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HAIR-TRIGGER NUCLEAR ALERT OVER KASHMIR
DISPLAY UNTIL 11/15/2019
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SAV VE THE DATE! T UPA’ A’s 2019 OPEN HOUSE PRESE ENTS
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TELLING THE TRUTH SINCE 1982
Volume XXXVIII, No. 6
On Middle East Affairs
October 2019
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 14
Israel Presented Tlaib With a Cruel Dilemma: Her Principles or Her Family—Noa Landau
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A Letter to Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) —Naomi Shihab Nye
Where’s the Media Outrage Over Hateful Rhetoric Targeting Muslim Congresswomen? —Dale Sprusansky
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He Threatened Us, Now He Goes to Jail— Dr. James J. Zogby
Something’s Fishy About AquaMaof’s “Project Jonah” in Virginia —Grant F. Smith
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This Place is Only for Jews: The West Bank’s Apartheid Springs —Gideon Levy and Alex Levac
From South Africa to Palestine: End Investment in Apartheid Crimes—Letter to the Editor of The Occidental College Newspaper —Halla Keir
Kentucky Governor Signs Bill To Crack Down on BDS Movement —Michael Arria
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House Takes Up and Passes Three Pro-Israel Measures—Shirl McArthur
26 28 29 31 33 35 36 38 40
Middle East Ranks High in President Trump’s Foreign Policy Failures—Walter L. Hixson
The Legacy of Jason Greenblatt’s Diplomatic Service—Giorgio Cafiero Trump Makes the Right Call: Bolton Out —Paul Pillar
Jewish Settlers Rule the Roost in Israel: But at What Price?—Ramzy Baroud Netanyahu’s Calculus: Bombs Speak Louder than Words —Marwan Bishara
Shattered Limbs—Crippled for Life—Mohammed Omer
Five Million Palestinians Deserve Better —Ian Williams
Straining Out a Gnat but Swallowing a Camel —Rev. Alex Awad
Increasingly, Idolatry Characterizes the Organized Jewish Community’s Embrace of Israel —Allan C. Brownfeld
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Jews from Arab Countries vs. Palestinian Refugees: A Wash?—Gregory DeSylva
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Turkish Intervention in Idlib, Syria May Never Come—Sami Moubayed
SPECIAL REPORTS
India Revokes Kashmir’s Special Status—Three Views— Eric Margolis, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay and B.Z. Khasru
50 51
Time to Liberate Afghanistan—Eric Margolis
Algeria’s Second Revolution—Marvine Howe
54 58
As More Egyptian Women Become Breadwinners Are Labor Rights Keeping Up?—Fatma Mostafa
Troubled Independence of Transcaucasia—John Gee
ON THE COVER: Muftia Tlaib, the grandmother of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), outside her home in the village of Beit Ur al-Fauqa in the West Bank on August 15, 2019. Rep. Tlaib declined an Israeli offer to let her visit her grandmother on the condition that she promise not to engage in political activities. Israel also barred her from leading a congressional delegation to the Holy Land in August. ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images
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(A Supplement to the Washington Report on Middle East affairs available by subscription at $15 per year. To subscribe, call toll-free 1-888-881-5861.)
Other Voices
Compiled by Janet McMahon
Will Israel’s War Become America’s War?, Patrick J. Buchanan, Creator’s Syndicate, Inc. When Eisenhower Republicans Censured Israel—Three Times, Derek Leebaert, theamericanconservative.com Trump’s Middle East Communications Theater, Sam Bahour, lobelog.com
OV-1
Shocking Report on Leading Jews’ Effort to Defeat Rashida Tlaib, Philip Weiss, mondoweiss.net OV-9
OV-2
California Ethnic Studies Curriculum Delayed After Attack on its Comparison of Israel to South Africa, Michael Arria, mondoweiss.net OV-10
OV-4
U.S. and Iran, Short Memories, Serge Halimi & Pierre Rimbert, Le Monde diplomatique
OV-11
Rivers of Dust: The Future of Water and the Middle East, Conn M. Hallinan, EricMargolis.com
OV-12
Interrogating the Mechanics of Power in France Through Art, Michael-Oliver Harding, www.aljazeera.com
OV-14
Romania, a Beacon of Coexistence for Muslims in Eastern Europe, Maxim Edwards, www.aljazeera.com
OV-15
Playing Palestinian Politics: UAE-Backed Ex-Security Chief Weighs His Options, James M. Dorsey, mideastsoccer.blogspot.com
OV-5
The Honey Trap on E. 71st St., Eric S. Margolis, www.ericmargolis.com
OV-6
GOP’s Biggest Donors Laid Groundwork for Trump and Netanyahu’s Targeting of Muslim OV-7 Congresswomen, Eli Clifton, lobelog.com
DEPARTMENTS 5 Publishers’ Page
6 letters to the editor
62 MusiC & arts: Despite U.S. Visa Denials, Coloradans Enjoy Palestinian Music
65 book talks: When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History 67 the World looks at the Middle east — CaRToonS 68 other PeoPle’s Mail
70 book reVieW: Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations —Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson
71 Middle east books and More
"And There Was Light" No.1. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm (2015) by Kamal Boullata (2015). See p. 72.
74 2019 aet Choir oF angels 72 obituaries
30 indeX to adVertisers
COURTESY BARJEEL ART FOUNDATION
63 Waging PeaCe: Two Rallies for Kashmir Held in San Francisco
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American Educational Trust
Changes in Washington
Publishers’ Page
Apartheid Pools and Fishy Business
PHOTO CREDIT UNRWA
With the end of summer came some notable changes to President Donald Water plays a prominent role in two of Trump’s foreign policy team. Both this issue’s articles. On pp. 17-19, folNational Security Adviser John low Israeli columnists Gideon Levy Bolton and “deal of the century” neand Alex Levac as they travel throughgotiator Jason Greenblatt have vaout the West Bank visiting various natcated their posts. We cover their (disural swimming holes that are reserved honorable) legacies on pp. 28-30. exclusively for Jews. The powerful With Bolton having been forced out piece is just another gut-wrenching by Trump, there is renewed hope for example of Israel’s poorly-concealed the possibility of diplomatic negotiaapartheid policies. Closer to home, tions between Washington and Grant F. Smith of the Institute for ReIsmail Ajjawi, a Palestinian student bound for Harvard search: Middle Eastern Policy took a Tehran. Greenblatt’s departure brings less hope, as it appears the adminis- University who was denied entry to the U.S. in August, trip to Virginia to look into a planned tration will not deviate from its efforts was able to enter the country in September, on his second Israeli-owned fish farm. His investigato green-light increasingly aggressive attempt. Ajjawi received a full scholarship to Harvard. tion unveils that Virginia taxpayers are Israeli attempts to exert its control subsidizing a much-delayed project over Palestinians (see p. 31) and its will on ald Trump. TIP, founded in 2002, was infil- that, if it comes to fruition, promises to pose neighboring countries (see p. 33). trated by an undercover reporter and fea- a threat to the livelihoods of those who work tured prominently in the 2017 Al Jazeera at other near-by fish farms. Smith’s article, Remembrances undercover documentary “The Lobby on pp. 14-16, serves as a warning of what Several tireless fighters for justice in the USA.” The organization’s most accom- can happen when pro-Israel groups gain inMiddle East left us this summer, leaving plished asset was its Jerusalem office, fluence over state agencies. behind enduring legacies. Former Rep. which worked with foreign journalists to inPaul Findley (R-IL) spent his career chal- fluence and shape mainstream reporting Conference Registration Is Open! lenging the power of the Israel lobby and on Israel. Let’s hope free of TIP’s hasbara, We are excited to announce that tickets to urging peace over war, standing out as a foreign correspondents now do a better job our 2020 annual conference on Israel, its rare courageous voice on Capitol Hill. challenging official Israeli narratives! lobby, Palestine and the elections and are We also bid farewell to Donna Curtiss, now available! Next year’s conference will the wife of Washington Report co- Tlaib and Omar Banned take place a little later than usual, on May founder Richard Curtiss. She was instru- Derisively told by President Trump to “go 29, so that we are strategically positioned mental to the founding and functioning of back to where she came from” in July, between the AIPAC and CUFI conferences. the magazine. We would not be where Rep. Rashida Tlaib, just one month later, For the first time, the 2020 conference will we are today as a magazine and a suddenly found the president encouraging also include a gala dinner on May 28, movement without Donna and Paul, so Israel to bar her from her ancestral home- where friends and supporters of the magawe hope all readers take the time to read land of Palestine. Prime Minister zine and conference can gather to enjoy our tributes to them and other stalwart Binyamin Netanyahu—in the midst of an camaraderie and entertainment. See the ad advocates for justice on pp. 72-73. election campaign sending him ever fur- on p. 9 for more information on how to regther toward the right—was happy to ister for the conference and/or gala. Israel Project Closes its Doors oblige and informed Reps. Tlaib and Ilhan On a much more uplifting note, The Israel Omar that their congressional delegation Stay Connected and Supportive Project (TIP), a non-profit organization to the Holy Land would not be permitted With the 2020 elections growing closer, and dedicated to boosting Israel’s global image, to take place. Tlaib was subsequently conference season upon us, be sure to keep shut its doors this summer. Former em- given the option by Israel to forego her us in mind. Share magazines with your ployees and insiders interviewed by right to engage in political discourse in ex- friends, family and fellow conference-goers Haaretz blamed the closure on the loss of change for being granted permission to curious about the Israel lobby’s role in our several large donors since 2016. Democra- visit her sitti (grandmother)—pictured on elections and the stubbornly hawkish orientic donors reportedly became disillusioned the cover of this issue—in the West Bank. tation of U.S. Middle East policy. We are with the organization after it worked to Rep. Tlaib made the difficult decision to happy to supply sample copies, or even scuttle President Barack Obama’s nuclear decline a visit and stand by her principles. boxes of magazines, for our subscribers to deal with Iran, while one large Republican See pp. 8-12 for more on the scuttled trip hand out. Doing so is just one way you can... donor apparently felt the organization was- and the media’s coverage of attacks on n’t sufficiently supportive of President Don- Reps. Tlaib and Omar. Make A Difference Today! OCTOBER 2019
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
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Executive Editor: Managing Editor: Contributing Editor: Other Voices Editor: Middle East Books and More Director: Finance & Admin. Dir.: Art Director: Founding Publisher: Founding Exec. Editor: Board of Directors:
DELINDA C. HANLEY DALE SPRUSANSKY WALTER HIXSON JANET McMAHON SAMI TAYEB CHARLES R. CARTER RALPH-UWE SCHERER ANDREW I. KILLGORE (1919-2016) RICHARD H. CURTISS (1927-2013) HENRIETTA FANNER JANET McMAHON JANE KILLGORE
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (ISSN 87554917) is published 7 times a year, monthly except Jan./Feb., March/April, June/July and Aug./Sept. combined, at 1902 18th St., NW, Washington, DC 20009-1707. Tel. (202) 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 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056. Published by the American Educational Trust (AET), a nonprofit foundation incorporated in Washington, DC by retired U.S. foreign service officers to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states. AET’s Foreign Policy Committee has included former U.S. ambassadors, government officials, and members of Congress, including the late Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright and Republican Sen. Charles Percy, both former chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Members of AET’s Board of Directors and advisory committees receive no fees for their services. The new Board of Advisers includes: Anisa Mehdi, John Gareeb, Dr. Najat Khelil Arafat, William Lightfoot and Susan Abulhawa. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs does not take partisan domestic political positions. As a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, it endorses U.N. Security Council Resolution 242’s land-for-peace formula, supported by nine successive U.S. presidents. In general, it supports Middle East solutions which it judges to be consistent with the charter of the United Nations and traditional American support for human rights, self-determination, and fair play. Material from the Washington Report may be reprinted without charge with attribution to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Bylined material must also be attributed to the author. This release does not apply to photographs, cartoons or reprints from other publications. Indexed by ProQuest, Gale, Ebsco Information Services, InfoTrac, LexisNexis, Public Affairs Information Service, Index to Jewish Periodicals, Ethnic News Watch, Periodica Islamica. CONTACT INFORMATION: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Editorial Office and Bookstore: 1902 18th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009-9062 Phone: (202) 939-6050 • (800) 368-5788 Fax: (202) 265-4574 E-mail: info@wrmea.org bookstore@wrmea.org circulation@wrmea.org advertising@wrmea.org Web sites: https://www.wrmea.org https://www.middleeastbooks.com Subscriptions, sample copies and donations: P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056. Phone: (888) 881-5861 • Fax: (714) 226-9733 Printed in the USA
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LetterstotheEditor
READERS REMEMBER REP. PAUL FINDLEY (1921-2019)
I am saddened to learn of the passing of Rep. Paul Findley. He was a truly great man of intellect, courage, energy and longevity, who inspired me and so many others by his example in life. I have turned to Paul Findley's book, Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the U.S.-Israeli Relationship, and his many articles in the Washington Report, countless times as a reference for letters to the editor, letters to members of Congress and others, and discourse on social media. Paul Findley will live on as an inspiration to continue the fight for justice and peace in Israel/Palestine. Paul Thomas, via e-mail
I have always had great admiration for former U.S. Rep. Paul Findley. He is one of the few elected officials to dare speak truth to power. God bless him, and may he rest in peace. And many thanks to the Washington Report for all the work you have done! Andy Amid, Henderson, NV See p. 72 for more on Rep. Paul Findley’s exceptional life. Findley courageously challenged the pro-Israel lobby, co-authored the War Powers Act and fought against racial discrimination. We are greatful for his exemplary service to the country, and extend our condolences to his family and friends.
ISRAELI ARCHITECT DEFENDS ACTIONS IN JERUSALEM
I appreciated the article by Jonathan Cook concerning the Jerusalem cable car. Indeed, as mentioned in the article, I have been one of those advocating against it. I believe it will damage the historic fabric of the city. Moreover, I do believe it is politically motivated. However, there has been a gratuitous mistake and egregious mischaracterization of my work in Jerusalem. In the almost-50 years of my involvement as a practicing architect in Jerusalem, I have refused to participate in any project of settlement, or otherwise, in the West Bank. While I have accepted commissions in the expanded city borders of Jerusalem, particularly my in-
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
volvement of the restoration of the Jewish Quarters and Mamilla Quarters, I have not been involved in any of the new neighborhoods beyond the Green Line, and I certainly have not, as you put it, “designed illegal settlements and worked to make East Jerusalem Jewish.” In fact, several of my projects, including the fiveyear Harvard Jerusalem Studio, were focused on enhancing development opportunities for the Palestinian community in the city. I would appreciate a retraction. Indeed, I would appreciate an apology. Moshe Safdie, via e-mail Editors at the Washington Report, rather than Jonathan Cook, are responsible for the parenthetical phrase to which Mr. Safdie takes objection, notably the statement that he “designed illegal settlements and worked to make East Jerusalem Jewish.” It should be acknowledged that Mr. Safdie’s involvement in planning Jerusalem over the decades has been controversial. Among several writers, the chair of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, Abe Hayeem, has outlined in The Guardian and Daily Financial Times Mr. Safdie’s projects in East Jerusalem, particularly in the Silwan neighborhood, where he worked on a project commissioned by Elad, an extremist Israeli settler organization. Additionally, Mr. Safdie’s colleague at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, the chair of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, dedicates a significant portion of her recent book, Seizing Jerusalem, detailing Safdie’s projects in Jerusalem and their complicity in the Israeli state’s initiative to Judaize the city.
RESPONSE TO BOOK REVIEW ON U.S. CULTURE AND ISRAEL
I’m writing in response to Walter Hixson’s book review of Amy Kaplan's Our American Israel in the August/September edition. It was a very good review of a very good book. I was somewhat dismayed, however, to read your statement that a “study integrating the politics and propaganda as well as the culture within the unique history of the Israeli-American special relationship has yet to be written.” OCTOBER 2019
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do so as well. I beg to differ. I’d urge you to KEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS John V. Whitbeck, Paris, France take a look at Perceptions of COMING! Palestine: Their Influence on Send your letters to the editor to the Washington U.S. ENABLING OF GAZA U.S. Middle East Policy, pubReport, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>. lished by the University of CaliCRIMES fornia Press in 1999 and in paJane Ferguson, one of the most perback in 2001. At the risk of seeming umphing over tyranny on the seal and courageous and trusted reporters in the to toot my own horn, since I authored translate from the Latin as “Thus Ever world, was on assignment in Gaza for the that book, I believe that book does just Unto Tyrants,” it is probably only appro- PBS NewsHour and filed a most disturbwhat you contend has never been done. priate that an entity whose activities sup- ing report. As the title indicates, Perceptions is pre- port tyranny in Palestine should have the For the past year, Palestinians in Gaza cisely an examination of how popular delicacy to omit those words. have protested their appalling conditions John Gee, Singapore perceptions of early Zionism and then of along the border fence with Israel. For the Israel became a part of American culture most part, the protests have been peaceand directly influenced policymaking. It TRUMP’S ISRAEL-FIRST POLICIES ful, but international observers have reexamines the making of policy, and how It appears that Donald Trump has stirred up ported devastating injuries inflicted on this related to culture development, in another hornet's nest by publicly asserting Palestinians by Israeli sniper fire. every administration from Wilson through that all American Jews should, like him and Some 7,000 have been shot by the IsClinton. most members of the U.S. Congress, owe raeli army while taking part in protests in In your defense, Amy Kaplan doesn't their primary loyalty to a foreign country. the last 15 months. Dozens have lost a make reference to Perceptions either—or Trump appears to have forgotten that limb. The lead surgeon in Gaza’s main to some of the other literature that also the rational reason for his rabidly Israel- hospital, Dr. Adnan Al Borsh, told Jane links culture and policy—but an author's first policies has never been to obtain Ferguson that the hospital was overimperfect knowledge shouldn't set the pa- Jewish votes, which are relatively few and whelmed and unable to cope with all the rameters of the reviewer's knowledge. overwhelmingly Democratic, but, rather, to injured. A lack of instruments, antibiotics Kathy Christison, via e-mail continue receiving mega-millions from and anesthesia intensified the suffering Thanks for your note in response to Sheldon Adelson and a handful of other of the injured and resulted in complete my review of Amy Kaplan's book. Your Israel-first billionaires to finance his re- fatigue of the medical staff, some of who Perceptions of Palestine has had a place election campaign and the campaigns of were also shot and killed. on my shelf for years. What I was trying Republican congressional candidates. It was the nature of the wounds that to say is there is no up-to-date history of In any event, Trump's persistent efforts most disturbed Dr. Borsh. The bullets the Israel lobby that also considers the to make Israel a partisan issue in Ameri- measured one centimeter on entry but role of American culture in fostering pro- can politics can only be welcomed by all exploded more than 15 to 20 centimeters Israeli sympathies. For example, the Americans who owe their primary loyalty on exit, inflicting enormous damage, Mearsheimer-Walt thesis doesn't much to their own country and harbor dreams shattering everything in their path and consider cultural forces. Your book (20 that American politicians might one day forcing surgeons to amputate limbs. Docyears old now) and a few others tors Without Borders surgeons made (Michelle Mart wrote a good little book on similar observations. Israel in American culture) are important Many of the snipers were recorded works, but what is needed now is a study laughing while shooting at unarmed procombining the role of culture and the Istesters. Saleh Hijazi, who heads Amnesty rael lobby’s influence. —Walter Hixson International in Israel and the Palestinian territories, stated, “The willful cause of inA PRO-ISRAEL GROUP’S FITTING jury and death is a war crime and therefore Israel has violated international law.” OMISSION In another damning report, the United In your May issue reporting on the Israel Nations’ independent commission of inLobby and American Policy conference, quiry stated, “The Israeli military sniping you featured James Metz speaking about OTHERVOICESisan optional16-page supplement at protesters was unlawful and unjustihow the Virginia Coalition for Human available only to subscribers of the Washington fied, and should be referred to the InterRights has taken on the Virginia Israel AdReport on Middle East Affairs. For an additional $15 national Criminal Court at The Hague.” visory Board (VIAB). The text features an per year (see postcard insert for Washington Report Unless members of Congress and the image of Virginia's state seal as featured subscription rates), subscribers will receive Other American public raise their collective in the logos of organizations such as the Voicesinsideeachissueof their WashingtonReport voices and demand an immediate halt to Virginia-Asian Advisory Board, and that on Middle East Affairs. all military and economic aid to Israel, as featured in VIAB’s logo. Back issues of both publications are available. To these crimes will continue. Finally, we I’ve only just noticed that in the latter’s subscribe telephone 1 (888) 881-5861, fax (714) must demand Israel lift the siege of Gaza version, the words on the state seal, “Sic 226-9733, e-mail circulation@wrmea. org>, or write and end its suffocating occupation. Semper Tyrannis,” appear to be left out. to P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056. Jagjit Singh, Los Altos, CA ■ As they allude to the figure of Virtue triOCTOBER 2019
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Special Report
Israel Presented Tlaib With a Cruel Dilemma: Her Principles or Her Family
By Noa Landau
PHOTO CREDIT JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
sharp criticism over the decision not to allow her and Rep. Ilhan Omar (DMN) into the country, which came at the request of President Donald Trump. If Tlaib had chosen to visit under those limitations, many of those who are already particularly reluctant to fight the Netanyahu government beyond limp condemnations on Twitter could have exploited the issue. For example, the pro-Israel group AIPAC, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and Republicans such U.S. Democratic Representative for Michigan’s 13th congressional district Rashida Tlaib gets a hug from a as Sen. Marco Rubio (Rsupporter at an event, “Shabatt in the Park with Rashida,” in Pallister Park in Detroit, MI, on Aug. 16, 2019, FL), all of which spoke the day she turned down Israel’s oppressive restrictions on her planned visit to her grandmother in the occupied out on Aug. 15 against West Bank. barring the congresswomen, could have, had she come, declared a “happy ending” to the controversy. They ISRAEL WAS TOO QUICK to celebrate Palestinian-American could have said that there was no need for a general paraRep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D-MI) apparent agreement to send a hudigm shift regarding Israel. manitarian request to visit her elderly grandmother in the West The Israelis who figured that the problem in the affair was Bank, alongside a commitment not to promote [Boycott, Divestmainly reputational, too, could have given a sigh of relief. Now ment and Sanctions] BDS and to “respect any restrictions” during there are those whose conclusions from the drama will focus the visit. on the embarrassment caused to Prime Minister Binyamin NeFollowing a leak by Israeli “official sources” that she “was tanyahu (and his ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer), forced to submit to the conditions that Israel placed in adwho zigzagged and came out looking like Trump’s puppets. vance,” Tlaib promptly clarified that she would not accept such The drama over Tlaib’s visit serves as a reminder that the restrictions as a condition for her visit, even if it meant not main issue is always the Israeli system and the everyday peoseeing her 90-year-old grandmother—a heavy personal price. ple who are affected by it, and not the politicians and their exThus, Tlaib foiled the Israeli government’s efforts to flaunt a ploits. Implementation of the recently passed law that allows special “humanitarian gesture” to her, an attempt to deflect the those who support the boycott of Israel to be barred from entry Noa Landau is diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz. Prior to this, is deepening and is shaped by every case and every precedent. she served as head of the news department and editor of Haaretz Tlaib’s surrender, with the explicit promise on official conEnglish Edition. Copyright © Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All gressional stationary bearing her personal signature that she rights reserved. 8
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OCTOBER 2019
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will “respect any restriction,” would have constituted a tacit recognition of the law’s conditions in a way that would have been used as a precedent in cases to come, against political activists of Palestinian descent or others who do not enjoy Tlaib’s elevated status. Until now, many of those denied entry refused to publish in advance a formal declaration agreeing to every Israeli condition and limitation to their freedom of expression before landing. Although the case in 2018 of U.S. student Lara Alqasem was quite different, she decided to fight for her student visa in every court. At one stage she was urged to publicly send a letter to Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, saying she opposed the boycott movement. Although the conditions of Alqasem’s visa did include the restriction that she will not publicly support boycotting Israel, and in her trial she also declared that she was not a major activist in the movement, she chose not to write this statement requested by Erdan as a shortcut in her
OCTOBER 2019
fight, but rather continued on to the Israeli Supreme Court. Had Talib chosen to arrive under such a commitment in advance, she would have confirmed what Israel seeks to establish as fact: Palestinians and their descendants can be required to adhere to political restrictions when they come to visit relatives in the West Bank, and that entry to the Palestinian Authority’s territories is a privilege, not a right. Instead of an official visit, as a powerful member of the U.S. Congress, with the freedom to express her views, Tlaib was asked to plead as the descendant of Palestinians, a private citizen, for the goodwill of the authorities in Israel to allow her to see relatives while agreeing to political censorship. Israel, then, put Tlaib to a particularly cruel test: principles or family. In addition to all this, a decision by Tlaib to arrive by herself would have also been seen as a lack of solidarity toward her colleague, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who is still barred from entering due to (Advertisement)
her lack of an elderly grandmother in the territories or willingness to give up her freedom of political expression. It’s possible that Tlaib first sent the humanitarian request because it was truly more important to her to see her elderly grandmother for the last time at any price. Or perhaps she or those around her simply thought the conditions were mere words that would not be enforced, but then responded to the criticism. After all, what would Israel have done if Tlaib had promoted a boycott during her visit? Would soldiers have dragged a member of Congress into detention before the eyes of the whole world? And what if she had promoted a boycott later, after returning to the United States? Either way, the decision not to make the trip has for now prevented the creation of a new precedent in the implementation of the boycott law: a formal declaration ahead of time as a condition for a visa. Tlaib, the granddaughter, lost, but Tlaib the politician won. ■
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A Letter to Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) By Naomi Shihab Nye
MI SHIHAB NYE PHOTO BY NAO
DEAR RASHIDA, book writes a letter to the I hope you felt your president—maybe it inspired Palestinian-American him to reply. This has consiscommunity and all people tently been the one question who promote justice kids most often ask me: Did standing up with you reyou write letters to presicently, appreciating your dents when you were little? honesty. It’s been so rare Well, yes, I did, because my to hear anyone speaking Palestinian father was a joursuch truth in a public nalist and he believed in chilvenue. Bernie Sanders dren’s voices. He thought tries to, and President kids should write more letJimmy Carter tried, most ters to editors—or presieloquently, to witness what dents, kings, mayors. (I was really going on in Israel also wrote to movie stars and Palestine. But we’re livand comedians—once the ing in a crazier time and great Danny Kaye anyou’re facing angry voices swered with a handwritten, who can’t pronounce personal note.) We need to ABOVE: Sitti Khadra and our son when there your last name corspeak up as human beings was 100 years age difference between them— rectly (probably the whenever we can, and she was 105 and he was 5—in her West Bank same people who still Rashida, you are speaking village. INSET: A photo from a 25-cent can’t pronounce “Iraq”), up for us all. Neglect for machine in Ferguson, MO, shows me with my but you’re not alone. Palestinians is an old, tatdad, Aziz Shihab, when I was 8, and he was urging me to write letters. tered, exploited story—and we really need you right now. Your smiling Sitti whom you didn’t visit I always think—let these U.S. congresspersons who proclaim right now respects and loves you. She’s deep in your genes as all our Israel is such a great democracy travel through Tel Aviv airport with ancestors are, and no one can separate us. What a beauty! a Palestinian American just once. Let them see. Let them see what This Sitti flare-up brought people out of the woodwork for me. So people go through. Take Bill Maher with you. Let the ultra-Christian many messages from kind readers…because my simple children’s ones stand up to the butt of an Israeli soldier’s gun. Let everybody sit picture book Sitti’s Secrets (beautifully illustrated by Nancy Carpenin a West Bank living room or a Gazan school, with regular, humble human beings, for a few tasty evenings, then see how it feels when ter) was published way back in 1994 by Simon & Schuster Books for the Israeli soldiers come blasting through, for no good reason, to tearYoung Readers and is still in print, more than one generation of kids gas, or shoot, or pitch some grenades, or whatever they’re in the has been able to read it. Receiving letters across 25 years from parmood to do. See how you feel then. It’s not a democracy, if you’re not ents and grandparents speaking of their tears while reading it, their Jewish. And we deeply appreciate the Jewish people who say this too. loneliness for far-away relatives, their need to stay connected, their My Sitti used to say, “They just don’t know our stories” to calm herself. gratitude for heritage and culture, has been most heartening. But knowing stories is part of our destiny as human beings—we I have thanked my editor forever for never questioning that Paleshave imaginations and need to use them. It’s part of our responsitinians are human beings too. Kids in China have told me that my West bility. Where do you hurt? What happened to you? We have memoBank refugee grandmother, who lived to be 106 in real life, was just ries too—what happened to your people? We know how to translate. like theirs. (She lost her home in Jerusalem in 1948 and missed it all Palestinians, suffering insult and occupation for so long, still cook her life.) President Carter wrote a note thanking me for Sitti’s Secrets— dinner, pick lemons, hope their olive trees don’t get sabotaged, hold someone had given it to his grandchildren. Also, the little girl in the babies, make art. They retain their hope. Miraculously, they do. Naomi Shihab Nye made Palestinian grandmothers famous with her Rashida, thank you. Those smiling people on Twitter hugging book Sitti’s Secrets. 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle their own Sittis aren’t running for office or trying to make huge busiEast, Habibi, The Turtle of Oman, A Maze Me, Words Under the ness deals or wielding power. They’re just being alive, expressing Words and The Flag of Childhood are our customers’ favorites at Middle East Books and More. love. Maybe Sitti’s biggest secret is she never gives up. ■ 10
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Special Report
Where’s the Media Outrage Over Hateful Rhetoric Targeting Muslim Congresswomen?
