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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2002, pages 3, 72-74 Letters to the Editor
Self-Determination DefinedI admire the novel approach of John Whitbeck in “Israeli-Palestinian Peace Must Be Imposed.” Certainly international pressure toward a just peace is required to solve the conflict. Although I rarely disagree with articles in your magazine, there is one “principle” Whitbeck proclaims as “international law” that makes no sense to me. “The Sovereign right of every state to determine who has a right of residence in that state” is precisely the ammunition that criminals like Milosevic and Sharon drool over. It is not states that should have the right to determine their citizens (while ethnically cleansing others). Rather it is the people of the land who have the right to determine their government, as well as whom to admit as immigrants. That is called self-determination. The Universal Declaration for Human Rights allows for people anywhere to leave their countries and return to them at any time. Self-determination and the right of return are immutable. Since the Jewish settlers in the occupied territories are in violation of international law to begin with, there is no need to contrive dubious “principles” in order to justify their deserved expulsion from the land they usurped. Rami Kishek, Silver Spring, MD
A Touching Tribute to VanceRichard Curtiss’ tribute to former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in the March issue truly did justice to this wonderful man. As Curtiss wrote, he was wise, honest and courageous. One of Vance’s contributions that has been largely forgotten is his joint effort with Soviet Foreign Minister Andre Gromyko in October 1977 to reconvene the Geneva Conference to negotiate a comprehensive Middle East peace. The statement by Vance and Gromyko said in part: “All specific questions of the settlement should be resolved, including such key issues as withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the 1967 conflict; the resolution of the Palestinian question including the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people; termination of the state of war and establishment of normal peaceful relations on the basis of mutual recognition of the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence.” On Oct. 3, 1977, the San Francisco Chronicle carried two news reports on the responses to the Vance-Gromyko statement. One headline read, “Arab World Hails the Talks Proposal,” and said the PLO had instructed its representatives at the United Nations to support the U.S.-Soviet communiqué. The other article, headed “U.S. Jewish Groups are Angry,” said, “What angered the powerful pro-Israel lobby was the United States’ first formal commitment to the statement that such a settlement must ensure ‘the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.’” The Israeli government, then headed by Menachem Begin, turned down the proposal and nothing more was heard of it. As Curtiss reminded us in his beautiful tribute, Vance was the kind of statesman we could surely use today. Rachelle Marshall, Stanford, CA
Baku-Ceyhan Makes SenseI wholeheartedly agree (despite being a Jew) that AIPAC is an abomination and it serves solely Israeli interests, which in 99 percent of the cases do not coincide with the U.S. interests. And I admire your courage—we all know how these bastards can smear reputations, etc. However, in this particular case, I must admit that I also think that the Turkish pipeline route (in the long run) makes more sense. You mention the extra cost of the Turkish route—maybe, but don’t the benefits of long-term stability and involvement of a NATO country overweigh the one-time cost? I would be very grateful if you would explain why not. Alex Chaihorsky, Reno, NV The fact that Turkey is a NATO ally does not mean it is a stable NATO ally. The proposed Baku-Ceyhan route, in fact, would have the pipeline traverse the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeastern region—the unstablest of the unstable, so to speak. Nor is that the only area of concern. The pipeline also would travel through the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where a civil war continues to unfold and where U.S. troops recently have been deployed ostensibly to search for al-Qaeda terrorists. (See publisher Andrew I. Killgore’s report on p. 51 of this issue.) Rather than proceed with a longer, more expensive pipeline requiring military protection, then, we think it makes more sense to pursue the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) approach. Nor do we believe, by the way, that there is an inherent conflict between being a Jewish American and finding AIPAC an “abomination.” Welcome to the club.
