Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 1999, pages 109-114

Human Rights

Deir Yassin Remembered in Twilight Vigil

“Hope lives when people remember.”
—Simon Wiesenthal

A moving vigil was held in front of the White House to honor the victims of the massacre at Deir Yassin, the Palestinian village on the west side of Jerusalem, where more than 100 Palestinians were murdered by the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Lehi (Stern Gang) militias on April 9, 1948. The Arab Club at Georgetown University and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) sponsored the twilight vigil, on the 51st anniversary of the massacre. Georgetown students carried placards and handed out pamphlets and buttons. Dr. Imad-ad-Deen Ahmad from the Minaret of Freedom Institute sang to his own guitar accompaniment a dramatic song he had written about being driven from his Palestinian homeland.

Daniel McGowan, director of Deir Yassin Remembered, prepared a dramatic speech for the vigil, but the delivery was interrupted by a thunderstorm. His speech reproduced, almost verbatim, a 50th anniversary commemoration speech in Kielce, Poland, marking the killing of 42 (and wounding of 50 other) Jewish survivors of the Holocaust on July 4, 1946, over a year after the end of World War II. The original speech was made by Nobel Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, and reported in The New York Post on July 15th.

It asks people to remember the horror of what happened at Kielce and it asks the prime minister of Poland to remove Christian crosses from the site. McGowan’s recasting of the speech asks people to remember the horror of what happened at Deir Yassin and asks the prime minister of Israel to remove Jewish Stars of David from the site. Words not spoken by Wiesel are in italics:

How could they? This question has haunted Jews and non-Jews for decades.

How could citizens, the ordinary citizens of this seemingly holy land, commit such heinous crimes, commit them in broad daylight?

How could soldiers of the Haganah allow it to happen? How could the forces of law and order permit the maiming and butchering of such a peaceful village as Deir Yassin? How could their neighbors in Givat Shaul have done nothing to prevent the massacre, especially of the women and children?

Pronounce the name Deir Yassin and the next word that comes to your minds and lips is massacre. True, the killing was perpetrated by hoodlums of the Irgun and apocalyptic radicals of the Stern Gang. But what about the soldiers who took part?

What about the onlookers, the bystanders? Where, moreover, were the “solid citizens” of the Jewish settlement of Givat Shaul? How many of them tried to stop the massacre?

The vicious massacre, whose more than100 innocent Palestinian victims we commemorate today, is the truth. What happened in this place demonstrated that the Jewish ‘purity of arms’ is a myth, another piece of deceptive propaganda . What happened in this place showed that “ordinary people” could be as cruel as the killers in any death camp.

If violent, prewar anti-Arab Zionism paved the way for the Catastrophe, then the Deir Yassin massacre confirmed its purpose. Hence the feelings of frustration, bitterness, dismay and anger that overcame compassionate people...

Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec and Chelmno were German inventions, created on Polish soil; Deir Yassin was not. The Deir Yassin murderers were Jews. Their language was Hebrew. Their hatred was Jewish.

I do not believe in collective guilt. In Israel, as in every country, there are good people—to whom we shall always be grateful—and bad people, who brought pain to Palestinians and shame to their native or adopted land. In Israel, as everywhere, there are kindhearted people and brutal people, generous people and murderous people....

But how was it possible that frenzied Jewish terrorist gangs were inspired and allowed to kill Palestinians for almost an entire day?

I find it difficult to believe articles...which report that there are today many Israelis who deny the unspeakable crimes that were committed here—that there are, in the holy city of Jerusalem, men and women to whom this solemn ceremony means nothing.

Today, we ask ourselves: Where is hope to be found? As a member of the human family, I want to know: Will the Har Nof and the Givat Shaul of today acknowledge and remember the Deir Yassin of yesterday?

The history of the Jewish people is filled with suffering and glory. Be worthy of that history, citizens of Israel. And face the recent past which is also yours. To forget is to choose dishonor. Honor without memory is inconceivable.

Your conduct, Mr. Prime Minister, reassures us. We know your role in planning this commemoration. You understand our concerns; you are sensitive to our anguish. You graciously pledged to me that you would personally handle the painful problem of the dozen or so Stars of David erected at Deir Yassin, the site of the most famous massacre of Palestinians and the site of the first of over 400 Palestinian villages to be depopulated in your 1948 War of Independence and the Palestinian Catastrophe—a place where there should be no religious symbols at all.

