological differences.

On the other hand, the liberal and secular parties need to present themselves as a serious alternative and act as a loyal opposition without undermining the main institutions in the country. The judges need to stop dismantling the elected institutions of the state and stay out of politics. Finally, the youths must remain the conscience of this remarkable revolution and hold all political groups accountable until a new democratic Egypt not only is born and stable, but enduring and flourishing. ❑ 31

gee_32-33_Islam and the Near East in the Far East 5/16/13 12:48 PM Page 32

No One Satisfied After Malaysia’s Most Hotly Contested Election Yet

Islam and the Near East in theFar East

MOHD RASFAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By John Gee

Young supporters of Malaysia’s opposition alliance display their parties’ flags as they gather at a stadium in Kelana Jaya, Selangor in advance of a May 8 opposition rally protesting the results of the previous weekend’s election, which the opposition charged was fraudulent. The stadium was packed that evening, despite the police having declared the rally illegal. or most ruling parties, a 13th succes-

Fsive election victory would be cause for

celebration, but there is unhappiness in Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional (BN, or National Front) coalition after its victory in May 5 elections for national and state governments. In fact, neither the government nor the opposition achieved the aims they set themselves before the elections, the outcome of which leaves both unsatisfied and the country facing uncertainty about its political future.

In the 2008 general election, the BN lost its accustomed two-thirds majority, which would allow it to introduce constitutional changes. Then-leader Abdullah Badawi was ousted as a result. His successor, Prime Minister Najib Razak, hoped to recover a two-thirds majority in this year’s election.

Some $2.6 billion was spent on social assisJohn Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore, and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.

32

tance to poor families, some of it in straight give-aways shortly before the election.

Najib could point to modest reforms and an economy that continued to grow amid unfavorable international conditions as achievements of his leadership. This did not save him from further losses in the election, however, and his political future now looks uncertain. He is likely to face increased sniping from Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the long-standing former prime minister who helped bring down Abdullah Badawi’s government over its lackluster electoral performance.

Najib had to contend with a widespread perception that the ruling coalition is pervaded by corruption. Although he tried to reach out to win support among the 40 percent of Malaysians who are not Malays or Muslims, he hesitated to make any substantial moves that might risk alienating support among conservative Malays.

During Najib’s leadership, there was a long-running and unresolved struggle over THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

a ban on the use by Christians of the word “Allah” for God. Intolerant conservative Muslim activists opposed its use in Malaylanguage Christian texts, including the Bible, claiming that it was a specifically Muslim term and would only cause confusion among Muslims. (Significantly, PAS, the Islamic Party of Malaysia, did not endorse this view.) Christians pointed out that this is the Arabic word for God and is commonly used in the Arab world by indigenous Christians, without controversy. The government plainly found the dispute embarrassing, but was not prepared to go against the intolerant Muslim conservatives, so the ban stood. This issue became a focal point for the expression of rival visions of community relations within Malaysia.

Najib’s government stood firm on upholding Malaysia’s existing policies in favor of “bumiputras” (sons of the soil). These are Malays and the minorities who lived in Malaysia before the colonial era, when Chinese and Indian migrants came in large numbers. The pro-bumiputra policies were introduced after independence and justified by the claim that they were needed to redress the imbalance in wealth between the Chinese minority and the mass of Malays. They have involved state handouts targeted specifically at poor Malays and compulsory inclusion of Malay partners in businesses, as well as favoring Malays in employment in the state sector.

Criticism of the pro-bumiputra policies was a key plank of the opposition’s electoral campaign. The predominantly Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP) has consistently criticized them over the years. The mainly Malay Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR, or People’s Justice Party) and PAS, DAP’s partners in the Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance), have been cautious, saying they did not want to make any sudden changes to the policy, but pointing out its defects: that Malays have made advances in education, state service and the economy and are in less need of favorable state policies than they were, and, in any case, the main beneficiaries of the policy have been well-connected individuals who were not among JUNE/JULY 2013

gee_32-33_Islam and the Near East in the Far East 5/16/13 12:48 PM Page 33

the nation’s poor. They held out the prospect of modifying and abolishing the policy over time.

The Results In 2008, the BN won 140 seats and the opposition alliance 82, in the 222-member parliament. This year, the BN suffered a net loss of 7 seats, winning 133 seats to 89. In the state elections, the opposition held Kelantan in 2008 but also gained control in the northern and western states of Kedah, Perak and Selangor. It soon lost Perak because of defections, but had hopes of recovering it this time around. It not only failed to recover Perak, but also lost Kedah.

It is necessary to go more deeply into the results to understand their true significance.

The opposition managed to break through former BN strongholds in Johore and East Malaysia, while losing some ground in areas where it performed strongly at the last election: it needed to retain its strength in the latter and make a bigger breakthrough if it was going to win.

While the BN won a clear majority of parliamentary seats (60 percent), it did so with a minority of the popular vote (46.5 percent). The opposition won 40 percent of the seats with just under 50 percent (49.9 percent) of the popular vote. The new government therefore has a problem of legitimacy. This outcome put a spotlight on opposition claims that constituency boundaries and electorates are gerrymandered in favor of the BN, by weighting representation in favor of rural areas where UMNO’s strength is greatest. This issue is unlikely to go away.

The most troubling feature of the elections may be a deepening of the division of Malaysians along community lines. The United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the main component of the BN, held its ground quite well, and gained some support in localities won by the opposition in the last election. However, the Indian component of the BN was practically dead on its feet before the vote, and the Malaysian Chinese Association’s vote collapsed, with former supporters chiefly turning to the DAP. The DAP was the biggest winner in the elections with a 10seat gain, turning it into the largest party within the PR. The PKR lost one seat and PAS lost two, leaving them with 30 and 21 respectively, compared to the DAP’s 38.

This will make the PR more vulnerable to the taunt that it stands for minority interests, and its problems will not be eased by PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim’s stated intenJUNE/JULY 2011

tion to step down as party and alliance leader at some point after this election.

Following this year’s outcome, it is likely that both sides will already be thinking ahead about how to win next time, so that political life in Malaysia over the next four years or so will sometimes resemble one protracted election campaign, with goodies on offer or promised and hard decisions avoided; communal relations will become more complicated, as some politicians play upon community differences and others try to build stronger cross-community ties; and the BN, PKR and PAS all are likely to have new leaders before the next elections. ❑

Terrorism…

Continued from page 11

the arguments Israeli politicians give for allowing Israeli squatters to keep the Palestinian land in the West Bank that they have usurped is that attempting to move them back out would produce violence. I.e., the settlers not only actually terrorize the Palestinians, but they form a terrorism threat for Israel proper (as the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin discovered).

Even more recently, it is difficult for me to see much of a difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Baruch Goldstein, perpetrator of the Hebron massacre.

Or there was the cold-blooded bombing of the Ajmer shrine in India by Bhavesh Patel and a gang of Hindu nationalists.

Chillingly, they were disturbed when a second bomb they had set did not go off, so that they did not wreak as much havoc as they would have liked. Ajmer is an ecumenical Sufi shrine also visited by Hindus, and these bigots wanted to stop such openminded sharing of spiritual spaces because they hate Muslims.

Buddhists have committed a lot of terrorism and other violence as well. Many in the Zen orders in Japan supported militarism in the first half of the 20th century, for which their leaders later apologized.

And, you had Inoue Shiro’s assassination campaign in 1930s Japan. Nowadays militant Buddhist monks in Burma/Myanmar are urging on an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya.

As for Christianity, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda initiated hostilities that displaced two million people. Although it is an African cult, it is Christian in origin and the result of Western Christian missionaries preaching in Africa. If Saudi Wahhabi preachers can be in part blamed for the Taliban, why do Christian missionaries skate when we consider the blowback from their pupils?

Despite the very large number of European Muslims, in 2007-2009 less than 1 percent of terrorist acts in that continent were committed by people from that community.

Terrorism is a tactic of extremists within each religion, and within secular religions of Marxism or nationalism. No religion, including Islam, preaches indiscriminate violence against innocents.

It takes a peculiar sort of blindness to see Christians of European heritage as “nice” and Muslims as inherently violent, given the 20th century death toll I mentioned above. Human beings are human beings and the species is too young and too interconnected to have differentiated much from group to group. People resort to violence out of ambition or grievance, and the more powerful they are, the more violence they seem to commit. The good news is that the number of wars is declining over time, and World War II, the biggest charnel house in history, hasn’t been repeated. ❑

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cook_34-35_Special Report 5/15/13 7:55 PM Page 34

Critics Object to Israel Hosting European Under-21 Soccer Championship SpecialReport

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Jonathan Cook

Beitar Jerusalem’s supporters chant slogans during an Israeli championship soccer match between Beitar Jerusalem and the Israeli Arab team Bnei Sakhnin, Feb. 10, 2013. Three days earlier indictments were filed against four Beitar fans over charges relating to racism. srael is celebrating its biggest soccer

Icoup this summer, when it hosts a major

international tournament for the first time: the European Under-21 Championship.

The decision to select Israel as the venue was made by European soccer’s governing body, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).

Many observers have been surprised that, at a time when Israel is refusing to revive peace talks, it is being warmly embraced by international soccer.

“A large sporting event is an ideal opportunity for Israel to present itself as a normal country,” said Tamir Sorek, an Israeli-Palestinian sociologist at the University of Florida who has written extensively on Israeli soccer.

It is precisely this scenario that frustrates Palestinians and their supporters, Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His most recent book is Disappearing Palestine.

34

who fear that Israel is exploiting soccer as a way to distract attention from its occupation of Palestine and the troubling record inside Israel of anti-Arab racism in the stands and dressing room.

One sports official in Ramallah, who wished not to be named, said: “The reality is that Israel uses every opportunity to undermine our sporting capacities, just as the occupation is being used to destroy us politically, culturally and economically.”

UEFA’s decision to let Israel host the under-21 tournament from June 5 to 18 appears to reflect its purported vision of fostering peace through soccer. Michel Platini, head of UEFA, wrote to the Israel Football Association (IFA) last year, saying the championship would “be a beautiful celebration of football that, once again, will bring people together.”

The Israeli and Palestinian national teams do not meet, because Israel plays in Europe and the Palestinian squad in Asia.

But opposition has been growing, from Palestinians, solidarity activists and—perTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

haps most suprisingly—from within the ranks of the soccer elite.

Last November, after Israel launched its eight-day attack on Gaza that damaged several soccer grounds, including the national stadium, 62 leading European soccer players signed a statement protesting the UEFA decision.

Chelsea’s Eden Hazard, Arsenal’s Abou Diaby and Paris Saint-Germain’s Jeremy Menez were among those who wrote that the tournament would be “seen as a reward for actions that are contrary to sporting values,” adding that Palestinians “endure a desperate existence under occupation.”

The statement also noted Israel’s repeated attacks on Palestinian sporting venues, its jailing of its leading athletes and restrictions on Palestinian teams’ freedom of movement.

In a more opaque protest in March, Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the world’s bestknown players, refused to join his Portuguese teammates in swapping shirts with their Israeli opponents at the end of a World Cup qualifier in Tel Aviv. Ronaldo has a long record of supporting Palestinian causes.

Palestinian soccer clubs have also voiced their dismay at Israel’s increasing integration into the European game. Last October they protested the decision by Spanish team Barcelona FC to invite Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas and held for five years in Gaza, as guest of honor at one of their matches—at a time when thousands of Palestinians are in Israeli jails.

Writing to Sandro Rosell, head of Barcelona, the clubs noted that Israel had prevented Palestinian players from attending matches in Mauritania and Singapore, leading to the team’s elimination from international competitions.

They wrote: “Many times the Palestinian team could not assemble, train or participate in tournaments because of Israeli illegal restrictions on player movement.”

The clubs added that Israeli actions were “reminiscent of the notorious racist ‘pass law’ in apartheid South Africa. This is a continuous systematic policy for all of us that has decimated our involvement in international sport.”

The UEFA decision has come at a time when the movement to isolate Israel through a campaign of boycotts, divestJUNE/JULY 2013

cook_34-35_Special Report 5/15/13 7:55 PM Page 35

ments and sanctions—known as BDS—has begun to capture international attention.

But it has not only been the treatment of Palestinians under occupation that has sparked opposition to Israel’s hosting of the youth tournament.

Scenes of extreme racial abuse in Israeli stands in recent months also have raised questions about the degree to which UEFA’s decision squares with its stated commitment to “zero tolerance for any form of racism and discrimination.”

One premier league club in particular, Beitar Jerusalem, has long prided itself on being the only major Israeli squad never to have fielded an Arab or Muslim player, despite a fifth of Israel’s population being of Palestinian origin. Cries of “Deaths to the Arabs!” and “Muhammad is dead!” are commonplace at its matches.

Yoav Borowitz, a sports columnist for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, has criticized both Luzon, president of the IFA, for “remaining inert” on Beitar’s blatant racism and the authorities for failing to enforce anti-discrimination laws. “Have any of Beitar’s managers paid a fine or sat behind bars on account of decades of discrimination?” he asked.

When in January Beitar finally signed two Muslim players from Chechnya, many fans vented their fury. The pair were greeted with a torrent of abuse and a large banner declaring “Beitar: pure forever”; they have been spat at and endured walkouts. Shortly after they were signed, the Beitar clubhouse was burned down by hardcore fans known as La Familia.

Last year Beitar also made headlines when hundreds of fans rampaged through a Jerusalem shopping mall, beating Palestinian workers and customers.

Rifaat Turk, the most successful Arab player in Israeli soccer and the first to be selected for the national team, in 1976, recalled that every time he stepped on the field it “started to rain,” there was so much spitting.

“Things have not improved,” he added.

“Racism is endemic to the Israeli game. By staying silent, it’s as if the [Israeli] football authorities, the government and state officials approve of the racism.”

Although the BDS movement has already scored successes with musicians refusing to perform in Israel, and with academic boycotts and church divestment campaigns, the UEFA decision has now fueled the first serious demands for a sports boycott, modelled on actions against apartheid-era South Africa.

Indeed, South Africa, where most sports were segregated based on color, eventually JUNE/JULY 2013

found itself barred from the Olympics, suspended from world soccer, and excluded from cricket tours. International rugby teams also came under strong pressure to stay away from the apartheid state.

According to Omar Barghouti, a leading BDS campaigner in the West Bank, the UEFA tournament has pushed Israel’s abuses of Palestinian sports and athletes onto the BDS agenda.

“Just imagine the Commonwealth Games being held in South Africa at the height of apartheid. It is this kind of exceptionalism that Israel expects and receives from Europe,” he said. “European politicians simply are not reflecting public opinion.”

Barghouti pointed to a BBC poll last year that found two-thirds majorities or higher in the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany viewing Israel’s influence in the world as “mainly negative.”

The Case of Mahmoud Sarsak The moral case for a boycott has been exemplified by Mahmoud Sarsak, a former Palestinian player whose flourishing career was cut short by the Israeli military authorities.

Sarsak was arrested in 2009 as he tried to leave Gaza using the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing point to attend a match in the West Bank. At the time he was a promising 22-year-old midfield player.

Although Sarsak was held in administrative detention for three years, accused of membership in Islamic Jihad, he was never charged and his lawyers were denied access to the evidence against him. Such practices have been widely condemned by international human rights organizations.

Sarsak was finally freed last July after a 92-day hunger strike. According to Israeli sources, he was released following private lobbying by the IFA, itself facing heavy pressure from Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body.

Over the past few months Sarsak has been taking advantage of his freedom to persuade UEFA officials to reverse their decision.

“Israel works endlessly to repress Palestinian football, just like it does many other forms of Palestinian culture,” he said. “Israel does not behave like a normal state where citizens can play sport freely.

“UEFA is legitimizing Israel’s continued occupation, oppression and apartheid policies,” he charged. “There can be no place in football for segregation and oppression.”

Palestine was admitted to FIFA in 1998 but was disqualified from hosting international matches until 2008, when an interTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

national stadium was built in Gaza. A few months later, Sarsak pointed out, during the winter of 2008-09, Israel bombed the stadium, along with the Gaza Strip’s other major sporting facilities and the Palestinian Paralympic Committee building. Israel again attacked the stadium last year.

Sarsak has also highlighted Israel’s detention of other leading soccer players, including goalkeeper Omar Abu Rois and striker Muhammad Nimr, again without charges. Another striker, Zakaria Issa, jailed for 16 years, died of cancer last year, a few months after being released on humanitarian grounds.

Support for the Palestinian campaign has been spreading.

In European countries, “Red Card Israeli Racism” groups have been established, staging protests at UEFA offices to pressure officials. In April, 40 activists occupied the offices of the French Football Association after its chairman, Noel Le Graet, refused to meet them.

Red Card’s biggest protest was scheduled for May 24 in London, with a march to the Grosvenor Hotel, where UEFA was to hold its annual congress.

International soccer officials have not been immune to these criticisms. In an apparent move to disarm opposition to staging the event in Israel, FIFA announced in March a plan to invest $4.5 million in Palestinian soccer.

The money, designed to provide a major fillip for the Palestinian national game, will be used to build a headquarters for the Palestinian Football Association; establish a soccer academy; and install two artificial soccer fields. A further $200,000 will be used to rebuild the national stadium in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israel has been seeking to highlight its use of soccer to build bridges.

In April it promoted a “meet your neighbor” tournament near Tel Aviv between young players from Israel, occupied Palestine and Jordan.

“The tournament will teach Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians to be better neighbors in the future,” regional cooperation minister Silvan Shalom told reporters.

But Barghouti warned that the notion of peace-building through sport was an illusion—one based on “the false premise that the colonizers and the colonized, the oppressors and the oppressed, are equally responsible for the ‘conflict.’”

Sorek of the University of Florida agreed, arguing that such initiatives “legitimize the status quo” rather than “addressing the issue of how to achieve justice for all.” ❑ 35

hanley-race_36-39v2_Special Report 5/16/13 3:41 PM Page 36

On 65th Anniversary of Nakba Palestinians And Israelis More Separate—and Unequal SpecialReport

By Delinda C. Hanley

Hebron’s segregated Shuhada Street in February 2012: one side for Arabs, the other for Israelis. (Photo riseresistandrevolt.wordpress.com). azing at photographs by Gordon

GParks on view from March to May at

the Adamson Gallery in Washington, DC, it’s impossible not to compare the “separate-and-unequal” lives his photos captured in 1956 Alabama with the lives of present-day Palestinians and non-Jewish Israelis. As we commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, Parks’ photos challenge viewers to end segregation, wherever it occurs, including in Israel and occupied Palestine.

Indeed, in this country African Americans make up 12 percent of the population, while 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Arabs. America still has a long way to go in treating all its citizens equally, but that at least is the ideal toward which we strive.

Parks’ powerful images, capturing iconic moments in America’s past, are happy yet sad, innocent yet evil: An African-American father buys treats for his children at a window for “colored” shoppers in Shady Gove, Alabama. In “Outside Looking In,” black girls gaze through a fence at a whites-only playground in Mobile. A family lines up at segregated drinking fountain. A smartly dressed woman and her Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

36

daughter stand outside a department store with a “colored entrance.” A sign showing desolate land is on sale—for colored buyers.

Many Washington Report readers vividly remember this shameful chapter of American history. It’s been a driving force for publisher Andy Killgore, who grew up in segregated Alabama and, as a result, felt compelled to spend his life fighting injustice. It drove this writer’s mother, Donna Curtiss, to take her then-3-year-old son, Drew, and her aunt to a 1959 sit-in protest at a suburban Virginia drugstore counter.

Long-time reader Vincent Larsen, from Billings, Montana, grew passionate about combating intolerance and racism as a result of growing up playing with AfricanAmerican children. His father taught at Tougaloo College, a traditionally black campus, in Jackson, Mississippi. It was unbelievable to Vince that he couldn’t go into town with his friends. Every time he gets a letter calling for civil and human rights for Palestinians published in his local paper, Larsen says, he gets hate mail and phone calls charging him with being antiSemitic.

A growing number of Americans believe it is immoral for their tax dollars to continue to support Israel’s illegal and racist THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

occupation. U.S. financial and diplomatic support makes us complicit when Israel practices ethnic and religious discrimination that is totally contrary to everything present-day America stands for. If ordinary Americans knew what goes on every day in Israel and occupied Palestine our support for Israel would dry up. But there is rarely any news on U.S. TV, radio or newspapers about the pervasive racism in what is described as the only democracy in the Middle East. Perhaps that’s because anyone who criticizes Israeli policies and practices is slandered and called anti-Semitic.

Americans were appalled by racism in apartheid South Africa—but today Americans are providing military aid to a country that treats Palestinians far worse. In 2002 Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu said, “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”

Israel’s army currently operates 27 permanent staffed checkpoints in the West Bank, as well as hundreds of roadblocks in the form of concrete blocks, piles of dirt, JUNE/JULY 2013

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LEFT: An Israeli soldier stands guard in front of an amusement park during a military operation carried out to arrest an alleged militant in the West Bank city of Jenin, Feb. 3, 2013. (SAIF DAHLAH/AFP); BELOW: Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956 (Photograph by Gordon Parks Copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation. Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation.

or trenches which prevent access to and from—and between—towns and villages, according to the Israeli monitors with B’Tselem. At these checkpoints, which constitute the most severe restriction on movement of Palestinians, Israel’s security forces check every non-Jewish person who crosses, resulting in frequent lengthy deJUNE/JULY 2013

lays. In addition to the damage that these restrictions cause to the Palestinian economy, they have also affected the ability of Palestinians to receive medical treatment, as ambulances have often been delayed for hours at these checkpoints.

Israel’s law of return allows a Jew from any part of the world to become a citizen of THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Israel. But it bars even Muslims and Christians who were born in Israel from returning to live there if they have been forced out of Israel or even if they have only been absent for a time (see story p. 17).

Israel demolishes Palestinian homes if they are built without a permit—which is virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain. In East Jerusalem there is a systematic policy which aims to remove the Palestinian population from the city in order to establish a Jewish majority.

In March 2013, a Palestinian family with Israeli citizenship purchased a house in a new development in the historical city of Acre. After finding out, Jewish residents of the Hakerem Bet neighborhood gathered waving Israeli flags and imploring the Jewish seller to cancel the sale, according to a May 15 article published in the The Palestine Chronicle. Meanwhile, there now are more than 130 settlements—all illegal—housing over half a million Israelis in land promised to Palestinians for their state. An American Jew from New York can move to a government-subsidized home in a religiously exclusive armed-tothe-teeth settlement. Imagine if AfricanAmericans or Hispanics were forbidden from living in an American neighborhood or apartment building.

