Washington Report - August/September 2017 - Vol. XXXVI, No. 5

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TELLING THE TRUTH FOR 35 YEARS...

On Middle East Affairs

Volume XXXVI, No. 5

INTERPRETING THE MIDDLE EAST FOR NORTH AMERICANS

✮

August/September 2017

INTERPRETING NORTH AMERICA FOR THE MIDDLE EAST

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

10

8

With Cable Car and Other Planned Projects, Israel Tightens Grip on Arab East Jerusalem —Jonathan Cook

Two Million Gazans Swelter in the Dark—Two Views —Mohammed Omer, Ramzy Baroud

14

13

Ramadan Apartheid—Jeffery Abood

From the Gaza Strip to Brandeis University: A Perspective-Changing Experience —Oday Abdaljawwad

20

Crisis in the Gulf—Four Views —Graham E. Fuller, Camelia Entekhabifard, Jonathan Gorvett, Jesse Schatz

25 28 30 32

Senate Passes Iran, Russia Sanctions Bill —Shirl McArthur ISIS Ousted From Mosul—Two Views —Majed al-Samarai, Shyam Bhatia

No, Mr. Trump, Western Civilization Isn’t Threatened

By Terrorism—Rashmee Roshan Lall

Journalist Seymour Hersh’s New Syria Revelations Buried From View—Jonathan Cook

SPECIAL REPORTS

35 37

16

In Memoriam: Jack Shaheen (1935-2017): Help Continue His Quest for Fairness —Delinda C. Hanley

Despite Corruption Scandal, Malaysian Prime Minister Well Placed for Election Win—John Gee

Europeans Face the Surge of Refugees, Migrants and Other Global Challenges—Marvine Howe

68

In Memoriam: Rachelle Marshall (1927-2017) —David Glick

ON THE COVER: Iraqis flee their homes in Mosul’s Old City, July 4, 2017, during the government offensive to retake Iraq’s second largest city from ISIS fighters. See story p. 28.

FADEL SENNA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

toc_3-4_August September 2017 TOC 7/13/17 8:31 PM Page 4

(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

Red State Doctors: Why Immigration

Spoiling for a Wider War in Syria, Robert Parry, http://consortiumnews.com

OV-1

From Muslim-Majority Countries Matters for Rural America,

New Revelations of the U.S. in Iran, Ervand Abrahamian, http://lobelog.com

OV-3

How Israel Manages Its Message, Philip Giraldi, www.unz.com

OV-5

Freddie Whitlow, www.counterpunch.org

OV-10

Being Arab in Latin America, Lamia Oualalou, Agence Global

OV-11

At FBI, Mueller Oversaw Post-9/11 Torture, Jonathan Marshall, http://consortiumnews.com

OV-7

All Women, Azeezah Kanji, Toronto Star

The Lie at the Heart of the Jewish American

Gertrude Bell and the West’s Fatal Failure

Philip Roth Doesn’t Believe He’s an

to Understand the Arab World,

American Jew, Talya Zax, The Forward

DEPARTMENTS 5 Publishers’ Page

6 letters to the editor

40 MusliM aMerican activisM: MPAC Honors Voices of Courage and Conscience 44 huMan rights: USS Liberty Survivors Commemorate 50th Anniversary of Israeli Attack

45 Waging Peace: Similar Policies, Close U.S. Relations for New Saudi Crown Prince

57 diPloMatic doings: Afghanistan, Pakistan Ambassadors Agree on Need for Cooperation, But Not Much Else

58 Music & arts: New Book Sheds Needed Light on Iran-Pakistan Relations

OV-13

OV-8

OV-9

K.J. Wetherholt, www.thedailybeast.com

OV-14

63 other PeoPle’s Mail

65 the World looks at the Middle east — CARtooNS 66 book revieW: the Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and their Fight Against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s-1980s —Reviewed by Salim Yaqub 67 Middle east books and More 71 obituaries

73 2017 aet choir oF angels 26 indeX to advertisers

STAFF PHOTO NATHANIEL BAILEY

Consensus, Edo Konrad, Haaretz

When Feminism’s Wonders Aren’t for

Passersby browse at Middle East Books and More’s June 17 sidewalk sale. See p. 62.

pubs_5_Publishers Page 7/13/17 9:06 PM Page 5

American Educational Trust

It’s the Dog Days of Summer…

Publishers’ Page

the next generation of Americans could begin to see an end to the…

Here in the northern hemisphere. On the day we went to press, it felt like 105 degrees—outdoors. But most of us are able to spend our time in an air-conditioned environment. When it gets dark, we turn on the lights and go on about our business. We don’t consider that a luxury, just the way things are supposed to be. But, according to a just-released U.N. report, an 11-yearold child living in Gaza has not experienced more than 12 hours of electricity in a single day in his or her entire lifetime. Can we even imagine having to live through so many…

Scourge of Prejudice and Hate.

Speaking of Future Writers…

You can see in the pages of this issue that our summer interns have been hard at work attending numerous conferences and panel discussions swirling around DC. They’ve also researched and produced weekly roundups of the Middle East for our free weekly Internet newsletter. Visit our website, <www.washingtonreport.me>, to subscribe. Our interns have also inspired the entire staff with their powerful personal stories (see p. 14).

Years of Deprivation?

And deprivation resulting not from the whims—or increasingly, perhaps, revenge—of nature, but deliberately inflicted by one’s fellow human beings? For a decade or more? Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example—when much of the country’s civilian infrastructure was deliberately attacked and destroyed. Or since 2006—when Israel imposed its deadly blockade on the Gaza Strip after Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank alike elected Hamas to a parliamentary majority. Millions of individuals in the Arab world—those who survived—have had their lives and communities destroyed by war. Now Qatar, which has sponsored many humanitarian projects in Gaza, is under attack for its support of Hamas. Will the people of Gaza lose this friend and benefactor as well? Will electricity and clean water ever become staples that are taken for granted? Will the world simply stand by and watch?

A Cascade of Losses.

In addition to the friends we wrote about in last issue’s “Publishers’ Page,” we were devastated to learn of the death of longtime Washington Report contributor Rachelle Marshall (see p. 68). Even when her husband, Hugh, became ill and she had to devote all her time and energy to his care, we stayed in touch. We missed her meticulous updating of each of her articles as the deadline neared, and her notes after each issue telling us it was the best one yet—but we could always exchange emails or pick up the phone and call. Now AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

Excerpt from a Dec. 2, 2000 note from Rachelle Marshall.

her voice is silenced. We are so grateful that she was part of the Washington Report family for so many years, and that all her articles live on at the magazine’s website, <www.washingtonreport.me>.

Next Was “Uncle” Jack.

On July 8 we received an e-mail from Dr. Jack Shaheen’s beloved wife, Bernice, saying he had just been diagnosed with liver cancer. No more than a week later, he was gone. (See p. 17 for tributes by many of his friends and admirers.) This gentle scholar dedicated his life to trying to make sure Arabs and Muslims in the media were “projected no better, no worse, than anyone else.” That simple request was actually relayed in excellent obituaries in both The Washington Post and New York Times. Maybe Jack Shaheen’s magnificent work has given a nudge to publications that have often downplayed the achievements of Arabor Muslim-Americans. We can almost hear him say...

Keep Applying That Pressure!

Shaheen used to wish that more donors would contribute to his Mass Communications Scholarship Award. He wanted to encourage even more Arab Americans to enter this vital field. If every one of our readers donated to that fund, mentioned at the end of the “In Memoriam” on p. 18,

Survey Results (and Donations) Are In.

Thank you, Angels (see pp. 73 and 74), for your generous donations! Without you we would be forced to fold our tents.

Many of you filled out our survey, and your opinions matter to us as we look ahead. Most subscribers said, “I like the print best—you’re doing a great job!” or “Only magazine I subscribe to. Keep up good work. If I could afford more…

“I Would Give More.”

More than 60 percent of the readers who responded said they’d stop subscribing if we no longer published the print edition, which they prefer to the digital version of the magazine. OK, we get it! We will continue printing the magazine—especially since our readers are putting their money where their mouths are! Another asked for more “personal stories of people’s travels to the Mideast and Iran, hoping it would inspire Americans to go to see for themselves.” (Gotcha, see p. 13.) One of your favorite features is “Other People’s Mail.”

Indeed, we wish we had written those letters (see p. 63) ourselves! You also seem to like your own “Letters to the Editor,” so we know you’ll keep those coming.

One reader wrote, “Thanks for trying (to save the world)!” Well, we couldn’t do it without your help, so thank you, readers, for your continued support. Together we will...

Make A Difference Today!

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Managing Editor: News Editor: Assistant Editor:

Middle East Books and More Director:

Finance & Admin. Dir.: Art Director: Publisher: Executive Editor:

NATHANIEL BAILEY CHARLES R. CARTER RALPH U. SCHERER ANDREW I. KILLGORE (1919-2016) RICHARD H. CURTISS (1927-2013)

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (ISSN 8755-4917) 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 200091707. 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 non-profit foundation incorporated in Washington, DC by retired U.S. foreign service officers to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states.

AET’s Foreign Policy Committee has included former U.S. ambassadors, government officials, and members of Congress, including the late Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright and Republican Sen. Charles Percy, both former chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Members of AET’s Board of Directors and advisory committees receive no fees for their services.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs does not take partisan domestic political positions. As a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, it endorses U.N. Security Council Resolution 242’s landfor-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.

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Phone: (888) 881-5861 • Fax: (714) 226-9733 Printed in the USA

6

LetterstotheEditor

JANET McMAHON DELINDA C. HANLEY DALE SPRUSANSKY

WHO IS—OR IS NOT—A TERRORIST?

I just rang up CBS—WBZ-TV News, here in Boston—and had a brief conversation with the gentleman who answered the telephone in the newsroom. I asked why the reporters and commentators [covering the June 14 shooting at an Alexandria, VA ballpark] aren't using the word “terrorism” in their reports. Actually, I think I used “domestic terrorism.” This guy drives all the way from Illinois to come to Northern Virginia to shoot a Republican congressman, and no one describes the incident as terrorism. So, the gentleman from the newsroom said, “Yeah, they use terrorism when referring to Muslim terrorism.” Discrimination? He said he will pass my comments along, which is what they usually say. Just thought you should know.

Judith Howard, Norwood, MA Nor did we hear any speculation about how James T. Hodgkinson, who shot Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and three others, might have become “radicalized.”

The gunman apparently was upset over the election of President Donald Trump—had he come under the pernicious influence of Democratic propaganda? Should the purveyor of that propaganda be assassinated in a drone attack, as was American citizen Anwar alAwlaki (and, later, his 16-year-old son)?

Instead, individual motives typically are attributed to non-Muslim mass killers— such as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and others, including Hodgkinson, who clearly were motivated by ideology. We applaud your vigilence, and hope others will follow your example in holding the media accountable.

THE POWER OF FILM

In Honolulu, Hawaii, we (Sabeelers) have been pushing Palestinian films, particularly as our Honolulu Museum of Art’s Doris Duke Theater (DDT) has an annual Jewish Film Festival but had not shown one single Palestinian film that anyone can remember. Susequently the DDT has shown three Palesinian films.

“Open Bethlehem” was shown last November. Most of the audience didn't realize that Bethlehem had any problems at all, so it was an eye-opener, which is what we wanted. However, I felt that

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

there were too many unanswered questions, and that the equipment used did not give us clarity of hearing. This is sad because it's like telling a poor Gazan that he's not eating the best diet. I just wish they had more sophisticated equipment.

On the other hand, “5 Broken Cameras” came out very clearly, no problem there.

This week DDT played “Disturbing the Peace,” which attracted quite a large audience and raised many questions.

Good!

I saw “3,000 Nights,” which was a good film. However, the trailer showed the most violent parts of the movie, which I think was not wise because it turned a lot of people off. It turned me off, and I dreaded going to this film. The only reason I went was because I have been trying to get people to go to these films, so it doesn't look good if I don't go myself! I went and am grateful to my husband for supporting me and taking me, being that I'm such a coward.

I am sending your article about the films from Jenin to the director and assistant director of the DDT in hopes of enticing them.

With all best wishes to Palestinian filmmakers and their promoters.

Leatrice Fung, Honolulu, HI As a subscriber to our Acton Alerts, you received back in June our weekly email newsletter containing the story that appears on p. 60 of this issue. We are glad it will assist you in your efforts to have Palestinian films screened at the Honolulu Museum of Art! You might also be interested in filmmaker Tom Hayes’ remarks at our March conference, cosponsored with the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. The video and transcript are available on the conference website, <www.israellobbyand americanpolicy.org>, as well as on our own website,<www.washingtonreport. me>—where readers who do not already receive them can also sign up for our Action Alerts.

REJECTING DESPAIR IN SHATILA

Thanks to Kathryn Habib for her vivid and powerful description of Shatila camp today and its nearly seven decades of deprivation, mortal danger, and persistent, abundant, generous vitality. (See “Dropping by Shalila, a Wounded Place,” AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

lte_6-7_August/September 2017 Letters to Editor 7/13/17 5:23 PM Page 7

June/July 2017 Washington ReUnited Nations. In order to gain KEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS port, p. 24.) membership in the international COMING! In 1979 I visited Palestinian body, Israel promised that it Send your letters to the editor to the Washington camps in Beirut and saw enerwould allow the refugees it creReport, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 getic enterprises and initiatives ated in 1948 to return to their or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>. of many kinds. The refugees, alhomes. Instead it demolished ready three decades away from home, tion the many times they violated these more than 400 Palestinian villages and had established a furniture factory, conditions (Jeremiah 1:16, Amos 2:6-7), killed those who attempted to return. It nurses' training program, embroidery and their loss of the land for doing so has never defined its borders, and never workshops and dental clinic (open to im- (Jeremiah 11:10-11, Amos 3:11 & 5:27). intended to. It’s no surprise that it was a Although God restored the land to close ally of apartheid South Africa. poverished Lebanese as well as Palestinians). There was also a workshop tai- some of the Hebrews after the Assyrian What is a surprise is that Israel is not loring prosthetic limbs—many of them and Babylonian conquests and Hebrew considered a rogue state by those quite small—for victims of cluster bombs. exiles, their continued disobedience led whose stated principles it has violated Within a few years of that visit, most of to the evidently final loss of the land with time and again. those institutions would be only memo- the Roman conquest in 63 BC. Never ries. Laws severely limiting both internal again in the Bible does God promise or FROM A LONG-TIME FRIEND construction and outside employment, give the land to the Jewish people. So, I believe that I began subscribing to your combined with the withholding of basic contest the claim that God gave the land publication some time in the mid-1980s. I municipal services, have driven steady to the Jews, ancient or modern. It's a have kept in touch with you ever since, deterioration of buildings and infrastruc- half-truth, an over-simplification that at- visited with you in Washington, and even ture. Year by year, living conditions have tempts to justify Israel's settlement and made a presentation at one of your visibly worsened. Yet today Habib is able colonization of Palestinian land, and its major gatherings. As one or two of your to report that the vibrant society of the ethnic cleansing of the legal owners of leaders know, I am an Australian Lutheran clergy who has lived in the U.S. camps continues to show its rejection of that land.

Gregory DeSylva, Rhinebeck, NY since mid-1979, been to 60 countries, despair through its commitment to the fuThank you for your biblical clarification and worked in 32 of them. ture. Children remain the treasures of And ever since I began subscribing to Palestinian communities, and that loving of the argument that God gave the land commitment carries the society forward of Israel to the Jews. On a more secular your publication, I have devoted a lot of level, there’s the matter of Israel’s false energy and effort to trying to get other under the most desperate conditions.

Anything we in North America can do promises to organizations such as the people to subscribe to it and study it.

You have been most kind in that you to support the work that the Palestinians have continued to send me a package of are doing to construct their future will about six copies (more than that to begin show them that we, too, have faith in that with) that I might give to prospective submission to prepare a strong tomorrow for scribers. their community and their nation.

I am now 86 years of age, and withJane Power, via e-mail drawing from my ministry. I have less Not only can we support the work of contact with people “out there,” and I Palestinians living under exile and occuthink it would be appropriate if you dispation, but we can learn a great deal continued sending me those sample from them as well. copies. However, I would be most happy GOD’S EXPIRED PROMISE to receive a single copy each month— According to a 2013 Pew Research poll, and in addition to reading it, I would 44 percent of the U.S. general public show it to others and encourage them to replied “yes” to the question, “Was Israel subscribe. given to the Jewish people by God?” You dear people have done a wonderOnly 34 percent said “no,” and 22 perful job of making known what has been cent didn't know or don't believe in God. taking place in the Middle East during OTHER VOICES is an optional 16-page supThis is significant in view of the massive the past century. Rest assured that your plement available only to subscribers of the Washsupport the U.S. gives Israel in its conpublication contains treasures of inforington Report on Middle East Affairs. For an addiflict with the Palestinians. mation. It is sorely needed! tional $15 per year (see postcard insert for Many Jewish settlers also use the beHarry Wendt, Crossways International, Washington Report subscription rates), sublief that God gave the land to the Jews Minneapolis, MN scribers will receive Other Voices inside each issue as justification for their settlements. But As the old song goes, “We belong to a of their Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. this claim omits the conditions upon mutual admiration society!” We are grateBack issues of both publications are available. which this “land grant” was made— ful for your decades of support and enTo subscribe telephone 1 (888) 881-5861, fax things like the Jews shall not worship couragement, and it was most kind of you (714) 226-9733, e-mail circulation@wrmea. org>, other gods, they shall be just and comto speak at our 2006 fund-raiser kicking off or write to P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809passionate, and they shall not oppress our 25th anniversary. Here we are, more 1056. the orphan, widow, alien and the poor than a decade later, still going strong—as (Zechariah 7:9-11). It also does not menyou yourself clearly are as well! ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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The Nakba Continues

With Cable Car and Other Planned Projects, Israel Tightens Grip on Arab East Jerusalem

By Jonathan Cook

PALESTINIAN LEADERS HAVE denounced new construction projects they say are intended to further tighten Israel’s grip on occupied East Jerusalem and its holy places, including the incendiary site of al-Aqsa Mosque.

The most elaborate plan is for a cable car to bring thousands of visitors an hour to the Western Wall and its Jewish prayer plaza immediately below the Haram Al-Sharif, a compound containing alAqsa and the golden-topped Dome of the Rock.

The $56 million project was unveiled at a late May meeting of the Israeli cabinet in tunnels below Haram Al-Sharif. It was the first time the cabinet has met in Jerusalem’s Old City, which Israel annexed in violation of international law.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called the meeting in the provocative location to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Israel’s illegal occupation of East Jerusalem following its launching of the 1967 Six-Day War. Palestinians, meanwhile, have expressed mounting concern that Netanyahu’s stated intention to “strengthen Jerusalem” conceals a policy of driving out Palestinians and seizing control over the alAqsa compound. Israel claims two ancient Jewish temples are built under the mosque.

Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. He is the author of Blood and Religion and Israel and the Clash of Civilisations (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More).

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

WWW.SKYSCRAPERCITY.COM

An artist’s rendering of Israel’s planned cable car project.

In June, Jibril Rajoub, a senior Palestinian Authority official, told Israeli TV that Netanyahu’s government had to stop treating the site as though it were under Israeli sovereignty. “If you want to create an explosion, just say ‘It’s ours, it’s ours,’” he said.

However, in the same program, Rajoub suggested the PA might agree to Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall. The PA appealed in late May to the United Nations Security Council to take action to protect Jerusalem from what it called Israeli attempts to “Judaize” the city.

Officials believe Israel is seeking to foil any future peace-making efforts by preventing East Jerusalem from ever becoming the capital of a Palestinian state.

President Donald Trump, who visited East Jerusalem as part of a visit to the region in May, has promised he will soon unveil the “ultimate deal” to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In June he signed a waiver delaying moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, on the grounds that it would harm prospects for such a deal.

In addition to the cable car, Netanyahu’s government announced a $14 million elevator and underground passageway to facilitate access for disabled and elderly people to the Western Wall, a retaining wall of the al-Aqsa compound and a Jewish holy site.

Longer term, Israel hopes to build a subterranean station connecting the site by express train from Tel Aviv. Netanyahu told his ministers the various projects would strengthen the Jewish people’s connection to the city.

These latest moves follow figures showing that Israeli authorities have been allowing Jewish ultra-nationalists to visit the al-Aqsa compound in record numbers.

Palestinians have long complained that Jewish extremists are being allowed to pray at the site, in contravention of agreements, and that they pose a danger because many support destroying alAqsa and building a Jewish temple in its place.

In June, during Ramadan, tensions escalated as Jewish extremists continued to be allowed to visit the site in large numbers.

Clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians in the compound resulted in a number of arrests.

The United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, passed a resolution in May reaffirming that East Jerusalem is occupied, and that “illegal practices” by Israel were threatening historical and cultural sites there.

“Step by step, Israel is finding ways to take over al-Aqsa,” said AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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Khalil Tufakji, a Palestinian geographer in Jerusalem and director of the Arab Studies Society’s mapping department, which monitors settler activity.

He added: “Israel is sending a message to the Palestinians and to Jordan [whose officials formally oversee the site] that ‘al-Aqsa is no longer yours. We can enter and we can do as we please there.’”

The cable car, due to be completed in four years, is supposed to transport some 3,000 visitors an hour from West Jerusalem to an entrance in the Old City walls next to al-Aqsa. The cable car will pass directly over Palestinian homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.

Yariv Levin, the tourism minister, called it a “revolutionary project” that would serve as “an exceptional tourist attraction.”

Yonatan Mizrachi, who heads Emek Shaveh, a group of archeologists who oppose the misuse of tourism and archeology, warned that the cable car would also connect to a controversial tourism site in Silwan run by an Israeli settler organization, Elad.

The City of David complex, close to alAqsa, has taken over a large area of Silwan, damaged surrounding Palestinian homes with underground excavations, and encouraged large numbers of settlers to move into the area, backed by armed guards.

“This is yet another element in an Israeli policy of divorcing the Old City from its Palestinian hinterland, making it seem exclusively Jewish to visitors,” Mizrachi said. “It is all about changing the Old City’s character irreversibly.”

The cable car project, initially championed

by Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, was scrapped two years ago after the French firm due to construct it pulled out, following warnings from the French Foreign Ministry of the likely diplomatic fallout.

Israel’s efforts to bring larger numbers of Jews into the Old City were highlighted in May with a new government-sponsored program of ceremonies at the Western Wall.

A group of 300 students from the U.S., Britain and France became the first to “pledge allegiance to the Jewish people” at the spot, echoing a loyalty oath conducted at the Wall by newly drafted Israeli soldiers.

At the ceremony, the students vowed to “forge a covenant with Jerusalem.”

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

“A COVENANT WITH JERUSALEM”

At the same cabinet meeting at which the cable car and lift were approved, noted Tufakji, plans were announced to apply budgetary pressures to Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem to force them to switch to the Israeli curriculum.

That has alarmed Palestinian leaders, who say the curriculum—overseen by Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a settler leader—erases Palestinian connections to Jerusalem and teaches only Zionist history.

“Israel taking control of the Palestinian schools is very dangerous,” Tufakji said.

“They want to change the thinking of the children, to educate them that Israel has a natural right to Jerusalem.”

That was the message from Netanyahu, too, on May 24, when Israel celebrated “Jerusalem Day,” an annual show of force by the Israeli right in East Jerusalem.

Tens of thousands of ultra-nationalists marched through Palestinian neighborhoods, close to al-Aqsa, forcing residents into hiding and traders to shut shops.

In an address to mark the occasion, Netanyahu said East Jerusalem had been “desolate” and “neglected” before Israel occupied it. He added that the al-Aqsa Mosque compound—or what he called Temple Mount—would “always remain under Israeli sovereignty.”

Under pressure from Israel, Jerusalem’s Islamic authorities have been forced to allow access to the mosque compound for settlers

and ultra-nationalist Jews, backed by Israeli police.

Israeli figures show that some 1,000 Jews entered the compound on Jerusalem Day, the largest number in a single day in decades. That followed the largest-ever annual number of visits by settlers, at nearly 15,000, in 2016.

Sheikh Azzam Khatib Tamimi, head of the Waqf, an Islamic authority in charge of alAqsa, protested in an interview with the Haaretz daily that the Jewish visitors “don’t come innocently as tourists. They are extremists…Their purpose is to foment conflict.”

He added that they had the blessing of Israeli officials. “The government isn’t preventing extremists from performing ceremonies [praying] here. The police encourage them.”

In April, during the Jewish Passover holiday, police permitted settlers to sacrifice a lamb close to al-Aqsa for the first time—to them, part of a ceremony associated with building a Jewish temple where al-Aqsa stands.

By contrast, Tamimi pointed out, Waqf officials were regularly banned from entering the compound and Israel had outlawed Islamic groups associated with al-Aqsa. The vast majority of Palestinians can no longer reach the site because of Israeli movement restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza.

According to Tufakji, Israel was increasingly treating outlying areas of East Jerusalem—located outside the wall Israel built through the Continued on p. 34

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Mail your U.S. Tax-Deductible check to our American Foundation: Friends of UPMRC, Inc PO Box 450554 • Atlanta, GA 31145 For more information call: (404) 441-2702 or e-mail: fabuakel@gmail.com WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Two Views

Two Million Gazans Swelter in the Dark

MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The unremitting electric blackouts— sometimes for as long as 20 to 22 hours a day—along with ill-equipped hospitals and closed borders, mean that many people in Gaza literally face death as a result of Israel’s collective punishment.

In late June, three seriously ill infants died after the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) denied their families permission to take their babies to Israel for treatment, Hamas claimed.

Bara Ghaben, Ibrahim Tbeil and Mus'ab Araeer, all under a year old, suffered from congenital heart conditions not treatable in the hospitals of Gaza, where health care is on the brink of collapse.

More patients, including infants, face the same fate if referrals for treatment outside the coastal enclave are not expedited, Gaza’s Deputy Health Minister Yousuf Abu Rish said in early July. He charged that the recent spike in delayed A man removes broken glass from his window following an Israeli air strike on Gaza City, June referrals is part of the Fatah-run PA’s 27, 2017. overall efforts to destabilize Hamas.

The civilians who live in Gaza have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. “We have been pummeled with all manner of humiliations, homelessness, unemployment,

By Mohammed Omer wage-cuts, blackouts, bombings, commercial blockade and medical aid denial for our sick elderly and children,” said Abu Kareem “THE SIEGE HAS reached a level we have never known beof Gaza City, who preferred not to give his last name, fearing he fore,” says Umm Fady, a 29-year-old mother, as she leaves for would lose the remaining 60 percent of his PA salary.

Nasser hospital, where she is taking her daughter for treatment In April, President Mahmoud Abbas announced a 30 to 40 perof a neurological disorder. cent salary cut for PA employees in Gaza. Due to the Gaza blockThe extra electrical activity taking place inside her daughter’s ade imposed by Israel, and now Egypt, over the past 11 years body is happening at a time when Gaza faces one of its worst poverty has become rife and unemployment is sky-high, making power outages since 2006, when the Israeli military bombed its PA salaries a crucial source of income in Gaza. main power plant in the central Gaza Strip. More than a decade Exacerbating the situation is the fact that Gaza-Ramallah relater, Gaza’s two million residents continue to suffer long-term lations currently are at an historic low. Palestinian President water shortages, rationing of domestic and agricultural supplies, Abbas recently has been escalating his quiet war to undermine and a myriad of health-related problems. and destroy Hamas’ hold on the Gaza Strip, suffocating the Gaza people by cutting power supplies and medical aid, and Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports regularly on the Gaza Strip. Follow him on Twitter: @MoGaza. slashing wages. Apparently the PA has its own version of politi-

Gaza in the Dark

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cal collective punishment.

“That indicates to me that a war is forthcoming, sooner rather than later,” said Abu Kareem. His fear reflects the views of many Gazans, who have already survived several Israeli military assaults.

In June, at Abbas’ request, Israel began reducing its electricity feed to Gaza. According to the Palestinian Energy Authority, the Israel Electric Corporation has reduced by 8 megawatts, the 120 megawatts it supplies daily to the Gaza Strip. Along with the 30 megawatts of electricity it receives from Egypt, Gazans have been trying to survive on 150 megawatts of power—when its basic electrical requirement is 500 megawats.

This further reduction comes as the Middle East suffered a debilitating heat wave in July. Nowhere was the suffering greater than in Gaza, which was without electricity for air conditioning for 23 out of 24 hours a day.

The PA, which reimburses Israel for Gaza’s electric bill, informed Israel it would cover only 70 percent of Gaza’s monthly bill. It also refused to cut the taxes it imposes on fuel used to run Gaza’s power plants.

Israel’s security cabinet agreed to implement the reduction, stating that Israel would not cover the shortfall in electric payments.

The PA said that the power cuts were the result of the refusal by the de facto Hamas government to reimburse the PA for Gaza’s use of electricity, even after collecting revenues from the few Gaza residents who could afford to pay for their electricity.

Many Gazans view these moves by the PA as an attempt to turn people away from Hamas, the democratically elected party—in both Gaza and the West Bank—which has controlled Gaza since 2007.

Gaza’s ongoing power cuts translate to ever-worsening health services, increasing poverty, acute and chronic illnessess, and national feelings of hopelessness as Israel continues its attempts to drive Palestinians from their homeland. It is unclear how long Gaza hospitals can function on current supplies levels. For several years the United Nations has helped pay for the costs of fuel and electricity for hospitals and sanitation centers.

However, the world’s attention is not focused on Gaza at the moment, but rather on famine in Yemen, South Sudan and Somalia, and ongoing unrest in Syria and Libya. Most of the Arab media’s attention currently is focused on the GCC diplomatic crisis. Not even news about the PA’s June cuts to health funding in Gaza—from around $4 million a month to $500,000 a month— and its effects on Gaza’s besieged civilians seems to interest the regional media.

Everyone seems to have forgotten, or fallen silent, about the two million civilians trying to survive under Israel’s land, sea and air siege of Gaza.

As clearly as Israel wishes to destroy any chance of a free Palestine, it is clear the PA’s goal is to smash Hamas’ de facto authority, and force it out of the political arena. Despite the PA’s efforts, however, Hamas seems able to hold its own. Meanwhile, it publicly aUGUSt/SePteMber 2017

blames Abbas and the PA for strangling the besieged people of Gaza—the very people who have lost their children due to shortages of electricity, clean water and adequate medical facilities.

Yet one has to wonder whether either political party really cares about Gaza’s children, elderly and sick, or a quality future for Gaza.

“Hamas and PA seem to blame each other,” Abu Kareem reflects, “but Israel should also be responsible—as the occupying power—for what is happening in Gaza.”

For the average citizens of Gaza, forced to live under blockade and blackout, there seems to be no positive light on the horizon. “Hello,” Abu Kareem cries out, “is anybody there?”

Pushing Gaza to Suicide: The Politics Of Humiliation

By Ramzy Baroud

MOHAMMED ABED IS a 28-year-old taxi driver from the village of Qarara, near the town of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He has no teeth.

Lack of medical care and proper dentistry work cost him all of his teeth, which rotted and decayed at a very young age. Yet his dire financial needs prevented him from acquiring dentures. His community eventually pitched in, collecting the few hundred dollars needed for Mohammed to finally be able to eat.

Mohammed is not unemployed. He works 10 hours, sometimes more, every single day. The old taxi he drives between Khan Younis and Gaza City is owned by someone else. Mohammed’s entire daily salary ranges from 20 to 25 shekels, about 6 dollars.

Raising a family with four children on such a meager income made it impossible for Mohammed to think of such seemingly extraneous expenses, such as fixing his teeth or acquiring dentures.

Strange as it may seem, Mohammed is somewhat lucky.

