Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1998, Pages 106-114

Arab-American Activism

Vote ’98 Features President Clinton, Members of Congress and Palestinian Officials

Arab Americans from across the United States gathered in Washington, DC May 6 through 10 for “Vote ’98: A Winning Strategy,” a national leadership conference co-sponsored by the Arab American Institute, Palestinian American Congress and the National Arab American Business Association.

Vote ’98 featured a keynote address by President Bill Clinton, the first by a sitting U.S. president to an Arab-American organization (see article on p. 27 concerning Clinton’s speech and see box on facing page for the full text of AAI President James Zogby’s introduction of the president), remarks by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, panel discussions by members of Congress, academics and policy makers, sessions at the White House, meetings with elected representatives on Capitol Hill, and panel discussions with Arab ambassadors and Palestinian diplomats.

On the domestic level, delegates and presenters focused on the developing political role of the Arab-American community in the United States. Many Arab-American leaders compared their warm reception on Capitol Hill and at the White House for Vote ’98 with a decade earlier when members of Congress would return “Arab money” given to political campaigns. In contrast, dozens of Arab-American candidates now are running for local, state and federal office in 1998, and many were on hand to discuss their campaigns.

Conference participants also focused on important issues facing the Arab-American community, including the Middle East peace process, the U.S. advisory against traveling to Lebanon, and profiling of Arab and Muslim Americans as security threats at U.S. airports. The most sensitive issue seemed to be profiling, and many members of the audience, including various speakers, reported that they had been pulled aside by U.S. authorities while traveling, presumably solely because they are Arab American.

Vote ’98 culminated with a day of panels on the Middle East peace process which included Palestinian Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Faisal Husseini and Minister for Higher Education Hanan Ashrawi. Both spoke at length about the Israeli government’s intransigence on the U.S.-sponsored peace process, with eye-opening accounts of events on the ground in Israel and Palestine.

Additional information about Vote ’98 can be obtained by writing, calling or faxing the Arab American Institute, 918 16th St. NW, Suite 601, Washington, DC 20006, phone: (202) 429-9210, fax: (202) 429-9214

—Shawn L. Twing

Ohio Groups Collaborate on Palestine Commemoration

Thirteen Muslim-American, Arab-American and peace-and-justice organizations combined to present a heavily attended program May 16 on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus entitled “Peace and Justice for Palestine.”

The five-hour program featured a Palestinian heritage exhibition of traditional arts and crafts, children’s activities, a showing of the documentary film “In the Memory” depicting the suffering of Palestinians under occupation, and a reception and buffet dinner of Middle Eastern and South Asian food.

The afternoon and evening activities concluded with a program emceed by president Andy Amid of Arab Americans of Central Ohio consisting of talks by three speakers: executive editor Richard Curtiss of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs; Dr. Nizam Peerwani, chief medical examiner of Tarrant County, Texas; and Dr. John B. Quigley, Jr., professor of international law at Ohio State University.

In his talk, entitled “Journey Through Jerusalem,” Pakistan-born Dr. Peerwani, who first visited Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza with an American delegation of Physicians for Human Rights, illustrated the conditions under which Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied areas have been living for decades with slides and also with charts showing the medical and psychological effects of the Israeli occupation on its victims.

Dr. Quigley, author of Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice (1990); Legal Consequences of the Demolitions of Houses by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (1994); and Flight into the Maelstrom: Soviet Immigration to Israel and Middle East Peace (1997), revealed some little-known facts of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

He discussed the preparation of a United Nations report fixing the blame for the Qana massacre, in which Israeli artillery killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians who had sought refuge in the compound of United Nations soldiers from Fiji during Israel’s “Operation Grapes of Wrath” against southern Lebanon in the spring of 1995. The Dutch general who conducted the investigation charged that the killings were deliberate, and then-U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali issued the report over strong U.S. objections. This, Quigley said, was the background to the U.S. veto of a second term for Boutros-Ghali.

Discussing the problem of repatriation of more than 700,000 Palestinian refugees from the fighting that broke out after the United Nations voted to partition Palestine in November 1947, Dr. Quigley said about 300,000 of those Palestinian Arab refugees already had been expelled or had fled their homes before Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948. He noted also that Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, the U.N. special representative to Palestine, was recommending that the Palestinian refugees be returned to their homes at the time he was assassinated by Jewish terrorists of the Lehi, or Stern Gang, headed by a triumvirate of leaders that included future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Groups sponsoring the program included the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Arab Americans of Central Ohio, Arab Student Association, Columbus Campaign for Arms Control, Columbus Community Organizing Center, Egyptian Student Association, Islamic Association for Palestine, Islamic Foundation of Central Ohio, Islamic Society of Greater Columbus, Masjid al-Islam, Muslim Student Association, Palestinian-American Association, and SEARCH for Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel.