Settlers harass or even shoot Palestinians who try to farm their own land near settlements. They burn Palestinians’ olive or fruit trees or steal their crops, and no one is ever held accountable. “The only weapons we have are our cameras,” a mother of seven turned amateur camerawoman Alia Nawaja told The Economist after Israeli soldiers cleared Palestinian farmers from their land and a Jewish settler brought her sheep to graze in Palestinian wheat fields.

Israel supplies uninterrupted water to pools and homes in Jewish settlements, which use four times as much water as their Palestinian neighbors. Palestinians receive water shipped once a week in trucks.

Israeli soldiers have destroyed U.S.- and EU-funded water projects, cisterns and wells, as well as solar paneling.

Land is routinely confiscated from its Palestinian owners. Israel declares private 37

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Smoke from riots between settlers and Palestinians rises in the sky as Jewish settler children play in a pool near the illegal Givat Ronen outpost in the West Bank, July 26, 2010. Jewish settlers, who use four times as much water as their Muslim and Christian neighbors, have unlimited access to water. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images).

Palestinian property “state land,” then releases it later to build Jewish settlements.

Or the military confiscates Palestinian land to build the separation barrier, establish a live-fire “military zone,” create “secure zones” around settlements, or build roads for “Jewish use only” to provide access to those settlements. Imagine if only whites were permitted to use major U.S. highways or beltways.

Those roads (and Israel’s separation wall) not incidentally isolate Palestinian towns and villages from each other. This happened years ago on a smaller scale right here in Washington, DC and the effect was catastrophic. The Anacostia Freeway (I295), constructed in the 1950s, carved up the neighborhood and imposed a barrier separating the historically African-American Anacostia neighborhood from the Anacostia River waterfront. In the ensuing decades the community battled crime, drugs, joblessness and despair. A 30-year, $10 billion Anacostia Waterfront initiative 38

is attempting to reverse this damage and reconnect neighborhoods on both sides of the road.

In March Israel’s transportation Ministry introduced a separate bus system for Arabs and Jews living in the occupied West Bank and commuting to work in Israel. “The decision to separate bus lines in the territories is shocking and turns racism into the norm,” Jessica Montell of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem told Israel’s Army Radio. “A Palestinian Rosa Parks is needed to insist upon sitting on Jewish bus lines.”

In Beit Shemesh, 19 miles west of Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox residents have chased or spat on modern Orthodox schoolgirls, thrown eggs and bags of excrement and yelled insults at them. There are signs instructing women to cross to the other side of a street, dress modestly, and refrain from congregating in certain areas.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has described African migrants in THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Israel as “illegal infiltrators” that threaten “our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.” Knesset member Miri Regev described refugees from Sudan and Eritrea as “a cancer in our body.” Outgoing Shas Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who once called on Israel’s army to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure and “to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages,” has irresponsibly claimed refugees and migrants are behind a massive crime wave, including rapes of Israeli women. Nearly six decades after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against segregated schools in Brown v. Board of Education, Israeli Jews, Jews of Ethiopian descent and Arab Israelis are, more often than not, educated in separate and unequal schools.

Ministry of Education civics lessons discourage any relations between Jewish boys and Arab girls. Israel has two justice systems, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians (see story p. 22). In March a Muslim schoolteacher wearing a headscarf was attacked by yeshiva students in Jerusalem.

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Another Arab woman was punched by teenage Jewish girls in a separate incident. According to Deborah Siegel, a teacher in Jerusalem, these events are growing in number. “It feels like it’s getting worse and worse,” she told a Haaretz reporter.

“I feel that the racism is more rampant, and that it’s happening all over the country. I notice it more from the kids’ mouths and in the newspapers. It’s not just about Arabs, it’s against foreign workers, it’s against Haredim.”

Police “lost” hours of crucial taped testimony that could have convicted assailants in the case of the Zion Square “lynching” in August 2012, when an anti-Arab group of Jewish Israeli teenagers beat Jamal Julani, leaving him unconscious. In early May settler children in Hebron attacked Palestinian children walking home from Qortoba school. Police arrested the 12- and 11-year-old Palestinian brothers who were accosted, in addition to the Swedish activist who was peacefully objecting to their arrest.

Israeli society as a whole is becoming more racist. Progressive Jews are leaving the country. It should come as no surprise that a settler state based on the rule of one ethnic group would be steeped in racist, religiously exclusive public policies.

Why, when the vast majority of Americans no longer tolerate racism, does Washington continue to provide financial aid for Israel’s military and allow tax-free contributions to a racist foreign state? U.S. tax dollars would be better spent at home, ending food insecurity, educational and health care inequity, and improving access to jobs for Americans—of every race and religion. ❑

TOP RIGHT: Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956; BOTTOM RIGHT: Untitled, Mobile, Alabama, 1956.

(Photographs by Gordon Parks Copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation. Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation).

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Jonathan Kuttab Kicks Off Memorable Friends of Sabeel/L.A. Conference

By Pat and Samir Twair

tification, aquifers have been damaged, and sewage systems have been systematically bombed, causing 23 million gallons of polluted water to empty daily into the Mediterranean.

The World Health Organization has this data and publishes them, she noted, yet the U.S. and Europe don’t pressure Israel to end these tactics. Exposure to a high level of nitrates in the water causes more health problems, Roy pointed out, with more than 10 percent of Gaza’s children anemic and malnourished, and breast cancer and birth defects increasing.

Human rights attorney Jonathan Kuttab. he arc of history bends toward jus-

“Ttice” was the premise of human

rights attorney Jonathan Kuttab’s keynote address to more than 350 attendees at the April 6 conference of Friends of Sabeel of Los Angeles and Orange County in Pasadena’s Presbyterian Church.

Four things have happened to effect change in the incredible imbalance of the Israel-Palestine deadlock, stated the cofounder of the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence. The first, he said, is the so-called Arab Spring, which has given people more control of their lives, bringing a rapid change not unlike the falls of the Berlin Wall and the shah of Iran and the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The second change is Israel’s shift to the right, no longer attempting to hide its use of brute force to control the Palestinians.

This has led to Kuttab’s third factor: that U.S. support of Israel is ebbing. He cited as proof the fact that AIPAC no longer commands automatic allegiance from all Jews, and failed to stop President Barack Obama’s nomination of John Kerry as secretary of state or Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense.

The fourth change, according to Kuttab, is in U.S. evangelicals such as former PresPat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.

40

Grim Gaza Facts Harvard professor Sara Roy offered a depressing outlook for Gaza during a workshop she conducted and the second plenary speech. In her “Focus on Gaza” workshop, the scholar emphasized that Israel’s deliberate environmental destruction of Gaza is dangerous and has turned it into an aid-reliant state. Farmlands have been flattened by Israeli bulldozers, causing deserTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR

STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR

ident Jimmy Carter, who points out that Christian commitment includes justice and says he can’t support military occupation.

Don’t be discouraged by the longevity of the struggle, Kuttab urged. “There’s a difficult fight ahead. The U.S. is the last bastion of support for Israel. You’re in the belly of the beast, you’re frontline warriors!” he exclaimed.

Kuttab’s four-point strategy for the battle ahead is to avoid claims of symmetry between the oppressor and the oppressed, not to accept that Israel alone can veto any decision in negotiations, not to fear criticism, and not to look for the perfect solution by falling into the trap of arguing for one state or two states.

Kuttab concluded by stressing that all should agree that apartheid is evil and that security (for Israel) doesn’t come by humiliating others. “Do not be apologetic,” he advised, “don’t expect everyone to agree. If one side doesn’t like something—so what? Boycotts and sanctions are okay, but what’s off the table are suicide bombers and a pre-emptive strike on Iran.”

Dr. Jamal Nassar, dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at California State University, San Bernardino, delivered the first plenary speech, on “The Ordeal of the Palestinian Occupation in Everyday Life.” Since 1948, he noted, Israel has practiced apartheid by making Palestinians of the Galilee live under military law. Now there are separate settler roads and buses, as well as 500 checkpoints to protect Jews who illegally stake claims to West Bank land. “I don’t agree God prefers one group over others. If this was so, I’d be an atheist,” stated the Palestine-born Roman Catholic.

Southern California Chronicle

Dr. Sara Roy. In answer to a question about the vast natural gas deposits off Gaza’s coast, Roy said Gaza will never see the profits. Israel imposed its maritime blockade of Gaza after the gas fields were discovered to halt any possible claims by Gaza, and imposed a three-mile limit on Palestinian fishermen, thus ruining their incomes (see story p. 24).

Hamas was elected in 2006 on a secular plan for change, she continued. “Hamas was the legitimately elected government [in both Gaza and the West Bank], but it was criminalized by the West. The U.S. thought by putting economic pressure on the Gazans, they’d overthrow Hamas. Instead there are two authorities pitted against each other. The claim was that Hamas was unwilling to compromise with Fatah, but Hamas was willing to work with it.”

Dr. Mark Braverman, program director of KAIROS USA, offered the third plenary speech, titled “Justice and Only Justice.”

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Iranian-American actor Pej Vahdat, who plays the role of Muslim lab assistant Arastoo Vazri in the TV series,“Bones,” accepted MPAC’s award, acknowledging the series’ inclusion of a sympathetic Muslim role for five consecutive seasons.

During an earlier workshop, he explained that kairos is a Greek word meaning time or season or the historical moment for change to occur. Noting that he is of the Jewish faith, Braverman nevertheless spoke with the vehemence of an evangelical preacher, insisting that KAIROS is not anti-Semitic, but it is unapologetically Christian and objects to Judeo-Christian exceptionalism.

“God didn’t exclusively give land to one group of chosen people,” he exclaimed. “We are all chosen people.” He went on to say that KAIROS nonviolently opposes occupation because it is oppression and tyranny.

“Israel is in trouble so long as it refuses to admit what it’s done to the Palestinian people. Go to Jerusalem,” he urged the audience, “and you will see the soldiers and the persecution that Jesus witnessed.”

Gaza Book Talk

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STAFF PHOTOS S. TWAIR

MPAC Media Awards Academy Award-winning actor Dustin Hoffman was scheduled to present a Muslim Public Affairs Council 22nd Media Award to Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat at an April 27 ceremony in the Long Beach Hilton Hotel, but illness prevented the film legend from doing so. Nonetheless, the 600-plus guests rose to offer a standing ovation to Rabbi Leonard Beerman when he walked onstage to present the award.

Beerman, who is rabbi emeritus of Leo Baeck Temple, explained that he has known actor Hoffman for 35 years and officiated at his wedding. So when his friend, MPAC senior adviser Dr. Maher Hathout, asked him to request Hoffman to present the award, Beerman set a precedent by asking a celebrity for a favor.

Hoffman e-mailed back the same day from Paris, where he was promoting “Quartet,” his first directoral effort, and agreed to the rabbi’s request providing he was back in the U.S. by mid-April. The actor went on to say he’d viewed Burnat’s Academy Award-nominated documentary, “5 Broken Cameras,” (see April 2013 Washington Report, p. 50) and admired his work and his nonviolent mission for peace.

Plans proceeded for the awards ceremony, but two days before the event, Hoffman sent his regrets, along with an audio tape of congratulations which was aired during the presentation. In accepting the award, Burnat said he spent seven years making “5 Broken Cameras” and that his documentation of his village of Bil’in’s weekly peaceful protests of Israel’s confiscation of its land could never have been brought to fruition if not for foreign support.

Independent filmmaker Lena Khan presented the MPAC Media Award to the Sun-

TOP: Dr. Mark Braverman. MIDDLE: At the MPAC 22nd Media Awards (l-r) Salam alMarayati, Rabbi Leonard Beerman and filmmaker Emad Burnat. ABOVE: Linda Gharib. dance Film Institute for its mentoring of such feature films from the Middle East and South Asia as “5 Broken Cameras,” “Paradise Now,” “Amreeka” and “Wajda.”

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Linda Todd Gharib read from her book For the Love of Hamoudi (2011 Foundation Press, Amsterdam) at an April 7 book signing in the Santa Monica home of Karin Pally. Gharib has written an inspirational memoir about her eight-year Internet romance with a young Gazan reporter whom she married in May 2009.

The author read excerpts from her first chapter, which relates the intense anticipation both felt as they waited on either side of the Rafah crossing as she entered Gaza from Egypt with a Code Pink delegation delivering playground equipment for a school bombed by the Israelis during Operation Cast Lead.

For the first time they could touch each other’s skin, hug and hear the actual sound of their voices. Three precious days of Gharib’s three-week Gaza visa were consumed by red tape for complicated marriage documents, but the two were officially wed at last and began married life in the vacated apartment of Hamoudi’s friends.

Gharib returned to her job and five children in Vancouver, BC but spent more than a year trying to rejoin her husband in Gaza until he obtained permission to relocate to Canada. She finally was reunited with him in August 2010. He continued working as a correspondent for the Chinese news agency Xinhua, while she found a job teaching English for grades K12 at Gaza’s American International School.

Scarcely two months later, she was immobilized by a dangerously high fever and rushed to the hospital, where Gaza doctors said there was nothing they could do. Miraculously the Canadian Embassy gained permission for Hamoudi to accompany his comatose wife by ambulance to a Tel Aviv hospital. The diagnosis was grim: encephalitis (severe inflammation of the brain). Somehow, after weeks, Gharib regained consciousness.

The Canadian Embassy once more waived regulations and permitted Hamoudi to be with his wife on the journey to Vancouver.

Gharib has fully recovered, although a neurologist told her that her return to health is miraculous. The two also believe in miracles, as they live happily with her five children in Vancouver and he awaits completion of documents to work in Canada. ❑ 41

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By Elaine Pasquini

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

generation, is “at the top of our list,” the minister noted, stressing the need to create jobs and increase the GDP. “The young generation in Egypt is our hope for a new Egypt,” he said, “and to do our job we have to set the groundwork.”

A key element of Helmy’s vision involves the Suez Canal, Egypt’s vital shipping route, becoming a high-tech logistical hub by increasing the infrastructure to expand the submarine cables that transport data information from the west to the east.

Egypt’s geographical position makes it the logical nerve center for this initiative.

Helmy brings outstanding skills and 30 years of experience in the IT sector to his Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information ministerial position. During his career he was managing Technology Atef Helmy. director of Oracle Egypt and gypt’s Minister of Communications and launched global support centers for Oracle Information Technology Atef Helmy customers worldwide, which helped proled a delegation of Egyptian businessmen pel Egypt into one of the top five providers and policymakers to California’s Silicon of outsourcing and offshore services.

Valley March 27. The group visited the gi“Egypt has all the ingredients for sucants of the high-tech industry, including cess and I am sure we will have a better fuMicrosoft, Oracle, Intel, Cisco and ture, despite these difficult times,” the Hewlett-Packard, and connected with minister concluded. members of the local Bay Area Egyptian community. The delegation also met with American Egyptian Strategic Alliance TechWadi, a non-profit organization build- Founded in 2011, the American Egyptian ing bridges between Silicon Valley and the Strategic Alliance (AESA) is a non-profit Arab world and striving to empower the organization that strives to assist American next generation of high-tech Arab and decision makers in shaping U.S. policies toward Egypt, and encourages Egypt to furArab-American entrepreneurial leaders.

One of the trip’s goals was to maintain ther the creation of a civil society based on the presence of the American companies the universal values of human dignity, dethat have been working in Egypt for many mocratic process, freedom of speech and years, Helmy told a group of leading tech- individual rights. Comprising mainly nology professionals on the final day of his Americans of Egyptian heritage who share visit. Other goals included partnering with a common interest in promoting the strong American firms to achieve Egypt’s objec- ties between the U.S. and Egypt, AESA tives in the areas of infrastructure, cloud aims to encourage U.S. policy makers to ascomputing and e-commerce. Enabling in- sist in building a secure and stable Egypt.

As the first U.S. Egyptian 501(c)(4) lobnovation and entrepreneurship, particularly among the quality talent of the next bying organization, AESA has the ability to support, oppose, or call to action on any Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist specific legislation concerning Americanbased in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Egyptian relations. AESA advocates a re-

E

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Northern California Chronicle

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

Egyptian Delegation Visits Silicon Valley, CIT Minister Shares Vision of “New Egypt”

Kais Menoufy, president of the American Egyptian Strategic Alliance. structuring of American financial aid to post-revolutionary Egypt to better support the country’s economic and social infrastructure. For more information on AESA, which is a volunteer-based organization, visit <http://americanegyptiansa.org>.

Gaza’s Ark Fund-raiser Keep Hope Alive and 14 Friends of Palestine, Marin, co-sponsored a March 24 benefit for Gaza’s Ark at San Anselmo’s First Presbyterian Church. The event was held in memory of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old peace activist who was killed March 16, 2003, while trying to prevent a Palestinian home in Gaza from being bulldozed by the Israeli military. Hannah Romanowsky, the Romanza Dancers and the musical group Helm entertained the audience with Middle Eastern music and dance; Greta Berlin, co-author of Freedom Sailors, personal accounts of the first voyage of the Free Gaza Movement (available from the AET Book Club), was the guest speaker.

“This is a celebration of Rachel Corrie’s life and it’s also a celebration for those of us who managed to go on this crazy first trip,” Berlin said. “The book is not about the internationals on the boats, it is about the Palestinians who were waiting for us to arrive. For a few minutes or maybe a few days, the Palestinians of Gaza realized that they were not forgotten. It’s why we go JUNE/JULY 2013

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back over and over again. It’s why we’ve gone 12 times and it’s why Gaza’s Ark is going to leave Gaza and go out to Europe.”

An initiative of human rights supporters from around the world, Gaza’s Ark is not an aid project, Berlin explained, but a peaceful action to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza, stimulate the local economy and encourage trade. To achieve these goals, local Palestinians will build a boat using existing resources, which on completion will sail out of Gaza with a crew of internationals and Palestinians to deliver Palestinian products to international businesses and NGOs. Presently, Israel prohibits boats from going beyond three nautical miles from the Gaza coast.

This arbitrary restriction has caused incredible hardship on the local fishermen, as the limited coastal area has been overfished.

While accompanying Palestinian fishermen seven nautical miles off the coast of Deir al-Balah on Nov. 18, 2008, San Jose-based activist Darlene Wallach was arrested at gunpoint by the Israeli military. The Jewish activist and her twin, Donna, were two of the 44 passengers traveling in the two wooden fishing boats from Cyprus which successfully broke Israel’s 41-year naval blockade of the occupied enclave on Aug. 23, 2008. Wallach was held at Maasiyahu Prison near BenGurion International Airport in Lod until eventually being deported to New York City. For more information on Gaza’s Ark visit <www.gazaark.org>.

Between 1941 and 1978, under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, many of Tehran’s famous landmarks were created, including the Azadi Tower, the symbol of Tehran designed

by Hossein Amanat and completed in 1971. The Tehran City Theatre, designed by Ali Sardar Afkhami, opened in 1972, and since 1979 has been overseen by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The eight-year war between Iraq and Iran overshadowed all activities between 1980 and 1988, including architecture and urban planning, the architect noted.

During the question-and-answer period, an audience member commented on the irony that presently in the Islamic Republic, under the leadership of the Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, a large number of ultra-modern buildings—without traditional Islamic features—are being constructed in Iran, such as the 56-story Tehran International Tower, the tallest residential building in Iran, completed in 2005. Another person asked about restoration efforts in the country.

A few structures were being restored in Isfahan, the exquisite ancient capital of Persia from 1598 to 1722, Etessam said, but added that funds for renovation and preservation were extremely limited at this time.

Protest Against Drones

STAFF PHOTOS PHIL PASQUINI

Human rights supporters protested April 13 in San Francisco’s Hallidie Plaza against the Dr. Iraj Etessam on Iranian U.S. military’s use of drones.

Architecture “I am here today for Tariq Dr. Iraj Etessam, emeritus proAziz, a 16-year-old Pakistani fessor of architecture and urban who wanted to learn photogradesign at the University of phy to photograph the drone Tehran, discussed the contemstrikes, but was killed by a porary architecture of Iran April drone missile in November 4 at the Center for Middle East 2011,” Code Pink’s Toby Blomé Studies at the University of Caltold the crowd. “These drone ifornia at Berkeley. strikes are totally illegal.”

In a succinct one-hour lecWhile debate continues over ture, the professor discussed the the legality of the Obama adevolution of contemporary Iranministration’s drone assassinaian architecture from the Qajar TOP: Greta Berlin signs copies of Freedom Sailors at Gaza’s Ark tion program, human rights period (1785-1921) through fund-raiser. MIDDLE: Dr. Iraj Etessam. ABOVE: Toby Blomé of supporters consider the strikes today’s Islamic Republic. Eu- Code Pink speaks at a drone protest in San Francisco. immoral and are demanding rope’s industrial revolution was that the U.S. immediately stop one of the main early influences on the re- ings in Tehran and other cities. One mas- its drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, making of the Iranian capital, he said. terpiece from the Qajar period is the Borou- Afghanistan, and Somalia. Estimates of Tehran’s old walled city was reconstructed jerdi Mansion in Kashan, a city famous for deaths by drone strikes are over 3,000, inwith wide boulevards and large public its carpets, silks, textiles and covered cluding almost 200 children. squares, emulating European cities.

Other speakers included Omar Ali, bazaar. Another treasure in Kashan is the In his visual presentation, Etessam Agha Bozorg mosque and school built by Henry Clark and Richard Becker of the ANshowed images of many landmark build- Ustad Haj Sa’ban-ali in the late 1700s.

SWER coalition, organizer of the rally. ❑ JUNE/JULY 2013

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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By Jane Adas

COURTESY COHEN MEDIA GROUP

Jenin after Israel’s April 2002 massacre. When A m i n go e s t o Nablus his sister welcomes him, but others fear he is working for Shin Bet or possibly being tracked. A priest tells him, “Your wife died for yo u r re d e m p tion.”

B a c k i n Te l Aviv, an Israeli friend urges him to go to the police. When Amin A scene from “The Attack”: Siham and Amin embrace. refuses “to contribute to opr. Amin Jaafari (played by Ali Suli- pression,” the friend replies angrily, man, of “Paradise Now” and “The “WE allowed you to succeed.”

