Focus on Arabs and Islam

By Samir El-Sayed

NAAA Holds Annual Political Action Conference in Washington, DC

Over 450 Arab Americans from across the nation attended the National Association of Arab Americans' (NAAA) 15th annual political action conference, entitled "People, Politics, and Progress," in Washington, DC on June 15-16. At a Capitol Hill luncheon, conference attendees heard addresses from Senator Warren Rudman (R-NH), Reps. Lee Hamilton (D-IN), David Bonior (D-MI), David Obey (D-WI), and Nick Joe Rahall (D-WV). Other prominent speakers included Abdulwahab Darawshe, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, and Ran Cohen, chairman of the Israeli Citizens Rights Movement. Cohen told the audience that Jewish Americans need to support a more evenhanded US Middle East policy. At the NAAA banquet, Frank Carlucci, President Reagan's national security adviser, reaffirmed the administration's intent to provide military protection to Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, and Congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar (D-OH) presented the Arab American Friendship Award to Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Zamil, Saudi Arabia's Deputy Minister of Commerce for Trade.

Islamic Society of North America Objects to Helms Amendment

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), along with several major Christian denominations, is protesting a proposal by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) to amend the FY 1988 foreign aid authorization bill now being considered by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. According to congressional observers, the amendment, which would substantially decrease funding for the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, is designed to be a first step to force the Department of State to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv, where all the embassies of the major powers are situated, to Jerusalem. Persons wishing to protest this amendment may write: The Hon. Claiborne Pell, Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 446 Dirksen Senate Office Building, US Senate, Washington, DC 20510.

ADC Continues Campaigns Against Gen. Yaron and Anti-PLO Bill

The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) continues to press the Reagan administration to revoke its accreditation of General Amos Yaron, military attache to the Israeli Embassy. ADC and other Washington, DC groups held a demonstration outside Yaron's apartment building in late May, and it also sent a letter to every occupant in Yaron's apartment building informing them of who Yaron is and what his continued presence in Washington means. Although Ottawa has refused to accredit Yaron as Israel's military attache to Canada, the US State Department and the Reagan administration have not yet taken any action, despite such public criticism of General Yaron's assignment to Israel's Embassy in the US. In 1983, Yaron was stripped of his battle command by Israel's Kahan commission, which found that because Yaron was in charge of the area around the Sabra-Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, he was "indirectly responsible" for the September 1982 massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese civilians there by Lebanese Maronite militiamen.

ADC is also coordinating criticism by Arab Americans of two congressional proposals by Republican Presidential candidates Sen. Robert Dole (R-KS) and Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY), to close the Palestine Liberation Organization's information office in Washington, DC and its UN observer post in New York City. ADC has sent action alerts to its members urging them to write their senators and representatives expressing their criticism of this legislation, which would curtail American dialogue with and access to Palestinian leaders and viewpoints.

AAI Meets with Presidential Candidate Robert Dole

James Zogby, executive director of the Arab American Institute (AAI), and Munzer Charanni, president of AAI's Orange County Republican Club, met with Republican Presidential candidate Sen. Robert Dole (R-KS) on June 16 to express their concern over Sen. Dole's bill to close the PLO information offices in Washington, DC and the PLO UN observer mission in New York City. In an extended meeting, Charanni, a national co-chair of Dole's campaign, informed the senator that the bill had made fund-raising in the Arab American community impossible. Zogby said that an important dialogue had been initiated with the presidential candidate, and he predicted that the dialogue would continue.

Samir El-Sayed is Promotion Director for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Focus on Jews and Israel

By Andrea Barron

Twenty Years of Israeli Occupation

June 1987 marks the 20th anniversary of Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day War and the beginning of 20 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights. For many American Jews, the occasion was one for celebration. But for others, such as Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, former president of the American Jewish Congress and professor of religion at Dartmouth College, the Six Day War was a two-edged sword. The war certainly "'cured' Jews of the shame of powerlessness" which began with the destruction of the Temple over two thousand years ago. But the victory has also been a "tragedy" for the Jewish state, Hertzberg wrote in the May 28 issue of the New York Review of Books. "Israel has now become an American dependency which cannot maintain both its standard of living and the state of war without at least $3 billion dollars of American aid annually" and it is in danger of turning into the Belfast of the Middle East.

Hertzberg faults Israeli (and Arab) leaders alike for refusing to consider the territorial concessions necessary for a peaceful settlement to the Mideast conflict. But he also blames the American Jewish community, which "cast itself very early for the role of chief priest of the temple of unqualified admiration of Israel." That is starting to change, writes Hertzberg, as more American Jews realize that this sort of "country worship" is not in the best interests of either Israel or the American Jewish diaspora.

World Zionist Congress Elections

Thousands of American Jews are voting this May and June for 152 delegates to the 31st meeting of the World Zionist Congress, which will take place next December in Jerusalem. The first World Zionist Congress was held over 90 years ago in Basel, Switzerland. The Congress is the "parliament" of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). WZO delegates make up half the Board of Directors of the Jewish Agency, which has an annual budget of over $500 million dollars. Among other things, this money is used to develop Jewish settlements in Israel and the occupied territories, as well as for educational institutions and immigrant absorption.

Experts estimate that between 200,000 and 300,000 American Jews will vote in this election, the first to be held in 10 years. Nine different slates are competing for votes, including one supporting the Israeli Labor Party and another representing the right-wing Herut Party. Two relatively non-ideological parties—the Zionist Organization of America and Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization, are predicted to win the largest share of the votes.

This writer was tempted to vote for ARZA, the Reform Zionists of America. ARZA opposes the "fanaticism of Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, former Israeli Interior Minister, who stated that Reform Jews are leading Israel to 'annihilation and destruction.'" But she ended up casting her ballot for the Progressive Zionist List, a coalition which includes two leftist Israeli parties—Mapam and the Citizens Rights Movement—and New Jewish Agenda. The Progressive Zionist List calls for "mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestinian people" and "the right of self-determination for all peoples in the Middle East." The Progressive Zionist List's Washington area delegates include Rabbi Gerald Serotta from New Jewish Agenda and journalist I.F. Stone. The Progressive Zionist List currently has two representatives in the United States, said he hopes this number will double after the current election. He said the election is an "important vehicle for American Jews to directly influence Israeli policies on religious pluralism, democracy, and Jewish-Arab co-existence."

Andrea Barron, a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at American University in Washington, DC, writes frequently about Middle East issues. She is active in Washington Area Jews for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (WAJIPP) and New Jewish Agenda (NJA).