Washington Report on Middle East Affairs — March/April 2015

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IS THIS PALESTINE’S “SOUTH AFRICA MOMENT”?

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On Middle East Affairs

Volume XXXIV, No. 2

March/April 2015

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 Palestinians Pay a High Price for Justice —Rachelle Marshall

22 “Complete Idiot” Steve Emerson’s Birmingham Blunder—John Gee

11 Israel’s Drone Strike on Syria: Another Pre-Election Gambit?—Uri Avnery

26 Never Again: Palestinian U.N. Official Organizes Holocaust Remembrance Day—Ian Williams

12 His Master’s Voice: Netanyahu Invited to Instruct Congress, American People on Iran

—Janet McMahon 13 The Persians Are Coming!—Patrick J. Buchanan 14 UNRWA out of Funds for Gaza Repairs 16 Israel Punishes PA by Withholding Taxes Belonging to Palestine—Mohammed Omer 18 Israeli Veterans, Palestinian Survivors Testify at First 1948 “Truth Commission”—Jonathan Cook

28 Who Is Charlie Hebdo?—Two Views —Khalil Bendib, Uri Avnery 31 American Muslims Examine Causes and Suggest Ways to Halt Radicalization—Delinda C. Hanley 34 Guantanamo Is a Little Emptier These Days, But When Will It Finally Be Closed?—Dale Sprusansky 38 114th Congress Convenes Under Republican Leadership—Shirl McArthur

20 Experiencing Fair Trade in Palestine—Randa Kayyali

SPECIAL REPORTS 33 Yemen’s Turbulent Transition —Kevin A. Davis 36 In Memoriam: King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (1924-2015)—Elizabeth Dickinson 40 Archeologist Wendell Phillips: The “American Lawrence of Arabia”—Barbara G.B. Ferguson and Tim Kennedy 42 Shaheen Media Scholarships Awarded to 60 Students Over Past 17 Years

—Gabriella Patti and Delinda C. Hanley 71 In Memoriam: Dr. Maher Hathout (1936-2015) —Pat McDonnell Twair

ON THE COVER: 85-year-old Zahira Dandees argues with Israeli soldiers as they seal off the door to her home in the West Bank town of Hebron to prevent her from entering it, after they said a Molotov cocktail had been thrown from her roof, Jan. 19, 2015.

HAZEM BADER/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

Bibi’s Bad Choice,

Perhaps a New Struggle for Civil Rights Is

Editorial, Jewish Daily Forward

Needed, Jonathan Cook, The National

OV-1

OV-9

Pro-Palestine Parliaments—Hopes and

What to Say When You Have Nothing

Dangers, John V. Whitbeck,

To Say?, Diana Johnstone, www.counterpunch.org OV-2

www.counterpunch.org

OV-9

Murder in Paris, Eric Margolis, http://ericmargolis.com

OV-3

The Paris Killings—A Fatal Trap for Europe, Roberto Savio, Inter Press Service

OV-4

Are All Terrorists Muslims? It’s Not Even

Ghada Karmi, www.aljazeera.com

OV-10

Our Man in Havana, Lou Dubose, washingtonspectator.org

OV-11

Crime and CIA Embarrassments,

Close, Dean Obeidallah, www.thedailybeast.com

OV-6

How Bibi Tried to Make Paris All About Him, Lisa Goldman, Jewish Daily Forward

The Jewish Right of Return,

Ray McGovern, www.consortiumnews.com

OV-13

The Year in Drones, OV-7

The U.S.-Israel Politics Gap

Charles Pierson, www.counterpunch.org

OV-13

Guantánamo Paradoxes Tested In Uruguay,

Scott McConnell, theamericanconservative.com

OV-8

Diana Cariboni, Inter Press Service

OV-15

DEPARTMENTS 5 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

52 THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST — CARTOONS

7 PUBLISHERS’ PAGE 44 NEW YORK CITY AND

Moment”?—Jane Adas

53 OTHER PEOPLE’S MAIL 68 BOOK REVIEWS: 56 ARAB AMERICAN ACTIVISM: Arab America Launch

Firing, Prosecution of Bush

56 DIPLOMATIC DOINGS: Arab American Day Celebration

Administration Attorney John Yoo—Elaine Pasquini 48 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE: MPAC Convention

ACTIVISM:

—Reviewed by Kevin A. Davis 69 MIDDLE EAST BOOKS AND MORE 70 BULLETIN BOARD 72 2014 AET CHOIR OF ANGELS

58 HUMAN RIGHTS:

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

Despite New “Nationality Bill” Claims, Israel Is not the

An Accidental War

CAIR Calls for More Respect

Activists Urge Repatriation for 50 ISRAEL AND JUDAISM:

Don’t Be Afraid of the Bullets:

57 MUSLIM AMERICAN

Focuses on Improving the Nation—Pat and Samir Twair

The Lady From Tel Aviv

Correspondent in Yemen

46 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE: Activists Call for

Humanitarian and Legal Dynamics of the Syrian Conflict

TRI-STATE NEWS: Is This “Palestine’s South Africa

59 WAGING PEACE: The Political,

58 MUSIC & ARTS: Westmoreland

“Nation-State” of American Jews

Hosts Palestinian Violinist/

—Allan C. Brownfeld

Composer Aburedwan

51 INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

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Publisher: Managing Editor: News Editor: Assistant Editor: Middle East Books and More Director: Finance & Admin.

Director: Art Director: Executive Editor:

ANDREW I. KILLGORE JANET McMAHON DELINDA C. HANLEY DALE SPRUSANSKY KEVIN A. DAVIS CHARLES R. CARTER RALPH U. SCHERER RICHARD H. CURTISS (1927-2013)

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MARCH/APRIL 2015

LetterstotheEditor Declaration of Independence House Speaker John Boehner’s protocolbreaching, Israeli-requested invitation to Binyamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress yet again (now rescheduled, at Bibi’s direction, from Feb. 11 to March 3, two weeks before the Israeli election) actually presents an opportunity for historic progress toward liberation—initially for Americans and perhaps later for Palestinians.

It has already been announced that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry, justifiably outraged, will refuse to meet with Bibi during his visit to the United States.

That is a good start, but the Obama administration should not stop there. There are two other courses of action which it should seriously consider: (1) Prior to March 3, President Obama should publicly announce that he expects any and all members of Congress who owe their primary allegiance to the United States of America, rather than to a foreign country, NOT to attend Bibi’s speech, thereby challenging each member of Congress to visibly demonstrate where his or her true allegiance lies; and/or (2) When, after the Nigerian elections on Feb. 14 (when, with a little good luck, current President Judas Jonathan should be replaced by past and future President Muhammadu Buhari) but prior to the Israeli election on March 17, the Palestine Freedom Resolution is resubmitted for a new vote by the U.N. Security Council, the United States should either abstain or vote affirmatively, in either case after advising all other members of the council that it would have no objection to their voting affirmatively.

Either or both of these courses of action would constitute a resounding wake-up call both to Americans and to Israelis and make it significantly less likely that the Israeli electorate, which recognizes the existential Israeli need for unconditional American “support,” would grant Bibi, as the man whose arrogance had clearly lost it, another term as prime minister.

Either or both of these courses of action would constitute a veritable second American Declaration of Independence, requiring exceptional courage and genuine patriotism of a sort rarely demonstrated by American politicians.

Yet, with an abusively dominant Israel continuing to threaten to suck an abjectly THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

subservient United States down the toiletflush of history, isn’t it high time—indeed, well past time—for a second American Declaration of Independence?

If not now, when?

John V. Whitbeck, Paris, France Given the backlash that Netanyahu’s selfgenerated invitation has provoked in both the U.S. and Israel, wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if America gained its independence from Israel thanks to the Likud prime minister? In the Israeli-occupied territory of Congress itself, we wonder how Democrats— who in 2014 again received more pro-Israel PAC money than Republicans—view their

opportunity to show their allegiance to their country—or is it just their party? Do they welcome the prospect, or cringe at the thought of possibly losing a great deal of cold, hard cash? Interesting times, indeed.

And wonderful times if they lead to Palestinian liberation!

Settlers Attack U.S. Officials Biting the hand that feeds them billions of dollars in military and economic aid, Jewish settlers attacked American consular officials who were investigating the destruction of Palestinian olive trees. International outrage followed Palestinian Authority minister Ziad Abu Ein’s death following a violent assault by Israeli forces.

Tragically, this state-sponsored violence follows a familiar pattern. It is outrageous that we continue to divert critical resources from the American public to support the Israeli military machine which violates every norm of human decency and paradoxically the basic principles of Judaism.

The Obama administration unleashed its usual arm-twisting exercise and halted the United Nations Security Council’s resolution demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Abandoned by much of the world, the Palestinians should now vigorously remedy decades of injustice by taking their case to 5

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the International Criminal Court at mentary is no exception.

Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming!

The Hague.

For readers who would like to Send your letters to the editor to the Washington Jagjit Singh, Los Altos, CA see balanced reporting on the Report, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 Unfortunately, we are not surU.S./Iranian negotiations, I suggest or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>. prised at the attack on U.S. consular adding the following to your list of officials by Jewish settlers (in fact, we sources. wonder if any of the settlers were American). damentalism is just a sideline.

• At the website <www.NuclearEnWhen the Washington Report publisher and I and real human rights advocates con- ergy.ir>, click on the “News-Views” opeditors visited Palestine a decade ago (see tinue to call on the “West” to shed its tion in the top horizontal menu on the our October 2004 issue), we encountered a hypocrisy, which would lead us to a win- home page. settler guarding a Palestinian farmer’s land win scenario for all humans. It will take For background information, I suggest which the nearby settlement was in the decades to reclaim the rationality of the the following (all available from AET’s process of stealing. “I hate Americans,” he 1960s. It is a difficult path but we must try Middle East Books and More): informed us. But apparently not our money. and work on it.

• Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story Mazin Qumsiyeh, Bethlehem, Palestine of the Iran Nuclear Scare, by Gareth Porter.

Western Hypocrisy As we are all too aware, governments • A Dangerous Delusion: Why the West It is very hard to live knowing how much often lag far behind the citizens they allegedly is Wrong About Nuclear Iran, by Peter suffering there is. Our friends in Gaza have “represent” (see, for example, the U.S. Con- Oborne and David Morrison. no electricity (or four hours a day maxi- gress). Thanks to our “objective” media, • Going to Tehran: Why America Must mum) and no heating and cooking gas. No Americans in general are terribly uninformed Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran, by incomes, no jobs and how they survive is about other countries, so it’s critical that peo- Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett. beyond us. But then again, some do not ple such as yourself and magazines such as Bill Buckel, Columbus, OH survive. The most vulnerable are infants ours reach out on behalf of our shared huThank you for letting us know about and children, and several were frozen to manity. these resources for one of the issues on death in the past three weeks. But also life which the U.S. mainstream media is most is tough among refugees from the civil war An Excellent Resource misleading. We hope that the more Ameriin Syria—a war that claimed the lives of A thank you to Eric Margolis for explain- cans realize they are not being served by the over 100,000 and shows no sign of abetting. ing WHY Iran insists on having a nuclear most prestigious standard bearers of the We also think of Ukraine and its civil war. energy program. (“Nuclear Chicken in the Fourth Estate, the more they will look to I had warned about these situations all Mideast,” Jan./Feb. 2015 Washington Re- other sources of information (such as this coming about because of the hypocrisy of port, p. 11). He said, “A self-sufficient nu- magazine). We often recall a favorite quip Western governments. There is ethnic clear power industry will help assure by the late author Gore Vidal (who wrote cleansing they decry (e.g., Christians in Iran’s economic and political indepen- the foreword for Israel Shahak’s classic Iraq) and ethnic cleansing they support 100 dence...” This rationale is seldom ex- Jewish History, Jewish Religion): “You percent (Christians and Muslims in Pales- plained in the American media. When the will never read anything good about another tine). Over 20 years ago, I warned that there subject does come up, Iran’s “nuclear pro- country in an American newspaper.” Except are no winners and losers in this hypocrisy gram” is usually reported or debated in Israel, he might have added—and certainly but only losers. I warned of abandoning ra- the context of: how to stop Iran from not Iran! tionality and continuing down the path of building a bomb.

To those who believe Iran is trying to Thanks From Bangladesh supporting religion-based states (first a Jewish state and then Muslim states, then build an atomic bomb, imposing economic We are in receipt of the periodicals and who knows what). Increased religious fun- and trade sanctions may make sense. But, magazines sent to our club, and we will be the Iranians are ever grateful to you if you continue this interpreting the process, which will be of great use for us Other Voices is an optional sanctions message to augment our knowledge.

16-page supplement availYou know that ours is a very small poor as: “To have a relia b l e n u c l e a r country. But most of the young generations able only to subscribers of power-plant in- are so much concerned with unwarranted the Washington Report on dustry, we must political activities that these deter them Middle East Affairs. For an m a ke o u r ow n from the real way to acquire knowledge for uranium fuel.” To future life, and in the course of time they additional $15 per year (see counter the Amer- find themselves completely bound up in postcard insert for Wash ican media bias, dirty politics, which devour the core of life. ington Re port subscripIran has recently To make them engage in a faithful way, I tion rates), subscribers will created the web- plan to let them know about the developed site <www.Nu world and about the activities of their peoreceive Other Voices inside ple. I ask benevolent organizations to doclearEnergy.ir>. each issue of their Washington Report on Middle For reasons I don’t nate books and publications for the enEast Affairs. understand, most hancement of thoughts and ideas.

Back issues of both publications are available. To The Secretary, United Listeners Club of the American Habiganj, Bangladesh m e d i a h a v e subscribe telephone 1 (888) 881-5861, fax (714) 226We are more than happy to continue sendavoided mention9733, e-mail <circulation@wrmea.org>, or write to ing the existence ing you the Washington Report—although P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056. of this website. we confess to often being “concerned with unMargolis’ com- warranted political activities” ourselves! ❑ 6

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

MARCH/APRIL 2015

publishers_7_MARCH-APRIL 2015 Publishers page 1/29/15 10:52 PM Page 7

American Educational Trust

Publishers’ Page

and on Capitol Hill—and before Hold Onto Your Socks... you sit down to do your taxes (and It’s campaign season in Israel. That figure out how much you’re paying usually means the incumbent folfor wars for Israel), we’re offering a lows the tried-and-true strategy of change of pace. The Washington distracting voters from the breadReport and the Institute for Reand-butter issues that affect ordisearch: Middle Eastern Policy nary citizens. Israeli polls show (IRmep) will host an exciting and that the economy is the top conimportant daylong conference on cern for most voters. Prime Ministhe Israel lobby. Expert speakers at ter Binyamin Netanyahu’s ecothe April 10 event will tackle two nomic policies, including cuts in questions: Is the Israel lobby good welfare, plus rising food and housfor the U.S.? Is it good for Israel? ing costs, have widened Israel’s Obviously, by design... income gap. Voters can’t miss reports of retirees dumpster diving US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Jewish Voice for for food or depending on soup Peace and Roots Action have launched a campaign to demand The Lobby Is Bad For Palestine.

Comments made by Rep. John kitchens while a growing number that their congressmembers “SkipTheSpeech.”

Yarmuth (D-KY) in late January emphasize of millionaires enjoy conspicuous consumpthe critical importance of the conference. tion. Flattening Gaza was expensive, but A War On Terrorism Works at Home. voters aren’t too bothered about Palestini- American Muslim leaders spent much of “You know, I am a Jewish member of Conans, who are mostly out of sight and January relentlessly denouncing terrorism gress, I’m a strong supporter of Israel, but trapped behind a wall—so Gaza and Arab (see stories p. 31 and 57) following the my first obligation is to the Constitution of peace are not a significant campaign issue. Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. As usual, the United States, not to the constitution of Nevertheless, Israelis are getting tired of.... however, their efforts were not enough to Israel,” he said in a radio interview. (In fact, please anti-Muslim bigots—or interest the Israel has no constitution.) “And I think Bibi’s “Bomb Iran” Trash Talk. mainstream media. On. Jan. 29, Texas State some of the demands that are made by He simply must go to Washington, DC to Rep. Molly White implied that individuals members of AIPAC and some strong Jewish give his favorite stump speech and demand participating in the state’s Muslim Capitol supporters are that we pay more attention—I guess we defer—to Israel more more American tax dollars to fight “Islamic Day event had a... than we defer to the United States.”

Terror.” He’ll speechify and sabre-rattle to his heart’s content at the March meeting of Duplicitous Anti-American Agenda. the American Israel Public Affairs Commit- “I did leave an Israeli flag on the reception The Interests of a Foreign Nation… tee (AIPAC), which is not just de rigueur for desk in my office,” White posted on Face- Must never be put above those of the U.S. American politicians. Then, on March 3, book, “with instructions to staff to ask rep- That is why our conference will do what no Bibi plans to tell the U.S. Congress what to resentatives from the Muslim community previous conference has done: call out do (see p. 12) and where to put it—or to to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and AIPAC and its fellow pro-Israel lobbies on which bank to send it. Send the postcard publicly announce allegiance to America their increasingly overt attempt to get Conincluded in this issue and tell Congress not and our laws.” Wait—so she wants Muslim gress to do Israel’s bidding. You won’t want to attend Netanyahu’s speech. We all know Americans to pledge their allegiance to the to miss this groundbreaking event! For U.S. in front of an Israeli flag? Perhaps more information and to register, see p. 23 his agenda is…

White ought to look in the mirror before or visit <israellobbyus.org>.

To Cook Up a War or Two. she accuses others of duplicity.

Thank You Angels, New and Old! Or at least manufacture a major breach of “Expert”…

Foolish Another Then Your generous response to our recent donaIsrael’s 1974 cease-fire with Syria. An Israeli airstrike on a convoy of Hezbollah fighters So-called “terrorism expert” Steve Emerson, tion appeal—along with an excellent Middle killed six, plus an Iranian general, in the appeared on Fox News Jan. 10 and declared East Books and More holiday season— Syrian part of the Golan Heights on Jan. 18. that the entire city of Birmingham, Eng- helped the magazine and bookstore through No surprise that, ten days later, Hezbollah land—the country’s second largest city—was a rough patch. Many of you also answered missiles killed two Israeli soldiers at Shebaa a “no-go zone” closed to non-Muslims (see ar- our call for tax-deductible donations specifiFarms, near the Golan Heights. Israeli ticle p. 22). The remark was so outrageous cally for our April 10 conference. As you return fire killed a Spanish member of the that Fox News was forced to issue an apology. might guess, we need even more of your supU.N. peacekeeping force that day. Tough- While Emerson’s credibility has thankfully port to reach a wider audience, especially on-security candidate Netanyahu warned been crushed for the moment, many “ex- future leaders and journalists. We also need that those who were behind the attack “will perts” of his caliber unfortunately continue to volunteers to help prepare for our gamechanging conference. There are so many pay the full price.” Waving the flag and make appearances on major U.S. networks. ways to help. Choose one—or more!—and warning voters (and U.S. donors) about extogether we can… ternal threats ensures that Israel’s fractious Plan for Refreshing Discussion. voters and splintered coalitions forget about After watching U.S. and Israeli politicians foment at AIPAC’s conference, in the media Make a Difference Today! the economy and social problems.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

7

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Palestinians Pay a High Price for Justice SpecialReport

MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Rachelle Marshall

A man shelters his granddaughter during a winter storm at an UNRWA school housing Palestinians whose homes Israel destroyed in its summer assault on Gaza, Jan. 7, 2015. nly in a Kafka-esque world would it

Obe a punishable offense to seek justice

before a court of law. Yet that is the world that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live in. For nearly half a century Israel has controlled their land and water, restricted their every movement, and taken steps to cripple their economy. For years they were forbidden to hold political gatherings.

Today, Palestinians in the West Bank live at the mercy of trigger-happy soldiers. The U.N. reported that Israeli forces killed 50 Palestinians in the West Bank in 2014, including a 55-year-old Palestinian official, Ziad Abu Ein, who was grabbed around the neck and butted in the chest by a helmeted Israeli soldier while taking part in a peaceful demonstration. Scores of Palestinians were wounded last year by gunfire, including several members of the International Solidarity movement, who are pledged to nonviolence.

Soldiers make no distinction between Palestinian children and adults. More than a thousand children in the West Bank were 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

injured last year, among them 5-year-old Muhammed Ubeid and 11-year-old Saleh Mahmoud, both of whom were shot in the face with rubber-coated steel bullets. Saleh was permanently blinded. Amira Hass concluded in her Dec. 15 Haaretz column: “The violence of the Israel Defense Forces has become normal, an obvious routine.”

Palestinians have since 1991 repeatedly taken part in negotiations with Israel to end its occupation, but given the huge disparity in bargaining power between the two sides, and unconditional financial and diplomatic support from the U.S., the Israelis have had no reason to compromise.

Meanwhile Israel continues to seize Palestinian land for settlements. President Mahmoud Abbas, with his popularity plummeting, had no choice but to turn for help to the international community.

In late December the Palestinian Authority, through Jordan, submitted a resolution to the U.N. Security Council calling for a negotiated end to the occupation by the end of 2017. Due to pressure from Secretary of State John Kerry, who phoned 13 of the Council members at the last minute, the resolution fell one vote short of the 9 votes required for passage. Only the U.S. and Australia voted no. Eight countries voted yes, and five abstained.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

With no attempt to sound impartial, or even informed, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power called the resolution a “staged confrontation” that was “deeply unbalanced,” and said it did not adequately take into account Israel’s security needs. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered the same message more bluntly, saying, “We will not accept attempts to dictate to us. We will rebuff any attempt to put terrorism inside our home, inside the state of Israel.”

Having failed at the Security Council, Abbas immediately signed the Rome Statute, enabling the Palestinian state to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) and bring charges against Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and for war crimes its military committed in Gaza. To the 2,335 Palestinians killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza last summer should be added the 5 babies who died of exposure this winter because their families’ homes were so badly damaged by Israeli bombing they provide no shelter from freezing storms.

Membership in the ICC could cost the Palestinians dearly. Israel immediately withheld over $100 million in Palestinian tax revenues (see p. 16), and threatened harsher penalties to come. If a Palestinian case goes before the court, U.S. law requires an immediate cut-off of the $400 million a year in aid Washington gives to the Palestinian Authority.

Prosecutors at the Court announced in mid-January that they had begun examining possible war crimes committed by Israel and the Palestinians, but gave no assurance they will take the case. Nevertheless, Netanyahu called the announcement “scandalous” for coming a week after four Jews were killed in Paris; and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused the Court of granting “a tailwind to terrorism,” and said Israel would seek to disband it. The State Department called the Court’s action “counterproductive to the cause of peace.”

Although the Arab League has promised to replace the tax revenue expropriated by Israel, Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, predicted that harsher sanctions could result in the downfall of the Authority. A poll by Shikaki’s organization last December found that only 35 percent of Palestinians approved of Abbas’ performance, and that if elections were held MARCH/APRIL 2015

today, Hamas would win.

Some experts doubt the ICC will even take a Palestinian case. Michael P. Scharf, dean of Case Western Reserve University law school, pointed out that in the past, cases before the court “involved hundreds of thousands, or at least tens of thousands of deaths,” and “require that they be committed as part of a policy or plan.” Other scholars point to the court’s stated threshold for hearing cases as “unimaginable atrocities that shock the conscience of mankind.”

Palestinian human rights activist Shawan Jabarin says there is a possibility the ICC’s mandate may expand to include Israel’s annexations of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and its blockade of Gaza’s coast, as illegal “acts of aggression.”

Surely Israel’s seven-year blockade of Gaza, and the imprisonment and near starvation of nearly two million Gazans, constitutes a crime of major proportions.

Egypt’s eradication of the town of Rafah in January created a 500-yard-wide wasteland on the border, and Gazans are now almost totally isolated.

The White House press office responded to the Palestinians’ membership in the ICC with its usual avoidance of the facts. “We are deeply troubled,” the statement said.

“It is an escalatory step that will not achieve any of the outcomes most Palestinians hope to see.” And what will achieve those outcomes? According to the White House, only “constructive engagement between the two parties...Our efforts should focus on creating an environment for meaningful talks.” Bitter advice for Palestinians who have taken part in talks with Israel for a quarter of a century with no result, and a sharp contrast to the speed with which the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia after its annexation of Crimea, a former Russian territory.

Ghassan Khatib, vice president for development and communications at Birzeit University, exposed the folly of the U.S. position. “I’m a little surprised with the negative American reaction,” he said, “because Palestinians either pursue peaceful legal approaches or pursue violent illegal approaches. But if all the doors are closed, and the Israelis and Americans stop funding, then the P.A. will collapse, and that will play into the hands of the extreme elements in Palestinian society, including Hamas.”

Such a development, however, may be exactly what Netanyahu and his supporters are hoping for, since Israel is able to crush violent resistance far more easily than it can nonviolent efforts to achieve justice.

Dim as prospects may seem for an end to Israel’s occupation, in fact a Palestinian state already exists. The West Bank and Gaza meet the necessary criteria of a perMARCH/APRIL 2015

HAZEM BADER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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A family argues with members of the Israeli security forces as an Israeli army bulldozer prepares to demolish their home in Al-Dirat, near the West Bank town of Hebron, which authorities allege was built without a permit, Jan. 20, 2015. manent population: clearly defined territory, a governing authority, and recognition by other states. The parliaments of France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, Russia, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey and Poland have voted to recognize the Palestinian state; and the European Parliament recently expressed “its strong support for the twostate solution on the basis of the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as the capital of both states.” In a more surprising move, the General Court of the European Union ruled on Dec. 17 that the EU no longer would consider Hamas a terrorist organization.

The question haunting moderate Israelis is what effect such developments will have on the outcome of Israel’s March 17 elections. The moderates fear that the show of international support for Palestinians’ membership in the ICC and other U.N. organizations will cause Israeli voters to circle the wagons and vote for Netanyahu and even more extremist candidates, rather than for the joint slate led by Isaac Herzog of the center-left Labor Party and former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni of the centrist Hatnua party.

Before the events at the U.N., the main issue in the campaign was dissatisfaction with the high cost of living and shortage of available housing. Netanyahu proposes to exempt food staples from the value-added tax and double the grant given to demobilized soldiers. Elimination of the 18 percent tax on food would especially benefit ultraOrthodox families with many children.

Political opponents immediately charged Netanyahu with hypocrisy. “Where was this wonderful plan until now?” asked Yair THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Lapid, suggesting that Netanyahu could have acted long ago. Lapid, who heads the Yesh Atid party, is the former finance minister whom Netanyahu fired last fall along with Livni. Shelley Yachimovich, a member of the Labor party, pointed out that Netanyahu had opposed similar proposals in the past and asked, “Is there no limit to cynicism?”

Such criticism aside, Palestinians have little to hope for from the coming elections.

Most Israelis favor Netanyahu’s hard-line policies against the Palestinians, and trust him to safeguard Israel’s security. His opponents are still question marks when it comes to negotiating a just solution. Herzog favors an independent Palestinian state but has not said what its borders should be.

Livni, who in nine years has been a member of four different parties, says she would freeze settlement construction, but only do so outside the large settlement blocs that already reach deep into West Bank territory.

In 2009, a British court issued a warrant for her arrest as a war criminal on charges involving her role as foreign minister in planning “Operation Cast Lead,” the Israeli attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008-9 that killed 1,400 Palestinian civilians. The damage to Gaza’s homes, factories, power lines and sanitary systems was only minimally less than the destruction caused by Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” last summer.

Nevertheless, Livni said she was “proud of her decision. The operation achieved its objectives to protect the citizens of Israel and restore Israel’s deterrence capability.”

In an interview in late December with Roger Cohen in The New York Times, the 9

marshall_8-10_Special Report 1/29/15 11:13 PM Page 10

The Unfinished War In 1966, as the war in Vietnam dragged on and there seemed no reason why our soldiers should continue dying, Sen. George Aiken of Vermont suggested that the U.S. simply declare victory and get out.

That is more or less what President Barack Obama did in late December when he announced the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan. “The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible end,” he said in a statement issued in Hawaii. Except that it hasn’t ended, and won’t for the foreseeable future.

When the flag of the International Security Assistance Force was ceremoniously lowered at NATO headquarters in Kabul on Dec. 28, the flag of a new international mission was immediately hoisted. Operation Enduring Freedom is now over, and Operation Resolute Support has taken its place. The commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. John Campbell, said, “Resolute Support will serve as the bedrock of an enduring partnership” between NATO and Afghanistan.

“They change the name of the mission but the mission doesn’t change,” said the wife of a sergeant who is still serving in Afghanistan.

“It weighs very heavily on us even if the rest of the country doesn’t pay much attention.” The mission of the American-led international force is still to fight the Taliban while training Afghan troops to be able to take over if and when the international force leaves. The U.S. is providing some 12,000 of the 13,500 troops who will remain.

Under Afghanistan’s new President Ashraf Ghani, U.S. troops are again authorized to engage in combat against the Taliban and take part in nighttime raids, which were banned by former President Hamid Karzai. Karzai imposed the ban because of widespread anger on the part of Afghans who resented the intrusion into their homes. Haji Abdullah Jan, a local official, said the renewed raids will mean more killing of civilians. “The Taliban will be going into people’s houses, and the Americans will be behind them again, and there will be losses of women and children when Taliban shoot from people’s houses, and in reaction the foreigners will bomb them.”

The second mission of the Americans is to train the Afghan army, a project that has been underway for nearly as long as the war but so far made little progress. Illiteracy and frequent desertions on the part former foreign minister blamed Abbas for the breakdown in the latest round of peace negotiations—deliberately ignoring Netanyahu’s refusal to free a third round of Palestinian prisoners, as he had pledged to do, and his abrupt withdrawal from the negotiations when the Palestinian Authority agreed to form a unity government with Hamas.

On Jan. 18 Israel without warning or provocation launched a drone strike on Syrian territory that killed six members of Hezbollah and a senior Iranian general.

One week later, Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire, resulting in the deaths of two IDF soldiers and a Spanish U.N. peacekeeper. The air strike followed Israel’s familiar strategy of ending a lull in the violence with a surprise attack, then responding to a retaliatory action with disproportionately massive force and claiming, “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Former 10

of recruits remain as serious a problem as ever, and in areas where foreign forces have turned over combat responsibility to the Afghan army the Taliban have come surging back, seizing territory across the country.

Mohammed Saleh, a five-year veteran who was badly wounded in the fighting, said, “Our commanders all buy their positions, so they have to make money to pay for them. The Taliban do not do this with their commanders.” A policeman had a similar complaint. “Our own commanders sell our bullets to the Taliban instead of giving them to us, and then buy a nice house in Lashkar Gah and stay there, leaving the little guys to do the fighting.”

A recent study commissioned by the international community found that corruption, the delivery of justice, and the quality of government services have become worse. “The officials are not in touch with the people,” said one village elder. “The people do not trust them.” A foreign diplomat with long experience in the country agreed. “The Taliban still carries the banner of Islamic morals,” he said. “There is no justice in this government. There is justice under the Taliban.”

Whether the situation will improve under the new government is still an unanswered question. It took three months for President Ghani and his former political rival Abdullah Abdullah to agree on a cabinet, and individual posts have not yet been assigned. Abdullah, who contested Ghani’s election, is now his chief executive. Ghani’s vice president is Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former warlord who is notorious for having locked Taliban prisoners inside a shipping container until they suffocated.

Who runs the government is of little immediate concern to the thousands of homeless Afghans huddled in tents outside of Kabul seeking shelter from the harsh winter. For them the question is whether their children will survive the winter. Several have already died. The U.N. agency assigned to help them with clothing, food, firewood and plastic sheeting is strapped for money, and a U.N. official said there was no money for blankets.

The war has already cost the U.S. an estimated trillion dollars. The number of American soldiers killed so far is 2,242, with 19,600 wounded. Those figures are certain to be far from final. ❑ —R.M.

Israeli military commander Yoav Galant observed that the timing of such actions is sometimes “not unconnected to election campaigns.” With tensions in Syria at an all-time high as competing rebel forces battle the Assad government and one another, the latest Israeli action could be the match that sets off a conflagration.

Although Palestinians have little to hope for from the March elections, some supporters of Israel see its self-proclaimed identity as a democratic state at stake. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in his Dec. 17 column that the right is now “dominated by West Bank settlers and scary religious-nationalists...who if they run the next government and effectively annex the West Bank, will lead Israel into a dark corner.” And Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit warned that “this time the forces threatening Israeli democracy and the Zionist enterprise from within THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

are unprecedented in their power.”

When Haaretz pointed out after the killing of 12 French journalists by Muslim gunmen on Jan. 7, that 13 journalists were killed in Israel’s war on Gaza last summer, the newspaper was deluged with death threats. A message from the right-wing organization Im Tirtzu read, “With God’s help, the journalists at Haaretz will be murdered. They should die.”

Right-wing zealots aside, the notion that Israel is a democracy has been a fiction from the beginning. A nation whose identity is based on the dominance of a single ethnic group can never be democratic; nor can it be permanently secure. Early opponents of a Jewish nation in Palestine predicted that by taking land by force from a people who had inhabited and cultivated it for centuries, the Jews would face endless conflict and bloodshed. Those early prophets have unfortunately been proven right. ❑ MARCH/APRIL 2015

avnery_11…25_Special Report 1/29/15 11:03 PM Page 11

Israel’s Drone Strike on Syria: Another Pre-Election Gambit?

SpecialReport

MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Uri Avnery

An Israeli army 155-mm. mobile artillery battery stationed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, near the border with Syria, Jan. 28, 2015. here used to be a joke about a sadist

Tand a masochist.

“Hit me! Beat me! Kick me!” the masochist pleads with the sadist.

The sadist smiles a cruel smile and slowly answers: “No!” That, more or less, reflects the situation on our northern border at this moment.

Two Israeli drones have bombed (or missiled) a small Hezbollah convoy, a few miles beyond the border with Syria on the Golan Heights. Twelve people were killed. One was an Iranian general. One was a young Hezbollah officer, the son of Imad Mughniyeh, a very high-ranking Hezbollah officer who was also killed by Israel, some seven years ago, in a Damascus car explosion.

The killing of the Iranian general was perhaps unintended. Seems that Israeli intelligence did not know that he, and five other Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers, were in the convoy. An Israeli army officer admitted this in a roundabout way. A second officer denied the statement of the first.

Uri Avnery, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, is a founder of Gush Shalom, <www.gush-shalom.org>.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

He did not apologize, of course. One cannot apologize when one does not officially admit to being the perpetrator. And, of course, Israelis do not apologize. Never ever. Indeed, one far-right party in the present election has turned this into an election slogan: “No apologies!”

The intended victim of the attack was the 25-year-old Jihad Mughniyeh, a junior Hezbollah officer whose only claim to fame was his family name.

Immediately after the killing, the question arose: Why? Why now? Why at all?

The Israeli-Syrian border (or, rather, cease-fire line) has been for decades the quietest border of Israel. No shooting. No incidents. Nothing.

Assad the father and Assad the son both saw to this. They were not interested in provoking Israel. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which started with a huge Syrian surprise success and ended with a complete Syrian defeat, the Assads wanted no new adventure.

Even when Ariel Sharon attacked Lebanon in 1982, the Syrian troops stationed in Lebanon did not intervene. But since one of Sharon’s war aims was to drive THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

the Syrians out of Lebanon, he had to open fire himself to get them involved. That adventure ended with a Syrian success.

Any intention Bashar al-Assad might ever have had to provoke Israel (and it seems that he never had any) vanished when the Syrian civil war started, more than four years ago. Both Bashar al-Assad and the various rebel factions were fully occupied with their bloody business. Israel could not interest them less.

So why did Israeli drones hit a small convoy of Assad’s allies—Hezbollah and Iran? It is very unlikely that they had any aggressive intentions against Israel. Probably they were scouting the terrain in search of Syrian rebels.

The Israeli government and the army did not explain. How could they, when they did not officially admit to the action? Even unofficially, there was no hint.

But there is an elephant in the room: the Israeli elections.

We are now in the middle of the election campaign. Was there, could there be, any connection between the election campaign and the attack?

Continued on page 25 11

mcmahon_12_Special Report 1/29/15 11:09 PM Page 12

His Master’s Voice: Netanyahu Invited to Instruct Congress, American People on Iran SpecialReport And on a visit to Israel late last December, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Netanyahu that “Congress will follow your lead” on legislation regarding Iran sanctions.

One heard little or no outrage expressed following any of those previous challenges to American sovereignty over its own affairs. So why has House Speaker John Boehner’s Jan. 21 announcement of his invitation to Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress generated such controversy?