A key to understanding “The Attack” Lemon Tree”) is a model of assimilation.

He won scholarships to become a sur- is when Amin returns home after being geon, is respected by his Israeli col- interrogated to find “Child Killer” spray leagues, and so successful that he is the painted on his house and everything infirst Arab to receive the top award in his side trashed. As he surveys the mess, we field. He loves his wife of 15 years, Siham, see a copy of Edward Said’s memoir, Out a Christian from Nazareth. They live in a of Place. That is true not only for Amin, nice house in a good neighborhood. How but almost for the film itself, which is fragile Amin’s achievements are and at based on the best-selling (in France) what personal costs gradually become 2006 novel, L’Attentat (2006) by Yasmina clear as events unfold in “The Attack,” Khadra, the pseudonym of Tunisian author Mohammed Moulessehoul. In a Jandirected by Ziad Doueiri (“West Beirut”).

There are clues. A victim of a suicide uary 2013 interview with Now Lebanon, bombing refuses to be treated by an Arab Doueiri told how in 2006 an independoctor. Amin learns Siham was killed in dent division of Universal Studios asked the attack and may be the bomber. He is him and his co-writer, Joelle Touma, to handcuffed and interrogated, his wife ac- turn the novel into a script. The pair cused of destroying Israel’s trust in its worked on it for nine months and then Arab citizens. Some of his co-workers were fired because the script was too have taken out a petition to strip him of “orientalist.” Universal Studios would his citizenship. He accuses a colleague not make the film, but refused to sell it who is trying to comfort him of being “a back to Doueiri. It took a five-year struggle to regain possession of the script. nice Jew defending a poor Arab.”

The next struggle was for financing.

Amin hasn’t seen his family in Nablus since his father’s funeral years earlier. The Doha Film Institute in Qatar was Siham, however, had traveled to the the major backer. Then the Lebanese West Bank frequently to study medical Ministry of Culture refused to submit aspects of the occupation, including in “The Attack” as an entry for the Oscars because it wasn’t Lebanese enough and Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in had Israeli actors. That’s a shame, because “The Attack” is beautifully made the New York City metropolitan area.

D

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

New York City and Tri-StateNews and acted, genuinely human and profound. It might have won.

The Kairos Document Jamal Khader Daibes, a Catholic priest and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Bethlehem University in Palestine, is one of the 15 authors of the Kairos Palestine document of Dec. 20, 2009 calling on “the international community to stand by the Palestinian people who have faced oppression, displacement, suffering and clear apartheid for more than six decades.” Speaking at the Princeton Theological Seminary on April 4, Father Jamal introduced himself as being from a family that has been Christian for 2,000 years and as an Arab who shares the same culture with Muslims, and formerly with Jews.

Father Jamal’s earliest memory is of June 1967, when he was not yet three.

He was sitting on the ground with his hands on his head and soldiers pointing guns at the women and children. The men were taken elsewhere. Like most

STAFF PHOTO J. ADAS

“The Attack”: A Genuinely Human and Profound Film

Father Jamal Khader Daibes.

Palestinians, he has no memory of life before occupation. His home was raided three times, always at night, and his brothers arrested. In 1990, one brother was convicted of throwing stones in a trial that lasted three minutes, with the only evidence his dirty hands.

Father Jamal grew up believing that the Bible speaks about his land and his suffering. Only later did he learn that JUNE/JULY 2013

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JUNE/JULY 2013

331 to 333 with two abstentions. This, Ufford-Chase recalled, was his hardest moment at any General Assembly.

Can a Jewish State Be Democratic?

STAFF PHOTOS J. ADAS

Palestinians suffer for the wrong interpretation of some theologians who believe the Bible promises their land to a chosen people eternally—a promise, he said, that was “a menace to our very existence.” This has led to a personal struggle with the Bible, Father Jamal admitted, because he cannot accept a theology totally separated from justice and ethics. When he hears fundamentalist Christians talking about divine right to the land, Father Jamal said he feels “the need to defend God.” Even President Barack Obama, on his recent visit to Jerusalem, spoke about “redemption for the sons of Abraham,” which Father Jamal described as using biblical justification for political events that have led to the Palestinian nightmare.

The authors of Kairos Palestine represent different denominations and are a mixed group of old and young, men and women. For two years they met, prayed and reflected. All of them know what despair means, but have hope because “we have experience with resurrection.”

Kairos Palestine calls for “no theological cover-up for the sin of occupation.” The holy land should be a place of reconciliation and love, Father Jamal said, meaning inclusion rather than exclusion, with the rights of two peoples and three religions equally respected. He said he sees hope in the steady work of the churches in Palestine. The appeal now is to the international community to move beyond sympathy for Palestinians to “costly solidarity”—specifically to support boycott, divestment and sanctions. This constitutes peaceful resistance, he explained—an advocacy campaign not for revenge, but to free oppressor and oppressed alike.

One American denomination that anticipated Kairos Palestine is the Presbyterian Church. For years at its biennial meetings the Presbyterian General Assembly passed vague resolutions expressing “grave concern for the Israel/ Palestinian situation” which received no reaction at all. Then, in 2004, the Assembly passed a resolution to begin the process of selective, phased divestment from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation. Rick Ufford-Chase, who is on the founding board of Kairos USA, was then moderator of the assembly and this was his “first action with the gavel.”

He spoke March 16 in Princeton about the reactions to the resolution.

Within a month, he recalled, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote editorials calling Presbyterians anti-Semites.

TOP: Rick Ufford-Chase. ABOVE: Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark.

Two months after that, Ufford-Chase was summoned to a meeting with Jewish leaders from all three branches and various organizations. He assumed there would be a discussion, but instead he was lectured at and told to reverse the resolution. This set the tone for Presbyterian/Jewish relations ever since, Ufford-Chase said. After a year of dealing with angry people, Ufford-Chase was invited to the Islamic Society of North America. Dr. Sayyid Syeed rushed to embrace him, saying, “If we in the U.S. can’t reach across religions to work for peace, we have no right to expect it anywhere else.”

At the 2012 General Assembly, a motion to divest from Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Caterpillar passed in committee by more than 3:1, with support from groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, but then was defeated in the assembly, THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

“Can a Jewish State be Democratic?” is apparently such a dangerous question that the rabbi of the Upper West Side conservative Ansche Chesed synagogue, where the panel discussion was to have taken place, cancelled the contract. Fortunately Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, in order to “counter the trend in the Jewish community that restricts the terms of acceptable debate,” offered an alternative venue. The discussion among three Jewish panelists took place at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in lower Manhattan on April 4 before a large, thoroughly engaged audience.

Moderator Lizzy Ratner, journalist and co-editor of The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (available from the AET Book Club), asked each panelist three questions: Why is this issue important to you? Is Israel a democracy? Do American Jews have a role in shaping Israeli democracy?

Attorney Kathleen Peratis, a convert to Judaism and board member of Americans for Peace Now, described herself as first and foremost a civil libertarian.

She sees Israel within the Green Line as a flawed rather than failed democracy—structurally sound, but vulnerable to a government that is “close to ruining Israel as a Jewish democracy.”

American Jews with influence and power “are not us,” Peratis added, and the American government “does not serve a useful role.” She views efforts to restart the “peace process” as a setback.

Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, noted that the U.S. was founded on democracy for just a select group: white, propertyowning males. It took more than a century of struggle to gain equality for all.

Why, she asked, when the same is pushed for in Israel, is it considered a threat? Vilkomerson acknowledged that Israelis, who have the most to lose, worry about what greater equality would mean for them, but added that Palestinians (who already have lost the most) should not be asked to tolerate injustice and be patient in order to accommodate Israeli fears. She characterized Israel within the Green Line as an ambiguous democracy. The 25 percent of the population that is non-Jewish has 45

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the right to vote, but has never been included in a ruling coalition. They are second-class citizens with every aspect of their lives limited—including separate and unequal education, denial of access to land, and, with last year’s Nakba law, even the ability to acknowledge their own history.

Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark, co-host of WBAI radio’s “Beyond the Pale,” said Israel is a concern because its actions are not only bad for the Israeli people, but fuel anti-Semitism worldwide. Noting that millions of residents in lands Israel controls cannot vote and live under military law, while Jewish settlers vote and are subject to Israeli law, she declared that a distinct “Green Line Israel” is a fiction. This to Neimark makes a “slam dunk case” that Israel is not a democracy. Moreover, she continued, democratic Israel was doomed from the start by the goal of preserving its Jewish character. “Jewishness trumps democracy, even among the most liberal Zionists,” she pointed out. As evidence that “globally Israel’s reputation is irretrievable,” and that it is America’s support for Israel that enables it to be dysfunctional, Neimark reported that the Israel Project, which she described as a right-wing hasbara group, is closing down all operations in Asia to focus its resources in the U.S. American Jews, she concluded, have no role in shaping Israeli democracy. Rather, ”our role is to work to change our own government’s policy.” ❑

Congress Watch…

Continued from page 28

Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (RAZ), on April 24 wrote to Obama specifically asking “has the Assad regime—or Syrian elements associated with, or supported by, the Assad regime—used chemical weapons in Syria since the current conflict began?” The White House responded promptly the following day, with a classified briefing for senators, during which senators were given copies of identical replies to Levin and McCain stating that “our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.” The letter concludes by cautioning against precipitous actions, saying, “given the stakes involved, and what we have learned from our own recent experience, intelligence 46

assessments alone are not sufficient—only credible and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision making.”

That did not deter McCain, who immediately called for more aggressive military steps by the U.S., saying, “I think it’s pretty obvious that this red line has been crossed.” Previously, on March 21, Levin and McCain wrote to Obama saying, “we believe that there are credible options at your disposal, including limited military options, that would require neither putting U.S. troops on the ground nor acting unilaterally.” And at a March 19 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Levin endorsed the idea of establishing a no-fly zone inside Syria, with Graham calling for the U.S. to put “boots on the ground” to secure chemical weapons sites.

Others, however, were less quick to call for U.S. intervention. After the April 25 briefing, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said, “there’s probably a little bit of additional verification that needs to occur…I think there are a lot more serious and sober discussions ahead.” Even Ros-Lehtinen, who is usually hawkish on Arab-related matters, said only that it is time for the Obama “administration to put forth a cogent and decisive plan to deal with Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.” Earlier, at a March 20 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Syria, Chairman Royce said, “It has been said that the U.S. has no good options in Syria, and that’s probably true.”

Legislatively, on March 19 Sens. Robert Casey (D-PA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), joined by four others, introduced S. 617, the “Syria Democratic Transition” bill.

This large bill, as described in a Casey press release, “would authorize U.S. assistance for Syrian civilians and innocent victims of the conflict,…expand sanctions against the government of Bashar al-Assad, strengthen U.S. support for democraticallyoriented political opposition groups and help ensure stability and security in Syria during and after a political transition.”

In the House, Reps. Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Mike Rogers (R-MI), joined by two others, on March 21 introduced H.R. 1327, the “Free Syria” bill. This comprehensive bill would increase humanitarian and economic aid to the Syrian opposition as well as provide arms, training and intelligence support to “vetted” opposition groups. It would also set up a framework under which the administration could deploy anti-aircraft systems and allow the administration to develop a proTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

gram to find and destroy Syria’s chemical and biological weapons stockpiles.

Two New Palestinian-Related Bills Introduced On March 21 Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) introduced H.R. 1337, the “Palestinian Accountability” bill. It would prohibit the use of the term “Palestine” in any U.S. government document unless the Palestinian Authority meets a list of eight conditions, including recognizing “Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state” and excluding Hamas from participating in a unity government. The bill also would prohibit aid to the PA and U.S. contributions to the U.N. unless those same eight conditions are met. Finally, it would prohibit contributions to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) unless the agency meets a similar list of conditions. The bill has nine co-sponsors, including DeSantis.

Roskam with seven co-sponsors introduced on April 23 the non-binding H.Res. 177, “urging the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas to clarify a presidential succession plan, expand political freedom in the West Bank, and take preventative measures to limit the possibility of a Hamas takeover in the West Bank.”

Criticism of Aid to Egypt Continues, But More Muted The previously reported measures objecting to the delivery of F-16 aircraft and other military equipment to Egypt have gained no further support. Also, the “Egypt Accountability and Democracy Promotion” bill, H.R. 416, introduced by Ros-Lehtinen in January, “to condition security assistance and economic assistance to the Government of Egypt in order to advance U.S. national security interests in Egypt, including encouraging the advancement of political, economic, and religious freedom in Egypt,” still has only 19 co-sponsors, including Ros-Lehtinen. And H.R. 276, introduced in January by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), which simply would prohibit aid to Egypt, forever, has gained only two co-sponsors and now has 22, including Buchanan.

H.R. 1039, introduced in March by Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), which would “rescind unobligated amounts for foreign assistance to Egypt,” has gained 17 co-sponsors and now has 40, including Fitzpatrick. One new bill, H.R. 1302, introduced on March 20 by Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA), would simply “prohibit foreign military financing to Egypt” beginning in FY 2014. ❑ JUNE/JULY 2013

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Israel Has Abandoned Ben-Gurion’s Assurance That American Jews Are “Americans” Israel andJudaism

By Allan C. Brownfeld n a now forgotten declaration, Israeli

exchange with Jacob Blaustein, president of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), stated on Aug. 23, 1950: “1. That the State of Israel spoke only for its own citizens.

“2. That Jews in other countries had no political obligation to the State of Israel…”

Now, Israel has turned its back on that formulation. However, the story behind this historic exchange is instructive.

In what came to be known as the “Exchange of Views” between Blaustein and Ben-Gurion, the Israeli prime minister declared that, “The Jews of the United States, as a community and as individuals, have only one political attachment and that is to the United States of America...Our success or failure depends in a large measure on our cooperation with, and on the strength of, the great Jewish community of the United States, we, therefore are anxious that nothing should be said or done which could in the slightest degree undermine the sense of security and stability of American Jewry.”

In his recently published book The Speech, and Its Context, Abba Solomon points out that, “This passage was believed at the time to represent a Ben-Gurion retreat from Israeli statements that American Jews, or at least their children, were expected to emigrate to Israel. Blaustein’s part in the ‘Exchange’ laid out the dynamic tension of American Jews supporting a state of Jews, but resisting the more grand conceptions of Israel as the ‘Jewish state.’”

In his own declaration, Blaustein, a respected businessman who headed the American Oil Company (AMOCO), which was founded by his father, stated: “The American Jewish community sees its fortunes tied to the fate of liberal democracy in the United States, sustained by its heritage, as Americans and as Jews...the AJC has been active, as have other Jewish organizations in the U.S., in rendering within the framework of their American citizenship, every possible support to Israel...But we must in a true spirit of friendliness, sound a 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.

JUNE/JULY 2013

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

IPrime Minister David Ben-Gurion, in an

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren is shown addressing the openingin Washington, DC of the 2009 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. Oren was born Michael Scott Bornstein in upstate New York and grew up in New Jersey. He emigrated to Israel in 1979, a year after receiving a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University, and served in the Israel Defense Forces during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. note of caution to Israel and its leaders...It must recognize that the matter of goodwill between its citizens and those of other countries is a two-way street...American Jews vigorously repudiate any suggestion or implication that they are in exile. American Jews—young and old alike, Zionist and non-Zionists alike—are profoundly attached to America. America welcomed their immigrant parents in their need. Under America’s free institutions, they and their children have achieved that freedom and sense of security unknown for long centuries of travail. American Jews have truly become Americans; just as have all other oppressed groups that have ever come to America’s shores. To American Jews, America is home.”

Although few are aware of it, the government of Israel has repudiated the Blaustein-Ben-Gurion agreement.

In his address to the Jewish Federation of North America last November, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren—himself a native American who abandoned his U.S. citizenship to become a citizen of Israel—told his audience that “in 1950, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion pledged never to question the loyalty of THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

American Jews to America. In return, Blaustein promised American Jewish help in forging a secure and robust Jewish state.

And the agreement pretty much worked.

Israelis mostly refrained from calling for a mass aliya (emigration) of American Jews.

Indeed, in many of the Israel Experience programs for Americans, Israeli counselors are forbidden to press for aliya...But in recent years, something has changed. We, Israel and American Jewry, have changed.”

As Solomon points out in his book, “The activities of the Nefesh b’Nefesh organization—supported by the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency—to promote immigration from the U.S., seems inconsistent with the agreement reached between Blaustein and the Israeli government.”

This is nothing new. Charles S. Liebman, writing about the Blaustein-Ben-Gurion agreement in the July 1974 issue of Jewish Social Studies, commented that, “Events and life have—at least for the time being—rendered the 1950 ‘Exchange’ without substance.”

The Ben-Gurion-Blaustein agreement, argues Jack Wertheimer, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, “did not heed a fundamental premise of spiritual 47

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Zionism: the conviction that the Diaspora would be transformed by Zionism and the Jewish state that was born from it.”

Rather than adhering to the non-interference called for in the Ben-Gurion declaration, wrote Wertheimer in the June 2009 issue of Commentary, “Over the...years since its founding, Israel has come to play a pervasive, if unacknowledged, role in virtually every sector of American Jewish public culture...Passages of the liturgy are sung to Israeli melodies, as when references to the restoration of the Jewish people to Zion are chanted to the tune of the ‘Hatikvah,’ Israel’s national anthem, or the iconic song of the Six-Day War, ‘Yerushalayim Shal Zahab’ (Jerusalem of Gold)...rabbis across the spectrum routinely deliver sermons about conditions in Israel designed to inspire their flock to identify with Israel...and the flag of Israel is displayed prominently along with the Stars and Stripes in sanctuaries and social halls of synagogues...Ignoring Ben-Gurion’s pledge of non-interference in internal American Jewish affairs, several recent prime ministers and presidents of Israel have looked for ways to shore up Jewish education in the U.S....”

Shortly after the Ben-Gurion-Blaustein declaration, the World Zionist Congress of 1951 passed a resolution calling upon the youth of the Jewish community, particularly those in the U.S., to immigrate to Israel. The head of the American Section of the Jewish Agency, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, declared: “We accomplished a great job.

American Jews have always been asked for money and came through beautifully. Now we shall ask them for children, and I am confident that they will come through, after much education and effort.”

Blaustein wrote in anger to his wife, Hilda, about another Goldmann statement at the 1953 World Jewish Congress which reportedly mentioned a “duty” of Jews to go to Israel: “It goes to show how alert we have to be with these people all the time.”

In 1960, the AJC protested a World Jewish Congress speech of Ben-Gurion, in which he quoted, “Whoever dwells outside the land of Israel is considered to have no God, the sages said,” and warned of (Advertisement)

48

Western Jews that, “Judaism faces death by a kiss—a slow and imperceptible decline into the abyss of assimilation.”

Ever since, while never publicly repudiating the Ben-Gurion-Blaustein exchange, Israel has spared no effort in attempting to stimulate the emigration of Jews, not only from the U.S. but from every place in the world where Jews live.

On a January 1996 visit to Germany, Israeli President Ezer Weizman declared that he “cannot understand how 40,000 Jews [there are now well over 100,000] can live in Germany,” and asserted that, “The only place for Jews is in Israel. Only in Israel can Jews live full Jewish lives.” In July 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon issued an appeal for all French Jews to move to Israel “immediately.” He said: “Move to Israel as early as possible. That’s what I say to Jews all over the world.”

In 1998, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called upon American Jews to make a “mass aliya” to Israel. In 2000, Israeli President Moshe Katsev called upon Jews around the world to make aliya and argued against “legitimizing” Jewish life in other countries. In the 2000 book Conversations With Yitzhak Shamir, the former Israeli prime minister declared: “The very essence of our being obliges every Jew to live in Eretz Yisrael.”

A “Homeland” for Jews Only True to its Zionist philosophy, the State of Israel is not content to be the state of its own Jewish citizens but persists in claiming to be the “homeland” of all Jews, whose responsibility, it argues, is to emigrate. The head of the Jewish Agency, Natan Sharansky, told the International Jerusalem Post in its Jan. 11-27, 2013 edition that world Jewry needs Israel for its identity. Saying, “I strongly believe in aliya,” Sharansky argued that the way to stimulate it is to strengthen the connection of Jews to Israel through programs such as Birthright, which sends young Jewish Americans on free trips to Israel. “The percentage of young people who are deciding to make aliya after their Israeli experience is growing,” he said. During that experience, particpants report, they are repeatedly told that Israel is their real “homeland” and that the highest expression of their Jewish identity is to emigrate to that country.

This Zionist mindset can be seen in an advertisement appearing in the Nov. 2-8, 2012 edition of the International Jerusalem Post from a group called the Israel Emergency Aliyah Movement. It reads, in part: “WARNING! JEWS LIVING IN AMERICA...YOU ARE IN DANGER!...Countless Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups are spreading their venomous message...calling for violence against Jews and praising THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Hitler as a ‘True Hero’...Come home to Israel...Before It’s Too Late.”

In telling American Jews that Israel is their real “homeland” and that their obligation is to emigrate to that country, the Israeli government is being true to the Zionist philosophy, which Blaustein and the AJC seemed not to properly understand.

In his 1896 book Der Judenstaat, Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl, honored by President Barack Obama on the latter’s recent trip to Israel, wrote: “We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those highly civilized—for instance, France— until the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America...the longer anti-Semitism remains in abeyance the more fiercely will it break out. The infiltration of immigrating Jews, attracted to a land by apparent security, and the ascent in the social scale of native Jews, combine powerfully to bring about a revolution. Nothing is plainer than this rational conclusion...Everything tends, in fact, to one and the same conclusion, which is clearly enunciated in that classic Berlin phrase: ‘Juden Raus!’ (Out with the Jews).”

We now know that Herzl’s analysis of the status of Jews in Western democratic countries was as far from the truth as was his characterization of Palestine as “A land without people for a people without a land.” Herzl understood the values and wishes of American, English and French Jews as poorly as he understood the fact that Palestine was populated by people with an ancient presence in and connection to that land.

Whatever David Ben-Gurion may have agreed to in 1950, the State of Israel ever since has promoted the idea that Jews living outside its borders are “in exile” and that all Jews should emigrate to that state.

Indeed, a mass emigration effort currently is underway. Financed by Nefesh b’Nefesh and the Jewish Agency, it is providing grants of up to $25,000 for each new American immigrant. The program, says Prime Minister Netanyahu, will “bring home to Zion our Jewish brethren from the Diaspora.”

