Washington Report on Middle East Affairs | 2011 April

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THE LEGACY OF THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

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On Middle East Affairs Volume XXX, No. 3

April 2011

Telling the Truth for 29 Years…

Interpreting the Middle East for North Americans

■

Interpreting North America for the Middle East

THE U.S. ROLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE 8 U.S. Allies Fall as Arabs Demand Freedom and Justice—Rachelle Marshall 10 Should the U.S. Intervene?—Two Views —William Pfaff, Jim Lobe 13 Iraqi Authorities “Using Violence and Bribes” to Curb Dissent—Andrew Raine 14 What Does Arab Democracy Mean for Israel and The West?—Two Views

—Patrick Seale, Rami G. Khouri

24 Democracy May Be Good for Egyptians, but not For Palestinians—Rachelle Marshall 26 While Happy for Egyptians, Many Gazans Fear the Unknown—Mohammed Omer 27 Qaddafi No!—But Bibi Si!—Ian Williams 30 AIPAC Triumphs Over Former Director’s Defamation Lawsuit…or Does It?—Grant F. Smith 32 Muslim Americans Express Concern Over Homeland Security Hearings—Delinda C. Hanley

18 Will the Promises of Egypt’s January 25 Revolution Be Fulfilled?—Joseph Mayton

34 Congressional Conservatives Launch Effort to Cut Spending, Including Foreign Aid—Shirl McArthur

20 Egypt, the West and the “Islamist Threat”—Three Views—Andrew Stimson, Tariq Ramadan, Richard Bulliet

52 Using Two-Pronged Strategy, Minnesota Activists Seek Divestment From Israel Bonds—Bill McGrath

SPECIAL REPORTS 29 In Pakistan, American Killer Sets Off National Introspection—Zofeen Ebrahim 38 Yaser al Saghrji and Nawara Chakaki: Champions Of Syrian Culture—Janis Jibrin PHOTO BY NAWARA CHAKAKI

40 Turkish Ambassador Addresses Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, Iran, Other Regional Issues

—Pat McDonnell Twair 42 Egyptian Popular Revolt Unsettle’s Asia’s Old Guard—John Gee 74 In Memoriam: Ambassador Richard B. Parker (1923-2011)—Andrew I. Killgore

Yaser al Saghrji shows a Syrian kilim to a customer outside Yana Kilims in Damascus. See story p. 38.

ON THE COVER: As world pressure on Muammar Qaddafi increased, anti-government protesters wave their old national flag during a rally in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, Feb. 28, 2011.

AFP PHOTO/PATRICK BAZ

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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 1-800-368-5788, and press 1.

For other options, see page OV-3 in this issue.)

Other Voices

Compiled by Janet McMahon

This Revolution Is Brought to You by Al-Jazeera, Charles R. Larson, www.counterpunch.com OV-1

Top Genocide Scholars Battle Over How to Characterize Israel’s Actions, Gal Beckerman, The Forward

Liberating the American People, Gilad Atzmon, www.PalestineChronicle.com

OV-2

Saad’s Revolution, Juan Cole, www.truthdig.com

OV-3

Arab Women Lead the Charge, Emad Mekay, Inter Press Service

OV-4

Egypt: Reduxing The Past, Abdullah Al-Arian, http://english.aljazeera.net

OV-5

Free Pollard? Never, Frank Anderson, Los Angeles Times

OV-12

Pollard Espionage Ring Still Unfolding, Grant Smith, www.antiwar.com

The Muslim Brotherhood and Democracy In Egypt, John L. Esposito, www.counterpunch.com

OV-6

OV-12

Israel’s European Friends Get Active, David Cronin, Inter Press Service

The Future of the (De)Stabilizing Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, Patrick Seale, Agence Global

The Not-So-Great Islamist Menace, Dan Gardner, The Vancouver Sun

OV-10

OV-14

The Assault on Human Rights Watch and Shawan Jabarin, Scott McConnell, http://mondoweiss.net

OV-7

OV-15

Lebanon Should Reject Hariri Tribunal, OV-9

Linda Heard, Arab News

OV-15

DEPARTMENTS 5 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

54 ARAB-AMERICAN ACTIVISM:

67 OTHER PEOPLE’S MAIL

Examining Law Enforcement 7 PUBLISHERS’ PAGE

Interaction With Arab and Muslim Americans

44 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE: Raging Grannies Protest Role of Spyware Company in Egypt’s Ruthless Repression—Elaine Pasquini

54 MUSLIM-AMERICAN ACTIVISM: Interfaith Pray-In in Front of Peter King’s Office

—Pat and Samir Twair 48 NEW YORK CITY AND TRISTATE NEWS: “Never Again for Anyone,” Survivors and Activists Vow—Jane Adas

MIDDLE EAST — CARTOONS

70 BOOK REVIEW: The Goldstone Report: the Legacy of the Landmark

55 HUMAN RIGHTS: Father of 46 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE: “Pessoptimistic” Views of Israel/Palestine Offered

By Richard Falk, Jeff Halper

69 THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE

Gaza Flotilla Victim Furkan

Investigation of the Gaza Conflict—Reviewed by Ian Williams

Dogan Seeks Justice in U.S. 71 NEW ARRIVALS FROM THE 56 MUSIC & ARTS: “Dreams of a Nation” Celebrates

AET BOOK CLUB

Palestinian Cinema 72 BULLETIN BOARD 58 WAGING PEACE: Ambassador Freeman Looks at

73 2011 AET CHOIR OF ANGELS

America’s Continuing 50 ISRAEL AND JUDAISM: Democracy on Trial in Israel—and Losing, in the View Of Many, Even Long-Time Supporters—Allan C. Brownfeld

Misadventures 66 DIPLOMATIC DOINGS: Saudi Ambassador Hosts East Coast Premiere of “Arabia3D”

22 INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

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ANDREW I. KILLGORE Executive Editor: RICHARD H. CURTISS Managing Editor: JANET McMAHON News Editor: DELINDA C. HANLEY Book Club Director: ANDREW STIMSON Circulation Director: ANNE O’ROURKE Administrative Director: ALEX BEGLEY Art Director: RALPH U. SCHERER

LetterstotheEditor

Publisher:

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

Periodicals, postage paid at Washington, DC and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009-9062.

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

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs does not take partisan domestic political positions. As a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, it endorses U.N. Security Council Resolution 242’s land-for-peace formula, supported by seven successive U.S. presidents. In general, it supports Middle East solutions which it judges to be consistent with the charter of the United Nations and traditional American support for human rights, selfdetermination, and fair play.

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CONTACT INFORMATION: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Editorial Office and Bookstore: P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009-9062 Phone: (202) 939-6050 • (800) 368-5788 Fax: (202) 265-4574 E-mail: wrmea@wrmea.com bookclub@wrmea.com circulation@wrmea.com advertising@wrmea.com Web sites: http://www.wrmea.com http://www.middleeastbooks.com Subscriptions, sample copies and donations: P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009-9062 Printed in the USA

APRIL 2011

Mubarak Symbol of U.S. Failure The widespread anti-government protests across Egypt calling for an end to the repressive, dictatorial polices of President Hosni Mubarak exposed the failed policies of our own government. We have acquiesced in Egypt’s sham elections and subverted democracy for the past 30 years. We have propped up Mubarak with billions of dollars of aid money used to purchase weapons such as tear gas bombs, helicopters, M1 tanks, missiles and F-16 fighter planes built by U.S. defense contractors.

Nobel Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei put Western leaders on notice when he said: “If Western leaders, who have backed the dictator Mubarak for 30 years, cannot stand before the Egyptian people today and say unequivocally, ‘we support your right of national self-determination,’ when can they do it?”

It is time for the Obama administration to call an immediate halt to shipping weapons of repression to brutal regimes whose only purpose is to clutch onto power. Sadly, this current crisis is another dark episode of our long history of overthrowing popular democratic reformers with brutal dictators such as those in Haiti, Chile, Guatemala, Iran, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Philippines.

Jagjit Singh, Los Altos, CA See Patrick Seale’s article on p. 14 of this issue for the reason behind Washington’s long-time support of Egypt. (Hint: it likes to call itself “the only democracy in the Middle East.”)

What About Israel?

It really is amazing how the West is reacting to the ongoing protests in the Middle East.

President Obama, Mrs. Clinton, The European Union, Messrs. Cameron and Hague of the British government et al.

With their serious faces fixed to camera, all are calling for reform in these counties, an end to repression—for freedom of expression for the people—for “Full Democracy”—an end to state violence against the protesters! [“British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the Commons he had stressed the need for peaceful action in dealing with the protesters.”]

Lord Owen, the former British foreign secretary, even wants NATO to become engaged in Libya!

All this rhetoric against Arab governments!

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

But what about the Israelis? Are these same Western politicians as quick to condemn the violence meted out in the 44 years of brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine land? Of course not! Most of them are members of some sort of “Friends of Israel” group!

So they ignore the utter murderous Israeli violence used against the Palestinians!

While reminding the Arab governments of “International Law,” they assist the Israelis in flouting this same Law, by vetoing U.N. resolutions calling on Israel to stop building “settlements” in the occupied Palestinian West Bank!

Whatever the tragic death toll in the present Middle East protests, it should be remembered that in the 2008/9 attack on Palestinian Gaza, the Israeli occupation forces, killed some 1,500 Palestinian people! as well as injuring hundreds of men women and children—all with the full cooperation and friendship of these same mealymouthed Western political hypocrites!

Barry M. Watson, Scarborough, UK Perhaps before too long ordinary citizens in the West will follow the example set by their courageous counterparts in the Middle East.

A Secret to Political Longevity As revealed in an Associated Press report published on Feb. 6 in the Arab News (but how widely in the American press?), “no one showed up” for proclaimed “days of rage” against the rule of Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad which had been publicized and promoted, as was the case in Egypt, via Facebook and Twitter.

Other Arab rulers can be expected to notice the apparent immunity to popular rage of the Syrian president, which, logically, should cause them to rethink whether serving the interests of America and Israel rather than serving their own people, as Hosni Mubarak had notoriously done for al5

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most 30 years, is still (if it ever was) the best way to secure their own longevity in power.

Surely, after the debacle of America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, the risk that asserting one’s independence from America and Israel would bring “shock and awe” raining down, with a hangman’s noose to follow, must be greatly diminished. Nooses in the hands of one’s own humiliated and aroused people may now represent the more realistic threat.

John V. Whitbeck, Paris, France Wait—you mean there are presidents who put their own country’s interests ahead of those of a foreign government???

other friend of the Washington Report. We can well understand how you are inspired by Ambassador Safieh—especially because you want to become a diplomat yourself. We are inspired by the young Arabs who are demanding democracy in their countries. The whole world can learn from them.

An Unpleasant Shock As a faithful reader of your periodical, I was unpleasantly shocked by your magazine allowing Mr. Uri Avnery to use a crude anti-Polish joke in his article “Aftermath of the U.S. Election” (Jan./Feb. 2011 Washington Report, p. 21). As a Germanborn Jewish activist for just causes he News of Two Friends should know better that the joke he used in On Feb. 26 I attended a lecture for Ambas- his article is anti-Polish and has nothing to sador Afif Safieh at Bethlehem Hotel, and do with the situation of Jews in Poland’s it was amazing. history. Although technically useful for When it came time for questions, I asked purposes of the said article, it helps to for the microphone (and was afraid the am- spread an anti-Polish attitude so present bassador wouldn’t recognize me). now in many Jewish-controlled world “Hello, my name is Jacoub Sleibi, a se- media. As an ardent supporter of the Palesnior student at Bethlehem University,” I tinian cause I financially contribute to a began. “Actually I introduced you, Ambas- Catholic charity that helps Palestinian famsador Afif, at the Palestine Center in Wash- ilies living under occupation. I also sent to ington, DC last summer when I was an in- the Catholic university in Poland (Torun) tern at the Washington Report on Middle books representing the Palestinian position East Affairs.” on the Middle East and, specifically, the “Of course, I remember you,” he inter- Palestinian cause. As a Pole, I know what it rupted me to say. means to be under foreign occupation (GerI continued: “I was really thrilled at that man and Russian) or control (Soviet), and time when you told us that we (the new this is why I sympathize with the Palestinigeneration) are the keepers of the flame, ans. But I do not appreciate reading in the and I took it as my motto. But my question magazine jokes so offensive to the Poles and is, how can we, the new generation, help spreading such a hateful point of view history make the right choice? What are about Polish-Jewish relationships. We had the strategy or strategies we should fol- enough of such hateful and aggressive prolow?” paganda coming from Israelis and Jewish I went up afterwards to say hello, and he diaspora who hope (as Prof. Norman was happy to see me. If they publish the Finkelstein has written) to thereby create video I will send you the link! grounds for baseless Jewish claims for monJacoub Sleibi, Bethlehem, Palestine etary compensation from Poland. After all, We are always so happy to hear from a Mr. Avnery has never lived in Poland, so former intern, especially when it concerns an- he is just repeating hateful Jewish propaganda fed to him by someone else who has an Other Voices is an optional 16interest in presenting page supplement available only such a distorted picture to subscribers of the Washington of the situation of Jews Report on Middle East Affairs. For in Poland’s history. an additional $15 per year (see Les A. Sosnowski, postcard insert for Washington Ph.D., Chicago, IL It certainly was not our Re port subscription rates), intention to cast aspersions subscribers will receive Other on the Polish nation or Voices bound into each issue of contribute in any way to their Washington Report on anti-Polish sentiment.

We Middle East Affairs. found the joke to be more Back issues of both publicarevealing of the Jewish tions are available. To subscribe telephone 1 (800) 368-5788 protagonist, as we pre(press 1), fax (202) 265-4574, e-mail <circulation@wrmea.com>, sume Mr. Avnery did as or write to P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009. well. Our rule of thumb is that if an ethnic group, 6

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

gender, etc. can be replaced, the joke is not specific to that group. In this case, the nobleman could be of any nationality, and the point would be the same. That said, we shall certainly be more attentive to possible insults, and thank you for bringing this to our attention.

A High Cost-Benefit Ratio Let me begin by thanking you, ever so much, for how you have kindly extended us your magazine. It is very informative, and we have put it to good use educating those around us concerning what is actually going on in the world—especially as it relates to Palestine and the control of the U.S. government by the Zionist state (we often debate this point in here: is it the dog wagging the tail—or does the tail wag the dog?!). We have around 15 Muslims in our prison jama’t, the majority of whom read the Washington Report (many don’t get it until it’s a month old, due to everyone having to wait their turn for it), with each old issue going into the jama’t “chapel library” here. In addition, recently we have had quite a few non-Muslims ask to read it—I even went and got the back issues from the library to circulate and have on hand—especially in light of what has been going on in Tunisia and Egypt. Many of these men are both shocked and deeply angered when they see how much AIPAC has been giving to basically buy our elected officials. There is a college program here too, and many times the prisoners in that program (where they are obviously discussing current events) have come to get issues to research such topics and prove points in their classes. It is heartening to see such things being discussed and it’s a pleasure to have such a demand for this sort of information.

The reason I’m writing this letter is because my subscription will run out with the next issue, and we would like to be able to continue receiving the magazine.

Would you kindly consider to extend my subscription? This would truly come as a big blessing to us, and also continue giving us access to the information—which is not readily available to us otherwise. I only get $15 per month as my “state pay” from my prison job, or otherwise I would just order it myself. In the event that you are constrained or otherwise unable to assist, my thanks all the same. May Allah bless you and reward you for the work that you are doing in informing people about the Middle East and Muslim world. Take care; and may Allah be with you always.Abdul Badri, Lima, OH One of our “Angels” is more than happy to donate the cost of your subscription renewal—and we are impressed and delighted by—and grateful for—your dedication to spreading the word! ❑ APRIL 2011

publishers_7_APRIL 2011 Publishers page 3/3/11 4:11 PM Page 7

American Educational Trust Never Fear: Israel to Qaddafi’s Aid. According to a March 1 report in the Hebrew-language news site Inyan Merkazi, an Israeli company run by retired Israeli army commanders is recruiting mercenaries to support Muammar Qaddafi’s brutal efforts to suppress his people’s uprising. Highranking Libyan intelligence officer Abdullah Senussi asked the Israeli company to recruit up to 50,000 mercenaries from African countries, the report said, and the plan was approved by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and intelligence chief Aviv Cokhavi. It’s too bad Israel couldn’t offer Qaddafi its own IDF soldiers, but they’re already busy enforcing their own 44-year crackdown. Let’s hope Israel doesn’t decide to offer to sell the colonel any of its nuclear weapons—as it did the government of apartheid South Africa.

U.S. Attacks Killing Innocents.

Drone intelligence and all the other surveillance available to the U.S. military couldn’t help helicopter pilots figure out, on March 1, that the nine people they believed to be insurgents on a mountainside in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley, were actually children, aged 8 to 14. They were targeted and killed as they collected firewood for their families. U.S. Gen. David Petraeus issued a rare apology for the botched strike, but earlier, on Feb. 20, Petraeus shocked President Hamid Karzai’s aides by suggesting that, in another attack that killed 65 civilians, Afghan parents might have burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties.

The U.S. Veto…

Of a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as illegal—which, according to international law, they are, and which is stated U.S. policy—removed any doubt that Washington’s de facto foreign policy is to put Israel’s interests ahead of its own. We hope the world now will stop waiting for this country to actually act as an impartial mediator in a fraudulent peace process, and finally take matters into its own hands. On the other hand, as Americans, we wish we had a leader like Germany’s Angela Merkel, who, when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu called her the day after the Security Council vote to express his disappointment that Germany had voted in favor of the resolution—as did APRIL 2011

Publishers’ Page

every other Council member except the U.S.—responded,

“How Dare You?” Sadly, we don’t expect to hear this from JStreet, America’s premier liberal—but proIsrael—lobby, which, despite describing itself as “pro-peace,” works to promote lavish and unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel. Their half-measures are lame, argues Chase Mader in a March 2 article on <www.counterpunch.com>, and instead J-Street serves as a “comfort zone” for young, liberal Jewish American activists.

By contrast, Rabbis Brant Rosen and Alissa Wise co-wrote an “On Faith” article for The Washington Post asking Jews to…

“Light a Candle for Gaza…”

On Hanukah. They directed attention to Israel’s devastating Operation Cast Lead, and the courageous civilian flotillas seeking to break the crippling blockade of Gaza, including the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, and the Israeli raid that left eight unarmed Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American citizen dead. The rabbis asked their fellow Jews to stop retreating “behind a veil of defensiveness” by claiming Israel’s actions are an appropriate, commensurate response to the threat posed by Hamas. They challenged Jews who “might be troubled, but choose to look away from the hard and painful reality of this bloodshed.” You never read the article, you say? That’s because…

wingers insist on “ensuring the Jewish character of the state of Israel,” and those migrant workers have to go. In fact, if Esther, one of the three children featured in the film, had attended the Hollywood award ceremony, she would not have been able to…

Return to Israel Changes Sweeping Our World.

The tiny staff of the Washington Report has found it difficult to meet the challenge of reporting on so many breaking stories, as well as the flood of panel discussions and other events taking place daily around the country. These days numerous NGOs, universities and think tanks are providing Podcasts or video links to their events, permitting large audiences from all over the world to tune in.

At the same time, they no longer publish written transcripts or summaries of their speakers’ remarks, so often there is no written record of their events other than the ones published in the Washington Report. A larger staff, including interns, would help us meet these vital needs. Unfortunately, we’re experiencing…

A Budget Crunch of Our Own. Our traditional sources of income have taken a beating in this economic climate. Private donations have plummeted, libraries are cutting their acquisition budgets, and the Borders bankruptcy means that our magazine no longer will be carried in those bookstores. We’d like to remind you that…

The Post Demanded Edits...

A Free Press Isn’t Free.

Completely changing the meaning of the article, according to evidence provided by the rabbis, and published March 3 on the popular Web site Mondoweiss. The rabbis refused. Mainstream media refuse to publish views that are not pro-Israel—even those of Jewish moderates. Perhaps that’s why Americans who wanted to follow the recent historic developments in the Middle East found a way to get their news from Al Jazeera!

We want to continue offering an alternative to Rupert Murdoch and his ilk in the crucial battle for a free press, but we need your help. Judging by the phone calls we get from new subscribers, Americans have a new thirst for knowledge about the Middle East.

Some of our readers think the Washington Report is a free online magazine. We’ve always believed that it is more important to get the information out than to make money.

But we have to pay our huge printing bills, writers, staff and rent. Please return our recent donation appeal with a generous check, or donate online at our Web site, <www.wrmea.com>. It is up to all of us to get vital information into the hands of readers, so that together we can...

Israel to Deport Migrant Workers...

Including children featured in the Oscarwinning film “Strangers No More.” The film profiles a school which serves children from 48 countries and diverse backgrounds. After barring most Palestinians from work inside Israel, the government encouraged foreign workers to replace them. Now Israeli rightTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Make a Difference Today!

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U.S. Allies Fall as Arabs Demand Freedom And Justice SpecialReport

By Rachelle Marshall

U.S. was supporting and arming any Middle East dictator, no matter how brutal, as long as he posed no threat to Israel Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described the dilemma facing President Barack Obama: “The problem for America is, you can balance All the regimes are shaking being the carrier for the Israeli now. This is just the beginagenda with Arab autocrats, ning.—Fawaz Traboulsi, Lebabut with Arab democracies you nese journalist, Feb. 11, 2011. can’t do that.” Larry Diamond, director of Stanford Univerhe neocons who mastersity’s Center on Democracy and minded the U.S. invasion the Rule of Law, disagrees. of Iraq predicted that once “Most protesters resent Israel’s Saddam Hussain was ousted, treatment of the Palestians and other Arab regimes hostile to want an independent Palestinthe U.S. and Israel would fall ian state,” he wrote in the Feb. like dominos and be replaced 19 San Francisco Chronicle. by free market states friendly “But mainly they want to to Israel and the West. The transform their own country, theorists were half right. politically and economically.”

Dominos were blown over in a Argued Diamond, “a democstorm of protests that began in racy will produce a much more Tunisia and swept through the reliable partner for peace.”

Arab Middle East—but they Because the CIA and other were not falling in the direcU.S. intelligence agencies failed tion the neocons hoped. to foresee the seismic shift Instead, people who had about to take place, the Obama suffered too long from crushadministration was caught off ing poverty and humiliation balance when the uprisings were able, by pressure of their began. As the crowds in numbers, to topple two powerCairo’s Tahrir Square grew ful U.S. allies, Hosni Mubarak steadily larger and more angry, of Egypt and Zine Ben Ali of Tunisia. Although both were A Bahraini girl flashes the “V for Victory” sign during a March 1 anti- the Obama administration waautocrats who presided over regime protest at Manama’s Pearl Square, the focal point of demon- vered between sympathy and alarm. White House officials corrupt regimes, they were re- strations for weeks in the capital city. who talked daily with the Isgarded in Washington and promised he would not run for re-election raelis shared a mutual concern that if the Jerusalem as dependable allies.

Other Arab rulers closely allied with in 2013, as demands that he leave contin- Egyptians held free elections the Muslim Washington felt the ground shake as well. ued. Mass demonstrations are taking place Brotherhood was certain to be part of the Demonstrations in Jordan and Yemen even in normally quiet Bahrain, the home new government. It is an outcome that proIsrael groups in the U.S. and their allies in forced King Abdullah to broaden his gov- port of the U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet.

The mostly young crowds that gathered Congress bitterly oppose. ernment to include members of the MusThe Brotherhood renounced violence lim Brotherhood and vow to give the pub- in the streets of Middle East cities in late lic a greater role in decision-making. January and February were calling for years ago, but in any case Egyptian polls Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh democracy, jobs and an end to corruption show it with only a 15 percent approval and police brutality, including torture. In rating, and their spokesman said the party Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor liv- rejecting their rulers, the protesters were would not seek a majority in parliament. ing in Mill Valley, CA. A member of A Jew- challenging U.S. Middle East policy as According to Shadi Hamid, a fellow of the ish Voice for Peace, she writes frequently on well. While Israel was promoting itself as Brookings Center in Qatar, the Brotherthe Middle East. “the Middle East’s only democracy,” the hood hates al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda hates the Is the cost in human dignity for 80 million Egyptians an acceptable exchange for Mubarak’s imprimature on the so-called “peace process?”—Prof. Charles Hirschkind, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 8, 2011.

AFP PHOTO/JOSEPH EID

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

APRIL 2011

Brotherhood. “So if we’re talking about counterterrorism,” Hamid said, “engaging with the Brotherhood will advance our interests in the region.”

Israel and its supporters, however, were prepared to suspect any replacement of Mubarak who enjoyed popular support. In accord with its policy of smearing anyone critical of Israel, pro-Israel spokesmen targeted Mohamed ElBaradei, a consensus figure in Egypt who headed a coalition that included youth organizations and secular liberals as well as the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2005 ElBaradei received the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work as chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency, but this did not impress his U.S. critics. “He is a stooge of Iran,” proclaimed Malcolm I. Hoenlein, vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “He fronted for them. He distorted reports.”

On Feb. 11, the day Mubarak resigned, ElBaradei outlined in a New York Times op-ed column his vision of an Egypt that would be free and democratic, and at peace with its neighbors. He wrote, “The rebirth of Egypt represents the hope of a new era in which Arab society, Muslim culture and the Middle East are no longer viewed through the lens of war and radicalism, but as contributors to the forward march of humanity.”

If ElBaradei’s dream is realized it will be as a result of the extraordinary resilience and courage of tens of thousands of Egyptians who over the course of 18 days never lost their fervor. Although they remained steadfastly nonviolent, Mubarak lashed out with force. On Feb. 1 hundreds of his supporters, mobilized by his security forces and secret police, charged into the peaceful crowds in Tahrir Square on horses and camels, wielding whips, clubs, firebombs and guns. By the end of two days, hundreds of protestors had been injured, and at least 365 killed. Dozens of reporters were arrested, as were many human rights workers.

The offices of Al Jazeera were destroyed.

Yet the demonstrators returned in the greatest numbers yet. On Feb. 4, 100,000 men and women of all ages, rich and poor, secular and religious, gathered in Tahrir Square to demand an immediate end to the Mubarak dictatorship. Despite the huge turnout, Obama reacted to pressure from Israel and the rulers of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and the next day retreated from his demand that Mubarak leave office “now.” He and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called instead for an “orderly transition,” to be presided over by Vice President Omar APRIL 2011

AFP PHOTO/AHMAD GHARABLI

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Yemeni anti-government protesters chant slogans calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the capital city of Sana’a on Feb. 23, a day after Saleh vowed to defend his three-decade regime “with every drop of my blood.”

Suleiman while Mubarak remained in office.

The announcement was a sharp rebuff to the pro-democracy movement and prompted a letter to Obama from a diverse group of American specialists on Egypt, who warned that the U.S. might be agreeing to “an inadequate and possibly fraudulent transitional process in Egypt.” The experts had good reason for concern. Suleiman was a former intelligence chief and remained a close adviser to Mubarak. He served as an important contact for the Israelis and for the CIA, most recently when it was sending suspected terrorists to Egypt to be tortured.

As a key participant in a one-party system that ruled Egypt for three decades, Suleiman helped enforce emergency laws that allowed the government to abolish freedom of the press and assembly, and imprison and torture tens of thousands of political dissidents. As protests continued, he refused White House requests that he lift the emergency laws, and declared that the Egyptian people were not yet ready for democracy. Mubarak, meanwhile, insisted he would stay in office until September. Finally, on Feb. 11, a date that will long be celebrated across the Arab world, he resigned under pressure from the increasingly angry Egyptian people.

The historic events in the Middle East revealed the limitations of U.S. influence in the region, and cast doubt on the longstanding policy of supporting any authoritarian regime that served America’s global interests. During the Cold War the U.S. supported dictators from Africa to Latin America who could be relied on to suppress leftist movements. After the fall of the U.S.S.R., Washington’s focus shifted to THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

the Middle East to safeguard the flow of oil and assure Israel’s security. The bill for such alliances came due on 9/11.

Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks on the Word Trade Center, has repeatedly maintained that those attacks were a response to America’s support for corrupt and oppressive rulers, and its collaboration with Israel’s illegal occupation.

His statements were dismissed as the words of a ruthless terrorist, but it is probably no coincidence that Mohammed Atta, who flew a plane into the World Trade Center, was a graduate of Mubarak’s jails.

Another threatened U.S. ally, Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, rules over the poorest country in the Middle East, which as such is a fertile ground for militants. Since alQaeda began moving into Yemen, the U.S. has supplied Saleh with millions of dollars worth of weapons. Meanwhile, young people remain without jobs, and as UNICEF representative Geert Cappelaere has pointed out (see Jan./Feb. 2011 Washington Report, p. 66), “funding for Yemen’s children is in short supply.”

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Yemen in January, Saleh’s opponents asked her how the U.S. could support a deeply unpopular and corrupt strongman yet continue to advocate democracy. Clinton explained, “There are terrorists operating from Yemeni territory.

Stopping these threats would be a priority for any nation, and it is a priority for us.”

The people of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan and the Gulf emirates had far different priorities: democracy and social justice. In Washington that message was slow Continued on page 16 9

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Should the U.S. Intervene?

Libyan demonstrators in Benghazi’s main square reject foreign intervention, Feb. 28, 2011.

Arab Revolutions Need Not Be Americanized

By William Pfaff

he annual meeting of the Club of T Monaco’s Institute for Mediterranean Political Studies serendipitously coincided this year with the long-awaited Arab revolutionary awakening, to the disquiet of many Israeli members of the Institute.

However, the unrest also inspired passionate attention from them, as well as from the other 40-odd members of the group, all experienced observers of Mediterranean events, and many of them notable actors in recent Middle Eastern developments and conflicts.

A new Middle East, indeed! But not the one that American policymakers expected William Pfaff is an internationally syndicated columnist and the author of 10 books. Visit his Web site, <www.williampfaff.com> for more on his latest book, The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America’s Foreign Policy. Copyright © 2011 Tribune Media Services International. All rights reserved.

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when the George W. Bush administration launched its riposte to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, launching the “Great War on Terror,” which the last few days have made irrelevant.

It was not the terrorists or Islamic radicals that launched this revolution or that are likely to unmake it—even if they wished, and even if it could be unmade. It could certainly veer onto a destructive course in some places, as in Libya, and it already seems to be lagging behind the expectations of many of its makers, who are likely to intensify if not radicalize their demands if the provisional governments of Tunisia and the Egyptian army allow themselves to be outstripped by events, and if reform is resisted in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and Iran.

And indeed, if Israel refuses to change course. While touched by apprehension, some officials display an astounding complacence. A high Israeli political figure replied to my suggestion that American policy toward Israel might change by saying, “We got along before without America, and we can get along without

America again.” Not all Israelis might be comfortable with that sentiment.

So far this revolution has made its way without Western intervention, and it would seem best for it to so continue. The politically and ideologically conditioned American official response in this situation is to search for potential allies to support, hoping they will become the new leaders.

Restraint would be a better course, combined with multilateral humanitarian aid in the short run, to cope with the thousands of refugees uprooted by the fighting in Libya, followed by low-key multilateral support sought by the democratic forces that do emerge. The European Union would best lead this because of the residual knowledge and institutional intimacy that still exists between some of the European states and their former colonies. They know better what they are doing and are likely to be regarded locally as sure to eventually go home.

The U.S. is badly compromised by its recent history in the Middle East. A Benghazi, Libya, political scientist, Abeir Imneina, is quoted in the French press as being hostile to any external intervention.

She says local committees, made up of lawyers, magistrates and teachers, are linking up with committees in neighboring communities near Benghazi to cope with the inevitable disorder and prevent a power vacuum despite the lack of civic structure that was part of the Muammar Qaddafi regime’s systematic hostility to any popular political manifestation. She says that Americans in particular should stay away because, if they come, “they won’t leave, and Benghazi will become Iraq.”

She hasn’t heard the latest news, which is that Americans are getting fed up with foreign wars. The mood in Washington is shifting toward ending the global adventurism of the past decade that has killed hundreds of thousands of bystanders as well as what the Obama government identifies as “violent extremists,” while also provoking further violent extremism.

Lost in the news has been an extremely significant speech Feb. 25 by departing Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Survivor of the Bush administration and often criticized as a careerist, Gates actuAPRIL 2011

ally is ending his government career as one of the last—or perhaps it is as one of the first—sane men in a Washington gone mad during the past decade.

Speaking to the cadet corps of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY, he told them that in their military careers they are unlikely to serve in another large ground war like those in Afghanistan, Iraq and, before that, Vietnam—“invading, pacifying and administering a large Third World country.” The odds on that are low, he said.

“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as Gen. [Douglas] MacArthur so delicately put it.” Such was the reply that MacArthur gave President John F. Kennedy when asked whether the U.S. should send combat troops to Vietnam. Kennedy did not do so, so long as he was alive. President Lyndon Johnson was the one who did, under immense pressure from Congress and from Kennedy’s ideologically intoxicated former advisers.

Implicitly, Gates was answering two questions that every politically conscious high official in the G.W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations has been afraid to answer, or has suppressed within himself— or herself—the true answer: Why did we attack Iraq? Why are we in Afghanistan?

The answers are that we acted to gratify the ego of one president and defend the career interests of another, to serve venal and sectarian interests, and to advance promotions in what has become a militarist professional army. God may forgive us.

History—and the Iraqis and Afghans— may not.

Neocon Hawks Take Flight Over Libya

By Jim Lobe

n a distinct echo of the tactics they purIthesued to encourage U.S. intervention in Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Feb. 25 for the United States and NATO to “immediately” prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the previous week.

The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organized and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a twoAPRIL 2011

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The warship USS Kearsarge passes through the Suez Canal at the Egyptian port of Ismailia carrying Marines and equipment en route to Libya, March 2, 2011. year-old neoconservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the morefamous—or infamous—Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Warning that Libya stood “on the threshold of a moral and humanitarian catastrophe,” the letter, which was addressed to President Barack Obama, called for specific immediate steps involving military action, in addition to the imposition of a number of diplomatic and economic sanctions to bring “an end to the murderous Libyan regime.”

In particular, it called for Washington to press NATO to “develop operational plans to urgently deploy warplanes to prevent the regime from using fighter jets and helicopter gunships against civilians and carry out other missions as required; [and] move naval assets into Libyan waters” to “aid evacuation efforts and prepare for possible contingencies”; as well as “[e]stablish the capability to disable Libyan naval vessels used to attack civilians.”

Among the letter’s signers were former Bush Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Bush’s top global democracy and Middle East adviser, Elliott Abrams; former Bush speechwriters Marc Thiessen and Peter Wehner; Vice President Dick Cheney’s former deputy national security adviser, John Hannah; as well as FPI’s four directors: Weekly Standard editor William Jim Lobe is Washington, DC bureau chief for Inter Press Service. His blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at <http://www.lobelog. com>. Copyright © 2011 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Kristol; Brookings Institution fellow Robert Kagan; former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor; and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman.

It was Kagan and Kristol who cofounded and directed PNAC in its heyday from 1997 to the end of Bush’s term.

The letter comes amid growing pressure on Obama, including from liberal hawks, to take stronger action against Qaddafi.

Two prominent senators whose foreign policy views often reflect neoconservative thinking, Republican John McCain and Independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman, called in Tel Aviv Feb. 25 for Washington to supply Libyan rebels with arms, among other steps, including establishing a no-fly zone over the country.

Two days earlier, Obama said his staff were preparing a “full range of options” for action. He also announced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would fly to Geneva Feb. 28 for a foreign ministers’ meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council to discuss possible multilateral actions.

“They want to keep open the idea that there’s a mix of capabilities they can deploy—whether it’s a no-fly zone, freezing foreign assets of Qaddafi’s family, doing something to prevent the transport of mercenaries [hired by Qaddafi] to Libya, targeting sanctions against some of his supporters to persuade them to abandon him,” said Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation, who took part in a Feb. 24 meeting of independent foreign policy analysts, including Abrams, with senior Na11

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Some of the thousands of people fleeing Libya stand among tents at the Echoucha refugee camp near the Tunisian border city of Ben Guerdane, March 2, 2011. tional Security Council staff at the White House.

