Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - March/April 2020 - Vol. XXXIX, No. 2

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SHOULD U.S. BACK OUT OF MIDDLE EAST?

DISPLAY UNTIL 4/30/2020

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TELLING THE TRUTH SINCE 1982

On Middle East Affairs

Volume XXXIX, No. 2

March/April 2020

INTERPRETING THE MIDDLE EAST FOR NORTH AMERICANS ✮ INTERPRETING NORTH AMERICA FOR THE MIDDLE EAST

THE U.S. ROLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE

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14

34

Will the U.N. Sign Off on Trump’s So-Called Peace Deal?—Ian Williams

20

17

The Long Shadow of Oslo —Gregory DeSylva

JNF: Ethnic Cleansing Disguised as Environmentalism—Jonathan Cook

24

Zionist Narrative Distorts History —Walter L. Hixson

26 39 42

44 46

Gaza’s Health System is Collapsing. Where’s That Headline?

—Mohammed Omer

Soleimani’s Assassination Prompts Strong Congressional Reaction—Shirl McArthur

The Jeopardy of Media Bias Against Palestine —Mohamed Mohamed

Honoring Martin Luther King Jr.—Dr. James J. Zogby JVP Mobilizing for Greater Political Impact Behind Palestinian Rights—Walter L. Hixson

SPECIAL REPORTS

Soleimani Killing Provokes Outrage and Reprisals— Two Views—Eric Margolis, Ted Galen Carpenter

31

U.S. Actions Threaten Cultural Sites Beyond Iran—Eleni Zaras

Should U.S. Back Out of Middle East to End Endless Wars?—Two Views—Trita Parsi, Eli Clifton

48

Behind a Massacre—John Gee

CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL/CWS

28

Trump Endorses Israeli Apartheid—Three Views —Diana Buttu, Zaha Hassan, Gideon Levy

ON THE COVER: A Palestinian woman in Gaza City places a shoe on graffiti showing President Donald Trump with a footprint on his face, Jan. 29, 2020. Palestinians categorically reject Trump’s one-sided proposal for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

PHOTO BY MAJDI FATHI/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

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(A Supplement to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs available by subscription at $15 per year. To subscribe, call toll-free 1-888-881-5861.)

Other Voices

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Palestinians Can Have Human Rights When They Start Winning Nobel Prizes— Bret Stephens, Philip Weiss, mondoweiss.net OV-1

Israel’s Shameful Role in Myanmar’s Genocidal Campaign Against the Rohingya, Charles Dunst, Haaretz OV-10

Hindu Nationalists Are Seeking The Israelification of India; They Must Be Stopped, Nasim Ahmed, www.middleeastmonitor.com OV-2

Cyprus, Cyberspies and the Dark Side of Israeli Intel, Yossi Melman, Haaretz

OV-11

When Will the Afghan War Architects Be Held Accountable?, Daniel R. Depetris, www.theamericanconservative.com

OV-13

Peace Is Out. Good., Yossi Gurvitz, mondoweiss.net

OV-4

Israel Is Rewriting the History of Middle Eastern Jews for Propaganda, Lior Sternfeld & Menashe Anzi, Haaretz

OV-5

BDS as a Way of Resistance, Majed Abusalama, mondoweiss.net

OV-7

What Is Behind the Foreign Tour By Hamas’ Haniya?, Adnan Abu Amer, www.aljazeera.com

DEPARTMENTS

OV-9

An Afghan Perspective on 18 Years of Washington’s Lies About the War and Our Suffering, Basit Muhammadi, www.juancole.com OV-14 Why Did a Saudi Kill U.S. Sailors While Three Others Filmed It?, Doug Bandow, www.theamericanconservative.com OV-15

5 Publishers’ Page

6 letters to the editor

50 WagiNg PeaCe: Washington Responds to Soleimani’s Assassination 54 huMaN rights: Activist Successfully Challenges “Product of Israel” Settlement Wine Labels in Canadian Court 57 MusiC & arts: Exhibition Exposes Washington to Kurdish Art 59 arab aMeriCaN aCtiVisM: Growing Palestine’s Successful Holiday Hafla

60 MusliM aMeriCaN aCtiVisM: Trump Doubles Down on Refugees 61 diPloMatiC doiNgs: Embassy Receives Condolences After Sultan Qaboos’ Death

President Donald Trump threatened to target 52 Iranian cultural sites (see p. 31).

62 Middle east books reVieW 69 the World looks at the Middle east—CARToonS

70 other PeoPle’s Mail

72 obituaries 73 2019 aet Choir oF aNgels 72 iNdeX to adVertisers

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Assassinating Peace

President Donald Trump began the new year with a series of moves that crush the prospects for peace in the Middle East. The Jan. 3 assassination of Iran’s Quds Force Commander Qassim Soleimani (see pp.

28-30) brought the U.S. and Iran to the brink of an all-out war that the citizens of neither country desire. The White House’s varying and incongruous justifications for the assassination drew rare bipartisan ire, bolstering support on Capitol Hill for legislation (see p. 39) that would inhibit the president’s ability to unilaterally launch a war against Iran. Trita Parsi notes on p. 34 that the assassination also jeopardized the prospects for peace throughout the broader region, as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar and others were beginning to launch serious diplomatic efforts to ease tensions on a variety of fronts.

A Plan for Israeli Domination

Publishers’ Page EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

American Educational Trust

and the world of the true costs of war.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” the World War II hero said.

“This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Eisenhower v. Trump

A Palestinian farmer tends to a field in Bardalah in the Jordan Valley on Jan. 27, 2020. Trump’s peace plan paves the way for Israel to annex this woman’s farmland.

Trump took another hatchet to peace on Jan. 28 when he and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu finally released his peace plan. As expected, the plan, unveiled at a White House ceremony that had the atmosphere of a victory celebration rather than a sober diplomatic endeavor, grants Israel nearly free rein to do as it wishes.

Transparently one-sided and failing to even feign even-handedness, the plan is emblematic of the post-truth and post-shame world we live in. While many Arab governments—mostly those in the Gulf—have expressed approval for Trump’s plan, support for the Palestinian people remains strong on the Arab street, and this latest U.S. betrayal of Palestinians is sure to increase the animosity many Arabs feel toward our government.

In the midst of growing regional tensions, the Middle East lost its most highly regarded peacemaker in January. The leader of Oman for nearly 50 years, Sultan Qaboos served as a rare impartial mediator, bringing together bitter rivals such as Iran and the U.S. for critical and successful diplomatic negotiations. Here’s to hoping the Sultanate continues to wage peace in the wake of Qaboos’ passing.

While it’s easy to dismiss the proposal as a political stunt that is doomed to fail, it’s important to remember that it will, in short order, have serious implications for Palestinians. Netanyahu is expected to move quickly to begin annexing large swaths of the West Bank and Jordan Valley. Even if a new U.S. president comes into office next

As we reflect on the potential of a costly (in every sense) war with Iran and the billions of dollars in annual military aid the U.S. supplies to Israel, we recall the words of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man who understood the value of peace—or better yet the depravity and horror of war. In an April 1953 speech, he reminded Americans

Serious Consequences

MARCH/APRIL 2020

January and nullifies the “peace plan,” Israel still has 12 months to create facts on the ground that could make resetting U.S. policy and undoing the damage enabled by the Trump administration difficult. We have full coverage of the so-called “peace plan” on pp. 8-15 of this issue.

Death of a Peacemaker

“Theft From Those Who Hunger”

In February 1957, in the midst of the Suez Crisis, Eisenhower rebuked Israel’s refusal to withdraw from Egypt. His words are especially prescient in the wake of Trump’s complete acquiescence to Israeli demands.

“I would, I feel, be untrue to the standards of the high office to which you have chosen me, if I were to lend the influence of the United States to the proposition that a nation which invades another should be permitted to exact conditions for withdrawal,” he said in a radio address. Would Eisenhower simply let the Israelis dictate the terms of a “peace deal” that imposes their will on the occupied and besieged people of Palestine?

Must-Attend Event

Our May 29 conference, “Transcending the Israel Lobby at Home and Abroad,” cohosted with the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, is quickly approaching. Headlined by Gideon Levy, Joseph Massad, Stephen Walt and Roger Waters, this year’s event is not to be missed. See p.

16 for more information on the conference and gala dinner and to learn how to register.

Sincere Appreciation!

We thank you for the donations, surveys and book orders that filled our mailbox at the end of the year. Contributions received after we closed our books will be listed in the May 2020 Angels list. We value your support and words of encouragement. You convinced us—thanks to your donations we plan to keep the print magazine going while we enhance our digital presence.

Make A Difference Today!

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

DELINDA C. HANLEY DALE SPRUSANSKY WALTER HIXSON JANET McMAHON SAMI TAYEB CHARLES R. CARTER RALPH-UWE SCHERER ANDREW I. KILLGORE (1919-2016) RICHARD H. CURTISS (1927-2013) HENRIETTA FANNER JANET McMAHON JANE KILLGORE

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LetterstotheEditor

PALESTINE OUGHT TO PRESENT A PEACE PLAN OF ITS OWN

While the Palestinian leadership has chosen not to destabilize the status quo and stimulate constructive thinking by preempting the Kushner/Netanyahu “peace plan” with a genuine and appealing Palestinian peace plan, it should be clear now that the international community should be offered, rapidly, a choice between the Kushner/Netanyahu “vision” and a Palestinian vision and peace plan.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said that he is willing to negotiate with the Palestinians, for at least ten years, on the basis of Trump's “vision,” on which he well knows that no Palestinian could conceivably negotiate. Imagine that the State of Palestine were to announce that it is willing to negotiate with the State of Israel on the merger of the two internationally- and U.N.-recognized states into a single fully democratic state with equal rights for all.

How would the international community react? Which vision would it be more likely to support?

What could the Palestinian people possibly lose from such a “merger” initiative?

The State of Palestine would not be renounced. It would be reaffirmed while simultaneously refocusing the world's attention on Palestine and the Palestinian people, reasserting the willingness and desire of the Palestinian people to achieve a win-win solution in the interests of both Palestinians and Israelis and opening minds to new possibilities. The perceived threat of a fully democratic country could even inspire a new Israeli government to seriously seek, for the first time, to actually achieve a decent “two-state solution.”

John V. Whitbeck, Paris, France President Trump’s absurd “peace plan” perhaps serves to make a one-state solution all the more likely. The plan’s proposed Swiss cheese Bantustan model for Palestinian sovereignty is transparently untenable. Israel annexing West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley will only create more facts on the ground making two states unviable. The end game is likely

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

a massive civil rights struggle to transition the land from the river to sea from one de facto apartheid state into one unified state with equal rights for all citizens.

WHO BENEFITS FROM A U.S. WAR WITH IRAN?

The Washington Post article, “From Iraq 2003 to Iran 2020, pundits’ points sound familiar,” echoes my feelings exactly.

It was surprising to see Tucker Carlson’s question: “And who is actually benefiting from this?” I think this is always the best question to ask in situations like this.

I think the obvious answer is Israel, as it was in the case of Iraq. The U.S. has not benefited from the Iraq war, certainly the Iraqis did not; Israel, which had a potential threat firmly removed, has benefited.

Israel is always held up as being our ally, but there is no evidence for this. The United States is certainly Israel’s ally, but I challenge you to find even one thing that Israel has done for us that didn’t benefit it far more.

So much talk now about Iran’s terrorism and how many Americans Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani has killed. Apparently reports of this have been pretty well hidden in the Post and elsewhere in the past, as this was largely unreported (“The leader of Iran’s foreign military operations was barely mentioned on TV until his death last week,” the Post notes.)

Iran’s support for its “proxies” is only for the purpose of containing Israel’s expansionism; Iran has never claimed any additional territory for itself by this. (Contrast this with Israel’s appropriation of territory, not only in Palestine, but the surrounding countries of Syria and Lebanon.)

Apparently Trump has not yet done enough for Israel in order to secure the support needed for his re-election. It is so sad that this little racist country has the U.S. by the tail.

Doris Rausch, Columbia, MD Some remember Qassim Soleimani as a hero who defended the Iranian homeland from threats posed by the U.S., Saddam Hussein and the Islamic State.

Others remember him as a brutal butcher MARCH/APRIL 2020

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whose life work resulted in countTejinder Uberoi, Los Altos, CA KEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS less amounts of blood being shed We often focus on the many forCOMING! throughout the region. Regardless eign policy “experts,” such as John Send your letters to the editor to the Washington Report, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 of one’s opinion, we think it’s fair to Bolton, Dennis Ross and Max Boot or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>. say that his assassination has done who keep on getting recycled little to move the region forward. It’s through Washington think tanks, WILL THERE BE ACCOUNTABILITY useful to reflect on Martin Luther King Jr.’s government appointments and news corFOR THE AFGHANISTAN FIASCO? warning about the futility of attempting to porations, never facing accountability for According to a trove of documents obroot out violence with more violence: “The their previous grievous failures. You cortained by the Washington Post, senior ultimate weakness of violence is that it is rectly point out that many in the military and U.S. officials deliberately misled the Amera descending spiral, begetting the very Congress are also able to deftly navigate ican people throughout the now 19-year thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminthrough Washington without ever having to Afghan war campaign, making sunny proishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence answer questions about their failure to pernouncements they knew to be untrue and you may murder the liar, but you cannot form the most basic duties of their jobs. We hiding unmistakable evidence the war was murder the lie, nor establish the truth. hope the recent bipartisan furor over Presdoomed to fail.

Through violence you may murder the ident Trump’s near-war with Iran is the beVice President Dick Cheney boasted hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, ginning of legislators on Capitol Hill reclaim“we have the Taliban on the run,” mimickviolence merely increases hate....Returning their important oversight authority over ing President Richard Nixon’s oft repeated ing violence for violence multiplies viomatters of war and peace. pronouncement “we see light at the end of lence, adding deeper darkness to a night KEEP ON READING! the tunnel,” offering a misleading sense of already devoid of stars.”

I received the Washington Report’s yearprogress in the failed Vietnam War. end donation appeal and short survey. I am “We didn’t know what we were an indigent prisoner without the means to doing,” confessed Gen. Douglas pay for a subscription. The one I had was Lute, the White House’s Afghan truly informative and enlightening, and I will war czar during Bush and miss the gift subscription. I will no longer be Obama’s administrations. able to read the magazine, unless someMore than 2,400 American one would be so kind as to again sponsor lives have been lost, 20,589 a subscription for me. wounded and thousands of innoI note that most publications are slowly cent Afghan civilians killed and turning into digital-only magazines, which maimed. Unable to cope with the are not available to California prisoners, as horrors of war, many U.S. solwell as prisoners in many other states. The diers took their own lives.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs The core failings of the war fills a gap in our information regarding what that persist to this day span three goes on in the Middle East that should presidencies, Bush Jr., Obama frankly concern all humanity. I have enjoyed and Trump. reading the articles and perspectives of Obscene amounts of money subscribers in the letters to the editor, as were squandered in the mistaken well as the humor in the cartoons section. belief that Afghanistan would be The fact that the Washington Report also crushed with America’s superior provides a healthy dose of what the govfirepower, ignoring the mistakes of OTHER VOICES is an optional 16-page supple ernment in Washington, DC is up to is much Vietnam and so many other failed ment available only to subscribers of the Washingappreciated. Thank you for allowing me the conflicts. privilege of reading the magazine, and do Sadly, no government official ton Report on Middle East Affairs. For an additional have another informative, enlightening and will be held accountable for the $15 per year (see postcard insert for Washington productive new year. appalling mistakes in mismanagReport subscription rates), subscribers will receive Brian Keith Barnett, San Diego, CA ing the war and fueling runaway Other Voices inside each issue of their Washington Thank you for being a faithful reader of corruption. This is also a damning Report on Middle East Affairs. the magazine. We (as well as our generindictment of Congress, which Back issues of both publications are available. ous donors) are passionate about every completely failed in its oversight To subscribe telephone 1 (888) 881-5861, fax American becoming better informed about duties. The CIA and military bud(714) 226-9733, e-mail circulation@wrmea. org>, what is happening in the Middle East. In gets need to be drastically cut to that spirit, we are happy to once again offer halt these costly military advenor write to P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809you a complimentary subscription to the tures. Afghanistan really is the 1056. magazine. ■ graveyard of empires.

MARCH/APRIL 2020

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Three Views

Trump Endorses Israeli Apartheid Trump’s vision of a Palestinian state resembles the Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa.

Trump’s Mideast Plan Is a Recipe for War, Not Peace

By Diana Buttu AS U.S. PRESIDENT Donald Trump stepped up to speak at the White House Jan. 28, it was flagged as the announcement of a much-delayed plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Far from offering a path to peace, Trump’s “vision for peace and prosperity and a brighter future” will instead cement the long-term subjugation of Palestinians at Israel’s hands.

Israel will not be required to dismantle its illegal settlements.

Palestinians will be required to renounce their internationally-recognized right to return to their homeland. Palestinians will have little

Diana Buttu is a Ramallah-based analyst and activist, and a former adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas and the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization. This article was printed in Haaretz, Jan. 28. Reprinted with permission.

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access to Jerusalem. Israel will be allowed, in violation of international law, to annex parts of the West Bank.

To the unengaged outside observer this may not mean much, but for Palestinians, and indeed for the international community, this plan speaks volumes. It does away with the international legal system as we know it and replaces it with a system in which “might is right”—where power, and not law, is supreme.

Let’s be clear: this is not a peace plan but rather ticking off Israeli PM Netanyahu’s wish list: in violation of international law Trump has handed Netanyahu Jerusalem, Trump has recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and now Trump has given a green light to Israel’s partial annexation of the West Bank—while simultaneously turning a blind eye to Israeli bombing campaigns, Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes and Israel’s continued blockade on Gaza. The closure of the PLO office in Washington, DC and cutting off aid to Palestinians is fully in line with Netanyahu’s wishes. It is unsurprising that Netanyahu welcomes this plan with open arms.

Twenty years ago this week marked one of the last rounds of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Taba, Egypt. I was a legal

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advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team at the time.

When those negotiations ended without an agreement, Palestinians were asked by the Israelis and the international community to behave as though we had come “close” to achieving an agreement, when reality could not have been more different. Rather than seek to end its military rule, Israel sought to repackage it by continuing to maintain control over Palestinian lives and freedom through its control over land, resources and our ability to develop as a country. We would have had no control over our airspace, over our natural resources or over our borders.

Twenty years later, these same ideas remain on the table, with Israel and the United States not only refusing to recognize Palestinians as equals, but also expecting our gratitude that Trump is even looking our way. In that time Israel has expanded settlements at breakneck speed, with barely a word of condemnation coming from the international community.

Some have even criticized Palestinians for not engaging with Trump’s team on the plan. The absurdity of this speaks volumes: just as we would never ask a victim of domestic abuse to engage with her abuser in the false belief that this may ease his abuse, so too we should not be asking Palestinians to engage in a process we know will simply seek to lead to further Israeli abuse over Palestinian lives.

Peace requires treating others with equality; it can never be achieved through subjugation, as Israel and the U.S. are attempting to do. Refusing to engage with this U.S. administration is not only necessary for Palestinians, but sends the strong message to the international community that international law, and not power, must remain supreme.

Following Trump’s announcement all eyes should now remain firmly on the international community’s response. Will the international community send the U.S. and Israel a definitive message: Your bullying will no longer be accepted, or will it continue, as it has done for decades, to submit to Israeli dictates.

For this is not simply about Palestine, but about the international legal system as we know it. Rewarding Israel for building settlements sends the clear message to other dictatorships around the world that they, too, can do as they please and that they, too, will be rewarded. The ramifications are unimaginable: every country under threat around the world will hear that they too can be invaded, their land stolen and their people deprived of rights. This is a recipe for war, not peace and should be treated as such.

For Palestinians, the next steps are clear: instead of shying away from holding Israel accountable, as the Palestinian Authority has done in the past, we must now begin pressing to ensure that Israel faces consequences for continuing to deny us our freedom and steal our land, just as the South African anti-apartheid activists pushed for an end to South African apartheid.

The fiction of negotiations and the reality of Israeli bullying must come to an end—and with it the sense that Israel, with America’s enthusiastic backing, can do with us whatever it pleases.

MARCH/APRIL 2020

U.S. Peace Deals Have Paved the Way to Apartheid

By Zaha Hassan

ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION to President Donald Trump’s policy on Israel over the last three years is not surprised by the contents of his administration’s so-called peace plan, which was rolled out on Jan. 28. Yet many are still shocked by how brazenly the United States has legitimized the ethno-religious domination of Palestinians.

The Swiss cheese cut-out map of the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, showing enclaves reserved for Palestinians, strikingly resembles the Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa. In fact, the map simply mirrors the reality on the ground as it exists today in the occupied West Bank. The proposed ceding of Israeli territory for additional Palestinian enclaves near Gaza might seem magnanimous, until one realizes that these areas sit atop a nuclear waste dump.

The U.S.’ apparent aim is to facilitate Israel’s desire to take the maximum amount of Palestinian land with the least number of Palestinians. To this end, two relevant stakeholders were at the White House before the announcement: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the leader of the Israeli opposition Benny Gantz.

No Palestinians were needed, since the “Deal of the Century” is, in effect, a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Israel over how much Palestinian territory to annex.

The plan doesn’t foreclose Israel’s taking of even more Palestinian land in the future. This is because, before Palestinians can even hope to have a state of their own, they must declare that the Greater Israel envisioned under Trump’s plan is the “nation state of the Jewish people.” Once Palestinians recognize those expanded borders, make the above declaration, and meet other unattainable benchmarks—including ending all resistance to their ongoing oppression—negotiations can begin. Only then will the U.S. support “designating territory for a future [Palestinian] state.”

Regardless of whether Palestinians accept the plan, Israel now has America’s blessing to annex most of the West Bank, with the promise that the U.S. will extend political recognition to those territories. As such, there is no way to understand this plan or look at the attached conceptualized map without calling

Zaha Hassan is a human rights lawyer and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focus is on Palestine-Israel peace, the use of international legal mechanisms by political movements, and U.S. foreign policy in the region. Previously, she was the coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for U.N .membership, and was a member of the Palestinian delegation to Quartet-sponsored exploratory talks between 2011 and 2012. This article was first published on Jan. 30 in +972 Magazine. Reprinted with permission.

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Palestinians watch the televised press conference of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Jan. 28, 2020, at the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. it by its name: apartheid, designed and sanctioned by the U.S. government.

This position ignores the elephant in the room. What has made a peace agreement illusive between Israelis and Palestinians is not the lack of active U.S. engagement with both parties, or insufficient rounds of bilateral negotiations. There has been no peace agreement because Israel, backed by the U.S., is unwilling to address the root cause of the conflict: the forced mass displacement of Palestinians and the expropriation of their land that began before 1948 and continues until today. America’s failure to compel Israel to accept its responsibility for Palestinian exile, to engage in meaningful negotiations, and to end Palestinian statelessness is what has emboldened Israel’s ongoing colonization.

The subjugation of Palestinians and the disregard for their rights and humanity did not begin with the Trump administration. President Bill Clinton’s peace parameters showed similar indifference when he called on Palestinians to cede parts of Arab East Jerusalem for the benefit of Jewish settlers, and to temper their expectations regarding the return of Palestinian refugees to their original homes.

Likewise, President George W. Bush was not concerned for Palestinian rights when he assured Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon—in writing—that the U.S. did not expect Israel to completely withdraw from the occupied territories. Bush also accepted the demographic changes resulting from Israeli settlement as immutable, and declared that all Palestinian refugees should be resettled in a future Palestinian state—not their historical homes.

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President Obama went further by stating that “everyone knows... a lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people.” The Obama administration believed that by supporting such a parameter, Israel might be encouraged to end settlement expansion and accept Palestinian statehood. It in fact had the opposite effect: settlement building accelerated during Obama’s eight years in office.

Despite this, only days before President Trump was to take office, the Obama administration officially made Palestinian recognition of Israel a parameter for negotiations. This, along with the permissive environment created under Trump’s administration, gave the Israeli Knesset a green light to pass the quasi-constitutional Jewish nationstate law in July 2018, which ensures that Jewish people have the exclusive right to self-determination anywhere Israel decides to extend its sovereignty.

That the Trump plan requires Palestinians to first recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people before the U.S. even contemplates designating territory for a future Palestinian state should be understood not only as a way to end refugee claims and legitimize land expropriation, but as an opening for the displacement of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the future. The plan hints as much by referring to the possibility of ceding communities within Israel that have a high density of Palestinian citizens to a future Palestinian state. Those Palestinian citizens, like the rest of their brethren, need not be consulted.

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PHOTO BY SAID KHATIB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

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PHOTO BY HAZEM BADER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

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Palestinian women walk past an Israeli soldier in the al-Aroub Palestinian refugee camp, which is located between Hebron and Bethlehem in the West Bank, Jan. 29, 2020. President Trump's proposed peace deal would not allow Palestinians to leave refugee camps and return to the homes they were forced to flee due to attacks by Jewish militias and the Israeli forces.

What is needed now is not chest-pounding or handwringing about returning to bilateral negotiations and a viable two-state solution. What is needed is for policy-makers in the U.S. and abroad to reassess their support for political solutions that would sanction the supremacy of one people over another. If that conversation does not take place now, in a world where ethno-nationalism is on the rise, Trump’s “Deal of the Century” will become the shame of the century.

Trump Declared the Third Nakba

By Gideon Levy

IN A FLIMSY hospital gown, injured, barefoot and confused, without food or water, with a catheter attached and wearing a diaper, Gaza resident Omar Abu Jeriban was tossed on the side of the road on June 13, 2008 and left to die. Chaim Levinson reported the story in Haaretz at the time, David Grossman was appalled by it.

The other day, the entire Palestinian people became Abu Jeriban.

The role of the police who tossed out a wounded man in the middle of the night was taken by the American president, Donald Trump, and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. The role of the

Gideon Levy is the Haaretz correspondent for the occupied territories. He is also a speaker at the upcoming “Transcending the Israel Lobby at Home and Abroad “ Conference on May 29. Copyright © Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All rights reserved MARCH/APRIL 2020

hospital that just stood by was taken by the world.

In 2008 it was a human tragedy; two days ago, it was a national tragedy: The White House declared the start of the third Nakba.

The Palestinians were tossed by the side of the road and abandoned to their fate. Right-wing Israel is delighted, left-wing Israel is lost as usual, and the world is silent. It’s the end of the world.

The White House looked like Habayit Hayehudi the other day, awash in kippot and Yiddishkeit. Does one have to be an anti-Semite to wonder about this? With all the wheeler-dealer peacemakers— all these Friedmans, Adelsons, Greenblatts, Kushners and Berkowitzes, these supposedly fair and unbiased mediators, it’s impossible to even think about the start of a fair accord.

It’s not hard to guess what goes through the mind of every Palestinian and every seeker of justice at the sight of this all-Jewish and all-right-wing class picture. But the Palestinians weren’t just missing entirely from the ceremony, they were also nowhere to be found in the plan that could seal their future and that heralds the elimination of their last chance for some belated decency, for a bit of justice, for a drop of compassion. They were left bleeding on the side of the road.

This is their third Nakba. After losing most of their land, property and dignity in the first and their liberty in the second, now comes the third to crush whatever is left of their hope. They’ve tried everything. Diplomatic struggle and armed struggle, nonviolent protest and economic boycott. Nothing has helped. The “deal of the century” only reconfirms what was known: The evil thrive, this time in

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a particularly extreme edition of one-sidedness, racism and arrogance. The mighty take all. All. The Palestinians get a caricature of an independent state after many years, if ever, and only as long as they agree to a series of degrading surrender conditions that even the lowest collaborator would never agree to. Israel, on the other hand, gets almost everything, and right away.

Why do only the Palestinians have to prove themselves before they get anything? Has Israel proven itself in the half-century of oc-

THE REGION RESPONDS TO TRUMP’S PEACE PLAN Algeria: The Algerian Foreign Ministry affirmed its support for the Arab Peace Initiative endorsed by the League of Arab States in 2002 and the “inalienable” rights of the Palestinian people to establish their own state with a capital in East Jerusalem.

Bahrain: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs commends the United States of America for its determined efforts to advance the peace process.”

Egypt: "Egypt recognizes the importance of considering the U.S. administration's initiative from the perspective of the importance of achieving the resolution of the Palestinian issue, thus restoring to the Palestinian people their full legitimate rights through the establishment of a sovereign independent state in the Palestinian occupied territories in accordance with international legitimacy and resolutions.”—Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Iran: “The shameful peace plan imposed

by America on the Palestinians is the treason of the century and doomed to fail.”

—Iran’s Foreign Ministry Iraq: “Iraq stands with its Palestinian brothers in their legitimate rights guaranteed by international legitimacy, Security Council resolutions and their right to return to their homes and lands.”

—Iraq’s Foreign Ministry Jordan: “An independent Palestinian state on June 4, 1967, lines with East Jerusalem as its capital—living in peace side by side with Israel on the basis of the two-state solution that fulfills the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, in accordance with international law—is the only path to a comprehensive and lasting peace. Israeli measures, such as the annexation of Palestinian lands; the building and expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian occupied lands; and encroachments on the Holy Sites in 12

cupation? Has it obeyed international law at all? Has it heeded the international community? Should there be a prize for the brutal occupier? For the settlers? For what, and why, America?

