Bullet-Riddled Body of Murdered California Returned by Israel

by Pat and Samir Twair

On April 1, the badly decomposed, bullet–riddled corpse of Ahmed Abdel Hamida arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Israel. It was received by his brother, Ghalib, who had left Southern California for Israel on Feb. 26 after learning that his brother had been shot by an Israeli mob when his rented car skidded into a crowd of people at a Jerusalem bus stop. In the first hours after the incident, in which an Israeli woman was killed, the Israeli press called it an accidentjudging by skid marks from Hamida’s car, and the fact that he was returning from a supermarket with a load of groceries for a family picnic. Then, when it was learned that he was an American citizen lynched by an Israeli mob, he was described as one of a series of Palestinian suicide bombers.

While Israeli reporters called Hamida a drug addict, a Hamas bomber or both, the truth seems to be that he was a man not quite at home either in his native Palestine or his adopted state of California, and whose life ended because he lost control of his car at the wrong place and the wrong time.

Hamida arrived in Southern California with his parents and younger brother and sister in 1976. He never finished high school but was employed in the family grocery store, where colleagues described him as a hard worker. He was married briefly to a non-Palestinian woman and had a daughter, “Kathy,” to whom he was devoted. Eventually, stricken by a serious intestinal problem, he decided to return to his home village near Ramallah until his health improved.

On Feb. 27 newspapers around the world printed photos of Ahmed Hamida’s body, sprawled on his back on a Jerusalem street where two Israeli vigilantes had shot him after the accident in which 22 bystanders had been injured in addition to the one killed. His murderers, both armed Jewish “settlers” from the West Bank, were released by Israeli authorities after they said they had jumped to the conclusion that Hamida was a Hamas terrorist. The day before the killing, on Feb. 25, two suicide bombers had detonated explosives on buses in Jerusalem and Ashkalon that killed 27 people and injured 80.

Hamida’s relatives in Ramallah and California were distraught, first at the news of his murder, and again when Israeli officials refused to release the body. Islamic custom calls for burial within 24 hours after death if at all possible. When Israeli officials tried to strike a bargain with Hamida’s brother, Ghalib, over the release of the bullet-riddled body, Ghalib returned empty-handed to Los Angeles. Thirty-five days after the execution-style murder, Ahmed’s corpse arrived at Los Angeles International Airport in a body bag.

“The autopsy was conducted by an American and Israeli doctor and the findings were printed in Arabic,” Ghalib stated. “It confirmed my brother had no drugs in his body,” Shaking his head sadly, he expressed hesitation to continue the interview. “One of the Israeli conditions for releasing his body was that he be buried quietly without any questions.”

Nevertheless, we asked “The Question” that Israeli authorities had sought to keep Galib Hamida from answering.

How many bullet holes did you count?

“Twenty-four. That was all we could determine because the tissue was soft.”

The Hamida family is trying to forge ahead and put Ahmed’s tragic murder behind them. The family, with members still living in West Bank areas under Israeli occupation, won’t lodge a wrongful death suit against the Israeli government, nor against the settlers who shot and killed him without asking questions.

First Lady Visits L.A. Muslims

In introducing Hilary Rodham Clinton as the “first First Lady to address an American Muslim group outside the White House,” Dr. Maher Hathout informed a Southern California audience of more than 300 people on May 30 that although he may speak with an accent, he doesn’t stutter. The spokesman for the Southern California Islamic Center obviously took pride in the historic occasion in the downtown Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel. Clinton was in town at the invitation of the Muslim Women’s League and Muslim Public Affairs Committee.

The U.S. president’s wife was introduced by Dr. Laila Marayati, a young Glendale physician who became acquainted with the First Lady last September when both served on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women in Beijing. There, Clinton, who was honorary head of the U.S. delegation, asked Dr. Marayati, an adviser, to give a half-hour description of Islam and Muslim women. The presentation must have made a lasting impression, judging by Clinton’s repeated calls for Muslims to reach out and share their religious beliefs with Americans. Dr. Marayati first gained international recognition in 1993 when she led an American women’s medical team to Bosnia to interview Muslim rape victims and catalog their needs.