Unemployment in Gaza is among the highest in the world, presently estimated at 44 percent. Those who are “employed,” like Mohammed, still struggle to survive. Eighty percent of all Gazans are dependent on humanitarian assistance.

In 2015, the U.N. had warned that Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020. At the time, all aspects of life had testified to that fact: lack of reliable electricity supply, polluted water, Israel’s military seizure of much of the Gaza Strip’s arable land, restricting the movement of fishermen and so on.

An Israeli military siege on Gaza has extended for over 10 years, and the situation continues to deteriorate.

A Red Cross report last May warned of another “looming crisis” in the public health sector, due to the lack of electricity.

The energy crisis has extended from electricity supplies to

Ramzy Baroud is an American-Arab journalist, media consultant, author, internationally syndicated columnist, and, since 1999, editor of Palestine Chronicle. His most recent book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More).

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even cooking gas.

Last February Israel cut cooking gas supplies to the Strip in half.

“The cooking gas stations stopped accepting empty gas cylinders because their tanks are empty,” according to the chairman of the Petroleum and Gas Owners Association of the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud Shawa. He described the situation as “very critical.”

In April, the Mahmoud Abbas-controlled Palestinian Authority in Ramallah decided to reduce the salaries of tens of thousands of its employees in the Gaza Strip.

The money provided by the PA had played an essential role in keeping the struggling economy afloat. With most employees receiving half—or less—of their salaries, the barely functioning Gaza economy is dying.

“H” is a university professor and his wife, “S,” is a doctor. The middle-class couple with five children has lived a fairly comfortable life in the Strip, even during the early years of the siege. Now, they tell me they are counting their money very carefully so as to avoid the fate of most Gazans.

“S”‘s salary comes from Ramallah. She is now only able to claim $350 from what was once a significantly higher pay. “H” does not receive his money from the West Bank’s authority, but his salary was slashed by half anyway, since most of the students are now too poor to pay for their tuition.

Mu’in, who lives in the Nuseirat refugee camp, is worse off. A retired teacher, with a pension that barely reaches $200 a month, Mu’in is struggling to put food on the table. An educated father of four unemployed adult sons and a wife recovering from a stroke who can barely walk, Mu’in lives mostly on hand-outs.

With no access to the West Bank due to the Israeli siege, and with severe restrictions on movement via the Rafah-Egypt border, Gaza is living through its darkest days. Literally. Starting June 11, Israel began reducing the electricity supply to the impoverished Strip, as per the request of Abbas’ Palestinian Authority.

The results are devastating. Gaza households now receive 2 to 3 hours of 12

electricity per day, and not even at fixed hours.

“S” told me that her family is constantly on alert. “When electricity arrives at any time of the day or night, we all spring into action,” she said. “All batteries must be charged as quickly as possible and the laundry must be done, even at 3 in the morning.”

But Gazans are survivors. They have endured such hardships for years and, somehow, they have subsisted. But cancer patients cannot survive on mere strength of character.

Rania, who lives in Gaza City, is a mother of three. She has been struggling with breast cancer for a year. With no chemotherapy available in Gaza’s barely functioning hospitals, she has taken the arduous journey from Gaza to Jerusalem every time she has needed to carry out the life-saving procedure.

That is, until Israel decided not to issue new permits to Gaza’s terminally ill patients, some of whom have died waiting for permits and, others—like Rania—who are still hoping for a miracle before cancer spreads through the rest of their bodies.

But Israel and Egypt are not the only culprits. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is using the siege as a bargaining chip to put pressure on its rival, Hamas, which has controlled the besieged Strip for 10 years.

Hamas, on the other hand, is reportedly seeking a partnership with its old foe, Mohammed Dahlan, to ease the Gaza siege through Egypt in exchange for making him the head of a committee that is in charge of Gaza’s external affairs.

Dahlan is also a foe of Abbas, both fighting over the leadership of the Fatah party for years.

Abbas’ requests to Israel to put pressure on Gaza via electricity reduction, together with his earlier salary cuts, are meant to push Hamas out of its proposed alliance with Dahlan.

Palestinians in Gaza are suffering; in fact, dying.

To think that Palestinian “leaders” are actually involved in tightening or manipulating the siege to exact political conces-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

sions from one another is dismaying.

While Israel is invested in maintaining the Palestinian rift so that it continues with its own illegal settlement policies in the West Bank and Jerusalem unhindered, Palestinians are blinded by pitiful personal interests and worthless “control” over occupied land.

In this political struggle, the likes of Mohammed, “H,” “S” and cancer-ridden Rania— together with two million others—seem to be of no significance.

Magdalena Mughrabi, deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, sounded the alarm on June 14, when she warned that “the latest power cuts risk turning an already dire situation into a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe.

“For 10 years, the siege has unlawfully deprived Palestinians in Gaza of their most basic rights and necessities. Under the burden of the illegal blockade and three armed conflicts, the economy has sharply declined and humanitarian conditions have deteriorated severely,” she said.

Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch director for the region, rejected the notion that the Israelis’ cut of electricity supplies to Gaza are made as per the Palestinian Authority’s request.

“Israel controls the borders, the airspace, the waters of Gaza, so Israel has an obligation that goes beyond merely responding to a request from Palestinian authorities,” Shakir said.

Between Israel’s dismissal of international calls to end the siege and Palestinians’ pathetic power game, Gazans are left alone, unable to move freely or live even according to the lowest acceptable living standards.

Fatima, a 52-year-old mother from Rafah, told me that she tried to kill herself a few days ago, if it were not for her children wrestling the knife away.

When I told Fatima that she has so much to live for, she chuckled and said nothing.

The suicide rate in the Strip is at an alltime high, and despair is believed to be the main factor behind the alarming phenomenon. ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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Special Report

Ramadan Apartheid

Jeffery Abood is author of A Great Cloud of Witnesses: The Catholic Church’s Experience in the Holy Land.

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

PHOTO J. ABO0D

THIS PAST RAMADAN in Jerusalem, Israel’s “separate and unequal” system of apartheid was on full display.

The Jerusalem Light Rail system, which began operation in 2011, links many of the Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank (all of which are illegal according to international law) directly with Jerusalem. Each of these settlements, the rail system that connects them, and the Old City of Jerusalem are located on the Palestinian side of the Green Line. This rail system makes visiting the Old City easy, quick, and cheap—but only for Jewish settlers. Because it only has stops in the settlements, it is not available to Palestinian residents of the West Bank. In Israel itself, the entire public transportation system shuts down hours before the Jewish sabbath begins at sunset on Fridays, and does not reopen until after sunset the next day.

This year, the Israeli government initially issued more permits that usual to Muslim worshippers for travel to Jerusalem on the first Friday of Ramadan to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. This was made possible by lowering the age limit for Palestinian males to visit Jerusalem from 55 and older to 40 and older. Worshippers were allowed to board specially designated Israeli buses in Bethlehem and surrounding areas.

The buses were then driven to the Old City along roads closed off by barricades, as friendly looking police directed Israeli traffic around the closures. Once inside the closed-off areas of the Old City, far behind police barricades, worshippers were unloaded from the buses—only to be confronted with an array of armed soldiers and attack dogs as they made their way to prayer.

Later that weekend, many of the remaining travel permits were being torn up by Israeli soldiers at the various checkpoints.

The Israeli Civil Administration, a unit of Israel’s Defense Ministry, agreed that up to 100 Palestinians from Gaza over 55 years old were eligible for one-day permits to pray at al-Aqsa mosque each Friday during Ramadan. Between 16,000 and 17,000 Gazans applied for those permits, according to Mohammed Maqadmeh, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Gaza. “It’s like a lottery,” Maqadmeh told Al Jazeera.

“Every week, we select 100 different people. A very small number of people are allowed to go to Jerusalem and pray during Ramadan...Twenty years ago, Gaza residents could come to alAqsa freely. But now it is like a different world. It feels far away, as far away as Mecca.”

On the second Friday of Ramadan, Israeli authorities closed roads and bus stations within nearly a mile of the Damascus

By Jeffery Abood

A young Palestinian near Bili'n exhibits sumud (steadfast perseverance) as he replants a previously destroyed field against the background of Israel’s annexation wall.

Gate, the main entrance to the Old City for Muslim worshippers.

As a result, people were forced to walk a long distance in the heat, down crowded streets, past deserted bus stations, heavily manned checkpoints and armed soldiers. A far cry from the easy access enjoyed by the Jewish settler population.

Israel is increasingly denying access to religious sites to Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike, while allowing unfettered access to religious sites for Jewish worshippers. Given its treatment of the faithful during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, it is highly unlikely that Israel will honor its promise to ensure freedom of religion to all. ■

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Special Report

From the Gaza Strip to Brandeis University: A Perspective-Changing Experience

By Oday Abdaljawwad

PO. ADDALJAWWAY

MY NAME IS Oday Abdalfront the fear inside me that jawwad. I am a Palestinian has been building for most of who grew up in Gaza and my life, and get to know this moved to the U.S. about a Jewish community. year ago for my master’s Four months later, I finally degree. My journey from made it to the U.S. My first Gaza to the U.S.—and to day of classes at Brandeis Brandeis University, in parwas Aug. 24, 2016. Needless ticular—wasn’t an easy to say, my concerns were not one. the normal ones of every new After finishing my understudent—they were deeper. I graduate degree in English was scared of being exliterature from the Islamic cluded, scared of being emoUniversity of Gaza, I aptionally defensive every time plied for a Fulbright scholarthe Palestinian-Israeli conflict ship to pursue my M.A. at was mentioned. an American university.

The first day of school went During the application smoothly. Going home, I was process, participants were uncertain which school shutasked to list four U.S. unitle to take, so I asked a girl for versities they would like to directions. It turned out we The author’s selfie of himself (front) with friends at a Passover Seder in Boston. attend, keeping in mind that were going to the same part the first school in their lists of the city, so I waited with her would be considered their first choice. At searching universities that offer MAs in for the right shuttle. the top of my list was Brandeis.

Conflict Resolution. Initially, my Palestinian “Where are you from, by the way?” she A week later, I received an e-mail from identity felt very threatened seeing Hebrew asked. my Fulbright supervisor saying, “Hey letters on the university’s logo. My heart “Palestine! And you?”

Oday! Brandeis is a great school, and the started beating very quickly, and Brandeis “Israel!” program you’re applying for is one of the seemed an impossible option for me.

We both laughed, then hugged each top 10 Conflict Resolution programs in the One of my friends who studied Interna- other. On the shuttle, we had an endless U.S. However, considering where you’re tional Relations in the U.S. hooked me up conversation about how great food back coming from we think we should at least with his American friend who studied Con- HOME is. And how horrible the falafel and let you know that Brandeis is a Jewish uni- flict Resolution at Portland State University the hummus are here in America comversity.” in Oregon. I e-mailed him asking him to pared to Palestine and Israel. Just before “I appreciate your valid concerns,” I re- recommend schools, and Brandeis was at Maya reached her destination and got off sponded, “but actually the main reason the top of his list. “It can’t be a coinci- the bus she said, “There is hope. We just why I chose Brandeis is because it’s Jew- dence,” I said to myself. “It must be a sign.” need more people like you and me.” ish.” I had come upon Brandeis while reSo I re-visited the Brandeis website and I arrived home—and for the first time in looked at its Conflict Resolution program— the past four months, I felt light. All my and I was impressed. I decided that if I am fears faded away. In the months before I Oday Abdaljawwad is a Fulbright scholar interning this summer at the Washington Re- going to the U.S., I must make it a new ex- got to Brandeis I had built a thousand sceperience on every level. I decided to con- narios of what my first encounter with an port on Middle east affairs.

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Israeli would be like. Then I met one, and she helped navigate me on my way home.

This was symbolic to me.

On the second day of school, I met with Regine, a Filipino Muslim student in one of my classes. She had a great interest in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, since she lived in the West Bank for three months.

During our first conversation, we both realized how progressive our perspective is.

Together we approached an Israeli classmate, who later invited us to a synagogue he used to attend in Boston. Regine and I were the first Muslims to be invited there.

Honestly speaking, I was so worried about how people in the synagogue would perceive me as a Palestinian and as a Muslim. Yet once again, the experience proved my worries and concerns wrong.

People there were so friendly to us, and offered us food they grew in their gardens as a way of showing love and kindness.

Following a conversation about the Torah with the synagogue’s rabbi, Regine and I

were amazed by the tremendous similarities between Islam and Judaism. z In addition to learning about the Torah, I got to attend some Jewish holiday celebrations that gave me the opportunity to increase my knowledge and understanding of the Jewish community. The very first Jewish holiday I experienced was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. On a beautiful breezy fall day, Regine and I walked around the streets of Cambridge with progressive Jews from Jewish Voice for Peace singing peace songs in both Hebrew and in English. One Rosh Hashanah custom is Tashlikh, where people gather around a body of flowing water and empty their pockets or throw stones into the water, symbolically casting off their sins. On a bridge over the Charles River, people spoke about the necessity of ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

Seeing Jewish people acknowledging the crimes of Israel against Palestinians left me speechless.

My second favorite Jewish holiday was Sukkot, which commemorates the 40 years the children of Israel wandered in the desert, living in temporary shelters.

Hence, on Sukkot people build kits and sleep in them. I got involved in building kits with some Jewish friends, and we spent the whole night in our kit. We worked together, ate together and prayed together.

This kit-building process was a real expression of coexistence.

It is so sad how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been taken to a religious level, making it a Muslim-Jewish conflict. That is why I’m so grateful for this enlightening year at Brandeis which gave me a chance to learn about Judaism. I have made so many Jewish friends, who later told me that they thought all Palestinians were Jew-haters. I came all the way from Gaza to Brandeis to get my MA in Conflict Resolution—but teaching Jewish people about Palestine and Palestinians, and learning from them about Judaism, was just as important. ■

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AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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In Memoriam

Prof. Jack Shaheen (1935-2017): Help Continue His Quest for Fairness

By Delinda C. Hanley

PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

2002 and produced by Anisa Mehdi, another hero toiling to enhance the media’s depiction of Arabs—Shaheen described his family: “We worked the mines, my grandfather, my uncles. My uncles, all three, served in the military.” He told Koppel that he was the first in his family to attend college, and in order to help him continue his education his single mother “scrubbed floors in the school and was a cashier in the movie theater.” His grandmother took him to the movies every Saturday morning, launching his lifelong love of film.

After serving in the Army in Germany, Shaheen went back to school and, in 1964, earned a master’s degree in theater arts from Pennsylvania State University. He married Bernice Rafeedie in 1966 and went on to complete a doctorate in communications from the University of Missouri in 1969. He taught mass communications at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville from 1969 until 1994, when he and Bernice retired to Hilton Head, SC. In SIUE’s notice about Shaheen’s death, Dean Greg Drs. Jack Shaheen and Hanan Ashrawi spoke at “The Israel Lobby and American Policy” conference on March 24, 2017 at the National Press Club in Wash- Budzban wrote, “As a committed internationalist and a ington, DC. devoted humanist, Dr. Shaheen is considered to be a legend on our campus.” He also noted that Shaheen had recently given a keynote speech at SIUE’s “Diversity Amidst We do not want our children to inherit the TV Arab image. As Adversity” conference, April 3-6, 2017, sharing with a new genconcerned men and women of good will, we should continue to eration of communications students his “undying commitment to monitor programs and regularly seek out dialogue with TV exsocial justice and human rights.” Budzban said Shaheen “enecutives, writers, and directors. The TV stereotype will be bancouraged students to always seek ways to make the world a betished only if we work together in the quest for fairness. Keep in ter place for everyone.” Shaheen told the students, “I always say mind this law of physics: Nothing percolates unless you apply a that the worst thing you could do is to remain silent about these whole lot of heat. issues. If you can do something to change even one person’s —Jack Shaheen, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, mind, you have done your job.”

Aug. 12, 1985, p. 6 At the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s yearly conference in Washington, DC, Jack Shaheen often told the DR. JACK SHAHEEN, a trail-blazing Arab-American media exstory about how he became the world’s expert on racial stereopert, scholar, activist and writer, died suddenly of cancer on July typing of Arabs. It all started one Saturday morning during the 9. His death shocked and saddened this magazine and the ensummer of 1974, when his children, (Michael, then 6, and tire Arab- and Muslim-American community Shaheen spent his Michele, 5) called for him to come to the TV: “Daddy, Daddy, career defending. they’ve got bad Arabs on!” That led to his discovery that SaturShaheen was born in Pittsburgh to Lebanese Christian immiday morning wrestling shows and cartoons like Porky Pig, Popgrants and grew up in the nearby steel town of Clairton, PA. In eye and Bugs Bunny all had negative images of ugly, violent an ABC News “Nightline” interview with Ted Koppel—aired in Arabs. He gave Michael and Michele an assignment and they became “monitors” of Saturday morning cartoons “looking for Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. bad, evil Arabs.”

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A one-year Fulbright scholarship quickly followed, and it was while he was teaching at the American University of Beirut in 1974 that he finally met his first Muslims and—surprise— they were nothing like those horrible caricatures on TV...

Shaheen told another story about that seminal year in Beirut on March 24, a few days before delivering his SIUE keynote, when he addressed our “Israel Lobby and American Policy” conference, co-hosted with the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. One of the very few speakers we’ve asked to speak twice at our four conferences, he was lauded and applauded by a subsequent speaker: “Let’s give it up for godfather, Arab uncle extraordinaire,” Jack Shaheen.

Before launching into his devastating rebuke of the “peddlers of prejudice” in film and TV shows, and giving five concrete suggestions to eliminate anti-Muslim and anti-Arab stereotypes (which you can watch on our YouTube channel or read in our May 2017 issue), he gave a touching testimonial: ”My heart belongs with the

Washington Report, mainly because the first speech I ever gave on stereotyping was in Beirut [during that Fulbright gig] and the man who sat in the front row” was Richard Curtiss, who later co-founded the Washington Report. Shaheen credited AUB, his students, and colleagues like Curtiss with inspiring him to study negative stereotyping of Arabs.

When his family returned to the U.S. in 1975, Shaheen began to search for articles or books on the Arab image in American pop culture. “I found nothing,” he said.

He also began watching TV dramas and comedies, and—with the help of Bernice— cataloging them. He wrote his first article about the TV Arab, “But it took three years and about 50 rejection letters before an American publication would publish an article on how TV projected Arabs,” he noted.

After the launch of the Washington Report in 1982, Shaheen wrote numerous articles about his research and popular films and TV shows that were published in this magazine. We also printed reviews of his influential books, The TV Arab (1984), an

eight-year study of hundreds of shows; Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture (1997); Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2001), which in 2006 became a documentary film; Guilty: Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs After 9/11 (2008) and A Is For Arab: Archiving Stereotypes In U.S. Popular Culture (2012), which we continue to sell in our bookstore.

In our February/March 1996 issue, Shaheen wrote,“The time is long overdue for imagemakers to begin eradicating bigotry of all types. There has been harm. The prejudices Disney’s “Father of the Bride II” and other films project injure innocents.

They engender among America’s Arabs and Muslims feelings of insecurity, vulnerability, alienation, and even denial of heritage.

“Make no mistake, the hated Arab-Muslim stereotype does not exist in a vacuum.

Following last April’s (1995) bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, more than 200 hate crimes, ranging from eight vandalized and burnt-tothe-ground mosques to a pregnant Muslim

TRIBUTES TO JACK SHAHEEN

A powerful obituary in the July 12 Washington Post said Dr. Shaheen “worked to dismantle Arab stereotypes in media.” His New York Times obituary said Shaheen “diplomatically but tenaciously lobbied to shatter demeaning stereotypes of Arabs in popular culture as ‘billionaires, bombers, belly dancers and boisterous bargainers.’”

Filmmaker Annemarie Jacir, who directed “When I Saw You” and “Salt of This Sea,” tweeted: “Can’t get over death of #Jack Shaheen. What a beautiful gentle soul. He was a light for me. A fighter. A dreamer. A friend and a supporter.”

Karim Haddad wrote a touching tribute published in AlJazeera.com, saying he was inspired by Shaheen’s work “even before I was old enough to read. When I heard that he passed away, I felt as though I had lost a member of my family. I remember seeing The TV Arab on my parents’ bookshelf as a child, shortly after we moved from Lebanon to the United States. Even though I was only five years old at the time, I knew there was something wrong with the scary-looking caricature on the cover.”

Haddad said Shaheen gave him the longest interview he’d done so far in his 15 years as a journalist, but when it was over Haddad had many more questions to ask. “He was full of wisdom and I wanted to take in as much of it as I possibly could.”

Shaheen told Haddad, “It’s up to Arab Americans to challenge the status quo in pop culture...there are two centers of power in AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

the world: Washington and Hollywood,” and he urged more Arab Americans to become part of the “Hollywood machine.”

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) presented Shaheen with the Lifetime Achievement Award. After announcing Shaheen’s death, ADC president Samer Khalaf said, “Dr. Shaheen worked passionately and tirelessly to shed light on the common media stereotypes of Arabs in Western film, providing invaluable resources to the academic community at large...His work started a conversation about the representation of Arabs in Hollywood and the need for more nuanced depictions of the community. Dr. Shaheen will be greatly missed.”

Albert Mokhiber, a past president of ADC, who worked with Shaheen, said the scholar “brought intellectual and academic credibility to the issues we raised.” Together, Shaheen and ADC helped persuade Walt Disney Studios to change hurtful song lyrics in its 1992 film “Aladdin.”

Shaheen also received the University of Pennsylvania’s Janet Lee Stevens Award. ACCESS, a nonprofit based in Dearborn, MI, named him Arab American of the year in 2015. The Arab American National Museum, where Shaheen was an advisory board member, also lauded the late author’s contributions. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) described his work as “instrumental in promoting accurate portrayals of Arabs, Islam and Muslims.”

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woman losing her child, were committed against American Arabs and Muslims.

“Why did many Americans believe those journalists who incorrectly reported the bomber was someone who looked ‘Middle Eastern’? Because of pre-conditioning.

For more than a century, anti-Arab images have been pounded into their psyches...

Timothy McVeigh was never described as an Irish Catholic or a veteran. When one person’s terrible actions are linked to a whole group the effect is disastrous.”

Shaheen’s last e-mail to me, dated June 7, recommended we carry the book featured on p. 66 of this issue. When my father and I interviewed him for a July 2001 Washington Report article, Shaheen said, “Once upon a time I thought the stereotyping of Arabs was because of ignorance.

No more. I know it is more straight-out purposeful now. Films vilify Arabs for different reasons, not all political. Some reasons are financial. Arab-bashing is a surefire box office winner.”

Shaheen challenged the Arab and Mus-

lim community to read Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People and send it to men and women who have influence—teachers, advertisers, filmmakers, screenwriters, movie critics, members of Congress and the press—as well as to libraries. Otherwise, he said, one can just sit there and let another generation of Arab-American children flinch when they go to a movie that lambasts their heritage.”

At the “Israel Lobby” conference last March, Shaheen said, “For nearly half a century—I know I look much younger than I am—I’ve tracked Hollywood’s Arabs and Muslims. Almost always, I found they appear as villains. They’re godless, evil, enemy, other. Renewed and repeated over and over again, these images are hardwired into our psyches. As the Arab proverb reminds us, ‘By repetition even the donkey learns. Islamophobia has joined Arabophobia. Prejudices are escalating, not diminishing. Today’s villains are not just Arabs and Muslims from over there. They are homegrown Americans with Arab roots...”

Jerusalem Fund chairman Dr. Subhi Ali wrote, “No other person contributed to the understanding of Arabs and their culture in America as did Dr. Shaheen...Jack’s quiet wise counsel will always be remembered with great appreciation and admiration...Dr. Shaheen once said, ‘the storytellers of today have a tremendous impact on the world as we perceive it.’ His influence on these storytellers has helped to improve perceptions of Arab Americans, and we are tremendously grateful for all of his brave efforts.”

The March/April 2016 issue of AramcoWorld featured a marvelous article, “A is For Arab,” about the 2011 donation to Tamiment Library’s Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University of Shaheen’s massive collection of “books, comics, toys, games and even ‘shaykh’ Halloween masks and bumper stickers—anything he could find that mirrored popular culture’s images of Arab people.”

After Shaheen’s death, AramcoWorld editor Richard Doughty wrote, “To me personally he was a mentor in deed and attitude over more than 25 years. The fires of insight, courage and inspiration that he lit warm us all. Thanks to dear, beloved Jack, we are better, as individuals, as a nation, as a civilization, as human beings.”

In his statement Ralph Nader said, “Jack Shaheen was a scholar, communicator and advocate regarding the cruel stereotypes of peoples of the Arab world in Hollywood movies, cartoons, and mass media. In his many calmly argued articles, books and videos, he provided the incriminating evidence directly from the biased media, unedited. He was a tolerant, respectful discussant in hundreds of public programs and debates on prejudice, its various causes and ways to replace bigotry with enlightenment.”

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One of the many ways to continue Dr. Shaheen’s vital work to eradicate those harmful stereotypes is to produce qualified Arab- and Muslim-American writers, journalists and filmmakers. Inspired by Bernice, in 1998 the Shaheens established the Jack G. Shaheen Mass Communications Scholarship at ADC, which awards annual scholarships to Arab American college students studying journalism and mass communications.

Previous recipients include Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and author Anthony Shadid, William Youmans, who teaches international communications at George Washington University, Laila Al-Arian, a producer at Al Jazeera, NPR correspondent Leila Fadel and award-winning filmmaker Annemarie Jacir. To continue Shaheen’s quest for media fairness, write a check to the Center for Arab American Philanthropy (CAAP), with “The Jack G. and Bernice M. Shaheen Endowed Media Scholarship Fund” on the memo line, and mail it to CAAP, 2651 Saulino Court, Dearborn, MI 48120. ■

Shaheen scholarship recipient Will Youmans wrote, “There is no denying that Dr. Jack Shaheen was a trailblazer...One of his lasting legacies is his impact on a cadre of journalists, communication specialists, and professors who all read his writing, heard him speak, or interacted with him. They became more attentive to the problems he raised and more vigorous in trying to correct them.”

Youmans recalled receiving his own award: “Most memorably, the letter informing me of the prize came with a kind, uplifting, hand-written note. I remember so vividly meeting him and his wonderful wife Bernice when I collected the award. Whenever I saw him, he always had a bright twinkle in his eye. It showed the enthusiasm he exuded each time we spoke. I will forever miss that.

“He wrote passionately about how the repetitious portrayal of a people as cruel and barbaric was not just inaccurate and demeaning, but it harmed especially Arab-American children.

These images would make them feel ashamed about their Arab background. And those Americans with little exposure to Arab culture came to see them through a skewed lens of ignorance.

The echoes in the hate crimes, Islamophobia, and discrimination still continue to worsen day by day.”

Youmans concluded, “His sense of humor was plain. One of his books on Hollywood and its unchallenged recurrent ethnic bias is titled Reel Bad Arabs. But such humor did not mask the pain of his viewing hundreds of movies and cartoons brazenly and sweepingly defaming his ethnicity. It will be very hard to find another Jack Shaheen with such manifold talents and temperament to carry on.”

—D.C.H.

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Crisis in the Gulf

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East political consciousness; Arab media would never be the same again. Al Jazeera devastated tedious rigid state-controlled media across the region. It astonished, wooed and won Arab viewers with riveting, free-swinging programs in which a broad range of once taboo topics were now shockingly aired. Viewers remained glued to their screens in the face of this astonishing new phenomenon of exciting professional television in the Arab world, and in Arabic. It offered heated live debates and new perspectives on themes that were on everyone’s minds: Islam, Islamism, democracy, Arab nationalism, women’s rights, freedom of speech, Western radical thinking, Western imperialism, the plight of Palestinians, and close-in coverage of Western wars waged in the Arab world. Al Jazeera even offered periodic Israeli commentators on major issues. It sponsored hugely popular call-in programs where popular religious sheikhs dispensed practical daily advice on the real problems of daily life and love.

Maybe more significantly, Al Jazeera broke the exSecretary of State Rex Tillerson (l) and Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed clusive BBC-VOA monopoly on news in Arabic; now bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani leave a July 11 press conference in Doha. It was Arabs had news presented from a Muslim world perTillerson’s first stop on a “shuttle diplomacy” tour of the Gulf, but he returned to spective.The reaction of the leadership across the Arab Washington three days later with no agreement in hand. world was predictably apoplectic. Traditional authoritarian regimes lost control of their state-controlled, selfserving news coverage to this upstart new news channel out of Qatar. Perhaps the ultimate tribute to Al Jazeera was that it was

By Graham E. Fuller condemned by virtually every single Arab regime. Outside the Middle East, Washington was particularly angry because Al THE TINY Gulf state of Qatar is today under harsh siege from Jazeera covered in detail U.S. wars in the region, including imnearly everybody in the Middle East, and portrayed as a “supages of carnage and destruction that U.S. media deemed too upporter of terrorism.” The U.S. has bought into the mantra. What’s setting for their own citizens to see. Indeed, Al Jazeera offices really going on here? were “mistakenly” bombed twice by the U.S., first in Afghanistan, Back in the 1990s the joke in the Arab world was, “Qatar is a then in Baghdad. small country in the Persian Gulf and Al Jazeera is its capital.”

Indeed, Al Jazeera was highly critical of U.S. policies, reflectIn one sense, the quip is quite revealing, even today. It was ing widely held public opinion across the region. It was in turn the appearance in 1996 of a new satellite channel, Al Jazeera, accused of being a propaganda outlet for the Muslim Brotherthat pushed Qatar’s real capital, Doha, to the forefront of Middle hood—and certainly a number of broadcasters had ties with the Brotherhood—although they never advocated violence. At the Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official and the author of nusame time Al Jazeera was accused of promoting Arab nationalmerous books on the Muslim world; his latest book is Breaking Faith: ist, secular, even Marxist views. These critiques all contained elA Novel of Espionage and an American’s Crisis of Conscience in Pakements of truth, again reflecting a variety of outlook and popular istan. His website is <http://grahamefuller.com>. Copyright © Graham E. Fuller 2017. opinion in the Arab world.

Does Qatar Really Threaten the Gulf?

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Al Jazeera’s one unwritten rule was—no coverage of Qatar itself. Certainly this was a form of domestic censorship, but few viewers cared when all the rest of the world was fair game.

The Al Jazeera phenomenon provides important background to understanding the current and harsh official backlash against Qatar by so many Arab regimes—not by Arab citizens. Today, muzzling Al Jazeera is among the key demands of the Saudi-led Arab coalition against Qatar.

Qatari state support to Al Jazeera is just one indicator of the feisty independence of this diminutive Gulf state. Qatar also exercises its outsize influence through its immense wealth: it shares half of the massive South Pars gas fields in the Gulf with Iran— giving Qatar the third biggest natural gas reserves in the world.

Qatar’s diplomatic outreach is also astonishingly diverse, starting with Israel. Qatar has had numerous high-level meetings with Israeli officials over the years and maintained an Israeli trade office in Doha for some 13 years until tensions over Israel’s destructive war in Gaza in 2008. Qatar has worked to mediate between Israel and the elected government of Hamas in Gaza, and has spent generously to improve conditions in Gaza. It works closely with Hamas—a successful political party as well as a resistance movement against Israel.

Far more important, Qatar has consistently enjoyed good relations with Iran—partly a function of shared gas fields. Yet Qatar is not Shi’i; it follows Wahhabi Islam, the dominant sect in Saudi Arabia. But Qatar’s version of Wahhabism is more relaxed—still theologically austere but in practice more flexible, open to cinemas, some mixing of sexes; women drive cars and run for local offices, Christian churches are open, alcohol is available in some public places, and modern art galleries help contribute to a lively public life. Qatar hosts over a dozen Western-based U.S. universities that have opened campuses in Doha—including Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon and Texas A&M. All this contrasts sharply with the general rigid cultural aridity of Riyadh.