Apparently what makes this insult different from any other insult is that it constitutes a serious breach of protocol. Miss Manners would be proud!

Not only has that breach backfired big time, however, generating a discussion rarely heard in this country about whether Israeli interests should prevail over American, but as details emerged over the ensuing days the insults just got egregiouser and egregiouser.

In his Jan. 20 State of the Union address, President Obama told Congress: “There are no guarantees that negotiations [with Iran] will succeed….But new sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails….That is why I will veto any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo this progress.”

The following day Boehner announced that he had invited Netanyahu to address Congress about “the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life.”

Speculation was that Boehner hoped to add enough pro-Israel Democrats to the Republican majority to pass the adminisContinued on page 17 HTTP://BLOG.RETROPLANET.COM/CHARACTER-OF-THE-WEEK-RCA-NIPPER/

By Janet McMahon

Taking their cue from this old RCA Victor logo. t’s not as if the signs weren’t already there.

IAs far back as 1998, days before peace dis-

cussions were to begin under the aegis of then-President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington, DC and immediately went to a rally of Christian and Jewish supporters.

There the Rev. Jerry Falwell—whom Steven Erlanger of The New York Times noted was “regarded by the Clinton administration as an outright enemy of the president”—enthusiastically described Netanyahu as “the Ronald Reagan of Israel.”

As Erlanger went on to report in his Jan. 19, 1998 article: “A meeting with Mr. Falwell was added to Mr. Netanyahu’s schedule at the last minute, officials said, before he met the Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. Mr. Netanyahu will also meet with conservative Republican legislators including Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and will give interviews to conservative groups and commentators like Janet McMahon is managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

12

Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network and Cal Thomas of The Washington Times.”

Apparently the Israeli prime minister found it quite acceptable to work the opposition in a country other than his own— and no one seemed to disabuse him of that notion.

More recently, when Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress in May 2011—for the second time—Americans’ elected representatives jumped to their feet 29 times to cheer the foreign head of state.

Two months earlier, members of Congress had accorded their president, Barack Obama, 25 standing ovations during his State of the Union speech.

Netanyahu’s enthusiastic reception came just days after he delivered what McClatchy Newspapers described as “a public rebuke” of President Obama during a 90-minute meeting at the White House.

Netanyahu “flatly reject[ed] any suggestion that Israel might even consider withdrawing from territories it seized in the 1967 Six-Day War,” McClatchy reported on May 20, 2011.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

MARCH/APRIL 2015

buchanan_13_Neocon Corner 1/29/15 7:57 PM Page 13

The Persians Are Coming!

SpecialReport

By Patrick J. Buchanan he Iranians are on the march,”

Jan. 25.

“Iran is building a new Persian Empire,” echoed Col. Ralph Peters.

So alarmed is Speaker John Boehner, he invited Bibi Netanyahu to come and challenge U.S. policy toward Iran from the same podium where the president delivered his State of the Union address.

Bibi will make the case for new U.S. sanctions on Iran; sanctions that Obama has said he will veto as they would sabotage talks on Iran’s nuclear program and potentially put us on the road to war.

Why are Bibi’s insights needed?

Because, says Sen. Robert Menendez (DNJ), the outgoing chairman of foreign relations, White House statements sound like “talking points from Tehran.” This beloved poodle of AIPAC is always a strong contender for best in show.

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence...a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

So warned our first and greatest president in his Farewell Address.

But this column is not about how Washington would weep at what has become of this Republic, nor a polemic against the corruption of a capital where the currency is campaign cash and national policy is the commodity bought and sold.

The issue is whether Iran represents a threat to our security worth risking a war.

For that is where many, including Bibi, want us to go.

The latest panic was triggered by the ouster of the pro-American Yemeni President by Houthi rebels. Suddenly, we heard wails that Iran has now captured four Arab capitals—Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Sana’a.

“Death to America, death to Israel,” is a slogan of the Houthis, who are a Shi’i minority in Sunni Yemen. But who do the Houthis view as their mortal foes?

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP. Our enemy, too.

Patrick J. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist. Copyright © 2015 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Patrick J. Buchanan and Creators Syndicate, Inc. MARCH/APRIL 2015

RICK WILKING/AFP//GETTY IMAGES

“Twarned John McCain on Sunday,

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (r) speaks with Secretary of State John Kerry before their Jan. 14 meeting in Geneva.

The crown jewel of the new “Persian Empire” is said to be Iraq. So how did the Iranian imperialists manage to acquire it?

George W. Bush sent an army up to Baghdad, ousted Iran’s greatest enemy, Saddam, disbanded his army, smashed his state, and brought to power a Shi’i majority with religious and historic bonds to Iran.

A masterstroke of Bismarckian brilliance. And both parties voted in Congress to authorize it. Mission Accomplished!— as they say in Tehran.

As for Damascus, Iran is backing the Alawite Shi’i regime of Bashar Assad, whose father, Hafez Assad, was Bush I’s ally in Desert Storm.

As for Beirut, Hezbollah arose as a resistance movement when Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon in 1982.

Yitzhak Rabin would come to regret the consequences: “We let the Shi’i genie out of the bottle.”

Looking over the chaos that is the Middle East today, we see failed states in Libya, Yemen and Syria, with Iraq and Afghanistan perhaps next.

A strategic disaster, largely of our own making. But if al-Qaeda and ISIS are our real enemies now, Iran, Hezbollah, Assad THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

and the Houthis are all de facto allies, fighting on the same side with us.

Alarmists may see a new Persian Empire threatening all mankind.

A closer look reveals a Shi’i minority in a Sunni-dominated world where Shi’i are despised heretics. And of all the terrorist organizations we have the most reason to fear and hate—al-Qaeda, Islamic State, Ansar al-Sharia, Boko Haram—none is Shi’i, all are Sunni.

What about Iran’s drive to build a nuclear bomb?

Well, Israel has 100-300 atom bombs.

America has thousands. Iran’s Muslim neighbor Pakistan has scores. And Iran?

She has no bomb.

Iran has never tested a nuclear device.

She has never produced weapons-grade uranium. Her Fordow underground plant now has IAEA inspectors and its 20-percent-enriched uranium is all being diluted.

Construction of the heavy-water reactor at Arak has been halted. Half of Iran’s centrifuges are not operating. There are International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and cameras blanketing Iran’s program.

The U.S. intelligence community has twice said Iran has no nuclear bomb proContinued on page 17 13

UNRWA_14-15_March/April 2015 Template 1/29/15 10:31 PM Page 14

UNRWA out of Funds for Gaza Repairs The United Nations agency tasked with assisting Palestinian refugees across the Middle East has announced that a major funding shortfall has forced the suspension of its cash assistance program that would have helped families in Gaza repair their homes and provide rental subsidies to people left homeless after last year’s conflict in the enclave.

Announcing the suspension, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said in a press release “virtually none” of the funds pledged by donors at an international conference in Cairo last year has reached Gaza, and that it will need some $100 million in the first quarter of 2015.

Over 96,000 Palestine refugee family homes were damaged or destroyed during last summer’s conflict and overall, $720 million is required to address this need, according to UNRWA. To date, the agency has received only $135 million in pledges, leaving a shortfall of $585 million.

“People are desperate and the international community cannot even provide the bare minimum—for example, a repaired home in winter—let alone a lifting of the blockade, access to markets or freedom of movement. We’ve said before that quiet will not last, and now the quiet is at risk,” said Robert Turner, the agency’s director in Gaza.

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SAID KHATIB PHOTO

While some funds remain available to begin the reconstruction of totally destroyed homes, UNRWA has exhausted all funding to support repairs and rental subsidies.

“UNRWA in Gaza has so far provided over $77 million to 66,000 Palestine refugee families to repair their homes or find a temporary alternative,” Turner said, emphasizing that while this in itself is a “tremendous achievement,” it is wholly insufficient.

“It is easy to look at these numbers and lose sight of the fact that we are talking about thousands of families who continue to suffer through this cold winter with inadequate shelter. People are literally sleeping amongst the rubble; children have died of hypothermia,” he stressed.

Of the $5.4 billion pledged at the Cairo conference last October to help Palestinians rebuild from last summer’s war, “virtually none of it has reached Gaza,” he added.

“It is unclear why this funding has not been forthcoming,” said Turner. “But UNRWA has been a stabilizing factor in a very challenging political and security context, and if we cannot continue the program, it will have grave consequences for affected communities in Gaza.”

The Agency warned that if it did not receive the $100 million, it would not be able to continue to provide rental subsidies, fearing that large numbers of families may return to the collective centers, where almost 12,000 displaced Palestinians continue to seek shel—U.N. News Service, Jan. 27, 2015 ter.

All photos AFP/Getty Images.

All photos Mohammed Abed unless otherwise noted.

SAID KHATIB PHOTO

omer_16-17_Gaza on the Ground 1/29/15 8:01 PM Page 16

Israel Punishes PA by Withholding Taxes Belonging to Palestine Gazaon the Ground

MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Mohammed Omer

Palestinian workers inspect the damage the day after an explosion targeted the Bank of Palestine in Gaza City, destroying its ATM, on Jan. 10, 2015. sraeli authorities have decided to retaliate

Ifor Palestine’s bid to join the Interna-

tional Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague by withholding $127 million worth of Palestinian tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

According to Russia Today, the funds represent “customs duties for goods transferred to Palestinian markets via Israeli ports. They comprise two-thirds of the Palestinian Authority’s annual budget, without foreign aid.”

As stipulated in the Paris Protocol on economic relations between Israel and the PLO that was incorporated into the 1994 Oslo agreement, Palestinian taxes are to be collected by Israel and transferred to the Ministry of Finance in Ramallah. The tax monies Israel collected for December were due to be transferred to the PA in January.

That month, in the besieged Gaza Strip, Anwar Saleh asked his supermarket in Rafah to extend him the same amount of Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>.

Follow him on Twitter: @MoGaza.

16

credit as it had in December, based on his usual salary arriving in January. As of mid-January, however, his salary had not been deposited in his bank account.

One of the PA’s 165,000 employees, Saleh is now experiencing how the concept of Palestinian statehood translates into real life, as the PA is unable to pay its employees or cover the costs of ministries, schools or hospitals as a result of the Israeli move.

“Israel is not hiding [its retaliation], they are making it clear straight up front; you want to be independent, we will cut off your living,” Saleh told the Washington Report while at the supermarket.

Israel acted after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas applied to join the Rome Statute, which oversees the activities of the ICC. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu demanded that the ICC reject Palestine’s application, saying,“Those who should face justice are the heads of the Palestinian Authority who signed a covenant with the war criminals of Hamas.”

However, Palestinians say none of the consensus government ministers who were appointed in June are linked with Hamas.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Among Palestinians, Abbas’ effort was well received. Umm Diab, a 43-year-old housewife, said she supports President Abbas on this, as joining international courts would enable Palestinians to bring the Israeli military and its political leaders to court for war crimes.

“We were slaughtered day and night for 67 years,” she said, “and it’s time for the international community to bring [to trial] criminals who committed war crimes against us.”

This is not the first time Israel has reneged on its responsibility to turn over funds belonging to the PA. Following the collapse in April of the most recent Palestinian-Israeli peace talks—in part because of the continued expansion of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank—rival Palestinian political parties Fatah and Hamas agreed to cooperate with each other and form a consensus government. Since Israel opposes such cooperation, it froze the return of Palestinian tax revenues for several months. In response, the PA leadership engaged in several diplomatic battles, primarily at the U.N., after Washington’s ninemonth attempt to restart “peace” negotiations ended in failure.

In addition to its application to join the ICC, the PA also has filed a complaint with the U.N. against Israel’s decision to withhold tax revenues. Palestinian politician Dr. Mustapha Barghouti described Israel’s action as “financial piracy.”

According to Palestinian economic analyst Naser Abdelkareem, “Not transferring some part of this tax money will place the PA in extreme financial distress, especially since it suffers from a major budget deficit.”

Both the EU and the U.S. have criticized the Israeli move but, as the saying goes, talk is cheap.

Thanks to a $60 million contribution from Saudi Arabia and $25 million from Qatar, the PA was able to pay 60 percent of its salaries in December, but as January neared an end there was growing concern about whether salaries would be received that month.

Despite the lack of cash, Palestinians living in Gaza still support President Abbas’ initiative. As Saleh explains, “One can live on bread and salt, but we can’t continue living with constant blackmail and lack of economic security.”

Ironically, the lack of wages for PA employees puts them in the same position as MARCH/APRIL 2015

omer_16-17_Gaza on the Ground 1/29/15 8:01 PM Page 17

employees of Gazaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s de facto authority: none of them are getting paid.

Saleh hopes Palestineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Arab brothers will step forward to make up the lost tax revenues, but realizes that the United States could block that move, too.

What Gaza public employees seem not to realize, however, is that the PA could consider dissolving itself as a result of its application to the ICCâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a possibility hinted at by several PA officials. (See Jonathan Cookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Perhaps a New Struggle for Civil Rights Is Neededâ&#x20AC;? in this issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Other Voicesâ&#x20AC;? supplement.)

Meanwhile, anger in Gaza at Israel and its enablers continues, with unknown militants bombing two ATM machines in the center of Gaza City, and another group attacking the Palestinian Telecommunications Companyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the now literally empty symbols of their oppression. â?&#x2018;

His Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Voiceâ&#x20AC;Ś Continued from page 12

tration-opposed Kirk-Menendez bill expanding sanctions on Iran with a vetoproof majority.

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MARCH/APRIL 2015

Not only was Boehnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unilateral invitation news to the White House, but the previous day Secretary of State John Kerry had met for two hours with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;like his predecessor Michael Oren, a former Americanâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;who neglected to inform Kerry of it. This despite the fact that, as The Washington Post reported on Jan. 22, Kerry â&#x20AC;&#x153;has made nearly 50 calls in the past month to world leaders [on behalf of Israel] on such issues as the U.N. Security Council Resolution on Palestine and a probe by the International Criminal Court.â&#x20AC;?

As it turned out, the invitation had been in the works since Jan. 8, when, according to Haaretz, citing an unnamed senior Israeli official, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dermer approached Boehner, [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell and other senior Republican Party figures at Netanyahuâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s behest and suggested the idea of the speech.â&#x20AC;?

As the furor grew, the original Feb. 11 date for Netanyahuâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s address was pushed back to March 3, ostensibly to enable the Israeli prime minister to attend AIPACâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual policy conference in Washington, DC. Exactly two weeks after his speech to Congress, Israeli voters will decide whether or not Netanyahu deserves to be re-elected.

That proximity was cited by the White House as the reason neither the president, secretary of state or Vice President Joe Biden (who was greeted on one of his trips to Israel with the announcement that 1,600 new housing units for Jews only would be built in Arab East Jerusalem) planned to meet with Netanyahu in March.

Even the organized American Jewish community was divided over the invitation, concerned that support for Israel risked becoming a political issue rather than the bilateral priority it has always been. Writing in the Jan. 23 edition of Haaretz, Chemi Shalev quoted a â&#x20AC;&#x153;Democratic lawmakerâ&#x20AC;? as saying that by turning this into a partisan issue, [Netanyahu] may be forcing some Democratic members to choose between Boehner and Obama, which, for them, is no choice at all.â&#x20AC;?

(No mention of whom they might choose between Netanyahu and Obama, however.)

Nor are Jewish Israelis united in support of Netanyahuâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in-your-face ploy. As Haaretzâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Shalev described the dangers of the Boehner-Netanyahu scheme on Jan. 21: â&#x20AC;&#x153;At best, they could jeopardize any hope for an amicable relationship between Obama and Netanyahu, should he win the March elections. At worst they could lay the groundwork for an unprecedented and potentially explosive rupture in U.S.-Israeli relations and in Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s long-term standing in American public opinion.â&#x20AC;?

Come to think of it, maybe that breach of protocol wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t such a bad thing after all. â?&#x2018; THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Persians Are Coming!â&#x20AC;Ś Continued from page 13

gram. And the most recent finding, 2011, has never been reversed by the director of National Intelligence.

And just how credible a foreign leader has Boehner invited to undercut his own presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s credibility?

This is the same Bibi who told the Jewish community of Los Angeles in 2006, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1938 and Iran is Germany...racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.â&#x20AC;? President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad â&#x20AC;&#x153;is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.â&#x20AC;? Bibi even had the war plans: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Israel would certainly be the first stop on Iranâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tour of destruction, but at [Tehranâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s] planned production rate of 25 nuclear bombs a year, [the arsenal] will be directed against â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the big Satan,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; the U.S.â&#x20AC;?

Twenty-five Iranian nuclear bombs a year! What bullhockey it all was.

Boehner seems to have concluded that new sanctions on Iran, even if it aborts negotiations and brings on a war with Iran, will be rewarded by the electorate in 2016.

Perhaps. But if this is where the GOP is heading, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be getting off here. â?&#x2018; (Advertisement)

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cook_18-19_The Nakba Continues 1/29/15 5:58 PM Page 18

Israeli Veterans, Palestinian Survivors Testify at First 1948 “Truth Commission” TheNakbaContinues

HTTP://ZOCHROT.ORG

By Jonathan Cook

he first-ever “truth commission” in Is-

Trael featured confessions from veteran

Israeli fighters of the 1948 war, admitting that they had perpetrated war crimes as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

The commission, held in December 2014, is the culmination of more than a decade of antagonistic confrontations between a small group of activists called Zochrot, the Hebrew word for Remembering, and the Israeli authorities, as well as much of the Jewish public.

Founded in 2002, Zochrot is dedicated to educating Israeli Jews about what Palestinians call the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe, referring to Israel’s creation on the ruins of their homeland more than six decades ago.

The group also campaigns for the right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel, probably the biggest taboo in Israeli society.

The commission, which has no official standing, could be the first of several such 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 (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More).

18

events around Israel to investigate atrocities and war crimes committed in different localities, said Liat Rosenberg, Zochrot’s director.

“We have looked to other such commissions around the world as models, most obviously in South Africa,” she said. “But unlike the one there, ours does not include the element of reconciliation because the conflict here has yet to be resolved.

“We cannot talk about reconciliation when the Nakba is ongoing,” Rosenberg explained. “We are still in a situation where there is apartheid, constant violations of human rights and 70 percent of the Palestinian community are refugees.”

The commission is the latest iniative to antagonize the Israeli government, which passed the so-called Nakba Law in 2011 to try to make it harder to commemorate Palestinian suffering. The impact of the law is being widely felt. In November, the Culture Ministry vowed to block a government grant to a Tel Aviv cultural center that hosted a Zochrot film festival on the Nakba.

Rosenberg said Israeli veteran fighters and Palestinian witnesses participating in the truth commission had asked for their names to be kept secret beforehand, for THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

fear that friends and family would put pressure on them to withdraw.

The commission was held in the city of Beersheva, a once-Bedouin town that was ethnically cleansed in 1948 and is today the largest Jewish city in the Negev region in southern Israel.

Zochrot said it had chosen the city because forced expulsions of Bedouin from the Negev had taken place not only in 1948, but had continued on a large scale, out of view of observers, for many years afterward.

The commission is the latest project by Zochrot that discredits a traditional Israeli narrative that some 750,000 Palestinians left under orders from Arab leaders and that Israel’s army acted only in self-defense. Such beliefs have fed into the common assumption from the Israeli public that Israel’s army is the “most moral in the world.”

“This is not just about researching the truth,” said Rosenberg. “The truth of the Nakba is to a large degree known, but the task is to expose the truth to the Israeli Jewish public—both so that it is forced to take responsibility for what happened and so there can be accountability.”

The commission is the direct result of a project launched by Zochrot two years ago to create an alternative archive of the Nakba, based on filmed testimonies from Palestinian refugees and Israeli veterans.

Activists fear that, as the generation of refugees and fighters dies off, they will take their secrets to the grave.

Israeli military archives relating to the 1948 war began being opened to academics in the late 1980s. This led to a group of socalled “new historians” overturning the traditional accounts of that period and unearthing written evidence of massacres and ethnic cleansing operations for the first time.

However, historians have reported in recent years that the Israeli authorities have become more reluctant to open files, and many of the more controversial episodes of the 1948 war remain unclear.

Rosenberg said she hoped the commission would begin to fill some of the gaps.

Three Israeli fighters and three Palestinian witnesses testified before a panel of MARCH/APRIL 2015

cook_18-19_The Nakba Continues 1/29/15 5:58 PM Page 19

commissioners, who were able to question them further about events and make follow-up recommendations.

The commission possibly proved to be a rockier process than organizers expected.

The first Israeli fighter was loath to admit that his brigade, the Negev Battalion, had done anything wrong, although he conceded that there had been looting of Palestinian homes in Beersheva.

His account was contradicted by another fighter in the same battalion, who said they had been ordered to expel Palestinians and destroy their villages: “The government’s policy was to expel as many people as we could in the north and south of the country.”

He said he did not think at the time that he was doing anything wrong. “We were young, we didn’t understand the implications of what we were doing and we were always in danger.”

Admitting that his battalion had committed acts that were “very ugly,” he initially refused to expand. Under questioning he said one fighter had raped and killed a Palestinian woman.

One veteran Negev fighter, Amnon Neumann, had gone on record earlier in testimony filmed by Zochrot.

He said that, contrary to popular Israeli perception, the Bedouin in the Negev had put up almost no resistance to advancing Jewish forces because they lacked “a military capacity” and “had no weapons.”

Nonetheless, he said, the Israeli army terrified the Bedouin villagers out of their homes by shooting either at them, or above their heads.

“We drove them out,” Neumann stated.

“Women and children went to Gaza.…By the morning there was nobody there. We burned their houses.”

When villagers tried to sneak back to tend crops or vineyards under the cover of night, he recounted, the soldiers opened fire. “We would shoot and kill them. This was part of the horrible things we did.”

For the most part, the Israeli veterans are coming forward now out of a feeling of guilt.

“At that time I did not see anything wrong with what we were doing,” Neumann said.

“If I was told to do things that I do not want to mention [here], I did them with no doubts at all.…Not now. It is already 50, 60 years that I am filled with regret.”

Rosenberg said many of those testifying have been reluctant to go into details of the war crimes they participated in, making it hard to get a full picture of what occurred in 1948.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

One Palestinian witness, Nuri al-Uqbi, told of a massacre that had occurred in 1948 in which 14 Bedouin from his village of al-Araqib were rounded up by the Israeli army and executed.

The commission also briefly addressed the period after 1948, examining expulsions in the semi-desert Negev region, which comprises nearly two-thirds of Israel’s landmass.

Isolated from the rest of the new state of Israel, the Negev was largely unmonitored as the Israeli military carried out expulsions of Bedouin throughout the 1950s, said Raneen Jeries, a Zochrot organizer.

More than 2,000 Palestinian inhabitants of al-Majdal, which later became the Jewish city of Ashkelon, were put on trucks and shipped to Gaza nearly two years after the war ended, according to Nur Masalha, a Palestinian historian and expert on Israeli “transfer” policies.

Jeries said the legacy of the events of 1948 was being felt to this day, with policies of expulsion continuing in the Negev and the occupied territories.

Haaretz reporter Amira Hass revealed last year that the Israeli army was planning to forcibly relocate for a second time the Jahalin tribe. The tribe was driven out of the Negev in 1948 and fled to the safety of the West Bank, then under Jordanian control.

However, Israel occupied the land after the 1967 war, and it seems that Israeli authorities now want to expel some 12,500 Jahalin tribespeople, this time to a site near Jericho.

Zochrot had been successful in forcing Israelis to recognize the Nakba and a darker side to the 1948 war, said Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva.

“A decade ago, if I mentioned the Nakba in a class of 150 students, hardly any of them would have known what I meant.

Now 80 or 90 percent would know,” Gordon said.

He attributed the change both to Zochrot’s activities and to statements by Arab legislators representing Israel’s large Palestinian minority, which represents a fifth of the total population.

But as the issue of the Nakba has become more visible in Israel, sensitivity about it has only grown. Ahead of Nakba Day last May, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lashed out at the Palestinian Authority for commemorating the day, saying: “They are standing silent to mark the tragedy of the establishment of Israel, the state of the Jewish people.”

Palestinians were educating their children with “endless propaganda” calling THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

for the disappearance of Israel, he said.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett went further, saying: “We need not tolerate Israeli Arabs who promote Nakba Day.” The government has backed up its rhetoric with legislation, passing a Nakba Law in 2011 that denies public funds to institutions and organizations that commemorate the Palestinians’ dispossession. The measure is partly seen as a reaction to Zochrot’s growing success.

The original legislation, which would have criminalized any commemoration of the Nakba—making many of Zochrot’s activities illegal—was watered down after Israel came under strong international pressure.

In Zochrot’s early years, its main efforts were directed at escorting Israeli Jews and Palestinian refugees to some of the more than 500 Palestinian villages that Israel destroyed during and after the 1948 war. The villages were razed to prevent refugees from returning home.

The remnants of most of the villages are now barely traceable, hidden under forests planted by a charity called the Jewish National Fund or lost within gated communities in which only Jews may live.

Zochrot has continued such visits, placing signposts to remind the new Jewish inhabitants that their communities are built on the ruins of Palestinian homes, often belonging to neighbors living a short distance away. A large proportion of Israel’s Palestinian minority were internally displaced by the 1948 war and live close to their original homes, but are barred from returning.

Eitan Bronstein, who founded Zochrot, said the current challenge was how to change Israeli Jews’ perception of the Nakba.

“They now recognize the word, but what does it mean to them? Many, it seems, think it is simply a negative label Palestinians have attached to Israel’s establishment. We have an Independence Day that they call their Nakba,” Bronstein said.

“We need to educate them about the events of the Nakba, what occurred and our responsibility for it,” he explained.

“They have to stop thinking of it as just propaganda against Israel.”

The right wing, including the Netanyahu government, has grown increasingly rattled by Zochrot’s agenda-setting program of events.

The popularity of a far-right youth movement, Im Tirtzu, has grown rapidly on Israeli university campuses over the Continued on page 43 19

kayyali-20-21_Special Report 1/29/15 6:02 PM Page 20

Experiencing Fair Trade in Palestine SpecialReport

PHOTO COURTESY R. KAYYALI

By Randa Kayyali

Participants in Canaan Fair Trade’s Olive Harvest Tour pick olives with Palestinian farmers. very year in early November, Canaan

EFair Trade organizes a little-publicized

Olive Harvest Tour for visitors to Palestine to learn about farmers and their Fair Trade products. For eight days, six of us—all Americans—spent our days and evenings with host farmer families, exploring the northern part of the West Bank and enjoying delicious home-cooked Palestinian foods while experiencing the daily life and perils of Israeli military occupation for Palestinian farmers.

The tour began at the Palestinian Farmers Union (PFU) in Ramallah, where we were briefed about the political economic context for farmers and agriculture. We learned that the “peace plans” put forward

by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will transform Area C on the border with Jordan into a haven for labor exploitation, bringing in day laborers who will not be allowed to unionize and will be paid wages far lower than their Israeli counterparts.

The PFU is concerned with Israel’s threedimensional occupation that includes the Randa Kayyali is the author of The Arab Americans and a postdoctoral research fellow at George Mason University. She recently received her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies.

20

water below the surface, the air above the earth, as well as the destruction and seizure of land owned by Palestinians. The hope for Palestinian farmers lies in finding creative and sustainable solutions for their produce by organizing their work through cooperatives and finding markets for their products.

Following this hard-hitting dose of reality, our group proceeded to lighter activities—namely, visiting the Taybeh Brewing Company and a beer tasting. This was to be the first stop of many, tasting and sampling Palestinian foods and delicious beverages made by Palestinian producers. We drove through beautiful landscapes of olive terraces to Deir Ballout, a fair trade women’s cooperative, where we learned how to coucous-roll and enjoyed a coucous—called maftoul in Palestine— dinner with the women, with whom we stayed overnight. Canaan Fair Trade provides the women in Deir Ballout and other West Bank farms small business loans, or microloans. These are used to support smaller scale agricultural and husbandry activities such as growing zaatar (dried thyme), raising chickens, rabbits and doves, as well as commercial enterprises such as hand-making maftoul for sale.

The old city of Nablus was our next THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

stop, where we walked through the souk, stopping at various shops—the famous 200-year-old Nabulsi kanafe bakery (Palestinian cheese pastry soaked in sweet syrup), where we tasted manoushe bizaatar and bread with baked-in eggs. At the spice shop we smelled the essence of many dishes, and at the nut roaster we tasted pumpkin seeds, cashews, pistachios, almonds and hazelnuts that were roasted on-site. For a couple of hours we prepared stuffed grapeleaves and zucchini with the women of Bait Al-Karama of the Slow Foods Nablus movement. Our day ended with singing and the classical Arabic musical traditions of the ‘oud, darabekeh, duff, and tableh on a rooftop in Nablus.

The next day we drove in the rain to the countryside and sipped strong, sweet tea and Turkish coffee beside the goats in a barn, picking olives when it stopped raining. Men and women alike climbed the ladders up into the olive trees, carefully dropping the olives onto the tarp below, where they were gathered and sorted by the older women of the family. While picking olives, we watched as our dinner of a three-tiered rack of layers of chicken, vegetables and rice baked for two and half hours in a deep hole in the ground. A welldeserved and delicious dinner after laboring in the terraces!

Further north, in Sebastia, we walked through the largest Roman ruins in Palestine, trying to avoid the attention of local students on an unescorted school field trip.

We continued north to Jenin, the city where there has been much unrest and clashes with the IDF. There we enjoyed beef and chicken shawarma and falafel from a street-side café and visited the Freedom Theater to see its new play and watch the documentary “The People and the Olive” in its theater. This documentary (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More) is about a group of American ultra-marathon runners who crossed the West Bank planting olive tree saplings with farmers, and learning of their struggles.

In Jenin, we met with the Palestine Fair Trade Association (PFTA) to learn about organic programs, certifications, future activities and the history of olive oil in Palestine. Although olive oil has been produced on this land since the times of Herod, farmers in Palestine today have few opportuniMARCH/APRIL 2015

kayyali-20-21_Special Report 1/29/15 6:02 PM Page 21

ties to access the global market, and face many challenges due to the destruction of trees, seizure of lands for settlements and living under occupation in general.

Because Palestinian olive oil was not well known or appreciated on the international market, and individual farmers were unable to achieve the scale of production and quality specifications necessary to be globally competitive, the local market for olive oil was flooded and prices were low. Without a sufficient return on labor and investment, Palestinian olive farmers began to abandon farming as a means to support their families, which in turn posed a direct threat to food security.

In 2004-5, the PFTA began educating farmers about the financial benefits of having their oil certified as organic and labeled as Fair Trade. Twenty farmers signed on.

In 2004, the price of a kilogram of olive oil was around 8 shekels; through Fair Trade Certification, in just one year that price doubled to about 16 or 17 shekels per kilogram, providing the farmers with a living wage and income from their land. Eventually all the PFTA cooperatives received Fair Trade Certification in olive oil, and the first organic certification in Palestine.

The path has not been smooth—there is competition from mass-produced olive oil from Italy and Spain. Palestinian olive oil was sometimes sold internationally as “from the Holy Land” and sold as Israeli. However, through the PFTA, Canaan Fair Trade was able to sell Palestinian olive oil as “Palestinian” abroad, while providing a fair price to the farmers. It is this combination of internal, grassroots connections with the farmers and an expertise in navigating export markets that makes Canaan Fair Trade so special and of such value to Palestinian farmers.

We learned how the building of Israel’s apartheid wall and the seizure of Palestinian agricultural and grazing land impacted farmers and small landowners. Under constant threats from nearby settlers and restricted from access to their land by the IDF, these farmers are only able to pick their olives at certain times—and even those are not certain—and prohibited from bringing food or water or implements to prune their trees.

While picking olives was still a beautiful and communal activity, the images of land divided by the wall, destroyed trees and distraught farmers permeated our thoughts.

Every year, the PFTA farmers celebrate the end of the olive harvest at Canaan Fair

Trade’s headquarters in Burqin in a festival called jaru’a. Last November was extra special because it was the Canaan Fair Trade’s tenth anniversary and Canaan invited 2,000 farmers. Our intrepid band of six joined the festivities, ate maftoul and chicken, debke danced to a band and listened to achievements of the past year. The final day of the tour was capped with a hike and picnic in the nearby hills to learn about the histories, plants and ecologies of the surrounding landscape.

This trip gave me a deeper appreciation of organic agriculture and the transformative impact of fair trade on farmers’ lives and well-being. Canaan’s Jerusalem olive oil is available at Whole Foods stores. Its popular Nabali Tree and Rumi Tree Olive Oils are available from AET’s Middle East Books and More. Palestinian olive oil also is available for resale by interfaith groups and non-profit organizations, or through its website, <www.canaanfairtrade.com>.

I would encourage anyone wanting to show solidarity with Palestinian farmers to consider joining the 2015 Olive Harvest Tour and to support Canaan’s sales in the U.S. in any way you can. The rewards are many— and some of them are very tasty, indeed! ❑

(Advertisement)

MARCH/APRIL 2015

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

21

gee-22_Neocon Corner 1/29/15 6:04 PM Page 22

“Complete Idiot” Steve Emerson’s Birmingham Blunder NeoconCorner

CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES

By John Gee

A congregation of Serbian Orthodox Christians celebrates the Nativity of Christ liturgy at Lazarica Church in Birmingham, England, Jan. 7, 2015. here are actual cities like Birming-

“Tham [England] that are totally Mus-

lim where non-Muslims just don’t go in,” the American “terrorism expert” Steve Emerson told Fox News viewers in a Jan. 10 broadcast. Looking concerned, interviewer Jeanine Pirro said, “You know what it sounds like to me, Steve? It sounds like a caliphate.”

As it happened, I was in the Birmingham “caliphate” when I first saw news of Emerson’s statement, sipping a glass of wine and about to tuck into a non-halal meal. So were the religious police about to burst in and drag me away?

Not likely. The day before, I’d passed through the city center. In the pedestrianized main street just outside New Street Station, people of European, South Asian and African origin went about their shopping and chatted with their friends with no signs of friction. A prime spot at a road junction near the newest arcades was occupied by a group of evangelical ChrisJohn Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore, and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.

22

tians. One declaimed his faith loudly to whoever might listen, while others held out leaflets to passers-by; they seemed to be having trouble attracting attention, rather than repelling hostile Muslims.

Later, as I traveled out of the center by train, I looked around at a skyline pierced in many places by church spires, with hardly a dome or minaret to be seen.

Birmingham does have a sizeable Muslim population, mostly of Pakistani, Kashmiri and Bangladeshi origin. According to the 2011 census, they make up 21.8 percent of the city’s 1,192,000 inhabitants. More than twice as many people (46.1 percent) gave their religious affiliation as Christian and more than 200,000 (19.3 percent) said that they followed no religion. There are areas where Muslims form a majority of the population, but the presence of pubs, liquor stores and non-halal restaurants there shows that those of other faiths are able to go about their lives without experiencing intolerance or intimidation.

Now and then, Muslims in Birmingham have been in the news for the wrong reasons. At the time of the first Gulf war in 1990, attention was drawn to the Saddam THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Hussain Mosque, so called because the Iraqi leader had given money for its construction. The name was later changed.

Last year, there was a scare story in the media about an alleged conspiracy by Muslim extremists to take over school boards, but despite a lot of outraged commentaries, the evidence for a far-reaching plot seemed thin. In both these cases, community leaders and the broader Muslim public distanced themselves from expressions of extremism and intolerance.

Emerson’s comments were greeted with a mixture of anger and derision by Birmingham people of all religions. Spoof reports online included one that featured a photo of Birmingham’s television tower captioned as a minaret. A cricket fan posted a picture of Moin Khan, a wellknown Muslim cricketer from Birmingham who has played for England, with a raised cricket bat and the caption, “Terrifying photo of how a typical Muslim from Birmingham guards the city gates against infidels.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron, on hearing of Emerson’s remarks, referred to him as “a complete idiot.”

Councillor James McKay, cabinet member for social cohesion, equalities and community safety, said: “These curious comments clearly have no foundation, and it’s good to see an apology has been issued.

“Birmingham’s an incredible place, rightly held up as an example of how communities can and do live and thrive together.

“We are amazingly diverse, and that’s one of the things that makes us brilliant.

All this fuss is a reminder of how it’s always best to check your facts before getting into a debate.

“Maybe Fox News could come and visit sometime, and see for themselves what a great city we have here?”

The councillor’s comments were featured on the Birmingham city council website, which placed Emerson’s credentials as a terrorism expert in inverted commas. Likewise, when the BBC West Midlands regional news program interviewed Emerson live, it featured a caption describing him as a “terrorism ‘expert.’”