Israel gets everything and without conditions, while the Palestinians, a fairly restrained people given the terrible abuse it endures, still have to prove themselves in order to receive the little crumbs of justice that the American president throws to them. Why does Israel’s security have to be guaranteed over and over again,

Jerusalem, that aim at imposing new realities on the ground [are] a violation of international law and provocative actions that will push the area toward more conflict and tension.”

—Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi Kuwait: The state news agency said in a statement to Reuters that it “highly appreciates” the Trump administration’s peace proposal.

Morocco: “Acceptance by the parties is fundamental to the implementation and sustainability of the plan. Morocco [hopes for] a constructive peace process [that will offer] a realistic, applicable, equitable and lasting solution.” —Morocco’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Oman: The Sultanate’s Ambassador to the U.S., Hunaina Sultan Ahmed Al Mughairy, attended the unveiling of the peace plan at the White House, signaling her country’s support for the initiative. The UAE and Bahrain also sent their ambassadors to the unveiling.

Qatar: “[The country] appreciates the endeavors of President Trump and the current U.S. administration to find solutions for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. All solutions should be consistent with international law and the relevant U.N. resolutions.”

—Qatari News Agency Saudi Arabia: “The Kingdom appreciates the efforts of President Trump's administration to develop a comprehensive peace plan between the Palestinian and the Israeli sides, and encourages the start of direct peace negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, under the auspices of the United States.”

—Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Syria: “[The country issues] strong condemnation and absolute rejection of the socalled ‘Deal of the Century,’ which represents a prescription to surrender to the usurping Israeli occupation.”

—Syria’s Foreign Ministry Tunisia: “[Tunisia] follows with great con-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

cern the announcement of the initiative of the U.S. administration to settle the Palestinian question.”

—Tunisia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Turkey: “Jerusalem is our redline. We will not allow any step seeking to legitimize Israel's occupation and atrocities. We will always stand by the brotherly Palestinian people and will continue to work for an independent Palestine on Palestinian land. We will not support any plan that does not have the support of Palestine. There will not be any peace in the Middle East without ending Israel's occupation policies.”

—Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs United Arab Emirates: “This plan is a serious initiative that addresses many issues raised over the years. The plan announced today offers an important starting point for a return to negotiations within a U.S.-led international framework.” —Yousef Al Otaiba, UAE Ambassador to the U.S.

CANDIDATES CONDEMN TRUMP’S PLAN

Joe Biden: “A peace plan requires two sides to come together. This is a political stunt that could spark unilateral moves to annex territory and set back peace even more,” the former vice president said. “I’ve spent a lifetime working to advance the security and survival of a Jewish and democratic Israel. This is not the way.”

Mike Bloomberg: The former mayor of New York City said, “Every peace plan deserves a chance, but any viable plan requires buy-in from both sides, and over the past three years the president has done nothing but hurt the U.S. position as an effective broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As this process unfolds it is critical that neither party take unilateral steps that could trigger instability and violence.”

Pete Buttigieg: The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said, “Peace requires both MARCH/APRIL 2020

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throughout the generations and against all risk, without anyone so much as lifting a finger to ensure the security of the Palestinians, whose blood is so cheaply shed by Israel? A little girl in Gaza also deserves a secure night’s sleep, but who cares about her in Habayit Hayehudi, the Jewish Home, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

If this plan is fulfilled, God forbid, it will be the end of the Palestinian people. Not the physical end, the national end. Whoever thinks this is reason to celebrate is invited to join the celebration parties at the table. Not a political green light to the leader of one for unilateral annexation.”

Bernie Sanders (I-VT): “Any acceptable peace deal must be consistent with international law and multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. It must end the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and enable Palestinian self-determination in an independent, democratic, economically viable state of their own alongside a secure and democratic state of Israel,” he said. “Trump’s so-called ‘peace deal’ doesn’t come close, and will only perpetuate the conflict, and undermine the security interests of Americans, Israelis and Palestinians. It is unacceptable.”

Elizabeth Warren (D-MA): “Trump’s ‘peace plan’ is a rubber stamp for annexation and offers no chance for a real Palestinian state,” she tweeted. “Releasing a plan without negotiating with Palestinians isn’t diplomacy, it’s a sham. I will oppose unilateral annexation in any form—and reverse any policy that supports it.”

Sanders, Warren and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), another presidential candidate, wrote a letter to Trump sent by 12 Democrats in the Senate expressing their “profound concern” over the plan: “We write to express our profound concern regarding your decision to release a one-sided IsraeliPalestinian plan forged without any Palestinian involvement or support,” the senators said. “Unilateral implementation of this onesided proposal will risk eliminating any remaining prospects for achievement of a peaceful and viable two-state solution.”

OTHER DEMOCRATS

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI): “It's ‘fitting’ that the plan was released by ‘a forever impeached president on the same day that Netanyahu was indicted for corruption. This political stunt gets us no closer to peace or justice. As a member of Congress, I consider it a non-starter,” she stated.

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in Rabin Square for the release of Naama Issachar, and to vote Likud or Kahol Lavan—what’s the difference? But anyone who still has a drop of moral commitment should be aghast at this terrible peace of the victors that may end well for Israel but will never end well for Israelis. Israel never assumed responsibility for the first and second Nakbas, perhaps it will also evade its responsibility for the third. But it will never be able to escape the blame and disgrace for stamping out another people. ■

Ilhan Omar (D-MN): “They could have guaranteed justice, and brought everyone into this peace deal. Instead these two embattled heads of state, impeached and indicted, have a ‘just us’ peace deal. It’s shameful and disingenuous!” she tweeted.

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) also tweeted his displeasure: “The so-called Trump ‘peace plan’ will only lead to more division and conflict. Claiming to advance peace without the involvement of one party to the conflict is a diplomatic hoax that undermines the chance of a genuine two-state solution....Timing is everything here. The Trump plan is not about advancing peace. It’s a deliberately timed ploy to interfere in the Israeli elections by distracting attention from Netanyahu’s formal indictment for bribery today and to divert from Trump’s impeachment proceedings.”

Andy Levin (D-MI) tweeted, “Don’t be fooled. What Donald Trump is proposing is a ‘two-state solution’ in name only, not lasting peace that will protect Israel’s future as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people or fulfill Palestinians’ aspirations for self-determination.”

COMMUNITY LEADERS

Noura Erakat tweeted, “They want to put us in permanent, high-tech cages and call it peace.”

Linda Sarsour tweeted, “We as Americans are COMPLICIT. This must be condemned by all people of conscience. A peace plan without Palestinians is not a peace plan, it’s a re-election campaign strategy for Donald Trump.”

J Street also dismissed the plan as annexation. “Israel will apply its laws to the Jordan Valley and to the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. That's the definition of annexation. This is an annexation plan, not a plan for peace.”

Jewish Voice for Peace also called it an apartheid plan. “International law, global consensus and decades of U.S. policy concur that Palestinian land isn't for Trump to give away nor for Netanyahu to steal,” Rabbi Alissa Wise said.

American-Arab Anti-Discrimation Committee stated, “In this plan, President Trump gives Israel a green light to annex the West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley—a long time objective of the Apartheid State of Israel. By adopting this position and apartheid ideology, the U.S. has officially put an end to its own objective of a two-state solution...

Palestinians will continue to live in an apartheid state, subjected to dehumanization on their own land. Palestinians in Gaza will continue to live under grave humanitarian conditions, and millions more will still be prevented from returning home. It is time that this country, and the rest of the world, takes action to end the apartheid system of governance in Israel and to ensure full rights and freedoms for all Palestinians.”

Arab American Institute executive director Maya Berry urged action: “If we wish to see a future of any peace or justice in the region, Congress must exercise its power of oversight and oppose this plan. Inaction in this moment is complicity in the face of all that we claim to stand against: oppression, intolerance, illegal annexation, population transfers and apartheid laws. The American people will continue to support dignity, freedom and human rights for Palestinians.”

American Muslims for Palestine: “We’re all fuming at what we witnessed today...But it's not enough to get mad; it's time to get off the couch and take action! The U.S. will never become a fair broker in the Middle East and recognize the rights and security of Palestinians if we don’t put in the work to build power in our communities and impact policy.”

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United Nations Report

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence hosts Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, Jan. 23, 2020. The meeting was also attended by Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer (l) and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman (r).

NETANYAHU AND TRUMP can make deals to the Devil’s content, and the Knesset can claim as much sovereignty as it likes, but in the end, it is the much reviled, toothless United Nations that will have to sign off on it.

As former Secretary General Kofi Annan said, “There is no substitute for the unique legitimacy provided by the United Nations.” It is not just Palestine: The U.N. never recognized Indonesia’s claim to East Timor nor has it accepted Moroccan claims to the Western Sahara, which is why maps still demarcate them separately, like the Occupied Territories.

If the Palestinians were indeed to accept such a humiliating and one-sided “deal of the century,” they would have to persuade the U.N. to ratify it. Unsurprisingly to everyone but Donald Trump, however, the Palestinians are in no rush to stampede into doom like the Gadarene Swine who ran into the sea. But then the plan gives no

U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of UNtold: the Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).

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Palestinian access to the Sea of Galilee where the demented hogs drowned.

Antonio Guterres, the current Secretary General, characteristically put in as low-key a rebuff as he could, short of congratulating the U.S. President and Israeli Prime Minister. “The Secretary General has seen the announcement of the United States plan for the Middle East. The position of the United Nations on the two-state solution has been defined, throughout the years, by relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions by which the Secretariat is bound.

“The United Nations remains committed to supporting Palestinians and Israelis to resolve the conflict on the basis of United Nations resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements and realizing the vision of two states—Israel and Palestine—living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, on the basis of the pre-1967 lines.”

That should have been the cue for a vociferous public denunciation of a deal cooked up while excluding the most affected party, but then again neither Lord Balfour nor the Versailles Conference

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

MARCH/APRIL 2020

PHOTO COURTESY KOBI GIDEON/GPO

Will the U.N. Sign Off on a Trumped-Up Peace Deal?

By Ian Williams

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consulted the Palestinians either. In any case, bemused by his own temerity in stating this most minimal position Guterres did not invoke the corpus of U.N. resolutions going back to the founding of Israel, which includes the right to return or compensation for the refugees, Israel’s withdrawal to the 1967 lines and recognition of East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.

These are not archival small print, but at the prescient insistence of the Palestinians these resolutions have been resurrected and restated year after year in the teeth of U.S. and Israeli protests and rejectionism.

In some ways Guterres’ tepid response could be anticipated from his statement on the Soleimani assassination. “My message is simple and clear: Stop escalation. Exercise maximum restraint. Re-start dialogue.

Renew international cooperation.” This is simple minded rather than simple, and not at all clear—a list of waffling platitudinous demands without a single specific request, addressed to the universe rather than the country that had just done the deed. He could just as well have admonished, “Be good boys and girls!” Not a hint of reproof for a manifestly illegal act that potentially could have matched the assassination in 1914 of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo for consequences, nor even the faintest reminder that there is international law about acts of war and killings on other people’s territories.

So the challenge for both the supporters and the opponents of the deal is to persuade the U.N. members themselves.

Israel and the U.S. have to persuade them to eat their own words in the form of 70 years of overwhelmingly passed resolutions at the General Assembly and in the Security Council, not to mention judgments of the International Court of Justice and the U.N. Charter’s own stipulations against the acquisition of territory by military force.

Sadly, although difficult, that is not totally impossible. Israel sings along with the professed scorn of the evangelical chorus against the U.N., but its astute Ambassador Danny Danon knows what he is doing.

While Trump has sent semi-detached Israel supporters to represent the U.S. at the U.N., the Israeli ambassador has taken the orgaMARCH/APRIL 2020

nization and its members seriously over the years. While the U.S. was pulling out of the organization and leaving the Chinese and others to fill the gap, Danon has been working hard to “normalize” Israeli participation.

He has courted smaller members with trips to Israel and, of course, the implied benefit of preferential access to the succession of American U.N. representatives, each of whom has been more unthinkingly pro-Israeli than the previous. This strategy has been very successful compared with the low-key, under-resourced Palestinian response.

Genuine supporters of a Middle East peace should not take for granted the U.N.’s position in the face of world regression in terms of law and rights.

Short of presenting a clone of Mahmoud Abbas at the General Assembly endorsing the deal, the Trumped-up deal is unlikely to win support in the GA, where 138 members explicitly recognize Palestine as a state with sovereignty over the territories in the Green Line boundaries. Many of the others do not accept it is Israeli territory. It is almost inconceivable that any but the usual cabal of atolls and banana republics would support the deal, although there might be a high rate of expedient abstentions from countries that know that the deal is wrong but do not want to risk the wrath of Trump by saying so.

But what about the Security Council?

There a simple veto would suffice but looking at the diplomatic lineup, there is more dubiety than there used to be. At one time, Russia and China could have been guaranteed to support the Palestinians and the Arab/Muslim/Nonaligned bloc whether out of principle or reciprocal self-interest. But with Egypt signaling acceptance and the Gulf States standing in attendance on the peace plan debacle, which bloc are we talking about?

Russia and China have been closely engaged with Israel financially and technologically and are likely to be totally pragmatic in their approach, while Emmanuel Macron in France is no Charles de Gaulle where Israel is concerned. In London Trump has a more intellectual clone, Boris Johnson, who is reported as saying the plan “could

prove a positive step forward.” His foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, referred to the deal as a “serious proposal” that should be considered. An abstention would possibly be the best that the Palestinians could expect from the UK and maybe even France. Among the temporary members, South Africa, with its long memories of Israeli support for Apartheid, would hold the line, as probably would Indonesia and Tunisia and very likely St. Vincent and the Grenadines. But many of the others, like Germany, Belgium, Estonia and other Europeans, would be under heavy pressure and have been softened up with continuous, strident and spurious allegations of anti-Semitism.

Scouring the news reports just after the announcement, the most succinct dismissal came from Bernie Sanders: “Any acceptable peace deal must be consistent with international law and multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. It must end the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and enable Palestinian self-determination in an independent, democratic, economically viable state of their own alongside a secure and democratic state of Israel.

“Trump’s so-called ‘peace deal’ doesn’t come close, and will only perpetuate the conflict, and undermine the security interests of Americans, Israelis and Palestinians. It is unacceptable.” ■

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desylvar2_17-19.qxp_Special Report 1/30/20 6:53 PM Page 17

The Long Shadow of Oslo On Dec. 6, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution advocating the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Surprisingly, Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib (DMI), her Muslim colleague Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and the two other members of their “Squad” opposed the resolution. Tlaib explained, “This resolution…endorses an unrealistic, unattainable solution, one that Israel has made impossible.”

Tlaib’s statement may well have mystified her House colleagues.

Why is the two-state solution unrealistic and unattainable, and how is Israel to blame for that? Most U.S. politicians are unaware that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are under the yoke of apartheid and that a Palestinian state is impossible as long as that is the case. The fact that the majority of U.S. representatives evidently want to return to something like the Oslo “peace process” for two states indicates they don’t understand how Oslo failed and how it created apartheid.

Especially in light of President Donald Trump’s new “peace plan,” it is timely to evaluate the Oslo process to understand why it would be a mistake to return to anything like it at this time.

A PALESTINIAN STATE—OR SOMETHING LESS?

The Oslo “peace process” began with the Sept. 13, 1993 Oslo I agreement, followed by the Sept. 28, 1995 Oslo II agreement.

Israel’s desire to end the First Intifada, which had erupted in December 1987, was the impetus for these secret negotiations in which the PLO headed by Yasser Arafat represented the Palestinians. The Palestinians’ condition for peace was sovereignty over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as defined by the 1949 armistice “green line,” and East Jerusalem for a capital. Israeli settlements undermined these requirements and negotiators also demanded the resolution of the refugee issue. These territories constituted only 22 percent of Palestine. The Palestinians considered this a huge compromise conceding to Israel the 78 percent from which it had ethnically cleansed them in 1948. A viable state required contiguity, so an undivided West Bank with a secure land link to Gaza was essential.

Israel dominated the Oslo process. Israeli scholar and politician Yossi Beilin was a principal architect of the Accords. Perhaps Oslo’s greatest flaw was its failure to acknowledge Palestinian rights to a state. Arafat put that right—and Palestine’s equal status with Israel— at risk in a Sept. 9, 1993 exchange of letters with Israeli Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin. Momentously, he acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. In exchange, Rabin merely acknowledged the PLO’s right to

Gregory DeSylva is a board member of Deir Yassin Remembered and has written and produced six videos related to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

MARCH/APRIL 2020

Special Report

By Gregory DeSylva

represent the Palestinians. Moreover, in 1992 Rabin had advised the Palestinians, “We are offering you the fairest and most viable proposal from our point of view today—autonomy, self-government.”

The autonomy proposals envisioned local self-rule, not sovereignty.

In 1994 Rabin declared, “We do not accept the Palestinian goal of an independent Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan. We believe in a separate Palestinian entity short of a state.” Regarding Jerusalem, he wrote in his memoirs, “Jerusalem is and will continue to be united [under Israeli sovereignty] and our eternal capital.”

Despite Rabin’s aims, the Oslo Accords could have acknowledged Palestinian rights to a state. Failure to do so opened up the possibility of something less than a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Yet the Palestinian residents of the territories—many of them victims of ethnic cleansing by Israel during the 1948 and 1967 wars—had strong rights, backed by international law, to statehood in this remnant of Palestine. Oslo did indicate that Israel would withdraw from parts of the West Bank, which were to be transferred to the Palestinians, but precise areas and timing were left ambiguous.

The proposals could be construed to mean that parts of the territories—even large parts—might go to Israel. Whether the remainder would be sufficient for a viable state was purely hypothetical. Such ambiguity was Oslo’s second great flaw, making for misunderstandings, unrealized expectations, loss of faith in the process and violence.

Non-recognition and ambiguity didn’t eliminate all possibility of a Palestinian state. There were still issues essential to statehood in which the Palestinians had strong grounding in international law.

These included Israeli settlements and military locations, borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and foreign relations. The settlements and military locations and troops in the territories contravene international law prohibiting colonization of territories occupied by war and requiring timely termination of military occupations. The borders would define the location, extent and contiguity of the state.

According to international law they would be the same as those of the territories, which also would clarify the Jerusalem issue. The right of refugees to return or to be compensated also is well established in international law, as is the right of a sovereign state to conduct its own foreign relations. These “permanent status” issues, emphatically, should have been at the top of the agenda. Instead, Oslo postponed the deadline for resolving those issues until May 4, 1999.

Putting off difficult issues normally means they will be taken up later in a particular negotiation. Deferring them five years after an agreement per Oslo was highly unorthodox, and no progress was made during that period. Rather, these issues became increasingly intractable with each passing day as Israel created more settlements and other “facts on the ground.” This was not the first nor

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SEPARATION AND DOMINATION: APARTHEID

With Palestinian dreams in deep freeze, Israel waited until the final days of the Oslo II negotiations to foist upon the PLO the notorious A-B-C scheme splitting up the West Bank.

Superficially, this might seem like the basis for a state to start small and expand to re-unite the territory. In the context of non-recognition, ambiguity, postponement and withdrawal failures, it’s hard not to suspect that this scheme was intended to become permanent. Area A consists of Palestinian cities, theoretically to have autonomy, local self-rule and internal security. Area B encompasses Palestinian villages and nearby lands, to be under Palestinian local rule and supposedly joint Palestinian-Israeli security control. In fact, Israeli security dominates Area B. This arrangement enables Israel to suppress dissent in B and invade A at will, despite A’s nominal internal security. C is under full Israeli control and contains all the settlements and most of the water and other essential natural resources lacking in A and B. C also completely surrounds and transects A and B, cutting them into many non-contiguous fragments incapable of constituting a viable state. All of this gave Israel dominating control of the population of A and B and the movement of people, goods and services into and out of those areas.

A and B form three rough non-contiguous blocks: Nablus to the north, Hebron to the south and Ramallah in between. The Second Intifada prompted Israel to impose severe restrictions on Palestinian movement between these blocks and between fragments thereof.

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It did so by installing numerous checkpoints requiring permits to pass, as well as hundreds of roadblocks and other obstacles along roads connecting the blocks and their fragments. By 2006, 528 checkpoints and obstacles and Jewishonly roads were disrupting Palestinian lives and damaging their economy. Israel also started building a high wall to physically separate West Bank Palestinians from Israeli Jews and from some of the illegal settlements.

The A-B-C scheme allowed Israel to tightly control A and B and the Palestinian residents of C in the name of security. It was a blueprint for apartheid, a prototype for separation and domination disturbingly reminiscent of the “autonomous” bantustans engulfed by the dominating matrix of white South Africa. Its intent clearly was not to create a bona-fide contiguous state for the Palestinians but to isolate and control them. They didn’t fail to recognize A and B as bantustans to which they could be restricted as Israel settled C and annexed the West Bank.

Arafat reportedly shouted that they were like “the cantons of South Africa!” (Gaza became a bantustan in 2005 when Israel removed its settlements and enclosed it in a separation barrier.)

But wasn’t C supposed to be transferred to A and B in stages, putting the West Bank Humpty-Dumpty back together? Postponement of the settlements issue made this impossible. As long as they remained and continued to expand, most of C could not be transferred. Though Oslo II prohibited actions changing the status of the territories during permanent status negotiations, it erred by not explicitly banning settlement expansion.

Israel took full advantage. Between the signing of Oslo II and the 1999 deadline for those negotiations, the number of West Bank settlers increased 9.2 percent per year. Withdrawal delays and ceaseless settlement expansion led to Palestinian loss of confidence in the process and anti-Israel violence, causing more delays. Consequently, only limited areas of C have been transferred to A and B. By 2013, Area A, initially 3 percent of the West Bank, grew to 18 percent; Area B, initially 24 percent, declined to 22 percent. Area C, initially 73 percent, declined to 60 percent. The map on the next page shows combined areas A and B today: scattered bantustans totaling 8.8 percent of pre-1947 Palestine. Palestinian residents of C—many of them refugees and even refugees twice over—are under pressure to migrate to A and B or emigrate due to the lack

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MAP COURTESY NAD-PLO.

the last time vital Palestinian interests were swept under the rug. They were the sticking point in the 1978 Camp David negotiations, in which Palestinian rights to a state also were unacknowledged and the key issues were put off five years. Nothing was accomplished during that period either, allowing Israel to achieve peace with Egypt without negotiating—let alone reaching an agreement—with the Palestinians. Postponement and other aspects of the Oslo Accords evidently were modeled upon the 1978 Camp David Accords.

In sum, by not demanding explicit statehood recognition and by going along with ambiguous schemes, the PLO was signaling—perhaps unwittingly—that it would accept something less than a state.

By acceding to the long postponement of the permanent status issues, the Palestinians were virtually guaranteeing that that would be their only option.

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of housing. Building is not an option because Israel virtually always denies them permits and demolishes houses they build without permits.

Israel justifies all of this on the basis of security. But the sole cause of Palestinian violence is resistance to Israel’s settler colonization of Palestine. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said of black violence, “It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.”

Just so, Palestinian violence is born of the greater, original crimes of the Zionist society. Israel can no more justify its apartheid crimes by Palestinian violence than South Africa could justify its apartheid crimes by African National Congress (ANC) violence.

JUSTICE DELAYED/JUSTICE DENIED: CAMP DAVID 2000 AND BEYOND

MAP COURTESY NAD-PLO.

Each delay of the permanent status issues—especially the settlements— drove another nail into the two-state coffin. Nevertheless, President Bill Clinton convened another Camp David Summit in 2000 to try again. Since Oslo II (1995), the number of West Bank settlers had increased 48 percent. Prime Minister Ehud Barak made a half-baked proposal that still did not acknowledge Palestinian statehood and under which many West Bank settlements were to be annexed. It rejected the green line border and gave Israel a 99-year lease on the Jordan Valley; most of East Jerusalem was to be under Israeli sovereignty with no Palestinian capital; and the world would bear most of the responsibility for the refugees. In Gaza, Israeli settlements and border control would have remained. None of this was in writing and there was no map. Leery now of ambiguous schemes, Arafat walked out and was blamed for the failure— never mind Israel’s proposed settlement annexations and rejection of other Palestinian permanent status positions. Once again those were left in limbo as Israel gained more time to establish facts on the ground.

The January 2001 Taba negotiations were a hasty attempt to salvage the 2000 Summit before Ariel Sharon’s probable election as prime minister. Considerable progress was made, but differences on settlement annexations and compensating land swaps, as well as Jerusalem and refugee restitutions, could not be resolved in time.

Once again, the permanent status issues stymied negotiations and MARCH/APRIL 2020

were kicked further down the road.

Israel didn’t make all the proposals. The stipulations of the 2002 Arab League Peace Initiative were virtually identical to Palestinian demands, for which it offered Israel peace with all Arab League states.

Israel rejected this proposal on Jerusalem and refugees.

George W. Bush’s 2003 “Roadmap” further postponed the permanent status issues until the end of 2005—by which time the number of settlers had increased 84 percent over 1995—and also ended up in the peace plan graveyard.

Israeli policy thawed briefly when Ehud Olmert became prime minister in 2006. In late 2008, with the number of West Bank settlers up 109 percent, he made a proposal similar to the 2001 Taba concept.

But differences persisted over settlement land swaps, Jerusalem and refugees, and the deal could not be done before rejectionist Binyamin Netanyahu returned to power in 2009.

UNHOLY APARTHEID IN THE HOLY LAND

Twenty-seven years of the “peace process” haven’t come close to a twostate solution. Rather, it has resulted in apartheid in the territories. Assuming the House of Representatives is sincere about two states, that outcome indeed is unrealistic—even fanciful—under current circumstances. It also is not a little hypocritical, given its approval of more than $75 billion in aid to Israel from the beginning of the “peace process” in 1993 to 2017 and $3.8 billion per year in military aid thereafter—which has helped to establish and maintain this apartheid.

Apartheid in the Palestinian territories is a clear and present evil that cannot be whitewashed by Israel apologists. It’s a legitimate target for the kind of grassroots action that helped bring down South African apartheid. Assembling a bona-fide state from the shattered, dominated fragments Oslo created is highly improbable.

Apartheid must be disassembled before that can be a real possibility. Adequate physical, legal and political space must be cleared before a Palestinian state can take root. All the apartheid laws, regulations, institutions and infrastructure first must be swept away, beginning with the official condemnation and outlawing of Zionist apartheid itself.

So, politicians and citizens: put aside two states for now. Help bring down this apartheid if you can. But get out of the way if you can’t lend a hand. ■

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The Nakba Continues

JNF: Ethnic Cleansing Disguised as Environmentalism

By Jonathan Cook

SCHONING/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES

boasts: “Every penny raised

by JNF UK is sent to a project in Israel.”

The United States has its own organization, JNF-USA, whose slogan is “Your voice in Israel.”

Donations from these overseas charities were used to buy most of the 250 million trees planted across Israel since 1948. That was the year when 750,000 Palestinians were forced out at gunpoint from their homes by the new Israeli army.

Those expulsions were an event Palestinians call their Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe.”

Afterwards, the Israeli army laid waste to many A man sits on a bench at Jerusalem’s Independence Park, built in 1955 and financed by the JNF-USA, on the site of the Arab Mamilla Cemetery. Israeli authorities bulldozed or removed at least 1,500 tombs in the hundreds of Palestinian vilcemetery and simply threw away the human remains, according to an investigation by the Israeli news- lages, turning them into paper Haaretz. rubble. Forests planted over the villages were then promoted as efforts to “make the desert bloom.”

THE EFFORT TO strip a major international Zionist organization of In fact, the trees were intended primarily to prevent Palestinian its status as a charity in Britain because of its role in aiding war refugees from ever being able to return to their villages and rebuild crimes is being stepped up—in a campaign that has implications their homes. As a result, millions of Palestinians today languish in for tax-exempt donations reaching Israel from North America and refugee camps across the Middle East, evicted from their homeland the rest of Europe. with the help of the forests.

The British state is being asked to account for its financial and JNF branches raised the funds for a parent organization in Israel, moral support for the UK branch of the Jewish National Fund (JNF the Jewish National Fund-Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (JNF-KKL), that UK), which stands accused of complicity in the ethnic cleansing of enforced the expulsions by using donations to plant the forests. The hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland.

Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population The JNF UK describes itself as “Britain’s oldest Israel charity.” was effectively disguised as a form of environmentalism.

Noting its role in “building Israel for over a century,” the organization The U.S., Canada, Britain and many other European states have long treated their local JNF fund-raising arms as charities.

Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth and a winner of the The JNF UK received charitable status in 1939, nearly a decade Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. He is the author of before Israel was created as a Jewish state on the ruins of the Blood and Religion and Israel and the Clash of Civilisations (availPalestinians’ homeland. able from AET’s Middle East Books and More).

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HAZEM BADER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The forests are still managed with money raised through tax-deductible donations in Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere. In the case of Britain, donations to the JNF have been eligible for Gift Aid since 1990, meaning that the British government tops up donations by adding its own 25 percent contribution.

Critics have noted that in effect the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages has been subsidized by western publics.

It is the continuing sanction of these crimes—and others—by European and North American officials that is being belatedly given scrutiny by human rights activists in Britain.