—Richard H. Curtiss

Albuquerque Coalition Conducts Series of Iraq, Palestine Observances

A number of activist groups collaborated on a series of events in Albuquerque starting Feb. 14 and continuing into May to express public opposition to renewed bombing of Iraq, support for lifting the United Nations sanctions on Iraq, and to commemorate 50 years of Palestinian dispossession.

The events began the night of Feb. 14 with a candlelight vigil on the University of New Mexico campus, during which participants heard several speakers protest U.S. plans for military action against Iraq. Following the vigil, participants assembled in the university library to map out an action plan for subsequent activities.

Every weekday for the two weeks following the vigil demonstrators carried signs in front of the campus bookstore facing a major street, while drivers of passing cars honked in support of the protest.

On weekends participants of all faiths demonstrated at the busiest intersections in Albuquerque, holding signs and using loudspeakers to voice their opinions.

Then, on March 29, all who had signed petitions and who had participated in the organizational meeting were invited to a Middle Eastern dinner at the Friends Meeting House prepared by members of the New Mexico chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). The large crowd was shown a video “The Children Are Dying,” depicting the suffering caused by the United Nations embargo.

ADC chapter president Mahassen Shukry talked about the destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure during the 1991 bombing which, in turn, magnified the suffering resulting from the embargo. Other speakers included a university professor from Iraq who discussed his country’s role as the cradle of world civilization more than 5,000 years ago, and the imam of an Albuquerque mosque, who discussed the immorality of the sanctions. Present to discuss their experiences during the Gulf war were a number of Iraqi refugees. A similar program was held on the university campus.

This was followed by a week of compassion, from April 6 to 10. During this period photos of dying Iraqi children were displayed, petitions and letters to U.S. officials were prepared and mailed, and leaflets were passed out to the public. A demonstration also was held at the offices of New Mexico’s senators in downtown Albuquerque.

Participants in these events were invited to address the participants in a Jewish Passover Seder, and were interviewed on local radio and television stations in both English and Spanish. The community cable television also ran videos dealing with the suffering in Iraq and with local protests over a period of several weeks.

On Earth Day a display was mounted where participants could see photos of the children of Iraq and sign petitions calling for an end of the sanctions. On April 24 a display was scheduled for the works of an Iraqi artist who is studying at the University of New Mexico and who witnessed the Gulf war. After the failure of uprisings against Saddam Hussain’s government, the artist took refuge in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia.

Albuquerque activists also adopted Basra General Hospital and arranged to send medicines with the Iraq Sanctions Challenge Group that visited Iraq in mid-May. Members of the challenge group were invited to visit Albuquerque upon their return to the United States to describe at first hand what they had witnessed.

Among the groups that participated in protests against renewed bombing and for lifting the sanctions on Iraq were Veterans for Peace and Justice, Amnesty International, The Greens, The Progressive Student Alliance and the ADC. These groups, in turn, formed an organization called “Peace With Iraq” which carried out the extensive series of observances.

Some of the same groups also participated in planning a series of events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the dispossession of the Palestinians. Those events commenced in May.

—Mahassen Shukry

At National Press Club, Hanan Ashrawi Condemns Resurgence of Myths

“We cannot rescue the peace process singlehandedly,” Palestinian Minister of High er Education Hanan Ashrawi told journalists, academics and others attending an April 29 “Morning Newsmaker” program at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Introduced by Peter Hickman of the National Press Club and accompanied by President Khalil Jahshan of the National Association of Arab Americans, Ashrawi discussed the current state of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as well as significant upcoming events.

In the long shadow cast by Israel’s celebration of its 50th anniversary, Ashrawi urged the audience to consider the effect this has had on the Palestinian people. She challenged two long-discredited myths that have been reinvented in connection with the celebrations—that Palestine was a “land without people for people without land,” and that Israel “has made the desert bloom.” “Perhaps one should give thought to the denial of the existence of the Palestinian people” by Israeli leaders and others, she said, adding that “Palestine was never a desert [and] we don’t need to give it away to others to make it bloom.”

“May 4 is the final test for the American role in the peace process,” Ashrawi said, referring to then-upcoming meetings in London between U.S., European, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. “We don’t hold any unrealistic expectations” about America’s role, particularly its acceptance of Israeli intransigence, “but we do expect minimal even-handedness.” If the United States continues to accept Israel’s unwillingness to implement agreements already entered into by both parties and signed by the U.S. government, the Palestinians and Arabs “may have to reassess the U.S. role” in the peace process, she said. She cautioned against a unilateral U.S. disengagement from the peace process—to which the U.S. is a signatory—saying this would only “play into Israel’s hands.”

To bring the magnitude of the stalled peace process into focus, Ashrawi reminded the audience that the end of June 1998 is the timetable for Israel’s redeployment from the occupied territories as agreed to in the Oslo accords.