Continued on page 43 MARCH/APRIL 2015

TILedit_23-24_Israel Lobby Conference 1/29/15 8:31 PM Page 23

Israel Lobby Finally to Be Scrutinized April 10 at National Press Club THERE HAS NEVER been a conference in Washington focused entirely on the Israel Lobby…until now! On April 10 an all-day conference at the National Press Club will ask tough questions about where the Israel Lobby came from, what it really does and what its impact is on America. The conference is cosponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, published by the American Educational Trust, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Inc (IRmep).

This important conference is long overdue! It’s simply no longer productive to gather experts to discuss Middle East policy while ignoring the elephant in the room: the Israel lobby in America.

Around its capital this spring, there will be dozens of gatherings hyping the phony Iran nuclear threat—not least by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC’s) annual policy conference. AIPAC will urge its members to pressure Congress and state legislatures to pass sanctions against Iran—and call to revive the equally phony “peace process.”

Only one conference will be looking behind the curtain at the multi-billion-dollar machinery that has worked to give Israel the undue influence over American policymaking and governance it enjoys today. It is a conference so important that everyone concerned about U.S. Middle East policy—young and old alike—will want to watch and listen.

Students, our country’s future leaders, will be offered financial assistance to attend the conference and network with experts and peers. Dismayed and disenfranchised stakeholders in U.S. Middle East policy will be empowered by hearing a comprehensive overview of the Lobby’s activities. Lobby operatives, with a history of suppressing voices critical of their failed policies, will

cringe as Americans discover their true scope and agenda.

All of this will take place at one of Washington’s most prestigious venues and feature exciting speakers from around the world: Long-time Israel Lobby critics and authors. Top former intelligence analysts. Outspoken journalists. Former members of Congress. Israeli critics.

Former law enforcement. Palestinian policy experts.

Conscientious Americans who no longer work for the Israel Lobby and have begun working for peace. Their travel is already being booked and ticketed! The venue is contracted, bought and paid for.

Yet the ultimate success of this conference is—to a large measure—in your hands! You can make it a success in several ways. Buy tickets at the special Washington Report rate of $75 on the special form on the back of this page. If you cannot come yourself, help a college student attend with a contribution to our scholarship program! Or contribute whatever you can to our final publicity and media campaign, which is running announcements in Washington publications, academia and other establishment news media outlets, and via nationwide news releases!

Only you can make the difference! …Registration form on reverse

☛

TILedit_23-24_Israel Lobby Conference 1/29/15 8:15 PM Page 24

Conference Registration Form²Special Rate National Press Club Ballroom April 10, 2015 8AM-5PM

Same day registration is $199

Fax to: (202) 265-4574 Email to: conference@IsraelLobbyUS.org Mail to: 2015 Conference, PO Box 32041, Washington, DC 20007

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$______ Final media campaign. I cannot attend, but enclose $50 for the final media and public relations campaign to guarantee this conference gets the attention and news coverage it deserves!

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Please provide a conference ticket to a college student or member of academia who has applied to attend this important conference and needs financial assistance.

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avnery_11…25_Special Report 1/29/15 11:23 PM Page 25

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paign comes to be dominated by the issues of war and fear, the Right Continued from page 11 will probably win. If, alternatively, the main issue is housing and the You bet! exorbitant price of cottage cheese, To suggest that our leaders could the Left has a chance. order a military action to increase This is not a matter of particutheir chances in an election borders larly acute perception, but of genon treason. eral public knowledge. Every misYet it has happened before. Insile launched by Hezbollah or deed, it happened in many of our Hamas will be a missile for Likud.

19 election campaigns till now.

Every day of quiet on the borders The first election took place when will be a day for Labor. we were still at war. David Ben-GuIt was therefore quite obvious to rion, the war leader, won a great many Israelis that the sudden flareelection victory, of course. up on the northern border, caused The second election took place by an unprovoked Israeli attack that during the fight against the Arab makes no sense, was an election ploy “infiltrators,” with almost daily inby Netanyahu and his companions. cidents along the new borders. Who Many knew. But nobody dared to won? Ben-Gurion. say so. The political parties were And so on. In 1981, when Menafraid of being seen as stabbing the achem Begin ordered the bombing army in the back. Accusing Neof the Iraqi nuclear reactor, sometanyahu of risking a major war in body dared to suggest that the acorder to win an election is a very tion was connected with the upcomgrave matter. ing Knesset election. This gave Begin Clos Du Val Wines support The Labor party published a the opportunity for one of his greatlame statement supporting the est speeches. Begin was an outstandhuman rights & education army. Meretz kept quiet. The Arab ing orator in the European (and very projects around the world. parties were busy with creating a un-Israeli) tradition. united Arab list. The Orthodox “Jews!” he addressed his audience, “You have known me for many years. Do you tanyahu, in turn, threatened a Gaza-like in- couldn’t care less.

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And then the silence was broken from a these human animals—in order to gain Gaza, not far from the city of Sderot.”

To understand these threats and fear- totally unexpected quarter. votes?” The crowd roared back “No!” Gen. Yoav Galant gave an interview in Even the other side played their part. mongering, one must review the current which he squarely accused the government The Egyptians and Syrians launched their Israeli election campaign.

It is being waged by two large blocs— of warming up the northern border for surprise attack on Yom Kippur 1973 in the the right-wing led by the Likud and the election purposes. middle of the Israeli election campaign.

Galant? Incredible!

After the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin center-left led by the Labor party. The left Yoav Galant was the chief of the Southin 1995, his heir, Shimon Peres, also faced has gathered unexpected momentum by an election campaign. During his short re- uniting Labor with Tzipi Livni’s little fac- ern Command during the cruel Molten gency, he managed to start and lose a war. tion, and now, incredibly, has overtaken Lead campaign. After that he was apHe invaded Lebanon and during the fight- Likud in the polls. Aside from the two pointed by Netanyahu as the new army ing a U.N. refugee camp was bombed by blocs there are the Orthodox and the Arab chief of staff. But before the appointment could be consummated Galant was accused mistake. That was the end of the war and citizens, who have their own agendas.

The two main blocs sail under different of expropriating public village land for his of Peres’ reign. Binyamin Netanyahu won.

When this year’s Jan. 18 killing was an- flags. Likud and Co. sail under the flag of palatial home and had to back out. I always nounced, the country and the army were Security. The public believes that Ne- considered him an out-and-out militarist. tanyahu and his allies are more trustworTwo weeks ago, Galant suddenly reaprequested to prepare for war.

Along the border, tension spread. Mas- thy when it comes to war and keeping our peared on the stage as candidate No. 2 on the sive troop deployments took place. Ar- army big and powerful. The public also list of Moshe Kahlon’s new center party with mored brigades moved north. “Iron Dome” believes that Labor and its allies are more no ideology except bringing down prices.

Galant’s statement caused an outcry, and anti-missile batteries were positioned near effective when it comes to the economy, he quietly retracted it. But the deed was the border. All the media prepared the the price of housing and such. done. Galant had opened the gate. A horde public for instant revenge actions by Guns vs. Butter, Israeli-Style of commentators stormed through it to Hezbollah and Iran.

A week later, Hezbollah did respond by This means that the outcome will be de- spread the accusation.

The campaign may never be the same firing missiles into the Israeli-occupied cided by which side succeeds in imposing Golan Heights, killing two IDF soldiers. Ne- its agenda on the campaign. If the cam- again after Galant’s gallant deed. ❑

Pre-Election Gambit…

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Never Again: Palestinian U.N. Official Organizes Holocaust Remembrance Day

United Nations Report

UN PHOTO/PAULO FILGUEIRAS

By Ian Williams

Maher Nasser, director of the Outreach Division in the Department of Public Information, briefs the General Assembly’s Fourth Committee on the work of the Division, Oct. 18, 2011. n late January, the U.N. commemorated

Ithe 10th annual International Day in

Memory of Holocaust Victims, an event inaugurated back in 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Postponed for a day by the no-show Winter Storm Juno, the celebration was organized by Maher Nasser, the highest ranking Palestinian in the U.N. system, who was born in Al-Birehn near Ramallah, and for a time worked for UNRWA. In between designating Jan. 27 as the day of commemoration and congratulation to the Allied forces (in the case of Auschwitz, the Red Army) that had liberated the camps, the resolution went on to say that the U.N. “condemns without reserve all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, wherever they occur,” and “requests the secretary-general to establish a program of outreach on the subject of the ‘Holocaust and the United Nations’ as well as measures to mobilize civil society for Holocaust rememIan Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations who blogs at <www. deadlinepundit.blogspot.com>.

26

brance and education, in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide.”

Sadly, anyone who doubts that racism is alive and well, not to mention frothing at the mouth, has only to look at the comments thread to the YNet news story that a Palestinian was to commemorate the Holocaust (<www.ynetnews.com/articles/ 0,7340,L-4618255,00.html>).

Nasser is currently acting head of the U.N. Department of Public Information (DPI), and director of public outreach, both of which involve him in the organization of the Holocaust remembrance day.

Many of the more deranged commentators on YNet rabidly assume that having a Palestinian in charge of the commemoration is inherently inappropriate and disrespectful. Looking at the threads is a bit like reading a mirror image of Der Sturmer, as blood guilt, ethnic stereotypes and slurs smear themselves across the screen.

The gist is that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem joining with Hitler to get the British out of Palestine not only makes him a collaborator in the Holocaust, but is a sin to be visited on all Palestinians then, and on their children and their children’s children.

That the predecessors of the Likudniks THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

negotiated with Hitler’s emissaries to get the British out of Palestine is either forgotten, or viewed as being as permissible as the Yitzhak Shamir-led Lehi assassination of Lord Moyne, the British minister of state in the Middle East during the war against Hitler. (Not to mention their murder of U.N. envoy Count Folke Bernadotte just after.) One presumes those nice German military types now providing nuclear-capable submarines to Israel also get a free pass on ancestral responsibilities!

Of course, the idea that all Palestinians, let alone Maher Nasser, share some type of collective ancestral blood guilt for the Holocaust is as preposterous as it is grotesque— a prime example, in fact, of Nazi racial thinking. The crime is the inherent debunking of the stereotypes. As Orwell wrote about totalitarian speech patterns, they all have “a curious mouthing sort of quality, as of someone who is choking with rage and can never quite hit on the words he wanted.” They don’t want anything to disturb their blaming of their victims, and nothing is so galling to such people as to have their preconceptions challenged.

Guilt by Association?

However, some of Nasser’s colleagues in DPI wonder whether such residual feelings of guilt by association do not still echo round those members of the diplomatic corps who have made a habit of interfering with senior appointments. While it is specifically outlawed by the U.N. Charter, everyone knows that any secretary-general who appointed someone in the teeth of, say, American opposition would pay some kind of heavy price for his or her temerity.

Nasser has been acting head of DPI since August, and it would seem most of the staff—allowing for the usual bureaucratic backbiting—thought he was doing a great job. He seemed in line for promotion to under secretary-general for the Department of Public Information since he was actually doing the job for some time, and which seemed all the more fitting since he had been working in that area for decades in places across the world.

But at the end of last year, despite previously encouraging signals, word came out that Nasser had been sidelined for the MARCH/APRIL 2015

williams_26-27_United Nations Report 1/29/15 6:06 PM Page 27

post, which has gone to a Spanish candidate with EU backing. One could not help but wonder if there had not been some intense behind-the-scenes lobbying to avert the potential embarrassment of, Heaven forbid, a Palestinian heading the United Nations information arm. Looking at the numerous other recent examples of asses braying drowning out sensible discourse, Franklin Graham and Duke University Chapel spring to mind.

The Never Again department gets even richer in ironies than having a Palestinian quota of zero in high U.N. positions. The International Criminal Court had its intellectual origins in the Nuremberg Tribunals, based on the assumption that if we did not want a repeat, then justice had to be threatened and delivered to those who breached humanitarian law. Sadly, as we saw with Saddam Hussain with the Kurds and the Shi’i of the south, not to mention the Balkans, Cambodia and Rwanda, “never again” did not even mean “hardly ever.”

The gruesome repetition of savagery with impunity finally impelled the nations of the world to set up the International Criminal Court—for which Israel and the U.S. initially signed up, only to change their minds.

They have now “unsigned” the treaty al-

the U.S. voted against the accession of Palestine to the United Nations, just as it voted in the General Assembly against a resolution supporting a nuclear-free Middle East. The triumph of American diplomacy is to induce numerous states to abstain. Most of these abstentions should really upset any American diplomats or politicians who care about their country’s global standing. The message is, we disagree with you, and we have enough principles not to vote with you, but we worry about the consequences if we voted our hearts and minds.

And in Congress, the Lobby marshals the signatures to show what they are scared of, as elected American representatives threaten to cut aid to Palestine for its temerity in seeking the international justice promised by the Allies in 1945, the U.N. Charter afterwards, and the Rome Treaty of the International Criminal Court since. For all the oligarchic thugs across the world, it sends a resounding message.

“Don’t do as we say, do as we do.”

But in the meantime, Israeli military and political leaders implicated in the occupation and the assault on Gaza should get their tourism in quickly, as travel will become increasingly hazardous for them. ❑

together, although there is doubt among international legal experts about whether that is legal! However, since former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton’s public temper tantrums and bullying of small states, even the later George W. Bush administration, and now Barack Obama’s, tacitly recognize the usefulness of the ICC—at least for other people.

It is worth remembering that although Bolton might have bludgeoned smaller states into making promises not to cooperate with the Court to prosecute American citizens, even he never extended the protections of the American Service-Members’ Protection Act to Israeli personnel!

While Obama’s State Department has drawn back from the shamefulness of the ASPA bullying, it has been repeating it over Palestine and the ICC. In the shameful history of Washington’s unrequited pandering to Israeli demands, there can be few as shaming for its reputation as the last few years of pressure on Palestinians and other countries on the issue of the ICC. Related to that, of course, is the arm twisting of states small and large to prevent the recognition of Palestinian statehood, since the whole purpose was to thwart Palestine’s accession to the ICC treaty.

At the Security Council in December, (Advertisement)

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views_28-30_Two Views - March/April 2015 1/29/15 5:06 PM Page 28

Two Views

COPYRIGHT @2015 KHALIL BENDIB WWW.BENDIB.COM

Who Is Charlie Hebdo?

The Charlie Hebdo Murders: A Multiple Catastrophe

By Khalil Bendib

s a political cartoonist who happens to

Abe both American and Muslim, I often

find myself at the center of media curiosity: Muslim—with all the stereotypical notions attached to that identity—but a freedomloving artist and a humorist to boot—not just a butt of jokes but a purveyor of them, a nonviolent wielder of the pen which, I maintain, is funnier than the sword.

No stranger to controversy and censorship—and the recipient of my fair share of death threats over the years—I’ve had ample opportunity to mull over the thorny question of freedom of expression versus responsibility. Was Charlie Hebdo, as an institution, always the fairest and most responsible magazine in the world? Not by a long shot, and I confess to having often cringed at some of its double standards.

But does anyone—ever—deserve to be threatened, hounded, let alone brutally murdered for expressing an opinion, howKhalil Bendib is an Algerian-American editorial cartoonist based in Berkeley, CA. His cartoons appear regularly in the Washington Report.

28

ever egregious it may be perceived by some? I think Voltaire eloquently and definitively answered that question long ago: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

For me, Jan. 7, 2015 will be remembered as a day of infamy, a multiple catastrophe delivering layer upon layer of sad emotions: As a human being, disgust over the murder of 12 innocent people. As an artist, a profound sense of loss over the brutal disappearance of four fellow cartoonists, with two of whom I felt a special kinship: the great Cabu, who helped spark the desire in me as a young man to become a cartoonist, and the big-hearted Georges Wolinski, who came to the rescue of a close friend of mine, Algerian cartoonist Slim, in his hour of need during Algeria’s atrocious civil war in the 1990s.

And as a member of the worldwide Muslim community, a nagging sense of shame and fear for the kind of inevitable backlash that will result in an already Islamophobic Europe, where my family still resides, the unspeakable acts of a few drowning the sincere protestations of the many that this kind of horror does not speak for us.

Following the killings former French Justice Minister Pierre Badinter—no parTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ticular friend of the Muslim community— warned his fellow citizens in France not to fall into the trap set by extremists on both sides, and not to let barbaric violence divide French society, of which over 10 percent is Muslim—lest the terrorists win.

Meanwhile, behind an ostensibly increasing societal polarization manifested by the senseless Islamist violence witnessed in January and the cheap Islamophobia fanned by opportunistic politicians and media, lies a more interesting and nuanced—if perhaps less sensational—reality which tends to escape mainstream attention: the myriad signs of hope and progress, the coexistence and hybridization of French society.

Among the many good works for which he will be remembered, Wolinski, who was assassinated in cold blood in the name of wounded religious pride, in 1995 had come to the rescue of Algerian cartoonist Slim, who was fleeing from a similar persecution in his native Algeria.

A bloody civil war had seen the systematic assassination of artists and intellectuals opposed to the Islamist agenda and, out of simple human solidarity, a Jewish cartoonist had spontaneously intervened to secure a job for a beleaguered Muslim colleague at the Paris newspaper L’Humanité.

Just as the stories of North African Muslims standing firmly in solidarity with their Jewish brethren against the Vichy government’s hunt for North African Jews during World War II, these simple stories tend to get lost in the din of terrorist mayhem.

But bullets and bombs can never silence the voices of laughter and friendship. ❑

Waving in the First Row

By Uri Avnery

he three Islamic terrorists could have

Tbeen very proud of themselves, if they had lived to see it.

By committing two attacks (quite ordinary ones by Israeli standards) they spread panic throughout France, brought millions of people onto the streets, gathered more than 40 heads of states in Paris. They changed the landscape of the French capital and other French cities by mobilizing thousands of soldiers and police officers to guard

Uri Avnery, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, is a founder of Gush Shalom, <www.gush-shalom.org>.

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Jewish and other Jewish speeches, potential targets. For were worth more Who Committed France’s Worst Terror Attack? several days they than three weeks at dominated the news h o me , s l i n g i n g “[A]fter France’s most brutal terrorist attack in decades, many in the country are t h ro u g h o u t t h e mud. asking serious questions about the future of French society and seeking security world.

The blood of the and strength.”

Three terrorists, four Jews murdered Source: Philippe Le Corre, “Je Suis Sarko,” <http://foreignpolicy.com>, probably acting in the kosher suJan. 13, 2015 alone. Three!!! permarket was not For other potenyet dry, when Is“The Vitry-Le-François train bombing of 18 June 1961 was a bomb attack on a tial Islamic terrorists raeli leaders called Strasbourg–Paris train carried out by the Organisation de l’armée secrète (OAS, throughout Europe upon the Jews in or Secret Army Organization), a paramilitary organization opposed to the indeand America, this France to pack up pendence of Algeria in the Algerian War. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in must look like a and come to Israel. modern French history, killing 28 people and injuring over 100.” huge achievement.

Israel, as everySource: Wikipedia It is an invitation for body knows, is the individuals and tiny s a fe s t p l a c e o n groups to do the earth.

March 1962: “a group of French army officers called the Organisation de l’armée same again, everyThis was an secrète (OAS) in favor of French rule in Algeria killed innocent Muslims in a lastwhere. almost automatic ditch effort—a mutiny of sorts—to thwart independence.”

Terrorism means Zionist gut reacSource: Eliza Berman, “The History of French-Muslim Violence Began in the Streets of Algeria,” TIME Magazine, Jan. 13, 2015 striking fear. The tion. Jews are in three in Paris cerdanger. Their only tainly succeeded in safe haven is Israel. doing that. They terrorized the French Jews, instead of a public outcry for the Make haste and come. The next day Israeli population. And if three youngsters with- freedom of the press and other “republican papers reported joyfully that in 2015 more out any qualifications can do that, imagine values.” Netanyahu came nevertheless, than 10,000 French Jews were about to what 30 could do, or 300! with two extreme rightist ministers in tow. come to live here, driven by growing antiFrankly, I did not like the huge demonPlaced in the second row, he did what Semitism. stration. I have been in many demonstra- Israelis do: he shoved aside a black African Apparently, there is a lot of anti-Semitions in my time, maybe more than 500, president in front of him and placed him- tism in France and other European counbut always against the powers that be. I self in the front row. tries, though probably far less than Islamhave never participated in a demonstration Once there, he began waving to the ophobia. But the fight between Jews and called by the government, even when the people on the balconies along the way. He Arabs on French soil has little to do with purpose was good. They remind me too was beaming, like a Roman general in his anti-Semitism. It is a struggle imported much of the late Soviet Union, Fascist Italy triumphal parade. One can only guess the from North Africa. and worse. Not for me, thank you. feelings of Hollande and the other heads of When the Algerian war of liberation But this particular demonstration was state—who tried to look appropriately broke out in 1954, the Jews there had to also counterproductive. Not only did it solemn and mournful—at this display of choose sides. Almost all decided to support prove that terrorism is effective, not only chutzpah. the colonial power, France, against the Aldid it invite copycat attacks, but it also Netanyahu went to Paris as part of his gerian people. hurt the real fight against the fanatics. election campaign. As a veteran camThat had a historical background. In To conduct an effective fight, one has to paigner, he knew that three days in Paris, 1870, the French minister of justice, put oneself first into the shoes of the fanat- visiting synagogues and making proud Adolphe Crémieux, who happened to be a ics and try to understand the dynamic that (Advertisement) pushes young local-born Muslims to commit such acts. Who are they? What do they think? What are their feelings? In what circumstances did they grow up?

What can be done to change them?

After decades of neglect, that is hard work. It takes time and effort, with results uncertain. Much easier for politicians to march in the street in front of the cameras.

And who marched in the first row, beaming like a victor?

Our one and only Bibi.

How did he get there? The facts came out within record time. Seems he was not invited at all. On the contrary, President François Hollande sent explicit messages: please, please don’t come. It would turn the demo into a show of solidarity with the MARCH/APRIL 2015

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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‘Nuff Said:

J e w, c o n f e r r e d Zionism was born French citizenship at the end of the The Debate Over the Home of French Jews on all Algerian Jews, 19th century as a separating them “To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is direct answer to the from their Muslim not just the place in whose direction you pray; the state of Israel is your home,” challenge of antineighbors.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in a televised address.

Semitism. After the The Algerian LibFrench revolution, eration Front (FLN) The debate comes with a contemporary twist: If Jews abandon France in large the new national tried very hard to numbers, are they not doing just what Islamist extremists want—ridding France idea took hold of all draw the local Jews of its Jews?

European nations, to their side. I know big and small, and because I was some“We are moving from an aliyah of rescue to an aliyah of free choice,” [Natan] all of the national wh a t i nvo l ve d .

Sharansky said. movements were Their underground more or less antio rga n i z a t i o n i n These French Jews must be wooed. Zionism—the international movement for Semitic.

France asked me to the return of the Jewish people to their homeland—might not be enough.

The basic belief set up an Israeli sup“In the old model, people came in distress, from Ethiopia and Morocco, and of Zionism is that port group, in order were put in Dimona,” a drab town in the middle of the Negev desert. “Now if IsJews cannot live to convince our Alrael did that, the French would just leave,” [Dov Maimon] said. anywhere except in gerian co-religion“If we do not plan properly, the wealthy Jews will move to somewhere else,” the Jewish State, ists. I founded the he said. “The most integrated Jews will assimilate and remain where they are. because the victory “Israeli Committee And only the traditional, ideological and underprivileged Jews will come to Isof anti-Semitism is For A Free Algeria” rael.” inevitable everyand published mawhere. Let the Jews terial which was [Said] Emmanuelle Ohnouna, 36, [who] lived in Paris, where she worked as a of America rejoice used by the FLN in pharmacist[,]“If you wanted to be in a country that is safe, we would have gone in their freedom their effort to win to America or Canada.” and prosperity— over the Jews. sooner or later that Source: “In Israel, Debate Over Whether French Jews Should Come—or Stay In vain. The local will come to an end.

Home,” Washington Post, Jan. 15, 2015 Jews, proud of their They are doomed, French citizenship, like Jews everystaunchly supported the colonists. In the young local people could neither find nor where outside Israel. end, the Jews were prominent in the OAS, afford apartments in the metropolitan area.

The new outrage in Paris only confirms the extreme French underground which Practically all these “French” tourists and this basic belief. There was very little real conducted a bloody struggle against the immigrants are of North African origin. commiseration in Israel. Rather, a secret freedom fighters. The result was that pracWhen asked what drives them to Israel, sense of triumph. The gut reaction of orditically all the Jews fled Algeria together their unanimous answer is: anti-Semitism. nary Israelis is: “We told you so!” and also: with the French when the day of reckon- That is not a new phenomenon. As a “Come quickly, before it is too late!” ing arrived. They did not go to Israel. matter of fact, the vast majority of Jewish I have often tried to explain to my Arab Almost all of them went to France. (Unlike Israelis, they or their parents or grandpar- friends: the anti-Semites are the greatest the Moroccan and Tunisian Jews, many of ents, were driven here by anti-Semitism. enemy of the Palestinian people. The antiwhom came to Israel. Generally, the poorer The two terms—anti-Semitism and Zion- Semites have helped drive the Jews to and less educated chose Israel, while the ism—were born at almost the same time, Palestine, and now they are doing so again.

French-educated elite went to France and toward the end of the 19th century. And some of the new immigrants will cerCanada.)

Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist tainly settle beyond the Green Line in the What we see now is the continuation of movement, conceived his idea when he occupied Palestinian territories on stolen this war between Algerian Muslims and was working in France as a foreign corre- Arab land.

Jews on French soil. All the four “French” spondence of a Viennese newspaper The fact that Israel benefits from the Jews killed in the attack had North during the Dreyfus affair, when virulent Paris attack has led some Arab media to beAfrican names and were buried in Israel. anti-Semitism in France reached new lieve that the whole affair is really a “false Not without trouble. The Israeli govern- heights. (Anti-Semitism is, of course, a mis- flag” operation. Ergo, in this case, the Arab ment put great pressure on the four fami- nomer. Arabs are Semites, too. But the term perpetrators were really manipulated by lies to bury their sons here. They wanted is generally used to mean only Jew-haters.) the Israeli Mossad. to bury them in France, near their homes.

Later, Herzl wooed outspoken anti-SeAfter a crime, the first question is “cui After a lot of haggling about the price of mitic leaders in Russia and elsewhere, asking bono,” who benefits? Obviously, the only the graves, the families finally agreed. for their help and promising to take the Jews winner from this outrage is Israel. But to It has been said that Israelis love immi- off their hands. So did his successors. In draw the conclusion that Israel is hiding gration and don’t love the immigrants. 1939, the Irgun underground planned an behind the jihadists is utter nonsense.

That certainly applies to the new “French” armed invasion of Palestine with the help of The simple fact is that all Islamic jiimmigrants. In recent years, “French” the profoundly anti-Semitic generals of the hadism on European soil hurts only the tourists have been coming here in large Polish army. One may wonder if the State of Muslims. Fanatics of all stripes generally numbers. They were often disliked. Espe- Israel would have come into being in 1948 if help their worst enemies. The three cially when they started to buy up apart- there had not been the Holocaust. Recently, Muslim men who committed the outrages ments on the Tel Aviv seafront and left a million and a half Russian Jews were in Paris certainly did Binyamin Netanyahu them empty, as a kind of insurance, while driven to Israel by anti-Semitism. a great favor. ❑ 30

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American Muslims Examine Causes and Suggest Ways to Halt Radicalization SpecialReport

By Delinda C. Hanley uslim-American leaders are trying

danger of terrorism by examining its root causes. American Muslims are in the same spot they were in after the attacks on Sept.

11, 2001. “Islam has become the issue because it’s easier to blame the religion of 1.7 billion than to examine serious issues, the root causes of radicalization,” said Dr. Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy at a Jan. 22 news conference organized by Muslim leaders at the National Press Club.

As usual, the Muslim speakers first had to defend their faith before they tackled the causes of terrorism and offered their recommendations on how to combat it.

Each speaker noted that Muslims universally condemned the Paris murders of Charlie Hebdo magazine staff and a Muslim policeman. “Muslims were offended by cartoons mocking the Prophet,” Dr. Masmoudi said, “but criminal acts are much more offensive to Islam than cartoons.”

Muslim Americans condemn the killings, but they also believe the printing of Islambashing cartoons and articles in Charlie Hebdo is not simply a case of free speech.

Americans have laws—the First Amendment—to protect free speech, but there are certain things we’ve decided not to do because they offend, noted Dalia Mogahed, author of Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think. Americans cringe when we see cartoons from past decades offensive to African Americans or Jews, Mogahed asserted. Americans have decided not to depict people that way. “I wish the French would join the rest of the world and get enlightened,” she said.

Fox News and many of the usual suspects blame Islam for the Charlie Hebdo killings. “Where are the moderate Muslims?” TV pundits invariably ask. Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told reporters at the press conference that local and national Muslim leaders have repeatedly spoken out against acts of terror, “but the media rarely report our condemnation because it doesn’t sell or fit the agenda.”

Delinda C. Hanley is the news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

Mhard to understand and remove the

(L-r) Dr. Radwan Masmoudi, Nihad Awad, Dalia Mogahed, Imam Talib Shareef and Prof.

James Le Sueur examine the root causes of radicalization.

Awad added, “young Muslims are tired of seeing us coming out and apologizing.”

They don’t see requests for Christian or Jewish leaders to defend their religion when acts of terror occur. Did Christian leaders apologize for the Norwegian antiMuslim, anti-immigration extremist who killed 77 young people in 2011? Do they apologize when so-called Christians bomb abortion clinics or Ku Klux Klan members place a burning cross on someone’s lawn?

Norway never declared war on rightwing extremist ideology, noted Mogahed.

Instead the Christian perpetrator was dismissed as a madman. Those terrorists in France intended for Europeans to respond exactly as they did, she continued. Within hours of the Charlie Hebdo attack, France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared war on radical Islam. That’s exactly what terrorists want to ignite—a religious war— and they’ll be the first martyrs.

In Karen Armstrong’s latest book, Fields of Blood, the expert on religion mentions that she constantly hears that “Religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history.” Obviously the two world wars were not fought on account of religion, she points out, adding, “Experts in political viTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

olence or terrorism insist that people commit atrocities for a complex range of reasons. Yet so indelible is the aggressive image of religious faith in our secular consciousness that we routinely load the violent sins of the 20th century on to the back of ‘religion’ and drive it out into the political wilderness.”

Isolate the terrorists instead of conflating them with an entire religion or anointing them as representatives of their community, Mogahed urged reporters. They are not defenders of their faith. [In fact, many would agree, they shame their faith.]

Terrorism stripped of symbolism is just a violent act.

A growing number of Americans understand this. As news broke about the killings in France, Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont and 2004 presidential contender, told MSNBC, “I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists.

They’re about as Muslim as I am. They have no respect for anybody else’s life.

That’s not what the Qur’an says.”

The New York Times editorial board also took the high road, explaining, “This is also no time for peddlers of xenophobia to try to smear all Muslims with a terrorist brush.”

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Look at Root Causes of Terrorism Speakers at that DC press conference challenged the media to look beyond Islam and examine the causes of terrorism. “We need to understand and remove the root causes behind these growing threats and dangers,” Masmoudi said. Radicals are not only a threat to the U.S. and the West, but they endanger Muslim society. More than 90 percent of the victims of Da’ish/ISIS, alQaeda and Boko Haram are Arabs and Muslims.

Turning back to the attacks in Paris, including the attack that killed four people at a kosher supermarket, University of Nebraska professor James Le Sueur provided some insight into the disenfranchisement of Muslim immigrants in France. Migrant laborers began bringing their families to live in Parisian shantytowns in the 1950s, during the Algerian war of independence. The government destroyed those camps and sent the immigrant workers to live in housing units in the suburbs, where they found themselves increasingly isolated from French life. But instead of talking about dislocation and immigration and social-economic problems, French citizens are talking about Islamic fundamentalism.

“Young Muslims are losing hope across the world,” Masmoudi warned. They need a voice in the way they are governed.

There is rising discrimination and racism against Muslims in Europe, and French Muslims, living in isolation and alienated from their fellow citizens, have no jobs and no hope for a good future. The young fighters heading to Syria or Iraq often are aimless rebels at home looking for a cause.

They are young, disaffected and seeking adventure.

Most violent extremists are radicalized and recruited over the Internet, not by imams and sermons at home. Others are radicalized in prisons. Parents and imams have no control over what these youths see or read.

On the Internet, extremists justify their violent attacks because of legitimate grievances in Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. If world leaders paid more attention and worked to solve major conflicts, it would obviate recruiting messages.

Back on Oct. 16, 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry connected the ongoing IsraeliPalestinian conflict to waves of international recruits flocking to the terrorist group ISIS. He remarked that world leaders he talked with believe the Arab-Israeli conflict is a cause of recruitment, street anger and agitation.

During a Jan. 12 appearance on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” former President Jimmy Carter also emphasized that the Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the factors that led to the deaths in Paris.

Carter told host Jon Stewart it is “disheartening” to think about how much time has elapsed since the 1993 Oslo accords without a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

“Terrorists actually hijack legitimate Muslim grievances,” Mogahed noted. “Give young people a way to address their reasonable rage. Terrible things happen in the world,” she said. “The civil rights movement began with moral rage. Moral rage is good.

It just needs to be channeled, and that takes education. Give people a peaceful means of addressing these important issues.”

Encourage youths to join organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine or the

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Muslim Students Association, and join the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Find other Muslims who are already focused on helping the poor, raising funds for charities and working to improve underserved neighborhoods at home.

Mogahed also called for better religious education to combat “Internet predators who are reaching young people and brainwashing them with incorrect, seductive messages.”

Talib M. Shareef, imam of Masjid Muhammad, the Nation of Islam’s mosque in Washington, DC, agreed with Mogahed.

“This is all about education,” stated Shareef, who served 30 years in the U.S. Air Force. “The literacy rate in the Muslim world is shocking,” he acknowledged, but Americans also are uninformed about Islam and the Middle East. After 9/11 Muslims in the armed forces heard disparaging comments about “ragheads” and were made to feel uncomfortable in the military environment. Imam Shareef was tasked with educating personnel about the rich history of Islam.

He also urged Americans to give proper attention to people who are suffering in the world. The French attack has opened up hurtful wounds from 9/11, he added, and put patriotic Muslim Americans on the defensive.“It’s not OK to disrespect others,” the imam said, “and it’s not OK to separate society.”

On Jan. 23, the day after the Muslim leaders’ important press conference (which, incidentally, was not reported by U.S. media), Secretary of State Kerry told leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that it would be a mistake to link Islam to criminal conduct rooted in alienation, poverty, thrill-seeking and other factors. “We have to keep our heads,” Kerry said. “The biggest error we could make would be to blame Muslims for crimes… that their faith utterly rejects.”

Kerry described terror groups as “a form of criminal anarchy, a nihilism, which illegitimately claims an ideological and religious foundation.

“This fight will not be decided on the battlefield,” he told Davos attendees, “but in the classrooms, workplaces, places of worship of the world.”

It will also be decided when nations come together and make progress on multiple international and domestic fronts. The desire for freedom, civil rights and justice is universal. It’s simply easier to describe radical ideology as Islamic. It gets leaders off the hook in dealing with injustice. ❑ MARCH/APRIL 2015

davis_33_Special Report 1/29/15 8:17 PM Page 33

Yemen’s Turbulent Transition SpecialReport

By Kevin A. Davis hen Yemeni President Abd-Raboo

nation on Thursday, Jan. 22, most observers of Yemen were shocked. In retrospect, however, his apparently sudden decision actually was a long time coming, and may even prove to be the move that helps Yemen to progress in the long term.

Hadi’s resignation was the result of the takeover of Sana’a and its surrounding areas by Houthi rebels in September. The Houthis, a fervently anti-imperialist group long dominant in the country’s north, has been engaged for years in a series of wars against the central government and even against Saudi Arabia. The 2011 uprising that ended with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh stepping down after more than 30 years of rule left something of a power vacuum—one that the Houthis were happy to take advantage of.

Their takeover of Sana’a was a result of the inability of Yemen’s transitional government to adequately implement any of the outcomes of the National Dialogue—a long process that brought together many groups and factions from across the country to meet and lay out a roadmap for the future of Yemen. The National Dialogue (NDC) itself was a product of the Gulf Initiative, the agreement brokered by the GCC that allowed Saleh to step down in return for immunity from prosecution. Ironically, the Dialogue was considered the only peaceful transition among Arab Spring countries, and world leaders were intent on holding up the “Yemen model” as an example for other transitional states.