Deir Yassin is its own eloquent symbol. The Arab homes, the arches, the ruins of the cemetery. Nothing else need be there. With due respect to all religions and believers, the presence of Stars of David on sacred soil covering the multitudes of Palestinian victims in Deir Yassin remains an insult.

The Palestinian victims, who had lived at Deir Yassin for centuries, were butchered and incinerated there inits stone quarries. There can be no justification for placing Stars of David over their remains. Whoever did this may have been inspired by good intentions—but the result is a blasphemy.

I feel certain that, thanks to you, Mr. Prime Minister, out of respect for the dead the Stars of David will soon be removed.

Such a gesture will be a positive step in bringing Palestinians and Israelis closer together. Then, perhaps in the future, Deir Yassin will be remembered not only as a village identified with cruelty, but also as part of a city capable of penitence and compassion.

And hope.

—Daniel McGowan

Other Deir Yassin Observances

ADC sponsored other events across the country to commemorate Deir Yassin and the deaths of 100 Lebanese killed by Israeli shelling after they took refuge at the United Nations post at Qana from Israel’s “Operation Grapes of Wrath” in 1996. At the Detroit College of Law of Michigan State University there was a showing of the video “In Search of Palestine” narrated by Dr. Edward Said, professor at Columbia University. The video “Qana,” featuring footage of Qana today and interviews with Lebanese survivors, also was shown. A candlelight vigil was held to protest home demolitions.

At Georgetown University the film “Palestine, Story of a Land” by Israeli Moroccan director Simon Bitton was shown. There was also a lecture by Susan Akram, Esq., entitled “Abuse of Human Rights of Palestinian Refugees.” Also at Georgetown, Peter Fryer, the coordinator for Save the Children U.K.’s photography project, discussed the miserable fate of children living in refugee camps for the past 50 years in a presentation and exhibit called “Rights Denied.” ADC and the Washington Report have cards commemorating the victims of Deir Yassin that can be used to send to officials or friends. Phone ADC at (202) 244-2990 for Deir Yassin buttons.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Religious Leaders and Peace Groups Demand: “Lift the Sanctions on Iraq”

On April 27 religious leaders and peace activists gathered at the National Press Club Building in Washington, DC to call for an end to the sanctions against Iraq. All of the speakers demanded an end to the sanctions against Iraq, and stressed the need for action to raise awareness of the unnecessary death and destruction caused by the sanctions. Gordon Clark, the executive director of Peace Action, pointed out that “more people have been killed in Iraq due to economic sanctions than by weapons of mass destruction throughout all of recorded human history.”

Hussein Ibish, media director of ADC, said that activists throughout the country are planning to mail medicine and school supplies from the United States to Iraq, an action that is prohibited. They know that the packages will be returned, but hope to raise awareness by pointing out the absurdity of the sanctions. “I can’t mail a bottle of aspirin to a dying child in Iraq. It is not permitted in the United States,” said Ibish.

Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness said that her organization is being charged with a crime for bringing toys and medicine to children in Iraq. Kelly, who visited Iraq, told a heartbreaking story of a mother whose child died because the hospital lacked the oxygen tube needed to resuscitate the infant. “Because of a piece of plastic, that baby died,” noted Kelly as she expressed despair at the lack of hope in Iraqi children. While in Iraq, she was asked by a teenage girl, “What is the difference between me and a 16-year-old in the United States? What crime have I committed? What have I done to you?”

Kelly asserted that the sanctions policy deliberately targets the most vulnerable members of society such as the sick, the elderly, and the children. We need to instigate change in our government so that we can tell that Iraqi girl that there is no difference between her and a teenager in the United States, she concluded.

Auxiliary Bishop P. Francis Murphy of the Archdiocese of Baltimore called the sanctions “a moral outrage…an action not against the government, but against the people of Iraq.” Dr. Hassan Ibrahim pointed out that sanctions against Iraq and Cuba have not altered the government, but they have unnecessarily punished the people of those countries.

Rev. Thom Whitewolf Fasset of the United Methodist Church, which has a membership of 10 million, asserted that all members agree that “war is incompatible with the teachings of Christ.” He added, “We are struggling to find the baseline of human decency, and the sanctions show that we have lost sight of this baseline.”

Finally, Rev. John Dear of the Fellowship of Reconciliation quoted President Clinton’s comment in reference to the shootings at Columbine High School, “We need to teach our kids not to kill kids.” Dear asked rhetorically, “How can we teach our kids not to kill when we are killing children in Iraq and Yugoslavia?” Dear called the Iraqi sanctions “cruel, unjust, illegal, immoral, genocide.”