By Dale Sprusansky
PHOTO BY ADAM BETTCHER/GETTY IMAGES
WHEN IT COMES TO THE MIDDLE EAST, Muslims, more so than other Americans, have to be very careful about what they say, who they associate with, which organizations they support and where they travel. The Holy Land Five, imprisoned and targeted for operating a charity that benefited Palestinians, are a testament to this reality. So are the PalestinianAmerican students slandered on the Internet by the Canary Mission, the U.S. mosques closely monitored by informants and the Muslim Americans disproportionality interrogated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents upon returning from travel to the Middle East. It is thus no surprise that American Muslims elected to Congress face the same discrimination as the milU.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) hold a news conference Aug. 19, 2019 lions of “ordinary” Muslim Americans. in St. Paul, MN after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu blocked their planned delegation Former Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), to the Holy Land. the first Muslim elected to Congress debating if she was an anti-Semite. Max Boot penned an op-ed and the current attorney general of Minnesota, has been persisin the Washington Post titled “Ilhan Omar is Getting off the tently accused of supporting firebrand preacher Louis FarHook.” Notorious anti-Muslim activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali secured an rakhan, even though he repudiated the leader of the Nation of op-ed in the Wall Street Journal asking, “Can Ilhan Omar OverIslam. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ellison’s successor, has been come Her Prejudice?” regularly accused of being an anti-Semite for daring to question Mainstream outlets also ran commentary defending Omar, the role of the pro-Israel lobby, the largest foreign policy lobby in but the fact that her remark was deemed worthy of consuming the country. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was targeted by her colan entire news cycle reveals how the U.S. media handles “conleagues for having the gall to organize a congressional delegatroversial” remarks by Muslim leaders. One (intentionally mistion to her native homeland of Palestine. Ellison, Omar and construed) tweet opened the floodgates to an unwarranted deTlaib have all been accused of supporting subversive and mabate over Omar’s character. Months later, Omar is still associlignant “Islamofascist” activity due to their association with orgaated with issuing an “anti-Semitic” tweet. Any misstep, real or nizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations manufactured, sticks to Muslim lawmakers. The same, how(CAIR). ever, cannot be said of lawmakers and public figures who enThe so-called “sins” of these Muslim leaders are frequently gage in regular and unrepentant acts of anti-Muslim and antirepeated in both conservative and mainstream news outlets. Palestinian bigotry. After Omar’s February 2019 remark that U.S. support for Israel Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan recently penned a column is “all about the Benjamins,” the mainstream media spent days noting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s long history of making anti-Muslim remarks and associating with individuals and orgaDale Sprusansky is managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. nizations that regularly stoke fear of Muslims. He correctly OCTOBER 2019
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pointed out that this history of bigotry is rarely noted when Pompeo is featured in news pieces or interviewed. Can the same be said of Muslim lawmakers merely accused (often baselessly) of antiSemitism? “Anti-Muslim bigotry is still something that won’t get you in trouble in DC,” Matt Duss, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy adviser, observed in a tweet. This double standard was on full display in August when Rep. Mo Brooks (RAL) engaged in a public attack on Reps. Omar and Tlaib—and the entire MuslimAmerican community—during a local radio interview. “Muslims more so than most people have great animosity toward Israel and the Jewish faith,” Brooks said. “And as you have more and more Muslims in the United States, as they gain greater and greater influence in elections, particularly in Democratic Party primaries, then you’re going to see more and more people like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and company that are anti-Israel, and that brings an entirely different viewpoint into the United States Congress.” He added: “I think you’re going to see this influence in the Democratic Party grow and grow and grow over time, but ultimately become the dominant influence within the Democratic Party, where the Democratic Party will become very strongly anti-Jewish and antiIsrael.”
Days after these remarks, the Alabama Republican Party passed a resolution calling for Omar to be removed from office. Brooks’ remarks—overtly discriminatory and meant to incite bigotry—were ignored by the same media that, with insufficient cause, fervently debated if Rep. Omar is an anti–Semite. At the behest of Mehdi Hasan, Parker Molloy of Media Matters for America investigated coverage of Brooks’ remarks and compared it to coverage of Omar’s “Benjamins” remark. She discovered that in the seven days following Omar’s “Benjamins” tweet, “Fox News mentioned her during 21 shows, CNN in 53, and five on MSNBC.” Hasan compared this to the coverage of Brooks’ comments: “In the seven days since Brooks’ remarks? Zero mentions of him in the national press. Zero coverage of him on network and cable news. Not one story; not one report.” The double standard is glaring. “Can you imagine the reaction if Ilhan Omar had said that Jews had become the ‘dominant influence’ within the Republican Party, or if she had decried the ‘growing influence’ of the Jewish religion in the GOP?” Hasan observed. “Or if she had spoken about Jews gaining ‘greater and greater influence’ in elections?” Brooks is but the latest example of selective and disingenuous outrage when it
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comes to hateful comments. Television pundits Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, both former Republican members of Congress and presidential candidates, have unabashedly claimed that Palestinians do not exist. The same networks that spent hours legitimizing bogus claims of anti-Semitism against Omar employ these men, despite their open embrace of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. HBO personality Bill Maher frequently makes abhorrent remarks about Muslims and Palestinians to no consequence and minimal mainstream pushback. Examples of inconsistency and the inability, or unwillingness, to dismiss slander and expose actual bigotry are pervasive throughout the entire American political spectrum and media landscape. In recent weeks, Brooks and others on the right have only increased their attacks on Omar, accusing her of all sorts of moral failings, from marital infidelity to financial malpractice to immigration fraud. At the moment, there’s no way to know if any of these accusations are true. It’s also beside the point, as these accusations are solely meant to conjure up more hate toward the congresswoman, not to vet the moral character of a member of Congress. It comes as no surprise that accusations against Omar gain media attention while the verifiable moral offenses of other leaders are overlooked. Ilhan Omar is simply not an anti-Semite obsessed with attacking Israel. Rather, she is the victim of people obsessed with defaming Islam and supporting Israel. These individuals regularly manufacture accusations of anti-Semitism in order to hinder an open discussion about Israel’s policies and stoke xenophobic and antiMuslim fervor. The media is all too willing to take their bait while simultaneously overlooking or minimizing anti-Muslim rhetoric. Reuben Telushkin of Jewish Voice for Peace succinctly summarized this reality in a recent statement to Middle East Eye. “She [Omar] is consistent,” Telushkin said. “She doesn’t single Israel out, but because of her identity she gets singled out.” ■ OCTOBER 2019
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Special Report
He Threatened Us, Now He Goes to Jail
By Dr. James J. Zogby
PHOTO ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
BACK IN MAY, a jury found Patrick Syring, a former State Department official, guilty of 14 counts of making threats against my life and my staff at the Arab American Institute. This week, a federal judge sentenced Syring to five years in prison to be followed by three years of court-ordered probation. This was Syring’s second conviction. He had been found guilty of the same crimes against my staff and me in 2008 and served over a year in prison. After his release and a period of probation, he began once again to stalk, harass and threaten us. He accused me of horrible crimes—organizing dozens of terrorist attacks around the world. He referred to me as a “genocidal, anti-Semitic, homophobic murderer.” He threatened me with death by saying, “The only good Arab is a dead Arab,” and that America would only be free of terror when it was “cleansed of James Zogby” and “all Arab Americans.” Although Syring’s threats were communicated diDr. James J. Zogby demands that hate crimes against Arab Americans be given rectly to me, he made a practice of copying other the same recognition as those against other vulnerable communities. members of my staff and even our young interns. In of violence. Our concern was heightened by his apparent willall, we received over 700 such emails from Syring and because ingness to continue despite having already been punished for of their frequency and the hate-filled threats they contained, they the same crime and having been repeatedly warned by law enwere a cause of real concern. forcement to stop what he was doing. Each day, when I entered my office I could tell on the faces So now the sentence has been given. Syring will be in a fedof my staff and interns whether or not Syring had struck again. eral prison until 2024. At that time, he will begin three years in Especially after a terrorist attack either in the U.S. or internacourt-ordered probation, undergoing psychiatric evaluation, and tionally, his language became so extreme that we had to call be required to avoid any contact or communication with me or local police for protection and report the threats to the FBI. The any current or former staff member of the Institute. support they provided us was so appreciated. For a time, two It gives me no pleasure to see this man going to jail for a long agents accompanied me to public events. The Department of period, but it does provide us all with a sense of enormous relief. Homeland Security gave us an assessment of measures we I’ve been threatened before. My wife, my children, and I have reshould take to make our building and office more secure. And ceived death threats for the past 50 years—owing to my advobecause we knew who had sent the threats, they often visited cacy for Palestinian rights and the rights of the Arab American Syring to warn him that there would be consequences to his becommunity. My office was fire-bombed and an Arab American havior. colleague, whom I hired, was murdered. Two individuals who, in His obsession with me, and his hatred of Arab Americans, was the past, made death threats against my children and me were so great, that he continued until the Department of Justice finally convicted and sentenced to prison terms. But this case was difconvened a grand jury and indicted him for his crimes. Nothing, ferent. however, stopped him. In the first place, Syring had tormented us for over a decade. It was this obsession and hatred that concerned us most preHe literally became a part of our daily lives. My wife had his piccisely because we never knew when he might act on his threats ture handy and if a car was parked outside of our house, she would check to see if he was the driver. My staff was instructed Dr. James Zogby is president of the Arab American Institute in Washington, DC. Continued on page 21 OCTOBER 2019
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Special Report
Something’s Fishy About AquaMaof’s “Project Jonah” in Virginia By Grant F. Smith
IRMEP, SEPT. 4
furtive glances over their shoulders to see if any enemies or potential competitors were listening during an Aug. 1, 2013 board meeting. According to its minutes, VIAB summed up the main reason behind all the secrecy. “All board members are asked to refer to the project by this code name. Leaked information could jeopardize funding opportunities from the state.” To understand Project Jonah, one must first delve into the true nature of VIAB. VIAB emerged in 1996 under the watchful eye of a Virginia House of Delegates member from the 73rd district named Eric Cantor who later went on to become House Republican Majority Leader in Congress. VIAB’s charter was to “advise the governor on ways to improve economic and cultural links between the Commonwealth and the State of Israel, with a focus AquaMaof’s making hay (and only hay) at its secret 119.5-acre site surrounding the Richlands, on the areas of commerce and trade, art VA wastewater treatment plant. and education, and general government.” During VIAB’s time advising the governor, 13 of the 29 citizen members of the VIAB board were reIF YOU DRIVE JUST SOUTHWEST of Richlands, VA across the quired to be drawn from four Virginia-based Jewish community Clinch River, and toward the municipal wastewater treatment federations. Like other such Jewish federations across the naplant, you’ll quickly stumble into the territory of a secret Israeli tion, Virginia’s are heavily involved in advocating for Israel, project known only to a handful of Tazewell County and state fundraising and hosting political candidate forums. In their 2017 government officials in Richmond. Nearly 120 acres of land on tax filings, the four federations raised a combined $20 million in three sides of the plant have been quietly acquired by Dominion tax-exempt funding. Like other Jewish federations, these chariAquaculture, LLC, the U.S. subsidiary of the Israeli fish farming ties uniformly claimed to the IRS that they did not engage in any company AquaMaof. lobbying activities. But the federations overseeing VIAB are exThe Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB)—the only state govtremely politically active. ernment agency that exists in the United States with the sole At a July 26, 2016 meeting at the state capitol, VIAB worked mission of delivering preferential market access and massive to implement a legislative version of the State of New York’s antisubsidies exclusively to Israeli companies—has kept nearly all boycott executive order. The Virginia General Assembly subsedetails about the project under wraps since 2014. It is code quently passed resolution HJ 177, which claimed that the Boynamed “Project Jonah.” cott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement was hamperOne can almost imagine VIAB board members turning to cast ing peace and preventing negotiations. BDS is a non-violent Grant F. Smith is the director of the Institute for Research: Middle movement aimed at boycotting Israel over its human rights Eastern Policy in Washington, DC. To view files solicited through the record, more specifically its military occupation and mistreatment Virginia Freedom of Information Act used to produce this report, visit of Palestinians. the Israel Lobby Archive at <https://IsraelLobby.org/viab2>. To view Early in 2018, the federations attempted to ram through a sevideos and transcripts about the Virginia Israel Advisory Board ries of controversial changes to Virginia K-12 textbooks with the presented by the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights at the National help of an outside Israel advocacy organization called the “InstiPress Club, go to https://www.wrmea.org/ycax (pp. 59-66 of the May 2019 issue of the Washington Report). tute for Curriculum Services.” The proposed edits to McGraw Hill, 14
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In January of 2015 VIAB disPrentice Hall, National Geopatched a group of Tazewell graphic and other textbooks County officials to visit Aquapublishers demanded they teach Maof’s tilapia plant in Poland as students that Israel does not ocpart of “due diligence” activities. cupy any foreign territory and According to VIAB’s March 24, that Arabs alone have been re2015 meeting minutes: The sponsible for all crisis initiation in VIAB took the group for visits inMiddle East conflicts, among cluding an on-site waste treatother dubious claims. ment plant that will work well in In 2018, upset by Governor the Tazewell area as well as Ralph Northam’s administration greenhouse companies and an attempts to influence its selecaquaculture facility that is similar tion of a new executive director, to the facility that we hope will be VIAB staged a reconstitution. In built in Virginia. Virginia’s facility an intense flurry of lobbying acwill be from 8 to 10 times larger. tivity, VIAB changed Virginia law Food City in Abingdon, VA. Presently, 152 Food City supermarkets We also met with prospective to become an agency of the Vircarry tilapia and salmon from Florida and Indonesia. That could venture capitalists. ginia General Assembly, diluting change if AquaMaof finally begins production. By Sept. 17, 2015 the Tothe governor’s control over its activities. A glance at its website reveals estimated it would take $150 million “in pub- bacco Region Revitalization Commission, VIAB is clearly no longer an advisory lic and private equity both from Israel and County of Tazewell and Dominion Aquaculboard (if it ever was) but is now fully trans- the U.S., as well as from private/public part- ture, LLC signed a separate performance formed into an Israel export promotion nerships in the state and on [the] federal agreement for a $1.5 million grant. David Hazut, CEO of AquaMaof International agency continually tapping deep pools of level.” VIAB needed additional skilled support, LTD, signed an unconditional guarantee for state and federal funding. According to a confidential VIAB “pipeline” report, it is cur- so it hired consultant Lala Korall, and paid “any and all obligations of every nature rently attempting to develop 13 Virginia her company I-Deals LLC $11,788.82 from owing by Dominion Aquaculture, LLC.” projects with a combined capital expendi- VIAB’s 2014 budget in “management Lala Korall had moved up in the world, and ture of $640 million. VIAB involves itself in fees.” Korall could spin out exactly the was now listed in the documents as the right business speak and enticing num- contact to receive the $1.5 million at Aquathe minute details. On Oct. 22, 2013 VIAB organized meet- bers. The Harvard graduate majored in Maof’s U.S. subsidiary Dominion Aquaculings between AquaMaof and Food City su- economics and history, and later did an ture, LLC, housed in a dingy storefront permarket chain executives headquar- MBA at the Robert H. Smith School of building in Cedar Bluff, VA. But Project tered in Abingdon, VA just 50 miles to the Business at the University of Maryland. Jonah again missed 2015 and 2016 deadsouth of the Richlands site. Food City was Korall assured the VIAB board that “for lines for the $10 million VCEDA loan. A pattern of pleas for deadline resets a logical partner for an “offtake agreement” every job the aquaculture project will bring to purchase product from a future fish to the state, seven more are created from Project Jonah to VCEDA then comfarm. Founded in 1955, the chain grew to through ancillary services like trucking, menced. All were quickly and perfunctorily granted. Then Project Jonah started ham123 stores in Virginia, Kentucky, Ten- etc.—It is a vertical operation.” On Dec. 19, 2013 VCEDA announced a mering VCEDA to sweeten the terms of the nessee and Georgia. Food City’s holding company, K-VA-T Food Stores was pri- loan of $10 million had been earmarked to loan. The Chief Operations Officer of Dovately owned, meaning any offtake deal Project Jonah, conditioned on their raising minion Aquaculture John H. Schiering and inked with AquaMaof would not leak. K- $137 million in matching funds. VCEDA Lala Korall, who by August of 2017 was VA-T owned its own distribution center, so set Dec. 13, 2014 as the expiration date vice president in the Project Jonah venture, there would be no intermediaries between for the offer, so “team AquaMaof” had to demanded and won a reduction of the rethe Israeli fish farm’s loading dock in Rich- move fast. Korall wasn’t the only one on quired private matching funds to $110 millands and a distribution network serving VIAB’s “Project Jonah” payroll rushing to lion. The pair also demanded that VCEDA assemble the financing that would allow agree to convert portions of the loan to outFood City outlets. VIAB introduced Israeli executives to the project to take off. VIAB also brought right grants and reduce the interest rate to Tazewell County council members who in an academic from Virginia Tech, paying 0 percent until year three and 2.125 perquickly pledged $1 million in tax abate- $7,500 for “management services” from its cent thereafter if certain performance ments to the project. VIAB also submitted a thin $176,000 budget for a thumbs up. De- benchmarks were met. VCEDA also loan application to the Virginia Coalfield spite the effort, Project Jonah missed its quickly agreed to this, perhaps not realizing Economic Development Authority (VECDA) 2014 deadline to meet the VCEDA perfor- that they would not only forfeit $4.78 million of loan interest and principal repayments, to help finance the project. At the time VIAB mance agreement. OCTOBER 2019
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began producing tilapia, overbut also only be repaid $6.46 coming severe threats of dismillion of their $10 million inease with in-house technolvestment. ogy. Tazewell officials, who alBRA is socially conscious ready had put at least $1.5 miland believes “recirculating lion into Project Jonah, solaquaculture systems are the diered on. In April of 2019 most environmentally friendly Country Administrator Eric beneficial source of protein Young told the Bluefield Daily because of its relatively small Telegraph that the facility was ecological footprint.” Aquastill “very much in play…they Maof’s core technology is also are very close to having their recirculating aquaculture. money in place.” Tazewell The end result of AquaCounty Supervisor Mike Hymes Maof’s Virginia launch—if it claimed the initial plan was to r a i s e t i l a p i a b u t m a y b e VIAB and AquaMaof are fishing for more Virginia state funding through ever happens—may be a repeat of yet another VIAB pet changed to salmon. In any a joint venture with Southwest Virginia Community College. project, the Sabra Dipping case, it would be different in that the idea now included “flash freezing” and Ridge Aquaculture (BRA) is located at al- Company LLC factory, located just south of most the same latitude—just 166 miles to Richmond. Sabra has received (and is due taking the fish “directly to supermarkets.” Meanwhile, Project Jonah is hatching al- the east of Project Jonah in Ridgeway, VA. to receive) $1.7 million in support from the ternative plans. In addition to the Rich- BRA long ago demonstrated “proof of con- Virginia Economic Development Partnership through Fiscal Year 2020, in addition to millands wastewater site, AquaMaof pur- cept.” BRA, an employee-owned company, lions from other levels of government. This chased an option to buy land adjacent to Southwest Virginia Community College. emerged in 1993 from a former catfish pro- influx of government capital allowed the IsThe company is pressuring the college to ducer called Blue Ridge Fisheries. It claims raeli- and PepsiCo-owned giant to seize the sign a memorandum of understanding to on its website to be the largest U.S. pro- market share of Cedar’s, a family-owned train aquaculture technicians for the future ducer of tilapia using recirculating aquacul- hummus maker launched by Lebanese implan—paid for by even more state-funded ture systems, producing four million migrants operating in New England. Accordgrants! SW has so far balked at signing pounds of tilapia and shipping 10-20 thou- ing to market tracker Statista, Sabra’s share the MOU, which will become “null and sand pounds of live tilapia every day to of the U.S. hummus market jumped from void” if the fish farm does not begin oper- Asian and Hispanic consumers in Wash- 17.3 percent in 2006 to 60.7 percent in ington, DC, New York, Boston and Toronto 2015. Over the same period Cedar’s fell ations by year-end December 2020. It is no great mystery why VIAB chose who prefer live seafood over the packaged from 15.8 percent to 4 percent. Propelled by secrecy and massive state to develop an aquaculture project. Blue refrigerated or frozen kind. In 1993 BRA subsidies, Israeli-owned AquaMaof could soon take out BRA, an innovative, so(Advertisement) cially conscious competitor much closer to home. VIAB makes huge claims about how its projects create jobs and generate tax revenues. In 2017 VIAB said it helped create 127 jobs and $426,000 in tax revenue. Todd Patterson HayPalestinian Medical Relief Society, a grassroots communitymore, who served as Virginia’s Secrebased Palestinian health organization, founded in 1979 by tary of Commerce and Trade, found Palestinian doctors, needs your support today. portions of VIAB’s 2017 report “inflated without merit.” Visit our Website <www.pmrs.ps> to see our work in action. VIAB’s Chairman of the Board Mel Chaskin refuses to release any subMail your U.S. Tax-Deductible check to our American Foundation: stantiation of VIAB’s claims. But it is Friends of UPMRC, Inc clear that “churn”—the loss of emPO Box 450554 • Atlanta, GA 31145 ployment at locally owned enterprises—does not factor into VIAB’s For more information call: (404) 441-2702 or e-mail: fabuakel@gmail.com calculations. ■ 16
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Special Report
This Place is Only for Jews: The West Bank’s Apartheid Springs
By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac
MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
WHAT COULD BE MORE IDYLLIC than the sight of a natural bubbling spring amid craggy boulders, welling up from the hills, its crystalline waters flowing silently into a small pool where people are cavorting in delight? What could be more innocent than parents and children splashing about in a natural pond of greenish water, the gurgling of the water mingling with yelps of joy? And what could be more moving than the sign next to one of these springs of salvation: “Dear hikers, Welcome to Anar Springs, built thanks to an intensive effort by the youth of [the nearby settlement of] Niria. Israelis swim in a spring water lake, in the Israeli kibbutz of Ein Hanatziv, south of the town of Beit Shean, Lovers of this place, we have in the Jordan Valley on May 31, 2018. one small request: to dress in are gone, the springs are gone, justice is gone. And all, of a way that respects all visitors, based on consideration for the course, under the aegis of the state and its institutions. needs of the Other. We built the site for your sake and for the According to Dror Etkes, the founder of Kerem Navot, an orsake of the people of Israel. Our goal is for everyone to hike and ganization that studies Israeli land policy in the West Bank, enjoy the springs together.” there are today more than 60 springs in the central West Bank The heart swells at the words “lovers of this place,” “considthat settlers coveted and seized as part of a project of plunder eration for the needs of the Other,” “enjoy the springs tothat began 10 years ago. The landscaping and renovation gether.” Mankind is happy, nature is spectacular, but this work at about half of them has been completed, the disposspring, like all the others like it in the West Bank, was stolen session made absolute, the Palestinians blocked from even from its owners. Robbed. Plundered. With a stomach-churning approaching the springs and their lands. Other springs tarcrudeness and violence. The “everyone” and the “considerageted by the settlers are in various stages of takeover. tion”—those words refer to Jews only. Etkes explains that the seizure of the springs is part of an In these apartheid springs, stolen waters shall not be sweetambitious plan of a far larger scope—to take control of the reened. Palestinian owners of these lands can only look on demaining open spaces in the West Bank. This is being done by spairingly from the windows of their homes at their neglected way of creation of bathing areas and hiking trails, designation olive groves, which they were forced to abandon to the insaof graves of Jewish spiritual figures as “holy sites,” and develtiable greed of the lords of the land, and at the gushing opment of picnic sites, all on Palestinian-owned private land. springs nearby that were also stolen from them. The groves The aim: to isolate the Palestinian villages, instead of isolating Gideon Levy is a columnist for Haaretz, and a popular speaker at the settlements, and of course to seize more and more land. Israel Lobby conference. Copyright © Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. Last Friday this criminal undertaking claimed a high price: All rights reserved. OCTOBER 2019
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The gurgling waters were tainted with red—the blood of Rina Shnerb, a teenager who was killed by an improvised explosive device that had been planted next to the Ein Bubin spring; her father and brother were also wounded in the blast. We wandered the land of the springs this week escorted by Etkes, who’s intimately familiar with the territory. (In 2012, Etkes wrote a report on the theft of natural springs for OCHA, a United Nations agency dealing with humanitarian affairs.) He knows about every new sheep pen that settlers have built secretly and is familiar with every boulder. The sights were enthralling, but the truth behind them is enough to make the blood boil. Many of these stolen springs were deserted this week, despite the “between the times” break for yeshiva students, perhaps due to fear in the wake of the attack at Ein Bubin, which is situated near the settlement of Dolev and the Palestinian village of Deir Ibzi. A long rocky path there leads to the site
that settlers call Danny’s Spring, named for Danny Gonen, a student who was killed four years ago, after taking a dip. The settlers built the hillside path down to the fertile valley without authorization, of course. It runs through a grove of olive trees that belong to farmers from Deir Ibzi. The trees are now neglected and forsaken, the soil around them is uncultivated and thorny bushes have sprung up. The farmers are allowed access to their property only two or three days a year, as its forlorn state testifies. The whole descent into the valley where the spring gushes has been plundered. A spring, a sandy trail—a languishing grove. A few armed soldiers suddenly dart out at us from among the olive trees about halfway down the deserted path. No entry, closed military zone! Back on the main road, a large Israeli flag flaps in the wind. Welcome to the Dolev-Talmonim bloc of settlements. The grove owned by farmers from the nearby village of Al-Janiya has also been ruined. Their natural spring, Ein al-Masraj, in the
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grove’s center, is now known as Ein Talmon and the path leading there passes through the fenced-off territory of the Talmon settlement and its array of unauthorized satellite “neighborhoods.” The Jewish National Fund declares that this is the “circuit trail around Talmonim Springs.” The neglected olive trees alongside the path that’s blocked to Palestinians are ancient, withering. The stolen spring looks well-tended, but heaps of garbage are piled up around it unmercifully. A youngish-looking woman and three girls from Dolev are taking a dip there, fully clothed and kerchiefed. The girls call her grandma. A shopping bag from the Rami Levy supermarket lies on the ground. Gender separation is de rigueur at these springs; the woman offers to come out of the water so that we can enter. The ruins of a Palestinian farmhouse nearby bear mute witness to a past that’s gone forever. “A Jew doesn’t refrigerate another Jew,” is the graffiti scrawled on a wall.
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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
OCTOBER 2019
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Talmon cuts off the grove from the Palestinian village to which it belongs. “Circle, circle, circle, let’s celebrate in a circle, sit down, sit down and stand up,” the woman and girls sing gaily. An empty Doritos bag rolls across the ground. Teenage settlers are sitting at a JNF picnic table wearing T-shirts with the inscription, “the running experience in biblical landscapes.” The settler outpost above us is called Givat Habreicha (Hill of the Pool). Villas with a view to the water. A military base has been erected in the settlement, for security purposes. The signs in the olive grove belonging to Mazra’a al-Kibiliya, east of the Talmons, lead to something called Vineyard Hill. This whole surrealistic scene is topped off by a huge elephant made of polyester atop the hill. Between the homes of Mitzpeh Haresha are signs leading to Haresha Spring. “To the new families: Welcome, in God’s name. We are happy at your arrival. With love, the family of Haresha.” In the name of God and for the sake of love, they also stole this spring in the valley. A soldier darts out, a child rides a swing, a vehicle of the Israel Defense Forces on which is mounted a mysterious device scans the valley where the attack occurred last Friday. Haresha Spring is very close to the homes of Mazra’a al-Kibiliya and it’s dangerous to go there, a soldier tells us. Settlers go there armed. Yet another spring that no longer belongs to its owners. “A spring with two cool, crystalline streams, usually three meters full,” the settlers’ Land of the Springs portal promises. “Thanks to the youth of Neria, the neighboring community, for the information.” We ascend to Zayit Ra’anan (literally, “fresh olive”), another settler outpost of Talmon. Yes, there really is such a place. Not far from it is a sheikh’s tomb, Nebi Anar, and after it the trail descends through forcibly abandoned olive groves to the Anar Springs, whose original names are Ein a-Shuna and Ein alBatama. Settlers have built three pools OCTOBER 2019
in a row here and, as at similar sites, everything is splendidly constructed and well-tended. There’s even a sign with a phone number to call in an emergency. Ma’ayan Hagefen, Ma’ayan Hana’arim, Ma’ayan Neria: The pools are shaded by grapevines. Abutting them is a grove of fruit trees owned by Palestinians. A group of teens from Neria and Dolev are in the water. They’re talking about the prime minister’s promise to build 300 homes in Dolev, a consolation prize for the attack last Friday. “’Bro, it’s like his promise to build 300 homes in Beit El,” one youth says dismissively. This is the pool-side conversation.