Yet it was not just the Houthis’ declared desire to continue where the revolution left off and enforce anti-corruption and security measures that would stabilize the transition.

Their takeover was facilitated by the cunning former president, Saleh, who found in the Houthis an able and willing force on the rise that shared a common enemy, the Islah party.

Islah—Yemen’s conservative Islamist party and the major player in the opposition JMP party which has been the main rival to Saleh and his GPC for decades— was largely involved in the military campaigns against the Houthis. Elements within Islah have been portrayed as symKevin A. Davis is director of AET’s Middle East Books and More.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

WMansour Hadi announced his resig-

Shi’i Yemeni supporters of the Houthi movement carry a poster of their leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, during a Jan. 28 demonstration in the capital, Sana’a. pathetic to growing Salafi influence. Islah also was one of the main winners in the 2011 Gulf Initiative, and has played a large role in the NDC and in Yemeni politics in general. After the Houthis targeted Islah, the party has been reduced to being a bit player, with many of its leaders complaining from exile.

President Hadi’s decision to step down was the end result of the Houthis overstepping their boundaries. Since their takeover in September, the Houthis had been the country’s de facto rulers, using Hadi as a figurehead to gain international legitimacy. Hadi became tired of being used, however, and the last straw was the Houthi kidnapping of Ahmed bin Mubarak, Hadi’s chief-of-staff, who the Houthis believed was behind the structuring of the new draft constitution’s six-region federal plan, which would have systematically weakened the Houthis.

As of late January, Hadi’s resignation has left the Houthis in a panic. They have neither the legitimacy nor the know-how to run the country, and were actively trying to persuade Hadi to rescind his decision.

Many analysts have attempted to paint the current conflict with a sectarian brush, reducing the conflict to the perceived reTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

gional struggle between Sunnis and Shi’i.

According to that scenario, it is the Shi’i Houthis, backed by Iran, against the remainder of Yemen’s largely Sunni population. While the recent battles between the Houthis and such Sunni-based groups as Islah, Salafis and al-Qaeda might seem to bolster this interpretation, in fact it reveals a complete lack of understanding of Yemen’s religious doctrines and an ignorance of the intricacies of Yemeni politics.

Yemen’s situation is further complicated by its historic north-south divide, and Hadi’s resignation was immediately met with security forces in most southern provinces announcing their refusal to take orders from Sana’a. Many southern leaders are now calling for outright secession, although a few northern provinces now seem to be entertaining the possibility of joining them.

Ultimately, the current turmoil in Yemen can largely be attributed to Saleh, the everconniving political mastermind. His ability to manipulate other political actors can be seen as an entirely self-serving plot, one that will continue to destroy any hopes of progress and stabilization.

Yet the current dilemma is also a direct result of the Gulf Initiative that granted Continued on page 43 33

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Guantanamo Is a Little Emptier These Days, But When Will it Finally Be Closed?

SpecialReport

PABLO PORCIUNCULA/AFP/GETTY IMAAGES

By Dale Sprusansky

Days following their release to Uruguay, former Guantanamo inmate Abd al Hadi Omar Mahmoud Faraj (l) holds a mate, a traditional South American drink, as he stands on a beach near Montevideo with his fellow Syrian and former inmate Ali Husein Shaaban, Dec. 14, 2014. n Jan. 22, 2009—his second full day

Oin office—President Barack Obama

vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within a year. More than six years later, however, 122 men remain indefinitely detained at the prison.

While the president continues to publically commit to closing the facility, he no longer offers a clear timeline. “As Americans, we have a profound commitment to justice—so it makes no sense to spend $3 million per prisoner to keep open a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit,” Obama said during his Jan. 20 State of the Union address. “Since I’ve been president, we’ve worked responsibly to cut the population of Gitmo in half. Now it’s time to finish the job. And I will not relent in my determination to shut it down. It’s not who we are. It’s time to close Gitmo.”

A recent rise in releases from the prison suggests that Obama—who has just two years left in office—is beginning to get serious. In 2014, he freed 28 Gitmo deDale Sprusansky is assistant editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

34

tainees—22 of whom were released in the last two months of the year. The president began 2015 by releasing an additional five detainees.

Activists committed to ensuring Guantanamo’s closure have reacted to this recent uptick in releases with cautious optimism.

“I certainly feel more optimistic about this long-standing stain on American justice being brought to an end than I have for many years,” Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, said at a Jan. 12 discussion on Guantanamo at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. Fellow panelist Thomas B. Wilner, a lawyer with Shearman & Sterling LLP who has represented 12 Gitmo detainees, said he hopes the president becomes bolder in his commitment to closing the facility. “I don’t want to give him too much credit,” Wilner said, arguing that Obama must show political courage and swiftly close the prison.

Senior members of the Republican-controlled Senate have other plans, however.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

In January, Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte (NH), John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Richard Burr (NC) introduced “The Detaining Terrorists to Protect America Act of 2015.” The legislation would “suspend international transfers of highand medium-risk detainees, prohibit transfers of Guantanamo detainees to Yemen, extend the current prohibition on transfers to the U.S., and increase transparency regarding risk assessments of the remaining Guantanamo detainees.”

Commenting on the legislation, Graham told Fox News: “The war on terror has reached a lethal phase, and it is insane to be letting these people out of Gitmo to go back to the fight.”

This fear-based narrative simply has no basis in fact, however, Col. (ret.) Morris Davis, who served as chief prosecutor of the Guantanamo Bay military commissions from September 2005 through October 2007, told the New America audience.

“The public gets the view that the government knows that these are really dangerous people…that’s not the case, it’s a mischaracterization of who those people are,” he said. Pointing out that he personally reviewed the evidence against detainees while working for the government, Davis said U.S. intelligence officials lack damning evidence against most of the men and instead have a “vague suspicion” of wrongdoing. “We don’t hold people, we have never held people, based on pure suspicion,” he noted. “The evidence against these people would never hold up in a court of law.”

Wilner took it a step further. Intelligence officials have long known that most Gitmo detainees were either low-level fighters in Afghanistan or innocents rounded-up incorrectly following 9/11, he said. “It was really realized pretty quickly that we didn’t get the leaders.”

Aware of this lack of evidence, officials have attempted to extract damning information from detainees by offering plea deals—or, worse, via torture. These tactics, Worthington explained, have produced dubious information. “The problem with the so-called evidence is that when it’s examined, it’s discovered that a large amount of this information came from the prisoners MARCH/APRIL 2015

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STAFF PHOTO D. SPRUSANSKY

Wilner also said that more themselves or from their fellow must be done to inform the prisoners being interrogated American public about the inand talking about each other,â&#x20AC;? justices occurring at Guanhe explained. Many detainees tanamo. Activists, he lamented, â&#x20AC;&#x153;told a pack of liesâ&#x20AC;? just to get tend to speak to the choir and interrogators to stop the persisthus fail to communicate with tent questioning, he added. a broad audience. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t This flimsy evidence exreached beyond that to the plains why only 6 of the 779 great mass of the American men (described as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;worst public about these issues,â&#x20AC;? he of the worstâ&#x20AC;? by the George W. stated. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to do a betBush administration) who have ter job.â&#x20AC;? passed through the cells of Gitmo have ever been tried, As Gitmo Survives, Terror convicted and sentenced for Thrives committing a terror-related offense, Davis noted. And, four (L-r) Andy Worthington, Thomas B. Wilner and Col. (ret.) Morris In the past 13 years, as 779 of the six had their charges dis- Davis call on President Obama to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. men have passed through missed by the DC Circuit Court Guantanamoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cells, the U.S. after it ruled that providing material sup- Gitmo decreases significantly, Davis pre- has carried out ground wars in Iraq and port for terrorism does not constitute a vio- dicts it will become easier for the president Afghanistan and drone strikes across the to make the case to move the remaining de- globe. The U.S. â&#x20AC;&#x153;war on terrorâ&#x20AC;? continues lation of the laws of war. tainees to the U.S. mainland. This, he to rage, with Syria as the newest battlefield.

False Information noted, would force the government to ei- And yet, the terrorist threat remains as perDavis also questioned the widely held be- ther charge the remaining prisoners or set vasive as ever and enemies even worse than lief that many released detainees return to them free, as it would be difficult to legally al-Qaeda, such as ISIS, now exist.

Somehow, with the â&#x20AC;&#x153;worst of the worstâ&#x20AC;? the battlefield. He noted that according to hold the detainees on the U.S. mainland in American custody, terrorists have been Clifford Sloan, who until recently served as without charge or trial. able to expand their influence. Maybe, just the State Departmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s special envoy for maybe, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s because the men we have Guantanamo closure, over 90 percent of de- â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in Our National Interestâ&#x20AC;? tainees released by the Obama administra- If and when Guantanamo is finally closed, been detaining at Gitmo are not in fact the tion have not re-engaged in terror. By com- the U.S. will be a safer place. Multiple ex- â&#x20AC;&#x153;worst of the worst.â&#x20AC;?

One thing is clear, however: the real parison, the Bureau of Justice Statistics has perts, including government officials, have reported that 77 percent of people released acknowledged that Gitmo remains a pow- worst of the worstâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Abu Bakr al-Baghfrom American state prisons are arrested erful recruiting tool for terrorists. A for- dadi, Ayman al-Zawahiri and companyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; again within 5 yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a horrifying statistic eign security official told Sloan that clos- have used Gitmo as a tool to incite antithat ought to truly concern elected officials ing Guantanamo is the best thing the U.S. American hatred and recruit soldiers. Closing Gitmo wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop terrorist leaders from on Capitol Hill. could do to end terrorism, Wilner noted.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also important to remember, Davis The Pentagon shares this view. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in wishing death upon the U.S., but we are said, that the Obama administration has our national interest to close Guantanamo. certainly not doing ourselves any favors by plans to prosecuteâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not releaseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the few It creates a psychological scar on our na- indefinitely imprisoning a hundred Mustruly dangerous men at Guantanamo, such tional values,â&#x20AC;? Gen. Martin Dempsey, lim men without any evidence.

As Colonel Davis put it: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve paid the as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (â&#x20AC;&#x153;the princi- chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told price for 13 years now, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to pal architect of the 9/11 attacks,â&#x20AC;? accord- â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fox News Sundayâ&#x20AC;? on Jan. 11. ing to the 9/11 Commission Report).

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also in Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interest to never stop.â&#x20AC;? â?&#x2018; Another widely circulated mythâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that torture war prisoners, Davis said. Republi(Advertisement) the U.S. is struggling to find countries will- cans who support torture ought to recall ing to accept detaineesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is also unfounded. that Ronald Reagan was a strong propoThe reality, Wilner said, is that many coun- nent of the international Convention tries are willing to accept released prison- Against Torture and led a bipartisan effort ersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the problem is getting approval from to ratify the U.N. treaty. the White House. He also noted that Pope Today, however, polls show that a majorFrancis is playing an active role in helping ity of Americansâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Democrats and Repub4HERE S ALOT MORE YOU MIGHT to find new homes for the detainees. licans alikeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;believe the torture of GuanNOT KNOW ABOUT YOUR â&#x20AC;&#x153;The problem is that the United States tanamo inmates was justified. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to MUSLIM NEIGHBORS wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take them,â&#x20AC;? Davis added. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pathetic make the case that torture hurts us, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 6JG /WUNKO .KPM VJG NCTIGUV PGYURCRGT HQT CPF CDQWV and bizarre, he said, that the U.S. is begging a fairly easy case on the facts,â&#x20AC;? Wilner said.

VJG /WUNKO %QOOWPKV[ KP &% /& CPF 8# #XCKNCDNG CV OQUV /QUSWGU #TCD +PFQ 2CM CPF 2GTUKCP TGUVCWTCPVU CPF countries to help empty Gitmo but is un- Having spoken to many interrogators, ITQEGTKGU KP VJG ITGCVGT 9CUJKPIVQP $CNVKOQTG willing to accept a single detainee of its own. Wilner noted that he has frequently been OGVTQRQNKVCP CTGC #XCKNCDNG (TGG Davis believes some of the prisoners will told that building rapport, not torture, is an 0HONE &AX eventually end up on American soil, but in effective way of getting reliable information WWW -USLIMLINKPAPER COM prison. Once the detainee population at from prisoners.

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MARCH/APRIL 2015

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

35

dickinson_36-37_In Memoriam 1/29/15 2:36 PM Page 36

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (1924-2015) InMemoriam

By Elizabeth Dickinson

that we have in the country,” said Hussein Shobokshi, a Jeddah King Abdullah bin businessman and Abdulaziz Al Saud columnist. “It is easier took the leaders of to address critical issues warring Palestinian such as women, tolerfactions Hamas and ance and education.

Fatah to the holiest These are all subjects site in Islam and told that were not menthem to make peace. tioned before now.”

The venue was the King Abdullah king’s palace in Mecca brought new ideas to overlooking the Kaaba. the Kingdom, just as The two Palestinian his predecessors had leaders, Khaled Meshal done. But he wanted of Hamas and Mahthem talked about. moud Abbas of Fatah, When he pushed e n t e r e d t h e H o l y President Barack Obama meets with Saudi King Abdullah at Radwat Khuraim, the forward the Foreign M o s q u e t oge t h e r, king’s desert camp 35 miles northeast of Riyadh, March 28, 2014.

Investment Act as draped in the robes of Shammar tribe and the founder of modern Crown Prince, one of the keystones of his pilgrimage, to touch the black stone.

Within days, they walked away with an Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, economic policy, he opened the draft up Abdullah was the personification of the for discussion. agreement. “[That] was a novelty: business elites This was classic King Abdullah, a man very marriage that had wed the state of who, during his nearly 10 years as king Saudi Arabia together—an improbable were not a driver of the FIA, but the Crown and two decades leading the Kingdom of kingdom of landed and Bedouin who Prince…allowed them to be part of the debate,” wrote Steffen Hertog in a study of Saudi Arabia, gained a reputation for pa- stretched across hostile desert terrain.

Over the decades that King Abdulaziz the Saudi government bureaucracy. tience, dialogue and unwavering religious Nor did King Abdullah shy away from faith. His leadership was a powerful blend ruled, the kingdom’s founder wove tomixing the soft power of symbolism, the gether a nation of rural and urban, oil rich difficult discussions. One of his first moves hard power of generous state coffers, and and poor, Sunni and Shi’i, Bedouin and as ruler was to open a dialogue about the land owners. When King Abdullah was uneven national development that had left the pragmatism of honest discussion. some parts of the country—particularly King Abdullah died on Friday, Jan. 23, born, he was proof of that cohesion.

As monarch, he proved that the many Saudi Arabia’s predominantly Shi’i East— 2015—having seamlessly woven together the many roles that Saudi Arabia can and threads of Saudi Arabia could stand the feeling left behind.

The role of women in the Kingdom was wear of time. King Abdullah oversaw a does play at home and in the region.

“Saudi Arabia sees itself as the leader of the vast economic modernization of the King- also a priority. King Abdullah named the Arab world, the Islamic world, and the en- dom, loosening rules for foreign invest- first female cabinet member to the Educaergy world,” said Simon Henderson of the ment, expanding education and improving tion Ministry in 2009. Then, in September 2011, he promised women the right to vote Washington Institute for Near East Policy. infrastructure.

But on the weekends and holidays, he and stand for office in the Shura Council “Although to the outside world, the energy predominates, to the Saudis generally and preferred the desert, where he raised Ara- and municipal councils.

“All people know that Muslim women King Abdullah in particular, it was the Arab bian horses throughout his life. He once weland Islamic leadership that was most crucial.” comed former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary have had in the Islamic history, positions King Abdullah was popular—even at Clinton—and her entire press corps—to his that cannot be marginalized,” he said upon the most trying of times for the Kingdom retreat in Radwat Khuraim, an elaborate net- making the announcement. “We reject to and the region. And much of his charm work of chandeliered tents. With typical marginalize the role of women in the Saudi had to do with the very fact of who he was Saudi hospitality, the “buffet ran for yards,” society, in every field of works, according to shariah guidelines.” one correspondent remembered. to Saudi Arabia.

Education, King Abdullah argued, was His ability to balance the traditional and The son of a Bedouin woman from the modern may be one reason why King Ab- fundamental to his country’s development.

Elizabeth Dickinson is the former Gulf corre- dullah was known, even when he was He put his money on it; education represented an incredible 24 percent of governspondent for the UAE’s The National, where crown prince, as a peacemaker of men.

“He has opened up the opportunity for ment spending in 2012. When King Abthis article was first published Jan. 23, 2015. dialogue to address some of the challenges dullah opened his flagship research univerCopyright © 2015 Abu Dhabi Media. n early February

SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

I2007, Saudi Arabia’s

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

MARCH/APRIL 2015

dickinson_36-37_In Memoriam 1/29/15 11:42 AM Page 37

sity, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, in 2009, he called it â&#x20AC;&#x153;a dream of mine for more than 25 years.â&#x20AC;?

Overseas, King Abdullah took his role as a conciliator equally seriously. He engaged warring factions from Palestine and Darfur to Somalia and Iraq.

When he visited U.S. President George W. Bush as Crown Prince in 2004, he carried with him videos and tapesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he was determined to show the American leader what life was really like in Palestine.

He also began a drive toward inter-religious tolerance that won broad praise, meeting Catholic Pope Benedict XVI in November 2007â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the first time a Saudi leader had ever done so. King Abdullahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gestures carried particular weight in the decade following the Sept. 11 attacks. â&#x20AC;&#x153;[The Kingdom] has equally treated all ideologies, factions and sects forming other societies and called for dialogue, understanding and reconciliation in any region witnessing seeds of sedition and division,â&#x20AC;? he told the Shura Council that year, laying out his philosophy.

Toward the end of his life, King Abdullahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concern over religious strife was evident again. Conflict in Iraq and Lebanon, he worried, had reopened sectarian rifts in

the second half of the 2000s. As crisis enveloped Syria, the risk of â&#x20AC;&#x153;sedition,â&#x20AC;? he warned, was stronger than ever.

At a summit of all Islamic countries in August 2012, he urged â&#x20AC;&#x153;solidarity, tolerance and moderationâ&#x20AC;? to solve a crisis there. His condemnation for the regime of Bashar Al-Assad was outspoken, and at the time of his death Saudi Arabia was involved in training Syrian rebel forces. â&#x20AC;&#x153;King Abdullah agonized about things,â&#x20AC;? said Mr. Henderson. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He agonized about the Palestinians when the intifada was at its height, and he was now agonizing about the people of Syria.â&#x20AC;?

His pragmatism helped him steer his country through the turmoil of the Arab Spring, using a blend of assertive foreign policy to support allies such as Bahrain, and dialogue to help others like Yemen through transitions of power.

In November last year King Abdullah again chose compromise and discussion when he oversaw an agreement between Gulf Cooperation Council leaders that helped resolve one of the most serious disputes in the blocâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain had recalled their ambassadors from Doha earlier in the year over Qatarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s failure to honor

a security agreement.

The personal involvement of King Abdullah was one of the main factors that encouraged GCC leaders to restore diplomatic relations. â&#x20AC;&#x153;King Abdullah thought that you either have to compromise to maintain the unity of the GCC or to escalate the internal conflict,â&#x20AC;? said Mustafa Alani, the director of security and defense studies at the Gulf Research Center.

In his absence, King Abdullahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s legacy will now shape what follows. His halfbrother, former Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, ascended to the throne immediately after his death. The new Crown Prince is Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the youngest son of King Abdulaziz ibn Saud. As one of six royal decrees issued on Jan. 23, King Salman named Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as Deputy Crown Prince.

But perhaps even more fundamentally than succession, King Abdullah leaves the kingdom in a region changing quicklyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; more intricately linked than ever by technology and the speed of news, but in other ways as divided as ever in its modern history.

As he once said: â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are passing startling days.â&#x20AC;? â?&#x2018;

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mcarthur_38-39_Congress Watch 1/29/15 6:08 PM Page 38

114th Congress Convenes Under Republican Leadership CongressWatch

By Shirl McArthur n Jan. 6 the 114th Congress formally convened, with Republicans controlO ling both the House and the Senate as a result of last November’s general election.

Since Republicans already controlled the House, there are few changes in that body.

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) will still be majority leader, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will be minority leader. There will be a couple of changes in key committee chairs.

Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY) will still chair the Appropriations Committee, with Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) as ranking Democrat; Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) will now chair the Armed Services Committee and Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) will still be the ranking Democrat, and Rep. Ed Royce (RCA) will still chair the Foreign Affairs Committee, with Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) as ranking Democrat.

A major change will be in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where Arab-American Rep. Darrell Issa (RCA), who has been a leading force in Republican efforts to uncover real or imagined scandals regarding the Obama administration, fell victim to term limits as chair.

He will be replaced by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who promises to be as aggressive as was Issa. The ranking Democrat remains Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD).

The major change is in the Senate, where control shifted from Democrats to Republicans. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is now majority leader, and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is minority leader. Committee leadership also switched. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) is the new chair of the Appropriations Committee and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) becomes ranking Democrat.

The Armed Services Committee will be chaired by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), with Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) as ranking Democrat. The Foreign Relations Committee will be chaired by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) becoming the ranking Democrat.

As majority leader, Reid had managed to avoid bringing the unhelpful Iran sanctions and nuclear negotiations bills to a

vote. His successor, McConnell, can now be expected to be willing to bring such bills for a floor vote. Menendez and nine other hawkish Democrats have said they will vote for further sanctions if the U.S. and Iran do not reach a political framework agreement by March 24.

While the opening sessions of the new Congress were largely ceremonial and dealt with administrative matters, members managed to introduce hundreds of new bills and resolutions in the first few days.

A few of those are Middle East-related.

s majority leader, Reid A had managed to avoid bringing the unhelpful Iran sanctions and nuclear negotiations bills to a vote.

Unsurprisingly, two of the new bills, as in past congresses, deal with Jerusalem. They would “recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocate to Jerusalem the U.S. Embassy in Israel.” The House bill, H.R. 114, was introduced by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) on Jan. 6. The Senate bill, S. 117, was introduced by Sens. Dean Heller (RNV) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Jan. 7.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) introduced their perennial bills “to limit the use of cluster munitions.” Feinstein’s bill, S. 28, was introduced Jan. 6 with 10 co-sponsors. McGovern’s introduced his bill, H.R. 157, the same day.

Also on Jan. 6 Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced S. 34 “to prohibit assistance to the Palestinian Authority until it withdraws its request to join the International Criminal Court.” The next day Sen. David Vitter (RLA) introduced S. 93 “to withhold U.S. contributions to the U.N. until the U.N. formally retracts the final report of the ‘U.N. Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.’”

And on Jan. 6 Garrett introduced H.R. 120 “to repeal the War Powers Resolution.”

Few Surprises, $3.73 Billion for Shirl McArthur is a retired U.S. foreign ser- Israel in Omnibus Appropriations Act

vice officer based in the Washington, DC area.

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As expected, before adjourning the “lame duck” session of the 113th Congress THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

passed H.R. 83, the $1.013 trillion “omnibus” appropriations act. The House passed it on Dec. 11, and the Senate on Dec. 13. It was signed by President Barack Obama on Dec. 16, becoming P.L. 113-235.

The measure funds most federal agencies through September 2015, the end of FY ’15. The exception is the Department of Homeland Security, which is funded only through February to give Republicans time to come up with legislation to counter Obama’s executive actions regarding immigration policy.

By providing $64 billion for the Overseas Contingency Operations fund, the measure meets Obama’s request for extra funds for the expanded operations in Iraq and Syria. The reauthorization for the secretary of defense to provide training, equipment and supplies to appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition is included in the separately passed National Defense Authorization Act (see below). But the Omnibus also provides that funds may be used for non-lethal programs to help Syrian civilians and to promote a number of non-military objectives in Syria.

While the measure provides $4.75 billion for Economic Support Funds (ESF) and $5.9 billion for Foreign Military Financing (FMF), only funds for Israel and Egypt are specifically earmarked, although the bill says that Jordan should get at least $1 million, without specifying either ESF or FMF. In accordance with the previously agreed U.S.-Israel “Memorandum of Understanding,” Israel gets $3.1 billion in FMF. In addition, $10 million is provided for “refugees resettling in Israel” and, from the Defense Department portion of the measure, $619.814 million for so-called “Israeli Cooperative Programs,” of which $351 million is for Iron Dome procurement. Also included is the provision, unique to Israel, that “not less than” $815.3 million (26.3 percent) of the FMF is to be made available for procurement in Israel. Other recipients must spent their entire allotment on procurement from the U.S. The total for Israel, then, is $3.730 billion.

The bill earmarks $150 million in ESF and $1.3 billion in FMF for Egypt, but with conditions. The first, overall condiMARCH/APRIL 2015

mcarthur_38-39_Congress Watch 1/29/15 6:08 PM Page 39

tion is that Egypt must maintain its strategic relationship with the U.S. and uphold the peace treaty with Israel. Of the economic aid, cash transfer or budget support may be given only if the secretary of state certifies that Egypt is taking steps to stabilize the economy and implement economic reforms. Another provision says that, of the economic and military aid, up to $725.85 million may be given only if the secretary of state certifies that Egypt is taking a list of seven actions, the first of which is holding “free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections.” But the text then says that such aid may be given even if the conditions haven’t been met if the secretary of state certifies “that it is important to the national security interest of the U.S.” to do so.

However, another provision says that, notwithstanding any other restrictions, an unspecified amount of funds “may be made available for counterterrorism, border security, and nonproliferation programs in Egypt and for development activities in the Sinai” if the secretary of state certifies that it is in the U.S. national security interest.

Aid to Palestinians Restricted As expected, the omnibus measure includes the long-standing and problematic “general” provisions seeking to punish the Palestinians for their refusal to meekly submit to Israeli domination. However, several of these conditions include limited presidential waiver authority. In addition, although no aid is earmarked for the Palestinian Authority (which received about $440 million in FY ’14, mostly for use by non-governmental organizations), the measure says that no funds may be obligated for the West Bank and Gaza unless the secretary of state reports that the purpose of such funds is to “(A) advance Middle East peace; (B) improve security in the region; (C) continue support for transparent and accountable government institutions; (D) promote a private sector economy; or (E) address urgent humanitarian needs.”

The provision receiving the most attention is the one prohibiting aid to the Palestinians if they get membership in the U.N. or any U.N. agency without an agreement with Israel, or if they pursue actions against Israelis at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The prohibition on aid if the Palestinians get membership in the U.N. includes secretary of state waiver authority, but no waiver is provided if the Palestinians pursue Israelis at the ICC. MARCH/APRIL 2015

Although no funds are earmarked for Lebanon, Libya, Morocco and Yemen, the bill includes restrictions or limitations on such aid. Another provision says that ESF funds may be used “to establish and operate one or more enterprise funds for Egypt and Tunisia,” subject to conditions.

Funds for the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) are conditioned. Funds for the former are prohibited unless the secretary of state reports on efforts taken to remove Israel as a permanent agenda item. Regarding UNRWA, the secretary of state must submit a report on whether UNRWA is undertaking a seven-item list of actions, including “implementing procedures to maintain the neutrality of its facilities, including implementing a noweapons policy and conducting regular inspections of its facilities.”

Regarding Iran, the measure includes no new sanctions, but does require the secretary of state to submit several reports to Congress on the status of bilateral and multilateral efforts aimed at curtailing Iran’s efforts to pursue nuclear weapons technology and the status of Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile development, including the adequacy of existing inspection and verification measures.

No Onerous Mideast Provisions in National Defense Authorization Act The National Defense Authorization Act, H.R. 3979, also was passed by the lame duck session of the 113th Congress. The House passed it on Dec. 4, the Senate on Dec. 12, and the president signed it on Dec. 19, as P.L. 113-291. As noted above, the act includes reauthorization for the secretary of defense to provide training, equipment and supplies to appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition (the previous authorization expired on Dec. 11).

While the different versions of the bill were making their way through the various House and Senate committees it was feared that the final version would include new Iran sanctions or unreasonable conditions on the negotiations with Iran. However, these were not included in the final bill as passed—although it does include a section requiring the president to report to Congress on the status of the interim agreement with Iran. The section also says that if the interim agreement “is renewed or if a comprehensive and final agreement is entered into regarding the nuclear program of Iran, by not later than 90 days after such renewal or final agreement THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

being entered into, and every 180 days thereafter, the president shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report on such renewed or final agreement.”

Last-Minute Efforts to Scuttle Negotiations With Iran Stymied Prior to the Nov. 24 renewal of the interim agreement with Iran, several Senate Iran hawks made last-ditch efforts to scuttle the agreement. On Nov. 13 Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Corker (R-TN) made long floor statements urging that S. 2650, the “Iran Nuclear Negotiations” bill introduced by Corker last July, be brought to the Senate floor for a vote no later than Nov. 24. But then-Senate Majority Leader Reid, following the Obama administration’s wishes, did not bring it up. The bill would have provided that, within three days of entering into an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, the president would be directed to submit the bill to Congress, and that a joint resolution of disapproval may be introduced in the House and the Senate.

On Nov. 24 Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte (NH), Graham and McCain issued a “statement” urging increased sanctions on Iran, and that “any final deal with Iran be sent to Congress for approval.”

And on Dec. 2 leading Senate Iran hawk Menendez, who has been a harsh critic of Obama’s Iran policy, announced—again— that he wanted to have his previously described, far-reaching and problematic Iran Sanctions bill, S. 1881, brought to the Senate floor for a vote before the end of the lame duck session. But that, too, did not happen.

Obama Signs U.S.-Israel Partnership Bill Into Law As previously reported in this space, the Senate on Sept. 18 passed S. 2673, introduced in July by Sen. Barbara Boxer (DCA), the Senate’s companion bill to the House-passed H.R. 938, the “U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership” bill. Then, on Dec. 3, leading Israel-Firster Rep. Ileana RosLehtinen (R-FL) without warning brought the Senate bill to the House floor, where it was passed under “suspension of to the rules.” It was forwarded to the White House on Dec. 10 for the president’s signature, but Obama waited until Dec. 19 before finally signing it, as P.L. 113-296.

The bill would give Israel a broad range of military and economic benefits, but without the controversial provision awarding Israelis exceptional visa preference. ❑ 39

ferguson_40-41_Special Report 1/29/15 7:24 PM Page 40

Archeologist Wendell Phillips: The “American Lawrence of Arabia” SpecialReport of southern Arabia in what is now presentday Yemen. The product of this undertaking is featured in the Sackler exhibit.

During his career, Phillips microfilmed more than 2 million pages of manuscripts at the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai; led the first major scientific expeditions ever to explore South Arabia; and for 10 years, beginning in the early 1950s, led expeditions in Oman, concentrating primarily in the Dhofar province.

COURTESY ARTHUR M. SACKLER GALLERY

COURTESY AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF MAN

By Barbara G.B. Ferguson and Tim Kennedy

Phillips (second from left) stands with Yemeni men, including Sheikh Al-Barhi (center), a leader of the Bal-Harith tribe, and a child in the desert.

hibit in Washington, DC, has been variously referred to as the “American version of Lawrence of Arabia” and the “inspiration” for Indiana Jones, film director Steven Spielberg’s intrepid celluloid explorer.

The truth, as revealed in “Unearthing Arabia: The Archaeological Adventures of Wendell Phillips” at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery on the National Mall, is an amalgamation of the two legendary figures.

The Sackler describes the exhibit, on view through June 7, 2015, as its “first multi-sensory” exhibition. The selection of excavated artifacts, 1950s-era film clips, videos, field notebooks and vintage photographs highlights Phillips’ key finds, which are the most important collection of documented South Arabian artifacts in the U.S., dating from the eighth century B.C. to second century A.D. Being of military age at the onset of World War II, Phillips served his country Barbara G.B. Ferguson and Tim Kennedy are co-writers for Arab News.

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as a merchant marine aboard transport ships—an experience that took him to ports of call in North Africa and the Mediterranean.

COURTESY ARTHUR M. SACKLER GALLERY

endell Phillips, the American archeol-

Wogist celebrated in a fascinating ex-

Cut from slabs of limestone, the stele, or funerary plaques, found at Timna are decorated with highly stylized faces that vary in their degree of abstraction.

After later obtaining a degree in paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, Phillips conceived the idea of an extensive continent-wide African expedition. After many months of fund-raising, Phillips launched his first expedition: a massive archaeological dig in a remote area THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

This unique object found in a two-story private residence in Timna combines a dedicatory plaque with an outstretched hand holding a flat dish, or phiale, that originally served as an oil lamp.

Phillips’ intial foray to the southern Arabian desert was approved and encouraged by the king of Yemen, Imam Ahmad bin Yahya Hamidaddin. The king’s authorization enabled Phillips to uncover the ancient city of Timna, the capital of the onceprosperous Qataban kingdom; and, during a later excavation in 1951 and ’52, Marib, the reputed capital of the legendary Queen of Sheba, who appears in religious texts sacred to all the Abrahamic faiths.

These cities had flourished 2,500 years ago along the fabled Incense Road—a trade route that stretched from India to port cities along the Mediterranean. The road facilitated the movement of goods such as Arabian frankincense and myrrh, gold, precious stones, pearls, ebony, silk, Indian spices, feathers, rare woods and animal skins.

Among the highlights of the exhibition MARCH/APRIL 2015

COURTESY AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF MAN

ferguson_40-41_Special Report 1/29/15 7:24 PM Page 41

The extensive Awam Temple complex and other structures at Marib had been buried under sand for centuries before Wendell Phillips and his team began their excavation there in the early 1950s.

are the “Lions of Timna,” the sculptures once featured on Yemeni currency, and an iconic translucent alabaster stele head of a young woman, with lapis lazuli eyebrows and an Egyptian hairstyle. Unearthed in the cemetery of Timna, the head was nicknamed “Miriam” by the Arab workers who discovered it.

COURTESY ARTHUR M. SACKLER GALLERY

COURTESY ARTHUR M. SACKLER GALLERY

of his death in 1975, at age 54, his personal wealth of many of the cities that were wealth was estimated in excess of $120 mil- highlighted in the Sackler Gallery’s “Roads lion ($471 million in today’s dollars). of Arabia” exhibition, Dr. Farhad added “As far as I can remember, I always (see Jan./Feb. 2013 Washington Report, p. wanted to be an explorer,” Phillips wrote 42). in his autobiography, Sheba’s Buried City.

For more information, visit <www.asia.

“This childhood ambition of mine was si.edu/unearthingarabia>. ❑ given every conceivable encouragement by my mother, who as a girl had prospected the gold dust trail by packmule with her father and mother throughout California’s High Sierras.”

Dr. Massumeh Farhad, chief curator and curator of Islamic art at the Sackler, told the Washington Report, “Phillips was a remarkable man, he made amazing discoveries; most notably, Miriam, which is probably the most important alabaster stele ever found in the region.”

The cultural, historical and Members of Phillips’ 1951 expedition team, including architectural relationship be- R.L. Shalkop, kept meticulous records of their finds, in tween Saudi Arabia and Yemen this case filling a notebook with descriptions and drawis exemplified in the historical ings of objects unearthed in the cemetery of Timna.

Phillips’ team decoded the timeline of Arabian history that remains the definitive narrative for archaeologists today.

Phillips knew and loved the Arabian desert like few other Westerners. Of all his honors, he was proudest of the fact that he had been declared a Bedouin sheikh of the Bal-Harith tribe—the only American so honored.

Known as the world’s richest archaeologist, Phillips derived his wealth from numerous oil leases. The world’s largest individual holder of oil concessions at the time MARCH/APRIL 2015

COURTESY ARTHUR M. SACKLER GALLERY

Overwhelmed by the beauty of this alabaster head, the Arab workmen who discovered it named it Miriam.

The “Lions of Timna,” two bronze figures found covered with a layer of ash from the fire that destroyed the city in the first century A.D. The inscription on their bases helped establish a chronology for the Qataban civilization, fixing its apogee in the first century A.D. THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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patti-42-43_Special Report 1/29/15 7:22 PM Page 42

Shaheen Media Scholarships Awarded to 60 Students Over Past 17 Years SpecialReport

PHOTO COURTESY JACK SHAHEEN

By Gabriella Patti and Delinda C. Hanley

(L-r) Stephanie Abraham, Prof. Jack Shaheen, Laila Al-Arian and Bernice Shaheen. rof. Jack G. Shaheen, a former CBS

PNews consultant on Middle East af-

fairs, began studying how Arabs are portrayed in the media when his children came to him saying, “Daddy, they’ve got bad Arabs on television.” The LebaneseAmerican mass media professor spent the next eight years examining and documenting Arab stereotypes in more than 200 television programs, and writing The TV Arab (1984). Next came Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture (1997), and finally—after 20 years of research and examining more than 1,000 films—Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2001). That book was made into a film in 2006. Shaheen followed his 2008 book, GUILTY: Hollywood’s Verdict On Arabs After 9/11, with A is For Arab: Archiving Stereotypes in U.S. Popular Culture. (See AET’s Middle East Books and More to order.)