“Understanding by our people of Islam is long overdue,” Clinton stated. “Only recently have I begun to appreciate Islam. Growing up in Chicago, I was not aware of courses on Islam, nor were there Muslim families in my neighborhood. That has changed.”

Clinton recalled the “poignant moment” last February when she and the president hosted an Eid al Fitr breakfast at the White House. “I want Muslim children—like Christian and Jewish children—to look at the White House and know there is recognition of their religion,” she said.

AUB Alumni Meet in L.A.

There are approximately 35,000 graduates of the American University of Beirut, of whom 5,000 live in North America. On May 24-26, the AUB’s Alumni Association of North America (AANA) staged its 16th biennial convention at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Lebanese Consul General Gebran Soufan hosted a reception at his residence on the eve of the two-day event, which was chaired by Dr. Najwa Mirhij Shammas (class of 1972). Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria and to Israel Edward P. Djerejian was the keynote speaker at the convention banquet.

“Building Bridges Between Peoples and Cultures” was the theme of this year’s event. Two panel discussions by scholars and recent graduates revealed the unique memories and spirit shared by AUB graduates. Nostalgia for a special campus and its unique intellectual ambience was shared by the more than 400 alumni who attended.

John Espositoa world-renowned scholar of Islam, editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World and professor at Georgetown University—who encountered AUB for the first time in 1968—commented: “AUB symbolized the best the Arab world could be. It was a center that produced the elites of the Arab world.”

Prof. May Seikaly of Wayne State University, who has gained recognition for her oral histories of Arab Americans and the Palestinian diaspora, said the generation of AUB students of the ’60s and ’70s experienced major transitions: “Beirut of this period was emanating deep social change, liberal thinking prevailed. This produced a resilience that has paid off as the people have persevered through Israel’s latest attack on Lebanon’s infrastructure.”

Seikaly recalled the “bonanza of free thought” generated by Charles Malek, Fayez Sayegh, Jalal Sadeq al-Azm, Hannah Batatu and George Khairallah, “who gave us a reference for successive generations.”

“AUB students were exposed to new concepts and gradually developed liberal thought so that over the shifting atmosphere of the past 25 years, many have adhered to the motto: ‘It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,’” Seikaly said.

The special identity that comes with an AUB education also was described by Dalia Mroue, who graduated in sociology in 1995 and is now studying for a master’s degree in law and diplomacy at Tufts University. Born in 1973, Mroue called herself a true child of Lebanon’s 15 years of civil war, which began in 1975, and said her generation has not succumbed to the instability of the time and place. “Learning became an act of defiance at AUB,” she said, describing how on Nov. 8, 1991, she and her classmates insisted on attending class after College Hall was blown apart by a bomb.

Dr. Armen Arslanian, who graduated from AUB in 1988 and received his medical degree there in 1992, entitled his talk: “AUB, I’d Do It Again.” Dr. Arslanian, an endrocrinologist in Georgia, provided darkly humorous descriptions of the lack of basic equipment at AUB’s once incomparable Medical School

AUB President Robert Haddad noted that over the years AUB has provided education to many doctors who then set up practice in the U.S. rather than in the Middle East. He said that as recently as 1985, 22 percent of AUB’s budget came from USAID. This now has been slashed to 3 percent, and probably will be killed altogether by Congress in the near future. Dr. Haddad added that until the U.S. State Department ban on American travel to Lebanon is lifted, it will not be easy to recruit American professors, let alone pay them.

UCLA’s Near East Center Honors Oleg Grabar

The life-long achievements of Harvard University’s Aga Khan Professor Emeritus Oleg Grabar were recognized during a three-day symposium at the Gustav E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA. A highlight was the presentation to Dr. Grabar of the 15th Levi Della Vida Award, which is presented every two years.