During the 1990s, neoconservatives consistently lobbied for military pressure to be deployed against so-called “rogue states,” especially in the Middle East.

After the 1991 Gulf war, for example, many “neocons” expressed bitter disappointment that U.S. troops stopped at the Kuwaiti border instead of marching to Baghdad and overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussain.

When the Iraqi president then unleashed his forces against Kurdish rebels in the north and Shi’i insurgents in the south, they—along with many liberal interventionist allies—pressed President George H.W. Bush to impose “no-fly zones” over both regions and take additional actions— much as they are now proposing for Libya—designed to weaken the regime’s military repressive capacity.

Those actions set the pattern for the 1990s. To the end of the decade, neoconservatives, often operating under the auspices of a so-called “letterhead organization,” such as PNAC, worked—often with the help of some liberal internationalists eager to establish a right of humanitarian intervention—to press President Bill Clinton to take military action against adversaries in the Balkans—in Bosnia and then Kosovo—as well as Iraq.

Within days of 9/11, for example, PNAC issued a letter signed by 41 prominent individuals—almost all neoconservatives, including 10 of the Libya letter’s signers— that called for military action to “remove Saddam Hussain from power in Iraq,” as 12

well as retaliation against Iran and Syria if they did not immediately end their support for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

PNAC and its associates subsequently worked closely with neoconservatives inside the Bush administration, including Abrams, Wolfowitz and Edelman, to achieve those aims.

While neoconservatives were among the first to call for military action against Qaddafi in late February, some prominent liberals and rights activists have rallied to the call, including three of the letter’s signatories: Neil Hicks of Human Rights First; Bill Clinton’s human rights chief, John Shattuck; and Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic, who also signed the PNAC Iraq letter 10 years ago.

In addition, Anne-Marie Slaughter, until January the influential director of the State Department’s Policy Planning office, cited the U.S.-NATO Kosovo campaign as a possible precedent. “The international community cannot stand by and watch the massacre of Libyan protesters,” she wrote on Twitter. “In Rwanda we watched. In Kosovo we acted.”

Such comments evoked strong reactions from some military experts, however.

“I’m horrified to read liberal interventionists continue to suggest the ease with which humanitarian crises and regional conflicts can be solved by the application of military power,” wrote Andrew Exum, a counter-insurgency specialist at the Center for a New American Security, whose Abu Muqawama blog is widely read in Washington. “To speak so glibly of such things reflects a very immature underTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

standing of the limits of force and the difficulties and complexities of contemporary military operations.”

Other commentators noted that a renewed coalition of neoconservatives and liberal interventionists would be much harder to put together now than during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

“We now have Iraq and Afghanistan as warning signs, as well as our fiscal crisis, so I don’t think there’s an enormous appetite on Capitol Hill or among the public for yet another military engagement,” said Charles Kupchan, a foreign policy specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

“I support diplomatic and economic sanctions, but I would stop well short of advocating military action, including the imposition of a no-fly zone,” he added, noting, in any event, that most of the killing in Libya the week the letter was issued had been carried out by mercenaries and paramilitaries on foot or from vehicles.

“There may be some things we can do— such as airlifting humanitarian supplies to border regions where there are growing numbers of refugees, but I would do so only with the full support of the Arab League and African Union, if not the U.N.,” said Clemons. “[The neo-conservatives] are essentially pro-intervention, pro-war, without regard to the costs to the country,” he told IPS. “They don’t recognize that we’re incredibly over-extended and that the kinds of things they want us to do actually further weaken our already-eroded stock of American power.” ❑ APRIL 2011

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Iraq Authorities “Using Violence and Bribes” to Curb Dissent SpecialReport

By Andrew Raine uthorities in Iraq are using a mixture

persuasion to prevent anti-government protests gaining momentum.

The political stakes escalated significantly when thousands of people took to the streets of Baghdad and other major cities in late February to demand reforms, improved services and an end to the corruption associated with Iraq’s new political elite.

Those demonstrations, the largest yet in Iraq, were met by force, as riot police opened fire on protesters with live ammunition. At least 29 people were killed, including a 14-year-old boy.

Since then, army and police units have beaten, arrested or threatened scores of political activists and journalists, their colleagues say. Meanwhile, government security and intelligence agencies are trying to root out the organizers of the protests, especially those who are using the Internet in an attempt to organize another mass protest.

Hussein Abdul Hadi, a blogger who helped to arrange the Feb. 25 “Day of Rage” march in Baghdad, said: “The intelligence services are collecting information about activists and after the demonstrations they have been making arrests and detaining people.”

According to Mr. Abdul Hadi and other activists, the number detained in the three days before March 2 runs into the dozens.

Abul Razzq Nouri, a blogger from Anbar province who helped to organize the Feb. 25 demonstration, said protest organizers and demonstrators were being “hunted down.” The security services deny any systemic effort to silence demonstrators and have promised to carry out a wideranging probe into allegations of abuse.

Qassim Attar, spokesman at the Baghdad Operations Command center, which oversees security of the Iraqi capital, said he believed some soldiers had “overreacted” and behaved “stupidly” during the protest. “We have opened an investigation into the claims of damage against journalists and protesters and if we find evidence This article first appeared in The National, March 2, 2011. Copyright © 2011 Abu Dhabi Media Company PJSC. APRIL 2011

AFP PHOTO/AHMAD AL-RUBAYE

Aof strong-arm tactics and financial

An Iraqi demonstrator holds a placard during a Feb. 25 “Day of Rage” rally in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square calling for improved public services, more jobs, less corruption, and broader political reforms. that laws have been broken by members of the security services, they will be punished,” he said.

With more demonstrations contemplated, Mr. Nouri said Iraq was entering a “dangerous time,” with the prime minister, Nouri al Maliki, apparently insistent on quashing dissent on the streets.

“Al Maliki doesn’t want any future demonstrations and he is doing all he can to stop us, he is coming after us,” he said.

Even before the Feb. 25 protests, the prime minister had moved to defuse them, imposing a curfew and a vehicle ban.

Another success for the government in tamping down the protests has been its management of the media. In the months running up to the demonstrations, the government has given Iraqi journalists gifts including plots of land, low-interest loans for car purchases and cash handouts, all of them officially sanctioned and distributed under the auspices of the journalists’ union.

Sabah Khadim Hamza, office director at the journalist’s syndicate, was adamant the land allocations and car loans were not bribes, but instead perks the union had THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

struggled to get for its members. “Many government employees in the ministries enjoy such benefits and we wanted to win them for hard-working journalists,” he said. “It does not mean reporters will stop being independent.”

But critics were not so sure. “Most of the domestic media didn’t cover the protests in detail and really downplayed them. They didn’t interview protesters or ask them why they were marching,” said one journalist for a leading Iraqi television channel.

“Basically, al Maliki has found out how to control journalists. He’s given them money and land, and on Feb. 25 they paid him back by not covering the protests.

Only the reporters working for outside media did their jobs properly that day,” he said.

The government repression, plus payments to journalists to spin public opinion in the government’s favor, have so far been effective in limiting the size and frequency of protests in Iraq.

“The government has bribed and beaten journalists to stop them covering the demonstrations,” said Nasir al Shalal, a Continued on page 41 13

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What Does Arab Democracy Mean for Israel and the West?

President Jimmy Carter (c) congratulates Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat (l) and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on the north lawn of the White House following the signing of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, March 26, 1979.

The Future of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty

By Patrick Seale

srael has been unnerved by Egypt’s RevItheolution.

The reason is simple: It fears for survival of the 1979 Peace Treaty—a treaty which, by neutralizing Egypt, guaranteed Israel’s military dominance over the region for the next three decades.

By removing Egypt—the strongest and most populous of the Arab countries— from the Arab line-up, the Treaty ruled out any possibility of an Arab coalition that might have contained Israel or restrained its freedom of action. As Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan remarked at the Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press). Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale. Distributed by Agence Global.

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time: “If a wheel is removed, the car will not run again.”

Western commentators routinely describe the Treaty as a “pillar of regional stability,” a “keystone of Middle East diplomacy,” a “centerpiece of America’s diplomacy” in the Arab and Muslim world. This is certainly how Israel and its American friends have seen it.

But for most Arabs, it has been a disaster. Far from providing stability, it exposed them to Israeli power. Far from bringing peace, the Treaty ensured an absence of peace, since a dominant Israel saw no need to compose or compromise with Syria or the Palestinians.

Instead, the Treaty opened the way for Israeli invasions, occupations and massacres in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, for strikes against Iraqi and Syrian nuclear sites, for brazen threats against Iran, for the 44-year occupation of the West Bank and the cruel blockade of Gaza, and for the pursuit of a “Greater Israel”

agenda by fanatical Jewish settlers and religious nationalists.

In turn, Arab dictators, invoking the challenge they faced from an aggressive and expansionist Israel, were able to justify the need to maintain tight control over their populations by means of harsh security measures.

One way and another, the Israeli-Egyptian Treaty has contributed hugely to the dangerous instability and raw nerves which have characterized the Middle East to this day, as well as to the sharpening of popular grievances, and the inevitable explosions which have followed.

Suffice it to say that, emboldened by the Treaty, Israel smashed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and, the following year, invaded Lebanon in a bid to destroy the PLO, expel Syrian influence and bring Lebanon into Israel’s orbit. Israel’s 1982 invasion and siege of Beirut killed some 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians. In an act of great immorality, Israel then provided cover (and arc-lights) to its Maronite allies as they engaged in a two-day slaughter of helpless Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Israel remained in occupation of southern Lebanon for the next 18 years, until driven out in 2000 by Hezbollah guerrillas. So much for the Peace Treaty’s contribution to Middle East peace and stability!

The origins of the Peace Treaty can be traced to the diplomacy of Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser at the time of the October War. Anxious above all to protect Israel and contemptuous of Palestinian and Syrian aspirations, Kissinger maneuvered Egypt’s Anwar al-Sadat out of his alliance with both Syria and the Soviet Union, and toward a cozy relationship with Israel and the United States.

With the 1975 Sinai Disengagement Agreement, Kissinger removed Egypt from the battlefield—a fateful decision which led directly to the Camp David accords of 1978, and the Peace Treaty of 1979. Sadat may have hoped for a comprehensive peace, involving the Palestinians and Syria. But he was out-foxed by Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin, a fervent Zionist who was determined to destroy APRIL 2011

Palestinian nationalism and prevent the return of the West Bank to the Arabs.

Begin was happy to return the Sinai to Egypt in order to keep the West Bank.

Weakened at home by pro-Israeli forces, President Jimmy Carter witnessed unhappily the scaling down of his peace effort from its original multilateral aims to a mere bilateral outcome—a separate IsraeliEgyptian peace. At the end of the day, Washington swallowed Israel’s argument that the Treaty ruled out the threat of a regional war and was therefore in America’s interest. Egypt’s army was given a $1.3 billion annual U.S. subsidy—not to make it more warlike but, on the contrary, to keep it at peace with Israel.

Defense of the Peace Treaty remains the prevailing wisdom in Washington. The Obama administration is reported to have told Egypt’s military chiefs that they must maintain the Treaty. In turn, Egypt’s Supreme Military Council has said that Egypt will honor existing treaties. So there will evidently not be any revocation of the Treaty. No one in Egypt or in the Arab world favors a return to military action, nor is ready for it. But the Treaty may well be put on ice.

We do not yet know the color of the next Egyptian government. In any event, it will be hugely preoccupied with pressing domestic problems for the foreseeable future.

But if, as is widely expected, this government will have a strong civilian component drawn from the various strands of the protest movement, adjustments of Egypt’s foreign policy must be expected.

It is highly unlikely that Egypt will continue Hosni Mubarak’s policy—deeply embarrassing to Egyptian opinion—of colluding with Israel in the blockade of Gaza.

Nor is the new Egypt likely to persist in Mubarak’s hostility toward the Islamic Republic of Iran and the two resistance movements, Hamas and Hezbollah. Whether the Treaty survives or not, Egypt’s alliance with Israel will not be the intimate relationship it was.

The Egyptian Revolution is only the latest demonstration of the change in Israel’s strategic environment. Israel “lost” Iran when the shah was overthrown in 1979. This was followed by the emergence of a Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis, which has sought to challenge Israel’s regional hegemony. Over the past couple of years, Israel has also “lost” Turkey, a former ally of real weight. It is now in danger of “losing” Egypt. The threat looms of regional isolation.

Moreover, Israel’s relentless seizure of Palestinian land on the West Bank and its APRIL 2011

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Bahraini anti-government protesters gather at Pearl Square in Manama on Feb. 21, 2011 as the country’s Sunni Muslim ruling family came under increased pressure to open in-depth negotiations with the leadership of Bahrain’s Shi’i majority population. refusal to engage in serious negotiations with the Palestinians and Syria on the basis of “land for peace” have lost it many former supporters in Europe and the United States. It is well aware that it faces a threat of de-legitimization.

How will Israel react to the Egyptian Revolution? Will it move troops to its border with Egypt, strengthen its defenses, desperately seek allies in the Egyptian military junta now temporarily in charge, and plead for still more American aid? Or will it—at long last—make a determined bid to resolve its territorial conflicts with Syria and Lebanon and allow the emergence of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem?

Israel urgently needs to rethink its security doctrine. This is the clear lesson of the dramatic events in Egypt. Dominating the region by force of arms—Israel’s doctrine since the creation of the state—is less and less of a viable option. It serves only to arouse ferocious and growing resistance, which must eventually erupt into violence.

Israel needs a revolution in its security thinking, but of this there is as yet no sign.

Only peace, not arms, can guarantee Israel’s long-term security.

Bahrain and Libya Raise the Stakes

By Rami G. Khouri

he continuing insurrections and reT volts by enraged Arab citizens across the Middle East have now spread to Bahrain and Libya, and these two states THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

raise significant issues that go beyond the existing implications of the overthrow of the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. In different ways, both Libya and Bahrain are deeply associated with the world of Arab energy producers and exporters. So the anticipation of these countries’ governments implementing policies that actually reflect the opinion of their people raises the prospect that Arab wealth and Arab public opinion might soon converge—with astounding implications for the region, but especially for Iran, Israel, Turkey and the United States and other major Western powers.

Libya has squandered hundreds of billions of dollars in the past 42 years of authoritarian and often imbecilic rule by the family and friends of Muammar Qaddafi.

Should that regime be overthrown, and Libyan foreign and domestic policy be subject to the will of its people, we are likely to see radically different uses of national wealth from oil income. While excessive wealth almost always fosters mismanagement, corruption and enormous waste of assets, in this case we might find that the Libyan people will insist on using their national wealth more productively and sensibly, perhaps sparking a new era of growth and human development across Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. Copyright © 2011 Rami G. Khouri. Distributed by Agence Global.

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U.S. Allies Fall…

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Continued from page 9

An anti-government Libyan protester raises his country’s old Libyan national flag in the eastern city of Benghazi, Feb. 27, 2011.

North Africa.

Bahrain is important in the same sense because it is located in the heart of the oiland gas-producing Gulf region, even though it has little of its own oil left. It is nevertheless a symbol of populist citizen revolts achieving their first triumph in this strategic energy-producing region. The Bahrain revolt will be seen by many around the world mostly as a rebellion by Shi’i Arabs who resent being ruled by the Sunni minority in the country. Others will worry that majority rule in Bahrain in a small country where Shi’i are the majority will be another victory for Iran and its growing influence in the Arab world.

Some may be concerned that a democratic Bahrain might force the United States to close its large naval base there. These are all fascinating but secondary aspects of the changes underway. The most important thing taking place in Bahrain is that national policy-making may soon occur on the basis of the majority of Bahraini citizens expressing their views freely and formulating policies in a manner that responds closely to their values, rights and aspirations.

If these two states that are deeply anchored in the Arab oil and energy world pursue policies that are faithful to their people’s sentiments, we could see major changes in how Arab countries work more closely together to pursue more collectively beneficial domestic, regional and global policies (as Western Europe did after World War Two, for example). More democratic Arab countries with plenty of money are likely to become more sovereign countries, rather than puppets of Western powers or hostages to Israeli concerns (for example, seeing their armed forces defined by what Israel allows Western countries to sell them). Sovereign and wealthy Arab 16

states that think for themselves are likely to make major adjustments in their relations with the three major non-Arab regional powers of Israel, Turkey and Iran.

This would mean being more critical of Israel, less hostile to Iran, and more inclined to associate more closely with Turkey and its impressive economic and regional policies. If the United States, Europe and others abroad deal equitably with the Arabs, and also address Israel and Iran on the basis of law and legitimacy rather than naked self-interest driven by indigenous emotionalism and pro-Israeli political blackmail, they will find themselves welcomed as valuable friends and partners across the Arab world.

The changes underway in Tunisia and Egypt point the way to an historic change in how Arab countries are governed and what policies they pursue. The transformations that have been unleashed and are spreading across the region will need years to settle into a permanent pattern of new policies and governance systems. When such changes reach the Arab countries associated with oil and energy—like Libya and Bahrain—as is happening these weeks, the stakes suddenly become much greater. From the perspective of the citizens of these countries, however, the process at hand is the same.

Arab men and women want to be treated like human beings and citizens, with Godgiven human and civil rights. The advent of citizens with full rights and freedoms in Arab oil-producing states is a novelty they and the world have never known. We should welcome it with open arms, because it may mark a very important boost to the development of the entire Arab region in a more rational, balanced, sustainable and accountable manner than has happened in the last several generations. ❑ THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

to sink in. Shortly after the protests began, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley called Egypt “a stabilizing force,” saying, “It has made its own peace with Israel and is pursuing normal relations with Israel. We think that is important.”

Translation: Mubarak could be counted on to enforce Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and is fiercely opposed to Hamas and Hezbollah. ElBaradei, on the other hand, had referred to the blockade of Gaza as “a brand of shame on the forehead of every Arab, every Egyptian, and every human being.”

To Egyptians who had been inspired by Obama’s speech in Cairo two years ago calling on Arab regimes to respect “the will of the people,” the hypocrisy of Washington’s support for Mubarak was all too evident.

Said Samir, a 26-year-old Cairo resident, asked, “If America really cares about democracy, why aren’t they behind us?”

ElBaradei posed that question directly to Obama in a Jan. 31 interview on CBS News. “You are losing credibility day by day,” he told the president. “On one hand you’re talking about democracy, the rule of law and human rights, and on the other hand, you’re lending your support to a dictator who continues to oppress his people.”

A week after Obama urged Mubarak to institute reforms but did not ask him to resign, Mubarak resigned and the American president reversed himself once again.

He praised the Egyptian uprising as a model of “nonviolence and moral force,” and compared it to Gandhi’s resistance to British rule. Obama also dispatched the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, to Israel to assure the Israelis of continued U.S. support for Israel’s security.

With the army currently in control of Egypt and the transition to democracy yet to take place, the Egyptian people’s struggle for freedom is certain to continue. “The revolution is not over,” one youth leader said. “This is just the beginning.” The questions that remain are what America’s role in the process will be, and whether Washington has learned that support for regimes that deny freedom to their own people leads to turmoil, not stability.

As the donor of $1.3 billion a year to the Egyptian army, the U.S. can insist that it turns over power to a civilian government as quickly as possible. But the surest way for the U.S. to assure stability in the Middle East and remove a major source of tension is to support those demanding justice and human rights and work to end Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. ❑ APRIL 2011

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APRIL 2011

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Will the Promises of Egypt’s January 25 Revolution Be Fulfilled?

CairoCommuniqué

By Joseph Mayton

AFP PHOTO/PATRICK BAZ

proposed amendments to the county’s constitution were revealed—following approval by the Supreme Military Council.

The amendments, proposed by a committee headed by constitutional scholar Tarek el-Beshry and seven other jurists, include the easing of restrictions on presidential candidacies, term limits, full judicial oversight of voting, and an end to the controversial Draconian emergency laws that gave the government the ability to indefinitely imprison citizens without charge.

While Egyptians are confident that the ousting of Mubarak ultimately will lead to democracy, as the international media begin to look Celebrating in Cairo’s Tahrir Square Feb. 12, the day after President Hosni Mubarak left office after 30 elsewhere for news—includyears in power, an Egyptian demonstrator vows not to abandon the struggle. ing the political upheaval in neighboring countries—there mmediately after Egyptian President worried and frustrated by the military’s at- is an undercurrent of uncertainty on the Hosni Mubarak stepped down on Feb. titude toward demonstrators. When the streets that the country could slide slowly 11, rejoicing began in the streets of the army first took to the streets on Jan. 28, re- back into apathy.

“We were out on the streets for nearly country, as millions of citizens partied into placing an inept police force that had atthe night. More than a month later, how- tempted to violently end the protests, it as- three weeks showing our government that ever, Egyptians are not entirely pleased. sured the country its soldiers would not we Egyptians have a right to say how our They say the revolution is not over—and, fire or intervene against civilians. Now, the country goes,” said Hossam Desouky, a 20worry is the army may attempt to enforce year-old protester and aspiring journalist. by the look of things, it is not.

On the evening of Feb. 25, the military, curfews and end any form of public calls “Throughout the protests, the media were instrumental in maintaining a lot of the which has taken control of the country for further change.

“It is going to be interesting to watch pressure by showing images and disand implemented a pseudo martial law, forcibly removed some 200 protesters from how the military and the people get cussing the Egypt situation—but now Cairo’s central Tahrir Square. According to along,” observed Yussif Mohamed, a 24- with them gone and focused on other witnesses, military police used tasers and year-old university student in Cairo who events, it isn’t helping the cause.”

Others agree with Desouky that media sticks to disperse demonstrators, then tore was part of the mass mobilization that down tents that had been set up during ended three decades of Mubarak’s rule. He coverage, now dwindling on major news the 18-day street demonstrations that and other activists believe that more networks such as Al Jazeera and CNN, is change is needed, but are concerned that an important aspect of the revolution. ousted Mubarak.

London-based media and security anaThe protesters had vowed to remain in the military wants stability over change.

“The army is in a precarious position, I’ll lyst William Evans told the Washington Rethe Tahrir Square until the current government—many of whose ministers had give them that,” the political science grad- port that the lack of coverage could drabeen appointed by the former president— uate student added, “but if they are not matically change the on-the-ground attiwilling to listen to the people’s demands tudes of Egypt’s military and civilians alike. was forced out.

“When there was constant Egypt coverAs the weeks go by, many Egyptians are and move a bit quicker, Egyptians could very well get frustrated and return to the age being blasted across the world, people Joseph Mayton is a free-lance journalist based streets. It is an important relationship,” took notice, and this was a major catalyst in the quick pace at which Mubarak fell,” in Cairo, where he administers the Web site Mohamed explained. <http://bikyamasr.com/wordpress>.

In a sign of some movement, on Feb. 27 Evans said. “But now, if we turn on the

I

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

APRIL 2011

television, Egypt is a side story at bestâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;so we have to be careful that the leaders in Egypt might not believe they have to move as swiftly in creating the changes demanded by the protests.â&#x20AC;? he said.

Such sentiments are being echoed in Cairo as well, with a number of activists continuing online calls for more change.

They have demanded the army remove the government of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik, who was appointed by Mubarak shortly after the January 25 Revolution began in a failed effort to appease demonstrators. It was reported by a number of activists, but not confirmed, that Shafik delivered a briefing to Mubarak in February at the former presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sharm el-Sheikh home.

Thus, the situation remains tense. With no real clear implementation of supposed changes to the Egyptian state in sight, there are worries that such inaction could lead to impatience and a return to the streetsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and possible chaos.

Dina, a 32-year-old photographer, said she is already hearing of restlessness among the hardcore activists who were the inspiration behind the January 25 revolt.

For her, the realities on the ground have changed in name only. Real change has yet to come. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Women are still being harassed, police are shooting people and the military is now demanding people remain off the streets,â&#x20AC;? she said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;To me, it sounds a lot like the past, not the future.â&#x20AC;?

It is the current contradictions in Egypt that are worrisome to political leaders, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, which, after decades of being barred, finally could make a splash in the political scene. The Brotherhood has announced the formation of a political party, but said it would not contest what many hope to be the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first truly free and open presidential election. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are expecting to become a voice for our constituents and we will listen and help create the future Egypt that the people want,â&#x20AC;? said top leader Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh. The Brotherhood, he added, â&#x20AC;&#x153;is not interested in an Islamist coup like Iran. We want a democratic state that allows the people to have their voices heard.â&#x20AC;?

Meanwhile, even as democratic change appears on the horizon in Egypt, American pundits have been keen on warning the world that democracy in Egypt could bring about the rise of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Islamist Brotherhood which wants to implement shariah law.â&#x20AC;?

APRIL 2011

AFP PHOTO/PEDRO UGARTE

mayton_18-19_Cairo Communique 3/3/11 2:59 PM Page 19

Waving their national flag in front of the pyramids, Egyptian tour guides call for tourists to return to the country, Feb. 14, 2011. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s simply not true,â&#x20AC;? Aboul Fotouh said bluntly. Ironically, a number of studies have revealed that in an open democratic election, the Brotherhood would gain no more than 25 percent of the vote. But the stigma of an Islamic organization weighs heavily in the international media.

Since the revolution, Egyptians believe the â&#x20AC;&#x153;New Egypt,â&#x20AC;? as they have termed it, will be one for all peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;based not on religion, but identity.

Still, women have been largely marginalized since Feb. 11, and this has led to a number of calls for greater female participation in determining the future of the country. A sexual assault on CBS reporter Lara Logan put womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rights and empowerment into the forefront of Egyptian politics for a few days the week after Mubarak quit, but for many womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activists in the country, it was too little. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Women are a vital part of Egypt, making up more than half the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s [80 million] population,â&#x20AC;?noted Nehad Abu Komsan, head of the Egyptian Center for Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rights. Indeed, she argued, women are the most important factor in the construction of a new country based on equality and justice. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Too long have women suffered harassment, violence and a pushing aside in the political decisions being made. Their voices must be heard or Egypt will continue to suffer from a complete lack of empowerment that we have seen hurt the country for decades,â&#x20AC;? she added.

Her point is well taken. Of the Constitutional Committeeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eight members, none were womenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;despite the fact that many THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

of the activists who had been on the ground leading the protests against Mubarak were women. Now, however, their voices have been all but silenced as Egypt plays a game eerily reminiscent of the past.

In order to achieve a complete change in the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trajectory, Mohamed emphasized, all groupsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;religious, women, secular and otherwiseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;must be given a real concrete voice in developing the country. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If that does not happen, then we will fail in what we set out to do on January 25,â&#x20AC;? he warned. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We want to change Egypt. This process has started, but it must be continued and must include all groups, or we face the very real possibility of continuing the social problems that have been holding Egypt back.â&#x20AC;? â?&#x2018; (Advertisement)

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Three Views Egypt, the West and “The Islamist Threat”

AFP PHOTO / STR

91 percent of Egyptians believe democracy is compatible with Islam, there is also a strong distrust of Islamist parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood, with arguments against democracy made by Islamic fringe groups roundly rejected by roughly three-quarters of participants.

In addressing what the U.S. role should be in the new Egypt, Kull argued that the Obama administration should refrain from supporting only secular parties.

Doing so might strengthen the perception that Washington is attempting to manipulate internal politics across the region, thereby likely boosting popular support for more extreme At a Nov. 9, 2010 press conference in Cairo held by opposition parties under the slogan “Stopping Elec- groups. Instead of focusing on a tions Fraud Is a National Duty,” Mohammed Badie (c), head of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, accused party process that could pit secthe Mubarak government of arresting dozens of potential Muslim Brotherhood candidates in upcoming ularists against Islamists, Kull parliamentary elections. urged the U.S. to concentrate on encouraging the development of What the Egyptian People agreed with the notion that democracy is an Egyptian “public voice” and the develReally Want better than any other form of government, opment of civic society. and 98 percent believe that the will of the Professor Telhami, who has conducted

By Andrew Stimson people should be the basis for government. polls in the region since 1998, pointed out teven Kull, director of the University Not surprisingly, prior to President that those who would have tried to predict of Maryland’s Program on Interna- Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, the level of pop- the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt invariably tional Policy Attitudes, and Shibley Tel- ular dissatisfaction with the Egyptian gov- would have failed because, he said, these hami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and ernment was among the highest in the events truly are anomalous. Prior to 2011, Development at the University of Mary- world, according to Kull’s polling. Thus, he the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was the land, discussed Egyptian public opinion at argued, the revolution was most likely sup- only uprising to take place in the modern an event called “After Mubarak: What do ported by nearly all parts of Egyptian so- Middle East. Over the past decade, Telhami the Egyptian People Really Want?” hosted ciety, not just the youth. Further polling argued, public opinion polls in the region by the Middle East Institute in Washing- data provided evidence that large majori- have revealed that the gap between the ton, DC, on Feb. 16. ties support freedom of speech, press free- people and their governments is growing Dr. Kull began by reminding the over- doms, Internet rights, women’s rights, and and becoming unsustainable. flow audience that the voices heard in religious freedom.

In contrast to food riots of the past,TelCairo’s Tahrir Square frequently expressed However, Kull pointed to other polls that hami described the recent upheavals as a liberal democratic sentiments that should showed strong support for Islamic values “dignity revolution.” Like Wael Ghonim, be balanced by an awareness of long-term that may clash with more liberal ideals. He the Google executive who used the Internet popular support for Islamic ideals some- said that 92 percent supported strong Is- to help spur the revolution in Egypt, the times at odds, he said, with openness and lamic values in Egypt’s government, 67 organizers of today’s protests are not poor equality. For the past five years Kull has percent believed shariah should be the and uneducated. Many young middle- and conducted polls, focus groups and inter- only source of law, and 57 percent believed upper-class protesters made statements views with a wide range of Egyptians, pro- that shariah law should play a larger role in such as “for the first time in a long time, I ducing data that is both hopeful and para- Egypt’s government. feel proud to be an Egyptian.” Such sentidoxical. Perhaps most striking is the high Other responses reveal strong cleavages ments, Telhami noted, reveal the pervasive level of support for liberal values: 83 per- in Egyptian society, Kull noted. While 75 sense of humiliation and subjugation felt cent of Egyptians say that democracy is a percent supported the review of legislation by Arab citizens vis-à-vis their government good way to govern Egypt, 91 percent by senior religious scholars, the Egyptian and their status in the outside world. public was evenly split over whether reliTelhami argued that Mubarak’s policies Andrew Stimson is director of the AET Book gion should be a private matter while the alienated Egyptians from the state because Club. public sphere remains secular. Although government positions differed greatly from

S

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APRIL 2011

Democratic Turkey Is the Template for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood

By Tariq Ramadan

ven as the mass demonstrations began E in Tunisia, who would have thought that Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime would have collapsed so quickly? Who could have predicted that Egypt would soon witness such unprecedented popular protest? A barrier has fallen. Nothing will be the same again. It is quite likely that other countries will follow the lead of Egypt, given its central and symbolic significance. But what will be the role of the Islamists after the collapse of the dictatorships?

The Islamist presence has for decades justified the West’s acceptance of the worst dictatorships in the Arab world. And it was these very regimes that demonized their Islamist opponents, particularly Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which historically represents that country’s first well-organized mass movement with the political influence to match. For more than 60 years, the Brotherhood has been illegal but tolerated. It has demonstrated a powerful capacity to mobilize the people in each relatively democratic election—for trade unions, professional associations, municipalities, parliament and so on—where it has been a participant. So, are the Muslim Brothers the rising power in Egypt and, if so, what can we anticipate of such an organization?

In the West, we have come to expect superficial analyses of political Islam in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. However, not only is Islamism a mosaic of widely differing trends and factions, but its many different facets have emerged over time and in response to historical shifts.

The Muslim Brothers began in the 1930s as a legalist, anti-colonialist and nonviolent movement that claimed legitimacy for armed resistance in Palestine against Zionist expansionism during the period before World War II. The writings from between 1930 and 1945 of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Brotherhood, show that he opposed colonialism and strongly criticized the fascist governments in Germany and Italy.

He rejected the use of violence in Egypt, Tariq Ramadan is professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford. His latest book is The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism (Allen Lane). Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928.

Copyright © 2011 Global Viewpoint Network.

Distributed by Tribune Media Services.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

AFP PHOTO/HO

the core issues that mattered to Egyptians.

He provided a powerful example in the form of a polling question that asked Egyptians to respond with the priority of identity they felt best represented them: Egyptian, Arab, Muslim. When polled a decade ago, a large majority of Egyptians responded that they were “Egyptians first,” yet in 2009-2010 only one-third held this view. “I bet you if I were to hold a poll tomorrow,” Telhami said, “I would have a majority say ‘I am an Egyptian first.’”

According to Telhami, Egyptians have increasingly viewed their government as dependent on outside powers and have thus felt humiliated about their position in the world. When asked who their favorite political figures were, leaders such as Hassan Nasrallah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez appeared at the top of the list. These figures, he argued, represent the enemies of the Egyptian, Israeli and U.S. governments. During a televised interview, Ghonim stated a common refrain made by many protesters: “we are not traitors”—a sentiment that Telhami feels is evidence of a deep distrust of outside control. In fact, following Mubarak’s downfall, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah stated that his response was tardy because he “did not want to claim any responsibility.”

In discussing the role of the U.S., Telhami strongly emphasized that Washington should not be involved or be perceived to be. Based on research he and others have conducted, he elaborated, fewer than 10 percent of Arabs polled believe that the U.S. supported democracy. Instead, a majority of them believe the U.S. regional preoccupation is access to oil and the protection of Israel. U.S. strategic priorities, Telhami argued, inherently drive it to extend authoritarianism in the region, rewarding Arab dictators for doing things that are contrary to public opinion.

In the final portion of his discussion, Telhami discussed the effects of the “Information Revolution” in the Middle East. Given the gap between what citizens want and their government’s policy, Telhami said he had long wondered why Arabs had not already revolted. Governments in the Middle East were long adept at disrupting organized political opposition, he noted, pointing out that the heightened connectivity offered by the Internet was certainly helpful in disrupting this tendency. In conclusion, Telhami pointed out that the organizational ability of the Internet, combined with a renewed sense of public empowerment among Arab populations, will force a shift in everyone’s calculations and produce ramifications that are “much bigger than imagined.”

Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.

even though he considered it legitimate in Palestine, in resistance to the Zionist Stern and Irgun terror gangs. He believed that the British parliamentary model represented the kind closest to Islamic principles.

Al-Banna’s objective was to found an “Islamic state” based on gradual reform, beginning with popular education and broad-based social programs. He was assassinated in 1949 by the Egyptian government on the orders of the British occupiers.

Following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s revolution in 1952, the movement was subjected to violent repression. Several distinct trends emerged. Radicalized by their experience of prison and torture, some of its members (who eventually left the organization) concluded that the state had to be overthrown at all costs, even with violence. Others remained committed to the group’s original position of gradual reform.

Many of its members were forced into exile: some in Saudi Arabia, where they were influenced by the Saudi literalist ideology; others in countries such as Turkey and Indonesia, Muslim-majority societies where a wide variety of communities coexist. Still others settled in the West, where they came into direct contact with the European tradition of democratic freedom.

Today’s Muslim Brotherhood draws these diverse visions together. But the leadership of the movement—those who belong to the founding generation are now very old—no longer fully represents the aspirations of the younger members, who are much more open to the world, anxious to bring about internal reform and fascinated by the Turkish example. Behind the unified, hierarchical façade, contradictory influences are at work. No one can tell which way the movement will go.

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The Muslim Brotherhood did not lead the upsurge that brought down Hosni Mubarak: it is made up of young people, of women and men who have rejected dictatorship. The Muslim Brotherhood, and the Islamists in general, do not represent the majority. There can be no doubt that they hope to participate in the democratic transition following Mubarak’s departure, but no one can tell which faction will emerge in a dominant position. That makes it impossible to determine the movement’s priorities.

Between the literalists and the partisans of the Turkish way, anything can happen; the Brotherhood’s political thinking has evolved considerably over the past 20 years.