Israeli Ambassador Oren is a good example of what Netanyahu has in mind—a native American who left his country to embrace the Zionist vision by emigrating to Israel. Mr. Oren has done us all a service by publicly declaring that the Blaustein-BenGurion exchange of 1950 is now a dead letter. It was so from the beginning. ❑ JUNE/JULY 2013

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Arab American Activism

The Arab American Institute Foundation hosted the Kahlil Gibran Spirit of Humanity Awards gala on April 16 at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC. The 15th annual celebration was attended by high-profile members of the government, business, and media, including outgoing Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), and the ambassadors of Qatar, Egypt, the League of Arab States and Palestine.

AAI founding member Jean Abi Nader opened the ceremonies with a warm introduction. George Salem, co-founder and chair of the AAI Foundation, outlined the Foundation’s mission, noting that “public service has been a pillar of AAI since its inception.”

David Bonior, former U.S. representative from Michigan and Democratic whip, presented the Najeeb Halaby Award for Public Service to Ralph Nader. The prolific writer, activist, and presidential candidate has “made government and industry more accountable and he’s made American citizens arguably the best-informed consumers and voters in the world,” Bonior said. “Ralph’s lifetime work has shown that you can make a career out of fighting the good fight, and there is no greater public service than that.”

Accepting his award, Nader warned that “militarizing foreign policy is going to get us in more and more trouble.” He said he hoped that “we can all work to become the United States of America, a humanitarian super power, for which we are superbly equipped but not so superbly deployed.”

After thanking Nader for giving him his first job in journalism at the Capitol Hill News Service, Washington Post editor David Hoffman presented AAI’s first ever Anthony Shadid Award for Excellence in Journalism to CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Once Shadid’s editor at The Washington Post, Hoffman compared Amanpour to Shadid for becoming a “beacon in dark corners of the world.”

Amanpour expressed gratitude to Shadid’s mother for her son’s work before addressing the “elephant in the room”: the previous day’s bombing at the Boston Marathon. “Like all of you,” she said, “I’m not Pakistani, and I’m not Arab, but I am part Iranian. And I do understand the burden of association. And I know when we know who did this, we will all unite in 50

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Nader, Amanpour, Kasem and CDF Receive Kahlil Gibran Awards

Christiane Amanpour. strong condemnation.”

Amanpour said she hoped the actions of the bombers would not provoke intolerance—in action or reaction. She went on to praise Shadid’s courage for covering all sides of the Syrian story, and for the sacrifices he and his family made for his “noble profession.”

AAI executive director Maya Berry praised the organization’s talented young interns and introduced Sara El-Amine, an emerging leader, who is the national director of Organizing for Action—a nonprofit dedicated to supporting President Barack Obama’s national agenda. El-Amine thanked AAI for “helping redefine what being Arab American in the United States actually means.”

Chicago Tribune editor Clarence Page presented the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) with the Award for Institutional Excellence. For 40 years, he noted, the CDF has fought to level the playing field for all children by promoting policies that protect children from poverty, abuse and neglect.

CDF founder Marian Wright Edelman, a heroine of the civil rights movement, accepted the award and called for a new Poor People’s Campaign like the one that brought her to Washington, DC in the late 1960s with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. AAI president Dr. James J. Zogby called Individual Achievement Award recipient Casey Kasem “a hero” and recounted going to the movies as a child and looking for “Arab names—to see if there was someone I could be proud of.” Zogby recalled that “when I found out that Casey Kasem was an Arab-American it blew me away. I mean THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

he was big!” Zogby spoke with pride of his many collaborations with Kasem in support of various causes, and introduced a video filled with celebrity endorsements of Kasem’s work. Syndicated radio host Bill Press introduced Kasem’s daughter, Kerri, who accepted the award on her father’s behalf. Press cited many of Kasem’s passions, but remembered that his fight for peace in the Middle East was recognized internationally when he was invited to the White House to witness the signing of the Oslo accords by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in 1993. Kerri recalled watching her father get arrested for the principles he believed in, and concluded by quoting his words that “the only cause worth supporting is a cause that will never be resolved in our lifetime.”

—Alex Begley

Arab Americans Making a Difference Montgomery County, MD kicked off Arab American Heritage Month with an April 15 City Hall reception in Gaithersburg celebrating “Caring and Advocacy: Arab Americans Making a Difference.” Palestinian-American educator Samira Hussein— who has helped transform her county by advocating changes, including a mandatory cultural sensitivity course for teachers—and Juliet Francisco organized events throughout the month.

The reception began with a moment of silence for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing earlier that day.

Human rights activist Guled Kassim, who hosts a weekly radio talk show in the DC metropolitan area, followed with a talk entitled: “Getting to Know your Arab American Neighbors and their Contributions to our Country.” Kassim talked about the diversity of the Arab-American community, a group defined not by race or religion, but by culture. He provided an imposing list of famous Arab Americans who have changed this country, including Apple entrepreneur Steve Jobs, radio personality Casey Kasem and Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM).

Then he told his own all-Arab-American story: Kassim and his family immigrated to the U.S. from Somalia, with just the clothes on their backs, when he was 10. His parents always emphasized a key aspect of their culture to their nine kids: ”You have to serve the community.” Kassim served in the U.S. Marine Corp, studied history at the University of Maryland, and ran for District 19 delegate in Silver Spring, MD. He has volunteered in DC soup kitchens and fed the homeless. Today he is trying to JUNE/JULY 2013

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Montgomery County, MD officials join Arab American Heritage Month organizers at City Hall.

U.N. (both are available from the AET Book Club).

Jebreal was born in 1973 in Haifa and grew up in Jerusalem. Her mother committed suicide when she was 5 and her father, a groundskeeper at the al-Aqsa Mosque, put his daughters into the Dar ElTifel orphanage. He told his daughters they could achieve anything if they had a good education. To be successful and independent he urged them to: 1. learn to speak English; 2. be able to challenge the system; and 3. dress well all the time.

Why, one might ask, was it important for Jebreal to dress well? “I lived in East Jerusalem and looked like a tomboy, skinny with short hair,” she laughed. It was so the police would quit stopping her!

By the time she was 18, Jebreal said, she was frustrated by the way Muslim Palestinians were portrayed in the media. “I got tired of throwing my shoe at the TV,” she explained, so Jebreal started writing her

help senior citizens trapped at home reach the outside services available to them. He also is involved in a youth mentorship program in Silver Spring and the Capital Area Food Bank. Even in relatively affluent Montgomery County, 25 percent of residents face food insecurity, Kassim said, adding that the impact of hunger on children is huge: “Hunger impacts learning when the only thing on a child’s mind is food.”

Arab American Heritage Month included a “mini festival” at Montgomery College’s Germantown Campus on April 25, co-sponsored by the Muslim Student Association and Arab Americans of Montgomery County. An April 30 celebration at the Executive Office Building in Rockville featured Arab and Middle Eastern media expert Dr. Sahar Khamis of the University of Maryland.

Montgomery County students, teachers and parents have joined the “Equality 4 Eid Coalition” to add the Muslim Eid to the list of public school holidays, which already include Christmas, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover. For more information visit: <www.Equality4Eid.com>.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Human Rights Congressional Briefing on Indefinite Detention at Guantanamo

Diplomatic Doings

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Lunch with Rula Jebreal Jumana Areikat, wife of Palestinian Ambassador Maen Areikat, filled her McLean, VA home on April 22 with women, including Palestinians, ambassadors’ wives and business leaders, eager to meet Rula Jebreal, author of the award-winning novel and screenplay Miral. Jebreal’s book has sold more than 2 million copies and has been translated into 15 languages—and her film was the first to premiere at the

own articles. She received a scholarship from the Italian government and graduated with a degree in physiotherapy and, later, while she worked, earned a master’s in journalism and political science.

Jebreal became the first foreign anchorwoman in the history of Italian television.

That scholarship changed her life, she told her listeners. Moreover, she added, “When you educate a girl or woman, you also educate her society and family.”

Arabs, and especially Palestinians, need to take one step at a time, for there’s a huge road ahead of us, Jebreal stated. We must invest in our education and have a presence in media as journalists or making documentaries, Jebreal urged. “We need 10 movies like ‘Miral,’” she said. “Paradise Now” won the Golden Globe Award but it didn’t win an Oscar because of Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad’s speech. [He made a plea for a Palestinian state.] “‘5 Broken Cameras,’ ‘The Gatekeepers’...this is the first wave of movies. We need many more,” she said. “‘Exodus’ changed the way Jews in this country were perceived.

We, too, must bring our narrative here,” Jebreal said.

All my life, my father empowered us. He made us feel like the smartest people...

Gather among ourselves, Jebreal suggested. “Help others. Give it back to other girls. Madeleine Albright said, ‘There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.’”

As Jebreal told her story, listeners wished their daughters, granddaughters or nieces were with them—and that this Palestinian woman could speak in high schools around the world. Jebreal is busy working as an MSNBC commentator in New York, writing a new book, and raising her own teenage daughter—Miral.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Rula Jebreal, author of Miral, speaks at a luncheon hosted by the Palestinian ambassador’s wife, Jumana Areikat.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

On May 10, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) held a congressional briefing at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill to discuss the United States’ indefinite detention of 166 individuals at its Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Naval Base.

Moran began the briefing by calling on President Barack Obama to follow through on his 2009 pledge to close the Guantanamo detention center. While some members of Congress may balk at the move, Moran said, the president retains 51

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Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) calls for the closure of Guantanamo. the unquestionable authority to close the facility.

“If the president could decide to intervene in Libya without even informing Congress, he could close Guantanamo today,” said Col. (Ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson. In Wilkerson’s opinion, President Obama must ultimately demonstrate moral courage. “Moral courage is most often the missing ingredient in any president’s decision,” he lamented, noting that presidents almost always place politics before morality.

Only 5 percent of the individuals held at Guantanamo are known members of alQaeda, Moran pointed out, noting that, disturbingly, 86 percent of detainees were turned over to the U.S. in exchange for the payment of bounties. “A majority of these men never committed an act of violence against the U.S.,” stated the visibly frustrated Moran.

Pardiss Kebriaei, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents several detainees, said the administration must take immediate action to free the 86 individuals cleared for release. In order for this to happen, she said, the administration will need to lift its moratorium on the transfer of detainees to Yemen, as 56 of the cleared individuals are Yemenis.

According to Kebriaei, in recent months conditions at Guantanamo “have regressed dramatically.” Detainees have not been allowed to engage in human-to-human contact, including group prayer, she said, and prisoners are kept in their cells for 22-23 52

hours a day. Brig. Gen. (Ret.) David Irvine said the detainees also endure poor medical care, violence and sexual abuse.

Noting that 100 detainees are currently on hunger strikes, Moran said that “Guantanamo has become an immediate humanitarian crisis that needs to be addressed now.” Of those 100 on strike, he noted, 21 are currently being forcibly fed via feeding tubes. Irvine characterized the feeding of prisoners against their will as yet another example of American brutality at Guantanamo.

George Hunsinger, an ordained Presbyterian minister and theologian at Princeton Theological Seminary, decried the lack of dignity shown toward the detainees. “Do we even realize that these prisoners are human beings?” he asked. The belief in the sacredness of human life is “a bond across all the world’s religions,” Hunsinger pointed out, warning Americans that their hardened post-9/11 hearts are causing them to forget this central reality.

The inhuman treatment of detainees has created the perception that the U.S. does not honor the rule of law and does not respect human dignity, Irvine said. “It’s a cancer to America’s claim of moral leadership,” he warned, adding that indefinite detention “is absolutely contrary to the precepts of American law.”

Agreeing, Moran said Guantanamo “has not been worth the cost of America’s reputation around the world.” The prison “has been too easily used as a rallying cry and recruitment tool for our enemies,” he said.

Before the briefing concluded, Col. (Ret.) Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for the U.S. Military Commissions at Guantanamo, presented a petition signed by more than 191,000 individuals demanding the closure of the Guantanamo facility.

—Dale Sprusansky

Rosalie Riegle Discusses Crossing the Line When Rosalie Riegle visited Iowa recently to talk about getting arrested and going to jail for resisting war, the audience for the accomplished author at the Des Moines Catholic Worker (DMCW) Dingman House on April 29 included activists featured in her most recent book, Crossing the Line: Nonviolent Resisters Speak Out for Peace, an oral history of nonviolent resistance in America and Europe.

“It was at a Midwest Catholic Worker Faith and Resistance retreat, I think in 2003, that I decided to make resistance a more important part of my life,” Riegle reTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

called. “I was sitting in a church basement in Omaha listening to Jerry [Ebner] and Frank [Cordaro] and a lot of other people telling jailbird stories. What was it like for war resisters to go to prison?” she asked.

“I knew it was quite different than what it was like for people who go to prison because they are oppressed, poor, black, minority, undocumented—all the people that crowd our prisons,” Riegle said.

Riegle explained that she had experience with what she calls “yogurt busts, busts that go down easy,” but, “if you’re risking six months in prison, like Jerry is on Friday, that’s not a yogurt bust.”

Risking going to prison for six months is a decision that affects a lot of people— your family, your community—and requires thought, planning, support and sacrifice, said Riegle. Her first book on civil disobedience, Doing Time for Peace, focused on resisters’ families and communities as well as the resisters themselves, she added, while Crossing the Line has an historical focus.

During the wide-ranging question-andanswer period that followed her formal remarks, Riegle presided over a discussion that included the vagaries of risking arrest on foreign soil, as Cordaro had when he, Steve Jacobs and Cairon O’Reilly blocked the gates at 10 Downing Street in London in 2011. Someone recalled that Brian Terrell, currently serving a six-month sentence at the Yankton Federal Prison Camp in South Dakota for an April 2012 drone protest at Whiteman AFB in Missouri, had been arrested and deported by Israeli authorities for a protest there in 1997.

Julie Brown and Jessica Reznicek, two members of DMCW’s Rachel Corrie Project, were arrested and detained briefly in the West Bank in February when they sought to prevent the harassment and arrest of a Palestinian farmer. This reporter asked Brown what it was like to be arrested

by Israeli soldiers in illegally occupied Palestine.

“We escorted some Palestinians into their field and were attempting to replant some olive trees that had been burned down,” Brown explained. “Israeli soldiers came and demanded passports from the internationals who were there. The farmers just ignored the soldiers, even when they became violent and started kicking them and filling in the holes the Palestinians were digging for the trees. They were perfectly nonviolent.

“The soldiers surrounded one elderly farmer who was by himself and we noticed they were becoming violent, so we deJUNE/JULY 2013

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Rosalie Riegle (c) signs Crossing the Line for her friends, activists Jean and Bill Basinger, in Des Moines. of 1967, they have settled in the Harir refugee camp in Jordan. Missing home, they anxiously wait in the squalid camp to be reunited with him, until Tarek takes matters into his own hands and runs away, discovering a brave band of resistance fighters. The 2012 drama was selected as the Palestinian entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards and won Best Arab Film at the Abu Dhabi International Film Festival.

Speaking to a full house at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC on April 18, Jacir described searching for an actor to play young Tarek. After meeting 200 boys, she found Mahmoud Asfa in the Irbid refugee camp in Jordan. “When we asked the other kids what they wanted to do when they grew up, they said normal kid things like ‘I want to be a doctor or a lawyer.’ When we asked Mahmoud, he said, ‘I want to go to Palestine.’ I thought he’d read the script,” Jacir laughed. “He’s like that. He’s open, not self-conscious.

He’s got a clear idea of home.”

cided to interposition ourselves,” Brown continued. They used their bodies to shield the farmer from the swearing and pushing soldiers. “We clung to the farmer to make it impossible for them to take him, and that’s when they turned their attention to us and arrested us. The Palestinian farmer was able to leave, but we were arrested,” said Brown.

“If the Palestinian had been arrested, he would have spent six months to two years in prison in horrible conditions. They took us to a military base and then they transferred us to the nearby Israeli settlement, Ariel. They were polite to us. There was a stark difference in the way they treated us and the way they treated the Palestinians.

We were held for a few hours and then they released us. We walked out of the settlement and back down the hill to Palestinian land,” she said.

Brown and Reznicek trained with and joined a Michigan Peace Team (MPT) delegation to the West Bank. MPT has trained hundreds of people in nonviolent action based on the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Riegle said she plans to include Brown and Reznicek in her next book.

—Michael Gillespie

Many of the actors playing young idealist Palestinian resistance fighters ready to sacrifice their lives to liberate Palestine in “When I Saw You” turned out to be the children of real fedayeen, Jacir discovered.

They were re-enacting their parents’ lives in her film.

After watching this powerful film, and meeting the director at both the screening and the Palestine Center, this writer rushed to watch Jacir’s award-winning 2008 debut, “Salt of This Sea” (available from the AET Book Club), which turned out to be completely different and equally provocative. Her earlier film focuses on Soraya, a modern-day Brooklyn-born Palestinian-American who visits her father’s homeland for the first time. From her first encounter with suspicious Israeli officials at the airport, examining her U.S. passport with her Arabic last name, our rage grows with hers as she is treated like an unwelcome interloper when she seeks to recover her roots.

Both of Jacir’s films address problems facing the Palestinian diaspora and the lifeaffirming spirit of those who struggle to go home. Neither Tarek nor Soraya is a perfect person, nor do they represent all Palestinians, Jacir emphasized. “I’m interested in flawed people” not stereotypes, Jacir stated.

It took six years to find European funding for “Salt of This Sea,” Jacir said. At that rate, Jacir worried that Mahmoud Asfa would be all grown up before Jacir raised funds for her second film. Fortunately for her fans, including this writer, it took only three years to write, raise funds and shoot “When I Saw You,” which was funded by the Dubai Film Festival with some additional Greek funding.

Having been banned by Israeli authorities from returning to Palestine, Jacir now lives in Amman, Jordan. She, like so many

Music & Arts

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Filmmaker Annemarie Jacir Visits DC The DC International Film Festival screened Annemarie Jacir’s latest film “Lamma Shoftak” (“When I Saw You”) April 16 and 17 at the Landmark E Street Cinema. Jacir’s film tells the tale of Tarek, 11, played by Mahmoud Asfa, and his mother, Ghaydaa, played by Ruba Blal.

Separated from Tarek’s father in the chaos JUNE/JULY 2013

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Jerusalem Fund program manager Samirah Alkassim (l) interviews film director Annemarie Jacir.

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In her paintings Borchert aims to draw in the viewer and create a “deep and thoughtful dialogue between viewer and artwork where cognitive and creative thinking ocFreedom House Auctions curs.” Vian will also exhibit her sigImages of “Repression and nature figurative paintings, using Freedom” the expressionistic style which has won her international acclaim.

Freedom House, which describes itIn the Middle East, Borchert’s self as an “independent watchdog work can be seen at The National organization,” held its second annual Gallery of Art in Amman, Jordan, photography and art silent auction, and she recently exhibited at the titled “Images of Repression and United Nations Gallery in New Freedom,” at the Hillyer Art Space York. For her show at the Jerusalem in Washington, DC on April 18.

Fund Gallery, Borchert will paint The photography contest drew live to the accompaniment of oud more than 400 submissions from music in an unrehearsed artistic colaround the world. Each image— whether photograph, graphic art, “Shackled Thought,” by imprisoned Palestinian cartoonist laboration, her subject matter inspired solely by the music of Palesdrawing or painting—had to depict Mohammad Saba’aneh. the struggle for freedom from repression. Fund Gallery in Washington, DC. The con- tinian-American oud player Fuad Foty.

—Dagmar Painter The staff and trustees voted to select the temporary artist, who also is an art intop 30, and those were on display for the structor at the Arts Barn in Gaithersburg, silent auction.

MD, describes Jerusalem as “a magical Muslim American Activism First place was awarded to a submission place filled with cultural heritage and arfrom Bahrain, a 2012 black-and-white chitectural wonders.” She considers her photo by Ahmed al-Fardan titled “Political paintings as “visual poems, poems of hope, CAIR Inaugurates Maryland Chapter Participation and Toxic Gas,” in which an poems of love and poems that capture the More than 500 guests from nearly every anti-government protester is shrouded by expression and human emotions.” county in Maryland turned out on April a cloud of toxic gas shot by Bahraini riot 28 for the inaugural banquet of the new police. The second- and third-place phoMaryland chapter of the Council on Amertographs, respectively, depicted a hopeful ican-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MD) at Marchild in South Sudan and a Russian tin’s Crosswinds in Greenbelt, MD. The woman posing in front of a line of police banquet’s theme was “Upholding Our Conduring a demonstration. stitution, Defending Our Faith.”

Senior communications manager Mary The sold-out event opened with a moMcGuire said that all the proceeds from the ment of silence to honor the victims of the auction go to supporting Freedom House.

Boston Marathon bombings. CAIR-MD She described the goal of the event as president Dr. Mudasar Raza, who resides bringing “stories of these people and what in Frederick, introduced the chapter’s they are fighting for to the DC audience.” board. Zainab Chaudry, co-founder of One submission, a political cartoon by CAIR-MD, who at 22 graduated as the Mohammad Saba’aneh from Jenin, Palesyoungest person in her University of tine, showed a man in a ragged suit with Maryland pharmacy class, introduced his arm shackled to an empty thought CAIR national executive director Nihad bubble. Saba’aneh has been jailed in Israel Awad, who stressed the need for Amerisince Feb. 16, 2013, when he tried to recans to unite in the face of challenges that turn home via the Allenby Bridge crossing threaten the Muslim community. after a four-day Arab American University Immediately after the Boston bombings, conference in Amman, Jordan. He is now Awad noted, national organizations, local serving five months in prison for being in imams—everyone in the Muslim commu“contact with a hostile organization.” The nity—condemned the attack, mourned the piece, entitled “Shackled Thought,” did victims, and said, “God, please don’t let it not win any awards, but received several be a Muslim who did this...heinous crime.” bids.

—Alex Begley Awad stated, “We stand with our nation.

Our society knows that [this was the work Hopes and Dreams: Paintings by of] a deranged lunatic...there should be no Vian Shamounki Borchert blame assigned to the whole community.”

