Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2003, pages 78-80

Arab-American Activism

Arab American National Museum in the Works

Michigan is home to 400,000 Arab Americans, and Dearborn is the capital city of Arab America. The dynamic force for change and growth within Dearborn’s Arab community is ACCESS (The Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services).

Founded in 1971 in response to the flood of new immigrants from the Arab world, ACCESS started off helping men find industrial jobs by teaching them the English words for wrench, hammer, nail, saw, and other tools. Next it gave Arab women English lessons. Before long ACCESS was providing all kinds of human services, including helping immigrants start small businesses and navigate the school, banking, health care, social and civil systems most Americans take for granted.

ACCESS helped Muslim and Christian immigrants and their children make a success of their new lives in America. Coming as they did from the broad, 5,000-mile swath of the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, each immigrant brought his or her own special needs and requirements. ACCESS helped empower the new Americans to lead more informed, productive and fulfilling lives.

ACCESS has experienced exponential growth, embracing a wide range of social, mental health, educational, artistic, youth, employment, legal, and medical services. In 1992 ACCESS received the Points of Light award as an exemplary non-profit organization. In further recognition of its success, in 2000 ACCESS was awarded Crain’s Detroit Business Best Managed Non-Profit Award. By 2002 ACCESS was directly serving 45,000 people, and more than 300,000 individuals attended ACCESS cultural and educational events.

That same year ACCESS received approval for a multi-year AmeriCorps program to help strengthen Arab-American community organizations. This will put 40 AmeriCorps members to work in 11 Arab-American organizations throughout the U.S.

Impetus for the Museum

The history and contributions of Arab immigrants to America is a largely untold story. Two years ago ACCESS decided to establish an Arab American National Museum in Dearborn to document and celebrate the presence and culture of Arab Americans in the U.S. An outgrowth of the organization’s Cultural Arts Program, this first-ever museum will highlight Arab-American culture, immigrant history, and the stellar contributions of Arab Americans.

Renovation work at the Michigan Avenue site across from the Dearborn City Hall is well under way. The 38,500 square foot museum, scheduled to open in September 2004, will house exhibits, an art gallery and a resource center.

The design itself reflects the inviting richness of Arab architectural tradition. An interior courtyard, with a modified arabesque feel, will welcome visitors with the traditional warmth and hospitality of Arab culture.

Exhibits will draw attention to the three monotheistic religions born in the Arab world, as well as the scientific, architectural, linguistic, decorative, and navigational accomplishments Arabs contributed to the New World. The museum also will commemorate the innovative genius and accomplishments of Arab Americans during the last 120 years in the entertainment, sports, military, professional, corporate, philanthropic, medical, and business spheres.

Kresge Foundation’s $1.5 Million Challenge Grant

Paving the way for the $16 million Arab American Heritage Campaign, Ford Motor Company led with a $2 million gift, and Daimler Chrysler Corporation pledged a $1 million contribution. Comerica Incorporated, DTE Energy and Lear Corporation each has donated $500,000. Remarkably, the dedicated ACCESS staff members—every single one—together have personally pledged nearly $1 million!

In December 2002, The Kresge Foundation awarded ACCESS a $1.5 million Challenge Grant. In order to receive the funds, the Kresge Foundation’s challenge grant requires ACCESS to raise the $5.7 million balance of its Arab American Heritage Campaign by July 2004.

The $1.5 million award, one of Kresge’s largest 2002 bricks-and-mortar grants, is for the museum’s development. Kresge challenge grants support not only the construction and renovation of an agency’s facilities and the development of new programs, but also encourage the expansion and diversification of an organization’s donor base.

In particular, Kresge seeks to encourage ACCESS to reach out to new donors who will support the agency in future years. Through the rigorous application process, grant-seekers learn a great deal about how to become effective fund-raisers and efficient stewards of their programs and physical assets. Thus, the act of collective philanthropy is a parallel, enduring benefit of the museum’s Heritage Campaign, and, importantly, for the Arab American community. All donor names at the $500 level and above will be displayed on museum walls.