Neither the United States nor Europe, not to mention Israel, will easily allow the Egyptian people to make their dream of democracy and freedom come true. The strategic and geopolitical considerations are such that the reform movement will be, and is already, closely monitored by U.S. agencies in coordination with the Egyptian army, which has played for time and assumed the crucial role of mediator.

Respect for democratic principles demands that all forces which reject violence, which respect the rule of law (both before and after elections) participate fully in the political process. The Muslim Brotherhood must be a full partner in the process of change—and will be, if a minimally democratic state can be established in Egypt

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(though no one can define the intentions of foreign powers).

Neither repression nor torture has been able to eliminate the Brotherhood. The opposite is true. It is only democratic debate and the vigorous exchange of ideas that have had an impact on the development of the most problematic Islamist theses— from understanding of the shariah to respect for freedom and defense of equality.

Only by exchanging ideas, and not by torture and dictatorship, can we find solutions that respect the people’s will.

Turkey’s example should be an inspiration to us observers.

The West continues to use “the Islamist threat” to justify its passivity and outright support for dictatorships. As resistance to Mubarak mounted, the Israeli government repeatedly called on Washington to back his junta against the popular will. Europe adopted a wait-and-see stance. Both attitudes are revealing: at the end of the day, lip service to democratic principle carries little weight against the defense of political and economic interests. The U.S. prefers dictatorships that guarantee access to oil, and allow the Israelis to continue their slow colonization, to credible representatives of the people who could not allow these things to continue.

Citing the voices of dangerous Islamists to justify not listening to the voices of the people is short-termist as well as illogical.

Under both the Bush and Obama administrations, the U.S. has suffered heavy losses of credibility in the Middle East; the same is true for Europe. If the Americans and Europeans do not re-examine their policies, other powers in Asia and South America may begin to interfere soon with their elaborate structure of strategic alliances. As for Israel, which has now positioned itself as friend and protector of the Arab dictatorships, its government may well come to realize that those dictatorships are committed only to its policy of blind colonization.

The regional impact of Mubarak stepping down is huge, yet the exact consequences are unpredictable. After both the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, the political message is clear: with nonviolent mass protest, anything is possible and no autocratic government is safe and secure any longer.

Presidents and kings are feeling the pressure of this historical turning point.

The unrest has reached Libya, Algeria, Yemen and Mauritania. One should also look at Jordan, Syria and even Saudi Arabia: preventive reforms have been announced, as if there were a common feeling of fear and vulnerability. The rulers of all these countries know that if the Egyptian regime is collapsing, they run the risk of the same destiny. This state of instabilTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ity is worrying and at the same time very promising. The Arab world is awakening with dignity and hope. The changes spell hope for true democrats, and trouble for those who would sacrifice democratic principle to their economic and geostrategic calculations. The liberation of Egypt seems to be just the start. Who will be next? If Jordan and Yemen follow, so will Saudi Arabia—the heart of the Muslim world—and Riyadh would be in a critical position, with no choice but to evolve toward a more open political system.

Around the world, among Muslims, there is a critical mass that would support this move, the necessary revolution at the center. In the end, only democracies that embrace all nonviolent political forces can bring about peace in the Middle East, a peace that must also respect the dignity of the Palestinians.

Egypt and Al-Qaeda

By Richard Bulliet

n effective transition to democracy in A Egypt will strike a powerful blow against al-Qaeda. A democratic Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood participating in a pluralistic electoral system will offer disaffected Muslim youth a viable alternative to terrorism and anarchy. Helping toward the achievement of this goal should therefore be an urgent priority for the entire international community.

Jihadist ideology distinguishes between the near enemy and the far enemy. It identifies the near enemy as the oppressive governments that have long prevailed in a dozen Middle Eastern and North African countries. These governments suppress popular yearnings for democracy and employ harsh measures in quelling every form of Islamic political aspiration, from the terrorist fringe to the mainstream democratic Islamist parties.

Jihadists see the United States, Israel, and the West in general as the far enemy.

They accuse these governments of bolstering the region’s autocratic regimes through armament sales, military training, financial aid, political support, and public praise for tyrants. And tales of active military intervention to kill Muslims loom large in jihadist propaganda.

What makes this ideology effective is its fundamental accuracy. No one in the Middle East and North Africa is blind to the reality of government oppression, and Richard Bulliet is professor of history at Columbia University and author of Islam: The View from the Edge and The Case for IslamoChristian Civilization. Copyright © 2011 Richard Bulliet. Distributed by Agence Global.

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views_20-23_Three Views 3/2/11 9:40 PM Page 23

no one disputes the American record of supporting dictatorial regimes and autocratic monarchies. American actions in Iraq and Afghanistan speak for themselves. The United States justifies supporting oppression by touting the virtue of stability. But stability means little to people who have never had a say in the way they are governed and whose governments are unable to provide freedom, jobs, and a decent standard of living.

Al-Qaeda propaganda takes the near enemy for granted and concentrates on the far enemy, “the Crusaders and the Jews” who keep the dictators in power. This is a powerful recruiting tool. Whether holding jobs or unemployed, whether well or minimally educated, whether living under oppression or only sensitive to the plight of their brothers and sisters in faith, a significant number of Muslim youth are drawn to religiously inspired movements that offer a solution. Even if that solution entails violence, or even a martyr’s death. They don’t believe there is any other way open to them.

What a revelation it will be if the Egyptian people, without resort to bombings and assassinations, succeed in forcing a democratic transformation on one of the Muslim world’s most repressive regimes.

Egypt is the most populous Arab country, and its 1952 revolution, led by the military, inspired similar movements in many other countries. A major move toward democracy now would prove a similar stimulus to much needed change elsewhere.

Some analysts predict that governmental participation by the Muslim Brotherhood would open the way to intolerable Islamic militancy. Others worry about the degree of instability that might result from Egypt’s transformation from a military officer state to a pluralistic democracy. But more worrisome than either of these possibilities is what would transpire if this transformation fails.

For the first time in living memory, the Arab peoples are witnessing a mass movement to achieve major political change.

Most of the demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square saw Hosni Mubarak as a dictator, not as the near enemy as defined by the jihadists. But if he is succeeded by another general without any significant change in the country’s basic political structure, the jihadist propagandists proclaim that nonviolent change is impossible. And they will allege that the United States, the far enemy, secretly orchestrated the frustration of the people’s will.

Failure to achieve major change in Egypt

will greatly enhance the effectiveness of jihadist recruiting. For those young people who are susceptible to al-Qaeda’s poisonous appeal, jihad will appear to be the only way.

A successful transformation in Egypt, on the other hand, could be the beginning of the end for al-Qaeda-type terrorism. If Arabs think they can depose dictators and take command of their political destinies by peaceful means, the strongest jihadist argument will have been refuted.

A democratic outcome in Egypt might well lead to regional instability, just as defenders of the status quo predict. And that instability might well produce disquieting moments for the United States, Israel, and other Western countries. The Middle East and North Africa could well enter into a period like the mid-19th century in Europe, which witnessed the unification of Italy and Germany and the birth of several new states on the shrinking frontiers of the Ottoman Empire.

But the world would be a safer and happier place if the political aspirations of Muslim populations around the world became channeled into mass movements for democratic change, and if terrorism lost its appeal as a consequence. ❑

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Democracy May Be Good for Egyptians, But not for Palestinians SpecialReport

AFP PHOTO/ABBAS MOMANI

By Rachelle Marshall

A woman and her child walk by banners near where some 2,000 Palestinians gathered in Ramallah’s Manara Square Feb. 20 to protest the U.S. veto of a Security Council resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlements. he State Department’s official comment

Twhen the uprisings in Arab countries

took the Obama administration by surprise was, “The United States supports the fundamental right of expression and assembly for all people.” It is a policy that clearly does not apply to the Palestinians. As crowds throughout the Middle East began protesting against their oppressive rulers, demonstrations of support in the occupied West Bank were suppressed by President Mahmoud Abbas’ U.S.-trained security forces. They allowed only one demonstration to take place—against Al Jazeera, and in support of Abbas.

Nevertheless, the popular uprisings elsewhere convinced Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, to form a new cabinet and schedule long delayed elections for local councils in July and for president in September. The voters’ choice will be somewhat limited, however, as long as some potential candidates with broad popular appeal, such as Marwan Barghouti and Abdullah Abu Rahma, are languishing in Israeli prisons.

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

24

Prime Minister Fayyad hopes to establish the institutions necessary to statehood

by September, and meanwhile the Palestinian Authority will seek international support for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. The Obama administration strongly opposes such a move, even though it was a U.N. resolution that established Israel in 1947.

With Middle East dictators friendly to Israel toppling one by one, peace advocates in Israel maintain that this is the time to seek reconciliation with the Palestinians.

They warn that Israel, with fewer allies, otherwise will become even more isolated.

Netanyahu disagreed, and insisted that the basis for stability and peace “lies in bolstering the might of Israel.”

Releases from Al Jazeera in late January revealed that Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had been in the midst of secret peace negotiations in 2008 before Olmert was indicted for fraud and forced to resign. The release was deeply embarrassing to Abbas because it revealed he had agreed to hand over to Israel all Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem except Har Homa, and allow Israel to annex a portion of the West Bank in exchange for land in Israel. Only a symbolic number of Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return.

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Despite Abbas’ concessions, when Netanyahu replaced Olmert he rejected the tentative agreement as too generous to the Palestinians and insisted that negotiations begin again from scratch. He continued to maintain that Israel had “no partner for peace ” while approving the construction of thousands of new houses on the West Bank, the eradication of Bedouin villages in the Jordan Valley and the Negev, and the systematic destruction of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

As Palestinian homes are demolished day in and day out, on the excuse that they “lack a permit “ or pose a “security risk,” families are being forced either to live in the resulting rubble or leave the area entirely. This process of gradual expulsion has become routine in an Israel where, in the words of David Shulman, “malignant forms of racism and protofascist nationalism are becoming more evident and more powerful.”

Shulman, a professor of humanistic studies at Hebrew University, writes in the Feb. 24 issue of the New York Review of Books that a growing population of ultra-Orthodox, fiercely nationalist settlers has increased the danger to Palestinians and their children from vandalism, assault, and even murder. Settlers commit such crimes with impunity, according to Haaretz columnist Zvi Bar’el, who wrote on Jan. 8, “Settlers no longer look to Israel or its laws.” Thanks to Israel’s settlement policy, “there are norms taking root that render Israeli courts impotent...Judea and Samaria is here.”

On Jan. 18, Lebanon, Brazil and South Africa formally submitted a resolution to the U.N. Security Council condemning Israel’s illegal construction of settlements, and 120 countries have endorsed it. The U.S. is the only member of the 14-member Security Council to oppose the resolution, and has pressed Abbas to accept a compromise resolution condemning settlements but calling on both sides to resume negotiations. “New York is not the place to resolve the longstanding conflict and outstanding issues,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She did not say what the right place would be.

Israeli settlements have long been considered a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention forbidding settlements on captured APRIL 2011

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territory. But President Barack Obama’s timidity is at least understandable. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said even a condemnation of the settlements would be “a major concession to enemies of the Jewish state and other free democracies,” and on Feb. 18, U.N. Ambassador to the U.N.Security Council Susan Rice, voted to veto the resolution. Israel has learned once again that it is free to defy the U.S. at no cost.

Many moderate Israelis are convinced that no peace agreement is possible under the present Israeli government. As a Jan. 18 Haaretz editorial put it, “Israel is ruled today by an extremist rightist government that objects to any compromise”—a fact the Obama administration is unwilling to admit. Nor has it chastised Israel, which receives more U.S. aid than any other country, for its unrelentingly harsh treatment of the Palestinians.

While the rest of the world was focusing on the protests in Egypt against police brutality, Israeli soldiers and police were responding to nonviolent Palestinian demonstrators with clubs, tear gas and live bullets. Every week scores of demonstrators are hospitalized with serious injuries. Many others, including children, are thrown into prison, where they remain for long periods without trial.

B’Tselem reported that the Israelis killed some 10 Palestinians a week in January, more than the average of one such killing a day in the previous three years. The Gaza border has become a target range for Israeli snipers. Shaban Karmout, a 65-year-old Gaza farmer, was shot by border guards in January while he was tying up his donkey. His crime was “trespassing” on land he had owned for 40 years but which Israel has declared off-limits because it is within several meters of the border. Many more Gazans are shot in the leg and crippled for months when they are spotted gathering rubble too near the border.

Netanyahu and Tony Blair, the Middle East representative of the Quartet that includes the U.N., Russia, the European Union and the U.S., have declared their intention of improving the West Bank economy, but they have yet to explain how an economy can thrive while Palestinian communities are becoming increasingly hemmed in by barriers and encroaching settlements, and denied access to their own water sources.

When Defense Minister Ehud Barak APRIL 2011

announced in early January that he and eight other Labor party members were leaving Labor to form a new party, Israeli liberals saw it as an opportunity for the opposition to regroup. A recent editorial in Haaretz called Barak a “collaborator with Netanyahu,” whose policies are indistinguishable from the prime minister’s. Therefore his departure from Labor means that a bloc can now form around the principles of social justice, advancing peace, and saving Israel’s democracy.

Such a bloc, the Haaretz editorial says, “will provide an alternative to the ideology of hatred.” It might also have considerable popular support. On Jan. 15, 20,000 Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the witch hunt authorized by the Knesset when it voted to investigate the funding

sources of humanitarian and human rights organizations. But if the new alignment hopes to limit the abuses of the Netanyahu government it will have to enlist the Obama administration in doing so.

Obama so far has shown nothing but timidity in the face of pressure from the Israeli right-wing and its U.S. supporters. If he continues to use Washington’s U.N. veto to defend Israel, and backs off from every demand on its government, he will expose once again the disconnect between his promises and his words. As hundreds of thousands of men and women throughout the Middle East demand justice, democracy and dignity, Obama can no longer remain deaf to the demands of the Palestinian people for the justice they have been denied for too long. ❑

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omer_26_Gaza on the Ground 3/3/11 2:30 PM Page 26

While Happy for Egyptians, Many Gazans Fear the Unknown Gazaon the Ground

PHOTO M. OMER

By Mohammed Omer

A worker climbs out of one of many tunnels between Gaza and Egypt used to bring basic necessities to Gaza’s besieged population. s the repercussions of Egypt’s revolu-

Ation reverberated throughout the

Middle East, the Palestinians trapped in the coastal enclave of Gaza collectively held their breath. Many wondered who the Egyptians would allow to take over from departed President Hosni Mubarak—or if the Egyptian people would have any say in the matter at all. “Will the Egyptians settle for another U.S.-Israeli-controlled leader?” a young Gazan barber asked skeptically.

Due to the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza after Hamas won free and fair Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, Gaza’s seven-and-a-half-mile border with Egypt has been closed for most of the past five years. Admissions by Israeli officials and disclosures released by WikiLeaks have confirmed that the blockade and isolation of Gaza since then indeed are intended as collective punishment.

So Gazans watched with admiration and concern as Egyptians demonstrated for their right to democracy and self-determination, and were inspired to see people from all walks of life join together to claim Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports on the Gaza Strip, and maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be reached at <gazanews@yahoo.com>.

26

their political freedom through people power and the will to say “Enough!” to an oppressive regime. The people of Gaza hope that, unlike themselves, their Egyptian neighbors will be allowed to choose their leaders without fear of punishment and that the world will honor their choices.

Not all Gazans wanted to see the Mubarak reign end, however—even though it is Egypt that enforces the blockade at the Rafah Border Crossing. Some even feared Gaza’s situation might become worse, since in several instances Egypt demonstrated leniency and eased the blockade. President Mubarak walked a fine line, they argued, ignoring some issues while cooperating with Israel in enforcing the blockade and disrupting weaponssmuggling into the Gaza Strip via tunnels.

“Egypt knows all the tunnels, is aware of all our activities and is sensitive enough to ignore the ones carrying basic essentials like food items, drinks, clothes and fuel.

Tunnels which they know concentrate on smuggling arms are usually shut down soon after they are discovered,” said Abu Abdelrahman, 43, who runs a cross-border tunnel which winds through the no-man’sland called the Philadelphia Corridor. “We are just people trying to live in dignity and THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

feed our families—no more, no less. Fighting is for those who want it, but not us.

Egypt has always been the only support for us during the Israeli blockade; it has been the tunnels through to Egypt that have kept us alive and standing until today.”

Gaza’s population of 1.5 million people, of whom nearly 70 percent are below the age of 18, depends upon international aid to survive. This has not always been the case, however. Prior to June 1967, when Israel launched the Six-Day War and conquered the West Bank and Gaza, Gaza was a bustling self-sufficient Mediterranean enclave of small businesses, fishing, textile and agricultural industries. But today an estimated 80 percent of Gazans live below the poverty line, struggling to survive on less than $2 a day and handouts provided

by UNRWA. Many in Gaza are concerned about how a new Egyptian government will affect them. Change, after all, has not served the region well in recent decades.

Indeed, Egypt shut the Rafah Border Crossing with Gaza in late January as demonstrations broke out in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere. This naturally caused Gazans great concern, since it meant their lifeline had been cut off. It was almost a month before the crossing was partially reopened.

The absence of Egyptian security forces in Sinai had a similarly disastrous effect on Gaza. The resulting uncertainty and lawlessness meant that few products were available for sale or transport. For Abu Abdelrahman, this meant having to lay off his workers, since he no longer could afford to pay them. Business was slow enough before, focusing as it did mainly on basic necessities, most of them prohibited by Israel. Now he could not obtain even those everyday items his clients wanted. Abu Abdelrahman fears he might have to shut down his tunnel business completely if Egypt does not get a new U.S.-Israelifriendly leadership.

The security situation also kept fuel supplies from reaching Gaza’s gas stations, resulting in long lines and high prices. Running near empty, Gaza faced the prospect that taxis, ambulances and other essential services soon would lack the fuel needed to operate.

Continued on page 41 APRIL 2011

williams_27-28_United Nations Report 3/2/11 4:48 PM Page 27

Qaddafi No!—But Bibi Si!

By Ian Williams

United Nations Report

n Friday, Feb. 25, Col. Muammer

tently instrumental in re-invigorating the U.N. Human Rights Council. The Council unanimously condemned apparent human rights violations in Libya and, in an unprecedented move, recommended its expulsion from the body. It was aided by the defection of the members of the Libyan delegation to the Council who, in common with many of their compatriot diplomats, had abandoned the sinking ship in Tripoli.

Of course it also helped that Qaddafi’s eccentricities, rather than his barbarities, had alienated all his neighbors. You know you’re in trouble when your only friends in the world are similarly wayward caudillos like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega.

Washington and some, at least, of its allies in the West also were hoping that everyone would forget that it was Western oil company checks made out to the Qaddafi regime that had kept him in power all these years, especially when he made a geopolitical switch from his former reflexive anti-Western position.

The West now is sternly condemnatory of a regime ordering its air force to bomb civilians—so long, of course, as it was not Israel flying sorties into the crowded alleys of Gaza.

Closer to Tripoli, the Arab League, hitherto so tenderly solicitous of the Sudanese government’s sensibilities, already had rescinded Libya’s membership, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference joined in the condemnation of Qaddafi.

Libya’s suspension from the Human Rights Council would not have been necessary had it not been for the complaisance of the African and Arab countries that persisted in running a rota system for important positions—not only membership on the Human Rights Council but on the Security Council as well, and even the presidency of the African Union, all of which Qaddafi’s Libya has recently occupied.

It is not that they loved the colonel, who has consistently been a sandfly chewing away under the tail of his neighbors, but rather that they were prepared to go along Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations and has a blog at <www.deadlinepundit.blogspot.com>.

APRIL 2011

U.N. PHOTO/JOHN MCILWAINE

OQaddafi was collaterally and inadver-

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice explains to the Security Council on Feb. 18, 2011 that, while it was the only member to veto a resolution condemning Israeli settlements as illegal, the U.S. nevertheless considered Israeli settlements illegal. with such a flagrant ethical breach of procedure in order to ensure that they in their turn would have their regular place at the rostrum.

Human rights advocates carefully crafted the rules for the revised Human Rights Council to reconcile African and non-aligned objections, so that there would be contested elections. However, the African states, recidivist rota makers, frustrated that move by either nominating only the same number of candidates as seats, or by putting up stalking horse candidates that ran to lose.

Those member states and the NGOs that genuinely pursue human rights should take this opportunity to ensure not just elections, but also elections which ensure that only properly qualified states are elected. This debacle might do just that.

However, its expulsion of Libya should do something to revive the prestige of the Council, which has been battered with varying degrees of credibility by sundry enemies. The action proved that it was not just Israel that could make the Council’s agenda—even if there were those special circumstances that took away the benefit of Arab and African omerta. Of course, it THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

will not change the minds of those who consider any scrutiny of Israel to be ipso facto unbalanced if not anti-Semitic, but it will at least deprive them of their traditional lament that the Council never considers the violations of Arab states.

Over at the Security Council, Qaddafi’s alienation factor overcame even Russia and China’s traditional and self-interested reluctance to countenance action against human rights-offending states. Realpolitik helps, of course. When one of the world’s largest oil suppliers is about to change government, it is expedient to jump on the bandwagon no matter how belatedly.

One of the crucial and fascinating aspects is that Resolution 1970 refers events in Libya since Feb. 15 to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although it eventually was passed unanimously—albeit with face-saving caveats that the U.N. would not pay the costs, and that nationals of other non-signatory states would not be arraigned—the geopolitics is interesting. The Libyan delegation had again supported the resolution, which might have mitigated some concerns about sovereignty on the Council that became the subject of a day-long wrangle behind 27

williams_27-28_United Nations Report 3/2/11 4:48 PM Page 28

closed doors.

China and India for example, have consistently held hands across the Himalayas to oppose the ICC as a breach of sovereign rights. Russia is, for reasons not unconnected to incidents like Chechnya, equally unhappy. And, of course, under former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton’s baleful reign, the U.S. “unsigned” the Rome Convention that brought the court into being.

The lesson is clear: Do not alienate other member states, particularly permanent members of the Security Council, and then massacre civilians.

Talk Is Non-Binding That lesson was brought into stark relief by events a mere two weeks earlier, when in the same chamber U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice castigated Israeli settlement activity in the strongest terms—and then vetoed a resolution saying exactly the same thing!

“We reject in the strongest terms possible the legitimacy of the continued settlement building,” inveighed Rice, while ferociously condemning them as “folly,” bad for Israel as well. Her words, however, only reinforced the international message that U.S. foreign policy is decided in the Israeli cabinet.

We have noted before that Ambassador Rice usually has the good sense to deputize someone else to sing to the AIPAC hymn sheet at the U.N., but President Barack Obama’s veto of everything he had stood for in his speeches at Cairo and Istanbul obviously was too important to leave to others, not to mention effectively raising the white flag to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and AIPAC. The sincerity and ferocity of Rice’s attack on Israeli settlement policy was presumably some form of penance for the veto of a resolution with 130 sponsors and which was voted for by all other members of the Council, including substantial allies such as Britain, France and Germany that actually support American security concerns rather than laying the U.S. open to attack, as the alliance with Israel does.

The attack was not noticed in Israel, however, which thanked Obama for the veto—even though that was noticed by the motley crew of die-hard Likudniks, “Obama is a foreign Muslim,” and Christian Zionists who found in Rice’s speech scarcely needed additional reasons to vote against the president’s re-election.

The events leading up to the settlements resolution were almost as damning for American dignity and ethical standing as 28

the veto itself. In the face of defiantly redoubled settlement activity by the Israelis, Washington did not threaten to cut back aid to the perpetrators. Not at all. Instead Hillary Clinton went to the victim and threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinians unless they stopped complaining and withdrew the resolution.

In the current context, it is as if the U.S. continued sending financial and military aid to Mubarak, Ben Ali and Qaddafi and threatened sanctions against the protesters on the streets.

Lowering its dignity even more, the U.S. had tried to avert the resolution with an ineffectual and in any case non-binding statement that tangentially admitted to the “illegitimacy” of settlements in the West Bank, but spent more space condemning ineffectual rocket attacks from Gaza. As several observers said, it read like a floor statement from an AIPAC-manipulated representative in Congress. Unsurprisingly, it found no takers.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas had no option but to go ahead and put the resolution to the vote. With elections announced for this year, he and his administration have been badly burnt with the leaked documents showing their supine negotiating posture and the WikiLeaks revelations that they had connived under American pressure to keep the Goldstone Report out of the U.N. Human Rights Council. More importantly, the U.S. had lost the additional leverage of Hosni Mubarak, a reliable ally in restricting Palestinian ambitions, and had done so under circumstances which sent a stark warning to Palestinian, and indeed all Arab, leaders.

At any time, voting for the resolution would have sent a clear message to Netanyahu that his defiance carried a price tag—and would not have involved a budget battle with AIPAC supporters in Congress. Indeed, if truth be told, if Obama

wanted a confrontation combining budget and foreign policy matters, what could be better than a very loud public proposal to cut off aid that the GAO has estimated at costing more than $5 billion for a so-called ally that not only defies American interests but seriously damages them?

Now that the layer of bribable kleptocrats surrounding Israel is being peeled off by popular action, however, the veto and continued American support for its obdurate policies is going to erode its support in the region even more precipitately.

It’s not as though the veto makes the issue go away, after all. Moreover, Obama also has yet another crisis coming. In the debate on the vote, the UK, on behalf of France and Germany as well, promised to do all it could to welcome Palestine as a U.N. member by this September, thereby pushing yet another hot button for AIPAC—and thus the administration. President Abbas, with the elections coming, has every incentive to take the vetoed resolution to a resumed Emergency General Assembly under the Uniting For Peace procedure originally moved by Washington to overcome the Soviet veto during the Korean War. Obama’s new outreach to the Muslim world would there be weighed in the balance and found wanting—not by 14-1, as in the Security Council, but by 190-2.

Even nearer to hand, the Feb. 26 Libyan resolution did not mention the no-fly zone that had been discussed to stop Qaddafi’s air force strafing his own citizens. One can only presume that at least one reason was that, since the settlement veto, Obama administration has lost most of the bona fides his administration had established once he had replaced George W. Bush, and who could countenance yet another attack on any Arab country by a recidivist U.S.?

The U.S. will regret its veto—as will the rest of the world. ❑

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APRIL 2011

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In Pakistan, American Killer Sets Off National Introspection SpecialReport

By Zofeen Ebrahim he United States is putting pressure on

Raymond Davis, who has confessed to killing two men. But some Pakistanis want their government to demand concessions from the U.S. in exchange for Davis’ freedom.

“For a change, stand up for the people, there is so much to get from this tragic episode,” said Fauzia Siddiqi, sister of Aafia Siddiqi, who is serving an 86-year prison sentence in the U.S for shooting a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.

A prisoner swap—Davis in exchange for Siddiqi—is just one of the demands that have been made in the face of U.S. pressure. “If I were the president or the prime minister, I’d tell the United States that we were willing to let go of Raymond Davis on the condition that they compensate the families of the deceased amply, stop drone attacks in our tribal region and return Aafia to us,” said an emotional Siddiqi.

Davis, 36, was arrested Jan. 27 after he confessed to the killings in daylight in a busy market square in the eastern city Lahore.

Davis invoked self-defense, saying the two men were trying to rob him. A third man was hit and killed by a U.S. consulate car rushing to Davis’ rescue and driving on the wrong side of a one-way road. The consulate has not handed over either the vehicle or the killers of the third Pakistani, a young motorcyclist.

Pakistanis have taken to the streets demanding that Davis be hanged over the killings. But the U.S. government says Davis is a diplomat entitled to “full immunity from criminal prosecution” and therefore must be released according to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, of which Pakistan is a signatory.

There has been immense diplomatic pressure on Islamabad to free Davis, with talk of a probable cut in U.S. financial aid and the danger of a head-on diplomatic row. On Feb. 15, Sen. John Kerry visited Pakistan promising the government Davis would be subjected to a criminal trial in the U.S. if released.

President Barack Obama himself weighed Copyright © 2011 IPS-Inter Press Service.

All rights reserved.

APRIL 2011

AFP PHOTO/RIZWAN TABASSUM

TPakistan to release jailed American

Mask-wearing Pakistani activists in Karachi hold placards comparing the treatment of CIA contractor and former Blackwater employee Raymond Davis, who shot and killed two Pakistanis, with that of Aafia Saddiqui, sentenced to 86 years in a U.S. prison for attempting to shoot an American soldier while in custody. in, saying, “We expect Pakistan…to abide by the same convention.” He also stressed that the U.S. was not “callous” to the loss of lives, but that it would be untenable if diplomats were prosecuted.

But the Lahore High Court (LHC) is not about to let Davis walk free just yet. Chief Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry had ruled, “Whether [Davis] has or does not have [diplomatic] immunity will be decided by the court.” While the court has adjourned hearings until March 14, it has directed the government to keep Davis in the country.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, before stepping down from his post in February, said Davis did not qualify for THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

blanket immunity.

Rejecting the ministry’s claim, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley said, “He does have diplomatic immunity.”

But why is Davis so important that even the U.S. president wants him released and is willing to risk angering Pakistan, its ally in the war on terror?

Pakistan’s domestic media is rife with allegations Davis is a spy. Najam Sethi, a senior journalist, said in a television show that there are at least 60 to 70 other Davises lurking in Pakistan with the full knowledge of Pakistani intelligence and the government.

Continued on page 41 29

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AIPAC Triumphs Over Former Director’s Defamation Lawsuit…or Does It? SpecialReport

By Grant F. Smith

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIVIL DIVISION STEVEN ROSEN PLAINTIFF, v.

AMERICAN ISRAEL PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, INC., et al.

DEFENDANTS.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Civil Action No. 2009 CA 001256 B

Judge Erik P. Christian Calendar 12

ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT Upon consideration of Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment, Plaintiff’s Opposition thereto, and the record herein, the Motion is granted.

n Feb. 22, 2011 District of Columbia

OSuperior Court Judge Erik P. Christian

dismissed a $20 million defamation lawsuit against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The civil suit, filed on March 3, 2009 by Steven J. Rosen, AIPAC’s former long-time director of foreign policy issues, was a direct result of AIPAC’s treatment of Rosen during a 2005-2009 criminal Espionage Act prosecution. Rosen’s failed lawsuit opened the Israel lobby’s practices to unprecedented public scrutiny.

Rosen and fellow employee Keith Weissman were still under criminal indictments in early 2009 when Rosen sued AIPAC. Pentagon official Lawrence Franklin, Rosen and Weissman’s source, had pleaded guilty in 2005. During 2005-2009 pretrial maneuvers, it was never in question that Rosen Grant F. Smith is director of research at the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy (<www.IRmep.org>) and author of Spy Trade: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy (available from the AET Book Club).

30

and Weissman obtained classified national defense information from Franklin in order to press AIPAC’s case for a U.S. attack on Iran. The pair funneled selections to Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler as well as to Israeli Embassy officials. Rosen falsely claimed a major Iranian push— ”total war” as he characterized it to Kessler in 2004—against petroleum infrastructure and U.S. troops in southern Iraq.

After they were wiretapped and caught passing classified information, AIPAC, Rosen and Weissman mounted a skilled defense—inside the courtroom and across the news media. Thanks to a series of favorable pre-trial rulings by presiding Judge T.S. Ellis of the Eastern District of Virginia and an extensive media campaign, they managed to turn public attention away from the violations listed in the indictment. A consortium of top establishment media companies intervened in court, portraying Rosen and Weissman as quasi members of the press “doing what reporters do every day.” Ellis ruled in their favor in 2007, prohibiting closed court sesTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

sions designed to protect classified information. Government prosecutors were effectively “gray-mailed”: If they wanted to present the stolen and circulated classified information as evidence, it would all have to be publicly revealed in open court.

In 2008 Judge Ellis allowed former government classification arbiter J. William Leonard—earlier barred for his role assisting the prosecution—to testify that while technically classified, the information purloined by the AIPAC operatives should not have been. In his most bizarre ruling of all, in February of 2009 Ellis ordered U.S. prosecutors to prove that Rosen and Weissman were in a “state of mind” in which they believed they were actually committing a crime. Under the close scrutiny of Obama political appointees, U.S. prosecutors dropped their case in May of 2009, citing Ellis’ “unexpectedly higher evidentiary threshold.” The FBI Washington Field Office was furious. Ellis went into semi-retirement—but the precedents set by his judicial rulings may have gutted the possibility of any successful future Espionage Act prosecutions.

Rosen’s angry May 2009 civil suit applied a rack-and-pinion rib-spreader to AIPAC’s chest of secrets. As a jilted highlevel insider, Rosen guided civil court observers into AIPAC practices never uncovered by criminal prosecutors.

Rosen’s core claim was that AIPAC repeatedly defamed him in the press by stating his behavior “did not comport with the standards that AIPAC expects of its employees.” Initially, Rosen, AIPAC and Judge Christian all worked in tandem to ignore the elephant astride the courtroom: AIPAC’s long history of collecting, circulating and leveraging U.S. government classified information in order to win benefits for Israel. In his 2009 filings (while still apparently hoping for a hefty out-of-court settlement), Rosen referred euphemistically to “inside” government information “not normally available to or needed by the wider public,” while insisting that gathering such information was not really unlawful. This stance was to be only temporary, however. During a June 5, 2009 court APRIL 2011

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appearance, Rosen’s lawyer promised he would be seeking “serious discovery” against AIPAC. Rosen’s key court filings detail how AIPAC jettisoned its two employees in 2005 in order to avoid its own criminal indictment. After initially considering a joint legal defense agreement and media campaign to accuse the FBI of anti-Semitism, AIPAC suddenly got cold feet. U.S. prosecutors gave AIPAC’s outside counsel a recorded audiovisual presentation of Rosen and Weissman circulating information they knew to be classified. AIPAC’s legal counsel reported that prosecutor Patrick McNulty was on their side “fighting with the FBI to limit the investigation to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman and to avoid expanding it.” McNulty reportedly even advised AIPAC that “we could make real progress and get AIPAC out from under all of us.” Under the Department of Justice “Thompson Memorandum” corporate prosecution guidelines in effect at the time, AIPAC could avoid criminal investigation and possible indictment by quickly cutting ties with its accused employees and publicly condemning them. AIPAC took the deal.

According to documents and depositions filed in the defamation suit, AIPAC continued paying Rosen and Weissman’s criminal defense fees (almost $5 million) as wealthy AIPAC donors such as media mogul Haim Saban and SlimFast diet billionaire Daniel Abraham stepped in to provide nearly a million dollars in direct support to Rosen between 2005 and 2009.

Rosen’s civil suit deposition claimed AIPAC had put him into a legal “zone of danger” by abandoning their joint defense strategy, firing him and making derogatory statements to the press. Rosen also publicly decried the lack of a payoff for being AIPAC’s fall-guy, revealing an e-mail to Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein promising that “when this is over” AIPAC would “do right by Steve.”

In a massive 260-page filing submitted on Nov. 8, 2010, AIPAC maneuvered to have the Superior Court drop the civil suit by characterizing Rosen as a rogue operator and deviant. AIPAC’s deposition revealed that, “on the morning of Aug. 27, 2004, two FBI agents came to plaintiff’s [Rosen’s] house, and after an ‘intense exchange of words’ issued a ‘threat [to plaintiff] about getting a lawyer by 10:00 a.m.’”

Rather than immediately meet with AIPAC’s in-house legal counsel, Rosen instead quickly arranged a face-to-face with the second in command at the Israeli EmAPRIL 2011

bassy. Rosen warned Rafi Barak of an evolving “Jonathan Pollard” type crisis, allowing key embassy staff time to flee the United States. AIPAC’s legal team also filed selective depositions showing Rosen had long used his work computer to download pornography and arrange sexual liaisons with married men.

After that AIPAC motion, Rosen finally dropped all pretenses, flatly promising Washington Post reporter Stein, “I will introduce documentary evidence that AIPAC approved of the receipt of classified information.” Rosen then documented a twodecade span of intelligence collection to back up his claims. AIPAC obtained a “secret National Security Decision Directive #99 calling on the Armed Services and Secretary of Defense to explore the potential for stepped-up strategic cooperation.”