Rockville lawyer Azim Chowdhruy, Award-winning Palestinian-American CAIR-MD’s civil rights director, introduced artist Vian Shamounki Borchert exhibits Maryland State Sen. Brian Frosh, who her landscapes and cityscapes of Jerusalem from May 31 to July 12 at the Jerusalem “The Holy City,” by Vian Shamounki Borchert. began his remarks by saying “Salam PHOTO COURTESY JERUSALEM FUND

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other young Arab filmmakers, have wonderful energy and talent—now they need to find the funds to tell their stories. —Delinda C. Hanley

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STAFF PHOTO SAMIR TWAIR

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Leaders of the interAlaikum,” and thanking faith community and CAIR for its important representatives of the work. Frosh shared his Los Angeles Police DeJewish family’s immipartment (LAPD) and grant story, explaining county sheriff’s office that “it’s what ignited spoke at the April 19 my passion for civil conference following Frirights.” His grandfather day services in the Isfought in Europe but lamic Center of Southern found it hard to find a California. All warned job when he came home against any violent reacto America. His father, a tions to the suspects’ lawyer, was professionMuslim faith. ally and physically MPAC’s senior adviser threatened because he Wajahat Ali provides a light-hearted description of Islamophobia.

Dr. Maher Hathout exdefended a bookbinder Gansler went on to tell his listeners how pressed the hope that a backlash to the subpoenaed by the McCarthy committee.

“This is a nation of immigrants, and it’s he asked the Holocaust Museum to open Boston bombing would be nipped in the our obligation to treat each other kindly early so a group of attorney generals he bud. This was reiterated by Assistant Sherand fairly without regard to religious be- was hosting at a conference could see first- iff Cecil Rhambo, who stated that vigilante liefs or skin color,” Frosh stated. We are all hand what can happen if laws are abused. behavior would not be tolerated and that The CAIR-MD program featured an hate speech heard on the air leads to hate victims of the violence in Boston, he argued. “Suspicion of anyone who is a awards ceremony recognizing Marylanders thoughts. A deputy police chief said the stranger tears us apart and compounds the in the categories of Media Excellence, Civil LAPD appreciates the contributions of the physical violence the victims endured at Leadership, Community Service and Youth Muslim community and that the strength that race.” Frosh promised to fight against Leadership. The CAIR-MD board also for- of the U.S. lies in its diversity. mally announced the launch of the “EqualMPAC President Salam Al-Marayati comracial, ethnic and religious profiling.

Attorney/activist/humorist Wajahat Ali ity for Eid” campaign—an effort to have mented: “If the 99.9 percent of American gave a riveting, and sometimes hilarious, the Eid holiday observed in the Mont- Muslims is to become more relevant, then it must challenge extremists in areas where discourse on Islamophobia in America. gomery County Public School calendar.

The evening ended on an entertaining they expend their resources. The American The co-author of the report “Fear Incorporated” (see <www.americanprogress.org>) note, with a performance by comedian public must recognize the relevance of the —Delinda C. Hanley Muslim mainstream in order to discredit traced the roots of Islamophobia to seven Said Durrah. the .1 percent fringe.” right-wing foundations and individuals Dr. Hathout observed that the danger which have bankrolled Islamophobes such MPAC/LA Response to Boston the public had been alerted to April 15 in as Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Daniel Bombs Horowitz and Robert Spencer.

Hours after the alleged Boston Marathon Boston is the shift to cyberspace’s extreme “Islamophobia is not a Muslim problem. bombers were identified, and either killed and hateful messages that enthrall suscepIt’s an American problem,” Ali said, adding or captured, the Muslim Public Affairs tible loners with their twisted versions of —Pat McDonnell Twair he hopes the anti-Islam tide is receding, Council of Los Angeles called a press con- Islam. just as it did for Jews, Catholics, African ference to commend law enforcement for Americans and gays. The ending is always rapidly apprehending the suspects and to Waging Peace the same—Their enemies are the “villains express its shock and dismay they were of our children’s history books,” Ali con- two brothers of Chechen heritage. cluded.

Conference Explores ReliMaryland Attorney General gion and Pluralism Douglas Gansler, who accordGeorgetown University’s Aling to The Washington Post is waleed Bin Talal Center for considering a run for goverMuslim-Christian Undernor, began his remarks by saystanding held a daylong coning, “I may lose votes for ference April 24 at Georgestanding here.” He went on to town’s Washington, DC camsay that Americans just don’t pus titled “The Boundaries of know enough about Muslims.

Religious Pluralism and FreeOne of his best friends is dom: The Devil is in the DeTurkish, he said, and Gansler’s tail.” Panels addressed such ischild didn’t even know that sues as the proper relationship old friend is Muslim. There between church and state, are bad people in every relihow to advance interfaith ungion, Gansler pointed out: Dr. Maher Hathout speaks at a press conference called April 19 by derstanding, and whether lim”look at Adam Lanza, the MPAC/LA in response to the arrest and death of the alleged Boston its should be placed on bigshooter in Newtown, CT.“ Marathon bombers. oted, anti-religious speech.

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(L-r) Moderator Chris Seiple, Dalia Mogahed, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Abdulaziz Sachedina discuss interfaith tolerance.

David Law of the Georgetown University Law Center opened the first panel by pointing out that there is no global consensus on the extent to which individuals should be allowed to criticize religions.

This is true even in the Western world, he said, citing Ireland’s constitution, which prohibits blasphemy.

Georgetown University professor Thomas Farr noted that the centrality of religious freedom is still not accepted in much of the world. As evidence, he pointed to a September 2012 Pew Research Center report which found that 75 percent of individuals live in countries where religious freedom is restricted or highly restricted.

University of Johannesburg professor Farid Esack disagreed with Farr’s assertion, arguing that “Few dispute the value and centrality of religious freedom.” Because each culture has its own way of defining religious freedom, he elaborated, polls measuring the topic are not conclusive.

Recent events have shown that the U.S. “is having some serious difficulties” with the concept of religious freedom, according to Farr. This is particularly the case when it comes to Islam and traditional forms of Christianity, he added, pointing to the opposition to construction of a mosque in Murfreesboro, TN as a particularly poignant example of bigotry. Calling the opposition to the mosque “as un-American a proposition as I can imagine,” Farr described the right to build houses of worship as being “at the very core of religious freedom.”

Esack said he personally defines religious freedom as “freedom for the self and freedom from others.” Regardless of what one believes, “we have to respect the rights of people to be who they are,” he emphasized.

The conference’s second panel explored how questions of religious freedom are 56

being dealt with in Tunisia and Egypt.

“In my view Egypt will not become a religious state,” said American University in Cairo professor Emad Shahin. Post-revolutionary Egypt offers an historic opportunity to fully integrate the country’s Christians into all aspects of the national community, he stated. In order to help facilitate this process, Shahin advised the Coptic Church to refrain from interfering in the political process.

Nancy Okail, director of Freedom House Egypt, argued that because sectarian tension in Egypt predates President Mohamed Morsi’s regime, Islamists do not deserve sole blame for the religious inequality that exists in the country. “It’s not like Christians were living in a haven of democracy under [President Hosni] Mubarak,” she reminded the audience.

According to Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy, Tunisian society is currently divided over the role religion should play in politics. While liberals fear living in a religious state, he explained, Islamists fear that secular rule will mean a return to the oppression of the past. As a gesture to liberals, Masmoudi noted, the Islamist-dominated Constituent Assembly did not identify sharia as the source of the country’s legislation.

Kicking off the third panel, George Mason University professor Abdulaziz Sachedina said that initiatives designed to facilitate interfaith understanding must no longer be developed and carried out by political elites. Elite-level discussions, he argued, will do nothing to advance mutual respect and understanding if they never involve ordinary people. “What we are missing is the link with the public,” Sachedina explained.

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Political leaders must reach out to religious leaders and encourage them to instruct their faith communities on the importance of interfaith respect, Sachedina continued. This would allow this important message of tolerance to be presented in a simpler, more relatable manner to the general public, he explained.

Agreeing wholeheartedly with Sachedina, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, DC, said that those in positions of influence must leave their offices and engage their communities. This is something Pope Francis has encouraged his flock to do, he noted.

Cardinal McCarrick concluded by emphasizing the importance of the separation of church and state. “Once you have priests making politics, you have unpriestly politics,” he quipped.

—Dale Sprusansky

Syria’s Humanitarian Crisis Worsens U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos spoke at a Middle East Institute (MEI)-sponsored event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC on May 7 to offer a somber and disturbing assessment of Syria’s worsening humanitarian crisis.

“The world is now facing a humanitarian catastrophe in Syria,” Amos stated, noting that one-third of Syrians—6.8 million people—have been seriously impacted by the crisis. Half of those affected are children, she added.

Furthermore, Amos said, Syria is experiencing rising food prices and shortages of fuel, electricity and water. Education and healthcare have also been decimated in the country, with many schools turned into shelters for the internally displaced and 50 percent of Syria’s hospitals damaged. “The impact on human lives is significant,” she observed.

The Syrian crisis risks destabilizing neighboring countries, Amos warned, with 1.4 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. Syrian refugees now make up 10 percent of the Lebanese population, Amos pointed out, adding that this figure would be higher if it included unregistered refugees living in the country. She described the crisis as “an existential threat to Lebanon.”

If a settlement to the conflict is not reached by the end of the year, Amos warned, the number of Syrian refugees could more than double, to “up to 3.5 million refugees.”

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ing off the list [of troubled countries],” she concluded. “All we’re doing is adding to the list.”

—Dale Sprusansky

versus another ethnic group.

—Pat McDonnell Twair

Syria Policy Recommendations

UCLA Panel Discusses Crisis in Syria

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The Middle East Institute (MEI) held an ”The Responsibility to Protect and the Cri- event at its Washington, DC headquarters sis in Syria” was the topic of an April 17 on April 19 to discuss “Syria at the Crosspanel discussion at UCLA’s School of Law. roads: United States Policy and RecomSpeakers were Prof. Ricardo Arredondo of mendations for the Way Forward.” MEI the University of Buenos Aires, UCLA vice president Kate Seelye moderated the Prof. Asli Bali, and Gen. Wesley Clark of discussion.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Edthe UCLA Burkle Center. Prof. Maximo ward Djerejian began by comparing Syrian Langer was the moderator.

An historical view of the concept of pro- President Bashar al-Assad to his father and tection was offered by Arredondo, who predecessor, Hafez al-Assad. “There’s a big noted that in the case of Kosovo when a difference between the father and the son,” state won’t protect its population, the U.N. Ambassador Djerejian explained. While Security Council approved other govern- Hafez was direct and stuck to his word, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humani- ments to intervene. In Syria, where 200 are Djerejian said the same is not true of tarian Affairs Valerie Amos says the num- killed daily, there is a deadlock because Se- Bashar. “You cannot take to the bank what ber of Syrian refugees could more than dou- curity Council members China and Russia Bashar tells you,” he explained. ble by the end of the year.

According to Andrew Bowen, Baker Inobject to armed intervention.

Professor Bali called for diplomatic en- stitute Scholar for the Middle East, Bashar said, the country’s worsening security en- gagement rather than intervention. She al-Assad still thinks he is going to win the vironment is complicating the humanitar- cited Yemen as an example of bringing all civil war and therefore believes he should be ian effort. “It has become overwhelming,” the shareholders to the table to carve out a the one negotiating the terms of any agreeshe lamented. “The security situation is form of peace. General Clark drew upon ment or resolution. “It’s a regime that is behis experience in the Pentagon in the cases coming increasingly delusional,” he opined. extremely volatile.”

The U.S. should boost the Syrian oppoOn a recent humanitarian trip between of Rwanda and Bosnia. sition’s capacity by providing Aleppo and Damascus, Amos said them with military assistance, her staff encountered more than Ambassador Djerejian said, argu50 checkpoints administered by ing that a better organized oppoboth pro-Assad forces and various sition “can change the situation rebel groups. The Syrian Red on the ground in Syria.” If no asCrescent has become an invaluable sistance is provided to the rebels, resource for humanitarian workthe conflict will remain staleers, she explained, because the mated and the carnage will pergroup—which is made up of indisist, Djerejian warned. However, viduals on both sides of the conthe ambassador was quick to cauflict—is able to negotiate the pastion that military assistance is not sage of humanitarian workers and the sole answer to the crisis, and supplies through checkpoints. that the U.S. should not put Emphasizing that “Our job is not to take sides, our job is to put UCLA Syria panel speakers (l-r) Gen. Wesley Clark, Prof. Asli troops on the ground.

Ambassador Djerejian conthe people first,” Amos said her Bali, Prof. Ricardo Arredondo and moderator Prof. Maximo cluded by making several policy organization works with individ- Langer. recommendations. The internauals on all sides of the conflict with the sole aim of assisting anyone who “When we intervene, we make others tional community must work to establish an is in need. “Humanitarian aid has got to re- look weak,” Clark asserted. “Russia said inclusive transitional government in order to preserve Syria’s multi-ethnic and multimain true to its principles” and get help to we’d never leave if we went into Bosnia.” the people who need it most, regardless of Stating that Moscow wants oil prices at confessional nature. Importantly, he said the their views, Amos insisted. $100 per barrel for its economic survival, U.S. must “learn from the Iraqi experience” “This is a crisis which is stretching our Clark opined that Russia wants to be in and not encourage actions, such as the fircapacity to the limit,” she added, noting Syria and is willing to go to war. He is op- ing of all civil servants, which could divide that the U.N. is struggling to deal with the posed to pre-emptive stabilization, adding and destabilize the country.

In order to solve the Syrian crisis, the growing number of humanitarian crises that in the case of Syria, a strong oppositaking place throughout the world. In ad- tion leadership is needed that’s in control U.S. needs to use high-level diplomacy to dition to Syria, Amos said, considerable at- of the weapons. If the opposition were suf- find common ground with Russia, Ambastention also is being given to, among oth- ficiently strong, it would have taken con- sador Djerejian continued. Furthermore, he ers, Yemen, Mali, Afghanistan, Sudan, trol of the country, he reasoned. In con- said, the international community must deSouth Sudan and the Democratic Republic trast, Kosovo’s opposition was united, and velop a unified and coherent funding of the Congo. “It feels like nothing is com- the struggle was between one ethnic group source for the opposition. Finally, the amJUNE/JULY 2013

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of George Washington University’s Central Asia program, the Central Asian republics are apprehensive about the upcoming U.S. pullout for geopolitical, economic and security reasons.

On the geopolitical front, Laruelle noted that all five republics have relied on the American presence in Afghanistan as “a tool for regional balance.” Their fear is that decreased American interest in the region post-2014 will cause them to lose leverage in negotiations and leave them susceptible to pressure from the international community, particularly Russia and China.

The Central Asian republics also have benefited economically from the Afghan war, Laruelle pointed out. In exchange for their cooperation with the war effort, she elaborated, many countries have received increased aid from the U.S. over the past decade. Furthermore, the countries have earned considerable revenue from the transportation of NATO military supplies across their borders, Laruelle said.

Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors are also concerned that their economic interests in the country will be threatened by post-2014 instability. In particular, Laruelle said, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan—both of which share a border with Afghanistan— are concerned that their energy sales to Afghanistan will be interrupted. This fear has resulted in Uzbekistan being open to accepting a Taliban presence in future Afghan governments, Laruelle added.

Security-wise, Laruelle said, the secular Uzbek and Tajik governments are fearful of “radical Islamists” spilling across their border and creating instability. In her opinion, however, “the risk of spillover is in fact very limited.”

—Dale Sprusansky

Scholar Blames Marginalized Tribal Societies, not Islam, for Troubles American University Prof. Akbar Ahmed launched his new book, The Thistle and the

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and large parts of Afghanistan will return to warlordism, she said.

In an effort to prepare for the post-2014 era, Khan said, Pakistan has been fortifying its military posts along its 1,640-mile border with Afghanistan. This has become a source of tension between the two countries, she noted, as Kabul maintains that Pakistan is building some of its posts within Afghan territory. These territorial disputes have Andrew Bowen (l) and Ambassador Edward Djerejian dis- historical roots, Khan excuss U.S. policy options in Syria. plained, since, unlike Pakistan, Afghanistan does not bassador said Washington must not allow accept the border the British established bethe crisis to destabilize neighboring Jordan tween Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1893.

Afghan officials also are unhappy with and Lebanon, both of which have struggled to handle the flood of Syrian refugees Pakistan’s efforts to reach out to non-Pashcrossing their borders. —Dale Sprusansky tun leaders in Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is a Pashtun, conRegional Perspectives on Post-2014 siders these non-Pashtuns his enemies, she Afghanistan noted. Ultimately, however, Khan believes The Woodrow Wilson International Center President Karzai has little reason to fear for Scholars held a May 1 event at its Pakistan’s endeavor, since its effort to woo Washington, DC offices to explore the im- non-Pashtun Afghans “hasn’t met that pact the withdrawal of U.S. troops from much success.” Most non-Pashtun groups Afghanistan in 2014 will have on Pakistan already have long-standing relations with and the Central Asian republics of Kyr- other regional actors, she said.

While Pakistan has been attempting to gyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazafacilitate intra-Afghan dialogue, Islamabad khstan and Turkmenistan.

Simbal Khan, a Pakistan scholar at the is growing increasingly pessimistic about Wilson Center, began by noting that “Pak- the success of its efforts, Khan said. Pakistan has long been skeptical of the war in istani officials believe Afghan political Afghanistan.” Islamabad never believed elites are uneasy about participating in any the international coalition would be able to process that could result in concessions being made to the Taliban, Khan said, predefeat the Taliban, she explained.

Nor does Pakistan believe that the dicting that these Afghan leaders will Afghan government will be able to estab- likely not embrace dialogue until their lish security post-2014, Khan said. Instead, country’s April 2014 presidential election the general conviction in Pakistan is that has been decided.

According to Marlene Laruelle, director Afghanistan’s security forces will collapse

(L-r) Simbal Khan, moderator Regine Spector and Marlene Laruelle discuss how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will impact Pakistan and Central Asia.

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agreed that drones create more enemies and kill the warrior ethos. Listeners were left with the realization that drones may be a marvel of technological development, but the ethics, laws and methodology of when to use them is lagging far behind. If we wait until we see a drone hovering over Times Square or a police officer is able to decide to pop that drug dealer using a drone—then, the panelists warned, it will be too late to regulate drones.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Egypt’s Polarized Politics, Stalled Economy, Diplomatic Relations Egypt was the topic of several discussions held at Washington, DC think tanks and universities in April and May. A range of speakers—some participating in more than one event—dissected the polarized nature of Egyptian politics, the country’s struggling economy and Cairo’s relationship with the U.S. and its regional neighbors.

Prof. Akbar Ahmed launches his latest book, The Thistle and the Drone.

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Political Polarization Speaking at an April 18 Middle East Institute (MEI) event titled “Egypt’s Growing Political Crisis,” Khalil al-Anani of Durham University noted that the Muslim Brotherhood is having a difficult time adjusting to being the ruling party. “They’re still acting as an opposition movement,” he observed.

Instead of adapting to the norms of the state, al-Anani said, the Brotherhood has made the mistake of trying “to adapt the state to their organizational norms and values.”

Because it was persecuted by past regimes, al-Anani said, the Brotherhood has a conspiratorial outlook on politics.

According to al-Anani, such a world view makes them inherently distrustful of other political actors and has prevented them from forging alliances with other groups.

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Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (available from the AET Book Club), with a panel discussion on drones at AU’s School of International Service on April 9.

The former Pakistani ambassador to the U.K. said his latest book is the third part of a series (Discovering Islam and Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam) he wrote after 9/11 to help Americans understand the Muslim world. In The Thistle and the Drone, he examines the tribal roots of terrorism, a reality which has been overlooked by many since the declaration of the war on terror over a decade ago.

Using 40 case studies of tribal societies across the Muslim world, from Morocco to Chechnya, Ahmed and his four-member team of students show how the U.S. misunderstood its enemy after 9/11, mistakenly believing that it was engaging in a “clash of civilizations” between the West and the Muslim world. Their painful study focuses on the “spaces between states”— isolated, impoverished, illiterate, voiceless tribal people living in huge swaths of territory. They include Yemenis, Pashtuns, Kurds, Circassians, Berbers and African tribes. The study reveals man’s inhumanity to man—traumatized people living on the periphery of society. It also emphasizes that Islam is a red herring, not the root cause of these conflicts.

The closing lines of Professor Ahmed’s book point to a path of peace. He calls upon people to rise above tribe and race, and save themselves by going out to heal a fractured world.

Joining Ambassador Ahmed to discuss the use of drones was a distinguished panel of experts, including Col. (Ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Prof. Randolph Persaud. All

At an April 29 Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) event titled “Political Islam and the Struggle for Democracy in Egypt,” Michele Dunne, director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, said the Brotherhood’s persecution complex is in some ways legitimate.

Specifically, she said, there is evidence to suggest that elements of the Egyptian bureaucracy are out to make the Brotherhood fail. The Brotherhood, Dunne noted, is “in a struggle with the old state.”

Many in the liberal opposition also are out to make the Brotherhood fail, said Nur Laiq, a senior policy analyst at the International Peace Institute, at a May 6 New America Foundation event titled “Egypt in Transition.” “The opposition’s politics is a politics of ‘no,’” she opined. While they constantly criticize President Mohamed Morsi, Laiq said, the opposition “doesn’t have any particular political platform.”

Ahmed Maher, co-founder of the April 6 Youth Movement, differed with his copanelist’s assessment, charging that the Morsi regime has refused to work with liberals. While he was a member of the Constituent Assembly, Maher claims, members of the Islamist-dominated body belittled his role. “They [the Islamists] said they are the majority and that’s it,” he recalled.

“This regime is the same as the old regime, only with a religious face,” Maher said of the Brotherhood. The goals of the revolution have been undermined, he argued, and the opposition must thus press forward. “We will not stop until we have real freedom, real dignity, real social justice,” Maher pledged.

At an April 25 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) discussion on “The New Egypt: Challenges of a PostRevolutionary Era,” prominent Egyptian

(L-r) Khalil al-Anani, Samer Shehata, Nathan Brown and Michael Hanna.

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“Sins of the Transition”

different segments of society during the 18month transition to civilian rule. As a result, she explained, Egyptians were never able to agree on a clear plan for the future.

Dunne identified the decision to hold elections before agreeing on a constitution as the second “sin,” saying that this gave political forces “an opportunity to test their strength with the Egyptian public before setting up the rules of the game.”

Consequently, Dunne said, the constitution-writing process became divisive and political and lacked the art of compromise.