A photo taken from the Palestinian village of Ramadin shows the illegal Israeli settlement of Sansana, A campaign launched in 2010 south of the West Bank town of Hebron, April 9, 2017. According to research by “Stop the JNF,” called “Stop the JNF”—backed by contributions from JNF UK have aided this religious settlement. various Palestinian solidarity orvillage. The Jewish National Fund is not cludes Britannia Forest, on the sites of three ganizations—has hoped to shame British merely planting trees. These trees have Palestinian villages that were destroyed by officials into ending the JNF’s charitable been used as a weapon of war, a weapon the Israeli army after 1948. status. of colonization.”

Similar parks over destroyed villages The campaign gained parliamentary supIsraeli scholar Uri Davis has observed have been named after countries where the port a year later, when 68 MPs signed an that the establishment of British Park and donations were raised. The JNF is also reearly-day motion condemning the JNF’s acother such foreign-financed parks “ought to sponsible for United States Independence tivities and calling for its charitable status to be classified as an act, and as a policy, of Park, Canada Park, France Park, and be revoked. complicity with war crimes.”

South Africa Park.

The motion was sponsored by Jeremy In fact, the barrister for the Charity ComA sign at the entrance to British Park Corbyn, then a backbencher but now the mission in the UK, Iain Steele, conceded in reads: “Gift of the Jewish National Fund in outgoing leader of the Labour Party, and a submission that it was possible the JNF Great Britain.” attracted cross-party support, though no had violated the Al Ajarma family’s rights by Many of those who donated to such proMPs from the ruling Conservative Party creating British Park on their land. jects, often Jews encouraged to drop penbacked it.

Nonetheless, the Charity Commission nies into the JNF’s iconic fund-raising “blue Nonetheless, the campaign has faced has on two occasions refused to consider boxes” at schools and synagogues, had no stiff institutional resistance. Over the past revoking the JNF UK’s charitable status. idea how their money was being used. six years appeals to the Charity CommisIn June last year a Commission official Stop the JNF UK included testimony sion, a department of the British governeven wrote to the campaign with a defense from Kholoud al Ajarma, whose family was ment, to intervene and remove the JNF UK that appeared to strip the term “charitable” expelled from the village of Ajjur during the from its list of registered charities have been of all meaning. He wrote: “In simple terms, Nakba. Today the family lives in the overrepeatedly rebuffed. the test for charitable status is a test of what crowded Aida refugee camp, next to BethRather than seeking explanations from a charity was set up to do, not what it does lehem in the West Bank. the JNF UK, British officials have largely igin practice.”

The JNF-KKL planted Britannia Forest nored the evidence they have been preThe Commission’s apparent reasoning on land to which her family and many sented with. is that, so long as the JNF includes fineothers still have the title deeds. In doing so, The campaign has highlighted one spesounding words in its mission statement, the JNF in Israel violated the protected cific and egregious example of the JNF what it does in practice as a “charity” does status of such lands in international law.

UK’s work. The organization raised donanot matter.

In her submission, Al Ajarma wrote: “It tions to create a large recreation area west Last April, “Stop the JNF” appealed the was British pounds that helped destroy my of Jerusalem called British Park, which inMARCH/APRIL 2020

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Commission’s decision to the First-Tier Tribunal. The judge, however, told them that neither Al Ajarma nor the campaign itself had a legal right to be heard.

He concluded instead that only Britain’s attorney general could overrule the Charity Commission’s decision. In October the attorney general rejected the campaigners’ claims without investigating them.

In an attempt to revive the case, “Stop the JNF” has submitted more than 4,000 letters of protest to the attorney general in late November, calling on him to reassess the organization’s continuing charitable status.

The establishment’s apparent unwillingness to confront the JNF UK’s historical record is perhaps not surprising. The JNF was one of the key organizations that helped to realize a British government promise made in the 1917 Balfour Declaration to help create a “Jewish home” in what was then Palestine.

Two years later Lord Balfour declared that the colonization of Palestine by Zionist Jews from Europe was “of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 [Palestinian] Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”

Little, it seems, has changed in official British attitudes since.

Steele, the Charity Commission’s barrister, successfully urged the First-Tier Tribunal not to get involved, arguing that it would be “drawn into matters of intense political controversy, for no obvious benefit to anyone.”

Kholoud al Ajarma and many millions more Palestinians might dispute that assessment. They would have much to gain should Britain finally demonstrate a willingness to confront its continuing role in aiding and comforting those like the JNF accused of complicity in crimes against international law in historic Palestine.

As the “Stop the JNF” organizers wrote in their own letter to the attorney general: “These people [Palestinian refugees like the Ajarma family] are not defined by the JNF as recipients of their charity, but they have human and legal rights which the actions of this charity unacceptably violate.”

The campaign has not only focused on 22

the JNF’s historic role in dispossessing Palestinians. It points out that the JNF is still actively contributing to grossly discriminatory and racist policies in Israel—another reason, they say, it should be barred from being considered a charity.

The JNF UK’s accounts from 2016 show that it has funded the OR Movement, an Israeli organization that assists in the development of Jewish-only communities in Israel and the occupied territories.

One such Jewish community, Hiran, is being established on the ruins of homes that belonged to Bedouin families. They were recently forced out of their village of Umm al-Hiran—a move the legal rights group Adalah has described as “reminiscent of the darkest of regimes such as apartheid-era South Africa.”

The JNF claims the

forest will “help mitigate climate change.”

On its website, the JNF-KKL congratulates “Friends of JNF UK” for supporting the establishment of nearby Hiran Forest. The JNF claims the forest will “help mitigate climate change”—once again disguising ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as a form of environmentalism.

The JNF UK’s annual accounts for 2014 and 2015 also reveal that it contributed money to the Israeli army under the title “Tzuk Eitan 9 Gaza war effort”—a reference to Israel’s Protective Edge attack on Gaza in late 2014, whose death toll included some 550 Palestinian children.

A United Nations commission of inquiry found evidence that Israel had committed war crimes by indiscriminately targeting civilians—a conclusion confirmed by the testimonies of Israeli soldiers to Breaking the Silence, an Israeli whistle-blowing group.

Equally troubling, an investigation in November by Haaretz discovered that, under Israeli government pressure, the JNF-KKL has been secretly directing vast sums of money into buying and developing land in

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the occupied West Bank to aid Jewish settlers, again in violation of international law.

The funds were covertly channeled to Himnuta, effectively the JNF’s subsidiary in the occupied territories, disguised as funds for projects in Jerusalem.

In December, the JNF’s role in assisting Jewish settlers take over the properties of Palestinians under occupation was highlighted in a court hearing.

A Jerusalem judge temporarily froze a lower court ruling that would have allowed the JNF-KKL to evict the Sumreen family from their home in Silwan. Himnuta has been battling to secure the eviction for 30 years.

Last year the JNF managed to force a Palestinian family off their land near Bethlehem, clearing the way for rightwing Jews to establish a settlement on their land.

Veteran Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker recently observed that the JNF-KKL had rapidly converted itself into a banking fund for the settlers. He added that its “coffers are bursting with billions of shekels [and] the settlers’ appetite for land is at a peak.”

Given the lack of transparency in JNFKKL’s accounts, it is difficult to know precisely where the funds originated. But as more than $70 million has been spent by the JNF-KKL over the past two years in the West Bank, according to Haaretz, there must be a suspicion that the funds include money raised by the JNF UK, as well as money from North American branches.

Research by “Stop the JNF” suggests the JNF UK has had no opposition to making “charitable” donations to settlements in the West Bank. Its contributions have ended up aiding Sansana, a community of religious settlers close to Hebron, according to the campaign.

Settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are considered war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The JNF UK’s chairman, Samuel Hayek, has defended his organization’s fundraising from criticism, stating in a letter in 2010 to the Guardian newspaper: “Our environmental and humanitarian work is not based on any political or religious affiliation, but rather on supporting Israel and its population—whatever their background.”

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However, as the JNF UK states on its website, every penny raised in Britain is “sent to a project in Israel”—much of it via the JNF in Israel.

The JNF-KKL is a major landowner in Israel. Under a special arrangement with the Israeli government, it owns 13 percent of Israel’s territory—often lands seized from Palestinian refugees.

The arrangement includes a provision from 1961 that the primary aim of the JNF in Israel is to acquire property “for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties.”

In 2004 the JNF-KKL explained its role.

It was “not a public body that works for the benefit of all citizens of the state. The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF, as the owner of the JNF land, does not have a duty to practice equality toward all citizens of the state.”

In marketing and allocating lands only to Jews, the legal group Adalah has noted, the

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JNF in Israel intentionally rides roughshod over the rights of a fifth of the country’s population who are Palestinian by heritage.

In other words, the JNF is integral to an Israeli system that enforces an apartheidstyle segregation, preventing Israel’s Palestinian minority from accessing and benefiting from a substantial part of Israel’s territory.

This institutionalized discrimination has been made even more explicit since Israel passed in 2018 the nation-state Basic Law, which has constitutional-like status.

According to the Basic Law: “The State views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and strengthening.”

As the “Stop the JNF” campaign notes, British charities should abide by legal responsibilities enshrined in UK legislation such as the Equalities Act of 2010, which makes it illegal to discriminate based on “color, nationality, ethnic or national origin.”

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The JNF UK, they note, is failing to abide by this core legal principle. It is operating in a foreign state where it has helped over many decades to fund activities that grossly violate both British law and international law.

The evidence suggests that the even larger donations made to the JNF-KKL from North America are being funnelled into the same discriminatory operations.

However, a 2011 challenge to the taxexempt status of JNF-USA for violating U.S. legislation against religious and ethnic discrimination failed to effect change. The Internal Revenue Service appeared to accept the argument that such laws apply only to charities using their money inside the U.S., not overseas.

As long as Western states apply this distinction, it seems the JNF-KKL will be able to continue relying on its overseas fundraising arms to help it entrench a system of apartheid, conferring superior land rights on Jews than on Palestinians. ■

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History’s Shadows

Zionist Narrative Distorts History

By Walter L. Hixson

PHOTO BY BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

PHOTO BY MPI/GETTY IMAGES

AT A JEWISH COMMUNITY forum in Manhattan on Dec. 5, 2019, Jeffrey Goldberg, the former Israeli prison guard and current editor-in-chief of the uber-Zionist magazine The Atlantic, smugly distorted both past and present to justify Israeli repression in Palestine.

Goldberg explained—for the benefit of all the “stupid” people who might question the right of Zionists to dominate Palestine—that the Jews are actually the “Indians” and Palestinians are the “cowboys” seeking to drive them from their rightful home.

Glibly declaring, “In order to understand what’s going on historically you need to understand history,” Goldberg proceeded to show that he actually knows very little about history, either of the indigenous people in the United States or of the Jewish people as well.

The celebrated journalist asserted that the situation of Jews in Israel is “the equivalent of the Seminoles...coming together and deciding that they’re going back to Florida” in order to claim it as their rightTOP: Circa 1840: American soldiers hunting Native Americans with bloodhounds during the Second Seminole ful homeland.

War. ABOVE: Palestinian women and children flee with their belongings after Jewish terrorists from the Irgun For starters, the Seminoles and Lehi militias massacred residents of Deir Yassin, April 9, 1948. still have tribal lands in Florida (you can visit them, as I have done). So, contra Goldberg, some SemiHistory’s Shadows, a regular column by contributing editor Walter nole bands never left Florida despite three wars waged against them L. Hixson, seeks to place various aspects of Middle East politics and in the 19th century by American settlers. The settlers were the diplomacy in historical perspective. Hixson is the author of Israel’s “cowboy” invaders of these indigenous homelands, just as Zionists inArmor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine vaded and continue to expand their occupation of Palestine. Americans Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along with and Israelis have in common invasive histories of settler colonialism, several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of but Goldberg naturally steers clear of that term and its implications. history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor.

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The Seminoles—more like the Palestinians than the Zionists—fought tenaciously to retain their homelands, frustrating Americans, including Andrew Jackson, who was livid in his dotage about the persistence of the Indian resistance aided by escaped slaves. Some historians have called the littleknown but at the time highly frustrating Seminole Wars (the second of which dragged on from 1835-’42) the equivalent of the Vietnam War for Americans of that era.

History is complicated stuff and invariably there are many layers to unfold. The Seminoles were like the Jews—though Goldberg won’t like this part—in that they were not a homogeneous ethnic group or a “real” nation. The Seminole tribe was formed when refugees of many tribes banded together, not as a result of ethnicity or some innate nationhood but in order to survive as they escaped south to the Florida swamps amid the devastating wars of Indian enslavement that were unleashed throughout the southeast by white Indian slave traders and rival indigenous bands. These slave wars raged following the arrival of Spanish, English and other settlers before African slavery became dominant and well before the American Revolution.

The Seminoles, in other words—like the Jews, like the Palestinians, like the Americans, like the British, the French and practically everyone else—are an invented people and nation.

In his musings in the Manhattan forum, Goldberg lamented that all of Israel’s military might can’t fully resolve the Palestine issue, yet if only people understood history as well as he did—if only the “stupid” people could be made to understand that the Jews are a nation (not merely a culture or religion) and that they were there first—the issue of the fate of Palestine could be put to rest.

Goldberg’s distorted “history” is thus a retelling of ancient myth and legend. As Israeli historian Shlomo Sand explains in an excellent book, The Invention of the Jewish People (available from Middle East Books and More) the saga of the ancient Jews has been “relegated to the status of fiction, with an unbridgeable gulf gaping” between the biblical stories and what is known of the actual history. Like the Seminoles, the Jews invented themselves as a culture and a religion but had no innate nationhood or ethnicity under God. Ignorance of the past doesn’t stop people like Goldberg from smugly acting as if they know history, when they clearly do not.

Charlatans and biblical literalists—Christian fundamentalists as well as Zionists—have become increasingly visible in a desperate effort to provide divine justification for Israeli repression and the takeover of Jerusalem and the West Bank. Last April Danny Danon, Israel’s U.N. representative, dramatically holding the Bible aloft, declared, “This is the deed to our land.” The Likud politician and former IDF official averred, “The Jewish people’s rightful ownership of Eretz Israel, the land of Israel” was “well documented throughout the Old Testament and beyond.” The Bible thus provided the modern state of Israel an “everlasting covenant” to “all the land of Canaan.”

He is not alone. Asked in 2019 why he condemned American advocates of ethnic white supremacy in the United States, while

justifying the “Jewish state” in Israel, Morton Klein, head of the Zionist Organization of America, responded, “Israel is a unique situation” because it was “a Jewish state given to us by God.” He added, “God did not create a state for white people or for black people,” just for the Jews. Klein is a right-wing conservative, but Sen. Charles Schumer, like Goldberg a liberal Democrat from New York, speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Conference in 2018, declared: “Of course, we say it’s our land, the Torah says it.”

The historical reality is that there is no justification, biblical or otherwise, for what Danon, Goldberg, Binyamin Netanyahu, Klein, and many other Zionists support, namely the claim to all of Palestine and the ongoing brutal repression of the indigenous residents.

Having as a result of Israel’s aggression precluded the possibility of a two-state solution, these Zionist extremists at the same time reject a one-state solution in which Jews and Palestinians might live jointly. Instead of democracy they support colonial rule, apartheid, and continuous, lethal repression.

The Zionist extremists claim to have God on their side. And if you dare to oppose them, they will call you anti-Semitic and propose laws to curb your freedom of speech.

They have the backing of the U.S. Congress and right-wing fundamentalists, but there is one thing the Zionist extremists do not have on their side: history. ■

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THE BIBLE AND HISTORY

The historical truth, however, is that the Jews were not some ethnically distinct group let alone a nation of people, nor were they the first sole inhabitants of the land that is Israel-Palestine today. Historical, archeological and anthropological research refutes this notion.

MARCH/APRIL 2020

A Project of Middle East Children’s Alliance

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Gaza on the Ground

A Palestinian doctor treats a child at an UNRWA-run clinic in al-Nusirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Jan. 17, 2018, after the White House froze tens of millions of dollars in contributions.

THE CORONAVIRUS is capturing headlines around the world. One headline you’ll never see is that measles—the once common and sometimes deadly highly contagious childhood infection—is making a comeback in Gaza. The viral disease remains one of the leading causes of death among young children globally, despite the availability of safe and effective vaccines. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported a total of 124 confirmed cases of measles, including two deaths, in the Gaza Strip from Dec. 19, 2019 to Jan. 1, 2020.

Of those confirmed cases, 49 required hospitalization; 12 were healthcare workers; and 57 had not been vaccinated.

WHO is working along with Gaza hospitals to deliver vaccines to a population of two million Gazans if they have no proof of vaccination or immunity against measles. The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines are given to children at the age of 12-to18 months and again a few months later. Those confirmed cases included 57 unvaccinated infants between 6 months to one-yearolds, as well as 29 people older than 30.

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

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Between 2009 and 2018, 97 percent of Gazans had received both doses of the MMR vaccine and only one Gazan caught the measles from 1986 to 2000. Now, the disease is coming back to densely populated Gaza, causing growing concern that it could go viral if vaccines are not provided immediately.

Nasser Al Omran, 13, was one of many students recently lining up for his measles vaccine in Gaza’s schools. Health authorities in the Gaza Strip began MMR vaccination of all health care workers in four public hospitals where measles cases were admitted and treated. An estimated 900 healthcare workers were vaccinated in December 2019.

The rise in confirmed cases of measles exacerbates a rapidly deteriorating public health situation in the Gaza Strip. The Trump administration’s 2018 decision to cut more than $200 million in aid has drastically affected basic health services, especially in Gaza, where healthcare services have dropped by 90 percent, according to a UNICEF report. Gaza’s infrastructure has been badly damaged by repeated Israeli attacks, and the Strip lacks clean water and nutritional food for all its inhabitants.

A new United Nations report states that more than two million Palestinians in the occupied territories are facing a humanitarian

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Gaza’s Health System is Collapsing. Where’s That Headline?

By Mohammed Omer

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crisis. An estimated $348 million is urgently needed to provide life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable.

lives. Unfortunately, however, the response from donors has not been adequate.

COLLAPSING HEALTH SYSTEM

Human rights organizations have urged Israel to immediately halt renewed aerial herbicide spraying along the Gaza Strip perimeter fence, according to the legal rights center Adalah.

In mid-January Israeli crop dusters flew along the fence “and sprayed chemicals purported to be herbicides.” The spraying was “conducted sporadically for about three and half hours.” Israel has long treated Gaza like a concentration camp, and now sprays its borders like a disease containment camp.

The chemicals reached Palestinian farmlands inside the Gaza Strip, mainly east of Gaza, in North Gaza, and in the

HERBICIDE ON THE FARMLANDS

Deir Al Balah districts.

Adalah has sent a letter to Israeli officials “with an urgent demand to refrain from conducting further aerial spraying of herbicides inside and near the Gaza Strip, due to the severe damage to crops and the health risks to Gaza residents.”

Israel’s practice of conducting aerial herbicide spraying was first documented in 2014. “Herbicidal chemicals have reached distances as far as 1,200 meters into the Strip in previously documented incidents of spraying,” according to Adalah.

“It is estimated that a total area of 7,620 dunams of arable land in the Gaza Strip has been affected by aerial spraying since 2014, when the first incident of this type was reported,” Adalah noted. “Palestinian farmers have sustained widespread damage to their crops and incurred immense financial losses as a result, which drove some farmers to abandon cultivating fields near the perimeter fence due to the associated risks.”

It is difficult to assess how serious the damage could be to human health, aquifers, and livelihoods of people and animals in the area. Neither is there any authority on the ground to prevent farmers from collecting affected resources.

The United Nations has recently launched a 2020 Humanitarian Response Plan aiming to assist 1.5 million people, mostly residents of Gaza, who are already in dire straits.

The U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for occupied Palestinian territory, Jamie McGoldrick, said nearly half of Gaza’s population is unemployed. That figure includes seven out of 10 young people under age 30 who have no jobs. Among them, he said, are more than 400,000 university graduates who cannot find jobs.

Lack of jobs is causing frustration among the youth of Gaza. “I’m losing (Advertisement) hope in humanity” says 34year-old Bilal Abulkhier, who hoped to marry the girl he loves, but her parents want a son-inlaw who can earn his living. “My engineering degree is worth nothing,” he adds, as he applies for jobs. Like many, he can neither leave Gaza, nor find a job in Gaza.

McGoldrick said the health system is on the verge of collapse. The situation is compounded by a serious braindrain of doctors who have left for better-paying jobs abroad. He added that more than 60 percent of households are short of even Playgrounds for Palestine is a project to build playgrounds for our basic foods. “Living in Gaza is children. It is a minimal recognition of their right to childhood and like living a perpetual trauma,” creative expression. It is an act of love. noted the French group, Doctors Playgrounds for Palestine (PfP) is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit Without Borders/Médecins Sans organization, established in 2001. We’re an all-volunteer organizaFrontières (MSF). tion (no paid staff) that raises money throughout the year to construct playgrounds and fund programs for The U.N. appeal is not rechildren in Palestine. ceiving the much-needed funds to cope with and to prevent Selling Organic, Fair Trade Palestinian olive oil is PfP’s principle source of fundraising. more humanitarian crises. Mcis year, PfP launched AIDA, a private Goldrick said the largest portion label olive oil from Palestinian farmers. of money from the appeal must Please come by and taste it at our table. first go to food, then clean drinkWe hope you’ll love it and make it a staple in your pantry. ing water and sanitation.

McGoldrick said the appeal is For more information or to make a donation visit: both addressing these needs https://playgroundsforpalestine.org • P.O. Box 559 • Yardley, PA 19067 and restoring dignity to peoples’ MARCH/APRIL 2020

ISRAEL EASES BLOCKADE

In recent months Israel began quietly allowing thousands of Palestinians to enter from the Gaza Strip to conduct business and work menial jobs. Some 5,000 so-called merchant permits were awarded to Palestinians (who can afford to pay for the paperwork) to work as laborers in construction, agriculture and manufacturing, in return for ending Palestinian border demonstrations. Before the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, more than 26,000 Palestinians crossed into Israel from Gaza for work. ■

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Two Views

Mourners surround a car carrying the coffins of Iranian military commander Qassim Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, killed in a U.S. drone strike, during their funeral procession in Kadhimiya, a Shi’i pilgrimage district of Baghdad, Jan. 4, 2020.

Thousands of Iraqis chanting “Death to America” joined the funeral procession, before heading to the Green Zone government and diplomatic district where a state funeral was held, attended by top dignitaries.

The Mafia Would Have Been Proud

By Eric Margolis THE U.S. DRONE strike at Baghdad airport that killed Iran’s top commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani, and a senior leader of Iraq’s Shi’a militia, has set the Mideast on fire. The Trump administration, which authorized the assassination, called it a “pre-emptive” strike. Iran branded it “outright murder.”

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist and the author of American Raj: Liberation or Domination? Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More). Copyright 2020 EricMargolis.com.

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Soleimani was Iran’s second most powerful figure and a national icon. He headed up the Quds Force, the elite branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, a key player in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and the Gulf region. Soleimani was also the most capable, intelligent and effective military leader in a region of third-rate generals.

The 62-year-old general distinguished himself in the long IraqIran War, the dirty war in Lebanon and operations in Iraq. He played a key role in defeating the ultra-radical Islamic State movement in Iraq, working in tandem with the U.S. Soleimani helped turn the tide of battle in Syria, saving the regime of Bashar Assad.

As a result of his battlefield and political successes, Soleimani earned the enmity of the U.S., Israel and the U.S. media. So many assassination attempts were launched against him that Iran’s spiritual leader dubbed him a “living martyr.”

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His luck ran out on Jan. 3, no doubt as a result of an intelligence leak in Iraq. His two-car convoy was incinerated by U.S. missile strikes. Along with Soleimani, a leader of Iraq’s Shi’a militia was also killed by the U.S. attack as well as some 10 other senior Iraqi and Iranian officials.

By Ted Galen Carpenter President Trump proudly took credit for authorizing the assassination, a brazen violation of international law. He seemed unfazed that most of the rest of the world sees the U.S. as “Murder Inc.” For A POLICY STATEMENT that the State Department issued on JanTrump, the killing will boost his standing with Republican/Evangeluary 10 asserts that “America is a force for good in the Middle East.” ical voters in this year’s elections and promote his faux tough guy It adds, “We want to be a friend and partner to a sovereign, prosimage—this from a man who repeatedly dodged Vietnam era milperous, and stable Iraq.” Yet the Trump administration’s recent conitary service and called for an end to America’s Mideast wars. duct toward Iraq indicates a very different (and much uglier) policy.

Iran’s cautious leadership may avoid giving Washington the Washington is behaving like an impatient, imperial power that has reason to attack Iran that it has been seeking for the past two concluded that an obstreperous colony requires a dose of corrective years. U.S. forces, which are spread across the Mideast are easy discipline. targets.

Washington’s late December airstrikes on Iraqi militia targets, in Israel has long been itching to attack Iran’s nuclear and military retaliation for the killing of an American civilian contractor working installations. An excellent new book, Rise and Kill First, by Israeli at a base in northern Iraq, greatly provoked the Iraqi government author Ronen Bergman (available from Middle East Books and and population. Massive anti-American demonstrations erupted in More), exhaustively details the long record of Israel assassinating several cities, and an assault on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad Palestinian leaders and militants. As Stalin famously quipped, “no forced diplomats to take refuge in a special “safe room.” man, no problem.”

The drone strike on Iranian General Qassim Soleimani outside A large portion of the Palestinian leadership—notably the most Baghdad a few days later was an even more brazen violation of intelligent and moderate—was killed by Israeli hit squads, leaving Iraq’s sovereignty. Carrying out the assassination on Iraqi territory “no one to negotiate with,” in Israel’s words. when Soleimani was reportedly there at the invitation of Prime MinIsrael’s decisive influence over the Trump administration ister Adel Abdul Mahdi to discuss a new peace feeler from Saudi means that the U.S. has fully embraced the same kill policies.

Arabia was especially clumsy and arrogant. It created suspicions Trump may now have the war with Iran he so obviously craves and that Israel and Saudi Arabia want. Any further Iranian retalTed Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy iation will be branded “terrorism” by the administration and its studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The Amermedia sycophants. ican Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more than 850 General Qassim was perhaps in line to become president of Iran. articles on international affairs. Published Jan. 17 in The American He was widely respected for his wisdom, religious faith, and clever Conservative. All rights reserved. diplomacy. He has now been removed.

Trump’s reckless policy may help his re(Advertisement) election, but it also makes it much more likely that the U.S. will sink ever deeper into the morass of the Mideast.

America has always demonized troublesome Mideast leaders that defied its imperial writ. The region’s complex problems were simplified into Palestinian Medical Relief Society, a grassroots communitycartoon characters that were labeled based Palestinian health organization, founded in 1979 by “bad guys” or “terrorists.” Think of Palestinian doctors, needs your support today.

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In Bullying Iraq, America is Starting to Look Like the New Evil Empire

MArCh/April 2020

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our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East.” that the United States was deliberately seeking to maintain turmoil Throughout the Cold War, U.S. leaders proudly proclaimed that in the Middle East to justify its continued military presence there.

NATO and other American-led alliances were voluntary associations The killing of Soleimani (as well as two influential Iraqi militia leaders) of free nations. Conversely, the Warsaw Pact alliance of Eastern Euled Iraq’s government to pass a resolution calling on Mahdi to expel ropean countries formed in response to NATO was a blatantly imperial U.S. forces stationed in the country, and he promptly began to preenterprise of puppet regimes under the Kremlin’s total domination. pare legislation to implement that goal.

Moscow’s brutal suppression of even modest political deviations within Trump’s initial reaction to the prospect that Baghdad might its satellite empire helped confirm the difference. Soviet tanks rolled order U.S. troops to leave was akin to a foreign policy temper into East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia tantrum. He threatened America’s democratic ally with harsh in 1968 to crush reform factions and solidify a Soviet military occupaeconomic sanctions if it dared to take that step. As Trump put it, tion. Even when the USSR did not resort to such heavy-handed mea“we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before, sures, it was clear that the “allies” were on a very short leash. ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.”