AIPAC gleaned classified annual reports of secret U.S. arms transfers. AIPAC skimmed classified law enforcement files about North African financial transfers to African-American political activists, which it then used to discredit Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. AIPAC suctioned up classified U.S. intelligence about Khartoum. An AIPAC board member funneled classified raw U.S. signals intelligence into a lobbying effort, while another AIPAC employee solicited and received classified information about secret U.S. understandings with Saudi Arabia.

In his final desperate courtroom maneuvers, Rosen even filed several declassified FBI documents detailing a 1984-1987 investigation into a joint AIPAC/Israeli Embassy effort to obtain and leverage confidential U.S. business information in order to secure non-reciprocal trade preferences for Israel. (These documents were first obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in 2009 for the book Spy Trade: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy.)

In the end, Rosen never got a chance to prove that trafficking in classified information was a longstanding, accepted, even unavoidable practice at AIPAC, rather than conduct for which AIPAC could casually fire him to save its own skin. Rosen’s case was short-circuited just as effectively as that of U.S. prosecutors pursuing him under a strong espionage case in 2009.

In deference to AIPAC, Judge Christian stuck to a disgruntled employee versus former employer framework, sternly opposing “inviting a jury to scrutinize and second-guess an employer’s policies and business judgment.” While dismissing the suit in his Feb. 22 order, the judge ruled that THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

AIPAC’s public statements about Rosen’s comportment were “not provably false,” conveniently extricating himself and the DC Superior Court from the overarching questions about AIPAC’s classified information trafficking. AIPAC immediately put out statements that it was “pleased” with the dismissal of a lawsuit that “was frivolous and had no basis in fact.”

But is AIPAC only deceiving itself?

Many of the notoriously secretive organization’s most closely guarded corporate documents and practices are now freely circulating in the public domain. These unprecedented disclosures are not going to waste.

Many pages of evidence and corporate documents released during Rosen v.

AIPAC were included in a 1,389-page complaint filed by the nonprofit Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, Inc. with the Internal Revenue Service on Nov. 22, 2010 and a Feb. 23, 2011 complaint addendum.

This unabridged official “IRS 13909” filing argues that trafficking in classified U.S. government information in service to a foreign government—among other documented illegal activities since 1951— proves that AIPAC is not a bona fide social welfare organization eligible for a tax exemption. (The summary can be downloaded at <http://www.IRmep.org/IRSAIPAC.pdf>.) The IRS filing calls for the retroactive revocation of AIPAC’s tax exemption.

As a regulatory body chartered with continually monitoring AIPAC’s actual (versus claimed) conduct for tax-exempt eligibility, the IRS must diligently respond to such complaints. Though AIPAC has once again prevailed in court, given the seriousness of the recent court disclosures it is much too early for Israel’s Washington, DC lobby to claim victory. ❑ (Advertisement)

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Muslim Americans Express Concern Over Homeland Security Hearings

Islam in America

PHOTO SAEED AHMED

By Delinda C. Hanley

Opponents of Rep. Peter King’s hearings on the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism hold an interfaith “Pray-In” in front of his office on Feb. 22 in Massapequa Park, NY. eligious leaders across the country

Rhave urged Rep. Peter King, the New

York Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, to cancel hearings on the “radicalization” of Muslims in the U.S., scheduled to begin the week of March 7. Rabbis, imams and ministers have signed a letter to Speaker John A. Boehner (R-OH) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) expressing their fear that “this effort will only further divide our community and undermine our nation’s highest ideals.”

They compare Congressman King’s hearings, planned to continue periodically over the coming 18 months, to McCarthyism, named after the Republican senator from Wisconsin who believed subversive Communists lurked in government, Hollywood, and academia. McCarthy’s attacks not only destroyed careers but threatened the freedoms guaranteed to Americans in the First Amendment of the Constitution.

“Singling out a group of Americans for government scrutiny based on their faith is Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

32

divisive and wrong,” the letter states. If King won’t cancel his hearings, religious leaders asked for a broad-based examination of domestic extremist groups, including extreme environmentalists and neo-Nazis.

Why single out Muslims? they ask. There are plenty of radical Americans in the U.S., and only a marginal few are Muslims.

“If you put every single Muslim in the U.S. in jail, it wouldn’t have stopped Jared Loughner,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) argued, referring to the man accused of shooting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and her constituents. “It wouldn’t have stopped the young man who killed his classmates at Virginia Tech. It wouldn’t have stopped the bombing in Oklahoma City or the man who killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.”

Several hundred Muslims and their interfaith community friends gathered together Feb. 19 for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)’s Interfaith and Government Forum at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Crystal City, VA. They came to hear what Americans can do to counteract anti-Muslim bigotry.

As this writer looked around my table at THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

the ISNA forum, I wished Congressman King could be there to meet these ordinary Muslims—each of them so extraordinarily American. To my right were gregarious Somalia-born Virginians—who immediately “friended“ me. Their two daughters “texted” high school friends on their cell phones as they listened to the panelists.

Across the table sat two other couples, originally from Pakistan and Egypt, who said they’d found it hard to leave their TVs to attend the evening forum, afraid they’d miss breaking news about regime changes sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. My tablemates said they are fascinated by events in the countries of their birth, but also acutely aware of danger brewing in the land they have chosen to embrace—America.

ISNA, the largest Muslim umbrella group in the United States and Canada, is a real American success story. Members elect their leaders—Dr. Ingrid Mattson, a Canadian, served as ISNA’s president from 2006 to September 2010, the first convert to Islam and the first woman to lead ISNA. ISNA’s new president is Imam Mohamed Magid, a young Sudanese-born American who came to the United States in 1987.

Everyone is worried about how Congressman King’s hearings will stoke the fires of Islamophobia in the United States, not to mention causing further damage to this nation’s international reputation, already tarnished by recent wars in Muslim countries. During the 2010 congressional elections the media exacerbated the growing Islamophobia problem in America and hyped the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque“ controversy.

Panelist Dr. Azizah Al-Hibri, founder of Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, called for President Barack Obama to speak out to protect the Muslim minority, which she said just can’t compete with hate-mongering newspaper columnists or commentators on TV and radio.

Dr. Mattson said she trusts the religious community will help Muslims weather any new storm Congressman King may unleash. “I’m part of an extended faith family that won’t let me down. They have APRIL 2011

stood up for me,” Dr. Mattson assured the audience. “We have people who have our backs and they’ve proven it again and again....Together we can make disrespect [of Muslims] maybe not illegal, but unacceptable.”

Dr. James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), an organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab-American community, asked his fellow Jewish and Catholic panelists to share their own histories in order to see how Muslims can find a path forward. Both Catholic and Jewish immigrants felt alienated from America when they first arrived, Zogby stated, pointing out that “They have not always been a part of the American narrative.” They, like immigrant Muslims, had political attachments back home, Zogby said, some of them to countries considered enemies of America.

Father Leo Walsh with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said a hundred or more years ago it was Catholics who were under attack in the U.S. If the Muslim experience plays out the same as the Catholic story, this prejudice or even hatred could last three generations: first there will be coexistence, later cooperation, and finally there will be a real commitment to the needs of others. In his opinion, Americans did not associate all Catholics with the violence of the Irish conflict.

Rabbi Dr. Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association said Jews in America faced their low point in the early 1920s, when they experienced anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and restrictive anti-immigration laws. Jewish Americans were arrested, accused of being Communists or Bolsheviks, she said. Then, during the “Second Red Scare” in the 1940s and 1950s—things got worse. U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his ilk accused thousands of American government employees, union activists and educators—many of them Jews—of being Communist sympathizers.

Like Muslims today, Rabbi FuchsKreimer said, Jews debated how to protect their civil rights. Should they try lawsuits, boycotts, or publish books about the many Jewish contributions? They decided to start non-profit organizations, like the Anti-Defamation League in 1913 and the American Jewish Congress in 1918, to protect the Jewish community at home. The Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations, which currently comprises 51 national Jewish organizations, was launched in 1956, she said, to promote the State of Israel.

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PHOTO SAEED AHMED

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Muslim-Americans are afraid that the new Homeland Security Committee’s chairman will embark on a modern-day witch hunt.

The Jewish and Catholic panelists agreed that both Jews and Catholics brought to America their attachments to political parties back home. For instance, Congressman King, a Catholic, has a long and deep involvement with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish Northern Aid (NORAID), a U.S.-based group accused of funnelling guns and money to the IRA, according to the New York Sun. How did Eastern European and Russian Jewish immigrants, some of whom had deep ties to socialist and anarchist movements back home, avoid anti-Russian sentiments in their new land?

Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has become the focal point of American Jewish life and philanthropy. How can the Jewish-American attachment to Israel withstand growing international criticism of Israeli government policies, especially its brutal occupation of Palestinian territory?

Aren’t American Jews concerned that contempt for Israeli actions, including illegal settlement activities and recent attacks on unarmed civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, eventually may cause blowback for American Jewish supporters?

This is the elephant in the room. How do Muslim or Arab immigrants reconcile their attachments to their native lands with eyes wide open to human rights abuses back home? How do Americans of Pakistani, Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian, Iraqi and Iranian descent retain their support for their homelands from afar, from a nation that opposes many of the lands they cherish?

There is no easy answer, panelists agreed.

Muslims need to understand American hisTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

tory, constantly educate Americans about Islam, and remind them about American ideals of civil and human rights for all.

Both the civil and women’s rights movements can teach Muslim-American activists. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream was more powerful than words of hate.

Muslims need to get even more involved in their communities, and work to improve local schools and health care and national politics.

Father Walsh noted that Catholic voters are found on both sides of the aisle. Neither Republican nor Democratic platforms embrace all the positions important to Catholic voters.

It’s up to individual Catholic voters to choose which issues are most urgent.

ISNA’s keynote dinner speeches were given by Special Representative to Muslim Communities Farah Pandith and Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Hannah Rosenthal. They introduced a new campaign, 2011 Hours Against Hate, to stop bigotry and promote respect across lines of culture, religion, tradition, class and gender. The U.S. State Department is asking young people around the world to pledge their time to stop hate—”to do something for someone who doesn’t look like you, pray like you, or live like you. We are asking the next generation to work together to build a stronger, more prosperous world. No one group can do it alone.”

Representative King’s effort to marginalize Muslims will fail, ISNA’s Rizwan Jaka said at the conclusion of the evening. “We have history on our side. America has always made the right choice in the end— sometimes a little late, but better late than never.” ❑ 33

mcarthur_34-36_Congress Watch 3/2/11 4:51 PM Page 34

Congressional Conservatives Launch Effort To Cut Spending, Including Foreign Aid CongressWatch

By Shirl McArthur s reported in the March issue of the Washington Report, House Foreign AfA fairs Committee chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) has said on several occasions that her mission is to cut the State Department and foreign aid budgets. She has been joined in this effort by several extremist conservatives who are determined to drastically cut federal spending.

First, Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) on Jan. 18 introduced H.Res. 38. Passed by the full House on Jan. 25 on a roll call vote of 256165, it requires the House Budget Committee chair to include in the Congressional Record the contemplated allocations for the rest of FY ’11 that assume non-security spending at FY ’08 levels or less. (Since House resolutions do not go to the Senate and are not signed by the president, they do not have the force of law, but they are used to set the rules of the House.) House Foreign Affairs Committee former chairman and now ranking Democrat Howard Berman (CA) spoke against cutting State Department and foreign aid spending, pointing out that the military leadership “and even former President [George W.] Bush” have all argued for increasing, not reducing, the budgets for foreign aid and diplomacy.

Potentially more damaging bills are the draconian H.R. 408, introduced on Jan. 24

by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and 32 cosponsors, and the identical S. 178, introduced in the Senate the following day by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) with no co-sponsors. In addition to reducing non-security discretionary spending to FY ’08 levels, they would repeal several previously passed laws, eliminate parts of several programs, and completely eliminate 37 other programs, including aid to Egypt, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Trade and Development Agency.

These two bills have no chance of passage, however. In the Democratic-controlled Senate, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Aid Appropriations Subcommittee Lindsey Graham (SC) has said he plans to work with subcommittee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to increase State Department and USAID funding.

A more moderate bill, S.245, was introduced in the Senate on Feb. 1 by Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and Claire McCaskill (DMO), with 10 co-sponsors. It would cap federal spending at 20.6 percent of gross Shirl McArthur, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, is a consultant based in the Washington, DC area.

34

domestic product (GDP), using a system of multiyear averaging. (Currently federal spending is over 24 percent of GDP.) One positive bill was introduced, which has no chance of passage in the current fiscal atmosphere. On Jan. 20 Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) with nine co-sponsors, all Democrats, introduced H.Con.Res. 11, which would express “the sense of Congress that the U.S. should provide, on an annual basis, an amount equal to at least 1 percent of GDP for nonmilitary foreign assistance programs.”

But newly elected Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) learned that some things just aren’t said in Washington. He said that all U.S. foreign aid should be eliminated, including aid to Israel! This, of course, brought forth denunciations from left and right alike.

Letters Condemn Security Council Resolution on Israeli Settlements On Jan. 18 Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), with 17 other senators, wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claiming that the proposed U.N. Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements dealt with “borders and settlements” and urging her to “make clear that the U.S. will veto such resolution.” It seems as if the drafters of the letter had not read the resolution. The resolution does not deal with borders; instead it calls Israeli settlements in the occupied territories illegal and urges all parties to fulfill their obligations and continue final status negotiations. This, moreover, has been the official U.S. position since 1978.

In the House, Ros-Lehtinen and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA), joined by Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (MD), Berman, Middle East subcommittee chair Steve Chabot (OH), and subcommittee ranking Democrat Gary Ackerman (NY), wrote on Jan. 27 to President Barack Obama urging that the U.S. veto the resolution. But the House letter didn’t stop there; incredibly, it further urged that the administration “pledge in response to this letter to veto any UNSC resolution that criticizes Israel regarding final status issues.”

In opposition to those ill-considered letters, on Jan. 18 a group of 55 former cabinet members, senior foreign policy officials, ambassadors, academics and other respected members of the foreign policy establishment, including two rabbis, wrote to Obama urging a “yes” vote on the resolution. Their letter points out that “the settlements are clearly illegal according to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” and that “U.S. policy across nine adminisTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

trations has been to oppose the settlements, with the focus for the last two decades being on the incompatibility of settlement construction with efforts to advance peace.” The letter concludes: “America’s credibility in a crucial region of the world is on the line—a region in which hundreds of thousands of our troops are deployed and where we face the greatest threats and challenges to our security. This vote is an American national security interest vote par excellence. We urge you to do the right thing.”

Israel-Firsters Profess Fear of Muslim Brotherhood’s Influence in Egypt Following the Jan. 14 resignation of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and before the Feb. 11 resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, most members of Congress remained quiet regarding events in Egypt. Most of those who did speak out—Republicans as well as Democrats—largely supported the Obama administration’s handling of developments, although some were more forthright than the administration in saying that Mubarak should step down sooner rather than later. But a common theme running through the comments of congressional Israel-firsters was concern over the possible increase in the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in Egypt and the effect that might have on Israel.

After the announcement of Mubarak’s resignation, most of those Congress members who spoke out largely echoed the comments of Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA), who emphasized the need for “free and fair elections that will allow the people to choose a broadly representative and responsive government.” He said “the U.S. must help Egyptians turn this democratic moment into a process that builds a government responsive to economic needs as well as demands for freedom.”

One jarring note came from Ros-Lehtinen, whose main concern was that the U.S. and its allies “urge the unequivocal rejection of any involvement by the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremists who may seek to exploit and hijack these events to gain power, oppress the Egyptian people, and do great harm to Egypt’s relationship with the United States, Israel, and other free nations.”

This was also a pronounced theme in the two-part House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing called by Ros-Lehtinen on Feb. 9 APRIL 2011

mcarthur_34-36_Congress Watch 3/2/11 4:51 PM Page 35

and 10 on “Recent Developments in Egypt and Lebanon: Implications for U.S. Policy and Allies in the Broader Middle East.”

The first day featured committed Zionists Elliot Abrams, former national security adviser to President George W. Bush, and Robert Satloff, executive director of the AIPAC-created Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The second day’s sole witness was Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg. In both her opening statements, Ros-Lehtinen made it clear that, in addition to sharply criticizing the administration for not being adequately prepared for events, she was obsessed with the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood’s and Hezbollah’s increasing influence in Egypt and Lebanon. Citing reports that the administration would not rule out engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood, she said “engaging the Muslim Brotherhood must not be on the table.” She also presumed to set the criteria that Washington should insist on “to ensure that only responsible actors who meet basic standards participate in Egypt’s future.” Of course, those criteria include enforcing Egypt’s peace agreement with Israel.

Abrams performed pretty much as expected, decrying the growing strength of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood and saying that the U.S. should make it clear to Egypt’s military leaders that U.S. military aid is conditioned on their behavior. Satloff, on the other hand, was probably a disappointment to Ros-Lehtinen.

After saying that “President Obama and his advisers have generally adopted a sound approach” in handling the situation, he said that, for now, the U.S. should “maintain its current posture, continuing economic and military aid to Egypt” to “maintain the limited influence it has.”

Previously, on Jan. 30, Clinton had said that “there is no discussion at this time about cutting off aid” to Egypt, and House foreign aid subcommittee chair Kay Granger (R-TX), in a Feb. 11 release, said that the new FY ’11 Continuing Resolution funding the government for the rest of this fiscal year would include the full $1.3 billion in military aid and $250 million in economic aid to Egypt—but would prohibit military aid to Lebanon unless the secretary of state determines that it is in the U.S. national interest. Berman on Jan. 25 called on the administration “immediately to suspend all weapons transfers to Lebanon and to review carefully all economic assistance programs.” But Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough said on Jan. 27 that the U.S. would continue funding the Lebanese Armed Forces “because of their independence.”

Legislatively, on Feb. 3 Sens. Kerry and John McCain (R-AZ), with six co-sponsors, introduced the non-binding S.Res. 44 “Supporting Democracy, Universal Rights, and the Peaceful Transition to a Representative Government in Egypt.” Among its APRIL 2011

10 “resolved” clauses, it calls on Mubarak immediately to transfer power to “an inclusive caretaker government”; “expresses deep concern over any organization that espouses an extremist ideology, including the Muslim Brotherhood”; and underscores the importance of any Egyptian government “continuing to fulfill its international obligations, including its commitments under the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.” The full Senate passed the resolution unanimously the same day.

Then on Feb. 7, six Democratic representatives, led by Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), wrote to House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) urging “that the House take up an emergency resolution in sup-

port of the Egyptian people and their struggle for freedom and democracy.”

While stopping short of calling for Mubarak to step down, the letter says that it has become clear that his regime “has exhausted its credibility.” However, choosing to ignore the letter, Boehner introduced no House resolution. But on Feb. 11, just hours after the announcement of Mubarak’s resignation, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) introduced H.Res. 88 “expressing solidarity with the people of Egypt in their democratic aspirations as they begin a new chapter in their country’s proud history.”

Its “resolved” clauses make no mention of the Muslim Brotherhood; instead, one “calls upon the Government of Egypt and

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the political opposition to work together to transition Egypt to a credible democracy with respect for universal rights, including minority rights, and a new era for the Egyptian people.”

Ros-Lehtinen Fires First Salvos in Her Attack on the United Nations As reported in the previous issue, RosLehtinen on several occasions previously has called for the U.S. to use its contributions to international organizations as leverage to force changes at the U.N. Her first official effort to this end was a Jan. 25 Foreign Affairs Committee hearing with the revealing title, “The United Nations: Urgent Problems that Need Congressional Action.”

The witness list was packed mostly with critics of the U.N., who performed as expected. In her opening statement, RosLehtinen said that U.S. policy on the U.N. should advance American interests, uphold American values, and show responsible stewardship of American taxpayer dollars, but that right now it fails on all three counts. She was mostly critical of the U.N.’s “anti-Israel activities,” especially at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Berman said he agreed there are problems with the U.N., but said that withholding contributions would only lessen U.S. influence there.

Ros-Lehtinen promised soon to introduce legislation to “reform” the U.N., including making U.S. contributions voluntary. She has introduced U.N. reform bills in the past three Congresses, but they have

either died in committee or not made it through the Senate. Each of these bills focused mostly on Israel-Palestine issues and included gutting the Human Rights Council and either severely restricting the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which provides essential services to Palestinian refugees, or eliminating it altogether and turning its duties over to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. It is likely that her new bill will include these same elements, but it is also likely that it will not make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Ros-Lehtinen’s next attack on the U.N. was her introduction on Feb. 8, with no co-sponsors, of H.R. 519, the “U.N. Tax Equalization Refund” bill. The Tax Equalization Fund is what Washington pays the U.N. to reimburse U.S. citizens who work at the U.N. for the U.S. taxes they pay (other countries do not tax their citizens who work at the U.N.). Over the years the U.S. has overpaid the fund by about $179 million, and H.R. 519 would require the U.N. to return that amount to the U.S. Treasury. But Ros-Lehtinen’s bill ignores the fact that $100 million of the fund already has been allocated for security upgrades at U.N. headquarters, as requested by the City of New York, and agreed to by the Obama administration, with the remaining $79 million earmarked to reduce future U.S. peacekeeping dues. For these reasons House Democrats and even Republican chairman of the Homeland Security Committee Peter King (NY) strongly objected to the bill.

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Undeterred, Ros-Lehtinen brought the bill to the floor for a vote under “suspension of the rules” (allowing for no amendments, but requiring a two-thirds majority). It was defeated on a roll call vote of 259-169. No doubt she will try again, using normal, majority-vote procedures.

Bills Introduced to Withdraw U.S. Forces from Iraq, Afghanistan On Jan. 7 Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), with no co-sponsors, introduced H.R. 232, the “Military Success in Iraq and Diplomatic Surge for National and Political Reconciliation Act.” It would “recognize the extraordinary performance of the Armed Forces in achieving the military objectives in Iraq,” and would repeal the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq” resolution of 2002 (P.L. 1907-243). It also would provide that “not later than Oct. 1, 2011, or 90 days after the enactment of this act, whichever shall occur first, all units and members of the Armed Forces deployed in Iraq and all security forces under contract or subcontract with the U.S. government and working in Iraq shall be withdrawn from Iraq,” with some exceptions. Finally, it states that U.S. policy shall be to “pursue regional and international initiatives and steps to assist the government of Iraq to achieve certain security, political, and economic milestones,” and it gives two pages of presidential actions to implement that policy.

Regarding Afghanistan, on Jan. 25 Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), with four co-sponsors, introduced S. 186. It would require the U.S. to begin the phased redeployment of U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan not later than July 1, 2011. It would also require the president to submit a plan for the phased redeployment not later than July 31, 2011, including an end date for the completion of the redeployment.

New Congress, New Jerusalem Resolution No new Congress would be complete without a new Jerusalem resolution. Accordingly, on Jan. 5, the first day of the 112th Congress, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) introduced H.Con.Res. 5 “Supporting the Reunification of Jerusalem.” After 12 “whereas” clauses, some questionable, its six “resolved” clauses include one calling “upon the president and the secretary of state to repeatedly affirm publicly, as a matter of U.S. policy that Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of the State of Israel”; one urging “the president to discontinue the waiver contained in the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 (P.L. 10445), immediately implement the provisions of that Act, and begin the process of relocating the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem,” and one reaffirming “Israel’s right to take necessary steps to prevent any future division of Jerusalem.” ❑ 36

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Yaser al Saghrji and Nawara Chakaki: Champions of Syrian Culture SpecialReport

PHOTO JANIS JIBRIN

By Janis Jibrin

Yaser and Nawara seated on a Syrian kilim in Yana Kilims. f you’re in Syria, and a carpet enthusiast,

Ior have good rug store intelligence on the

ground, you’re bound to wind up at Yana Kilims, behind the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus’ Old City. As you carefully walk down the three steep steps leading into the small and inviting space, odds are you’ll run into someone from the American Embassy or a diplomat from Japan, Europe, South America or elsewhere. “It couldn’t have been more than a month after we arrived that we heard that there’s this carpet store run by a guy named Yaser al Saghrji, who’s a real scholar, who can tell you about the history of your carpet in very fluent and nuanced English. The entire diplomatic corps shops there,” recalls Ann Roebuck, whose husband, Bill, was political counselor at the American Embassy in Damascus from June 2004 to July 2007.

Exit Yana Kilims, hang a right, and it’s just a short walk up Qaimariyeh Street to Noon Gallery, owned by Yaser’s wife, Nawara Chakaki. Stylish and fun, it sells some Central Asian textiles, paper goods Janis Jibrin is a free-lance nutrition and health writer. She lived in the Middle East during her teenage years and travels there periodically.

38

from Egypt, and many products made in Syria.

On the surface, these are just two among the legions of tourist shops in Damascus’ Old City. But dig a little and it’s soon clear that what’s taking place both inside and outside the shops is nothing short of a two-person movement to preserve Syrian cultural heritage. Among other accomplishments, Yaser and Nawara have singlehandedly created an appreciation—and a market—for a textile that wasn’t on anyone’s radar: Syrian kilims.

Yaser comes by the carpet trade naturally: he was just eight years old when he began working in his uncle’s Damascus carpet shop (a favorite haunt of the storied collector William Eagleton, U.S. ambassador to Damascus in the mid-1980s). “We sold carpets from Iran, Turkey, Uzbekistan and many other countries,” he said. “Also hanging around were kilims—flat weaves used as rugs, blankets and for other purposes—made in Syria. But they were not valued, in fact they were considered so minor that we gave them away for free— we used them to wrap the expensive Persian carpets sold to customers.”

How he grew up to become the world’s expert on these once-ignored Syrian kilTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ims, invited to lecture at museums and textile associations as far away as Washington, DC and Los Angeles, has something to do with Yaser’s good eye—he saw the beauty in the kilims’ lively, rich colors and unique patterns. Made of wool or goat hair, usually with one or more panels sewn together, many have trinkets, feathers, even scraps of a wedding dress or human hair woven in.

He was also drawn in by the stories behind the kilims. “A mother and son came to the store to sell me a kilim made of two panels, with one clearly bigger and more finely woven than the other,” Yaser recounts. “The mother explained that she wove the rougher, smaller panel and her mother-in-law created the finer one. Her grown-up son, who was drinking tea with us, put down his cup and said to her, ‘Fifteen years after my grandmother’s death and six years after my father’s you’re still afraid to tell the real story, that they forced you to take blame for the panel you didn’t create?’ The mother covered her face and left the store crying.”

And of a kilim in his private collection Yaser says, “It’s impeccably woven with one glaring imperfection: a coarsely sewn repair. It looked like someone without any skill had clumsily tried to repair it. But it turned out the weaver herself marred the kilim explaining, ‘Only Allah can create perfection. It would be blasphemous for me to do so.’”

But the most irresistible hook was the scholarly challenge: Yaser is much more an intellectual (holding a degree in English literature from Damascus University) than a merchant. And Syrian kilims were completely absent from the textile literature.

Even Ambassador Eagleton’s An Introduction to Kurdish Rugs and Other Weavings, published in 1988 and still considered a classic, made no mention of Syrian kilims.

Yaser’s research took him to Afreen, a Kurdish region in the north of Syria, from where most of the kilims come. There he spent six months following word-of-mouth leads to track down weavers and the kilims they made. He came home with a stash of beautiful kilims and notebooks describing their uses, dyes, patterns and symbols.

“Families often lived five, six, eight or APRIL 2011

more to a one-room house,” he explained.

“The kilims were used to separate off sections of the home—for instance, wedding screens gave newlyweds some measure of privacy.” Others were used as bed covers in the winter, baby cradle blankets, prayer rugs, or turned into saddle bags for animals.

But to his disappointment, Yaser found only a handful of elderly women weavers left, and not one person from a younger generation who knew the skill. The last known Syrian kilims were made in the 1950s, so the art form, which may have dated back thousands of years in Syria (no one knows), is dead.

Yaser figured the only hope of reviving kilim-making was to get Syrians and the international community interested. A few years after the Afreen excursion he met Nawara, a Syrian-American who had left the U.S. to reconnect with Syria and make a life there. She was smitten by the kilims (and by Yaser, whom she married two years later). Using her social connections and a lot of perseverance—things like this aren’t done easily in Syria—in 2006 she and Yaser put on an exhibit of the kilims in the gorgeous As’ad Pasha al-Azem khan, in the old city’s spice souq. (“Khans” are buildings dating back to the mid-1700s, nestled among the old city’s covered souqs, that were used by merchants and traders to conduct business.)

It did the trick. “Syrians left the exhibit feeling so proud, foreigners were wowed by the kilims and the fantastic exhibit space, and dealers were able to raise their prices to a level more commensurate with the value,” says Yaser. Currently, the kilims, which range in size from 5 x 8 feet to 8 x 15 feet, are priced at $300 to $2,500. As we go to press, Yana Kilims has 32 in stock, and Nawara and Yaser have the largest private collection—163 kilims—not for sale.

And Yaser’s Alwan Afreen organization is working to try to revive their production.

A book on the kilims, co-authored by the couple, is currently in the works.

Meanwhile, Nawara is bent on preserving and documenting other Syrian crafts at risk of extinction; for instance, she’s collecting old Syrian patchwork bed spreads, curtains and pillow covers. “And I’ve partnered with Syrian artists to design new items for my shop,” she says. “For instance, we’re applying the traditional Ajami technique of intricate hand painting and lacquering in new way: Brightly painted wooden hands of Fatima with mirrors, mini wooden stools, and picture frames.” Her hip brooches and belts are made from colored keffiyeh fabric (the APRIL 2011

PHOTO JANIS JIBRIN

jibrin_syria_38-39_Special Report 3/2/11 9:42 PM Page 39

Inside Noon Gallery, a turnstile holds stationery designed by Nawara and made in Syria, and painted hands of Fatima hang in the window. The gallery also offers notebooks made in Egypt (on shelves) and felt jewelry from Uzbekistan (hanging on wall). head covering famously worn by Yasser Arafat and now a world-wide fashion trend). High-end greeting cards and notepads of her design are printed in Syria and decorated with Syrian symbols like the clogs, tarboosh (fez hat), and lanterns, with messages like “Mabrook” (congratulations), “Salamat” (welcome/peace) and “Shukran” (thank-you).

Amazingly, the couple has taken on yet another cultural cause: They’re restoring a traditional Damascus home. Located catty corner to Yana Kilims, it’s one of the old Damascene homes with a central courtyard, complete with a fountain. And it’s rarer than the kilims, according to Nasser Rabbat, Ph.D., Aga Khan professor of Islamic architecture and director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. “The existing old Damascene homes go back to the early to mid18th century. The French destroyed about a third of them while quelling the 1925 revolt, hence we have a whole section called al-hariqa (the fire) caused by French bombing. Uncontrolled real estate development, greed, and ignorance in the 1940s to 1990 destroyed about another third. Neglect and lack of maintenance also deTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

stroyed a certain percentage. The stock today is fewer than 80 houses of middle to large size,” he explains.

Wandering through the Old City streets, it’s a treat to look into some of the restored old homes, many converted to restaurants or boutique hotels. “While it’s nice that these homes are being preserved, unfortunately many are not using original materials and have changed the design and layout of the home to maximize space, which takes away from the charm,” laments Nawara. And while Syrian laws, informed by UNESCO guidelines, are in place to protect these homes, Nawara says that no organization is regulating the renovations.

Stepping cautiously through the dusty renovation of their future home, and up three flights to the roof terrace, Nawara proudly shows off the spectacular view of the Ummayad mosque and the sprawl of city. “This house was in pretty bad shape,” she says, “but was intact enough that we could see the original design and layout.

We’ve had no problem getting the right stone, tiles and other materials to do a historically accurate restoration. Now, if only we could convince renovators of the remaining homes to do the same,” she sighs. ❑ 39

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Turkish Ambassador Addresses Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, Iran, Other Regional Issues SpecialReport

By Pat McDonnell Twair

STAFF PHOTO SAMIR TWAIR

believed to have been robust that fell in 18 days. The Egyptian people deserve a free market economy and a democracy shaped by its own citizens. Turkey will stand by Egypt,” he declared.

The ambassador views his task as one of asking his countrymen to look at the similarities they share with the U.S. which, he says, outweigh their differences.

After the floor was opened to questions, it became clear by the tone of the well-rehearsed queries that the finesse of the veteran diplomat was to be tested.

“What about women’s rights in Turkey?” asked a well-dressed matron.

“Our women are sophisticated and elegant. Working rights were established in Turkey before the U.S.,” he replied.

In reply to a query about the relationship between Israel and Turkey, Tan stated, Turkey’s Ambassador to the U.S. Namik Tan. “Israel is our friend, this matamik Tan was appointed as Turkey’s ters profoundly. There have been good reambassador to the U.S. in February lationships between Turks and Jews for 2010 and a year later he proved his diplo- 517 years—120,000 Jews live in Turkey. matic skills when he adroitly answered dif- We were the second nation after the U.S. to ficult and sometimes hostile questions at a recognize the state of Israel.”

Without specifically mentioning Israel’s Feb. 16 dinner meeting of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in Century City’s In- May 31, 2010 attack in which its commandoes boarded the Turkish ship Mavi Martercontinental Hotel.

Initially discoursing on relations be- mara, killed nine Turks, wounded many tween the U.S. and Turkey, the envoy said more and forced the vessel and more than he’s disappointed when Washington ques- 400 passengers into the Israeli port of Ashtions him about the shift in Turkey’s polit- dod, Tan went on to say: “Our Israeli ical axis. “Turkey is not going anywhere” friends made a mistake. I’m pretty sure they’ll realize this. Just make an apology. he stated.

Stressing that Turkey is the world’s 16th In the early 1990s during a joint NATO exlargest economy, Tan said his nation is sit- ercise, the U.S. accidentally fired two misuated in one of the most unpredictable re- siles onto a Turkish frigate resulting in 10 Turkish deaths. The U.S. apologized. The gions of the world.

“We were one of the first to feel the in- alternative [to an Israeli apology] is they’ll tensity of the protests in Egypt, a regime lose, we’ll lose and the U.S. will lose.”

When asked about protocols with ArPat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer menia, Tan replied: “I’m very positive about this, I think it will help with reconbased in Los Angeles.

N

40

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ciliation. I’ve invested time in this process.”

An audience member identifying himself with a Greek organization asked if the presence of Turkish occupying forces on Cyprus for the past 35 years was holding up Turkey’s entry into the European Union.

Tan responded by citing a plan presented by the U.N. which the Turkish Cypriots accepted and the Greek Cypriots rejected. “Let’s have the union like the U.N. proposed,” he said. “We want the Cyprus problem behind us.”

A longer response was required to a question dealing with Turkey’s position on a nuclear Iran.

Harking back to the time when Mohamed ElBaradei headed the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tan recalled that ElBaradei asked for Turkey’s assistance to persuade Iran to come to the negotiating table. Once Ankara was assured by Washington that it was in compliance with this request, Turkey began exchanging messages with the Iranians.

“We went to Iran—and don’t forget, it was the Persians who invented the game of chess—it took two 18-hour days to get their cooperation,” he explained. “We don’t want Iranian nuclear weapons in our neighborhood. Take a moment to imagine our neighborhood—Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, the Caucasus. We’re in the center of complex problems.”

Another question dealt with Kurdish aspirations for statehood and whether Turkey would be willing to cede some of its southeastern territory for such a Kurdish nation.

Noting that Kurds hold seats in Turkey’s parliament, Tan opined that if Kurds have their rights and freedoms, it would be unlikely they’d fight for other entities.

“When will Turkey apologize to the Armenians?” asked another audience member.

“I can tell you we have different memories and narratives,” he replied, adding that historians and scholars from both sides should get together and reach a just and accurate conclusion. “We must eduAPRIL 2011

twair_40-41_Special Report 3/3/11 2:28 PM Page 41

cate future generations not to hate. Create a just memory. Don’t try to legislate history.

It is a disservice to our children.”