In launching the Arab American National Museum project, ACCESS is reaching out to scholars, researchers, museum administrators, and donors not only locally, but nationally and internationally as well. The Kresge Foundation, through its support, clearly believes that the time has come for Arab Americans to publicly celebrate their experiences and achievements, and to offer all Americans a greater understanding of what it means to be Arab American.

The Arab American National Museum will be a magnificent addition to the pioneering accomplishments of ACCESS in Dearborn, and will take its place among other museums proud of their Native American, African, Asian, Japanese, and Jewish heritage.

For financial contributions, naming opportunities and information contact ACCESS CFO Maha Freij at (313) 842-7010 or <Mfreij@accesscommunity.org>; or Director of Development Ruth Ann Skaff at (202) 234-1743 or <Ruthannskaff@starpower.net>, To contribute photographs, artifacts or oral histories to the Museum contact Dr. Anan Ameri, Director, ACCESS Cultural Arts at (313) 843-2844 or <Aameri@accesscommunity.org>; or Sarah Blannett, Curator, Arab American History Museum at (313) 843-2844 or <Sblannett@accesscommunity.org>.

—Robert Younes, M.D. and Ruth Ann Skaff

A CALL FOR ARTISTS

Two permanent installations have been designated for The Arab American National Museum.

Work 1:

Description: Visitors will enter the Museum through two large doorways in the front and one doorway at the rear. Two distinct permanent installations will be commissioned to one artist. Both pieces will be installed on the Museum facade, one above the front entrance and one above the rear entrance. Though each work will be unique, there should be a correlation between the two. These will be signature pieces for the Museum and the suggested mediums are mosaic or tile.

Work 2:

Description: The Community Courtyard is located on the first floor of the Arab American National Museum and is a place of social gathering and the beginning of the prepared exhibit experience. At its center and focal point will be this installation, envisioned as a large light fixture within a dome that rises two stories above it.

The other focal point in this space will be a fountain in the center of the courtyard, directly beneath the commissioned light fixture. It is important for this fixture to work in harmony with the fountain and the interior of the building. Suggested Mediums: metal, glass.

Artist Selection Process:

Open Call Responses are due April 9, 2003. Finalists for both commissioned works will be notified by mail on or around April 30, 2003. Included will be parameters for the final proposal, as well as suggestions from the review committee. Each finalist will receive an honorarium of $750 to offset the costs associated with creating the detailed final proposals. Proposals will require fully developed, specific project recommendations as well as a full project budget. Final proposals are due Aug. 6, 2003.

Submitting finalists will be notified of final decisions by phone on or around Aug. 27, 2003. Proposals and questions should be directed to: Dr. Anan Ameri, Director, ACCESS Cultural Arts, 2601 Saulino Court, Dearborn, MI 48120 —RY and RAS

Dr. Hisham Sharabi Opens the CPAP Winter Conference

The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine’s (CPAP) winter conference on Jan. 23 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC focused on “Israel’s Policy of Apartheid and Ethnic Cleansing.” Palestinian, Israeli, and American speakers included: Nur Masalha, senior lecturer and director of Holy Land Research Project at St. Mary’s College in the United Kingdom; Ilan Pappé, senior lecturer of political science at Haifa University; Gabriel Piterberg, associate professor of Ottoman history at the University of California Los Angeles; Amal Jamal, Tel Aviv University political science lecturer; Stephen Zunes, chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco; Justin Raimondo, senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute; and journalist and author Lenni Brenner.

Since Israel began, Dr. Hisham Sharabi said in his opening remarks, the success or failure of the Zionist movement in fulfilling its goals has hinged on the pursuit of two options: the establishment of an apartheid system, wherein a settler minority rules over a native majority, or the imposition of a massive demographic shift in which the native majority is removed and replaced by settlers. Whether you call the latter option a “population exchange” or “involuntary transfer,” as modern Zionists prefer, it is more popularly and accurately known in the West as “ethnic cleansing.”