—Samia El-Mahdi

Iranian Opposition Group Demonstrates in Washington

Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCR), the most visible opposition group to the current Islamist government in Tehran, demonstrated April 30 in Washington, DC to protest the deaths in Iran of a father and son linked to the group.

Some 50 persons demonstrated outside the Amnesty International headquarters in the U.S. national capital while NCR leaders were inside conferring with U.S. officials of the human rights organization.

Demonstrators protested the April 6 crushing to death under the wheels of a tractor of 61-year-old Sohrab Akbari, an agricultural worker in western Iran. Akbari was the father of 20-year-old Ali Akbar Akbari, who allegedly died under torture in an Iranian prison last summer three days after he was arrested on Aug. 23 for involvement in the assassination of Assadollah Lajevardi in Iran. Lajevardi had been called “Iran’s Eichmann” by the NCR for his alleged involvement in particularly brutal actions carried out by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry.

The NCR charged that the father had been repeatedly interrogated and threatened with death by Intelligence Ministry agents and members of the Revolutionary Guards corps. Two days before his death he had been summoned again for interrogation. His death occurred when Revolutionary Guards confronted him in a field where he was working.

The case was similar to the death in March of the father of another Mojahedin supporter, Mohammad Say yahi, who was among 18 supporters of the People’s Mojahedin, an NCR affiliate, allegedly executed in March in a prison in Khorramabad, in Western Luristan prov ince. The father had gone to the prison to inquire about his son, and when he pro tested after learning of his son’s execution, the father was detained and tortured. He died in the hospital March 11 of the injuries he suffered under torture.

NCR spokespersons at the Washington demonstration pointed out that the mass execution took place after the return of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami from a three-day visit to Italy, where he was heckled throughout by Mojahedin supporters. The resistance groups charge that although Khatami’s election gave Iran a moderate face, the dark realities of torture, assassination and oppression have not changed.

The 53-member United Nations Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution April 23 in Geneva welcoming some developments in Iran but expressing concern at “continuing violations,” including “the high number of executions, cases of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and continuing discrimination against religious minorities, especially members of the Baha’i faith.

On April 30 the U.S. State Department issued its annual human rights report in which Iran and six other nations (Cuba, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) were accused of sponsoring or sheltering terrorist groups. In last year’s report Iran was listed as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. In this year’s report Iran was not singled out as the world’s worst offender, but it, Iraq and Sudan remained the only three nations in the world accused of pres ent involvement in terrorism. The other four nations named were accused only of providing sanctuary or other support for terrorist fugitives.

—R.H. Curtiss

Fatima Mernissi’s Wit and Wisdom on Display in Washington, DC

Sociology Professor Fatima Mernissi of Mohammad V University in Rabat was guest speaker April 20 at the Luna Café and Bookshop in Washington, DC. Ms. Mernissi is the author of three books (see p. 107) based upon her personal observations while making the transition from a childhood spent largely within the walls of the harem in which she was born in the traditional Moroccan mountain town of Fez, to the cosmopolitan feminist icon she has become today.

She was introduced to the capacity audience as a “sociologist extrordinaire” by Iraqi-American entrepreneur Andy Shallal, co-owner with his brother, Yasser, and other family members of the Luna Bookshop and the Skewers Middle Eastern restaurant, both situated in the same building in the national capital’s Dupont Circle neighborhood.

Ms. Mernissi, who is teaching this year at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia, was in Washington to participate in a seminar at the Smithsonian Institution. Her Luna session attracted Arab media correspondents in addition to a largely youthful audience, many of Middle Eastern descent.

“I am in the process of designing a book and the questions I hear give me inspiration,” she explained. Then she peppered her remarks with humorous readings from her books to challenge her audience to a dialog.

Jumping from topic to topic, in accordance with audience questions or comments, she noted that “in the Arab world there is a real revolution underway...Something has happened. It is television.” She noted also that “I came here also because of the second bombing of Iraq.”

“In the Gulf war we were destroyed,” she continued. “But this time it was something else, and that was the television. For $50 you can get a satellite dish and you have 70 stations. There are the state stations, but there are others, from London.

“It is already the Arab agora. We see the bombs, and the American leaders asked to explain what they are doing on the Arab talk shows.” She noted that after bombing of Iraq resumed in December, “for 24 hours there was no response from the Arab states. They did not reach decisions. There was no statement by the Moroccan government.