Yet it is Qatar’s good relations with Iran that constitute the most serious no-no from the Saudi perspective. While Qatar is no democracy, as a monarchy it is politically a good bit freer than Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or the UAE. (Both Oman and Kuwait enjoy still greater political freedom than Qatar—and both also enjoy good relations with Iran and have not joined the Saudi alliance against Qatar.)

And to complete this contradictory picture, Doha is home to the biggest U.S. military base in the Middle East at al-Udeid, while enjoying good relations with Russia.

Why is Qatar engaged in all these diverse outreach initiatives?

Partly to put the country on the map—for vital existential reasons.

Qatar is a tiny peninsula attached to the Saudi mainland on the Arabian Peninsula; physically its security situation is vulnerable. Riyadh could probably overrun the country militarily in a day. Thus Qatar is determined to establish a strong network of international ties, enabling the country to rally international support to protect its independence against Saudi domination or expansionism. And right now is one moment when Qatar is drawing down on those ties.

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We should not forget that Saudi Arabia is the regional hegemon on the Peninsula. It has twice in two centuries seen Wahhabi religious forces sweep across the Peninsula all along the Gulf; it could quite conceivably seek to assert eventual strategic control over the entire Peninsula as part of Wahhabi/Saudi manifest destiny. Of course, for Gulfis to publicly express such anxieties is clearly impolitic, but the awareness is no less real.

SHARED FEARS

Indeed, Qatar is not the only state with such fears. Bahrain to all intents and purposes has now already become a Saudi province, as Riyadh backs its repressive Sunni monarchy that is trying to hang onto power through harsh repression of its Shi’i majority population. Even the UAE—surprisingly supportive of Riyadh in this Qatari crisis—normally seeks to avoid being pressured into Saudi regional security schemes that threaten its own sovereignty. Yet one of the UAE’s own emirates, Dubai, enjoys a quiet but cordial working relationship with Iran. And two other Gulf states, Oman and Kuwait, are far more outspokenly independent of Saudi pressures.

These are some of the multiple reasons why Riyadh in early June finally declared a sweeping and punitive blockade against Qatar, sealing its land, sea and air borders in opposition to Qatar’s unacceptably independent ways.

A number of other regimes back the Saudi coalition, mostly because they are paid off: Egypt (that doesn’t like the Muslim Brotherhood anyway), Libya, the Yemeni government in exile and others— all beholden to Riyadh.

The harshness of these moves against Qatar is unusual for the Gulf, but particularly reflect the ambitious and impulsive young Mohammed bin Salman, son of the Saudi king. The Saudi mantra is of course to blame all regional ills on Iran and Shi’ism. In reality, however, religion has almost nothing to do with the Saudi-Iranian standoff, while geopolitics has everything to do with it.

But yet there is also a kind of struggle over Islam. No, it’s not about Shi’i vs. Sunni. Qatar is very Sunni, as is Saudi Arabia. So is Hamas. But Qatar essentially perceives the Muslim Brotherhood as a key representative of the future of moderate political Islam in the region. Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood is a relatively modern Islamist movement. It is essentially nonviolent, is not jihadi, avoids Sunni-Shi’i sectarianism, and accepts the principles of democratic politics and political parties; it has modernist and traditionalist wings. Yet reading the U.S. mainstream media you’d scarcely hear of any of this, since Israel does not like the Brotherhood.

There is much realism in Qatar’s view. Movements in political Islam in fact cover a spectrum: autocratic vs. democratic, traditionalist vs. modernist, tolerant vs. intolerant, violent vs. nonviolent, pragmatic vs. ideological. They are in a state of constant evolution depending on local conditions. One thing is for sure— political Islam is not going away anytime soon. It is too deeply imbedded in Muslim culture not to have an impact on political thinking. The key question is what form it will take and the

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lessons it will draw from today’s world. Unfortunately, Western liberalism has only shallow roots in the Muslim world.

Qatar has essentially opted for progressive Islamism in the future of the region. It has thus lent support to the Muslim Brotherhood movement because it sees it as an authentic, democratic, essentially nonviolent way toward entering the political and electoral order. Qatar was sympathetic to the Arab Spring, which Saudi Arabia and the UAE abhorred. The mildly Islamist AKP government in Turkey shares a similar sympathy for the Brotherhood.

Their hope was that if the Assad regime in Syria had been overthrown, the Brotherhood, as a member of the Syrian opposition over long decades, might well have come to the fore. Yet far more radical and violent movements like al-Qaeda and ISIS instead gained the military upper hand in the Syrian chaos.

Regrettably, lots of states in the region—Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey among others— have all flirted with aid to these more violent—and effective—jihadi groups in order to overthrow Assad. The Saudi charge that “Qatar supports terrorism” is fundamentally hypocritical; the charge applies equally well to all these states, above all to the Saudis themselves, who globally sponsor extremely intolerant Islam. It is Qatar’s support to the (essentially) nonviolent, more democratic Brotherhood that infuriates autocrats, who fear the introduction of any democratic practice will cost them their thrones. Egypt joins them in this fear. Iran, interestingly, is also sympathetic to the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood as a relatively progressive political force for change in the region.

The UAE invokes one other longstanding territorial issue here: three small islands in the Gulf now in Iranian possession. Actually, this is virtually the only territorial issue involving Iran anywhere. As the British pulled its troops out of the Gulf, and before the UAE came into existence, in 1971 the shah of Iran seized the three islands for Iran; today’s UAE still argues its claim.

Whatever the virtues of the case, it does not suggest a pattern of Iranian territorial aggression, that has been virtually unknown for over two hundred years.

Saudi Arabia will not achieve its goal of establishing a “Middle Eastern NATO” against Iran; it will not even succeed in forging an enduring regional alliance. But the implications of this rash attempt to isolate and crush Qatar are serious, with many external consequences. In the end all three states will probably back down in some face-saving formula compromise—as usually happens in Gulf spats.

But nobody should think the drama over Qatar represents “fighting terrorism” or “fighting Shi’ism.” The self-preservation of autocratic rulers is what is at stake here. But Washington, too, seems to have bought into the Saudi view of Middle East politics. Qatar somehow sees a different future for the Gulf—and perhaps a slightly more enlightened one.

It would behoove the U.S. to avoid sides in this complex struggle that has mainly been provoked by Saudi Arabia’s new muscle-flexing. Washington should also not allow Qatar to be subdued. Crushing Qatar is an exceedingly poor and retrogressive instrument by which to pursue the dubious game of intimidating Iran.

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Trouble in the Gulf: The View From Tehran

By Camelia Entekhabifard

THROUGHOUT THE GULF region people are talking about the rift between Saudi Arabia (and its allies) and Qatar and the unexpected appointment on June 21 of Mohammed Bin Salman (known as “MBS”) as Saudi Arabia’s new crown prince. The unprecedented attempt to marginalize a fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member has shocked many in the region, and there are fears that the promotion of MBS may further exacerbate the tension.

For months it has been obvious that King Salman was grooming his favorite son as his successor, but few imagined that happening quite so soon.

At the core of the Qatar furor lies the longstanding rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Throughout the commotion, Iranian politicians have largely kept quiet and advised both parties to settle their issues through negotiation. But if they were concerned about the inter-Arab squabbling, the promotion of MBS has sent an altogether more powerful message to the Iranians, as he is behind the war on Yemen, and seen either as a “reformer” or as “reckless.”

Most of the recent editorials in the Iranian press express extreme concern at the possibility of a full-on confrontation with Riyadh. From the Iranian perspective, recent events in the Gulf are all interrelated and risk jeopardizing security and stability in the region.

The heated feelings—with Saudi hostility to Iran reciprocated by that of more militant members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards—have prompted some Iranians to launch a campaign on Twitter under the (trending) hashtag #NoToWar. The hardships of Iran’s long war with Iraq in the 1980s are still fresh in the memory of many Iranians.

At the same time, Iran is itself in the midst of a transition as the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is now old and debate over his successor has already begun.

Many in Iran fear the new Saudi crown prince could be preparing the Kingdom for war with Iran. In a recent interview on Saudi-owned network MBC, he said: “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia. Instead we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran.”

While there is no doubt that Mohammed Bin Salman is personally popular—at just 31, he represents a generational change in a traditional society—Saudi Arabia’s rift with Qatar threatens the entire GCC. The Kingdom’s harsh approach is viewed in Iran as extreme, even draconian. The U.S. State Department (though not President Trump himself) issued a stinging rebuke to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies on June 19 saying they had failed to come up with a justification for the embargo they imposed on

Camelia Entekhabifard is an Iranian journalist based in New York.

Copyright ©2017 Le Monde diplomatique. Distributed by Agence Global.

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KHALED ELFIQI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Qatar earlier that month. However important Saudi Arabia is as a strategic ally, the security and stability of the Gulf is paramount.

The U.S. counts on the GCC to contain or counter Iran’s influence in the region, and to fight radical Islamist ideology.

This contradiction presents an opportunity for Iran to benefit from the disagreement between Riyadh, Washington, Qatar and the other Gulf states. Iran watchers know that if there’s one thing Iran excels at it is taking advantage of messes created by others.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar may (L-r) Foreign Ministers Adel al-Jubeir (Saudi Arabia), Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (UAE), Sameh Shoukry (Egypt) and Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa (Bahrain) at a July 5 press conference in Cairo followyet normalize relations, but the ing their meeting to discuss what they described as Qatar’s “negative response” to their 13 demands issued Kingdom’s actions have now on June 22. opened a crack within the GCC cheese. Turkish armored vehicles could also be seen recently, ranks, already subject to past rivalries. parading through Doha’s streets on their way to a joint QatariSome argue that if Iran keeps cool and plays its cards right, Turkish military base just outside the capital. the government of President Hassan Rouhani, re-elected with a This deployment occurred after a resolution allowing it had decisive majority in June and supported by 24 million voters, been fast-tracked through the Turkish parliament in early June could take charge of the Syria file and put a stop to the Revoluby President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development tionary Guards’ role in the conflict. That is perhaps over-optiParty (AKP) government, just days after the blockade began. mistic. But if Iran could find a way to temper Saudi policies, the This was but the latest step in a long-term relationship, howcountry might hope to gain a prominent role in regional peace ever, as Turkey and Qatar have stood together diplomatically, talks. politically and economically for many years now. Both supported the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government in Egypt and the “Arab Spring” more generally, and have provided homes for MB

By Jonathan Gorvett leaders in exile. Both also have good relations with Hamas in Palestine, in contrast to the Saudis, while they have also shared IN THE QATARI capital of Doha, opening the fridge doesn’t only support for the same anti-Assad rebel groups in Syria. Both also lead to relief from the 113 degree heat these days—it also herhave a more nuanced relationship with Iran than the outright alds a major diplomatic triumph for one of this tiny Gulf state’s hostility shown by Saudi Arabia and its close allies, while Qatar strongest allies. has large investments in Turkey—and Turkish construction com“Inside, it’s all bottles of Turkish milk,” says Noha Aboueldapanies are big players in Qatar. hab of the Brookings Institution’s Doha outpost. “Once, it would Yet despite this background of cooperation, Turkey was likely a all have been Saudi.” more reluctant Qatari ally in this dispute than might at first seem.

The blockade recently imposed on Qatar by its Gulf neighInitially, when the crisis first blew up, President Erdogan’s govbors—Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE—and Egypt has cut ernment appeared to have been caught out, with no knowledge off the land, sea and air routes that used to supply Doha with that Saudi Arabia was about to act. Once the blockade had most of its produce. But since early June, all that and more has begun, however, Erdogan had thought his good personal relabeen flown in from Iran and Turkey, with daily deliveries being tionship with Saudi King Salman, along with Turkey’s long-standmade from the dairies of Anatolia to the giant malls of Qatar. ing good relations with Qatar, might place him in a good position “It’s a constant reminder,” she adds, “of how Turkey has to mediate in the crisis, rather than come down on one side. stepped up.”

Yet those hopes seem to have been quickly dashed when the Indeed, Ankara has rallied rapidly and decisively to support removal of that joint military base was revealed as one of the 13 Qatar in the current confrontation—and not just with milk and demands on Qatar made by the Saudi-led group. Questions over Jonathan Gorvett is a regionally based free-lance writer.

King Salman’s influence in the crisis—as opposed to that of the

Qatar’s Turkish Ally

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rising star, now-Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman—also undermined Turkish hopes of being a go-between.

“Whether by design or default,” says Galip Dalay, with the Sharq Forum think tank in Istanbul, “Turkey thus ended up having to come out more strongly on the side of Qatar.”

Reinforcing this obligation was also the realization that the list of allegations against Qatar made by its adversaries could mostly be made against Turkey, as well: Ankara also refuses to condemn Hamas as a terrorist group; Ankara also gives shelter to MB activists; Ankara also has a less antagonistic relationship with Tehran; and Ankara, too, had been outspoken in its initial support for the Arab Spring and anti-establishment forces in the Arab world. A Qatari surrender to pressure from the Saudi-led group on these issues thus “might have emboldened them to act next against Ankara,” suggests Dalay.

The crisis has also brought to the surface antagonisms that had been simmering for some time. One of these is between Turkey and the UAE. Last summer’s abortive coup attempt against Erdogan’s government is widely seen in AKP circles as having some connection to the Emirates, even if no real proof has been publicly offered. The apparently central role played in the development of the crisis by UAE officials, such as its ambassador to Washington, may thus also have persuaded Turkey to act.

Indeed, Washington’s role in the crisis may have been key in another sense. The initially strong support given by President Trump for the Saudi-led group’s actions may have alarmed Ankara that a military operation by the anti-Qatar camp was also in the cards. The rapid deployment of Turkish troops was thus a deterrent, with the ensuing, contrarily more measured, stance from the State Department and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson being seen as a vindication of the Turkish reaction—and a significant weakening of the foundations beneath the Saudi-led move.

“Turkey was also saying to everyone, look, the balance of power in this region can be altered,” says Aboueldahab. “The fast deployment of Turkish troops put a finger on the scale.”

For now though, few in Ankara expect a speedy resolution to the dispute, with a “new normal” of continued blockade seen likely. At this stage, saving face would also likely be impossible, as one side or the other would have to very publically back down. A previous dispute, back in 2014, simmered on for several months and involved much less serious moves against Qatar. It was eventually quietly settled by Doha’s expulsion of a number of foreign activists. Qatar did deport Saudi human rights activist Mohammed al-Otaibi back to Saudi Arabia at the start of the current dispute, but this appears to have done nothing to assuage Saudi anger. Al-Otaibi, meanwhile, was detained by Saudi police on his return and remains “at risk of torture,” according to Amnesty International.

Meanwhile, Turkey has achieved a great boost in its popularity in Qatar. Yet with the country already a strong Qatari partner, it is the longer-term impact on regional politics that is more significant for Ankara. A deterioration in relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey would be damaging for both—and likely good 24

for Iran—a factor perhaps recognized in Ankara and Riyadh, as they have tried to avoid direct accusations against each other.

Nonetheless, there are historic suspicions between the two, stretching back to Ottoman times. Indeed, the presence of Turkish troops on the Arabian peninsula for the first time since World War One is a factor that has not gone unremarked in Istanbul and Ankara, where some supporters of Erdogan welcome it as a return to old frontiers, while others oppose such foreign ventures—and for much the same reason.

Now, many await the outcome of Tillerson’s July mission to the Gulf, with the U.S. still the only power with leverage on all sides in the dispute. Meanwhile, milk from Pinar and yoghurt from Sütaş continues to stock up in Doha’s over-worked refrigerators.

Education: An Early Victim of the Qatar Crisis?

By Jesse Schatz

UNIVERSITY FACULTY AND students in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have been reeling at the consequences of the ongoing Qatar crisis, fearing the implications of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt’s blockade on Doha for their careers and academic pursuits. Within the first days of the blockade Saudi Arabia and Bahrain recalled 12 and 11 nationals, respectively, who held faculty positions at Qatar’s universities. Officials in Doha remain adamant, however, that they will not force any faculty to leave, a decision that has allowed 226 Egyptian university faculty and staff to remain in the emirate. Given that universities in Qatar are on summer break, students have yet to be largely affected. But the blockading countries have recalled students that elected to stay in Doha for the summer term.

Caught up in this geopolitical crisis, a host of educational institutions, including American university branch campuses, are increasingly concerned about the possible effects of the blockade. Although largely comprised of American, British and French citizens, whom the ban does not directly affect, university faculty are concerned about their future in Qatar. Qatari officials insist that American universities will be unaffected, but the deployment of analysts from Global Rescue (an international crisis management firm) has only raised the anxiety levels.

Restricting Saudi, Bahraini and Emirati students from attending Qatari universities, and Qatari students from academic institutions in the three Persian Gulf countries blockading Qatar, will further isolate Qatar from the rest of the region and upset the cosmopolitan exchange of knowledge and ideas that sustains these international universities in Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Additionally, from Qatar’s vantagepoint, this restriction of knowledge and the sequestering of talent away from Doha threatens Continued on p. 31

Jesse Schatz is a contributor to Gulf State Analytics (@GulfState Analytics), a Washington, DC-based geopolitical risk consultancy.

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Special Report

Senate Passes Iran, Russia Sanctions Bill

By Shirl McArthur

AS MENTIONED IN the previous “Congress Watch,” a bill strongly promoted during AIPAC’S annual “policy conference” was S. 722, introduced by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) in March. It is a wide-ranging measure to impose sanctions “in relation to Iran’s ballistic missile program, support for acts of international terrorism, and violations of human rights.” It was selected by Senate Republican leaders to be brought up to a vote by the full Senate, but first they agreed to consider a Democratic amendment adding Russia sanctions to the bill. The amendment was agreed to on June 14 by a vote of 97-2. The amendment also includes a provision giving Congress the power to block any presidential effort to scale back existing Russian sanctions. Then, on June 15, the Senate passed the amended bill by a vote of 98-2, with the “no” votes coming from Sens. Rand Paul (RKY) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). When passed it had 64 co-sponsors, including Corker.

However, the bill’s passage by the House in its Senate-passed form is uncertain, because the House parliamentarian declared that it violates the constitutional provision that revenue bills must originate in the House.

Another AIPAC-promoted bill is H.R. 1698, introduced by Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) in March. It would “expand sanctions against Iran with respect to the ballistic missile program of Iran.” It has continued to gain co-sponsors and now has 309, including Royce. Also, on April 27 Reps. Robert Pittenger (R-NC) and Lee Zeldin (R-NY) introduced H.R. 2185, the “Iran Sanctions Relief Review” bill.

A new bill was introduced targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). On May 2 Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), with five cosponsors, introduced S. 1011 “to prevent the IRGC from using Mahan Air [a small Iranian airline] for material support for terrorist activities.” And on March 20 Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-ME) introduced H.R. 1638, the “Iran Leadership Asset Transparency” bill.

promoted S. 170, with the same title, introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in January. Both bills say that “a state or local government may adopt and enforce measures” to divest state or local assets from, or prohibit investment of state or local assets in an entity that knowingly engages in BDS activity targeting Israel, or “Israel-controlled territories.” H.R. 2856 has 66 cosponsors, including McHenry, and S. 170 has 41 co-sponsors, including Rubio.

Similarly, AIPAC is pressing for passage of the identical “Israel Anti-Boycott” bills, S. 720, introduced by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) in March and H.R. 1697, introduced by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) also in March. S. 720 now has 43 cosponsors, including Cardin, and H.R. 1697 now has 226, including Roskam.

All four of these bills’ texts make it clear that they are not aimed at boycotts against Israel, but, rather, are aimed at the BDS movement targeting Israeli products and companies from the occupied West Bank—another attempt to legitimize Israeli colonies on the West Bank by equating the colonies with Israel.

These bills are not aimed at boycotts

against Israel, but at the BDS movement.

ANOTHER BILL THAT WOULD EQUATE ISRAEL’S COLONIES WITH ISRAEL

On June 8 Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) introduced H.R. 2856, the “Combating BDS” [“Boycott, Divest, and Sanction”] bill. This is the House companion to the previously described, AIPAC

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

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

SOME NEW PRO-ISRAEL MEASURES

A new pro-Israel bill was H.R. 2833, the “Defending Israel’s QME” bill, introduced June 8 by Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Claudia Tenney (R-NY). The bill seeks to expand the requirements originally enacted in 2014 to assure Israel’s “Qualitative Military Edge” in the Middle East.

A measure designed to let U.S. senators burnish their pro-Israel credentials was S.Res. 176, introduced May 24 by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), “commemorating the 50th anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem.” It was passed June 5 by a vote of 90-0. In the House, the similar H.Res. 328 was introduced May 16

by Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-NY) with two co-sponsors.

Most of the previously described measures saying the U.S. Embassy in Israel should be moved to Jerusalem have made little progress (see “Status Updates” box on p. 27), but another new one, S.Res. 167, was introduced May 17 by Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) and three co-sponsors.

On May 25 Rep. Darren Soto (D-FL) introduced H.R. 2659, to promote U.S.-Israel agricultural cooperation. It has 23 co-sponsors, including Soto. See the “Status Updates” box for the limited progress made by the previously described measures promoting more U.S.-Israel cooperation.

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‘Nuff Said:

Sen. Ted Cruz (RTX) jointly introduced H.R. 2390 The White House’s 2018 budget proposal includes a and S. 1060, “to five percent cut in the budget of the U.S. Holocaust strengthen prohibiMemorial Museum. tions regarding the Now, lawmakers are stepping up to defeat this Palestine Liberation proposed cut.

Organization.”

The Hill reported Friday that a bipartisan slate of Among other things, 64 members of Congress sent a letter to the relevant the bills would force appropriations subcommittee demanding to reverse the closure of the the cut, which amounts to $3 million and which PLO mission in would return government funding of the museum to Washington, DC unthe 2016 level of $54 million. less a list of unlikely “The mission of the museum has never been more conditions is met. important, particularly as the number of anti-Semitic attacks around the world rises,” the lawmakers H.R. 2390 has three wrote. “Now is not the time to cut funding for this co-sponsors, includnational treasure.” ing Ros-Lehtinen; Anti-Defamation League chief Jonathan Greenblatt Cruz is S.1060’s also spoke out against cutting the Holocaust Musole sponsor. seum’s budget, noting its role in “educating future Two other antigenerations about the importance of combating hate Palestinian bills and bigotry.” were introduced. On The National Jewish Democratic Council issued a May 17 Franks instatement calling on Congress to reverse the cut, troduced H.R. 2497 which it described as part of a pattern of insensitive to prohibit assisactions by Trump on issues relating to the Holocaust. tance to the Palestinians. And on May Source: Nathan Guttman, The Forward, June 9, 2017 25 Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), with 12 cosponsors, introduced H.R. 2712 to impose FEWER ATTACKS ON U.N. While attacks on the U.N. have died sanctions on the PA. Unfortunately, the three previously dedown, and most of the previously described anti-U.N. measures have re- scribed pro-peace measures, H.Res. 23, ceived no further support, a new bill, H.Res. 226 and H.R. 1221 (see June/July H.R. 2496, was introduced May 17 by 2017 Washington Report, p. 31) have Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), the “Defund- made no progress. Furthermore, on May ing the Corrupt and Incompetent United 17 Franks, who apparently wants to take Nations” bill. Earlier the U.N. came under over the role of leading Israel-firster when strong congressional criticism following Ros-Lehtinen retires, introduced H.Res. the passage of U.N. Security Council 331 “expressing the policy of the U.S. with Resolution 2334, which says that Israel’s respect to a two-state solution between the continuing expansion of its colonies State of Israel and the Palestinian people.” (“settlements”) is an obstacle to peace The measure would oppose a two-state between Israel and the Palestinians, a solution unless a list of conditions is met, position consistent with long-standing including one that the Palestinians acU.S. policy, as followed by presidents of knowledge “Israel’s historical land claims.” both parties, until now.

Trump Budget Cuts $3 Million From Holocaust Museum

MORE NEW ANTI-PALESTINIAN MEASURES INTRODUCED

On May 4 leading Israel-firster Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Senate gadfly 26

MEASURES EXPRESS CONCERN OVER EVENTS IN SYRIA

On March 22 Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) introduced H.R. 1677, the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection” bill. It would impose

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

sanctions on persons responsible for committing human rights violations and hindering access to humanitarian relief in Syria.

It has 109 co-sponsors, including Engel.

And on March 29 Rep. Adam Kinzinger (RIL), with 13 co-sponsors, introduced H.R. 1785 “to require a comprehensive regional strategy to destroy ISIS and its affiliates.”

On April 6 Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL), who is Lebanese American, with nine cosponsors introduced H.Res. 252 expressing the sense of the House on “the challenges posed to long-term stability in Lebanon by the conflict in Syria and supporting the establishment of safe zones in Syria.” The similar S.Res. 196 was introduced on June 21 by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) with two co-sponsors.

None of the previously described measures urging the passage of a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) have made any significant progress. But a new one, S.J. Res. 43, “AUMF Against alQaeda, the Taliban and ISIS,” was introduced May 25 by Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Tim Kaine (D-VA). ■

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STATUS UPDATES

H.R. 566 and S. 420, Aircraft to Iran. H.R. 566, introduced in January by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL), now has seven co-sponsors, including Roskam, and S. 420, introduced in February by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), still has six co-sponsors, including Rubio. Both bills would require a report on the use by Iran of commercial aircraft for military activities.

H.R. 478, S. 67 and H.R. 380, IRGC Sanctions. H.R. 478, introduced in January by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) to impose sanctions on Iranâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), now has 10 co-sponsors, including Poe. Of the two bills introduced in January to direct the secretary of state to submit a report on designating the IRGC a foreign terrorist organization, S. 67, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) still has 3 co-sponsors, including Cruz, and H.R. 380, introduced in the House by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) now has 22 co-sponsors, including McCaul.

S. 169 and H.R. 2232, U.N. Anti-Israel Bias. Both bills complain about anti-Israel bias and â&#x20AC;&#x153;anti-Semitismâ&#x20AC;? at the U.N. S. 169, introduced in January by Rubio, still has four co-sponsors including Rubio. H.R. 2232, introduced by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) in April, now has 14 co-sponsors, including Ros-Lehtinen.

H.R. 257, H.Con.Res. 11, S. 11 and H.R. 265, Jerusalem Embassy. Of the previously described measures that would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, only H.R. 257, introduced in January by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), has gained co-sponsors. It now has 34, including Franks. H.Con.Res. 11, introduced by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), still has two cosponsors, including Blackburn; S. 11, introduced by Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) still has nine co-sponsors, including Heller; and H.R. 265, introduced by Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ), still has two co-sponsors, including Lance.

S. 719, S.Res. 90, H.Res. 218 and H.R. 1159, U.S.-Israel Cooperation. S. 719 to promote U.S.-Israel cooperation in cybersecurity technology, introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in March, still has five co-sponsors, including Whitehouse. S.Res. 90, introduced in March by Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), urging increased U.S.-Israel cooperation in various new areas, still has 10 co-sponsors, including Perdue. But the identical H.Res. 218, introduced by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), now has 74 co-sponsors, including Lieu. H.R. 1159, introduced in February by Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA), encouraging U.S.-Israel space cooperation, still has 26 co-sponsors, including Kilmer.

S. 474, H.R. 1164 and H.R. 789, Limit Palestinian Aid. All three bills would prohibit, condition, or limit foreign aid to the West Bank and Gaza. S. 474, introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in February, now has 16 co-sponsors, including Graham; H.R. 1164, introduced in February by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), now has 75 co-sponsors, including Lamborn, and H.R. 789, introduced in February by Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC), still has 10 co-sponsors, including Budd.

S. 68 and H.R. 377, Muslim Brotherhood. Of the two measures aimed at designating the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization, S. 68, introduced in January by Cruz, still has five co-sponsors, including Cruz. But H.R. 377, introduced in January by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), now has 63 co-sponsors, including Diaz-Balart.

H.R. 489, Muslim Registry, the positive bill introduced in January

by Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA), which would prohibit the collection of information and the establishment or utilization of a registry for the purposes of classifying or surveilling persons on the basis of religious affiliation, now has 91 co-sponsors, including DelBene. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;S.M.

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Two Views

ISIS Ousted From Mosul

FADEL SENNA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

pacities, but are Mosul’s problems over with the removal of extremism? What about the trauma of horror that children have been subjected to? Will Mosul’s inhabitants be subjected to another wave of humiliation?

Will Mosul witness the birth of political forces bent on drowning the city with new political complications?

Mosul needs a fair governing body with no connections to the governorate’s council. I’m in favor of appointing a military governor to head an independent people’s committee with no connections to political parties or militias.

The first lesson from Mosul’s experience is the importance of a strong central authority. Because there was no strong central government in 2014, a few scores of terrorists could seize a major city the size of An elderly woman draped in the Iraqi national flag looks on as she stands by members of the Mosul, which was supposedly under the federal force during celebrations in the Old City of Mosul, July 9, 2017. protection of three heavily armed divisions.

Some analysts did not waste any time putting the blame on Mosul’s inhabitants themselves. They relied on the fact that Mosul was home to former officers and soldiers

By Majed al-Samarai from the previous regime’s army, which had been disbanded disgracefully [by U.S. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, head of the ocFOLLOWING THE DEFEAT of the Islamic State (ISIS)—the cupation’s Coalition Provisional Authority—ed.]. At the beginning, eponym of extremism, death and savagery—the return of Mosul these military men did not stop ISIS invaders, and even aided to its inhabitants and to its country deserves official recognition. them during the initial days of the invasion. Later, however, they It was expected that the people of Mosul and their Iraqi turned against ISIS. brethren would eventually kick out the invaders; they’ve done it The elation over Mosul’s victory over ISIS should not eclipse all throughout their long history. Kicking out a bunch of passing the city’s post-ISIS concerns. On a political level, the Iraqi govthugs wouldn’t have been a problem were it not for the initial beernment and its governing parties should consider the political trayal of the security forces and corrupt politicians. reasons, before the military ones, that facilitated ISIS’ invasion Iraqis were puzzled by the quick fall of Mosul and other cities of Iraq. This means reviewing and correcting the humiliating and to the hands of ISIS in 2014 and they continue to be puzzled by anti-democratic political measures implemented against Mosul’s the military effort it took to liberate it. Was this band of thugs inhabitants and the rest of Iraq’s Sunni Arab governorates. mighty enough to defeat three trained army divisions in 2014?

On a strategic level, everybody is wondering who will win the Was it strong enough to require the combined efforts of Ameritrust of Mosul’s inhabitants. Will it be Iraqi Prime Minister Haider can, Iranian and Iraqi troops and all kinds of modern weaponry to al-Abadi’s government or the traditional Sunni forces? Could it dislodge it in 2017? be the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), or will we witness the For Iraqis, the victory over ISIS must be a sign of renewed carise of new liberal forces heralding the birth of a new Iraq?

Logically, Abadi has a better chance in Mosul, given that he is Majed al-Samarai is an Iraqi writer. Copyright © 2017 The Arab Weekly. Distributed by Agence Global. the prime minister and commander of the armed forces, but it

What’s in Store for Iraq After Mosul?

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views-Mosul_28-29_Two Views 7/13/17 5:33 PM Page 29

depends on whether he works toward a genuine project of national unity or the interests of one party or the other.

Security concerns have dominated Iraq’s political realm since 2003, when terrorist organizations made their appearance [following the U.S.-led invasion—ed.]. However, the security problem in Iraq is part of the political problem. If political issues continue to poison Iraq, Iraqis risk seeing the birth of new extremist organizations and the return of the cycle of violence and death.

We have yet to see positive signs of unified positions among the governing parties. The parties of the Shi’i bloc, just like their counterparts in the Sunni bloc, continue to fight each other, and Kurdish political forces are not concerned with a unified Iraq.