Yet another spring that
no longer belongs to its owners. The multistory homes of the village of Deir Amar overlook the pools; from every window villagers can see the young settlers frolicking in their lost spring. It’s not hard to imagine what they are feeling. Here, too, the Palestinians’ trees are a pitiful sight; they seem to be begging for help. “Two more springs are going to be built here, ’bro,” one of the young people in the water says. “My dad heard the explosion on Friday. You could see the ambulances arriving from our balcony.” A supermarket bag is lying next to the third pool in the row. A group from the religious-Zionist newspaper Makor Rishon is here to do a story on the springs. They will certainly take a totally different viewpoint. Arab music from the houses of Deir Amar wafts softly across the valley. Construction of the road leading here was also unauthorized. The settlers didn’t even bother to expropriate the land, Etkes notes; they simply paved the road as though the property was theirs. In the morning, on the way here, opposite the settlement of Nili, Etkes suddenly jumped up in the driver’s seat as though bitten by a snake: He noticed a large pen
for livestock that wasn’t here just a few days earlier. A storage area for grain, a truck for sleeping in, a generator and a water container—another settler outpost is about to be established, along with annexation of large parts of pasture land for the benefit of the new shepherds. Meanwhile, above Anar Springs, a bulldozer is clearing land in Neria. Heading north en route to the settler outposts of Kerem Re’im and Nahliel are picnic tables in a deserted grove. We turn off the road toward Wadi al-Zarka, aka the Blue Valley. A sign of the U.N. development agency from 2018 hints that this is the only place where the settlers failed in their takeover bid: They tried to seize the spring on the slope of the hill above, but the permanent presence of Palestinians and the lack of a settlers-only road has so far kept them from carrying out the scheme. But just wait. At Ein al-Ze’ira, aka Ateret Spring, they did succeed. “Served up with love” is inscribed on the picnic table next to the empty pool, supplied by “Binyamin Tourism”—named for the territory allotted to that tribe in the Bible. It’s hard to think of any greater irony. Only the huge Palestinian flag waving in the wind high up in the new city of Rawabi reminds us where we are. Our journey ends at the Ein al-Qus spring, now also a Jewish “convert” that’s been renamed Ma’ayan Meir, below the village of Nabi Saleh, best known for its anti-occupation protests. Some soldiers are guarding an ultra-Orthodox father from Modi’in Ilit, who is here with his two children. The trio is busy scooping minnows out of the water with plastic bags. We asked the soldiers who is banned from coming here. “Arabs,” one of them replied immediately, adding, “This place is only for Jews.” The words of a song by Yoram Taharlev are engraved on a plaque in the shade of a fig tree: “A piece of heaven, a slice of sky / Nothing do I ask only a small stone / On which to lay my head / In the shadow of the olive tree / And rest for 40 years.” ■
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Special Report
From South Africa to Palestine: End Investment in Apartheid Crimes—Letter to the Editor of The Occidental College Newspaper By SJP-Occidental College IT IS TIME TO DIVEST from Israeli apartheid, and to join other colleges and organizations that have taken a stand against violent, discriminatory policies in Israel. Oxy [Occidental College] had the opportunity before to demand justice—and it failed. While the college boasts of former student Barack Obama’s role in the South African divestment movement, it conveniently chooses to ignore its past decision to profit from South African apartheid. Today, we have the hindsight to understand that we failed black South Africans; let us not do the same to Palestinians. Apartheid, the Afrikaans word for “separateness,” is a crime under international law. It is “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group...and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” In South Africa, violent policies expropriated land from black South Africans, removed them from their homes and outlawed black ownership of land. Black South Africans were forced to carry “pass books” when travelling through white areas and 3.5 million were displaced from their homes to live in Bantustans, establishing residential segregation. At the same time, according to a pamphlet in Oxy’s Archives, a fifth of Occidental’s investments provided financial support for South African apartheid. Oxy faculty twice voted to end those investments, and students protested and demanded better from the school. The board of trustees and Oxy administration denied those demands. They argued, as documented in The Occidental in 1978, that divestment would negatively affect black South Africans: “The maintenance of trade and economic relations...enables companies doing business in South Africa to contribute positively to the economic and social welfare of those persons and groups who are the victims
20
of apartheid.” Black South Africans issued a call for divestment, and we were in no position to dictate the “right” approach to ending their suffering. This reeks of white saviorism, but many use this justification against divestment from Israel today. The college also would not divest from South Africa, because its role is to maintain “a superior educational institution,” and it would be “morally...irresponsible if we...were to adopt an investment policy that would...almost inevitably produce inferior investment results,” according to another issue of The Occidental from 1978. As an Oxy student, grounded in our mission’s values of community, service and equity, I am disgusted that the college saw our education, as privileged students at a Western institution, as more important than the lives of black South Africans. An education that refuses to respect basic human rights is not “superior,” it is reprehensible. Today, many question whether Israel’s policies parallel apartheid in South Africa. [In his April 2 Occidental column] Josh Schapiro refuted that idea on the basis that Arab students are admitted to Israeli universities. Admission, however, does not remedy that twice as much money is allocated to Jewish students than to Arab students. Israel’s Hafrada policies, the Hebrew word for “separation,” directly mirror the policies of South Africa. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stated proudly that “Israel is not the state of all of its citizens...Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people—and of it alone.” The recent nation-state law codified this discriminatory treatment. Apartheid in South Africa was upheld by international companies, and many of those companies do the same in Israel today. Hewlett Packard (HP) provided computer systems to the apartheid regime in South Africa. Today, it sells technology that underpins the identity card system in Israel, separating people based on whether they are “Jewish” or “Arab.” HP also provides infrastructure used to uphold mass incarceration, mass deportations and domestic surveillance in the U.S. today. Similarly, G4S equips Israeli prisons holding Palestinian children, and helps run Israeli checkpoints and police training centers. It is worth noting that U.S. police forces are often trained in these centers. Racist violence is not unique to Israel; these companies profit from the subjugation and murder
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of marginalized communities globally. Colleges invest their endowments into companies like HP and G4S, and benefit from the profit margins made by upholding oppressive states. Many have revoked their support for apartheid in Israel, but Oxy has not. We cannot claim to be an institution of diversity and equity while funding the decimation of black and brown communities globally. We must hold our administration accountable and be clear: An education that comes at the cost of another’s life is no education worth having. In 2005, Palestinian civil society issued its call to the international community to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) Israeli apartheid and companies complicit in it. Established as a non-violent means of resistance, it echoes calls from black South Africans to divest from an increasingly violent and repressive state. Palestinians chose BDS not only for its success in South Africa, but because there are tangible parallels between the two states’ policies. The BDS movement does not take a political stance on statehood, but appeals to the basic human rights of all people. It calls for Israel to respect three principles of international law, and Oxy should make that same call: 1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Apartheid Wall. 2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality. 3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. Resolution 194. Oxy has not only failed South Africa and Palestine. During the “Fossil Free” Oxy movement, Occidental repeatedly maintained that it does not have “direct control over or day-to-day knowledge of how [76 percent of the college’s endowment] is invested” and could not divest from fossil fuel. That lack of transparency is chilling. Miraculously, though, Oxy rightfully divested from military-style assault rifle manufacturers after the Sandy OCTOBER 2019
Hook massacre. This raises questions about Oxy’s control over investments, and moreover, why it is only able to control those investments when they affect American lives. Frankly, I am embarrassed that a school professing to care about the public good and create engaged citizens fought furiously to continue investing in the South African regime and continues to fight against boycotts of Israel. We should all be ashamed. While other schools and organizations take a stand, Oxy remains silent; it has chosen the side of the oppressor. Our education was not worth more than the lives of black South Africans, and is not worth more than the lives of Palestinians. BDS is working, and when Palestinian liberation is achieved, I do not want to look back at my school with the shame and embarrassment I feel looking back to South Africa. Today, we have a chance to be on the right side of history; it is time to divest from Israel. ■
Dr. James J. Zogby Continued from page 13
to alter their behaviors—so as not to take the same route to and from the office. And some even had to receive counseling. It was especially troubling to see the reactions of young interns when they would be the unlucky recipients of a Syring email. They had come to have a Washington work experience, not to be threatened or have their ethnicity maligned. This is also different because for more than two decades Syring had been a Department of State official who had served two tours in Lebanon. During the 2008 proceedings, I learned that on more than one occasion he had been rebuked by the DOS for displays of anti-Arab behavior. I was shocked that instead of taking action they simply moved him to another posting. They even allowed him to remain in the federal service after he was indicted for his first threats against me—some of which he made from his State Department phone or his State Department computer. At that time, I asked DOS officials, “What if a for-
eign service officer had threatened a Jewish American leader and made repeated anti-Semitic comments against him and called for genocide against the Jewish community—what would the reaction have been?” That troubled me then and still troubles me now. And while there has been some press coverage of the case, I am compelled to ask, “What kind of press treatment would have been given if a former government official delivered death threats to a Jewish American leader accompanied by the statement ‘the only good Jew is a dead Jew?’” Why are Arab Americans seen in a lesser light? And why are threats against us less worthy of evoking outrage? With Syring going to jail for the next five years, my staff and I feel a degree of relief. It won’t give us back the years we lived in fear, but we know that at least for the foreseeable future our daily lives won’t be turned upside down by cruel death threats from this man. We are thankful for that. We are also thankful for the strong support and protection we were given by the civil rights attorneys at the DOJ and law enforcement agencies and for the friendship and support we received from allies and friends. With this sad chapter behind us, we will now continue our advocacy work. We will fight against hate crimes and demand that hate crimes against Arab Americans be given the same recognition as those against other vulnerable communities. We will continue our work empowering Arab Americans through voter registration and involvement in the political process without fear of discrimination or political exclusion. And we will continue to advocate for an inclusive immigration policy, protection for vulnerable refugees and asylees, and a foreign policy that promotes human rights and justice for all—including the long-suffering Palestinian people. Some may not like what we advocate and may even threaten us because of our advocacy—but we will persist because we know that it is our duty, as Americans, to continue to fight for what we know is right. ■
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Special Report
Kentucky Governor Signs Bill To Crack Down On BDS Movement
By Michael Arria
PHOTO BY BILL PUGLIANO/GETTY IMAGES
Rabbi Shlomo Litvin of Chabad of the Bluegrass, Kentucky State Senate President Robert Stivers (who co-sponsored the bill), and representatives from Christians United for Israel (CUFI). The ceremony came just weeks after the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning the BDS movement, 398-17, (see p. 23) Public school teachers and their supporters protest a pension reform bill outside the senate chambers at the and amidst a ReKentucky State Capitol on April 2, 2018 in Frankfort, Kentucky. publican push to hold a House vote on a bill that would grant states the legal cover to more efON AUGUST 27 KENTUCKY Gov. Matt Bevin held a ceremony fectively crack down on the movement. Since 2014, 27 to officially sign Senate Bill 143. The law allows the state to states have adopted anti-boycott laws and Kentucky is one refuse business from companies that boycott Kentucky trade of five states to have passed the legislation via executive partners, including Israel. The bill’s supporters identify it as a way order. for the state to crack down on the Boycott, Divestment and SancAt the signing, Jewish Community Relations Council memtions (BDS) movement. ber Leon Wahba specifically cited CUFI’s local lobbying effort The ceremony merely codified an executive order that was to get the bill passed. “Everything that was said was favorable signed by Bevin last November. “The State of Israel is an imto Israel and World Jewry,” he said. “Our friends from CUFI portant friend and trading partner to the Commonwealth,” he have demonstrated to us that they can be counted on to help said at the time. “We will not allow state resources to benefit us advocate for Israel and against anti-Semitism.” entities that intentionally engage in discriminatory practices to After the executive order in November, CUFI Action Fund harm the sovereignty and economic prosperity of any ally naChairwoman Sandra Parker released the following statement: tion. Today’s executive order makes it clear that Kentucky con“Kentucky’s action today means that more than half the coundemns the BDS movement and that we stand shoulder-totry has enacted legislation or policies targeting the anti-Seshoulder with our friend, Israel.” mitic effort to boycott, divest from or sanction Israel. We look Bevin was joined at the signing by Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), forward to advancing similar policies across the country and will not stop until the door is shut to BDS in every state in the Michael Arria is the U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss. He covers union.” ■ labor and social movements for other publications. 22
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Congress Watch
ON JULY 17, IN A RARE flurry of activity, the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) reported out to the full House five pro-Israel measures: H.Res. 246, opposing “the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement [BDS] Targeting Israel”; H.R. 1837, the “U.S.-Israel Cooperation and Regional Security” bill; H.R. 1850, the “Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention” bill; H.Res. 326, supporting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and H.Res. 138, which claims to support a two-state solution, but really seems designed to support Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s “regional” approach. Then, on July 23 the full House passed, under “suspension of the rules” (requiring a two-thirds majority to pass), H.Res. 246, H.R. 1850 and H.R. 1837. H.Res. 246 passed on a roll call vote of 398-17, with five voting “present.” The other two passed by voice votes.
STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI
House Takes Up and Passes Three Pro-Israel Measures
Activists gathered outside of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco office on Aug. 16 to call for the U.S. to end its support for the deadly war in Yemen.
MEASURES OPPOSING THE BDS MOVEMENT ARE BLATANT ATTACKS ON FREE SPEECH
The non-binding H.Res. 246, introduced in March by Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), had 352 cosponsors when passed, including Schneider. The identical Senate Res. 120, introduced in March by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), has 70 cosponsors, including Cardin. These two measures are modestly better than other anti-BDS measures in that they do not equate Israel’s colonies with Israel, and they express support for a two-state solution. However, they clearly are blatant attacks on the constitutional right to free speech. Senate Bill 1, introduced in January by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and passed by the Senate in February, consists of four bills not passed by the 115th Congress and still rests with the
Shirl McArthur is a retired foreign service officer. He lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. OCTOBER 2019
By Shirl McArthur
House. The House companion bill, H.R. 336, introduced in January by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), still sits in various House committees. It has 67 cosponsors, including McCaul. The most objectionable of the four sections concerns the BDS movement. It applies not only to Israel but also to “Israeli-controlled territories.” Apparently to counter H.Res. 246, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on July 16 introduced H.Res. 496 “affirming that all Americans have the right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad, as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.” The measure’s text nowhere mentions Israel and one would expect it to be seen as noncontroversial and bipartisan. But no, Israel’s friends in Congress, who are pushing for a definition of the First Amendment to exclude criticism of Israel, immediately jumped on the measure as being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. It has 19 cosponsors, including Omar.
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STATUS UPDATES
S.J.Res. 36, 37, and 38, Resolutions of Disapproval. The
Yemen. S.Res. 243, introduced in June by Sen. Chris Murphy
dent Trump on July 24 vetoed the three “resolutions of disap-
Yemen, still has five cosponsors, including Murphy. The iden-
previous edition of the Washington Report reported that Presiproval” of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE previously
passed by Congress. On July 29 the Senate tried to override the vetoes but failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority.
S. 1945 and H.R. 643, Prohibit Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia.
S. 1945, introduced in June by Menendez, still has seven cosponsors, including Menendez, and H.R. 643, introduced in
January by Rep. James McGovern (D-MA), has 32 cosponsors, including McGovern.
H.R. 1471, Saudi Nuclear Program. Of the previously de-
scribed measures requiring congressional approval of any nu-
clear agreement with Saudi Arabia, only H.R. 1471, introduced in February by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) has gained cosponsors. It now has 14 cosponsors, including Sherman.
H.J.Res. 37, S.Res. 243, S.Con.Res.21, and H.Con.Res.
21, Yemen.
H.J.Res. 37, passed by the House in February, still has not
been acted on in the Senate. Introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna
(D-CA), it would direct the removal of U.S. Armed Forces from
NEW U.S.-ISRAEL “COOPERATION” BILLS INTRODUCED
The House passage of H.R. 1837, introduced in March by Rep. Ted Deutch (DFL), is truly a wish list for Israel, including a section authorizing the president in emergencies to provide unlimited defense articles and services to Israel with no congressional oversight. It had 292 cosponsors when passed. But that did not end efforts by members of Congress to demonstrate their undying support for Israel. Identical measures were introduced proposing “a joint U.S.-Israel cybersecurity center of excellence.” H.R. 2488 was introduced May 2 by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) with five cosponsors. In the Senate, Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) on July 29 introduced S. 2309. And on August 2 Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) introduced H.R. 4156 “to provide defense and security assistance to ensure the survival of Israel and its people from an existing or imminent military threat,” which is essentially the same as 24
(D-CT), regarding Saudi Arabia’s human rights practices in
tical resolutions introduced in June condemning human rights violations and cooperation with Iran by the Houthi movement
in Yemen, have gained no further support. S.Con.Res. 21, in-
troduced by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), still has seven cosponsors, including Cotton, and H.Con.Res. 50, introduced by
Reps. Will Hurd (R-TX) and Mike McCaul (R-TX) gained one cosponsor.
H.R. 1441, H.R. 2118, S.Res. 195, and H.Res. 390, Iran
Sanctions. These measures urging more Iran sanctions have
made little progress. H.R. 1441, introduced in February by Rep.
David Kustoff (R-TN), has 18 cosponsors, including Kustoff; H.R. 2118, introduced by McCaul in April, now has six cospon-
sors, including McCaul; S.Res.195, introduced in May by Cotton, still has 14 cosponsors, including Cotton, and H.Res. 390,
introduced in May by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), now has 12 cosponsors, including Gallagher.
the provision in H.R. 1837 giving the president authority to give unlimited military aid to Israel. As previously reported, a new section was added to H.R. 1837 intended to fix the unintended consequences of last year’s “Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act” (ATCA). While the purpose of the ATCA was to cut off aid to the PA or PLO, its wording could also apply to any country accepting the described aid. H.R. 1837’s new section fixes this problem by simply deleting the offending provision. But this apparently was not sufficient for some senators. On July 16, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) with two cosponsors introduced S. 2132 “to promote security and provide justice for U.S. victims of international terrorism.” This bill would “fix” the ATCA by making the aid restriction not apply to all forms of aid, but at great cost. It would set new, impossible conditions which, if not met, would allow organizations to sue the PLO/PA.
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
—S.M.
ANTI-HAMAS MEASURE PASSES WITH NO DEBATE
H.R. 1850, which would sanction anyone who has dealings with Hamas, introduced by Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) in March, was passed by the House by voice vote with no substantive debate. It had 45 cosponsors, including Mast, when passed. Identical bills introduced in June, which would seek to reduce the influence of Hezbollah in Lebanon, have gained some support. S. 1886, introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (RTX), now has three cosponsors, including Cruz, and the identical H.R. 3331, introduced by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), now has 11 cosponsors, including Zeldin.
MEASURES SUPPORTING TWOSTATE SOLUTION NOT BROUGHT TO THE FLOOR
The two measures reported out by the HFAC but not brought for vote by the full House, H.Res. 326 and H.Res. 138, apparently were deemed insufficiently pro-Israel to get a two-thirds majority vote. This OCTOBER 2019
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outcome is surprising in the case of H.Res. 138 because, while giving weak support to a two-state solution, it basically endorses Netanyahu’s “regional” approach. Introduced by Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) in February, it has 34 cosponsors, including Hastings. H.Res. 326, on the other hand, although it was severely watered down during the committee mark-up session, still notes that any U.S. proposal that “fails to expressly endorse a two-state solution will likely put a peaceful end to the conflict further out of reach.” The measure, introduced in April by Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), now has 184 Democratic cosponsors, including Lowenthal. S.R. 234, introduced in June by Sen. Jeff Merkley (DOR), which would affirm “the U.S. commitment to the two-state solution,” still has only 11 cosponsors, including Merkley. A new measure “regarding U.S. efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a negotiated two-state solution” was introduced July 24 by Reps. Lowenthal and Gerry Connolly (D-VA). H.Res. 518 says, among other things, that “the outcome of a two-state solution that enhances stability and security for Israel, Palestinians, and their neighbors can both ensure the State of Israel’s survival as a Jewish and democratic state and fulfill the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own.” On the two measures proposing a “partnership fund for peace” to promote joint economic development and finance ventures between Palestinian companies and those in Israel and the U.S., H.R. 3104, introduced in June by Rep. Nita Lowey (DNY), now has 20 cosponsors, including Lowey, while S. 1727, introduced in June by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), has five cosponsors, including Coons. H.R. 2407 “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation,” introduced in April by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), lost a cosponsor and now has 22 cosponsors, including McCollum. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) took to the House floor on Sep. 10 and asked to be removed as a cosponsor of the legislation. On July 10 Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL)
OCTOBER 2019
and two cosponsors introduced H.R. 482 “regarding U.S. efforts to promote peace and stability in the Gulf region.” It would encourage “President Trump and the Secretary of State to use all efforts at their disposal to resolve the current crisis peacefully.”
SFRC PASSES BILL HOLDING ACCOUNTABLE THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR KHASHOGGI’S MURDER
On July 25 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) passed by a vote of 13-9 S. 398, the previously described “Saudi Arabia Accountability and Yemen” bill introduced in February by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) to “support the peaceful resolution of the civil war in Yemen, to address the resulting humanitarian crisis, and to hold the perpetrators responsible for murdering” journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The SFRC reported the bill over the objection of committee Chairman Sen. James Risch (R-ID), who prefers his S. 2066, introduced July 9, the “Saudi Arabia Diplomatic Review” bill, which is far weaker than the Menendez bill. Risch claims that his bill would have a good chance of becoming law, but S. 398 will not even get out of the Senate. The claim is probably true, since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has abdicated the Senate’s role as part of an equal branch of government by saying that he will only bring to a vote bills that will be approved by Trump. H.R. 2037, introduced in April by Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), the “Saudi Arabia Human Rights and Accountability” bill, was passed July 15 by the full House, under suspension of the rules, by a vote of 405-7. When it passed it had 20 cosponsors, including Malinowski. On July 31 the nearly identical S. 2351 was introduced by Sens. Coons and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). H.Res. 472, introduced in June by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), “requesting the president to strongly condemn Jamal Khashoggi’s killing, hold accountable individuals identified as culpable, and condemn imprisonment of and violence against journalists around the world,” now has 35 cosponsors, includ-
ing Speier. A new bill, S. 2338, was introduced July 30 by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and three cosponsors. It would “prohibit the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. from financing the export of nuclear technology, equipment, fuel, materials, or other goods or services to Saudi Arabia.”
BILLS AIMED AT PREVENTING WAR WITH IRAN WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL MAKE PROGRESS
Three previously-described bills, aimed at preventing war with Iran in the absence of congressional approval, continue to gain support. S. 1039, introduced in April by Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), now has 28 cosponsors, including Udall; H.R. 2354, introduced in April by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) now has 81 cosponsors, including Eshoo, and H.R. 2829, introduced in May by Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI), now has 79 cosponsors, including Levin. ■ (Advertisement)
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History’s Shadows
Middle East Ranks High in President Trump’s Foreign Policy Failures By Walter L. Hixson
PHOTO BY LEV RADIN/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
that the United States alone—among all the nations of the world—would not participate in combating the scientifically verified, potentially devastating, and daily snowballing effect of climate change. This is the single most reckless, damaging and rudderless action taken by Trump. If he is reelected, the American people will be voting for nothing less than the destruction of life as we know it on planet Earth. Reason No. 2: Abandoning Arms Control Treaties with Iran and Russia. One of the great achievements of the right-wing Ronald Reagan presidency was the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1987, U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during campaign rally at Southern New Hampshire which eliminated an entire class of interUniversity Arena in Manchester, NH, Aug. 15, 2019. mediate range missiles in Europe and, RANKING OF PRESIDENTS is always fraught with subjectivity, moreover, established rigorous verification procedures on comand it is still a bit premature to render a final judgment on Donpliance. One of the great achievements of the centrist Barack ald Trump. If the economy plummets, or alternatively blossoms Obama presidency was the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, more in the next few months or years, views of him could change. formally the JCPOA, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in When it comes to foreign policy, however, the verdict is alwhich Iran agreed to rigorously verifiable limitations on its ability ready in, virtually no matter what happens from here. Trump to enrich uranium for bomb-making capacity in return for lifting has earned a failing grade—and Middle East policy ranks of U.S.-sponsored international economic sanctions. high on the list of his failures. As the campaign season gains The born-rich real estate tycoon president with zero foreign momentum, here are my top three reasons why President policy experience summarily terminated both treaties. Trump may be the worst foreign policy president in all of Other members of the U.N. Security Council (China, Russia, American history. Britain, France) as well as the European Union signed off on Reason No. 1: Withdrawal of the United States from the the deal with Iran—which has shown remarkable restraint thus Paris Agreement (2015) on Climate Change. far in response. Like many others, Iran appears to be awaiting When civil war-battered Syria signed on to the Paris Treaty the outcome of the 2020 election before deciding precisely in November 2017, Trump’s announcement of unilateral U.S. what direction to go. withdrawal from the accord earlier that year made it official Trump’s termination of the INF Treaty frees Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as the venerable U.S. military-industrial complex to rev their engines and restart the nuclear History’s Shadows, a regular column by contributing editor Walter L. Hixson, seeks to place various aspects of Middle East politics and arms race, which has been quiescent for decades. Another diplomacy in historical perspective. Hixson is the author of Israel’s critical treaty with Russia, the New START Treaty, also deArmor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine nounced by Trump, expires in 2021. Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along with Termination of these arms control agreements rank near the several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor. top of Trump’s foreign policy failures because, well, as the old 26
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bumper sticker read, “One nuclear bomb because their consequences can be cata- actually come to power in Venezuela; can ruin your whole day.” strophic. But there is a litany of failure on and he has inspired neo-fascist moveReason No. 3: Recognizing Jeru - the part of this president, who is both ar- ments all over the globe, as men such as salem as the “Eternal Capital” of Is- rogant and amateurish, a potentially lethal Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and rael and the Golan Heights as Israeli combination. Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte Territory. Because of the overweening Trump has alienated all of Africa by praise his leadership. influence over the U.S. Congress and calling it a continent full of “shithole” I actually had high hopes for Trump the American public of the American Is- countries; he has done nothing to calm making a breakthrough with Kim Jong-un rael Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)— the India-Pakistan dispute playing out but his diplomacy—if that’s what you call one of the top two or three lobbies in the today in Kashmir, at the risk of escalation the three highly publicized meetings with country—all too many Americans may between two nuclear-armed powers; he Kim—has done nothing but give visibility not find these actions, or the termination has given little rhetorical support to the and legitimacy to a ruthless autocrat. A of the Iran deal, objectionable, but any- pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong deal can be secured if the United States one with broader knowledge of the Mid- while launching a trade war with China; and its allies offer a trade along the lines dle East conflict understands that Trump he has anointed a new ruler who can’t of terminating off-shore military maneuis playing with dynamite. vers, which make Kim feel (Advertisement) As readers of this magathreatened, in return for dezine well know, Jerusalem nuclearization, but for reais a holy city for Christians sons known only to Trump and Muslims as well as he has chosen to strike up Jews and cannot be domia pointless friendship legitinated by any one if there is mating a petty dictator while ever to be hope of peace. achieving no tangible reUnder the moribund twosults. state solution, East Where on this list, some Jerusalem was to be the may wonder, is Trump’s incapital of a Palestinian difference to Russian medstate. dling in American elections? As the U.N. and the interWhile clearly it is true that national community have Russia does meddle—the repeatedly affirmed, Israel fact of the matter is, so do has no legitimate claim to we—all over the world. So, either the Golan Heights while it is not “fake news,” (annexed from Syria in Russian meddling is also 1967) or the West Bank, not an existential threat to Playgrounds for Palestine is a project to build playgrounds for our chilboth of which it nonetheless world peace as are the isdren. It is a minimal recognition of their right to childhood and creative has been settling for sues discussed above. expression. It is an act of love. decades in blatant violation Sorry, Democrats, Russia Playgrounds for Palestine (PfP) is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organiof international law. Trump did not decide the eleczation, established in 2001. We’re an all-volunteer organization (no paid is not the first president to tion—the Electoral College staff) that raises money throughout the year to construct playgrounds and bow to AIPAC and Christian and too many naïve Amerifund programs for children in Palestine. fundamentalists on Middle can voters did that to themEast policy, but he has selves. Selling Organic, Fair Trade Palestinian olive oil is PfP’s principle source of fundraising. is taken it to a new level by Competition may still year, PfP launched AIDA, a private label olive signing off on Israel’s sole exist for the dubious oil from Palestinian farmers. Please come by and occupation of Jerusalem. achievement of being taste it at our table. ranked the worst overall We hope you’ll love it and make it a staple in your pantry. ALAS, THERE’S MORE... president in American hisThe top three above strike tory, but in foreign relations For more information or to make a donation visit: • me as the most serious Trump is well on his way to https://playgroundsforpalestine.org • P.O. Box 559 Yardley, PA 19067 Trump foreign policy failures claiming the top spot. ■ OCTOBER 2019
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Special Report
The Legacy of Jason Greenblatt’s Diplomatic Service By Giorgio Cafiero
PHOTO BY SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES
spectrum. Although its details JASON DOV GREENBLATT, the have not yet been made public, Trump administration’s “special some information about the plan representative for international nehas been leaked, confirming that gotiations,” resigned on Sept. 5. it would mark the end of even Greenblatt—along with Trump’s nominal U.S. support for a twoadviser and son-in-law, Jared state solution. At least based on Kushner, and Washington’s amwhat we do know about it, the bassador to Israel, David Fried“Deal of the Century” would conman—was responsible for formusolidate Israel’s occupation of lating a plan to resolve the Palestinian land and oblige the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli Palestinians to accept a permaconflict. Greenblatt’s decision to nent state of dehumanization resign before the administration and indignity in exchange for released its so-called “Deal of the some money that the White Century” (a.k.a. the KushnerHouse wanted to see oil-rich Greenblatt plan), which will not Arab states in the Gulf Cooperahappen until after Israel’s elections tion Council (GCC) fork over for —assuming it happens at all— Palestinian “economic developmay have been partly motivated ment.” by the heavy criticism the plan has Ultimately, however, Greenalready taken. blatt’s resignation was significant Regardless, Greenblatt leaves not because of the likely failure behind a dark legacy that will unof his “Deal of the Century,” but fortunately taint U.S. foreign policy long after Donald Trump him- Advisers to President Donald Trump Jason Greenblatt (l) and because of what the envoy did self exits the White House. Jared Kushner attend the opening session of the Ministerial to achieve, as explained by Michael Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East on Young, the senior editor at the Greenblatt and others in the adFeb. 14, 2019 in Warsaw, Poland. Carnegie Middle East Center. ministration were behind deciGreenblatt, a former Trump Orsions such as recognizing ganization lawyer, played an important role in bringing the Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, cutting all U.S. funding for the White House and Netanyahu’s government into an alignment United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and shutting down that was closer than that of any past U.S. administration and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)’s DC office, Israeli government. Most likely, any hope for a two-state soluwhich aligned the White House with Prime Minister Binyamin tion has been irreversibly undermined by the Trump adminisNetanyahu’s government to the maximum extent seemingly tration’s pro-Netanyahu positions. The odds are good that bepossible. Depressingly, it is difficult to imagine how a future tween now and the next U.S. presidential election, Trump will U.S. administration could reverse the damage caused by such recognize the legitimacy of Israeli control of the West Bank, hardline anti-Palestinian policies. further undermining any future U.S. effort to bring Palestinians Put simply, the Kushner-Greenblatt plan was “dead on arand Israelis closer to a just and lasting peace. Indeed, that is rival,” rejected by virtually all Palestinians across the political Greenblatt’s legacy as an American diplomat. Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics, a Undoubtedly, Palestinians are saying good riddance after Washington, DC-based geopolitical risk consultancy. In addition to Greenblatt, who backed the most extreme positions of the IsLobeLog, he also writes for The National Interest, Middle East Institute, and Al Monitor. Reprinted with permission from LobeLog. Continued on page 30 28
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Special Report
Trump Makes the Right Call: Bolton Out
By Paul Pillar
PHOTO BY PAVLO GONCHAR/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP will soon have his fourth national security adviser in less than three years reflects the lack of strategic sense underlying the president’s foreign and security policies. When policy is more a matter of applause lines and appealing to a domestic political base than of implementing a coherent view of America’s place in the world, then seeing whether the president and the job candidate share the same coherent view is not part of the hiring process. With none of Trump’s hires has there been anything like Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon meeting at the Pierre Hotel after the latter’s election victory in 1968, with the president-elect determining that he and the Harvard professor shared a realist way of thinking about how the world worked and America’s place in it. Trump’s filling of the national security adviser’s position has been a scattershot response to diverse needs and impulses. Michael Flynn clearly was never properly vetted. H.R. McMaster had the attraction of wearing a general’s uniform without Flynn’s baggage. But Trump evidently did not anticipate how he would tire of McMaster’s dutiful reminding his boss of the Only days before President Trump fired his third U.S. National Security Adviser, way the world really works, even when that way does John Bolton speaks during a media conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Aug. 28, 2019. not fit into a slogan. John Bolton’s appointment to the ears of the ultra-hardline policy toward Iran favored by seemed to many as the oddest of any of these three hires, given Binyamin Netanyahu’s government. It was this sort of stance by how this uber-hawk’s views appeared to clash with Trump’s camBolton that made him Adelson’s favored candidate for the White paign rhetoric about staying out of wars. But Bolton offered buHouse job. reaucratic savvy and the opportunity to win points with hawkish It possibly is no coincidence that the firing of Bolton comes parts of Trump’s Republican base. shortly after a sharp public falling-out between Adelson (along The single biggest factor in getting Bolton the job was Sheldon with his wife Miriam, a dual Israel-U.S. citizen) and Netanyahu. Adelson, whose weighty political checkbook has won him much This altercation, which surfaced during an investigation of corinfluence over Trump’s policies. The policies that by far have ruption allegations against Netanyahu and evidently has involved mattered most to Adelson are any that deal with Israel or are imthe prime minister becoming especially assertive in trying to diportant to the right-wing government of Israel. Adelson and rect the editorial practices of Israel Hayom, the free-distribution Bolton both have openly advocated bombing Iran, which is music newspaper Adelson owns, is a marked and surprising departure from what had been a close political and financial partnership Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security between the Adelsons and Netanyahu. Trump may believe that Studies of Georgetown University and an Associate Fellow of the with this split, he still has his Israeli bases covered despite oustGeneva Center for Security Policy. He retired in 2005 from a 28-year ing Adelson’s man from the West Wing. career in the U.S. intelligence community. His senior positions included National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South More fundamental to Trump’s calculations, however, was his Asia, Deputy Chief of the DCI Counterterrorist Center, and Executive realization that Bolton’s determination to wreck deals clashed with Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. His books include Trump’s desire to make deals. This has been the case on several Negotiating Peace, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, Intelligence fronts. It is true of North Korea, where Bolton’s wrecking career and U.S. Foreign Policy (available from Middle East Books and began as an undersecretary in the George W. Bush administraMore) and Why America Misunderstands the World. OCTOBER 2019
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tion, when Bolton boasted of his role in killing the earlier Agreed Framework dealing with the North Korean nuclear program. Trump reportedly had already sidelined Bolton from a further major role in policy toward North Korea. He also partially sidelined him on policy toward Afghanistan, although Bolton may get the last word there in the sense that it now looks, according to the president, that a prospective agreement with the Taliban is dead. The major foreign policy issue on which Bolton’s departure is likely to make the biggest difference is Iran. Bolton has always wanted war; Trump has increasingly indicated that he wants a deal. It had to be clear to the president that any effort to reach such a deal would be subject to sabotage efforts by Bolton every inch of the way. Iran is also an issue where current policy is manifestly failing, with the “maximum pressure” campaign resulting only in harder-line Iranian postures regarding nuclear matters, activity in the Middle East and domestic Iranian politics. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been Bolton’s maximum pressure partner in all this, but Pompeo’s first priority is to stay in tune with the president. With Bolton gone,
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the president’s, and thus Pompeo’s, tune may change. President Trump has done the right thing by firing John Bolton. In each of his positions in government, Bolton has made the world a more conflictual place and the United States a more isolated and despised country. This certainly has not made the country safer. One indication of how much Bolton’s policies have been at odds with U.S. national interests is that he still believes that the disastrous offensive war in Iraq was a good idea. It is impossible, of course, to gauge just how much Bolton’s departure represents an improvement until a new national security adviser is announced. That appointment will be all the more important because of another part of Bolton’s legacy, which has been to destroy the policy-making procedures of the National Security Council and circumvent the national security bureaucracy in general, and to make policy-making a more irregular and closely held game of maneuvering to influence the president. A previous time when foreign policy was in large part run out of the national security adviser’s vest pocket was when Kissinger had the job, and to the extent it worked it was only because of the intellect and talents of the man wearing the vest. Kissinger himself recognized how shaky the arrangement was and, in his memoirs, recommended against any attempt to repeat it. What President Trump could use most right now is a national security adviser who will restore an orderly policymaking process in which policy options are carefully considered, from all angles and by everyone in the executive branch with relevant responsibilities. But given Trump’s own operating style, that is probably not going to happen. ■
Jason Dov Greenblatt Continued from page 28
raeli government, announced his resignation. Yet as a fervent supporter of Israel’s colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Greenblatt pushed an agenda
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
that was not only dangerous for Palestinians, but also for the Jewish State’s future. By throwing away decades of negotiations aimed at reaching a two-state solution in line with the international consensus on how to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the U.S. has left Israel worse off. In Young’s words, “as many Palestinians watch their principal demands—on a state, Jerusalem, and refugees—undermined by the Trump administration, the risk is that they will conclude that since negotiations brought them nothing, perhaps violence can.” Now facing an “irresolvable dilemma,” the Israelis must contend with facts on the ground. “The Palestinians won’t disappear and in the decades ahead Israel will struggle with what to do with them.” Looking ahead, by tasking long-time supporters of the “Greater Israel Project” like Greenblatt with the responsibility of developing an Israel-Palestine peace plan, Trump has established a new normal that changes the conflict’s equilibrium in a dangerous way. Without the U.S. even nominally supporting the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, the prospects for peace between the Palestinians and Israelis are dimmer than they have been at any time since Israel’s official establishment in 1948. By appointing Greenblatt—a real estate lawyer with zero diplomatic experience and an overwhelming bias in favor of Israel—to lead efforts to solve one of the most sensitive problems in foreign affairs, Trump has pushed Palestinians toward greater desperation, Israel toward a seemingly unsolvable dilemma, and the U.S. even further away from any respected position of leadership in the Middle East. The legacy of Jason Greenblatt’s diplomatic service is dark and disturbing. As Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, put it: Greenblatt “acted as a dangerous extremist” who was “against all things Palestinian, without exception” and did “tremendous, historic damage” in his capacity as an envoy for the Trump administration. ■ OCTOBER 2019
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From the Diaspora
HAZEM BADER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Jewish Settlers Rule the Roost in Israel: But at What Price? By Ramzy Baroud
An Israeli settler walks past an electoral campaign poster of Israel’s prime minister and Likud party chairman Binyamin Netanyahu in the West Bank town of Hebron, Sept. 4, 2019. At least 600 Israeli settlers live under heavy military guard in the city, which is home to around 200,000 Palestinians. Before the Israeli election Netanyahu pledged to annex West Bank settlements. I S R A E L I J E W I S H S E T T L E R S are on a rampage in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. While settler violence is part of everyday routine in Palestine, the violence of recent weeks is directly linked to the Sept. 17 general elections in Israel. The previous elections, on April 9, failed to bring about political stability. Although Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu is now the longest-serving prime minister in the 71-year history of the country, he was still unable to form a government coalition.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More). His forthcoming book is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons. Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a non-resident scholar at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California. His website is <www.ramzybaroud.net>. OCTOBER 2019
Tarnished by a series of corruption cases involving himself, his family and aides, Netanyahu’s leadership is in an unenviable position. Police investigators are closing in on him, while opportunistic political allies, the likes of Avigdor Lieberman, are twisting his arm with the hope of exacting future political concessions. The political crisis in Israel is not the outcome of a resurrected Labor or invigorated central parties, but the failure of the Right (including far-right and ultra-nationalist parties) to articulate a unified political agenda. Illegal Jewish settlers understand well that the future identity of any right-wing government coalition will have lasting impact on their colonial enterprise. The settlers, however, are not exactly worried, since all major political parties, including that of the Blue and White, the centrist party of Benjamin Gantz, have made the support for Jewish colonies an important aspect in their campaigns. The decisive vote of the Jewish settlers of the West Bank and their backers inside Israel became very clear in the last elections.