Israel, explained Sharabi, began implementing an apartheid regime in the Palestinian territories in the early 1990s when it agreed to give the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the subsequent Palestinian Authority (PA) headed by Yasser Arafat, control over 13 disconnected Palestinian localities. To strengthen this apartheid system, Israel subdivided these non-contiguous localities through an intricate network of military checkpoints which severely restricted Palestinian movement. As a result, Palestinian daily life suffered crippling setbacks which forced the economy into a path of de-development, weakened the education and health systems, and brought about a humanitarian crisis of malnutrition, mainly among children.

Parallel to this apartheid system, Israel carried out an unprecedented colonization campaign, Sharabi said. Successive Israeli governments encouraged Jews to settle in the occupied territories through a series of incentives, violating international law, various United Nations resolutions, and Israel’s international commitments through signed agreements.

The Zionist colonial project in Palestine, argued Sharabi, is one of three major colonial projects the Arab world has experienced. Like the Zionists in Palestine, the French imposed themselves in Algeria and the Italians in Libya. These three modern colonial projects of the 19th and early 20th centuries differed from the classical colonialism of the 15th and 16th centuries—the Anglo-Saxon colonization of North America, Australia, and New Zealand, and the Spanish colonization of Central and South America—in one important respect. This difference, argued Sharabi, has had a devastating affect on the native populations involved. Sharabi explained that the native populations the Anglo-Saxon and Iberian colonial settlers encountered were primitive tribal groupings seen simply as subhuman. They were easily uprooted, hunted down, and eventually exterminated. However, the local populations that the modern French, Italian, and Jewish colonialists confronted in North Africa and the Levant—though mostly illiterate and impoverished—were historical societies who possessed a language and a culture that is shared by millions of Arabs and Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East.

Not only were these populations able to resist the invader, explained Sharabi, but they eventually liberated themselves after decades of bloody war. The liberation process was achieved first in Libya after the Second World War and later in Algeria.

In Palestine, however, the Zionist settler movement was different. It initially consisted of mostly idealistic and socialist groups that settled in certain parts of Palestine and remained invisible. It was only after the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 that the colonization of Palestine and the expulsion of the Palestinians began.

The possibility of expulsion or transfer continues to be a threat. Many fear that under the cover of a war on Iraq, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may attempt a large transfer operation of the Palestinians. Most of the world, particularly the United States, has remained indifferent to the plight of the Palestinian refugees for over 50 years, and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip fear that they, too, will receive a similar response.

Sharabi said he believes that such an act by Sharon, compounded with the expected devastation of the war on Iraq, will create conditions that would fuel the conflict in the region. He warned that although this “overwhelming force, contemptuous of the principles of law and justice” may easily win in Palestine and Iraq, it is not likely to achieve its professed goals. On the contrary, the likely outcome is that the anger and despair of the people in the region will increase, giving rise to further regional instability and violence.

This anger and despair has shown itself in Palestine. In the face of relentless Israeli force, the only weapon the helpless and desperate have is to “fling their bodies against the beast.” Suicide bombings are no longer the lone act of desperate fanatics, but have become a conscious weapon of resistance and war. The culture of death and self-sacrifice is spreading in many Arab and Muslim countries. With unprecedented violence being unleashed against helpless people, the task of recruiting hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women willing to die has become a “routine organizational matter in the resistance process.”

In a world suddenly turned upside-down, where the line between sense and nonsense has blurred, madness can and will breed madness and willful death is becoming a discipline of resistance and an instrument of emancipation. —Courtesy Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (CPAP)

Lively Round Table Discussion Closes Conference

The Jan. 23 closing session of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine’s winter conference consisted of a round table discussion by Jennifer Loewenstein, Gabriel Piterberg, Ilan Pappé, Diana Buttu, Nur Masalha and Amal Jamal.