“But there was Saddam Hussain (on Al Jazira television from Doha) saying that ‘you have to express your opinion by marching tomorrow.’ A woman who was to have visited my house the next day called and said, ‘I am not coming. I am marching.’

“I think technology is giving Islam the chance to modernize its democratic potential by ensuring expression to all members of the Umma [Muslim nation] if politicians are allergic to expression.

“The women who have access to the media are no longer members of the aristocracy. We are into a new class who have gotten access to education. This class pays taxes and doesn’t want to hear about the rulers not paying their dues.

“In Morocco, the subjects that are taboo are the NGOs dealing with AIDS. The minister of health said we don’t have AIDS. The next day the head of the blood bank appeared to say that we do. She raised huge sums of money from the private sector.”

Jumping from subject to subject in her anecdotal style she described “villages in the High Atlas that are solving their own problems without waiting for the government to do so. The fact that they are organizing themselves helps a lot. This thing [television and local activism based upon a Berber tradition] is booming.”

She noted that another side effect of television “is that men and women are dialoging, in public. It’s no longer about liberation of women. It’s about citizens’ rights...Separation of the classes and between men and women, is all vanishing.”

Noting also that of her own two daughters, one is studying medicine and one is studying law, she said that “the idea that parents are against women’s education and that there are differences between generations is vanishing.”

Warming to her subject, Mernissi asked rhetorically: “How come the American people are not aware of this huge revolution in the Arab world? It’s happening in Iran also.

“Heads of state cannot manipulate any more. Why aren’t people in America aware of this audience? They still have the view of Muslims as ‘the other’…The local state is doing its propaganda as usual. The satellite TV is doing something else. Suddenly after two years the propaganda disappeared and we are learning what is going on in the U.S. or Kosovo

“These television programs are highly intellectual and better and better. There is television competition for this middle class I’m talking about. There is even a program telling us what the West thinks about the East. [Arabic] newspapers in London talk about problems of Arab society that were taboo. And for the first time we are seeing the non-Arab Muslims and, believe me, it’s a love affair. We saw on TV Indonesians explaining how their economy was looted. It’s the Muslim agora.”

Asked about the Internet in the Middle East, Mernissi called it “liberating technology.” She explained that every Moroccan with anything to sell, particularly the women who sell handicrafts and who operate stalls in the souqs, are excited by the prospect of using the Internet in their businesses.

“Technologies have helped people develop for themselves,” she explained. “Every Moroccan woman, even if she is 80, wants to sell on the Internet. We are talking about a nation of people who for the first time think they can solve their own problems.”

— Richard H. Curtiss

Immigrants’ Groups Condemn Supreme Court Decision

Imagine a classroom made up of half non-immigrants and the other half immigrants. The first half can give their point of view in class. The second have to keep silent. This is the heart of the troubling Feb. 24 Supreme Court ruling that some voices cannot speak and America doesn’t have to hear all points of view.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and various immigrants groups held a joint press conference March 22 at the Washington Hotel in the nation’s capital to voice their dismay with the recent Supreme Court decision and to file a motion for rehearing. In Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that resident immigrants who are not yet citizens can be selectively targeted for deportation in retaliation for their otherwise lawful political activities.

David Cole of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and attorney for ADC and the L.A. 8 and author of a new book, No Equal Justice, described the case. He told the press that ADC has filed a petition for rehearing before the Supreme Court on the grounds that the court had in fact ruled on the First Amendment selective prosecution issue with its Feb. 24 decision, even though the court previously had told the parties that it would not decide that issue and therefore heard no arguments before making the decision.

The court would have been flooded with briefs from immigration groups if it had been known they would be making a decision on that issue, Cole said. The case arose out of a 12-year effort to deport eight immigrants legally living in Los Angeles for their pro-Palestinian political activities, activities that would cause no problem if the participants were U.S. citizens. Members of the L.A. 8, who included seven Arabs and the Kenyan wife of one of them, participated in lawful fund-raisers attended by more than 1,000 people for IRS-certified charitable organizations.

Hussein Ibish, moderator of the press conference and media director of ADC, said his group is deeply concerned about the impact of selective targeting of immigrants based on otherwise lawful political activism. “The decision is a repudiation of free speech on which the United States is founded,” Ibish charged.