Bush’s Hidden Agenda?The major media finally are becoming aware of the Bushites’ hidden agenda in Afghanistan—construction of pipelines that would exploit the Caspian Basin’s oil and natural gas resources (see CNN’s Paula Zahn’s 1/8/02 “interview” with Richard Butler). However, much better information can be gleaned from testimony presented to a subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations, Feb. 12, 1998, by John Maresca, vice president of Unocal. His entire testimony was printed in the Dec. 19, 2001 issue of the Anderson Valley Advertiser under the title “A New Silk Road.” Also, Zalmay Khalilzad, the new special American envoy to Afghanistan, was an adviser for Unocal. He participated in talks between Unocal and the Taliban in 1997 when Unocal was planning the pipeline. Make that pipelines, because Unocal is part of a consortium that has been planning a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and possibly India. It looks like the entire U.S. petrochemical lobby has infested Washington. But Enron and Unocal combined could make the Bushite Bandits run for deep cover and seriously cripple any plans for keeping U.S. military forces in the Stans. Russia and China definitely will have input about the West exploiting natural resources much closer to their borders. And the Soviet Union probably was instrumental in finding the fields and funding their development. Stay tuned.... this one is going to be interesting. Keep up the good work, Dave Morton, Longmont, CO
A Nobel ProposalThank you for your information on the amount of money the U.S. gives in aid to Israel. My impression is that all Americans and Israelis may be less safe despite this huge expenditure. President Bush would get the Nobel Peace Prize if he would enact the following: The total damages done to Palestinian property and persons over the last year would be deducted from the amount of U.S. money going to Israel, and that amount of money would be spent on tax subsidies to American firms that would do business in the occupied territories, and help build the economy of the Palestinians (like help build houses, roads, water treatment plants, etc.). This money might be called “Palestinian Seed Money” to help the Palestinian economy grow. Now, for each Israeli killed by a Palestinian, one million dollars would be taken out of the Seed Money, and would go back into the pool of aid to Israel. And for each Palestinian killed by an Israeli, one million dollars would be shifted from aid to Israel to the Palestinian Seed Money pool. This way, both sides would have an incentive not to kill the other. And with money from the U.S. going to help the Palestinian economy, Palestinians might gain a sense of hope that things would improve, and they would have a better impression of the U.S. Thank you again for your information on Israel. Bruce Burdick, M.D., Sacramento, CA
Holocaust Museum’s “National Status” vs.…Someone should question the national status given to the Holocaust Memorial Museum under Bill Clinton. What does national status imply and what are the rewards? National status means that a museum has enough connection to national heritage to warrant a special allocation. This means that the Holocaust Museum now receives $34 million in federal funding each year without needing to go though Congress. But does the museum in fact rank national status? The holocaust did not even happen on American soil. It did not even happen to Americans. This horrible event happened to a foreign population that was liberated from death camps by Americans. But in the museum itself, these liberators are considered only in a passing way. In fact, a rabbi who holds a chair on the council stated, “This museum stands as a testimony to America’s failure to commit to the Jews of Europe.” The museum furthermore is relentlessly ethnocentrically Jewish, run by Jews for Jews. All the council members were Jews until recently, when Bush appointed Maya Angelou, the black poet, to a seat. Further, wealthy Jewish patrons can take off thousands in tax-deductible contributions to the museum. There is even a Helena Rubinstein room . The WW II Veterans Memorial did not receive this kind of attention. In fact Tom Lantos, a Zionist congressman who sat on both the Holocaust Memorial Council and the Veterans Affairs Committee, gave most of his attention to the Holocaust Council, remembering not for a second, perhaps, the American servicemen who gave their lives to defeat the cause of this horror—and who would be paying for it. Mary K. Baker, via e-mail According to the Feb. 5 Washington Post, President Bush’s 2003 budget proposal calls for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to receive a $3.8 million funding increase—to be used “for repairs, salary increases, technology upgrades and some security measures”—bringing its total taxpayer-supported funding to $39.8 million. In comparison, funding for the Kennedy Center would remain at $34 million.
WWII Veterans’ MemorialLet me start by thanking all of you for the effort you make in presenting the truth on issues that are always twisted in most of the media/press we hear and read everyday. I came across this letter on the Web site of Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA 33rd), and I thought maybe you would be interested to present it to the rest of your readers: “Why is Congress funding the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. with $35 million every year yet denied funds for the WWII Veteran Memorial?” Here is the link: http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/userletter/?letter_id=1538148 Again, thank you for your efforts. Ayman Taha, Mesa, AZ