Shaheen also has given more than 1,000 lectures and written 300-plus essays on the subject.

His conclusion: only 6 to 7 percent of the images American filmgoers and TV watchers saw could be considered positive or Gabriella Patti was a 2014 Washington Report summer intern and Delinda C. Hanley is news editor.

42

non-offensive toward Arabs. Arab Americans are largely invisible on TV or, if they exist, they are often the villains. “It’s hard to believe that in the 21st century, the print and news media, as well as the motion picture industry, can continue to perpetuate this vile image,” Shaheen told the Washington Report.

Knowing that constant vigilance is not enough, Shaheen confronts those responsible for negative portrayals and offers himself as a film consultant. “I always point out to the director what I think are the harmful stereotypes. Then I explain why I feel they are harmful and finally I suggest what I think would work better,” he explained. Shaheen said his goal is to help create a better and more accurate film, a more honest, truthful and gripping piece, free from stereotypes and with strong, accurate dialogue.

Shaheen believes that the best solution is to encourage young Arab Americans to improve media by entering the field. He credits his wife, Bernice, with coming up with the idea for a mass media scholarship—in the field of journalism, television, radio and/or film—for American college students of Arab heritage.

After 17 years, and 60 student awardees, the $1,000 scholarship is still going strong.

As a result, young Arab Americans are beTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

coming active in the media. Past scholarship recipients include National Public Radio’s Cairo bureau chief Leila Fadel and filmmaker Annemarie Jacir (“When I Saw You,” “Salt of this Sea”); Dr. Dina Ibrahim, who reported for BBC World Service, United Press International, CNN and NPR and now teaches radio and TV news production at San Francisco State University; Jad Melki, Ph.D., journalism and media studies assistant professor at the American University of Beirut; Jackie Reem Salloum, director of the award winning film “Slingshot Hip Hop”; Ziad El-Bayoumi Foty, who is working on “Return to Ramallah: A Palestinian American Story” about his musician father; editor and filmmaker Elaine Hamood Strutz, who has worked on network TV shows such as “Disappeared” and “Say Yes to the Dress”; and Evelyn Alsultany, an associate professor at the University of Michigan who teaches courses on media representations, U.S. cultural and racial politics, and Arab Americans.

“The Jack Shaheen scholarship is a criti-

Apply for the 2015 Jack G. Shaheen Mass Communications Scholarship Please submit the following by Monday, March 30, 2015 (hard copies only): • A one-page statement explaining your goals and why you merit the scholarship, and a declaration that you are a U.S. citizen of Arab heritage.

• Two original signed letters of recommendation from professors of mass communications.

• Copies of your articles, DVDs, films, etc. (these items will not be returned).

• Official academic transcripts (minimum 3.0 GPA).

• Your permanent home address and phone number, e-mail address, and phone number during the school year, if different.

Submit all materials to the ADC Research Institute, Attention: Mr. Nabil Mohamad, ADC Vice President, 1990 M St., NW, Suite 610, Washington, DC 20036.

For more information call ADC at (202) 244-2990, or e-mail: organizing@ ADC.org.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

patti-42-43_Special Report 1/29/15 6:10 PM Page 43

cal source of support for young, aspiring journalists,” says fellow awardee Laila AlArian, now an award-winning producer for the Al Jazeera English documentary series “Fault Lines.” “Dr. Shaheen is a giant in the field,” she elaborates, “and the encouragement and guidance he has offered young Arab-American journalists over the years has proven invaluable. Arab Americans continue to be under-represented in the field of journalism and their presence is critical to offering Americans more balanced and nuanced coverage of the Middle East.”

According to Shaheen, “The purpose of the scholarship was to create an AmericanArab presence in the media, because it is more difficult to discriminate against someone if you work alongside them.” Until recently, he noted, Arab Americans have avoided careers in the media and Hollywood, so “the scholarships were not only to honor these young people but to motivate them to study media.”

Change will only come by taking action and ownership of negative stereotypes in the media, Shaheen insists, emphasizing that “presence propagates power.” Pointing out that other groups, including Asians, African Americans and Hispanics, also are dealing with this issue, Shaheen explains: “You have to be present if you are going to make a difference, and that is the purpose of this scholarship, to create a difference. Our young scholars are accomplishing great things for our country; their presence in the media is making a profound difference in how we perceive Arabs and Muslims in our society—no better, no worse than any other group.” ❑

Truth Commission…

Continued from page 19

past few years, in part as a backlash to commemorations of the Nakba by Zochrot and Palestinian students.

In November, when Zochrot held its second Nakba and Right of Return Film Festival in Tel Aviv, Culture Minister Limor Livnat immediately threatened to pull a government grant worth more than $450,000 from the cinema that hosted it.

“The state cannot bear the cost of funding of an entity that encourages debate over what the Palestinians call ‘the right of return,’” Livnat said in a statement. She was reported to have based her decision on her reading of the Nakba Law. “The antagonism towards Zochrot and the idea of the Nakba is part of the educational process,” said Bronstein. “It is a necMARCH/APRIL 2015

essary phase Israel needs to pass through if we are to get to a point of reconciliation.”

Bronstein and others have faced angry opposition from the Israeli public and police as they have tried to stage Nakba commemorations—most notably in Tel Aviv in 2012, when they were surrounded by riot police for four hours. Three Zochrot activists were arrested.

Yet Zochrot’s organizers, whose members include both Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, seem largely unfazed by the threats and hostility their group generates.

In 2013 Zochrot arranged a conference that for the first time examined not just the principle of the right of return but practical ways to implement it (see December 2013 Washington Report, p. 12).

Last year the group launched a phone app, called iNakba, in three languages, which provides users with detailed maps and information on the destroyed villages.

Jeries said it had received thousands of downloads, giving Israelis for the first time the chance to peel away the subsequent layers of construction and forestation to see what was destroyed, often on their very doorstep. ❑

Steve Emerson…

with his 2006 book, Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the US (not available from AET’s Middle East Books and More).

Emerson is the founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism which, despite its name, is concerned only with real or alleged terrorist activities by Muslims (see Jan./Feb. 2011 Washington Report, p. 25). He advised prosecutors in the Sami al-Arian case (see April 2003 issue, p. 54), furnished “evidence” used to shut down the Holy Land Foundation charity, said the Oklahoma City bombing bore the “trait” of Middle Eastern terrorists and that the city “is probably considered one of the largest centers of Islamic radical activity outside the Middle East,” and is frequently interviewed or cited as an anti-terrorist authority.

It says much about Emerson’s lack of international expertise that he could make such a wildly inaccurate statement about Britain’s second largest city as that made on the Fox News channel. It also reflects badly on Fox that, far from being able to respond like a conscientious and well-informed journalist, Jeanine Pirro simply reinforced Emerson’s ignorant comments.

The public deserves better. ❑

Continued from page 22

Yemen’s Transition…

Emerson was left with little choice but to apologize to Birmingham. In the interview with the regional news program, he claimed that he had drawn his information about the city from a source that he took to be reliable and had neglected to check it thoroughly himself. As a token of his contrition, he donated 500 pounds to a local hospital. However, he stood by comments he made about London, including his statement that “there are actually Muslim religious police who beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn’t dress according to Muslim religious attire.” (I used to live in northeast London before moving to Singapore, and don’t recall any such problem, though there have been complaints by some Muslim women by men who taunted them for not wearing hijab—as well as complaints by some women wearing hijab against non-Muslims who showed hostility to them for how they dressed.)

Emerson will be familiar to Washington Report readers for his Islamophobic and anti-Arab track record over the past 30 or so years. He made the notorious documentary, “Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America,” broadcast on PBS, and built on this

Continued from page 33

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Saleh immunity. The shortsightedness of this decision left most of 2011’s protesters completely disillusioned with the international community, in particular the United States and the U.N., who were largely behind the GCC deal. And sure enough, as many predicted, this thinking has enabled Saleh to continue pulling his strings, leading the country spiraling out of control.

Most believe that at some point his son Ahmed will emerge as a hero, ready to rescue Yemen from its instability.

The international community and the United States specifically have never been concerned with the interests of the Yemeni people, and a democratic Yemen is certainly not their priority. The continued focus on the war on terror and the rise of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, along with Washington’s insistence on relying on drone strikes to preserve “U.S. interests,” have proven catastrophic. Yemenis must now hope that Hadi’s resignation will actually serve as an impetus for real change and a new direction for the country, rather than the latest step in Yemen’s collapse. ❑ 43

adas_44-45_New York City and Tri-State News 1/29/15 11:45 AM Page 44

Is This “Palestine’s South Africa Moment”?

New York City and Tri-StateNews

STAFF PHOTOS J. ADAS

By Jane Adas

Prof. Mahmood Mamdani (l) and Omar Barghouti. olumbia University’s Center for Pales-

Ctine Studies—the only such research institute in the Western hemisphere— sponsored a Dec. 2 panel on “Palestine’s South Africa Moment? The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement.”

Omar Barghouti, who literally wrote the book, BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More), is optimistic.

His co-panelist, Mahmood Mamdani, Columbia professor of government and African affairs, is less certain.

In 2005, Palestinian civil society across the spectrum—all political parties, unions, NGOs, urban and rural, left and right—joined in the call for a global BDS movement as a tactic to achieve their rights, which the movement defined as ending the occupation, equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.

Barghouti noted that Palestinians are asked to compromise, to forget the Right of Return and focus on occupation—or be accused of wanting to destroy Israel.

His response is that because 50 percent of Palestinians are in diaspora and half of Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.

44

those within Israel have been internally displaced, the Right of Return as called for in U.N. Res. 194 is essential. He described BDS as a rights-based movement opposed to all racism, including antiSemitism and Islamophobia.

In the nine years since the call, BDS has moved faster than the South African anti-apartheid movement. According to Barghouti, this is partly because of the Internet, e-mail and social media. In the earlier movement, activists had to rely on clandestine faxes in basements or exploding barrels filled with flyers. Another important factor Barghouti cited is the small but strong Jewish support for BDS, both within Israel and in the U.S. When he wrote his Jan. 31, 2014 New York Times op-ed, “Why Israel Fears the Boycott,” Barghouti said he had to negotiate, including that “extremely difficult point,” with the editors.

Barghouti also credited Israel for failing to come up with one smart tactic against BDS. Viewing it as an image problem, Israel has spent billions on “Brand Israel” to portray the country as a liberal haven for gays, artists and entrepreneurs. But, Barghouti added, one massacre in Gaza and “poof.” Despite ballerinas and Beethoven, Israel finds itself vying with North Korea THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

for third place among most unpopular countries—and North Korea spends nothing on propaganda.

With Israel’s proposed nationality law (see p. 50), the oxymoron of a Jewish democratic state may be unraveling, Barghouti continued. The laws’ proponents have expressed surprise at resistance to the law, even in America, when all they are trying to do, they say, is codify the Jewish identity of the state. For Palestinians, Barghouti noted, the law is doing what Palestinians have failed to do: de-Israelize Palestinian citizens of Israel to produce unprecedented unity across the Green Line.

Before examining the South Africa moment, Mamdani pointed to an important difference in the debate on academic freedom. In 1980s South Africa it was the anti-apartheid movement calling for academic freedom; today it is the rallying cry of anti-Palestinians and those opposed to BDS. Academic freedom, he urged, should be for all, not only for Israelis.

The South Africa moment, Mamdani explained, was prepared over time and involved a triple shift. After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, South Africa responded to armed guerillas with disproportionate force. The activists went into exile, leaving the country in relative calm. In 1975, Soweto shattered the silence and resistance shifted from exiled professional revolutionaries to community-based activists.

Secondly, according to Mamdani, governance was redefined. Under apartheid, the population was separated into groups—blacks, Indians, coloreds and whites, each with their own organizations. As early as 1955, the African National Congress declared that South Africa belongs to all those who live in it. Steve Biko sought unity with coloreds and Indians, saying, “Black is not a color, but an experience. If you are oppressed, you’re black.” As with BDS, a small number of committed whites joined the movement.

Thirdly, South Africans re-defined the struggle as not against settlers, but against the settler state and its privileges; not against whites, but against white power.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

Mamdani observed that apartheid South Africa, like Israel, called itself the only democracy in its region, but in both cases it was democracy for a clearly defined racial group. Like Israel, South Africa defined any resistance as terror. Apartheid finally ended when whites recognized that their security required that they give up their monopoly of power. The problem, Mamdani suggested, is the Zionist message that Israel is the only guarantee against another Holocaust and that Israel is not yet convinced that a military solution is not possible.

He concluded by arguing that the task for Palestinians is to convince Israelis that they will be secure only when they dismantle the Jewish state in favor of a state that belongs to all who live in it.

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adas_44-45_New York City and Tri-State News 1/29/15 11:46 AM Page 45

Attorney Daniel Seidemann.

Daniel Seidemann on the Real Jerusalem Daniel Seidemann, an American-born Israeli attorney, is an expert on the city where he now makes his home, Jerusalem. He challenged his audience at the Jewish Center in Princeton, NJ to examine closely the article of faith that “Jerusalem is the eternal undivided capital of Israel.” While candidates must recite this mantra to get elected to the U.S. Congress, he noted, the Jerusalem to which so many Israeli and American Jews and politicians are devoted “does not and has never existed in nature.”

How Jewish is Jerusalem? With an Israeli Jewish population of 508,000, Seidemann claimed Jerusalem as the largest Jewish city in history. But it is not only Jewish: 38 percent of the residents are Palestinians, who are not Israeli citizens.

They are allowed to vote only in municipal elections, but few choose to do so. Less than 1 percent voted in 2013, allowing Mayor Nir Barkat to crow that he is “the mayor of all who voted for me.” Palestinian residents of Jerusalem pay taxes, but receive only 10 percent of the budget. Israel does not invest in East Jerusalem, where, for example no housing has been built for Palestinians since 1978.

Is Jerusalem the capital of Israel? Yes, but only according to Israel. Not a single country has its embassy in Jerusalem, and on CIA maps its status is “to be determined.”

Is Jerusalem undivided? According to Seidemann, a glass wall has been in place since 1967 that precludes Israeli Jews MARCH/APRIL 2015

and Palestinians from shopping in the same places, attending the same schools, or walking the same streets. He added that some Israeli Jews feel very brave when they make a safari two blocks into East Jerusalem to visit the American Colony Hotel.

Seidemann described Jerusalem since July as more than ever a “tale of two cities.” The Palestinian areas have been “on fire,” a state of affairs West Jerusalemites barely registered until a Palestinian drove his car into pedestrians in Sheikh Jarrah on Oct. 22, followed by another vehicular attack in central Jerusalem on Nov. 5 and an attack on a synagogue two weeks later. Seidemann described the situation in East Jerusalem as worse than either intifada. The second intifada was more violent, he said, but the danger was in West Jerusalem and the terror did not originate in East Jerusalem. Seidemann quoted Shin Bet statistics that from 2000 through 2008, Israel arrested 270 East Jerusalem Palestinians for security-related offenses; from July through November 2014, Israel arrested more than 1,300, the majority of them juveniles.

Official Israel has yet to ask, “why so much unrest in hitherto quiet East Jerusalem?” Israeli leaders have assumed the youth are being incited—although Seidemann portrayed President Mahmoud Abbas as incapable of inciting anyone—or they are ungrateful, or inherently criminal. Seidemann said that nowhere are leaders more detached from empirical reality when they cannot imagTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ine that East Jerusalemites have legitimate grievances. He distinguished between detonators—the triggers that explain why, where and when there is an upsurge in violence—and the underlying causes.

The first detonator was when Israeli terrorists abducted 16-year-old Shuafat resident Mohammed Abu Khdeir and burned him alive on July 2. Young East Jerusalemites felt a deep sense of vulnerability and identity with the victim—plus, Seidemann added, this was not an isolated event. The second was Israel’s assault on Gaza, leaving it a “corked volcano” that must erupt somewhere. Since Abbas’ security forces prevent violence in the West Bank, the outbreak was in East Jerusalem. Third, in Palestinian attacks the terrorists died, but Israel demolished the homes of their unguilty family members as preventive deterrence, a practice upheld by Israel’s Supreme Court.

Israel has not demolished the homes of Abu Khdeir’s murderers, as though only Arabs require deterrence. A fourth trigger is the radicalization of the area around the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. Israeli ministers pray “not silently” there, something Seidemann called “aggravated devotion,” and Minister of Construction Uri Ariel wants to see the third temple built in place of the Dome of the Rock. This threatens to morph the national conflict over Jerusalem into a religious conflict, abetted by Christian fundamentalists.

The underlying cause, according to Seidemann, is that Palestinians are miserable and Israel aims to increase their misery. The occupation has been in remission, but is today aggressive and metastasizing. Symptoms include recent settlement activity that renders no border possible, the proposed nationality bill that seeks to demote Arabic as an official language, and the torching of a bilingual school in Jerusalem by Jewish extremists.

In Washington, Barack Obama is being told, “Mr. President, walk away. There is no forward movement with Netanyahu.”

In Seidemann’s view, the period of U.S. ownership of the Israel/Palestine file is over. There will be an international dimension with the center of gravity elsewhere. Israel, he concluded, needs big doses of reality. The greatest obstacle to peace is Israeli complacency and escapism, he concluded: “Israelis are sipping cappuccino on the edge of a volcano.” ❑ 45

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Activists Call for Firing, Prosecution of Bush Administration Attorney John Yoo

By Elaine Pasquini

Northern California Chronicle

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

United Nations ficult to endure.” To any ordinary individConvention ual, waterboarding of any length of time Against Torture would be “difficult to endure,” but Bybee and other Cruel, considered less than 40 seconds to be alInhuman or De- lowable. He also provided legal justification grading Treat- for sleep deprivation of up to 11 days and ment or Punish- “walling” (slamming a prisoner’s head ment, any com- against a wall). plicity in torture CODEPINK and other activist groups must be prose- gathered more than 100 signatures of UC cuted, and our alumni, current students and members of attorney general the community on a petition calling for Atmust act to pros- torney General Eric Holder to investigate ecute John Yoo.” Yoo. Papermaster, accompanied by WashGeorge Lipp- ington Report staff photographer Phil man of the Berke- Pasquini, delivered the petition to Areca ley Peace and H’Lael Smit, chief of staff to University of Justice Commis- California Dean of Law Sujit Choudhry. Pasion reminded permaster also requested a meeting with the crowd that Dean Choudhry. “international Outside the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law, human rights treaties are the Berkeley Peace and Justice Panel activists call for the firing and prosecution of law professor John Yoo, whose supreme law of Sheds Light on Human Rights Issues the land, and The City of Berkeley Peace and Justice legal opinions justified torture in the George W. Bush administration. anyone who vio- Commission held a press conference Dec. 6 n Dec. 12—three days after the release lates these laws is subject to prosecution.” at the North Berkeley Senior Center to anof 528 pages of the 6,000-page Senate For several years, activists throughout the nounce the Berkeley City Council submisIntelligence Committee report on CIA tor- San Francisco Bay Area have relentlessly sion of local compliance reports with inture during the George W. Bush adminis- campaigned to bring the “torture memo ternational human rights treaties to the tration—CODEPINK and other human writer” to justice for his role in supporting U.S. Department of State to be included in rights organizations held a press conference torture, indefinite detention and other vio- its report to the United Nations Human outside the Berkeley School of Law on the lations of the Geneva Conventions on hu- Rights Committee.

University of California campus calling for mane treatment of prisoners.

Sameena Usman, government relations the firing and prosecution of Prof. John In addition to Yoo, the human rights ac- consultant for CAIR California, was one of Yoo. The activists also demanded that the tivists called for the prosecution of former several speakers who presented updates on tenured law professor’s recent faculty chair Vice President Dick Cheney, his former chief human rights issues put forth in the comendowment be rescinded. of staff and longtime government attorney pliance reports.

As deputy assistant attorney general in David Addington, and Judge Jay Bybee “Unfortunately, our organization has seen the Bush administration Justice Depart- (Yoo’s former colleague in the Bush adminis- acts of Islamophobia on the rise,” she said. ment’s Office of Legal Counsel, Yoo drafted tration). memoranda justifying torture during inIn the latter’s 50terrogation of detainees. page “Memorandum “Yoo’s recent faculty chair endowment is for Alberto R. Gonzaa slap in the face to the human rights com- les, Counsel to the munity,” Cynthia Papermaster, one of the or- President,” otherwise ganizers of the press conference, told atten- k n o w n a s t h e dees. In the memos Yoo wrote while with the “Bybee” or “Torture” Department of Justice, he redefined “tor- memo, Bybee conture” as “enhanced interrogation tech- cluded that the Conniques,” which he deemed to be legal. “Yoo vention Against Torgave the legal green light to the Bush ad- ture prohibits only ministration to do what they were already “extreme acts.” He doing at the time, which was waterboarding also stated in his detainees,” she pointed out. “Under the memorandum that “for an act to consti- (L-r) Wendy Hernandez, Sharon Adams, Matt Kellegrew, Mansour Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist tute torture...it must Id-Deen, and Andrea Pritchett listen as Sameena Usman discusses based in the San Francisco Bay Area. inflict pain that is dif- CAIR’s civil rights work.

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

MARCH/APRIL 2015

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Beautifully filmed, the 30-minute documentary features interviews of local residents involved in the project, along with religious leaders, the town’s fire chief and the FBI agent who led a criminal investigation into the fire. No one has been apprehended and the case has been closed.

COURTESY “AN AMERICAN MOSQUE”/DAIVD WASHBURN

Referring to CAIR’s report entitled “Legislating Fear” which analyzes legal cases in 2013, Usman noted that there are 37 groups in the U.S. whose primary purpose is to promote prejudice or hatred against Islam and Muslims in America.

“These groups have access to $119 million in order to promote their Islamophobic ideas,” Usman said.

“We have seen a correlation between that $119 million that has been raised and the introduction of 78 bills designed to vilify Islamic religious practices that were introduced in the legislatures of 32 states between 2011 and ABOVE: Yuba City townsmen build their community’s first mosque. RIGHT: Filmmaker David Washburn.

2013.”

As portions of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the gued that lawyers should not be allowed to CIA’s detention program under the Bush set ethics standards. “It is not right that we administration after 9/11 became public, have allowed the institutions of law to dethe subject of waterboarding was also dis- termine what torture means,” she stated. cussed.

Rita Maran, a professor of international Tragedy of Burned Mosque Brings law at the University of California at Berke- Community Together ley for 20 years, and a founding member of David Washburn’s independent film “An Human Rights Advocates, pointed out how American Mosque” is the heart-breaklegislators misinterpret the Convention ing—and heart-warming—account of the Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman building of the Yuba City Muslim commuor Degrading Treatment or Punishment. nity’s first mosque, its subsequent de“The politicians make the argument that wa- struction by an act of arson, and its eventerboarding is not exactly torture,” she said. tual rebuilding by a community united by “It doesn’t matter. The treaty also prohibits, the tragedy.

After raising $1.8 million to fund their ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’ equally. According to the dream project of building a mosque in a tratreaty, “waterboarding is equally illegal and ditional Islamic style, in 1994 the Muslims equally a criminal act, and under no circum- in Yuba City, a small northern California stances can any country that ratified it com- farming town, began the project. Longtime mit torture,” she explained. While under local resident Khalid Saeed donated five certain circumstances some rights might be acres of farmland that his grandfather had allowed to be suspended, “the right to be acquired in 1956. “It’s all God’s land and he protected against torture cannot be sus- gave it to us,” Saeed states in the film. “If we pended, curtailed, or lifted,” Maran argued. give him a part of it, that is not difficult at With respect to John Yoo’s infamous all.” Saeed’s roots in the area go back some “torture memos,” Maran referred to a let- five generations, when his family first came ter she received from Sen. Dianne Feinstein to the California agricultural town from Pak(D-CA), then-head of the Senate Intelli- istan in 1901.

On Aug. 31,1994, just a few months after gence Committee. “I believe the Yoo memos were seriously flawed,” Feinstein its completion, the 12,000-square-foot wrote, “that torture is illegal…and it vio- house of worship was set on fire by an arsonist shortly after evening prayers. lates U.S. and international law…”

Also referring to Yoo’s 131 pages of Shocked and devastated, the community memos, Sharon Adams of the National came together to rebuild.

Six years later, with a small amount of Lawyers Guild explained how laws are manipulated to serve and perpetuate systemic insurance money and funds raised by comviolence. As an example, she cited the munity members—Muslims, Christians, phrase “prolonged mental harm,” noting Jews, Sikhs and others who were brought that Yoo claimed, “There is no prolonged together by the tragedy—the townspeople mental harm in waterboarding.” Adams ar- rebuilt the masjid and Islamic center.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Arab Youths Host Winter Hafle

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Wallenberg High School students Eslah Alowdi, Almas Kaid, Mohamed Omar, Asma Ali, Hager Ali and Amat Ali hosted a Winter Treats & Arab Beats Hafle on Dec. 6 a t S a n F r a n c i s c o ’s SOMA Street Food Park.

Palestinian-American performance poet and human rights activist Remi Kanazi was one of several artists entertaining the crowd.

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Children perform traditional Yemeni dances at the Winter Treats & Arab Beats Hafle.

DJ Emancipacion, part of the San Francisco Bay Area dance scene for over 15 years, and the popular hip-hop artist Excentrik also performed.

The six teens initiated an Arab Awareness and Education campaign to dispel stereotypes and anti-Arab racism after receiving a grant from the Youth Empowerment Fund of San Francisco.

Through their website, <www.true arabs6.net>, the students are making their voices heard and hope to help other Arab youth who may feel marginalized.

The celebration was a youth-led project of the Arab Cultural and Community Center. ❑ 47

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MPAC Convention Focuses on Improving the Nation

Southern California Chronicle

MPAC Convention dinner speakers (l-r) Rais Bhuiyan, Salam Al-Marayati, Rep. Adam Schiff and Anand Giridharadas. ess than a month before his death (see

L“In Memoriam” on p. 71) Dr. Maher

Hathout, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), participated in a panel discussion at MPAC’s annual convention, which took place Dec. 13 at the Long Beach Convention Center. The greatly admired and now greatly missed community leader shared his insights on an important and timely topic, namely the “Crisis of ISIS: A Result of Failed Policies or Perverted Ideologies?”

This year’s convention theme, “America Deserves Better,” testified to the nation’s need for better policies and better civic participation from Muslim Americans, more than 800 of whom were in attendance.

The focus of the conference banquet was the book The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (Norton 2014), scheduled to be made into a major motion picture.

Keynote speakers were author Anand Giridharadas and the book’s inspiring subject, Rais Bhuiyan.

Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) eloquently introduced Bhuiyan, founder and president of World Without Hate, who Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.

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fought to prevent the execution of white supremacist Mark Stroman, who tried to kill him by shooting him in the face just three days after the 9/11 attacks.

Bhuiyan, whose organization aims to raise cross-cultural awareness of perpetrators and victims of hate crimes, immigrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh, where he was a pilot. He continued his education in computer sciences and engineering in New York and Dallas. In accepting his award, the peacemaker said his passion to save his would-be killer was generated by his faith.

“In Islam,” he stated, ”we’re instructed that saving one human life is the same as the entire mankind. Since I forgave him, all those principles encouraged me to go further, and stop his execution and save another human life.”

Giridharadas, a New York Times columnist, said he was fascinated by the juxtaposition of Bhuiyan and Stroman, and the white supremacist’s transformation. MPAC President Salam Al-Marayati interviewed the author, who regularly appears as an analyst on CNN, MSNBC and NPR.

Rabbi Leonard Beerman (1921-2014) A somber note was cast over the holiday moods of progressive Jews, Muslims and THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Christians in Southern California as word spread on Dec. 24 of the death of Rabbi Leonard Beerman, whose well-measured appeals for justice influenced the nation’s conscience for 60 years.

The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Beerman enlisted in the Marines in World War II and joined the Haganah in 1947 to fight in Israel’s war for independence. It was the latter experience that turned him into a lifelong pacifist and unwavering spokesman for a Palestinian state. In 1949 he became the founding rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple in posh Bel-Air, as well as an articulate voice for the African-American struggle for civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War and on behalf of underpaid workers.

During the Dec. 28 funeral service before an over-capacity audience in Leo Baeck Temple, the Rev. Dr. George Regas, retired rector of Pasadena’s famous All Saints Church, recalled how they spoke and marched together in movements to end the Vietnam War. Regas then named Beerman rabbi in residence at All Saints, where he became a favorite to deliver a guest sermon. Regas said Beerman became his best friend those many years ago.

STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR

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By Pat and Samir Twair

Rabbi Leonard Beerman and his wife, Joan.

As the dynamic duo became engaged in combatting Islamophobic attacks on Muslims in the community after 9/11, they joined forces with Dr. Maher Hathout of the Islamic Center of Southern California and often were referred to as the holy trinity of Los Angeles.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

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STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR

to the world economy, as wind and solar become prime energy resources.

Following the discussion,both speakers signed copies of their new books. Cole’s The New Arabs is available from AET’s Middle East Books and More. Cockburn, co-author of Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship, has written a novel, Baghdad Solitaire.

Sabeel Friends Convene

Truthdig speakers (l-r) Professor Juan Cole, moderator Robert Scheer and Leslie Cockburn.

Truthdig Panel “Monsters of Our Own Creation: America’s Role in Them” was the title of a Dec. 18 forum sponsored by Truthdig in the Santa Monica Women’s Club. Headline speakers were Prof. Juan Cole and veteran journalist Leslie Cockburn, with Truthdig editor-inchief Robert Scheer as moderator.

Middle East scholar and analyst Cole skillfully capsulized the past century of Iraq’s tortured history, starting with the monarchy Britain set up in Baghdad after World War I. Following the takeover of Saddam Hussain in 1979, The University of Michigan professor stated, Iraq declared war on Iran in 1980 and in 1990 inMARCH/APRIL 2015

vaded Kuwait. The U.S. then imposed crippling sanctions on Iraq that, Cole noted, resulted in the deaths of a half-million children.

In Afghanistan, Cole continued, the U.S. created al-Qaeda to defeat occupying Soviet troops. That, however, subsequently became the haven for Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attack on the U.S. Following George W. Bush’s revenge invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam, Cole explained how the U.S. brought about Shi’i rule through the disastrous decisions of the occupation authority to exclude participation of Ba’ath party members, the army and functionaries of the deposed Sunni government.

In the opinion of Cockburn, who described ISIS as the Arab mujahideen, the only force that can de- Tony Litwinko and his apartheid wall of Bethlehem. feat ISIS is the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).

Litwinko also reported on Israel’s pracScheer interjected with a query as to tice of putting Palestinian children into how Israel fits into the game of nations. military detention and abusing them.

Cole responded that there’s been a sea Rev. Darrel Meyers, who sustained a sechange in Israel since the 1990s: the Russ- vere heart attack in November, received a ian/Ukrainian immigrants and the Arab huge welcome.

Jews are steadfast right-wingers out to subvert whatever remains of the so-called New Mosque in Westminster peace process. Economically, trade is drop- The Dec. 12 opening of Alnoor Mosque ping with the European Union, leaving Is- in Westminster marked the presence of rael more isolated. As a result, he said, em- 200 masjids in Southern California. More igration figures are soaring. than 20 sheikhs were among the thouThe discussion concluded with Cole’s sand-plus guests who toured the elegant optimistic prediction that within 20 to 30 structure and enjoyed a spread of Arab years petroleum no longer will be critical cuisine. ❑ STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR

A eulogy speaker noted that the Beerman home was filled with books, music and family time around the piano with the three Beerman daughters. Days after his retirement in 1986, the rabbi’s first wife, Martha, died unexpectedly, after 41 years of marriage. Their union produced four surviving grandchildren.

Beerman’s influence and stature were international. In 2007, the Nation Institute asked him to present the Ron Ridenhour Courage Award to President Jimmy Carter.

His scathing criticism of Israeli policies which disregarded justice for the Palestinians therefore could not be discredited by the Israeli right wing.

In October of last year, more than a quarter-century after his retirement, Rabbi Beerman delivered the Yom Kippur sermon at Leo Baeck Temple. His statement that because of the Israeli military’s “callous” disregard, it had killed 500 Gazan children in its assaults months earlier on the defenseless coastal enclave was quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

A lifetime of searching could not answer Beerman’s question of whether God exists.

If He does, the rabbi now knows.

The Middle East Fellowship of Southern California has merged with Friends of Sabeel of Los Angeles and Orange Counties and convened Dec. 21 in Pasadena to share memories of visits made to Bethlehem, now struggling under Israeli military occupation.

An attention-stealer was a miniature Israeli apartheid wall made by Tony Litwinko, who photographed the illegal cement barricade dividing the holy city revered by Christians when he toured the site in 2011 and 2014. Litwinko painted his cardboard and Styrofoam creation a dreary gray and replicated graffiti (in English) on the walls. Watch towers were crafted by utilizing empty plastic hummus containers.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Despite New “Nationality Bill” Claims, Israel Is Not the “Nation-State” of American Jews Israel andJudaism

By Allan C. Brownfeld n November, a proposal for a basic law

Ititled “Israel, the Nation-State of the

Jewish People” passed in the Israeli Cabinet by a vote of 14-6, with two centrist coalition parties opposing it. For the bill to become law it must be approved by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

There is much opposition to this proposed legislation by those who argue that it would make Israel’s non-Jewish citizens— 20 percent of the population—less than equal. In fact, of course, Israel’s Palestinians already are second-class citizens. Ahmed Tibi, a veteran Arab member of the Knesset, says that there has long been tension between the halves of the term “Jewish democracy,” as Israel likes to define itself.

He notes that the proposed legislation simply “confirms that the Jewish and democratic state is fiction.” He described Israel instead as a “Judocracy” that would never recognize the collective rights of “a minority that has long suffered discrimination.”

The claim that Israel is the “nationstate” of “the Jewish people” is on its face fanciful and far from the truth. The “nation-state” of American Jews is the United States, not Israel, just as the “nation-state” of British Jews is the United Kingdom and the “nation-state” of French Jews is France, etc.

The Zionist notion that Israel is the Jewish “homeland,” and that all Jews living outside of Israel are in “exile” is an ideological construct which has no relationship to reality. The overwhelming majority of American Jews, for example, have always believed that Judaism is a religion of universal values, not a nationality, and that rather than being in “exile” in America, they are fully at home. This view has been expressed repeatedly in our history. In 1841, at the dedication ceremony of Temple Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, Rabbi Gustav Poznanski declared, “This country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple.”

Sadly, the Israeli government has never recognized that Jewish Americans were not “Israelis in exile.” Prime Minister 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.

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Binyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly called upon American Jews to make a “mass aliyah” (immigration) to Israel. No other foreign government argues that millions of Americans—because of their religion—are in “exile” in the United States and that their real “homeland”—or “nationstate”—is that foreign country.

ven the limited E democracy which Israel now enjoys is under serious threat.

When it comes to Israel itself, the proposed Nationality Law makes clear that even the limited democracy which Israel now enjoys is under serious threat. As a Nov. 25 New York Times editorial entitled “Israel Narrows Its Democracy” states: “Since its founding in 1948, Israel’s very existence and promise...has been based on the ideal of democracy for all its people. Its Declaration of Independence, which provides the guiding principles for the state, makes clear that the country was established as a homeland for the Jews and guarantees ‘complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.’ That is why it is heartbreaking to see the Israeli cabinet approve a contentious bill that would officially define Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, reserving ‘national rights’ only for Jews...To go back and emphasize nationality and religion in defining the country...runs counter to the long-term movement among liberal democracies toward a more inclusive vision of a state...Having experienced the grievous legacies created when a government diminishes the rights of its people, we know this is not the path that Israel should take.”

Prof. Juan Cole of the University of Michigan argues that, “Saying Israel is a ‘Jewish’ state in the sense of race would be analogous to insisting that the U.S. is a ‘white’ state and defining Latinos as ‘brown.’ And saying it is a Jewish state in the sense of observant believers would be like asserting that the U.S. is a Christian state even though about 22 percent of the population does not identify as Christian (roughly the same proportion as non-Jews in Israel)...Netanyahu’s demand is either THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

racist or fundamentalist and is objectionable from an American point of view on human rights grounds either way.”