Arguing that “process is as important as product,” Nathan Brown said that constitutions are meant to bring differing political forces together. Instead of achieving unity, however, the Egyptian constitution was passed with only a narrow consensus, and thus served to “fundamentally make [Egypt’s] problems worse,” he said. Because so many refuse to accept the document’s legitimacy, Brown noted, “basic rules of political life are still being contested.”

Brown also lamented that, more than two years after the revolution, “most political institutions are fundamentally unreformed.” In particular, he said, the military and security apparatuses continue to operate without oversight or accountability, and labor union and judiciary reforms remain stalled.

At the New America Foundation event, youth revolutionary Jawad Nabulsi, cofounder of the Nebny Foundation, shared Brown’s frustrations. He described Egypt’s entrenched bureaucrats as “big enemies that have special financial interests they

U.S. Policy to Egypt

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In Michele Dunne’s opinion, the current political polarization can be explained in part by analyzing procedural errors made during Egypt’s transition. She dubbed these mistakes the “sins of the transition.”

The first mistake, according to Dunne, was the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ (SCAF) inability to initiate a roundtable, consensus-building initiative between

(L-r) Nur Laiq, Jawad Nabulsi and Ahmed Maher.

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Egyptian Economy During his remarks at the CSIS event, Dr. Khaled Ismail, chairman of Endeavor Egypt, painted a dire picture of the Egyptian economy. “The economy is draining, the economy is falling apart,” he opined.

Dunne shared Ismail’s viewpoint. “The economy is on life support,” she commented, pointing out that the Egyptian government has been forced to cut corners on purchases of food and fuel.

Mostafa Al Hassan, chairman of Global Consolidated Contractors, offered a more optimistic take on the Egyptian economy, saying the economic landscape is changing in a positive direction. Al Hassan complimented the Brotherhood-backed Freedom and Justice Party’s (FJP) economic policy, saying the party has put forth a clear economic model. The opposition, he added, has offered no economic plan and instead opts to protest any FJP-endorsed initiative.

Prof. Samer Shehata said he believes Egypt will be able to navigate its economic crisis, noting that “Egypt has always managed to muddle through.” Qatar, Libya and Turkey have provided Egypt with billions of dollars in recent months, he pointed out, adding that he did not believe the international community will allow Egypt to fail.

According to Dr. Ismail, Egypt must begin tackling head-on the sources of its economic instability and stop relying on temporary fixes. “Sometimes you need to face the problem and do an operation,” he said. The longer the country waits to confront its structural issues, the more painful the remedy will be, Ismail warned.

(L-r) Manar El-Shorbagy, Naguib Sawiris, moderator Jon Alterman, Dr. Khaled Ismail and Mostafa Al Hassan. businessman Naguib Sawiris, executive chairman of the Orascom Group, shared Maher’s sentiment. Sawiris accused the Brotherhood of not wanting to govern democratically and President Morsi of cracking down on such basic freedoms as freedom of the press. “They’re still attempting to go their own way and not listen to the opposition,” he said of the Brotherhood.

Maher and Sawiris’ comments are indicative of Egypt’s tense political climate, George Washington University professor Nathan Brown said at the SAIS event. “I’m beginning to lose my ability to eat lunch while reading the Egyptian press,” he quipped, noting that vice and suspicion are rampant in the country.

At the MEI event, Brown said President Morsi views the opposition “as a lost cause” and as “unreasonable people.” Georgetown University professor Samer Shehata agreed with Brown’s assessment, saying the president “sees sour grapes and sore losers” when he looks at the opposition. Voicing his personal opinion at the later SAIS event, Brown said the opposition “did not come to terms with the fact that it lost.”

are willing to fight to protect.” Comparing the state institutions to mafias, he acknowledged that overcoming their corrupt ways will not be easy. “They are so hard to fight on your own,” Nabulsi said.

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Speaking at the MEI event, Michael Hanna of The Century Foundation said the U.S. has not properly adjusted to the realities of post-Mubarak Egypt and is still trying to dictate political outcomes in the country.

“That’s a strange place to be at this point,” he commented. Highlighting the continuity of American policy, Dunne pointed out that the U.S. still spars with Egypt over economic and democracy assistance, still provides the country with the same aid package, and continues to only actively engage the president and other elites.

Hanna was particularly critical of the U.S. on this latter point. Washington, he said, must engage a wide range of actors in JUNE/JULY 2013

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(L-r) Gen. (ret.) Sameh Seif Elyazal, moderator Jon Alterman, Amr Darrag and Amr Hamzawy. bors in order to be effective. As an example, he said, progress cannot be made in Syria without talking to the Iranians. “We are hoping to have a balanced relationship with everyone,” he emphasized.

Overall, Hamzawy was critical of President Morsi’s foreign policy record, saying he has lacked vision and clarity. In Hamzawy’s opinion, Egypt’s top foreign policy priority must be to improve its economic and trade relations with the region.

Hamzawy also expressed his concern that Egypt is borrowing too much money from other nations. Noting that Egypt has a foreign debt of $35 billion, he said the country is at risk of becoming acquiescent to the desires of its debt holders.

—Dale Sprusansky

Egypt and should not assume the Brotherhood will remain in power for the longrun. Egyptian voter allegiance is “dynamic, fragile, fluid and somewhat incoherent,” he cautioned, and it remains uncertain how the country’s political landscape will look in a few years.

“I think the United States is completely befuddled by Egypt at this point,” Dunne opined. Unable to adjust to the rapidly changing realities on the ground, she said, the U.S. has “no real strategy behind its policy on Egypt.” The U.S. must undergo “a complete rethink of its strategy” toward Egypt, Dunne advised.

Offering an Egyptian perspective at the CSIS event, Al Hassan and American University in Cairo professor Manar ElShorbagy both urged Washington not to meddle in their country’s internal affairs.

“This is an issue Egyptians have to figure out themselves,” El-Shorbagy said of the country’s polarized politics. “Each country has its own DNA,” Al Hassan added. “Only people in the country understand what they want.”

Algeria’s Politics and Economy The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) held a March 28 event at its Washington, DC campus titled “Algeria: Between Reforms and Stability” to discuss Algeria’s political and economic landscapes.

SAIS professor emeritus William Zartman began by outlining why Algeria has not witnessed an Arab Spring uprising.

First and foremost, he said, Algerians remain emotionally traumatized by the country’s bloody 1990s civil war between the military and Islamist groups. “People

The second panel at the CSIS event focused on Egypt’s foreign policy. Gen. (ret.) Sameh Seif Elyazal, chairman of the Algomhoria Center for Political and Security Studies, began by warning Cairo not to reinstate diplomatic relations with Tehran. Demonstrating deep hostility toward Iran throughout his remarks, he repeatedly expressed fear that Tehran is attempting to export Shi’ism to Egypt.

Amr Hamzawy, president of the liberal Egypt Freedom Party, accused General Elyazal of resorting to extremist politics.

Egypt, which recently began allowing a limited number of Iranians to visit its beach resorts, has no reason to be afraid of Iranians, he argued, adding that it is unwise for Cairo to diplomatically shun Tehran. “I am not in principle against reaching out to Iran,” he stated.

Amr Darrag, a member of the Freedom and Justice Party’s executive board, said Egypt must have ties with all of its neighJUNE/JULY 2013

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Egyptian Foreign Policy

just don’t want to be involved in something that’s going to bring about the same thing,” Zartman observed.

Secondly, he said, the close relationship between President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and the Algerian military poses a number of challenges to the opposition. Due to the fact that the military junta essentially runs the country, he pointed out, Bouteflika’s overthrow would have little substantive change in the way the country is run. Real change, Zartman stated, would require the overthrow of the military.

Thirdly, because the military staunchly supports Bouteflika, Zartman said, Algerians cannot be certain it will not fire on civilians if an uprising were to break out. This, he noted, was not an obstacle faced by revolutionaries in countries such as Egypt.

Finally, the Algerian government has successfully bought off, suppressed or met the demands of most protesters, Zartman explained. Furthermore, he added, most Algerian protests have been over local matters and have thus not directly challenged the legitimacy of the government.

While the Algerian political climate is currently relatively stable, Zartman predicted the scheduled 2014 presidential election will be “a touchy time for Algeria.” Regardless of whether or not the 76year-old Bouteflika, who is reported to be in poor health, decides to run for another term, Zartman said the election could ignite the opposition and lead to instability.

SAIS lecturer Eamonn Gearon cited the lack of diversity in Algeria’s oil-dependent economy. “Algeria doesn’t have an economy, it has a savings account,” he quipped, pointing out that oil accounts for over 95 percent of the country’s export earnings.

Gearon placed the blame for the lack of diversity on the country’s leaders, arguing that they have taken a lukewarm approach

Profs. Eamonn Gearon (l) and William Zartman discuss the stagnant nature of Algeria’s politics and economy.

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lution as “either dead or on life support.” Pointing out that more than 600,000 Israelis now live in illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and that Israel has become increasingly reliant on Palestinian aquifers for water, Walt described the two-state solution as “further away than ever.”

“At some point you won’t be able to say you support a two-state solution without making people laugh,” he predicted. If the two-state solution is indeed dead, Walt continued, there are now three possible outcomes: a oneRalph Nader Challenges Activists state solution, ethnic cleansing, or perTo Get to Work manent apartheid. Given the graveness Author, activist and former presidential Ralph Nader challenges his audience to become of the latter two options, he said, the U.S. “needs an honest discussion of candidate Ralph Nader spoke on March Congress-Watchers. where we are headed.”

26 at the National Press Club, at the inWalt, co-author of The Israel Lobby and vitation of the McClendon Group, founded sports, gossip, political peccadilloes and by the late senior White House correspon- natural disasters. Investigative journalism, U.S. Foreign Policy (available from the AET dent Sarah McClendon. The crusading at- like “60 Minutes,” which has some very Book Club), pointed out that the Israel lobby frequently uses smear tactics against torney first made headlines in 1965 with good reporting, Nader said, is rare.

Nader called for campaign finance re- those who question Israel or point out the his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a scathing indictment of the auto industry for pro- form to neutralize lobbies. Donations from lobby’s influence. As an example, he noted ducing dangerous vehicles. His book led to corporations should not be treated like in- that the lobby has accused former Presicongressional hearings and a series of au- dividual contributions. “Corporations dent Jimmy Carter of being an anti-Semite don’t die in Iraq,” he pointed out. “They “even though he did more to secure peace tomobile safety laws passed in 1966.

Nader went on to found Public Citizen should not be treated like human beings. for Israel than any other president.”

The lobby uses smear tactics for two reain 1971. Since then the NGO, which now No corporation should be allowed to give sons, Walt said: to deter individuals from has 100,000 members, has taken on air pol- money to campaigns.”

Nader also called for an end to the cor- speaking out and to marginalize those who lution, nursing home flaws, pharmaceutical companies, national security issues, the ruption and waste in the Defense Depart- refuse to remain silent. Because it is aware nuclear industry, the Iraq war, corporate ment. “We could rebuild America with that public perceptions could change rapidly if an open and honest discussion strangleholds on democracy, and is now that money,” he added.

He motivated his listeners to get to work. were held on the topic, the lobby acts agworking to raise the minimum wage. Public Citizen also is leading the charge against “It’s easier than we think to get tens and gressively to prevent any anti-Israel voice undemocratic trade agreements that ad- millions who think they have no power to from gaining notoriety or legitimacy on the national stage, he explained. vance the interests of mega-corporations at challenge the big boys,” Nader said.

“There are 50 million bird-watchers in While this is bad news for those advothe expense of citizens worldwide.

In his remarks Nader reprimanded Con- America, but not 100 Congress-watchers,” cating for peace and justice in Palestine, gress for undermining regulations and fail- Nader said. “Democracy only works if a Walt acknowledged, there is a silver lining.

Once the lobby’s defenses are cracked, he ing to prosecute corporate fraud. He de- modest number of people work at it.”

Nader urged Americans to work to en- said, public opinion could suddenly scribed embattled citizen groups overwhelmed by opponents financed by thou- gage their members of Congress on their change in favor of the Palestinians. “This sands of PACs with fake names, who can issue. If their representatives have to avalanche could flow with incredible outspend them by buying TV ads and choose between money and votes, they’ll swiftness,” Walt opined. choose votes, Nader promised.

Philip Weiss, founder and co-editor of paying lobbyists.

—Delinda C. Hanley Mondoweiss.net, began by lamenting the Nader reserved special scorn for media fact that it has been left to the alternative and the corporations that have annihilated media to report on the Israeli occupation. competition. In 1983, he noted, 50 corpo- Expanding the Debate on Israel“This is work our politicians should be rations controlled the vast majority of all Palestine news media in the U.S. Today there are The Middle East Policy Council held an doing all the time,” he stated.

In Weiss’ opinion, the pro-Israel bias of seven incredibly powerful media corpora- April 25 conference at the Rayburn House tions which own TV networks, cable chan- Office Building on Capitol Hill to discuss most American politicians is actively unnels, movie studios, newspapers, maga- “The Future of Israel and Palestine: Ex- dermining a just solution to the conflict. zines, publishing houses, music labels and panding the Debate.” Panelists addressed As an example, he pointed to the fact that even websites. The big seven—Time the status of the two-state solution, the in- President Barack Obama invited Reps.

Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Rupert fluence of the Israel lobby, and the U.S. ap- Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Eliot Engel (D-NY)—both of whom were Murdoch's News Corp., CBS Corporation, proach to the conflict.

NBC Universal and Clear Channel—focus Harvard University professor Stephen leading recipients of aid from pro-Israel news consumers’ attention on celebrities, Walt began by describing the two-state so- political action committees (PACs) in 62

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

to the economy. “I don’t see the political will there at the moment,” he said.

Even though Algeria is concerned about the presence of militarized Islamists in the region, Gearon said, the country had an “ambivalent reaction” to the crisis in neighboring Mali because Algiers was nervous about being dragged into a foreign intervention.

Nevertheless, he stated, Algiers remains fully committed to protecting Algeria’s many oil and gas fields.

—Dale Sprusansky

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raeli Peace?” Dr. Jehan Sadat, widow of assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, opened the 2013 Sadat Forum, moderated by Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at University of Maryland.

Telhami asked panelist Margaret Warner Philip Weiss (l) and Henry Siegman debate Israel's identity as a of the PBS “NewJewish state. sHour,” who accom2012—to accompany him on Air Force One panied President Barack Obama on his March 20-22 trip to Israel, if she thought on his recent trip to Palestine and Israel.

Weiss declared the two-state solution the president was just “checking a box” or dead, explaining, “One side has won...one if he had something in mind. Warner said side controls all the land with the excep- she believes Obama was signaling “caution of Area A.” Israel has intentionally tious re-engagement.” Obama may have used the peace process to steal Palestinian hoped the trip would improve his standing land, he said, adding that “Israel has al- with Israelis, she suggested, and show he ways wanted as much land as possible had a sense of the Israeli narrative and concerns. After this trip it will be harder for with as few Palestinians on it.”

Henry Siegman, president of the U.S./ Israel to defy Obama, she added.

Warner compared her recent trip to a Middle East Project, agreed with Weiss’ assessment. “The peace process is probably visit 20 years ago, when “Israelis and Palesthe greatest scam in modern political his- tinians distrusted each other but they tory,” he charged. The status quo benefits knew each other, they worked together, Israel, he argued, as it gives the Jewish state they were willing to engage. Now the separation barrier has really done a job,” free reign over the Palestinian territories.

According to Siegman, who supports the Warner stated. “Palestinians don’t know existence of a Jewish state, the early lead- Israelis except settlers and soldiers.”

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State ers of the Zionist movement “would be appalled to see what their experiment Tamara Cofman Wittes said the most imporyielded.” Weiss, on the other hand, argued tant message from Obama’s trip was that that Israel should no longer remain a reli- Arab-Israeli peace and ending wars in the regious-based state. “I like a state in which gion are of primary concern to Americans.

Daniel Kurtzer, a Princeton professor religious minorities have rights,” he said.

—Dale Sprusansky and former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, said there is only a two- to threeSadat Forum Agree Kerry and month window for Israeli-Palestinian Obama Can Make Peace peace talks because there is a growing conStudents, faculty and guests gathered at the stituency in both communities who would University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Per- rather not have peace.

The president has the power to shape forming Arts Center on April 9 to hear panelists decide “Can Obama Broker Arab-Is- and articulate U.S. foreign policy if we be-

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(L-r) Prof. Shibley Telhami, Margaret Warner, Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer and Tamara Cofman Wittes.

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lieve he knows what he’s doing, Kurtzer added. There is a strong feeling in Congress that when and if the president comes forward with a reasonable policy they’ll let him go ahead. This is so important to America that it’s worth taking risks, Kurtzer argued.

When asked what leverage the U.S. has today in Israel and Palestine, Kurtzer explained that Israelis are uncomfortable when they have a bad relationship with an American president. “A whisper in Washington comes out of a bullhorn in Israel,” Kurtzer quipped. As for cutting off financial assistance, as one audience member suggested, Kurtzer argued that we don’t have to think about that. Israel has such intimacy with the U.S. that we can use “body language and nuances. Use sticks in the end,” he said, “but we don’t have to start that way.” As for Palestinians, according to Kurtzer, they know that “America is the only game in town.”

Panel members agreed that Secretary of State John Kerry wants to make Arab-Israeli peace a priority and that the White House is willing to let Kerry be the point man and see what he can do. Obama will have his back, Warner concluded.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Clifford’s Metro Ads Come to DC The battle to educate Americans continues.

Henry Clifford, chairman of the Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine, unveiled his latest billboard campaign in major subway stations throughout downtown Washington, DC the second week of May. Even before the Washington Report spotted the first ad—with maps depicting the loss of Palestinian land from 1946 to 2010, and another line stating 4.7 million Palestinians are classified by the U.N. as refugees—we noticed a reaction. A father herding children across the crowded station platform stopped dead in his tracks to read the billboard, ignoring his kids, who kept on walking.

American Muslims for Palestine launched its own ad campaign in several cities, including Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, on March 26, timed to coincide with President Barack Obama’s Middle East visit.

The ads featured a drawing of an Israeli soldier pointing his gun at a Palestinian child, with both figures surrounded by Israel’s illegal wall. They called for an end to Israeli Apartheid, and urged America to ”Stop U.S. Aid to Israel.”

The extreme pro-Israel organization StandWithUs [SWU] plans to place seven posters in 25 New York (Westchester) MetroNorth locations from May 13 until June 9.

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Henry Clifford’s billboard campaign stops DC residents and tourists in their tracks.

Rabbi Brant Rosen of JVP Speaks on BDS in Des Moines Rabbi Brant Rosen spoke at Drake University in Des Moines, IA on April 29, about his personal journey to support Palestinian human rights. “I have come to believe that Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is an enormously important movement,” he told a near-capacity audience gathered in Sussman Theater. “I believe that it is a call from Palestinians for support. The real question we need to be asking is not, ‘What about this country or that country?’ but ‘Are we going to answer their call, or not?’”

Rabbi of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, IL; co-founder of Ta’anit Tzedek, Jewish Fast for Gaza; and chair of the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace, Rosen is the author of the recently published Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi’s Path to Palestinian Solidarity (available from the AET Book Club).

“If we believe their call is valid, that their oppression is real, then calling for popular support for a nonviolent resistance, which is a time-honored way that oppressed peoples have resisted far more powerful parties, as in the Montgomery Bus Boycott during the civil rights movement, I think it’s important to take this se64

riously,” explained Rosen.

“Even if there are those in my community who are not ready to sign on, at the very least [we ought] not to condemn [BDS] irrationally as ‘Jew-hatred,’ which I firmly believe it is not,” he declared. “Can we argue about its effectiveness? Absolutely. But to shun all public consideration of it is, I think, narrow-minded and short-sighted.”

Rosen told his audience that for many years he had dealt with questions about Israel and Palestine by avoiding them with the thought that “it’s complicated.” After Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, with Israel’s display of overwhelming military force against a captive civilian population, it no longer was complicated, he explained.

Several times during his presentation, titled “Jews in Solidarity with Palestinians: BDS and Beyond,” Rosen’s comments drew

STAFF PHOTO M. GILLESPIE

One StandWithUs ad states that the U.S.-Israel relationship creates jobs in America, another claims that “Israel Celebrates Diversity,” while yet another shows President Barack Obama meeting Miss Israel 2013, the first Ethiopian-Israeli to win the title.

“The posters showing Palestinian loss of land are based on historical and geographical fact,” Clifford told the Washington Report. “The ads by StandWithUs present unsubstantiated opinion along with a frivolous mention of Obama meeting with Miss Israel. With competition like that we can’t lose...”

—Delinda C. Hanley

Rabbi Brant Rosen at Drake University in Des Moines.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

general applause from an audience of activists and interested observers. During the question-and-answer period, Dr. David Drake, chair of the Des Moines Human Rights Commission, asked, “Is a two-state solution still possible?”

“I don’t believe it is, in the way that it has been defined in the past 20 years by the ‘peace process,’” said Rosen.

“If you go to the West Bank and you see the reality on the ground, and I have done this numerous times, you understand that Israel is engaged in a very concerted policy.…Israel has been systematically demolishing Palestinian homes, revoking property rights and citizenship rights.…

They’ve been Judaizing [much of the West Bank] and de facto annexing it. There’s no way you could imagine a contiguous, viable Palestinian state given what Israel has done. They’re doing this because they can, because no one is stopping them. Our government certainly isn’t,” said Rosen.

Another questioner accused Rosen of “glossing over the violence targeting Israeli civilians while focusing on Israeli operations that target militants” and ignoring thousands of civilian casualties in Syria.

“Our country, my country, doesn’t have a special relationship with the government of Syria that arms it, enables it, and looks the other way when [violence] happens,” replied Rosen, who noted that as an American and as a Jew he is doubly implicated in what goes on in Israel.

“The reason I spend so much time on this particular issue is because our community has been egregiously silent, and we hide behind arguments of ‘What about here? What about there?’ To me, that’s misdirection. That’s not the question to be asking,” said Rosen, adding that he is not sure the Israeli assertion, “they target civilians and we don’t,” is an honest one.

“Israel was founded through a dislocation and a disenfranchisement of the people who lived in that land, and Israel’s security since that time has been predicated on keeping a Jewish majority in that land and keeping the people who were sent out, out of that land, but also keeping down the people who remain, oppressing them,” he continued. “One of the things you find is that when people are oppressed, they tend to resist, sometimes violently...I don’t condone violent resistance, but I understand it.