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Subsequently, their power forced Gantz to adopt an entirely different political stance since April. The man who, on April 7 (two days before the last elections), criticized Netanyahu’s “irresponsible” announcement regarding his intention to annex the West Bank, is now a great supporter of the settlements. According to the Israeli news website, Arutz Sheva, Gantz vowed to continue expanding the settlements “from a strategic point of view and not as a political strategy.” Considering the shift in Gantz’s perspective regarding the settlements, Netanyahu is left with no other option but to up the ante, as he is now pushing for complete and irreversible annexation of the West Bank. Annexing the West Bank, from Netanyahu’s viewpoint, is a sound political strategy. The Israeli prime minister is, of course, oblivious to international law, which sees Israel’s military and settler presence as illegal. But neither Netanyahu, nor any other Israeli leader, for that matter, have ever cared about international law whatsoever. All that truly counts for Israel is Washington’s support, which is often blind and unconditional. According to the Times of Israel newspaper, Netanyahu is now officially lobbying for a public statement by U.S. President Donald Trump to back Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. Although the White House refused to comment on the story, and an official in Netanyahu’s office claimed that it was “incorrect,” the Israeli right is on the fast track to making that annexation possible. Encouraged by U.S. Ambassador David Friedman’s comment that “Israel has the right to retain some of the West Bank,” more Israeli officials are speaking boldly and openly regarding their intentions of making that annexation possible. Netanyahu had, himself, hinted at that possibility in August during a visit to the illegal settlement of Beit El. “We come to build. Our hands will reach out and we will deepen our roots in our homeland—in all parts of it,” Netanyahu said, during a ceremony celebrating the expansion of the illegal settlements to include 650 more housing units. 32
Unlike Netanyahu, former Israeli justice minister and leader of the newly formed United Right, Ayelet Shaked, didn’t speak in code. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, she called for the full annexation of Area C, which constitutes nearly 60 percent of the West Bank. “We have to apply sovereignty to Judea and Samaria,” she said, referring to the Palestinian land using biblical designations. Public Security, Strategic Affairs and Information Minister Gilad Erdan, however, wants to go the extra mile. According to Arutz Sheva and The Jerusalem Post, Erdan has called for the annexation of all illegal settlements in the West Bank and the ouster of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas as well. Now situated at the center of Israeli politics, Jewish settlers are enjoying the spec(Advertisement)
12 Muslim Revolutions, and the Struggle for Legitimacy Against the Imperial Powers, by Carl Max Kortepeter, XLIBRIS Press, 2017, Amazon: paperback $19.99; hardcover $29.99; Kindle $3.99. Professor Kortepeter spent decades traveling, studying and teaching about the Middle East. This narrative, told in a very personal manner, borne of on-the-ground experience, presents a thoughtful study of the medieval and modern history of the central lands of Islam. The last chapters focus on American presidents and their inability to comprehend the complexities of the Middle East since World War II.
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
tacle as they are being courted by all major political parties. Their increased violence in the West Bank is a form of political muscleflexing, an expression of dominance and a brutish display of political priorities. “There’s only one flag from the Jordan to the sea—the flag of Israel,” was the slogan of a rally involving over 1,200 Jewish settlers who roamed the streets of the Palestinian city of Hebron (Al-Khalil) on Aug. 14. The settlers, together with Israeli soldiers, stormed al-Shuhada street and harassed Palestinians and international activists in the beleaguered Palestinian city. Just a few days earlier, an estimated 1,700 Jewish settlers, backed by Israeli police, stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, more than 60 Palestinians were wounded when Israeli forces and settlers attacked worshippers. The violent scene was repeated in Nablus, where armed women settlers stormed the town of al-Masoudiya and conducted “military training” under the protection of the Israeli occupation army. The settlers’ message is clear: we now rule the roost, not only in the West Bank, but in Israeli politics as well. All of this is happening as if it is entirely an Israeli political affair. The PA, which has now been dropped out of American political calculations altogether, is left to issue occasional, irrelevant press releases about its intention to hold Israel accountable according to international law. But the guardians of international law are also suspiciously absent. Neither the United Nations, nor advocates of democracy and international law in the European Union, seem interested in confronting Israeli intransigence and blatant violations of human rights. With Jewish settlers dictating the political agenda in Israel, and constantly provoking Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, violence is likely to grow exponentially in the coming months. As is often the case, this violence will be used strategically by the Israeli government, this time to set the stage for a final and complete annexation of Palestinian land, a disastrous outcome by any count. ■ OCTOBER 2019
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Special Report
Netanyahu’s Calculus: Bombs Speak Louder Than Words ISRAEL HAS EXPANDED its military operations in the Middle East from Palestine to Lebanon, Syria and as of August, Iraq, allegedly carrying out multiple attacks on Iranian allies and assets. In a departure from traditional ambiguity, the Israeli government has boasted about its responsibility for the bombings and, with an utter sense of impunity, threatened more such attacks anytime, anywhere in the region. The bombast, timing, scope, and rhythm of the bombings suggest there is more to the pre-emptive attacks than immediate security consideration. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is sending a message to his own public at home ahead of the Sept. 17 elections as well as to Iran and the United States.
THE MESSAGE TO THE ISRAELIS
PHOTO CREDIT SEBASTIAN SCHEINER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
By Marwan Bishara
Netanyahu’s decision to launch a cross-regional bombings spree three weeks before national elections was a carefully calculated political move aimed at guaranteeing his survival as prime minister and a free man. The vote is important not only for Israel’s future but also for Netanyahu’s own fate. If he loses this election and, as expected, is indicted on corruption charges, he will certainly Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the weekly cabinet meeting go to prison like his predecessor, Ehud Olmert. in Jerusalem on Sept. 3, 2019. But as several generals-cum-politicians are running against him on Sept. 17, the incumbent prime minister, who promised to annex the West Bank settlements to prove his rightputting Tehran on notice: Israel will be watching, weighing and wing credentials, needs to prove his military credentials as well, wielding its superior power like never before, until and unless preferably without plunging the country into war. Iran stops projecting power and building allies and assets close So Netanyahu, the seasoned politician, took a calculated risk to its borders. of bombing Iranian targets while assuming that Iran is not interOver the past two years, the Israeli army has allegedly carried ested in fighting a major war—certainly not while Tehran is trying out hundreds of attacks against Iranian targets in Syria, soliciting to save the nuclear deal with the help of Europe and others. little or no real response from Damascus or Tehran, other than He also assumed that when the time comes, any tit-for-tat with the occasional condemnation and threat of retaliation. Hezbollah would be limited. Indeed, the tit-for-tat on Aug. 25 Israel delivered a similar message by attacking Hezbollah pocame to an end before it had even begun, with both parties movsitions in Syria and Lebanon, which was considered a major esing toward immediate de-escalation. calation and a violation of previous agreements reached after Paradoxically, these avowed enemies have thus far proven their 2006 war. more predictable in their confrontations than most allies are in But the Israeli security establishment no longer views the their cooperation, including the U.S. and Israel. group as a Lebanese resistance movement—a title it held since its inception as a byproduct of the 1982 Israeli invasion and ocTHE MESSAGE TO THE IRANIANS cupation of Lebanon. With Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah threatening reIsrael’s expansion of its military operations against Iranian asgional war if Iran is attacked, and abetting Iranian projection of sets to include Iraq cannot be mistaken for anything other than force and influence across the region from Syria, Yemen and Iraq, the Lebanese armed group has come to be considered an Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst. He was asset or client of the ayatollahs in Tehran. previously a professor of International Relations at the American Paradoxically, the more Hezbollah has become overstretched University of Paris. An author who writes extensively on global and preoccupied with other conflicts in the region, the less time politics, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on the Middle and energy it has had for confronting Israel. East and international affairs. OCTOBER 2019
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THE MESSAGE TO TRUMP
The timing of the most recent elaborate campaign of bombings on three fronts during the two-day G7 conference in Biarritz, France could hardly be a coincidence. Netanyahu was angered by the French invitation of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to the summit and dismayed by French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempts to mediate between Tehran and Washington and arrange for a meeting between President Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Netanyahu has realized by now that Trump’s love for shock, controversy and publicity and his willingness to meet U.S. enemies like Kim Jong-un mean that it is quite possible for him to agree to France’s mediation and commit to a meeting with Iranian leaders. That is why Netanyahu tried vociferously to reach the American president in Biarritz to dissuade him from meeting Zarif or acquiescing to the French proposals to lift secondary sanctions on Iran. Apparently, the U.S. president was too busy or perhaps unwilling to talk.
Trump may be impressionable, but he does not like to be told what do. At any rate, bombs speak louder than words, and Netanyahu knew that even if he could not get Trump on the phone, the attacks on Iraq, Syria and Lebanon would be heard loud and clear in Biarritz. Well, the G7 ignored the Israeli escalation, neither condemning it nor justifying it. The Trump administration, predictably, defended Israel’s right to “defend itself,” but the president remained open to the idea of direct talks with Iran as he insists on the need to withdraw the U.S. military from the region’s hotspots. Moreover, Trump seems to be sidelining his national security adviser, John Bolton, who has long advocated for the U.S. and Israel to bomb Iran, as he makes some peculiar overtures towards Tehran. Well, that is until he changes his mind.
SAVING THE MIDDLE EAST
Meanwhile, Israeli and Iranian leaders and their allies are turning the Middle East into an open theater of war, acting like pyromaniacs, who, unless stopped, may end up burning down the whole region. (Advertisement)
Together, Israel and Iran constitute the gravest menace to the future of the region. Supporting one or the other will not bring victory or avert war—it would only accelerate the march toward an all-out conflict, and implicate other regional and global powers. Israel and Iran may have succeeded over the past four decades in maintaining distance, fighting only by proxy, but deepening tensions amid the spree of Israeli attacks and biting sanctions against Tehran may pave the way toward a whole new regional confrontation with unforeseen consequences. The main reason why Israel and Hezbollah avoided war since 2006 is their—especially Israel’s— determination to prepare well enough to be able to win decisively and at minimum cost. This may be nearer than we think, as Israel perfects its anti-missile defenses, notably its Iron Dome system. That is why France and its European partners need to step up their efforts to reach a diplomatic breakthrough between the U.S. and Iran—one that ensures short as well as long-term regional security. ■
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OCTOBER 2019
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Gaza on the Ground
Shattered Limbs—Crippled for Life
PHOTO CREDIT PAULA BRONSTEIN/GETTY IMAGES
By Mohammed Omer
Ahmad Abu Jaser, 31, father of four, hugs his daughter Lyan, 7 on May 22,2018 in Gaza city. Abu Jaser and his brother (lying on the floor) were shot by Israeli sharpshooters. KHALIL AL BRAIM looks down at his shattered leg stretched out on a white plastic chair, supported by a folded blanket. “The most difficult part is when your children see you in pain— and feel helpless,” said Al Braim, father of three small children who watch him from afar, as they fear coming close to his wound. The 26-year-old’s leg has been encased in a metal support frame since he was wounded last summer while taking part in the Great March of Return on the Gaza border. “All I want is to go back to being pain-free, fully mobile and physically able to care for, and play with, my children,” he says. But the reality is that after being shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper, he is unlikely to regain full use of his leg after the bullet severed some nerves, leaving him in constant pain. “I was far away from the Israeli soldiers, sitting in a tent with other young people. But I saw someone get injured and ran to help him
Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports regularly on the Gaza Strip. OCTOBER 2019
to an ambulance, when the bullet hit my leg,” he recalls. Dr. Ayman Sahabani, head of the emergency department at Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al Shifa, said medical crews witnessed many cases of people with permanent damage to their bodies as a result of bullet wounds. “The ammunition being fired on demonstrators is explosive bullets that penetrate the body and explode inside, causing shattered nerves and bones,” he explained. Dr. Sahabani said doctors try to use stainless steel to fuse the pieces of bones back together—an attempt to avoid amputation of limbs. However, Gaza’s medical facilities and hospitals are cashstrapped and seem unable to cope with the volume of serious injuries. A top U.N. humanitarian official said at least $20 million in emergency funding is needed to save the shattered limbs of some 1,700 people in Gaza who have been seriously injured in the Great March of Return, the demonstrations against Israel along the borContinued on page 37
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United Nations Report
Five Million Palestinians Deserve Better!
By Ian Williams
PHOTO BY MUSTAFA HASSONA/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES
has not provided sustenance for its friends. The secretary-general is presumably aware that after Al Jazeera (and the Washington Report) began its investigation into the UNRWA Ethics Office’s report on Krähenbühl’s management (see Aug./Sept. 2019 Washington Report, p. 17), Krähenbühl in quick succession lost three senior staff members, including both his chef de cabinet and deputy commissioner. Major donors Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and, not least, Krähenbühl’s own Swiss government pulled their funding because of the report, which called for his immediate dismissal. All those countries have been loyal friends of the U.N. and of UNRWA, and their defunding shows clearly that the Ethics Office report made a compelling case to them. It is also clear that the govCommissioner General for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for ernments concerned are trying to send sigPalestinian Refugees, Pierre Krähenbühl, holds a press conference in Gaza City, Aug. 27, nals to the U.N., whose response to the cri2019. sis has been a textbook case of complacent bureaucratic ineptitude. After this writer’s report on UNRWA corruption came out in Al AN OLD ADAGE passed on by veteran U.N. staff to younger reJazeera, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki R. Haley cruits is, “Do nothing whenever possible. It’s safer.” For a junior wrote on Twitter, “This is Exactly [sic] why we stopped their fundofficer that might indeed be career-enhancing. But—in the face ing.” of persistent hostility from the U.S. and Israeli Prime Minister In fact that was an outright lie. The Trump administration only Binyamin Netanyahu’s friends around the world—for the secredid as Israel asked and pulled its contribution to UNRWA for matary-general of the U.N., or even the commissioner general of licious reasons having nothing to do with Commissioner General UNRWA, it is a recipe for disaster. Krähenbüh’s love life or travel arrangements. Instead it was beAnd sometimes doing a little is even worse. cause UNRWA’s continuing existence is a persistent institutional Antonio Guterres announced the appointment of Christian reminder of U.S. complicity in Israel’s dispossession of some six Saunders as deputy commissioner general of UNRWA but the million Palestinians. Admittedly, it was also because a particular U.N. secretary-general failed to explain what had happened to subset of ambitious Republicans looks for large campaign donaSaunders’ predecessor, Sandra Mitchell, let alone the chain of tions from a coterie of very rich right-wing donors who consiscircumstances that led to her departure. Saunders is experitently display their disdain for Palestinian rights by helping fund enced and well-respected, but making him deputy commissioner Jewish-only settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. general while leaving Pierre Krähenbühl, the person primarily reHowever, knowing that both Washington and Tel Aviv entertain sponsible for the scandal, as commissioner-general for UNRWA such sentiments makes the insouciance of both Secretary-Genis like throwing a sardine into a school of sharks. It has, preeral Guterres and Krähenbühl even more egregious. The ethics dictably, just whetted the appetites of UNRWA’s enemies—but report detailing the managerial failings and turpitude in UNRWA was delivered to the secretary-general’s office back in December U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of UNtold: the Real 2018. The UNRWA staff who had contributed to it fretted that no Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More). action was being taken after many of them had risked their liveli36
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hoods and pensions. They were amazed that such a compelling dossier from the organization’s own Ethics Department would be ignored, and it was only after months had passed that some of them leaked it to me, in the hope that media inquiries about the report would prompt pre-emptive action by the U.N., and that the commissioner general would lance the boil before the pustulent Trump/Netanyahu axis began to fester on it. Ambassadors and senior U.N. officials were approached to press the secretarygeneral’s office for the action necessary, but to no avail. Faced with such a damning indictment from his own ethics office, Krähenbühl could have, and should have, resigned or stepped aside for the good of the organization. The secretary-general could have suspended or fired him and announced a genuinely independent inquiry, enlisting donors and others concerned with the welfare of UNRWA and the Palestinians. Predictably, the failures of the commissioner general and U.N. headquarters to take action—of any kind—has set off a feeding frenzy among the enemies of the Palestinians and UNRWA, who want to punish refugees for the ethical failings of bureaucrats foisted on them by an international community that oversaw their dispossession. An unannounced internal investigation by the U.N.’s own Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS)—whose reputation is far from stellar even inside the U.N.—is a politically disastrous course of action. It took repeated questioning before we even discovered the investigation was under way—at a time when the secretary-general’s office denied it had even seen the report. It was conceivable that, without media publicity, the OIOS report could have been a bland procedural whitewash, as have been too many about recent scandals involving senior U.N. staff. But the media exposure means that Krähenbühl has little or no support from his present and recent senior staff, and certainly not from the donors. His rigor mortis-like grip on office is profoundly damaging to UNRWA, to the OCTOBER 2019
U.N., and to the more than five million Palestinians it serves. In any case, confronted with such a manifest managerial failure, a traditional international civil servant should have accepted responsibility and resigned: by clinging to office Krähenbühl is giving succour to his agency’s enemies. One could add that the scandal reflects an erosion of the concept of an ethical international service under a constant corrosive drip of short-term contracts and outsourcing urged by those experts who brought us the 2008 financial crisis. Even so, Secretary-General Guterres can still ameliorate the crisis—first, of course, by inviting Krähenbühl’s immediate departure, but then by a resounding public declaration of how essential UNRWA’s work is. Persuading a senior diplomat or U.N. figure to take over from Krähenbühl is a bit like fitting someone for a crown of thorns, but there are people out there who care enough about the Palestinians and who are prepared to stand up to the barrage of bile from worldwide Friends of Likud. Above all, there is no need for the secretary-general to take advice from countries whose oft-condemned actions created and perpetuated so many decades of misery for the Palestinians. He would, however, do well to invite donors and other humanitarian organizations to examine the agency and recommend much needed managerial and structural reforms, without pandering to those whose solution to the refugee problem is to leave them homeless and hungry while declaring them no longer to be refugees. ■
Gaza on the Ground Continued from page 35
der fence that began a year ago, leaving 29,000 people injured. “Of that 29,000, at least 7,000 have been shot with live ammunition and those are the ones who have been treated at facilities that are under very serious stress anyway,” Jamie McGoldrick, humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory at the U.N., added.
“We are running against the clock for some cases, with osteomyelitis—bone infection—near to critical numbers if we are unable to prevent or treat such secondary symptoms. More and more young people risk limb amputations,” he said. “The technical abilities and resources of doctors on the ground to carry out treatment required for the 1,700 (injured demonstrators) just doesn’t exist here.” Al Braim lived with pain through all seasons since his injury. The level of pain changes with the climate and temperature, but never goes away. “In summer, it is painful because of the external temperature heating up the metal frame supporting the fractures and transferring that heat inside my leg,” he explains. With only eight hours of electricity a day, air conditioners and fans are a luxury—and hospitals are crowded with people like Khalil and families who can’t cope with the needs of the injured. Today, the average household debt in Gaza is $4,000, noted McGoldrick, adding that average salaries are $400 a month. The situation has worsened with chronically high youth unemployment and the fact that the U.N.’s $350 million humanitarian appeal for 2019 is funded at only 14 percent. But Gaza also needs political solutions. Al Braim dreams of open borders where he can reach medical assistance outside of Gaza to maximize his recovery and job possibilities to earn an income for his family. “I watch my leg weakening every day. I miss being able to play with my children, walk outside and do a day’s work,” he said in a shaking voice. With the lack of medical treatment available, the fracture in his bones—which started at three centimeters deep in the bones—has now expanded to 9 cm. [1.18 inches now 3.5 inches deep.] “I wish my leg had been amputated, maybe I would have less pain and more mobility by now,” Al Braim says. His doctors still hope the bones will mend in time, but one year after being shot he is losing hope. “It’s like a slow death,” he says looking down at the metal frame around his leg forcing him to stay at home and do very little. “I lost the appetite to meet people or talk to anyone—I just want to be on my own.” ■
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From the Diaspora
Straining Out a Gnat but Swallowing a Camel By Rev. Alex Awad
MUSA AL SHAER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
away when Israeli bulldozers demolish Palestinian Christian homes and farms, and they keep totally silent when thousands of Palestinian Christians, like me, lose the right of citizenship in their homeland because they left the country to study or to work overseas. If there were a systematic persecution of Christians in the Holy Land at the hands of the PA, I would be the first Palestinian Christian to travel the globe to expose these crimes against the Christian minority. I would seek the help of all majority Christian countries, the U.S., the U.N., Archimandrite Abdullah Yulio (C), parish priest of the Melkite Greek Catholic church in Ramallah, attends and all human rights organithe Friday prayers in Dar Salah, Aug. 2, 2019, at the site of demolished buildings in the West Bank, adjacent zations to stop the persecuto Sur Baher in East Jerusalem. tion. I love the Palestinian church, and I pray that the church in the Holy Land will continue to shine with the light of ISRAEL’S APOLOGISTS never seem to tire of pointing a finger Christ to the world. I served the Christian church in Palestine for of accusation at the Palestinian Authority (PA) with allegations over 30 years. During these years I learned which party, in fact, that the PA persecutes Palestinian Christians. Hence, they say, is the one that poses the greatest threat to the Palestinian the decline of the indigenous Christian population in the Paleschurch. As any Palestinian—Christian or Muslim—will tell you, it tinian territories. is the Israeli occupation that is making life unbearable, for MusJesus had words to describe such accusers: "You blind lims and Christians alike. guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matthew The good news is that the PA and Hamas are not persecuting 23:24 NIV.) The camel in the room is the occupation, and Israel’s Christians. If the PA at any moment were to shift its policy and apologists want to shift blame from the massive crimes of the ocpersecute Christians, the two percent Christian population would cupation to place the PA in the defendant’s seat. These accusers not endure for even three months in the West Bank. As for are not willing to look at the thousands of dunums of land that Hamas, if it merely threatened to persecute Gaza’s fewer than have been confiscated from Palestinian Christian landowners by 2,000 Christians, Gaza’s Christians would, within days, run for Israeli settlers and government agents. They turn their eyes the tunnels to sneak out of the Israeli-besieged enclave, and no Rev. Dr. Alex Awad is a retired United Methodist Missionary. He and Christian would be left in Gaza. But this is not happening. As I his wife, Brenda, served in Jerusalem and in Bethlehem for more learned through my frequent visits to Gaza, Hamas leaders are than 25 years. Rev. Awad served as pastor of East Jerusalem Baptist bending over backward to make the few Christians in Gaza feel Church, dean of students at Bethlehem Bible College, and director secure. of the Shepherd Society. Awad has written two books, Through the Regrettably, many of these accusations are generated by the Eyes of the Victims and Palestinian Memories. Rev. Awad is a member of the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace (PCAP). Israeli Ministry of (mis)Information and then handed to Christian 38
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Zionists who stand ready and eager to receive these accusations and use them to smear the reputation of the PA without checking the facts. Here are facts that any decent researcher can investigate and verify: 1. Although the total number of Christians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is less than 2 percent of the total population, high-ranking Palestinian Christian leaders hold 7-10 percent of the top positions in the PA. 2. The number of Christian ambassadors to foreign countries relative to their percentage of the total population is quite high. 3. By law, several Palestinian cities and towns must always have a Christian mayor, even in cities like Bethlehem and Ramallah where the majority population is Muslim. 4. By law also, a number of seats in the Legislative Council are reserved for Christians, including two out of the seven seats for East Jerusalem. 5. Every Christmas Eve, the Palestinian president shows solidarity with Christians as he attends the Christmas Midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity. 6. The PA declared that Christmas is a national holiday. Every Christmas a PA representative attends the Christmas tree lighting at the Church of the Nativity. In Israel, on the other hand, Christmas Day is a regular working day unless it falls on Saturday. 7. The PA considers all Palestinians, Muslims as well as Christians, equal citizens of the Palestinian state with equal rights for all. In Israel, however, non-Jews (Christians, Muslims and Druze) are second-class citizens according to Israel’s nation-state law. All the above show that the PA is not only doing its best not to discriminate against Palestinian Christians, but is even favoring them. Naturally, Christians in the Palestinian state feel the pressure of being a tiny minority in a predominantly Muslim society and are even more sensitive to the threats of radical Islam, which endangers them as well as their Muslim neighbors. From time OCTOBER 2019
to time, frictions and injustices are experienced by the minority Christians as would be the case for any minority group anywhere in the world. However, these injustices are not initiated by the PA. Further, we must make a distinction between the pressures and irritation a minority experiences and outright persecution by government authorities. Jewish colleagues have pointed out to me that Jewish Zionist organizations have also resorted to using the fear of Islam in appeals addressed directly to the Christians of Palestine. It goes like this: “We (Jews) understand that you, our Christian brothers and sisters in Palestine, are under threat from ‘Palestinian nationalism’ that threatens your well-being and survival in the Holy Land. The State of Israel can be the Christians’ best friend in helping preserve your presence in the Holy Land.” “Palestinian nationalism” is code for Muslims. By casting the situation as a religious struggle, rather than as a clear case of human rights violations, this argument presents Muslims as hyper-nationalist terrorists, a threat to the “Judeo-Christian” way of life. The attempt to drive a wedge between Palestinian Christians and Muslims is cynical and not in accordance with the facts. The statements coming out of the churches of Palestine, e.g. the 2009 Kairos Palestine statement and the 2017 open letter of the National Coalition of Christian Organizations in Palestine, all speak of “us” as the Palestinian people— not the "Christians of Palestine.” The churches in Palestine speak for Palestinians—all Palestinians. The biggest challenge to Christians in Palestine is the continuing Israeli occupation, which affects the Palestinians in every aspect of their existence. The impact of the occupation on the Palestinian economy is what causes many Palestinian Christians to leave their homeland. My own brothers and sisters who live in the U.S. and Germany point to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Israel’s discriminatory policies, and the consequent economic challenges as the reasons why they left and would not return to live in their homeland.