With the Mosul phase over, international forces in Syria have returned to jockeying for influence along the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Daraa, Latakia and Raqqa are at the center of an intense struggle between Kurdish and Shi’i militias. In the so-called secure zones along Syria’s borders with Turkey, Jordan and Iraq, units belonging to the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), with Russia behind them, are trying to link up with forces from the Syrian Army. They’re playing a chess game with forces belonging to the Syrian Democratic Forces backed by the Americans. A tussle is going on between Russia and the United States and between Iran and Turkey.

There might not be a clear winner in the Syrian contest, and no parties have an interest to be gleaned from partitioning Syria.

Russia wants permanent bases in Syria, and the United States wants to contain Iran in the region. Iran has its strategic goals and Turkey is more concerned with its internal security, especially with Kurdish mobilization in Iraq.

In light of this fuzzy situation in a highly volatile area on the brink of tremendous transformation, politicians in Iraq should take a second look at their goals. They must start planning, prioritizing the interests of common Iraqi citizens before any partisan or sectarian loyalty. They also need to wean themselves from foreign influence, for nobody serves Iraq better that its own children.

ISIS Virtually Defeated in Mosul but Root Problems Remain

By Shyam Bhatia

IRAQI SOLDIERS FIGHTING to liberate the last holdouts of ISIS militants in Mosul may hold the key to either the survival or further destabilization of the war-torn country.

Assisted by U.S. special forces, elements of the Turkish army as well as Kurdish and Shi’i militias, Iraqi army units participated in capturing the Great Mosque of al-Nuri and surrounding areas from where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his caliphate.

Unlike the limited international support enjoyed by the Kurds, the Shi’i militias have powerful financial backing from across the border with Iran. They and their backers in Tehran are inevitably a power to be reckoned with in a post-ISIS Iraq.

Shyam Bhatia is co-author of Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun. Copyright © 2017 The Arab Weekly. Distributed by Agence Global.

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

The capture of the historic mosque prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to observe it amounted to a “declaration of defeat” from ISIS. After ISIS took control of the city in 2014, senior Iraqi officials, such as former Deputy Prime Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, predicted it would not be able to retain control of the city indefinitely.

Three years later, his prediction is coming true. What happens next? Stories about Iraqi government corruption and inefficiency date from before 2014. They are still part of the conversation on the street.

One of the reasons Mosul fell so easily to ISIS was the absence of full-time soldiers to defend the city. Thousands of so-called ghost soldiers registered with the Ministry of Defense existed only in name, allowing senior officers to pocket the salaries. The issue of ghost soldiers is a major one. Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari has been quoted as saying there was “maybe $500 million-$600 million in salaries being paid to soldiers who don’t exist. There are so many outlets for this money to go without any accountability.”

Apart from the ghost soldiers, money has been earmarked for imported defense equipment that never arrived or for infrastructure projects that were never built. The money is believed to have ended up in the pockets of well-connected government officials.

Other aspects of corruption continue to come to light. When the Al Baiji oil refinery north of Baghdad was liberated from ISIS control in 2015, Iraqi MP Mishan al-Juburi told local television that the refinery had been looted, with even underground pipes and cables stolen.

Asked who was responsible, he responded: “I’d rather be a coward one thousand times than dead once.” Juburi, who is a member of a parliamentary committee investigating corruption, earlier said: “Everybody is corrupt, from the top of society to the bottom. Everyone. Including me. At least I am honest about it.”

Corruption has highlighted the differences between the haves and have-nots in Iraq, as has a shortage of public funds resulting from the comparatively low oil prices that underpin government spending. Last year, oil prices plunged to $27 a barrel at a time when the government’s budget was based on price assumptions of $45 a barrel.

Although prices subsequently recovered, there is a big gap between what is needed and what is available for public spending.

None of this has been helped by funds being syphoned into private pockets.

Stories of corruption were so endemic that, at one stage, desperate government officials sought the assistance of the country’s leading religious authority, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to back anti-corruption measures. Sistani did speak out, but stopped commenting because, his spokesman said, “Nobody listened.”

Sistani’s backing may once again be required as part of a multi-pronged effort for more accountability in public life. Never mind that questions remain as to the ayatollah’s effectiveness.

Long-term, no matter Mosul’s recapture, the absence of economic reforms with political and religious backing will provide an opening for the likes of ISIS to exploit. ■

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Special Report

No, Mr. Trump, Western Civilization Isn’t Threatened by Terrorism

By Rashmee Roshan Lall

SABAH ARAR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

chists might “disrupt the summit’s procedure, occupy all access routes and logistics hubs, attack urban infrastructure and blockade the harbor.”

These are the sort of warnings the world has come to associate with terrorist violence. That they are used for acts of civil disobedience indicates the extent to which dissent itself is increasingly deemed dangerous. The terrorist, as they say, is someone who has a bomb but not an air force.

Anarchists may have neither, but politicians still portray them as a threat disproportionate to the mathematical risk they pose.

Time, then, to restate the facts.

The chance of a major mishap at the hands of anarchists in Hamburg was pretty low. The risk of anyone anywhere dying in a terrorist attack is also low.

Worldwide, more people die every year Iraqis gather at the site of a car bomb explosion near Baghdad’s Al-Shuhada Bridge which killed at least 5 people and wounded 17, May 30, 2017. There were no car bomb attacks in from heart attacks than from terrorist atIraq before the U.S. invaded in 2003. tacks (or those by anarchists). Nearly 18 million people died from cardiovascular disease in 2015. Nearly 30,000 people died due to terrorist atIF WE ALLOW them to do so, anarchists can intimidate just as tacks in the same year. much as violent extremists. Both types of disrupters were probMore people die from a lack of clean water than from wars. ably on the minds of those who attended or organized the G20 Even for Americans, who became intensely fearful of terrorism summit in Germany. after 9/11 and spend tens of billions every year on homeland seThe tyranny of the disrupter is worth remembering as the oftcurity, the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are very rechristened, U.S.-launched “war on terror” drags into its 17th low—1-in-20 million. There is more chance—1-in-18 million—of year. There is no sign it is being wound down. There is no atan American being killed by a dog. It’s a whole lot more likely he tempt to redesign or rethink the grammatically (and militarily) or she will win the lottery, be struck by lightning, drown in a bathwaging of war on an abstract noun. tub or die in a building fire.

If anything, the current U.S. president is indulging in ever more Then there is the lethal danger posed by traffic accidents to hair-raising claims about the danger posed by terrorism. In Warpeople everywhere, but especially in the MENA region and in saw, ahead of the G20 summit, Donald Trump warned that most low-income countries. In 2013, the World Bank highlighted Western civilization itself faced an existential threat.

MENA’s soaring road traffic mortality rate. At 22 deaths per Such words were not meant to hearten. They may have con100,000 people, it was more than 4 times that of countries with tributed to the panic evinced by the German authorities as probetter road safety. testers massed in Hamburg for a “Welcome to Hell” march. The All of this is a rather long-winded way of saying it’s time to Hamburg police chief warned of “massive assaults.” The Gerapply perspective and the art and science of probability to the man Defense Ministry reportedly expressed worry that anarissue of terrorism. The hysteria has gone on too long, triggered by the collective breast-beating after every successful or foiled Rashmee Roshan Lall is a regular columnist for The Arab Weekly.

Copyright © 2017 The Arab Weekly. Distributed by Agence Global. jihadist plot on Western soil.

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It’s true that the number of attempted attacks rose after ISIS called on its followers to attack Western countries militarily involved in Iraq and Syria, but only a very few were successful.

The West has suffered much less from terrorism than MENA, but you wouldn’t know that from the caterwauling. Estimates from 2015 stated that 3 percent of all deaths by terrorism occurred in Western countries since the turn of the millennium. Three-quarters of the global total of deaths due to terrorist attacks took place in five countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.

These figures are available to the American public. They’re from the U.S. State Department’s 2015 “Country Reports on Terrorism,” the most recently available in the annual series. And yet the erroneous impression is nurtured that Americans and Westerners face an existential threat.

If they do, it is because fear-mongering politicians such as Trump seek to dangerously subvert the West’s hard-won civil rights and rule of law in the name of security. ■ (Advertisement)

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Crisis in the Gulf Continued from page 24

the technological advancement Qatar needs to fully transition to a “knowledge economy,” a task in which research universities play an integral part.

The National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) of Qatar has appealed to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to intervene. It has submitted to the U.N. body a report that accuses the three GCC states taking action against Doha of committing injustices against Qatari students and “serious violations of a range of civil, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to education.”

The report alleges 85, 29 and 25 violations against Qatari students in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, respectively, since the ongoing crisis erupted in early June. The NHRC chairman, who filed this report with UNESCO, told Al Jazeera that these violations of students’ rights to an education included “preventing them from taking final exams, withholding certificates of graduation, closing their educational accounts and arbitrarily terminating their registration without giving reasons.” Accusing a fellow GCC member of failure to protect human rights is uncharted territory for the Persian Gulf’s bloc of Arab monarchies, which typically take a collective approach to defending the others from such accusations.

Compatible with the missions of GCC states to diversify their economies away from their hydrocarbon sectors, each member has taken part, albeit to varying degrees, in developing their higher educational systems. The thinking is that the push to strengthen universities in the GCC will simultaneously train these six countries’ citizens in skills that can produce profitable technological advancements for their economies and reduce reliance on foreign workers. Qatar’s Education City serves as a model for the other five GCC members in terms of attracting renowned academics and students from all over the West, the Arab world, and other regions.

Although protecting their citizens’ rights to obtain an education would help the GCC states achieve their economic diversification goals, the Qatar crisis has clearly prompted the Saudi and UAE governments to violate this right of their citizens for political purposes. If officials in Abu Dhabi, Manama and Riyadh continue such restrictions on GCC nationals’ right to an education throughout the duration of what could easily be a prolonged stalemate, these countries will bear costs.

Over time, such costs will be measured in what could have been a more educated citizenry with the skills that are required for making the GCC’s economies knowledge-based and free of their current addictions to oil and gas. Putting politics aside and defending the right of all citizens of each GCC country to obtain an education would help decrease the negative long-term social and economic fallout from the Qatar crisis. ■

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Special Report

Journalist Seymour Hersh’s New Syria Revelations Buried From View

By Jonathan Cook

MOHAMED AL-BAKOUR/AFP/GETTU IMAGES

the corporate media has grown ever more fearful of a truly independent figure like Hersh. The potential reach of his stories could now be enormously magnified by social media. As a result, he has been increasingly marginalized and his work denigrated. By denying him the credibility of a “respectable” mainstream platform, he can be dismissed for the first time in his career as a crank and charlatan. A purveyor of fake news.

Nonetheless, despite struggling to find an outlet for his recent work, he has continued to scrutinize Western foreign policy, this time in relation to Syria. The official Western narrative has painted a picture of a psychotic Syrian president, Bashar Assad, who is assumed to be so irrational and self-destructive he intermittently uses chemical weapons against his own peoA Syrian child receives treatment at a small hospital in the town of Maaret al-Noman following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun, a nearby rebel-held town in Syria’s north- ple. He does so not only for no obvious western Idlib province, on April 4, 2017. purpose, but at moments when such attacks are likely to do his regime untold damage. Notably, two sarin gas attacks have supposedly ocOVETERAN INVESTIGATIVE journalist Seymour Hersh, the curred when Assad was making strong diplomatic or military man who exposed the Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War headway, and when the Islamic extremists of al-Qaeda and and the U.S. military’s abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib ISIS—his chief opponents—were on the back foot and in desin 2004, is probably the most influential journalist of the modern perate need of outside intervention. era, with the possible exception of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the pair who exposed Watergate.

DANGEROUS MONSTERS For decades, Hersh has drawn on his extensive contacts within the U.S. security establishment to bring us the story beHersh’s investigations have not only undermined evidence-free hind the official story, and to disclose facts that have often claims being promoted in the West to destabilize Assad’s govproved deeply discomfiting to those in power and exploded the ernment, but threatened a wider U.S. policy seeking to “remake self-serving, fairy-tale narratives the public was expected to pasthe Middle East.” His work has challenged a political and corposively accept as news. His stature among journalists was such rate media consensus that portrays Russia’s Vladimir Putin, that, in a sea of corporate media misinformation, he enjoyed a Assad’s main ally against the extremist Islamic forces fighting in small island of freedom at the elite, and influential, outlet of The Syria, as another dangerous monster the West needs to bring New Yorker. into line.

Paradoxically, over the past decade, as social media has creFor all these reasons, Hersh has found himself increasingly ated a more democratic platform for information dissemination, friendless. The New Yorker refused to publish his Syria investigations. Instead, he had to cross the Atlantic to find a home at Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth and a winner of the the prestigious but far less prominent London Review of Books.

Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. He is the author of Back in 2013, his contacts within the security and intelligence Blood and Religion and Israel and the Clash of Civilisations (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More). establishments revealed that the assumption Assad had ordered 32

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the use of sarin gas in Ghouta, outside Damascus, failed to stand up to scrutiny.

Even Barack Obama’s national intelligence director, James Clapper, was forced to admit privately that Assad’s guilt was “not a slam dunk,” even as the media widely portrayed it as precisely that.

Hersh’s work helped stymie efforts at the time to promote a Western military attack to bring down the Syrian government.

His latest investigation questions whether Assad was responsible for another alleged gas attack—this one at Khan Sheikhoun in April. Again a consensual Western narrative was quickly constructed after social media showed dozens of Syrians dead, apparently following the dropping of a bomb by Syrian aircraft. For the first time in his presidency, Donald Trump received wall-to-wall praise for launching a military strike on Syria in response, even though, as Hersh documents, he had no evidence on which to base such an attack, one that gravely violated international law.

Hersh’s new investigation was paid for by the London Review of Books, which declined to publish it. This is almost as disturbing as the events in question.

What is emerging is a media blackout so strong that even the London Review of Books is running scared. Instead, Hersh’s story appeared June 25 in a German publication, Welt am Sonntag. Welt is an award-winning newspaper, no less serious than The New Yorker or the LRB. But, significantly, Hersh is being forced to publish ever further from the centers of power whose misinformation his investigations are challenging.

Imagine how effective Woodward and Bernstein would have been in bringing down Richard Nixon had they been able to publish their Watergate investigations only in the French media. That is the situation we have reached now with Hersh’s efforts to scrutinize the West’s self-serving claims about Syria.

U.S.-RUSSIAN COOPERATION

As for the substance of Hersh’s investigation, he finds that Trump launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base in April “despite having been warned by the AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.”

In fact, Hersh reveals that, contrary to the popular narrative, the Syrian strike on a jihadist meeting place in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 was closely coordinated beforehand between Russian and U.S. intelligence agencies. The U.S. was well apprised of what would happen and tracked the events.

Hersh’s sources in the intelligence establishment point out that these close contacts occurred for two reasons. First, there is a process known as “deconfliction,” designed to avoid collisions or accidental encounters between the U.S., Syrian and Russian militaries, especially in the case of their supersonic jets. The Russians therefore supplied U.S. intelligence with precise details of that day’s attack beforehand. But in this case, the coordination also occurred because the Russians wanted to warn the U.S. to keep away a CIA asset who had penetrated the jihadist group from that day’s meeting.

“This was not a chemical weapons strike,” a senior adviser to the U.S. intelligence community told Hersh. “That’s a fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in transferring, loading and arming the weapon… would be wearing Hazmat protective clothing in case of a leak. There would be very little chance of survival without such gear.”

According to U.S. intelligence, Hersh reports, the Syrian air force was able to target the site using a large, conventional bomb supplied by the Russians. But if Assad did not use a chemical warhead, why did many people apparently die at Khan Sheikhoun from inhalation of toxic gas?

The U.S. intelligence community, says Hersh, believes the bomb triggered secondary explosions in a storage depot in the building’s basement that included propane gas, fertilizers, insecticides as well as “rockets, weapons and ammunition,…[and] chlorine-based decontaminants for cleansing the bodies of the dead before burial.” These explosions created a toxic cloud that was trapped close to the ground by the dense early morning air.

Médecins Sans Frontières found patients it treated “smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine.” Sarin is odorless.

Hersh concludes that the evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force—as opposition activists insisted— had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.

POLITICAL SUICIDE

Hersh’s main intelligence source makes an important contextual point you won’t hear anywhere in the corporate media: What doesn’t occur to most Americans is if there had been a Syrian nerve gas attack authorized by Bashar [Assad], the Russians would be 10 times as upset as anyone in the West. Russia’s strategy against ISIS, which involves getting American cooperation, would have been destroyed and Bashar would be responsible for pissing off Russia, with unknown consequences for him. Bashar would do that?

When he’s on the verge of winning the war? Are you kidding me?

When U.S. national security officials planning Trump’s “retaliation” asked the CIA what they knew of events in Khan Sheikhoun, according to Hersh’s source, the CIA told them “there was no residual delivery for sarin at Shayrat [the airfield from which the Syrian bombers had taken off] and Assad had no motive to commit political suicide.”

The source continues: No one knew the provenance of the photographs [of the attack’s victims]. We didn’t know who the children were or how they got hurt. Sarin actually is very easy to detect because it penetrates paint, and all one would have to do is get a paint sample. We knew there was a [toxic] cloud and we knew it hurt people. But you cannot

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jump from there to certainty that Assad had hidden sarin from the U.N. because he wanted to use it in Khan Sheikhoun.

Trump, under political pressure and highly emotional by nature, ignored the evidence. Hersh’s source says: The president saw the photographs of poisoned little girls and said it was an Assad atrocity. It’s typical of human nature. You jump to the conclusion you want.

Intelligence analysts do not argue with a president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data this way, I quit.’

Although Republicans, Democrats and the entire media rallied to Trump’s side for the first time, those speaking to Hersh have apparently done so out of fear of what may happen next time.

The danger with Trump’s “retaliatory” strike, based on zero evidence of a chemical weapons attack, is that it could have killed Russian soldiers and dragged Putin into a highly dangerous confrontation with the U.S. Also, the intelligence community fears that the media have promoted a false narrative that suggests not only that a sarin attack took place, but paints Russia as a co-conspirator and implies that a U.N. team did not in fact oversee the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile back in 2013-14. That would allow Assad’s opponents to claim in the future, at a convenient time, yet another unsubstantiated sarin gas attack by the Syrian government.

Hersh concludes with words from his source that should strike fear into us all: The issue is, what if there’s another false-flag sarin attack credited to hated Syria? Trump has upped the ante and painted himself into a corner with his decision to bomb. And do not think these guys [Islamist groups] are not planning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and harder. He’s incapable of saying he made a mistake.

NECESSARY CONCESSIONS

As was to be expected, there has been a backlash against Hersh’s investigation. If one thing is clear about the Khan Sheikhoun incident, it is that, in the ab34

sence of an independent investigation, there is still no decisive physical evidence to settle yet what happened one way or another. Therefore, our job as observers should be to keep a critical distance and weigh other relevant issues, such as context and probability.

So let us set aside for a moment the specifics of what happened on April 4 and concentrate instead on what Hersh’s critics must concede if they are to argue that Assad used sarin gas against the people of Khan Sheikhoun.

1. That Assad is so crazed and self-destructive—or at the very least so totally incapable of controlling his senior commanders, who must themselves be crazed and self-destructive—that he has on several occasions ordered the use of chemical weapons against civilians. And he has chosen to do it at the worst possible moments for his own and his regime’s survival, and when such attacks were entirely unnecessary.

2. That Putin is equally deranged and so willing to risk an end-of-times conflagration with the U.S. that he has on more than one occasion either sanctioned or turned a blind eye to the use of sarin by Assad’s regime. And he has done nothing to penalize Assad afterward, when things went wrong.

3. That Hersh has decided to jettison all the investigatory skills he has amassed over many decades as a journalist to accept at face value any unsubstantiated rumors his long-established contacts in the security services have thrown his way.

And he has done so without regard to the damage that will do to his reputation and his journalistic legacy.

4. That a significant number of U.S. intelligence officials, those Hersh has known and worked with over a long period of time, have decided recently to spin an elaborate web of lies no one wants to print, either in the hope of damaging Hersh in some collective act of revenge against him, or in the hope of permanently discrediting their own intelligence services.

Critics do not simply have to believe one of these four points. They must maintain the absolute veracity of all four of them. ■

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Israel Tightens Grip Continued from page 9

city more than a decade ago and heavily populated with Palestinians—as no longer part of Jerusalem.

“Israel is frightened by the fact that East Jerusalem continues to have a Palestinian majority,” he said. “The goal is to ‘shrink’ the city so that the 140,000 Palestinians who live beyond the wall no longer count.”

He added that Israel had seized control of 87 percent of East Jerusalem’s land. A master plan for 2050 includes building an airport and railway and increasing the connections between the Western Wall and the main Jewish settler colony in the Old City.

The projects unveiled by Netanyahu come in the wake of Trump’s visit to the Western Wall in May, when he became the first sitting U.S. president to enter occupied East Jerusalem.

The Israeli prime minister exploited the visit to undermine UNESCO’s recent resolution, saying: “I told Trump that his visit to the Western Wall dispels all of [the] UNESCO lies.”

Netanyahu took part in a video link in June between the Israeli parliament and the U.S. Congress to mark Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, or what it termed Jerusalem’s “liberation.”

That month, the U.S. Senate similarly voted 90-0 in favor of a resolution celebrating what it termed the “reunification” of the city’s western and eastern sections in 1967.

Mizrachi said: “Israel has reached the point where it believes it can treat the Old City and surrounding Palestinian neighborhoods as part of Israel, without international criticism.”

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation, Haaretz published an account of what took place immediately after the capture of Jerusalem’s Old City. It recounted that army generals quickly and secretly demolished more than 100 Palestinian homes to create the current broad Jewish prayer plaza in front of the Western Wall.

Many thousand more Palestinians were also expelled from their homes nearby in the Old City to create its Jewish Quarter.

Uzi Narkiss, the army commander in charge of the area, warned his officials: “Best to do it and not ask questions.” ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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Islam and the Near East in the Far East

Despite Corruption Scandal, Malaysian Prime Minister Well Placed for Election Win

By John Gee

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

MALAYSIA SPENT THE first half of 2017, and even before, in pre-election mode. Not a week went by without some new development in the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund scandal (see October 2016 Washington Report, p. 54), which saw crooked dealings on a colossal scale, and yet Prime Minister Najib Razak seemed unconcerned about any potential damage to his chances at the polls—with good reason.

Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), relies upon the support of Malay Muslims, who make up 60 percent of Malaysia’s population. Over its years of uninterrupted rule since independence, UMNO has presented itself as the champion of the bumiputras—the “sons of the soil.” These are the people who are said to be indigenous to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak arrives for the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, the country, which includes Malays Saudi Arabia, May 21, 2017. and the peoples who lived in Malaysia Rakyat (People’s Alliance)—a coalition of the Islamist party of before their arrival thousands of years ago. The term excludes Malaysia, PAS, the mainly Chinese-based Democratic Action the Chinese and Indian communities, even though they have Party, and the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), headed by former been rooted in the country since the 19th century. From the UMNO politician Anwar Ibrahim. PAS was able to appeal to con1970s on, UMNO-headed governments implemented a policy of servative religious Malays, and the PKR, although setting out to “affirmative action” in education, required businesspeople who draw support from all communities, was able to attract backing from were non-bumiputras to take on bumiputra partners when setreform-minded urban sectors of the Malay electorate. The three ting up a company, provided employment in the state sector and parties agreed not to run against each other and to urge their suptaken other measures that favored Malays. The government proporters to back whichever coalition party’s candidates were running vides an annual cash grant to the poorer sections of the populain their area. They were able to expand their support in the 2013 tion, who are overwhelmingly Malay. elections, winning just over half of the vote, though only a minority As a result, most Malays came to see the preservation of UMNO of parliamentary seats. rule as desirable for the maintenance of policies that they considIt is, above all, the dissolution of that coalition that has made ered to be in their interests, and UMNO could normally count on Najib confident of electoral victory on Aug. 24. It broke apart in their support. UMNO had a rude awakening in 2008, however, 2015 following the imprisonment of Anwar Ibrahim on a charge when an opposition alliance won more than a third of the vote— of sodomy and the death of veteran PAS leader Nik Abdul Aziz winning not only majority support among Chinese Malaysians, but Nik Mat. Following the latter’s demise, PAS under its president, also crucial support within the Malay population. The opposition Abdul Hadi Awang, re-asserted its call for Islamic criminal laws built on its success by formalizing its cooperation in the Pakatan to be implemented in Malaysia, which was an alliance-breaker for the DAP. In July 2015, PAS formally severed ties with the John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore, and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.

DAP. AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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Two months later, on Sept. 22, 2015, a new opposition alliance, the Pakatan Harapan (Coalition of Hope), was launched. It brought together PKR, DAP and the Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) formed by a group that left PAS. However, it did not seem that Amanah could fill PASâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; shoes, and so it is likely that there will be numerous constituencies where PAS and Pakatan Harapan split the opposition vote, to the advantage of UMNO and its allies.

An additional complicating factor is the establishment of another opposition party headed by Mahathir Mohamad, who was prime minister from 1981 to 2003. Mahathir kept up a barrage of attacks upon Najibâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leadership over a payment of $700 million into his personal accounts and the 1MDB scandal for a year, trying to unseat him, but Najib was able to isolate his critics within UMNO and remove their leaders from office.

They included deputy UMNO president Sri Muhyiddin and Mukhriz Mahathir, son of the former prime minister. In July 2016, the expellees established a new party, officially headed by Muhyiddin and known as Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysiaâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Malaysian United Indigenous Party (PPBM).

Mahathir has exuded confidence over the partyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chances of winning votes away from UMNO and also over the prospects of the PPBM-PH alliance. However, he must know that, with the resources commanded by Najib, the opposition faces an uphill struggle.

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A previously little-known terrorist group seized control of large parts of a southern Philippines city on May 23, following an attempt by security forces to arrest a wanted man. Isnilon Hapilon, named in 2014 by ISIS as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;emir,â&#x20AC;? or leader, of its Southeast Asia operations, had been reported to be in Marawi, a predominantly Muslim city of 200,000 people on the southern island of Mindanao. He was reported to be having medical treatment after being wounded during the bombing of a training camp.

The attempt to arrest Hapilon failed, and an armed group took control of areas around the city center.

Most of the terrorists were reported to be members of the Maute group, named after

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

its founders, Omarkhayam and Abdullah Maute, who embraced extreme views after going to religious schools while working in the Middle East. The group is based in Lanao del Sur province and, as with other terrorist groups in the Philippines and neighboring Indonesia, it appears to be able to draw upon family networks for members and support.

Fighters from elsewhere were reported to have traveled to Marawi. They were said to include Indonesians and Malaysians, as well as members of Hapilonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breakaway faction of the Abu Sayyaf group, notorious for its kidnapping and ransoming of hostages, as well as the brutal killing of non-Muslim captives whose families or countries refused or were unable to pay for their release. Both the Maute group and Hapilonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Abu Sayyaf faction had declared their allegiance to ISIS. Philippines troops surrounded Marawi and pushed into the districts controlled by the rebels. Initially, spokesmen characterized the operation as being concluded within days, but as the days turned into weeks, they talked of the difficulties of overcoming an enemy that sheltered among civilians and had snipers well located to fire on advancing soldiers. They also revised upward their estimate of their adversariesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; numbers, from 100 to 500.

Governments in the region feared that the seizure of Marawi was an attempt to establish a territorial basis for an ISIS-affiliated regime, much after the example of ISISâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; own seizure of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

During the fighting for Marawi, the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s civilian population suffered a great deal.

Over 90 percent fled their homes to escape the fighting. The Maute group and its collaborators were reported to have murdered Christians who fell into their hands, as well as Muslims who could not prove their religious devotion by reciting verses from the Qurâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;an. Civilians trapped in the districts held by the group were at risk of being killed or injured by the Philippinesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; security forces, which used helicopters and planes to assault rebel-held areas. The crisis provided an occasion for Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to declare martial law throughout Mindanao, the Philippinesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; second largest island. â&#x2013; AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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Special Report

Europeans Face the Surge of Refugees, Migrants and Other Global Challenges

By Marvine Howe

PHOTO M. HOWE

FARIDA KHALAF IS a 20-year-old Yazidi, or non-Muslim Kurd, with a mission: to bear witness to the genocide carried out against her community in northern Iraq. Her personal story of escape from sexual slavery under Islamic extremists won a standing ovation from international dignitaries—including four Nobel Peace Prize winners—attending the biannual Estoril Conferences dedicated to Global Challenges.

At the same time, Portugal and the Council of Europe cohosted a ceremony in parliament to honor a Tunisian MP for her struggle for democracy, and an Italian mayor for her defense of the rights of refugees and migrants in general.

Meanwhile the Lisbon Forum discussed how to respond to problems of migration and integration. In the nearby resort of Cascais, the Swiss-based think tank Horasis brought business leaders from around the world to debate global challenges facing corporations. And Portugal’s National Defense Institute organized an international seminar on the challenge on everyone’s mind: Islamist movements in the Middle East, North Africa and the Sahel.

Increasingly, Europeans are troubled over the fractious state of their universe, particularly the rise of extremism and the influx of refugees and migrants. Many leaders, experts Tunisian MP Mbarka Brahmi is presented the North-South Prize by Portuand educators, concerned over the problems of globalization, gal’s president (l) and Assembly president (r). are seeking answers through cultural interchange. Portugal, a silver necklace with the name of her village, Kocho, in Arabic, she peaceful, multicultural country known for its tolerance and stability, said she had remained in captivity for about four months before provided a welcoming platform for debate last May and June. “We being rescued by Kurdish smugglers, “who had exacted a price seek to build bridges instead of walls, aiming at solidarity and a from her family for her freedom.” She now lives in Germany with more competitive, sustainable and free world,” Carlos Carreiras, her mother and younger brothers, but has postponed her dream the mayor of Cascais, said in welcoming the visitors. of becoming a math teacher because she is waging her personal It was the Yazidi refugee who stirred the most emotional rewar against ISIS. Last year she wrote her memoir, The Girl Who sponse with her testimony. Speaking in Arabic on “Coping with Beat ISIS, with a German journalist, and since then has talked Extremism,” Khalaf recounted how ISIS occupied her peaceful about her experience at conferences in Europe. “My aim now is village in northern Iraq in August 2014, killing many of the men to obtain justice,” she said. “I want to testify in court against the and kidnapping the women. Her father and older brother were people who committed genocide against the Yazidis.” murdered and she was raped and made a sex slave. Only when During the panel on “Migration and Civil Society,” Samer Abshe referred to the suffering of the women she left behind did delnour, assistant professor at Erasmus University’s Rotterdam she break down into tears “What can we do to help?” members School of Management, was asked how to combat xenophobic of the audience asked. Khalaf’s reply: “Be strong and get your populism. As a Canadian Palestinian and activist, he urged young government to support the Yazidis.” people to learn about and support contemporary grassroots moveSome 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are still being held prisoner, ments like Black Lives Matter or BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Khalaf told the Washington Report later in an interview. Wearing a Sanctions movement to force Israel to comply with international Marvine Howe, former New York Times bureau chief in Ankara, is the law. Since 2006, Abdelnour has undertaken extensive research in author of Al Andalus Rediscovered: Iberia’s New Muslims and Other Minorities.

Sudan studying the post-war reintegration of fighters and initiatives AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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that seek to protect women against sexual violence.

In Lisbon, the North-South Centre, founded by the Council of Europe in 1990, presented its annual awards in a formal ceremony in the Assembly of the Republic, presided over by Portugal’s president. The Centre also announced Algeria as its 21st member; other members include Greece, Spain, Morocco and Tunisia. The new laureates were: Mbarka Brahmi for her “fight for social justice and fundamental role in the democratic process in Tunisia,” and Giuseppina Nicolini, mayor of the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa “for her strong commitment to the reception of migrants and the defense of refugee rights.” Nicolini sent excuses for not being able to attend the ceremony. It was learned however, that the woman who had become a symbol of Italian hospitality to migrants had been defeated in the June 11 election by an anti-immigrant opponent.