Among other things, this legislation would relegate Arabic from an official language to one with a “special status.” Avinoam Bar-Yosef, president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, said that any distortion of the balance between Israel’s Jewish and democratic character “may stain Israel in the eyes of the free world and distance diaspora Jews...”

Israel has no constitution. Instead, its constitutional character consists of basic laws, judgments and the Declaration of Independence of 1948, which enshrines the right of the Jewish people to their own sovereign state and also pledges to “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens.”

“A Slap in the Face” Hebrew University professor Rabah Halabi called the nationality bill, which contributed to the collapse of Israel’s coalition government, “a slap in the face” to nonJewish Israelis. Many Jewish Israelis agree.

Journalist Sarabeth Lukin, writing in the Nov. 27 issue of Washington Jewish Week, declares that, “The bill upends the concept of Israel as ‘a Jewish and democratic state’ and downgrades democracy to a secondary status. It declares that Israel is, first and foremost, ‘the nation-state of the Jewish people,’ providing all of Israel’s 8 million citizens with the vague promise that they will be afforded ‘personal rights in accordance with every law.’ The proposed law also declares that only the Jewish people enjoy the right to national self-determination and that housing can be determined by religion or nationality. And if Jewish law, Halacha, takes precedence over civil law in both legal and legislative proceedings, as some scholars interpret the bill, Israel will find itself in the company of other theocratic Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran...”

Many American Jewish supporters of Israel are concerned about its retreat from democracy. In a Dec. 5 editoral, The Forward stated: “The test of a genuine democracy, or at least a nation that aspires to be one, is how it protects the rights of those with a skin color, faith tradition, cultural background, political party or language preference different from the majority. Are MARCH/APRIL 2015

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those in the minority to be full citizens?

Are they treated equally by the law and its enforcers? Is their difference considered a welcome attribute or an obstacle to inclusion?...The absence of constitutionally protected rights for minorities in Israel doesn’t only endanger Muslims or Christians or Druze. It also oppresses secular or non-Orthodox Jews forced to comply with the enshrined religious monopoly of the Orthodox—who, while the minority in terms of population, exercise majority power in matters of conversion, marriage and, thanks to the Law of Return, citizenship...Israel can act in far more productive ways to ensure its eternal Jewish character than by enacting this law.”

It is time to come to grips with the reality that while Israel repeatedly claims to be both a “Jewish” and “democratic” state, the reality is far different. For Jews who are not Orthodox, Israel is a theocracy in which Reform and Conservative rabbis have no right to perform weddings, funerals or conversions. Israel is far more similar in this regard to Saudi Arabia and Iran than to Denmark or France.

For non-Jews, the idea of Israel as a “democracy” contradicts reality. Omar Barghouti, the Palestinian human rights activist, points out that, “Not even theoretically are Palestinian citizens of Israel given

full rights, with or without this new law.

Israel already has more than 50 laws that discriminate against its Palestinian Arab citizens in every domain, according to the human rights organization Adalah. The U.S. Department of State has criticized Israel for its system of ‘institutional, legal and societal discrimination’ against them...Israel does not recognize a civic Israeli nationality, lest that avail equal rights, at least theoretically, to all its citizens, and undermine its ‘ethnocratic’ identity.”

If Israel has any hope for a peaceful future, it must content itself with being the state of all its citizens and abandon the myth that it is the “nation-state” of Jews who are citizens of other countries. Beyond this, making a false god of a sovereign state is not Judaism, but idolatry. Thus, Israel is not only not a genuine democracy, but it is in violation of the basic principles of Judaism itself.

Prior to the mid-20th century, Zionism was rejected by the overwhelming majority of Jews who lived in the U.S., Western Europe and all countries where they enjoyed equal citizenship. In 1929, Orthodox Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamarat wrote that the very notion of a sovereign Jewish state as a spiritual center was “a contradiction to Judaism’s ultimate purpose.” He wrote: “Judaism at root is not some religious con-

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centration which can be localized or situated in a single territory. Neither is Judaism a ‘nationality,’ in the sense of modern nationalism...No, Judaism is Torah, ethics and exaltation of spirit...it cannot be reduced to the confines of any particular territory. For as Scripture said of Torah, ‘Its measure is greater than the earth.’” ❑

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MARCH/APRIL 2015

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST

Sunday Business Post, Dublin

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Der Standard, Vienna

The Dominion Post, Wellington

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The Khaleej Times, Dubai

The New York Times Syndicate, New York

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore

MARCH/APRIL 2015

OPM_53-54_Other People's Mail 1/28/15 11:00 AM Page 53

With House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to address Congress, there can be no lingering doubts as to Israel’s stranglehold on the legislative branch of the U.S. government.

And what has that gained for us other than endless war?

Cliff Homesley, Mooresville, NC

Netanyahu a Threat to Peace To the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 23, 2015 When are we going to stop witnessing self-serving and dangerous politics being played at the expense of our peace and security?

It is reprehensible that House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-OH) and Netanyahu have arranged a speech before Congress soon to denounce Iran and undermine diplomatic efforts by President Obama to build Mideast peace.

This is an insult to the United States and it hampers efforts to use diplomacy with Iran for peace.

Lillian Laskin, Los Angeles, CA

‘Braying Chorus’ in Congress

Cuba Today, Iran Tomorrow?

To The Fresno Bee, Jan. 25, 2015 “Outrageous” describes Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s unpatriotic breach of protocol in inviting Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress to attack U.S. negotiations with Iran, in effect putting Israel’s interests above those of the U.S. Rarely are foreign leaders honored with such opportunities. This makes Prime Minister Netanyahu’s third appearance. His last address to Congress in 2011 was accurately described by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as follows: “It is unlikely that any other [head of state] has ever attempted to sell them such a pile of propaganda and prevarication, such hypocrisy and sanctimony,” “filled with lies on top of lies,” “apparently there is no end to hypocrisy,” and “last night we saw that Americans will buy anything, or at least their applauding legislators will.”

In 2011 our legislators resembled nothing so much as a chorus of braying donkeys, as they leaped to their feet time after time to applaud “lies heaped upon lies.” I have no doubt that Prime Minister Netanyahu will serve the same dish as in 2011, and the braying chorus will react in the same manner.

John Freitas, Fresno, CA

To The Dallas Morning News, Jan. 1, 2015 Re: “U.S. mission in Havana to be upgraded to embassy—‘This is a pretty powerful symbol by our president,’ former chief of mission says,” Sunday news story.

Rapprochement with Cuba is a well-deserved feather in President Obama’s cap.

Ending a failed 50-year-old policy not only provides a security gain for the U.S., it is a humanitarian gesture toward a neighbor that was long overdue.

But the benefits of improved U.S.-Cuban relations are limited and will not be felt beyond the two nations involved. If the president would like to transform world politics as decisively as, say, the U.S.-China détente in 1972, he should boldly pursue reconciliation with Iran, which sits in the middle of the world’s most volatile region and shares many security interests with the United States. Based on a deal that prohibits Iran from becoming nuclear armed, the two nations could cooperate to curb violence and fight terrorism. Iran’s influence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria’s civil war can’t be overstated.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s plans to visit Havana will raise the curtains on a long-awaited phase in U.S. foreign policy.

Followed, hopefully, by the main act, a trip to Tehran in 2015! Turning two former enemies of the United States into friends would be a fitting legacy for President Obama.

Hadi Jawad, Dallas, TX

Israeli Stranglehold Brings War To The Charlotte Observer, Jan. 26, 2015 MARCH/APRIL 2015

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

U.S. Support for Israel at U.N. To the San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 2, 2015 Regarding “U.N. rejects Palestinian resolution to end occupation,” Dec. 31: It is hard to understand how the Obama administration could justify voting against a deadline for ending the occupation on the grounds that “peace must come from hard compromises that occur at the negotiating table,” as U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power put it. The deadline did not preclude negotiations, which have been taking place for over 20 years. What a deadline would do is force Israel to stop using negotiations as a fig leaf for what it most wants to do—continue creating facts on the ground that will make it impossible to negotiate a fair solution.

Esther Riley, Fairfax, CA

Robbing the Palestinians To the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 6, 2015 The Palestinians have applied to join the International Criminal Court to accuse Israel of committing war crimes against them. Israel’s response: a vigorous legal defense? No. It is to take money that belongs to the Palestinians.

What part of “war crimes” does Israel not understand?

Erica Hahn, Monrovia, CA

Wrong to Blame Palestinians To The New York Times, Jan. 1, 2015 You are wrong to blame the Palestinians for moving to join the International Criminal Court. Instead, you should ask why the United States voted and lobbied against a resolution to set a deadline to establish a Palestinian state and end the occupation— even though the United States says it supports a Palestinian state and ending the occupation.

In fact, President Mahmoud Abbas says the Palestinian Authority was pushed to join the ICC because all other efforts to birth a Palestinian state alongside Israel and to end the occupation have been stymied

by Israel and the United States. The Times, and the United States, should support the Palestinian effort for justice, even if it upsets Israel.

Jeff Warner, Los Angeles, CA The writer is the action coordinator for L.A. Jews for Peace.

Israel Self-Destructing To The News Press [of Fort Myers], Dec. 16, 2014 News from Israel is usually met with a chorus of “I stand by Israel” letters, those that take Israel’s side on every issue.

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OPM_53-54_Other People's Mail 1/28/15 11:00 AM Page 54

The Knesset recently drafted a bill that would give Jewish people preferred status in the country, rolling back the guarantee to treat every citizen equally and making a significant move from democracy and toward becoming another dogmatic religious Middle Eastern state. The Israel that I have visited a dozen times is a diverse country, from the deeply religious communities with strict traditions to the throbbing night life of Tel Aviv.

The blind and unwavering support of this chorus doesn’t support Israel as a diverse culture, but supports the nationalist right wing, and Netanyahu as their hero.

Now, Netanyahu is getting rid of coalition partners who voice a more inclusive and moderate view and is charging a path toward intolerance and isolation, all with this chorus shouting his praises. The chorus has already shown that it will blindly support Netanyahu when thousands of innocent people die. How many innocent deaths will it take? Ten of thousands? Millions? The chorus will lead Israel down the path toward destruction with an unfailing hand faster than any missile can.

Bill Veach, Fort Myers Beach, FL

Reasons for Closing Gitmo To The Denver Post, Jan. 18, 2015 The exorbitant cost of maintaining the prison at Guantanamo Bay should be sufficient to expedite its closing, but your editorial overlooks two even more important reasons why the prison should be closed.

Its existence has been a rallying call for recruitment of terrorists and militants worldwide since 9/11. Furthermore, the

prison and the treatment of prisoners are an affront to the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law and international treaties.

Mary D. Poole, Denver, CO

American Support for Torture To The Chippewa Herald, Dec. 23, 2014

In a recent Pew poll on whether the CIA was justified in interrogation methods used on suspected terrorist prisoners held at Guantanamo, 56 percent of Americans said “yes.”

I find this troublesome. Can torture of foreign prisoners be what my fellow Americans believe our country stands for?

Despite denials by the CIA, it’s likely that no useful information was obtained from CIA torture methods. I understand some prisoners now suffer permanent brain damage. Probably all that was accomplished was future revenge for American prisoners in Mideast countries, or worse, for insurgents to justify military bombings on American shores. Instigators of CIA actions certainly did not contribute to a safer America.

The survey further states that, of the 56 percent approving of CIA torture, 73 percent of Republicans vs. 43 percent of Democrats believe the interrogations prevented further attacks on the U.S. I admire Republican Sen. John McCain for denouncing what the CIA did as a violation of American values.

We need many more elected political mavericks, at all levels of government, who will legislate according to the wishes and needs of their constitutes and to what I hope Americans stand for, rather than to directives from either party’s leadership and their mega-rich “sugar daddies.”

Calvin E. Kraemer, Chippewa Falls, WI

Time to Rethink Militarism To The Plain Dealer, Jan. 8, 2015 When the U.S., by meddling in other people’s cultures, gets involved in war unconstitutionally, it’s like giving a blank check to the military that invites deficit spending. None of us will escape the end result of constantly living on the credit card. The hate, revenge and terrorists we have generated by placing military bases all over the world are from our own arrogant actions.

We are now reaping what we have sown for generations. Winston Churchill once said, “The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.” Hopefully our new Con54

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

gress will change our old failed militaristic foreign policy.

Pete Penn, Sheffield Village, OH

U.S. War and Iraq’s Christians To The Sacramento Bee, Dec. 31, 2014 Re: “Is this the end of Christians in Iraq?” Being a Christian Arab of Chaldean descent, I agree completely with the Detroit-based Chaldean Bishop Francis Kalabat that the plight of Christians in present Iraq is the result of the American-led invasion. I lived in Baghdad the first 22 years [of my life], and as far as I remember the Christian minority was treated with respect and admiration. Christians were never discriminated against and had the opportunity to excel in all aspects of life just like the rest of Iraqis.

All of this began to slowly disappear and [was] replaced with acts of hatred and violence as U.S. interference increased. The United States’ occupation produced a sick sectarian society where fanatics and their hate crimes against Christians and other Iraqis thrive.

Samira al-Qazzaz, Carmichael, CA

Syrian Refugee Resettlement To The New York Times, Jan. 11, 2015 It comes as no surprise that Lebanon is imposing visa restrictions on Syrian refugees. With the highest per capita ratio of refugees in the world, Lebanon’s population of about 4.4 million has already increased by more than 25 percent since the Syrian crisis began four years ago.

How can Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq possibly be expected to absorb more than three million refugees while more prosperous countries in the Middle East— including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates—are still keeping their doors closed to Syrian refugees? With the exception of a few countries like Germany and Sweden, the majority of Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia have failed to accept any significant numbers of Syrian refugees.

The frail economies of the Levant are stressed by this large influx of refugees, resulting in state measures that seemingly protect the host populations. Furthermore, Lebanon has to contend with a delicate sectarian structure, which could ignite the region if further destabilized. A truly global effort is needed to alleviate the biggest humanitarian calamity of the 21st century.

Josyann Abisaab, Satchit Balsari and Kathleen Hamill, Boston, MA The writers are researchers at Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. ❑ MARCH/APRIL 2015

holy_land_principles_55_Holy Land Principles Advertisement 1/28/15 2:15 PM Page 55

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activisms_56-67r2_March/April 2015 Activisms 1/29/15 8:16 AM Page 56

Arab American Activism Arab America Launch

[DAVID PHOTO COURTESY RAY’S PHOTOGRAPHY] [GROUT PHOTO STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY]

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

Arab America announced the launching of a new television channel and the rebranding of its digital website on Jan. 15 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. More than 300 guests joined Arab America president Warren David and his wife, Dr. Amal David, to celebrate the event.

David began his presentation by describing the Internet as the greatest invention of our lifetime. Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users, and television took 13 years to reach that number of viewers. There were only 5 million Internet users in 1994 and nearly 12 million by the following year.

Today there are nearly 3 billion users.

Downloads of iPod apps hit 1 billion in only 9 months. The new Arab America will take advantage of this digital media trend and use the web, social media, radio and television to reach viewers and listeners.

Warren David introduces Arab America (top) and Jennifer Grout (above).

56

David showed clips from TV, films, textbooks and cartoons denigrating Arabs and Arab Americans. He established Arab America to provide an accurate image, he said, humanize Arabs and counterbalance negative images and stereotypes. After all, Arab Americans have made significant contributions to their country in the fields of education, science, business, entertainment, sports, music (L-r)Ambassador of Kuwait Salem al-Sabah, Ambassador Dr. Mohammed Al Sharif, Nick J. Rahall, Ambassador of and in every facet of U.S. sociEgypt Mohamed Tawfik and Andrew Gelfuso, vice president ety and culture. of the Ronald Reagan Building.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s about time for us to take control of our nar- Arab Americans and dignitaries celebrating rative, and tell our story,” said David. Arab the community’s contributions to America.

America will “empower the new generation The Arab American National Museum in of Arab Americans.”

Dearborn, Michigan loaned posters docuDavid introduced the Arab America web- menting the Arab immigrant story and the site and stated that weekly Arab America E- impact on U.S. culture, including business, News reaches 100,000 subscribers—making arts, sports and diplomacy. it possibly the largest Arab-American e-mail Ambassador of Kuwait Salem Abdullah data base in the U.S. Al-Jaber al-Sabah, current president of the The new Arab America Television is a 24- council of Arab Ambassadors in Washinghour web-based linear channel streaming in ton, said “You’re lucky to be of Arab origin North America via the web, a new app, and and lucky to be American citizens.” He said Roku. It can be accessed on smart devices he has traveled to many cities in America through Arab America’s new app for An- meeting Arab-American business leaders, droid and iPhone mobile devices, Google doctors, cab drivers and sandwich sellers, TV, and Apple TV. Arab America will and they are all proud of their heritage. stream educational and cultural content Speaking on behalf of Secretary of State about the Arab world and Arab Americans. John Kerry, Richard Stengel, under secretary It will include award-winning documen- for public diplomacy and public affairs, said taries, feature films, comedy and music.

Americans used to look at their country as a The audience then got a big treat when melting pot, but he prefers the image of a recent “Arab Voice” and “Arabs Got Talent” gorgeous mosaic in which citizens are atcontestant Jennifer Grout, a non-Arab from tached to their old culture and America at Cambridge, MA, walked on stage to sing the same time. Stengel encouraged more classical Arabic music, followed by songs Arab Americans to run for public office. from Fairouz and Najah Salam. That perforRetired Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-WV) mance by a non-Arabic-speaking 24-year- agreed with Stengel, joking that when he old seemed to be a harbinger of things to was elected in 1976 he became the dean of come, showing that when Americans are Arab Americans in Congress, and “we used exposed to accurate Arab culture instead of to have our meetings in a phone booth.” clumsy stereotypes, they are enchanted and The evening continued with a fascinating want to learn more. For more information preview from a soon-to-be-released film “A visit <www.arabamerica.com>.

Thousand and One Journeys: The Arab—Delinda C. Hanley Americans,” produced by Abe Kasbo.

The evening concluded with performances by Lubana Al Quntar, the first SyrDiplomatic Doings ian opera singer, and Kaylee Boalt, an American soprano who works for the National Arab American Day Celebration Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.

—Delinda C. Hanley Ambassador Dr. Mohammed AlHussaini Al Sharif, chief representative of the League of Arab States in Washington, DC, welcomed Scholarly Symposium Looks at hundreds of guests to the third Annual Oman in the 21st Century Arab American Day on Dec. 14, 2014. The The Ministry of Information and the EmRonald Reagan Building’s atrium filled with bassy of the Sultanate of Oman held a scholTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Speakers and Omani delegates pose for a group photo after lunch. arly symposium on Dec. 3 at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, DC. Master of ceremonies Dr. Thomas Mattair, executive director of the Middle East Policy Council, welcomed guests and described the deep-rooted friendship between the U.S. and Oman before introducing Hunaina Sultan Ahmed Al Mughairy, Oman’s ambassador to the U.S. since 2005. She said she hoped the audience would enjoy the day ahead, learning about the history and culture, geopolitics and economic development of her country.

During his remarks, Oman’s Minister of Information Dr. Abdulmun’em bin Mansour al-Hassani mentioned that in Oman there was a simultaneous conference focusing on the 1840 voyage to New York of the Sultana ship carrying the Sultan’s envoy Ahmad ibn Na’aman, who came offering gifts and important diplomatic ties for U.S. President Martin Van Buren.

Dr. Fahad Ahmad Bishara, a professor of history at the College of William and Mary, moderated the historical panel. University of Wisconsin anthropology professor Jonathan Kenoyer described archeological findings of Omani shells in Pakistan, evidence that Oman already was part of a busy trade network in 7,000 BC. Dr. Valerie Hoffman, a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discussed Ibadi Islam, the dominant sect in Oman and Zanzibar.

The Ibadi faith is distinct from Sunni and Shi’i, she explained, emphasizing good deeds and special rituals. Believers are both tolerant and cordial to non-Ibadi Muslims and others, and they are urged not to put up with bad governance. There is no public promotion of the Ibadi faith, Dr. Hoffman added, nor is there sectarian teaching in Omani schools. Omanis pride themselves on warm interfaith relations, and Hindus and Christians are free to practice their faiths and build houses of worship.

Dr. William Zimmerle, a visiting professor and Fulbright scholar at Dhofar University, described Oman’s unique clay frankincense burners, and the potters who learned their MARCH/APRIL 2015

skills from their grandmothers in the Dhofar region of southern Oman.

Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, moderated a lively panel on geopolitics. Frederick Community College professor Linda Funsch described the rapid improvements in health care and education that took place after Sultan Qaboos took the reins from his father, Said bin Taimur, in 1970. Today Oman is building medical cities, she marvelled: ”It’s a miracle renaissance.”

Dr. Abdullah Baabood from Qatar University described Oman’s good relations with Iran—which has been a valuable trading partner—and its vital efforts to resolve disputes and push for co-existence in a tough region.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. began his keynote address explaining the importance of U.S. elections. Our policy choices have “implications and consequences” for the rest of the world, noted the former ambassador to China and 2012 presidential candidate. The world is now challenged by non-state actors who commit terror or cyber attacks, he said. Every community used to have a town square where people came to meet, exchange ideas and talk with their neighbors, he recalled. Now the world is full of “cul-de-sacs and alleyways” and communities get information that feeds their own biases, he lamented.

Describing the ties between our two “seafaring, tolerant” nations, Huntsman predicted that the best is yet to come. Oman should be a major tourist destination and continue its current outreach to think tanks and universities. Oman has kept a low profile in vital mediation efforts with Iran, and Huntsman urged Muscat to continue to play a bridge-building role in the Middle East.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Muslim American Activism CAIR Calls for More Respect The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) held a press conference on Jan. 14 at THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Nihad Awad calls for unity in the face of violence. the Muslim civil rights organization’s Capitol Hill headquarters in Washington, DC to offer a reaction to the publication earlier that day of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in France featuring a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad on the cover.

CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said he and other Muslim leaders around the world condemned the attack on the French weekly magazine staff by extremists claiming to be Muslims. “Islam does not condone taking innocent lives,” Awad said. “Just as Charlie Hebdo has the right to publish, we have the right to peacefully challenge negative portrayals of our religious figures,” he added. “The answer to speech one disagrees with should not be violence, but should instead be more speech promoting tolerance and mutual understanding.”

CAIR offices and Islamic centers around the country have received a spike in hate messages since the Paris attack. “Don’t let extremists set the agenda,” Awad urged.

“Terrorists will win if we start to talk at each other instead of with each other,” he argued, calling for peaceful coexistence and more respect for diversity of religion and culture.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Muslim Charities Having Fun and Doing Good American Third Pillar Charities and Islamic Relief USA volunteers teamed up with the District of Columbia government on Nov. 25 to purchase, package and distribute more than 1,000 Thanksgiving turkeys for Ward 7 neighbors in need. Many of those same hardworking volunteers gathered on Dec. 12 at DC Central Kitchen to prepare tasty biscuits and nutritious vegetables. DC Central Kitchen recycles donated food and trains unemployed adults (and eager volunteers!) for culinary careers as they serve up healthy meals for the needy. Muslim Amer57

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Activists Urge Repatriation for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

On International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, 2014, Mauri’ Saalakhan, director of the Peace Thru Justice Foundation, convened a panel discussion at the National Press Club to examine the plight of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuro-scientist who is serving an 86-year sentence after being convicted of attempted murder of FBI agents, U.S. soldiers and interpreters in Ghazni, Afghanistan, during her interrogation. Saalakhan said Siddiqui is being held in abominable conditions in FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, TX. A Pakistani consular officer, Saadia Qazi, traveled from Houston to Carswell on Nov. 19 to facilitate a telephone call between Dr. Siddiqui and her family in Karachi, Pakistan. Her family has been unable to speak with her for months. Saalakhan told re-

Music & Arts Westmoreland Hosts Palestinian Violinist/Composer Aburedwan

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Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ in Bethesda, MD hosted several important educational events to get people to pause and learn about the Holy Land during the Christmas rush. The church held a special screening of the documentary “Just Play,” directed by Dimitri Chimenti on Nov. 30. The film is about Al Kamandjati music schools, created in refugee camps in Palestine and Lebanon.

One of the founders of Al Kamandjati, Palestinian violist Ramzi Aburedwan, spoke about the schools and answered questions after the screening.

Born in Bethlehem in 1979, Aburedwan grew up in the Al’ Amari refugee camp in Ramallah.

A photograph of 8-year-old Aburedwan throwing a stone at an Israeli tank became an iconic image of the first intifada, and was featured on the cover of the December 1988 issue of the Washington Report. At age 16 Aburedwan participated in a music workshop that changed his life. From 1996 to 1998 he studied at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Mauri’ Saalakhan describes the plight of Dr. Aafia Sid- Ramallah. In 1998 he received a diqui and urges solutions. scholarship to study viola at the 58

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porters that the consular official never saw the face of the prisoner “said to be Dr. Aafia Siddiqui” who was “uncooperative.” The incident raises questions about Siddiqui’s physical and psychological well-being.

Saalakhan called for an independent medical team, including her sister, a practicing physician in Karachi to evaluate the prisoner. He also urged repatriation of Siddiqui, who has already Islamic Relief’s Said Durrah (l) gets down to making served 11 years and should biscuits after entertaining his fellow volunteers with a serve the remainder of her “Wolfgang Arab!!” skit. sentence in Pakistan.

Dr. Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, president of icans enjoyed giving back to their commuthe Minaret of Freedom Institute, said Sidnity and working for a better DC. —Delinda C. Hanley diqui is no longer articulate and needs medical treatment. “We are supposed to be the good guys...what would we say if an AmerHuman Rights ican woman was treated this way?”

—Delinda C. Hanley

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Ramzi Aburedwan, 8 (top), on the cover of the Dec. 1988 Washington Report, now (above r), a world-class musician with Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez.

National Regional Conservatory of Angers, France until 2005. He returned home to lead the Palestine National Ensemble of Arabic Music and start Al Kamandjati, to bring music education to Palestinian children in refugee camps and villages. “Through music, you can make from negative energy, positive energy,” Aburedwan says, “and that’s what I do.”

On Dec. 6, the Westmoreland Festival Choir, orchestra and soloists presented the world premiere of “The Imaginary City,” a five-movement cantata composed by the church’s gifted musical director, Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez. “The Imaginary City” is inspired by Aburedwan’s life story. The concert also featured a deeply moving “Imagine Reimagined,” Aburedwan’s interpretation of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and “Sodfa” (“Coincidence”), Aburedwan’s concerto for buzuk and orchestra.

As the standing-room-only crowd filed out of the sanctuary for a reception, listeners praised the Westmoreland musicians and Aburedwan’s performance, and wished MARCH/APRIL 2015

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al-Assad has committed crimes against humanity and war crimes. Definitive proof, he stated, lies in the more than 55,000 authenticated photographs of prisoners being tortured and killed by the regime released by “Caesar,” a government employee who defected. The real challenge, Crane said, will be collecting not the evidence, but the political will to press charges.

Aside from the Assad regime, a large number of actors in Syria likely are also guilty of crimes against humanity, he added, calling the situation on the ground a “bloodbath.” As the world decides how to pursue justice and reconciliation in Syria, Crane stressed the importance of consulting the Syrian people. “We always Waging Peace have to ask ourselves: what do the Syrian people want? Is the justice we seek the jusThe Political, Humanitarian and Legal tice they want?”

Dynamics of the Syrian Conflict According to George Sabra of the Syrian Democratic People’s Party and the Syrian National Council, many Syrians feel abandoned by the outside world.

Reciting the number of people who have been killed, displaced, imprisoned and rendered homeless, he called on the international community to show a greater commitment to ending the conflict.

American University George Sabra (l) and Jennifer Daskal discuss the legal and Washington College of humanitarian consequences of the Syrian war.

Law professor Jennifer The New America Foundation and Arizona Daskal discussed the legality of the current State University held a daylong conference U.S. anti-ISIS operation in Syria. Internain Washington, DC on Jan. 15 to discuss tional law, she noted, prohibits outside Syria’s ongoing civil war, which is entering military intervention without the consent of Syria. Furthermore, she pointed out, no its fourth year.

Speaking on the “Atrocities, Interna- Security Council resolution authorizing tional Law and Accountability” panel, force has been approved, and the U.S. can’t Megan Price of the Human Rights Data claim it is intervening on national security Analysis Group said it will likely be many grounds, as administration officials have years until those responsible for commit- stated that the Syrian civil war does not ting human rights violations in Syria are pose a direct threat to the American homeheld accountable under the law. Histori- land. What the administration does argue, cally, she noted, accountability measures she said, is that the operation is necessary for such conflicts have been implemented because neither the Syrian nor Iraqi govslowly. As an example, she pointed to ernments are willing or able to defend their Guatemala, where those who organized the country from extremists.

At home, Daskal noted, President Barack genocide of the early 1980s are only now Obama is operating without a congresbeing brought to justice.

Syracuse University School of Law pro- sional declaration of war, as previous Aufessor David Crane, who served as chief thorizations for Use of Military Force prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra (AUMFs) passed under the George W. Bush Leone when it indicted then-President of administration to enter Afghanistan and Liberia Charles Taylor for war crimes, said Iraq are out of date. As Congress and the there is no question Syrian President Bashar White House work on a new AUMF,

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they could tour North America. They hoped that with the March 2015 release of Sandy Tolan’s Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land, Aburedwan would go a multi-city U.S. tour.

From Dec. 5 to 7, including during the concert’s intermission, Folk Art Mavens held a sale of exquisite handcrafted Palestinian embroidery, ceramics, glass, jewelry and olive wood made by women’s cooperatives or family-owned businesses. Concertgoers went out into a frigid rain filled with hope—imagining all the people living life in peace and the world living as one, to paraphrase Lennon. —Delinda C. Hanley

MARCH/APRIL 2015

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Daskal suggests the document be missionspecific and time-restricted in order to prevent executive abuse.

Hannah Allam of McClatchy Newspapers opened the panel on “Media Portrayal of the Crisis” by arguing that the Obama administration’s unclear Syria policy is often mirrored in coverage of the conflict. For instance, she noted, media outlets were too slow to characterize the conflict as a civil war and initially downplayed the human rights abuses being committed by opposition forces.

Allam praised those journalists who remain in Syria at great risk to their wellbeing. In particular, she commended “Syrian citizen journalists who do [their work] at great risk, and sadly these days, with little exposure.”

Most coverage of the conflict, however, comes from journalists based in Beirut or Turkey who rely on second-hand sources, such as activists and citizen journalists, for their information, Allam said. As the situation in the country continues to devolve, these sources become less reliable, she cautioned, given their increased propensity to exaggerate information in an effort to heighten international concern.

New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker said the lack of American media attention on Syria, coupled with the absence of American troops on the ground, has put less pressure on the administration to develop a cogent Syria strategy. As a result, he described U.S. policy on Syria as “being written on the fly” and changing constantly in order to reflect what Washington’s political elite want to hear.

Washington Post associate editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran noted that the Obama administration has not been transparent about its military activities in Syria. For example, he said, the press has not been permitted to witness the American military training of so-called Syrian moderates.

Media were frequently invited to observe similar activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, he pointed out. He believes this discrepancy can likely be attributed to the administration’s doubts about the efficacy of its Syria strategy.

Syrian journalist Honey Al Sayed lamented the “simplistic” manner in which the Syrian conflict is often presented to the American people. By describing the civil war as a confrontation between two warring groups, the media amplifies the importance of ISIS by presenting it as one of two sides Syrians have to choose between, she said. This, she added, “dehumanizes 59

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Former U.S. Department of Defense Anathe Syrian issue” and diminishes the dilyst Oubai Shahbandar expressed concern versity of the country’s citizens. More atthat refugee camps are “a perfect storm for tention should be paid to the more than radicalization in the future.” He also called 2,000 nonviolent movements operating Assad the root cause of the conflict and arwithin Syria, she stressed. gued that more needs to be done to hold In his keynote address, former U.S. his regime accountable for the ongoing criAmbassador to Syria Robert Ford exsis. pressed pessimism that a resolution to the An emotional Farah Atassi of the Naconflict will be reached any time soon. In tional Syrian Women’s Association said the many parts of the country, he said, “modSyrian people are “living an ongoing erates” have been eclipsed by ISIS and the nightmare for a crime they did not comal-Qaeda-backed al-Nusra Front and are inmit.” Humanitarian assistance and refugee creasingly losing territory. Meanwhile, the camps, while necessary, must not become U.S. bombing campaign has been largely a permanent reality, she cautioned. Likenineffective, he noted, as ISIS has gained ing humanitarian aid to giving a person territory since the mission was launched.

Ambassador Robert Ford is pessimistic with cancer a painkiller, Atassi stressed the “The regime at the same time is tiring” about Syria’s future. importance of a solution to the and running out of resources, conflict that will allow disFord said, adding that rumors placed Syrians to return home. have been circulating that the Speaking on the panel asking government may be willing to “What Can Be Done?” Jim allow some form of self-rule for Zogby, president of the Arab areas under opposition control.

American Institute, said it was However, he doubts that the inevitable that the Syrian civil Assad regime is willing to make war would morph into a regenuine concessions or would gional proxy conflict. Saudi actually supply the opposition Arabia and Iran, he explained, with the resources it would both believe defeat in Syria need to administer its territories. would be an existential threat to Ford, who resigned his post their interests. Zogby also quesbecause he believed the U.S. tioned those who argue that the should have done more to help the rebels, dismissed two myths Aaron Y. Zelin (l) and Jim Zogby, address the topic “What Can Be U.S. could have tipped the scales of the war by providing more surrounding the Syrian conflict. Done?” weapons to the opposition. Any First, he said, many in the “moderate opposition” see Assad, not ISIS, false information.” The government’s top increase in U.S. support, he said, would as their number one enemy. Thus, it’s a priority is to get as much aid into Syria as have likely been met with increased Russmyth to believe the moderate opposition possible and to keep the borders of neigh- ian and Iranian support for the Assad would be willing to work with Assad to boring countries open to refugees. The lat- regime.

Zogby called on the Saudis and the Iradefeat ISIS. Second, Ford urged rebels to ter is a difficult request, she acknowldissuade themselves of the notion that edged, as Jordan and Lebanon are cur- nians to reach some kind of rapprochement in order to calm the strife in Syria. He also Washington will tolerate their cooperation rently overwhelmed with refugees.

Clements said the U.S. has agreed to stressed the importance of all sides inwith the Nusra Front. “I think the days of us looking the other way are finished,” he grant asylum to more Syrian refugees. Due volved in the fighting dropping their fansaid. “The opposition is going to need to to security concerns, only 300 of the 3.2 tasies of victory and negotiating a compromillion Syrian refugees have thus far been mise. The Lebanese civil war, he added, distinguish itself from the Nusra Front.”

In the medium term, it will be difficult permitted to enter the U.S. “Those num- serves as evidence that there is no military for the various Syrian factions to sit down bers will be increasing substantially,” she solution to the crisis.

According to New America research feland negotiate, Ford believes. However, he pledged, noting that the U.S. has received said, the U.S. should find a way to deepen 10,000 referrals from the United Nations low Barak Barfi, it’s not clear that there are talks with other major international actors High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). any moderates for the U.S. to cooperate Alexandra Brosnan of the International with, describing the American initiative to involved in the conflict, such as Russia, Rescue Committee said a clear assessment build an opposition force “unrealistic.” In Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Kelly Clements of the State Department’s must be done of the needs of the countries order for Assad to be defeated, he will Bureau of Population, Refugees and Mi- hosting Syrian refugees. She also stressed have to loose the support of the urban gration began the “Regional Humanitar- that Western countries must increase the elite, Barfi added. He also emphasized the ian Crisis and Policy Responses” panel number of refugees they receive. Mean- importance of direct U.S.-Iran talks regardby outlining the U.S. government’s re- while, David Kilcullen of Caerus Global So- ing the situation in Syria.

Thomas O. Melia, deputy assistant secsponse to the crisis. Washington has pro- lutions noted that humanitarian assistance vided more than $3 billion in humanitar- has become politicized, as various actors retary of state in the Bureau of Democracy, ian aid to Syrians, she said, but “to say this have used food, water and fuel to punish Human Rights and Labor, said the U.S. cannot bomb its way into a solution in is enough would be providing you with or reward populations.

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Panel Explores the New Challenges Facing Islamist Movements As authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East collapsed in 2011, Islamist groups such as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia’s Ennahda filled the political void. Fours years later, however, these Islamists find themselves out of power and their brand damaged by the rise of ISIS. To explore the issues confronting these groups, George Washington University’s Project on Middle East Political Science held an event in Washington, DC on Jan. 22 titled “New Challenges for Islamist Movements.”