Every Palestinian Christian family I know has relatives abroad who are either barred from returning to their homeland or who face being barred from even visiting by being turned back at the airport. The fact is that Israel works around the clock to reduce the Palestinian population of Israel and the West Bank and therefore makes it difficult and often impossible for Palestinian Christians who leave the country for the purpose of study or work to return to their homeland. Thousands of Palestinian Christians are challenged by these policies. Zionist journalists and Christian Zionist defenders of Apartheid Israel can travel extensively up and down the Palestinian territories to seek evidence of Muslim persecution of Christians. They may find a few isolated stories here or there. However, if they stand on a hill in almost any Palestinian Christian village or city and are willing to open their eyes, they will see hundreds of visible indicators of Israeli wrongdoings against Christians. It is tragic when people who call themselves Christians are not willing to tell the truth but rather continue to strain out gnats while swallowing camels! ■
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Israel and Judaism
Increasingly, Idolatry Characterizes the Organized Jewish Community’s Embrace of Israel By Allan C. Brownfeld
GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
an ethnographic-political movement, is idolatry carried to an extreme. Religion is repeatedly being used by many Israelis and their American friends to advance the thesis that Israel’s role in the Middle East is ordained by God. Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, has used the Bible repeatedly to advance the Jewish connection to the land. Speaking before a Security Council meeting in May, Danon opened the Bible, held it up and declared, “This is the deed to our land.” (See p. 18 June/July 2019 Washington Report.) U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who is an ally of the Israeli settler movement and opposes the creation of a Palestinian state, referred to the relationship between the U.S. and Israel as an “altar of holiness” and the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem as a Ultra-Orthodox Jews stage a protest against Israeli army conscription in the Ultra-Orthodox “shrine.” At a ceremony in Jerusalem, Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem, Aug. 13, 2019. he declared that Israel “was on the side of God.” The U.S. and Israel, he said, should grow even closer, which would be a sign of “holiness.” THE FIRST OF THE BIBLICAL Ten Commandments deMaking the Israeli state “holy,” and therefore a legitimate obclares, “You shall have no other gods before me.” In Jewish ject of worship, has been accompanied by the virtual canonhistory, the worship of something other than God can be found ization of those who embrace its occupation of the West Bank at the very beginning. At the foot of Mt. Sinai, a golden calf and East Jerusalem. was erected as an object of worship. Idolatry has been deOn June 27 Miriam Adelson, wife of billionaire casino mogul fined as the worship or fetishization of an idol or cult image in Sheldon Adelson and a major contributor to the Trump camplace of God. It seems alive and well at the present time. paign as well as Birthright Israel and other Zionist causes, proIn many ways, those who have made Israel “central” to their posed that the story of Donald Trump, “hero and patriot,” Jewish identity are, in fact, engaging in a form of idolatry, makought to be added to the Bible. Her article, entitled “A Time of ing the State of Israel a virtual object of worship and veneraMiracles,” appeared in the Israeli daily newspaper Israel tion, replacing God and the Jewish moral and ethical tradition. Hayom, which her husband owns and she publishes. The This can be seen as synagogues display Israeli flags, use their paper supports Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, opposes religious schools to teach Israeli culture, and promote Birthright the creation of a Palestinian state and supports annexation of Israel trips for young people to make sure that their Jewish parts of the occupied West Bank. identity is tied to this proclaimed “homeland” of all Jews. ReAccording to OpenSecrets, the Adelsons have contributed placing Judaism, the religion of universal values, with Zionism, hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republican Party and tens of millions of dollars to Donald Trump. In November Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of 2018, Miriam Adelson was awarded the Presidential Medal of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Freedom. ABC’s Robert Schlesinger declared that the award, Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism. “Perfectly captures the crassly transactional nature of Donald 40
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Trump and his presidency.” In her branding of Trump as a modernday prophet, Miriam Adelson framed his unpopularity among Jews in biblical terms: “Scholars of the Bible will no doubt note that the heroes, sages and prophets of antiquity were similarly spurned by the very people they came to raise up. Let us at least sit back and marvel at this time of miracles for Israel, for the U.S. and the whole world.” For many years, the idea that the State of Israel is “central” to Jewish identity has been widely proclaimed. In 1968, the 27th World Zionist Congress adopted a resolution recognizing its “Jerusalem Program” as the official pronouncement of basic Zionist aims. The key element of the program is its first provision which affirms “the unity of the Jewish people and the centrality of Israel in Jewish life.” In the years following, America’s major Jewish religious bodies—Orthodox, Conservative and Reform—have adopted this position. To the Zionist refrain that the conquest of Palestine was simply a return to Jewish roots, Jewish social psychologist Erich Fromm had this response: “If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, the world would be a madhouse.” In fact, the history of Palestine is far more complex. According to the Bible, so often cited by Israeli leaders and others, the Israelites were not the original inhabitants and their rule extended for only a brief period of that land’s complex history. In her book, Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan, Ilene Beatty reports that, “All these [different peoples who had come to Canaan] were additions, sprigs grafted onto the parent tree...and that parent tree was Canaanite...The Jewish kingdoms were only one of many periods in ancient Palestine.” Many thoughtful Jewish voices have objected to what they view as idolatry in making Israel “central” to Jewish identity. Rabbi Henry Siegman, former head of the American Jewish Congress and the Synagogue Council of America, laments, “For many American Jews—and I suspect for most American Jews—Israel has OCTOBER 2019
become the content of their Jewish religious identification. It has very little other content. I rarely have been at a Shabbat service where a rabbi gives a sermon where Israel isn’t a subject of the sermon. And typically, they are. The sermons are not in the spirit of Isaiah, you know, who says, ‘My god, is this what God wants of you?’...What he wants is to feed, to feed the hungry, to pursue justice...So what I mean is that there is much more to Judaism...than support for the likes of Netanyahu.” Rabbi David Goldberg of the Liberal Synagogue of London notes, “With the erosion of belief, God has been replaced by Israel as the credo of the Jewish people to the benefit of neither.” From the very start of Zionism, promi-
“There is much more to
Judaism...than support for the likes of Netanyahu.” nent Jewish leaders viewed it as a rejection of Judaism itself. The chief rabbi of Vienna, Moritz Gudemann, denounced the mirage of Jewish nationalism. “Belief in one God was the unifying factor for Jews,” he declared, and Zionism was incompatible with Judaism’s teachings. For Reform Jews, the idea of Zionism contradicted almost completely their belief in a universal prophetic Judaism. The first Reform prayer book eliminated references to Jews living in exile and to a Messiah who would miraculously restore Jews throughout the world to the historic land of Israel and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The prayer book eliminated all prayers for a return to Zion. The respected Rabbi Abraham Geiger declared that the Jewish people were a religious community destined to carry out the mission to “serve as a light to the nations,” to bear witness to God and His moral law. The dispersion of the Jews was not a punishment for their sins, but part of God’s plan whereby they were to disseminate the universal message of ethical monotheism.
In 1929, Orthodox Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamarat wrote that the very idea of a sovereign Jewish state as a spiritual center was “a contradiction to Judaism’s ultimate purpose.” He declared, “Judaism at root is not some religious concentration which may be localized or situated in a single territory. Neither is Judaism a ‘nationality,’ in the sense of modern nationalism, fit to be woven into the three folded-ness of ‘homeland, Army, and heroic songs.’ No, Judaism is Torah, ethics and exaltation of spirit. If Judaism is truly Torah, then it cannot be reduced to the confines of any particular territory. For as Scripture said of Torah, ‘Its measure is greater than the earth.’” One of the leading Jewish theologians of the 20th century, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. for civil rights for all people, said, “Judaism is not a religion of space and does not worship the soil. So, too, the State of Israel is not the climax of Jewish history, but a test of the integrity of the Jewish people and the competence of Israel.” While the organized American Jewish community has adopted the idolatrous view of Israel as “central” to Judaism, there is increasing evidence that growing numbers of American Jews, particularly young people, reject this view. In recent years, sympathy for Zionism among American Jews has been in steady decline. A study by social scientists Ari Kelman and Steven M. Cohen found that among American Jews, each new generation is more alienated from Israel than the one before. Among American Jews born after 1980, only 54 percent feel “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state.” The reason, Cohen asserted, is an aversion to “hard group boundaries” and the notion that “there is a distinction between Jews and everybody else.” Other polls show that among younger non-Orthodox Jews only 30 percent think that “caring about Israel is essential to being Jewish.” Slowly, idolatry is being recognized for what it is. The era of Judaism’s new Golden Calf is clearly in decline as more and more people recognize it for what it is. ■
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An Iraqi woman walks past an abandoned house in what was a Jewish neighborhood in the Iraqi city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, on August 12, 2015. Between 1948 and 1951 nearly all of Iraq's 2,500-year-old Jewish community fled amid a region-wide outbreak of nationalist violence. Prior to the exodus that followed the creation of Israel in 1948, Jews made up around a third of Baghdad's population and played a major role in the political, economic and cultural life of the country. ISRAEL IS LOUDLY PROCLAIMING a false equivalency between Palestinian expulsions and the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries across the Middle East and North Africa. While not taking responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israeli officials nonetheless argue that even more Jewish refugees were expelled or forced to flee from Arab countries, especially following the 1948 war. According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs—an Israeli research institution—“Between 1920 and 1970, 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab and other Muslim countries…600,000 settled in the new state of Israel.”
Gregory DeSylva is a board member of Deir Yassin Remembered and has written and produced six videos related to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. 42
Another advocacy group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, promotes their “cause” to governments and at the U.N. It claims as its most significant accomplishment the 2008 House of Representatives resolution calling on U.S. officials to refer to the “plight of the Arab Jewish refugees” whenever Palestinian refugees are mentioned. The implication is that since the Arab countries expelled their Jews and have not compensated them for their property, therefore Israel has no obligation to allow the Palestinian refugees to return or to compensate them for their losses. The argument claims that Arab Jewish losses of land and property exceed Palestinian losses. Based on a 1951 report by the U.N. Conciliation Commission for Palestine, British land expert John M. Berncastle estimated
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Jews from Arab Countries vs. Palestinian Refugees: A Wash? By Gregory DeSylva
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Palestinian losses at $4.4 billion versus Arab Jewish losses of $6.7 billion, in 2012 dollars. As of 2019 the ante has been upped dramatically: Israel is demanding $250 billion from seven Arab countries and Iran, with the Palestinians demanding $100 billion. These analyses are predicated upon comparison of what happened to the Arab Jews and what happened to the Palestinians, but the analogy is false. What happened to the two groups was not comparable. Rather, these two events are related, constituting the two phases of the Zionist’s scheme to “…expel Arabs and take their places,” as Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion capsulized it in an Oct. 5, 1937 letter to his son Amos. Ben-Gurion strove to expel Palestinian Arabs from their homes and properties in the Holy Land and replace them with Jews from everywhere—including Arab countries. The Zionists carried out the expulsion phase under “Plan Dalet” (or Plan D) whereby they ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians from that part of the Holy Land that would become Israel in 1948. According to the International Criminal Court, ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. The replacement phase manifested as the immigration to Israel of Jews from Arab countries and elsewhere to fill the vacancies so created.
the population vs. 60 percent Muslim Arabs and 7 percent Christians—still far from a dominant Jewish majority. That year, the U.N. partitioned the Holy Land: 56 percent went to the Zionist state, 42 percent for an Arab state and 2 percent for internationally controlled Jerusalem. On March 10, 1948, Zionist political and military leaders, including Ben-Gurion, met in Tel Aviv and formally adopted Plan Dalet, a blueprint for the forcible ethnic cleansing of Arabs to make way for a repopulation with Jews. They drove out 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from the 78 percent of the Holy Land that the new state of Israel would control after the 1948 war. This transformation left 86 percent Jews and only 14 percent Arabs. The Palestinian exiles were bona-fide refugees, having fled partly out of fear of war, but primarily due to at least 31 massacres of Palestinians. Like most war refugees, they did not want to leave home and strove to return when the war was over. But Israel barred them with lethal force from doing so, declared their property abandoned, and made it state property. This confiscated property was then made available to Jewish immigrants—including Arab Jews. Counting descendants of the 1948 and 1967 refugees, there now are about five million Palestinian refugees, about 1.5 million of whom subsist in wretched camps in the West Bank, Gaza and surrounding Arab countries.
With few exceptions,
Arab Jews thus were not expelled or ethnically cleansed.
EXPULSION: THE PALESTINIAN NARRATIVE
Zionism arose in the late 1890s with the aim of making the entire Holy Land a Jewish nation, and trouble has shaken the region ever since. Its intentions were particularly arrogant given that Palestine was part of the Muslim Ottoman Empire and was 81 percent Muslim vs. 8 percent Jewish and 11 percent Christian, all living in relative peace there. The Zionist nation was to be a “Jewish democracy”—an idea as self-contradictory as “white democracy” or “Christian democracy.” In theory, Jews had to be politically dominant to make it a “safe haven” for the world’s Jews, who had endured much oppression. Thus, Jews had to become a large majority where they long had been a small minority. But they were not expected to become 100 percent of the population. The new country would be Jewish (large majority, politically dominant) yet appear to be a genuine democracy fully enfranchising its minorities. To achieve these goals, the proportion of Jews to Muslims and Christians had to change radically. From 1892-1947, the Zionists removed Arabs mainly by buying land from “notable” Arab owners of large estates farmed by Arab tenants. These tenants originally had owned much of this land but had entrusted it to the “notables” to avoid conscription into the Ottoman military. After buying the property, the Zionists evicted the tenants and replaced them with Russian and European Jews, more than 550,000 of whom flooded the Holy Land in six waves. So, by 1947 Jews had increased to 32 percent of OCTOBER 2019
REPLACEMENT: THE ARAB JEWISH NARRATIVE
In 1945 about a million Jews inhabited the Arab states. They were often considered second-class citizens, but so were other nonMuslims. And while they occasionally experienced more or less harsh oppression, most did not want to leave their homelands. But since the late 19th century Zionism had been increasingly destabilizing not only the Holy Land, but Arab lands as well. To replace the Palestinians expelled under Plan Dalet, the Zionists first imported Holocaust survivors and other European Jews, followed by some 600,000 Arab Jews. In contrast to Israel’s attitude toward the Palestinians, most Arab governments strongly opposed the departure of their Jews because they might migrate to Israel and thereby benefit the Zionist scheme. The Jews also constituted valuable human resources. Thus, rather than expelling their Jews, Iraq and Syria long prohibited them from leaving. Iraq only lifted its prohibition in 1950 under American and British pressure, which got so intense that Iraq’s leader relented and even pushed some out. In 1956 Egypt expelled 25,000 of its Jews. Morocco barred its Jews from leaving from 1956-1961 but permitted their emigration the next three years. Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Bahrain all permitted their Jews to leave and did not expel them. Under U.S. pressure, Syria finally let its Jews emigrate in 1991—tellingly, under the
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condition that they would not go to Israel. With few exceptions, Arab Jews thus were not expelled or ethnically cleansed. Rather, more often they were prohibited from leaving. Most Arab Jews did not want to leave, even when faced with growing violence. As the Jewish Virtual Library explains, “After the Arabs rejected the United Nations decision to partition Palestine to create a Jewish state, however, the Jews of the Arab lands became targets of their own governments’ anti-Zionist fervor.” These anti-Zionist sentiments spread to ordinary Arabs disturbed by Israel’s maltreatment of Palestinians and, it seems likely, by the prospect of Islam losing its standing in the Holy Land. Even before 1947, Arab Jews had been targets of anti-Zionist sentiment in Arab countries. According to Israeli historian Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, the “Palestine problem” had affected Iraqi society since the late 1920s. The 1936-1939 Arab Revolt against Jewish land purchases and growing Jewish immigration in Palestine precipitated stormy anti-Zionist demonstrations and bomb-throwing against Jewish institutions in Iraq. In the “Farhud” of June 1941, Iraqi Arab nationalists tragically killed 150-
Can You Guess The Top 10 Countries by Jewish Population? BY AIDEN PINK
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he Jewish Agency for Israel’s annual world Jewish population figures have been released, and they reveal that Jews continue to be spread throughout the world, although mostly concentrated in major countries. According to research by Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor Sergio Della Pergola, the global Jewish popula44
180 Iraqi Jews because they supported British rule of Iraq, under which they had thrived. Antagonism to Zionism may also have contributed to this massacre: according to Meir-Glitzenstein, “In the first half of the 1940s, the Iraqi people were incited against Zionism by propaganda in the [Iraqi] press.” The proposition that attacks on Arab Jews during this period stemmed from anti-Zionism rather than anti-Semitism is supported by the correlation of the dates of these attacks with Zionist historical milestones. The 1945 anniversary of the Nov. 2, 1917 Balfour Declaration granting British support to Zionism precipitated attacks on Jews in several Arab countries. On Nov. 2 and 3, anti-Zionist militants killed five Jews and injured hundreds in Egypt. From November 5–7, 140 Jews were killed in riots in Tripolitania (today’s Libya). On Nov. 6, 14 Jews were killed during riots in Lebanon. The Nov. 29, 1947 partition of Palestine marked another major Zionist milestone with ominous implications for Arab Jews. The previous day, the Iraqi foreign minister warned the U.N. General Assembly, “Partition imposed against the will of the major-
ity of the people [of Palestine] will jeopardize peace and harmony in the Middle East. Not only the uprising of the Arabs of Palestine is to be expected, but the masses in the Arab world cannot be restrained. The Arab-Jewish relationship in the Arab world will greatly deteriorate.” Three days later, Arab attacks on Jews and Arab-Jewish clashes in Aden, Yemen left 82 Jews and 38 Arabs dead. On Dec. 5, one Jew was killed and much Jewish property was destroyed in Bahrain. Later that month, attacks in Syria killed an estimated 75 Jews. The May 14, 1948 establishment of Israel was Zionism’s ultimate milestone. On June 7 and 8, attacks in Morocco killed 43 Jews and injured 150. The attackers were angered over young Zionist Jews trying to go fight for Israel in the war that broke out on May 15. A few days later, 13 or 14 Jews and four Arabs were killed in Tripolitania in clashes between young Zionists going to fight for Israel and antiZionist Arabs going to fight for Egypt. That summer, bombings left 70 Jews dead and 200 wounded in Cairo. Measures against Arab Jews were not limited to inter-ethnic violence: Iraq made Zion-
tion in 2019 is 14.6 million. There are 175 countries where the Jewish population is 100 or bigger, but 84 percent of global Jewry lives either in the Israel or the United States. Della Pergola defined a country’s “core Jewish population” as anyone who identified themselves as Jews; anyone without a religion who was identified as Jewish by a respondent in the same household; or anyone with Jewish parentage who does not identify with a particular religion. If one were to use the broader definition of Israel’s Law of Return—anyone with a Jewish grandparent—the number would swell to 23.5 million. Here are the top 10 countries by core Jewish population, compared with data from the 2012 edition of the study:
Israel: 6,153,500 (grew 10.2%) United States: 5,700,000 (grew 5.1%) France: 453,000 (shrank 5.6%) Canada: 395,000 (grew 5.3%) United Kingdom: 290,000 (shrank 0.3%) Argentina: 180,300 (shrank 0.8%) Russia: 172,000 (shrank 11.3%) Germany: 116,000 (shrank 2.5%) Australia: 113,400 (grew 1.3%) Brazil: 93,200 (shrank 2.2%)
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
South Africa, Ukraine, Hungary, Mexico, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy also had core Jewish populations of 25,000 or more.
Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward, where this article was first published Sept. 5, 2019. Reprinted with permission. OCTOBER 2019
ism a capital crime and put several onerous restrictions on its Jews. The Suez War of Oct. 29 to Nov. 7, 1956—a failed Israeli attempt to reverse Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, barring Israel from using it—marked a rare Zionist setback, as the U.N. and the United States forced the invaders to withdraw. Yet the Suez Crisis had anti-Zionist repercussions for Egyptian Jews: soon after Israel invaded, Egypt expelled 25,000 and forced them to sign away their property. Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War was another major Zionist milestone. Soon Libyan Jews were again targeted, with 18 killed and many injured. In Qamishli, Syria, 57 Jews were killed in a pogrom. In Egypt, Jewish men between the ages of 17 and 60 were deported or jailed and tortured, more Jewish property was confiscated, and most remaining Egyptian Jews left for Israel. Iraq expropriated Jewish property, froze Jewish bank accounts, fired Jews from public posts, prohibited them from using the phone, kept them under constant surveillance, held many under house arrest, restricted them to the cities, cancelled Jewish trading permits, and closed many Jewish businesses. In Bahrain, riots induced its remaining 500-600 Jews to emigrate. Compelling evidence suggests that the attacks and measures against Arab Jews were motivated by anti-Zionism rather than anti-Semitism. Gudrun Kramer, author of The Jews in Modern Egypt, 1914-1952, concludes that the Egyptian Jews were attacked because of their real or alleged links to Zionism. Regardless of its motivation, this violence worked counter to Arab interests, inducing the Arab Jews to do what the Zionists wanted them to do: migrate to Israel. As too often has been the case, Arabs harmed their own interests by engaging in violence against civilians. Despite violence and repression, most Arab Jews still clung to their homelands. To further motivate them to leave, Zionist agents operated in several Arab countries, applying such force as necessary to ensure their exodus. To convince less eduOCTOBER 2019
cated Jews in Iraq and elsewhere to migrate, they portrayed Israel as a paradise. Higher status Iraqi Jews required more convincing: from 1950-1951, a series of bombings in Baghdad killed three or four Jews and wounded dozens. According to Naeim Giladi, a former member of the Iraqi Zionist underground, they carried out bombings in an effort to force more Jews to leave Iraq. Moroccan Jews also required special “persuasion.” Israeli historian Yigal Bin-Nun has documented Zionist crimes committed to convince Jews to migrate to Israel. Some Libyan Jews believed the Jewish Agency was behind the June 1948 riots, since the riots helped it achieve its goals. Zionist agents also urged Algerian and Tunisian Jews to emigrate to Israel. Anti-Zionist attacks, persuasion, threats and terror finally broke Iraqi Jews’ ties to their country. When Iraq lifted its prohibition in 1950, they hastened to migrate—especially to Israel. Similar forces were dislodging Jews from the other Arab countries. Jews who exited Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Syria had some or virtually all of their property confiscated for the same reason Jews were often prohibited from leaving: to keep that wealth from benefitting Zionism. Tellingly, in 2010 Libya agreed to compensate only its Jewish emigrants who had not migrated to Israel. Confiscated property also compensated these countries to some degree for their loss of human capital. Jews who exited Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Yemen generally did not lose their property because they sold it and circumvented prohibitions against taking cash out of the country by converting it to jewels. Lebanon and Bahrain did not constrain their Jews from leaving or confiscate their property. Some Jews from countries that prohibited their emigration crossed into Israel illegally. Where they were permitted to leave, the Zionists flew thousands to Israel in operations like “Magic Carpet” from Yemen, and “Ezra and Nehemiah” from Iraq. Upon arrival in Israel, they were placed in temporary “transit camps,” then re-settled in “development towns” on the sites of demolished Palestinian villages.
PHOTO BY ISA TERLI/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
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Rasel Kazes (r), 85, arrives in Istanbul, Turkey with her daughter, Silvia on May 23, 2019. Kazes, a Sephardic Jew, left Turkey at the age of 16 and migrated to Argentina with her husband. Others were moved into vacant houses of Palestinian refugees. There, Zionism’s “expel and replace” scheme was on full display.
LIABILITY AND COMPENSATION
What happened to the Arab Jews has only superficial resemblance to what happened to the Palestinians. Their narratives are not comparable. These were closely related but distinct events: the expulsion of one group—the Palestinians—and their replacement by another group, the Arab Jews. The Arab countries had no comparable scheme to expel Jews and replace them with Palestinians. The Palestinians were the victims of the Zionist crime. The Arab Jews were more or less unwitting pawns in that scheme. There is no logical, moral or legal equivalence between their narrative and that of the Palestinians. Zionist Israel is responsible for restitution to the Palestinians. If the Arab Jews deserve further compensation, then Israel—whose founders engineered their migration and indirectly incited their Arab countrymen against them—should also be responsible for making them whole. ■
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Three Views
India Revokes Kashmir’s Special Status
PHOTO CREDIT YAWAR NAZIR/ GETTY IMAGES
chunk of northern Kashmir known as Aksai Chin. In 1949, the U.N. mandated a referendum to determine if Kashmiris wanted to join Pakistan or India. Not surprisingly, India refused to hold the vote. But there are some Kashmiris who want an independent state, though a majority seek to join Pakistan. India claims that most of northern Pakistan is actually part of Kashmir, which it claims in full. India rules the largest part of Kashmir, formerly a princely state. Pakistan holds a smaller portion, known as Azad Kashmir. In my book on Kashmir, War at the Top of the World, (available from Middle East Books and More) I called it “the globe’s most dangerous conflict.” It remains so today. Indian government forces check the prescriptions of a woman before allowing her to walk toward the I’ve been under fire twice on hospital, amid curfew-like restrictions in Srinagar, Kashmir, Aug. 17, 2019. the Indo-Pak border in Kashmir, known as the “Line of Control,” and once at 15,000 feet atop the Siachen Glacier on China’s border. India has over 500,000 soldiers and paramilitary police garrisoning its portion of Kashmir, whose 12 million people bitterly oppose often corrupt and brutal By Eric Margolis Indian rule—except for local minority Hindus and Sikhs who support it. A bloody, bitter uprising has flared on against Indian TWO OF THE WORLD’S most important powers, India and rule since 1989 in which some 40,000 to 70,000 people, mostly Pakistan, are locked into an extremely dangerous confrontation civilians, have died. over the bitterly disputed Himalayan mountain state of Kashmir. About 250,000 Pakistani troops are dug in on the other side Both are nuclear armed. of the ceasefire line. Kashmir has been a flashpoint since Imperial Britain divided What makes this confrontation so dangerous is that both India in 1947. India and Pakistan have fought numerous wars sides have important tactical and nuclear forces arrayed against and conflicts over majority Muslim Kashmir. China controls a big one another. These are mostly short/medium-ranged nuclear Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated tipped missiles, and air-delivered nuclear bombs. Strategic nucolumnist, and the author of American Raj: Liberation or Dominaclear weapons back up these tactical forces. A nuclear extion? Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim change, even a limited one, could kill millions, pollute much of World (available from Middle East Books and More). Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2019. Asia’s ground water, and spread radioactive dust around the
Hair-Trigger Nuclear Alert Over Kashmir
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globe—including to North America. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a Hindu hardliner who is willing to confront India’s 200 million Muslims, who make up over 14 percent of the population. In February, Modi sent warplanes to attack Pakistan after Kashmir insurgents ambushed Indian forces. Pakistan shot down an Indian MiG-21 fighter. China, Pakistan’s closest ally, warned India to back off. Modi is very close to President Donald Trump and Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, both noted for anti-Muslim sentiments. On Aug. 5 Modi revoked Article 370 of India’s constitution that bars non-Kashmiris from buying land in the mountain state, and shut down its phone and internet systems. The revocation means that non-Kashmiris can now buy land there. Modi is clearly copying Israel’s Netanyahu by encouraging non-Muslims to buy up land and squeeze the local Muslim population. Welcome to the Mideast conflict East. China is also doing similar ethnic inundation in its far western, largely Muslim, Xinjiang (Sinkiang) region. In an ominous sign, Delhi says it will separate the high altitude Ladakh region (aka “Little Tibet”) from its portion of Kashmir. This move suggests India plans to chop up Indian Kashmir into two or three states, a move sure to further enrage Pakistan and thwart any future peace settlement. There’s little that Pakistan can do to block India’s actions. India’s huge armed forces outnumber those of Pakistan by 4 or 5 to one. Without nuclear weapons, Pakistan would be quickly overrun by Indian forces. Only massive Chinese intervention would save Pakistan. Meanwhile, Kashmir, the world’s longest-running major dispute, continues, threatening a terrible nuclear conflict. Making matters worse, both India and Pakistan’s nuclear forces are on a hair-trigger alert, with a warning time of only minutes. This is a region where electronics often become scrambled. A false alert or a flock of birds could trigger a massive nuclear war in South Asia. India and Pakistan, where people starve in the streets, waste billions on military spending because of the Kashmir dispute. Now some of India’s extreme Hindu nationalists warn they want to reabsorb Pakistan, Bangladesh, and even Sri Lanka into Mother India. Previous Indian leaders have been cautious. But not PM Modi. He is showing signs of power intoxication.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this was the most politically opportune time to make the move and secure Kashmir’s “complete integration” into the Indian Union. Across the world, from Brazil to Italy to the United States, populist leaders like him have launched overt attacks on the rule of law, democracy and equality in their countries without receiving much push-back from the international community. Now, the Indian government hopes that it can also do the same without losing face on the international arena. The ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) staged this constitutional coup also on the back of the significant majority it secured in the parliamentary elections earlier this year. Its landslide victory muffled voices of dissent in India and even led many international actors, who do not want to alienate the elected leader of the world’s largest democracy, to throttle down their criticism of Modi. In May, when Modi won re-election, many expressed fears over the future of democracy in India. Today, it is clear that those worries were not misplaced. With his move against Kashmir, Modi proved that he has no interest in the democratic process. By scrapping an important constitutional instrument, which defined an entire region and its people’s relationship with the Union, without a consultative process, the prime minister showed utter disregard for democratic institutions and processes. For Modi and the BJP, the Aug. 5 move was simply the natural conclusion of decades-long right-wing Hindu attempts to fully integrate India’s only Muslim-majority state into the Union. Integration of Kashmir has always been an important talking point for India’s right-wing politicians; until Modi, however, those ambitions were kept at bay and political action remained within the national consensual framework on Kashmir. Thus, for decades the oppression of Kashmiris went on, but the special status of their state remained. After securing a majority in the parliament for a second term, the BJP started to look at the region in terms of numbers. Prior to the Aug. 5 decision, the state of Jammu and Kashmir was allocated just six parliamentary seats out of 543. Both in 2014 and 2019 the BJP won three of these six seats—the ones in Hindu-dominated constituencies. In light of all this, the BJP likely made the calculation that it has much to gain and nothing to lose by dealing the death blow on Muslim-majority Kashmir and revoking its special status. This strategy of intensifying attacks on India’s minorities, chiefly Muslims, to pump up the public’s Hindu-nationalist sentiments has worked wonders for the party in the past.
A flock of birds could trigger a massive nuclear war
The Abrogation of Kashmir’s Special Status: Why Now? By Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay
ON AUGUST 5, THE INDIAN government announced it was scrapping Article 370 of the constitution, which effectively abrogated the autonomy of the disputed region of Kashmir. For OCTOBER 2019
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is a Delhi-based writer and journalist with a special interest in Hindu nationalistic politics. Published by Al Jazeera Aug. 8, 2019.
