Omar Kader

By George F. Smalley

Many Palestinians who have come to the U.S. as refugees since 1948—who with their children now number more than 100,000—are still struggling to shape new identities as Americans, says Dr. Omar Kader, the new executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. But as an American-born descendent of Palestinians who came to the U.S. a generation earlier, his own search would appear to have ended long ago. Dr. Kader exudes enough self-confidence to convince you that he knows exactly who he is, and that he has what it takes to confront those who defame Arabs and Arab Americans.

For most of his adult life he has been toting books around college campuses, first as a student and then as a professor. He earned his B.A. from Brigham Young University (1970) in Provo, Utah—the city where he was born and raised—and received both his M.A. (1974) and his Ph.D. (1981) in international relations from the University of Southern California.

A Real Expert on Terrorism

The portrayal of Arabs as terrorists is probably the stereotype which aggravates Dr. Kader the most, since he wrote his dissertation on international terrorism and understands more about it than many of the frequently-quoted "experts." "Right now," he says, "many of the writers on terrorism are either Israelis, or Americans who are sympathetic to Israel, who really don't understand it—except how to use their analysis as a handle with which to club people."

When he decided in 1975 to enter academia, he returned to Provo, where he spent the next eight years teaching political science at Brigham Young. When he left the university in mid-1983 he was assistant to the Dean of the College of Social Science. Although Dr. Kader was very involved in the Democratic party in Utah—he and his wife Nancy were delegates at the Democratic convention in 1980—he says that professionally it was time "to get into more active work."

He took his first step in this direction in September, 1983, when he became the first full-time director of the United Palestinian Appeal (UPA) in Washington, D. C. Dr. Kader and his small staff established the UPA as a viable and tightly-run charity. This was no easy task, he recalls, and it was made more difficult at times by that old familiar barrier of discrimination. Dr. Kader says that about a dozen direct mail firms once refused his business because, some of them admitted, they did not want to risk losing clients.

So what does Omar Kader plan to do now that he is in charge of the only organization in the U.S. which fights this kind of discrimination fulltime? "We will hit Arab defamation as hard as we can everywhere we see it," he says. Specifically, he plans to zero in on the "institutionalized" forms of defamation that he says are found, for example, in textbooks and dictionaries. "We want to be kind and fair in our approach" to countering defamation, Dr. Kader adds, "but we'll be as combative as we have to be to get results."

And what group does he see as the biggest offenders? "Unfortunately," says Dr. Kader, "our greatest opposition is from some American Jews who do not want to see the word 'Arab' mentioned publicly in a positive light." Particularly appalling, in his view, are the "blacklists" that have been published by at least two pro-Israel organizations containing the names of individuals and groups allegedly engaged in "pro-Arab" propaganda. "We're going to focus on that blacklisting" and do more to publicize its sponsors, Dr. Kader says. "There is no reason for Jews to be the primary source of defaming Arabs."

Improving Communications with Jews

One approach he recommends to Arab Americans to help reduce defamation by Jews is improved communication. "I think to some degree we haven't talked to Jews enough about what's importantto them. By not focussing on what means a lot to Jews—and the Holocaust does mean a lot to them—you lose your ability to communicate with that group of people." Ile says, for example, that Arab Americans "ought to hear" stories on the Holocaust because they are "about victims," in the same way that Palestinian poetry has focussed on the victims of massacres of Palestinians. If Arab Americans listen to Jews and show sympathy toward them, Dr. Kader believes, they in turn "will begin to see Arabs as human beings, rather than as objects."

Dr. Kader's parents immigrated to the U.S. from the small village of Shufat, located just outside Jerusalem. His father made the trip about 1910, joined the U.S. Army and fought in France during World War I, and returned to Shufat in 1921 to find a wife. He married there, but like so many Arab immigrants during those years, his father returned to the U.S. without his wife. He went back for her ten years later—after he had purchased farmland and built a house. Dr. Kader was born in 1943 and now has four children of his own—all boys.

If you work in Washington but haven't yet met ADC's new executive director, look for a tall, athletic-looking man carrying a monogrammed briefcase with eye-catching initials. After all, Omar Kader is OK.

George F. Smalley is managing editor of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.