The final question came from a woman who asked the ambassador to respond to a statement made by Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul the previous day on a trip to Tehran, that he agreed to a road map with Iran on its nuclear program.

Tan congratulated his questioner for being more informed of President Gul’s travel to Iran than he was. “Assuming this is true, Iran has the right to develop peaceful nuclear energy,” he said. “Any country has the full right to have nuclear energy, but not to develop nuclear weapons. We are not siding with Iran—we are side-byside with Iran.” ❑

Gaza on the Ground…

Continued from page 26

Taxi driver Medhat Swaliem, 33, recalled the difficult year of 2008, when a liter of diesel fuel cost 20 shekels ($5.47— equal to $21 per gallon) and some of his fellow drivers had to resort to using falafel cooking oil to run their cars. Prior to the January 25 Revolution, a liter of smuggled Egyptian diesel was 1.8 Israeli shekels (40 cents), compared to 6.5 shekels ($1.75) for a liter of diesel from Israel. At one point, Swaliem had enough gas in his taxi to last perhaps two more days.

As the taxi driver shook his head in frustration, he was interrupted by one of his passengers, who pointed out that “even cooking fuel is no longer available. If this shortage continues, we will not be able to cook for our children at all.”

In Gaza, a shortage of cooking fuel coming from Israel is serious for other reasons as well. During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military destroyed much of Gaza’s infrastructure, affecting water and sewage treatment especially hard. As a result, households that can afford to, boil their water before drinking. Without cooking fuel, that is a precaution they cannot take.

Even before the Egyptian demonstrations erupted, electricity shortages had become the norm in Gaza, with the electric company rationing among Gaza’s various districts the few hours of power available.

At home, Swaliem estimated, he had seven liters of fuel for his generator. After that, he predicted, “We will sleep in the cold darkness and my children will read by candle light— if we are lucky enough to have any candles left.”

Meanwhile, Gazans continue to navigate APRIL 2011

from crisis to crisis. They wonder if their lives will become worse if Mubarak is succeeded by a leader who panders to Israel.

The best case scenario, of course, would be a government in Cairo that demands Israel lift its siege along Gaza’s border with Egypt and allow basic necessities into Gaza through normal crossing points. Undoubtedly, the last thing the majority of Gazans want is for Israel to reinvade the Gaza Strip and occupy the Egypt-Gaza border at Rafah. “Then our tunnel economy would collapse,” sighed Abu Abdelrahman, “and we would all die.”

For the most part, however, people in Gaza rarely talk about the future. Instead they simply say “Inshallah” (God willing) and hope that all will go well and their families will be provided for. “The Israeli occupation means we have to live from one meal to the next,” explained journalist Fathi Sabbah. “You cannot think of anything else but how to survive each day.” ❑

Iraq…

Continued from page 13

leading human rights activist. “The police and army in Baghdad, Mosul and Anbar were targeting reporters who were trying to film the protests or cover them properly.”

Mr. al Maliki’s office has said it would investigate allegations of improper use of force. But it insists that any abuses were an overreaction by a handful of security personnel, not a matter of policy.

Officials have also long brushed off allegations that Iraqi journalists receive government bribes. They say gifts of land and cheap loans are designed to support poorly paid reporters who would otherwise have to find another profession, not to buy their silence or complicity.

Mr. Shalal dismissed such assurances.

“It was not an accident. It was all quite deliberate. A decision was taken at the highest level about how to handle this.”

In Mosul, a traditional center of opposition to the central authority, protesters have accused the government of sending out hit squads, armed with silenced pistols, to sow chaos among the demonstrators.

Omar Majid, a blogger from Mosul, said: “The emergency security forces arrested and beat tens of activists, and gangs working for the government, dressed in civilian clothes, shot and injured people here during the Friday protest, to spread fear. Now these gangs are after us and anyone conTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

nected with the movement. They are trying to stop us.”

Shaker Kitab, an MP from Iraqiyya, said there were indications the government was acting illegally to suppress demonstrations.

“It was a very modern and peaceful protest, in accordance with people’s constitutional rights, I don’t understand why some of the security forces were violent in their response. This must stop. People are allowed to campaign peacefully for their rights.” ❑

Pakistan…

Continued from page 29

According to Sethi, it is important for the U.S. to handle this case with care, as it will prove to be a yardstick of how other Davises, if caught in a similar jam, are to be handled.

Many, like Naeem Sadiq, a Karachibased businessman and a peace advocate, believe Davis was “responsible for coordinating some critical operations relating to espionage and militancy,” and thus the U.S. government must be worried about information leaking out.

Sadiq also believes the “leadership” had a “deep role” to play in this “mischief.”

These possibilities are consistent with what the U.S. has been doing in countries like Iraq prior to “direct militancy,” reflects Sadiq. He hopes “all such people are identified and sent back.”

The Davis case has become a flashpoint for anti-U.S. sentiment. The tactics the U.S. employed to secure his release have made the struggling democracy and the ruling Pakistan People’s Party more unsure where to run to for succor.

“Pakistanis feel used, and this may prove to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Yasmeen Ali, who teaches law at Beaconhouse University in Lahore and runs a blog called Pakpotpourri.

“The popular uproar on this issue is good for many reasons,” says lawyer Syed Shahzad Akbar. Last December, Akbar helped serve notice to the CIA on behalf of some tribal people whose families were killed by the drone attacks.

“We need to handle our problems ourselves; we cannot have another country’s spies roaming free here, and especially no private contractors. The popular sentiments are good, as the government can tell the U.S. that they cannot do what it wishes because the people would not allow it,” said Akbar. ❑ 41

gee_42-43_Islam and the Near East in the Far East 3/3/11 1:19 PM Page 42

Egyptian Popular Revolt Unsettles Asia’s Old Guard

AFP PHOTO/SAEED KHAN

By John Gee

Islam and the Near East in theFar East

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife, Rosmah Mansor (r), receive Malaysian nationals at the VIP terminal in Kuala Lumpur, Feb. 7, 2011. More than 1,000 nationals, mostly students, flew back home during the pro-democracy protests in Egypt. gypt’s popular revolt has had an im-

Epact far beyond the Middle East, and

perhaps nowhere more than in East and Southeast Asia. While governments that owed their status to relatively free elections or popular uprisings took the news in their stride, others were disturbed at the sight of citizens taking to the streets and demanding change. Generally, it was not the fate of a friendly regime that concerned them, but the example it might set for their own citizens.

Most unsettled was the Chinese government, which in 1989 had its own experience of citizens taking over the central John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore, and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.

42

square of the capital city and demanding democracy. Foreign news Web sites reporting on the Egyptian events were disabled and Internet access to Egypt news was obstructed. Internet activists found ways around Beijing’s censorship, however. As Oiwan Lam reported in Global Voices Advocacy on Jan. 30, “even though the term ‘Egypt’ is blocked from keyword search, info-activists can always create a separate user account to spread the information.” She cited the example of an account created by an overseas Chinese student that provided access to a livecast to those searching under the heading of “Eygpt.”

Coverage in the official press was drawn heavily from official Xinhua news agency reports and was kept on the back pages of THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

newspapers. Popular demands for democratic changes and protests against corruption were ignored, and the Chinese public was not provided with information that could help it make reasonable sense of the issues behind the revolt or the forces involved. A running theme was the disorder and “chaos” that was occurring in Egypt.

Western countries were criticized for urging democracy on states that had not laid the foundational basis for it. On Jan. 28, a spokesperson of China’s Foreign Ministry said that the Chinese government would continue to support the Egyptian government in “maintaining social stability” and oppose any foreign intervention in Egypt.

A tight lid also was kept on news from Egypt in Burma (now officially Myanmar) by a regime dominated by an aging miliAPRIL 2011

tary clique. By contrast, Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s leading advocate of democracy, said during a question-and-answer session on BBC World Service radio, “I would want you to know that we’re all with you—that people all over the world who want freedom somehow or other feel connected to other people who are struggling for freedom.”

Malaysia has strong ties with Egypt. At the beginning of the crisis, there were 14,000 Malaysians in Egypt, 11,000 of whom were students. Of those, more than 6,000 were engaged in religious studies and nearly all the rest were studying medicine. Most were evacuated. Because of the student program, tens of thousands of Malaysians are very familiar with conditions in Egypt, thus ensuring that the public was relatively well informed about the background to the revolt. There was vigorous discussion of the events in Egypt on the Internet, with participants strongly supportive of the uprising. Among them was Marina Mahathir, daughter of former Premier Mahathir Mohamad. After news came through of Mubarak’s final attempt to hold onto office, she tweeted, “Damn! Is Mubarak extra-delusional or what? Silly fool! Don’t give up, Egypt!”

Malaysia’s government was generally tight-lipped throughout the Egyptian protests. Prime Minister Najib Razak affirmed that it was the right of the Egyptian people to decide their own future, including choosing their own leaders. Commenting on the protests, however, he said that the government “would not allow anything similar to happen here.” The opposition response was mixed, with the strongest support for the anti-Mubarak opposition coming from the Islamist party, PAS. Indonesians were sympathetic to the revolt, but this was expressed in conversation and online discussion; solidarity rallies were small. There were 6,100 Indonesian students and workers in Egypt when the revolt broke out. The government evacuated more than 2,000 of them, mostly women and childen. It did not seem concerned about possible negative consequences for Indonesia. After all, the country overthrew its own dictator through a revolt as recently as 1998, and has since changed governments through elections.

For similar reasons, neither the governments nor the public seemed perturbed in Thailand or the Philippines, where some commentators saw the Egyptian revolt as similar to the movement that overthrew the notoriously corrupt regime of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.

APRIL 2011

PHOTO DOREEN SIOW

gee_42-43_Islam and the Near East in the Far East 3/3/11 1:19 PM Page 43

Singapore’s Arab Street.

In Japan and South Korea, by contrast, official responses were cautious, but media coverage was extensive and commentaries discussed issues such as the potential impact of the upheaval in Egypt on energy supplies and other concerns well chewed over in Western democracies. The Singapore media carried ongoing reports and commentaries without a strong editorial emphasis, though a certain unease at the sight of citizens protesting in defiance of the authorities came through. It was only two weeks after the protests began that Foreign Minister George Yeo first commented publicly on the events by expressing hopes for a peaceful transition.

By and large, governments and the public were interested in the possible impact of the Egyptian uprising on the global economy—and hence, upon them. There were some concerns about the possibility of a Muslim Brotherhood-led regime taking power. A more keenly interested, largely youthful minority followed news of the protests with sympathy. The region was largely spared the agonizing and lecturing of those who treated the aspirations of 85 million Egyptians as a side issue to the preservation of Israel’s “security.”

You’ve Heard of “The Arab Street”— Well, Here It Is! Ever get irritated about commentators who use the term ‘The Arab Street’? It is employed in contexts where the commentator wants to juxtapose what goes on in govTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ernment and elite circles with attitudes and responses at the mass level, generally in a context where democratic norms are weak or non-existent. But those kind of differences exist elsewhere as well, so why don’t we hear commentators saying, “But no one knows how the new policy will be received on the Burmese street”...”What will be the response of the Venezuelan street?” or “This may not be popular on the Chinese street.”?

This usage suggests there is something unusual about power and social position in the Arab world. It takes politics at a popular level out of the broader context of socio-economic interaction, and detracts from the sense of political life taking place (however cautiously) in a variety of contexts. Usually this sort of thing is a matter of lazy journalism rather than ill-intent, but it seems like yet another case where Arabs are treated in a way that other nationalities are not. Issues can seem quite complicated and off-putting, and the temptation to simplify radically in commentary can be hard to resist—but if the better parts of the media do take seriously the job of informing the public, then it is necessary to put more effort into clear analysis and not be satisfied with an easy “one size fits all” approach to political life in Arab states.

The photograph above is from Arab Street in Singapore, in the heart of the area where the Arab migrant community first settled. ❑ 43

pasquini_44-45_Northern California Chronicle 3/2/11 5:01 PM Page 44

Raging Grannies Protest Role of Spyware Company in Egypt’s Ruthless Repression

Northern California Chronicle

By Elaine Pasquini

mediately detect, analyze, mitigate and target any unwanted, unwarranted or malicious traffic.

STAFF PHOTO E. PASQUINI

Bay Area Rallies in Solidarity With Demonstrating Egyptians

Raging Grannies protest outside the Sunnyvale, CA headquarters of the spyware company Narus. ome 25 members the Raging Grannies and the San Jose Peace and Justice Center protested Feb. 2 outside the Sunnyvale, CA headquarters of Narus, the Boeingowned company that peace activists condemn for enabling the government of President Hosni Mubarak to track down and punish Egyptian journalists and bloggers.

Best known for creating NarusInsight, a supercomputer system allegedly used by the National Security Agency for the real-time surveillance and monitoring of public and corporate Internet activities, Narus has provided Egypt Telecom with deep packet inspection (DPI) equipment for the same privacy invading purposes. Founded in 1997 by Israeli security experts, the spyware company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing Company in 2010.

“We’re here to protest and publicize the

44

A young boy (above) is among the thousands of human rights supporters who rallied in San Francisco in support of Egyptian protesters.

STAFF PHOTO E. PASQUINI

Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

Sof

During the historic weeks of unprecedented protests throughout Egypt, more than 3,000 human rights supporters— many from the Bay Area’s Egyptian community—rallied in San Francisco in solidarity with their counterparts in Egypt.

Holding signs reading “Egypt Wants Mubarak Out,” “Down With Mubarak,” and “Free Egypt,” the boisterous group drew attention from passing motorists and pedestrians during the evening rush hour on Jan. 26.

“The people of Egypt have shown they are ready to struggle and we have to show we are ready to struggle,” said Imam Zaid Shakir, co-founder of Berkeley’s Zaytuna College, during a Jan. 29 rally in United Nations Plaza. “And we have to show we are not going to support dictatorships that deprive the people of the Middle East of a democracy. Democracy is for everyone.”

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

APRIL 2011

fact that an American company is selling Internet technology, known as deep packet inspection, to despotic regimes, including the Egyptian government,” retired schoolteacher Gail Sredanovic told the Washington Report. “We’re ashamed that the parent company, Boeing—and the local company, Narus—is involved.”

Narus considers itself “the global leader in real-time traffic intelligence for the protection and management of large IP networks,” according to its Web site, which also boasts that “…service providers, governments and large enterprises around the world can im-

pasquini_44-45_Northern California Chronicle 3/2/11 5:01 PM Page 45

Egyptian Americans at the large Feb. 5 rally disagreed with media reports that “Islamist extremists” might fill the void if President Mubarak steps down. “The average Egyptian—from Egypt’s growing middle class—wants a normal life, an opportunity to earn a living, and a free and open government,” Ayman, a San Francisco resident of Egyptian heritage, told the Washington Report. “We have many educated, qualified people to be in the government.”

While concerned about their families in Egypt, Bay Area residents, many with their children in tow, were thrilled that Mubarak’s reign would—they hoped—be coming to an end.

The Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California opened the Bay Area’s first gallery to showcase works by Muslim artists at its Oakland center on Jan. 7. The inaugural reception featured paintings by Rubina Kazi, the first artist to be featured in the three-part exhibition, “Women and the Word: Women Artists and Islamic Calligraphy.” A computer and software engineer by profession, Kazi’s “Praise and Peace” series of paintings constituted her artistic debut.

Artistically inclined since childhood, the India-born mother of two began inten-

Reem Alalusi, Sam Hussain Wedding Reem Alalusi and Sam Hussain celebrated their wedding with family, friends and colleagues at an elegant Jan. 22 reception in San Francisco’s City Hall.

Following a welcoming fete on the second floor balcony, guests gathered in the beautifully appointed rotunda for the baraat (groom’s arrival), followed by the zaffa (bride’s arrival). Escorted by drummers and accompanied by his parents, Ashfaq and Razia Nishat Hussain, and other

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

Calling for the closure of the U.S.-run prison at Guantánamo Bay and an end to torture and other inhumane practices, human rights activists dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods gathered inside San Francisco’s federal courthouse on Jan. 11. “President Obama has continued indefinite detention, blocking accountability for torture both by refusing to conduct independent investigations and by attempting to prevent the courts from reviewing lawsuits brought by formerly detained men,” World Can’t Wait member Stephanie Tang told the small crowd. A lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. by plaintiffs Binyam Mohamed, Abou Elkassim Britel, Ahmed Agiza, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah and Bisher al-Rawi is one case blocked by the Bush and Obama administrations from proceeding to justice. In December the plaintiffs petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review their case against the Boeing-owned entity (see Nov. 2010 Washington Report, p. 52).

STAFF PHOTOS PHIL PASQUINI

Activists Call for Closing of Guantánamo Prison

ABOVE (l-r): Diana Alalusi, Razia Nishat Hussain, Reem Alalusi, Sam Hussain, Ashfaq Hussain, and Dr. Hesham Alalusi. INSET: The bride’s hennaed hands.

sively pursuing her painting career after viewing an exhibition at Dubai’s Islamic art center. “The exhibit really inspired me, along with my trip to Mecca, where I performed umrah,” she told her guests. “That experience brought me closer to God, so I decided to use my painting as a medium to Rubina Kazi Art Exhibit express my spirituality.”

Kazi’s use of geometric shapes and rich harmony of color have a visual appeal—beyond their written message—even to those who don’t read Arabic.

Rabea Chaudhry, the second artist in the debut show, exhibits Feb. 4 through March 1, and Salma Arastu, the third artist, will s h ow h e r wo rk s Standing in front of her artwork, with her daughter, Zara, at her March 4 through 29. side, Rubina Kazi speaks to guests at her art exhibition at the Is- For more info visit (<www.iccnc.org>). lamic Cultural Center of Northern California.

APRIL 2011

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

family members, the groom proceeded down the grand staircase to the flowerstrewn dais. Also accompanied by her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Hesham Alalusi, and family members, the bride—a dazzling vision in a jewel-encrusted red silk Pakistani gown—descended the marble stairs to join her husband.

Dr. Alalusi welcomed the guests and introduced renowned master of Arabic calligraphy Haji Noor Deen, from Zhen Zhou, China, who, on the previous day, had conducted the nikah (religious ceremony).

Aswat, the Bay Area’s classical Arabic music ensemble, performed throughout the evening event.

Born and raised in San Francisco with roots in Iraq, the bride is an independent art curator working with fine art galleries around the world (see April 2009 Washington Report, p. 34). The groom—raised in Texas, of Pakistani descent and fluent in five languages—is a government consultant in Washington, DC, where the couple will make their home. ❑ 45

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“Pessoptimistic” Views of Israel/Palestine Offered by Richard Falk, Jeff Halper

By Pat and Samir Twair

STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR

proved there is no peace process. The Palestine Authority does not collaborate with Israel, Halper opined, but it is so weak, it will soon collapse.

“Even if Marwan Barghouti were to be released from prison,” he continued, “he’d refuse to be a collaborator with Israel, Israel would never deal with Hamas. The Israeli public has been inculcated for the past 100 years with Dr. Richard Falk (l) and ICAHD founder Jeff Halper. the idea the Arabs are gypt is historical proof that the im- a permanent enemy—hence, there’s no possible can happen,” stated scholar partner for peace.”

The Israeli activist foresees Prime MinisRichard Falk, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Terri- ter Binyamin Netanyahu moving to waretories, at a Feb. 5 public forum also featur- house the Palestinians behind Israel’s illeing the views of American-born anthropol- gal apartheid wall. “Israel says they [Palesogist Jeff Halper. Their views as expressed tinians] are bad people,” Halper explained, at the event in the Iman Cultural Center— “lock them up and let the international part of a monthly “Progressive Conversa- community feed them.”

Falk honed in on Israel’s refusal to admit tion” series co-sponsored by the Levantine Cultural Center and L.A. Jews for Peace— that its recent actions are regarded as crimcould be described as “pessoptimistic,” a inal in the eyes of international law. He word coined by the Palestinian writer and cited these as its disproportionate 2006 war of revenge on Lebanese neighborhoods in politician Emile Habiby.

Halper, who founded the Israeli Commit- south Beirut, its all-out land, sea and air astee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), sault on Gaza in the winter of 2008-09, and discussed his article entitled “Palestine its May 31, 2010 attack on the Turkish aid 2011,” in which he predicts this will be a ship that killed nine Turkish civilians.

“The historic drift in the region has decisive year for the Middle East.

“Palestine is among the top political issues been adverse to Israel since the Iran Revoargued globally,” Halper stressed. “Govern- lution of 1979,” the Princeton University ments must be prodded by the people to professor stated. “Turkey has emerged as act,” he continued, citing how Boycott, Di- the most responsible actor in the Middle vestment, Sanction (BDS) movements in Eu- East—it could take the lead in making the rope prompted Norway to divest its pension area a nuclear-free zone.”

Stating he is pessimistic over Israel’s funds from Israel and the Church of England stance that it doesn’t need to make peace, to divest funds from Caterpillar.

“Strategies are being developed around or make it only on its own terms, Falk conthe world and, sooner or later, the U.S. will cluded that so long as Palestinians conbe left in the dust,” he warned, adding that tinue to bargain, instead of insisting on the Palestine Papers exposed by Al Jazeera their rights, there can be no peace process.

“No matter what the Palestinians offered, Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journal- Israel wasn’t interested,” he noted. Falk predicted Israel would speed up its annexists based in Los Angeles.

Southern California Chronicle ation policy and intensify its belligerent attitude toward neighboring countries.

Egypt was brought up during the question-and-answer period. Halper thought it difficult to envision a new government that would continue to seal Gaza. In Falk’s opinion, it is more likely the new Egypt will eschew the Iran model in preference to the Turkey model.

When asked if he tries to show Israelis his efforts to rebuild Palestinians homes systematically demolished by the Jewish state, he replied that Israelis simply don’t care. “The implications of what I’m saying might dash their idealized Leon Uris-esque visions of Israel. The thinking goes that if Jews drove the Palestinians out in 1948, the whole moral basis of Israel is shattered.”

Gaza Doctor Speaks Out

“E

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THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish.

The audience was transfixed Jan. 12 in the historic Los Angeles Central Library as it hung onto every word of Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, author of I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey (available from the AET Book Club).

In his book the Palestinian gynecologist relates how he witnessed an Israeli tank lob two shells into his home on Jan. 16, 2009, killing his two daughters and a niece and APRIL 2011

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STAFF PHOTOS S. TWAIR

noia about U.S., British and Iswounding another daughter and raeli agents actively conspiring to his son. Instantaneously, the trauundermine the Tehran governmatized physician phoned Israeli ment stems from the fact that Channel 10 anchorman Schlomi Iran is surrounded by U.S. miliEldar and in Hebrew screamed on tary installations, with hundreds Israeli airwaves for the army to of Israeli nuclear missiles pointed stop targeting his home. at every population center in the “I know who shelled my nation. “Iranians are very aware home,” he told his L.A. audience. the Mossad is spying inside the “The IDF tried to justify its accounty,” he stated. tions with lies or by confusing the “What’s more,” Majd added, public. At first it claimed there “what’s the big deal when India were snipers on the roof. If that and Pakistan are nuclear powers?” was true, why didn’t they aim at Asked during the questionthe roof? The next day it falsely and-answer period about the tenclaimed there were armed people sions between Sunnis and Shi’i, in my home. The third day, the Aslan compared the difalibi was it was Kassam ference between Persian rockets that hit my and Arab beliefs to that house, not IDF shells.” between Protestant and Since Israel never apolCatholic. The animosity ogized or offered comflares up in the geo-politpensation for the deliberical realm, he said, in terate shelling of his home, ritorial claims in the Gulf.

Abuelaish has filed a lawAt the conclusion of suit against Israel. He has their remarks, the two autaken his surviving chilthors signed copies of dren to Canada, where he their latest books: Majd’s is an associate professor The Ayatollahs’ Democof medicine at the Uniracy and Azlan’s antholversity of Toronto. ogy of modern writing A man who has overfrom the Middle East, come obstacles from his Tablet and Pen (available disadvantaged birth in from the AET Book Club).

Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp to earning medical degrees in Egypt, Abue- TOP: Reza Aslan (l) and Hooman Majd. ABOVE: A protester’s sign at Los An- Anti-Mubarak Protests in L.A. laish says he’s learned geles Consulate says it all. nothing is impossible— Even though the EgyptWhen asked if he seeks revenge, Abue- ian Consulate only moved from San Franexcept bringing his daughters back to life.

He is the oldest of eight children who laish replied, “I’m focused on how to save cisco to Los Angeles this past summer, lived with their parents in a one-room lives. Revenge from who? Will it return my since the Egyptian revolution began Jan. shelter lacking electricity or running daughters?”

25 its 4929 Wilshire Blvd. address has bewater. Even though he was afflicted with come as familiar a protest site to peace adrheumatic arthritis, from the age of 7, he Iran in Focus vocates as the 6880 Wilshire Blvd. headrose at 3 a.m. for his job of distributing Iranian-American authors Hooman Majd quarters of the L.A. Israeli Consulate. milk to refugee families. Later, he would and Reza Aslan shared the podium Jan. 11 On three different occasions, crowds asdeliver water from tanker trucks. at the Hammer Museum in Westwood as sembled outside the Egyptian Consulate to “My mother was a hero,” he recalled. they discussed their perspectives on poli- voice their solidarity with the people of “She insisted I study all my lessons. Ink tics and culture in Iran.

Egypt who were risking their lives to dewas my weapon—not a rock—and I got an Aslan, who teaches creative writing at mand democracy. Signs read “Egyptian education.” the University of California, Riverside, Repression, Tear Gas Made in the USA,” Even as he practiced medicine at Israel’s stressed that he and Majd are adamantly “Globalize the Intifada” and “Support largest hospital in Tel Hashomer, Abue- against Iran developing a nuclear bomb. Egypt’s Revolt.” laish, his wife and seven children lived in He said the Iranians are fully aware that if Crowds well in excess of 500 demonstraJabalya camp. His wife’s health began to Tehran struck Israel with a nuclear bomb, tors gathered in front of the West Los Angefail in 2008, and she died on Sept. 16 of “Israel would turn Iran into glass.” les Federal Building on Jan. 29 and Feb. 5 that year. Exactly four months later, on “The political atmosphere in Tehran is calling for Hosni Mubarak to step down.

Jan. 16, 2009, the 23rd day of Israel’s Op- such that the people believe they live Some Egyptian Americans said they drove eration Cast Lead assault on Gaza, IDF mis- under threat of attack,” commented Majd, from out-of-state for more than four hours to siles struck his home, killing and maiming author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. express their hopes that Egypt finally would his children.

Aslan concurred, stating that the para- shed its dictatorship for democracy. ❑ APRIL 2011

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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“Never Again for Anyone,” Survivors and Activists Vow

STAFF PHOTOS J. ADAS

By Jane Adas

New York City and Tri-StateNews

(L-r) Holocaust survivors Hedy Epstein and Dr. Hajo Meyer, and Deir Yassin massacre survivor Dawud Assad. he headline on Jan. 29 of “Atlas

TShrugs,” the blog of Islamophobe

Pamela Geller, a leading scourge of the “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York, screamed: “RUTGERS STUDENTS NEED YOU TONIGHT—PROTEST HOLOCAUST DENIERS AND ISLAMIC SUPREMACISTS.” Aaron Marcus, a student from Rutgers Hillel, had contacted Geller and some local synagogues urging them to protest the event, “Never Again for Anyone.” Perhaps Marcus was energized by the pledge four days earlier from New Jersey Jewish federations of $10,000 to Rutgers Hillel to combat “delegitimization” of Israel on campus.

Some 200 mostly older Zionists heeded the call. Already on edge, they became indignant when they learned that the sponsors of the national tour of “Never Again for Anyone”—American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), and the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA)—had decided to impose a mandatory $5 entry fee. Sara Kershnar of IJAN explained that this became necessary because of unanticipated expenses. The campus organization hosting the event, BAKA: Students United for Middle Eastern Justice, had reserved the venue at reduced student group rates. After pressure from Rutgers Hillel, the university changed the event’s status and charged the Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.

48

full $1,200. Then, faced with an angry crowd blocking the lobby, organizers hired two additional security personnel to join campus police already on the scene. The disruption delayed the program for over an hour, but the 160 people who paid the entrance fee, including students from Hillel, men in yarmulkes, and an older man with a large sign condemning Holocaust deniers, waited patiently in the lecture hall.

Who were these “Holocaust deniers” and “Islamic supremicists”? Dr. Hajo Meyer, now 86, fled Nazi Germany when he was 14 to join the Dutch underground. In 1944 he was betrayed by an informer and sent to Auschwitz. After such experiences, Meyer said, the conclusion of his life is that “no injustice, no matter what, will ever justify another injustice.” Meyer views Zionism as so contrary to Jewish ethics that it had to find a replacement in “Holocaust religion,” which, he said, preaches that “nobody has or ever will suffer like we Jews.” Therefore whatever Jews do to Palestinians doesn’t signify, because it is not gas chambers.

Hedy Epstein, 83, remembered Nov. 9, 1938, the day of Krystallnacht, when the principal came into her classroom and told her, “Get out, you dirty Jew.” She went home to find her house vandalized and her father arrested. On May 18, 1939 she was sent to England on the Kindertransport rescue mission. None of her family survived Auschwitz. When she decided to go to Palestine in 2003, her Jewish friends told her, THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

“Don’t go! Palestinians will kill you.” Instead, she experienced Palestinian hospitality that she described as “like none other,” and the only violence she encountered was from Israeli soldiers. When she saw the 25-foot-high separation wall, she thought, “It’s always been never again to us, but now it is by us.”

Dawud Assad was 17 when Zionist forces attacked his village of Deir Yassin. The villagers had friendly relations with their Jewish neighbors. Assad’s family had even housed a young Jewish woman for two years. But, he said, everything changed after the U.N. passed the partition resolution in November 1947. He woke at 4 a.m. on April 9, 1948 to find his village ablaze. His grandmother and two-year-old brother were shot dead, his mother and a sister taken captive. Assad told of his harrowing escape by crawling through ditches. (See May/June 2008 Washington Report, p. 18.)

Hearing the protesters in the lobby shouting “Let the Jewish people live,” the youngest panelist, Osama Abu-Irshaid of AMP, said he agreed with them. “We don’t generalize,” he explained. “We are against the crimes of Zionism, not of Jews; and against the crimes of al-Qaeda, not the Muslim people.” The Qur’an, he continued, requires that we witness for justice no matter the identity of oppressor or oppressed, even against ourselves. Along with the other panel members, Abu-Irshaid insisted on the “full dignity and equivalence of all people.”

The next day, Marcus, the instigator of APRIL 2011

the protest, posted a report to David Horowitz’s “newsrealblog” that got picked up by WorldNetDaily under the headline, “Rutgers bars Jews from anti-Zionist gathering.”

Next, the Jerusalem Post reported that organizers had asked police to bar students wearing kippas from entering.

And so the defamation continues.

Manekin and Beinart on Israeli, American Jews

STAFF PHOTOS J. ADAS

adas_48-49_New York City and Tri-State News 3/2/11 5:07 PM Page 49

Just Peace of Columbia, a J- Peter Beinart (l) and Mikhael Manekin.

Street affiliate, and Barnard Hillel hosted a discussion with Peter Beinart, and incriminating documents, diagramming author of “The Failure of the American Jew- the house and passing that information on ish Establishment” in the New York Review to the secret service. He conducted the trainof Books, and Mikhael Manekin, co-director ing in actual homes in Hebron, he said. of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organiza- When, after staying in a home for a week, tion that publishes testimonies of former Is- his trainees tidied up and swept the floor, raeli soldiers about their experiences serv- Manekin was proud for about five minutes.

Then he had an epiphany: “the concept of a ing in the Palestinian territories.

Beinart’s concern is with the relationship benevolent occupier is obscene.” The Palesbetween American Jews and Israel. He sees tinian families were left traumatized, not a generational divide between the leader- even in control of their own homes.

The issue, Manekin realized, is not the ship of major Jewish organizations and younger, under-40 Jews. The former came behavior of soldiers at a checkpoint, but to Zionism after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the checkpoint itself. The main role of before the influx of Russian immigrants Breaking the Silence, therefore, is to conand before the occupation had such an im- textualize the occupation for civilians and pact within Israel. Beinart described these for the majority of soldiers who never leaders as generally secular and supportive serve in the territories. To an observation of Israel, not because of God-given land, from an audience member that only 750 but because of shared liberal values. How- soldiers have given testimonies to Breaking ever, he continued, they are not replicating the Silence, Manekin responded, “That’s themselves in the younger generation. true. But we are not 750 ‘rotten apples.’

Their unwillingness to criticize Israeli poli- The testimonies are not from the company cies has alienated young liberal Jews, he sadists, but from those who are bothered argued, leaving Zionism vibrant only by what they witnessed.” Beinart added among the young in the Orthodox commu- that “Breaking the Silence is facing the renity who are devoted to the land of Israel ality that Jews too can abuse power.” rather than to liberal Jewish values.

Manekin disagreed with the two narra- “Egypt Arising” tives of “the land is ours” versus liberal Hours before a distinguished panel disdemocracy. Rather, he suggested, the oc- cussed “Egypt Arising” at Columbia Unicupation continues and intensifies because versity on Feb. 10, President Hosni of a particularly Israeli point of view: Israel Mubarak had again appeared on state telefears its neighbors and therefore must con- vision saying he would carry on until the trol them. “Israeli independence,” he con- September elections. cluded, “rests on the lack of independence Describing Egyptians as the stand-up cofor others.” medians of the Middle East, Prof. Juan Born in Baltimore, Manekin served in the Cole, whose most recent book is Engaging Israeli military for four years, from 1998- the Muslim World (available from the AET 2002, mostly in south Lebanon and Nablus. Book Club), began with a joke: Mubarak’s One of his last assignments was to train offi- closest advisers privately suggest, “Don’t cers how to “map.” Mapping involves enter- you think it’s time to say goodbye to the ing a Palestinian home in the middle of the Egyptian people?” Mubarak, startled, night, putting the family out or confining asks, “Why? Where are they going?” them in a small space, looking for weapons Cole maintained that the Western media’s APRIL 2011

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

focus on new media and events at Tahrir Square does not give a full picture of the issues behind the uprising. This is a national movement, he emphasized, with demonstrations taking place all over Egypt, not only in downtown Cairo. For example, 4,000 workers, “probably none with Twitter accounts,” shut down Asyut in Upper Egypt on Feb. 9. And, Cole asserted, it is a labor revolution, noting that in the past decade there have been 3,000 strikes in Egypt. The April 6th Committee that is leading the current revolt was set up to carry out a textile strike in 2008 that was put down by riot police. Although our media avoids mentioning unions, he pointed out, on Jan. 29 white-collar and blue-collar workers joined to form an umbrella group: The Egyptian Federation for Independent Unions. Contrary to pundits’ worries, particularly on Fox, Cole noted that the rallying cries are not noticeably about Islam, but rather are “Living wage is the answer” and “No to the police state.”

Jean-Pierre Filiu, who specializes in Islamist movements, described the Egyptian uprising as catastrophic for al-Qaeda, which would benefit only if there were ruthless counter-revolutionary movements against the demonstrators. “Bye bye, jihadis,” he concluded, “the game is also over for you.”

Rashid Khalidi, professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia, said we are in the middle of a world history event that may revive the Arab public sphere. For two generations, he explained, Arabs have been ruled by fear of secret police and the divide-andrule policies of autocratic rulers with patronizing attitudes. They have been told that the police state is the only barrier between Islamic fundamentalism and instability—an argument always abetted by grasping local elites and foreign allies. Tunisia, Khalidi observed, unleashed a sense of empowerment and the idea that regime change is possible. He emphasized the goal of dignity, not only for the individual citizen, but also for Egypt, an ancient civilization that has for too long been a cipher under indirect external control. The Obama administration’s waffling positions, according to Khalidi, reflect its concern that a democratic Egypt might not acquiesce to Israel’s regional domination and may refuse to collude with Israel in its siege on Gaza.