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Since 2017, when the BJP secured a startling majority in India’s most populous and electorally largest state, Uttar Pradesh, the party has been trying to widen its support base by selling the idea that Modi is “fixing” India’s “Muslim problem.” Now it is the turn of Kashmiris to be “sorted out.” And what the BJP was hoping for indeed happened: A great number of Indians cheered on their government, as it disenfranchised an entire region and its people. For many who saw the move as a “victory” or even a conquest, Aug. 5 was a day of celebration. While the BJP was always expected to play the grappler in Kashmir, support lent to the government by a horde of regional opposition parties is indicative of the increasing sway of majoritarianism in India. These parties, many inimical to BJP and locked in direct conflict with it for political influence, are apprehensive of further political marginalization if they do not endorse the government’s move to revoke Kashmir’s special status. Distressingly, there is growing support for the BJP’s belief that India can only find harmony and prosper at the expense of Kashmir’s disintegration and the disempowerment of its people. The government’s decision to revoke the constitutional clause that gives Indian-administered Kashmir special status will undoubtedly lead to further alienation of the almost 13 million Kashmiris living there. Even at the best of times, the relationship between the Kashmiri people and the rest of India was defined by a rhetoric of “us vs them.” The BJP’s latest move will only serve to deepen the distrust and enmity the two sides feel for each other. Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which gave Kashmir its special status, was not a useless footnote written in incomprehensible legalese. Instead, for seven decades it served as an important reassurance for Kashmiris who agreed to remain under India’s control on the condition that they would have greater autonomy within the Indian Union. The government has secured a parliamentary approval to divide the Jammu and Kashmir state into two centrally governed union territories. This means Kashmiris will not only lose their independent constitution, but also their local government and legislative assembly. Hereafter, they will have to make do with a legislature which will remain under the control of a central nominee—a development that undermines the Indian federal structure. As Kashmir remains virtually cut off from the outside world, with phone lines and internet disconnected and thousands of troops enforcing a curfew, we have yet to witness the Kashmiri reaction. But given the region’s decades-long history of proud resistance in the face of political alienation, violence and repression, it is almost certain that Kashmiris are not going to take this latest assault lying down. Former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti, was right to call Aug. 5 the “darkest day in Indian democracy.” What happens next will have detrimental consequences not only for Kashmir but for the whole country. Many members 48
of the Hindu majority may be cheering today but Modi’s onslaught on democracy will affect them as well, sooner or later.
A Plan to Resolve the Kashmir Crisis By B. Z. Khasru
PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI is driving the Kashmir train on the wrong track of ultra-nationalism that cost India 25 percent of its land and 20 percent of its people in 1947. But it’s not yet too late to change course to find lasting peace and prosperity for all of its people. The nirvana lies in a blueprint that was secretly drafted a decade ago by two former leaders of India and Pakistan, but they failed to bring it to light because of their sudden departure from office. The idea, developed by aides to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India and former President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan through secret talks from 2004-2007, still remains a viable option to end the seven-decades-old madness. This M-squared (or Manmohan-Musharraf) formula is a win-win realistic approach for everyone—India, Pakistan and Kashmir. Kashmir, at the center of dispute between the two nucleararmed nations in South Asia, encompasses roughly 135,000 square miles, almost the size of Germany, and has a population of about 12 million. India controls 85,000 square miles, while Pakistan controls 33,000 and China 17,000. Both Pakistan and India claim the entire state as their own and have fought two wars over Kashmir since the British left India in 1947. In 1948, after a fight between the two nations, India raised the Kashmir issue in the U.N. Security Council, which called for a referendum on the status of the territory. It asked Pakistan to withdraw its troops and for India to cut its military presence to a minimum. A ceasefire came into force, but Pakistan refused to pull out its troops. Kashmir has since remained partitioned. Under the Musharraf-Manmohan plan, India and Pakistan would pull out soldiers from Kashmir; Kashmiris would be allowed to move freely across the de facto border; Kashmir would enjoy full internal autonomy; and the three parties—India, Pakistan and Kashmir—would jointly govern the state for a transitional period. The final status would be negotiated thereafter. Instead of picking up from where the two leaders left off, Modi has allowed himself to be drugged by a heavy dose of the misguided hyper-nationalist vision of the late V. D. Savarkar, who proposed nearly 100 years ago to keep minorities in subjugation in an India ruled by the Hindu majority. Sitting in a prison cell on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, the convicted-violent-revolutionary-turned-nationalist
B. Z. Khasru is editor of The Capital Express and author of Bangladesh Liberation War: How India, U.S., China and the USSR Shaped the Outcome, and The Bangladesh Military Coup and the CIA Link. His new book, One Eleven, Minus Two: Prime Minister Hasina’s War on Yunus and America, will be published shortly by Rupa Publications India Private Limited.
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drew up his solution. He would let Muslims and Christians stay in India only if they agreed to be subservient to Hindus, and they would enjoy no special rights that might infringe upon Hindu rights.
MODI IGNORED MUSLIM LEADERS
On Aug. 5, keeping Kashmiri Muslim leaders under house arrest and deploying tens of thousands of soldiers in heavily fortified Kashmir, the prime minister moved to snatch away their special rights—their own flag, own law and property rights— granted by India’s constitution. It was a blitzkrieg exercise carried out in a matter of hours. By scrapping Kashmir’s special autonomous status, Modi has taken a dangerous step toward implementing Savarkar’s dream. The fallout from his maneuver will reverberate far beyond India and Pakistan. India’s smaller neighbors, which have historically opposed their Big Brother’s heavy-handed behavior, already see a danger sign in Modi’s action in Kashmir. They wonder how India will deal with them when it comes to settling bilateral disputes. Is Kashmir any indication? It is disconcerting, to say the least, for them to know that the world’s largest democracy has been turned into a “mobocracy.” Bangladesh is India’s friendliest neighbor now, and it has enjoyed vastly improved relations with Delhi in recent years. Still, it has concern over several bilateral matters. One of them is an assertion by Modi’s party that there are 40 million Bangladeshi migrants illegally living in India and that they must be pushed back into Bangladesh. During just concluded talks in Delhi, Bangladesh flatly rejected India’s claim. The matter was acrimonious enough to prevent the two sides from issuing a joint communique after the talks ended. In addition, India is seeking to expand its third largest airport in Tripura on Bangladeshi land. This idea has already faced opposition from a cabinet member and will certainly run into stiff public resistance. India is also watching China’s move to build a submarine base in Bangladesh. Delhi’s standing policy is to bar Dhaka from granting Beijing a military base.
COLOMBO, MODI’S ONLY ADMIRER
Another neighbor of India, Nepal, also often accuses its Big Brother of interfering in its internal affairs on the border. To Delhi’s chagrin, China exploits Kathmandu’s displeasure with Delhi by boosting its own trade with Nepal. After Modi stripped Kashmir of its special rights, Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was the only neighbor who openly supported India. He needs India’s help to stay in power. Colombo’s endorsement comes at the expense of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. Hindu Tamils have close ties with India’s Tamil Nadu state and have faced discrimination from the majority Buddhist Sinhalese, which has intensified since Sri Lanka crushed a separatist Tamil insurgency in 2009. The Tamil rebels, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, fought for 26 years to create the independent country of Tamil Eelam in the north and OCTOBER 2019
PHOTO CREATIVE TOUCH IMAGING LTD./NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
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Kashmiris of Pakistani descent hold a large rally outside Queen’s Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Aug. 17, 2019. east of Sri Lanka. Modi’s move has stoked regional tensions within India, with some restive ethnic groups seeking autonomy, similar to that granted to Kashmir. One of them is demanding that West Bengal be divided, as Delhi has done with Kashmir, to grant tribal minorities special rights. On top of all this, the prime minister’s hyper-nationalist campaign in Kashmir will fire-up the already-inflamed fanatical Savarkar disciples to browbeat India’s Muslims and Christians.
OLD PLAN STILL VIABLE
Given the region’s history, the M-squared concept discussed above offers a realistic solution. It gives the Kashmiris near independence, allows India to maintain sovereignty over Kashmir and lets Pakistan claim it has freed Kashmir from Hindu domination. Compromise is the art of politics, and India must not repeat Pakistan’s mistakes in East Pakistan, which led to a war in 1971. The main problem that stands in the way of achieving peace in Kashmir is chauvinism in both India and Pakistan. It has cost tens of thousands of lives and prosperity for both nations as well as their neighbors. Modi’s extremist party has always opposed a negotiated settlement. It operates on a misguided dream to reunite the subcontinent into one Hindu-dominated nation, if necessary, through violence. Because of this faulty doctrine, when Singh invited his predecessor, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to lead the peace talks with Pakistan, he refused. He cited stiff opposition from his own Bharatiya Janata Party. Modi’s latest highly controversial and dangerous power grab is unlikely to end the crisis. To achieve lasting peace, the Msquared formula should be revived, even though it may be political suicide for anyone who dares to do so, especially in India, where a hysteria of hyper-nationalism now reigns supreme. Still, one of the Himalayan gods must make the sacrifice for the sake of the people who have suffered too much for too long. ■
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Special Report
Time to Liberate Afghanistan
By Eric Margolis
PHOTO CREDIT NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
regime of Ashraf Ghani in Kabul. Without U.S. troops to defend it, the Afghan regime of Ashraf Ghani would be swept away in days. Even Trump has admitted this. Keeping the Ghani regime safe in Kabul would at least provide a fig leaf to claim the U.S.backed government was still in charge. The pro-war right in Washington is crying to high heaven at this prospect. Senators and congressmen who never heard a shot fired in anger are ready to fight to the last 18-year-old American soldier and keep the trillion-dollar war sputtering on. To date, 2,430 American soldiers have been killed in combat in Afghanistan, with some 20,000 A volunteer carries an injured boy to a hospital, following multiple bomb blasts in Jalalabad, Aug. 19, wounded, many of them perma2019, as Afghans celebrated 100 years of independence from Britain. nently maimed. Thousands of U.S.-paid mercenaries and foreign troops dragooned into this conflict have been killed or AFTER 18 YEARS OF WAR in Afghanistan—America’s longest wounded. Heavy Afghan civilian casualties, mostly caused by air conflict—the U.S. and Taliban were close to a withdrawal agreestrikes, are covered up by U.S. occupation authorities. Without ment when President Donald Trump changed his mind, pro24/7 U.S. air support, American forces would have long ago claiming the peace talks “dead.” The reason he cited was the been driven from Afghanistan, as were their British and Soviet death of a U.S. soldier in a Kabul bombing at a time when waves predecessors. of U.S. warplanes were bombing targets across Afghanistan. Proponents of the Afghan War insist that “terrorists” will take Any lessening of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan had over if U.S. troops withdraw. By now, it’s unclear who the sobeen bitterly opposed by National Security Adviser John Bolton called “terrorists” really are. Previously, the U.S. branded Taliban and a group of pro-war Republicans. Bolton was abruptly fired as terrorists. But now that the U.S. is negotiating with Taliban to on Sept. 10. end the war, Washington claims the threats are the Islamic State Trump’s original plan was, reportedly, to withdraw 5,000 of the from Iraq and something called “the Khorasan Group,” a figment 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. No mention was made of the of Washington’s imagination. thousands of mercenaries and NATO troops deployed by WashThe U.S. warns that if Taliban wins, it will turn Afghanistan into ington to Afghanistan. A residual U.S. force would remain to proa base for international terrorism. This is absurd. Taliban today tect the key U.S. air bases at Bagram, Kandahar, and the puppet controls more than half the nation by day, and 80 percent by Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated night. There is plenty of room left for anti-U.S. groups. columnist and the author of american Raj: liberation or dominaContrary to U.S. claims, Taliban was never a terrorist group. I tion? Resolving the conflict between the West and the Muslim was in Afghanistan and Pakistan when Taliban was created. Civil World (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More). Copyright 2019 EricMargolis.com. Continued on page 60 50
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octobeR 2019
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ALGERIANS WILL READILY TALK about November and their dreams of liberty, dignity and democracy…but they don’t mean last November or next November. On their minds is November 1954, when a small group of Algerian nationalists launched their war for independence against the colonial might of France. The devastating Algerian war, which lasted eight years and cost 400,000 to 1.5 million Algerian lives and some 300,000 partisans of French Algeria, became a model for colonized peoples everywhere, but did not bring Algerians the sense of well-being and rule of law. Today’s descendants of those early revolutionaries are trying to achieve what their forebears failed to do—establish a democratic society with freedom, justice and opportunity for all. And they are determined to realize their goals peacefully. In the introduction to a new collection of essays in French, entitled To March!, Algerian poet and former diplomat Amin Khan writes: “While the revolution of November succeeded in resuscitating a people from colonialist extermination, the February revolution should lift up the country to the highest level of freedom, that of a people governed by themselves and for themselves.” Every week since February, Algerians have turned out massively in street demonstrations around the country to demand change in the authoritarian, corrupt regime that has ruled since independence. Friday protests have been backed up by Tuesday marches of university students. The popular movement, known in Arabic as Hirak, has already made important gains. By the sheer strength of numbers, the protesters forced the withdrawal of the ailing president, who was seeking a fifth term. They also pressured the authorities to cancel elections on the grounds they would be tainted by sympathizers of the former regime. And they imposed on the rulers the need for dialogue. But there are two major obstacles to a solution to the Algerian crisis. On the one hand, Hirak has not been able so far to unite under the leadership necessary to take part in such a dialogue. Every time a possible leader emerges, he or she is shouted down in this aggressively individualistic society. At the same time, the military command, which remains the de facto power, has not clarified its position regarding the revolution. Initially, the army chief General Ahmed Gaid Salah praised the “massive mobilization” and its “peaceful nature.” He emphasized that the military had “no political ambitions and sought only to serve the country.” But he has turned a deaf ear to the people’s demands for a democratic transition and insisted on holding presidential elections as soon as possible.
Marvine Howe, former new York times bureau chief in Ankara, is the author of al-andalus rediscovered: iberia’s new Muslims and Other Minorities.
OctOber 2019
STAFF PHOTO M. HOWE
Algeria’s Second Revolution
Special Report By Marvine Howe
The Hirak popular protest movement in downtown Algiers. Protests ignited after the announcement that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had a debilitating stroke six years ago, would run for a fifth term.
What happens in Algeria, the main Mediterranean gateway to Africa, does matter. Geographically the continent’s largest country and with a population of 43 million, Algeria is rich in oil and natural gas reserves and untapped agricultural potential. A democratic revolution in Algeria could spur change throughout the region, and serve as a powerful impetus to revive the failed Arab Spring. The mass uprising began as a spontaneous outburst last Feb. 22, in protest against the regime’s plan to present Abdelaziz Bouteflika as its presidential candidate for a fifth term. Bouteflika, 82, has been paralyzed, unable to speak and wheelchair-bound since a debilitating stroke in 2013. “Algeria was like a closed room with a gas leak that slowly builds up; then someone lights a match,” Adlene Meddi, an independent Algerian journalist remarked the other day. He added that the spark was the demand for a fifth term and noted that the army chief was praising Bouteflika’s record until a few days before the popular explosion. In fact, no one could ignore the massive marches every Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, when two to three million Algerians took to the streets of the capital and millions more in other towns and cities. There was nothing menacing about these demonstrations. Rather it was like a joyous family festival, with men, women and children of all ages, associations and soccer fans, members of political parties, businesses, and artists of all kinds. Many demonstrators draped themselves in the national green and white ban-
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ners and waved Algerian and Palestinian flags, as well as flags of the official Berber minority. Their chants and posters in French and Arabic were political, creative and good-humored. “We refuse the 5th mandate—or an extension of the 4th”; “We reject the power and corruption of the Deep State”; “Algerians want to recover their dignity and freedom promised by the leaders of November 1954”; “Algeria is a Republic, not a military garrison”; “No foreign intervention; this is a family affair”; “Macron, stick to your Yellow Vests”; “Trump, we have no more oil for you—unless you want olive oil.” And over and over again, their favorite slogan: ”silmiya”—peaceful! Demonstrating a new civic spirit, commended even by the authorities, young volunteers cleaned the streets after every march, collecting all the discarded plastic water bottles and throwing them away in large trash bags brought for the occasion. It was General Gaid Salah who delivered the coup de grace against Bouteflika on March 26. He invoked Article 102 of the Constitution, which states a president can be declared “unfit to exercise his functions because of a serious and protracted illness.” And the president resigned on April 2. Following constitutional procedure, the docile parliament accordingly named the President of the Senate Abdelkader Bensalah as interim head of state for 90 days and former Interior Minister Noureddine Bedoui as interim prime minister. Apparently to mark their distance from the old regime, the army chief and the Interim Government have launched a farreaching campaign against corruption. In the past few months, some 50 senior political and economic figures have been arrested on charges of large-scale corruption. The list includes two former prime ministers, other cabinet members and business oligarchs, the former head of the National Intelligence Service, as well as Bouteflika’s younger brother and close adviser, Said Bouteflika, considered the power behind the wheelchair. The Hirak demonstrators generally approved of the arrests of Bouteflika’s cronies, but have denounced the detention of persons known as critics of Gaid Salah, among them former freedom fighter Lakhdar Boure52
gaa and the head of the opposition Labor Party, Louisa Hanoune. The main mission of the Interim Government was to assure that national presidential elections would be held by July 4. But Algerian protesters saw these moves as a maneuver by the rulers to install a new Bouteflika regime without Bouteflika. Once again, the elections were widely rejected. “Everyone wants to change the system,” commented a university graduate, who works as a hotel clerk. “We cannot understand why this rich country has such poor social services and so few job opportunities. Nothing works properly—hospitals, schools, social security. Our frustration built up slowly over the years until we exploded.” As the protests maintained their momentum, the security forces resorted to increasingly repressive measures. On several occasions, they used water cannons against students. On Fridays, they closed the main highways leading into Algiers and cut off the central Post Office, a popular gathering place for protesters. Then in mid-June, police carried out a wave of arrests against demonstrators carrying Berber banners, also detaining street salesmen of Berber flags and pins. This arbitrary action spurred a spate of rumors. It was even suggested that the Gulf Arabs had demanded the removal of the Palestinian flags, seen as a sign of widespread Palestinian influence. Unwilling to act against the popular Palestinians, the Algerian military seized the Berber flags as “a threat to national unity.” In a change of tactic, the Interim Government acknowledged “the need to restore the confidence of the citizens in their state and institutions.” While insisting that the principal mandate of the interim head of state was to quickly organize presidential elections, the authorities announced in July the creation of a national panel of “independent and honorable personalities” to engage in a dialogue with the public. It would be the panel’s task to “guarantee the transparence and regularity” of the electoral process. Despite conciliatory words, the powerless panel, headed by a former speaker of parliament, failed to win credibility with Hirak. All through the Muslim month of fasting, the searing heatwaves and summer holidays, Hirak has kept up the fervor of its twice-weekly demonstrations. Although their
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
Protesters carry the green and yellow Berber banner, later banned, next to the green and white Algerian flag.
numbers have decreased from hundreds of thousands to thousands, the demonstrators have shown unflagging determination in their demands for “a democratic transition.” And reinvigorated crowds were expected back in the fall. Specifically, they want certain goodwill gestures like the release of all political prisoners starting with the 60-some Berber flag bearers, and an end to the police harassment and restrictions on basic freedoms. Their principal demand, however, is the replacement of “all the remnants” of the former regime by a new independent and trustworthy government that could begin to establish the conditions needed to draft a new constitution and hold presidential elections. There is, however, a growing concern that as the conflict drags on one or both sides will lose their patience. Some radical voices in Hirak have called for general civil disobedience. For its part, the Interim Government has warned of threats of anarchy and foreign intervention should the crisis be prolonged. The military chief announced presidential elections should be held by the end of the year, but the people said no. “The people know what they don’t want,” playwright-journalist Mustapha Benfodil told this correspondent over coffee. “What they want is more difficult to find: a strong symbol as president not involved in daily government, a mix of General [Charles] de Gaulle and Queen Elizabeth.” ■ OCTOBER 2019
STAFF PHOTO M. HOWE
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Special Report
As More Egyptian Women Become Breadwinners are Labor Rights Keeping Up?
By Fatma Mostafa
PEDRO COSTA GOMES/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
IN PREPARATION FOR EGYPT’S national 2030 Sustainable Development Strategy (Egypt Vision 2030), civil society groups are working to boost the number of women in the workforce by identifying ways to address realities that impede their participation in the formal economy. Women currently constitute 23.7 percent of the workforce in Egypt, according to the World Bank. In a country that is still reeling from the effects of the Arab Spring and economic pressures, women rights’ advocacy has been on the rise since the dawn of the 2011 uprising. About one-third of Egyptian families are supported by women. Financial pressures compel women to take jobs as house cleaners or other work in the informal sector. A woman sells fruit in a street of Cairo, June 27, 2019. Around 35 percent of Egyptian female bread“Only a few women choose to work winners work in the informal sector. to imply their gender equality and female empowerment beliefs,” Entessar El Saeed, a human rights ment’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) revealed that lawyer at the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law and a one-third of girls were married before age 19. Women are subject specialist in gender issues, told the Washington Report. to unfair inheritance rights, a high level of domestic violence, losing Around 3.3 million Egyptian families, which present roughly 14 custody of their children after divorce should they choose to repercent of the total number of families, are financially supported marry, and limited female access to public space. by women as their main source of income, according to the latest If women were treated equally as men in the workforce, according data by the state’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization (CAPto the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Egypt’s GDP would inMAS). However, around 35 percent of female breadwinners work crease by about 34 percent and average household income would in the informal sector, lacking insurance and medical care. rise by some 25 percent, pushing many families out of poverty. The low female employment rates in Egypt are mainly attributed The Egyptian government has established goals in which to not counting workers in some sectors, namely agriculture and women would comprise 40 percent of the workforce by 2030. In informal sectors, as official labor. More than 36 percent of working 2019 planning minister Hala Al-Saeed pledged to work with the women are below the poverty line. The Egyptian government National Council for Women (NCW) to achieve workplace protecvows to reduce that number to nine percent by 2030, according to tion and equality for women. a report released by the Cairo Review of Global Affairs. While the government has not specified the resources, budget Other factors deter many women from stepping into the workand initiatives set to achieve this goal, President Abdel Fattah elforce. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and DevelopSisi announced in March that the government will work on certain clear directives to integrate more women in the workforce and formalize informal employment. Proposals include taking the necesFatma Mostafa is an Egyptian free-lance writer. 54
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sary measures to achieve financial inclusion and technological empowerment of women and amending the Public Service Law, which has not changed for decades, according to El Saeed. Other civil society groups are also working to improve female participation rates, including “Future Eve Association” (Game’yat Hawaa El-Mostakbal), which specializes in empowering working women in rural areas and impoverished smaller cities, unlike the majority of other rights groups whose works focus on larger urban areas. “Women in rural areas and slums mostly lack education and suffer socially, economically and health wise. We work on this dynamic through first studying the resources available in each area and then utilizing those tools to train women to handle basic works such as creating handmade products and selling them at reasonable prices,” the association’s CEO Ekbal El Samaloty told the Washington Report. El Samaloty adds that the association works with women living in these areas, specifically slums, where they are often victims of domestic violence and other forms of abuse. Many of these women are forced to pursue jobs because their husbands are either imprisoned, sick, drug addicts, or simply refuse to support the household. Drug addiction is a rising problem in Egypt, impacting around 9.6 million people, twice the global rate, according to Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Wali. Women also lack access to jobs in the public (government) sector and to educational opportunities. According to the United Nations Development Program’s latest Gender Inequality Index, about 60 percent of women have attained secondary education as opposed to 71 percent of men. A significant gender gap exists between men and women in government positions. In 2018 six women have been appointed as ministers in a cabinet of 33. In the House of Representatives women occupy 89 of 596 seats amid plans to increase the number of women in parliament. Although Article 53 of Egypt’s Constitution states that women are allowed to purMARCH/APRIL OCTOBER 20192016
sue any position, there are also certain jobs that women have historically never occupied, such as the judiciary. “What is happening at the moment in terms of female participation in the judiciary is unconstitutional, but I think that women will be judges in the state council within three or four years because they are fighting and progressing in this,” El Saeed points out.
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT LAGGING DUE TO INEQUALITY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
Many Egyptian workplaces lack provisions for ensuring a safe atmosphere conducive to female empowerment. Needed are strong maternity laws and rules protecting against sexual harassment and violence. Nearly 69 percent of working women have encountered violence practiced by their bosses, according to data combined by civil organizations including NCW, Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) and UNICEF. “It is not about the wage, it is really about the working conditions,” University of Minnesota economist Ragui Assaad told The Cairo Review. While the labor law doesn’t mention any form of protection to women against violence and sexual harassment in the workplace, the country’s penal code calls for punishments of up to five years in prison and a fine of about EGP 20,000 ($1,200). This applies to employers who ask their employees for sexual favors in return for granting bonuses and/or promotions among other work incentives, El Saeed explains. “For this law to roll into effect, the victim needs to have at least one witness and/or filmed evidence of the incident, which is rarely the case because from the sexual harassment reports we received at the foundation, women were unable to verify the incident as it occurred in places with no cameras and often when no one was around,” she explains. Witnesses were often reluctant to support a victim’s report, according to El Saeed, out of fear of losing their jobs or work benefits. “Some reports don’t even make it through,”
she says, pointing out that victims are either threatened or compromised. For example, offenders often tell the victim to drop charges to avoid jeopardizing their job or in return for a promise of work benefits. Poor maternal laws are another factor deterring working women. “The labor law stipulates that any institution with female employees, regardless of their number, should have a day care facility,” El Saeed notes, adding, “Very few workplaces have those facilities.”
EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT JOBS AS A SAFE HAVEN
While Egyptian women are open to taking jobs in different sectors that will add to their financial empowerment and well being, many of them prefer to work in the public/government sector in which women constitute 26 percent as opposed to men constituting 74 percent. The preference is attributed to shorter working hours—30 hours per week compared to 40 hours per week in private sector jobs—and medical and social insurance. Other benefits include employees almost never getting fired and having the right to three months of paid maternity leave. Women are also entitled to up to two years of unpaid childcare leave for each child up to three children. Women in the public sector are also allowed to an open-ended unpaid leave for travel with her spouse and can be promoted during that time. Despite the leverage that the public sector offers, only 35 percent of female applicants were able to secure government jobs over the past decade, according to The Cairo Review. While industries such as oil, tourism, transportation and construction have always been the province of men, women’s education and persistence are key to breaking through the gender gap, El Saeed concluded. Although women have achieved progress in terms of working and governing the country, Egypt still has a long way to go in improving women’s participation in the workforce. ■
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Special Report
Turkish Intervention in Idlib, Syria May Never Come By Sami Moubayed
RAMI AL SAYED/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Russia and Turkey declared Idlib a demilitarized zone last year, giving Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the right to go after militants from Hayat Tahrir alSham and push them out of the province by mid-October 2018. Erdogan missed that deadline, however, and all its extensions showing more interest in regaining three strategic Kurdish-held towns—Kobane, Ras al-Ayn and Tel Rifaat—in the northern Aleppo countryside, in which he claimed Kurdish militia leaders were hiding since fleeing Afrin last year. Rather than send reinforcements to Idlib, Erdogan A man wearing a gas mask walks past a shelter for displaced Syrians that caught fire during clashes be- withdrew his best men to the tween Syrian demonstrators and members of the Turkish gendarmerie following a protest along the border Aleppo countryside, seeing with Turkey near the town of Atme in the northwestern Idlib province Aug. 30, 2019. Damascus’ ally Russia that they were more needed announced a ceasefire for the region of some 3 million people, to take effect from the following morning. now in his battle against the Kurds. Hoping to get one or all three Kurdish cities from the Russians, Erdogan initially did not THE TARGETING of a Turkish convoy deep within Syrian terriobject to the Idlib operation, only making sure that it targeted tory raised tensions in the Middle East to unprecedented levels, none of his checkpoints or any of the fighters on his payroll in coming at the heels of what appeared to be a final push to retake the National Front for Liberation, a loose coalition of pro-Turkish the north-western city of Idlib by the Russian and Syrian armies. Syrian military groups. The convoy was heading toward Idlib to protect one of 12 Erdogan had done it before, when he turned a blind eye to the Turkish checkpoints, rather than to confront both armies. Those retaking of eastern Aleppo in 2016 in exchange for letting him checkpoints were erected in 2018 via the Astana peace process, march on Jarabulus, al-Bab and Azaz and then again in 2018 after all, and signed off by the two co-guarantors, Russia and when he abandoned his proxies in East Ghouta in exchange for Iran. a green light to march on the Kurds of Afrin, west of the EuThe incident raised false hope for the Syrian armed opposiphrates River. tion, who wrongly believed that the Turkish army was marching This time, however, the territorial swap did not happen, infuriinto Syria to protect it from a massive military assault by the Syrating the Turkish president, who responded by sending reinforceian and Russian armies. On Aug. 19, the day of the convoy atments to the rebels of Idlib in early June, hampering the governtack, the opposition lost the strategic city of Khan Sheikhoun in ment troop advance and greatly delaying a Russian victory. the southern suburb of Idlib province, which it had held since A ceasefire collapsed in early August and operations resumed 2015. in Idlib. Erdogan was surprisingly silent once again, raising speculation that, this time around, a backchannel agreement had Sami Moubayed is a Syrian historian and author of Under the Black been reached between him and the Russians or that something Flag (available from Middle East Books and More). 56
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went horribly wrong between him and the intended to keep an eye on any Islamist re- to nothing and why no Turkish reinforceUnited States, pushing him further into the emergence, rather than to clean the area ments were sent to the armed opposition from Kurdish presence. The Syrian Demo- in Idlib. lap of Russian President Vladimir Putin. More will come out of this no doubt, After a stormy phone call between Erdo- cratic Forces and the People’s Protection gan and U.S. President Donald Trump in Units were red lines that Erdogan could not after Erdogan and Putin’s meeting in Ankara on Sept. 11, with Iranian President mid-August, it quickly became clear that cross, added the Americans forcefully. With little surprise, Erdogan silently Hassan Rouhani, and paying the high the latter was the case. Contrary to earlier promises, Erdogan had been told that the walked away from the American offer, right price will be the armed men of Idlib, who Trump administration had no intention of back into the open arms of his Russian are waiting for a Turkish intervention to granting him a full-fledge safe zone in counterpart. That might explain why the save them—an intervention, it seems, that north-eastern Syria or of giving him a bombing of the Turkish convoy amounted won’t be coming anytime soon. ■ green light to come after (Advertisement) Kurdish separatists, funded and armed by the United States. The Turkish president had explicitly requested a safe zone stretching across 460 km (286 miles), from Jarabulus on the SyrianTurkish border, to Faysh Khabour, an Assyrian town on the Tigris River in Iraq. Erdogan had envisioned a depth of no less than 32 km (20 miles) for his safe zone, enabling him to carve out an area free of any Kurdish military presence, where he could repopulate Syrian refugees living in Turkey since 2011. The United Through the Model Arab League (MAL) program students learn about the politics States said it would accept and history of the Arab world, and the arts of diplomacy and public speech. MAL a safe zone 14-15 km (9 helps prepare students to be knowledgeable, well-trained, and effective citizens as miles) in depth, spreading well as civic and public affairs leaders. across no more than 80100 km (49-62 miles) in length, between Ras al-Ayn University MAL Conferences: High School MAL Conferences: and Tab Abyad. » Boston, MA » Denver, CO » Boston, MA » Washington, DC The Americans were » Washington, DC » Los Angeles, CA » Little Rock, AR » Newport News, VA ready to ask the Kurds to re» Houston, TX » Commerce, TX » Atlanta, GA treat inward, up to 20 km (12 » San Francisco, CA » Spartanburg, SC and a half miles) away from » Grand Rapids, MI » Oxford, OH the Turkish border but not to
Model Arab League
end their military presence altogether nor to relinquish their arms. Instead of a safe zone, the Americans were using a new term, called “military arrangements” between the Turkish and U.S. armies, also adding to Erdogan’s anger. Joint American-Turkish patrols, they insisted, were OCTOBER 2019
Learn More:
ncusar.org/modelarableague Student Leadership Development Program from National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations 1730 M St NW, Suite 503, Washington, DC Telephone: (202) 293-6466
ncusar.org
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Special Report
Troubled Independence of Transcaucasia By John Gee
STAFF PHOTO J.GEE
century resulted in their incorporation into the empire of the Tsars and a reorientation toward the north. Unlike Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia are both predominantly Christian countries in a largely Muslim neighborhood. Georgia claims to be the first place in the world where there is evidence of wine making. Its Black Sea coast was the ancient location of Colchis, the land to which, according to Greek mythology, Jason and the Argonauts sailed to take the Golden Fleece. Armenia was the first state in the Narikala Fortress, towering over Tbilisi. Founded by Persian rulers in the fourth century, it was greatly ex- world to embrace Christianpanded by the Umayyad Arab rulers when they controlled the whole Transcaucasian region, and later by ity as its official religion. medieval Georgian King David. Armenia’s modern history has been overshadowed by the genocide that occurred in the late Ottoman Empire during ANYONE LOOKING TO take a multi-country holiday in the Cauthe First World War, when the majority of the Armenian popucasus region needs to plan their routes with care. It is possible lation, in what is now Turkey, was eradicated. While the Otto travel overland from Azerbaijan to Armenia or vice versa toman Empire suffered massive territorial losses to its south, through Georgia, but not directly: their shared borders are in Arab and Kurdish areas, it bequeathed to modern Turkey a closed. Armenia’s border with Iran is open, but that with its other chunk of territory recovered from Russia in 1918. The territory neighbor, Turkey, is closed. Georgia has a long border in the included historic Armenian sites such as the ancient city of Ani Caucasus Mountains and on the Black Sea coast with Russia, and Mount Ararat, so close to modern independent Armenia but much of it is effectively closed, and the main land access that it is easily visible from any high point in the capital, Yerepoint is through the historic Georgian Military Road. van. I heard all about this situation on a holiday to Georgia and Before the piecemeal incorporation of the Transcaucasian Armenia at the end of May. The border problems are a legacy region into Russia, Azerbaijan was under Persian rule while of both distant history and more recent events. Georgia and present-day Armenia were part of the Ottoman Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia lie south of the Caucasus Empire. After the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, they made a bid Mountains, a barrier that historically tended to orient their for independence in May 1918. Georgia still celebrates the ocmain foreign relationships to the adjacent peoples and councasion by observing May 26 as its Independence Day, while tries of the Middle East. The expansion of Russia in the 19th Armenia and Azerbaijan’s official independence days, on Sept. 21 and Oct. 18 respectively, mark their break with the John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author Soviet Union in 1991. of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel. 58
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The attempt to win independence in 1918 failed and the three countries were incorporated into the Soviet empire. The Bolsheviks had referred to Russia as a “prison house of nations” and promised to end national oppression within a new socialist state. A key pre-revolution essay relating to Bolshevik policy was “Marxism and the National Question,” written by Joseph Stalin, who was born in the town of Gori, in central Georgia. Although Stalin went on to behave like a Russian nationalist, many in Gori still see him as a local boy who made good, and when the Georgian government decided to remove the large statue of him that stood outside the Stalin museum in the city, it did so at night, to frustrate opposition. Under Soviet policy, those peoples recognized as nations within the Soviet Union had their official equal status acknowledged by being given republics of their own which, in theory, were voluntary members of the Soviet Union with the right to secede if they wished. The republic’s boundaries were supposedly drawn around the regions where their main nationality was a majority, even if that sometimes resulted in some rather eccentric looking borders (see map of the present Kyrgyz-Uzbek-Tajik border region at right). Minority nationalities within the republics were awarded autonomous republics or regions, further OCTOBER 2019
fragmenting them territorially. The upshot of this policy was that Azerbaijan not only included the territory centered on Baku, but a sliver of land, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Region, which was sandwiched between Armenia to the north and Iran to the south. Within Azerbaijan, the predominantly Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh was designated as an autonomous region. In Georgia, three areas were given autonomous status: Abkhazia and Adjara, on the Black Sea coast and South Ossetia further inland in northern Georgia, became autonomous regions. Abkhazia and South Ossetia bordered Russia. In practice, all of these national divisions and sub-divisions did not make much difference to ease communication or economic development in the Tran-
scaucasian area while the Soviet government exercised overall control and tolerated nothing that it perceived as weakening the existing union. However, it was a different story when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989; suddenly, the constitutional right to secede, previously theoretical, became operative in practice. All the non-Russian constituent republics of the Soviet Union declared their independence within months of each other. All that complicated boundary drawing became a serious problem, and a resurgent Russia, under Vladimir Putin, who makes no secret of his regret that the union republics had been allowed to secede, took advantage of the resulting situation. The Armenian majority of NagornoKarabakh wanted to be united with Armenia, but Azerbaijan firmly rejected their secession. A three-year war (1991-’94) between Armenia and Azerbaijan took place, in which Armenia was able to gain control of the strip of Azerbaijani territory that separated it from NagornoKarabakh, with Russian support. The former autonomous region now calls itself the Republic of Artsakh. Attempts to negotiate a final Azerbaijani-Armenian settlement have so far been unsuccessful. In Georgia, the three autonomous areas all tried to assert their independence from the Georgian government. Georgia was able to reassert its control over Adjara, but Abkhazia and South Os-
COURTESY WIKIMEDIA
The Armenian monastery of Khor Virap, with Mount Ararat in the background.