“A Jewish state and a democratic state are fundamentally incompatible. What I would advocate instead is a transformation,” explained Loewenstein, senior lecturer in communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The transformation, she argued, will depend on the creation of a nationwide anti-apartheid movement that recognizes that the future rests on abandoning the notion of the nation-state. However, she opposes the idea of two states—Palestine and Israel—for the simple fact that the “historical circumstances have rendered a Palestinian state impossible.” For there to be peaceful coexistence, argued Loewenstein, it must be based on a democratic, secular state.

Furthermore, for Palestinians and Israelis to move forward, there must be an acknowledgement of the “injustice” done to the Palestinians in 1948, when the Jewish state was created. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict began in 1948, explained Loewenstein, when Israel—a colonial state—took land that belonged to another people.

Gabriel Piterberg agreed with Loewenstein that the two-state solution would be problematic but, unlike Loewenstein, he did not advocate abandoning the idea. However, he blamed the Palestinian leadership, specifically Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat, for “playing along” with Israel.

The impression broadcast to the public, explained Piterberg, was that there are two equal parties to the conflict. But in reality, the inequalities and tremendous imbalance in the bargaining positions of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) induced the conflict that rages today.

Piterberg recommended that the Palestinians in the occupied territories follow the example of the Palestinian political parties in Israel. Arguing that it is not necessary to fight the state from the outside, as rebels or revolutionaries, he described himmself as a proponent of challenging the power of the state within its own legal framework, as the Palestinian citizens of Israel have always done.

Ilan Pappé, senior lecturer of political science at Haifa University, called for the creation of a political structure that would replace the two-state solution. Such a political structure, which he described as the long-term agenda, would accommodate the existential issues which animate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Those issues include the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and the status of Jerusalem.

However, he stressed that although ending the occupation is a “noble cause,” the most urgent act is to alert the public of the Israeli government’s plans to once again ethnically cleanse Palestine. According to Pappé, there is enough evidence to update people of a future catastrophe in the making.

Pappé is convinced that outside pressure, the kind of international outcry that influenced South Africa, is necessary to deter the Israeli government. Sanctions and boycotts, he argued, have shown their effectiveness in the past.

Although these methods would affect Israelis who do not deserve to be hurt, Pappé stressed that the Israeli sacrifices are “nothing compared to the sacrifices that happen on a daily basis in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

Pappé stressed the need for outside intervention, because, he believes, the supporters of peace in Israel are not strong and brave enough to end the occupation.

Amal Jamal agreed, saying that Israel is becoming more exclusionist. Competition for power is not a matter of conversation, Jamal said, but rather a war.

He argued that while there is “formal” democracy in Israel, when it comes to politics it is a control system. “There is no political culture of multiculturalism in Israel,” Jamal said.

To this end, the Arab community in Israel has developed interesting methods of mobilization. According to Jamal, the Arab citizens of Israel are using the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and litigation as a “battlefield.” He cited the many appeals by Arab non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the Israeli High Court which are forcing Israeli institutions to deal with the issues affecting Israel’s Arab citizens.

Jamal also pointed to the work Arab Israelis are doing on the international level and within the Israeli system as a means to mobilize “democratic forces.” The best example of the success of this method is the case of Azmi Bishara, the Arab lawmaker who was barred from running for re-election by the Israeli Election Committee. Bishara took his case to the Israeli Supreme Court, which overturned the decision, allowing Bishara to be placed on the ballot.

As Loewenstein explained, until Israelis, Jews, and Americans see Israel as a colonial state, Palestinians and Israelis will never be able to move forward. A colonial state, argued Loewenstien, has no future. And unless there are radical transformations from within Israel, Israel has no future.

“Many people tell me Jews need a place to be safe, and I say that—for the many reasons outlined today—the place Jews are least safe is in Israel,” Loewenstien concluded.

—Courtesy Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine