Focus on Arabs and Islam

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has begun a nation-wide campaign to collect signatures on petitions calling for the release of American hostages being held in Lebanon. ADC hopes that tens of thousands of Arab-Americans will sign the petition and that an ADC delegation will deliver it to those actually holding the hostages.

Senator James Abourezk, ADC national chairman, has sent a letter to relatives of the hostages saying that "We will try to explain to those who are holding the hostages that not only are (the hostages) not part of the struggle in which they find themselves, but that the Arab-Americans who signed these petitions are making the request as friends of the people in Lebanon, and not as antagonists."

Senator Abourezk also revealed that, two days after the U.S. air strike against Libya, he was informed by Steve Rothstein, a staffer in the Massachusetts Congressional campaign of Joseph Kennedy, that a January 27 check Senator Abourezk had sent to the campaign of the son of the late Senator Robert Kennedy was being returned.

"Kennedy's refusal represents the latest in a series of hostile and overtly racist reactions against Arab-Americans in the wake of the U.S. attack on Libya," said an ADC press release. In a phone call, Rothstein told Abourezk that the check was being sent back because Kennedy did not accept "political action committee (PAC) money" and that the candidate did not want to get involved in the Middle East issue "this way." In a letter to Kennedy, Abourezk noted that the check was a personal one (not from ADC, which, in any case, is not a PAC), and that he had not asked Kennedy to get involved in the Middle East issue in "any way." Abourezk said he was saddened by the action, particularly since he had personally helped the Kennedys on several occasions, including undertaking a secret trip to Tehran during the hostage crisis to negotiate for their release on behalf of then-presidential candidate Senator Ted Kennedy.

After ADC brought the incident to light, Joe Kennedy apologized and said he would be "honored" if Abourezk chose to resubmit the contribution.

Across the U.S. Arab-American organizations condemned the April 14 bombing of Libya by U.S. forces and called for intensified diplomatic efforts to reconcile Israelis and Palestinians and thus remove the major impediment to improved U.S.-Arab relations.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) "unequivocally" condemned the U.S. action against Libya, calling such attempts to combat terrorism by means of military force "shortsighted and reckless." In its press release, ADC noted that the Reagan Administration had a responsibility to seek a declaration of war from the U.S. Congress if it thought it had sufficient evidence against Libya to warrant war maneuvers, and that a nation "committed to a world governed by the rule of law ... should rely upon the legal mechanisms already in place to arbitrate international disputes—the World Court and the United Nations."

The National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) called for a "return to diplomacy," and said: "We are deeply worried that the United States will soon find itself isolated in the world community and embroiled in an endless cycle of attacks and retaliation which could result in the loss of hundreds of innocent American lives." NAAA added that an end to the violence would only come when the U.S. addressed the Palestine question, the "underlying cause" of unrest in the Middle East.

—Anthony B. Toth

Anthony B. Toth, of Arlington, Virginia, is a freelance writer specializing in US relations with the Middle East.

Focus on Israel and Jews

Applauding President Reagan's decision to bomb Libyan military targets on April 14, the Near East Report (NER), the weekly newsletter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), said that terrorists now know that they will be punished for "killing innocents with impunity" and that "at long last-the United States is fighting back." NER compared the critics of the Libyan operation, who claim the bombing will not bring an end to terrorism, to the "do-nothing" Americans who spoke out against U.S. military action following the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948 and the emplacement of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962.

In its April 28 editorial, NER praised Israel, Britain and Canada for "standing in solidarity with the United States against Colonel Qaddafi," then devoted the rest of the editorial space to denouncing Saudi Arabia. It told its readers that the U.S. has provided the Saudis with $70 billion in military assistance since 1950. As a "reward," Near East Report said, on April 17 the Saudi Ambassador to the United Nations called on the U.N. Security Council to condemn the American raid on Libya and stated that while he was opposed to terrorism, the real terrorists were the Israelis.

The NER editorial used the ambassador's comments to convince its readers that Saudi Arabia does not deserve the first of the five American AWACS planes it is scheduled to receive later this year. (In 1981, President Reagan told Congress the planes would be delivered only if the Kingdom contributed to the Mideast peace process. According to AIPAC, calling Israel "the largest terrorist institution in history" in the U.N. shows the Saudis are doing anything but contributing to peace.)

When AIPAC decided to withdraw from the fight in Congress over the Administration's proposal to sell $354 million in arms to Saudi Arabia [see last month's Focus on Israel and Jews], Executive Director Tom Dine said it preferred to concentrate its energies on the "more crucial" AWACS battle ahead. Apparently that battle has already begun.

The Washington Jewish Week joined AIPAC in support of the Libyan raid, saying that those who believe that satisfying Palestinian national aspirations will end terrorism originating in the Middle East, are deceiving themselves. Some Arab and Islamic radicals, it said, "harbor a deadly hatred for Yassir Arafat and would surely view a Palestinian state under his leadership as an incitement to even more violence." What the Jewish Week apparently overlooked, however, was that the terrorists it believes would remain after the Palestinians have a state of their own would be out to get Arafat, not Americans.

The Libyan raid was not the only thing on the minds of American Jews last month—the Pope's visit to Rome's central synagogue made Jews throughout the world sit up and take notice. The Jewish Week called Pope John Paul II "a man of unique principle and strength" and lauded him for "repudiating the doctrine of collective responsibility for the death of Christ," in the tradition of Pope John XXIII. But the Pope has only taken a "small step" in mending relations with the Jews, the newspaper declared. The "great step" would be when the Vatican recognizes the State of Israel. Although the Vatican now claims it cannot do so because Israel has not defined its borders, the Jewish Week said, in 1904 Pope Pius X told Theodor Herzl that the Vatican could not "recognize the Jewish people" because "the Jews have not recognized our Lord."

While Jews appear to be united around the question of the Pope's synagogue visit, that is not the case when it comes to Nicaragua. Many Republican Jews and the National Jewish Coalition, which grew out a group of Jews who campaigned for President Reagan, have accused the Sandinistas of "state-induced anti-Semitism." The Coalition, like the President, supports U.S. aid for the Contras and has emphasized what it calls the "close connection" between the Sandinistas and the PLO. At a recent Coalition press conference, Oscar Kellerman, a Jew who fled Nicaragua in 1979, said Jewish businesses in the country had been confiscated while nothing had happened to Arab-owned firms.

Rabbi Balfour Brickner [profiled in last month's Washington Report) of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, as well as members of New Jewish Agenda, a small national organization of "progressive Jews," have argued that there is no official policy of anti-Semitism in Nicaragua. Rabbi Brickner told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Nicaraguan Jews "didn't leave because they were persecuted as Jews but because they were supporters of former President Anastasio Somoza." He said that the Sandinistas were angry with Israel for supplying aid to the Contras, but that Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto had told him in a letter: "We are neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Israel. We believe that Israel has a right to exist, just as we believe that Palestinians deserve a homeland."

—Andrea Barron

Andrea Barron, a PhD Candidate in International Relations at the American University in Washington, D.C., is active in Washington Area Jews for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace and writes frequently about the Middle East.