Hours after the panel concluded, Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt and handed power over to the army. ❑ 49

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Democracy on Trial in Israel—and Losing, in The View of Many, Even Long-Time Supporters Israel andJudaism

By Allan C. Brownfeld here is no doubt that today in Israel

Tdemocracy is being sharply chal-

lenged.

Knesset legislation calling for an investigation of Israeli human rights groups has sparked a fierce argument over who is doing more to hurt Israel’s reputation: human rights groups critical of the Israeli government and army, or the politicians who want to investigate them.

By a vote of 47-16, the Knesset in January gave preliminary passage to proposed legislation calling for the establishment of a parliamentary panel to investigate the funding and activities of a long list of human rights groups.

One of the co-sponsors, Faina Kirshenbaum of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beitenu Party, charged that the groups are working under the guise of human rights advocacy to discredit the Israel Defense Forces’ presence in the West Bank, criminalize its soldiers and encourage draft-dodging, with the aim of weakening the IDF and delegitimizing Israel.

“These groups provided material to the Goldstone Commission and are behind indictments lodged against Israeli officers and officials around the world,” Kirshenbaum declared during a Knesset debate, referring to the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Goldstone report on the war in Gaza, which included allegations of war crimes violations by Israel.

In a party caucus meeting, Lieberman suggested that Israel’s delegitimizers rely on what he called the “subversive” work of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper; Yesh Din, a group that monitors the rule of law in the West Bank; and Yesh Gvul, an organization that defends Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the West Bank. He called the organizations “collaborators in terror.”

Declared Lieberman: “There wasn’t a single meeting abroad where I spoke about delegitimization of Israel and people didn’t say, look at what Haaretz wrote or what Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.

50

Yesh Din, Yesh Gvul or Yesh Batich published. There is Zero.”

According to David Rotem, a Yisrael Beitenu lawmaker, the party is convinced that funding for the human rights groups comes from Saudi Arabia, and he suspects it has terrorist origins. “If an NGO is being backed by terrorists or al-Qaeda, we ought to know,” he said.

and the Frightreetospeech dissent are being challenged.

Human rights advocates say they are working in an increasingly hostile climate, particularly since the war on Gaza, and warn that free speech and the right to dissent are being challenged. In mid-January, thousands of people marched in Tel Aviv to protest the initial approval of a parliamentary committee to look into the funding of human rights groups.

The rights organizations dismissed the allegations against them, noting that their funding sources, including foreign foundations, are listed on their Web sites and in the financial reports they are required by law to submit to authorities. Israeli law already requires full transparency on funding. Even NGO Monitor, an organization harshly critical of the human rights groups, went so far as to publish an op-ed piece in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency criticizing the proposed law as unhelpful and polarizing. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, said that his group has looked into the question of whether NGOs receive money from Arab governments and terrorist groups and has concluded that this is not the case.

“The purpose of the inquiry is not to establish the facts, they are well known,” argued B’Tselem, a leading rights group.

“The motive behind the investigation is an attempt to hinder our work through smears and incitement.”

Some commentators warn that the move to investigate the groups’ finances sends a broader message of intimidation.

“This obviously smacks of McCarthyism,” said Hebrew University political science professor Shlomo Avineri, “and the fact that it has been initiated by a party, THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

many of whose leaders come from the former Soviet Union, suggests a basic flaw in their understanding of what democracy and liberalism are.”

A petition signed by 70 law professors asserted that human rights organizations “play a vital role in Israeli democracy.” A group of prominent academics, artists and writers also raised the alarm in a letter to lawmakers. “When elected officials begin investigating citizens,” they wrote, “it spells the end of democracy.”

Russian Jews Blamed According to the Jan. 31 issue of The Jerusalem Report, “Analysts argued that the sociopolitical forces unleashed by Lieberman threaten not only Israel’s standing in the world, but the very fabric of democracy. Some pointed to a spread of the ‘totalitarian mentality’ initially brought in by masses of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and systematically reinforced

by Lieberman to extend his power base.

Others cast this as a struggle between Israel’s old democratic elites and newcomers allied with other non-democratic forces challenging for power.”

“I think Lieberman’s goal is to take power at all costs, by any possible means,” said Roman Bronfman, a Russian immigrant and former left-wing Knesset member (MK). “And the price he sets is one we should not accept, because it comes at the cost of our democracy.”

Bronfman, who is writing a book with journalist Lily Galili on the second large wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union which began in 1989, accused Lieberman of building on the fears, xenophobia, insecurities and “totalitarian mentality” of this large group in order to gain power.

“What he does is to make repeated attacks on democratic values from the law enforcement system to the rights of minorities, while creating a general sense of insecurity,” Bronfman explained. “Look at his relations with Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and the Palestinians. His tactics remind us APRIL 2011

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of very dark regimes. But he is not mainly to blame. The prime culprit is the prime minister who keeps him on as foreign minister...If we don’t have a change of government soon, our democratic values will not retain their primacy. The future looks extremely bleak.”

Racism on the Rise At the same time, racism seems to be on the rise. In December, Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, published a religious ruling prohibiting the renting of apartments to Arab citizens. Within days, 47 chief rabbis from locations around Israel and the West Bank published rulings saying more or less the same thing. A similar petition was signed by more than 300 rabbis.

Opposition to non-Jewish immigrants, among them refugees from Sudan, also is growing. In December, in Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood, several hundred Jewish residents led by MK Michael BenAri, a disciple of Meir Kahane, waving the yellow flags that are Kahane’s symbol, demonstrated against migrant workers and asylum seekers who have been crossing into Israel from the Egyptian-controlled Sinai and settling in the neighborhood.

That same week, three girls, daughters of African migrants, were beaten by teenagers as they walked home to their apartments. Within hours of the attack, in the port city of Ashdod, a tire was set on fire outside the door of an apartment where seven Sudanese migrants were sleeping. Five suffered smoke inhalation before they were able to break through the bars on their windows and flee. In Jerusalem a few days later, rabbis and right-wing agitators whipped up a crowd of several hundred against the rental and sale of apartments to Arabs.

Nitzan Horowitz, a Meretz party MK, accused the rabbis who opposed selling or renting to Arabs of having a warped approach to Judaism. “What these rabbis represent has nothing to do with Judaism, no connection to Jewish values, and definitely no connection to the democratic values of Israel,” he said. Horowitz viewed the rabbis’ proclamation as further proof of “the racist, fascist, ugly wave sweeping through Israel that calls for the exclusion of entire sectors of Israeli society—not only Arabs, but also Ethiopians, homosexuals, everyone who is a bit dfferent.”

There is growing concern on the part of American Jews about developments in Israel, even on the part of its traditional supporters. In its Jan. 7 issue, The Forward edAPRIL 2011

itorialized: “...if Netanyahu persists in keeping Lieberman, both men should know this: The obligation we assume as Diaspora Jews to support Israel, and combat delegitimization becomes much harder, more distasteful and less effective every time the foreign minister opens his mouth.

It betrays our Judaic and civic values to stand by while such a man advocates for the transfer of Arab citizens of Israel, for a discriminatory loyalty oath, and for an endless postponement of peace negotiations that are the only—the only—way to ensure that Israel remains Jewish and democratic.”

According to The Forward, “American Jewish communal organizations are now spending millions of dollars to combat what is perceived to be a new, aggressive attempt to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state. That is money that could be used at home to feed the hungry, educate our young, care for the sick and elderly and ensure the future of Israel’s most vibrant, important friend. We don’t stop loving Israel because of Avigdor Lieberman. But he makes it damn hard to support his government.”

Will Ethnicity Trump Democracy?

Even some of Israel’s strongest supporters are beginning to wonder aloud whether Israel’s democratic character will survive.

Jeffrey Goldberg, in a Dec. 27, 2010 Atlantic blog, asked: “What if Israel ceases to be a democracy?” He wondered: “Is it actually possible that one day Israelis—Jewish Israelis—would choose to give up democracy in order to maintain Israel’s voting majority? Some people, of course, argue that Israel has ceased to be a democracy, because there is nothing temporary about the 43-year-old occupation of the West Bank. I believe it is premature to talk about the end of Israel as a democratic state...but I can’t say that the thought hasn’t crossed my mind that one day Israelis will make the conscious, active decision to preserve the state’s Jewish character instead of its democratic character (I use the word ‘Jewish’ in the demographic sense, not the moral sense, obviously).”

Goldberg speculates about the future: “Let’s just say, as a hypothetical, that one day in the near future, Prime Minister Lieberman’s government (don’t laugh, it’s not funny) proposes a bill that echoes the recent call by some rabbis to discourage Jews from selling their homes to Arabs. Or let’s say that Lieberman’s government annexes swaths of the West Bank in order to take in Jewish settlements, but announces THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

summarily that the Arabs in the annexed territory are in fact citizens of Jordan, and can vote there if they want to, but they won’t be voting in Israel. What happens then?...Does American Jewry come to the rescue? Well, most of American Jewry would be so disgusted by Israel’s abandonment of democratic principles that I think the majority would simply write off Israel as a tragic, failed experiment...Am I exaggerating the depth of the problem? I certainly hope so...But on the other hand, the Israel that I see today is not the Israel I was introduced to more than 20 years ago...”

In mid-January, Lebanon proposed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity and demanding that Israel cease all construction immediately. While establishment Jewish groups dismissed the resolution as unproductive, a vocal—and some observers say surprising—minority advocated a different course of action.

Jewish groups such as J Street and Americans for Peace Now called on the Obama administration not to veto the proposal, while a group of policy analysts urged the U.S. to vote in favor. Among the latter was journalist Peter Beinart, who attached his name to a letter sent to President Obama calling upon him to “send a clear signal” that “the continued flouting of international legality will not be treated with impunity.” Others signing the statement included former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci and former Ambassador to Israel William Harrop (see March 2011 Washington Report, p. 7).

Beinart, who is Jewish and has long been a supporter of Israel, said: “It’s not an easy decision for me...It’s not necessarily one I would have come to six months ago.”

What’s changed, he said, “is that under Prime Minister Netanyahu the Israeli government has lurched rightward and flagrantly abandoned the peace process.”

Beinart argued that Washington must show it means business by voting to condemn settlements on the international stage.

Clearly, things have changed. “The notion of supporting a resolution critical of Israeli policies in the Security Council used to be taboo,” observed Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now. Those who have supported Israel in the past—whatever its policies—now are concerned about its future—particularly its future as a democratic society. No longer, it seems, will “Israel right or wrong” be their guiding philosophy. ❑ 51

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Using Two-Pronged Strategy, Minnesota Activists Seek Divestment From Israel Bonds SpecialReport

PHOTO COURTESY MINNESOTA BREAK THE BONDS CAMPAIGN

By Bill McGrath

(L-r) Nail AlBarghouti, Sylvia Schwarz, Susie Gad and Susanne Waldorf explain the Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign to an audience in St. Cloud, MN. uestioning both the morality and the

Qlegality of their state’s investments in

the state of Israel, a group of Minnesota activists has warned its state government to divest from Israel—or face possible legal action.

After two years of statewide grassroots organizing, the group, called the “Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign” (MN BBC), formally issued its divestment demand to the Minnesota State Board of Investment (SBI) on Feb. 1, 2011.

Minnesota currently holds two Israel bonds worth a total of $18.4 million. The money used to purchase the bonds came from pension and retirement funds collected from taxpayers on behalf of Minnesota state employees.

According to the MN BBC Web site (<http://mn.breakthebonds.org>), “Bonds are sold by Israel to finance infrastructural and economic development projects. Many of these projects include bypass roads and settlement building in the West Bank and Bill McGrath is a free-lance writer living in Minnesota.

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East Jerusalem. These settlements displace Palestinians from their own lands. Bond money also is used for building the illegal wall.” (The International Court of Justice [ICJ] ruled on July 9, 2004 that the separation wall Israel has been building on Palestinian land is illegal.)

Members of MN BBC argue that the state law that has been cited to justify investment in the Israeli government does not actually authorize such a transaction. Attorneys have told MN BBC organizers that MN Statute 11A.24 Subdivision 2 provides for specific types of foreign investment, but does not provide clearly for investment in Israel.

Israel and Canada are the only countries in which the state of Minnesota has direct investments. But Minnesota Statute 11A.24 Subdivision 2 spells out specific provisions for doing business with Canada only. Not only does it not allow investments in any other government, it does not mention Israel at all.

One lifelong Minnesotan who has become involved with MN BBC is Susie Gad, a Minneapolis attorney who has traveled THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

extensively throughout the Middle East, including Israel.

“Minnesota has been investing public funds in Israel in clear contravention of Minnesota law,” said Gad. “In addition, Israel uses the funds from Minnesota’s investments for various programs that violate international law, such as illegal settlement building and the construction of the apartheid wall.

“Such illegal and immoral investments in any other country would not be tolerated,” Gad pointed out. “And Minnesotans have an obligation to ensure that their state abides by both state and international law in its use of public funds. Israel should be no exception.”

One of the current hurdles facing MN BBC in its divestment campaign is the task of getting listed on the agenda of the SBI’s next meeting, scheduled for March 3. At that session, the four-member board—consisting of the state’s governor, attorney general, secretary of state and auditor— make decisions pertaining to investments.

Thus far, the SBI has attempted to sidetrack MN BBC by offering a closed door meeting with SBI members. However, MN BBC continues to seek a public hearing on the divestment issue.

Moreover, in addition to its efforts at influencing the SBI, the MN BBC is contacting members of the state legislature regarding Minnesota investment in Israel bonds.

Complementing the argument that investment in Israel runs counter to Minnesota law, the approach being used in talking to legislators emphasizes what MN BBC considers to be Israel’s disregard for human rights and international law.

MN BBC is acquainting the SBI and state legislators with these human rights abuses and disregard of international law, including Israel’s separation wall, its illegal settlements, the Israeli occupation itself, the siege of Gaza, the 2008-09 “Cast Lead” attack on Gaza, the apartheid conditions in the West Bank, the Right of Return, and Israel’s secret nuclear program.

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“What we’re saying, in the simplest of terms, is that we, as Minnesotans, should not be obligated to fund oppression with our tax dollars,” explains Liz Geschiere, a Minneapolis activist and MN BBC member who has spent time in Palestine. “By investing our money in the Israeli government, state policymakers are essentially making all Minnesotans complicit in an illegal and immoral occupation.”

Nor would this be the first time Minnesota has divested from other countries.

In 1987, it prohibited state investments in foreign and U.S. companies doing business in apartheid South Africa. In 2007, the state passed a law requiring the SBI to divest any holdings in companies doing business in Sudan. And in 2009, the legislature passed a similar law barring state investment in companies doing business in Iran.

Any bill sponsored by any member of either the state House or the Senate must obtain initial approval from a specific pension-related committee in the House, and a parallel committee in the Senate. Those two committees are chaired by Republican legislators who represent small cities in rural parts of Minnesota.

During the past 18 months, close to 2,000 Minnesota residents have signed MN BBC postcards. A brief statement on the postcard calls upon legislators to “help us break economic ties with Israel’s apartheid system.” MN BBC members then deliver the postcards to the appropriate legislators in both the Minnesota House and Senate.

One group likely to rally opposition against the MN BBC divestment plan is the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC). A year ago, the JCRC spoke out sharply against a divestment proposal MN BBC was circulating within the Minnesota Democratic party. While the JCRC’s position may resonate with some Minnesota government officials, MN BBC activists believe that the divestment message will find support among other officials.

“I truly believe that if someone takes the time to learn enough about Israel’s practices, on the ground, toward Palestinians both in the territories and within her own borders, that person will feel compelled to withdraw his or her financial support from those deeds,” says Geschiere. “All other attempts to pressure Israel to change its policies, including negotiations, two intifadas,

and hundreds of U.N. resolutions, have failed. So if you are not going to sit back and accept the status quo, then boycotts, divestments, and sanctions are the most morally and politically sound tactic to try next.”

MN BBC is currently incorporating itself as a 501(c)(3). Its divestment effort has been endorsed by many organizations, including the International Jewish AntiZionist Network, Friends of Sabeel North America, US Campaign to End the Occupation, Teachers Against Occupation, and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).

MN BBC members say that they are in this campaign for the long haul. Of the two Israel bonds Minnesota holds, the one scheduled to mature first will become due in 2015, the other in 2024.

Some legislators, having been approached by MN BBC constituents regarding divestment, have said that they “don’t want to get involved in international affairs.” However, MN BBC believes the state already has made an international statement in deciding to invest Minnesotans’ tax money in one of the world’s most controversial nations. ❑

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Arab-American Activism

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(L-r) Abed E. Ayoub, Barbara McQuade, Mike German and Sahar Aziz. community,” McQuade concluded. “We all statement that has nothing to do with terrorism in a voluntary interview, just somewant to protect our children.”

Mike German, a former FBI agent who one trying to do the right thing—that now works at the American Civil Liberties sends a big chill to the community, Aziz Union’s Washington legislative office, said said. When law enforcement entraps a pera robust democracy protects freedom of son just to beef up statistics...When the speech, religion and participation. “The government recruits informants at BRIDGE Arab and Muslim community in America meetings or mosques...when the federal is so diverse, and that’s a blessing,” he said, government permits a biased prosecutor because its members give our country in- like Gordon Kromberg, who should recuse novative ideas. “We should protect them, himself from cases involving Muslims, it not deal with them as a suspect commu- sends a message. Aziz emphasized federal nity,” German stated, adding, “A single legislation as a potential tool to improve focus on Muslims is unhelpful, stigmatiz- the national relationship, recommending ing and alienating.” We should “address the passage of bills such as the End Racial extremism in all communities,” he con- Profiling Act (ERPA). “These legislative efforts can improve community relations by cluded.

According to civil rights attorney Sahar proving to Arab- and Muslim-Americans Aziz, outreach on both sides, both the that the U.S. government is committed to homeland security and the Arab- and reforming its discriminatory policies,” said Muslim-American community, must im- Aziz.

—Delinda C. Hanley prove. Selecting who sits at the table on behalf of the community is important, she stated. The gatekeepers should reflect Muslim-American Activism gender, political and religious diversity, and rather than representing special interest groups they should be people who Interfaith Pray-In in Front of Peter have a real constituency or base. For ex- King’s Office ample, Aziz noted, on the basis of shady evidence an anti-Muslim group with undue influence on the U.S. government has made sure a major U.S. organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), is excluded or banned from the conversation.

Speaking as an attorney, Aziz said, the adversarial process is not helpful.

Everyone has an interest in public safety because “we all die in a terrorist Sister Jeanne Clark (speaking) warns that singling out Musassault,” she pointed out. lims is un-American and unfair. Talat Hamdani (c), whose If someone makes a false son was killed on 9/11, listens.

PHOTO COURTESY SAEED AHMED

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) held a Feb. 3 briefing on Capitol Hill to highlight how the relationship between the Arab- and MuslimAmerican communities and law enforcement has progressed, and what outreach efforts have proven effective for mutually beneficial interaction and dialogue.

ADC legal director Abed E. Ayoub said he hoped the briefing would “set the record straight and dispel myths about how the Arab- and Muslim-American community engages with law enforcement.”

Relationships have been challenged since 9/11, Ayoub admitted, but there is an “open line of dialogue which has grown in positive ways.”

Barbara McQuade, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said that in her home district trusting relationships between local authorities and Arab- and Muslim-American communities “help law enforcement more effectively combat radical extremism on both sides of the equation.” She described the organization Building Respect in Diverse Groups to Enhance Sensitivity (BRIDGES), formed in 2003 to promote dialogue on issues of mutual concern between federal law enforcement and affected vulnerable communities.

This dialogue has helped the Muslim, South Asian and Arab community feel safer after racially or religiously driven incidents, McQuade said.

After talking through one such incident—when a Secret Service agent defaced a calendar in a Muslim home—the community concluded it was an isolated action involving one rogue agent, who was disciplined. After FBI agents fatally shot Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah 20 times during a 2009 raid on a warehouse in Dearborn, ongoing dialogue averted what could have been an explosion of violence on the street.

Law enforcement officers have also received tips about criminal activity, McQuade said, describing an incident the previous week, when a Californian drove across the country intending to blow up one of the nation’s largest mosques in Dearborn. He was overheard in a Detroit bar describing his plan, and an alert employee took his license plate number. Roger Stockham was arrested Jan. 30 in a car packed with explosives outside the mosque, as 500 people gathered for a funeral. “We’re proud of our outreach and engagement with the

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

Examining Law Enforcement Interaction With Arab and Muslim Americans

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STAFF PHOTO L. AL-ARIAN

Christian, Jewish and Muslim protesters playing a blame game, which is not conheld a “Pray-In” in front of Rep. Peter ducive to healing this nation,” Hamdani King’s (R-NY) office in Massapequa Park, said, holding up a sign that said “Muslims NY on Feb. 22. As Homeland Security are American Too.” Hamdani told reporters Committee chairman, King plans to hold and protesters, “You know it’s been almost congressional hearings on radical Islam 10 years. We need to heal and move forwhich are set to begin in Washington, DC ward in solidarity, in unity, to overcome the week of March 7 and may be held pe- when the nation was traumatized by those attacks. And to hold the American-Muslim riodically over a period of 18 months.

Opponents of the hearings addressed the community and the whole faith of Islam rally. “Holding a witch hunt and a politi- accountable is not right.”

King, who was in his office during the cal circus will not make the country secure,” said Dr. Shaik Ubaid, co-chairman of protest, did not come outside.

—Rashid Ali the New York Chapter of Muslim Peace Coalition. “It will weaken its security by alienating Muslim youth and pushing Esposito Discusses “Islamophobia— them toward radicalization. The circus will Global Implications” not only demonize the Muslim community, but it will contribute to escalation of violent attacks and discrimination against Muslims and thus weaken American society and offer propaganda material to al-Qaeda.”

“The nature of the investigation that Representative King’s committee seeks to pursue has the potential of holding the Muslim community hostage to suspicion and fear-mongering,” Rabbi Jerome Davidson told the rally.

Fellow pray-in organizer Sister Jeanne Clark, coordinator of Pax Christi Long Island, agreed. “We stand Prof. John Esposito describes Islamophobia. here outside Peter King’s office because we believe that singling out an entire com- Georgetown University Prof. John Esposmunity such as Muslim Americans is un- ito addressed a crucial issue not many dare American, unfair, and does not make us to speak out about at a Jan. 18 event sponsafer.” Clark delivered a letter signed by sored by the World Affairs Council and more than 80 Long Island clergy members held at the University of California Washand people of faith asking him to cancel ington, DC Center. “Islamophobia is fast the hearings. becoming pandemic in America,” Dr. Es“We fear this effort will only further di- posito told his audience, noting that Islamvide our community and undermine our ophobia today is becoming for Muslims nation’s highest ideals,” the letter reads. what anti-Semitism was for Jews. He “We urge you to cancel these hearings.” quoted many notable people—including At least 30 police officers watched as members of Congress, Glenn Beck, Sarah counter protesters backing the hearings Palin, John Hagee, Ann Coulter, Michael gathered nearby. Some King supporters Savage and more—who have made blatant carried signs that read, “Don’t Tread on Islamophobic remarks, and warned about Me” and said the hearings will root out the fear and racism that fill our newspa“homegrown terrorists.”

Richard pers and television programs. Examples inLazevnick of Levittown, NY told reporters, clude reports on issues such as the contro“We have to be worried about our safety versy of the “mosque on the Ground Zero” and our security. We let all sorts of people (which is actually five blocks away) and in and whatever they believe. If you don’t the threatened burning of the Qur’an by believe in the American way and our gov- Terry Jones and his congregation of 13. Esernment and our system of laws,” he said, posito noted that “The New York Post said “then you don’t belong in the United ‘Where there are mosques there are MusStates.” lims, and where there are Muslims there Talat Hamdani of Lake Grove, NY, whose are problems,” and that The Post also 23-year-old son, Mohammad Salman, was warns that New York could become killed in the terrorist attacks on 9/11, con- “Newyorkistan,” as London has become demned King’s upcoming hearings. “He’s “Londistan.” Former House Speaker Newt APRIL 2011

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Gingrich stated that Muslims on ground zero would be like “Nazis outside a Holocaust Museum,” Esposito said.

Explaining how Islamophobia became exacerbated after the events of 9/11, he went on to ask: “At what extent do we take extremism and breaststroke it across an entire religion?” While the phenomenon of Islamophobia is more pervasive in Europe, he added, the discrimination and racism in the U.S. have increased drastically over the past few years.

Why don’t moderate Muslims speak up and tell the media that they are the majority, that Islam is a religion of peace, and that Muslims, with the exception of militant extremists, are opposed to the events of 9/11 and acts of violence in the name of Islam? The fact is that they do, Esposito said, but are not given the proper media coverage to convey these ideas.

Dr. Esposito concluded his talk by saying that Islamophobia will continue until people learn about other religions and distinguish between Muslims and extremists. In order to conquer Islamophobia, he said, we must “recognize we have a social cancer, and bigotry stemming from ignorance. National as well as international leaders must come together and change the discourse, as they are the ones with access to the masses. Politicians must speak out and denounce and disassociate themselves with those who speak hate.”

Esposito also noted the importance of the mass media providing context to the events, citing the example of Terry Jones.

Only after days of media coverage did news stations discover that Jones’ congregation numbered only 13, his church was being foreclosed, and he was not a credible minster who deserved that much media attention.

Reality is not black and white, Esposito reminded his audience, and we need to move beyond the rhetoric in order to overcome this cancer in our society.

—Lama Al-Arian

Human Rights Father of Gaza Flotilla Victim Furkan Dogan Seeks Justice in U.S. On a February visit to the U.S., Prof. Ahmet Dogan, father of Furkan Dogan, the 19-yearold American citizen killed by Israeli troops when they stormed the Mavi Mamara in international waters, met with elected officials and others to urge a congressional investi55

Prof. Ahmet Dogan accepts the American Muslims for Palestine Award in Chicago. gation into the May 31, 2010 attack on the unarmed ship attempting to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The assistant professor of accounting at Erciyes University in Kayseri, Turkey was in the U.S. to accept the American Muslims for Palestine’s (AMP) Al Quds Award for sacrifice and service to the Palestinian cause. The award was presented to him Feb. 19 at AMP’s annual dinner in Chicago, attended by more than 1,400 people.

Furkan was born in Troy, NY, where his father was attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The young man’s ambition was to become a doctor and, having done well on the highly competitive medical school entrance exams, he had been admitted to the University of Istanbul School of Medicine.

In the month before his classes were to begin, Furkan had planned to go to Chicago and study to improve his English.

Instead, however, his father explained in a Feb. 22 interview between meetings on Capitol Hill, Furkan saw a billboard advertising the upcoming Gaza Freedom Flotilla and decided to apply, figuring “he could always visit the U.S.” He had been interested in the plight of Gazans for the past two years, Professor Dogan recalled, and wanted to bring toys, notebooks, books and pens to the children of Gaza. Of the many Turks who applied to join the flotilla, Furkan was one of only a few accepted, even though he was not affiliated with IHH, the Turkish non-profit organization which sponsored the Mavi Marmara.

In a Feb. 24 op-ed in Albany’s Times Union newspaper, Professor Dogan wrote, “never did I imagine that the Israeli military would storm his ship, killing Furkan and eight others, and then blame our son and 56

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PHOTO COURTESY NAJWA NAJJAR

his co-passengers for their own deaths.

“It is my responsibility to speak for my son and voice his concern for Palestinians in Gaza. It is my responsibility to stand up to an Israeli propaganda effort that has attempted to paint our beautiful child as a fanatic and not the caring young man we knew him to be.…

“Now it is my turn to travel to the United States, Hiam Abbas stars in “Pomegranates and Myrrh” (2009). speak on my son’s behalf and attempt to achieve a measure of justice Speaking opening night about the colfor him. lection, Dabashi explained that he needed “I will forever be proud of my son.” films to teach an early course on Palestine While in the U.S. Dogan hoped to meet cinema and faced the challenge of finding with the parents of Rachel Corrie, another copies. He thanked film professionals in Isyoung American killed by the Israeli mili- rael-Palestine and the diaspora who over tary. It would not be their first meeting, as the years shared their work with him.

Craig and Cindy Corrie earlier had met with Dabashi and filmmaker Annemarie Jacir the grieving father in Istanbul. organized the first Dreams of a Nation film —Janet McMahon festival at Columbia in 2003, the first in America. “Today,” he said, “our festival is one of many national and international Music & Arts tributes to the collective identity of Palestinians, in their unity and their fragmenta“Dreams of a Nation” Celebrates tion.” Dabashi encouraged film fans and Palestinian Cinema scholars to use <www.dreamsofanation.

New Yorkers welcomed actress Hiam org> as a resource.

Growing interest in the “great milky Abbas and filmmakers Najwa Najjar and Elia Suleiman to film screenings at various way of Palestinian cinema” was also acvenues on the Columbia University cam- knowledged by scholar Rashid Khalidi, the pus from Feb. 2-6. The festival officially Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab launched the university’s Dreams of a Na- Studies at Columbia. “In the 1960s when I tion Palestinian film archive, a collection was studying you couldn’t mention the donated by Columbia Professor Hamid word ‘Palestine,’” he recalled. “Last fall we inaugurated the first Center for Palestine Dabashi.

Studies in the U.S., and tonight it sponsors this festival.”

“A labor of love” is how filmmaker Najjar described her 2009 feature debut, “Pomegranates and Myrrh.” “I worked with some of the best talent in Palestine,” she said, citing “Yasmine Al Massri, Ashraf Farah, Ali Suleiman, and Hiam Abbas [who was present]. They were very kind under difficult conditions.” Set in the West Bank near Ramallah, the film contrasts the freedom of movement of a local dance troupe with life under military occupation.

Qamar is torn between a handsome choreographer and her new husband, in prison for striking an Israeli soldier. To Najjar, the character played by Abbas—a loving but tough woman—symbolized Palestine’s will to survive, she explained.

Michel Khleifi’s “Wedding in Galilee” Elia Suleiman presents his latest film, “The Time That Remains.”

(1987) deserves praise as a multilayered STAFF PHOTO L. MULLENNEAUX

PHOTO COURTESY AMP

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PHOTO COURTESY WWW.IMDB.COM

“Palestinian film is the attempt to re- depicts how this family—and especially portrait of Israeli politics and Arab tradition. To celebrate his son’s nuptials, a vil- voice the silences of the witnesses, victims, its three brothers—struggle to survive the lage elder is forced to invite Israeli officers. and historical ‘losers,’” said Helga Tawil- ruthless French suppression of the AlgerResentment, not least by the groom, Souri, assistant professor in media, culture, ian people. They also struggle to maintain threatens to destroy the event. In “Since and communication at NYU. Tawil-Souri their dignity and humanity—first amid You Left” (2005) famed actor Mohammad joined academics Richard Pena and the institutional terrorism in Algiers, and Bakri speaks to Emile Habibi, the friend Thomas Hill in a panel discussion after then in the squalor of Paris shantytowns. and mentor he lost in 1996. Using home short films by Larissa Sansour. A final These three men react to the oppression movies and news footage, Bakri narrates night of Arabic food, music, and dance fea- and violence around them by taking three the heartbreaking events that have shaken turing poets Remi Kenazi, Omar Khalifah, different life choices—paths that take his life and the region. At times humorous, and Dina Omar drew more than 300 peo- them apart but ultimately bring them to—Lisa Mullenneaux gether. at times poetic, the commentary includes ple.

As TV audiences watch guns turned on Israeli furor over Bakri’s 2004 documentary “Outside the Law” a Must-See patriots in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya “Jenin, Jenin.” and Palestine, this film‘s examination of “Salt of This Sea” (2008), Jacir’s first fea- Algerian Film Algeria’s struggle takes on special ture film, was about Soraya, a meaning. Powerfully acted and Brooklyn-born Palestinian (Suheir lovingly photographed, the film Hammad) who travels to Israel to was a worthy candidate for the claim an inheritance. When told Oscar. by bank officials that all Palestin—Michael Keating ian deposits evaporated in 1948, she refuses to give up. Together Enthusiastic Crowd with waiter Emad (Saleh Bakri), Celebrates Tunisian Artist Ben who wants to leave Ramallah as Hamida much as Soraya wants to stay, she embarks on a quest to recover A large crowd attended the openwhat’s hers—both the money and ing reception for Tunisian artist her ancestor’s home. “They refused Zohra Ben Hamida’s exhibit at the to give us the right of return,” says Jerusalem Fund Gallery in WashSoraya defiantly, “so I took it.”

Three brothers react to French colonial suppression by making ington, DC on Jan. 21—a week Elia Suleiman was on hand to three different life choices. after Tunisia’s President Zine El present his newest feature, “The Abidine Ben Ali fled the country.

Time That Remains” (2009), a series of vi- The Smithsonian Institution’s National Tunisians and friends of Tunisia talked exgnettes on the absurdities of life in Museum of African Art closed its North citedly about recent events as they examNazareth from 1948 to the present. Shot African Film Festival on Feb. 24 with a ined Ben Hamida’s exhibit, entitled largely in the places where they happened, screening of “Hors la loi” (“Outside the “Woven With Her Brush,” which ran until the director—using his father’s diaries, his Law”). Nominated for an Academy Award March 4. Ben Hamida describes herself by mother’s letters and his own schoolboy for Best Foreign Film, the film was shown saying, “I am an Arab and Berber by anmemories—recreates his family’s history. simultaneously in two theaters in the mu- cestry, Tunisian by birth, Mediterranean As always, Suleiman plays himself, often seum in order to accommodate the crowd. and African by a lucky chance, American moving from room to room like a ghost, Ahmed Bedjaoui, director of the Algerian by destiny, and who I am today by there and not there, a sad-eyed witness to National Cinema, and Algeria’s Ambas- choice.” history’s brutality. Rising star Saleh Bakri sador to the U.S. Abdallah Baâli spoke beplays Suleiman’s father, Fuad. In one of fore and after the film. many sight gags, an Arab paces back and Like so many other great epic films, forth as he chats on a cell phone while an “Hors la loi” concentrates on a single famIsraeli tank follows his every move with its ily caught in the sweep of historic events. rotating turret.

Although a brief prelude depicts the famAudiences enjoyed a variety of docu- ily’s eviction from its ancestral land to mentaries and short films as well, includ- make way for French colonists, the film is ing Maryse Gargour’s “The Land Speaks bookended by two dates: May 8, 1945, Arabic” (2007), about ethnic cleansing of when crowds in Paris celebrated victory Palestine by Zionists, and “The Roof” over the Nazis while in Algiers crowds (2006), in which Kamal Aljafari uses his marching for basic liberties were gunned parents’ unfinished house as a metaphor down by French troops, and July 5, 1962, for Arab displacement and daily harass- when Algeria won its independence. ment. In “Be Quiet” (2005), Sameh Zoabi Watching the protests and battles for Alshows how a militarized presence disrupts gerian rights, it was impossible to forget and shapes a father’s relations with his the battles going on in Tunisia, Egypt, young son. “End of September” (2010) Bahrain, Oman, Libya and Palestine today. portrays a female freedom fighter as she reWith beauty and horror, honesty and turns to Palestine in shifts of time. compassion, director Rachid Bouchareb Tunisian artist Zohra Ben Hamida.

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The background of 9/11 and the scapegoating of Muslim Americans suggested his subject. He was as surprised as anyone by his early success, Ali said, especially when he got a letter from the BBC asking if they could invite every theater in England to stage his play.

In “The Domestic Crusaders,” six characters from three generations gather to celebrate the 21st birthday of the youngest son. The six “crusaders” assert their unique views while respecting family unity. Ali said that one of his most gratifying experiences has come from diverse audiences telling him that they recognize their own family in the dynamics. Critics share the popular enthusiasm. Harriet Gilbert at BBC World Service said, “From the deft irony of its title to the tender pain of its ending, ‘The Domestic Crusaders’ is a moving story of one Pakistani family.” It’s also the first play that McSweeney’s has ever published.

As the party progressed, some of the original New York cast members were joined by brave recruits to stage a few scenes from the play with no rehearsal or props. Ali himself, who previously swore off acting, made a brief return to the stage to fill in for the role of the father. Even the short snippets from the work gave a sense of the humor and contrasting ideologies. Additional performances during the evening included poetry, music, and comedy.