Although the United States has Over the following days, it (Advertisement) occasionally exerted presbecame apparent that the sure on its allies when sanctions threat was not just they’ve opposed its objeca spontaneous, intemperate tives, it has not attempted to outburst on the part of Presitreat democratic partners as dent Trump. Compelling Iraq servile pawns. That is why to continue hosting U.S. Introduced by the Trump administration’s forces was official administraFeaturing musical performance by current behavior towards Iraq tion policy. Senior officials is so troubling and exhibits from the Treasury Departsuch unprecedented levels of ment and other agencies crudeness. America is in began drafting specific sancdanger of becoming the tions that could be imposed. geopolitical equivalent of a Washington explicitly warned middle school bully. the Iraqi government that it If Washington refuses to could lose access to its acwithdraw its forces from Iraq, count held at the Federal Redefying the Baghdad governserve Bank of New York. ment’s calls to leave, those Such a freeze would amount troops will no longer be guests to financial strangulation of or allies. They would constitute the country’s already fragile a hostile army of occupation, economy. U.S. arrogance however elaborate the rhetortoward Baghdad seems ical facade. almost boundless. When At that point, America would Mahdi asked the administrano longer be a moral “force for tion to “prepare a mechanism” good” in the Middle East or for the exit of American forces anywhere else. The United and commence negotiations States would be behaving as towards that transition, Secan amoral imperial power imretary of State Mike Pompeo posing its authority on weaker flatly refused. Indeed, the democratic countries that dare State Department’s Jan. 10 adopt measures contrary to statement made it clear that Washington’s policy preferthere would be no such disences. America might not yet cussions: “At this time, any 275 Hayes Street, San Francisco have replaced the Soviet delegation sent to Iraq would (near Civic Center BART) Union as (in Ronald Reagan’s be dedicated to discussing words) the “evil empire,” but it how to best recommit to our www w.Citybox .Cityboxoffice.com/noamchomsky will be disturbingly far along strategic partnership—not to www.mecaf w.mecaf . forpeace orpeace.org the path to that status. ■ discuss troop withdrawal, but

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U.S. Actions Threaten Cultural Sites Beyond Iran

Special Report

By Eleni Zaras

DOMINIKA ZARZYCKA/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

IN A JAN. 4 TWEET President Donald Trump threatened to target 52 Iranian cultural sites, “some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.” What actually came very fast was backlash from all sides, condemning the illegality of such threats.

Despite condemnation from Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as media, museums and scholars, the commander-in-chief stood by his remarks and the following day asked rhetorically, “They’re allowed to kill our people.

They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people, and we’re not allowed to touch their Remains of Persepolis, ceremonial capital of the ancient Achaemenid Empire built by Darius I in sixth century cultural sites? It doesn’t work BC. Persepolis is a well-preserved example of ancient Persian culture. that way.” that the U.S. will follow the law and not attack cultural heritage sites.

Such an attack would be a war crime. Attacking cultural heritage Without fully backing down from his initial rhetoric, Trump walked sites violates the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1954 Hague Conback his threat on Jan. 7, saying, “I like to obey the law.” vention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Indeed, the threats rallied not just the Iranian people, many of Conflict, the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World whom took to Twitter with the hashtag #IranCulturalSites, but also Cultural and Natural Heritage, and the 2017 United Nations Security major museum directors and academics, who normally avoid politics.

Council Resolution 2347.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, On Jan. 6, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned Trump against the Association of Art Museum Directors, the American Alliance of targeting Iranian cultural sites, saying, “Cultural sites is not hitting Museums, World Monuments Fund, and the Association of Art them hard; it’s creating more problems. We’re trying to show solMuseum Curators expressed their concerns in open letters, through idarity with the Iranian people.” press releases and on social media.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Esper also countered Trump’s threats. On Jan. 6, Esper affirmed Thomas Campbell, issued a long condemnation via Instagram, Eleni Zaras is the assistant bookstore director at Middle East Books stating, “We are better than this, in diplomacy, rhetoric and action. and More. She has a BA in the History of Art from the University of Let’s hold high the flame of shared cultural achievements that Michigan and a masters degree in History at the Universite Paris remind us of our common humanity, across time, geography, faith Diderot. Her studies and research have focused on the historiography of Islamic art and late-Ottoman history. and politics.”

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VERONIQUE DE VIGUERIE/EDIT BY GETTY IMAGES

priceless treasures and documents.

Americans also set up military bases close to—or even within—historical sites and monuments. The proximity inevitably put the sites at risk, as University of Michigan Professor of Islamic Art History Christiane Gruber points out, referring in particular to the 9th century Malwiya minaret in Samarra. The Malwiya minaret is one of the only spiral minarets in existence and is part of what used to be one of the largest and most important mosques of its time. In the fall of 2004, the American forces occupied the minaret and transformed it into a sniper outpost. Iraqi authorities ordered American troops to vacate the monument in March 2005, but the top The Coalition Forces had a base at the Ur archeological site, near an old temple called the Ziggurat tier was still blasted on April 1, 2005 dating back to 2100 BC, with the remains of Abraham’s house and 7,000-year-old graves. The American base was a regular target for the insurgents’ mortar attacks. In April 2008, a mortar by opposition fighters to prevent future landed only a few meters from the precious Ziggurat. The heavy tanks and artillery vibrations also use as a sniper hideout. Undeterred, shook the foundations of these fragile monuments made of mud.

U.S. troops retook the minaret for military purposes in 2006.

The United States military also set up bases on top of ancient But are we better than this? Tristram Hunt, director of the Victoria cities such as Babylon, causing direct and irreparable damage. A and Albert Museum in London, which will notably host an exhibition 2009 UNESCO report on Babylon enumerates the damage. Direct of Persian art in the fall, tweeted: “This is a worrying step toward destruction by the Americans included, but was not limited to, the normalization of cultural destruction as a war aim.” damage of bricks and animals of the Ishtar Gate and of the ProcesAs Hunt suggests, what is concerning about Trump’s threatensional Way, leveling, compacting and chemically treating soil, paving ing tweets is not just their illegality, but also their long-term conseof un-excavated archaeological zones, digging of trenches, and fillquences and how they fit into broader trends. The devaluation of ing sandbags with shard-laden soil. In addition to this direct abuse Iranian culture, history and natural sites dovetails with previous of the site, the vibrations of vehicles and air traffic destabilized strucpolicies, positions and efforts of the Trump administration. The retures. While Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein did more than his fair marks churn up and risk normalizing problematic narratives about share of damage as well, the American presence proved more deIslamic and pre-Islamic art and culture, historically infused with structive and was deemed “a grave encroachment” on the site.

Orientalist and imperialist rhetoric that scholars have fought Following criticism of the damage to Babylon in 2006, NBC reagainst for decades. ported that “Col. John Coleman, former chief of staff for the 1st The Trump administration has not been shy in backing out of inMarine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, told the BBC that if the head of ternational organizations and treaties that protect cultural and natthe Iraqi antiquities board wanted an apology, and ‘if it makes him ural sites, most notably withdrawing from UNESCO. Domestically, feel good, we can certainly give him one.’ But he also asked: ‘If it as The Washington Post reported on March 18, 2019, Trump has wasn’t for our presence, what would the state of those archaeologeach year in office proposed “a federal budget that would shutter ical ruins be?’” the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for Even today, the U.S. is arguably complicit in the destruction of the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—which sites in Yemen which are attacked by the Saudi-led coalition that supports PBS and NPR—and the Institute of Museum and Library Americans continue to arm. A 2017 study by Professor Lamya KhaServices.” His repeated attempts to discredit journalists who lidi of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis reported that, according counter his framing of events also undercuts fact-based reporting to official Yemeni lists, of 78 major historical sites damaged as of and politicizes facts and history.

March 2015, “59 of these have been damaged or destroyed by Before Trump became president, although the U.S. did not diSaudi coalition bombs (17 in the range of 70- to 100-percent derectly attack cultural sites, the Iraq War bore witness to incidents stroyed) despite the coalition having been handed by UNESCO no of American forces endangering cultural sites. Following the U.S. fly lists of cultural heritage to avoid.” The others were targeted by invasion of Iraq in 2003, American troops refused to guard the al-Qaeda, ISIS and opposition Houthi forces.

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This accounting does not include additional damage by coalition bombs that targeted UNESCO sites in Sana’a’s old city, the historic city of Zabid and elsewhere—attacks that have damaged hundreds of historic houses, mosques, archaeological sites and even multiple museums. According to Professor Khalidi, “The most flagrant of these bombing campaigns [against museums] was the total destruction of the Dhamar Archaeological Museum, which housed upward of 12,500 objects, not including massive quantities of unregistered archaeological remains stored there by active archaeological field programs. It was pulverized by coalition bombs in May 2015.”

“Tragically,” Khalidi assesses, “much of this damage, notably that from Saudi airstrikes and from demolitions carried out by IS, appears to be intentional. The systemic destruction of the country’s cultural heritage is in effect a targeting of its people and a gradual erasure of their cultural identity.”

Still, the United States, the UK, France and Australia have continued to sell arms, worth billions of dollars, to Saudi Arabia.

The ripple effect of such acts of cultural erasure transforms how we frame and perceive history and cultures. The destruction of pre-Islamic sites reinforces narratives of a rupture between preIslamic and Islamic history, which can go as far as purporting that “pre-Islamic heritage is not necessary,” explains Aziz Morfeq who works in Sanaa for the Yemeni arts and culture NGO Basement Cultural Foundation. “Many groups in Yemen,” he starts without naming names, “share common ground with the Saudi way of thinking; it is not important to preserve [pre-Islamic] heritage.” De-

HopeHasWings

stroying these sites becomes a swift method of “eliminating problems” in history.

Furthermore, narratives popularized during the 19th century in Western Europe framed Islamic art as non-figural, timeless and decorative, and thus without historical or technical value.

Destroying Islamic art and architecture in fact serves to re-enforce racist narratives stipulating that Muslims “cannot be fully human because they don’t produce art,” elucidates Professor Gruber, much of whose work has aimed to undo the assumption that Islamic art does not include figural representation.

What Gruber views as “anxiety inducing” is that “if such sites are destroyed... [it] entrenches such pernicious narratives.” Gruber also underscores that the UNESCO sites in Iran are not limited to architectural monuments, but also include nature preserves, hydraulic systems and other technical “ingenuities” of the human spirit.

“Unfortunately, in the past 10 years,” for her Islamic art survey course, “I have [had] to address destruction and targets and sites of potential weaponization.” Not explaining the militarized and politicized significance they now bear would be denying a new reality and function of these sites. “Buildings are living organisms; they change through time.” The word itself, she notes, is “a ‘building’—it’s a gerund—we shift with them, and they shift with us.”

In the end, Gruber muses that “the silver lining” of these recent events and discussions is that they “reify pressing concerns—not just to preserve art and architecture and archaeology, but also human ingenuity, the animal world, and our planetary futures.” ■

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U.S. troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division arrive at Green Ramp for a deployment to the Middle East on Jan. 4, 2020 in Fort Bragg, NC. Soldiers from the Immediate Response Force of the 82nd are part of the approximately 3,000 troops being deployed as tensions increased with Iran in the region after a U.S. airstrike killed top Iranian General Qassim Soleimani.

Perhaps the Middle East is More Stable When the U.S. Stays Away?

By Trita Parsi Trita Parsi is an expert on U.S.-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign politics and the geopolitics of the Middle East at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where this article was posted on Jan. 13.

Parsi is co-founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council. He’s written Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States, A Single Roll of the Dice—Obama's Diplomacy with Iran and Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy, all available from Middle East Books and More. Reprinted with permission.

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IT HAS BEEN A MANTRA of U.S. foreign policy for a decade or more that, without the United States, the Middle East would descend into chaos. Or even worse, Iran would resurrect the Persian Empire and swallow the region whole.

Yet when U.S. President Donald Trump opted not to go to war with Iran after a series of Iranian-attributed attacks on Saudi Arabia last year and declared his intentions to pull troops out of the region, it wasn’t chaos or conquest that ensued. Rather, nascent regional diplomacy—particularly among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—and de-escalation followed. To be sure, the cards were reshuffled again in January, when Trump ordered the assassination of Qassim Soleimani, one of Iran’s most important military figures. Courtesy of Trump, the region is once more moving toward MARCH/APRIL 2020

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Should U.S. Back Out of Middle East To End Endless Wars?

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conflict, and the early signs of diplomatic progress achieved during the preceding months have vanished.

It is thus time for Washington to answer a crucial question that it has long evaded: Has America’s military dominance in the Middle East prevented regional actors from peacefully resolving conflicts on their own? And in that way, has it been an impediment to stability rather than the guarantor of it?

Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaimed a new doctrine: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region,” he stated, “will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” In the context of the Cold War, preventing the Soviets—the main outside force Carter was worried about—from gaining control over the energyrich region had a strategic logic.

But over time, that logic shifted. In the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan expanded the doctrine to include threats to the flow of oil originating from inside the region, too. As the geopolitical context changed still further, subsequent presidents found even more ways to justify America’s growing military presence in the Middle East. What started as a policy to prevent others from establishing hegemony over the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf morphed into a policy of asserting American hegemony in the region in order to “save” it.

As long as U.S. allies lack the capability or competence to secure the region, the thinking went, Washington would have no choice but to shoulder this responsibility. U.S. President George W. Bush was explicit about that; without an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, he claimed, there would be chaos in the region. He missed the irony, of course, that his invasion of Iraq was the single most destabilizing event in the Middle East of the past decades.

As the scholars Hal Brands, Steven Cook and Kenneth Pollack wrote endorsing the Carter Doctrine and its continuation, “The United States established and upheld the basic rules of conduct in the region: the United States would meet efforts to interfere with the free flow of oil by force; uphold freedom of navigation; demand that regional powers give up their irredentist claims on other states or face grave consequences; and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

This account is accurate enough (although the last rule on the list always exempted Israel), but the story glosses over how the policy also gave cover to U.S. allies for some fairly destabilizing behaviors of their own. That’s an omission Brands makes in a Bloomberg article, too, where he points to Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to argue that a “post-American Middle East will not be stable and peaceful. It will be even nastier and more turbulent than it is today.” And in the words of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in 2018, “If it weren’t for the United States, they’d be speaking Farsi in about a week in Saudi Arabia.”

All this without a nod to the fact that, if anything, the United States’ protection of the Saudi regime has enabled its promotion of terrorism and its destabilizing activities in the region, which have, in turn, prompted further Iranian response.

Assertions about the United States’ pivotal role in the Middle East, no matter how often repeated, have not been proved true. Iran, ravaged by sanctions, corruption, and economic mismanagement, is nowhere near establishing hegemony in the region. Saudi Arabia spends more than five times as much on its military than does Iran; the entire Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE—outspends Iran by a factor of eight. Meanwhile, whereas Iran has no nuclear weapons yet undergoes more inspections than any other country, Israel has a nuclear weapons program with no international transparency whatsoever. Iran may have been adept at taking advantage of U.S. overextension and missteps in the last few decades, but establishing hegemony is a different matter altogether.

Further, the region did not fall into deeper chaos as a result of Trump’s earlier refusal to get into a shooting war with Iran after attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi oil installations in September 2019. Critics lamented the president’s decision as an abandonment of the Carter Doctrine, calling it a disaster for the GCC and warning that it may even prompt Saudi Arabia to seek nuclear weapons.

Recognizing that the U.S. military was no longer at their disposal, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began exercising the diplomatic options that had always been available to them. For its part, Saudi Arabia stepped up direct talks with Houthi rebels in Yemen as a way to ease tensions with their backer, Iran. The level of violence on both sides declined as a result, and more than 100 prisoners of war were released. In November, the United Nations’ Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in Saudi-led airstrikes, and there were no Yemeni deaths in the previous two weeks.

Riyadh also opted to reduce tensions with Qatar, a former ally that had become a nemesis. The Saudi government seemingly ordered its notorious Twitter army to tone down the insults against Qatar and its emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and some sporting events between the two countries resumed, according to the New York Times.

Saudi officials also claimed that they had quietly reached out to Iran via intermediaries seeking ways to ease tensions. Tehran, in turn, welcomed the prospective Saudi-Qatari thaw and, according to the New York Times, floated a peace plan based on a mutual Iranian-Saudi pledge of nonaggression.

An even stronger change of heart occurred in Abu Dhabi. In July, the UAE started withdrawing troops from Yemen. The same month, it participated in direct talks with Tehran to discuss maritime security.

It even released $700 million in funds to Iran in contradiction to the Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy.

Some of these measures may have been more tactical than strategic. Saudi Arabia may have reduced tensions with Qatar

An impediment to stability rather than the guarantor of it

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PHOTO BY ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

and the Houthis in order to better situate itself for a confrontation with Tehran down the road or to offset international condemnation of its killing of Khashoggi, human rights abuses at home, and brutal tactics in Yemen. The UAE, too, may have felt that a tactical reduction of tensions was warranted.

Nevertheless, as the United States appeared poised to back out of the region, its erstwhile allies’ calculations tilted toward diplomacy. The Saudis and Emiratis simply had no choice but to cease some of their recklessness because they could no longer operate under the protection of the United States. If stability in the Middle East is the United States’ main goal, Washington should have celebrated rather than bemoaned these developments.

In the wake of the U.S. assassination of U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu participate in an East Room event at the White House as GOP megadonor, founder, chairman and CEO of Soleimani—which some former U.S. offiLas Vegas Sands Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam Ochsorn look on, Jan. 28, in cials have called an act of war—the calcu- Washington, DC. President Trump released details of his administration’s long-awaited Middle lations may change once more. According East peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. to Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Soleimani was in Iraq to bring him Tehran’s response to a message from Riyadh on how to defuse regional tensions, presumably as part of the House of Saud’s renewed interest in diplomacy. The Iraqis, according to him, were mediating between the two rivals, an initiative that has now been thrown into question.

Iran may very well conclude, rightly or wrongly, that Saudi Arabia

By Eli Clifton and the UAE conspired with Washington to assassinate Soleimani and as a result not only end the recent diplomacy but also target PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP has repeatedly promised to withRiyadh and Abu Dhabi as part of the revenge for Soleimani’s death. draw the United States from its ongoing wars in the Middle East, This is yet one more instance, it seems, in which U.S. activities in and avoid the kind of military adventurism, like the Iraq war, that the region have brought more turmoil than stability. has destabilized the region. Trump’s track record, however, is To be sure, there is no guarantee that recent diplomatic efforts largely detached from his promises—a disconnect perhaps at would have been successful. A more responsible Riyadh might least partially explained by his largest campaign contributors’ not have begotten a more responsible Tehran. But it is noteworthy consistent advocacy for U.S. military action in the Middle East that diplomacy did not even begin in earnest until Washington and support for starting a preventive war with Iran. clearly demonstrated its unwillingness to entangle itself in a war Trump appears to understand that the American public is largely between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And by returning to the region in supportive of ending the endless wars in Afghanistan and the greater a show of military force, Trump may once again disincentivize the Middle East. “Great nations do not fight endless wars,” said Trump United States’ allies from taking diplomacy seriously. They may in his 2019 State of the Union Address to bipartisan applause. But even interpret Soleimani’s killing as a license to resume their reckTrump’s actions haven’t lined up with his words. Despite his reckless lessness—activities like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Syria withdrawal announcement and blessing a Turkish invasion Salman’s purported kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister into northern Syria, total U.S. troop levels there are expected to and ordering of the dismemberment of Khashoggi; Saudi Arabia remain at around 900, a small reduction from the 1,000 soldiers in and the UAE’s imposition of a blockade on Qatar; and the two Syria at the time of Trump’s announcement. Meanwhile, despite countries’ further destabilization of Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan Trump’s repeated claims that he’ll end the war in Afghanistan, U.S. and Yemen.

Eli Clifton reports on money in politics and U.S. foreign policy.

As in the past, in other words, it seems as if the Middle East’s Clifton previously reported for the American Independent News descent into chaos is more likely with the United States than Network, ThinkProgress and Inter Press Service. Published in without it.

Responsible Statecraft on Dec. 4, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

Trump Stuck Between Ending Endless Wars and His Hawkish Megadonors

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threat to nuke Tehran, a city with a population of over eight million, if troops will stay there “for several more years,” as Chairman of the Iran did not abandon its nuclear program. The Adelsons pushed the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said in November 2019.

Trump White House to fulfill a campaign pledge of relocating the U.S. Trump tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, moving the U.S. Embassy Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and bankrolled efforts to push in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and a mission creep in Syria out then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster and replace him that’s expanded stated U.S. goals from containing ISIS to an “effort with John Bolton, who would take a harder line on Iran and oversee to push back against Iran,” according to Secretary of State Mike U.S. abrogation of the Iran nuclear deal.

Pompeo, are also a far cry from moving away from Middle East milHome Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus—who contributed $7 military adventurism, as Trump has always said he wants to do. lion to groups supporting Trump’s candidacy, over $13 million in camYet as a candidate for president, Trump talked a different game. paign contributions supporting GOP House and Senate races in 2016, At that time he broke with GOP/neocon orthodoxy on Iran and Israel. and nearly $8 million to GOP midterm campaigns in 2018—also made Then, his main critique of the Iran deal wasn’t its very existence— clear that his political engagement is driven by a militarist worldview. as was and is often the right-wing attack line—but that the Iranians In 2015, Marcus slammed the Obama administration’s efforts to weren’t buying enough commercial airliners from American comnegotiate constraints on Iran’s nuclear program, because, he said, panies, and instead spending more in Europe. And in another move Iran “is the devil.” Marcus even once accused Holocaust victims of that firmly put him on his own in the race, Trump even committed to being weak and submissive in the face of their own mass murder being a “neutral” party on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All of that in concentration camps, which he also referred to as “detention cenchanged, however, as Trump drew closer to clinching the nomination ters” and “concentration centers.” The Israelis, said Marcus, “weren’t and as he turned to some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors like the other Jews” and “didn’t walk into the ghettos, didn’t walk into to fund his general election efforts—thus evaporating his claim of the concentration camps, didn’t walk into the ovens.” being a “self-funded” candidate.

Hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer had set himself apart from Three GOP megadonors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Paul Marcus and Adelson, and was the biggest Republican megadonor Singer, and Bernard Marcus contributed more than a quarter-of-ato identify with the “never Trump” wing—that is until Trump won the billion-dollars to boost Trump’s 2016 campaign and support Repubelection when he donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. lican congressional and Senate campaigns in 2016 and 2018.

Singer rarely speaks publicly about his foreign policy views, but Candidate Trump even warned that the money from the biggest his money, alongside Marcus and Adelson’s, of these donors, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, (Advertisement) supports some of the most hawkish institutions comes with strings attached. In 2015, Trump in Washington, including the now defunct Formocked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for pursuing eign Policy Initiative and the Foundation for Adelson’s endorsement and financial support, Defense of Democracies (FDD) whose exsaying, “Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big perts promote economic pressure and military dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold strikes against Iran. Bundled together, employhim into his perfect little puppet. I agree!” ees of Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott ManageAdelson, and his wife Miriam, are the ment, were the second largest source of funds GOP’s biggest donors, and they’re relatively supporting the candidacy of the Senate’s most transparent about why they are engaged in outspoken proponent of preventive war with politics. The Adelsons contributed $35 million Iran, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), in 2014. to the Future 45 Super PAC that supported FDD donor rolls showed that by the end of Trump’s presidential bid and spent $205 mil2011, Adelson contributed $1.5 million, Singer lion on GOP Republican House and Senate $3.6 million, and Bernard Marcus—who still sits races in the past two political cycles.

Gifted Palestinian stu udents on FDD’s board and whose family foundation Sheldon Adelson has a history of using his can reach their potentia al with continues to provide approximately one-third ties to U.S. politicians to shape U.S. foreign your generous donatio on. of FDD’s budget—contributed $10.7 million. policy. In 2001, Adelson reportedly curried (T Tax ax Exemption is Applied fo or) Trump and Republican members of Confavor with the Chinese leadership and helped gress are effectively bound to take the words secure his casino license in Macau by calling of these hawkish donors under consideration Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), then the House maAFBU when soliciting campaign funds. In some jority whip, and persuading him to halt Repubcases, Trump and other Republicans appear lican opposition to Beijing’s Olympic bid.

American Friends of Birzeit University niversity to be torn between their instincts to avoid And those views can take an extreme milineedless wars and campaign megadonors tarist tone regarding U.S. foreign policy in the who hold radical foreign policy visions and Middle East. Adelson publicly advocated Thank you in advaance for expect their campaign dollars to shape the launching a preventive nuclear attack on Iran ki d t ibb ti foreign policy of the politicians they fund. ■ as a negotiating tactic and following up with a

A erican FFrie American Am riends nds of B Birzeit irzeit U Unive nivers rsity ity

MARCH/APRIL 2020

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Congress Watch

Soleimani’s Assassination Prompts Strong Congressional Reaction

By Shirl McArthur

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S decision to approve the assassination of Iran’s Quds Force Commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani prompted strong congressional reactions, with most Republicans applauding the decision and most Democrats firmly opposed.

No fewer than 10 bills and resolutions were introduced in the days following Soleimani’s killing. In the House Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on Jan. 7 introduced H.R. 5543 “to prohibit the use of funds for unauthorized military force against Iran.” It has 93 cosponsors. In addition, two previously described bills opposing war with Iran have gained more support. H.R. 2354, introduced in April by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) now has 85 cosponsors, and H.R. 2829, introduced in May

by Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI), has 93 cosponsors.

Two resolutions were introduced “to terminate the use of U.S. Armed Forces to engage in hostilities in or against Iran.” On Jan. 7 Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) introduced H.J.Res. 82, and on Jan. 9 Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) introduced H.Con.Res. 83. A joint resolution has the force of law when passed by both houses and signed by the president. But it is subject to the whims of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has refused to bring to a vote anything that Trump may not like. A concurrent resolution is not subject to being held up by McConnell, but it does not go to the president for signature and thus does not have the force of law.

House leadership decided to go with the largely symbolic H.Con.Res. 83 to force a Senate vote, and the House passed it on Jan. 9, by a vote of 224-194, with three Republicans voting “yes” and eight Democrats voting “no.” When passed it had 162 cosponsors, all Democrats.

In the Senate three measures were introduced similar to H.Con.Res. 83. S.J.Res. 63 was introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine (DVA) on Jan. 3, with 30 cosponsors. On Jan. 9 Kaine, with eight cosponsors, introduced the similar S.J.Res. 68. This resolution has bipartisan support, and Sen. Kaine has enough Republican votes to make sure the measure passes when it is brought up for a vote.

The bill, however, is subject to a presidential veto, so Kaine will likely need a veto-proof majority to see his bill become law.

On Jan. 9 Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) introduced S.Con.Res. 33. Also on Jan. 9, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), with 13 cosponsors, introduced S. 3159 “to prohibit the use of funds for unauthorized military force against Iran.” Two measures were introduced by Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) condemning Trump’s action and subsequent state-

Shirl McArthur is a retired foreign service officer. He lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

MARCH/APRIL 2020

ments. On Jan. 6 he, with seven cosponsors, introduced S.Con.Res. 32 “expressing the sense of Congress that attacks on cultural sites are war crimes,” and on Jan. 8 he, with eight cosponsors, introduced S.Res. 465 “condemning threats by President Donald J. Trump to violate the law of armed conflict with respect to Iran.”

On Jan. 8 Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), with seven cosponsors, introduced S.J.Res. 64 making clear that neither of the two previously enacted authorizations for the use of military force (AUMF) against Iraq can be interpreted as authorizing the president’s unilateral use of force against Iran.

Two previously described measures regarding the AUMFs gained support. S.J.Res. 13, introduced in March by Kaine, which would repeal the AUMFs against Iraq of 1991 and 2002, now has four cosponsors. H.J. Res. 66, introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio (DOR) in June, which would amend the existing AUMFs to emphasize Congress’s role in introducing U.S. armed forces into hostilities, has 14 cosponsors.

APPROPRIATIONS BILLS INCLUDE FEW SURPRISES

As reported in the Washington Report’s previous issue, to avoid a government shutdown, on Nov. 21 Congress passed a continuing resolution to keep federal departments and agencies funded at the FY’19 level until Dec. 20. Congress did, barely, meet this deadline, and on Dec. 20 Trump signed two “omnibus” appropriations bills, H.R. 1158 and H.R. 1865, as P.L. 116-93 and P.L. 11694, respectively.

H.R. 1865 includes the foreign operations (foreign aid) appropriations, and the amounts for each Middle Eastern country are included in the accompanying “Joint Explanatory Statement” (JES).

Israel. $3.3 billion in military grants, plus $5 million for “refugee resettlement.” The JES also includes the perennial stipulation giving Israel the military grant funds within 30 days. It also says that $805.3 million of the military grant funds “shall be available for the procurement in Israel of defense articles and services.” (Also, as described below, the other appropriations bill, H.R. 1158, includes appropriations for the Defense Department, including $500 million for “Israeli Cooperative Programs.”)

Egypt. $1.4318 billion, including $1.3 billion in military financing.

Funding for Egypt is subject to several conditions, including that Egypt is “sustaining the strategic relationship with the U.S., and meeting its obligations under the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.” The JES says that the military financing funds should be transferred to an interest-bearing account.

Iraq. $451.6 million, including $250 million in military financing.

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STATUS UPDATES

S. 2874, H.R. 5086, and H.R. 1441, Iran Sanctions. The identical S. 2874 and H.R. 5086 would terminate certain waivers of sanctions. S. 2874 was introduced in November by Sen. Ted Cruz (RTX) with five cosponsors, and H.R. 5086 was introduced in November by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) with 27 cosponsors. H.R. 1441, introduced in February by Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN), now has 18 cosponsors.

H.R. 4692, S. 2644, H.R. 4694, and S. 2624, Turkey Sanctions.

H.R. 4692, introduced in October by Cheney, to impose sanctions on several persons, still has 117 cosponsors. Its Senate counterpart, S. 2644, introduced in October by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), still has 15 cosponsors. H.R. 4694, to “require a review of U.S.Turkey relations,” introduced in October by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), now has 20 cosponsors. S. 2624, “to prohibit arms sales to Turkey,” introduced in October by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), still has two cosponsors, and H.R. 4868, introduced in October by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), to certify that U.S. aid to the U.N. for humanitarian programs in Syria is not misdirected,” now has eight cosponsors.