“The goals of our revolution have not yet been achieved,” declared Brahmi, a mother of five, as she accepted the North-South glass globe. Speaking in Arabic through an interpreter, she highlighted problems of unemployment, economic imbalances and unjust distribution of wealth—problems which she said were just as important as the fight against terrorism. Calling for increased solidarity, Brahmi said: “Let’s unite North and South to vanquish terrorism, grow wealth and bring about justice.”

Later, speaking in French in an interview, Brahmi, whose husband was assassinated by Islamic extremists in 2013, said there were still terrorist incidents in Tunisia, but that considerable progress has been made. She emphasized that public pressure had forced the Islamist-led government to resign after the death of her husband, who headed a small opposition party. Asked about women’s rights, the widow called Tunisia “an example for other Arab countries.” Pointing out that polygamy has been banned since independence in 1956, Brahmi stated: “Tunisian women have imposed their presence in all domains; now we want to improve their social and economic condition and ensure their real political participation.”

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The North-South Centre and its partner, the Aga Khan Development Network, also welcomed some 200 participants from 52 countries to the Lisbon Forum, held in the Ismaili Centre. The agenda for the two-day conference was ambitious: “Managing Migration,” “Avoiding Populism,” “Building Inclusive Societies” and “Reinforcing the North-South Dialogue.” The conclusions provide a valuable blueprint for dealing with some of the most urgent problems resulting from globalization. The glaring weakness of the program was omission of any means of financing the recommendations.

ADDRESSING THE CAUSES

The Forum stressed that it was necessary to address the origins of migration, not just the consequences. The flow of migrants must be better managed, while ensuring the enforcement of international law. Appropriate resources should be made available for transit countries to deal with migrants. Media stereotypes that portray migration “as a Trojan horse of terrorism” should be corrected by presenting the positive effects. To improve integration, financial resources should go to educate people to live together while respecting each other’s rights. Finally, to improve the North-South dialogue, there must be a new way to look at the Mediterranean, “not as a wall or a barrier but as an element of unity.”

In Cascais, the Horasis Global Meeting of some 400 leaders of business, government and non-governmental organizations grappled with impending threats of Brexit, President Donald Trump’s unpredictable tweets, the expanding income gap and the spread of populism. Dr. Frank Jurgen Richter, who founded Horasis in 2005 as “an offshoot of Davos,” acknowledged that the “world seems to be more fragile and fractious” and “citizens less trusting of their governments.”

Nevertheless, he stressed that Horasis, which means vision in ancient Greek, would seek to build “a new togetherness.”

The Estoril Conferences wound up with expressions of self-criticism. Recalling that Europe recognized the right to asylum after World War II and its 60 million refugees, the Portuguese minister of home affairs, Constanca Urbano de Sousa, added: “thus Europe has a duty to protect refugees.” She pointed out that

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Europe has accepted not even one million of the total five million Syrian refugees, most of whom are in Germany and Sweden. “We must control our borders and dismantle networks of traffickers,” she acknowledged, “but Europe should share the responsibility for refugees.” Michael Neuman from Médecins Sans Frontières, France agreed: “The EU’s performance on refugees has been disastrous,” he said, noting that France has taken in 4,000 refugees—compared to Uganda, which has received 600,000 from South Sudan.

The seminar on Islamist Movements at the Portuguese National Defense Institute raised the complex nature of current radicalization. According to Prof. Mathieu Guidere, director of Arab Studies at the University of Paris 8, the ideology of movements like ISIS “can only be countered by another ideology, not by military means.”

He emphasized that radical Islamist groups are not engaged in a war of civilization against the West. The French professor pointed out that, like Christianity and past wars between Catholics and Protestants, there’s a war within Islam, between Sunnis and Shi’i and their offshoots. “Muslims are killing each other; the West is not a priority,” Guidere said, noting that there are some 2,000 Muslim victims every week, compared to a couple of targets in the West.

On the other hand, George Joffe, professor of international relations at Cambridge University in England, stressed that the recent wave of attacks in Europe were the work of second- and third-generation minorities and “indicate Europe has failed to integrate Muslims.” Describing the primary factor behind radicalization as political, not religious, he declared: “The great war on terror and the invasion of Iraq was a great mistake that ignored history and provoked an antagonistic response—a cry for political dignity.” Asked to comment on the importance of Israel on Islamic radicalization, Prof. Joffe delivered a grave warning. “An enormous crisis is building up in the occupied territories; there’ll never be a two-state solution. The occupation has achieved its purpose, for Palestinians the situation is untenable….There’s going to be a third or fourth intifada or worse. The Arab states think they can ignore it. They can’t.” ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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MUSLIM AMERICAN ACTIVISM More than 600 guests attended the 26th annual Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) Media Awards Gala on May 6 at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. MPAC honored people and projects exercising “resistance through art.” MPAC’s Hollywood Bureau, directed by Sue Obeidi, is working with the entertainment industry to “increase the number of authentic and humanizing stories of Muslims and Islam on film and TV.” This year’s awards honored the projects and people exemplifying "voices of courage and conscience.”

Ahmos Hassan, committee chair of MPAC’s Hollywood Bureau, noted that while frightening things are happening in Washington, DC, there are people who are mobilizing this nation using their art.

“Hasan Minhaj [from the “Daily Show”] was here on this stage last year,” Hassan noted. “Today, he is the featured entertainment at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.”

The night’s honorees included The Amplifier Foundation, which commissioned the nonpartisan #WeThePeople campaign that redefined the face of the 21st century American. Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the now iconic images of a Muslim and Latina woman and an African-American child, shared a special video message. Munira Ahmed, whose image was used for the Muslim woman wearing an American flag hijab, presented the award to Amplifier Foundation artist and poet Mark Gonzales. [Hundreds of people have purchased posters of Fairey’s images from the Washington Report’s Middle East Books and More.]

Another awardee was HBO’s “The Night Of,” a series that portrays a Muslim family’s challenges as their son Naz tries to prove his innocence of murder. The show addresses racial stereotyping and incarceration, and the emotional and financial impact they can have on American Muslim families. Actress Poorna Jagannathan, who portrays Naz’s mother, spoke about how thankful she felt to the show for giving 40

PHOTO COURTESY MPAC

MPAC Honors Voices of Courage And Conscience

(L-r) Salam Darwaza, Sue Obeidi, Joanna Natasegara and Ahmos Hassan at the Muslim Public Affairs Council 2017 Media Awards. her such a sense of belonging. She read a message from Armenian-American director Steven Zaillian in which he said, “We have to try harder to portray all vulnerable or maligned people with dignity, respect and truth.”

2016 MPAC Media Award honoree Salam Darwaza, producer of “Salam, Neighbor!,” presented an MPAC award to producer Joanna Natasegara for her Oscar-winning film “The White Helmets,” which follows Syrian rescue workers.

MPAC also honored Coca-Cola for its “America the Beautiful” Super Bowl commercial.

MPAC president Salam al-Marayati urged attendees to continue to support MPAC’s work, which benefits all Americans. What it means to be American is not one’s race, color, socioeconomic status, religion or ethnicity, he said, but one’s respect for the Constitution. “The Qur’an says that hope is something that you will find if you only believe in God’s mercy. So, wherever you find hope, you will find God. That is our faith, our mantra. That is why we do what we do tonight in the Muslim Public Affairs Council Entertainment Media Awards. We find that hope for America, so that people know that Islam is part of this great country,” he concluded.

The evening’s emcee, actor/comedian Ramy Youssef, kept the jokes flowing, and Chicago-based American-Muslim musician Zeshan B. sang an anthem to modern protesters.

—Samir and Pat Twair

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Poets and Politics at APWA’s Iftar Honoring Refugees

The American Palestinian Women’s Association (APWA) co-hosted a Ramadan iftar to honor World Refugee Day at the Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ in Arlington, VA on June 17. The fact that a church co-hosted this special fastbreaking dinner, eaten by Muslims after sunset during Ramadan, symbolized the very real coexistence between the Muslim and the Christian communities in America.

Dr. Mai Abdul Rahman, president and co-founder of APWA, launched in 2005, opened the evening with a brief overview of APWA’s mission, shedding light on the significant role that Palestinian women play in the current political situation.

“We’ve tried to create a social movement, a social consciousness about being one and together,” Abdul Rahman noted. The event was a real example of being one and together, with Arabs, Americans, people of other nationalities as well as Muslims and non-Muslims gathering in one place to honor and show love and support to refugees.

Abdul Rahman shared her own personal journey into political activism, which began after the 9/11 attacks, when she was a third grade teacher. Her principal warned her she’d have to prove every day that she wasn’t a terrorist. That drove her to run for public office and put her Arab-American name on yard signs all over DC, to proudly say, “I am one of you. I’m Muslim. I’m an AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

Arab-American. I’m Palestinian.”

Samar Najia, another APWA co-founder, recited three poems that she wrote. One was titled “Bint Al-Quds,” or “Daughter of Jerusalem,” which she wrote in dedication to the soul of her mother, who was displaced from Palestine at the age of 14 and sought refuge in many countries, beginning in Egypt and ending in the U.S., which was her home when she died. The poem is a conversation between Najia and her mom, Nanal Dajani, who always referred to herself as Bint Al-Quds, as she held on to the heritage of her parents and ancestors. Mrs. Dajani never forgot who she was and who she would always be. Najia’s poems projected the very real dilemma refugees face as they settle in lands around the world, fitting in but making sure they never forget their heritage.

Palestinian Ambassador to the U.S. Husam Zomlot, who had recently returned from the West Bank, emphasized the close relations between Palestinian Muslims and Christians. He also expressed his awe for Palestinian women as he described an invitation to speak to the Dutch Palestinian Women’s Association in The Netherlands when he worked in London.

Actually, he admitted, he was terrified by the thought of addressing 500 Palestinian grandmothers, mothers and students.

Turning serious again, he said that after the Nakba of 1948, Palestinian women held their family’s wealth in the form of gold. It was up to Palestinian mothers and grandmothers to protect the children when their men were killed, left to find work, or imprisoned. Growing up in a Gaza refugee camp, Ambassador Zomlot said he had 20 mothers, because the camp had such a strong sense of community.

“Every refugee has one dream—to return home,” Zomlot said. He criticized the framing of refugees as a threat or a burden. “The United States is great because of refugees,” he said, listing famous refugees, including Steve Jobs. “Jesus was a refugee. The Prophet Muhammad had to become a refugee.”

There should be no stigma in being a refugee, he continued. They aren’t only victims, they are also human beings who AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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(L-r) Joanne Demchock, Dr. Najat Arafat Khelil, Saleem F. Zaru, Dr. Mai Abdul Rahman, Samar Najia, Amal Morsi and Laila Boufraine.

make valuable contributions. Ambassador Zomlot assured the audience that when President Donald Trump visited Bethlehem, Palestinians were very clear in stating their rights and demands, including the fact that there could be no solution without honoring the rights of refugees.

Rev. Graylan Hagler, senior pastor of Plymouth United Church of Christ in Washington, DC, spoke about the role of U.S. churches in challenging Israel’s military occupation of Palestine. He said he accompanied activists, including hip hop artists, on trips to Palestine in 1974 and 2014. Most recently, he led a trip with 10 black clergy last December. One committed Christian Zionist argued all the way there, Rev. Hagler said. It took only 48 hours for even him to say, “I’ve never seen oppression like this.” Looking at the occupation through black American eyes, Jim Crow eyes, “it makes the hair on the back of your neck bristle,” Rev. Hagler said.

Zionists have relied on the religious right to give them cover, Hagler continued.

They’ve used empire theology, wrapping themselves up in the Bible, to protect the status quo. It is time to change the ideology, Hagler insisted, like we did in South Africa, and to oppose apartheid.

Palestinian-American writer Zeina Azzam, the Arab Center DC’s publications editor, read her moving poems about refugees, “Leaving My Childhood Home” and “Colors of the Diaspora.”

After reading his own poem, “Let Your Love Live,” Imam Yahya Hendi, the Mus-

lim chaplain at Georgetown University, said it should come as no surprise that Muslims would gather in a church. He had recently attended an iftar with 800 Christians and Muslims in Tennessee.

There are some groups that spend millions of dollars trying to vilify Muslims and divide us, he warned. But, he countered, “We are one family. An injustice to one of us is an injustice to all. When one nation is occupied we are all occupied. When one nation is oppressed, we are all oppressed.” Imam Hendi closed by describing the significance of Ramadan.

After attendees enjoyed a traditional iftar dinner of lentil soup, olives, rice pilaf with nuts and chicken, topped off with fabulous desserts, APWA presented well-deserved awards to United Palestinian Appeal’s executive director, Saleem F. Zaru, and Arab America co-founder Amal David. The Washington Report’s Middle East Books and More joined other booths in selling books, olive oil and embroidery to attendees.

—Oday Abdaljawwad and Delinda C. Hanley

Spending Father’s Day With a Pastor and an Imam

Senior Pastor Rev. Graylan Hagler invited Imam Johari Abdul-Malik to give a sermon titled, “Who’s Your Daddy?” on Father’s Day, June 18, at the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC. Both religious leaders have served in the “ministry of the public square together,” Hagler said, as he introduced

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children—one lesson being not to objechis long-time friend. In fact, they tify, abuse or degrade women. Islam once gave each other a teaches Muslims to protect women, Johari Thanksgiving challenge: Who said. can feed more people at a Turning to the recent controversy with homeless shelter? They both his mosque, Johari acknowledged that it won, Hagler admitted, with their was hard to quit his job, but “when a buildMuslim and Christian congreing is burning it’s time to get out...Silence gants serving 10,000 meals in is betrayal,” he said. a week.

Rev. Hagler called for unity in this naOn June 9, Imam Johari retion, and for Americans to work to drive signed from his public relations away hatred. “No one should build walls post at Dar Al Hijrah Islamic around us or between us,” he argued, callCenter in Falls Church, VA after ing for justice, liberation and reconciliation he said the mosque’s board Rev. Graylan Hagler (l) and Imam Johari Abdul-Malik for all.

—Delinda C. Hanley failed to adequately condemn speak on Father’s Day. the banned practice of female genital mutilation. The mosque’s lead imam, Shaker Elsayed, had said limited circumcision of girls prevented “hypersexuality.” The mosque’s board condemned Elsayed’s comments as out of line with both U.S. and Islamic law and placed him on administrative leave, but Imam Johari called for the imam’s dismissal, and quit when the board refused. Imam Johari stood up against violence and abuse, Hagler said.

That’s a challenge for all of us in the Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities, he noted, and we need to have prophets in our midst.

Imam Johari explained why Muslims fast during Ramadan, just as Moses, Jesus and Muhammad fasted—so that they can acquire restraint. He also explained that the Qur’an says that God created mankind from a single soul, and he described how people of every religion around the world have so much in common.

Addressing Father’s Day, Imam Johari said that while he was raised by his single mother, his father taught him about integrity when he visited on Saturdays. “Pew estimates that 67 percent of black fathers who don’t live with their children see them at least once a month, compared to 59 percent of white dads and just 32 percent of Hispanic dads,” he noted. His own father showed Johari how to stand tall and be a man. His father also admitted he’d top: In Istanbul not all Muslims break their fast by attending a traditional iftar in a home or made a lot of mistakes, and told his son to restaurant. Sitting on Istiklal Avenue at night, many enjoy sandwiches provided by the local “let my shipwreck be your lighthouse.” municipality amid an extremely heavy police presence following the May 31 bombing in Kabul.

A father isn’t an ATM machine, Johari ABoVE: two young ladies enjoy a casual iftar of sandwiches in a doorway with Armand, a local cat. stated. He has a responsibility to teach his

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STAFF PHOTO SAMIR TWAIR

Islamic Relief USA’s chief executive officer, Anwar Ahmad Khan, welcomed a room packed full of American Muslims and supporters to an Eid luncheon at the Rayburn House building on Capitol Hill on June 27 to celebrate the end of Ramadan. The luncheon, Islamic Relief’s 7th annual celebration, attracted 25 honorary co-hosts and 14 letters of endorsement. Khan described Islamic Relief’s vital work around the world, including in South Sudan, where people were eating grass until his organization stepped in to help. “It’s our job, as members of the human race, to help,” Khan noted.

“Our faith urges us to feed the needy.” He reminded listeners that a video of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sharing an iftar meal with Muslims went viral, with six million downloads in one day. Khan was too polite and studiously non-partisan to belabor the fact that the current U.S. president broke with a 20-year tradition by not hosting a White House iftar.

Children play with a magician’s rabbit at the Syrian American Council-Los Angeles picnic marking eid al-fitr on July 2 in Mason Regional Park, Irvine, CA. august/september 2017

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Islamic Relief Hosts Capitol Hill Eid Luncheon

ABOVE (l-r): Islamic Relief’s Jihad Williams and Anwar Khan listen to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) at the eid luncheon. RIght: Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, calls on American Muslims to not be MIA.

Ambassador Tony Hall, executive director emeritus of the Alliance to End Hunger, said that Islamic Relief is working to end hunger in America as well as in the warravaged Middle East. The selfless acts of faith-based communities can’t be sustained without political will, he warned, adding that the U.S. budget, which cuts programs for the poor, troubles him. “Our budget is a moral document that paints a picture of who we are,” Hall said. “It’s a troubling narrative when we only focus on countries strategic to America.” He urged listeners to “Take back our narrative. Revive our nation’s spirit of compassion. Help those in need...We need to scream or these cuts will survive.”

Maxine Waters (D-CA) described Islamic Relief’s work fighting hunger and despair, including distributing food to nearly 400,000 people in 31 countries in 2016.

Last year the organization’s Disaster Response Team delivered water and hygiene kits to victims of Hurricane Matthew in North Carolina. “American Muslims don’t get the credit they deserve,” she said. And although she promised herself not to “rant and rave” at this event, she concluded by urging attendees to “Resist!”

Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) pointed out that “no one resists as elegantly and effectively

as Auntie Maxine!” Thanking Islamic Relief for more than two decades of community service, she said, “Your work should be highlighted when we talk about American Muslims.”

Rep. Daniel Kildee (D-MI) gave perhaps the most moving testimony, describing how Islamic Relief stepped up to distribute clean drinking water to his constituents exposed to high levels of lead in their water in Flint, MI. “Long after the cameras left, Islamic Relief continued to help my community in their moment of greatest need. I take that personally,” Kildee said. “Your actions represent the values of Islam in ways no words can ever do.” He then welcomed “my brother from another mother, Keith Ellison (D-MN),” to the mic.

Ellison, who in 2007 became the first Muslim American elected to Congress, spoke about Islamic values of mercy and compassion. Fasting during Ramadan reminds Muslims that many live in places with food insecurity, he noted. Muslims have never been hostile to people of other faiths, he stated, adding that seeing this room full of Muslims, Christians and Jews

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HUMAN RIGHTS

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USS Liberty Survivors Commemorate 50th Anniversary of Israeli Attack

Mourners packed Dupont Circle.

is a good sign. “As Americans debate which direction their nation will take, Muslims can’t be MIA [Missing in Action],” Ellison warned, citing the two alt-right rallies held in Washington, DC on June 25. Muslim Americans must show their neighbors they’re not like the Muslims they see on TV. “It’s critically important for you to be talking to those who represent you, and standing with refugees, the hungry and vulnerable,” he concluded.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Mourning Nabra Hassanen

MPower Change organized a solemn vigil June 20 at Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle to mourn Nabra Hassanen. The 17year-old Virginian was assaulted and killed on June 18 (Father’s Day) as she was returning to her mosque after eating a predawn breakfast with friends before beginning her Ramadan fast for the day. The night she was killed, she had just had a group of Muslim and non-Muslim friends over to her family’s Reston apartment for dinner to break that day’s fast.

Her murder was a terrible tragedy for Hassanen’s family, her community, and for Muslims across the nation, organizers told the hundreds attending the DC vigil.

After a month of violence, including the assaults and murders in Portland, OR and 44

anti-Muslim marches organized by hate groups, this vigil and others around the country showed support for Muslims and demanded justice for Hassanen’s murder.

Julie Parker, a spokeswoman for Fairfax County, VA police, told reporters after Hassanen’s body was found, “No evidence has been recovered that showed this was a hate crime. Nothing indicates it was motivated by race or religion.” Instead police described the killing by the suspect, 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres, as an act of “road rage.”

Hours after the Dupont Circle vigil, items from Hassanen’s memorial were set on fire at the Circle’s fountain, but “the memorial did not appear to be specifically targeted,” Park police said, and the police report does not list a hate bias motivation.

Hassanen’s funeral service was packed at the Sterling, VA, All Dulles Area Muslim Society Center, where Nabra attended religious services. It was followed by another vigil in Reston, VA organized by her high school’s Muslim Student Association.

—Delinda C. Hanley

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

As the eyes of the world were focused on former FBI Director James Comey’s congressional testimony about a possible White House cover-up regarding Russia’s role in the November election, a group of roughly 100 people gathered at Arlington National Cemetery on June 8 to reflect on an event the U.S. government has been covering up for 50 years: Israel’s deliberate June 8, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty.

Despite ample evidence that Israel intentionally attacked the clearly marked U.S. ship in international waters during the 1967 Six-Day War, officials in Washington and Tel Aviv insist the attack was a mistake. Following the attack, President Lyndon Johnson oversaw a cover-up of the affair, ordering the Naval Court of Inquiry to conduct a sham investigation intended to absolve Israel of guilt. The president also ordered the Liberty crew to never speak of the incident publicly. Congress has also refused to conduct an official investigation into the attack.

As Liberty survivors convened for their annual commemoration this year, there was a palpable sense of frustration and despair. Ordinary Americans who loyally served their nation feel betrayed by their government.

“When do our 34 shipmates and their families receive justice?” asked Liberty survivor Ernie Gallo, as he delivered remarks during the official midday ceremony.

“We will not go quietly into the night,” Gallo continued. “America, are you listening to us? You gave us honesty and integrity to be assigned to a highly classified intelligence ship. You taught us to determine what is right and wrong. You gave us the passion and the will to complete our mission despite any adversity. Yet the Navy, at the behest of the White House, abandoned us under fire. Did you hear us, America?

Yes, America, you abandoned us. Why?” Gallo noted that despite the many official commendations given to the ship’s AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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Shipmates and relatives lay roses in memory of the 34 Liberty crew members who were killed when their ship was attacked by Israel.

crew, they still face rejection and even condemnation from those who insist the Liberty crew have a prejudice against Israel and/or Jews. “Since our truthful claim is that the attack was deliberate, and the power structure claims otherwise, we are labeled bigots and such,” he said. “We then suffer embarrassment and condemnation. As a recent example, in my town of Palm Coast, FL, I cannot have a plaque honoring the Liberty…placed in our Heroes Memorial Park because of bigotry towards the USS Liberty. A town representative stated a segment of our citizens would be upset about it.”

In addition to this aggressive assault by pro-Israel forces, the Liberty survivors also must cope with an American public that knows little to nothing about the attack.

“The American public has no idea what happened to us,” Gallo pointed out.

Nevertheless, Gallo is hopeful the American people will one day demand that their government recognize the truth about the attack. “I have faith in the collective American soul,” he said. “As a believer in prayer, I know our God will not let us down. Our numbers are growing in leaps and bounds. When our truth and justice comes, some folks are going to be very upset.”

Time, however, is running out for the aging Liberty survivors, Gallo noted.

“Please, America, for the little time left for AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

the crew, we’re asking for justice, as we soon will be joining our shipmates in these sacred grounds,” he said.

Liberty survivors will never stop fighting for truth and justice, Gallo concluded. “Our adversaries never realized our love of country would compel us to keep on fighting for the truth to be known about the cowardly attack killing 34,” he said. “America, you taught us that we should be remiss if we did not stand up to this terrible wrong.”

—Dale Sprusansky

WAGING PEACE Similar Policies, Close U.S. Relations for New Saudi Crown Prince

The June 20 replacement of Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud with Mohammed bin Salman Al-Saud as crown prince of Saudi Arabia caused a shakeup in the Saudi royal family and has implications not only for Saudi Arabia itself but the region as well. The crown prince is the number two position in the Kingdom and first in line for succession to the throne. Two days later the Atlantic Council hosted a teleconference titled “An Expected Surprise: Mohammed bin Salman named Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia” discussing the move and its implications. Barry Pavel of the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center for Inter-

national Security moderated the discussion.

As far as overall Saudi foreign and domestic policy is concerned, no major changes are anticipated from Bin Salman.

“I don’t think that we’re going to see any big policy changes, just because Mohammed bin Salman has been driving the policy bus for the last couple of years anyway,” said F. Gregory Gause, III, of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Gause also doesn’t think the Saudi-U.S. relationship will change much. “Mohammed bin Salman has been courting the U.S.,” he pointed out.

This concentration of power in one person is almost unprecedented in Saudi history, Gause went on to say. While there is little public dissent within the Al-Saud family, King Salman has cut out many family members who expected to be involved in governing the country. Karen Elliott House of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs noted that 31 of the 34 family branches supported the move. She also said that in addition to Bin Nayef, King Salman would remove other senior officials and replace them with younger people. Remarking on possible increased instability due to the concentration of power, House said, “With absolute responsibility goes absolute accountability.”

With his new position as crown prince and future king, House speculated, Bin Salman will have more freedom and power to try to improve his stalling foreign problems in Yemen, Iran, Qatar and Syria.

“He also has a free hand at reform,” she added. Bin Salman is the only one with a plan for economic reform, something the Kingdom sorely needs.

Why did this happen now? President Donald Trump’s May visit to Saudi Arabia could have played a role in the decision.

According to Gause, Bin Salman has “cultivated” the new U.S. administration. Both Gause and House said that Bin Salman formed a relationship with his peer, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, as a way to get close to the U.S. president. Gause noted that both the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations trusted in and de-

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U.S. President Donald Trump (r) meets with soon-to-be Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the White House Oval Office, March 14, 2017.

pended on Bin Nayef. House added that Bin Nayef was supported and liked by the U.S. defense and intelligence communities as well, so “if he [Bin Salman] was going to overcome that, his one option was President Trump.” The new U.S. administration, Gause said, “gave every signal that they would be very accepting of a change that turned out Mohammed bin Nayef.”

However, he added, the Saudis may have been reading too much into U.S. signals. Ali Tulbah of McLarty Associates thought that in addition to Trump’s visit to Riyadh, a desire to maintain momentum on the current political and economic plan was also a factor. “If King Salman were to pass tomorrow, who is to say what would happen to that plan?” he asked.

Speaking about the effect the new crown prince will have on current relations with Qatar, Gause predicted it would actually ease the crisis. However, he said, “I don’t think we should expect a solution to the tensions, but I think that we can expect maybe a papering over and a kicking it down the road.”

—Alex Shanahan

U.S. Role, Stake in Gulf Feud

The decision on June 5 by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Egypt and others to cut off relations with Qatar caused a significant crisis in the Per46

sian Gulf, with implications for the entire Middle East region and beyond. To better understand these events, the Wilson Center hosted a June 12 teleconference entitled “Tensions in the Gulf: Implications for U.S. Policy.”

The discussion—moderated by Aaron David Miller, vice president for New Initiatives at the Wilson Center—began by describing the roots of the tension. According to Bruce Riedel, Brookings Institution senior fellow and director of its Intelligence Project, smaller countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) don’t like being labeled as followers of Saudi Arabia.

“Qatar has been the outstanding example of a small country that hated being labeled a follower, being labeled a puppet,” he said, “and stood out on its own.”

Marcelle Wahba, president of The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW), noted that Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the current emir’s father and predecessor, developed Qatar’s liquid natural gas export capacity and soft power in terms of news organizations and educational institutions, causing friction with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Both Wahba and David Ottaway, Middle East fellow at the Wilson Center, agreed that Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar have differing definitions of terrorism. “The Muslim Brother-

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hood in the UAE is listed as a terrorist organization, as is Hamas, but obviously not in Qatar,” said Wahba. “The differences on the Islamist front are, I think, the crux [of the feud],” she added, “more so than the differences on relationships with Iran.”

As for the timing of the blowup, Ottaway posited that the four countries used Trump’s “hard-line attitude” about the war on terror as a perfect excuse to take action against Qatar. Riedel and Wahba agreed that President Trump’s summit in Riyadh was an important factor. Trump has a very black-and-white view of the Middle East, Riedel noted, and therefore sided with Saudi Arabia against the alleged “terror financier” Qatar.

Wahba also commented that the Saudis feel vulnerable because of an increasingly costly war in Yemen, a stronger post-nuclear-deal Iran, reduced income from oil, and the national economic reform plan that will necessitate considerable economic and social change.

All the panelists discussed the importance of GCC unity for U.S. interests, especially Qatar’s Al Udeid air base, which hosts U.S. Central Command forward headquarters and is the launching point for many military operations in the region. The GCC, Riedel observed, “has been the rock on which the U.S. has built its Gulf policy, literally going back to the 1980s....If there is a complete breakdown of harmony within the Gulf Cooperation Council,” he warned, “American interests will suffer.”

“The Qataris will have to blink first,” Wahba predicted. Specifically, she later clarified, Doha will have to change its use of the Al Jazeera and Al Araby Al Jadeed news outlets so as not to “provid[e] a platform for the leadership, for example, of alQaeda and Jabhat Al-Nusra.” It also will have to stop financing the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. If Qatar negotiates on core issues like these, the “blockade” will start to lift, she said. Otherwise, in Wahba’s opinion, Qatar will be confronted with possible regime change or expulsion from the GCC. Riedel predicted that “the Qataris, in the end, will probably produce some of the usual suspects and throw them out of the AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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will continue with this approach unless it gets involved in a confrontation with the U.S., at which point it could change its GCC strategy.

—Alex Shanahan

PHOTO COURTESY AGSIW

Trump Administration Poised to Implement Hawkish Iran Policy

(L-r) Hussein Ibish, Ellen Laipson, Hamad Althunayyan, David Des Roches and Ali Vaez. country for awhile.” He also foresaw a “prolonged stalemate” if the Qataris don’t give in soon.

—Alex Shanahan

AGSIW Weighs in on Gulf Dispute

The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington hosted a June 20 discussion on “Washington’s Role and Interests in the GCC Crisis” at its Washington, DC headquarters, moderated by AGSIW senior resident scholar Hussein Ibish. Ellen Laipson, distinguished fellow and president emeritus at the Stimson Center, noted that Washington has an interest in maintaining and strengthening the stability of the Gulf. Despite growing U.S. energy independence, she added, “the United States still has some residual leadership role to play in stabilizing the world’s energy market,” in which the Gulf is still a major factor. U.S. goals in the short-to-medium term, Laipson said, are to reunify the GCC states and prevent the Saudis from taking harsher actions against Qatar. “The Qataris will have to find some concessions to make,” she declared, adding that the paramount goal for the U.S. is the survival of the GCC. Hamad Althunayyan, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park, echoed these ideas. The U.S. should be focused on “further de-escalation and containment,” he said, and advocated for Washington to support an interGCC solution via Kuwait’s mediation. “The U.S. should not take sides,” he asserted.

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Emiratis should also be flexible with their demands. While Doha risks humiliation if it assents to all the demands being made of it, he said, “If they do not address the concerns of their neighbors…it will isolate Qatar geographically and…put tremendous geopolitical pressure” on the Qatari government.

David Des Roches, senior military fellow at the National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies, raised the issue of the “regional security infrastructure,” or U.S. bases in the region. This is the only way the U.S. can project power in the Indian Ocean, he pointed out, and therefore Washington has a core interest in maintaining this infrastructure.