I understand that people who are put down long enough will fight back.”

Israel has always counted on more violence and greater firepower in the hope that finally the Palestinians will understand who is boss, said Rosen.

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regardless of the hardships, even if it costs me my life.” Dana had been shot twice by Israeli soldiers, beaten into unconsciousness by Jewish settlers, and had his head slammed in an ambulance door by UPA Supporters Walk for an Israeli policeman.

Palestine For his own safety, Reuters sent Dana to cover the U.S. invasion of United Palestinian Appeal held its Iraq. On Aug. 17, 2003 he was shot first annual Spring Walk for Palesto death by American forces outtine on May 4 at Lake Fairfax side Abu Ghraib prison. “His Park in Reston, VA. More than 150 participants, some from as far away Walkers raise funds for vital UPA programs for Palestinians. death, to me, underscores how we rely on him and people like him for as Pennsylvania, walked to show against the separation wall and, of course, our news, even as he is endangered by our their support for Palestine. armies,” Bishara stated.

Walkers wore T-shirts emblazoned with violence against Palestinian journalists.

She went on to talk about the valuable Bishara showed a clip from “Across red poppies, an image of hope that UPA chose to mark its 35th year of service to Oceans, Among Colleagues,” a documen- perspective of Palestinian journalists who Palestinians in need. The Washington Re- tary she produced about the work of the can speak the language, know their history port confesses to eavesdropping on a con- Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in and politics, and have the essential comversation between two young children. 2001-2002. During an internship with CPJ, munity connections. American reporters “Why are we doing this?” asked one boy, she explained, she learned about how Is- may try to be objective, she said, choosing walking just behind this reporter, a new raeli restrictions on Palestinians’ movement neutral terminology and talking to people acquaintance and my dog. His friend prevented Palestinian journalists from on both sides, but it is impossible for replied, “We’re helping kids in refugee doing their job. She also had the opportu- Americans, most of whom live in Israel, to camps in Palestine. When I went there I nity to meet and film Mazen Dana, a presume to be neutral outsiders as they reReuters cameraman from Hebron who was port on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. saw them. They really need our help.”

Dr. Juan Cole, author of Engaging the After walking around the lake, partici- awarded CPJ’s Press Freedom Award in pants enjoyed a spectacular lunch pro- 2001. In accepting the award, Dana said, Muslim World (available from the AET vided by Jerusalem Restaurant and oud “Words and images are a public trust. For Book Club), examined “Statelessness: The this reason I will continue with my work Core of the Palestinian Issue,” on May 2. music by Fuad Foty.

The University of Michigan professor, All proceeds from the walk, including whose popular blog, Informed Comment, sponsorships, raffle ticket sales and regisis a Washington Report favorite, argued trations will support UPA programs in the that most Palestinian problems stem from West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinian a condition of statelessness. Statelessness refugee camps throughout the Middle means a person has no human or civil East. The Spring Walk evoked feelings of rights, no property rights, nor standing in solidarity and camaraderie among particinegotiations, he explained. pants, young and old—all supporters of Cole cited Margaret Somers, an expert on UPA’s vital work—a spirit which is pricecitizenship and statelessness, who deless.

—Delinda C. Hanley scribes citizenship as the right to have Amahl Bishara, Juan Cole Describe rights. Somers argues that the state isn’t Palestine Past and Future doing much for vulnerable families living in Detroit, or Hurricane Katrina victims.

The Palestine Center in Washington, DC Cole noted that Israel isn’t doing much for hosted a wealth of important lectures in Palestinians, who have little access to outApril and May, with many of the events side markets, no airport or seaport, and live-streamed to viewers. only “little glimmers of citizenship.” No On April 15, Dr. Amahl Bishara, assisother group of people in the world look tant professor of anthropology at Tufts like this, Cole stated.

University, spoke about her recent book, He described Jewish statelessness in the Back Stories: U.S. News Productions and 1930s and ‘40s, as Nazis ruthlessly dePalestinian Politics (available from the AET prived them of their citizenship rights. EuBook Club). Her book describes the generropeans and Americans didn’t want Euroally hidden roles played by Palestinian fixpean Jews when they were stateless. Today ers, reporters, producers and photo jourit is Israel which deports or expels Palesnalists who have worked with foreign cortinians to Gaza, Jordan and Cyprus. Palesrespondents in the production of U.S. tinians are not like undocumented workers news reports during the second intifada.

The book covers everyday experiences of (Top) Dr. Amahl Bishara and (above) Dr. in the U.S. or Israel, who just don’t have checkpoints and closures, Palestinians’ ex- Juan Cole spoke at the Palestine Center in papers for where they’re working, Cole pointed out. Palestinians have no passperiences during Israeli invasions, protests Washington, DC. STAFF PHOTOS D. HANLEY

“That will not break their resolve. It won’t end the misery. It will only end up in greater destruction,” Rosen concluded.

—Michael Gillespie

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A Memorable Conversation with Father Elias Chacour The Palestine Israel Advocacy Group at the Washington National Cathedral hosted Father Elias Chacour, archbishop of the Melkite Catholic Church of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth and all Galilee, who spoke at the Perry Auditorium April 10 before a standing-room-only audience. Chacour, author of Blood Brothers (which has been translated into 28 languages) and We Belong to the Land (both available from the AET Book Club), has spent a lifetime working for reconciliation between Arabs and Jews. He founded the Mar Elias Educational Institution, which now has more than 3,000 students and faculty, including Muslims, Christians, Druze and Jews, from kindergarten to university, in Ibillin, northern Israel.

Palestinian-American activist Grace Said 66

Archbishop Elias Chacour signs copies of his books.

When asked what Americans who care about peace can do, Chacour said to continue to love Israel but criticize its policies.

“Raise hell. No nation on earth is divine.

No nation is holy. No nation has chosen people. A nation can’t enslave another.”

He urged his audience not to give up even if there is a vast “distance between what you believe and your foreign policy,” which seems to tolerate occupation as necessary for Israel’s national security. “We are as far from Christ as we are from the moon,” Chacour acknowledged. “If Jesus did appear he’d say to all of us, ‘I did not invite you to be peace contemplators but peace actors, activists, builders. Get up.

Get your hands dirty.”

Palestinians are running out of patience, he warned, hearing Israelis and Americans do nothing but “talk, talk, talk.”

—Delinda C. Hanley

introduced Abuna (Father) Chacour and Rev. Steve Hyde, a pastor of Ravensworth Church in Annandale, VA, who asked Chacour questions about his life. One story Chacour told was about a visit to America looking for support for his school. He Palestinians in DC Speak to the drove from the airport directly to the home Churches of Secretary of State James Baker. When Eight Palestinian-American professionals his wife, Susan, opened the door, Chacour shared their moving family stories at the introduced himself as “another man from Sabeel DC Metro Spring workshop on April Galilee.” When Mrs. Baker asked if he had 27 at Wesley Theological Seminary in an appointment, Father Chacour quipped, Washington, DC. The Palestinian Christian “Appointment? We men from Galilee don’t Alliance for Peace (PCAP), an ecumenical make appointments.” non-sectarian alliance of Palestinian AmerPastor Hyde recalled that when he and ican Christians initiated last year, partnered his friends met Chacour in Ibillin, Abuna with Sabeel to organize the day-long event. advised his group, “Don’t go home and take Paul Verduin, Sabeel Metro co-chair, welsides. Don’t spit your truth in their faces.” comed participants, and Rev. Steve Hyde, So many times when I get into conversations pastor of Ravensworth Baptist Church, gave here, Hyde said, “I see people’s eyes glaze an opening prayer. And then the personal over. Tell me how to remain balanced.” family stories began, complete with cher“If I spit the truth it brings more misery,” ished old photos and special memories.

Chacour replied. “I am a beggar, not for Software training developer Grace Said money, but for friendship and solidarity. I was born in Cairo, grew up in Lebanon, and beg you to be our friend...Jews and Arabs moved to Washington, DC in the 1980s. She need a common friend...take our side but showed photos of her grandfather and her don’t be one-sided.” father, both born in Jerusalem, who used to Chacour encouraged Americans to visit turn on the lights for neighborhood OrthoPalestine, not just the holy places but also dox Jews. The youngest of five, Said the refugee camps. Refugees whose cup- showed family portraits, taken yearly in boards are empty will borrow from their Cairo. “I never lived in Palestine,” Said exneighbors to make you food, he promised.

He said Americans also should go to Bethlehem, where “you’ll be horrified to see the wall, built with your money, which has torn up our hearts.” When the Berlin Wall crumbled, we danced, Chacour remembered, never dreaming our country would have an even higher wall built on hundreds of kilome- (L-r) Tarek Abuata, Ghassan (G.J.) Tarazi, Grace Said, ters of our land.

Philip Farah, Paul Noursi and moderator Paul Verduin.

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ports. They can’t travel or obtain work permits; their property can be taken away; they have no access to international courts.

Cole compared a stateless person with the child of an alcoholic or an abusive parent: they can’t even plan to go on a picnic without fearing someone will stop them. He reminded his audience that Israel calculated exactly how many calories Gazans need in order not to starve during Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza. “This is creepy, weird, repulsive,” he stated. Without citizenship for the past 65 years, Palestinians don’t have a right to have rights—or even chocolate.

Statelessness means you lack control of airspace, Cole continued. If a North Korean military jet entered San Diego airspace, all hell would break loose. But if an Israeli jet flies over the West Bank, that’s OK. If U.S. water is expropriated by Canada, there would be trouble. When 85 percent of West Bank water is diverted by Israeli settlers, however, it’s OK, Cole stated.

Why did Palestinians want observer state status in the U.N.? This was exactly the right strategy to establish claims of citizenship, Cole argued. Why did America vote against it? The U.S. is complicit in keeping Palestinians stateless. It is unacceptable in both international law and diplomacy to have four-and-a-half to five million people stateless without rights.

Someone has to give citizenship to Palestinians, Cole stated. Israel controls the territory, so it is responsible for the people who live there. Insist that Palestinians must end up with the right to have rights, Cole urged his audience. They need standing in international courts. Then they’ll be able to pursue Israel, which is breaking the law daily.

—Delinda C. Hanley

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So many powerful family stories were shared by people who, on the outside, appeared to be everyday working Americans—our next-door-neighbors. At the end of their testimonies, the nearly 100 attendees were deeply moved, having put individual faces to the Palestinian problem. They vowed to invite Palestinian speakers to tell their stories to their congregations and clubs, in hopes that American churches and organizations will begin playing a leading role in advocating for a just peace among all people in the region. —Delinda C. Hanley

Saudi Aramco Looks Ahead to Next 80 Years Jack Moore, director of Aramco Services Company’s Washington, DC office, welcomed guests to a dinner at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC on April 30 in honor of the 20 members of this year’s Saudi Aramco Management Development Seminar (SAMDS).

In his keynote speech, Saudi Aramco president and CEO Abdulaziz F. AlKhayyal—himself a 1984 alumnus—described the intensive SAMDS program.

“For more than 30 years,” he said, “SAMDS students have looked at the current state and the future direction of the oil and gas industry in a comprehensive, global context—and such a course has never been more important than in today’s increasingly complex world.”

There is a special significance to the SAMDS program this year, he continued, since 2013 marks Aramco’s 80th anniversary: “As such, it’s an ideal moment to look back on a proud history, and to look forward to an exciting future.” Al-Khayyal described the concession agreement signed in May 1933 by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Standard Oil of California, which later became Chevron. This led to the creation of the Arabian American Oil Company, or

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

plained. “There is something immoral about moving one people out of their homes to make room for another. You never get over that,” she lamented. “Because I always lived in the diaspora I am painfully aware of that side of the issue—it’s not just the occupation, it is also our right of return.”

Energy economist Philip Farah was born and raised in East Jerusalem, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1978. He is founder and co-chair of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace (WIAMEP) as well as of PCAP. Farah revealed that as a young man in East Jerusalem he was among those “beaten up several times… tortured, really.”

Tarek Abuata grew up in Bethlehem. He remembered riding in the family car with his father when he was 11. They were stopped by an Israeli policeman who pointed a gun at his head, then roughly treated his father, taking away his green Palestinian I.D. card. The family moved to Houston, TX soon after, but “I remember how I felt,” Abuata said.

After receiving his J.S. with a focus in international law, Abuata trained with Dr. Bernard La Fayette, a leader of the civil rights movement. Abuata now conducts nonviolence trainings and serves as the Palestine coordinator for the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Once, while working in Hebron, an Israeli soldier threw Abuata’s American passport in his face. Abuata confronted the soldier and shared his childhood story of humiliation.

He asked the soldier to quit pointing his gun at Palestinian children and to stop speaking to Palestinians so rudely. The soldier actually agreed, saying, ‘I will do what you asked me.’ “We must carry our hearts with us,” Abuata reminded his audience.

Next to speak was consulting engineer Paul Noursi, who lived in Jordan as a child and moved to the U.S. in 1970. Then came Hanan Idilbi, a Palestinian-American attorney who serves on the board of Interfaith Peace Builders. She was followed by Nadia Itraish, who works in the financial services industry. She was born in El Bireh, West Bank and came to the U.S. with her family at the age of 3. Mai Abdul Rahman, the popular DC blogger, writer, speaker, organizer and activist who founded the American Palestinian Women’s Association, told her story. She was followed by Ghassan (G.J.) Tarazi, a former school principal, educator, coach and professor, who served as executive director of United Palestinian Appeal. Tarazi was born in Beirut to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother, and immigrated to the United States in 1956.

Abdulaziz F. Al-Khayyal celebrates Saudi Aramco’s history and future, and its continued cross-cultural cooperation.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Aramco, the world’s largest and most reliable producer and exporter of petroleum.

The Aramco president honored the contributions of multiple generations of American employees and their families. “The story of Aramco may be primarily a Saudi epic—but many of the cast were and continue to be Americans, and the history books record both Saudi and American heroes, working side by side,” Al-Khayyal emphasized.

“That saga of cross-cultural cooperation and mutually beneficial partnership continues to be written today, and SaudiAmerican ties are flourishing in the realms of energy, trade, diplomacy, education and culture,” Al-Khayyal said. “For example, over the past three years, bilateral trade has nearly doubled to $74 billion annually, with a new emphasis on technology and knowledge transfer. And in what I see as a promising sign, in that same three years more than 300 small- and medium-sized U.S. companies have entered the Saudi market for the first time.”

Al-Khayyal went on to note some of Aramco’s exciting new ventures. Last year Motiva Enterprises, co-owned by Aramco and Shell, inaugurated a multi-billion-dollar expansion project at the Port Arthur Refinery in Texas, making it America’s single largest refinery. Aramco also will open three new research centers in Houston, Cambridge and Detroit as part of an emerging global network of R&D laboratories.

Business brings people together—but so do the arts and culture, Al-Khayyal added.

Saudi Aramco co-sponsored the “Roads of Arabia” exhibit in the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery (see Jan./Feb. 2013 Washington Report, pp. 42-43). In 2015 Saudi Aramco will complete construction of the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Dhahran, which Al-Khayyal described as “a multi-component, multi-functional cultural center that will contain performing arts spaces, museum and library facilities, and programs for lifelong learning.”

Al-Khayyal’s remarks celebrated the close ties between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, including the fact that his country continues to send its best and brightest to study in U.S. universities. “Maybe it’s the fact that ours are both relatively young countries,” he speculated, “or it could be the can-do, pioneer spirit you find among both Americans and Saudis; or perhaps it’s just the sheer scale of the promise and potential we both see ahead. In any case, what’s still to come is so much more interesting than what has already passed,” AlKhayyal assured his audience.

—Delinda C. Hanley 67

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

JUNE/JULY 2013

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Other People’s Mail Compiled by Dale Sprusansky

Abused Now Abusers To The Des Moines Register, April 4, 2013 The recent guest column (March 28) “A Bipartisan Case for Defending Israel” seemed to leave out the question of what we should do about those pesky Palestinians.

The same Arab folks forcibly driven from their homes in 1948 are still trying to cling to some house or land or dignity in the West Bank. Meanwhile, Israel has now shifted into a more slow-motion form of ethnic cleansing using settlements and security walls to gobble up land. A Palestinian, be they Christian or Muslim, has no clear assurance that their land, house, possession, right of passage will be respected should Israel decide otherwise.

Land confiscation, house and orchard destruction, random roadblocks or arrests are the norm for the Palestinians. For example, Israeli settlers uprooted 200 olive trees owned by a Palestinian farmer on March 28 in his field south of Bethlehem.

Do we care?

Sadly, the abused have become the abuser, and the United States has simply been the enabler. The oppressed have become the oppressor with our help. That’s not an achievement we should celebrate, whether or not it is bipartisan.

Selden Spencer, Huxley, IA

Occupation Injustice To The Wichita Eagle, April 25, 2013 What restricts the media from telling us what makes anti-American terrorists?

Consider soldiers coming to your neighborhood and declaring it a “firing range.”

They post demolition orders on your house, church, your children’s schools.

They drive large vehicles across planted fields; confiscate residents’ cars, cameras, phones and livestock; and threaten families with eviction and home demolition.

This is what Palestinians in eight villages in the Masafer Yatta region of South Hebron Hills face because their villages are within the area Israel claims is firing zone 918. Israeli settlers do crop destruction, cut water supplies and throw stones at Palestinian children on their way to school.

Our church relief workers report what the news media ignore about the U.S.-supJUNE/JULY 2013

ported Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Complete reporting could explain much of the anti-Americanism that brought the Sept. 11 disaster. If the news reported these examples of unpunished occupation injustice, many would insist that this encouragement to terrorist recruitment has to end.

Stanley Bohn, North Newton, KS

than 42 years of “engagement.” In Gaza and in the West Bank, the 46 years of engagement with the Israeli government since the occupation began has seen the situation worsen immeasurably for the Palestinians. Is not an academic boycott at least worth trying?

Michael Meadowcroft, Leeds, United Kingdom

Insist on Peace

Keep Distance on Syria

To The Olympian, April 11, 2013 Blaming the victims is the worn-out tactic Charles Krauthammer used in his April 2 opinion piece. The “foolishness” of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to accept Israel’s “generous” offer of peace is easily explained by Israel’s 630 obstacles and checkpoints, which prevent Palestinians from reaching hospitals and jobs when speed is essential.

Countless women in labor and babies have died at the checkpoints. The same is true of heart attack victims. Why is this?

They did not have the proper permits to get to Jerusalem.

The 24-foot separation barrier that surrounds Bethlehem, Ramallah and other Palestinian cities often prevents farmers from caring for their fruit and olive trees.

This is their livelihood. Children must walk in front of settlement boundaries and are frequently pelted with stones or threatened with rifles. Palestinians are farmers, yet the distribution of water is 80 percent for Israel and 20 percent for Palestine.

Our travels to the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza between 1992 and 2006 gave us a vivid picture of the horrors of occupation. Now is the perfect time to insist on peace with justice for all—Israelis and Palestinians. True peace requires that leaders from both Israel and Palestine negotiate as equal partners in forging an agreement so that no one will control all borders of land, sea or sky.

Sue Johnson, Shelton, WA

To the Orlando Sentinel, May 8, 2013 Our political right continues to agitate for intervention in Syria. Our middle is wavering.

It’s rumored that even Hillary Clinton has advocated stronger support of the rebellion. The intervention case rests on the estimated 70,000 civilian deaths and the introduction of poisonous gas. Unfortunately, the United Nations is toothless due to Russian and Chinese obduracy, and the caring world looks to us.

I would remind everyone that in the 1860s, the civilized world cringed at the horrendous casualties reported from our Civil War. England, then the dominant world power and commercially damaged by the interruption of trade, seriously debated intervening on behalf of our South.

American casualties were 10 times that reported in Syria. England didn’t send its navy, and eventually we put the insurrection to rest. England and the world benefited by the decision not to intervene.

We cannot cure every horror.

I urge support of our hesitancy. Our only action should be in support of Syria’s neighbors.

Dean S. Warren, Altamonte Springs, FL

In Support of Hawking To The Guardian, May 10, 2013 Following the collapse of apartheid in South Africa in 1990, both black and white communities acknowledged that the international sport boycott had been more significant in the transformation THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Help Syrian Refugees To The New York Times, April 12, 2013 “U.N. Says It Is Running Out of Money to Assist Wave of Refugees From Syria” (news article, April 6) reflects the distorted priorities of the world. With more than a million refugees in neighboring countries and three million to four million internally displaced, only a third of the $494 million needed has been raised to feed and sustain a desperate people.

As the child of a refugee who survived at an orphanage in Aleppo, Syria, during the 1915 Armenian genocide, I find it in69

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comprehensible that we cannot raise the necessary money. Have we lost the most basic of our humanitarian obligations, to help the stranger in need?

Martin Melkonian, Uniondale, NY

No Syrian Intervention To the Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2013 Majid Rafizadeh offers compelling reasons for the United States to avoid any military involvement in Syria. After years of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the installation of new governments, battles and deaths still occur in those countries; Syria risks a similar fate from U.S. intervention.

Surely our best course of action is to do as Rafizadeh suggests: to be one of the countries that “join together to address suffering” and to “address the urgent medical and basic needs of Syrians.” This is a role Americans can do well.

As Rafizadeh concludes, given the complexities and uncertainties about the future in Syria, “The way forward can only be shaped by Syrians.”

Dan Cabrera, Glendale, CA

Guantanamo Is Shameful To The Saratogian, May 4, 2013 President Obama spoke on April 30 about a hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay. “I don’t want these individuals to die,” he said. But his promise to close that prison five years ago remains unfulfilled and some will die.

This prison is recognized around the world as a place of shameful torture and the United States’ disregard for international law. Amnesty International called it a “toxic legacy” for human rights. Guantanamo Bay prison shows that we have become like those we abhor.

Currently, more than 100 of the 166 prisoners are fasting to death against their desperate conditions and indefinite detention.

Some are skeletal and too weak to move.

These are strapped into chairs and force fed through a tube through their noses into the stomach. Some have been imprisoned for 12 years; 86 were cleared for release from Guantanamo, but still remain imprisoned. Some others have never been charged with any crime during their 12 years of incarceration. It costs $200 million a year to operate, it is a recruitment tool for extremists and it fosters deep hatred against our country.