Brigham Young University professor Quinn Mecham began by asking a somewhat provocative question: is ISIS a rebel group or, as it claims, an actual state? In his opinion, ISIS lacks some—but not all—of the six characteristics attributed to states.

According to Mecham, ISIS scores fairly well on the first key characteristic of a state—the ability to acquire taxes and labor. The group receives ample money from foreign donors, he noted, but also is able to bring in a significant amount of revenue by imposing taxes on the population it controls. The group also has been able to attract and retain many fighters, he pointed out.

When it comes to the second characteristic—the ability to define and regulate citizenship—ISIS does not perform as well, Mecham said. Though the group claims sovereignty over all Muslims worldwide, most Muslims strongly oppose the group, he noted, and those who live under ISIScontrolled areas have not received documents such as passports.

ISIS also is doing a poor job with the third characteristic—the ability to manage international relations—Mecham said, as the “Islamic State” is not recognized by MARCH/APRIL 2015

any countries. However, ISIS does challenge outside states and is able to attract international business for its oil.

Mecham gave ISIS a better score on the fourth characteristic, domestic security. Though the group metes out harsh punishments, there is rel- (L-r) Monica Marks, Khalil al-Anani and Raphael Lefevre asative calm in the areas it sess the challenges facing Islamist groups in the Middle East. controls as long as indiIn Tunisia, said Oxford University providuals follow the law, he said. But security is extremely bleak for those who don’t fessor Monica Marks, Ennahda feels threataccept ISIS theology, such as Shi’i Muslims ened by groups such as ISIS. Individuals around the world, she added, increasingly or Christians.

ISIS is able to provide the fifth criteria— see no difference between moderate groups social services—relatively well, according such as Ennahda and ISIS. Marks pointed out that Ennahda has to Mecham, who said the group provides decent infrastructure, food supplies, water long maintained that Islam should not be and free social services such as health care. forced on individuals. Instead, she said, it But it remains to be seen, he cautioned, if believes its role is to encourage people to embrace Islam of their own volition and ISIS can sustain these services.

The sixth and final category—economic thus help create a more just society.

Radical Islam became a problem for Engrowth—is not a strong point for ISIS, according to Mecham. While the group has nahda when Salafist groups began carrying established a central bank, it has not out acts of violence in the country, Marks shown it is capable of creating markets and noted. Because Ennahda was in control of the government at the time, Marks said, regulating public goods.

ISIS appears to be “on a trajectory to- many accused it of being weak on terrorward increasing stateliness,” Mecham con- ism. The reality, she said, was that Encluded. This should concern policymakers, nahda thought that sending Salafists he said, as a strong state-resembling ISIS (whom they believed became radicalized because of the repressive, anti-Islamist will be difficult to degrade and destroy.

Raphael Lefevre of the University of policies of President Zine El Abidine Ben Cambridge argued that extremism is grow- Ali) to prison would only deepen their rading in Lebanon, where, he said, this can be icalization. Thus, the group favored a attributed to rising sectarianism caused by socio-economic approach to confronting Sunni resentment of Hezbollah. Sunnis feel extremism.

This strategy ultimately failed, Marks marginalized politically and economically

by Hezbollah, he explained, and disap- observed, as Ennahda was forced to abanprove of the group’s military operation in don its soft approach in favor of force due Syria. He pointed out that 94 percent of to mounting public criticism and pressure.

—Dale Sprusansky Sunnis oppose Hezbollah’s pro-Assad military operations within Syria, while 90 Snapshot of Today’s Middle East percent of Shi’i support these activities.

According to Johns Hopkins University The Middle East Institute and the Arab professor Khalil al-Anani, the Muslim American Institute held a panel discussion Brotherhood is fighting for its survival in on Dec. 18 at the Carnegie Endowment in Egypt. In the face of growing repression, Washington, DC about a poll titled “Today’s he said, the group is struggling to maintain Middle East: Pressures and Challenges,” reits unity, and fissures within the group are leased by Zogby Research Services. James beginning to emerge. For instance, some Zogby (AAI president, Zogby Research Sermembers of the group (particularly the vices), Jon Alterman (Center for Strategic youth) believe tactical violence should be and International Studies) and Paul Salem used as a mechanism to combat repression, (The Middle East Institute) discussed the he noted. Such dire opinions are being poll results and the implications for U.S. polformed because many in the group do not icy in the region in a conversation modersee themselves immersed in a political ated by Maya Berry (AAI). Visit MEI’s exstruggle, but rather as the victims of a state cellent Web site to watch that discussion war on Islam, he said. <www.mei.edu>.

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Syria. He also dismissed calls for the U.S. to take military action against Assad. “People want us to go to war with the Assad regime. That’s not going to happen,” he said. Any sustainable solution to the conflict must come from the Syrian people themselves, he concluded.

Aaron Y. Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said airstrikes alone will not be enough to defeat ISIS. At the same time, he cautioned, a ground war would be “disastrous” and likely lead to a larger regional war. He also stated that jihadists operating in the country are not looking to make compromises or engage in any kind of diplomacy.

—Dale Sprusansky

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(L-r) Jon Alterman, Paul Salem, James Zogby and Maya Berry discuss attitudes toward ISIS. The survey of more than 7,500 adults, conducted in eight Middle East and North African countries in November 2014, looked at regional attitudes on the emergence of ISIS, the role of the Muslim Brotherhood, the growth of sectarianism, the future of Syria and Iraq and Iran’s nuclear program. Similar polling took place in 2011, 2012 and 2013 so the new data reflects changing attitudes.

People were asked if ISIS poses a threat to the region and their own country. Respondents in Iran, Turkey and Iraq said that ISIS poses a great threat to both. Egyptians and Emiraties agree that ISIS poses a threat to the region but they’re divided as to whether ISIS threatens their own country. Jordanians and Lebanese don’t see ISIS as a threat to the region, but they are concerned by the danger it poses to their own countries.

Saudi Arabians aren’t very concerned by the threat from ISIS to the region or their country.

A key finding is that despite deep regional antipathy toward ISIS, there is popular opposition to any Western-led intervention and extremely low support for U.S. policies—two factors which may become a significant challenge to the efficacy of the current U.S.-led military campaign against the group.

Download and examine the results of the poll at <www.zogbyresearchservices.com>.

—Delinda C. Hanley

level necessary to defeat ISIS,” compared to 39 percent who believe the U.S. “should stay out of the conflict with ISIS.” However, a majority of respondents—57 percent—indicated their opposition to sending U.S. ground troops to Iraq if airstrikes alone cannot defeat ISIS. Furthermore, 78 percent of those polled said they believe the U.S. cannot permanently defeat ISIS. In sum, then, Americans think something ought to be done to counter ISIS, but oppose the deployment of U.S. ground troops and are skeptical that any military plan can actually obliterate ISIS. In Telhami’s opinion, these results demonstrate that Americans are not willing to enter a potentially dangerous and prolonged battle in order to defeat ISIS. “That is really the principal reason for public reluctance to commit more…they think we’re going to be dragged into an indefinite war,” he said.

The pollster opined that support for a ground war against ISIS would likely decrease if President Barack Obama were to actually announce or publicly propose such

More Turbulence Ahead for the Middle East in 2015?

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Poll Reveals Americans Have Mixed Feelings Regarding Anti-ISIS War A poll released at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC on Jan. 8 by University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami revealed that Americans have conflicting views about the U.S. campaign to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the terrorist group known as ISIS, or Da’ish.

On the one hand, the poll—which was conducted in mid-November—suggests that Americans are prepared to enter another war in the Middle East. Indeed, 57 percent of Americans expressed their belief that the U.S. “must intervene at the

an operation. This, Telhami explained, is because people tend to become more cautious when vague suggestions of war become firm proposals for intervention.

Telhami also noted that the poll revealed a partisan divide: a majority of Republicans—53 percent—favor the deployment of ground forces, while just 36 percent of Democrats share such a view. The poll also found that 22 percent of Republicans believe Muslims support ISIS, while 6 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Independents share that opinion.

Those who support Israel are also more likely to support a ground invasion, the poll found, as 61 percent of Americans who lean toward Israel believe the U.S. should use ground forces against ISIS if airstrikes fail.

—Dale Sprusansky

Prof. Shibley Telhami notes that Americans are unwilling to send ground troops into Iraq to combat ISIS. THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

After a tumultuous 2014, the political, humanitarian and security crises plaguing the Middle East are poised to worsen in 2015.

This was the view shared by four speakers at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC who participated in a Jan. 20 discussion titled “A Year of Crisis: The Middle East in 2015.”

Wilson Center distinguished scholar Robin Wright outlined some of the biggest issues facing the region: the return of authoritarianism in Egypt, the descent of Libya into a civil war, the failing health of Algeria’s long-time President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Tunisia’s tenuous democratic transition and battle with extremism, ISIS’ continued threat to the territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria, the millions of refugees overwhelming Jordan and Lebanon, Yemen’s collapse into chaos, and Saudi Arabia’s royal transition. (One might add to the list the declining health of Oman’s Sultan Qaboos, the looming Iranian nuclear decision, and the ever-real possibility of renewed violence in Gaza or the outbreak of an intifada in the West Bank.)

Focusing specifically on ISIS, Wright warned that the militant group is bigger, bolder and holds more territory than alQaeda did at any point in its history, and is believed to have a fighting force of 18,000 individuals, a third of them foreigners.

Despite the ongoing U.S.-led air campaign against ISIS, the group has been able to expand its territory, Wright pointed out.

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Sisi’s idyllic vision of restoring the glory of the Egyptian state is likely untenable and incompatible with the desires of many segments of the population, particularly the revolutionary youth, Ottaway said.

Nonetheless, while unrest remains in Egypt—particularly among labor unions—she believes another revolution is unlikely, as Sisi has learned from Robin Wright (l) and Shaul Bakhash discuss the role of his predecessors and taken measures to safeguard himself ISIS and Iran in the Middle East. against a mass uprising.

Chief Middle East correspondent for the cities such as Aleppo. She described such a strategy as being akin to an army fervently Economist Max Rodenbeck outlined issues fighting to defend Toledo but ignoring facing the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, New York City.

According to Wright, the U.S. plan to Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman.

The recent decline in oil prices will train a 5,000-member “moderate” fighting force to combat both ISIS and the regime likely not have a major impact on the GCC, of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is he said, as member countries have access to “rather naïve” and unlikely to make a sig- trillions of dollars in sovereign assets. nificant difference. She also expressed con- Saudi Arabia and its regional allies likely cern that the Shi’i and Kurdish militias allowed oil prices to fall in order to infighting ISIS in Iraq will be unwilling to crease long-term demand for the product cede power to the Iraqi army if and when and hinder the growing appetite for nonoil energy sources, he opined. The fact that it is capable of exercising power.

Finally, Wright warned that the human- lower oil prices hurt Russia, Iran and the itarian crisis created by the Syrian civil U.S. shale industry are simply side benewar (half of all Syrians are either refugees fits, Rodenbeck added.

Addressing royal succession in Saudi or internally displaced) is “just not tenable on a long-term basis.” Refugees increas- Arabia, Rodenbeck expressed little coningly are facing threats to their lives, cern, noting that the country has been able homes and businesses from disgruntled to govern itself well through prior transilocal populations in Jordan, Lebanon and tions. And while the newly crowned 79year-old King Salman is believed to be in Turkey, she noted.

Wilson Center senior scholar Marina Ot- poor health, Rodenbeck pointed out that taway offered a bleak assessment of Egypt, the country did not struggle under the saying that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, leadership of King Abdullah and King who led the 2013 coup that overthrew Mo- Fahd when they were ill. Nonetheless, he hamed Morsi, has “very draconian control pointed out, the country has a number of over the country” and oversees a govern- issues that must be addressed, such as ment that is vastly more oppressive than youth unemployment and the state’s relathe pre-2011 status quo. In order to main- tionship with Wahhabi Islam.

Rodenbeck was similarly optimistic that tain his firm grip on power, she said, Sisi has closed most avenues of political and Oman will experience a smooth transition, civic participation by banning street observing that the citizens of the Sultanate protests, criminalizing the Muslim Brother- are surprisingly unconcerned about who will follow Qaboos, who has ruled the hood, and targeting NGOs. Ottaway believes the hype surrounding country since 1970 and has been receiving the January 2011 revolution and Morsi’s medical treatment in Germany since July.

2012 election was overblown. The military While no succession plans have been anwas always in control, she noted, and ini- nounced, Rodenbeck noted that Oman tially facilitated the revolution and allowed “has a small elite which is quite capable.”

Qatar, which flexed its muscles for sevthe democratic process to take place because it believed members of the old regime eral years by allying itself with the Muslim would be elected. After this strategy failed, Brotherhood in Egypt (a move that defied the military decided in 2013 that it needed the UAE and Saudi Arabia), has begun to to regain firm control over the country’s tame its regional policy, Rodenbeck noted.

On the other hand, he said, the UAE has politics and forced Morsi’s ouster.

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

become more aggressive regionally, as demonstrated by its strong financial support of Egypt and its participation in air strikes in Libya.

Across the Gulf, George Mason University professor Shaul Bakhash said, “Iran is at a crossroads” as it weighs the future of its international relations, economy and revolution.

Regarding the nuclear issue, Bakhash said President Hassan Rouhani is deeply invested in a successful outcome to talks with the P5+1. Iran’s conservative camp, however, remains concerned that a bad deal will be negotiated and is ideologically uncomfortable with the Islamic Republic’s openness to striking a deal with the West.

Economically, Iran continues to be hampered by international sanctions and is also struggling to cope with falling oil prices, Bakhash noted, adding that large segments of the population remain dependent on government handouts and government jobs.

Within the region, Iran remains a thorn in the side of Israel and the Arab Gulf states due to its support for the Assad regime, Hezbollah, Hamas and Yemen’s increasingly powerful Houthis, Bakhash said. “These entanglements are reaching a dangerous level,” he cautioned, questioning how much longer Tehran can continue to pour billions of dollars into conflicts beyond its borders. At the same time, he noted, Iran and the U.S. coalition have been indirectly cooperating in the battle against ISIS. —Dale Sprusansky

Sisi Is Egypt’s Newest Pharaoh, But Is He Setting Himself Up to Fail?

Thanassis Cambanis, a correspondent for The Atlantic and author of the recently published Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story, appeared at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC on Jan. 23 to provide an assessment of Egypt’s political landscape.

In the years before Egypt’s January 2011 revolution, the country’s political activists had “incredibly low expectations” and thought their ability to force change was minimal, Cambanis noted. The uprising “turned a lot of these assumptions on their head,” he said, and refuted the notion that individual courage and action cannot produce political change.

Tahrir Square protesters were unified not by their shared political views, but by their frustration with the humiliating policies of President Hosni Mubarak’s government, Cambanis said. Once Mubarak was ousted, he explained, revolutionary unity gave way to post-revolutionary political 63

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the ways of old. Actors continue to the transport and distribution of that revoice dissent, Cambanis pointed source. Operation Dignity (an anti-Islamist out, and are developing a political military campaign) attacked a tanker in strategy they plan to deploy once Port Derna, an Islamist stronghold. This the Sisi regime begins to teeter. warplane bombing came a week after the This is not to say that Egypt will political Islamist group Libya Dawn atbe a democracy any time soon, he tacked an oil terminal in Sidra occupied by clarified, but rather that the coun- Dignity forces—who enjoy the backing of try will not passively acquiesce in the Libyan House of Representatives obedience to Sisi.

(HOR).

During the question-and-answer The international community continues session, Cambanis offered a harsh to recognize the HOR as Libya’s sovereign assessment of U.S. policy toward body, despite the fact that the Libyan Egypt, saying Washington has in- Supreme Court deemed it illegitimate in Thanassis Cambanis believes the Sisi regime’s re- coherently managed the Arab November 2014.

Spring and shown it has no clear “The House of Representatives was pressive policies are unsustainable.

Egypt policy. This muddled ap- elected by less than 15 percent of the fissures caused by a clash of egos and ide- proach, he added, has resulted in everyone Libyan electorate, it controls a small fracfrom the generals to the Muslim Brother- tion of Libya’s territory, it lacks represenologies.

In particular, the Islamist-secular divide hood to the young revolutionaries feeling tation from key ethnic and regional groups who either boycotted the elections or now destroyed the cohesiveness of the revolu- betrayed by the U.S. At the same time, Cambanis stressed that boycott the body, and it holds its sessions tionary camp, Cambanis said. This is somewhat unfortunate, he said, as the bickering even the most coherent of U.S. policies without its own legally mandated quogroups were never able to unify around would not have brought democracy to rum,” said Pack, who believes the U.S. and their many shared goals, such as the need Egypt. The U.S. is not, as it sometimes mis- others should no longer support the HOR for police reform and civilian control over takenly believes, in the driver’s seat in or any other warring group in the country.

Cairo, he pointed out.

“We’re dealing with thugs on both sides,” the military.

As an example, he recalled Secretary of he said.

Ultimately, the Muslim Brotherhood In Pack’s view, the goal of the internaemerged as the strongest opposition group, State Hillary Clinton’s 2011 visit to Cairo, even though it did not represent the ma- during which she was rebuffed by revolu- tional community should be to drain all jority of revolutionaries. According to tionary youth leaders. Clinton did not un- warring factions of external support from Cambanis, this is because the group was derstand that the young Egyptians did not regional actors supplying money and arms. vastly more organized than its rivals and want the U.S. interfering in Egyptian af- Currently Turkey and Qatar fund Libya had the ability to negotiate with the state. fairs, Cambanis said. The U.S. government Dawn, and Egypt and the United Arab The Muslim Brotherhood’s triumph was and civil society organizations (such as the Emirates support Operation Dignity.

Pack recommended building upon existshort lived, of course, as after one year in International Republican Institute and the power Mohamed Morsi was removed from National Democratic Institute) meddling in ing U.N. sanctions and a statement by the office in a coup d’état led by then-general Egyptian affairs often undermines the EU that it “stands ready to implement reand now President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. wishes and agency of the Egyptian people, strictive measures against those fueling vi—Dale Sprusansky olence in Libya.”

This blow to the revolution was hardly he concluded.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the UAE surprising, Cambanis said. While the David Mack cautioned that any internaBrotherhood and other opposition groups Oil and Political Chaos in Libya displayed naïveté and tactical stupidity, At a Jan. 7 panel organized by the Middle tional military action in Libya would be they also were simply outgunned by the East Institute in Washington, DC, Jason only as successful as the commitment of country’s powerful military, which used Pack of Cambridge University character- leading actors such as the U.S. Given the the courts and security forces to regain ized fighting between secular and Islamist relative American disinterest in becoming power. forces in Libya not as a religious conflict, more involved in the country, Mack does While Sisi appears to have consolidated but as a matter of “oil, money and greed.” not expect a significant international milipower, Cambanis cautioned that his govAccording to Karim Mezran, a senior fel- tary effort in Libya. ernment is not immune from mass unrest. low at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik “The current order is not as stable as it Hariri Center for the Middle East, may appear at first glance,” he said, adding the conflict also is rooted in two difthat he believes Sisi is struggling to artic- fering visions for the country that ulate a new political vision for Egypt and emerged out of the February 2011 is already beginning to see his cult of per- revolution: one that calls for purgsonality diminish. ing elements of the old regime and If Sisi believes he can restore Egypt to another that allows bureaucrats the pre-2011 status quo without pushback from the regime of deposed leader from citizens, he is mistaken, in Cambanis’ Muammar Qaddafi to continue to opinion. The government may once again play a role in politics. resemble the previous order, he noted, but With oil on their minds, each side the people of Egypt have not readapted to has targeted infrastructure key to Karim Mezran (l) and Ambassador David Mack.

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each consideration,” said Pedde durThe U.S. must be modest about what ing the question-and-answer period. it could do to assist the country, the “I can’t give you a percentage of ambassador stressed. “The worst whether I think a deal will come.” thing would be for the U.S. to promise Robin Wright of the U.S. Institute more than it can deliver,” he cauof Peace said a nuclear deal would tioned. provide a joint plan of action that In the midst of the ongoing conflict, would limit the stockpile of nuclear Mezran emphasized the need to imagweapons and extend the non-proliferine a future in Libya that would give ation treaty between the two counweight to local power while building a national identity. Pack said a Libyan Robin Wright (l) and Paul Pillar describe the political tries.

Without a deal, Pillar warned, the Magna Carta is needed—an agreement situation in Iran.

Iranians remain suspicious of the politi- failed diplomatic efforts of Rouhani and that guarantees each Libyan a percentage of the country’s oil wealth. “This would cal process in the U.S. as well, Pedde con- President Barack Obama will mean a retransform oil from a driver of conflict into tinued. “Iranians don’t trust the U.S. ma- turn to rigidity in U.S.-Iran relations. Even a driver of human development,” he said. chine,” he said. “They believe Obama has with a nuclear deal, Pillar said, Iran and —Kimya Hedayat-Zadeh good intentions, but they don’t trust the the U.S. “won’t be getting into bed,” but would gradually find more converging inpolitical apparatus.”

A Nuclear Deal With Iran?

Paul Pillar, who worked for the Central terests in the Middle East, especially in opWhen it comes to nuclear talks with Iran, Intelligence Agency and has since joined posing ISIS, Taliban and jihadi groups.

—Kimya Hedayat-Zadeh said speakers at Georgetown University’s Luers at The Iran Project, noted that even Mortara Center on Jan. 14 and at the Wil- if an agreement is reached between Iran son Center in Washington, DC the follow- and the P5+1, the U.S. House or Senate Media Development in Afghanistan ing day, the U.S. does not take domestic might block it.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors “It’s the U.S. that Iran is truly negotiat- (BBG) and Gallup reported the results of politics in the Islamic Republic or generational differences among the populace into ing with,” Pillar said, noting that in lieu of their August 2014 survey on media develan agreement, ideally by the end of June, opment and use in Afghanistan at a Jan. 15 due consideration.

According to former Ambassador Bill another wave of sanctions on Iran is likely. event at BBG headquarters in Washington, “This would actually be to the benefit of DC. BBG encompasses all U.S. civilian inLuers, speaking at Georgetown, “When you go to a senator, and many talk po- hardliners in Iran,” said Luers. “It will take ternational broadcasting, including the litely—[with] a couple of exceptions—the many years for the Iranian economy to re- Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio answers you get [about the possibility of a cover, and hardliners can say, ‘See, Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio and TV nuclear deal] are, ‘Why trust these people? Rouhani did not deliver his promise to im- Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting They killed Americans in Iraq. They want prove the economy.’”

Networks Radio Sawa and Alhurra Televi“We perceive the president [of Iran] as sion. to destroy Israel.’” Luers is director of the Iran Project, an NGO that seeks to improve this charismatic figure who has the power Television for the first time has surofficial contacts between the U.S. and Iran. to do what he likes,” said Pedde. “That is passed radio as the main platform used in Nicola Pedde, director of the Institute for naïve. The president in Iran is one branch Afghanistan, the survey found. “ViewerGlobal Studies in Rome, said the political of power.” ship rates are particularly high in the The most powerful branch of govern- northern part of Afghanistan, where the situation in Iran has evolved to such an extent that the Islamic Republic no longer ment in Iran consists of one man, Supreme electricity supply is more reliable, and exists ideologically among politicians or Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The third drop off in the south, where we see more branch—or “the noise,” as Pedde de- Taliban activity,” said Paul Tibbitts, directhe electorate at large.

“The events of 2009 came as a shock to scribed them—are Iran’s Revolutionary tor of market insight and evaluation at the inner circle of the Islamic Republic,” Guards.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Luers further reminded the Georgetown said Pedde, referring to Green Revolution The demographics most likely to watch protesters who alleged that election fraud audience that negotiations are not only a TV are Afghan men, especially in urban had led to a second term for President matter of politics and diplomacy, but also areas, and those with a post-secondary edMahmoud Ahmadinejad, blocking the require technical expertise, the more moderate candidate, Mir-Hossein lack of which may delay a nuclear deal. The agreement must Mousavi.

The bloody aftermath of the 2009 elec- address such details as the nutions caused Iran’s Supreme Leader to take clear facility’s design, rules for popular opinion into greater consideration, plutonium plants and the numparticularly with respect to a nuclear deal. ber of centrifuges allowed. Un“They want a nuclear deal,” said Pedde like purely diplomatic agreeof an Iranian electorate wishing to improve ments, these and other technical the country’s image abroad and avoid fur- provisions require diplomats to ther sanctions. “The Leader is supporting have a very specific expertise, dialogue but telling the Iranian people Luers explained.

“No one really knows how Mohamed Younis (l) and Bruce Sherman discuss a reclearly that, ‘I don’t trust the Americans, likely a deal is or the weight of cent survey on media use in Afghanistan. but I will support your position.’”

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formation reaching community members without access to media platforms from those who enjoy access.

In addition to the limiting factors of poverty and instability, especially in the western region of Afghanistan most vulnerable to the Taliban, is the country’s literacy rate, at 32 percent in 2011, according to the World Bank. More literacy programs are now available to Afghan children as well as adults, a USAID representative added, but little statistical data is available from public or private organizations.

The BBG will host a panel on media development in Iraq on March 19.

—Kimya Hedayat-Zadeh

Occupied Palestine: How Should the Black Church Respond?

“It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of how we should respond,” insisted Dean Alton B. Pollard III in his opening remarks at the groundbreaking half-day symposium titled “Occupied Palestine: How Should the Black Church Respond?” “The occupying powers in the Middle East are what we need to continue to address,” he stated at the Nov. 17 event, held at the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC, and co-sponsored by the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference and Kairos USA. By “occupying powers,” the dean of Howard’s School of Divinity meant primarily the State of Israel, and by “we” he meant the African-American church in the United States. His words seemed to signal a “declaration of independence” in the black American church—a departure from its traditional alliance with the mainline, pro-Israel Jewish-American community, coupled with a rising sense of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Ironically, this new sense of solidarity with the Palestinians and their struggle for human rights and liberation from oppression was being encouraged by a Jewish American, Dr. Mark Braverman, one of the three principal speakers.

Dr. Braverman is the author of two important books challenging the “let Israel do whatever it wants” mind-set that has dominated American Christian attitudes for the last two generations: Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews, and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land, and a work released last year titled A Wall in Jerusalem: Hope, Healing, and the Struggle for Justice in Israel and Palestine (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More).

Braverman also is the executive director of Kairos USA, a movement to unify and mobilize U.S. Christians to take a prophetic THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

PHOTOS COURTESY PLANET VOX

ucation. A few channels are more popular among women viewers, including Lemar TV, which features news and informational programs, and Tolo TV, which broadcasts a women’s live morning show with a segment of advice from a doctor.

Short-wave radio continues to be the main platform used, and the BBG produces the Persian broadcasts of Voice of America.

Other programs are broadcast in Dari, the Afghan Persian language spoken by the Tajik and Hazara ethnic groups, and in Pashto.

Three in ten Afghans interviewed have access to a mobile phone, a ratio the BBG considers remarkable, given that the country had only 60,000 active phone lines in 2002.

Internet use is low, at 4 percent for the population overall. Afghans with a postsecondary education use Internet most often as a daily news source, on par with friends and family (at 19 percent), behind television (49 percent) and radio (45 percent) and ahead of SMS (4 percent) and social media (2 percent).

Social media use has not risen overall or even among youth in a region whose neighbors use it as a means of engagement and interaction. While Middle East nations have a robust media environment, Afghanistan’s bleaker circumstances explain the slow development of several platforms there.

When Afghans were asked to rate their daily lives on a 10-point scale, one being the worst, the average rating was 3.1, according to Gallup, which studies human nature and behavior as economic indicators. Those surveyed also tended to be pessimistic about the future, which they predicted rising very minimally to a 3.7 rating.

According to Mohamed Younis, a senior analyst at Gallup, the youth demographic generally is more likely to have an optimistic outlook, but according to this survey Afghan youth did not feel hopeful.

Younis noted that the survey was taken following Afghanistan’s presidential elections, which led to accusations of fraud and violence before candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani reached a power-sharing agreement.

“When you see life evaluation assessments as dismal as what we see in Afghanistan, coupled with the anticipated withdrawal of NATO forces and a murky political roadmap, it is quite concerning for all of us following events in the country closely,” said Younis.

Despite this, Younis described as a positive finding the “multiplier effect” of in-

TOP: Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright. ABOVE: Rev. Carolyn L. Boyd. stance for peace in Israel and Palestine. Declaring his own independence from his pro-Israel Zionist upbringing, Dr. Braverman told his audience that the Jews who emigrated to Israel as refugees or as idealists determined to build a democratic free society have seen their dream hijacked by a racist, colonial settler project. His presentation concluded with a challenge: “It’s time for justice!”

Next to speak was Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, one of the co-founders of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference and pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a predominantly African-American congregation with a rich history of social justice activism stretching back to the civil rights movement. Addressing the audience of some 220 mostly African-American clergy, divinity school professors, pastors and social justice advocates, Reverend Wright advised that “[t]he black church should respond carefully” to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. “The people of Israel in sacred scripture and the State of Israel today are not the same,” he pointed out. Reverend Wright urged his listeners to read Braverman’s books as well as books by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, especially The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine; MARCH/APRIL 2015

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terest in Palestine began on his first visit to the Middle East in the 1960s, when he was in the U.S. Navy, but that on his second visit to the region in 2011 he met British anti-Zionist author Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer, who shared with him this pithy anecdote: “There are three cookies in the Holy Land jar—land, Zionism and democracy.” Dr. Sizer went on to explain that when Israel reached into this “cookie jar” it could pull out only two of these desirable entities, never all three. Bishop Williams described this parable as a teaching tool others can use in churches.

Rev. Carolyn L. Boyd, a member of the ministerial staff at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC, provided a compelling ending to the day. “This is such a passionate issue for me,” Reverend Boyd said, having visited Palestine four times. She has developed “a bigger, deeper and more inclusive view,” she said—describing it as a process “when everything you knew is in question.”

“Like me,” Reverend Boyd said, “the Palestinians fight each day not to give into” the oppression and discrimination they encounter. Boyd compared the oppression experienced by Palestinians to the “marginalization” that she asserted is still experienced day after day by black men and women in the United States. “Today we need bold new leadership,” she concluded. “We need a movement that no longer maintains the status quo. We must do something—we must find something to do. The Palestinians need us now. We are a moral voice—blacks, whites, Jews and Gentiles together.”

—Paul H. Verduin and Delinda C. Hanley

From Selma to Ferguson to Gaza To Now!

to Ferguson protesters. She read a deeply moving poem, a cry for justice and peace.

Plymouth’s Rev. Ronya-Lee Anderson offered a prayer for leaders, asking that God give them a conscience, touch them in the middle of the night and urge them to answer a call for greatness.

US Campaign co-chair Felicia Eaves reminded worshippers that the outrage in Ferguson followed on the heels of Israel’s worst Gaza incursion. She said that a Palestinian contingent marched in solidarity in Ferguson. “There are deep connections between black and brown lives,” Eaves said, adding that “we have to eliminate racial oppression.”

Senior minister Rev. Grayland Hagler said he met Jasiri X, a Pittsburgh hip hop artist and social justice activist, on a trip to Gaza.

Jasiri X said he is changing hip hop’s “bad rap” one rhyme at a time. Jasiri X’s friends urged him not to go to Palestine, worried that he could suffer an economic backlash that would affect his career. But he went, and couldn’t believe the level of oppression until he saw it with his own eyes.

Jasiri X described witnessing the forced eviction of an East Jerusalem family. “Israeli soldiers aren’t movers,” he said. “They were just throwing stuff down.” In Hebron Palestinians are living under conditions worse than death, he added.

When a tank approached their group of Americans he noticed Reverend Hagler wouldn’t move out of the way, but kept walking down the street. “I had to stand with my brother. I’m with you,” he said to Reverend Hagler.

“It’s always young folks who have led the way,” Hagler said. He called for people to embrace the movement for justice and act.

“If you want to keep your government job and can’t be out there, find another way to support us,” Hagler concluded.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC held a special service to honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday on Sunday, Jan. 18. Poet Zeina Azzam told the congregation that in the words of Dr. King, it was time to “pull down the gigantic mountains of evil” from Selma to Ferguson to Gaza. She drew parallels between U.S. and Israeli military and police excesses, pointing out that it is no coincidence that the St. Louis County police chief had trained in Israel or that Gazans tweeted teargas tips Jasiri X describes his recent trip to Palestine.

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

former President Jimmy Carter’s Peace Not Apartheid; and Palestinian Christian pastor Mitri Raheb’s latest book, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes (all available from AET’s Middle East Books and More). He also recommended Jewish theologian Marc Ellis’s book Judaism Does Not Equal Israel and Arthur Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe.

Reminding the African-American audience of their own history of discrimination and oppression, Dr. Wright challenged them and other African Americans to stand “in solidarity with those who are suffering and have no home,” people such as the Palestinians, who are daily suffering physical abuse, the denial of their human rights, and the constant threat of home demolitions.

Those attending the morning program had already been sensitized to Palestinian suffering by the Power Point presentation and history lesson provided by Palestinian American Dr. Philip Farah. Dr. Farah’s revealing slide presentation included a sideby-side historical overview of the tragedy of a “shrinking Palestinian land” perpetrated

by Israeli policy since the U.N.’s nonbinding partition of historic Palestine in 1947 and Israel’s founding a few months later, in 1948.

During the 67-year period up to the present day, Palestinians have seen their landholdings in historic Palestine shrink from 94 percent in 1946, to a proposed 46 percent in 1947, to 22 percent in 1949, to about 8 percent today. In addition to this discouraging trend, “Israeli racism is becoming worse and worse,” the Jerusalem-born-and-raised Dr. Farah told the audience.

The morning concluded with a stimulating panel of four African-American clergy who had visited Palestine and Israel, and who shared their frank and candid views on the response that African-American Christians should have to Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestine. They discussed the worsening Israeli racism in the occupied territories as well as in Israel itself, where 20 percent of the population is Palestinian.

Rev. Diane Ford Dessables, who traveled to Palestine in 2006 with a group that included Dr. Braverman, shared her horror at the violence toward Palestinians she witnessed in Hebron. She praised the “best ice cream in the world” she tasted in Ramallah, and remarked that people “don’t look that different from us.”

Rev. Lucas Johnson told conferees, “We can do something: we can change the trajectory that Israel is on.” Bishop Donald DiXon Williams told listeners that his in-

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Books

Reviewed by Kevin A. Davis

The Lady From Tel Aviv

By Raba’I Al-Madhoun, Telegram Books, 2014, paperback, 254 pp. List: $12.95; MEB: $10.

Walid Dahman hasn’t been home in 38 years. As a young student, he traveled from his native Gaza to Cairo to study, and eventually made his way to London. After Israel’s 1967 occupation of Gaza, travel home became increasingly difficult. Since leaving, he has gotten married, had children, and become an author.

Finally, Walid decides to make the journey home. The Lady From Tel Aviv is an account of that return journey. Author AlMadhoun delicately narrates Walid’s story as he meets a young Israeli woman on the plane ride from London to Tel Aviv. Their complex conversation marks the beginning of his homecoming, a voyage that reveals the complexity of emotions so burdening Walid.

As he had anticipated, Walid’s trip was anything but smooth. His constant paranoia is evident throughout, and he must brave checkpoints, interrogations and the shock of seeing Gaza so transformed over the 38 years he has been away. In one of

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the book’s longest scenes, Walid confronts the entry point into Gaza, struggling to come to terms with the limitations of privilege being British grants him.

As an author, Walid writes about Adel al-Bashity, a character loosely based on a man he met who also returns to Gaza after many years to search for a long lost love.

As Walid’s own journey unfolds, the two stories become increasingly parallel. The lines between fiction and reality become intertwined, and Al-Madhoun captivates the reader with a mystifying exploration of identity and belonging.

Credit must also be given to translator Elliott Colla, who masterfully captures the raw emotion and craft of the original Arabic version, first published in 2009. The Lady from Tel Aviv touches all aspects one would expect from a coming-home novel set in Gaza: loss, exile, homeland, diaspora and dignity. Yet Al-Madhoun’s powerful novel stands out both as one of the few books from Gaza to be translated into English, and a powerful work in its own right.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Bullets: An Accidental War Correspondent in Yemen

By Laura Kasinof, Arcade Publishing, 2014, hardcover, 299 pp. List: $24.95; MEB: $20.

Laura Kasinof never intended to be a war correspondent in Yemen. When someone suggested to her the idea of traveling to Yemen as a free-lance journalist, she could never have imagined the repercussions of that decision. By even the middle of the book, however, it is clear that despite the increasingly difficult situation in which she finds herself, she has very few regrets.