Unity in confronting Iran and other enemies is important as well, he noted, adding that from a bureaucratic standpoint, stability is critical because the U.S. bureaucracy is currently very understaffed.

Des Roches was skeptical of speculation that the U.S. gave the Saudis a “green light” to take these actions against Qatar, saying that because the feud harms U.S. national security interests, there was no intentional approval from the U.S. during President Trump’s May visit to Riyadh.

Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, posited that the U.S. policy of containing Iran has never worked. Although Tehran would prefer a divided GCC, he noted, it knows Qatar won’t leave the GCC. Therefore, Iran is remaining neutral and reaping the economic benefits of helping Qatar replace imports and services affected by the boycott. Iran

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, is likely to face multiple pressure points in the coming months, according to experts who participated in a June 13 panel at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC. The panelists largely agreed that increased isolation of Iran by other countries in the region, as well as a less friendly U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump, are the most likely impediments to the viability of the nuclear deal and improved U.S.-Iran relations.

The Trump administration is currently conducting a review of U.S. policy toward Iran, and while no policy has been decided upon, indications are that Washington is poised to move in a more hawkish direction vis-à-vis Tehran, even if it does not actually walk away from the nuclear deal.

Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, noted the effect that President Trump’s election victory had on U.S. policy to Iran.

“Fundamentally, U.S. policy is no longer JCPOA-centric,” she said. “The regional dynamic is now the primary vector through which the United States is going to be contesting” what she described as “Iran’s destabilizing activity in the region.”

To the surprise of many in attendance, Maloney went on to caution that the Trump administration’s posture on Iran, while lacking in finesse, is relatively cohesive.

“This administration has a certain commonality in terms of Iran policy, which is a fairly hard-line stance across all relevant cabinet officials and at the sub-cabinet level,” she said. “So to the extent that there is going to be a shift toward confrontation, there’s really no counterbalance to that perspective within the administration that I’ve been able to discern at this stage.”

Reza Marashi, research director at the National Iranian American Council, echoed Maloney’s sentiment. “I think it’s

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(L-r) Amir Handjani, Suzanne Maloney and Reza Marashi discuss the future of U.S.-Iran relations. possible for a cohesive policy to exist, even if it’s very top-down in its approach,” he said. “I think that this government, as it exists so far, is very top-down at the White House, it’s very top-down at the Pentagon.

Mattis’ team is the biggest that a secretary of defense has had, I think, since—I don’t even know how long—he’s got 25, 30 people working for him, [former Secretary of Defense] Ash Carter had 10. And Ash Carter’s was large. And then it’s very topdown at the State Department.”

While acknowledging that the Trump administration has thus far been unable to project a clear, unified message on foreign issues, Marashi believes it’s possible for the administration to adopt a clear message regarding Iran. “Now you’re right to point out there are different messages coming from the State Department and the White House on issues like, for example, Qatar last week, and that can be very confusing and, depending on the issue, very damaging,” he said. “But I do think that as we go from month 6 to month 8 to month 12, you’ll start to see less of that,” he told the audience.

Amir Handjani, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, cautioned the Trump administration not to overestimate its ability to project power over Iran. “I think we have a tendency in Washington to think that we can ratchet things up and ratchet things up, put Iran in the penalty box and make it cower, without thinking through what the Iranian reaction is going to be,” he said. “If Iran feels that the United States is going to 48

step out of the JCPOA in practice, if not in name, they have a lot of cards to play in the region, and that could lead to a very combustible situation.”

With Trump administration policy shaping up to be more hard-line toward Iran, there’s the possibility that Iran will attempt to cement a closer relationship with Europe, which has no interest in walking away from the JCPOA. Maloney said as much in response to an audience question. “I think obviously they’re going to use the Europeans to hedge, and it would be wise to do so to the [greatest] extent possible,” she stated. Ultimately, though, she added, European nations and companies value their relationship with the U.S. over their relationship with Iran, and would be wary of brazenly siding with Iran in any diplomatic standoff.

Marashi believes a fissure between the U.S. and Europe on Iran is unlikely, despite recent setbacks in the U.S.-EU relationship. “I’m a bit skeptical as to just how far the EU is willing to go with regards to policy divergence with its partners in Washington,” he said. “If past is prologue, I think there’s going to be a way to work out these kind of issues before it causes the kind of policy divergence that, frankly, we haven’t seen in quite some time—if not ever.”

The June 7 terror attacks in Tehran, as well as the diplomatic crisis with Qatar, also recontextualize Iran’s position and the tenability of the JCPOA. Handjani spoke to this, saying, “What happened in Tehran

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last week…plays into the narrative of more hard-line factions there, especially with the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps], with paramilitary forces. And this allows that faction of the deep state and the Iranian government to connect with the people and say, ‘Ah ha, you see what we’ve always been saying, this alliance that the Trump administration and the U.S. have now come out very forcefully and formed with their Arab partners in the region is actually targeted at us.’ And it feeds into that narrative that the U.S. and Sunni Arabs created ISIS to blunt and destabilize Iran.”

—David DePriest

Future of Iran Nuclear Deal, U.S.-Iran Relationship

The second panel at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center conference “Preserving and Building on the Iran Nuclear Deal,” on June 13, dealt with ways to “bolster and build on” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Barbara Slavin, acting director of the Atlantic Council’s Future of Iran Initiative, moderated the discussion and gave the opening remarks.

Ambassador Thomas Pickering, former under secretary of state for political affairs, suggested making the “uranium and plutonium provisions, particularly, of the JCPOA an international gold standard” and adding the “monitoring verification and inspection provisions.” In his opinion, “The adoption of those ideas must start with the five permanent members of the Security Council, the five recognized nuclear powers.” Pickering considers it important to bring Iran into an agreement that has other members, as opposed to it being the lone country constrained by the JCPOA. The benefit to Iran, Pickering said, is that it would join “the club of good behavers on a permanent basis.” He speculated that during the three to five years it could take to negotiate this deal, Tehran could continue to demonstrate compliance and perhaps have the banking sanctions lifted and be able to do more business with the U.S. Regarding the possible expansion of the JCPOA, Ambassador Laura Holgate, senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International AfAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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(L-r) Barbara Slavin, Kelsey Davenport, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Laura Holgate discuss the JCPOA. fairs, said, ”It is very unlikely that using either the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] or the IAEA’s [International Atomic Energy Agency] policymaking bodies, that the collective set of countries that are currently under safeguards are going to agree to do more.” She did, however, see the possibility of expanding the JCPOA’s procedures.

Lastly, Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, presented ideas to “build off the nuclear safety and security provisions in the deal.” Noting that “Iran has not taken a lot of the steps that responsible nuclear stakeholders at the state level are really expected to take,” she recommended several ways Iran can make its nuclear program safe and secure, including “conducting peer reviews and acting on the recommendations from those reviews…work[ing] through the IAEA’s network on nuclear security training and support centers,” and joining the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism.

The panel wrapped up with a brief discussion of the role of the JCPOA’s Joint Commission in strengthening the JCPOA and then expanding it. The Joint Commission, which Pickering described as the “sole remaining point of significant contact,” meets at the U.N. General Assembly and provides a way for the different parties to settle disputes.

The day’s third panel addressed the fuAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

ture of sanctions on Iran. In his opening remarks, moderator Christopher Kojm, professor of international affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, noted that the Treasury Department plays a role in national security and foreign policy like never before. Two of his former students participated in the panel.

Elizabeth Rosenberg, senior fellow and director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, opined that “The future for Iran sanctions involves more sanctions and not fewer sanctions,” because they have become “a tool of first resort.” She argued for the aggressive implementation of sanctions related to ballistic missiles, support for terrorism, and human rights violations. More sanctions—which, she believes, “should be multilateral”—must be combined with “a commitment to uphold the JCPOA,” and there should be efforts to engage with Iran when possible.

Matthew Calabria and Shavonnia Corbin-Jackson, recently graduated from the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs, presented “alternative ways for engaging Iran.” Noting that there is “no scholarly consensus as to whether sanctions work,” Calabria advocated “supporting Iran’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).”

This, he argued, would “empower Iran’s

private sector potentially at the expense of its public sector,” a large part of which is owned by the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps).

Corbin-Jackson noted that trading in dollars is more burdensome to countries wanting to do business with Iran than to Iran itself. It is also becoming “less beneficial for banks to process in dollars,” she noted, which negatively impacts the U.S. economy. Rosenberg agreed that sanctions come with a cost to the U.S. economy, but pointed out that denying access to the U.S. economy is the real power of sanctions. Corbin-Jackson added that, under her plan, European countries could buy oil from Iran in U.S. dollars as an alternative to Russia and not have to worry about the high cost of sanctions violations.

Moreover, “U.S. banks could profit from these transactions,” which would improve the U.S. economy.

—Alex Shanahan

Anti-Drone Campaign in Des Moines Continues

Following weeks of protests and arrests, members of Des Moines Catholic Workers (DMCW) and Veterans For Peace (VFP) reiterated on June 23 their commitment to an ongoing campaign of nonviolent direct action against drone warfare at the Iowa Air National Guard 132nd drone command center in Des Moines.

“Any kind of war is expensive, and it costs lives,” said Ed Bloomer of VFP Chapter 163, Des Moines. He also expressed concern about so-called “collateral damage.”

“They fly over a village and shoot it up from the sky, and innocent people die.

Who in the world knows how you can see anything from that far up?” asked Bloomer.

Initially, the groups maintained a constant presence at the gates of the Air Guard facility.

However, explained DMCW founder Frank Cordaro, a retired priest and longtime anti-nuclear weapons activist, “Our efforts to maintain a 24/7 vigil and picket line proved to be more effort than we had people.”

Cordaro has been arrested, cited and released, and later sentenced to jail for pe-

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(L-r) Ed Bloomer, Ruby Montoya, Alex Cohen and Spencer Kaaz outside the Iowa Air Guard base in Des Moines.

riods of 48 or 72 hours on three occasions since the protests began on May 11 (see June/July 2017 Washington Report, p.

69). He also has been issued a “ban and bar letter.” Also arrested, cited and released, and later fined, were Des Moines VFP member Al Burney, twice, and Omaha VFP member Mark Kenney, once.

Cordaro has challenged the Des Moines Christian community, in particular the local Catholic community, to look at what is going on at the drone command center and “to move away from the practice of blind nationalism when it comes to war and peace issues.”

On Saturday, May 20, the activists called their protest an “Honor the Dead– Stop the Killing Armed Forces Day– Ezekiel 33 Watchman’s Witness.” Before his arrest that day, Cordaro called on Iowans to demand an end to the killing of women and children from the drone center on the South Side of Des Moines, asking them to “honor our past military warriors on this Armed Forces Day, warriors who made the ultimate sacrifice of their lives.”

Highlighting one of the differences with past wars and modern warfare, Cordaro asked Iowans to stop “today’s computer geek counterfeit warriors, who at best are assassins from the skies and, at worst, killers of women and children.”

Cordaro expressed concern that only one local TV news organization has re50

ported on the protests—and only once, on the first day of the campaign. Most Iowans are unaware of the protest campaign.

“When it comes to the Des Moines Register,” he said, “this I know: it is intentional.

There’s a reporter there I know pretty well.

I asked him, ‘What’s going on? Are you guys getting my e-mails?’ He says, ‘I get every one of your e-mails. I give it to my editor, and they’re not interested in covering it.’

“I’m a Catholic,” Cordaro went on to say.

“My bishop shuns me, so he doesn’t want to hear this. There is no serious religious discussion about what’s going on here.

This community used to have that kind of social awareness, back in the [Bishop Maurice John] Dingman era (1968-1986), when bishops and executives would get together and talk about these issues. What is happening right now in Des Moines is absolute silence, a complete shutdown,” said Cordaro.

“Like I told the judge my third time there, ‘Your honor, this is the wrong venue. I’m looking for access to the religious leaders in Des Moines. I am forced to come here to try to start a discussion about issues they don’t want to address,’” said the 66year-old Des Moines native, who grew up on the city’s South Side, not far from the spot where he and others have been arrested repeatedly in recent weeks.

Undeterred, Cordaro told this reporter he hoped an action on Wednesday, June

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28, would be “a game changer.” Sure enough, at about 7:30 a.m. that day, Cordaro and other DMCW and VFP activists returned to block access to the Iowa Air Guard drone command center. Four activists chained themselves to concretefilled barrels and blocked McKinley Ave. in front of the Air Guard base.

More than a dozen Des Moines Police Department and Fire Department units responded, setting up a perimeter and using saws to cut the activists from the barrels.

Arrested were Jesse Horn, 20, Des Moines; Spencer Kazz, 21, Memphis, TN; Ruby Montoya, 27, Des Moines; and Jessica Reznicek, 35, Des Moines. The four were charged with Interference with Official Acts and Disorderly Conduct and were booked at the Polk County Jail at about 10:30 a.m. Five local news organizations, including the Des Moines Register, reported the nonviolent direct action protest.

—Michael Gillespie

Overcoming Economic Stagnation, Manipulation of International Law

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC hosted a June 15 panel of speakers from Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network to discuss a variety of issues in Palestine, focusing on the realities of economic stagnation and Israel’s manipulation of international law.

Tareq G. Baconi, author and AlShabaka’s U.S.-based policy fellow, discussed the evolution of Palestinian leadership since the occupation began, noting that there has always been a clear consistency of Palestinian demands, which he referred to as “fixed principles.” These were established as far back as 1948, and include the right to return, the right to resist in all forms, and the right to self-determination.

Even after the PLO recognized Israel, Baconi stated, the right to self-determination was reconfigured, not annulled. For its part, Hamas sought to reverse the Zionist agenda and the concessions the PLO was making at the time. Even as both organizations tried to introduce some degree of pragmatism, however, Israel refused to acknowledge the Palestinian concessions AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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(L-r) Noura Erakat, Khaled Elgindy, Nur Arafeh and Tareq G. Baconi discuss the realities of Israel’s “indefinite” occupation.

and the very core of the Palestinian movement in both parties.

Nur Arafeh, a Rhodes Scholar and AlShabaka policy fellow, discussed current diplomatic relations between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Referring to Trump’s proposal for peaceful relations, she noted that economic policies often are used to skirt around the core of the issue. “The Palestinian economy is a construct of Israel, and a symptom of the problem,” she stated.

Arafeh pointed to the decline of the Palestinian economy as it faced the realities of the Oslo accords and the goal of creating a “customs union.” Because it was essentially one-sided, she noted, Palestinian goods had very little access to Israel. By 1993 the Palestinian economy had dwindled significantly in Palestine, due to Israel’s “colonial domination” over the Palestinian economy that the Oslo accords enabled. Naturally, this coincides with the restriction of movement for Palestinians into Israel, and the territorial fragmentation which has caused the economy to exist in fractured parts.

Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney, activist, and assistant professor at George Mason University, spoke next on Israel’s manipulation of international law, explaining how the interpretation of law has helped keep the occupation alive for so long.

Israel has been able to carry out its incremental annexation of Palestinian land by characterizing its occupation as “indefinite” rather than “permanent.” Though there may seem to be little difference in execution, Erakat said, there is a differAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

ence in law, under which only “permanent” occupations are considered illegal.

Erakat described what she called a “retroactive cover,” when the words “all” and “the” were omitted from the Englishlanguage version of U.N. Resolution 242.

This changed the terms of Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, making it possible for Israel to argue that it was not required to withdraw from all the Arab land it conquered in 1967. Israel has rejected Palestinian peoplehood since 1948, Erakat added, something which is not corrected in Resolution 242. Instead it refers to the dispossession of the Palestinian people as a “refugee crisis,” as agreed to

by Jordan and Egypt.

Under international law, Erakat explained, occupation as an act of self-defense does not require that a state withdraw, and Israel’s 1967 claim to self-defense has not pressured other states to call for its withdrawal from the territories it has occupied since then. —Kelly Fleming

After 50 Years of Occupation, What Next for Palestine?

The Arab Center Washington DC hosted a June 6 panel of speakers to discuss the future of Palestine, as Palestine marked 50 years of Israeli occupation. The discussion reflected on Palestine’s past, examined the fate of the two-state solution, and considered the realities of President Donald Trump’s “America First” platform.

In his opening remarks, Arab Center executive director Khalil Jahshan noted that “A lot of things have changed, but a lot of things have not.” There are several notable anniversaries this year, he added. It has been 100 years since the Balfour Declara-

tion, 35 years since the Sabra and Shatila massacres, and more than 10 years since Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, described the day’s panel as an “opportunity for reflection.” The other noteworthy speakers included Virginia Tilley, professor of political science at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale; Khaled Elgindy, foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution Center for Middle East Policy; Palestinian political analyst Nadia Hijab; and William Quandt, political science professor at the University of Virginia.

Tilley called for a “paradigm shift” regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, which the international community has called a “belligerent occupation.” In her opinion, much progress could be made by describing the reality of the Israeli occupation as “apartheid,” akin to the situation in South Africa, where the world agreed on the need for international efforts to end the human rights violations there.

Israeli fears that a two-state solution would undermine the intertwining of religion and government resulted in decades of failed diplomacy, including the Oslo accords, only giving “lip service to the right to self-determination,” Tilley said, adding that Palestinians need a “reassessment of peoplehood.” The occupation delves beyond border disputes, and is deeply political and personal. She expressed that the narrative of Zionism has a clear reverse narrative, which led to the separation and disempowerment of Palestinians. If the international community saw it this way, then there would be greater efforts to restore “peoplehood” to Palestine.

Elgindy next drew the parallels between

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(L-r) Khaled Elgindy, Virginia Tilley, William Quandt, Nadia Hijab and Yousef Munayyer discuss the future of Palestine. the end of the 1967 Six-Day War and today’s continued Israeli settlement of the occupied territories. He also discussed the disintegrating prospects of a two-state solution, especially since former Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace efforts. The many diplomatic failures indicate the need to reconsider how the world views a two-state solution.

These diplomatic failures are rooted in collapsing peace agreements and U.N. resolutions. Elgindy suggested that as Resolution 242 is continually ignored, the collapse of the two-state solution could be afoot. He also suggested that there could be alternatives both to and within the twostate solution, and the idea of a partition was never fully viable, especially after the countless attempts to revive it.

Elgindy addressed the “competing narrative” that sovereignty and citizenship are not equals, and the issue of economic unity between Israel and Palestine. In places such as Jerusalem, he noted, more innovative solutions are necessary as the world moves forward and potentially imagines a solution without total separation.

Hijab emphasized the role of civil society as a key player in any peace agreement. She described the role of environmentalist movements in slowing Israeli settlement forces, and the strong, organized and growing Jewish population fighting the occupation.

Calling on the international community to uphold international law, Hijab described various ways the European Union can decide the fate of the conflict. Israel is determined to infiltrate the international community, she noted, and has developed strategies to legalize the occupation.

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This Israeli effort must be countered by a Palestinian effort to delegitimize the occupation, Hijab said, which may have an impact if Palestine can organize itself enough to produce such strategies.

As for those who wonder what will come of the Trump administration’s agreements with Israel, Quandt said that in some areas Trump’s “America First” policy resembles the policies of President George W. Bush, but that it is still quite different. This is because Trump was very vocal on the campaign trail about using his background in business to simplify his view of the conflict.

“Don’t count on the Trump administration to produce much more than rhetoric,” Quandt cautioned, adding that, at the end of the day, the president ignores the key role the U.S. could play in Israel: “to put pressure on Israel to do things it wouldn’t otherwise do.” Until we have an open American discussion on U.S. aid to Israel, however, this cannot happen under any administration, Quandt concluded.

—Kelly Fleming

Capitol Hill Briefing Reflects on 50 Years of Occupation

Defense for Children International-Palestine and the American Friends Service Committee co-sponsored a June 8 discussion on Capitol Hill about human rights in Palestine, with a special focus on the challenges facing Palestinian children. Fifty years after the Six-Day War, multiple generations of Palestinians have now experienced displacement, housing demolitions, and limited access to resources, among other injustices.

The highlight of the briefing was the tes-

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timony of Yazan Meqbil, a pre-med student at Goshen College who grew up in the West Bank town of Beit Ommar. He described witnessing the atrocities of Israel’s military occupation.

Before venturing to college in the U.S. in 2015, two of Meqbil’s friends were killed by the Israeli army—one shot by an Israeli sniper. His father was arrested and detained for 20 days, even though he did not participate in any protests or anti-occupation movements, and was ultimately released due to a lack of evidence against him.

Meqbil’s family home has received 10 demolition orders from the Israeli army.

His father successfully fought the first demolition order in 2002, but nine more orders followed.

He described his childhood under occupation as “growing up, seeing brains on the floor, growing up breathing tear gas, in an environment of violence and fear and fearing bullets every day.”

Meqbil’s closing comments summarized his message for the U.S. and for his friends back home: “It’s not just the occupation of land, it’s the destruction of our childhood. Living in the U.S., being far away, doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you.

“As Palestinians, we all have a dream,” he said, referencing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The young man described his most recent interaction with friends back home, explaining how he believes that they are changing as they learn and read more about civil rights leaders such as Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi.

Brad Parker, staff attorney and international advocacy officer at Defense for ChilAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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Nadia Ben-Youssef (l) and Yazan Meqbil take questions from the audience. dren International-Palestine, described the life of children growing up under occupation, and the reality they face of arrests and housing demolitions. He revealed that 96 to 97 percent of Palestinians arrested by the Israeli army are denied access to legal counsel, and 3 out of 4 will experience violence while they are detained.

Parker explained how difficult this data has been to retrieve since the 2015 spike in military detentions, and because, as of May 2016, the Israeli prison service is no longer releasing data.

Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, explained how the sustained occupation perpetuates a “systematic form of oppression with racial undertones, whitewashing, and violation of the Geneva Convention.” Shakir concluded by stating, “Any discussion of a solution needs to be grounded in the reality of 50 years of occupation, repression, systematic abuse, institutional discrimination. We need action.”

Nadia Ben-Youssef, lawyer, human rights advocate, and director of the Adalah Justice Project, prodded the audience to focus on more than the crude figures of the occupation. Politics is a human issue, she argued, and this is an urgent issue.

She also brought up the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe,” noting that long before the 1967 occupation, Israel created a legal and political regime predicated on the notion that some people’s rights ought to be privileged above others. “This is a history [of prejudice],” Ben-Youssef said, “a history that predates the Six-Day War.” —Kelly Fleming AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

50 Years Later: Assessing the Impact of the 1967 War

The Palestine Center in Washington, DC welcomed Dr. Shibley Telhami for a June 13 talk looking back on the 1967 Six-Day War and assessing its impact on Palestinians. He reviewed the history of the ensuing Israeli occupation and the “war of ideas” between Pan-Arabism and Palestinian nationalism that began alongside it.

Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development and director of the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll, first discussed Pan-Arabism and the ways it evolved with border disputes.

In Telhami’s opinion, the Palestinian struggle of 1948 was one of Arab nationalism, which gave Palestine intellectual,

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Dr. Shibley Telhami discusses the evolution of Palestinian nationalism.

emotional and practical support at the beginning of the Palestinian liberation movement.

Noting that Pan-Arabism and Palestinian pride were intertwined, Telhami explained that “Intellectually, it was hard for Palestinians to peel themselves off from the Pan-Arabism that was so promising to their aspirations, and because, also, they still needed Arab support. They were still vulnerable, and they still needed Arab support.”

Fifty years ago, he noted, there was tremendous hope in the Pan-Arab world.

This would eventually deteriorate, along with Palestinian aspirations for statehood.

He cited the history of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his belief that Egypt should be the Middle Eastern country to fight for Arab nationalism because of its military strength. Nasser “captured the imagination of many Arabs,” Telhami explained, and “made the question of Palestine a central mission for Arab nationalism.”

Nasser’s followers were eager to see how he could lead the Arab cause, militarily, and with Palestinian liberation as a part of the cause, Telhami said. “Of course, we know what happened” in the 1967 war, he added. “It was really the death of aspirations.”

As early as the passing of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 in November 1967, Palestinians knew that their cause was becoming separated from Arab nationalism. He described the Arab League’s October 1974 Rabat Conference, at which the PLO was accepted as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, as “a double-edged sword,” because while it established the PLO’s independence it also opened the door for the PLO to be abandoned by the other Arab countries.

Reflecting on the history of the occupation, Telhami noted that while the word “occupation” is still disputed by right-wing Israelis, it continues to be used to indicate that the territories do not belong to Israel.

At the same time, however, the word implies a “temporary state of affairs,” when in fact, he pointed out, “the overwhelming majorities of Palestinians in the West Bank

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have known nothing but occupation, they were born under occupation, many were born and died under occupation. This is a lifetime for them.”

—Kelly Fleming

New Story Leadership Fellows Begin Life-Changing Summer Program

Young Palestinian and Israeli New Story Leadership (NSL) fellows shared their stories at their first interfaith event of their 2017 summer program on June 28 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill. Welcoming the audience, NSL president, founder and CEO Paul Costello gave a shout out to the host families who are an integral part of the program’s success.

Costello shared his own story about getting involved in international education through the use of stories 25 years ago.

Eight years ago he launched the nonprofit NSL, which brings 10 young fellows—five from Palestine and five from Israel—to this country, where they stay with host families in order to gain a perspective of what the American story is all about.

Each NSL participant has a work placement for three days a week, Costello explained. Some are working in Congress, others are in NGOs or at various professional settings. In phase one of the program, participants get to understand the American story and the power of it. In other words, participants learn to LISTEN. In phase two, participants speak and share their own stories.

Costello emphasized that in Palestine and Israel certain stories are being repeated and taught to the new generations to keep fueling war, violence and conflict.

Stories about risk, hate, threat, fear and danger make it easy to recruit young people in that conflict zone, he said, adding, “Separation walls need stories of separation just to justify them.” Thus NSL aspires to teach these young fellows to tell their own stories without victimizing themselves, or being the victims of their own stories but, instead, becoming agents of change.

Four of this year’s participants then shared their own stories and perspectives of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and described their journeys from living in a con54

(L-r) Rawan Odeh, Katya Lipovetsky, Hazar Badin and Daniel Torban. flict zone to deciding to come and meet with “the other.” While the four stories were completely different, the hope for a better future united them all.

Daniel Torban, a 26-year-old Israeli from Tel Aviv, began by naming his story “Approaching the Unknown.” At the age of 16, he began learning about the PalestinianIsraeli conflict. “I read everything I could about the conflict,” he recalled, “books, articles, news, and any other source of information. I naively thought back then that I had a great understanding of this conflict.”

It wasn’t until he watched a movie about the conflict presented through the eyes of seven Palestinian and Israeli children that his perception changed. “It was my first time listening to Palestinians speaking for themselves,” he explained. “It was my first time seeing the facial expressions of a Palestinian kid talking about their perception of this conflict. It was an eye-opening experience for me realizing that my path through the unknown is going to be longer.” Torban invited everyone who wants to learn about or work on this conflict to follow the strategy of zooming in and zooming out. In other words, it’s not enough to look at the conflict as an objective third person. One must embrace the two peoples’ narratives and try to understand what they go through.

Hazar Badin is an Arab Israeli who lives in Acre, Israel. “Ladies and gentlemen!” she began. “On July 4th, you’re going to celebrate the Americans’ Independence Day and I’m extremely jealous of you, because I’m 23 years old now and during those 23 years I’ve never celebrated any Israeli Independence Day.” She went on to shed light on the identity crisis issues that Arab Israelis encounter every day—being

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Israelis in their official documents, yet Palestinians in spirit.

Badin shared a story of how her family used to visit what is now called “Israel’s National Park”—yet back in the day it was her father’s village, which was demolished in 1948. Most visitors do not know that this park was established on the ruins of the village where her father grew up, she noted. However, Badin and her siblings still remember this through the stories her father and her grandmother used to tell them. “It might seem hard to believe that we will go back to those villages—to our villages—but I still see hope in my grandmother’s stories telling us that we’re going back,” she concluded.

Katya Lipovetsky is an Israeli who grew up in Asdod which she later described as heaven. “One day, when I was only 16 years old,” she recalled, “the heavenly sounds of the wind and the crashing waves were interrupted by a deafening sound of a siren that cut through the air and changed our lives.”

Describing her childhood and adult experience, Lipovetsky said she was raised to believe that Palestinians are the bad guys. Her life was hinged around the sirens, and the 45 seconds before a rocket shot from the Gaza Strip hits her city. “It took me 45 seconds to shape my perception of my reality, to determine the way I perceived Palestinians,” she said, “yet it took me more than 20 years to meet with one from the neighboring city of Gaza whom I can easily call my friend.”

The last speaker was Rawan Odeh, who was born and raised in America until she moved to Nablus, Palestine at the age of 16. Odeh highlighted the notion of switching identities—in other words, who she is so much depends on where she is. For inAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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tion of her proceeds to ANERA. Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zahr concluded each iftar with his reliably hilarious comedy routine.

To learn more about ANERA, or to make a donation, visit <anera.org>.

—Dale Sprusansky STAFF PHOTO D. SPRUSANSKY

stance, she said, in America she was always the Arab girl, while in Palestine people saw her as an American girl. When she wants to, she sneaks on a bus to go to Tel Aviv, hoping that her Palestinian identity won’t be discovered, because she’ll be perceived as a Palestinian terrorist.

Odeh shared a story about her mother, who got shot because she tried to save her little brother when he was arrested by an Israeli soldier while playing on his bike in her village. History repeated itself, putting her daughter in the same situation as her mother, when Rawan herself had to defend her little brother, who was also arrested by an Israeli soldier while playing on his bike. Odeh concluded her speech saying, “My mother and I lived the same fearful events, but our perception of the conflict is the complete opposite. My mother grew to fear the other side, yet in my case I can see more hope than fear.”

In the question-and-answer period, panelists spoke briefly about their theories of change when they go home. Some suggested tackling issues from an environmental perspective and solving the water crisis in Palestine and Israel, since it’s one of the main sources of the conflict. Others spoke about bottom-up coexistence programs that they are willing to establish.

The young speakers invited the audience to attend additional NSL events to learn more about their theories of change.

ANERA Says Goodbye to Long-Time President Bill Corcoran

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) held a good-bye party for Bill Corcoran on June 29 at the National Press Club. Guests and speakers got a chance to thank him for his more than 10 years of great work as Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zahr.

ANERA president. Boardmember Les sistance as possible.

Janka, who spent years as a Middle East Year-round, ANERA assists refugees in specialist in the U.S. government and as a the Levant through their health, education consultant, remarked that it was great to and economic development programs. see so many of ANERA’s friends and The organization also supplies food pack- boardmembers—although “to have to say ages during the holy month of Ramadan good-bye to Bill is almost more than one so that poor families can partake in the could bear.” Corcoran came to ANERA at fast-breaking iftar meal. In addition, just the right time (following the retirement ANERA offers emergency assistance of Peter Gubser) to build on the foundawhenever manmade or natural catastro- tions of the past and to transform ANERA phes strike. into a 21st century NGO, Janka said.

The theme of this year’s benefit iftars It was thanks to Corcoran that ANERA was #RamadanSolidarity—a hashtag moved to work in new areas of providing meant to serve as a reminder of the suf- education, water and the ability to respond fering and pain refugees face. At the quickly to new crises, like the Syrian Washington, DC iftar, Dr. Yassine Daoud, refugee crisis in Lebanon. Thanks to Coran accomplished ophthalmologist who coran, Janka said, ANERA was able to grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp, move with efficiency and imagination.