There are many to blame for this open wound on the face of our nation, beginning with former President George W. Bush, Obama and Congress. A 2010 CNN 70

poll showed 60 percent of Americans favored keeping the prison there.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, the famous teacher of the Talmud, said, “The prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Our nation claims to be a beacon of light on the hill. We cannot claim moral high ground as long as that shameful symbol remains open. Our leaders are guilty, but we are all responsible.

Rev. Rich Broderick, Cambridge, NY

Innocent Prisoners To the Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2013 As a fan of Doyle McManus, I was disappointed to read his claim that most of the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay were anti-American extremists when they were apprehended.

Our own government has acknowledged that many of these men were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border when the war started in 2001. They are guilty of nothing.

I also note with dismay the remarks of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who said that the Guantanamo prisoners were “hell-bent on destroying our way of life.” Graham and

WRITE OR TELEPHONE THOSE WORKING FOR YOU IN WASHINGTON. President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20500 (202) 456-1414 White House Comment Line: (202) 456-1111 Fax: (202) 456-2461 Secretary of State John Kerry Department of State Washington, DC 20520 State Department Public Information Line: (202) 647-6575 Any Senator U.S. Senate Washington, DC 20510 (202) 224-3121 Any Representative U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-3121

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

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

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

his fellow Republicans in the Senate, who have supported the gutting of the Constitution under the guise of fighting terrorism, have been much more effective in that regard than the innocent men who languish in Cuba.

Jon Krampner, Los Angeles, CA

Bombers Not Muslim To The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 23, 2013 It is unfortunate that when I first heard about the Boston bombings, instead of thinking, “Oh God, please have mercy on the victims and their families,” I thought, “Oh God, please do not let the perpetrators be Muslim.”

When I heard the perpetrators were from Chechnya, I made another mistake; I sighed with relief thinking that they definitely weren’t Muslims. It turns out they were Muslims, but only by name. I say this because I know the Qur’an I study tells me that “whosoever kills a person, it shall be as if he had killed all of mankind” (5:33).

I know that the religion I follow does call for jihad—which is a holy internal struggle against evil. What those cowards did is anything but jihad. Reflecting back, my sigh of relief was justified; these terrorists do not deserve to be ascribed to any religion.

Sohaib Awan, Pickerington, OH

Anti-Muslim Bigotry To The Washington Post, April 24, 2013 In 2009, a U.S. Army major allegedly opened fire on his fellow soldiers, killing 13. In 2011, a gunman shot a congresswoman and killed a federal judge and five others. In 2012, a gunman opened fire in a Colorado movie theater, killing 12 people. In 2013, two men are alleged to have killed four people: three at the Boston Marathon and a police officer a few days later.

All four events were attacks on the United States and the American way of life.

Yet only two were met with demands that the suspects be treated as enemy combatants—terrorists—and have their rights revoked. Of course, in both of those cases, the suspects are Muslim. The alleged shooter in Aurora and the confessed shooter in Tucson are white, Americanborn and non-Muslim.

I’m disgusted by the bigotry. Each of these incidents was a terrorist incident. But none of the men responsible or alleged to have been responsible is an accurate representation of his religion or ethnicity.

Clifton R. Hamilton, Philadelphia, PA ❑ JUNE/JULY 2013

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Upcoming Events, Announcements & —Compiled by Andrew Stimson Obituaries Upcoming Events The Jerusalem Fund and Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies will present their annual Voices On Palestine Summer 2013 Film Series, every Friday from May 24-June 21. The series will include screenings of “Fire on the Marmara,” “Occupied Palestine,” “5 Broken Cameras” and many more. For information on showtimes and locations, visit <www.the jerusalemfund.org/> or call (202) 338-1958.

The Corvallis Palestinian Festival will feature a screening of “The People and the Olive Tree” on May 31 at 7 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 1165 NW Monroe, Corvallis, OR 97330. The film follows a team of American and Palestinian athletes as they run from Hebron to Jenin (129 miles) over five days to raise awareness about the struggles facing olive farmers in Palestine. The festival also will feature a presentation by Amani Inshashi, an educator from Gaza, on June 6 at the Multicultural Literacy Center, 128 SW Ninth St. For more information, call (541) 740-4207.

The 2013 American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee National Convention will be held June 13-16 at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, 2660 Woodley Rd. NW, Washington, DC 20008. The event will include panel sessions, congressional meetings on Capitol Hill, a souk, music and more. For more information, visit <www.adc.org>.

Sabeel will host its 8th International Youth Conference, July 1-6 in Bethlehem. The conference will include visits to Palestinian and Israeli communities, cultural activities, contextual tours of holy sites, volunteer and activism opportunities, worship and Bible study, and panel discussions and advocacy workshops. For registration information visit <www.sabeel.org> or e-mail <youth@sabeel. org>.

The 55th Annual Convention of the American Federation of Ramallah Palestine will take place July 4-6 in Detroit, MI. The convention will include several workshops, a presentation by Norman Finkelstein, and fun activities for children and adults. For more information visit <www.afrpconven tion.com>.

JUNE/JULY 2013

The Arab American National Museum will host the 5th Annual Arab American Culture Workshop for High School Educators, July 12-14 at 13624 Michigan Ave., Dearborn, MI 48126. High school educators from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois will gather for a free three-day workshop focusing on the culture and diversity of Arabs and Arab Americans. For more information and to register online visit <www.arabameri canmuseum.org/>.

Announcements On April 16, USAID announced it had selected America-Middle East Educational and Training Services (AMIDEAST) for a fouryear, $20 million project to Improve Educational Access, Youth Development Opportunities in the West Bank. The program will focus on strengthening leadership, teaching quality, and community engagement in West Bank schools, as well as provide career guidance, life skills training and experiential learning in order to overcome low student achievement. For more on AMIDEAST programs visit <www.amideast.org>.

Obituaries: Stéphane Hessel, 95, concentration camp survivor, member of the French Resistance, and ambassador, died Feb. 26 in Paris. Born of Jewish origin, he was imprisoned in Nazi camps during World War II for his activities as a prominent resistance figure in France.

Following the war, he worked as a French diplomat at the U.N., where he assisted in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hessel subsequently held diplomatic posts in Vietnam and Algeria, and was a public advocate for the rights of illegal immigrants in France. After visiting refugee camps in Gaza he described Israel’s 20082009 Operation Cast Lead as a “war crime” and a “veritable crime against humanity.”

Hessel later wrote an article in a German newspaper in which he compared the Nazi occupation of France during WWII with the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories. Responding to the ensuring controversy, Hessel clarified that he was drawing “no parallel between the horrors of Nazism, and the illegal attitude” of Israel, that he naturally supported the existence of Israel, but that he should be able to criticize the actions THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

BulletinBoard

of the Israeli authorities without being accused of anti-Semitism. In 2010, he published Time for Outrage!, which has sold more than 4.5 million copies in 35 countries.

Diane Halley, 33, international human rights advocate and co-founder of New Story Leadership for the Middle East, died March 31 of complications following minor surgery.

Her death came as a shock to friends and family, and tributes poured in from around the world. Born in Clogheen, Ireland, Halley studied law at the National University of Ireland and earned a master’s in international human rights law from University College London. In 2005, she joined the European Parliament in Brussels as a human rights policy adviser, and traveled to Ramallah in 2009 to serve as human rights expert for the EU mission in Palestine. There, she worked with Palestinian police and justice institutions to bolster human rights protection and abuse reporting. Halley also participated in an EU commission visiting Gaza just a few weeks after Operation Cast Lead to assess breaches of international humanitarian law. She was co-founder and European coordinator of the New Story Leadership Program, which recruits Israeli and Palestinian university students and recent graduates to spend a summer in Washington, DC learning about their shared common ground and how efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict play out in Washington.

Polly Roosevelt, 96, widow of the late Kermit Roosevelt, died April 8 at a retirement community in Cockeysville, MD. A longtime resident of Washington DC, she spent time with her husband in the Middle East, South America and Europe. Her husband, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, was the CIA operative who helped orchestrate the 1953 coup in Iran that overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mosaddegh and ensconced the military government of Shah Reza Pahlavi. Mrs. Roosevelt served in the American Red Cross during World War II, wrote from Washington for the Times of London, and volunteered with the American Heart Association. ❑ 71

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Book and DVD Mayflower Arab: A Memoir

By Carol Rae Bradford, Bookstand Publishing, 2013, hardcover, 200 pp. List: $15.95; AET: $12.75.

Reviewed by David Johnson Prejudice is a common problem these days, but Carol Rae Bradford has faced it from two directions.

And, like most successful people, she has been able to turn some unique problems into advantages.

Her mother was a Mayflower descendant, while her father was a first-generation Syrian.

It all began when Bradford’s mother stopped at a grocery store in Boston’s cosmopolitan Roxbury neighborhood to ask directions. The clerk at the Sunrise to Sunset Market was a young Syrian immigrant. They fell in love and married— against the wishes of both families.

Bradford’s new book, Mayflower Arab: A Memoir, details her upbringing in Boston during the 1940s and ‘50s and being David Johnson is a free-lance writer based in Boston.

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an outsider in two very different worlds.

Called “a dirty Syrian” by classmates, she often felt the pain and isolation many children feel when they realize they are “different” from their classmates. She and her sisters, Bradford explains, often were seen as exotic, foreign and vaguely “un-American” by the New England Yankees.

But Bradford also suffered at the hands of her father’s family, the Dikmaks. Clannish, proud and insular, they came from Damascus, as did many of Boston’s Syrians. As residents of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city, Damascenes were acutely aware of their cultural heritage and prominent position in the Arab world.

Bradford recalls the many times as a child she sat while everyone conversed— sometimes about her—in Arabic, a language she did not understand, and feeling again like an outsider who did not quite belong.

Mayflower Arab is divided in two parts.

The first is a memorial to her Aunt Agaby Rahwan, who died at 103. This section, which reads like a letter to her aunt, is a remembrance of Bradford’s childhood and her relationships with her large extended Syrian family.

Syrian Radio Days, the second part of the book, is a stream of consciousness series of memories, combining events in Bradford’s childhood with historical and literary references.

An intensely personal book, Mayflower Arab is packed with names, places and details. The descriptions of life in mid-20th c e n t u r y B o s t o n a re re c re ated with painstaking accuracy.

Readers unfamiliar with the city, or with Syrian names and culture, could find themselves overwhelmed. The best approach is to take the book as it was intended— as revealing an intimate experience, much like a letter. While the names and places provide local color, the book is about Bradford’s impressions, feelings and attitudes.

Not surprisingly, Mayflower Arab has been a success among Boston’s Syrian community. Bradford recently signed copies of her book at the Saint John of Damascus Orthodox Church in Dedham. In her book Bradford discusses the church’s early days in Boston’s South End, and includes photographs of the three church buildings the institution has occupied as it grew and expanded.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Although the details are specific, Bradford’s story of a young woman coming of age and trying to figure out her place in the world is universal.

The author can be reached <cbrad 4334@aol.com>.

Tears of Gaza Directed by Vibeke Løkkeberg, Choices Inc., 2013, DVD, 124 min. List: $29.95; AET: $24.

Reviewed by Andrew Stimson Yahya is 12. His father is dead, killed in an Israeli rocket attack. With tears i n h i s eye s h e tells a cameraman that he wants to be a doctor, so he can give medications and perform surgery on those injured by the Israelis.

Despite his family’s loss, life must go on.

While Israeli helicopters hover menacingly overhead, Yahya’s family nervously enjoys a wedding party.

The scenes in Vibeke Løkkeberg’s “Tears of Gaza” proceed without narration, analysis, or even an introductory title. The director’s minimalist approach, devoid of context, draws the audience into the immediacy of the horrors of daily life in Gaza during Israel’s 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead. Using video and photography captured by Palestinians who lived through the traumatic ordeal, “Tears of Gaza” tells the story of Yahya and two other Palestinian children, Amira and Rasmina, through interviews and intimate scenes of the children in their war-torn environment. Interwoven into the interviews are scenes of carnage and desperation without adornment or exploitation—the camera is simply present to bear witness. The injured are carried to the hospital because there are no ambulances. A school full of frightened refugees, mostly women and children, becomes a military target. Yahya takes a moment to pet a cat in the rubble that was his family’s home, while Israeli soldiers patrol nearby.

With excellent cinematography and powerful yet nearly invisible storytelling, Løkkeberg has created one of the most powerful anti-war films of our time. ❑ Andrew Stimson is director of the AET Book Club.

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AET Book Club Catalog Literature

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Music

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Film

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Monographs

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Summer 2013 Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football and the American Dream, directed by Rashid Ghazi, North Shore Films, 2011, DVD, 92 min. List: $24.99; AET: $21. “Fordson” documents a predominantly Arab-American high school football team from Dearborn (near Detroit) as they practice for their big crosstown rivalry game during Ramadan, revealing a community holding onto its Islamic faith and the American Dream while struggling to gain acceptance in post-9/11 America. Inspiring as well as sobering, the film reminds viewers that despite our differences, Americans are united by their love of country, family—and football.

A World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Woman, by Wadad Makdisi Cortas, Nation Books, 2009, paperback, 256 pp. List: $14.95; AET: $12. Beginning in Lebanon in 1917 and spanning more than half a century, through the creation of Israel and the Lebanese civil war, Cortas interweaves her personal experiences as a student, teacher, and finally principal of the Ahliah School for Girls in Beirut with the wider political and historical narrative of 20th century Lebanon.

Tears of Gaza, directed by Vibeke Løkkeberg, Choices Inc., 2010, DVD, 124 min. List: $29.99; AET: $24. Disturbing, powerful and emotionally devastating, “Tears of Gaza” is a unique documentary that reveals the civilian cost of Israel’s 2008-9 Operation Cast Lead.

Using video and photography captured by Palestinians who lived through the assault, Løkkeberg’s sparse yet potent storytelling offers audiences an unvarnished and apolitical study of the impact of war on innocent lives.

Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies, by Laleh Khalili, Stanford University Press, 2012, paperback, 368 pp.

List: $27.95; AET: $25. The author, an Iranian-American scholar at the University of London, explores two important counterinsurgencies of our time: Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the U.S. War on Terror. In rich and accessible detail, she investigates Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and Gaza, among others, linking them to a history of colonial counterinsurgencies. Ultimately, Time in the Shadows reveals that the use of dehumanizing incarceration has historically led democratic states to choose war over diplomacy.

Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism, by Toby Dodge, Routledge, 2013, paperback, 220 pp. List: $26.95; AET: $24. According to Dodge, Iraq, with its mix of Shi’i, Sunni, Kurdish and other minority groups, was not inherently ordained to fall prey to sectarian strife, as many politicians and commentators argued during the last decade. Rather, Dodge compellingly and concisely contends, the civil war in Iraq was the result of U.S. mismanagement of the political transition. Moreover, his insightful analysis documents Iraq’s current slide into authoritarianism and how it might be averted.

Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010,

by Breaking the Silence, Metropolitan Books, 2012, hardcover, 400 pp. List: $32; AET $28. This landmark work includes hundreds of soldiers’ testimonies collected over a decade, providing evidence of a broad military policy that is anything but defensive. In their own words, the soldiers reveal how the key planks of the Israeli army’s ostensibly protective program serve to accelerate the theft of Palestinian land, cripple normal political and social life, and ultimately thwart the possibility of Palestinian independence.

Vanunu’s Wait for Liberty: Remembering the USS Liberty & My Life as a Candidate of Conscience for U.S. House 2012,

by Eileen Fleming, Trafford Publishing, 2012, paperback, 106 pp. List: $11.79; AET: $9.75. In her fourth book, Fleming covers a wide range of subjects, including the story of former Israeli nuclear technician and whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu and his battle for freedom, as well as Israel’s 1967 bombing of the USS Liberty. The historical narrative provides the backdrop to the story of Fleming’s 2012 congressional campaign, in which she brought attention to the need for a change in U.S. policies toward Israel.

Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, by Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press, 2013, hardcover, 208 pp. List: $25.95; AET: $20. The acclaimed historian dissects the U.S. role as impartial broker in the failed Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Through cogent analysis of three pivotal moments during the last 35 years of negotiations, Khalidi reveals that while masquerading as unbiased agents, U.S. policymakers have been the agents of continuing injustice, effectively preventing the difficult but essential steps needed to achieve peace in the region.

Unfree in Palestine: Registration, Documentation and Movement Restriction, by Nadia AbuZahra & Adah Kay, Pluto Press, 2012, paperback, 216 pp. List: $30; AET: $26. Based on first-hand accounts and extensive fieldwork, Unfree in Palestine expertly chronicles how Israel’s apartheid policies have led to the denationalization of millions of Palestinians through the bureaucratic tools of census, population registration, blacklisting and discriminatory legal frameworks. AbuZahra and Kay have written a masterful exposé of the web of paperwork and procedures that deprive Palestinians of their most basic human rights.

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JUNE/JULY 2013

L i b r a r y p a c k a g e s (list value over $240) are available for $29 if donated to a library, or free if requested with a library’s paid subscription or renewal. Call the Book Club at 800-3685788 ext. 2 to order. AET policy is to identify donors unless anonymity is specifically requested.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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AETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2013 Choir of Angels Following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1 and April 30, 2013 is making possible activities of the tax-exempt AET Library Endowment (federal ID #52-1460362) and the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. We are deeply honored by their confidence and profoundly grateful for their generosity.

HUMMERS ($100 or more) Americans for a Palestinian State, Oakland, CA Mustafa Amantullah, Los Angeles, CA Dr. Nabih Ammari, Cleveland, OH* Dr. Robert Ashmore Jr., Mequon, WI Mazen Awad, Gainesville, FL Alma Ball, Venice, FL Jamil Barhoum, San Diego, CA Allen & Jerrie Bartlett, Philadelphia, PA James Bennett, Fayetteville, AR Robert A. Boyd, Binghamton, NY Rev. Ronald C. Chochol, St. Louis, MO Dr. Robert G. Collmer, Waco, TX Darcy Curtiss, Herndon, VA* Amb. John Gunther Dean, Paris, France John Dirlik, Pointe Claire, Quebec Mervat Eid, Henrietta, NY Yusif Farsakh, Arlington, VA Joseph & Angela Gauci, Whittier, CA Robert & Helen Harold, West Salem, WI Alan and Dot Heil, Alexandria, VA* Mr. & Mrs. John Hendrickson, Tulsa, OK Dr. & Mrs. Sam Holland, North Eastham, MA Mustafa Jamal, Hyde Park, NY Mohamed Kamal, North York, Ont. Michael J. Keating, Olney, MD* Ernestine King, Topsham, ME Shafiq Kombargi, Houston, TX Anthony Mabarak, Grosse Pointe Park, MI Richard Makdisi & Lindsay Wheeler, Berkeley, CA John B. Malouf, Lubbock, TX Joseph A. Mark, Carmel, CA Martha Martin, Paia, HI Mohamad Nabi, Union, KY Jim Plourd, Monterey, CA Barbara A. Porter, Boston, MA* Mr. & Mrs. James G. Porter, Takoma Park, MD* 74

Dr. Amani Ramahi, Lakewood, OH Nayla Rathle, Belmont, MA Paul Richards, Salem, OR Neil Richardson, Randolph, VT Amb. Christopher Ross, Washington, DC Mae Stephen, Palo Alto, CA Dr. William Strange, Fort Garland, CO Mubadda Suidan, Atlanta, GA Beverly Swartz, Sarasota, FL Ayoub & Ghada Talhami, Evanston, IL J. Tayeb, Shelby Township, MI Peter & Liz Viering, Stonington, CT Dr. Robert Younes, Potomac, MD* Munir Zacharia, La Mirada, CA Fred Zuercher, Spring Grove, PA

TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more) Kamel Ayoub, Hillsborough, CA Graf Herman Bender, North Palm Beach, FL Gary L. Cozette, Chicago, IL Shuja El-Asad, Amman, Jordan Eileen Fleming, Clermont, FL Amb. Holsey Handyside, Bedford, OH Richard Hoban, Cleveland Heights, OH* Brigitte Jaensch, Carmichael, CA Curtiss Jones, Chapel Hill, NC David & Renee Lent, Woodstock, VT* Jack Love, San Diego, CA Rachelle Marshall, Mill Valley, CA Betty Sams, Washington, DC*,** Yasir Shallal, McLean, VA

ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more) Dr. Abdullah Arar, Amman, Jordan Rev. Dr. Lois Aroian, Willow Lake, SD Mr. & Mrs. John Crawford, Boulder, CO Richard Curtiss, Boynton Beach, FL Eugene Fitzpatrick, Wheat Ridge, CO Dr. William Fuller, Valdosta, GA Ray Gordon, Venice, FL H. Clark Griswold, Woodbury, CT Martha Katz, Youngstown, OH Faisal Kutty, Valparaiso, IN* Joe & Lilli Lill, Arlington, VA Charles McCutchen, Bethesda, MD Patricia & Herbert Pratt, Cambridge, MA Sam Rahman, Lincoln, CA Dr. M.H. Salem, Amman, Jordan Russell Scardaci, Cairo, NY* Henry & Irmgard Schubert, Damascus, OR*** Michel & Cathy Sultan, Eau Claire, WI John V. Whitbeck, Paris, France

BARITONES & MEZZO SOPRANOS ($1,000 or more) Asha A. Anand, Bethesda, MD Rev. Rosemarie Carnarius and Aston Bloom, Tucson, AZ* Dr. & Mrs. Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR* Gary Richard Feulner, Dubai, UAE Evan & Leman Fotos, Istanbul, Turkey Dr. & Mrs. Hassan Fouda, Berkeley, CA Judith Howard, Norwood, MA* Vincent & Louise Larsen, Billings, MT * Bob Norberg, Lake City, MN*

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more) Henry Clifford, Essex, CT Donna B. Curtiss, Kensington, MD* John & Henrietta Goelet, Meru, France Andrew I. Killgore, Washington, DC William & Flora McCormick, Austin, TX* *In Memory of Richard H. Curtiss **In Honor of Andrew I. Killgore ***To Free Palestine JUNE/JULY 2013

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

June/July 2013 Vol. XXXII, No. 5

A Syrian mother and son wait at the Cilvegozu border gate in Turkey to go back to Syria after car bombings at Reyhanli in Hatay killed 50 people, provoking a backlash against the some 40,000 Syrian refugees in the country, May 14, 2013. The Turkish government said it would maintain its open-door policy for Syrian refugees.

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