The free event was sponsored by organizations including Busboys and Poets, the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for MuslimChristian Understanding at Georgetown University, McSweeney’s, and The Before Columbus Foundation. “The Domestic Crusaders” is now available for purchase at the Busboys and Poets Web store at <http://bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org>.

The 128-page paperback is just $9.

—Anne O’Rourke

Ben Hamida said she paints her striking images using “the textures and colors that are memories of the domes of mosques” and the “blazing sun straddling the cool shades over the desert in Saudi Arabia,” where she lived as a youth. She also paints her memories of the bright garments worn by her Berber grandmother “with such pride,” and her Arab grandfather, “a man who could not see with his eyes, so instead saw farther and deeper with his heart, a man who, unbeknown to him, emitted a bright and subtle light each time he knelt in prayer.”

Many attendees purchased Ben Hamida’s colorful paintings and mirrors—which, in years to come, may well remind them of an evening spent celebrating Tunisia’s nonviolent revolution.

—Delinda C. Hanley

“The Domestic Crusaders” Book Launch in Washington, DC Acclaimed playwright Wajahat Ali was joined by a host of artists and friends on Jan. 14, in Washington, DC to celebrate the publication of his landmark play “The Domestic Crusaders.” The book launch party at the Busboys and Poets bookstore (on 5th and K Sts NW) featured an impromptu staging of scenes from the play along with a variety of live performances.

Depicting a day in the life of a Muslim Pakistani American family, the comedy has received standing ovations at sold-out engagements including the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and the Atlas Theater in New York. Describing the humble origins of the work, Ali said he took a crash course in dramaturgy by reading plays for a month after his English professor threatened to fail him if he didn’t write a play.

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Shabana Rehman Shocks, Delights

Playwright Wajahat Ali says he was as surprised as anyone by his early success.

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You might describe Shabana Rehman as a Pakistani-Norwegian Lady Gaga, except she doesn’t sing or dance. She does border on the outrageous, however—unless she’s relating her story of growing up poor, abused and alienated from her cultural roots.

Los Angeles audiences delighted in her edgy one-woman stand-up comedy show, ”Homeland Insecurity,” which ran in January at West Hollywood’s Working Stage Theater.

As headlines and images of some of her most politically incorrect public stunts flashed in the background, Shabana deTHE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Stand-up comedian Shabana Rehman. scribed lifting up a shocked Mullah Krekar, the founder of Iraq’s Ansar al-Islam group, at his book signing in an Oslo nightclub.

During her monologue, she explains how her father immigrated to Norway and then sent for his wife and children when Shabana was one year old. Things went smoothly—at first. After her father’s business failed, he turned to alcohol and physically abused family members. She lived as a teenager in a public institution where she was raped by a social worker, whom she reported to the police.

The penniless immigrant survived humiliation and mistreatment to emerge as a popular columnist writing to youth trying to cope with societal challenges in two leading Norwegian publications. She also has become notorious for breaking social taboos.

Check her out on Google to learn about her next U.S. tour.—Pat McDonnell Twair

Waging Peace Ambassador Freeman Looks at America’s Continuing Misadventures As America’s relationships in the Middle East unravelled, and snow fell outside, New America Foundation senior fellow Steve Clemons and a standing-room-only audience quizzed Chas Freeman, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, in Washington, DC on Jan. 26. Freeman’s new book, America’s Misadventures in the Middle East (available from the AET Book Club), gives a devastating critique of U.S. policy in the Middle East, including its positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

According to the ambassador, U.S. policies are inconsistent with its underlying strategic interests. Unfortunately, Freeman stated, America’s misadventures continue APRIL 2011

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Ambassador Chas Freeman examines some perplexing issues missing from President Obama’s State of the Union address. drones.”

Finally, Amb. Freeman addressed the Sino-American relationship now that China has become banker to our debt.

“U.S. global military supremacy has come at a high cost,” he said, pointing out that the U.S. defense budget is more than that of the rest of the world combined. Freeman suggested that in the future America use its wits instead of its wallet, and send in diplomats instead of Marines.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Exum Examines U.S. Military Challenges in Afghanistan Andrew Exum, currently a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, discussed “Afghanistan: Looking Ahead to the Next Fighting Season” at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC on Jan. 25. Exum, who served in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2000 until 2004, went on to study Arabic and earn a Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies

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to unfold as we create disasters for ourselves and our friends in the Middle East.

Referring to the omission of a “whole series of perplexing issues” in President Barack Obama’s speech the previous night, Freeman said he couldn’t remember a State of the Union address that didn’t mention the Israel/Palestine issue. Obama has been humiliated repeatedly, he’s struck out three times at bat, and now he’s just written the Arab-Israeli problem off, Freeman said.

“But we can’t,” he pointed out, “because we’re funding it and supplying the weapons for continuing strife in the Holy Land, so we can’t pretend we’re not involved.”

Explaining that his starting point is his interest in U.S. security, Freeman said it is this issue that drives Muslim rage, alienates all Israel’s neighbors, and inspires terrorism. Israel is setting itself up for catastrophe, he warned, and America is acting as its enabler. Freeman addressed the failures of American mediation, made glaringly apparent in the recently released Palestine Papers. “America has disqualified itself as a mediator,” he stated, adding, “I say it with great sadness.” He recommended outsourcing mediation, looking to Europeans or Russians, or supporting the Arab Peace plan.

When asked about untangling the recent past and getting out of Iraq, Freeman warned that if Iraq doesn’t balance Iran better, we may be stuck in that region. Additionally, in response to a question about America’s presence in Afghanistan, he said Washington had demonstrated no ability to form a strategy, and that it was unsustainable to continue the occupation. In short, he recommended that American troops depart.

These conflicts, as well as the huge outpouring of anti-Muslim vitriol in this country, are perceived as an American crusade against Islam, Freeman warned. If our goal in “the war on terror” was to bring to justice or kill the leadership who planned the attacks on 9/11 (which were engineered in Germany), that had been accomplished by December 2001, with the attack in the mountains of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. If we wanted to punish the operators of a flophouse—the Taliban who gave al-Qaeda sanctuary—we did that, too, Freeman argued. “We’ve added a bewildering quantity of objectives,” he noted, “including advances in feminism, promoting democracy, building a state...”

What is our strategy? Freeman asked.

“You can’t bomb Islam into submission...

You can’t create a state using predator

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Andrew Exum says 99.5 percent of Americans aren’t concerned with the war.

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at the American University of Beirut. He later served as a civilian adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan, seeking to help define U.S. goals and produce a strategy for achieving those goals.

When Exum first visited Afghanistan, he said, Americans knew a lot about alQaeda, but little about Afghanistan, the terrain or its people, especially local power brokers—how they make money or who controls water resources. Decision-makers relied more upon newspaper reports than military intelligence to obtain on-theground information. Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, the top U.S. military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, published a report for the Center for a New American Security in January 2010, which criticized intelligence gathering in Afghanistan. Within 18 months, tactical units of intelligence officers became much more effective, Exum said. When he next visited officers in the field, he found their knowledge of the community to be much more sophisticated: when he asked questions, Exum said, it was like pulling the cord of a “Chatty Cathy doll”—and their knowledge of the counterinsurgency is remarkable.

Exum noted that when it comes to looking at forces driving the conflict, the government of Afghanistan is as important in what it’s not doing as what insurgents are doing. In his opinion, American resources are “out of whack” as we spend most of our efforts killing the enemy instead of building better government and developing Afghan institutions and infrastructure.

Exum assessed the possibility of a new Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan during the next fighting season—this summer— and its ramifications for U.S. strategy there.

He said he’s heard Taliban fighters say, “God is great, and he’s with you half the time, but he’s with us the other half.” If fighting intensifies, will American troops leave? Exum recommended retraining Taliban and setting conditions for bringing them into the fold of the political process.

America cannot win this conflict, he pointed out, but should set out the security conditions we hope to achieve, year by year. Exum concluded by saying that 99.5 percent of Americans are not paying much attention to the war. They’re not involved in a policy debate.

The discussion during the question-andanswer period focused on money, which is in short supply in this current economic crisis. Too much money flowing into the region is fueling corruption, one audience member argued. Exum agreed, adding that only 24 people are involved in targeting 59

Roger Hardy Claims U.S. Lost Muslim Hearts and Minds On Jan. 26 the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC hosted acclaimed author and former BBC World Service analyst Roger Hardy, who discussed “Losing Hearts and Minds: From Bush to Obama.”

Haleh Esfandiari, the program director, mediated the event, stepping in a few times when the question-and-answer session went heatedly off course.

Hardy opened his remarks with an anecdote, joking that it was all the audience would need to hear that day: A man was stung by a killer bee, he said. When the killer bee retreated to a hive of neighboring honey bees, the man poked the hive with a stick. Out swarmed a cloud of honey bees, attacking the man, who continued to fight off the wrong type of bee.

To him, they all looked the same.

“Since 9/11,” Hardy explained, “the United States and its allies tried to do two opposing things. They tried to eliminate Muslims that threaten us without alienating the Muslims that don’t threaten us.”

This issue has plagued both the Bush and the Obama administrations, Hardy said, because the fight for Muslim “hearts and minds” has become a propaganda campaign. Unfortunately, the two biggest play60

Roger Hardy urges Washington to improve its spotty diplomatic record.

which this enemy lives. For example, he asked, “Are we fighting Islam, or Islamicism?” He also wondered about President Obama’s long-term commitment to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nonetheless, Hardy didn’t hesitate to place the crown of imperial power squarely on the head of the United States.

Before taking questions, Hardy concluded by issuing a stern warning to this new imperial power: “We are reluctant to believe we are imperialist…but no diplomacy campaign will change that! A change in perception will come from a change in action.”

For more information visit <www. wilsoncenter.org>.

—Alex Begley

ers in the game—the State Department and Day of Remembrance of Egyptian the Defense Department—have not played Deaths the game very well, he argued, noting that Egyptian Americans and human rights the State Department is too underfunded supporters gathered in San Francisco’s and understaffed, among other things, to Civic Center Plaza on Feb. 12 to pay tribexecute the proper public diplomacy that ute to the more than 300 people who lost the U.S. needs. their lives in Egypt’s “January 25 RevoluThe Defense Department, on the other tion.” The crowd of more than 100 stood hand, has the money—for two compelling silent while the names of the dead were reasons (the wars in Iraq and Afghan- read. Most of the men who were killed in istan)—and the manpower to conduct a the 18-day grassroots revolution were successful outreach to the Muslim world. under 30 years of age.

However, in Hardy’s opinion, the military “Across the Middle East, North Africa, doesn’t do propaganda well, despite hav- and around the world, ordinary people ing launched several attempts to convince who held little hope less than two months the public otherwise. It failed, he said, be- ago are now realizing that change is possicause of a lack of organization and because ble,” Kalaya’an Mendoza, field organizer their successes are quickly overshadowed for Amnesty International, told the group. by their missteps. Small victories like “Amnesty International and human rights building mosques do little to undermine activists worldwide are raising our voices, the al-Qaeda narrative. Hardy contended our placards and our fists in solidarity and that it has been the Defense Department’s defiance. We stand in solidarity with the incapability to understand the cultures peaceful aim of the protesters in Tahrir they are invading and occupying that has Square and elsewhere in Egypt and around reinforced aggression against Western forces in the last decade.

Hardy did have hope for President Barack Obama and the “inbox from Hell” he inherited, but acknowledged that the president’s record on the Middle East is spotty.

He pointed to Obama’s speech in Cairo last summer, where the president perhaps promised too much and delivered too little.

Additionally, Hardy worried that Washington A family attends the memorial in San Francisco's Civic Center does not understand its Plaza honoring those who lost their lives and celebrating the enemy or the world in Egyptian revolution.

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corruption.

He also said that Americans could spend less money on the military if there was more trust in military spending. Exum described soldiers who are ordered to go out and use up all their extra ammunition for “target practice” or they won’t get the same amount budgeted next year. “We are slaves to our budget,” he charged, adding that when money is not spent in one fiscal year it should roll over to the next.

When asked by this reporter why there isn’t more debate on our military budget, Exum replied that the defense budget is small when compared to healthcare costs or Medicare. “It costs $1 million to keep one soldier on the ground each year in Afghanistan,” he said—but it also costs a lot to keep a soldier in Fort Riley, Kansas.

After we draw down troops from Afghanistan it may be time to decide how much of a ground force the U.S. really needs. Americans spend less than 4 percent of GPA on the military, he added, which some say is acceptable but others consider absolute madness.

A podcast of this event is available on the Middle East Institute’s Web site, <www.mei.edu>. —Delinda C. Hanley

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other activist groups in the Washington, DC area, held an emergency demonstration at noon on Saturday, Jan. 29, in front of the Egyptian Embassy. Protesters rallied for days in the nation’s capital to show solidarity with the Egyptian people in their struggle to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak. The Flint Journal Standing between the Tunisian and Egyptian flags, a reported that about 50 peodemonstrator holds the Egyptian flag in San Francisco's ple in Michigan had Civic Center Plaza. boarded a bus to join DC protests, picking up others in Detroit and the world.”

The crowd celebrated throughout the af- Toledo, Ohio.

Demonstrators across the United States ternoon, waving Egyptian, Palestinian and Tunisian flags. Many held photographs of showed their support for Egyptian protestthose who died in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, ers and called for Mubarak’s departure.

Alexandria and other Egyptian towns in People gathered outside the New Orleans federal building waving signs and Egypttheir pursuit of democracy.

Activist Omar Ali read the demands that ian flags and chanting, “Get up, stand up! the youth-led opposition groups are seek- Stand up for your rights.” Rallies also were ing from the Armed Forces Supreme Coun- held in Atlanta outside the headquarters of cil which is now governing Egypt since the CNN, as well as in New York and Seattle. resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. In Michigan, demonstrators waved “We These demands include the immediate re- Love Egypt” signs in Royal Oak, near Depeal of the state of emergency law, release troit. Women in headscarves held up antiof all political prisoners, modification of Mubarak signs such as one reading “Get the Egyptian constitution, dissolving par- Out Grandpa.” One man carried a sign liament, formation of a unity government showing the Egyptian and U.S. flags and consisting of predominantly civic leaders, the slogan: “2011 is Egypt’s 1776.”

—William Hughes and free and fair elections.

—Elaine Pasquini

Americans Show Solidarity With Egyptian Protesters

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Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition, along with a host of

Demonstrators at the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, DC, Jan. 29, 2010.

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Mowahid Shah Looks at Egypt and Beyond

As President Hosni Mubarak fled Cairo, American University Prof. Akbar Ahmed invited Mowahid Hussain Shah, an attorney, writer and policy analyst, to his DC classroom on Feb. 11 to discuss the “Implications of the Uprising in Egypt and Beyond.”

“What is happening is a watershed event,” Shah said. “It wasn’t brought about by guns. The uprising was spearheaded by young people who felt suffocated.”

He asked his student audience just who is remembered throughout history. “It is Moses, not the Pharoah. It is Jesus, not the Romans,” Shah said. When moral power is unleashed, despots fall. “A revolution of human dignity is spreading, and the epicenter is Egypt,” he stated.

So many think tanks, which cost millions of dollars, were caught off balance by recent events, noted Shah. “Scholars didn’t anticipate this. They may be book smart but they are not wise,” he said.

“They meet with elites and don’t talk to the common people.”

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Mowahid Hussain Shah tells A.U. students a revolution of human dignity is spreading.

These revolutions are rattling the American, Arab and Israeli establishments, according to Shah. Americans are distrusted in the Middle East because we lost our moral compass, he argued, we have supported despots. If we would just show moral leadership and resolve the Palestinian problem we still have the capacity to self-correct, he said.

As for the East-West relationship, Shah said, “We are handcuffed to each other, not necessarily voluntarily. It’s not necessarily a pleasant union. We have a common destiny. We’ll either sink or swim—together.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Tunisia and Egypt: We the People Luncheon guests at the Woman’s National Democratic Club (WNDC) on Feb. 17 were treated to a panel discussion moderated by former U.S. Ambassador to Qatar Elizabeth McKune.

Radia Daoussi, a Tunisian native and president of the Vineeta Foundation, described human rights abuses in Tunisia, including the repression of Muslim imams who couldn’t preach freely, and the harassment of women who wanted to wear a headscarf. American military aid supported Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. When it comes to human rights versus stability, what price is too high to support stability? Daoussi asked her audience. For years Linda Likar, an economist at the World Bank, taught sustainable development in North Africa and Asia.

Tunisia had a heavily distorted economy where nothing made sense, she stated, and unemployment and underemployment were serious issues in both Tunisia and Egypt. In 2004-2005, Egypt launched reforms, including a huge privatization pro61

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The American Tunisian Association (ATA) invited Dr. Thomas DeGeorges, director of the American Research Center (CEMAT) in Tunis, to speak at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Jan. 24. Dr. DeGeorges was scheduled to discuss “North African Veterans: Contested Histories and Legacies” but, having spent the past few weeks gazing out his office window in Tunis watching Tunisian protesters force from office Presi-

Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Palestine Center, invited three panelists to discuss the Palestine Papers—the leaked documents concerning Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which have caused an uproar across the Arab world—in front of a packed room in Washington, DC on Feb. 15. Munayyer asked for predictions on what effect the disclosures will have on the

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Reflections on the Jasmine Revolution

transformed Tunisia, especially its educational system, until it was the envy of North Africa.

Ben Ali took over in a bloodless coup in 1987, and this initially very popular new leader made the same bargain with his people, DeGeorges said: “your standard of living will improve, but don’t mess with politics or make political demands on government.” In the waning years of Ben Ali’s reign, DeGeorges said, he became increasingly more insular and stopped touring the country. His second wife, Leïla Trabelsi Ben Ali, and her greedy family governed his relations with his people, and Ben Ali began to lose his connection to what was going on, especially in the interior, where the riots began. Tunisians are shocked by what the government promised to do and what never happened in the countryside.

Westerners may say that this was a Facebook and Twitter revolution, but the people who began this in the interior (and who faced live ammunition in their streets) had no access to the Internet, DeGeorges said. It was only later that the revolution was spurred on by savvy urban youths and labor unions.

Dr. DeGeorges applauded Tunisian society, which pulled together and formed citizen patrols to help protect people and their property. Tourists may have left but many foreigners stayed put, DeGeorges said, adding, “Not one foreigner lost his life or had property vandalized.” Businesses, villas and banks owned by the Trabelsi family were looted, but small neighborhood stores owned by ordinary Tunisians were not targeted.

When asked what he would advise American friends of Tunisia to do, DeGeorges reminded the audience that Lebanon benefits from an active Diaspora, which opens up wallets and invests after troubles in Lebanon. If Tunisia can harness its expats, especially in Europe, and financial institutions will offer bridge loans and financial aid, they can weather through this, DeGeorges said. “Tunisians deserve the time to work this out,” he concluded.

—Delinda C. Hanley

(L-r) Ambassador Elizabeth McKune, Dr. Mary Elizabeth King, Elizabeth Spiro Clark, Radia Daoussi and Linda Likar discuss the national movements in Tunisia and Egypt.

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dent Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, his hosts asked him to talk instead about the country’s Jasmine Revolution.

Dr. DeGeorges gave a fascinating history lesson, starting with the bargain struck by the Beys of Tunis with Italian and French colonists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In return for a quiescent population providing cheap labor and land, European colonists would “bring civilization” to—or at least improve the standard of living for—the average North African, and even deliver education for a small minority.

Following World War II, he continued, anti-colonial labor movements began to challenge colonial authority. Tunisia’s nationalist movement spread from coastal cities to the interior of the country until, after 75 years as a French protectorate, Tunisia gained its independence in 1956.

Habib Bourguiba, both feared and respected by Tunisians, was first named prime minister, then president, and in 1957 abolished the monarchy. Bourguiba is known as the father of his nation—having

The Palestine Papers: Fallout STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

gram, which ended in gross injustice after Mubarak cronies got the companies and only a few benefitted from Egypt’s economic growth.

Dr. Mary Elizabeth King, an international expert on nonviolent action in political conflicts, said national nonviolent movements emerge not because of one incident, like Mohamed Bouazizi’s act of selfimmolation. Lots of people commit suicide by fire, she pointed out. “What happened in Tunisia was years in the making,” she charged, and it resulted from building coalitions with students, parents and grandparents crushed by seeing their children oppressed. Workers, traders, professionals—all different sectors came together. The facility of spreading information via Twitter and Facebook was only part of the spread of this nonviolent movement, Dr. King said.

According to Elizabeth Spiro Clark, a retired foreign service officer who chairs the WNDC’s human rights and international task force, “Democracy is not an exotic Western flower—it’s a universal right.”

Egyptians now have a sense of pride, and will never forget what happened in Tahir Square, Clark concluded. They’ll make sure there is a good outcome.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Dr. Thomas DeGeorges urges the Diaspora community to invest in Tunisia.

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Combined Tactical Systems (CTS) headquarters in Jamestown, PA flies the American and Israeli flags. The tear gas CTS produces was used on peaceful protesters in Tunisia, Egypt and the West Bank. Dozens of the CTS canisters were fired at crowds in Cairo, littering the road surface along with rubble and spent shotgun cartridges. Many protesters have been injured through tear gas inhalation and by being hit by the canisters themselves, with the security forces sometimes firing them straight at demonstrators. ing the papers were fabricated didn’t help their credibility.” In his opinion, they should have conveyed the serious efforts Palestinian negotiators were making to protect Palestinian rights within a limited framework. The papers also have shattered myths about the peace process and showed that “once again America’s thumb was squarely on the scale on Israel’s side.”

The Palestine Papers had serious ramifications for Palestinian leadership, including the Feb. 12 resignation of chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, stated Noura Erakat, adjunct professor at Georgetown University. The Palestinian human rights attorney and coordinator at the U.S.-based Badil Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights pointed out that legitimacy does matter—Palestinian leaders have to respond to their constituency.

“Washington, DC never paid attention to that,” she said.

Speaking next was Mark Perry, a journalist and author of eight books, including the recently released Talking To Terrorists.

As a frequent commentator on Al Jazeera, which released them, Perry was given an early look at the Palestine Papers. Palestinians may be focusing on other things, Perry said, but as an American he focused on what the U.S. was doing—especially the Obama ad(L-r) Yousef Munayyer, Mark Perry, Noura Erakat and Khaled ministration’s Special Envoy for Middle East Elgindy discuss the Palestine Papers.

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Palestinian Authority and the future of negotiations. He also asked panelists to weigh in on how recent events in Egypt affect the legitimacy of negotiations and if the Egyptian uprising will spill into the occupied territories.

First to tackle the questions was Khaled Elgindy, a visiting fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Elgindy, who served as an adviser to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah on permanent status negotiations with Israel from 2004 to 2009, pointed out that the documents released represent a small fraction, perhaps 10 percent, of the documents produced in the negotiations.

“They are a useful but limited snapshot,” he said. Some of the reports mischaracterized the talks, provided incomplete context, and hyped or sensationalized quotes.

He suggested listeners read the documents for themselves and decide.

Elgindy agreed that the Palestinian leadership didn’t handle the crisis well: “claim-

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Peace George Mitchell. There are six documents, from September to October 2009, that show that this administration decided to “forget the Road Map” and throw it out the window, Perry said.

Read those 2009 papers, he advised.

“You Americans in the audience will be embarrassed by our own government...We abandon prior pledges, international agreements and American principles. Why can’t we stand up to Israel?” Perry asked.

He went on to describe the three pillars of current American foreign policy in the Middle East: 1. support for Israel no matter what; 2. oppose Iran; and 3. no talking with political Islam. “Our interests in the Middle East are separate from Israel’s,” Perry concluded. “Our belief in democracy should come ahead of Israel—or else.”

Panelists debated the importance of finding credible negotiators who represent Palestinians at home and abroad. The Palestinian Authority has announced the holding of presidential and legislative elections before September of this year. Panelists discussed ways Diaspora Palestinians can get involved and voice their opinions on the future state. This event was so informative that the Washington Report sent a link to a video of this thought-provoking discussion as an action alert. Watch it yourself on the Palestine Center/Jerusalem Fund’s Web site: <http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/d/sp/i/223/pid/223>.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Examining U.S. National Security Interests in Israeli-Palestine Peace The Middle East Policy Council’s 63rd Capitol Hill Conference, held Jan. 20 at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, addressed “Israeli-Palestine Peace: What Is the U.S. National Security Interest and How Can It Be Achieved?”

When it comes to foreign policy discussions, finger-pointing can be a common occurrence, but—save for a few pokes at the United States—finger-pointing was noticeably absent. MEPC executive director Thomas Mattair introduced a panel that promised to offer solutions to the challenges that the Obama administration faces in tackling the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center, was first to take the podium. Outlining why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a threat to American national security, Riedel argued that now is the moment of truth between Israel and Palestine because the Obama administration has openly admitted to failure at making a breakthrough in peace talks.

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gized terrorism, saying “All the terrorists I ever knew saw very clear linkage between the IsraeliArab conflict and American interests.”

Anderson argued that the breakdown of current talks, coupled with the veto power held by rejec(L-r) Philip Wilcox, Brian Katulis, Thomas Mattair and Bruce tionist parties on both sides, make outRiedel. side help imperative.

Instead of putting this issue on the He concluded his remarks by outlining the proverbial back-burner, Riedel advocated terms of a possible peace resolution; it “doubling down,” and wanting a peace would have to establish two states with agreement even more than the parties borders around the 1967 lines, a shared themselves. The United States has a re- capital in Jerusalem, and compensation for sponsibility to tackle the Israel-Palestine the refugees. “Ignoring the dysfunction on issue, he asserted, because the conflict be- both sides is no longer possible,” he said. tween the two states creates “anger, frus- “And waiting for them to fix their dystration and humiliation that fuels the ene- function is no longer responsible.”

Ambassador Philip Wilcox, president of mies that are killing Americans today.” The longer America allows this conflict to gain the Foundation for Middle East Peace, strength, he said, the more it weakens called for the United States to take a much American allies in the greater Middle East. more aggressive approach to the peace For example, Riedel continued, al-Qaeda talks. The need for a comprehensive peace uses the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the plan and for mobilizing a “strong comstrong emotions surrounding it as a re- pelling public support in both of those socruiting tool. He pointed out that the three cieties for peace” would almost certainly key players of al-Qaeda—Osama bin mean interference in the internal affairs of Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Khalid both countries. He warned against followSheikh Mohammed—all have cited the ing the advice of special interest groups to Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian con- keep a distance. “The United States is not flicts at the forefront of their ideologies. just an onlooker, not just an observer,” he After linking the 2008 terrorist attacks on said. “We are not just drawn into this conMumbai to the conflict, Reidel ended with flict because of good will or altruism. We the following prediction: “Future genera- are a party to it.”

He pointed out that the history of U.S. tions will look back on us…and they will ask a simple question. ‘Why did America “moral, political, and financial” support let this fester for so long?’ Why did we let for Israel and its acts of impunity called for 1.5 million Palestinians live in Gaza under a more “energetic” response from Washsiege? Why did we let Israelis live under ington. “The policies of U.S. deference to siege for so many years? Couldn’t we see Israel are obsolete and harmful,” he said, that this was an urgent necessity in our “so we have a responsibility as Israel’s best friend and ally to treat it like a real friend, own self-interest to resolve?”

MEPC president Frank Anderson, a for- to speak the truth.” The ambassador was mer CIA agent and chief for Near East and careful not to place blame squarely on eiSouth Asia, offered an additional insight. ther side, focusing instead on the steps the On the question of whether or not the Is- administration needs to take now for sucraeli-Palestinian conflict could be resolved cess in the Middle East.

Arguing that force and criticism are not between the two parties themselves, Anderson said there was a short answer: “no.” the answer, Wilcox instead advocated supThough some call the Israel-Palestine port coupled with a large dose of honesty. struggle a “local conflict,” he pointed to The Palestinians, he said, have become too the 1956 Suez war and the Six-Day war of involved in quarrels with Israel which 1967, among many others in the bloody have divided the Palestinian community, history of the region where the conflict leaving no unified voice. Wilcox called spilled into the global arena. Like Riedel, upon American negotiators to be more Anderson felt that these moments ener- forceful in announcing where they stood 64

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on key issues such as security, Jerusalem, borders, settlements, refugees and water.

He admitted, though, that the White House lacks the experience necessary to handle the inevitable conflict that will result if their negotiators don’t take decisive action soon.

Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, closed out the four-hour panel discussion with a sense of urgency. “The window of opportunity is closing,” he said, “…because a viable twostate solution may no longer be possible this decade. And if it’s not achieved in the next few years, we’ve got some real problems.” He then went on to outline four possible alternatives if the current U.S. peace process fails, including Israel maintaining the status quo, Palestine being supported to become an independent state, or a dissolution of the Palestinian Authority altogether.

Although he said he believes the fourth alternative, a multilateral and international effort like the multilateral Arab Peace Initiatives of 2002 and 2007, could work, Katulis nonetheless said he hopes that the Obama administration can refocus its efforts on the conflict. The administration has laid out a plan, he said, but hasn’t necessarily accounted for all the possible outcomes. “If you don’t have a bend point, if you haven’t thought through how the Israelis will respond and how the Palestinians will respond, and then importantly, how do you garner political support both at home and abroad, then it leaves you stuck,” he explained. Presidential interventions have bruised Obama, Katulis pointed out, adding that intervention “is a very precious asset, and you want to use it sparingly.”

As the panel opened for discussion, one idea that was introduced was that of a map—a physical map drawing lines, taking stances and making demands. And if neither side likes what it sees, let them come back with revisions. The participants were united around one demand: days of conciliatory peace talks that go nowhere need to end. It’s time to point the finger at the current administration and ask it to take the definitive, comprehensive step forward in finding a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For more information, transcripts, or to watch the full conference visit <www. mepc.org>.

—Alex Begley

Iqraa’s Fourth Season Approaches: Running for a Brighter Palestine!

Iqraa (“Read” in Arabic) is gearing up for our fourth year of running on behalf of a APRIL 2011

sion of one mile for half-marathoners and three miles for six returning veterans who will provide mentorship to our new runners in 2010. The Marathon Charity Cooperation (MCC) provides coaches, seminars, food and beverages to meet the training needs of runners, as well as racing day support.

Some of the Iqraa team at the Baltimore Running Festival in OcIqraa hosts a series of tober 2010.

Ramadan training runs after sundown during better education for Palestinian youth. We the month of fasting so our runners can started in 2008 with a simple idea: that a keep up with the regular MCC training committed group of men and women can schedule.

Running with Team Iqraa is a great way train together, run in long-distance races, and leverage those races into a fund-rais- to get in shape or improve fitness, meet ing opportunity, with the proceeds going dedicated people, and perform selfless charity work for a great cause. As our 70to education in Palestine.

To make this vision a reality we recruit plus runners over three years have proven, would-be runners—experience really is anyone willing to make the commitment not required—and provide training, can be an Iqraa runner. We’ll be holding coaching, food and beverages for post- info sessions at UPA in April for anyone training runs, and guaranteed entry into who wants to run for Iqraa in 2011. UPA’s the Baltimore Running Festival or the Ma- office is at 1330 New Hampshire Ave NW rine Corps Marathon. All we ask in return near Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. For is a commitment to run and to raise funds more information, e-mail me at <kirkcruachan@yahoo.com>.

—Kirk Campbell for Palestinian education.

Iqraa cooperates closely with United Palestinian Appeal (UPA); all donations “Blues for Palestine” Concert raised by Iqraa runners go to education Benefits KinderUSA projects that UPA—a 501(c)(3) charity The Universalist National Memorial founded in 1978—funds in the West Bank Church (UNMC) in Washington, DC hosted and Gaza Strip. UPA sponsors our racing t- a “Blues for Palestine” benefit for shirts, tracks our fund-raising, and sends KinderUSA on Jan. 29, with musical guest thank-you’s and tax receipts to all donors. Robert Lighthouse, a DC-area blues musiIn our first three years—despite a diffi- cian originally from Sweden. cult U.S. economy—more than 72 Iqraa Operating from both Texas and Belgium, runners have raised almost $80,000 to help rebuild kindergartens in Gaza, and fund university scholarships and work study programs in Gaza and the West Bank.

Our 2010 runners included Muslims, Christians, Hindus and secularists representing the first or second generation from Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan, Palestine, Vietnam, India, America and Egypt. We typically have as many or more women than men, including several women wearing hijab. What unites us is “Running for a brighter Palestine,” our slogan and mission statement.

Team Iqraa’s 4th season begins May 7 at 8 a.m., with a training ses- Donors enjoyed a concert by Robert Lighthouse.

PHOTO COURTESY ROBERTLIGHTHOUSE.COM

PHOTO COURTESY KIRK CAMPBELL

activisms_54-66_April 2011 Activisms 3/2/11 12:12 PM Page 65

APRIL 2011

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

“Kinder” is an acronym for “Kids in Need of Development, Education, and Relief.”

The U.S. tax-deductible charity was represented by Dr. Bassil Kublaoui and Mai Abdul-Rahman, and the presentation detailed the many efforts that KinderUSA undertakes to fulfill its multipurpose mission: to “overcome obstacles by bringing material goods into areas of conflict and disaster; provide material support to those living in Palestinian refugee camps; to initiate rehabilitation programs; and to reverse the psychological damage caused to those innocent beings due to the horrors of conflict.”

KinderUSA operates and funds many projects in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon, as well as Pakistan and here in the U.S. Dr. Kublaoui discussed projects Kinder USA is involved in, including a women’s cooperative in Gaza that trains female heads of households to produce and market white cheese; a children’s theater group that employs drama as a means to provide psychologically therapeutic opportunities for children subjected to daily traumatic experiences and violence in everyday life under occupation; summer camps for children in Gaza; Ramadan food delivery in both Gaza and the West Bank; a cystic fibrosis (CF) diagnosis, medication and equipment plan, with visiting physicians to attend to CF patients; and Eid celebrations for children in the Lebanese Palestinian refugee camp of Naher el Bared.

KinderUSA also coordinated relief with International Blue Crescent for Pakistani flood victims. The literature that Kinder USA distributed described its efforts in the United States for Hurricane Katrina victims.

In a moving personal statement, Mai Abdul-Rahman said, “When Israeli children sneeze, Palestinian children catch a cold. We are all one people and we all need to be made whole through love.” She added, “The well-being of Palestinian children is an important goal for all those invested in peace, because they are the ones who will shoulder the burden of building the future.”

An objective of KinderUSA is to “change the world, one child at a time.” The world may not have been changed that night in the nation’s capital, but the 50 people in attendance were made more aware of the world—one person at a time.

For more information or to make a donation visit KinderUSA’s Web site, <www.kinderusa.org> or <www.kindereu.be>.

—Marti Martinson 65

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Diplomatic Doings Hamzah Jamjoom (l), a film studies student at Chicago’s DePaul University, narrates and stars in the film “Arabia3D.” To the right of the student, Ambassador Adel AlJubeir, historian Robert Lacey and producer/director Greg MacGillivray.

Iranians rose in unison and “broke the chains of the shah’s rule,” he said. After the shah fled to the U.S. in 1979 the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile to live in a “humble abode” in Iran (in sharp contrast to the shah and other recently deposed leaders). Today nations are “shaping their own destinies and the political aftershocks are reverberating across the Islamic world,” Dr. Rahmani said.

“Today Iran is a powerful nation that has never subjugated or oppressed other people throughout its history,” he pointed out. “We’ve defended our own territory but are not aggressors.”

Dr. Rahmani addressed the recent effort made by “two countries that collaborated to sabotage Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities,” referring to the Stuxnet computer worm attack on computers at the Bushehr nuclear plant in September 2010. “It could have caused a Chernobyl-like nuclear disaster,” Dr. Rahmani stated, but fortunately for Iranians, it did not.

Dr. Rahmani concluded his remarks by describing some of the technical advances his country has made, including building state-of-the art submarines and advanced satellites. Iran seeks to overcome misunderstandings with other nations, he concluded. Iranian children then took to the stage to sing and recite Iranian poetry, in both Farsi and English.