It was always wonderful working for the —Oday Abdaljawwad urged his American audience to never forget the humanity and potential of those liv- people who have guided ANERA with ANERA Hosts Solidarity Iftars ing in refugee camps. His wife, author such love, Corcoran responded. “I’d like to To help fund its continuing assistance to Laila el-Haddad, sold copies of her cook- leave you with three numbers that have refugees in Gaza, the West Bank and book Gaza Kitchen and dedicated a por- motivated me,” said Corcoran, who is returning to the priesthood and Lebanon, American Near East moving to Scranton, PA. Refugee Aid (ANERA) held a “The number three: there series of fund-raising iftars have been three horrific wars across the country this past in Gaza when innocent Ramadan. During their events Gazans were pummeled day in Richmond, VA, Portland, after day and our staff reOR, Seattle, New Orleans and sponded, with USAID and Washington, DC, ANERA staff others, in saving lives. explained the critical assis“The number 1.4 million: tance their organization proSyrian refugees who poured vides to some of most vulnerinto Lebanon, penniless and able individuals in the Middle despondent and looking for East, and asked attendees to someone to be a friend. provide as much financial as- Les Janka (l) thanks Bill Corcoran for 10 years of service to ANERA. AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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ANERA was there and reached out to them.

“The third number is 154. That’s the number of ANERA staff around the world. They are the people who inspire me every day because of their dedication and commitment to what they’re doing,” Corcoran said.

“Many of them struggle to go to work after suffering the indignities of checkpoints.

“Those three numbers are the reasons I got up every morning, because there was something I could do to fight against the injustice these families have suffered,” Corcoran explained. “I’m eternally grateful to ANERA for giving my own life a reason and a purpose. It’s given me a passion and desire to serve others.”

Bill Corcoran concluded his remarks by asking for two things: “Stay in touch with me and stay in touch with ANERA, because ANERA is a way we offer hope to so many people...One of the best things you and I can do for people who have been forgotten is to offer them sumud, steadfast support. When you and I are just there for them it gives them a reason to get up.”

—Delinda C. Hanley

World Refugee Day: “We Don’t Share A Past, We Certainly Share a Future”

New America welcomed two panels of speakers to its Washington, DC office on June 19 to discuss the refugee crisis in Syria and ongoing efforts to provide opportunities for refugee resettlement in the United States.

According the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR)’s website, there currently are a record 22.5 million refugees worldwide, including 5.3 million Palestinians, and the number of displaced persons has risen by 300,000 since last year.

Twelve million Syrians are currently either displaced within the country or living as refugees outside their country.

Angela Blanchard, president and CEO of BakerRipley, described the battle that many cities across the U.S. fought when their state governments tried to limit refugee admittance. BakerRipley provides resources for refugees in 70 locations, including information about education and employment opportunities, as well as how to integrate in U.S. cities. Referring to an 56

(L-r) Moderator Robert L. McKenzie, Qutaiba Idlbi, Angela Blanchard, Suzanne Akhras and Jana Mason discuss the Syrian-American community’s role in helping resettle refugees.

American catastrophe to explain why refugees need U.S. support, Blanchard explained that “Syria and the Syrian refugee crisis is to the world as Katrina was to the United States.”

Blanchard had a message for all refugees. “I want to say to you, if you are, in fact, a refugee—if you are a person who’s lost your home and your place where you felt you most belong, the place you came from—and you’ve begun your life again in a new place, and you had to start over, I want to say how sorry I am for your loss and I want to acknowledge your courage and fortitude.”

Qutaiba Idlbi, senior consultant at Pechter Polls and a Syrian refugee himself, described his experience resettling in the U.S. Twice detained by the Syrian government in 2011, he witnessed his government attempt to kidnap his little brother before the two managed to escape by the end of that year. He took his little brother to both Lebanon and Egypt to enroll him in high school, and in early 2013 Idlbi was invited to come to the United States.

Explaining his decision to stay in the U.S. for the past four years, Idlbi said, “I decided to stay here because I felt there is a bridge that needed to be built between people here in the United States and people back in the region.” Echoing Blan-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

chard’s words, he added, “We don’t share a past, we certainly share a future.” He recently was accepted into Columbia University to finish his education.

Dr. Zaher Sahloul, founder of the American Relief Coalition for Syria, discussed the challenges facing those still in Syria, their inventiveness and their determination to keep utilities running in the country, even as they endure persistent war. Syrians are using car batteries to power laptops in classrooms, he noted, and harvesting energy from animal waste to power hospital generators in parts of the country where electricity no longer flows.

Sahloul described his own family in Syria, saying his sister had to leave her home in the middle of the night after it was destroyed. He emphasized the strong attachment to home many Syrians feel. He quoted Warsan Shire, a Somali-British poet, to explain the hardships of leaving home: “No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” The problem is that Syria is the mouth of a shark.

—Kelly Fleming

Claudia, RIP (2006-2017)

Ellen Siegel, the Jewish American nurse who worked at Gaza Hospital in Lebanon AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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ambassadors to the U.S. for a June 19 discussion at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. Entitled “Pakistan and Afghanistan: Relations, Diplomacy, and Security Challenges,” the conversation was moderated by Dr. Marvin Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute.

Afghan Ambassador Dr. Hamdullah Mohib and his Pakistani counterpart, Ambassador Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, had a frank and frequently tense discussion. The two diplomats opened on a congenial note, acknowledging their countries’ shared history, culture, languages and border.

Ambassador Chaudhry went on to observe that instability in Afghanistan tends to cross into Pakistan. Pakistan has a “national interest [in] Afghanistan [becoming] stable, sovereign, independent and prosperous,” he said. He also noted that Pakistan’s recent ability to attract foreign investment—which he attributed to his country’s improving economic, governance and security environments—are threatened by an unstable Afghanistan. Chaudhry expressed his and Islamabad’s willingness to cooperate with Afghanistan in any manner.

Ambassador Mohib also voiced his desire for cooperation. Speaking about the relationship between the two countries, Mohib declared, “We see it as a non-zerosum game.” He then noted, however, “Our president has called this conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan an undeclared war on us.”

“We will not respond to that hostility” and other “much more hostile rhetoric,” Chaudhry replied. “We do recognize the sufferings in Afghanistan,” he continued, and lamented

Claudia.

during the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, reports that her beloved cat Claudia passed away peacefully on June 12, 2017 of multiple medical complications. Longtime readers may remember Siegel’s article about Claudia published in the Jan./Feb. 2008 Washington Report (http://www. washingtonreport.me/2008-january-february/waging-peace-faith-leaders-work-withbest-friends.html).

Claudia’s bereft mom writes: “Claudia was rescued as a newborn kitten in 2006 outside the zoo in the southern suburbs of Beirut (Dahyeh) during the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War. Like many of the other cats and dogs abandoned when their owners fled the country during the fighting, Claudia was starving and in need of help until Animals Lebanon rescued her. They provided her with safety, food and water in a shelter where she was cared for.

“The Utah-based Best Friends organization airlifted Claudia and 300 other homeless pets from Beirut to the U.S. in August 2006. These pets were put up for adoption. I applied to adopt her and another rescued cat (my dear Dartanian, rescued from a shoebox in Beirut).”

For more information on Animals Lebanon please visit <www.AnimalsLebanon.org> and Best Friends, <www.bestfriends.org>, which also airlifted abandoned pets after Hurricane Katrina.

—Ellen Siegel

DIPLOMATIC DOINGS Afghanistan, Pakistan Ambassadors Agree on Need for Cooperation, But Not Much Else

INDUS, a Washington, DC-based Pakistani think tank, hosted the Afghan and Pakistani AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

PHOTO COURTESY INDUS

PHOTO COURTESY E. SIEGEL

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that Afghanistan’s “blame game” distracts from the real causes of instability. Kabul “needs to own up [to] the problems that it has and not constantly shift the blame to Pakistan,” he charged.

Chaudhry also denied that Pakistan supports terrorism in Afghanistan. “These terrorists are nobody’s friend. We would not like to see [the] Taliban come to power by force in Afghanistan,” he insisted, “and we have made it very clear that they do not represent Pakistan in any manner.”

Rejecting the notion of a “blame game,” Mohib noted that Iran also has expressed concern about Pakistan’s support for terrorism. Pakistan does not “distinguish between good terrorists and bad terrorists.

That’s not a policy,” Chaudhry responded.

Pakistan’s message to the Taliban, he explained, is, “If you want to live in this country…you should live peacefully. Otherwise you shall simply leave.”

“I agree with you that we need to work with Pakistan,” said Mohib, responding to Chaudhry’s calls for cooperation, “But which Pakistan? The Pakistan that’s occupied by a…military, or the Pakistan of the civilians?” He decried the former’s continuing use of extremism and militancy as a foreign policy tactic and warned of “an extremist military on the rise.”

Chaudhry said he would not comment on the internal affairs of Pakistan, as he has never commented on the internal affairs of any country. Later, Mohib insisted that Chaudhry had done just that several times throughout the discussion.

In assessing a possible political arrangement in Afghanistan, Mohib detailed “rec-

(L-r) Ambassador Aizaz Chaudhry, Dr. Marvin Weinbaum and Ambassador Hamdullah Mohib discuss relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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57

oncilables” who can be brought “to the table” like “those who have political or social grievances,” and “irreconcilables” such as terrorist groups, criminals and foreignsponsored non-state actors who cannot.

He also declared, “This is not an internal war. This is not an internal insurgency. This is a war waged on the Afghan people from another side.” Chaudhry then expressed frustration with the idea that Pakistan is expected to “deliver the Taliban to the table dead or alive” because Pakistan is already fighting the group.

In ending the conversation, Mohib said, “We would be happy to accept that kind of a deal where Pakistan also only has voice and rhetoric to send our way instead of 20 tons of bombs,” referencing the May 31 terrorist attack in Kabul. He also questioned Islamabad’s commitment to fighting terrorism, saying that he assumed the Pakistani government issued Pakistani passports to the Taliban.

—Alex Shanahan

MUSIC & ARTS New Book Sheds Needed Light on Iran-Pakistan Relations

Middle East Institute (MEI) scholar and author Alex Vatanka sat down with the MEI’s Marvin Weinbaum and former U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka Teresita Schaffer for a June 14 conversation in Washington, DC about his new book, now out in paperback, Iran and Pakistan: Security, Diplomacy, and American Influence.

Vatanka’s book is one of the first to elucidate the history of this delicate and intricate relationship, and the ensuing discussion illuminated its immense promise, as well as the reasons why it has been so minimally covered.

“I picked Pakistan because by then, 2012, I’d been working on Iranian foreign policy for about 15 years,” Vatanka explained. “Now if you look at Iran’s 15 immediate neighbors, there are two giants.…

One is Pakistan, the other is Turkey. There is plenty of material on Iranian-Turkey relations. There’s almost nothing on IranianPakistani relations. In fact, there’s more 58

Alex Vatanka hopes softening Iran’s revolutionary rhetoric will prompt reconciliation with Pakistan. material on Iran’s relations with smaller neighboring countries like Armenia.”

Despite the dearth of literature, understanding the Iran-Pakistan relationship is critical, he said. “This giant to Iran’s east [is] nuclear armed, almost 200 million in terms of population, has been engaged in [a] proxy war with Iran in Afghanistan and elsewhere, you’ve got a long list of items— to my mind—that make this relationship interesting to follow.”

Vatanka discussed the pitfalls of going directly to the subjects about which he was writing.

“The relations are so security-centric,” he explained. “By that I mean, unless you are one of the boys who knows how to knock on the right doors, oftentimes you won’t find material or people willing to talk to you. I got some of that, but in the process of writing the book I found plenty of material that I really think...puts together the grand historical context.”

Vatanka wasted no time dispelling misconceptions about the nature and depth of the relationship, pointing explicitly to the presumption that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was the definitive negative turning point in Iran-Pakistan relations. In fact, he noted, relations began to sour during the reign of the shah.

Relations between the shah and Pakistan began on a positive note, he said.

The shah was “not only a source of subsidized oil and loans, but he also purportedly was the source of talking points to Washington, to presidents such as Johnson and Nixon and so on,” Vatanka pointed out.

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

“Nobody else was talking at that time on behalf of Pakistan the way the shah was, and at such a level, to the White House.”

This kindness was extended only for so long, however, as the conflict between India and Pakistan forced Tehran to scale back its relationship with Pakistan.

“The shah of Iran, as early as 1971, had decided that ‘look, I cannot be involved in choosing Pakistan against India in this proxy conflict.…And therefore, I’m going to try and be neutral.’ And that decision by the shah to become neutral is what upset the Pakistanis.”

Relations took a turn after that decision, as the shah became more reticent about negotiating for, or in service of, Pakistan.

When the shah was deposed, the relationship lost even more of its utility.

However, post-1979, Pakistan was careful not to fully isolate itself from Tehran. Due to escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia, Iran and India, Pakistan saw congeniality toward Iran as less of a political imperative. “If you’re sitting in Pakistan, you’ve got a country next door [Iran] that you can’t ignore, but really wasn’t bringing much to the table anymore,” he said. “It couldn’t do anything for you diplomatically anymore, couldn’t do anything for you in terms of money and support, and therefore was kept at arm’s length. That, however, doesn’t mean that Pakistan wants to fold over and take one side in the ongoing competition of power in the region in the way that certain people were hoping Pakistan might do.”

In what was perhaps the most optimistic AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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time I checked, Israel was not a part of the exchange, Vatanka disSunni power,” he quipped. cussed the softening of Iran’s revHe went on to decry the conserolutionary rhetoric, and how, after vative focus on punitive measures years of distance, it could prompt instead of diplomacy, saying, a reconciliation between the two “Clearly diplomacy is not a quick nations. “Pakistan never subfix, but it is the most likely fix.” scribed to the revolutionary lan“There are activities by the Iraniguage of the Islamic Republic of ans that clearly are problematic,” he Iran,” he argued. acknowledged, “but we now have “That revolutionary language has an example—the only example— changed,” he continued. “Today, a where we see the United States good part of the Islamic Republic being able to change Iran’s policies. doesn’t believe in that revolutionary What are the other examples of language and spreading the revocontainment, isolation and sanctions lution the way they used to in the where we have seen that U.S. pres‘80s. And that might create some sure led to a change in Iranian poliopportunities in Iranian-Pakistani cies?” he asked. “We have none.” relations depending on where Iran The history of the Iran deal that goes from here onwards. If Iran beBarbara Slavin (l) and Trita Parsi share a light moment while Parsi relayed—a process that the comes a normal economy, if this reflecting on President Obama's diplomatic outreach to Iran.

Obama administration began after market of 80 million people that’s rich in so many ways becomes a market cause things were obviously going in a seeing the ineffectiveness of sanctions that the Pakistanis can perhaps tap into, very negative direction, there were some and Iran’s burgeoning relationship with benefit from, cooperate with and so forth, attempts to see if there were any exits anti-Western forces in the region—stands well that will change the equation in terms available. At this meeting, one of the in stark contrast to the oft-touted narrative things that one of the senior Israelis said that politicians and pundits peddle stateof how Pakistan looks at Iran.”

Vatanka’s book is available from the was quite stunning, and it really put an in- side about “forcing” Iran to the table with Washington Report’s Middle East Books teresting filter on everything that has hap- sanctions. President Barack Obama made and More.

—David DePriest pened so far. He looked across the room, the calculation that the likelihood of war zeroed in on the Iranians, and he said, was higher than the likelihood of Iranian Trita Parsi Debunks Iran Nuclear capitulation or collapse due to sanctions, ‘This was never about enrichment.’”

Myths in New Book This revelation, shocking in its brazen Parsi said, and thus initiated the diplomatic On June 19 the Atlantic Council in Wash- undermining of decades of public rhetoric process that resulted in the nuclear deal.

Long before President Obama, Parsi ington, DC hosted author Trita Parsi, pres- coming from Israel, undergirded Parsi’s reident of the National Iranian American marks. Throughout the rest of his talk, noted, Iran had shown it would remain resCouncil, to discuss his new book, Losing Parsi challenged orthodoxy regarding Iran olute in the face of U.S. intimidation. an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph and its relationships with Israel, Saudi Ara- “[President Bill Clinton’s strategy of] dual containment essentially said that Iran is of Diplomacy. Barbara Slavin, head of the bia and the United States.

He noted that by strongly opposing the going to be in a prolonged state of isolaAtlantic Council’s Future of Iran Initiative, deal, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Ne- tion,” he explained. “[But] what the U.S. moderated the discussion.

Parsi began by relaying an interesting tanyahu actually helped the agreement miscalculated was that this created such anecdote about the use of nuclear enrich- come to fruition. “All he [Netanyahu] needed strong incentives for the Iranians to actument as a red herring. Describing a meet- to do, instead of saying that this is the worst ally become much more active against the ing that took place in Europe in April 2012, deal ever and that this will pave Iran’s way [Israeli-Palestinian] peace process and he said: “You have a gathering, a most un- to a nuclear bomb, was to say ‘this is a fan- support Palestinian rejectionists,” he said. usual gathering. You have Iranian officials tastic deal,’” Parsi said. “[Iranian Foreign “I also think there was a degree of hubris there, including some of the Iranian nu- Minister Javad] Zarif told me to my face, if in which the U.S. thought that they could clear negotiators. You have American offi- Netanyahu had endorsed the deal, it would manage these things.”

Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the cials there, including a senior American have been very very difficult for him to be Triumph of Diplomacy is available from general. And you have Israeli officials, in- able to defend it internally in Iran.”

Parsi also not-so-subtly dismissed sec- AET’s Middle East Books and More, along cluding some very high-ranking former officials. Very rare for these [people] to sit in tarianism as a lens through which to view with Parsi’s previous books, Treacherous the same room, but they were there be- Iran’s conflicts with other nations. “Last Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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Iran and the U.S. and A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran.

—David DePriest

Capturing The Scent of Jasmine

In the Old City of Damascus stands Beit Jabri, a restaurant serving traditional Syrian dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s the same house where Dr. Anan Ameri, a Funded by Kickstarter and internaPalestinian American, spent sumtional grants, the next generation of mers in her youth with her grandfaPalestinian filmmakers are operating ther, aunts and cousins. “You know out of a refugee camp in the northDamascus and you know the Syrian ern West Bank town of Jenin. people, and you see it destroyed in “Not everybody in the world front of your eyes,” she said at a knows that we are human, that we June 12 event hosted by the Palesride horses, that we have cars,” said tine Center in Washington, DC. Mohammed Haj Ibrahim, a film“That breaks your heart, that really maker, multimedia coordinator and instructor at the Freedom Theatre in Felice Gelman, a member of the board of Friends of the breaks your heart.”

Freedom Theatre, addresses the audience at the PalesIn her new book, The Scent of JasJenin. “We want them to know.” tine Center. mine: Coming of Age in Jerusalem The short films were screened at the Palestine Center on May 23, 2017, to a Arabic word often translated as “Maybe.” and Damascus, Ameri presents a vignette small but invested audience ranging from The alternate translation, however, was per- of stories from her childhood, from playing college students to seniors. Chosen by a haps more befitting —“It is possible.” It told with her first pet to attending her first protest. committee of directors from the Freedom the story of an aspiring female filmmaker at Her Syrian mother’s wealthy family was a Theatre, the three narratives depicted the Freedom Theatre, Suzanne Wasfi, who constant presence; her Palestinian father’s lives of Palestinians in Jenin through differ- fights to pursue her dream and finds inspi- family had scattered after the Nakba, the ration in a young girl breaking similar barri- forced 1948 Palestinian exodus. ent perspectives.

“I identify as Palestinian American be“Journey of a Freedom Fighter” follows ers in the equestrian community.

Wasfi isn’t the only woman to find a place cause we really have a just cause, we are Rabea Turkman, an ex-guerrilla fighter who laid down his gun to join the Freedom The- at Freedom Theatre, where Ibrahim said the Native Americans of the 20th century,” atre. Ibrahim began profiling Turkman some classes now have more female stu- Ameri explained. “I came of age in the rise shortly after he first joined the theater in dents than male. He said the theater’s role of the Palestinian liberation movement and 2007, but set the project aside to pursue in promoting female empowerment through the Palestinian identity.”

With her book, Ameri said she hopes to others. Then, on April 30, 2013, Turkman art is one of the accomplishments of which died of kidney failure due to injuries sus- he is most proud.

Art, Wasfi said in the film, “is my weapon. tained as a fighter during the second PalesThe weapon of freedom.” tinian intifada.

The third film, “The Racer,” tells the story “After the funeral, the idea came back again,” Ibrahim said. “[Rabea’s] story of race car driver Islam Abu Syria. An upshould be shown to everyone, we can’t hide lifting tale, his success is an inspiration to a population accustomed to hardship and it in our drawers.”

The film has now been screened at seven conflict. The Freedom Theatre itself has film festivals around the globe, from Europe come under attack, and members of its staff to America. The most emotional, however, have been arrested, and its founder, Arna was the screening at the Freedom Theatre, Mer Khamis, was assassinated. Still, they with Turkman’s friends and family in the au- continue to train Palestinians in a range of dience. After the screening, a friend of Turk- art forms, from acting to photography.

“Our aim is not only to produce someman’s, shown in the film arguing against Turkman’s decision to leave the armed re- thing,” Ibrahim said. “It is to give them a chance to express themselves…to work Dr. Anan Ameri’s memoir, The Scent of Jassistance, stood up with tears in his eyes. mine, captures the flavor of the tolerant, cos“We were wrong,” he said. “I am very sorry with the people here from their insides to mopolitan Arab world in which she grew up— [get them to] believe in themselves.” for all the things I said. I am with Rabea.” far from the political turmoil of today’s Middle —Anagha Srikanth East.

The second film was titled “Yumkin,” an 60

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Art in the Fight for Freedom: Films Produced by Palestinian Filmmakers

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dates on the “POV” series, <www.pbs.org/pov/dalyasothercountry>.

—Samir Twair

Istanbul’s Artistic Scene Flourishes

COURTESY DUSTIN PEARLMAN

help break down stereotypes that many Americans have about the Middle East.

Each chapter tells a different story, set in a range of locations—from Jerusalem and Damascus, where she learned her first lessons about womanhood, to Amman, Beirut and Cairo, as she studied to become a sociologist. Today, she lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“I am a woman, a Muslim, Palestinian and Arab. So to the average American, I am the embodiment of everything that is evil,” she said. “But if you read this book, you find out where we grew up, we grew up like every other culture.”

Ameri, who is also the founding director of both the Palestine Aid Society of America and the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, said she had written down stories from her life over the years, carrying her notes from office to office throughout her career. After she retired as director of the Arab American National Museum in 2012, she began compiling these stories, which were so extensive that she is planning a sequel.

“I want younger people to know that what the Arab world is today is not our fate,” she said. ”This is not our fate, this shall not be our fate, and that this too shall pass.”

The Scent of Jasmine is available from the Washington Report’s bookstore, Middle East Books and More.

—Anagha Srikanth

they find themselves.

Although Dalya struggles with her hijab and her new life in Los Angeles, she graduates from high school in 2016. She then applies to college and is accepted at Occidental College.

It turns out that one reason their father stayed behind was that he had married another woman. But he decided to leave his new wife in 2015 and travel to the U.S. to join his original family. The children are happy

to see their father, but Rudayna not so much. Check your local PBS TV listings for the film’s future broadcast times and

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

STAFF PHOTOS PHIL PASQUINI WITH PERMISSION

“Dalya’s Other Country”

The documentary film “Dalya’s Other Country” tells the story of a Syrian family displaced by the conflict in their country who are remaking their lives in Los Angeles. Director Julia Meltzer worked on the film for three years following the Syrian family’s arrival in Los Angeles. The film had its world premiere on June 17, at the L.A. Film Festival.

Rudayna and her children, Dalya and Mustafa Zeno, leave Aleppo during the bombardment of late 2012 and end up in the U.S. in 2014. Mustafa becomes head of the family after their father is left behind in Aleppo.

Dalya attends Catholic high school, while her mother, Rudayna, enrolls in college. Both walk the line between upholding their Muslim values and fitting into the new world in which

Dalya protesting the Muslim Ban at LAX in January 2017 (still shot from “Dalya’s Other Country”).

Despite Turkey’s stagnant economy, its highest unemployment rate in seven years and the six-year civil war still raging in Syria on its border—with the resulting influx of some three million Syrian refugees, the most in any country—galleries and museums continue to offer residents of Istanbul, as well as visitors, a wealth of artistic delights.

Following is a small sample of the city’s offerings: “The Characters of Yusuf Franko: An Ottoman Bureaucrat's Caricatures” Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civi-

ABOVE: Street vendors and dogs in front of the Sehzade Mosque. Engraver: Thomas Allom. 1838. Istanbul Research Institute Library.

TOP RIGHT: Vase. Ayyubid early 13th century. Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts.

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Minarets Hats Series, (l-r) Orange and Yellow Minaret 2012, Touba Minaret 2011, Red Minaret 2011, Afro Minaret 2010, Light Green Minaret 2012. Photograph printed on aluminum. Collection of artist, Verona, Italy. Maimouna Guerresi converted to Sufi Islam in Senegal. In this work, the persons are wearing minarets made from simple materials on their heads. These bodily extensions are designed to transmit spiritual energy.

Senegal and the Cote d’Ivoire, also explored the relationship between the Arab and Muslim world with sub-Saharan Africa.

Through trade, beginning in the eighth century, Islam spread throughout the region.

Featuring 300 pieces of artwork, the initial galleries displayed the early art and

craftsmanship of sub-Saharan Africa, including the calligraphy of sacred texts and manuscripts.

The final galleries presented the contemporary art of the area’s most innovative and talented artists in the African art scene.

—Elaine Pasquini

Spotlight on Islamic Art of Africa in Paris

“The Islamic Treasures of Africa: From Timbuktu to Zanzibar” is on display at L’Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris through July 30, 2017. Highlighting not only the art and culture of West Africa, the Horn of Africa, Upper Nile Valley and the Swahili region— the areas historically known in Arabic as bilad al-sudan (the land of the black peoples)—this unique exhibition, organized with the support of the governments of 62

The Washington Report’s Middle East Books and More held a sidewalk sale on June 17 in front of our Adams Morgan, DC bookstore. Throughout the day, old friends and new ones stopped by to browse through a fabulous selection of both new and used books and DVDs. Some sampled Palestinian olive oil and sipped iced tea and lemonade. If you missed the sale, come see our recently expanded shop on 18th St. NW, near Dupont Circle. It’s open all day, and evenings, every day.

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

STAFF PHOTO NATHANIEL BAILEY

lizations at its Istiklal Avenue gallery closed on June 1.

Franko, minister of foreign affairs in the Ottoman government, was a talented and prolific caricaturist who compiled his satirical portraits of wealthy capitalists, high society members, diplomats and Ottoman soldiers in an album between 1884 and 1896.

“Feyhaman Duran: Between Two Worlds” on display until July 30 at the Sakip Sabanci Museum.

Combining traditional and modern cultures, Duran (1886-1970) was known for his portraits, landscapes and calligraphic works.

“The Four-Legged Municipality: Street Dogs of Istanbul” on display at the Istanbul Research Institute until Sept. 16. Throughout the city's storied history, street dogs have been an integral part of daily life. Through photos, postcards, engravings and other media dating from the 19th century, the exhibition traces the relationship of street dogs with their two-legged neighbors amid political, religious and social transformations.

Istanbul’s famed Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts hosts a resplendent collection of Islamic calligraphy, tiles, carpets, pottery and mural fragments from the Umayyad, Abbasid and Selçuk periods, among others.

The museum is housed in the former palace of Ibrahim Pasa, grand vizier to Sü leyman “the Magnificent.”

“Coffee Break” remains on view at the Pera Museum’s permanent collection. (See Aug./Sept. 2016 Washington Report, pp.

75-76.)

In addition, the Istanbul Modern and SALT Galata galleries display outstanding permanent and temporary exhibits of contemporary art.

—Elaine Pasquini

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI WITH PERMISSION

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about potential chemical attacks and tweets in support of Saudi Arabia against Yemen), I am deeply concerned that President Donald Trump is stirring up a hornets’ nest (“U.S. accuses Syria of preparing for another chemical attack,” June 28). In this volatile and complex part of the world, recent administrations of both parties have learned that they meddle to their (and our) peril. Remember how disastrous President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq was? Trump, by all accounts, is not well-informed about the complexities, to put it mildly. It is tempting to suspect that he is trying to gin up a war to get the public to ignore his problems with Russia and rally around the flag.

Nancy Beach, Minneapolis, MN

POST-FIREWORKS PERSPECTIVE

TRUMP SHOULD ACT ON HIS WORDS AND END WARS

To the Billings Gazette, July 5, 2017 Trump's June 21 speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, should have gotten a lot more media coverage than it did, especially his comments on the Middle East. They sounded a lot like what Ron Paul and other sensible people have been saying for years: “As of a few months ago our country has spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, wasted.

And the lives, the lives....$6 trillion and thousands of young, beautiful lives. We started 16 years ago and it's in far worse shape than it was 16 years ago by many times over.”

I can't find anything to disagree with, but there is a problem. His words contradict his actions. He could have started withdrawing U.S. forces in January and had the withdrawal completed by early May. Instead, he has kept thousands of U.S. personnel in that area and significantly increased the especially risky U.S. military presence in Syria.

Time to get out of the Middle East, starting with Syria—the involvement that both alienates and risks war with Russia.

Richard Miller, Thermopolis, WY

DON’T STIR UP HORNETS’ NEST

To the Star Tribune, June 28, 2017 Given recent actions (threats to Syria AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

To the Concord Monitor, July 12, 2017 The celebrations are over. The “bombs bursting in air” have ended.

As I lay in my bed listening to the fireworks on July 4 and 5, my thoughts went to larger places.

I went to Syria, where these sounds have lasted for six-plus years, not the hour and a half here at home.

I wondered how children in Yemen feel when hearing the whistling rockets fly in the sky and wonder if they might die because of them.

I thought of our service women and men and service dogs home from war, many suffering “combat fatigue,” “shell shock,” PTSD, where these sounds create not the beauty we see in the sky but flashbacks to horrific death and destruction.

That children in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and other war zones, unlike us, are terrified of clear, bright, sunny days, when the drones fly, so they hide and wait to play until the gray cloud cover comes. I know my safety is a privilege, and I understand the delight in celebrating our immigrant ancestors’ success in severing ties with England (and claiming a land already inhabited by millions).

I don’t begrudge those sentiments. I do, however, believe we should never be smug or small-minded when “bombs bursting in air” means different things for our own and the world’s citizens.

Susan McKevitt, Bradford, NH

PROTECTING CIVILIANS SHOULD BE PRIORITIZED

To The New York Times, June 30, 2017 Re “Facing Civilian Casualties” (op-ed, June 19), about the civilian death toll from United States operations in Iraq and Syria: The recommendations by Micah

Zenko are both timely and important, especially his call for a comprehensive study of civilian harm.

As a result of lessons learned from a similar study in Afghanistan in 2010, civilian harm caused by United States operations significantly decreased.

While we know that many in the United States military remain committed to civilian harm mitigation, we are troubled that others, including some in positions of leadership, no longer believe that making minimal effort to prevent harm to civilians matters as much as defeating ISIS at any cost.

This logic puts much at risk, most important the lives of Iraqi and Syrian civilians, but also the reputation of the United States government. Preventing harm contributes to ultimate success, but it also speaks volumes about the nature and character of the country in whose name that military fights.

Federico Borello, Washington, DC The writer is executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict.

NO REASON TO SEND 4,000 MORE TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN

To The Virginian-Pilot, July 10, 2017 The Pilot has reported that 4,000 additional troops will join the 8,400 already in Afghanistan.

When you go into battle, you expect to win—not simply extend the battle. The 4,000 additional troops on the ground will not win this madness.

There should be another way of winning. The loss of lives, injuries and money spent on this war are enough.

We should spend the next $13.2 billion that would have been spent on this war for the needs of people in the United States.

Send all the brave troops home. They deserve it. Enough is enough.

