Hearing on Anti-Arab Bias

By Pat McDonnell Twair

It was a first in its 47-year history when the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations held a public hearing March 14 on anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry. The hearing was in response to a 400 percent increase in hate crimes toward Arabs and Muslims since the Aug. 2 onset of the Gulf crisis.

Testimony of 14 experts and professionals was recorded and the commission's report to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will be published.

"Making our findings known to the board of supervisors is of major significance," stated Eugene S. Mornell, executive director of the commission. He also stressed the importance of bringing anti-Arab and anti-Muslim harassment and bigotry to the attention of the public through continuous reports to the media.

Among those testifying at the hearing were actor Edward James Olmos, Nissar Hai of United Muslims of America, Don Bustany, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Salam Al-Marayati, director of an Islamic political action committee, and psychotherapist Ilham Al-Sarraf.

The commission also distributed its newest publication at the hearing. Entitled Salaam Means Peace: An Introduction to Arab Americans, the beautifully printed booklet describes the language that all Arabs have in common, as well as the religious, cultural and geographic diversity within the Arab world.

Agreement Links Museums in Los Angeles and Egypt

Anthropologist Fadwa El Guindi is a prominent member of the large Los Angeles Arab-American community and the producer of award-winning ethnographic films. She now has initiated a series of exchange activities between a leading American and a leading Egyptian museum.

El Guindi has long been an admirer of the collections of the Agricultural Museum in Giza, for which she obtained a small US grant from the Bioanthropological Foundation.

Last October she brokered an agreement between Egyptian Minister of Agriculture Dr. Youssef Wally and Dr. Craig Black, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, calling for cooperation between the two museums.

Under terms of the agreement, signed Jan. 10, the Giza museum, which has changed its name to the Egyptian Museum for Natural History and Ethnography, will send eight Egyptian curators to Los Angeles, two at a time, to receive training over a two-year period. US experts will also travel to Cairo, beginning this summer.

The Egyptians hope to upgrade laboratories, train multilingual docents and establish conservation and curatorial training programs. The Giza museum is famed for its dioramas of Egyptian rural life. These include a medieval wedding, a coffeehouse, and a complete country home.

El Guindi plans personally to direct the Giza museum's Center for Visual Anthropology, which includes a 200-seat theater. She will oversee the first International Visual Anthropology Conference and Film Festival at the Giza site.

"It makes sense to begin such a process here," she said, "because Egypt is the established cinematic center of the Arab world and is well known for its history in film making."

The Giza museum occupies several buildings. "It's a colonial structure, built during the time of King Farouk," El Guindi explained, describing why the theater is ideal for a film festival. "There are theater boxes originally intended for the royal family which we can use for the international jury."

In addition to the theater, the center will include a laboratory and a film and print visual anthropology library.

El Guindi's full-fledged vision over the past decade has been to establish an Arab-American museum and cultural center in Los Angeles. Owing to lack of finances however, such a museum portraying the Arab contribution to world civilization still remains just a gleam in her eye.

Jackson's "True World Order"

The question-and-answer period is always the most entertaining part of a speech by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and his March 15 address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council was no exception.

Asked whether he would advocate a five-year trial period of autonomy for the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza, Jackson replied:

"Israeli security and Palestinian justice are two sides of the same coin. There won't be peace until there is justice for both. As we affirm these, we must offer mutual security and recognition and co-existence over coannihilation. "

The Rev. Jackson said Israel's no-talk policy is a no-production policy.

"Israel is not going anyplace," he said. "Someone must emerge with a vision. The old argument about defending Israel from invasion must be replaced with a vision beyond war. If Israel could get along with its Arab neighbors, it could become the commercial capital of the Middle East within weeks. "

"The True World Order: the Challenge for Peace Abroad and Justice at Home" was the topic of Rev. Jackson's speech in the Century Plaza Hotel. He stressed that the foreign policy of the true world order must have consistent rules that respect the right of self-determination, whether in Kuwait, the West Bank, Lebanon, China, Angola, South Africa or Washington, DC.

Jackson called on the president to accelerate the process of disarmament by leading the campaign against proliferation of conventional, biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

"The US should convene an international conference of supplier nations with the goal of dramatically limiting antis and technology exports," he stated. "We're going to depend more and more on the United Nations, but it cannot be used conveniently as a fig leaf for one nation's policy."

AATV Faces Censorship

For the first timesince it began airing 10 years ago, Arab American TV didn't appear on its regular 4 pm slot Feb. 2 on channel 19 (KSCI). Community viewers were mystified, particularly because no explanation was offered by KSCI when the weekly Arabic program didn't air.

AATV president and producer Wahid Boctor says he took a tape of the show to KCSI one hour before broadcast time Feb. 2 and was told he was too late, that the show had to be monitored three hours prior to showtime. Since this was the first time in a decade that any attempt at censorship had been made on the Arabic program, the incident seems to be related to the Gulf war.

Hundreds of viewers wrote or called KCSI, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) voiced objections, and AATV programming has resumed, but not before KSCI "reviews" the show each week.

Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.