Over the past four decades, Grabar has produced 15 books and more than 140 articles. These range from numismatic studies of early Islamic coins to his archaeological work on Syria’s Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi. His latest tome, The Shape of the Holy: Islamic Jerusalem, will be published this year. He also has traveled throughout the world for the Aga Khan program dedicated to restoring and preserving Islamic architecture

U.S.–Arab Business Explored

More than 60 businessmen, students and diplomats gathered April 17 at the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies to hear a report on a January trade mission to Syria and Jordan. The mission was sponsored by the U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce (Pacific) Inc.

J.S. (Stan) Patterson, chairman and CEO of the San Francisco-based chamber, noted that a trade mission is not a substitute for a company’s efforts to establish itself in a foreign country, but rather provides American businessmen access to their counterparts overseas.

During the mission’s two-to-three days of concentrated business sessions in Damascus and Amman, Patterson said, it became clear Syria is opening its doors to foreign investment and that Jordan is already enjoying a peace dividend in banking, communications and manufacturing. Syria’s economy, Patterson predicted, will be based largely on agriculture, food processing and pharmaceuticals. He noted Syria is likely to be self-sufficient in petroleum and is producing 600,000 barrels of crude daily.

The chamber CEO voiced amazement over the construction boom that has “changed the face of Amman over the past three years.” He marveled at the industrial estates outside the capital where factories are busily manufacturing washing machines, TVs and other appliances.

A socio-economic summary of the trade mission was presented by Mary E. and Kent Morris of Morris & Morris Consultants, Los Angeles. Their firm was founded last September and is affiliated with the Jordan Center for Research and Development. Despite sharing the same name, the business partners are neither related nor married. She is a Middle East policy analyst, formerly with RAND. He has worked in advisory and liaison positions to Saudi government entities and is an instructor in conflict resolution in the California State University system.

“Syria could be a good place to go to invest your money,” Mary Morris stated. She cautioned, however, that this should be viewed as a long-term proposition due to technological changes that must be made in Syria.

She cited Syria’s large population of 15.5 million, compared to Israel’s 5.4 million, Jordan’s 4.1 million, Lebanon’s 3.7 million, the West Bank’s 1.3 million and Gaza’s 800,000. These figures, she noted, were taken from the 1995 CIA World Factbook.

Kent Morris interjected that Syria has three times the population of Israel while its cost of labor is roughly one-third that of Israel. This makes Syria an ideal place for companies to assemble their products and then re-export them to Central Asia.

“Much of the peace process is led by economics and the needs of growing populations,” added Mary Morris. “But for Syria to go west (e.g., to secure a Most Favored Nation status with the U.S.) it must go through Jerusalem.”

Lebanese Consul General Gebran Soufan disagreed, stating: “Syrians know better what’s best for them. Yet, I believe they prefer to have direct access to the Americans in this regard. However, if they choose indirect channels, they might elect (or choose) Saudi Arabia, France, perhaps Lebanon, anybody but Israel.” Morris later explained that she used the phrase as a metaphor for U.S. requirements for Syria to make peace with Israel before full normalization of relations.

Turning to Syria’s long-term potential, Mary Morris drew an example from Syria’s banking structure: “You couldn’t go to Syria and open a bank at present. But you could go there and offer your expertise to help them computerize their banking system. Then you would be in on the ground floor.”

She concluded that Jordan has a modern and stable business environment and low labor costs, which makes it, like Syria, a strategic take-off spot for the Gulf and Central Asia. Trade between Jordan and Israel won’t be the primary economic benefit of the peace process, she said. Rather, the peace process, and the economic reforms it already has inspired, will enable these nations to participate fully in the world economy.

Morris was less optimistic about the West Bank and Gaza. “As long as they are dependent on the Israeli economy, the situation is grim,” she said. She stressed that business is conservative, wants stability and won’t open factories in a region unless it knows its investment is safe.

Summing up business prospects in the region, Patterson said: “Now is the time to position yourself for long-term planning. If you wait until the dust is settled from peace negotiations, it will mean the difference between whether you bought IBM stocks in 1946 or today.” Pressing businessmen to strategize for the future, he concluded: “There are a lot of Israelis venturing into the Gulf—not because they think they can do business there now, but later.”