H.R. 4009 and H.Res. 764, Attacking Free Speech. The only previously-described “Anti-Semitism Awareness” bill that has gained support is H.R. 4009, which would implicitly include criticism of Israel in the definition of anti-Semitism. Introduced in July by Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), it now has 24 cosponsors. Also, H.Res. 764 was introduced Dec. 14 by Rep. Steve Watkins (R-KS). It would express the support of the House for “the priorities and goals” of Trump’s Dec. 11 Executive Order, which effectively says that criticism of Israel is not protected by the First Amendment.

S.1, H.R. 336, and S.Res. 120, Oppose BDS Movement.

No progress has been made on previously described bills that in-

clude a section opposing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) targeting Israel. The bills not only equate “Israelicontrolled territories” with Israel, but also blatantly attack free speech. S. 1, introduced in January by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and passed by the Senate, still rests with the House. H.R. 336, introduced in January by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), still rests with various House committees, with 67 cosponsors. S.Res. 120, opposing the BDS movement, introduced in March by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), still rests with the SFRC, with 69 cosponsors.

S. 398, S. 2066, and H.R. 643, Khashoggi’s Murder. Bills that would impose sanctions on those responsible for murdering Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi haven’t moved. S. 398, introduced in February by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), S. 2066, introduced in July by Sen. James Risch (R-ID), and H.R. 2037, introduced in April by Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) and passed by the House in July, still have not been voted on by the full Senate. S. 398 and S. 2066 each have six cosponsors. H.R. 643, introduced in January by Rep. James McGovern (D-MA), prohibiting arms sales to Saudi Arabia, still has 32 cosponsors.

H.R. 1850 and S. 2680, Hamas. These bills would sanction virtually anyone who has anything to do with Hamas. H.R. 1850, introduced by Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) in March and passed by the House in July, is still stuck in the SFRC. But its companion bill in the Senate, S. 2680, introduced in October by Rubio, now has 23 cosponsors.

H.R. 4862, Jordan. H.R. 4862, introduced in October by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), with 10 cosponsors, “to reauthorize the U.S.-Jordan Defense Cooperation Act of 2015,” was ordered to be reported to the House on Oct. 30.

Jordan. $1.525 billion, including $425 million in military financing and $745.1 million for “budget support for the Government of Jordan.”

Lebanon. $12 million for scholarships, plus unspecified amounts for security and economic assistance and military financing.

Libya. Unspecified amounts for economic and security assistance, “including support for a U.N.-facilitated political process and border security.”

Morocco. $41 million, including $10 million in military financing and $10 million in economic aid. The JES says that additional funds for Morocco “shall be used to address security threats emanating from Libya and the Sahel.”

Syria. $40 million for “non-lethal stabilization assistance,” and $7 million for “emergency medical and rescue response and chemical weapons use investigations.”

Tunisia. $191.4 million, including $85 million in military financing.

West Bank and Gaza. $75 million for law enforcement and security assistance programs (which benefit Israel), and $75 million for humanitarian and development needs “if the Anti-Terrorism Clarifi-

cation Act (ATCA) is amended to allow for their obligation.” (Note: this section includes a long list of limits and conditions, making aid to the Palestinians the most limited/conditioned aid to the Middle East. See below.)

Yemen. $40 million for “stabilization assistance.”

H.R. 1865 also includes a section “fixing” last year’s “Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act” (ATCA). As previously reported, the ATCA was intended to cut off aid to the PA or PLO, but its wording could also apply to any country accepting the described aid. The new section of H.R. 1865 would amend the ATCA by making it possible for the Palestinians to accept security funding and certain other aid without being subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. But the bill also includes several triggers that would subject the PLO/PA to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, including one saying that if the PA/PLO makes payments to any individual or family convicted of killing a U.S. citizen, it is automatically consenting to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Another would effectively bar the PLO/PA from opening a mission of any kind in the U.S. The other “omnibus” appropriations bill, H.R. 1158, includes ap-

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propriations for the Defense Department (DOD). It includes $500 million for so-called “Israeli Cooperative Programs.” Included in the $500 million is $191 million for the Short-Range Ballistic Missile Defense program; $95 million for the Iron Dome missile defense system; $55 million for Israeli Missile Defense Architecture for Arrow 3 Upper Tier systems; and $159 million for the Arrow System Improvement Program.

DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION BILL INCLUDES SEVERAL MIDDLE EAST PROVISIONS

In December Congress also passed the S. 1790 Conference Report reconciling the House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). While mostly authorizing funds for various DOD activities, it also includes many general provisions. Several of these are Middle East related, including three provisions aimed at limiting U.S. involvement in Saudi-led actions in Yemen, one provision requiring a report on Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, one requiring a report on the intelligence community’s assessment regarding the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and three extending U.S.-Israel cooperation in different military areas.

The version of the NDAA that the House passed on July 12 also included a provision requiring congressional approval before engaging militarily with Iran. But Senate Republicans objected, saying it was unnecessary and possibly giving the wrong message to Iran’s leaders, and the provision was dropped from the final Conference Report.

Receiving little attention but potentially causing the U.S. significant foreign relations problems was the inclusion in the NDAA of the text of last year’s “Our Obligation to Recognize American Heroes (OORAH) Act.” The OORAH Act would seek to overturn the principle of sovereign immunity by extending U.S. extraterritorial sovereignty in order to seize Iranian assets located outside of U.S. jurisdiction, to satisfy a U.S. court judgment against Iran on behalf of United States. Marines killed or injured in the 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut.

MARCH/APRIL 2020

107 HOUSE DEMOCRATS OPPOSE SETTLEMENTS DECISION; POMPEO CALLS THEM “FOOLISH”

On Nov. 21, 107 House Democrats signed a letter, initiated by Rep. Andy Levin (DMI), to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing their “strong disagreement with the State Department’s decision to reverse decades of bipartisan U.S. policy on Israeli Settlements.” Pompeo’s Dec. 16 insulting reply to Levin, called the congressional letter “foolish” and claimed that the decision regarding Israeli settlements on the West Bank “is an important step in the peace process.”

HOUSE PASSES WATERED-DOWN MEASURE SUPPORTING TWOSTATE SOLUTION

On Dec. 6 the House passed the amended H.Res. 326, introduced in April by Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), by a vote of 226188, with two voting “present.” Four Democrats voted “no” and two Democrats voted “present.” The amended version deleted reference to the “occupation” and softened discussion of Israeli “settlements.”

It also strengthened the expressions of undying love for Israel. The Democrats voting “no” and “present” said their votes were a result of this weakening of the resolution. The resolution does still say that “a U.S. proposal to achieve a just, stable, and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should expressly endorse a twostate solution as its objective and discourage steps by either side that would put a peaceful end to the conflict further out of reach.” When passed it had 192 all-Democratic cosponsors.

The other, previously-described measures endorsing a two-state solution, including H.Res. 138, introduced by Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) in February, which basically endorses Binyamin Netanyahu’s “regional” approach, have gained no further support.

H.R. 2407, Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children, introduced in April by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), has gained a cosponsor and now has 23.

H.R. 2343, introduced in April by Rep.

Brad Sherman (D-CA), now has 18 cosponsors. It would require the Secretary of State to submit annual reports regarding the educational materials used by the PA or UNRWA for Palestine refugees.

Also, H.Res. 727, introduced in November by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), “affirming U.S. support for the State of Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorist attacks,” now has 39 cosponsors.

Two bills were introduced to promote U.S.-Israel defense cooperation. H.R. 5063 was introduced Nov. 13 by Gottheimer with three cosponsors, and on Jan. 9 Sens.

Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Chris Coons (DDE) introduced S. 3176.

CONGRESS HAS LITTLE TIME FOR SYRIA PULL-OUT MEASURES

Trump’s ill-advised decision to halt U.S. efforts to prevent Turkish military operations against Kurdish forces in Syria drew little further Congressional attention (see Status Updates Box). However, three new measures were introduced. Two concerned violations of human rights in Turkey. On Nov. 12 Sens. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced S. 2832, and on Nov. 12 Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and 10 cosponsors introduced S.Res. 418. On Nov. 19 Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) and three cosponsors introduced H.R. 5182 “to prohibit the Department of Defense from deploying U.S. strategic assets” in Turkey.” ■

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Special Report

The “Jeopardy” of Media Bias Against Palestine

“Jeopardy!” contestant Katie Needle identifies Palestine as the location of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. The show’s host, Alex Trebek, declares her response incorrect.

IN A RECENTLY broadcast episode of the popular American television game show “Jeopardy!” a contestant correctly identified Palestine as the location of the Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. However, the show’s long-time host, Alex Trebek, declared the response incorrect. Another contestant then gave Israel as the response and received the $200 credit.

The truth is that Bethlehem is a city in the central part of the West Bank of Palestine. It is under the effective control of an illegal and oppressive military occupation by Israel, but it is in Palestine, nonetheless. Israel has occupied the West Bank for almost 53 years now, and by a broad consensus most countries in the world recog-

Mohamed Mohamed is the executive director of the Palestine Center and The Jerusalem Fund.

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nize that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal under international law.

The particular episode of “Jeopardy!,” which has been a popular television game show for decades, was viewed by some 10 million Americans. Many viewers watch the show to gain knowledge, as well as to be entertained, hence they assume that the answers to the show’s trivia questions are factually correct. Some people who watched this episode might know that Bethlehem is in Palestine, as contestant Katie Needle correctly answered, but millions of others may be unaware of this, and they are likely to accept the show’s “correct” answer as truth.

Even when a misconception about Palestine is propagated on a seemingly trivial medium such as a game show, the true effects can be much more consequential. If only 10 percent of “Jeopardy!”

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s“inform” them. For example, here at The tinians standing in complete rubble and deviewers had no idea where Bethlehem is, Jerusalem Fund’s office in Washington, struction, but Sawyer falsely described one million people may now be under the DC, we have had many people walk in out them as Israelis. For millions of Americans impression that it is an Israeli city. Even of curiosity, with the assumption that we watching, the images reinforced the myth worse, the show’s producers issued only are a pro-Israel organization. Recently, I rethat Palestinians are barbaric. In reality, it an online statement the next day to explain connected with an old friend from high was Israel that was flattening entire neighthat this was due to “human error.” They school and we caught up with each other. borhoods of Gaza. Palestinians do not did not bother to issue an on-air correction When I told him that I am still working at even have the capability to cause the devto their viewers, most of whom probably The Jerusalem Fund, he told me that he astation pictured on the program. never browse the show’s website. Instead thought it was funny that someone of The Jerusalem Fund caught this error at they expressed their “regret,” but they did Palestinian heritage would work for an Isthe time, and we uploaded the clip to not apologize. raeli organization.

YouTube to highlight the severe misrepreThe “Jeopardy!” incident was not an isoIn both cases, these people are not insentation of Palestinians in the U.S. media. lated example. For decades Israeli and herently against Palestinians or in favor Later, ABC News and Sawyer issued an Zionist propaganda in the U.S. has helped of Israel. The problem is that they have on-air retraction and apologized for the misto shape attitudes and promote misinforbeen conditioned by the mass media (or take. But the damage was already done. mation about Palestine and Israel, espeby others who have been influenced by Other examples are more subtle and cially through American media. the media) to believe that Jerusalem “bemay seem insignificant, but they are indicaA recent study confirms the conclusions longs” to Israel. Simply put, Zionist protive of how easily misconceptions can be of previous academic studies on coverpaganda has been very effective in proplanted in the minds of people who rely on age of the conflict: reporting by the U.S. liferating this misconception (along with the news, television and other media to mainstream media favors Israel both in many others) about Palesterms of the “sheer quantity tine. This is precisely why of stories covered, and by seemingly harmless televiproviding more opportunision shows such as “Jeopties to the Israelis to amplify ardy!” can be dangerous for their point of view.” PalesOn Middle East Affairs CAMPAIGN TO CRIMINALIZE CRITICISM OF ISRAEL the Palestinian struggle for tinians are consistently porfreedom and justice when trayed more negatively, and they spread false informathe Palestinian narrative is tion, whether intentionally “highly underrepresented.”

• U.S. foreign policy and the or unintentionally.

In fact, Israeli sources are Trump administration. Any The bottom line is that the almost two and a half times hope for change?

• America’s wars. How do media, along with the propamore likely to be quoted as they start and what do we ganda that it can spread, Palestinian ones. These leave behind? What’s next for holds great power in shaping factors help to conceal the Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran? people’s attitudes and perfull context of the conflict as • $3.8 billion-plus a year in ceptions. Many people are they propagate various U.S. aid to Israel pays for uninformed about various myths that promote Israeli weapons, walls and settlements.

• Congress and U.S. elections. How harmful resolutions topics, and the media has a narratives. hurt our nation and other countries. responsibility to present unOne of these myths, biased information, espewhich is a remnant of historCall 1-888-881-5861 or e-mail circulation@wrmea.org cially when it comes to ically rooted Orientalist deWashington Report on Middle East Affairs issues such as Palestine, scriptions of Arabs, is the imColorful issues, print + digital, for $29 a year where misinformation can plication that Palestinians (digital only $10 a year) have a very serious effect on Visit our Website to read 38 years of articles, are inherently violent, desubscribe or donate at www.wrmea.org what happens to human structive, and do not want beings on the ground. The peace. In 2014, ABC News Purchase the latest in Middle East Books, Films, sooner the American media anchor Diane Sawyer made Handicrafts and Gifts. takes responsibility for the a serious mistake while reVisit www.middleeastbooks.com material that it disseminates, porting on Israel’s assault on or call 1-202-939-6050 #1 the sooner there will be jusGaza. The program distice for Palestinians. ■ played two images of Pales-

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Honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

Special Report

(L-r) Josephine Butler (DC Statehood Party), Francis Adams, Dr. James Zogby and Jawad George protest outside the Israeli Embassy in January 1988.

THIRTY-TWO YEARS ago, in January 1988, I was arrested sitting-in and blocking the entrance of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. The embassy was hosting an event that evening in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Looking back at what we did that day, I’m confident that it was the right way to remember Dr. King’s legacy.

There were a number of concerns that prompted our protest. In the first place, it was the beginning of the first Palestinian Intifada— the mass protest movement which witnessed tens of thousands of young Palestinians, armed with nothing more than stones, confronting Israeli military occupation forces. In response to this youth

Dr. James Zogby is president of the Washington, DC-based Arab American Institute, founded in 1985. His highly-acclaimed book, Arab Voices, is available at Middle East Books and More.

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protest and the nationwide Palestinian boycott of Israeli products that accompanied it, then Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin cracked down using, what he termed, an “Iron Fist.” He imposed crippling curfews, demolished homes, expelled dozens of Palestinians, and ordered his troops to “break the arms” of the protesters “to teach them a lesson.”

It was confounding that despite carrying out this brutal repression, the Israeli Embassy declared that they were dedicating a Martin Luther King Street in Jerusalem. What rubbed salt into that wound was when, shortly before the event, I was informed by Israel Shahak, head of the Israeli League for Civil and Human Rights, that the century-old olive trees that Israel had planted along this street had been uprooted and stolen from Palestinian landowners by the Israeli occupation authorities. That was too much to bear.

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PHOTO COURTESY AAI

By Dr. James Zogby

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the man, or his legacy. Instead of honoring the fierce fighter for racial and economic justice, the critic of U.S. militarism and the corruption and greed of our economic/political order, the King we have come to remember is a fuzzy and benign shadow of the original.

It’s important to note that well over onehalf of all Americans were not alive or living in the U.S. during King’s lifetime. They have no recollection of segregated lunch counters, of dogs and fire hoses being turned on children simply protesting for equality. And they don’t remember the disgusting racist rhetoric used by senators, governors, and others seeking to maintain the old segregated order that King and his colleagues sought to tear down.

What we hoped for then, and still hope for, is that King’s Day can be one in which we recall our racist history, recall the sacrifices Dr. King and so many others made in their efforts to bring needed change, and commit ourselves to using, if necessary, the

non-violent tools he used to fight injustice, poverty, and war.

And surely King and his legacy are not to be abused by those who practice the very policies he gave his life fighting to end.

That’s why I was proud of what we did 32 years ago and why I believe that Dr. King would have been proud of us too.

To honor Dr. King and his legacy, first make an effort to learn more about America back in the 1950s—the world which King gave his life fighting to change. It would also be important to try to understand what has changed and what has not—and to assess the danger that we may be back-sliding in areas of racial and economic justice. Then look at the broader world and American foreign policy and understand how King would have dealt with the many challenges we are facing. And then finally pick one issue of economic, social, racial, environmental injustice and resolve to spend the year fighting to bring justice where it is lacking.

That, I believe, is the way to honor King.■

PHOTO COURTESY ISLAMIC RELIEF USA

Serving at the time as an appointed member of the Washington, DC, Martin Luther King Holiday Commission, I took my concerns to my fellow commissioners and asked them to join me in a protest against what a number of them agreed was an Israeli insult to the legacy of Dr. King. Three other commissioners demonstrated and were arrested with me. The banner we carried read, “Dr. King Taught Non-Violence and Justice, Not Occupation and Repression.” After blocking the front gate of the embassy for a time, we were arrested, brought before a judge, charged and released.

(Later the charges were dropped, since our demonstration was determined to be a legitimate expression of political speech.)

I mention this story and my pride in choosing this way to commemorate Dr. King’s holiday because, like many others who fought for King’s birthday to be celebrated as a national holiday, I have been concerned that almost from the first year, our celebrations didn’t do justice to the day,

Some 400 volunteers participated in Islamic Relief USA’s Martin Luther King Day weekend meal pack event at the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, VA on Jan. 19, 2020. Volunteers suited up in the organization’s trademark blue T-shirts, plastic hair caps and gloves. In just three hours volunteers created 100,000 jambalaya packages with rice, lentils and other healthy ingredients, which were distributed to people in need at various shelters and soup kitchens. The following day, IRUSA packed tens of thousands of additional meals at its Alexandria headquarters as well as at other events in Harrisburg, PA and Long Island, NY. “Islamic Relief USA has long participated in service projects in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, as it’s vital to take time out and serve,” said Syed M. Hassan, communications specialist for Islamic Relief USA. “The hard work of IRUSA volunteers will help provide nourishing food to many people in need.”

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Special Report

JVP Mobilizing for Greater Political Impact Behind Palestinian Rights

Jewish Voice for Peace deputy director Rabbi Alissa Wise (l) speaks during a press conference, along with Council on American-Islamic Relations executive director Nihad Awad (r) and others to support U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on Capitol Hill, March 6, 2019.

JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE, the preeminent Jewish organization championing Palestinian rights, is attempting to mobilize its grassroots organizing efforts to have a more direct impact on American national politics. “The goal is to build power outside DC to bring power to DC,” explained Rabbi Alissa Wise, interim coexecutive of JVP. Having developed a grassroots base of 18 chapters and 70,000 members, JVP recently launched JVP Action to spearhead the effort to “become more involved politically.” The multiracial, intergenerational group seeks to “organize American

Contributing editor Walter L. Hixson is the author of Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor.

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Jews and allies to win progressive legislation, change public conversation, and elect progressive candidates—from city councils to the White House.” (See www.jvpaction.org for more information.)

Unlike AIPAC and other right-wing pro-Israel lobby groups, as well as centrist Zionist groups such as J Street, JVP seeks to map out “a path for Palestinian rights to become a core part of the progressive agenda.” In 2015 the group fully endorsed the BDS call for boycott, divestment and sanctions targeting Israel. Early in the century, before the BDS call existed, JVP, founded in California in 1996, had championed the boycott targeting Caterpillar, the Peoria, Illinois-based company that supplied Israel with earth-moving equipment to facilitate Palestinian home demolitions after a Caterpillar bulldozer killed International Solidarity Movement activist Rachel Corrie on March 16, 2003.

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Other JVP initiatives include Deadly Exchange, which calls attention to â&#x20AC;&#x153;programs that bring together police, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), border patrol, and FBI from the U.S.â&#x20AC;? with their Israeli counterparts. The Deadly Exchange report, authored by Researching the American-Israeli Alliance (RAIA) in partnership with JVP, emphasizes that the U.S. and Israeli security states share and promote â&#x20AC;&#x153;worst practicesâ&#x20AC;? such as â&#x20AC;&#x153;extrajudicial executions, shoot-to-kill policies, police murders, racial profiling, massive spying and surveillance, deportation and detention, and attacks on human rights defenders.â&#x20AC;?

In launching Deadly Exchange, JVP took on the Anti-Defamation League, which fuels the police and security exchange programs between Israel and the United States. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had a few victories,â&#x20AC;? Wise notes, citing two police departments in the northeastern U.S. that canceled planned exchange programs after being lobbied by Deadly Exchange.

JVP also partners with activist groups and members of Congress in support of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;No Way to Treat a Child Campaign,â&#x20AC;? which targets Israeli practices of detention and mistreatment of children. Since 2000 more than 10,000 Palestinian children, most between 11 and 15 years old, have been detained and subject to abuses such as chokeholds, beatings, coercive interrogation, and in some cases torture.

NEW LEADERSHIP FOR JVP

JVP is currently searching for a new executive director following the departure, after a long tenure, of Rebecca Vilkomerson. Wise, 40, who plans to resume her position as deputy director when a new executive is found, grew up in a â&#x20AC;&#x153;very Zionist familyâ&#x20AC;? in Cincinnati and went on to become a rabbi.

In her youth she traveled to Israel several times and never questioned the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Zionist myth of a land without a people and a people without a land.â&#x20AC;? After attending a protest rally In Israel in 2002, she began to grasp the (Advertisement)

impact of Israeli policies and the repression of Palestinians, which ignited her sense of activism and ultimately led her to JVP. While change â&#x20AC;&#x153;doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t happen overnight,â&#x20AC;? Wise notes, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve actually seen a lot of progress.â&#x20AC;? The â&#x20AC;&#x153;American Jewish community is swiftly changingâ&#x20AC;? and younger Jews especially are increasingly aware of Israeli repression. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Young Jews on college campuses are seeing that the grotesquely right-wing Israeli government doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t match their own liberal values. JVP is instigating this generational shift.â&#x20AC;?

While promoting Palestinian rights, JVP condemns â&#x20AC;&#x153;the dangers and harms of weaponized antisemitismâ&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the leveling of false accusations against critics of Israeli policies. Politically driven false accusations â&#x20AC;&#x153;make it a lot harder to fight actual antisemitism,â&#x20AC;? Wise notes. JVP â&#x20AC;&#x153;has a lot of experience with this issueâ&#x20AC;? and is committed to â&#x20AC;&#x153;building a broader Jewish coalitionâ&#x20AC;? against the weaponization of antisemitism. â&#x2013;

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Behind a Massacre

Relatives of victims killed in the Maguindanao massacre celebrate following the court proceedings in Camp Bagong Diwa, Dec. 19, 2019 in Manila, Philippines. After a ten-year trial, a Manila court found key members of a powerful political clan guilty for the Nov. 23, 2009 massacre of 58 people, including 32 journalists, on their way to a local political event.

IN THE 2009 Maguindanao massacre, 58 unarmed people travelling in a convoy of cars in Mindanao, southern Philippines, were waylaid by armed men, forced to go to a deserted area a couple of miles from the busy road on which they’d been travelling, and gunned down in batches until everyone was dead. At least 32 of the victims were journalists, killed in the worst ever single assault on members of their profession. A few of the victims just happened to be driving close to the convoy and were killed along with its participants.

The killers belonged to or worked for a powerful extended family, the Ampatuans. The family head, Andal Ampatuan Sr., intended to step down as governor and ensure that his son and namesake, Andal Ampatuan Jr., was elected in his place, but Esmael Mangudadatu, head of another prominent local family, intended to stand for the post. Andal Sr. thought that there was a serious possibility of Mangudadatu winning, so he decided to kill him.

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

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On Nov. 23, 2009, a convoy of vehicles set out for the town of Shariff Aguak to submit Mangudadatu’s nomination papers. On board were his wife, three sisters, other family members, two lawyers and a large party of journalists. Esmael Mangudadatu was not with them. He believed that he would be a target for attack, but if others carried his papers and were accompanied by lawyers and journalists, they would be safe. As it was, not one survived. (The massacre story is told in full by Raul Dancel, “Kill Them All,” published in Singapore’s Sunday Times on Dec. 22, 2019.)

Political life in the Philippines has long been dominated by families with strong local power bases. Anyone surveying the politics of the last 80 years and more will find themselves coming across the same family names fairly regularly. No one family was ever in a position to exercise control over the key levers of power on its own, and so they have relied upon forming alliances with other families in different regions.

The Marcos family is one example. Their power base is in the province of Ilocos Norte. Ferdinand Marcos rose to be president in

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1965 and held office until he was overthrown by the combination of mass popular protest and an elite coup by regime insiders in 1986. His wife, Imelda (she of the famous 2,700 pairs of shoes, left behind when she fled into exile with her husband), was a member of the Romualdez family, whose power base is in Leyte, the seventh largest island in the Philippines.

Members of the Cojuangco, Enrile and Lopez families, each powerful in its own right, were allies until the overthrow of Marcos seemed imminent. The Marcoses retain their local base: Imelda and children Imee and Ferdinand Jr. are politically active to this day.

Into this framework of local dynasties stepped the Ampatuan family. Maguindanao, their home territory, is a province in the present Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Mindanao, established as a result of efforts to achieve an end to the long-running insurgency led, first of all, by the Moro National Liberation Front and later by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The Ampatuans consolidated their power following the fall of Marcos. Andal Sr. was elected mayor of his home town in 1988 and then governor of his province in 2001. His son was later elected head of the autonomous region. An important ally was Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, president of the Philippines from 2001-2010, who saw the Ampatuans, a Muslim family, as a valuable ally against the Muslim insurgents and in delivering votes for her supporters in the Senate. They were able to strengthen their grip on regional offices and build a private militia that not only dealt brutally with rebels, but with any perceived rivals. Only after the massacre did Arroyo disown them.

On Dec. 19, 2019, three leading members of the Ampatuan family were sentenced to 40 years in prison, without parole, for their role in the Maguindanao Massacre. Andal Sr. was found to be liable for it too, but he had died of cancer in 2015.

Two more relatives and over 20 gunmen, as well as 15 accessories received lengthy prison sentences.

Mangudadatu, whose relatives were murdered in the massacre, succeeded in MARCH/APRIL 2020

being elected as governor of Maguindanao and held the post for nine years, but the Ampatuan family hold on the region remains largely intact: six local towns are ruled by a family member and 32 members gained seats in local elections last May. It seems that, as elsewhere in the Philippines, family rule is tenacious.

NEW UK GOVERNMENT THREAT TO BDS

Following its re-election with a hefty majority, Boris Johnson’s government committed itself to action against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in support of Palestinian rights.

Incoming government’s plans are set forth in the Queen’s Speech, when a new parliamentary session opens. In the speech itself, the reference to BDS was opaque (The government “will stand firm against those who threaten the values of the United Kingdom, including by developing a sanctions regime to directly address human rights abuse…”), but its meaning was made crystal clear in the background briefing notes issued by the Prime Minister’s office: We will stop public institutions from imposing their own approach or views about international relations, through preventing boycotts, divestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries and those who trade with them.

This will create a coherent approach to foreign relations from all public institutions, by ensuring that they do not go beyond the UK Government’s settled policy towards a foreign country. The UK Government is responsible for foreign relations and determining the best way to interact with its international neighbors.

In other words, elected local councils or institutions such as universities, no matter what the opinion of the majority of those employed or studying in them, would be barred from boycotting, divesting or sanctioning any regime unless the British government approved. If such legislation had existed during the era of apartheid in South Africa, it would have banned a wide range of bodies from helping to isolate and weaken the racist regime and bring it to an end.

The background briefing notes cite as a benefit of the legislation: Preventing divisive behavior that undermines community cohesion. There are concerns that such boycotts have legitimized anti-Semitism, such as Jewish films being censored and Jewish university societies being threatened with bans.

It clearly endorses the lie that the BDS campaign is directed against Jewish people and institutions, rather than against a racist state that occupies and oppresses an indigenous people.

The Johnson government now has the majority to do whatever it wants. Some proPalestinian activists in Britain have described the present government as the most pro-Israeli in British history, especially under Home Secretary Priti Patel (see pp.

26-27 in the Jan./Feb. 2020 Washington Report), a pro-Israel zealot keen to push through this anti-human rights, centralizing, anti-democratic legislation. ■ (Advertisement)

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WAGING PEACE The Jan. 3 assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani by a U.S. drone in Baghdad resulted in a predictable flurry of panel discussions at think tanks around Washington, DC. Below is a summary of what observers of Iran and the region had to say.

A constant complaint among commentators was that the Trump administration has no clear Iran strategy.

“It’s just basically tactics and no clear strategy, other than a strategy of implicit regime change and economic warfare, which I don’t think is a strategy that has any coherence or chance of success,” opined Georgetown University Professor Daniel Brumberg at a Jan. 16 Arab Center Washington DC event. At his organization’s Jan. 7 event, Kilic Kanat, research director at the SETA Foundation, pointed out, “no one is clear about U.S. strategy.” On the one hand, he observed, President Donald Trump claims to want to “end the long and endless wars and move toward Asia,” but he also has sent more troops to the Middle East and provoked Iran militarily.