STAFF PHOTO J.GEE
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A map of Kirghiz-Uzbek-Tajik borders.
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setia, with Russian support, rejected Georgian rule. In 2008, Georgia and Russia came into direct conflict. President Mikhail Saakashvili pursued a policy of strengthening ties with the West, which plainly annoyed Russia. When he tried to re-assert Georgian authority over South Ossetia, Russia responded with massive force; planes hit Georgian air strips simultaneously and Russian troops cut the main highway between Tbilisi and western Georgia. When I travelled there recently, my guide told me, “There were Russian tanks on this highway during the war” and she pointed to the great expanse of low-rise houses to our north, saying that Georgians who had been forced to flee South Ossetia had been accommodated in them. The war lasted just five days. Georgia hastened to sue for peace and the Russian forces drew back, but Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent republics. Georgia insists that they are Russian-occupied Georgian territories. Feelings remain raw. When, in June this year, the Georgian parliament invited Sergei Gavrilov, a Russian communist deputy in the Russian Duma (parliament) to speak in its meeting chamber, a demonstration of around 30,000 people took place and was followed by days of clashes between police and anti-government protesters. Despite the political uncertainties, both Georgia and Armenia seem to be becoming more prosperous. Russia continues to be a major source of tourists to both countries, but increasing numbers come from elsewhere, including the Arab countries in the Gulf region. For them, these states are a fairly short hop from their homelands, have cultural similarities, are relatively inexpensive, and have good food and scenery to enjoy. Arab investors are putting money into local companies and property. While Armenia has friendly relations with Russia and Georgia does not, both, to varying extents, have turned away from the forced orientation toward Moscow during the years of Russian/So-
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
viet rule and have been able to re-engage with the countries of the Middle East, a region of which they are a part. ■
Liberate Afghanistan Continued from page 50
war in Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out led to wide-scale banditry, rapine and anarchy. A preacher named Mullah Omar, a veteran of the anti-Soviet war, cobbled together a force of ethnic Pashtun (Pathan) fighters and students to attack the bandits, rapists, and opium-producing Communist forces causing mayhem. This rag-tag movement came to be known as “talibs,” or religious students. Thus was born Taliban. Mullah Omar and his Pashtun fighters went on to drive the Communists from Kabul and take most of the country. According to the U.N., Taliban eliminated 90 percent of Afghanistan’s opium production and brought a rough justice to the nation. But then came the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Caught sleeping on guard duty, the embarrassed Bush administration claimed Taliban was somehow behind 9/11 because it had given refuge to Afghan war hero Osama bin Laden. Washington demanded Taliban turn over bin Laden. But the Afghan mountain warriors held to their tradition of defending guests and refused, claiming bin Laden would never have gotten a fair trial in the United States. But they offered to send him for trial in another Muslim nation like Turkey or Egypt. The U.S. spurned this offer and invaded Afghanistan, oblivious to its title “Graveyard of Empires.” And so, under the banner of the faux War on Terrorism, the U.S. bombed and rocketed Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest but proudest nations, for 18 years, using B-1 heavy bombers and fleets of killer drones against mountain tribesmen armed with old rifles and fierce courage. America faces historic defeat in Afghanistan. By not winning, it loses. How this loss would affect the rest of America’s empire remains to be seen. But the sooner America ends this shameful colonial war the better. ■ OCTOBER 2019
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MUSIC & ARTS Despite U.S. Visa Denials, Coloradans Enjoy Palestinian Music
project is in its 8th year of building connections between the two cities, including working with elementary, middle, high school and college students, as well as professionals, to develop an array of different opportunities to begin and support relationships and friendships. —Craig Sanders
STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI, WITH PERMISSION
PHOTO C. SANDERS
The week of Aug. 11-18, the Boulder-Nablus Sister City Project (BNSCP) planned to host the outstandingly talented Palestinian musicians Hatem Hafi, Habib al Deek, Beirut Museum and Qasem Najjar in ColReclaims Lebanon’s orado. Unfortunately, Habib Habib al Deek (center, playing the oud) entertains an audience in Ancient History was the only musician who Denver. Al Deek was the only Palestinian musician granted a visa by was granted a visa to travel U.S. officials to participate in a cultural exchange with the citizens of During Lebanon’s 15-year to the U.S., leading to last Colorado. civil war, the National Muminute partnerships with seum of Beirut stood on the local musicians to round out the perfor- audience. Handicrafts and products from dividing line between the country’s warmances. Habib al Deek has been playing Nablus and Gaza, such as olive oil, soap, ring factions. Its Egyptian Revival buildthe oud, a short-necked stringed instru- za’atar and embroidery were on sale to ing, constructed between 1930 and 1937, ment popular in traditional music from the support these events and Palestinian or- suffered severe damage from snipers’ Middle East and North Africa, for a signifi- ganizations. The week of music ended bullets and shelling before the conflict cant portion of his life. Al Deek is the for- with several additional events, including ended in 1991. mer director of Edward Said Conservatory performances at Global Fest in Aurora and Thanks to the efforts of archeologist of Music in Nablus and now teaches the the Augustana Lutheran Church in Den- Maurice Chehab, the country’s first direcver. oud and violin. tor of antiquities, the majority of the muBNSCP is a non-profit that fosters rela- seum’s ancient priceless sculptures and The week of events kicked off with a garden party at a local home in North tionships through cultural, educational artifacts were protected. Small objects Boulder, featuring Palestinian food ac- and professional exchanges, inspiring life- were housed in boxes in the basement, companied by al Deek playing traditional long friendships that promote understand- while large statues, bas-reliefs and sarPalestinian music and the recitation of ing and peace through person-to-person cophagi were safeguarded inside cement Arabic and English poetry. Midway “citizen diplomacy.” As a part of the Sister encasements. through the week, al Deek performed at Cities International program, which was The immovable wall-mounted “Mosaic the Bandshell in Boulder’s Central Park. established by the United Nations at the of the Good Shepherd,” however, did not The event included debke dancing to end of World War II, BNSCP is committed escape the fighting. The 5th century CE highlight this unique aspect of Palestinian to connecting people across the world by mosaic from a church in Jnah (just south developing supportive relationships. This of Beirut) suffered damage from years of culture. Later in the week, al Deek sniper fire, as the museum sat came to Denver to perform to a on the front line between east crowded room at the Mercury and west Beirut. Café. He was joined by local Twenty years after it reartists on the violin and hand opened following an extensive drum. The evening opened with renovation, Lebanon’s celea poetry reading in Arabic and brated archaeological museum English performed side-by-side continues to display extraordiwith melodic notes from the nary art and artifacts dating oud. The night continued with a from the Bronze Age through journey through Palestinian culthe Ottoman Era. The collecture, music and poetry, as the tion reflects Lebanon’s stratetrio played traditional instrugic importance in the Phoenimental and vocalized songs cian civilization, as well as the from the region to an attentive View of the first floor main gallery of the National Museum of Beirut. Roman and Persian empires. 62
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PHOTO C. BODNARUK
STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI
local leaders in attendance to ensure Among the 1,300 items on display—out WAGING PEACE Kashmiris their right to self-determination of its total depository of some 100,000 oband restore human and democratic rights jects—is the sarcophagus of Phoenician King Ahiram who ruled Byblos in 1,000 Two Rallies for Kashmir Held in San to the 12 million residents of the region. Many at the rally held signs reading, BCE. The writing on the intricate exterior Francisco “Kashmir is Bleeding,” “Free of his limestone coffin is beKashmir” and “End the Occulieved to be the earliest pation of Kashmir.” One moknown display of the fully torist waved a flag of Kashformed Phoenician alphabet. mir as he drove on the adjaThe museum’s renovated cent Embarcadero thoroughbasement, reopened in 2016, fare. showcases funerary art, inSpeakers, including Lara cluding 31 spectacular Kiswani of the Arab Rehuman-faced sarcophagi from source and Organizing CenSidon, dramatically displayed ter (AROC) and Javaid in a separate chamber. Akhtar of Kashmir Action While the galleries are filled Committee, directed their ire with an abundance of excepat Indian Prime Minister tional treasures, one special sculpture is a white marble Supporters of Kashmir rally outside the San Francisco ferry building on Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist government fragment of a capital in the Aug. 17. whose authoritarian actions shape of a bull’s head dating to the 4th century BCE. Excavated from Outside San Francisco’s ferry building on have caused a devastating hardship on the Temple of Eshmun in Sidon in 1967, Aug. 17, some 500 members of the the residents of Kashmir. By removing Article 370 from India’s the life-size bull’s head was stolen from a Northern California Kashmiri community warehouse in Byblos in 1981 during and their supporters rallied against the In- constitution, Modi has nullified Kashmir’s Lebanon’s civil war and ultimately emerged dian government’s recent revocation of own constitution, thus enabling a comin the private collection of Colorado resi- Kashmir’s special autonomous status. As plete occupation of the region. Supporters of Kashmir also protested dents Lynda and William Beierwaltes. part of the move, India deployed 38,000 While temporarily on loan to New York’s security forces to the region and placed outside San Francisco City Hall on Aug. Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2016, a cu- Kashmir’s residents under a lockdown, 15. Their red banner proclaiming “#Free Kashmir, Stand with Kashmir” drew attenrator determined the sculpture was one of curfew and communications blackout. several Sidon artifacts stolen from Stand with Kashmir, the grassroots tion from the many passersby and locals Lebanon and notified the country’s Min- group that organized the demonstration, going in and out of the municipal building. “We do not want Kashmir to become istry of Culture of its whereabouts. The called for the immediate withdrawal of all New York District Attorney’s office then Indian occupying forces from Kashmir another Palestine,” one activist told the —Elaine Pasquini took possession of the bull’s head and and for a referendum to be held under in- Washington Report. repatriated it to the Beirut museum follow- ternational and U.N. supervision, with Youth Participation Bolsters ing a June 2017 court case in 5th Annual Gaza Vigil in which the American law firm Winnipeg Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton LLP successfully represented the About 20 people gathered peaceLebanese government on a pro fully at the Israel Pavilion at “Folkbono basis. lorama” on Thursday, Aug. 8 to Now dramatically displayed at commemorate the fifth anniverthe entrance to the museum’s sary of Israel’s 51-day war on main floor gallery, the bull’s head, Gaza. “Folklorama” is Winnipeg’s along with four marble male torsos largest cultural festival, this year also stolen from Eshmun during celebrating its 50th anniversary. the civil war and subsequently reEvery year since 2014, local turned, makes a bold statement to peace activists have gathered at the efforts of repatriating stolen art. A protester stands in front of the Israel Pavilion at a cultural the Israel Pavilion to draw atten—Elaine Pasquini festival in Winnipeg, Canada. tion to the dire situation in Gaza. OCTOBER 2019
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PHOTO S. TWAIR
This year they also drew attention to re- jacent to the property line with the pavil- Israeli author Miko Peled and Palestinian cent events in the West Bank and East ion. His steadfastness caused the journalist Ali Al-Arian discussed the implicateacher and her group to either have a tions of Israeli apartheid and the country’s Jerusalem. The organizers of “Folklorama” proudly photograph with Samir and his Palestin- decision to ban Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said this yearly two-week event “cele- ian flag in it or move over. The teacher and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) from participating brates diversity and promotes cultural di- chose to shift her camera angle to ex- in a congressional delegation to Palestine, at versity.” However, it is the opinion of pro- clude Samir. an event at the Peace Center in Culver City, Placards also dealt with topics such as CA on Aug. 23. testers that the Israel Pavilion represents and proudly celebrates a de facto Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes “What is [Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] apartheid state. Israel routinely violates in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Netanyahu hiding?” Peled asked at the the human rights of Palestinians and con- and drew attention to the number of un- start of the discussion. “Israel today is an tinues to contravene numerous United Na- armed Palestinians killed and wounded apartheid system supported and aided by tions resolutions and international laws, during the Great March of Return. the U.S. government.” He noted that across Activists also focused on a recent vic- the political spectrum in Israel, support for such as the Fourth Geneva Convention. Vigil participants stood across the street tory in Canada for BDS and Palestinian the occupation and de facto apartheid is from the entrance to the pavilion and qui- activism. Canada’s Federal Court re- pervasive. “If some Israeli talks about the etly leafleted those going to the cultural cently ruled that wines made in the West pre-1967 borders and running for office, festival. Youth participants in the vigil, in- Bank can’t be labelled as “Made in Is- that would be a disqualifying statement,” cluding young Edie, who attended with her rael.” Long-time Winnipeg activist David Peled observed. mom and aunt, approached passersby by Kattenburg, a member of Independent “What are the Israeli regime’s goals saying “News from Palestine!” and then of- Jewish Voices along with his Montreal today?" Peled asked. “There are three main fered them literature. Many people ignored lawyer, Dimitri Lascaris, brought the case goals: First, to destroy Hamas, second to her or declined the leaflet, but she never to the court after making a complaint to strengthen the settlements in the West the Canadian Food and Inspection Bank and third, to annex these settlements wavered in her optimism. One side of the leaflet described the Agency. The judge ruled that Canadians to Israel.” (On Sept. 10, Netanyahu anNakba and Palestinians’ Right of Return. have a right to accurate information so nounced his intention to annex a third of the It featured a 1936 quote from David Ben- that they may make choices in accord West Bank should he win re-election.) Gurion about Palestinians: “I am for com- with their ethics. Peled said the BDS movement is the Members of Canadian Palestinian best way to challenge the Israeli system of pulsory transfer; I do not see anything wrong with it.” The other side featured Support Network (CanPalNet), Indepen- apartheid. “The way to see a free Palestine statistics on the number of Palestinians dent Jewish Voices (IJV) Winnipeg, is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions killed and injured in Gaza in 2014. We Peace Alliance Winnipeg and the Win- campaign in the U.S. and around the also included the number of Israelis nipeg Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid world,” he said. “It is growing and having all took part in this year’s 5th Annual some impact on the apartheid system in Iskilled and wounded during the war. —Candice Bodnaruk rael. The boycott campaign against the A Palestinian rights activist also read Gaza Vigil. the names of the 58 Palestinians killed in apartheid system in South Africa started in Peled and Al-Arian Discuss Gaza the week of August 4-8, 2014, inthe early 1980s, and the apartheid regime Apartheid, Rep. Tlaib in Los Angeles cluding at least 18 children. The reading ended in the early 1990s. Nelson Mandela of the names was followed was elected president of a new by a moment of silence. and free South Africa in 1994. One fearless young PalesWe need to act today to make tinian activist, 14-year-old that possible later.” Samir, stood in front of the Al-Arian, the son of professor entrance to the Israel PavilSami Al-Arian, who was arion holding a large Palestinrested and deported by the ian flag. A touring school U.S. for his political activism, group wanted to take a phoshared his reflections on Tlaib’s tograph in front of the Israel failed effort to lead a congressign, but did not want Samir sional delegation to Palestine. or his flag in their picture. He “I can't imagine how Rashida stood his ground and refused feels while this Congress supto move since he was stand- Miko Peled (l) and Ali Al-Arian noted the parallels between how Israel ports the occupation of her ing on a public sidewalk, ad- treated Rep. Rashida Tlaib and how it treats millions of Palestinians. homeland,” he said. “I was 64
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PHOTO COURTESY HINDY MOKHIBER
of the vigil, brought born in Florida, where my white balloons in memfather was a professor ory of his dad, who and activist, and was immissed seeing his first prisoned for many years grandchild. and ultimately deported to Luca Dieci, whose Turkey, where he had brother Paolo perished, never been and didn't traveled from Italy to parknow anyone. I decided ticipate in the vigil. “I to become a journalist so can’t recall another I could tell the story of my tragedy that united so father and my Palestinian many people from other people. I was denied countries, religions and entry to Palestine when I was in college, but later I Nadia Milleron and Michael Stumo thank the vigilers, saying it was important to ages to work together,” he told the Washington was allowed in. It was a hear all the families’ stories. Report. “I only hope we place I knew only through can save another plane full of passengers too busy. old photographs and stories of my family.” Boeing and aviation regulators should from crashing.” Mourners urged their govDuring the question-and-answer session, Peled was asked how a one-state solution have grounded the 737 MAX after Indone- ernments to focus on aviation safety as would impact Jewish Israelis and how sia’s Lion Air crashed on Oct. 29, 2018, they decide when and whether the Boeing quickly Israel could realistically transform killing 189 passengers and crew. The 737 MAX should return to the skies. —Delinda C. Hanley into a free and inclusive country for all of its crash, which took place shortly after takeoff, residents. “They don't need to go any- revealed a fatal flaw with the new aircraft’s where,” Peled said of Jews in the Holy systems. If the MAX had been grounded BOOK TALKS Land. “Abolishing apartheid in Israel is like following the tragedy, the Ethiopian Airlines When We Were Arabs: A Jewish abolishing apartheid in South Africa. It was passengers would be alive. Nadia Milleron and Michael Stumo, from Family’s Forgotten History a nuclear power…it was difficult to end, but it did end.” He concluded: “The Israeli Sheffield, MA—whose 24-year-old daugh- Journalist Massoud Hayoun discussed his regime is illegitimate and the apartheid sys- ter Samya was on her first Thinkwell as- new book, When We Were Arabs: A Jewtem has to go. The Palestinians have the signment to establish a local office to ex- ish Family’s Forgotten History, at Uncle right of return to their homes, villages and pand health development initiatives, and Bobbie’s Coffee and Books in Philadelcities. Gaza can be rebuilt with all the perished in the crash—organized the vigil. phia, PA on July 24. Temple University Samya’s parents and grand-uncle and professor Marc Lamont Hill, the owner of money Israel receives from the U.S.” —Samir Twair grand-aunt, Ralph and Claire Nader, want Uncle Bobbie’s, moderated the discussion. to hold Boeing responsible for the crashes A Jew of Moroccan, Tunisian and Families Hold Memorial Vigil for and to achieve a safer regulatory system Egyptian descent, Hayoun explained 737 MAX Plane Crash Victims to protect all air travelers. what it means to identify as both Jew Chris and Clariss Moore from Toronto, and Arab at a time when white nationalFamilies and friends of the American, Canadian, Ethiopian, Kenyan, Rwandan, lost their 24-year old daughter, Danielle. ism is on the rise and the State of Israel Belgian and Italian victims of the Boeing Chris urged governments to exert pres- is promoting a narrow definition of the 737 MAX 8 crash six months earlier gath- sure on Boeing to require proof of safety. Jewish identity. The author began his talk by noting that ered outside the U.S. Department of Trans- Stock buy-backs and resulting bonuses portation on Sept. 10. Some of the families for Boeing executives provide incentives the Arab identity has long been correlated held photos and spoke of the 157 people for a company that fails to put passenger with backwardness, resulting in some who were killed aboard Ethiopian Airlines safety first, he warned. Clariss said, “It is Arabs running away from or minimizing Flight 302, many of whom were on their not fair that so many lives were lost but their identity. It’s time for Arabs to reclaim way to a U.N. environmental conference. no one lost their job.” Paul Njoroge, also their identify from racist, colonialist and Families met with Transportation Secretary from Toronto and Kenya, whose wife, simplistic narratives, he implored. The Elaine Chao immediately before the vigil to three children and mother-in-law were “colonial problem of not seeing ‘Arabness’ urge her to prevent another crash. Chao killed, said that without them, “I don't as transnational, border-less, colorless and race-less” needs to be corrected by declined to address the vigil outside. The know how to live my life.” Naheed Noormohamed, whose father remembering the diversity of the Arab families had also tried to meet with FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson, but he was Ameen would have turned 73 on the day world, Hayoun said. Arabs, he noted, are OCTOBER 2019
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When We Were Arabs is available from AET’s Middle East Books and More. It has been one of our best-selling books of the year! Order at <MiddleEastBooks.com>. said his book offers a “counterbalance” by showing the ways Arab Jews thrived in the region and noting the “role that the Zionist state played in divorcing us from those societies.” Hayoun condemned Israel’s attempts to use attacks against Jews in Europe, the Arab world, the U.S. and elsewhere as a reason to encourage Jews to abandon their homelands and move to Israel. “The response to international hatred against Jewish communities has been time and again to ghettoize us on a very narrow parcel of land on the ash heap of another civilization of displaced people,”
he said. He also called out Israel for its cordial relations with leaders who promote hatred against minorities, including Jews. “If Israel were in earnest concerned with preserving the legacy of the Holocaust and ensuring that it never happened to anyone again, their response to various attacks on our faith community internationally would not be to emigrate to Israel, they would be to ensure an environment of white supremacist genocide did not exist,” he said. “We see the very opposite happening, especially with the Israeli administration’s close and fond relationship with [Brazilian President Jair] Bolsonaro, [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban and [U.S. President Donald] Trump.” Hayoun said his impetus for writing the book came from long, daily conversations he held with his grandmother— who he called his best friend—in which they frequently discussed identity and “why ‘Arabness’ had become such a difficult concept.” These talks led him to a thought that provoked the book: “Not calling ourselves Arab divorced us from humanity.” This sentiment perhaps best describes the dual but congruent intent of When We Were Arabs—to defend and celebrate a targeted and complex identity, while calling for a shared, inclusive human identity. —Dale Sprusansky
FETHI BELAID/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
“people who don’t maybe always look the same, or maybe don’t always have the same faith, or maybe don’t always have the same dialect of Arabic.” While Hayoun is proud to identify as Arab, he also expressed a humanistic view of the world in which, he believes, “colorized categories of human existence” ought to be deemphasized. “There’s no such thing as ‘peoples,’” he said. “There are so many people who throughout history moved through different spaces—It’s very possible for me as a North African person to say I’m Phoenician, or that I’m Amazigh (Berber), or that I’m an Arab, or that I’m an Ottoman, or a Circassian, or Greek, or Roman, or any of these things that moved through our lands.” Hayoun said his decision to intentionally identify as an Arab Jew is more about combating hateful stereotypes and policies than it is about relishing an identify that makes him distinct from other people. His identity, he said, is “something that at its core is a beautiful legacy that deserves to be taken and uplifted for the sake of shutting up the forces that say otherwise.” He made painfully clear the level of unease he feels as an Arab and Jew in the United States today. The era of Donald Trump “makes it impossible for me to have this very event tonight without worrying that somebody’s going to come through that door with a MAGA hat and shoot us all dead,” he said. “I was very afraid to call myself a Jewish person and an Arab American and come and speak to you guys tonight, because we are living in an unsafe environment.” As a Jew, Hayoun said he is also appalled by historical accounts that often solely emphasize the history of anti-Jewish discrimination in the Arab world and extol the State of Israel as a safe-haven for Arab Jews. “There were very frequent instances of discrimination, murder and acculturation that happened to us throughout history,” he acknowledged, but “that isn’t the only narrative that exists.” While these hate-filled incidents should by no means be dismissed, he
A Tunisian Jewish woman lights a candle at the Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba, during the annual Jewish pilgrimage, on May 25, 2016. Tunisia's Ghriba synagogue is the oldest in Africa.