Ralph Everton, Norfolk, VA

STRATEGY CHANGE IN AFGHANISTAN IS DELUSIONAL

To the Tri-City Herald, July 3, 2017 When the current administration completes its term in 2020, we will have been fighting our misbegotten war in Afghanistan for 20 years. Now, after 16 years, $1 trillion spent, more than 4,000 American military and contractor deaths and more than 20,000 military wounded, we are losing. So says Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

We have already destroyed much of the country, funded one of the most corrupt governments in the world, destroyed the country’s economy, displaced 600,000

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Afghans and killed more than 30,000 civilians, many of them children.

I can think of no more effective way to arouse hatred than by killing people’s children.

Congress is calling for a new strategy to defeat “the enemy”—Afghans who are fighting to drive a foreign invader from their country.

U.S. Central Command head Gen. Joseph Votel didn’t explain how a few thousand more soldiers could change the direction of the war when 100,000 didn’t in the past.

After 11 years of military involvement in Vietnam, we had the common sense to cut our losses. Expecting that, in another four years, we will win the war in Afghanistan by some change of strategy is delusional.

Jim Stoffels, Richland, WA

MEMORIES FROM 1948 AND 1967

To The Press Democrat, June 19, 2017 Fifty years ago this month, two of my brothers were in Ramallah, West Bank visiting some relatives. Ramallah was the ancestral home of my family until 1948, when we and 750,000 other indigenous Palestinians were forced out of our homes or had to flee as a result of the violence that erupted when Palestine was arbitrarily divided by the U.N., and 56 percent of it was given to the Jewish state.

We ended up in Jordan as poor refugees for the next 10 years, then eventually came to America, where after the required years we all became citizens.

But on that fateful day in June 1967, my brothers crossed the 40-some miles into Jordan to visit some friends in Amman. While they were there, the 1967 war broke out, and they, as every Palestinian outside the West

Bank at the time, weren’t allowed by the Israelis to go back, not even to fetch their luggage. Their American passports were useless. Why? Because they were Palestinian.

The result of the ’67 war was the brutal Israeli military occupation of the rest of Palestine still going on today.

My question is: when is enough enough?

Why do we consider some people more deserving of human rights than others?

Therese Mughannam-Walrath, Santa Rosa, CA

STOP PRETENDING ON ISRAEL

To The Spokesman-Review, May 31, 2017 Howard Glass (“Careful with Israel rhetoric,” May 13) refers to the report, “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” prepared by Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley for the U.N.’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. Although the U.N. subsequently bowed to U.S. pressure and disowned the report, it remains accessible through online sources.

Two apartheid systems were established in 1948. World moral judgment turned against the crime of apartheid, but the U.S. and Israel supported apartheid South Africa until the bitter end. South African apartheid was abolished in 1991.

Since 1991, the U.S. has remained the principal defender of the sole remaining apartheid state. The U.S. defends Israel by insisting that the apartheid state is “a democracy.”

Because the U.S. presents Israel as “a democracy,” any negotiation with the victims of apartheid is framed by the need to ensure the security of Israel. U.S. diplomacy regarding Israel always proceeds with a dishonest broker seeking to impose a dishonest agenda.

Howard Glass fears that honest reference to the apartheid state “inhibits progress toward peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

At 69 years and counting, perhaps it’s time to stop pretending that Israel is “a democracy.”

Wayne B. Kraft, Spokane, WA

INCOMPATIBLE: A JEWISH STATE AND RIGHTS FOR PALESTINIANS

To the San Francisco Chronicle, May 27, 2017 Regarding “50 years after war, division of city lingers” (May 25): Celebrating the unification of Jerusalem simply means Israelis celebrating their control over the entire city. The city, as you point out, is anything but unified: it is divided along racial lines, in which Jews get privileges that are not accorded to Palestinians. This goes

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beyond how resources are allocated.

Many countries discriminate in this way.

The difference between such countries and Israel is that in Israel, discrimination along racial lines is codified.

When Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it gave only residency rights, not citizenship, to the Palestinians living there.

Residency rights can easily be rescinded, and thousands of Palestinians have lost these rights in the process of Israel’s efforts to turn Palestine into Israel. People who denounce the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel as destroying Israel leave out four important words: as a Jewish state. It is those unspoken words that are problematic, because a country that codifies the separation and treatment of its population so as to keep one racial group dominant meets the definition of apartheid, a crime against humanity that nations are duty-bound to end.

Esther Riley, Fairfax, CA

MUSLIM MAN FIGHTS BIGOTRY

To The Washington Post, July 7, 2017 The article about Ayaz Virji struck a strong empathetic chord with me. Mr. Virji, a physician and a Muslim, set out to educate his neighbors about his faith when he sensed that they were distancing themselves from him after Donald Trump won the presidential election. He felt he could choose to run away from a small town where he and his family had begun to grow roots or provide a better understanding. But “you have to be sincere” and “use your brain” to understand, he said.

His first lecture drew nearly 400 people from his town of 1,400, the majority of whom voted for Mr. Trump. He addressed misinformation and was roundly applauded at the conclusion. He faced a potentially tougher audience in another rural community, also mostly Trump supporters. This talk, too, was well received by an audience that agreed “these conversations are very much needed.” This points to a widespread misinformation infection that attacks fact and depends on a complacent and often willfully ignorant public to allow its spread.

I noticed after church on Sunday that friends were saying how unusually moving the singing of “America the Beautiful” was to them this year, many hiding tears. All agreed that they have become fearful of what the future holds for our nation when our leadership is self-serving and anything but sincere. Our feckless administration condones violence.

In this atmosphere, unsurprisingly, the Ku Klux Klan feels free to request that our neighbor, Charlottesville, permit a rally there.

Murray Hulse, Earlysville, VA ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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B •O •O •K •S The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight Against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s-1980s

By Pamela E. Pennock, The University of North Carolina Press, 2017, paperback, 328 pp. List: $29.95; MEB: $25.

The 1967 ArabIsraeli War produced something the United States hadn’t previously seen: a sustained and nationally visible outpouring of Arab-American political activism.

Stunned by the magnitude of the Arab defeat, chagrined by the mainstream media’s sharply pro-Israel bias, Arab Americans vigorously promoted the Arab cause and demanded that it receive a fairer hearing in the United States. Fifty years later, it is hard to claim that this activism had much impact on U.S. Middle East policy. But it did, as Pamela Pennock argues in this outstanding new book, modestly alter the contours of left-of-center American politics.

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Reviewed by Salim Yaqub Pennock covers the quarter-century following the 1967 war. She focuses on the Left because, at the start of her chronology, the most audible Arab-American voices belonged to radical organizations, especially the newly formed Association of Arab American University Graduates.

These groups championed the Palestinian resistance, supported Third World “liberation” movements, and condemned U.S. policies in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Domestically, they challenged the defamation of Arabs in the news and entertainment media and provided social services to new Arab immigrants. By the early 1970s, such organizations had found a place, albeit a marginal and precarious one, in the broader American Left.

But over the next two decades, Pennock notes, the general orientation of Arab-American activism became more pragmatic. Figures and groups that had once called for the liberation of all of Palestine reconciled themselves (however grudgingly) to a two-state settlement of the Palestine/Israel dispute. The advocates of Third World revolution increasingly pursued more achievable goals at home, such as a softening of hostile media portrayals and the acquisition of foundation grants for community centers.

Partly as a consequence of these shifts, Pennock writes, “by the 1990s Arab American political organizations began to win more support among mainstream liberals, broadening their support beyond the Far Left.”

WAShIngton REpoRt on MIddlE EASt AffAIRS

The Rise of the Arab American Left is extremely well researched, drawing on a wealth of monographs, journalistic accounts, oral history interviews, and—a rarity in post-1967 Arab-American studies— manuscript collections of Arab-American figures and organizations. The result is a deeply informed and unusually credible study, setting a new, high bar for contemporary Arab-American history.

Where the book is less successful is in conveying the subjective experiences— the grief, anger, humiliation, defiance, hope, exhilaration and letdown—that came with being a politically engaged Arab American after 1967. One wishes, for example, that Pennock had quoted some of the wounding words that American opinion leaders hurled at Arabs during the 1967 war, as doing so would have provided a more visceral sense of why Arab Americans rose up in the first place. Similarly, because the book is more thematic than chronological, its overall narrative arc is often submerged. Pennock persuasively shows that her protagonists went from being radical and marginalized in the late 1960s to being somewhat more moderate and influential two decades later. But I doubt many readers will feel swept along on this political odyssey, even though it could be presented as poignant and stirring.

Still, Pennock has produced a work of impressive scope, cogency, precision and credibility, one that breaks new ground in Arab-American studies and will be a key scholarly resource for years to come.

Readers prepared to take a deep dive into this serious activist history will be richly rewarded. ■

Salim Yaqub is professor of history at UC Santa Barbara. His latest book is Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s.

AUgUSt/SEptEMbER 2017

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• EAST • BOOKS • AND • MORE MIDDLE Literature Films Pottery Solidarity Items More *

*

*

*

SUMMER 2017 The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II by John W. Dower, Haymarket, 2017, paperback, 184 pp.

List: $13.95; MEB: $12.

World War II marked the apex of industrialized total war around the globe. This book traces the U.S.-led transformations in how warfare is conducted from 1945 until the present, using examples from around the world, incuding recent U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

An Unlikely Audience: Al Jazeera’s Struggle in America by William Lafi Youmans, Oxford, 2017, hardcover, 256 pp. List: $29.95; MEB: $28. In 2006, the Al Jazeera Media Network attempted to make its way into the entrenched and hostile American market, leading to years of various successes and failures. Drawing on numerous sources and interviews, Youmans examines the difficulties faced by media giants when they attempt to break the stranglehold of corporate media.

On Anti-Semitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice by Jewish Voice for Peace, Haymarket, 2017, paperback, 288 pp. List: $19.95; MEB: $18. In this collection of essays, Jewish Voice for Peace poses critical questions regarding contemporary anti-Semitism, focusing primarily on cases where false charges of antiSemitism have been used to stifle criticism of Israeli policy and support for Palestinian rights.

Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy by Trita Parsi, Yale, 2017, hardcover, 427 pp.

List: $32.50; MEB: $28. In his timely book, the acclaimed author and former White House adviser dives deep into Obama administration strategy toward Iran. Parsi documents the administration’s success in brokering a nuclear agreement following years of deadlock and averting the danger of U.S. military engagement with the Islamic Republic.

Salt Houses: A Novel by Hala Alyan, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017, hardcover, 320 pp. List: $26; MEB: $24. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Salma is forced to leave her home in Nablus, Palestine. As members of her family are pulled in different directions, Salma and her husband move to Kuwait, beginning a series of relocations taking her from country to country, all the while wondering if she will ever see her home again.

The Home that Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek, Nation, 2017, hardcover, 352 pp.

List: $27.99; MEB: $24.

Weaving together history, society and politics, the author tells her story of returning to her family apartment in Damascus at the beginning of the Arab Spring. As the country slips into war, Malek chronicles the lives of her fellow tenants and the wider political shifts in her country.

Qatar: A Modern History by Allen J. Fromherz, Georgetown, 2017, paperback, 226 pp. List: $26.95; MEB: $25.

Released days after the GCC countries broke ties with Qatar, Fromherz’s new book is a timely analysis of the modern history of the small Gulf state. Beginning with the Ottoman and British influences in the Middle East, Fromherz details Qatar’s vivid history and its transformation into a regional economic powerhouse.

Scents and Flavors: A Syrian Cookbook by Charles Perry, NYU, 2017, hardcover, 352 pp.

List: $30; MEB: $28. This meticulous and scholarly volume brings together, in both Arabic and English, 635 recipes from a popular 13th century Syrian cookbook, reviving many lost and forgotten dishes, ingredients, and techniques from the Medieval Arab world. Scents and Flavors will appeal to both the curious cook and to those interested in the role of Arab food and culture many centuries ago.

The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories edited

by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin, Solaris, 2017, paperback, 356 pp. List: $15.99; MEB: $14. Bringing together an international cast of writers, this collection of new and classic tales about the Djinn, sometimes known as genies, brings these supernatural creatures to life in sometimes fearsome ways.

SHIPPING RATES Most items are discounted and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Orders accepted by mail, phone (800-368-5788 ext. 2), or Web (www.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.

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

Library packages (list value over $240) are available for $29 if donated to a library, or free if requested with a library’s paid subscription or renewal. Call Middle East Books and More at 800-368-5788 ext. 2 to order. Our policy is to identify donors unless anonymity is specifically requested.

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In Memoriam

Rachelle Marshall (1927-2017)

to understand the suffering and injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel, and she became a fierce, committed and deeply informed critic of Israel. This evolution in her thinking caused many friends and relatives to express anger at what she was doing. This was a difficult time for her, but she stood her ground and did not waiver.

Rachi loved learning and had a vast interest in and knowledge of both political and cultural issues, and one could always learn something of interest in spending time with her.

She was a prolific and talented writer, and her articles on a variety of political topics appeared in such venues such as The Progressive, Foreign Policy in Focus, and Truthout. She also had an uncanny ability to get her insightful letters published in The New York Times as well as her local paper.

A good example of her sophisticated and nuanced thinking appears in an article in Foreign Policy in Focus, where she wrote that Americans fail to understand the visceral way Russia views NATO and the European Union as an existential threat. She went on to say, “Even more disturbing is the fact that so few policy makers observe the cardinal rule of effective diplomacy: that when dealing with a perceived adversary, negotiators should be acutely aware of the other side’s concerns, especially when it comes to security.”

In another article in Foreign Policy in Focus, she wrote that modern warfare invariably involves the indiscriminate killing of human beings who bear no responsibility for its causes, and any attempt to distinguish between legitimate military actions that kill civilians (“collateral damage”) and tragic mistakes that kill civilians is a pointless exercise. She believed that atrocities are an integral part of war and that all wars must be considered war crimes.

While highly critical of Hillary Clinton’s obsequious, unconditional support of Israel and her proclivity to foreign intervention and war, Rachi was deeply frightened and disturbed by the election of Donald Trump, because she saw to the core of his racist, authoritarian personality, which reminded her so much of how fascism came to power in Germany.

Rachi spent the last several years of her life living with her husFAMILY PHOTO

Rachelle Marshall in 2013.

READERS OF the Washington Report will be sad to learn of the passing May 29 of Rachelle Marshall, whose incisive and knowledgeable articles on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict graced these pages for some 25 years. Her death occurred just shy of her 90th birthday, and her commitment to the cause of justice for the Palestinian people was evident to the very end.

Those who knew Rachi, as she was affectionately called by family and friends, knew her to have a brilliant mind and a passionate, feisty and caring way of being in the world. Her life was deeply rooted in the cause of social justice. She and her husband, Hugh, who at 97 died this past December, were extremely active in the civil rights movement and in opposing the war in Vietnam. Prior to that, in the 1940s the two worked with poor people in West Virginia around housing issues.

Like most Jews of her generation, Rachi was indelibly marked by the Holocaust that sensitized her to the suffering of her own people.

Eventually, however, as she explained in her “Seeing the Light” essay for this magazine (see facing page), after an intensive period of study and meeting with Palestinians, Rachi came

David Glick is a psychotherapist, poet and activist in Fairfax, California and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.

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By David Glick

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band in a retirement home in Mill Valley, California, where she was active with Mill Valley Seniors for Peace. She was also a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace

and Freedom. She is survived by her son, Jonathan (see this issue’s “Other Voices” supplement”) and daughter-in-law and four grandchildren.

Rachi lived her life with courage and in-

SEEING THE LIGHT: LESSONS FROM MY SON AND MY GRANDFATHER

LIKE ALMOST ALL Jews of my generation, I was indelibly marked by the calamity inflicted on the Jews of Europe between 1933 and 1945. Growing up safely in New York during those years, I knew that I was alive only because my grandparents had decided to come to America. Others in my family were not so lucky. During the late 1930s there was constant anxiety in our house as my father talked endlessly on the telephone trying to secure safe passage for relatives still in Europe. The newsreel I saw in 1938 of bearded Jews on their hands and knees in a Vienna street, surrounded by jeering crowds, was a searing revelation that ordinary men and women could suddenly become savage.

So after World War II it would have been unthinkable to me not to welcome the establishment of the state of Israel. At last, I thought, the Jewish people had a safe haven. During the 1950s and 1960s it never occurred to me that there was any inconsistency in working for civil rights in America and giving my full support to Israel. The only “Palestinians” I knew about were Jews like my Uncle Simon, who had settled in Palestine in the 19th century to escape the Czarist pogroms.

For nearly 20 years I assumed that whatever the Israeli government did was for self-defense, and thus justified. The first, imperceptible doubt arose the day after Israel’s victory in the June 1967 war. “What a triumph!” I exclaimed at breakfast after a look at the headlines. “Israel is finally safe.”

Our 12-year-old son, Jonathan, looked skeptical. “Why is Israel any safer than before?” he asked. “Doesn’t conquering more territory just mean making more enemies?” I reminded him that he hadn’t been alive during the Holocaust and therefore couldn’t possibly understand the relief that Jews everywhere must be feeling. To my shame, I accused him of being too rational.

As the days passed and I read news reports from the Middle East that suggested the conflict was far from over, Jonathan’s questions occasionally troubled me. But, at the time, U.S. involvement in Vietnam was uppermost in my mind, so much that in December 1967 I spent three weeks in jail for helping to block the entrance to the Oakland Army Terminal.

The carpet bombing of Vietnam by B-52s and the use of napalm and white phosphorus against defenseless peasants struck me as not so different from the Nazi ruthlessness we had once condemned. When the Honeywell Corporation announced it had developed an “improved” napalm that would stick to the skin longer, I realized that the Germans had no monopoly on evil.

When I later came to read about the Middle East, the knowledge that my own country was capable of committing atrocities gave me a degree of objectivity that enabled me to accept inforAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

tegrity and was an inspiration for me and many others. I for one will miss her greatly, and feel grateful to have known her and worked with her for the cause of Palestinian justice that is so dear to us both. ■

Washington Report, November 1989

mation about Israel that I would earlier have dismissed as Arab propaganda. The learning process began a year or two after my breakfast table confrontation with Jonathan, when an article appeared in the Stanford Daily that harshly criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

I was angy and wanted to reply, but I couldn’t counter the author’s facts with facts of my own. So I went to the library and began reading—starting with Christopher Sykes’ Crossroads to Israel and Maxime Rodinson’s Israel and the Arabs, and going on to books by Israelis and others. It wasn’t until much later that I was willing to trust works by Arab authors such as Sabri Jiryis and Edward Said. I took two courses on the Middle East at Stanford and went to hear most of the speakers who came to the campus, including Muhammad Hallaj and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod.

I was shocked when they were nearly shouted off the stage by members of the audience.

The light began to dawn as I learned that the Jewish haven I had welcomed was established on land the Palestinians had a right to claim as their own. I learned about the methods that Jewish forces had used to expel over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, such as the fiery barrel bombs that burned through Arab villages, and the massacre of 250 men, women and children at Deir Yassin.

I learned about Arab terrorism and about Israeli reprisal raids. From Menachem Begin’s book, The Revolt, I learned about Jewish terrorism and of the dedication of Jewish zealots to extending Israel’s borders to include the east bank of the Jordan.

The more I read, the greater my sense of betrayel. A large part of what I had been told about Israel and its neighbors was based on myth, I realized. And the myths continued to be repeated in most of the newspaper and magazine articles I read that dealt with the Middle East. But then I found that the price of challenging the conventional wisdom came high.

In the mid-1970s I began writing letters to the editor that were critical of Israel’s role in Lebanon, specifically its devastating bombing of civilian villages and its support for the Phalangist forces. The printed replies (and anonymous letters) were short on factual arguments but called me everything from an anti-Semitic Jew to a communist. The nice local rabbi, a hero of the Selma civil rights march, called me in to ask me not to wash our dirty linen in public. “It can only do harm to Jews when we criticize Israel,” he said.

The hardest thing was that relatives and friends expressed pain, and sometimes anger, over what I was doing. One of the guests at a family birthday party said to me in all seriousness, “You are an enemy of the Jews.”

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My husband and children were shocked by this reaction, but what reassured all of us is that we soon came to know, and work with, a group of Israeli and Palestinian graduate students at Stanford who believed fervently that both peoples could peacefully coexist, as equals, in separate independent states. At the time, this was a daring position for either Israelis or Palestinians to take.

The sanity and humaneness of these students reinforced my own belief that a two-state solution was the only way to settle the Middle East conflict and therefore assure Israeli’s security.

Despite this intellectual conviction, there were times when the accusations by fellow Jews that I was doing harm to Israel by what I wrote and said made me wonder if perhaps I was a kind of traitor.

Then a chance discovery about my grandfather changed everything.

He had come to America just before World War I and died before I was born. All I really knew about him was that my parents and aunts and uncles revered him, that he had founded a Hebrewlanguage newspaper in New York, and had helped to raise money in America for schools in Palestine. One day while I was browsing in the library, I found his name, Abraham Lubarsky, in the index of a book and learned that he had been an associate of Ahad Ha-Am. Ahad Ha-Am (whose real name was Asher Ginzberg) was already a hero of mine. He was one of a small group of Russian Jews called “cultural Zionists” who favored the establishment in Palestine of a homeland for the Jews but believed that they had no right to rule the entire country. The Arab inhabitants, Ahad HaAm wrote in 1920, “have a tangible right based on generation

after generation of life and work in the country. The country is their national home, too, and they too have the right to develop their national potentialities as far as they are able.” (Zionism, Gary Smith, ed., Harper & Row, 1974.) My grandfather’s entry in Encyclopedia Judaica says that he was “especially close to Ahad Ha-Am, whom he stimulated to write his first famous essay.”

THE LEGACY OF CULTURAL ZIONISTS

It is now too late for the kind of multicultural nation in Palestine that Ahad Ha-Am and my grandfather envisioned. But their insight that Arabs and Jews would have to live together as equals in the land of Palestine if there was to be peace between them is as valid today as it ever was. The “cultural Zionists” believed the identity and survival of the Jewish people depended not on wielding power over others but on establishing a community that would preserve and put into practice centuries of Jewish teaching and tradition. Central to the Judaism they valued were the words of Amos: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

If they were alive today, Ahad Ha-Am and my grandfather would undoubtedly have felt obliged, as Jews, to speak out against acts of brutality and injustice no matter who committed them. And I think they would have believed, as I do, that today the Jewish people face their greatest danger not from Palestinians seeking self-determination, but from an Israeli government that is making a mockery of Judaism.

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O• B • I • T • U • A • R • I • E • S Vincent T. Larsen, 87, died March 26 in Billings, MT of cancer. His father taught at Tougaloo College, a well-known historically black school near Jackson, MS. Vince couldn’t understand why once he and his friends left campus they couldn’t go to the same theaters and ice cream parlors.

That special childhood fed a passion to combat intolerance and racism which stayed with him for the rest of his life.

After graduating from Texas Tech in 1956 with a BS in petroleum geology, he joined the Coast Guard, then worked for Phillips Petroleum and later became a consulting geologist. From 1972 to 1975 he lived in Jakarta, working for Independent Indonesian American Petroleum Company (IIAPCO), and making life-long friends with Muslim co-workers. Through talking with friends and paying close attention to international news, Larsen became convinced the U.S. was biased and even racist when it came to its Middle East policy.

He married his wife, Louise, in 1977, and they continued traveling together, meeting people and learning about other faiths, cultures and customs. In 1990, when the couple went back to Jakarta, they were disturbed to discover many Indonesians no longer loved Americans. In fact, Vince said, in one young man’s glare he recognized the same pure hatred that some white people had shown his parents when they were teaching at Tougaloo. Vince asked a friend what had happened, and he explained, “It’s your country’s support for Israel. You talk peace but you give guns.”

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

Compiled by Nathaniel Bailey

An ARAMCO friend gave the Larsens a copy of the Washington Report and soon they were hooked, reading books mentioned in the magazine, and generously supporting this publication. Vince wrote earnest, thought-provoking letters to the Billings Gazette—some of which were published. Every time he wrote a letter calling for civil and human rights for Palestinians he got hate mail and phone calls accusing him of being anti-Semitic.

“Injustice bothers me,” he told the Washington Report, in one of many phone calls we sorely miss today. “I remember having the hell beat out of me because of what my dad did. Hate spreads from father to son. But so does love. My father’s greatest gift to me was raising me in Tougaloo.”

After his death, Vince’s friend Ed Kemmick wrote about the Larsens’ gifts of acres of land to Montana’s park service, and how they helped support at least one student a year at more than 10 or 12 different colleges. “Vince knew so much about the world and both its joys and its injustices, and he aimed to make them right,” Kemmick wrote.

As he planned his funeral, Vince asked his minister to include the following thought, a homework assignment from an “eager student” of the world: “Walk outside in the dark of the night and look up at the sky. Note the countless stars and realize how fortunate you really are to be alive in such a vast universe. Do something about the world that we live in. Give thanks and appreciate the gift of life that has been given to you. Do something for others every day and show your gratitude. Work for peace, it is so simple, just be kind and respectful of others.”

That life lesson is yet another lasting gift from Vince Larsen.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Sara Ehrman, 98, died June 3 in Washington, DC of endocarditis. Best known for her ties with the Clinton family, she was born on Staten Island, NY, as the youngest child and only daughter of Hungarian Jewish immigrants. Her parents’ communist sympathies would later inspire her left-leaning politics. In the 1930s she joined the Labor Zionist Youth movement. She moved to Northern Virginia after the end of World War II and worked as a legislative assistant to several Democrats on Capitol Hill. It was in this capacity that she met future President Bill Clinton. In 1974, Ehrman offered to drive a young Hillary Rodham to Fayetteville, AR so she could be with her boyfriend, Clinton. During the two-day trip Ehrman tried to talk Hillary out of her relationship with Clinton, as she saw more potential for Hillary than she thought Clinton could offer in Arkansas.

Ehrman maintained her friendship with the Clintons over the years, moving to Little Rock in 1992 to lead Jewish outreach for Clinton’s presidential campaign. After he was elected, she became an adviser to the president, with a particular focus on the Middle East. She became deeply disillusioned with AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby group she had previously helped to expand as political director in the early 1980s, and spent decades pushing for a two-state solution, working for organizations such as Americans for Peace Now and J Street.

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Dr. Omar S. Alfi, 89, a pillar of the Islamic Center of Southern California, died June 4 in Los Angeles.

He began his 71

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medical career as a pediatrician in Cairo, Egypt after graduating from medical school at Cairo University. After practicing medicine in Egypt and Kuwait, Dr. Alfi and his family immigrated to the U.S. in 1970, and he joined the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA) as head of the Division of Medical Genetics.

There he established a pre-natal genetics counseling clinic and identified a rare chromosomal anomaly known as Monosomy 9P, or Alfi Syndrome. Dr. Alfi founded Alfigen, Inc./The Genetics Institute in 1981 to provide genetic testing and clinical services locally and abroad.

After he retired he focused his research on developing stem cell therapy, hoping to develop a better treatment for Hepatitis C, an illness highly prevalent in Egypt Starting in the 1970s, Dr. and Mrs. Alfi helped the Islamic Center of Southern California grow to become the prominent West Coast mosque it is today. They were involved in the first Muslim-Catholic dialogue in Los Angeles, before the Interfaith Council of Southern California came into existance. The Alfis founded the New Horizon K-12 school system in the 1990s, which now has four campuses. In the 2000s they established an Islamic Law chair at UCLA Law School and co-founded Bayan Claremont at Claremont College. Dr. Alfi was a Renaissance man who leaves behind an inspiring legacy. He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Azmeralda, their 3 children, 11 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren.

—Samir and Pat Twair Adnan Khashoggi, 81, died June 6 in London, where he was undergoing treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Known as an extravagant Saudi arms trader who became immensely wealthy in the 1970s and 1980s, he was born in the holy city of Mecca, where his father, despite being of Turkish descent, was the court doctor to King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. Khashoggi attended Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, then enrolled at what was then Chico State College in California. Soon 72

afterward, he brokered his first major deal, selling $3 million worth of trucks to Egypt and earning a $150,000 commission. Khashoggi never returned to finish his college degree.

Over the years, Khashoggi made deals with a who’s who list of global arms traders, such as Northrop, Lockheed Martin, Grumman, Chrysler, Fiat, the Westland helicopter company, RollsRoyce and Raytheon. Although he had several encounters with the law, he was never convicted of a crime, even though he was involved in many of his era’s highest profile scandals, including the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scheme during the Reagan administration.

Tina (née Thomas) Bruder, 91, died June 10 in Alexandria, VA after a brief illness. Daughter of a U.S. Marine, she attended 12 schools before graduating from Hollins College and marrying Maj. Joseph Andrew Bruder, USMC. After many overseas posts, now-Colonel Bruder served as the defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon from 1967 to 1970, returning to Beirut in 1973. After settling in Alexandria, VA a few years later, Tina Bruder studied art history at George Washington University and fine arts at Northern Virginia Community College. She was a registered copyist at the National Gallery of Art and a member of Independent Visions, a group of women artists. Well into her late 80s, Bruder hosted gatherings of friends first made in Beirut, and braved heat and snowstorms to attend openings of fellow artists in DC. She is survived by five children.

—Delinda C. Hanley David Fromkin, 84, died June 11 in Manhattan of heart failure. Born in Milwaukee, he earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and later graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. He first worked as a lawyer and investor, before becoming a published author and professor. His groundbreaking 1989 book on the Middle East, A Peace

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

to End All Peace, traced the creation of unsustainable nation states through artificial mapmaking by Western powers following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the end of European colonization. Fromkin concluded that selfserving cartographers had underestimated the local populations’ enduring faith in Islam and their local communities, as well as their lingering resentment of Western imperialism and colonization. He often advocated for constraints on American military intervention overseas and against Western imperialism.

In 1994, Fromkin joined Boston University, where he was the director of the Center for International Relations and was the founding director of the Fredrick S. Pardee Center of the Long-Range Future from 2000-2007. The author of seven books, he retired from Boston University as professor emeritus in 2013.

Fred Rotondaro, 78, died June 26 at his home in Shady Side, MD after a battle with brain cancer. Born in Pittston, PA, he was a leader of the Italian-American community who was praised for providing Arab Americans political access in the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when many in Washington refused to work with the Arab community. He was instrumental in teaching Arab-American leaders the nuts and bolts of ethnic politics in the United States. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from the University of Scranton and his Master’s Degree at Creighton University, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University.

After marrying and moving to Washington, DC, he became communications director of the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, and later served as executive director of the National Italian American Foundation, remaining in that position for 22 years. After his retirement, he became a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, chair of Catholics In Alliance for the Common Good, and treasurer of the Italian American Democratic Leadership Council. ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017

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AET’s 2017 Choir of Angels

following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1, 2017 and June 27, 2017 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 helped us co-sponsor the conference “the israel lobby and American policy.” others donated to our “Capital building fund.” We are deeply honored by their confidence and profoundly grateful for their generosity.

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Catherine Abbott, Edina, MN

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Dr. Ahmed M. Sakkal,

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Lt. Col. Alfred Shehab, Odenton, MD Kathy Sheridan, Mill Valley, CA Dr. Mostafa Hashem Sherif, Tinton Falls, NJ

Teofilo Siman, Miami, FL

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Longmont, CO

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*In Memory of Andrew I. Killgore **In Memory of Richard H. Curtiss ***In Honor of John F. Mahoney ****In Memory of Diane Cooper †In Memory of Prof. Jack Shaheen ††In Memory of Rosemarie Carnarius

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August/September 2017 Vol. XXXVI, No. 5

A Palestinian man browses through merchandise as a woman and a boy on a bike pass by in the old market of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, July 7, 2017. That day UNESCO, meeting in Krakow, Poland, voted in a secret ballot to make Hebronâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Old City a protected Palestinian heritage site.

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