Don’t Be Afraid takes us through Kasinof’s entire experience in Yemen, from her beginnings as a free-lance journalist to one of the more experienced foreigners living in Yemen and documenting the 2011 uprising that ended in the resignation of Yemen’s long-term ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh.

As Kasinof recounts her experience, we learn more about Yemen along with her. Her sometimes child-like innocence makes her story and insights accessible THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

and readable, and her thorough explanations make even the immensely complicated world of Yemeni politics understandable.

Kasinof’s love and dedication to Yemen is apparent throughout. Her story is a testimony to everything that is good about Yemen in even the most difficult and uncertain of times.

While at times overly self-indulgent, Kasinof’s story also provides a useful timeline of the events of 2011, and her interviews with prominent Yemeni leaders shed light on their own positions at critical times during the uprising.

Intimate experiences and conversations with Yemenis not only make the situation relatable to a Western audience, but also humanizes the conflict in sometimes startling ways. At times, for example, Kasinof finds herself interviewing face-to-face some of the main perpetrators behind the violent attacks on protesters.

Her refreshing sense of self-awareness brilliantly captures what it is like to be a Westerner living in Sana’a. She experiences the entire range of human emotions throughout her journey, from sheer terror during a bombing campaign to intoxicated nights at diplomatic poolside parties. Such contrasts typify the expat experience, and Kasinof’s engaging writing style, honed by her extensive journalism background, expertly guides readers through her turbulent time in Yemen.

The book as a whole is also a useful guide for those interested in the details of 2011. Most of Kasinof’s major reports are retold in different chapters in the context of her memoir, augmented by the personal stories surrounding them. Despite the good work of Kasinof and other journalists, many of the events of 2011 in Yemen were still horribly undercovered and remain misunderstood even now. Don’t Be Afraid of the Bullets is a great read for anyone interested in Yemen, regardless of his or her current level of knowledge.

In sum, Kasinof’s book is an engaging read throughout and a moving tribute to the foreign journalists who risked their lives to report on the uprising, as well as the steadfastness of the Yemeni people who so bravely took to the streets demanding a better life. ❑ Kevin A. Davis is director of AET’s Middle East Books and More.

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Middle East Books and More Literature

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Music

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Film

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Pottery

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Winter 2015 Cairo: Histories of a City by Nezar AlSayyad, Belknap Press, 2011, paperback, 325 pp. List: $19.95; MEB: $16. In this wonderful history of the great city of Cairo, AlSayyad not only details the many different Cairos that have existed throughout history, but supplements each chapter with art, photographs and maps that help show the evolution and transformation of Cairo throughout the ages. The book focuses on the urban landscape and built environment and on the historical figures that have helped shape the city.

The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World by Avi Shlaim, W.W. Norton, 2014, paperback, 900 pp.

List: $24.95; MEB: $18. In this new edition featuring four new chapters, Shlaim sheds new light on his detailed exploration of Israel’s “Iron Wall” policy that has dictated its interactions with the Arab world at large since its founding. By acquiring a military superiority to its neighbors, Israel hoped to negotiate a lasting peace.

Shlaim exposes the failure of this policy and the reasons military strength has not equaled peace.

Islamic Stories by Anita Ganeri, Tulip Books, 2013, paperback, 30 pp. List: $10.99; MEB: $10. Part of the “storyteller” series documenting children’s stories from world religions, Islamic Stories brings together eight carefully selected stories written in a basic but engaging way that help teach children the basic history of Islam. The book includes fact boxes explaining people and places and fun facts, a glossary of terms, and beautiful illustrations to provide young readers a great short introduction to Islam.

Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, Picador Press, 2013, paperback, 484 pp. List: $22; MEB: $16. The Leveretts, both with years of experience in government, argue coherently and persuasively that U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic since its inception in 1979 is nothing short of ineffective. As Nixon famously went to Beijing to engage with the Chinese, the authors assert that the U.S. must do the same if it is to make any progress in its regional policies. Going to Tehran is a readable, complete account of U.S. foreign policy toward Iran and a convincing policy prescription.

The Making of a Human Bomb: An Ethnography of Palestinian Resistance by Nasser Abufarha, Duke University Press, 2009, paperback, 277 pp. List: $26.95; MEB: $24. In this groundbreaking study, Nasser Abufarha delves into the controversial and challenging subject of Palestinian suicide bombing.

With great care and detail, he explains the logic, history and context surrounding the tactic of suicide bombing during the second intifada from 2000-2006, relying on his depth of experience with the Palestinian community. This books is critical for anyone interested in suicide bombing anywhere, and specifically as a tactic of Palestinian resistance.

Ishmael’s Oranges: A Novel

by Claire Hajaj, Oneworld Books, 2014, hardcover, 320 pp.

List: $24.99; MEB: $18. In this powerful novel which opens in an orange grove in Palestine in 1948, Hajaj tells the fictional story of Salim, a Palestinian born in Jaffa but living in exile in London. By the 1960s, Salim falls in love with Jude, a Jewish girl he comes to know in London. Ishmael’s Oranges tells the story of a person straddling two sides of a political story. This beautiful story that challenges followers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not to be missed.

The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life by Roger Owen, Harvard University Press, 2014, paperback, 258 pp. List: $17.95; MEB: $15.

Before the events of 2011 and beyond that shook the foundations of the Arab world, many analysts characterized the dictatorial regimes in the region as stable. Roger Owen challenges that narrative by exploring the basic dynamics of each dictator that experienced the Arab Spring, showing that these regimes actually were relatively unstable and showed signs of falling apart. This book is an accessible guide to anyone interested in the Arab Spring and the long-lasting Arab regimes that protests aimed to unseat.

Man’oushé: Inside the Street Corner Lebanese Bakery by Barbara Abdeni Massaad, Interlink Books, 2014, hardcover, 199 pp.

List: $30; MEB: $24. The man’oushé is a type of Lebanese pie that is served as part of every meal of the day. This new cookbook is rich with details surrounding the history and culture of Lebanese food, provides more than 70 variations on the original man’oushé and shows a cult-like appreciation for this fabulous Lebanese staple. Variations include hot cheese pies, spinach turnovers, and meat pies with red peppers. Beautiful photographs by Raymond Yazbeck accompany each recipe.

What Is Veiling? by Sahar Amer, University of North Carolina Press, 2014, hardcover, 234 pp. List: $28; MEB: $22. Despite the Western world’s obsessive focus on the veil as a symbol of Islamic identity, and the wealth of literature surrounding it, accurate information is hard to find. Sahar Amer’s accurate and nuanced exploration of this still muchmisunderstood religious practice is a mandatory read for those interested in Islam, and specifically women’s roles and rights within this religious framework.

Shipping Rates Most items are discounted and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Orders accepted by mail, phone (800-368-5788 ext. 2), or Web (www.middleeast books.com). All payments in U.S. funds. Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express accepted. Please send mail orders to Middle East Books and More, 1902 18th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009, with checks and money orders made out to “AET.” U . S . S h i p p i n g R a t e s : Please add $5 for the first item and $2.50 for each additional item. Canada & Mexico shipping charges: Please add $15 for the first item and $3.50 for each additional item.

International shipping charges: Please add $15 for the first item and $6 for each additional item. We ship by USPS Priority unless otherwise requested.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

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 Middle East Books and More at 800-368-5788 ext. 2 to order. Our policy is to identify donors unless anonymity is specifically requested.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Upcoming Events, Announcements —Compiled by Kevin A. Davis & Obituaries Upcoming Events The Commonwealth Club of California will host a discussion titled The Invisible People: Syrian Refugees on Feb. 20 at its San Francisco headquarters. The event will feature photojournalist Giles Duley, known for his work with refugees for Amnesty International. Duley will also speak about his documentary on Syrian refugees. On March 20 Fulbright scholars from Afghanistan studying at Golden Gate University will discuss The Future of Afghanistan. For tickets to both events visit <www.commonwealthclub.org>.

The Impossibility of the Rhetoric of Partition in Zionist Literature, a lecture

by Hannan Hever, will be held at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies on Feb. 23. For more information visit <www.cmes.hmdc.harvard.edu>.

The Moroccan Gala and Fashion Show will be held March 8 at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, DC. The show includes a full fashion show, Moroccan celebrities and a performance by Abderrahim Souiri. E-mail <moroccoevent2015@gmail.com> for more information.

The 12th Annual Conference in Citizenship Studies: Governance & Citizenship will be held from March 12-14 at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. The conference will feature Frederick Cooper and Juan Cole. Visit <www.clas.wayne.edu> for tickets and more information.

The 2015 Jewish Voice for Peace National Membership Meeting will be held March 13 to 15 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Baltimore, MD. The conference is a networking opportunity for JVP chapters from across the country and will feature talks by Angela Davis, Rabbi Brant Rosen, Sa’ed Atshan and many others. Visit <www. jewishvoiceforpeace.org> for registration.

The 2nd Annual New York Cairo Raks Festival will be held April 16 to 19 at the Skyline Hotel in New York City. The festival will feature live music, workshops, fashion shows, lectures and more relating to Middle Eastern dance styles and will include many dance celebrities. For information and tickets visit <www.nycairo.com>.

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Announcements The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has been awarded the 2014 Stockholm Human Rights Award for its work promoting the rights of Palestinians living in the occupied territories and lobbying policymakers in Israel on behalf of universal human rights. The ceremony was held Nov. 25 in Stockholm, Sweden. The full press release can be read at <www.ibanet.org>.

The Turkish Cultural Foundation is now accepting applications for the Fellowship in Turkish Culture and Art, which aims to support the publication of papers and articles relating to Turkish studies and travel to conferences to present the papers.

Visit <www.turkishculturalfoundation. org> for more information.

Obituaries Said Akl, 102, widely considered among the greatest modern Lebanese poets, died Nov. 28, 2014 in Beirut. Born in Zahle to a Maronite family, he dropped out of school at the age of 15 before later studying theology, literature and history. Although a nationalist, he was a great critic of Arab culture. He famously proposed a new Lebanese alphabet in Latin script rather than Arabic, even going as far as to publish a newspaper in his new language. He was known for his plays, poetry and songs.

Radwa Ashour, 68, a prominent Egyptian author, died Nov. 30 in Egypt. The wife of poet Mourid Barghouti and mother of poet Tamim al-Barghouti, she was the author of numerous books, including The Woman From Tantoura, Siraj and Granada, and was awarded the 2007 Constantine Cavafy Prize for Literature.

Talât Sait Halman, 83, a Turkish poet and translator, died Dec. 4 in Ankara of a heart attack. A graduate of Robert College in Istanbul, he earned his M.A. at Columbia University in political science, international relations and international law, and taught at Columbia, Princeton, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and Bilkent University. He served as Turkey’s minister of culture in 1971 and ambassador for cultural affairs from 198082, and was a member of UNESCO’s Executive Board from 1991-1995. In addition to his pubTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

BulletinBoard lic service, he was a prominent English-Turkish translator of many classic and modern works. Halman received Columbia’s Thornton Wilder Prize for his translation achievements, as well as an honorary degree from Bosphorus University, a UNESCO Medal and a Rockefeller Fellowship, and was awarded the Knight Grand Cross by Queen Elizabeth II. He also was the subject of a Syracuse University Press Festschrift dedicated to him. His numerous books included an anthology of American women poets and anthologies of poetry.

Robert B. Oakley, 83, a career diplomat and ambassador, died Dec. 10 in McLean, VA of complications with Parkinson’s disease. He served at U.S. embassies in Khartoum, Abidjan, Saigon, Paris and Beirut, at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and as senior director for the Middle East and South Asia on the National Security Council. He was ambassador to Somalia, Pakistan and Zaire and, following his retirement in 1991, at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Omar Karami, 81, a former prime minister of Lebanon born near Tripoli, died Jan. 1 in Beirut following an undisclosed illness. His father, Abdul Hamid, was a leader of the independence movement and served as prime minister, as did his brother Rashid before being assassinated in 1987.

Karami, who received a law degree from Cairo University, had a tumultuous political career. He first became prime minister in 1990, resigning two years later during an economic crisis. He again became prime minister in 2004, but resigned shortly after losing a no-confidence vote following the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. Ten days later he again was appointed prime minister, but resigned after failing to form a government.

Samira Nasser, a Virginia resident and board member of the American Palestinian Women’s Association, died suddenly Jan. 8 in Ramallah. An activist and supporter of Palestinian rights and education, she taught Arabic, worked as a fund-raiser for numerous charities and causes, and served as headmistress of the Arab Evangelical Episcopal School in Ramallah. In 2002, she was featured in The Washington Post for her work at the school. ❑ MARCH/APRIL 2015

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Dr. Maher Hathout (1936-2015) InMemoriam

By Pat McDonnell Twair ad Maher Hathout born in the United States instead of Egypt, he wouldn’t have been sent to prison in the 1950s for publicly criticizing the government. He always remained unafraid to speak his political opinions, no matter what the result might be.

On Jan. 3, as word spread of his death at age 79 from liver cancer, American Muslims realized that while the voice of their spiritual mentor, leader and adviser had been silenced, he had left them with his philosophy for practicing the precepts of Islam to make America a better place.

Dr. Hathout met his fuDr. Maher Hathout. ture wife, Ragaa, while both were medical students in Cairo. Their Islam would prevail and no particular imam son, Gasser, now a neuroradiologist, recalls would officiate. As early as 1952, a woman that his first memory of his father was had served on the board of directors.

Under his guidance, the New Horizon when he was 5 years old. It was late at night, and there was much commotion schools were opened, offering highly acamong the adults. His father had been re- credited academic instruction with Islamic studies and launching The Minaret magaleased from prison!

When father and son were reunited, the zine and a half-hour TV program. In 1988, boy was asked what he’d like to do to- Dr. Hathout co-founded the Muslim Pubgether. “Go to the zoo,” was his answer. lic Affairs Council (MPAC), which advo“Inshallah” was the parental response. cates an Islamic view of breaking news. A Gasser started to cry, because he recog- Hollywood section reviews film and TV nized that as the polite Egyptian “no.” productions dealing with Muslim themes.

No pomposity flawed his basic humilThen his father patiently explained the ity. In the late 1980s, the Center sponmeaning of “God willing.”

The Hathouts, with Gasser and daughter sored a fund-raising carnival at a local Samer, today a Los Angeles deputy district high school. I can never forget the sight attorney, first immigrated to Buffalo, NY, of the respected cardiologist stepping up then moved in the late 1970s to Arcadia, to the dunk tank booth, taking off his CA, where Maher was a cardiologist and eyeglasses, then his shoes and socks, beRagaa practiced pathology. Soon Dr. fore entering. He got soaked that afterHathout was volunteering at the Islamic noon for the Center.

Together Rev. Dr. George Regas, former Center of Southern California (ICSC) in Los Angeles, known as one of the country’s rector of All Saints Church of Pasadena, most progressive mosques. It didn’t take Rabbi Leonard Beerman and Dr. Hathout long for the enthusiastic Egyptian to be- were active in the Interfaith Communities come chairman and spokesman for the Cen- United for Justice and Peace. In Los Angeter, where he established the policies that all les, they were known as the “holy trinity.”

On several occasions Dr. Hathout was sermons would be in English, no sect of summoned to Washington, DC to confer Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer with the president and State Department on Middle East issues. In 2000, he delivbased in Los Angeles.

STAFF PHOTO SAMIR TWAIR

Hbeen

MARCH/APRIL 2015

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ered the opening invocation at the Democratic national convention. In 2006, he was nominated for the prestigious John Allen Buggs award by the Los Angeles County Commission. Stand With Us and far-right rabbis vociferously objected, arguing that Hathout had called Israel a country that commits apartheid, and that such a charge should disqualify him as a peacemaker.

At the heavily attended commission hearing, the outspoken Muslim leader’s close friend, the widely respected Rabbi Beerman, eloquently explained why Maher Hathout was an ideal choice for the humanitarian prize. When it became time for this writer to testify, I was incensed by the snide remarks being made by the opposition, and stated: “No matter what Dr. Hathout’s enemies claim, Israel is an apartheid state and apartheid is apartheid is apartheid.”

Ultimately, Dr. Hathout received the award. The City of Los Angeles was appreciative of the strides the innovative Muslim had made in interfaith harmony during stressful periods of suspicion and racial tensions, and that is why it honored his legacy Jan. 10 with a unique memorial service attended by civic dignitaries on the steps of the historic City Hall.

The Hathouts were intensely proud of their grandchildren, Heba, Laith, Dean and McKenna, which brings to mind perhaps his most often quote: “Home is not where my grandparents are buried, but where my grandchildren will be raised.” A devoted grandmother, Ragaa arranged her schedule so she could pick up her firstborn granddaughter, Heba—now a Princeton University graduate—daily from preschool and teach her to speak Arabic.

On Jan. 4, the Rev. Ed Bacon, rector of All Saints Church, delivered his Sunday sermon on the interfaith significance of his Muslim friend and closed it with the words: “Because Dr. Hathout was such a great Muslim, I became a better Christian.” ❑ 71

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AET’s 2014 Choir of Angels

Following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1, 2014 and Dec. 31, 2014 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. Angels who have contributed in 2015 will be listed in the May 2015 Washington Report.

HUMMERS ($100 or more) Sami Abed, South Lyon, MI Jeffrey M. Abood, Silver Lake, OH Catherine S. Aborjaily, Westfield, MA Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, Atlanta, GA Alice & Rizek Abusharr, Claremont, TX Diane Adkin, Camas, WA James C. Ahlstrom, Stirling, NJ Aglaia Ahmed, Buda, TX Dr. M.Y. Ahmed, Waterville, OH Qamar Ahsan, Flint, MI Emeel & Elizabeth Ajluni, Farmington Hills, MI Ali Akbar, Oakland, CA Dr. & Mrs. Salah Al-Askari, Leonia, NJ Mohamad Alfakir, Oak Hill, VA Joe & Siham Alfred, Fredericksburg, VA Dr. Subhi Ali, Waverly, TN Mustafa Amantullah, Los Angeles, CA Nabil & Judy Amarah, Danbury, CT Mike & Pat Ameen, Kingwood, TX Edwin Amidon, Charlotte, VT Louise Anderson, Oakland, CA Sylvia Anderson de Freitas, Phoenix, AZ Anace & Polly Aossey, Cedar Rapids, IA Dr. Robert Ashmore, Jr., Mequon, WI Ziad Assad, Strongsville, OH Joyce Bacon, Corona, CA Dr. & Mrs. Roger Bagshaw, Big Sur, CA Nabil Bahu, Athens, Greece Mrs. Alma Ball, Venice, FL Nader Barakat, Moorpark, CA Jamil Barhoum, San Diego, CA Stanton Barrett, Ipswich, MA Allen & Jerrie Bartlett, Philadelphia, PA Mona A. Bashir, Reston, VA Genevieve Scott Bell, Davis, CA Susan M. Bell, Alexandria, VA Mohammed & Wendy Bendebba, Baltimore, MD Peter Bentley, Sebastian, FL Syed & Rubia Bokhari, Bourbonnais, IL Paul and Carol Bradford, Somerville, MA Wasfi Bsisu, Vernon Hills, IL Stephen Buck, Bethesda, MD Prof. Mireya Camurati, Williamsville, NY Barbara Candy, Loomis, CA John Carley, Pointe-Claire, Quebec Lois Carrig, Erie, PA Ouahib Chalbi, Coon Rapids, MN Blaine Chandler, Boise, ID Mark L. Chandler, Rock Hill, SC Patricia Christensen, Poulsbo, WA Dr. Arthur Clark, Calgary, Canada Dr. Robert G. Collmer, Waco, TX Walter Cox, Monroe, GA Lois Critchfield, Williamsburg, VA 72

Jay R. Crook, Tucson, AZ Amb. John Gunther Dean, Paris, France John Dirlik, Pointe Claire, Quebec Dr. Robert Dobrzynski, Alexandria, VA Ray Doherty, Houston, TX Tareck Elass, Washington, DC Kassem Elkhalil, Arlington, TX Gloria El-Khouri, Scottsdale, AZ Joyanne Elkinton-Walker, Orinda, CA Wajih Elkiswani, Niles, IL Barbara Erickson, Berkeley, CA Mike Evans, Seattle, WA Dr. Moneim Fadali, Los Angeles, CA Rich Hoban, Cleveland Heights, OH Dr. & Mrs. Hossam Fadel, Augusta, GA Albert E. Fairchild, Bethesda, MD Rita & Edward Fairchild, Marietta, GA Renee Farmer, New York, NY Mr. & Mrs. Majed Faruki, Albuquerque, NM Claire Bradley Feder, Atherton, CA Douglas A. Field, Kihei, HI Eileen Fleming, Clermont, FL E. Patrick Flynn, Carmel, NY E. Aracelis Francis, St. Thomas, VI Donald Frisco, Wilmington, DE Robert Gabe, Valatie, NY Ahmad & Shirley Gazori, Mill Creek, WA Dorothy Gerner, Indianapolis, IN Michael Gillespie, Maxwell, IA George Glober, Dallas, TX Bert H. Golding, Houston, TX Sam Gousen, Arlington, VA Herbert Greider, Dauphin, PA Philip Greider, Whittier, CA Agi Groff, New York, NY Mark Habib, Chico, CA Dr. Safei Hamed, Columbia, MD Shirley Hannah, Argyle, NY James Hanson, Columbus, OH Katharina Harlow, Pacific Grove, CA Robert & Helen Harold, West Salem, WI Dr. Steven Harvey, Manchester, NH Mrs. Frances Hasenyager, Carmel, CA Mr. & Mrs. Sameer Hassan, Quaker Hill, CT Ibrahim Hayani, Unionville, Ont. Joan & Edward Hazbun, Media, PA Dennis Heatherley, San Antonio, TX Alan & Dot Heil, Alexandria, VA† James Hillen, North Vancouver, Canada A.H.M. Hilmy, Surrey, England Jerry Hlass, Long Beach, MS Veronica Hoke, Hillcrest Hts., MD M.D. Hotchkiss, Portland, OR Dr. Michael Hudson, Chevy Chase, MD Dr. Marwan Hujeij, Cincinnati, OH Mr. & Mrs. Azmi Ideis, Deltona, FL George Jabbour, Sterling Hts., MI Dr. Raymond Jallow, Los Angeles, CA THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Janis Jibrin, Washington, DC Ronald Johnson, Pittsford, NY Jeanne Johnston, Santa Ynez, CA Anthony Jones, Jasper, Canada Curtis Jones, Chapel Hill, NC Jamil Jreisat, Temple Terrace, FL Mohamad Kamal, North York, Canada Mike Karim, San Diego, CA Basim Kattan, Washington, DC Mazen Kawji, Burr Ridge, IL Mujid Kazimi, Newton, MA Louise & Bob Keeley, Washington, DC Charles Kennedy, Newbury, NH Edwin Kennedy, Bethesda, MD Mazen Khalidi, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI Dr. Mohayya Khilfeh, Chicago, IL Abdal Hakim Khirfan, Flint, MI Eugene Khorey, West Mifflin, PA Alfred & Dina Khoury, McLean, VA N. Khoury, Pasadena, CA Ray Kielhamer, San Carlos, CA Donald C. Kimmel, Bethesda, MD Gail Kirkpatrick, Philadelphia, PA Joseph Korey, Reading, PA Donald Kouri, Westmount, Canada Loretta Krause, Little Egg Harbor Township, NJ Ronald Kunde, Skokie, IL Raymond Joseph, Hatfield, PA Ann Marie Labbate, Salt Point, NY Darryl Landis, Winston Salem, NC Barbara Leclerq, Overland Park, KS Mary Lou Levin, Mill Valley, CA Josie Toth Linen, Richmond, VA Leslie Lomas, Boulder, CO Sherif Lotfi, New York, NY Jeanie Lucas, Thebarton, Australia J. Robert Lunney, Bronxville, NY Robert L. Mabarak, Grosse Pointe Park, MI Allen J. MacDonald, Washington, DC A. Kent MacDougall, Berkeley, CA Donald MacLay, Springfield, PA Farah Mahmood, Forsyth, IL Aly A. Mahmoud, Oceanside, CA Asad Malik, Rochester Hills, MI Tahera Mamdani, Fridley, MN Ted Marczak, Toms River, NJ Martha Martin, Paia, HI Linden Martineau, Ventnor City, NJ Nabil Matar, Minneapolis, MN Carol Mazzia, Santa Rosa, CA Shirl McArthur, Reston, VA John McClain, Bowling Green, KY Stanley McGinley, The Woodlands, TX Bill McGrath, Northfield, MN Robert Michael, Sun Lakes, AZ Tom Mickelson, Madison, WI Lynn & Jean Miller, Amherst, MA MARCH/APRIL 2015

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Peter Miller, Portland, OR Dr. Yehia Mishriki, Emmaus, PA Colleen Mitchell, Fresno, CA Nabil Mohamad, Washington, DC John & Ruth Monson, La Crosse, WI Brian Mulligan, Suwanee, GA Mr. & Mrs. Farah Munayyer, West Caldwell, NJ Ann Murphy, Tacoma, WA Raymond & Joan Musallam, Wilton, CA Mohamad Nabi, Union, KY William & Nancy Nadeau, San Diego, CA John Najemy, Ithaca, NY Joseph Najemy, Worcester, MA Jacob Nammar, San Antonio, TX Neal & Donna Newby, Las Cruces, NM Susan Nicholson, Gloucester, MA Susan Nye, Watertown, MA Kamal Obeid, Fremont, CA Tom O’Connell, Brooklyn, NY Rev. John O’Neill, Petaluma, CA Khaled Othman, Riverside, CA John Parry, Chapel Hill, NC Mary Clare Penney, Falls Church, VA Vicki Perkins, Calgary, Canada Dr. Bashar Pharoan, Timonium, MD Jim Plourd, Monterey, CA Phillip Portlock, Washington, DC Clarence Prince, Austin, TX Humayun Quadir, Saint Louis, MO Syed R. Quadri, Elizabethtown, KY Cheryl Quigley, Toms River, NJ Bassam Rammaha, Corona, CA Nayla Rathle, Belmont, MA Vivian & Doris Regidor, Pearl City, HI Paul Richards, Salem, OR Evan Robinson, Arlington, VA Fred Rogers, Northfield, MN Ms. Brynhild Rowberg, Northfield, MN Arthur Rowse, Chevy Chase, MD Ambassador William Rugh, Garrett Park, MD Hameed Saba, Diamond Bar, CA Mohammed Sabbagh, Grand Blanc, MI Grace Said, Chevy Chase, MD Ramzy Salem, Monterey Park, CA Dr. Dirgham H. Sbait, Portland, OR Russell Scardaci, Cairo, NY * Robert M. Schaible, Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights, Buxton, ME Joan Seelye, Bethesda, MD Mona Serageldin, Cambridge, MA William A. Shaheen III, Grosse Ile, MI Ajazuddin Shaikh, Granger, IN Richard J. Shaker, Annapolis, MD George Shalabi, Sauk City, WI Theodore Shannon, Middleton, WI Lewis Shapiro, White Plains, NY Kathy Sheridan, Mill Valley, CA Nancy Taylor Shivers, San Antonio, TX Zac Sidawi, Costa Mesa, CA Yousuf Siddiqui, Bloomfield, MI Lucy Skivens-Smith, Dinwiddie, VA William Slavick, Portland, ME Deborah Ann Smith, Durham, NC Edgar W. Snell, Jr., Schenectady, NY Jean Snyder, Greenbelt, MD MARCH/APRIL 2015

Yasser Soliman, Hamilton Township, NJ Darcy Sreebny, Herndon, VA Peter & Joyce Starks, Greensboro, NC Gregory Stefanatos, Flushing, NY Dr. William Strange, Fort Garland, CO Karl Striedieck, Port Matilda, PA Corrine Sutila, Los Angeles, CA Thomas & Carol Swepston, Englewood, FL Mushtaq Syed, Santa Clara, CA Dr. Yusuf Tamimi, Hilo, HI Doris Taweel, Laurel, MD J. Tayeb, Shelby Township, MI M.A. Thamer, Woodbridge, VA William Thiessen, Bemidji, MN††† Charles Thomas, La Conner, WA George Tlamsa, Bayside, NY Edmund & Norma Tomey, Dorset, VT Ned Toomey, Bishop, CA Edwin Townsley, Center Harbor, NH Thomas Trueblood, Chapel Hill, NC Hani Tuffaha, Williamsport, PA Nona Tyler, Loveland, CO Charles & Letitia Ufford, Hanover, NH Unitarian Universalists for Justice, Cambridge, MA Tom Veblen, Washington, DC Elizabeth & Lawrence Waldron, Berkeley, CA Hermann Weinlick, Minneapolis, MN Sheila Wells, Monterey Park, CA Duane & Barbara Wentz, Kirkland, WA Edwina White, Sacramento, CA Keith Wilbanks, Gainesville, GA Darrell & Sue Yeaney, Scotts Valley, CA Raymond Younes, Oxnard, CA Mashood Yunus, Eagan, MN Munir Zacharia, La Mirada, CA Nadim & Alicia Zacharia, San Diego, CA Fred Zuercher, Spring Grove, PA

ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more) Robert Akras, N. Bay Village, FL Hani Ali, Amaroussion, Athens, Greece Mohamed Alwan, Chestnut Ridge, NY Mr. & Mrs. Sultan Aslam, Plainsboro, NJ Dr. Majid Azzedine, Lakewood, WA Mr. & Mrs. Robert Beckmann, Seattle, WA Robert Adams Boyd, Binghamton, NY Prof. & Mrs. George W. Buchanan, Gaithersburg, MD Lynn & Aletha Carlton, Norwalk, CT Joe Chamy, Colleyville, TX Mr. & Mrs. Rajie Cook, Washington Crossing, PA Andrew & Krista Curtiss, Herndon, VA M.R. Eucalyptus, Kansas City, MO Catherine Fararjeh, Santa Clara, CA Eugene Fitzpatrick, Wheat Ridge, CO Ken Galal, San Francisco, CA Joseph & Angela Gauci, Whittier, CA Sherna Gluck, Topanga, CA THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Ray Gordon, Bel Air, MD Iftekhar Hai, S. San Francisco, CA Erin K. Hankir, Ottawa, Canada Delinda C. Hanley, Kensington, MD*** Shirley Hannah, Argyle, NY Salman & Kate Hilmy, Silver Spring, MD Omar & Nancy Kader, Vienna, VA Issa & Rose Kamar, Plano, TX Martha Katz, Youngstown, OH Omar Khwaja, Irvine, CA Andrew N. Killgore, McLean, VA Paul N. Kirk, Baton Rouge, LA Michael Ladah, Las Vegas, NV Kendall Landis, Media, PA William Lawand, Mount Royal, Canada David & Renee Lent, Hanover, NH† Joseph Louis, Los Gatos, CA Anthony Mabarak, Grosse Pointe Park, MI Nidal Mahayni, Richmond, VA†† Joseph A. Mark, Carmel, CA Dr. Charles W. McCutchen, Bethesda, MD Ben Monk, St. Paul, MN Dr. Eid B. Mustafa, Wichita Falls, TX Homer Oldemeyer, Oak Harbor, WA John Pallone, Rapallo, Germany Arthur Paone, Belmar, NJ Edmond & Lorraine Parker, Chicago, IL Edward & Ann Peck, Chevy Chase, MD Barry Preisler, Albany, CA Catherine Quigley, Annandale, VA Sam Rahman, Lincoln, CA Mr. & Mrs. Edward Reilly, Rocky Point, NY Neil Richardson, Randolph, VT Ramzy Salem, Monterey Park, CA Carl Schieren, New York, NY Henry Schubert, Damascus, OR Dr. Thomas Abid Shah, Sarasota, FL Jack & Bernice Shaheen, Hilton Head, SC*, ** Tom Shaker, Poughkeepsie, NY Yasir Shallal, McLean, VA James G. Smart, Keene, NH Mubadda Suidan, Atlanta, GA Michel & Cathy Sultan, Eau Claire, WI Zuhair Thalji, Willow Springs, IL John Theodosi, Lafayette, CA John V. Whitbeck, Paris, France Jeannie K.Williams, Minneapolis, MN Darrell & Sue Yeaney, Scotts Valley, CA Rafi Ziauddin, West Chester, PA

TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more) Patricia Ann Abraham, Charleston, SC Miriam & Stephen Adams, Albuquerque, NM Michael Ameri, Calabasas, CA Rev. Dr. Lois Aroian, Willow Lake, SD Kamel and Majda Ayoub, Hillsborough, CA Graf Herman Bender, North Palm Beach, FL Wilhelmine Bennett, Iowa City, IA Rev. Ronald C. Chochol, St. Louis, MO 73

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Mr. & Mrs. John Crawford, Boulder, CO Richard Curtiss, Boynton Beach, FL* Joseph Daruty, Newport Beach, CA Robert & Tanis Diedrichs, Cedar Falls, IA L.F. Boker Doyle, New York, NY Mervat Eid, Henrietta, NY Edouard Emmet, Paris, France Sophia Farooq, Smyrna, GA Elisabeth Fitzhugh, Mitchellville, MD Elaine & William Guenther, Saint Joseph, MO Iftekhar Hai, S. San Francisco, CA George Hanna, Santa Ana, CA Masood Hassan, Calabasas, CA Dr. Colbert & Mildred Held, Waco, TX Sami Ibrahim, Denver, CO Brigitte Jaensch, Carmichael, CA Les Janka, Leesburg, VA Zagloul Kadah, Seattle, WA Wendy Kaufmyn, Berkeley, CA Gloria Keller, Santa Rosa, CA Kids in Need of Development Education, Richardson, TX Mahmud Khan, Columbia, SC Dr. M. Jamil Khan, Bloomfield Hills, MI Joe & Lilly Lill, Arlington, VA George & Karen Longstreth, San Diego, CA Bill & Jean Mansour, Corvallis, OR Jean Mayer, Bethesda, MD Tom and Tess McAndrew, Oro Valley, AZ Maury Keith Moore, Seattle, WA Anees Mughannam, Petaluma, CA Liz Mulford, Cupertino, CA Audrey Olson, Saint Paul, MN Mary Regier, Albany, CA**** Robert Reynolds, Mill Valley, CA Gabrielle Saad, Oakland, CA Betty Sams, Washington, DC Henry Schubert, Damascus, OR Shahida Siddiqui, Trenton, NJ Yusef & Jennifer Sifri, Wilmington, NC† David J. Snider, Airmont, NY Mae Stephen, Palo Alto, CA Michel & Cathy Sultan, Eau Claire, WI Ziyad & Cindi Zaitoun, Seattle, WA

Linda Emmet, Paris, France Dr. & Mrs. Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR Ronald & Mary Forthofer, Longmont, CO Evan & Leman Fotos, Istanbul, Turkey* Hind Hamdan, Hagerstown, MD Judith Howard, Norwood, MA** Mary Ann Hrankowski, Rochester, NY††† Sufian & Barbara Husseini, Salem, OR Shafiq Kombargi, Houston, TX William Lightfoot, Vienna, VA Jack Love, San Diego, CA John Mahoney, AMEU, New York, NY Bill & Jean Mansour, Corvallis, OR Rachelle Marshall, Mill Valley, CA William & Flora McCormick, Austin, TX Gerald & Judith Merrill, Oakland, CA Ralph Nader, Washington, DC Bob Norberg, Lake City, MN Mary Norton, Austin, TX Imad Tabry, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Ms. Janice Terry, Marietta, OH Dr. Robert Younes, Potomac, MD* John Van Wagoner, McLean, VA

CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more) Henry Clifford, Essex, CT Donna B. Curtiss, Kensington, MD****, † Rafeek Farah, New Boston, MI John & Henrietta Goelet, New York, NY Andrew I. Killgore, Washington, DC Vincent & Louise Larsen, Billings, MT*, ** Mahmud Shaikhaly, Hollywood, CA *In Memory of Richard H. Curtiss **In Honor of Andrew I. Killgore ***For Helen Thomas Internship ****In Memory of Frank Regier †In Memory of Ghassan Sabbagh ††In Memory of Leila Goodman †††In Memory of USS Liberty

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March/April 2015 Vol. XXXIV, No. 2

A farmer lines up mortar shells collected from a field in the Lebanese village of al-Wazzani near the Lebanese-Israeli border, Jan. 29, 2015. A 36-year-old Spanish U.N. corporal was killed the previous day when the Israeli military shelled border areas following a Hezbollah attack that left two IDF soldiers dead.

MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP/Getty Images