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
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CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com
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THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST
Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon
CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com
CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com
Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands
The Khaleej Times, Dubai, UAE
CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com
CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com
The Economist, London, England
El Diario de Coahuila, Saltillo Coah, Mexico OCTOBER 2019
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ISRAEL DENYING ENTRY TO TLAIB, OMAR REVEALS LARGER ISSUE
To the Star Tribune, Aug. 19, 2019 The Aug. 16 article “After Trump tweet, Israel bars entry to Omar, Tlaib” discusses the denial of entry for U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar into Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories because of their support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. As members of the Minnesota BDS community, we are outraged that Israel repeatedly denies entry to U.S. citizens and members of Congress solely on the basis of their political views. Omar and Tlaib are not the only people to have been denied entry to Israel. According to the Times of Israel, the number of those denied has been increasing, and in 2018 almost 19,000 people were barred. Although not all of those were denied for their political views, we must point out that many Minnesotans also have been denied entry, many only for their political views. This is not trivial, because we are being denied access to the real story from a part of the world in which our government has been deeply involved. A denial of entry is a denial of experience and understanding. As Peter Beinart of the Forward has written, the purpose of denial of entry is to keep the occupation of Palestinians and their land hidden—especially from Americans. While decrying the action of the Israeli government in denying entry to Omar and Tlaib, much commentary, including social media generated by some members of Congress, fails to demonstrate an 68
understanding of the context and goals of the BDS movement. Palestinians have lived under conditions of colonization since the establishment of the modern state of Israel. International human rights organizations, including the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, agree that these conditions imposed by the Israeli government are depriving Palestinians of their fundamental human rights. In the context of these intolerable conditions, more than 170 Palestinian civil society organizations called upon people of conscience around the world to participate in boycotting Israel. The BDS movement seeks three demands of Israel: End the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, grant equal rights for all Palestinian citizens of Israel, and recognize the right of return of the refugees who were expelled from their homes during the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. These demands of the BDS movement are enshrined in international law and therefore should not be controversial. We believe that affording human rights to human beings is common sense. It is also just. We call for an honest and in-depth dialogue about the roots and purpose of the BDS movement for Palestinian rights. Eric Angell and Sylvia Schwarz, St. Paul, MN
EVERYDAY REALITIES IN PALESTINE SUPPORT TLAIB’S GRIEVANCES
To the News & Record, Aug. 27, 2019 Last week my wife and I went to the airport to meet the daughter of good friends from Palestine and helped her move into her residence hall at one of Greensboro’s colleges. To travel to the U.S. from her home near Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s ancestral village of Beit Ur al-Fauqa, she had to get special permission from the occupying military administration, navigate past heavily armed soldiers at different checkpoints, and undergo humiliating security questioning before boarding her plane. By comparison, the trip from PTI Airport to campus went like a breeze. The experience highlighted for me that it was no “stunt” for Tlaib to call attention to the suffocating details of Palestinian life under military occupation. Our student can certainly “one-up” her friends when they complain about the hardship of lugging all their stuff up the stairs into their dorm room. Max L. Carter, Greensboro, NC
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
HOLDING CONGRESSWOMAN ACCOUNTABLE FOR ISRAEL TRIP
To The Daily News, Aug. 20, 2019 “Have you been offered or taken an expense paid trip to Israel?” I emailed to Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) several years back, but my email went unanswered. Several months ago, I saw American Educational Trust’s listing that indicated our representative has taken two such trips. My phone rang around dinner time a couple of weeks ago inviting me to participate in a town hall phone meeting with Rep. Herrera Beutler. Asked to give a signal if I wished to ask a question, I did. My time came and I confirmed that my question was desired. “Did you visit areas where Palestinian citizens of Israel live or the occupied West Bank or Gaza areas?” She launched into our deficit spending. This might have been relevant had I asked why Israel, with about the 30th highest gross national personal income (higher than some states), receives our highest (in the billions of dollars) foreign aid. Richard Nau, Longview, WA
CONGRESSMAN’S BASELESS ATTACK ON BDS MOVEMENT
To The Salt Lake Tribune, Aug. 3, 2019 Rep. Ben McAdams (D-UT) spoke recently at the First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City. He responded to a question about his support of legislation condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement pressuring Israel for its human rights violations against Palestinians. McAdams condemned this nonviolent, pro-human rights movement and claimed that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel most certainly is not a democracy for the non-Jewish population both in Israel (treated as second-class citizens) and the neighboring Palestinian territories militarily occupied by Israel for over half a century. Israel is a democracy as much as South Africa was during the apartheid regime. Boycotts are a time-honored American political tradition, including the Boston Tea Party, boycotts of products made with slave labor, the Montgomery bus boycott, the United Farm Workers boycott of grapes and the boycott of businesses operating in apartheid South Africa (upon which the modern BDS movement is modeled). To condemn this contemporary human rights movement and to subordinate Americans’ free speech rights to the interest of apartheid Israel is a disgrace for any politiOCTOBER 2019
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cian, especially one as intelligent and informed as McAdams. Bob Brister, Salt Lake City, UT
STOP CLASSIFYING CRITICISM OF ISRAEL AS ANTI-SEMITISM
To the Corvallis GazetteTimes, Aug. 16, 2019 Regarding “Anti-Semitism is on Rise on the Left,” Marc Thiessen’s column on Aug. 14: In his negative appraisal of the political left, Thiessen reported at least two quotes from Piotr Cywinski, director of the AuschwitzBirkenau State Museum. First, “I never saw any anti-Israel theory that was not anti-Semitic.” Well, I hope Cywinski does not mean to say that anyone like me who opposes policies of Israel’s government, e.g., its actions on the Palestinian West Bank, is necessarily anti-Semitic. Are people like me anti-Semitic? If I oppose the policies of India’s [Hindu nationalist] government in Kashmir, am I necessarily anti-Hindu? A reasonable person would answer “no” to both questions. Cywinski’s next quote suggests a possible double standard concerning Israel: “If you look to the United Nations, how many resolutions were concerning Israel and how many were concerning…Sudan?” Israel annually receives the gift of more U.S. taxpayer dollars as foreign aid than almost any other country. Since much of the gift consists of U.S. military hardware, Israel’s possible use of this military materiel to enforce its military occupation of the West Bank concerns many U.S. taxpayers. And Israel has consistently violated the United Nations Charter, Article 73, by its actions on the West Bank. E.g., Israel has pushed Palestinian Arabs off their land to expropriate (steal) the land for use by Israeli citizens only. At his end, Thiessen wrote: “…we all have an obligation to confront anti-Semitism and other forms of racism and xenophobia.” On this I can agree. Leo Quirk, Corvallis, OR
CONDEMNING INDIA’S ACTIONS IN KASHMIR
To The New York Times, Aug. 28, 2019 Re “The Silence Is the Loudest Sound” (Sunday Review, Aug. 18): Thanks to Arundhati Roy for her forthright account of the illegal actions of the Modi government in India by overturning Article OCTOBER 2019
370 of the Indian Constitution (which gave autonomy to Kashmir) and brutally repressing the people of Kashmir. The targeted attack on Kashmir has been preceded and supplemented by systematic attacks on minorities (especially Muslims), evidenced in lynch mobs that go scot-free and efforts to silence academics, public intellectuals, writers, filmmakers, artists, lawyers and anyone who dares to challenge the disastrous curtailing of freedom of speech, right to assembly and academic freedom. I applaud individuals and organizations courageously standing up for the rights of the Kashmiri people. India should not be allowed to hide behind the frequently evoked doctrine that Kashmir is an internal matter. The international community must join hands with those (particularly from Kashmir) who are protesting, challenging the actions of the government in court and courageously documenting the violence against the Kashmiri people. Severe repression of the Muslim population in Kashmir will not redress the injustice that was done to Kashmir’s Hindu Pandit community, who should surely be compensated and an apology rendered to them. But to use one historical injustice to unleash terror on a region is vengeance, not justice. This is not the India of Gandhi, nor is it the Hinduism we, who once loved this country, want or can live with. Veena Das, Baltimore, MD The writer is a professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University.
AFGHANISTAN IS COMPLEX, BUT IT’S TIME FOR U.S. TO LEAVE
To the Los Angeles Times, Aug. 17, 2019 There is no question that the ongoing U.S.-Taliban talks have their pitfalls (“No deal yet with the Taliban, but Trump is planning big cuts in U.S. presence,” Aug. 14). Reports of the Trump administration planning for a U.S. troop drawdown in
Afghanistan compound the legitimate concern among many that the Taliban will fail to uphold its end of the bargain in the event an agreement is struck. But the blunt reality is that whatever flaws exist, the United States has no other choice than to negotiate our way out. Critics who denounce the current talks have no realistic alternative to offer other than continuing a war most Americans want to leave in the rearview mirror. I spent the final 10 years of my military career under a declaration of war; my son, now in his 18th year of service, has spent his entire Navy career under the same authorization. Those who wish to hold the line have a responsibility to justify why the effort is worth sending more of America’s sons and daughters into the fight. Concessions will have to be offered to the Taliban, some of which will be painful for us to swallow. But just as the enemy gets a vote on the battlefield, it gets a vote at the peace table as well. After 18 years of blood and expense, it’s time to settle the conflict and come home. Len Hering, Chula Vista, CA The writer is a retired Navy vice admiral and a fellow at the American College of National Security Leaders.
CONGRESS MUST RESTRICT NUCLEAR WEAPON USE
To The Seattle Times, Aug. 5, 2019 I am a family doctor member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. My colleagues and I work to prevent the nuclear war we cannot treat. Aug. 6 and 9 marked 74 years since the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—74 years of a world threatened by nuclear war, 74 years of escalation, de-escalation and near misses. With diplomacy limping along in Iran and North Korea; treaties falling apart with Russia; and a $1.37 trillion U.S. budget deal that includes $738 billion for defense, it’s hard to disagree. What can we do? We can restart serious diplomacy. We can refuse to fund a nuclearweapons expansion. And most simply of all, we can promise not to be a nuclear aggressor. I urge Washington’s Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray to support S. 272 declaring a no-first-use policy. A nuclear war is a war nobody wins, so we should let the world know that we’re not going to start one. Chris Covert-Bowlds, Seattle, WA ■
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B •O •O •K •S Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations By Ronen Bergman, Random House, 2018, hardcover, 636 pp. MEB: $26. “Since World War II Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world.” With that simple, chilling statement Ronen Bergman prefaces his comprehensive history of Israel’s policy of state-sanctioned murder of perceived enemies. For years, Israel has assumed the role of judge, jury and executioner in defiance of international law and international boundaries as well. Bergman’s book is comprehensive, wellwritten and highly revealing. Despite a “complex array of laws and protocols,” including “strict military censorship” and sharp limitations on press freedom, the effort to maintain secrecy over the history of the assassination program failed, enabling
Walter L. Hixson, the Washington Report’s contributing editor, is the author of Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More).
Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson him to write the book. How could this happen? Because, Bergman explains, it turns out, “Everyone wants to speak about what they’ve done.” For decades Israel’s secret intelligence service, the Mossad, under direct supervision of the prime minister, has carried out targeted assassinations in multiple countries. Israel’s assassinations have killed many opponents, but they have also killed scores of innocent bystanders. Israel typically exercised caution about killing innocent people during its operations in Europe, but “as long as the targets were located in enemy countries, and as long as the innocent civilians were Arabs, the finger on the trigger became quicker.” Israeli patriarch David Ben-Gurion cultivated secrecy and kept a tight personal rein on Shin Bet, the internal security service modeled on the FBI, as well as on the Mossad. The trope “state security” was invoked to justify illegal activities ranging from arbitrary arrest and torture to assassination, all of it done as the “sole democracy” of the Middle East kept the public in the dark. Even when actions did become public, policies did not change. After he perpetrated the notorious Qibya massacre in October 1953, killing 69 innocent Jordanian villagers, Ariel Sharon nonetheless “was given free rein to use special forces and secret units to unearth and kill [al-
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leged] terrorists.” The intensity of Israel’s targeted killings accelerated in the wake of the post-1967 occupation and the increased Palestinian resistance and guerrilla assaults on Israelis. Following the deaths of its athletes at the 1972 Munich games, Israel broadened authorization to assassinate “in effect, anyone suspected of belonging to the PLO.” Targeted killings accelerated after the election of Likud leader Menachem Begin. Israel attacked scores of Palestinian targets with hit squads, car bombs, and even explosives strapped to donkeys and sent into Arab marketplaces. Unable to grasp the causes and implications of the Intifada in 1987, Israeli security forces responded with arrests, torture, demolition of homes, and targeted killings. As Hamas grew in popularity, Israeli security forces began to kill its leaders. Israel botched an attempted assassination of Hamas’ Khaled Meshal, who was injected with poison but survived. In the wake of 9/11, the “global war on terror” enabled Israel to normalize its shoot to kill policies. Israel began publicizing the targeted killings, some of which were carried out by the new lethal technology of drone attacks. In 2000, Israel approved 24 targeted killings; the number rose to 84 in 2001; 101 in 2002; and 135 in 2003. A former head of Shin Bet invoked Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase “banality of evil”—which she had used to describe Adolf Eichmann’s calm demeanor at trial as he related his complicity in the Nazi genocide—to describe Israel’s businessas-usual approach to targeted killings. Overall, however, Israeli society generally supported targeted assassination and often celebrated its accomplishments. Despite the undemocratic and capricious nature of the targeted assassinations, as well as the many blunders that he chronicles, Bergman concludes on a patriotic note, arguing that targeted assassinations “triumphed” over terrorism. While Bergman’s conclusions are highly subjective, there is no question he has provided a valuable service by meticulously chronicling the long and sordid history of Israel’s state-sponsored terror attacks. ■ oCTobeR 2019
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• EAST • BOOKS • AND • MORE MIDDLE Literature Films Pottery Solidarity Items More *
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FALL 2019 Sophie Halaby in Jerusalem: An Artist’s Life, by Laura S. Schor, Syracuse University Press, 2019, paperback, 272 pp. MEB: $30. Sophie Halaby’s family fled to Jerusalem in 1917 in the wake of the Russian Revolution. She was born in 1906 in Kiev to a Russian mother and a Christian Arab father. Halaby became the first Arab woman to study art in Paris and lived as a professional painter in Jerusalem. Her life was marked by violence and war, including the Arab Revolt from 1936 to 1939, the Nakba in 1948, and the Six-Day War in 1967. Schor’s compelling biography shines new light on this little-known artist and enriches our understanding of modern Palestinian history.
Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism: Stories of Personal Transformation, by Carolyn L. Karcher, Interlink Press, 2019, paperback, 400 pp. MEB: $17. Today Jews face a choice. We can be loyal to the ethical imperatives at the heart of Judaism—love the stranger, pursue justice, and repair the world. Or we can give our unconditional support to the State of Israel. It is a choice between Judaism as a religion and the nationalist ideology of Zionism, which is usurping that religion. In this powerful collection of personal narratives, 40 Jews of diverse backgrounds tell a wide range of stories about the roads they have traveled from a Zionist world view to activism in solidarity with Palestinians and Israelis striving to build an inclusive society founded on justice, equality and peaceful coexistence.
Stories My Father Told Me: Memories of a Childhood in Syria and Lebanon, by Helen and Elia Zughaib, Cune Press, 2019, hardcover, 112 pp. MEB: $24. Twenty-five paintings by Helen Zughaib accompanied by text based on favorite stories told by her father about life in Syria and Lebanon in the 1930s and during World War II. “Let me tell you a story,” Helen Zughaib’s father used to say. What followed were absorbing tales of her father’s childhood in Damascus, village life in Lebanon in the late 1930s, amusing relatives, happenings and the traditions of their local Greek Orthodox Church, and major events in her father’s young life that lead him to emigrate to the United States in 1946.
When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, by Kara Cooney, National Geographic, 2018, hardcover, 400 pp. MEB: $22. Female rulers are a rare phenomenon—but thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, women reigned supreme. Cooney’s riveting narrative explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs, from Hatshepsut to Cleopatra—women who ruled with real power—and shines a piercing light on our own perceptions of women in power today.
For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers, by Hiba Bou Akar, Stanford University Press, 2018, paperback, 264 pp. MEB: $24. Bou Akar shows how urban planning in Beirut plays on residents’ fears and differences, rumors of war, and paramilitary strategies to organize everyday life. She argues war, in times of peace, is not fought with weapons of violence but involves a more mundane territorial contest for land sales, zoning and planning regulations, and infrastructure projects.
Banking on the State: The Financial Foundations of Lebanon, by Hicham Safieddine, Stanford University Press, 2019, paperback, 272 pp. MEB: $30. Banking on the State reveals the history of Lebanon’s financial foundations in relation to the rest of the decolonizing world and how the set of arrangements that governed Lebanon’s central bank were dictated by the dynamics of political power and financial profit rather than market forces, national interest or economic sovereignty.
Inside Arabic Music: Arabic Maqam Performance and Theory in the 20th Century, by Johnny Farraj and Sami Abu Shumays, Oxford University Press, 2019, paperback, 480 pp. MEB: $40. What makes hundreds of listeners cheer ecstatically at the same instant during a live concert by Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum? What is the unspoken language behind a taqsim (traditional instrumental improvisation) that performers and listeners implicitly know? How can Arabic music be so rich and diverse without resorting to harmony? Why is it so challenging to transcribe Arabic music from a recording? The authors answer these and many other questions of a performance culture that is largely passed on orally.
The Book of Disappearance, by Ibtisam Azem (translated by Sinan Antoon), Syracuse University Press, 2019, paperback, 256 pp. MEB: $20. What if all the Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? How would Israelis react? These unsettling questions are posed in Azem’s powerfully imaginative novel. Set 48 hours after Israelis realize their Palestinian neighbors have vanished, The Book of Disappearance grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory for the Palestinians. Presenting a narrative that is often marginalized, Antoon’s translation of the critically acclaimed Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of Palestinians living in Israel.
Palestine +100: Stories from a Century After the Nakba, edited by Basma Ghalayini, Comma Press, 2019, paperback, 240 pp. MEB: $15. Palestine + 100 poses a question to 12 Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048—a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event—which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes—reach across a century of occupation, oppression and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians?
S H I P P I N G R AT E S Most items are discounted and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Orders accepted by mail, phone (800-368-5788 ext. 1), or Web (www.middleeastbooks.com). All payments in U.S. funds. Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express accepted. Please send mail orders to Middle East Books and More, 1902 18th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009, with checks and money orders made out to “AET.” U.S. Shipping Rates: Please add $5 for the first item and $2.50 for each additional item. Canada & Mexico shipping charges: Please add $15 for the first item and $3.50 for each additional item. International shipping charges: Please add $15 for the first item and $6 for each additional item. We ship by USPS Priority unless otherwise requested. OCTOBER 2019
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O• B • I • T • U • A • R • I • E • S Kamal Boullata, 77, a pioneering Palestinian artist, died in Berlin, Germany on August 6. Born in Jerusalem in 1942, Boullata was internationally-renowned and part of the avantgarde hurufiyya movement during the 1970s and ’80s, which combined traditional Islamic calligraphy with modernist art. While he studied art in Italy, the U.S. and Morocco, it was his childhood growing up in Jerusalem and then later having to flee after Israel conquered the city during the 1967 War that had a lasting impact on his work. This influence can be seen in his artwork that has been exhibited throughout the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, and in many books, including Faithful Witnesses: Palestinian Children Recreate Their World; Palestinian Art: from 1850 to the Present; and sketches he did for The Palestinian Wedding: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Poetry. As a pioneer of Palestinian art, Boullata set out to create his own style of art related to the Palestinian struggle, including representations of identity and exile. Melissa Gronlund of The National writes, “As both a writer and an artist, he [Boullata] played an integral role in the development of Palestinian art in the 1970s and ’80s.” His “Art in the Time of the Palestinian Revolution,” published in the Lebanese journal Mawaqif in January 1971, “sketched out what real revolutionary Palestinian art should look like: not the easily sold rehashing of Palestinian motifs, but artwork that moves forward into new forms and ideas.” Boullata’s death will be greatly felt in the art world, the Palestinian community and beyond.
Donna Bourne Curtiss, 90, wife to Foreign Service Officer and Washington Report on Middle East Affairs co-founder Rich ard H. Curtiss, died Aug. 7, 2019 in Kensington, MD. Born in Salt Lake City, she and her parents 72
Delinda C. Hanley and Sami Tayeb
moved to California during the Great Depression. After earning a degree in social work, she married and helped her husband represent the United States, from 1951-1980, in Indonesia, Germany, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and at the Voice of America relay station in Rhodes, Greece. She represented the American community by volunteering—teaching English in Ankara and washing newborns in a Baghdad hospital. At every post, she opened their home to host events for professors, artists, musicians, journalists, members of Congress and foreign statesmen. Curtiss, like many spouses of Foreign Service Officers, put her career on hold and moved across the world to conduct unpaid and unofficial people-to-people diplomacy. With every move (including two evacuations in one week, from both Damascus and Beirut, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war) or coup d’état she kept her cool. Sheltering in Rhodes with her youngest child, Denny, while her husband served as the U.S. Embassy’s Counselor for Public Affairs in Beirut during Lebanon’s civil war, she kept her scattered family connected with entertaining typed carbon-copied letters. She joked that even though her mother was a seamstress, in her nomadic life it never made sense to hem curtains, so she’d just use a stapler. During Washington, DC assignments, Donna Curtiss was a civil rights activist. She joined a sit-in—with her visiting aunt and her son Drew in his stroller—at a Virginia diner that wouldn’t seat African Americans. In fact she insisted on giving birth to Drew in DC because Jim Crow laws in Virginia, where they lived, were repugnant. That same urge to overcome injustice led her to seek human rights for Palestinians. Many a grandchild attended anti-war protests or demonstrations in support of Palestinians. After the couple retired from service to their government in 1980, they launched a second career to help educate their fellow Americans in hopes of changing U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. While Ambassador Andrew Killgore, publisher, and Richard Curtiss, executive editor, received numerous awards after launching the American Educational Trust’s magazine and what was then a
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
book club in 1982, their wives intentionally avoided the spotlight. Years before the Internet transformed the world, Donna visited libraries to comb through letters to the editors of newspapers across the nation. She then telephoned directory assistance to track down new subscribers who’d indicated they support even-handed U.S. foreign policy and peace in the Middle East. She worked in a cubby-hole office, typing and retyping articles for computer-averse authors who insisted on hand writing their stories or using a typewriter. After her husband’s stroke erased his ability to type on his own laptop (which had worn-off letters on its keyboard), she patiently took his dictation and helped him research his articles. For 37 years she also proof-read every page of the magazine—refusing to allow her name on the masthead or let us acknowledge her role as unpaid staff. When her perfect eyesight declined, managing editor Janet McMahon just kept enlarging the font on her copies. Until the end she was determined to play an unsung role in the magazine. After the death of her husband of 62 years in 2013, and the death of Killgore in 2016, she continued to provide free rent to the magazine and bookstore. One of her many gifts was her ability to recognize, praise and encourage everybody she met—and that kindness surrounded her until the end. She made everyone feel special, valued and appreciated. She is survived by Darcy (Dan) Sreebny, Delinda Hanley, Drew (Krista) Curtiss, grandchildren Kristin, David, Olivia, Rachel, Alan and Laura, and four great-grandchildren. Rep. Paul Findley, 98, who served the 20th District of Illinois in the House of Representatives from 19611983, died on Aug. 9 in Jacksonville, IL. Findley fought for civil rights and engagement with the Arab world. He also criticized the Vietnam War and helped write the War Powers Act, which requires a president to notify Congress within 48 OCTOBER 2019
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hours when U.S. troops are sent into battle. The act also puts a limit on the time troops can be deployed without congressional authorization. Early in 1973, Findley was asked to help secure the release of a constituent imprisoned in South Yemen, with which the U.S. government had no diplomatic relations. Findley obtained the release of his constituent, and his talks with two of America’s Middle Eastern enemies—the presidents of Syria and South Yemen— convinced him of the need for better communication with the Arab world. He applied that lesson to speaking with Yasser Arafat and urging him to recognize U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 and the land-for-peace formula. Findley began to speak out in Congress, arguing from a U.S. viewpoint— neither pro-Israel nor pro-Arab. He told his fellow lawmakers that U.S. unwillingness to talk directly to the political leadership of the Palestinians handicapped the search for peace. After 22 years in Congress Findley’s district was redrawn and he was narrowly defeated by current Senator Dick Durbin (who has accepted $403,421 in pro-Israel PAC contributions throughout his career, as well as countless contributions from individuals around the country who support Israel). Findley wrote that after his defeat, Thomas A. Dine, then-AIPAC’s executive director, gloated, “This is a case where the Jewish lobby made a difference.” As Dine told a Jewish gathering in Texas, “We beat the odds and defeated Findley.” Dine later estimated that $685,000 of the $750,000 raised by Durbin had come from Jewish donors. In the Washington Report’s book review of They Dare to Speak Out, Richard Curtiss wrote: “Because he questioned blind American support of Israel, the lobby deprived a conscientious Illinois congressman of the seat he occupied for 22 years. In doing so, it freed Paul Findley to write the most powerful exposé to date of Israel’s abuse of American trust, a book which may prove Admiral [Thomas] Moorer’s prediction to him that ‘the American people would be goddam mad if they knew what goes on.’” Convinced that domestic pressure and funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) prevents a rational U.S. foreign policy, Findley went on to co-found the Council for the National Interest (CNI) in 1989 with law professor and California congressman Pete McCloskey. CNI continues to fight for a OCTOBER 2019
just and rational U.S. approach to the Middle East. Findley was born, raised and educated in Jacksonville, IL, where he also died. He graduated in 1943 from Illinois College in Jacksonville, which is currently home to the Paul Findley Congressional Office Museum. He joined the Navy in World War II, serving as a lieutenant on the island of Guam. That is where he met his wife, flight nurse Lucille Gemme, and they married in 1946. After the war, Findley worked as a journalist in Washington, DC, before returning to Illinois to publish a weekly newspaper and then running for Congress. Findley never lost his flair for writing—he wrote more than 90 articles for the Washington Report and published three books about the Middle East and the Israel lobby: Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the U.S.-Israeli Relationship; Speaking Out: A Congressman's Lifelong Fight Against Bigotry, Famine, and War; and They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby. Findley’s courage and dedication inspired a generation of Americans to fight for justice in Palestine and the Middle East. His beloved wife, Lucille, died in 2011. Findley is survived by his son Craig, daughter Diane Findley McLaughlin, a sister, Barbara Stuart, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Salman (Sam) Hilmy, 90, a former director of the Voice of America Near East, South Asia and Africa division, died Aug. 14 in Silver Spring, MD. An article titled “An Iraqi-Born Voice of America,” written by his long-time friend Richard Curtiss, was published in the February/March 1994 Washington Report. Hilmy was born in Baghdad in 1929. His family owned one of the largest bookstores in the city and he loved to write poetry and articles. He secured an Iraqi government scholarship to study English literature at the University of Maryland. In 1952, he returned to Iraq to fulfill his scholarship obligations and teach, with a bride—Kate, a fellow student, and their son. Hilmy also wrote and translated for the U.S. Cultural Center in Baghdad. By 1958 the Iraqi monarchy, a close ally to the U.S. and Britain, was overthrown and Americans evacuated.
Within three months of the revolution Hilmy joined his wife and now two children, who had gone ahead to the U.S. He started a job with the Voice of America Arabic Service in 1960, translating and reporting the news. To protect his family back in Iraq he took the radio name “Samir Nader,” when he hosted a popular music program. When VOA decided to broadcast from the Greek Island of Rhodes in 1963, Hilmy helped establish a VOA unit housed in trailers in a pasture. They broadcasted during tumultuous times in the Middle East, including the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, turmoil in Afghanistan, and the more than decadelong Lebanese civil war. Gradually a proper VOA headquarters and studios were built on the island, and by 1970— when Richard Curtiss became Sam’s colleague and friend, the VOA’s Arabic services had a huge audience of nearly 200 million people. Every word broadcast, seven days a week, was closely examined by 21 Arab governments. In 1971, VOA moved back to Washington, DC and by 1972 Hilmy was named director of its Arabic Service. In 1986, he was named VOA’s “Outstanding Employee of the Year,” and soon Hilmy was asked to lead the North Africa, Near East and South Asia divisions as well as the Arab service. The Iraqi-born American guided VOA during its coverage of the Desert Shield and Desert Storm wars in Iraq, retiring in 1992 after receiving a Superior Honor Award. The citation said he was “the best programming chief in the history of a unit responsible for broadcasts in nine languages to one of the world’s most volatile and strategically important regions.” VOA Arabic was abolished in 2002 by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which created a separate U.S. government-funded Middle East Broadcasting Network in Arabic, which includes Alhurra and its sister station Radio Sawa. (At one point the previously mentioned AIPAC director Dine was hired to improve the network’s image.) Hilmy wrote several articles for the Washington Report, translating and commenting on Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s “ID Card,” and another about the death of Syria’s most popular poet, Nizar Qabbani. He never wrote about his favorite Iraqi poet, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. Sam Hilmy is survived by Kate, his wife of 70 years, son Steve, daughters Heather and Aida, and five grandchildren. ■
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AET’s 2019 Choir of Angels
the following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 11, 2019 and august 20, 2019 is making possible activities of the tax-exempt aet library endowment (federal id #52-1460362) and the american educational trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. some angels are helping us co-sponsor the conference “the israel lobby and american policy.” others are donating to our “capital building fund,” which will help us expand Middle east books and More. We are deeply honored by their confidence and profoundly grateful for their generosity.
HUMMERS ($100 or more)
Anonymous, Maplewood, NJ Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, Atlanta, GA Rizek & Alice Abusharr, Claremont, CA Dr. Robert Ashmore, Mequon, WI Mr. & Mrs. Sultan Aslam, Plainsboro, NJ Marwan Balaa, San Jose, CA Rev. Robert E. Barber, Cooper City, FL Stanton Barrett, Ipswich, MA Allen & Jerrie Bartlett, Philadelphia, PA Anna Bellisari, Yellow Springs, OH Prof. & Mrs. George Wesley Buchanan, Gaithersburg, MD Samer & Nora Burgan, Falls, Church, VA Gregory DeSylva, Rhinebeck, NY Bernie Eisenberg, Los Angeles, CA Kassem Elkhalil, Arlington, TX William Gefell, Tunbridge, VT Elizabeth Haas, Wilmington, DE Angelica Harter, N. Branford, CT Walter Hixson, Akron, OH Bilquis Jaweed, West Chester, OH Ghazala Kazi, Columbia, MD M. Jamil Khan, Bloomfield Hills, MI
Eugene Khorey, Homestead, PA David & Renee Lent, Hanover, NH Edwin Lindgren, Overland Park, KS Gwendolyn McEwen, Bellingham, WA Bill McGrath, Northfield, MN Merrill O’Donnell, New Westminster, Canada A. Karim Pathan, Cary, NC Jeffrey Pekrul, San Francisco, CA Peggy Rafferty, Cedar Grove, NC Amb. William & Andrea Rugh, Hingham, MA Irmgard Scherer, Fairfax, VA Bernice Shaheen, Palm Desert, CA*** Yasir Shallal, McLean, VA Dr. Mostafa Hashem Sherif, Tinton Falls, NJ Jean Snyder, Greenbelt, MD Fred Zuercher, Spring Grove, PA
ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more)
Anonymous, Eatonton, GA Diane Adkin, Camas, WA Larry Cooper, Plymouth, M # Dr. William Fuller, Valdosta, GA Ken Galal, San Francisco, CA Delinda C. Hanley, Kensington, MD****,## Jenny Hartley, Northfielders for Justice, Northfield, MN
Help make sure that the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs will be here for the next generation.
William Lightfoot, Vienna, VA
TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more) Dr. & Mrs. Roger Bagshaw, Big Sur, CA Raymond Gordon, Venice, FL Brigitte Jaensch, Carmichael, CA Benjamin Wade, Saratoga, CA Robert Younes, Potomac, MD
BARITONES & MEZZO SOPRANOS ($1,000 or more)
Americans for Middle East Understanding, New York, NY Drs. A.J. & M. T. Amirana, Las Vegas, NV Karen Ray Bossmeyer, Louisville, KY G. Edward & Ruth Brooking, Jr., Wilmington, DE Nancy Eddy, Chevy Chase, MD Gary Feulner, Dubai, UAE Ronald & Mary Forthofer, Longmont, CO Evan & Leman Fotos, Istanbul, Turkey Alfred R. Greve, Holmes, NY Hind Hamdan, Hagerstown, MD Judith A. Howard, Norwood, MA ### Ghazy M. Kader, Shoreline, WA Jack Love, Kailua Kona, HI Nabeel Mansour, McMinnville, OR Roberta McInerney, Washington, DC * Robert & Sharon Norberg, Lake City, MN Mary Norton, Austin, TX M.F. Shoukfeh, Lubbock, TX Dr. Imad Tabry, Fort Lauderdale, FL Donn Trautman, Evanstown, IL
CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more)
By remembering the Washington Report in your will, you can: • Make a significant gift without affecting your current cash flow; • Direct your bequest to a vital purpose—educating readers about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East; • Receive a charitable estate tax deduction & Leave a legacy for future generations. Bequests of any size are honored with membership in the American Educational Trust’s “Choirmasters,” named for angels whose foresight and dedication ensured the future of the Washington Report and Middle East Books and More. For more information visit www.wrmea.org/donate/bequests.pdf, contact us at circulation@wrmea.org, write: American Educational Trust, PO Box 91056 • Long Beach, CA 90809-1056, or telephone our new toll-free circulation number 888-881-5861 • Fax: 714-226-9733
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Washington RepoRt on Middle east affaiRs
James M. Crawford Trust, Miami, FL Donna B. Curtiss, Kensington, MD*, ** Estate of Dorothy Love Gerner, San Francisco, CA Dr. & Mrs. Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR*, ** John Gareeb, Atlanta, GA John & Henrietta Goelet, Washington, DC * In Memory of Andrew I. Killgore ** In Memory of Richard H. Curtiss *** In Memory of Dr. Jack Shaheen **** In Memory of Donna B.Curtiss # In Memory of Diane Cooper ## In Memory of Salman Hilmy ### In Memory of Paul Findley octobeR 2019
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American Educational Trust Washington Report on Middle East Affairs P.O. Box 53062 Washington, DC 20009
October 2019
Vol. XXXVIII, No. 6
Kashmiri students in New Delhi, India show their fingers marked with red ink during a Sept. 10 protest against 36 days of communications blackout and curfew-like conditions in Kashmir after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s abrogation of Article 370 of India’s Constitution. RAJ K RAJ/ HINDuStAN tIMeS VIA GETTY IMAGES