Michel Shehadeh, ADC’s western regional director and one of the L.A. 8, described “12 years of endless anxiety in this never-ending nightmare.” He came to the United States in 1975 to escape persecution suffered while living under occupation in the West Bank, he said. He and other members of the L.A. 8 never belonged to any terrorist group and abhor terrorism. Shehadeh said he was only involved in political activism on behalf of Palestinian rights. He deeply believed in the American promises to guarantee freedom to speak and raise a family. “We worry about our children and what our school and neighbors think of us. The most productive years of our lives have been taken from us and we’ve lived with a sword hanging over our heads,” he said. “It’s hard to plan for our future.”

Mr. Shehadeh, a legal resident in the United States, still faces deportation. This could separate him from his wife and family, who are American citizens.

Members of the L.A. 8 feel very strongly about continuing the case so that this never happens to others. When he was only 3, Michel’s son, Ibrahim, witnessed his father’s brutal arrest, and is still very confused, Shehadeh says. Ibrahim learns about freedom of speech in school but can see at home and in newspaper reports of this case that those freedoms aren’t for everyone, Shehadeh concluded. “It’s hard to explain to your child when he asks ‘Are you against Americans, Daddy?’ that you can never waver in your belief in the Constitution or give up the fight for a better, gentler America.”

American Bar Association president Philip Anderson issued a statement in response to the Supreme Court Decision saying that his organization “has long been concerned about attempts by Congress to curtail federal court review of immigration decisions…Immigrants across the nation have reason to be concerned that their access to the courts and rights to free speech are under attack. The American Bar Association is firmly committed to restoring immigrants’ access to the judicial system and defending their rights under the United States Constitution.”

Diverse groups made moving statements regarding the serious consequences to free speech that will result from the Supreme Court decision. Jeanne Butterfield from the American Immigration Lawyers Association described the outrageous position of legal immigrants to the United States. They have no legal rights to speak out against abuses in their native lands while they live in the United States, the country in which they now pay taxes, serve in the army, and vote. She said the Supreme Court didn’t even get the facts right, claiming the defendants were aliens unlawfully in the U.S. “Our history, laws and Constitution require equality, liberty and political freedom,” she concluded. “The courts and Congress didn’t get it right. It’s up to us to get it right.”

Greg Nojeim of the American Civil Liberties Union said, “The U.S. is a nation of immigrants. Everyone who comes here deserves constitutional rights in a non-discriminating manner.” Abdelrahim Sabir, from Amnesty USA, demanded fair public trials for those unjustly imprisoned on the basis of secret evidence. He talked of blatant human rights abuses in the United States despite international agreements.

Jane Park, from the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, said this decision was “a major step backward for human rights in this country.” She recalled the unfair targeting of Japanese Americans during World War II, when 120,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up by the U.S. government and placed in internment camps as “security risks.”

“With this recent court decision we realize how vulnerable we still are as we repeat the history of unfair targeting. It’s a chilling message,” Park said.

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, described the “fear and trauma this case has created in the community when eight people can be hauled off and denied political freedom because of what they believed.” He said that Arab Americans are the weak link in the civil liberties chain.

“If we lose this case, Arab Americans lose, the Bill of Rights becomes gutted, and all Americans lose,” he said. “If the chain breaks in any one point, we all suffer.” Zogby also criticized the Clinton administration. “This administration has turned its back on some of the fundamental reasons we supported them. This court decision should not be the legacy we remember this administration for.”

Alisa Wilkins, from the National Lawyer’s Guild, said that for the past 60 years the civil rights of all members of the American community were protected. “We could tout our free political process to the world as the shining example of democracy,” she stated. Wilkins called this decision a blow to civil rights and said it brought to mind the McCarthy era.

Abdurahman Alamoudi from the American Muslim Council Foundation, told the audience, “I am a very proud Arab. I am a very proud Muslim. I am a very proud immigrant. But I’m a very scared American... On the phone I have to be careful of what I say. Why can’t I speak my mind on the Palestinian issue?”

Alamoudi described cases where people are in jail only because they are Arabs or Muslims. He said that no one on the U.S. commission on religious freedom in the Arab world is Arab or Muslim. “How can we lecture others on religious freedom?” he concluded.

Joel Najjar, from the National Council of La Raza, a Latino immigration policy group, summed up the feelings at the dais when he said he was extremely disappointed in the decision for it negated the words engraved on the front of the Supreme Court building: “Equal Justice Under Law.”

—Delinda C. Hanley