—Delinda C. Hanley

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Prince Abdul-Aziz bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud (r) and his wife Princess Sara bint Saud at the opening reception.

(KAUST) and other major educational investments, Saudi Arabia hopes to be a vital home for future scholars and scientists.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Iran Celebrates Revolution’s 32nd Anniversary Dr. Mostafa Rahmani, director of the Iranian Interests Section in Washington, DC, welcomed guests to a Feb. 10 dinner event at his office to commemorate the “32nd Anniversary of the Victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.” Because Iran and the U.S. do not have diplomatic relations, Pakistan handles Iranian interests in the U.S., and the Iranian interests section is located a few miles from the Pakistani Embassy.

Dr. Rahmani, who has lived in the United States for more than 30 years, compared Iran’s revolution to the upheavals taking place in the Middle East and North Africa today. After decades of subjugation THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the U.S. Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir and Dr. Cristián Samper, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year, co-hosted a March 1 private screening of “Arabia3D” in the Johnson IMAX Theater. The spectacular new film will play at the Smithsonian through September 2011.

Ambassador Al-Jubeir welcomed Prince Abdul-Aziz bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud and his wife, Princess Sara bint Saud bin Saad Al Saud, granddaughter of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. He thanked diplomats, members of Congress and others for coming to watch a film that he said he hoped will show Americans that Saudi Arabia is so much more than oil, sand and camels—and, sadly, after 9/11, terrorism.

“It’s full of normal people seeking to lead normal lives,” the ambassador said, adding that there are 42,000 Saudi students studying in American universities.

Viewers donned 3D glasses to watch fish swim out into the audience from the Red Sea coral reefs, and they could almost smell dust flying from the desert sands. They climbed dizzying heights to fly over modern-day Riyadh, the Nabataean city and magnificent tombs of Medain Saleh, carved from sandstone mountain cliffs, and pilgrims during the Hajj at the Kaaba in Mecca.

“Arabia3D” depicts the bedouins’ vanishing way of life, like that of the American cowboy. It describes golden ages in the Kingdom‘s past and the golden age that is yet to come. With the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

STAFF PHOTOS D. HANLEY

Saudi Ambassador Hosts East Coast Premiere of “Arabia3D”

Dr. Mostafa Rahmani (above) recalls Iran’s revolution.

APRIL 2011

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Other People’s Mail Compiled by Kate Hilmy and Delinda C. Hanley Why the War Should End To The Washington Post, Feb. 21, 2011 Regarding the commentary “Want to cut the deficit? End the war,” by Reps. James P. McGovern (D-MA) and Walter B. Jones (R-NC): Two quotes in this piece—“there is no excuse for our collective indifference” and “the human and financial costs of the war are unacceptable and unsustainable”—hit the nail on the head. And they asked: “Where is the liberal outrage?”

Really good question. Perhaps the answer is few of us have skin in the game.

No draft, no outrage. Who cares? Only the parents, wives, husbands and children of the volunteers.

We don’t have a citizen army. We have an all-volunteer force that’s ripping apart at the seams. Our military-industrial complex, along with a broken Congress and an apathetic public, is bringing the greatest country in history to its knees.

Outrage? Pfft. How about those Caps?

Bill Little, Fairfax Station, VA

A Warning About War To The New York Times, Feb. 28, 2011 If, as Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates told West Point cadets, it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan (news article, Feb. 26), doesn’t it follow that it is unwise to continue fighting these? Shouldn’t we wise up right away?

David Greenstein, New York, NY

Two-State Solution Is Dead To The Independent, Feb. 18, 2011 Dr. Faysal Mikdadi, as a Palestinian, asserts that there is a solution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, namely, “Let us share the land.” I couldn’t agree more.

Living and working in Arab Jaffa and in Jewish Tel-Aviv, Israel, for 10 years as a chef, I was often encouraged at seeing how, on a daily basis, Arabs and Jews were able to work, laugh, joke and even commiserate together.

This reminded me of my native Northern Ireland, where, even in the height of the Troubles, Catholics and Protestants still had to work together, and people on the street still got on with their daily lives, despite the media polarization.

There is more chance of a peaceful future for Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land if they live together in co-existence, together in one country, than if the terriAPRIL 2011

tory is further divided into incontiguous sectarian pockets where extremism would most certainly foment.

Colin Nevin, Bangor, Northern Ireland

The Broken Peace Process To the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 30, 2011 We keep saying this is the end of the peace process—the two-state solution— and indeed this is sad. The Palestinians, whom Israel vilifies as unwilling to make concessions, were willing to give away everything for a small sovereign state.

So if the two-state solution really is dead, Israel’s worst nightmare is now reality. The Palestinian cause is now a civil rights cause—equal rights for all inhabitants of the state of Israel, whether Jewish or not. As Americans, how can we not support that?

Erica Hahn, Monrovia, CA

concerns”? America’s or Israel’s?

It’s time to come down off the fence and stand up for justice. That’s what Americans claim they are good at, and now is the time to prove it, across the Middle East.

Ibrahim Hewitt, London. The writer is senior editor of Middle East Monitor.

Night of High Drama in Cairo To The New York Times, Feb. 9, 2011 We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to bring democracy to the Middle East through our misadventure in Iraq. Now the Egyptians are doing it, all by themselves, with enormous courage and spirit. We Americans must support their effort, immediately, with no more equivocation. If we don’t stand for democracy now, heart and soul, what do we stand for?

Douglas Preston, Round Pond, ME

Sorting Out Egypt Uprising

Fearmongering on Islamists

To The New York Times, Jan. 31, 2011 It was only a question of time before the “moderate” Arab states in Israel’s neighborhood, a k a stable dictatorships at peace with Israel, would have their comeuppance.

But Israel has stubbornly ignored this ticking bomb, as well as a recent generous offer by the Palestinians and less than energetic prodding by the United States on its settlement policy, and it now faces the possibility that radical elements will take over Egypt, and possibly Jordan, Yemen and others over time.

President Obama did not even mention our intentions about reviving the IsraelArab peace process during his State of the Union address. If a major Middle East disaster is to be avoided, he needs to exert pressure on Israel now before a two-state solution slides off the table.

Gustav Ranis, New Haven, CT

To The Washington Post, Feb. 13, 2011 When The Post prints, on its Feb. 8 front page, an article such as “Muslim Brotherhood eyes comeback in Egypt,” it contributes to mischaracterizing the political equation in Egypt and, quite unhelpfully, incites fears about an imminent specter of Islamic extremism. Here in the region, this fear of the Muslim Brotherhood and its “hidden” agenda is largely absent. The focus is on Egyptians’ aspirations for legitimate political reforms and a democratic process. People are familiar with the Brotherhood’s ideology and its clearly stated objectives.

Long ago, the Brotherhood denounced violence and has held to this. Largely because of the Brotherhood’s pragmatic approach to politics, many people take as sincere its unequivocal statement that it does not intend to field a candidate for Egypt’s presidency. Its adherents don’t want to run a country; rather, they want to be part of the political process and wield influence in parliament.

The United States should support the Egyptian people’s aspirations for a free and democratic society and an open process that includes the Brotherhood.

Courtney Erwin, Doha, Qatar

Get Off the Fence To The New York Times, Jan. 31, 2011 Why do the people of Egypt have to place themselves in danger of being shot and tear-gassed by the riot police before the United States realizes that it has a “moral responsibility to stand with those who have the courage to oppose authoritarian rulers”? The United States government has been aware of the nature of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime for decades and has sustained it through generous foreign aid, but for whose “national security THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

A New Era in the Arab World To the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 2, 2011 As an Arab American, I am immensely proud of the movements taking place in 67

opm_67-68_Other People's Mail 3/3/11 3:25 PM Page 68

Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen by people standing up for themselves, absent any foreign meddling. They’re standing up not for a pan-Arab or pan-Islamic cause but for governments that muster even a halfhearted attempt at democracy.

These movements are emblematic of the flaw in Samuel Huntington’s theory of the clash of civilizations, as they represent the collusion of the modern (Twitter) and the joining of secular, religious and civic groups in common cause for fundamental rights.

I look forward to seeing which opposition movement is the first to rip up its country’s constitution and write the first modern Arab constitution of the 21st century.

Omar Masry, Newport Beach, CA

Up With Egypt To The New York Times, Feb. 10, 2011 My dear Egyptians: Your heroic efforts to bring democracy to your country bring tears to my eyes and joy to my soul. I dream of the day that you will be free. I race to my newspaper or the Internet to read about your latest extraordinary effort.

Your energy, determination, creativity and resourcefulness are breathtaking.

May your efforts bring peace and justice throughout your land. Know that for this American, you are an inspiration.

Jennifer Patton, Belmont, MA

A Time to Look Ahead To The New York Times, Feb. 14, 2011 As a Muslim-American, I believe that the regime change in Egypt is an opportunity for a real revolution. Cairo was the birthplace of Al-Azhar University, one of the first universities, founded around 970, at a time when Egypt was a cradle of scientific learning. Sadly, today the country lags behind.

But now with President Hosni Mubarak’s exit, there is a chance for Egypt’s youth to take control of their destiny by embracing science and technology.

Just look at the technological revolution that helped make America dominant in the world.

Sohail Husai, New Haven, CT

Hope for Egypt’s Future?

To the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 15, 2011 I am reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s response to the woman who asked him as he emerged from the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, “What do we have?”

He replied: “A republic, madam, if we can keep it.”

That will now be the challenge for the 68

Egyptian people. America has survived many challenges, wars and even a civil war. The democracy we cherish can get pretty messy at times, yet the Star Spangled Banner still waves, the hope lives on and the dream has never died.

May it be so for Egypt.

Phil Wilt, Van Nuys, CA

Iraq Lesson To The Independent, Feb. 16, 2011 I am sure Tony Blair will agree that the world is a better place without Hosni Mubarak. But does he also agree that the method of getting rid of him was far preferable to the way he and Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein, and, with a little more time, the Iraqi people would probably have done the same thing as the Egyptians?

Cormac Loane, Stourbridge, UK

Agreement on the Davis Case To the Arab News, March 3, 2011 For the first time Pakistanis, whatever their politics or sect, agree on one thing: Raymond Davis, the American jailed for allegedly killing two Pakistanis, should not be above the law.

There is massive pressure from various

WRITE OR TELEPHONE THOSE WORKING FOR YOU IN WASHINGTON. President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20500 (202) 456-1414 White House Comment Line: (202) 456-1111 Fax: (202) 456-2461 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Department of State Washington, DC 20520 State Department Public Information Line: (202) 647-6575 Any Senator U.S. Senate Washington, DC 20510 (202) 224-3121 Any Representative U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-3121

E-MAIL CONGRESS AND THE WHITE HOUSE E-mail Congress: visit the Web site <www.congress.org> for contact information.

E-mail President Obama: <president@whitehouse.gov> E-mail Vice President Joe Biden: <vice.president@whitehouse.gov>

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

quarters to have him freed. The U.S. has threatened to stop the promised aid at a time when Pakistan is going through a financial crisis.

Pakistan’s foreign minister had to resign from his post because he was resisting U.S. pressure over Davis. So far the Pakistan government has stuck to the view that it is for the judiciary to decide the issue. According to recent news reports, relatives of Davis had visited him in prison, a facility denied to the family members of thousands of prisoners languishing in notorious Bagram center in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and hundreds of other CIA secret locations.

Khawaja Umer Farooq, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Hearings on U.S. Muslims To The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2011 Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, first announced Homeland Security Committee hearings about the Muslim-American community because of alleged statements that community leaders are uncooperative with law enforcement.

Oddly, Mr. King now refuses to take testimony from the very law enforcement officials who expressed such concerns about cooperation.

Representative King claims that these sources are unwilling to speak publicly.

This lack of attribution—combined with the fact that law enforcement officials have spoken publicly about their positive relationships with Muslim-American communities—casts serious doubts on Mr. King’s claimed bases for the hearings.

Nevertheless, the real problem with these hearings is that they will promote division and prejudice. Capitalizing on recent waves of anti-Muslim sentiment, the hearings will perpetuate the myth that Muslims are a monolith, disregarding the important contributions that Muslim Americans make every day.

At a time when politicians have called for unity, we deserve hearings that focus on real security threats, not hearings that promote suspicion of an entire community of faith.

Asim Rehman, Brooklyn, NY

Murdoch Poses Greater Threat To The Seattle Times, Feb. 22, 2011 The Times asks: “Does Gates funding of media taint objectivity?”

A more important question: “Has Rupert Murdoch’s ownership of media destroyed objectivity?” Perspective, please.

Floyd McKay, Bellingham, WA ❑ APRIL 2011

cartoons_69_April 2011 Cartoons 3/3/11 2:23 PM Page 69

Nationa

WWW.BENDIB.COM

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST

The Muslim Observer, Livonia

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

New York Times Syndicate, NY

Al-Mustaqbal, Beirut

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com

Trouw, Amsterdam

Suddeutsche Zeitung, Munich

Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg

APRIL 2011

THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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book_review_70_Book Review 3/2/11 12:28 PM Page 70

Books The Goldstone Report: the Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict Edited by Adam Horowitz, Lizzy Ratner & Phillip Weiss, foreword by Desmond Tutu, Nation Books, 2011, paperback, 449 pp.

List: $18.95 AET: $11.25.

Reviewed by Ian Williams Widely invoked and equally widely excoriated, the Goldstone Report is up there with the U.S. budget as one of the least read but often cited documents in recent history. It is indeed very long and detailed, which is one of its strengths as an indictment—but not calculated to put it on the best seller lists!

Nation Books has republished it, edited for readability along with commentary from a spectrum of writers who do show every sign of having read it. It has been edited, not censored, so the Report’s accusations against both Hamas and the PA for their attacks on human rights and the former’s rocket attacks against Sderot in Israel remain.

Outstanding among the informed contributors was Washington state congressman Brian Baird, who actually had been to Gaza and read the report, and who comments about his colleagues when they overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the report. “I read the entire Goldstone Report, front to back, and I read it critically,” Baird writes. “And after all the flak it had taken, I thought, Well what am I missing here?…In fact, it was absolutely consistent with everything we had seen and heard in Gaza and Sderot.” But other congressmen had not been there, did not read the report and were happy to damn it.

Israeli philosopher Moshe Habertal carries the burden of criticizing it, because, claims editor Lizzy Ratner, he was a serious commentator rather than a reflexive abuser of Judge Richard Goldstone, as were so many critics of the report. Habertal calls the report “biased and unfair,” and “a terrible document.” He also concludes, Ian Williams is the Washington Report’s U.N. correspondent.

70

however, that “mere denunciation will not suffice” and that “Israel must establish an independent investigation into the concrete allegations that the report makes.”

That is, in fact, what the report calls for.

One hopes that Habertal has noticed the anti-Kangaroo Court that Israel set up, disappeared into its own pouch to ignore the evidence of massive war crimes.

As the contributors note, Israel’s defenders—rather than investigate the allegations in the report, rather than admit that the IDF had in any way erred—decided upon a massive Cast Dirt campaign against Goldstone. But the “internal” comments were most revealing. Apart from the calculated, purposeful expedient attacks appeared some of the reasons for the emotional force of the vilification.

Coming with plaudits from Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and a host of other secular saints of the modern era, Goldstone was not only a globally revered jurist— with honorable roles in the South African truth and reconciliation commission, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the “Oil for Food” investigation, even investigating Nazi war criminals in Argentina— he was himself Jewish. Not just that, he was a self-professed Zionist, on the board of World Ort and the Hebrew University, and had refused the assignment to investigate IDF behavior in Gaza unless his commission’s charge included Hamas and the PA. This reduced some of his critics to apoplexy, since it gave his report so much more credibility, augmented for those who bothered to read it by his exhaustive and well-documented efforts to secure Israeli cooperation, which again, for the rational would rebut the traditional claims of Israel and its so-called friends that Goldstone’s report was “biased and one-sided.”

As one South African Zionist told him, “Without your credentials as a Jew and pre-eminent human rights jurist this report would have lacked all credibility and would have failed to gain any traction.”

So the ad hominem drones were wheeled out, as detailed in Jewish peace activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s chapter. Alan Dershowitz called him “an evil man,” a “traitor to the Jewish people,” the U.N.’s “token court Jew,” and a “despicable human being.” Had he made such accusations in Britain, he would have been testing his forensic skills in the libel courts, and Goldstone THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

almost certainly would end up with a much larger retirement fund. In the U.S., Goldstone could merely comfort himself with the thought that being attacked by Dershowitz is no bad thing.

Goldstone is an extremely affable, mildmannered person, however, and there is no doubt that these attacks shocked and hurt him—not least when a bunch of Zionist zealots in South Africa tried to bar him from his grandson’s bar mitzvah. He has tended to withdraw from the spotlight and let the report maintain its own momentum, depriving its detractors of a lightening rod.

In effect, they made Richard Goldstone a victim as well, and the collateral benefit of how ferocious and unbalanced these scurrilous attacks were is that more and more figures, including many avowed American Jews, have been prepared to speak out about Israeli policy and to join the peace camp.

Nation Books has done a service—a mitzvah, one might almost say—in its republication and packaging with commentary of this momentous report, which vindicates all those who truly believe in accountability and justice being the best guarantee of “Never Again.” And we should remember that Israel’s supporters are not the only blinkered opponents of justice. Many on the so-called left excoriated Goldstone for his part in bringing Balkan war criminals to justice. It is all too common for partisans to call for justice for their opponents and ignore it for their friends. Goldstone’s achievement has been to raise justice above tribal and sectarian partiality. ❑

APRIL 2011

book_catalog_71_April 2011 3/2/11 12:30 PM Page 71

AET Book Club Catalog Literature

*

Music

*

Film

*

Monographs

*

More

New Winter 2011 Islamophobia: The Ideological campaign against Muslims, by Stephen Sheehi, Clarity Press Inc, 2011, paperback, 291 pp.

List: $16.95 AET: $11.50. Critically acclaimed scholar, author and activist Stephen Sheehi, analyzes the origins of the recently intensified epidemic of anti-Muslim sentiment throughout the West.

Sheehi provocatively argues that the colonial era image of a hopelessly backward Muslim culture was renewed as an excuse for Muslim opposition to economic and cultural globalization during the Clinton era.

The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict, edited by Adam Horowitz et. al., Nation Books, 2011, paperback, 449 pp. List: $18.95 AET: $11.25.

One of the most controversial and historic official documentations of war crimes published on the conflict in Israel and Palestine, Nation Book’s The Goldstone Report, includes essays by renowned experts, activists, and journalists, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rashid Khalidi, Ali Abunimah, Leila ElHaddad, and others.

Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine, by William Parry, Lawrence Hill Books, Press 2011, paperback, 191 pp. List: 24.95 AET: $16.00. London based freelance journalist William Parry documents the Palestinians’ defiance against the occupation using stunning photographs of drawings covering Israel’s Apartheid Wall accompanied with powerful vignettes of the people who suffer due to a lack of work, education, and vital medical care.

Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan. net, by Joshua Foust, Just World Books, Press 2010, paperback, AET: $23.95. Widely published military analyst Joshua Foust gives the readers a first hand look into why the US has been losing its war on Afghanistan for so long. Based on his writings on www.registan.net, Foust provides valuable insight gained from his visit to Afghanistan in 2009 and cogent analysis of the broader policy issues often ignored by U.S. press.

The Rise and Fall of A Palestinian Dynasty: The Husaynis, 1700-1948, by Ian Pappé, University of California Press, 2010, hardcover, 393 pp.

List: $29.95 AET: $20.00. Prolific scholar and activist, Ilan Pappé, chronicles more than two centuries of Palestinian history through the lens of Jerusalem’s former prominent family. Pappé expertly documents the Husaynis emergence under Ottoman rule only to be snubbed by the British intent on supporting Zionist aims.

By Hook and By Crook: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank, B’Tselem Press, 2010, paperback, 69 pp., AET: $0.00. Using a wealth of data collected by B’Tselem since its founding in 1989, By Hook and By Crook documents the proliferation Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Israeli government’s attempts to give their presence a veneer of legality. AET is offering this invaluable document for free, plus shipping and handling.

The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future, ed. by Nader Hashemi & Danny Postel, Melville House Press, 2011, paperback, 432 pp.

List: $18.95, AET: $12.50. Featuring essays and interviews by Iran experts, including Juan Cole, Reza Aslan, and Shirin Ebadi, this anthology attempts to provide "an intellectual and political roadmap" to understanding Iran's tumultuous 2009 presidential election. The People Reloaded not only provides the reader with a better understanding of 2009 protests, but also gives valuable insight into the country’s future.

Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment,

by Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Pluto Press, 2011, paperback, 320 pp.

List: $30.00, AET: $22.00.

Author of Sharing the Land of Canaan, Dr. Qumsiyeh’s newest work contains hundreds moving anecdotes of Palestinians who continue to resist the occupation non-violently. By highlighting the peaceful yet creative struggle for freedom, Popular Resistance in Palestine is an effective counter-narrative to the common media account of violent Palestinian resistance

Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World, by Bruce K. Rutherford, Princeton University Press, 2008, hardcover, 304 pp., List: 35.00, AET: $24.00. Written over two years before the collapse of Mubarak’s regime, Rutherford dispels common myths, such as the danger presented by the Muslim Brotherhood and the incompatibility of Islamic ideals and liberalism in Egypt. Egypt after Mubarak provides an excellent framework for understanding the new Egypt.

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APRIL 2011

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Upcoming Events, Announcements & Obituaries —Compiled by Andrew Stimson Upcoming Events: The Virginia Festival of Books will feature a panel on Voices From the Middle East, hosted by Just World Books, March 19 at 2 p.m., City Council Chambers, 605 E. Main St., Charlottesville, VA. Panelists will include Chas W. Freeman Jr., Laila ElHaddad and Joshua Foust. For more information visit <http://www.vabook.org/ site11/program/details.php?eventID=65>.

The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University will present a two-day symposium on A Sense of Place: Arab World Diasporas & Migrations, March 21 and 22, in the Lohrfink Auditorium, Rafik B. Hariri Building, on the Georgetown campus in Washington, DC. For more information and to RSVP, call (202) 687-6215 or e-mail <ccasevents@ georgetown.edu>.

All Saints Church of Pasadena, CA will host Belief Beyond Religion: Giving Up Religion for Lent, featuring James Carroll and Reza Aslan, who will discuss religious beliefs from Islam and Christianity. The event will take place March 27 and 28 at 132 North Euclid Ave. in Pasadena. For more information call Norma Sigmund, (626) 583-2734 or e-mail <nsigmund@allsaints-pas.org>.

The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley will present Arab Presidents for Life and the Politics of Succession, featuring Harvard University history professor Roger Owen, April 7 at 5 p.m. in Stephens Hall. For information visit <events.berkeley.edu> or call (510) 642-8208.

The Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) will host the ACCESS 40th Anniversary Dinner at which the Arab American of the Year Award will be presented to Emmy Award winner Tony Shalhoub and U.S. Army Gen. George Joulwan. The event will be held on Saturday, April 9 at the Detroit Marriott Renaissance Center with doors opening at 5 p.m. and the program beginning at 6. For more information call Rose Assi at (313) 842-4794, or visit <http:// www.accesscommunity.org/>.

The Arab community of Montgomery County, MD will celebrate the 12th annual Arab American Heritage Festival, April 17 from 12-4 p.m. at the activity center in Gaithersburg’s Bohrer Park.

The Michael Berger Gallery will present 72

the exhibit, Dis[Locating] Culture: Contemporary Islamic Art in America, exploring contemporary Islamic art, beginning with an artists’ reception April 15 from 5-7:30 p.m. and running through July 30. The exhibit is free and open to the public at the gallery located at 30 South Sixth Street, South Side, Pittsburgh, PA. For more information visit <http://www. michaelbergergallery.com/News-Detail.cfm?

NewsID=45>.

Announcements: The American University in Cairo announced the launch of a new quarterly policy journal, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs. A print edition will be distributed worldwide, and the journal also will be available online at <www.the cairoreview.com>.

Deadline for the Jack G. Shaheen 2011 Mass Communications Scholarships is April 1. The scholarships honor ArabAmerican junior and senior college students, as well as graduate students, enrolled for the 2011-2012 academic year, who excel in media studies. For more information visit <http://www.adc.org/edu cation/jack-g-shaheen-mass-communica tions-scholarship/>.

The deadline for student applications to the The Islamic Scholarship Fund is April 11. The fund was founded to address the problem of underrepresentation of Muslim Americans in the fields of humanities, social sciences and liberal arts and by providing scholarships for higher education. For eligibility criteria and application forms, visit <http://www.islamicscholar ship fund.org/>.

Deadline for the United Palestinian Appeal Scholarship for the 2011/12 academic year is April 30. The scholarship is offered to Palestinian students currently enrolled in a Palestinian university in the West Bank or Gaza Strip and pursuing a bachelor’s, master’s, medical, or law degree.

For more information visit <http://upa.fmgateway.com/students/>.

Obituaries: Saadalla Mohamed Aly, 79, the perpetually tuxedoed butler on the set of the NBC news program “Meet the Press,” died in December after contracting pneumonia while on a trip to his native Egypt. Beloved by the show’s staff as well as the politicians, panelists, and personalities featured each Sunday, Mr. Aly served drinks and food THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

BulletinBoard with elegance and charm. Born in Aswan, Egypt, in 1931, he was orphaned at a young age and moved to Cairo when he was 16.

There he found employment with the wealthy Sabet family, and followed them to the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, where he served at restaurants in the evenings. When his boss returned to Egypt, Aly asked to stay behind, and in 1963 found a job in the World Bank’s printing department, where he remained until he retired in 1997. After marrying in 1970 and the birth of his daughter, Mr. Aly began waiting tables to earn extra cash. In the mid-1970s, news anchor David Brinkley hired Aly as a waiter, and his career with “Meet the Press” began in 1976. According to The Washington Post, “the show’s extended clan of politicians, pontificators, analysts and newsmakers are taking Aly’s loss hard.” He is survived by his daughter, Dalia Aly. Abdallah El Maaroufi, 66, World Bank economist and former Moroccan ambassador, died of a neurological disorder Jan. 8 at his home in Chevy Chase, MD. His long career at the World Bank lasted from 1969 until his retirement in 1998, and included assignments with the organization’s offices in Burkina Faso, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, as well as heading the bank’s European office. King Hassan II of Morocco appointed him CEO of the Groupe Banques Populaires, and in 2000, King Mohamed VI named him Morocco’s ambassador to Washington. Born in Casablanca, El Maaroufi was among the first foreign students to attend the private St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H. According to a 1958 Time magazine article, he said that his dream was to become an ambassador because he was “weak in mathematics.” He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University in 1967 and a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University in 1969. El Maaroufi served on the boards of Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco and the American School of Tangier. Since 2003 he had been an independent consultant on African and Middle Eastern economic development.

He is survived by his wife of 37 years, Kathleen McKim El Maaroufi of Chevy Chase, and two sons, Karim El Maaroufi of Washington and Omar El Maaroufi of Lugano, Switzerland.

Sultan Amir Tarar, the retired Pakistani spy known as Colonel Imam, “the godfather of the Taliban” died Jan. 23 in captivity in Pakistan’s Waziristan Province, where he had been kidnapped 10 months earlier. He reportedly was killed because his kidnapAPRIL 2011

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AET’s 2011 Choir of Angels Following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1 and Feb. 23, 2011 is making possible activities of the tax-exempt AET Library Endowment (federal ID #52-1460362) and the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. We are deeply honored by their confidence and profoundly grateful for their generosity.

HUMMERS ($100 or more) Jeff Abood, Silver Lake, OH Diane Adkin, Camas, WA Dr. Nabih Ammari, Cleveland, OH Dr. Abdullah Arar, Amman, Jordan Stanton Barrett, Ipswich, MA Ouahib Chalbi, Coon Rapids, MN Mr. & Mrs. Rajie Cook, Washington Crossing, PA Dr. Hassan Dannawi, Macon, GA Kassem Elkhalil, Arlington, TX Barbara Ferguson & Tim Kennedy, Arlington, VA Ken Galal, San Francisco, CA Dr. & Mrs. Frederick Guenther, Newtown, PA Rich Hoban, Cleveland Heights, OH Veronica Hoke, Hillcrest Heights, MD Said Jibrin, Bethesda, MD Dr. & Mrs. Assad Khoury, Potomac, MD Paul Kirk, Baton Rouge, LA pers’ ransom demands had not been met, although the Taliban issued a statement saying he had suffered a heart attack. After graduating from the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) in Kakul, Tarar trained in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he was awarded an American Green Beret by his training commander. He then returned to Pakistan and the secretive Pakistani Special Service Group (SSG). In the 1980s, he ran a network of CIA-funded training camps in the tribal regions and Balochistan, which supplied tens of thousands of mujahideen guerrillas for battles against the Soviets. He won the respect of his students, mostly Pashtun refugees, including Muhammad Omar, who emerged as head of the Afghan Taliban and seized power in Kabul in 1996.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mr. Tarar was invited to the White House by then-President George H.W. Bush and given a piece of the Berlin Wall with a brass plaque inscribed: “To the one who dealt the first blow.” Later, Western intelligence agencies believed Tarar was among a group of renegade officers from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) who continued to help the Taliban following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. More recently, Tarar became a vocal advocate of peace negotiations with the Afghan Taliban, insisting that they could be separated from their al-Qaeda allies. He was abducted along with British APRIL 2011

Anthony Mabarak, Grosse Pointe Park, MI Rachelle Marshall, Mill Valley, CA Bill McGrath, Northfield, MN Ben Monk, St. Paul, MN Liz Mulford, Cupertino, CA Dr. Ibrahim Oweiss, Kensington, MD Edmond & Lorraine Parker, Chicago, IL Kyle Reynolds, Cypress, TX Betty Sams, Washington, DC Elizabeth Schiltz, Kokomo, IN Lucy Skivens-Smith, Dinwiddie, VA Dr. Yusuf Tamimi, Hilo, HI Joan Tanous, Boulder, CO

ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more) William Coughlin, Brookline, MA Richard Curtiss, Boynton Beach, FL Michael Habermann, Hackettstown, NJ Alice Nashashibi, San Francisco, CA

TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more) journalist Asad Qureshi, who was attempting to document the effect of U.S. drones on the civilian population, and Khalid Khawaja while heading to the North Waziristan capital of Miranshah. The circumstances surrounding his captivity were complicated when his kidnapper was killed in a shootout with a local tribal commander, and Tarar was passed into the hands of Hakimullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-i-Taliban. He is survived by two sons and two daughters.

Zahra Bahrami, 46, an Iranian-born Dutch citizen, was executed Jan. 29 in Iran on charges of drug smuggling. She had initially been jailed for joining the post-election protests in December 2009. The Tehran prosecutor’s office alleged that she was a member of an international drug gang. Following her arrest, Dutch officials expressed concern over the investigation of Bahrami’s case. Iran refused to recognize her dual citizenship and did not allow the Dutch consulate to provide legal assistance, despite international legal standards.

Held for months without access to her family and lawyer, she gave a televised confession, admitting to “forming an [illegal] group with three others,” possessing weapons and planning or engaging in acts against national security, and having contact with two banned organizations, the Anjoman-e Padeshahi-e Iran API, and the THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Evan & Leman Fotos, Istanbul, Turkey Brigitte Jaensch, Carmichael, CA Paul Meyer, Iowa City, IA Ghulam Qadir & Huda Zenati, Dearborn, MI

BARITONES & MEZZO SOPRANOS ($1,000 or more) Asha Anand, Bethesda, MD The Estate of Pascal Biagini, Drexel Hill, PA Dr. & Mrs. Rod & Carole Driver, West Kingston, RI Gary Richard Feulner, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more) John & Henrietta Goelet, Meru, France People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.

In court, Bahrami was charged with national security offenses and with being a member of the militant Kingdom Assembly of Iran, a banned royalist group. Later authorities allegedly found 450 grams of cocaine, 420 grams of opium, and several forged passports in her home. Bahrami also had a prior criminal record in the Netherlands, where she had spent three years in jail for trafficking 16 kilograms of cocaine in 2003, and for forging passports in 2007.

During her trial in Iran, Ms. Bahrami’s defense attorney, human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, had her office raided. Ms. Sotoudeh herself was arrested and imprisoned, but later released. Amnesty International raised concerns that the trial was unfair and that Bahrami most likely was tortured and forced to confess guilt on television. Reportedly, her lawyer at the time of her death had not been informed of the impending execution, as he had expected her security charges to be reviewed before a final sentence. The Dutch government’s repeated pleas for information on Bahrami’s case were denied. In response to her execution, the Netherlands suspended diplomatic relations with Iran.

After her appeal to Iran’s Supreme Court was rejected, Bahrami was hanged at 5 a.m. local time in the execution chamber at Evin Prison. She is survived by her daughter, Banafsheh Nayebpour. ❑ 73

killgore_74_In Memoriam 3/3/11 4:22 PM Page 74

Ambassador Richard B. Parker (1923-2011)

By Andrew I. Killgore

InMemoriam

ormer U.S. ambassador to

it was deliberate. Dick Parker used to joke that he was the only gentile in the State Department who believed it was a mistake.

Survivors included his wife of 66 years, Jeanne Jaccard Parker of Washington, who passed away on Feb. 9; four children, Alison Kenway of Portland, Maine, Jeff Parker of Newton, Massachusetts, Jill Parker of Arlington County, Virginia, and Richard “Jack” Parker of Danvers, Massachusetts; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. ❑

rocco, Middle East expert and writer/historian Richard B. Parker died Jan. 7 in Washington, DC. He had long suffered from vascular disease.

Born in the Philippines, where his father was a U.S. Army officer, Richard Bordeaux Parker graduated from Kansas State University in 1947, and received a master’s degree the following year. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1949 and specialized in the Arabic language.

In World War II Parker’s division had been captured by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. He was liberated in Poland 34 days later by the Russian army. On his way home Ambassador Richard B. Parker. via the Turkish Straits and Port Said he became fascinated by Istan- University of Virginia, where he bul’s architecture and the intricacies taught classes on foreign policy of Arab culture. Parker’s P.O.W. status in the Arab world and served as and his unusual trip back to the an editor of the Middle East United States may have had a power- Journal.

His book Uncle Sam in Barful influence on him.

In 1974 he was appointed U.S. am- bary: A Diplomatic History won bassador to Algeria. Three years later the American Academy of Diplohe was sent as U.S. ambassador to macy’s Douglas Dillon Award in Lebanon after the former ambassador, 2004 for distinguished writing.

Francis E. Melloy, Jr., was assassi- But in my opinion his major hisnated. Parker’s third ambassadorship, torical work was The Politics of to Morocco in 1978, was cut short by Miscalculation in the Middle East, that country’s monarch. In a 1984 in- in which he covers the 1967 terview, Parker explained that King Arab-Israel war, the 1968-70 Hassan II had never fully believed Egyptian-Israeli war of attrition, that the United States was not in- and the aftermath of Israel’s 1982 volved in two coup attempts against invasion of Lebanon. Politics is a him. Hassan told him that “relations careful and thorough piece of would not improve so long as I was historical writing. I did not always agree with Parker, but there,” Parker recalled.

In addition to his ambassadorships nevertheless his historical reDick Parker had assignments in Aus- search was excellent.

Parker was different from most tralia, Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

Following his distinguished diplo- “Middle East Hands” in that he matic career Parker won high stand- tended to favor the Israeli narraing as a writer/historian/teacher. He tive while most of the others was a diplomat-in-residence at the were critical of Israel. For example, he believed that Israel’s 1967 Andrew I. Killgore, former U.S. am- attack on the American spy ship bassador to Qatar, is publisher of the USS Liberty was “a genuine misWashington Report on Middle East take,” while the overwhelming majority of Arabists believed that Affairs.

74

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April 2011 Vol. XXX, No. 3

Palestinian firefighters work to extinguish a blaze at a medical storage facility in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabalya following an Israeli air strike, Feb. 9, 2011.

AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD HAMS