Correction: On SlaveryAmeena Jandali’s otherwise enlightening address to a Mill Valley school, which you reported in the March issue (p. 64), contained one misleading point which deserves correction. She said: “One-third of the slaves brought to North America from Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries were Muslim.” Round figures, as every journalist knows, are dubious, but this one is wide off the mark. Although a fraction of the slaves brought down the Senegal River to Saint-Louis-du-Senegal and some others brought to Dakar’s Goree island may have been Islamized, these slaves would almost invariably have gone, not to North America, but to the French Antilles, Haiti and French Guiana. A trickle of those brought down the Gambia River to the village of Bathurst (now Bajul) might possibly have been Muslims, but the Scottish explorer Mungo Park, who traced the river to its source, found only ancestor worship—what anthropologists call “shamanism” or “animism.” This was clearly the religious heritage which influenced Afro-American Christianity, whose exuberant forms of worship bore no relation to Islamic worship. In any event, and notwithstanding the fact that Alex Haley became convinced that his ancestor came from there, Bathurst was never a major slaving port, although it had a wooden landing where ships could come alongside, instead of standing off in the ocean as they almost always did further down the coast. The slave export industry was based on inter-tribal and inter-clan raids to capture able-bodied men, women and children. These were brought down to the coast by pirogue or—mostly—on foot. As a consequence, most were captured only a few tens of miles inland, far from the savannah country where Islam had penetrated. At the coast, they were bartered to those whom historians call the middleman chiefs—the coastal chiefs—who bartered them to European, American and Brazilian ships’ masters for firearms, schnapps (Dutch gin) and other trade goods. Neither middleman chiefs nor their foreign customers played any role in slave-taking. Invariably, only the master and his supercargo, who was usually the first mate, were allowed ashore. The seamen stayed on the ship, and natives brought out fruit and girls, by pirogue, to barter. The principal single source for most slaves imported into the American colonies, before and after independence, and into Bermuda, the Bahamas, the British West Indies and Guyana was the delta of the long river which had a score of different tribal names and was given the name Niger (Latin for black) by British mapmakers. Using place-names to identify imports was common then (Cuban cigars were called Havanas) and so the Delta “product” became “Nigers,” later corrupted in American to “niggers.” Those who would wish to know more on the subject will find the exhaustive survey of the slave trade compiled by the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the works on coastal trade of the great Igbo scholar, Professor Kenneth Onwuka Dike of Harvard, invaluable, as I did when I wrote my two-volume history of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s. Russell Warren Howe, Washington, DC Perhaps one day there will be in the nation’s capital a national museum on slavery to help educate Americans about the injustices carried out on American soil.
Budget LinksI work with the Ann Arbor, MI Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice. We are evaluating actions to contact legislators and the press to reverse the pro-Israel slant of U.S. foreign policy. We are following the FY2003 budget hearings but have limited information. Can you suggest an electronic contact to know exactly what steps of the budget process have been taken, and also what U.S. citizens could ideally be doing to intensify dialogue with our elected officials this winter? Can you identify other groups with this purpose and give me e-mail or telephone contacts? (Mrs.) Pat Schock, via e-mail We consulted Washington Report congressional correspondent Shirl McArthur, who advises as follows: To follow progress on the budget, or any other legislation for that matter, the Library of Congress Web site is the best. It takes a little while to learn how to navigate around in it, but everything’s there. It’s <http://thomas.loc.gov> (notice, no www. for some reason it won’t work if you use that). A Web site that is active in urging legislative contact would be the one for the Arab American Institute, <http://www.aaiusa.com>. Finally, there are two good e-mail addresses which send out periodic “action alerts.” The first would seem particularly appropriate given Mrs. Schock’s affiliation. It’s Churches for Middle East Peace,<cmep@aol.com>. The second is the e-mail service giving Middle East news, <menainfo@aol.com>.
Kudos on New DesignCongratulations on your attractive redesign! I particularly like the section identifiers with the graduated color screens. Very attractive, and easy to find sections. Your jumps are much improved also, and more reader-friendly. Having been through my share of publication redesigns, I know how much work it is and how difficult to please everyone. Here’s one reader who’s very happy with your new look. Keep those powerful covers coming—a message in themselves. Patricia Morrison, Valhalla, NY Thanks for your kind words. Just to keep ourselves humble, and our readers on their toes, we’ve reverted to a double jump on one story in this issue.
A Hidden RealityI am very happy to have read the special report “Saudi Arabian Women Dispel Stereotypes” by Delinda C. Hanley in the May/June 2001 edition. Delinda expressed to the outside world some of what we Saudi women would like to express. I would like to thank her for what she has written, as it exposes the real woman’s world in Saudi Arabia, which was and still is hidden from some people in different parts of the world. Stereotypes still surround us around the world. People still think that the condition of women in Saudi Arabia is the same as it was for those who lived under Taliban rule, not understanding what may be lying under that veil. Saudi women have developed their skills and role in the society. Thank you, Delinda, for bringing the reality you saw to life. Best Regards, Samar Marah, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Another article by news editor Hanley on the image of Arab women can be found on p. 52 of this issue.
PrincessReturnsI just read your article after finding it on the Web at <http://www.washington-report.org/ Thanks for your great reporting. Joel S., via e-mail
Prince of Darkness RemainsIn surfing the World Wide Web to secure leads on Richard Perle I come up so far (my effort has not been at all exhaustive as yet) with a curious mix. Early in the current Bush administration he became chairman of the Defense Policy Board, within the Department of Defense. Clearly in this role he is not a civil servant, and his appointment presumably did not require congressional confirmation. But I get a strong flavor of potential conflict of interest. So far as I have been able to ascertain he has not resigned from or put in mothballs his active involvement with the following positions: |