What happens next? Was Iran’s nondeadly attack on U.S. military sites in Iraq the extent of its retaliation? “This is definitely not finished,” Iranian-American journalist Negar Mortazavi warned at the Arab Center event. “The retaliation was a flashy one-time PR [public relations] operation, but the proxy fight is going to continue.” Iran, she predicted, will continue pursuing—possibly with more determination than ever— Soleimani’s mission of removing the U.S. from the region, or at the very least making that presence come at a costly price. “Iran is patient, Iran is going to play the long game in the region,” she said.

Iran’s use of proxies in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere is a strategic and cost50

Abbas Kadhim (l) and Barbara Slavin ponder what’s next in the U.S.-Iran confrontation.

efficient way for Tehran to exert its influence and disrupt its enemies, David Des Roches, associate professor at the National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, told a Jan. 9 National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations (NCUSAR) meeting via Skype. “Iran spends a fraction of what its adversaries spend [on military funding],” he noted. “For Iran to achieve its strategic aims, it can just disrupt, which is a far cheaper bill.”

At a Jan. 9 Atlantic Council event, Abbas Kadhim, director of the think tank’s Iraq Initiative, said the Soleimani attack has left Baghdad in a precarious position. The government cannot simply permit the U.S. to unilaterally carry out high-level assassinations on its territory, but it also recognizes the importance of its relationship with Washington. “The government is working to save what they can of this relationship, especially saving the diplomatic relationship,” he noted. Kadhim sees a cooling of military and business relations in the near-term, but, he added, “diplomatic relations can bring them back after this storm passes….The United States needs Iraq and Iraq needs the United States.”

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STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

Washington Responds to Soleimani’s Assassination

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) suggested now may be the moment for the U.S. to strategically invest more in the economy and people of Iraq, rather than its military. “We have been spending four times as much money equipping their military as we have been helping to try to rebuild places like Mosul,” he pointed out at the Atlantic Council. “The real long-term danger to that country is the permanent infrastructure falling apart.”

Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said it’s important to watch and see if Soleimani’s killing results in U.S. troops leaving Iraq and the U.S. playing a diminished role in the region. No additional major military escalations coupled with a U.S. withdrawal would be a victory for Tehran, he added. “I think everyone should pay attention to whether we end up rather surprisingly watching the U.S. reduce its presence to minimal levels, lose Iraq and essentially see a major Iranian strategic victory without having any major exchange in asymmetric warfare,” he told the NCUSAR audience.

While the tremendous imbalance of power between Tehran and Washington allows the U.S. to flex its muscle without facing devastating blowback, Brumberg said that the U.S. must realize its efforts to put pressure on Iran can only achieve so much. “The paradox is we have enough power to engage in a ‘maximum pressure campaign,’ but we don’t have enough power to prevail, and we don’t know how to square that circle.”

While a (far from assured) military victory stemming from a long and devastating war is likely the only way to get Iran to capitulate, Quincy Institute Executive Vice President Trita Parsi noted at the SETA event that such a conflict “ultimately does not serve U.S. national interests.”

The painfully obvious solution, concluded Barbara Slavin, director of the Atlantic Council’s Future of Iran Initiative, is for leaders in Washington and Tehran to listen to their citizens and MARCH/APRIL 2020

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forge a détente that benefits everyone.

“Iranians don’t want war; Americans don’t want war,” she noted. “We ought to be able to figure out a way to scale this back.”

—Elaine Pasquini and Dale Sprusansky

PHOTO C. BODNARUK

More than 100 human rights defenders gathered in Lafayette Square in front of the White House on Jan. 8 to protest the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani, head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, in a targeted airstrike in Baghdad by a U.S. military drone on Jan. 3.

Many in the crowd carried signs reading “No War on Iran.” Members of Code Pink, the organizer of the protest, held a banner proclaiming “Don’t Bomb Iran” in large letters.

Activists demanded the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and that President Donald J. Trump lift sanctions against Iran, which, according to a 2019 Human Rights Watch report, have had a devastating humanitarian impact on the health of the Iranian people.

The U.S. assassination of Soleimani was the climax of a recent round of escalatory events that began when Kataeb Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia group with ties to Iran, killed Sacramento, CA resident Nawres Waleed Hamid, an Iraqi-American contractor, in a rocket attack in Iraq

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

Protesters Demand No U.S. War With Iran

Outside the White House, protesters call for no U.S. war with Iran. on Dec. 27. Following a Jan. 8 early morning Iranian retaliatory attack on U.S. military sites in Iraq, it appears Tehran and Washington have reached an unofficial pause in the use of direct military action.

Thousands of Americans also took to the streets in cities across the country on Jan. 4 to demand that the U.S. ends its aggression toward Iran. Those protests were organized by the ANSWER Coalition.

—Elaine Pasquini

Canadians Respond to Aircraft’s Downing, U.S. Tensions with Iran

About 100 Winnipeggers took to the streets at noon on Jan. 11 to participate in a Pan-Canadian Day of Action

Winnipeggers brave the cold to show solidarity with the victims of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752, and to condemn recent U.S. military provocations against Iran.

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Against a U.S. War with Iran. Despite it being a bitter -22 degrees Celsius (-7 degrees Fahrenheit), protesters, with barely any shelter from the cold, gathered to condemn the U.S. assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani and Iraqi military commander Abu Mahdi alMuhandis. Young and old paced back and forth at the historic Portage & Main corner, carrying placards with slogans saying “Give Peace a Chance” and “No More Blood Oil,” and chanting “No War with Iran.”

Participants also condemned the U.S. detaining numerous Iranians at the U.S.-Canada border.

Rally participants observed a moment of silence for the passengers killed aboard Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752, which was downed shortly after takeoff from Tehran. Doctors, engineers, students and a volunteer were among those members of the Iranian community in Manitoba killed.

The crash also had a great impact on the University of Manitoba, killing three alumni, as well as two current students.

In total, 59 Canadian citizens were killed on the flight, including nine from Manitoba.

Iran has admitted responsibility for the downing, with President Hassan Rouhani calling it a “disastrous mistake.”

Just days before the incident, he issued a now tragically ironic tweet reminding

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She has a photograph of the Winnipeg victims on display in the restaurant. “All those people are gone,” she said. “The grieving is done, now everybody is angry.” She said she travelled to Iran on the same airline last July. “I even remember the pilot’s face.”

When asked about Canada’s reaction to recent events, she approved of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pushing Iran to give the plane’s black boxes to Ukraine.

She added that there has been “huge support” from the Canadian government.

She said her community is proud of their dual citizenship. “We count ourselves as Iranian-Canadian,” she said.

—Candice Bodnaruk

Does Libya Need an Economic Approach to Peace?

Washington, DC’s Middle East Institute hosted a Jan. 13 panel discussion launching MEI nonresident fellow Jason Pack’s paper “An International Financial Commission is Libya’s Last Hope.” Pack proposed that an economic-based approach is the best way to end Libya’s six-year civil war.

Libya’s problem, Pack argued, is that the country has “many extremely deeply-rooted yet dysfunctional institutions” that helped give rise to “militias, corruption, predatory business practices and a vacuum of legitimate politi-

cal power.” The goal of his paper, he explained, “was to reverse the conventional wisdom not only about Libyan statelessness and institutionality, but how to mediate the Libyan civil war, which is rooted in its economic structure.”

According to Pack, of the world’s five major conflicts: Syria, Iraq, North Korea, Yemen and Libya, “Libya is the only one whose solution can pay for itself” because of the country’s vast oil resources. “Libyans are smart, savvy and well-informed,” he said. “And when you speak to them, you always hear that the key question that interests them is not who should be the president or the prime minister, but rather how the country’s vast resources should be used and distributed.”

Nate Mason, former commercial officer at the American Embassy in Tripoli, agreed that economic concerns are the primary driver of the civil war in Libya.

He stressed that Libyans need serious economic solutions. “They can’t just see more commissions and groups get together to study what the constitution looks like or how money should be divided,” he said. “Things have to actually change.”

He believes one necessary change is for the currency to be floated, meaning that the government shouldn’t intervene

(L-r) Jason Pack, moderator Jonathan Winer, Stephanie Williams (on screen) and Nate Mason.

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the U.S. of its accidental downing of an Iranian passenger aircraft in 1988: “Those who refer to the number 52 [the number of Iranian cultural sites President Trump threatened to destroy] should also remember the number 290. #IR655 Never threaten the Iranian nation.”

A member of Winnipeg’s Iranian community spoke at the rally, lamenting the circumstances that led to the crash.

“This is a glimpse of the ugly face of war. This is a glimpse of what will come if you stand in silence,” she said.

At the University of Manitoba, students and faculty reacted to the deaths of university students and faculty members who were on Flight 752. “Everyone was shocked,” said a member of the Iranian Students’ Association at the University of Manitoba, who chose to remain anonymous.

He said he had two friends onboard the aircraft, and that he was texting with one of them minutes before the plane was taken down by two Iranian missiles.

The student does not think that what happened to Flight 752 can be written off as an unintentional by-product of rising U.S.-Iran military tensions. “I call it murder, that’s not an accident,” he said.

The student was active in Iran’s Green Revolution when he was just 17.

“I thought that as a citizen, it’s my responsibility to speak up. I decided to go to the streets and ask for my rights.”

The student expressed no anguish over Soleimani’s death. “We all were happy, he killed millions of Syrians,” he said.

However, he added that there are Iranians who are angry about Soleimani’s death, even though they may not support the Iranian regime. Many, he noted, believe Soleimani protected Iran from threats, such as U.S. aggression and the Islamic State. “He stood against ISIS,” the student acknowledged.

Maryam Nadmeh, owner of the Tehran Café in Winnipeg and an Iranian-Canadian, said her customers were distraught and angry about recent events in Iran.

to influence the value of the country’s currency. “The two central banks can get together and agree to float the currency,” Mason said. “They don’t need to have a study. They just need to do it.”

Another necessary change, Mason said, is to end fuel subsidies, “because that is really billions of dollars going to organized crime....Whether it is militias or criminals, or in most cases criminal militias, it is very difficult to see how you end the war as long as the fuel subsidies remain.”

Infrastructure contracts are also important, as is decentralization. “Centralized authority and centralized planning is not a good idea in Libya, but people tell me that is the way the whole region works,” Mason said. “And I would argue the entire region does not work.”

Speaking via Skype from Tripoli, Stephanie Williams, U.N. special representative for political affairs, noted the humanitarian crises facing Libya. After six years of civil war and nine years after the death of Muammer Qaddafi, some 150,000 people have been displaced from their homes, 115,000 children are unable to go to school, 26 health facilities have been destroyed and most of the population does not have access to health care, she noted.

All eyes, Williams said, are on the temporary ceasefire declared on Jan. 11, which stirred hopes for an end to the fighting between Khalifa Haftar, commander of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army, and the U.N.backed government of Fayez al-Sarraj.

—Elaine Pasquini

Deadlocked Israel and a Politically Fragmented Palestine

The Arab American Institute and U.S. Middle East Project co-hosted a Jan. 16 briefing on Capitol Hill to discuss “Palestine and Israel Amid Changing Policies and New Emerging Realities.”

Omar Baddar, deputy director of the Arab American Institute, set the landscape by noting the complete political deadlock in Israel, as the country prepares for its third election in a year. “All MARCH/APRIL 2020

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(L-r) Khaled Elgindy, Knesset member Aida Touma-Sliman and Lara Friedman.

of this puts us in uncharted territory with what seems to be a complete stall in peacemaking negotiations,” he said.

Aida Touma-Sliman, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and a member of the Israeli Knesset, refuted the oft-repeated moniker that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. “If we are measuring the democratic life in Israel by the situation of the Palestinian people, I think we will understand that is a false image.”

Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, lamented the Trump administration’s reversal of U.S. policies relating to settlements, permanent status issues, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and the situation of refugees. “We are now seeing a weaponization of the IsraeliPalestinian issue and the weaponization of ideas that three years ago were considered bipartisan and totally not controversial,” she said.

Friedman noted that the word “occupation” had to be removed in order for a recent resolution supporting a twostate solution to be passed in the House of Representatives. “The word now is seen as radioactive,” she said.

“We have seen [legitimate] criticism of Israel and activism against it equated with anti-Semitism.”

Khaled Elgindy, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, cited a decisive shift to the right in Israeli politics and increased incitement against the Palestini-

ans and the free press as growing concerns. “We are seeing the legitimization of extremists," he said. “They are now being courted by mainstream Israeli politicians.”

At the same time, the Palestinian body politic is becoming more fragmented, dysfunctional and divided, Elgindy observed. “The division between Hamas and Fatah is one of the most egregious, and a visible sign of this trend. We are also seeing a deterioration of Palestinian institutions.”

According to Elgindy, there is a growing authoritarianism on the Palestinian side. “We are also seeing this generally in the region and the broader Arab world,” he noted.

“I see the necessity of a different kind of American approach to the peace process,” Elgindy added. “You cannot have a peace process if it is not connected to physical and political realities on the ground. The problem is that we have a peace process that was completely divorced from the actual day-today operations of what the PalestinianIsraeli dynamic on the ground meant.

We need to have a different approach because there is no going back to the status quo.”

—Elaine Pasquini

A Call to Engage Evangelicals on Israel and Palestine

At a Nov. 14, 2019 Arab Center Washington DC discussion on “Evangelical

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(L-r) Jonathan Kuttab, Alison Glick and Jim Wallis note that attitudes toward Israel are beginning to change in the evangelical community.

Christians and U.S. Middle East Policy,” panelists expressed pessimism regarding the state of the country’s political and religious institutions when it comes to Israel, but hope in the potential for grassroots-led change.

Alison Glick, director of development and mobilization at Churches for Middle East Peace, noted that while American evangelicals remain overwhelmingly supportive of the State of Israel, young evangelicals are starting to question the credibility of their community’s unflinching support for Israel.

Citing a 2017 study conducted by LifeWay Research, she noted that 77 percent of evangelicals 65 years and older said they “support the existence, security and prosperity of Israel,” while 58 percent of evangelicals between the ages of 18-34 shared that sentiment.

Similar results were found when both groups were asked if they have a positive perception of Israel and if Israel’s creation in 1948 resulted in an injustice to native Palestinians.

Glick believes these numbers show evangelicals, particularly younger evangelicals, should not be outright dismissed by supporters of Palestinian rights.

“Those of us who are interested in moving U.S. policy to a more just stance, especially on Israel-Palestine ignore at our peril this group of Christians,” she said.

“We need to be conscious of where we 54

can reach out and form coalitions and strategize.” Engaging open-minded evangelicals has the potential to inject “a different perspective in this very important, very large and formidable Christian community,” she added.

Jim Wallis, a well-known theologian and editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, observed that the inter-generational divide and debate regarding Israel and Palestine is emblematic of a broader sense of disillusionment many young people have with the way their religious institutions are responding to global events. In the era of Donald Trump, he noted that many young Christians believe their religious leaders, parents and other authority figures have hypocritically strayed from the core tenants of their faith by supporting a leader that has shown a disregard for refugees, the dignity of women and other marginalized groups exalted by sacred scripture. Wallis shares this critique, accusing the president’s ardent supporters of voting in an “anti-Christ” manner.

Strong support for Israel among prominent evangelical leaders has more to do with political considerations than theology, Wallis contended. “It was a political takeover of the evangelical world by political operatives…it’s political, it’s money, it’s who’s paying who,” he said.

Young Jews are also rebelling against the politicization of their faith, Wallis and

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Glick observed. “AIPAC has a problem now because some of the protesters outside [their events] are their kids,” he noted. “Jewish leaders tell me their kids are outside protesting.”

Wallis described the struggle for Palestinian rights as “the hardest issue in American politics…we’re up against enormous odds.” Progress, he stressed, will come from the grassroots, not from political leaders, who tend to be responsive rather than proactive. “Don’t look for leadership on the Hill,” Wallis said. “You move people on the Hill by changing the culture and grassroots movements on the outside.”

Jonathan Kuttab, a non-resident fellow at the Arab Center, concluded the event by re-emphasizing the need to respectfully and openly engage the evangelical community. “Most evangelicals who take Christian Zionist positions do so out of ignorance of either the facts or scripture,” he said. “I find that once we can get down and engage directly with evangelical Christians and present them with both the facts on the ground and what the Bible teaches, I find that the response is very positive and that the challenge is really worth taking.”

—Dale Sprusansky

HUMAN RIGHTS Activist Successfully Challenges “Product of Israel” Settlement Wine Labels in Canadian Court

Freedom of expression and speech, two rights guaranteed to Canadians in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, were at the center of a 2019 Federal Court ruling that wines produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and sold in Canadian liquor stores cannot be labelled “Product of Israel.”

University of Manitoba professor and activist David Kattenburg led the court challenge after the self-described wine lover discovered settlement wine on the shelves of a local liquor store.

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Litigant David Kattenburg “undercover” at the Psagot Winery, which is located in an illegal Jewish-only settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. amount to, is an Israeli claim of sovereignty over settlements and over the [Palestinian] lands the settlements sit on—on Canadian store shelves,” he said.

Consumers of conscience, he said, ought to have the right to know a product originates from settlements deemed illegal by international law. “Wouldn’t you want to know that the car you are buying on the car lot is a stolen car?” he said.

“So it’s simply a matter of free choice.”

The legal challenge began in 2017 when Kattenburg filed a formal complaint with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (the organization that oversees the labelling of food and beverages in Canada). CFIA ended up agreeing with Kattenburg’s analysis that the labels were misleading.

Yet, CFIA did a quick about-face within 24 hours of its decision, after Global Affairs Canada (a government department that manages diplomatic relations) got involved. GAC received complaints from a number of pro-Israel organizations, including B’nai Brith Canada and the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs about the CFIA ruling. The Israeli Embassy in Ottawa also expressed its objection to the CFIA decision.

CFIA’s rationale for the reversal, Kattenburg explained, was that he and his legal team didn’t adequately consider the Canada-Israel Free Trade AgreeMARCH/APRIL 2020

ment (CIFTA), which made the “Product of Israel” labelling permissible. Kattenburg balked at this assertion and pointed out that CIFTA does not apply to products originating from West Bank settlements.

Kattenburg believes the reversal had more to do with politics than the fine points of the trade agreement. “There was intense political pressure right up and down the hierarchy, right up to the PM’s [Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s] office and they suddenly flip-flopped.”

After CFIA reversed its decision, Kattenburg and his lawyer Dimitri Lascaris took their case to the Federal Court of Canada for a judicial review and secured a favorable ruling. (The Federal Court reviews administrative decisions made by federal agencies for validity and correctness.)

Kattenburg said that one of the most significant aspects of the judge’s ruling was that free speech includes the right to accurate and truthful information about products. “I think this is huge,” he said. “The judge said Canadians have the right to boycott products based on their political conscience.”

Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), of which Kattenburg is a member, was a partner in the case. IJV’s lawyer argued that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms also applied in this case. The

Charter provides for the right to free speech and freedom of expression— and consumer choice, IJV maintained, is a form of expression. The judge accepted IJV’s argument that truthful information (such as clear and accurate labelling) is essential for the exercise of free speech.

Kattenburg said he thinks the court ruling will help Canadians understand the illegality of West Bank settlements. “I think it will delegitimize the settlements.

The purpose of the ‘Product of Israel’ label is to stake sovereign claim on the settlements and legitimize that claim.”

The Federal Court of Canada has instructed the CFIA to come up with new labels for settlement wines. The federal government has appealed the decision.

Kattenburg and his lawyer have until March 2020 to respond to the appeal.

While pleased with his victory, Kattenburg is frustrated at just how far his government has gone to protect the rogue actions of the Israeli state.

“Canada is actually going to court to defend Israel’s right to stake sovereign claim over the settlements,” he noted.

—Candice Bodnaruk

Resolution Urges India to Respect Rights of All Citizens

On Dec. 6, 2019, Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Steve Watkins (R-KS) introduced H.Res. 745 urging India to preserve religious freedom for all of its residents. The resolution also calls on the government to cease its restrictions on communication in the Jammu and Kashmir region, and to cease its mass detention of Kashmiri dissidents.

The resolution currently has 48 cosponsors, but has not been brought up for consideration in the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

India has a diverse religious landscape. It is the birthplace of Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism, home to the world’s third largest Muslim population, and three of its 29 states have a majority Christian population. The country’s constitution mandates a secular state that upholds the rights of all

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be used for disaster relief and infrastructure projects.

Following the rally, activists dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods— some carrying symbolic black coffins— led a procession to the Trump International Hotel, where they stood on the sidewalk in front of the controversial business on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Justice for Muslims Collective, Witness Against Torture and other human rights groups organized the afternoon event.

—Elaine Pasquini

ADVERTISE!

CAIR’s Nihad Awad says the U.S. must make it clear that it “will not tolerate the state persecution of any minority in India, including Muslims.” the White House calling for the closure of the facility, cessation of torture and the immediate release of cleared detainees.

Activists handed out flyers informing passersby, “Besides the moral and ethical issues of mistreating fellow human beings, the economics are atrocious.”

The activists would like the $10 million spent per prisoner per year to instead

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citizens to the freedoms of religion, expression, speech, and to equal treatment under the law.

In December, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which legalized the granting of citizenship to immigrants of a wide number of religions, but not to Muslims. India is also planning to implement a pan-India citizen verification process known as the National Register of Citizens, which combined with the CAA, could give the government grounds to strip millions of Indian Muslims of their citizenship.

U.S.-based human rights organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), are urging the House of Representatives to immediately adopt H.Res. 745 and follow the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to sanction the Indian government’s leadership for the discriminatory citizenship law.

“Congress must send a clear message to Indian Prime Minister Modi that we will not tolerate the state persecution of any minority in India, including Muslims,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad in a statement. “We are getting close to a situation in which the Indian government will round up Indian Muslim citizens and Muslim immigrants and indefinitely detain them in state-run concentration camps—a human rights disaster in the making that must be avoided through immediate diplomacy and civil action.”

—Elaine Pasquini

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Eighteen years after the opening of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 40 men remain incarcerated at the facility. Five prisoners were cleared to leave under the Obama administration, but President Donald Trump stopped their release and they remain under detention.

On Jan. 11, human rights defenders gathered in Lafayette Square in front of 56

Activists dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods to resemble detainees stand in front of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, demanding the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

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Rally to Close Guantanamo

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Exhibition Exposes Washington to Kurdish Art

On Dec. 6, the Middle East Institute Gallery opened “Speaking Across Mountains,” an exhibition dedicated to Kurdish artists who are now mostly scattered across the globe. For one of the first times, “Washingtonians are being exposed to Kurdish artists,” applauded Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Representative to the United States, in her speech on the opening night of the exhibit.

With Rahman, as well as the curator, Heba Elkayal, present for a discussion with MEI Arts and Culture Director Lyne Sneige, the opening event was overflowing, with far more attendees than chairs. “There are so many people [in Washington] who have been to Iraq, but how well do you know us?” Rahman asked, dubbing the exhibition “the first time to tell our own stories.”

Many of these stories address identity, displacement, gender, cultural erasure and ruthless governments. Uniting the artists is a shared identity that stretches across borders, or “speaks across mountains.” The exhibition’s title came to curator Elkayal during her conversations with the artists and as she realized that “everyone had hyphenated identities—ethnic and national.”

The two often conflict and “some [of the artists] battle their national identity, but have to grapple with it,” feeding their “constant need to communicate and engage.”

Approximately 35 million Kurds live in a stateless region, concentrated in the border zones of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Since World War I and the European powers’ unfulfilled promises of granting the Kurds a state, the Kurdish people have remained united through a shared identity. Together, they have strived to achieve autonomy, enduring persecution for the perceived threat this vision poses to the “nationalist agendas of regional governments,” explained MARCH/APRIL 2020

Lyne Sneige and MEI’s Vice President for Arts and Culture Kate Seelye. The artwork, contributed by ten artists living mostly in the diaspora, “seeks to remember and memorialize difficult histories, confront corrupt and unjust political systems, and to tackle outdated gender norms.”

Beyond Kurdish identity, the artists’ ingenuity and experimentation in Gallery visitors take in Kani Kamil’s “My Blue Blanket,” which artistic methods also offers commentary on the gender bias she witnessed as a child. unites them, said curaplemented by film screenings to fill that tor Elkayal. Meandering through the void, but what is on view still successgallery, the diversity of media and techfully introduces Washingtonians to the niques confirms this assessment. The landscapes of the Kurdish homeland, show starts with Kurdish-Iraqi artist the intimate stresses at home and their Walid Siti’s “A Poem to the Mountain at struggles against repressive regimes. the Edge of the World,” where painting The exhibition features artists Sherko meets sculpture; the large painted cutAbbas, Serwan Baran, Kani Kamil, out of a mountain peak is set a couple Hayv Kahraman and Walid Siti of Iraq; inches off the wall, casting layered Savas Boyraz, Zehra Doğan and Şener shadows and evoking the hidden nooks Özmen of Turkey; and Khadija Baker and passages in the mountains. Kani and Bahram Hajou of Syria, and is on Kamil’s “My Blue Blanket” places an view until Feb. 20, 2020. —Eleni Zaras advertisement featuring a blond boy, which the artist’s grandfather hung in DC Exhibitions Spotlight Iranian his office, next to photos of the women Female Artists in her family that he chose not to display. The female faces are obfuscated Amidst the attacks and aggressive by tangles of human hair glued over rhetoric in Washington, DC against Iran, their faces, evoking gender bias and the city’s arts institutions have continued erased histories. to embrace Iranian artists through variFrom drawn, painted and stitched deous exhibitions. From the Smithsonian’s tails, to photography and video monNational Museum of Asian Art, to the tages, to an installation we are forced DC Arts Center, to AFI Silver Theatre to step around—especially given the and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, opening night’s crowd—each artwork MD, Washingtonians have had a diverse challenges us emotionally and viscerrange of opportunities to connect with ally with clever criticisms, grim historithe work of Iranian and Iranian-Americal realities and introspective refleccan artists. tions.

On view at the National Museum of Yet the curator acknowledges that Asian Art until Feb. 9, “My Iran: Six the exhibition is not “complete,” given Women Photographers” features conthe logistical challenges of organizing temporary Iranian photography from the exhibition in eleven weeks and their their permanent collection. The phoinability to represent Iranian-Kurdish tographs straddle the real and the surartists. The show will therefore be comreal as they document, appropriate and STAFF PHOTO E. ZARAS

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(re)imagine Iranians’ past, present and future.

As we enter the show, we are immediately confronted with a five-minute film, “Somayeh,” a woman who stares unflinchingly out at the viewer with slightly furrowed brows, while artist Newsha Tavakolian’s camera slowly and almost imperceptibly zooms in on her. Motionless, Somayeh positions herself in front of a jagged, barren tree.

All that moves is her scarf draped loosely over her head and a couple of plastic bags ensnared in the branches behind her, billowing in a slight breeze.

Her defiant stare forces us to question stereotypes of supposedly powerless Iranian women. Yet the bleak surroundings and menacing tree behind her make us wonder how far even this woman’s determination could take her.

The artworks in the subsequent three rooms testify that these women will go far. They demonstrate resistance, confront and embrace family history, and cleverly stage scenes of uncertainty and transition in present-day Iranians’ lives.

Hengameh Golestan’s black and white photographs document crowds of unveiled young women in one of the final protests of the 1979 revolution, just before the enforcement of the hijab. Golestan’s works are the only photojournalistic pieces.

Shadi Ghadirian and Malekeh Nayiry, though, toy with the documentary connotations of historic photographs.

Ghadirian’s portraits of women might at first glance deceive the viewer into thinking they are 19th century relics, with their sepia-tones and Qajar fashions and decor. However we then notice the insertion of anachronistic props, such as a late-20th century leftist newspaper or a soda can, suggesting these women’s participation not simply in modern, everyday life, but also perhaps in more subversive acts.

Nayiry, on the other hand, appropriates and manipulates old photographs, adding neon colors and unexpected props, altering past realities, and paring 58

family portraits with banal, but sobering symbols of a lost past.

“The key is to not be too literal,” advised the museum’s Chief Curator Massumeh Farhad on her exhibition tour back in October.

Indeed, the sharp, surreal shots of Gohar Dashti take us into the realm of the absurd: A crowd lining up and ea- “Untitled” from series “Slow Decay” (2010) by Gohar Dashti. gerly pressing forshared background that brought these ward with suitcases in the middle of the women together. As they confided in desert; a women dressed in a fine, each other about their experiences as white silk blouse who stands before a Iranian-American women, they felt embleeding fish carcass carefully holding powered to work together and produce a bloody knife and staring just past the “collaborative art,” allowing each other camera. to “intervene and change the others’ Meanwhile, the exhibition “Once art. That took a lot,” exclaimed artist Upon A Journey,” on view at the DC and director of Exhibit9 Gallery Sarah Arts Center, celebrates the both introBarzmehri at the exhibition opening on spective and collaborative artistic exJan. 17. “We learned a lot to let go of perimentation of a group of seven Iranour ideas and creations for the group’s ian-American artists. benefit.”

Curated by Nancy Nesvet and sponToday, even if one loses faith in the sored by Exhibit9 Gallery, the show leaders at the helm of the political brings together a range of media and crises du jour, these two exhibitions styles. Some are attributed to one demonstrate the drive and the intelliartist, while many are collaborations gent, daring wit of Iranian artists, and and cover diverse subject matters, inthe power of arts institutions to chalcluding their memories and their female lenge and invigorate audiences worldidentities. wide.

—Eleni Zaras Photographs and paintings of shadowed female faces and bodies and colHanan Awad’s Olive Tree Project lages of memories pieced together from found objects or lines of poetry reWashington, DC’s Jerusalem Fund flect the emotional explorations of the Gallery hosted a haunting show called artists.

“Palestine Through Photo Essays By While certain pieces include lines of Hanan Awad,” on Dec. 13. Awad is a poetry, such as the collaborative piece Palestinian American street photographer “Rumi’s Poetry,” or Parisa Faghih’s based in Oklahoma, whose photos have drawings that depict characters from been exhibited around the world. Her phothe Shahnameh, the Iranian epic “Book tos capture the tragedy of the physical of Kings,” not all the works explicitly and cultural forced displacement of Palesevoke an Iranian identity. Yet it is this tinians and narrate their resilience/resis-

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Hanan Awad in front of her photo essays at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery.

tance against the colonialist occupation of Palestine.

Lining the gallery wall were Awad’s prints, each one telling a story. Viewers meet Muhaned Salah, 35, arrested and detained for a week by Israeli authorities in 2016 because he’d had the temerity to file a formal complaint against nearby settlers who’d burned his house down in the village of Shushahla.

Another print captures the voices and faces of Jahalin Bedouins, expelled from their ancestrial home and forced to live near a garbage dump in the West Bank.

Another describes the importance of the olive tree to Palestinian culture and livelihoods. She also captures the harrowing aftermath after Israeli soldiers and settlers chopped them down or uprooted the ancient trees.

This crime inspired Awad’s olive tree project, launched in 2012. For every photo print purchased, she will plant six olive trees on your behalf during Land Day, March 30, in Palestine. Print purchasers supply their e-mail addresses so they can learn where their trees are planted. Awad’s goal is to plant 1,000 olive trees in Palestine during Land Day every year.

Middle East Books and More was so impressed by her photos and project that we agreed to sell them in the store and online, <www.middleeastbooks.com/collections/debwania-olive-treeproject/products/photographs>. SupportMARCH/APRIL 2020

ers can also visit <www.debwania.com> for more information.

—Delinda C. Hanley

ARAB AMERICAN ACTIVISM Growing Palestine’s Successful Holiday Hafla

Nearly 400 people attended Growing Palestine’s Holiday Hafla, on Dec. 12 at the Sheraton Premiere in Tysons Corner, VA, a party which brings the Palestinian diaspora community together to celebrate their connections to their homeland and to each other. According to Nora Burgan, the annual festivities honor the “old” traditions and evoke pride as generations gather to

PHOTO COURTESY GROWING PALESTINE

PHOTO COURTESY ABEAR AWAD

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remember the gifts that their Palestinian cultural heritage offers—including music and dabke dancing!

Steering committee member Nadia Itraish welcomed attendees before showing a film featuring Vivien Sansour, who is reintroducing long-forgotten Palestinian produce to West Bank farmers. Sansour hopes traditional crop-growing methods will push back against the challenges imposed by the Israeli occupation, water shortages and agri-business.

The film also featured a young apprentice, born and raised in Maryland, who was learning from old farmers. The film emphasized the important issues of food sovereignty, heirloom and native seed and the ills of agri-business.

Growing Palestine is a vital organization committed to helping farmers in Palestine live sustainably on their land, because members believe “farming is resistance.” Burgan told the Washington Report, “We support farmers as they provide nutritious fruits, vegetables and grains for their communities that are grown from seeds native to Palestine.

Growing Palestine is working on the ground back home protecting heirloom and native seeds and Palestine’s rich agricultural heritage.”

Each summer Growing Palestine takes a group, including lots of young people, to help farmers harvest their crops. They come back to the U.S. fired up and inspired.

Growing Palestine’s board members and hafla organizers, (l-r), Samer and Nora Burgan, Nadia Itraish, Samar Langhorne, Samir Salem, Buthaina Abubader, Zeina Azzam and Paul Noursi.

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semble played well-known classics from Mohammed Abdel Wahab, Farid AlAtrash and Fairuz to an ecstatic crowd.

During a brief intermission, Michel Moushabeck, one of the ensemble’s members, spoke about the importance of ADC’s work defending the rights of Arab Americans, as well as the preservation of Arab-American cultural heritage through music, art and writing.

—Sami Tayeb

Shoppers purchased olive oil, embroidery, pottery, foods, dolls, and artwork from Growing Palestine’s holiday marketplace. The treasures included high quality Habibi socks, which make a fun fashion statement and support Palestinian artistry and entrepreneurship. Founded by Hani Azzam, a self-described Palestinian-American startup junkie and sock enthusiast, Habibi Worldwide plans to contribute to the spread of Palestinian and Arab design, culture and heritage worldwide. For more information visit <www.habibiworldwide.com>.

The event raised money “to support farmers who are producing organic, healthy produce with total respect and reverence for the land...the way our ancestors did... Another of our goals is to support more efficient water and electricity systems to improve the running of the farms and ensure their viability for years to come,” Burgan concluded.

Donations from last year’s dinner helped build the first heirloom nursery in the West Bank to help farmers protect Palestinian seed.

After Prince Charles attended the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem in January, he, unlike other leaders, spent time in Bethlehem with Muslim and Christian leaders.

Prince Charles, who is known for his love of trees and enthusiasm about seed conservation, chatted with Sansour. She told him about the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library as well as the importance of olive trees in Palestinian heritage, cuisine and practices. When Prince Charles planted an olive tree, he said: “I hope it will be a blessed tree.” For more information, visit <www.growingpalestine.com>.

—Delinda C. Hanley 60

ADC’s Turaath Celebrates Arabic Music, Culture

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) hosted its annual Turaath (meaning “heritage” in Arabic) event on Dec. 8, 2019, at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. The event featured Layaali, a Massachusetts-based Arabic music ensemble, accompanied by Syrian vocalist Fadi Jano. Layaali, whose mission is to “increase the awareness of Arabic music and culture through concerts, recordings, workshops and lectures,” is composed of musicians from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Morocco. The en-

Trump Doubles Down on Refugees

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other community advocates applauded a Maryland federal judge’s Jan. 15 ruling temporarily blocking the Trump administration’s ban on refugee resettlement on a state-by-state basis.

The Trump administration had set a Jan. 21 deadline for states and cities to decide whether they’d continue to accept properly vetted refugees within their jurisdictions. Refugee resettlement agencies filed a federal lawsuit in Maryland arguing that the Executive Order violates long-standing federal policies to welcome refugees.

CAIR’s director of Maryland outreach Zainab Chaudry said in a statement: “CAIR applauds U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte‘s decision to issue a preliminary injunction against President Trump’s irrational Executive Order designed to ban refugee resettlement on a state-by-state basis. This setback for the administration’s anti-refugee agenda is a victory for all those who value our diver-

Layaali, a Massachusetts-based music ensemble, performs at ADC’s Turaath.

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

STAFF PHOTO S. TAYEB

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

MUSLIM AMERICAN ACTIVISM

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A woman protests on June 26, 2018 outside the U.S. Supreme Court, following its 5-4 ruling upholding U.S. President Trump's travel ban.

sity and shared humanity.

“Refugees represent one of the most vulnerable populations globally, yet contribute to society in countless ways. While the ruling is temporary, we are hopeful that logic and reasoning will prevail, and that the courts will agree that our nation should always remain a refuge for those fleeing war, persecution, famine, violence and other atrocities.”

At a previous press conference, CAIR commended Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s Jan. 2 decision to continue to allow refugees into that state. North Dakota, which has settled 700 refugees in the past two decades, and other states and communities held serious and sometimes divisive discussions before deciding to continue to accept refugees.

Trump’s Executive Order 13769, titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” a ban on travelers from predominantly Muslim countries, is headed back to a federal appeals court in Richmond, three years after it was first imposed, and after the Supreme Court upheld the ban.

The president is doubling down on his campaign promise to ban Muslims and refugees from the country, reportedly set to include four more African countries: Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania and Eritrea, as well as Belarus, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan in his “Muslim ban.” The ban already includes restricted travel for most individuals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria MARCH/APRIL 2020

Yemen, North Korean and some individuals from Venezuela.

Trump has set the annual national refugee cap for 2020 at an historic low of 18,000, down from 110,000 in 2016.

—Delinda C. Hanley

DIPLOMATIC DOINGS Embassy Receives Condolences After Sultan Qaboos’ Death

On the occasion of the death of Oman’s long-time head of state, His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, the Omani Embassy in Washington, DC invited guests to sign an official book of condolences from Jan. 14-16. Many ambassadors and visitors from the foreign diplomatic corps, along with numerous friends of Oman, came to sign the book,

STAFF PHOTO P. PASQUINI

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and were graciously received by Her Excellency Ambassador Hunaina Sultan Ahmed Al Mughairy, and her staff. Visitors received meritorious Arab hospitality, with an offering of coffee and engaging conversation.

During his nearly 50-year reign, Sultan Qaboos led many major reforms for his country, transforming the formerly underdeveloped country into a modern nation state.

Under his foresight and leadership, Oman used its proceeds from oil exports to benefit ordinary Omanis. Today the capital city of Muscat has become a vibrant and modern metropolis. By not permitting the construction of high-rise buildings in favor of maintaining the architectural and cultural heritage of the country, his vision has preserved the character and flavor of the nation.

Oman also became an important diplomatic player under Qaboos, with the country earning the title of the “Switzerland of the Middle East.” Having established and maintained favorable relations with all regional players, Oman often finds itself as a discreet but critical mediator between opposing parties in regional disputes.

Words of thanks for facilitating deft diplomacy and robust economic development were likely among the sentiments recorded in the book of condolences that marks the passing of the Middle East’s longest-serving and most distinct leader.

—Phil Pasquini

Ambassador Hunaina Sultan Ahmed Al Mughairy (l) receives condolences from businessman Leo A. Daly III. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Middle East Books Review All books featured in this new section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1

The Movement and the Middle East: How the ArabIsraeli Conflict Divided the American Left

By Michael R. Fischbach, Stanford University Press, 2020, paperback, 297 pp. MEB: $25

Reviewed by Sami Tayeb

Michael R. Fischbach’s The Movement and the Middle East is the first account to examine how the Arab-Israeli conflict fomented dissent and division within the American Left and how these divisions have informed present-day political discourse on Palestine and Israel. While “the Movement,” which he defines as a “large, loosely organized collection of people pushing for an end to the [Vietnam] war and radical change in America,” coalesced around their opposition to the Vietnam War, they were deeply divided on the question of Palestine. Fischbach lays out a nuanced and detailed history of the contentious debates that occurred in various leftist groups during the 1960s and ’70s that centered around the Arab-Israeli conflict and the actions they took—particularly in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War. Building on the research of his previous book, which focused on the Black Power and Civil Rights movements’ positions on Palestine, Fischbach now directs his atten-

Sami Tayeb is the director of Middle East Books and More and an independent researcher who frequently writes about the political economy of the Middle East, Palestine and urban development in the region.

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tion to the white American Left’s attitudes on the same issue. His analysis of this diverse and multi-faceted movement, which included over 200 organizations at the height of the Vietnam War, is laid out in 12 succinct chapters, focusing on the more prominent organizations including, but not limited to: student groups and campus activism, the Old Left (Communist, Marxist and Socialist parties), the New Left (organizations of young white leftists whose activism was based on moral passion and street-level politics rather than ideological constructs), and the anti-Vietnam War coalition, as well as the feminist movement that emerged in the ’70s.

Perhaps most central to the debate, is a chapter on the Israel exceptionalism that existed within the Movement, which explores the contradictions that emerged and rationale that was used to justify support for Israel by members of the Left. He notes that many of the pro-Israel positions were grounded in emotion and ethnic affiliation rather than history or consistent WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ideology and the issue of Palestine proved to be the litmus test on radicalism, or what “distinguished the true anti-imperialists from the liberals.”

Jews were overly represented in the Movement, and much of what Fischbach details are divisions among Jews that were involved in leftist organizations. The main schism was between groups and individuals that had an internationalist outlook and sought to confront imperialism, colonialism, capitalism and racism wherever it may be and those that made an exception for Israel and Zionism. The rationale for the latter’s position included the view that Israel was the non-aggressor in the Six-Day War; belief that Israel was the underdog surrounded by hostile Arab countries; Israel and Zionism being standins for secular Jews’ Jewish identity; and that the U.S. military should be supported because it would, in turn, guarantee Israel’s military supremacy as well as create a balance of power in the region with the Soviet Union. The proponents of the last point largely came from a group that splintered from the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and later became the base of the neoconservative movement.

Fischbach lends insight to a variety of tactics that were employed by proponents of Israel. The most common tactic was for pro-Israel American Jews to send the message to other Jews in the Left to step in line and follow rank or else be prepared to face the backlash and vitriol of being called a self-hating Jew, not a real Jew or that they were a “psychological aberration” unable to conform to their identity as a Jew. Paradoxically, what emerges from this pro-Israel pushback is the “pro-Israel, non-Zionist” stance taken by some Jews, particularly by members of Communist Party USA. Fischbach cites investigative reporter I.F. Stone to sum up the prevailing debate surrounding American Jews and Israel stating, “Israel was creating a ‘moral schizophrenia’ in world Jewry, because Jewish existence outside Israel depended upon secular, nonracial, pluralistic societies—but Israel was the exact opposite of that.”

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The question of Palestine ultimately became a leviathan for the American Left to the extent that it was impossible to reach a consensus on this issue by the time the Movement began to decline in the mid’70s. In fact, the issue was so contentious that there was a fear that it could unravel the anti-Vietnam War movement if the organizations involved were pressed to make a declaration on Palestine. Consequently, no declaration was seriously sought by organizers.

Remarkably, Fischbach is able to piece together a coherent, yet nuanced, narrative on Palestine and the debates that ensued in a fractious and dynamic Left during the anti-war movement. He also situates the historical context in which the neoconservative movement emerged from the Left and, conversely, the origins of progressive institutions that are still around today.

Fischbach even details a fascinating, yet brief, history of what could be called the Canary Mission’s precursor, the Youth Institute for Peace in the Middle East, which spied on other leftist and pro-Palestine groups for the Anti-Defamation League. He accomplishes this feat through numerous personal interviews, declassified FBI and CIA documents, and a thorough examination of the literature by leftist groups and individuals during this time period. Fischbach has successfully created an entryway for other researchers to further explore this fascinating yet little written history of the American Left.

What the reader longs for is a narrative that links the black civil rights movement to what Fischbach calls the Movement and how they complemented and differed from each other. Also, the reader wants to know what other factors contributed to the Left’s decline during this period and how the question of Palestine fits within this context.

Was it the sole factor for the Left’s decline?

In the epilogue, Fischbach draws a tenuous link between the debates on Palestine during this time period to the politics of the present day. The reader would be well served if he devoted another chapter that sketches this out further and situates the MARCH/APRIL 2020

effect this debate has had on the politics of the present. Moreover, many of the people Fischbach writes about are still active in politics today. It would be informative to hear more of these people’s stories and their influence on present day politics. For example, knowing more about the story of how Carl Gershman went from being a member of SPA to a key player among neoconservatives to becoming the president of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Ultimately, Fischbach’s timely and invaluable account of the Movement’s debate on Palestine offers insight on the debates the Movement grappled with, and for anyone interested in U.S. Middle East policy, the history and politics of the American Left or the Arab-Israeli conflict The Movement and the Middle East is a must-have for their library. Fischbach’s wide-ranging analysis opens the door for other scholars to fill in the gaps of this incredibly fascinating story, which would be a welcome addition in the years to come.

The Parisian

By Isabella Hammad, Grove Press, 2019, hardcover, 566 pp. MEB: $20

Reviewed by Eleni Zaras

The story of The Parisian begins at sea.

Onboard a ship from Alexandria to Marseille we meet Midhat Kamal from Nablus,

Eleni Zaras is the assistant director at Middle East Books and More. She has a BA in the History of Art from the University of Michigan and a masters degree in History at the Universite Paris Diderot.

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

whose knowledge of France was limited to the European furnishings and French poetry that structured his Constantinople lycée. The year is 1914, although time and dates are revealed to us more subtly through descriptive cues and historical references. Midhat, the son of a textile merchant based primarily in Cairo, follows his father’s bidding to pursue medicine at the University of Montpellier in southern France. Before long, he changes course and finds himself in Paris, by which point he had already fallen in love with a French woman and French social liberties.

Midhat straddles two worlds and embraces two identities—Arab and newly Parisian—keeping one foot in both camps and inhabiting neither one nor the other fully. He dresses in refined European attire, surrounds himself with the Syrian-Arab intelligentsia, fuels debates on the future of “Greater Syria” with coffee and cigarettes and plays up his foreignness for its charming effect on the Parisian women. “Midhat the Levantine, with his mouchoir and new suit,” he self-consciously observes with a mix of pride and shame.

Much of the story, though, takes place upon his return to Nablus and through not just his eyes, but also others within his community. “I have to face up, finally, to what my father expects of me. I have to go back to Nablus. I have to do my duty,” Midhat proclaims to his friend just prior to his departure from Paris. But in the next breath, he desperately confides the emotional pain that this imminent departure elicits. Throughout his story, this dual identity both defines and torments him, as he embodies the “Nablusi” in France and the “Parisian” in Palestine.

In Palestine, this identity garners both admiration and reservation from those around him. His French education is boast-worthy for his grandmother, but Midhat’s attachment to the European aesthetic and intellect slips out of fashion and borders on frivolous and absurd to those who sacrifice their lives to the independence movement.

Our view through an unfiltered window into the minds and lives of Midhat and others in 63

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Nablus, though, reveals the universally understood feelings of nostalgia, duty and longing for validation that fuel decisions and engender sympathy.

Drawing from extensive oral histories and research, Hammad’s novel illuminates a chapter in history based, in part, on the story of her great-grandfather. Rather than focusing on the more commonly portrayed postNakba era in Palestine, The Parisian centers on World War I and the interwar period, when Palestinians in Palestine and abroad were beginning to articulate and demand their aspirations of independence. Through Midhat, his friends and his family members, we witness the shifting political tides and infiltration of new people, technologies and ideologies into the minds and streets of Nablus.

While Hammad’s novel is essentially historical, fluidly revealing the multifaceted Nablus community between the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, it is also deeply existential. From the beginning, we are privy to how Midhat, and the other char-

acters whose psyches we intermittently inhabit, navigate each step of their personal lives and how, to varying degrees, they grasp the weight of the changes around them. While some strategically and fervently participate in political movements, others turn inward or are left scrambling to make sense of it all.

Through judiciously woven sensory and historical details, Hammad lends the novel a realism reminiscent of 19th century French literature, but seemingly effortlessly keeps her prose graceful and light.

The Parisian slips seamlessly through time and perspectives, capturing the intricacies of a man and his community’s existential passage. Engrossingly melodic and meticulous, the only difficulty in reading The Parisian is the dramatic irony of knowing the future that lies ahead.

Paradigm Lost: From TwoState Solution to One-State Reality

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

By Ian S. Lustick, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019, hardcover, 194 pp. MEB: $27

Reviewed by Janet McMahon

Ever since I first read Thomas Kuhn’s groundbreaking The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in college, I’ve had a special affinity for the word “paradigm.” So it’s no surprise that I was intrigued by the title of Ian Lustick’s latest book, Paradigm Lost.

Lustick’s lost paradigm is the two-state solution, which he once advocated but now considers a distraction and “useful fiction.”

As the University of Pennsylvania political science professor states on p. 2: “In principle, two states might someday emerge in Palestine. But the hard truth is that such an arrangement will not and can not come about from negotiations…There is today one and only one state ruling the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and its name is Israel.”

Lustick proceeds to discuss the factors that resulted in this reality, noting throughout the historical effect of unintended consequences. According to the author, the Revisionist Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” theory was “a plan for moving from categorical Arab rejection of Zionism to a negotiated compromise based on satisfaction of Zionism’s minimum requirements.”

Janet McMahon recently retired as managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. She currently edits “Other Voices,” the popular 16-page supplement to the magazine. McMahon sits on this publication’s board, as well as the board of Americans for Middle East Understanding.

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However, Lustick observes, Jabotinsky and his adherents failed to realize that Israel’s successive and decisive victories “would push Jewish psychology and politics toward more extreme demands for the satisfaction of Zionist objectives.”

Another contributing factor to the status quo that Lustick cites is what he terms “Holocaustia,” or the view that “the essence of Jewish life in the contemporary world is that all Jews are threatened equally by Nazi-style genocide.” Despite its current ubiquity, not only in Israel but seemingly throughout the Western world, the Holocaust did not function as a “template…that governs how Israelis think about themselves and their country” until the late 1990s, Lustick notes.

Paradigm Lost’s chapter on the Israel lobby begins with the statement, “Nothing that the United States does about Israel is likely to endanger the integrity or future of the United States.” Perhaps Lustick is referring to territorial integrity—although Grant F. Smith’s recent articles in this magazine suggest that Israel may have its eyes on Virginia! Certainly, this country’s moral integrity has been severely compromised by its subservience to the demands of the selfproclaimed Jewish state. And one could credibly argue that our future has been endangered as well.

Lustick goes on to provide a thorough description of the strategies and effects of the Israel lobby on the national, state and local levels, as well as on campuses. It’s not clear if he believes its “grossly disproportionate influence over U.S. foreign policy” is limited to “all matters relating to Israel.”

Does that include Russia? China? arms sales? international law? solar panels? Or perhaps everything relates to Israel!

The “massive, indeed overwhelming support” Washington has provided Israel as a result of the latter’s American lobby “crippled Israeli moderates and empowered Israeli maximalists,” Lustick laments. The unconditional guarantee of U.S. support undermined efforts by liberal Israeli Jews to force their government to compromise and adopt policies that would advance the MARCH/APRIL 2020

N E W A R R I VA L S Promoting Democracy: The Force of Political Settlements in Uncertain Times, by Manal A. Jamal, NYU Press, 2019, paperback, 319 pp. MEB $34. Democracy promotion is a central pillar of the foreign policy of many states, but the results are often disappointing. Manal A. Jamal examines why these efforts succeed in some countries but fail in others. She offers an up-close perspective of the ways in which Western donor funding has, on one hand, undermined political participation in cases such as the Palestinian territories, and, on the other hand, succeeded in bolstering political engagement in cases such as El Salvador. Based on five fieldwork trips and over 150 interviews with grassroots activists, political leaders, and directors and program officers in donor agencies and NGOs, Promoting Democracy makes an important and timely argument about how political settlements ultimately shape democracy promotion efforts, and what political choices Western state-sponsored donors can make to maximize successful outcomes in different contexts across the world.

Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World, edited by Zahra Hankir, Penguin Books, 2019, paperback, 304 pp. MEB $16.

A growing number of intrepid Arab and Middle Eastern sahafiyat—female journalists—are working tirelessly to shape nuanced narratives about their changing homelands, often risking their lives on the front lines of war. From sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo to the difficulty of traveling without a male relative in Yemen, their challenges are as unique as their advantages, such as being able to speak candidly with other women at a Syrian medical clinic or with men on Whatsapp who will go on to become ISIS fighters, rebels, or pro-regime soldiers. In Our Women on the Ground, 19 of these women tell us what it’s like to report on conflicts that (quite literally) hit close to home. Their daring and heartfelt stories, told here for the first time, shatter stereotypes about the region’s women and provide an urgently needed perspective on a part of the world that is frequently misunderstood.

More Noble Than War: A Soccer History of Israel-Palestine, by Nicholas Blincoe, Bold Type Books, 2019, paperback, 280 pp. MEB $15. Soccer has never been apolitical.

This is especially true for Israel and Palestine. The game played a direct role in shaping the politics of both countries, and the view from the stands or the pitch shines a light on key moments in the region’s volatile history. In More Noble Than War, Nicholas Blincoe weaves a dramatic narrative filled with driven players and coaches who are inspired as much by nationalism as a love of the game. Blincoe traces the history from the sport’s introduction through church leagues, the rising tensions after the creation of Israel, and the decades of violence, war and hunger strikes that have decimated teams. This is a must-read for soccer fans and anyone seeking a new understanding of the world’s most intractable conflict.

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“peace process.” One wonders about the goal of AIPAC and its many partners: is it not peace, but rather simply obedience?

Lustick’s argument that a focus on “solutions” should be abandoned in favor of current “reality” is a real contribution to perception and policy alike—although his prediction that a true resolution of the conflict will probably take even more decades is disheartening, if perhaps realistic. Since he also emphasizes the role of unintended consequences, however, one remains determined not to abandon all hope. After all, who could have predicted the end of apartheid in South Africa?

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What has remained with me in the halfcentury since I first read Kuhn is the concept that a paradigm shift can only occur when new and different questions are posed.

Given Israel’s refusal to define its borders and its unrelenting aggressions against the Palestinians and their neighbors, I couldn’t help wondering what the result would be if one asked the question, “Has Israel ever really wanted to live in peace with its neighbors—or to dominate them instead?”

B O O K TA L K S Bunker Diplomacy: An ArabAmerican in the U.S. Foreign Service by Nabeel Khoury

Diplomats, journalists and others interested in the region packed the Atlantic Council’s Washington, DC headquarters on Jan. 15 to hear nonresident senior fellow Nabeel Khoury discuss his new book, Bunker Diplomacy: An Arab-American in the U.S. Foreign Service: Personal Reflections on 25 Years of U.S. Policy in the Middle East.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman conducted the interview, firing off questions on Khoury’s experiences serving in Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt and beyond as a high-ranking American diplomat.

Wherever he was posted in his long diplomatic career, Khoury identified closely with the issues and “deeply tried to bridge the differences no matter how wide the gap,” the author explained. “And in Baghdad in 2003 the gap was certainly wide.”

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

The Lebanese-born Khoury regaled the audience with tales from his many postings and how over the years the Middle East changed, along with the security of the embassies in which he worked, turning many into “bunkers.”

In Yemen, where he had his own car, Khoury said he had to trick his security team in order to go out alone, telling them, “I just want to go out. I just want to meet people. And don’t worry, I’ll let you know where I am.”

The French, British, Chinese and Russians, he noted, did not take the kinds of security precautions that Americans did, and yet their embassies weren’t attacked.

The Americans, he said, “projected an image of stupidity and arrogance that rubs people the wrong way.”

Referring to Kahlil Gibran’s 1920 poem “You Have Your Lebanon and I Have Mine,” which he quotes at the beginning of his book, Khoury said the celebrated poet’s insights into sectarianism, feudalism and corruption “might as well have been written yesterday.” The situation in Lebanon, he pointed out, has not changed, and “has gotten worse because the corrupt political elite has not only ruined the economy, but they have run the country into the ground physically.”

Khoury voiced support for the Arab youth currently taking to the street. “It has to be a good thing in the long term, but in the short term you are going to go through hell probably. The Arab in me detests the fact that most of the Arab world is ruled by dictators, and the Arab in me identifies with the youth that we see in the streets today in Beirut and Baghdad who want to get rid of this oppressive structure. The need for freedom is a very human thing....I think they finally understand that they are being abused by a corrupt political elite that eventually has to go.”

Elaine Pasquini, a recipient of the Fairness & Integrity in Media Award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is a correspondent for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

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N E W A R R I VA L S

Other Voices is an optional 16-page supplement available only to subscribers of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

For an additional $15 per year (see postcard insert for Washington Report subscription rates), subscribers will receive Other Voices inside each issue of their Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Back issues of both publications are available. To subscribe, telephone 1 (888) 881-5861, e-mail circulation@wrmea.org, or write to P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056.

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Amazon ($20.98); Kindle ($3.88) MARCH/APRIL 2020

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017,

by Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books, 2020, hardcover, 336 pp. MEB $25. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats and journalists—The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.

Original and authoritative, Khalidi does not present a chronicle of victimization, nor does he whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, he offers a new insightful view of a conflict that continues to this day.

These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons, by Ramzy Baroud, Clarity Press, 2020, paperback, 204 pp. MEB $23. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have experienced life in Israel’s prisons since 1967, as did many more in previous decades during the course of the ongoing Israeli military occupation. Yet rarely has the story of their experiences in Israeli jails been told by the prisoners themselves. Typically, the Western media portrays them as “terrorists,” while wellmeaning third-party human rights advocates paint them as hapless victims. They are neither. This book permits the reader to access the reality of Palestinian imprisonment as told

by Palestinian prisoners themselves—stories of appalling suffering and determination to reclaim their freedom. It includes a foreward by Palestinian Legislative Council member Khalida Jarrar and an afterword by Richard Falk, the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.”

This is the End, by Patrick Chappatte, Interlink Books, 2020, paperback, 120 pp.

MEB $15. This is the End offers a witty, savage, and thought-provoking testimony of a dizzying world, swirling around an oxygen-sucking black hole named Donald Trump. In this era of strongmen, closing borders and selfie narcissists, humor is needed more than ever.

On June 10, 2019, Chappatte posted an essay titled “The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times,” breaking the news that was quickly confirmed by the newspaper. Chappatte’s piece, which received worldwide attention and triggered a global discussion about self-censorship by the media in the age of internet angry mobs, appears as an appendix to this cartoon book.

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opm_70-71.qxp_Other Peoples Mail 1/28/20 3:51 PM Page 70

Other People’s Mail Compiled by Dale Sprusansky UNDERSTAND THE BACKSTORY ON U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS

To the News & Record, Jan. 13, 2020 To understand an adversary’s perspective and motivation, learn history.

In 1953, Kermit Roosevelt (Teddy’s grandson) led the CIA-sponsored overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, who advocated nationalizing Iran’s oil industry.

American-sponsored Reza Shah Pahlavi took over. His autocratic rule and severe repression of dissent led to a popular uprising.

In 1979, the Shah fled the country. In the turmoil, Shi’a clerics took control and established the Islamic Republic.

Then, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy and took hostages in response to the U.S. providing asylum and medical treatment for the Shah, whom Iran wanted extradited back to Iran.

In the 1980s the U.S. supported Iraq (knowing it was using chemical weapons) in its long, bloody war against Iran.

Since then, the U.S. has stationed hundreds of thousand of troops in the region, fought wars along Iran’s borders in Afghanistan and Iraq, imposed severe sanctions, broken its word, and allied with Iran’s principal enemies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, all the while calling Iran a terrorist state.

Iran’s perspective: America is everthreatening and untrustworthy; Iran’s motivation: self-preservation of its sovereign state.

America’s perspective: Iran is an evil regime and must be neutralized; American motivation: control of Middle East oil.

Kim Carlyle, Greensboro, NC

THE U.S. HAS IRAN SURROUNDED

To The Chestertown Spy, Jan. 6, 2020 The Islamic Republic of Iran is surrounded by U.S. military personnel: Iraq, 6,000; Syria, 800; Afghanistan, 14,000; Kuwait, 13,000; Jordan, 3,000; Saudi Arabia, 3,000; Bahrain, 7,000; Oman, 600; United Arab Emirates, 5,000; Qatar, 13,000; and Turkey, 2,500.

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If 67,000 Russian (or Chinese, or North Korean, or Iranian, etc.) troops were stationed in, say, Canada and Mexico—with accompanying warships, planes and missiles cruising off both our coasts—wouldn’t the United States have legitimate concerns?

Grenville B. Whitman, Rock Hall, MD

DON’T LOOK PAST ALARMING ACTIONS, WORDS OF TRUMP

To the Houston Chronicle, Jan. 12, 2020 Let’s be absolutely clear: When you order the assassination of the top general of a country you aren’t at war with, then threaten disproportionate violence and destruction of non-military cultural sites if they retaliate, you’re not fighting terrorism. You’re employing terrorism.

Donny Jansen, Katy, TX

FINISH WARS, DON’T START THEM

To the Star Tribune, Jan. 8, 2020 U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNN that the U.S. is not aiming to start a war with Iran but is “prepared to finish one.”

Maybe we should first finish the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

James Halvorson, Farmington, MN

A PROVERB ON WAR

To The Providence Journal, Jan. 15, 2020 As Iran and the U.S. rattle their sabers at one another, and Iran “accidentally” fires rockets and brings down a commercial plane killing 176 travelers, I am reminded of an old African proverb: “When two elephants fight, only the grass gets hurt.”

Tom Peters, Pawtucket, RI

THE “BRUTALITY, FUTILITY AND STUPIDITY” OF WAR

To The Blade, Jan. 19, 2020 The airstrike and killing of Gen. Qassim Soleimani is a sign of U.S. failure of diplomacy. The president said the attack was necessary to protect American personnel from harm by Iran’s elite Quds force.

Do drone attacks and bombing help bring about stability in Iran and the Middle East, or do they cause more hatred of the United

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

States? Is it a sign of weakness to reach out to the enemy to find common ground?

This would be more desirable than war.

I adhere to the words of America’s great general Dwight D. Eisenhower: “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, futility, its stupidity.”

John Laudick, West Toledo, OH

AFGHANISTAN PAPERS SHOW TRUTH IS FIRST VICTIM OF WAR

To the Star Tribune, Dec. 11, 2019 Many years ago, someone stated that “the first casualty of war is truth.” The Dec. 10 Star Tribune headline “U.S. lied about Afghan war, documents reveal” certainly brings this statement into focus. As a Vietnam combat veteran, I have experienced this firsthand, knowing that war, however well-intentioned, is an ugly beast that devours body and soul and, sadly, the truth.

Richard Timmerman, River Falls, WI

AFGHANISTAN PAPERS COME AS NO SURPRISE

To The Dallas Morning News, Dec. 12, 2019 For those opposed to the Afghan war, the so-called Afghanistan Papers [published by the Washington Post] come as no surprise.

We now learn that top U.S. military officials believed the Afghanistan war was lost many years ago but continued to lie to Americans.

Like the Vietnam War, this $1 trillion war was yet another canard foisted upon hapless Americans. With 2,300 U.S. soldiers dead, about 20,000 injured, tens of thousands Afghans killed and the entire country reduced to rubble, what can we learn from this tragedy? War is not the answer.

We were told that a $100 billion reconstruction program was making progress, that millions of Afghan girls were in schools and life expectancies were soaring. All turned out to be cruel lies by the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations.

Nineteen years into America’s longest war, Afghanistan is in a worse state than at any time since the U.S. invasion. Only dialogue between the Taliban, U.S. and regional powers such as Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia and China will bring peace and stability. The world community must provide a Marshall Plan to beleaguered Afghans so their decades-long suffering may end. Bring U.S troops back. Bring 'em home.

Hadi Jawad, Dallas, TX. The writer is exMARCH/APRIL 2020

opm_70-71.qxp_Other Peoples Mail 1/28/20 3:51 PM Page 71

economic pressure on the Israeli government to get it to PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO end its oppressive policies.

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE NEW YORK TIMES IS Trump’s order is an attempt 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE. NW 2201 C ST. NW NOT BIASED AGAINST to stifle this movement for WASHINGTON, DC 20500 WASHINGTON, DC 20520 COMMENT LINE: (202) 456-1111 PHONE: (202) 647-6575 justice. JVP believes we ISRAEL WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/CONTACT VISIT WWW.STATE.GOV TO E-MAIL must continue demanding To the News Chief, Dec. 30, Palestinian rights, even as 2019 ANY REPRESENTATIVE ANY SENATOR we work tirelessly to combat I beg to differ with the view U.S. HOUSE OF U.S. SENATE anti-Semitism and all forms of one letter writer that the REPRESENTATIVES WASHINGTON, DC WASHINGTON, DC 20510 of bigotry.

New York Times is anti-Israel.

20515 (202) 225-3121 (202) 224-3121 Stephen R. Shalom, For the most part, that Montclair, NJ. The author is paper (like nearly all U.S. a member of JVP of Northern NJ. thors of a 2017 Israeli study said, American media) has given virtually no attention or campuses are “a hotbed of anti-Semitism.” support to the Palestinian cause and lightly IS EVO MORALES’ OUSTER “GOOD Recent studies found that isn’t true. passed over any Israeli transgressions.

FOR THE JEWS”?

Interviewing Jewish students at five CalIn the last couple of years, however, an ifornia universities, a 2017 Stanford study increasing divergence of views about Israel To the St. Louis Jewish Light, Dec. 27, 2019 found, “Interviewees reported low levels of in the Jewish community has begun to find I was appalled to see the Dec. 13 comanti-Semitism or discomfort.” A study consome echo in the Times and other media. mentary by Norma Rubin in the Jewish ducted at Brandeis University that same As I read that newspaper, it remains Light that characterizes the recent coup year concluded, “The majority of Jewish closer in spirit to the dedicated pro-Israel against Bolivia’s first indigenous president students at all four schools disagreed that position of one of its lead columnists, Bret as “good for the Jews.” their campus constituted ‘a hostile environStephens, than to a highly critical global It contains numerous factual errors (such ment toward Jews.’” consensus, one charging that country with as the year of U.S. Ambassador Philip Lois Pearlman, Guerneville, CA cruelly subjugating Palestinians, and Goldberg’s expulsion) and highly dubious steadily taking over the West Bank in vioclaims, such as the statements that PresiTRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER lation of all international understandings. dent Evo Morales used an anti-Semitic slur WON’T STOP ANTI-SEMITISM But the Times has grown more aware against Goldberg and that Morales recently that a healthy, democratic future for Israel left Bolivia with planeloads of cash—neither To The Star-Ledger, Jan. 5, 2020 is not possible without a more equitable of which can be found in any news source.

Yet another horrific anti-Semitic assault future for the Palestinians.

The characterization of all anti-Morales has taken place, this time in Monsey, New Irwin Shishko, Delray Beach, FL protests as peaceful and all pro-Morales York. Jewish Voice for Peace of Northern protests as violent is especially absurd.

New Jersey (JVP) denounces this and all EXECUTIVE ORDER UNNECESSARY To cite another example: Rubin claims anti-Semitic attacks and calls for all approthat Morales blocked all Israeli tourism. That priate measures to address them.

To The Press Democrat, Dec. 23, 2019 is false. He did reinstate a visa requirement However, not every action proffered in reThe story about President Donald (just as Bolivians must get a visa to visit sponse to anti-Semitism actually deals with Trump’s Executive Order concerning antiIsrael) but Israelis continued to visit—in fact, the problem. One such inappropriate policy Semitism at U.S. universities fails to make a recent article in the Light reported on an is President Trump’s Dec. 11 Executive this important point: The federal education Israeli tourist who died in Bolivia in a cycling Order against anti-Semitism on college code already protects Jewish students. accident. campuses. It has nothing to do with stampAccording to a 2010 analysis by the DeI used to live in Bolivia. Last summer I vising out anti-Semitic bigotry and everything partment of Education’s office of civil rights, ited for the first time in 20 years. I felt like to do with quashing criticisms of Israel. The “Groups that face discrimination on the Rip Van Winkle—I was happy to witness order codifies a definition of anti-Semitism, basis of shared ethnic characteristics may the results of tremendous economic although the definition’s lead author warned not be denied the protection of our civil growth, a large decrease in poverty and the that legislating it would cause great harm to rights laws on the grounds that they also higher status for indigenous people that ocacademic freedom. share a common faith...thus, for example, curred under Morales’ leadership. I talked Blind support of the Israeli government OCR aggressively investigates alleged to people who supported Morales’ re-elecdoes not combat anti-Semitism. Witness race or ethnic harassment against Arab tion. I also talked with people who did not the ceremony for Trump’s moving of the Muslim, Sikh and Jewish students.” want Morales to seek another term—most U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem: benedictions That means the Executive Order is unof them had the attitude that his past leadwere given by a preacher who said Jews necessary. Most likely the real reason for ership had helped the country enormously were going to hell and another who bethe order is its redefinition of anti- Semitism but that it was time for him to move on. lieved Hitler was part of God’s plan to return to include criticism of Israel.

The present situation in Bolivia is comJews to Israel.

Another problem with the story is its tacit plex. Rubin’s simplistic commentary, full of At colleges and universities across the acceptance of the alleged prevalence of misinformation, is a disservice to readers. country, students and faculty are criticizing anti-Semitism on campuses. Acts of antiMichael Berg, St. Louis, MO ■ Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and urging Semitism have been so frequent, the auecutive director of the Dallas Peace and Justice Center.

MARCH/APRIL 2020

TELL YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS WHAT YOU THINK

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O• B • I • T • U • A • R • I • E • S Qaboos bin Said, 79, Sultan of Oman, died Jan. 10 after serving as Oman’s leader for the past five decades—the longest serving leader in the Arab world. He came to power in 1970 when he overthrew his father in a bloodless coup that was backed by the British. After quelling leftist rebels who sought to rid the Arabian Peninsula of British influence in the Dhofar region of the country in 1976, Sultan Qaboos embarked on a campaign to modernize the country through its oil wealth. Over decades of development in infrastructure, education and healthcare, Oman was the fastest rising country on the United Nations Human Development Index in the last 40 years.

During Sultan Qaboos’s tenure, Oman served as a backchannel for negotiations and diplomacy for different countries due to maintaining a foreign policy independent of other countries in the region. One of the most notable accomplishments of this foreign policy was being an initial broker in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the Iran nuclear deal with the U.S., in 2015 by covertly hosting American and Iranian delegations in 2013.

The official cause of the Sultan’s death was not reported by the Oman News Agency, but since 2014 Sultan Qaboos was seeking cancer treatment in Europe. Since he was married briefly with no children, a successor was not readily apparent upon his death. As per Omani law, if a successor cannot be agreed upon by the family council, the council is to open a sealed envelope with the Sultan’s choice. On the day of the Sultan’s passing, the envelope revealed his heir to be his cousin, Haitham bin Tariq Al Said. More about Sultan Qaboos’ life and legacy will appear in the next issue of the Washington Report.

General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, 79, a senior leader in the Algerian People’s National Army and de facto leader of Algeria, died of a heart attack in Algiers on Dec. 23, 2019.

General Gaïd Salah started his military career fighting in the National Liberation Army against the French during the Alger72

ian War. Over the years, he rose through the ranks of the army to become a general, and in the early 2000s he formed a strong alliance with former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Despite Gen. Gaïd Salah’s support for the longtime president, it was he who compelled Bouteflika to step down in April 2019 after months of mounting pressure by Hirak protesters calling for new elections and a complete change of the political system.

Two weeks before Gen. Gaïd Salah’s death, the military’s preferred candidate, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, was elected to be the new president—an election and outcome that protesters rejected. In an attempt to ease public tension, Gen. Gaïd Salah had Bouteflika’s brother, businessmen associated with Bouteflika and former prime ministers and ministers arrested. Gen. Gaïd Salah was buried on Dec. 25 in Algiers. .

Shahla Riahi, 92, Iran’s first female film director, died on Dec. 31, 2019 of Alzheimer’s in Tehran. Riahi began her acting career when she was 17 and was featured in over 70 films. In 1956, she directed the blackand-white film, “Marjan,” about a tribe of gypsies that settle near a village. Riahi was also a radio and television broadcaster, voice actress and appeared in several television series.

Garbis Zakaryan, 90, Turkey’s first professional boxer, died Jan. 25. Coming from a modest background, the Armenian-Turkish boxer, known as “iron fist,” started his boxing career in 1944 at the age of 24. In 1951, he became Turkey’s first professional boxer, with a career spanning 22 years, and won many local and amateur titles in Europe and the Middle East. He was buried in Istanbul’s Sisli Armenian Cemetery on Jan. 29.

Lina Ben Mhenni, 36, Tunisian activist, educator and blogger, died Jan. 27 from a chronic illness. The Nobel Peace Prize nominee was internationally recognized for her work during the 2011 Tunisian Revolu-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

By Sami Tayeb

tion and her blog, A Tunisian Girl, that covered the revolution and the events following it. One of the few bloggers to use her real name, Ben Mhenni’s blog was censored by the Ben Ali regime until he was ousted in 2011. After the revolution, her work focused on democracy, press freedom and human rights issues in the country.

Mustafa Kassem, 54, died Jan. 14 after spending six years in an Egyptian prison.

Kassem, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in 2013 when Egyptian security forces raided a square when Muslim Brotherhood supporters staged a sit-in in Cairo. Despite ongoing talks to release him to the U.S., Kassem died of a heart attack during a hunger strike. The U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, David Schenker, called Kassem’s death “needless, tragic and avoidable.” ■

IndextoAdvertisers Al-Mokha Coffee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 American Muslims for Palestine....23 American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA). . . . . . Inside Front Cover Barefoot to Palestine . . . . . . . . . . 67 Friends of Birzeit University . . . . . 37 Israel Lobby Conference . . . . . . . . 16 Kinder USA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Land of Canaan Foundation. . . . . 33 Middle East Children’s Alliance . . 30 Mondoweiss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Palestinian Medical Relief Society (Friends of UPMRC) . . . . . . . . . . 29 Palestinian Writes Literature Festival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Playgrounds for Palestine . . . . . . . 27 Shop Palestine.................................25 The Israel Lobby Enters State Government. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 United Palestinian Appeal (UPA) . . . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover MARCH/APRIL 2020

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AET’s 2019 Choir of Angels

The following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 11, 2019 and Jan. 31, 2019 is making possible activities of the tax-exempt AET Library Endowment (federal ID #52-1460362) and the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Some Angels are helping us co-sponsor the conference “The Israel Lobby and American Policy.”

Others are donating to our “Capital Building Fund,” which will help us expand Middle East Books and More. We are deeply honored by their confidence and profoundly grateful for their generosity.

HUMMERS ($100 or more)

Dr. & Mrs. Robert Abel, Wilmington, DE Jeff Abood, Silver Lake, OH Catherine Aborjaily, Westfield, MA Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, Atlanta, GA Rizek & Alice Abusharr, Claremont, CA Michael & Jane Adas, Highland Park, NJ James C. Ahlstrom, Stirling, NJ Aglaia & Mumtaz Ahmed, Buda, TX Qamar Ahsan, Flint, MI Salem Akel, Jacksonville, FL Peter Akras, Wading River, NY Dr. & Mrs. Salah Al-Askari, Leonia, NJ Hamid & Kim Alwan, Milwaukee, WI Nazife Amrou, Sylvania, OH Anonymous, Maplewood, NJ Rakad Arraf, Sterling Hts, MI Muhammad Ashiq, Cypress, CA Dr. Robert Ashmore, Mequon, WI Mr. & Mrs. Sultan Aslam, Plainsboro, NJ Marwan Balaa, San Jose, CA Rev. Robert E. Barber, Cooper City, FL Jamil Barhoum, San Diego, CA Stanton Barrett, Ipswich, MA Allen & Jerrie Bartlett, Philadelphia, PA Mona A. Bashir, Reston, VA Anna Bellisari, Yellow Springs, OH Linda Bergh, Syracuse, NY Nancy Bird & Karl Becker, Cordova, AK#### Syed & Rubia Bokhari, Bourbonnais, IL Prof. & Mrs. George Wesley Buchanan, Gaithersburg, MD Samer & Nora Burgan, Falls, Church, VA Prof. Mireya Camurati, Williamsville, NY Ouahib Chalbi, Coon Rapids, MN Patricia Christensen, Poulsbo, WA Jeff Cooper, Los Angeles, CA Lois Critchfield, Williamsburg, VA Jay R. Crook, Tucson, AZ Frank Cummings, Lancaster, PA## Joseph Daruty, Newport Beach, CA James Dickerson, Eau Claire, WI Ray Doherty, Houston, TX Mr. & Mrs. L. F. Boker Doyle, New York, NY Dr. David Dunning, Lake Oswego, OR Bernie Eisenberg, Los Angeles, CA MArCh/APrIL 2020

Kassem Elkhalil, Arlington, TX Dr. & Mrs. Hossam Fadel, Augusta, GA Andrew M. Findlay, Alexandria, VA Allan Fisher, San Francisco, CA E. Aracelis Francis, St. Thomas, VI William Gefell, Tunbridge, VT Graeme Goodsir, Mechanicsburg, PA Elizabeth Haas, Wilmington, DE Laurie A. Hanawalt, Cleveland, OH Walid & Norma Harb, Dearborn Hts., MI Angelica Harter, N. Branford, CT Gerald Heidel, Bradenton, FL Walter Hixson, Akron, OH Zafer & Juhayna Hussein, Dallas, TX Rafeeq Jaber, Oak Lawn, IL Thor Jacobs, Stow, MA Bilquis Jaweed, West Chester, OH Richard Johnson, Glendale, CA Anthony Jones, Jasper, AB, Canada Issa & Rose Kamar, Plano, TX Gamila Karjawally, Potomac, MD Ghazala Kazi, Columbia, MD Nazik Kazimi, Newton, MA Dr. Mazen Khalidi, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI Akbar Khan, Princeton, NJ M. Jamil Khan, Bloomfield Hills, MI Eugene Khorey, Homestead, PA Nabil Khoury, Bloomfield, MI Tony Khoury, Sedona, AZ Edward I. Kuncar, Coral Gables, FL Ronald Kunde, Skokie, IL LA Jews for Peace, Los Angeles, CA Alison Lankenau, Tivoli, NY Edwin Lindgren, Overland Park, KS William Lofthouse, Ashland, OR Joseph Louis, Los Gatos, CA Jane Hamilton Mader, Portland, OR Dr. Asad Malik, Bloomfield Hills, MI Mr. & Mrs. Hani Marar, Delmar, NY Ted Marczak, Toms River, NJ John Matthews, West Newton, MA Carol Mazzia, Santa Rosa, CA Alexander McDonald, Burke, VA Gwendolyn McEwen, Bellingham, WA Bill McGrath, Northfield, MN Prof. John Mearsheimer, Chicago, IL Robert Michael, Sun Lakes, AZ Dr. Yehia Mishriki, Orefield, PA Shehad Mohammed, Orland Hills, IL John & Ruth Monson, La Crosse, WI Maury Keith Moore, Seattle, WA Mr. & Mrs. Jan Moreb, Winston Salem, NC Mu’mina Friends, Abiquiu, NM Claire Nader, Washington, DC

John Najemy, Albany, NY Joseph Najemy, Worcester, MA Emiko Nakamura, Tokyo, Japan Stephen L. Naman, Dunwoody, GA Mary Neznek, Washington, DC#### Kamal Obeid, Fremont, CA Merrill O’Donnell, New Westminster, Canada Anne O’Leary, Arlington, VA Akram M. Omar, San Francisco, CA Edmund Ord, Oakland, CA Khaled Othman, Riverside, CA Edmond & Lorraine Parker, Chicago, IL A. Karim Pathan, Cary, NC Jeffrey Pekrul, San Francisco, CA Jim Plourd, Monterey, CA Phillip Portlock, Washington, DC Barry Preisler, Albany, CA Mirza Rab, Livonia, MI Peggy Rafferty, Cedar Grove, NC Kenneth Reed, Bishop, CA Mr. & Mrs. Edward Reilly, Rocky Point, NY Paul Richards, Salem, OR Nuhad Ruggiero, Bethesda, MD Amb. William & Andrea Rugh, Hingham, MA Hameed Saba, Diamond Bar, CA Dr. Ahmed M. Sakkal, Charleston, WV Rafi M. Salem, Alamo, CA Jood J. Sbait, Portland, OR* Irmgard Scherer, Fairfax, VA Peter Selassie, Longwood, FL Bernice Shaheen, Palm Desert, CA*** Qaiser & Tanseem Shamim, Somerset, NJ Dr. Mostafa Hashem Sherif, Tinton Falls, NJ Zac Sidawi, Costa Mesa, CA Sisters of St. Francis, Tiffin, OH Edgar W. Snell Jr, Schenectady, NY Jean Snyder, Greenbelt, MD Aida Suidan, Atlanta, GA Eddy Tamura, Moraga, CA J. Tayeb, Shelby Twp, MI Thomas Trueblood, Chapel Hill, NC Letitia Ufford, Hanover, NH Unitarian Universalists For Justice, Cambridge, MA Robin & Nancy Wainwright, Severna Park, PA Nancy Wein, Richmonders for Peace, Richmond, VA Rev. Hermann Weinlick, Minneapolis, MN Thomas C. Welch, Cambridge, MA Carol Wells & Theodore Hajjar, Venice, CA Edwina White, Sacramento, CA

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Help make sure that the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs will be here for the next generation.

By remembering the Washington Report in your will, you can: • Make a significant gift without affecting your current cash flow; • Direct your bequest to a vital purpose—educating readers about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East; • Receive a charitable estate tax deduction; • Leave a legacy for future generations.

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Miriam Adams, Albuquerque, NM Diane Adkin, Camas, WA Anonymous, Eatonton, GA Sultan Aslam, Plainsboro, NJ Ted Chauviere, Austin, TX Larry Cooper, Leesburg, FL # Gregory DeSylva, Rhinebeck, NY Dr. William Fuller, Valdosta, GA Erin K. Hankir, Nepean, ON, Canada Delinda C. Hanley, Kensington, MD****,## Jenny Hartley, Northfielders for Justice, Northfield, MN Fahd Jajeh, Lake Forest, IL Zaghloul Kadah, Los Gatos, CA Adel Korko, Delafield, WI David & Renee Lent, Hanover, NH Fran Lilleness, Seattle, WA Joseph A. Mark, Carmel, CA Sara Najjar-Wilson, Reston, VA Phil & Elaine Pasquini, Novato, CA**** Bassam Rammaha, Corona, CA Ramzy Salem, Monterey Park, CA Robert Schaible, Portland, ME Rifqa Shahin, Apple Valley, CA David J. Snider, Bolton, MA Dr. Joseph Tamari, Chicago, IL Vita Wallace, New York, NY Ziyad Zaitoun, Ellensburg, WA Dr. James Zogby, Washington, DC 74

TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more)

Michael Ameri, Calabasas, CA Dr. & Mrs. Roger Bagshaw, Big Sur, CA Helen Bourne, Encinitas, CA Edward Briody, Jackson Heights, NY Mr. & Mrs. Rajie Cook, Washington Crossing, PA Drew & Krista Curtiss, Herndon, VA**** Malcolm Fleming, Santa Monica, CA Ken Galal, San Francisco, CA Ernie Gallo, Palm Coast, FL Raymond Gordon, Venice, FL Masood Hassan, Calabasas, CA Ribhi Hazin, Dearborn, MI Brigitte Jaensch, Carmichael, CA Jeanne Johnston, Santa Ynez, CA Gloria Keller, Santa Rosa, CA Alfred & Dina Khoury, McLean, VA Tony Litwinko, Los Angeles, CA Richard Makdisi & Lindsay Wheeler, Berkeley, CA Hani & Dawn Marar, Delmar, NY Tom & Tess McAndrew, Oro Valley, AZ**** Georgianna McGuire, Silver Spring, MD Ben Monk, Saint Paul, MN Congressman Jim Moran, McLean, VA Suhail Nabi, The Woodlands, TX William & Nancy Nadeau, San Diego, CA Audrey Olson, Saint Paul, MN Betty Sams, Washington, DC Yasir Shallal, McLean, VA Jon B. Utley, Washington, DC Benjamin Wade, Saratoga, CA

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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

Americans for Middle East Understanding, New York, NY Drs. A.J. & M. T. Amirana, Las Vegas, NV Asha A. Anand, Bethesda, MD Lois Aroian, East Jordan, MI Karen Ray Bossmeyer, Louisville, KY Harvie Branscomb, La Jolla, CA G. Edward & Ruth Brooking, Jr., Wilmington, DE Gordon & Olivia Brown, Chevy Chase, MD Forrest Cioppa, Moraga, CA Nancy Eddy, Chevy Chase, MD Edouard & Linda Emmet, Paris, France Mr. & Mrs. Majed Faruki, Albuquerque, NM Gary Feulner, Dubai, UAE Ronald & Mary Forthofer, Longmont, CO Evan & Leman Fotos, Istanbul, Turkey Alfred R. Greve, Holmes, NY Hind Hamdan, Hagerstown, MD Judith A. Howard, Norwood, MA ### Ghazy M. Kader, Shoreline, WA Jane Killgore & Thomas D’Albani, Bemidji, MN* William Lightfoot, Vienna, VA Jack Love, Kailua Kona, HI Nabeel Mansour, McMinnville, OR Roberta McInerney, Washington, DC * Anees Mughannam, Petaluma, CA Ralph Nader, Washington, DC Robert & Sharon Norberg, Lake City, MN Mary Norton, Austin, TX Marjorie Ransom, Washington, DC Mary H. Regier, El Cerrito, CA M.F. Shoukfeh, Lubbock, TX Gretel Smith, Garrett, IN Dr. Imad Tabry, Fort Lauderdale, FL Norman Tanber, Dana Point, CA Donn Trautman, Evanstown, IL Dr. Robert Younes, Potomac, MD

CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more)

James M. Crawford Trust, Miami, FL Donna B. Curtiss, Kensington, MD*, ** Estate of Dorothy Love Gerner, San Francisco, CA Dr. & Mrs. Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR*, ** John Gareeb, Atlanta, GA John & Henrietta Goelet, Washington, DC * In Memory of Andrew I. Killgore ** In Memory of Richard H. Curtiss *** In Memory of Dr. Jack Shaheen **** In Memory of Donna B.Curtiss # In Memory of Diane Cooper ## In Memory of Salman Hilmy ### In Memory of Paul Findley #### In Memory of Eugene & Jerine Bird

MARCH/APRIL 2020

UPA_ad_c3.qxp_UPA Ad Cover 3 1/28/20 3:57 PM Page c3

United Palestinian tinian Appeal

IFTAAR FOR

PALESTIN A E This Ramadan, host an iftar dinner fundraiser on beha alf of UP PA A to empower Palestinian n communities.

Send inquiries to Mayssa Amerr,, mamer@upaconnect.org Toll-Free: 855-659-5007 Toll-F

cover4v2.qxp_MARCH/APRIL 2020 Back Cover 1/30/20 8:48 AM Page c4

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

March/April 2020

Vol. XXXIX, No. 2

Omanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newly sworn-in Sultan Haitham bin Tariq (r) and General Sultan bin Mohammed al Nomani carry the coffin of the late leader Sultan Qaboos to the royal family cemetery in the capital Muscat, Jan. 11, 2020. Sultan Qaboos, the longest-reigning leader of the modern Arab world, who died the previous night in Muscat at the age of 79, was unmarried, had no children and left no apparent heir.

(Photo by AFP via Getty imaGes)