In what may have been her most provocative statement, Ashrawi told the audience that the Palestinian Authority “will declare statehood on May 5, 1999,” after final status negotiations are scheduled for completion under the Oslo accords signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, and U.S. President Bill Clinton.

In the recent past, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has called such an announcement an unacceptable unilateral action and threatened to re-occupy Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank and Gaza if statehood is declared. In reference to these threats, Ashrawi pointed out, to the amusement of the Middle Eastern journalists present, the hypocrisy of Netanyahu’s complaint about “unilateral actions.” Netanyahu’s government has brought the peace process to a standstill with unilateral actions including renewed settlement building, land confiscations, collective punishment and torture of Palestinian detainees.

Statehood “is our right enshrined in international law and United Nations resolutions and is the logical outcome of peace negotiations,” Ashrawi said, pointing out that “Israel does not have the right to grant statehood to the Palestinian people.”

—Shawn L. Twing

Journalists, Pollster Participate in Panel on “U.S.-Israeli Relations”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and State Department correspondent Steven Erlanger joined pollster John Zogby on June 5 at a program sponsored by the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine entitled “U.S.-Israeli relations, Real Crisis or Smoke and Mirrors?” The program was moderated by Georgetown University professor emeritus Dr. Hisham Sharabi, co-founder and chairman of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development.

The opening speaker was John Zogby, brother of American Arab Institute President James Zogby, and the national pollster (for Reuters) who came closest to forecasting the correct results of the 1996 presidential elections. Zogby discussed his own polling data since 1995 that puts a very different perspective on a recent New York Times poll that, in Zogby’s words, “showed apparent strong attachment by Americans to [Israel] and considerable strong support for Israel’s positions in the Middle East peace process.”

Drawing on his own extensive poll results, Zogby agreed that “Israel is more popular to U.S. voters than her Arab neighbors, but the favorability levels are hardly the stuff of which special relationships are made. Indeed a comparison of how U.S. voters regard Israel and other countries places that state somewhere in the range of Russia and much below European nations and Japan.”

Zogby said that “U.S. voters are not keen about financial aid anywhere. Aid to Israel is no more supported than aid levels to Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, or loans to the IMF to bail out Mexico or Indonesia.”

The pollster also said that “U.S. voters are not isolationist, especially regarding the Middle East region. There is equal support for the premise that it is in the best interests of the U.S. to protect the security of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel.

“Middle East leaders perceived as moderate receive the highest favorable ratings,” Zogby continued. “Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat are not included in this picture.

“In a significant shift, two in three U.S. voters now blame both Israel and the Palestinian Authority for the impasse in the peace process,” Zogby said. “About as many voters blame the Palestinian Authority as they do Israel.”

Zogby said that “a plurality of voters see the Clinton administration as steering a middle course in the peace process, though by 8 to 1 they see the administration as favoring Israel over the Palestinian Authority. A steadily growing majority—now up to two out of three—feel that the Clinton administration should steer a middle course. A similar percentage believe the administration should pressure both sides. And if the president were to apply pressure on both Netanyahu and Arafat, it would help him with U.S. voters.”

The pollster said that “only one in four support a letter signed by 81 senators to President Clinton insisting he not publicly intervene by pressuring Israel, while a majority want the president to do whatever is required to secure peace in the region.”

Finally, Zogby said, “support for an independent Palestinian state has increased dramatically” from 29 percent who agreed and 48 percent who disagreed in April 1995 to 41 percent who agreed and 25 percent who disagreed in May 1998.

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Friedman began his presentation by saying “there is going to be a second redeployment along the broad outlines of the Clinton plan—somewhere between 13 and 15 percent. But the redeployment will be on Netanyahu’s terms.

“The Arab world has never been weaker or more divided,” Friedman continued. “There are two words that you never hear any more, and they are ‘Arab world.’ It’s a world of one superpower and one supermarket now.

“The Arab world has a black hole from Morocco to Pakistan regarding computers per capita,” Friedman said. Describing the effects of petro-dollars as “a golden straitjacket,” Friedman said “your economy grows and your political choices shrink.”

He said the Arab countries will have to downsize “extremely fat, bloated bureaucracies and shift power to the private sector” because the “pressure to open up and streamline affects every country from Morocco to Kuwait...There is an invasion of information capital going on, and it is going to be hugely transforming.”

Returning to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Friedman said “Bibi [Netanyahu] realizes that the U.S. is not into confrontation.” Describing why the peace process has halted, Friedman declared “you need a bulldozer and for the first few years the bulldozer driver was Yitzhak Rabin. All the U.S. had to do was walk behind the bulldozer. Rabin died and Clinton is enormously chary about driving the bulldozer. The president is deeply reluctant about alienating any member of his potential future jury” in case of impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives.

Friedman dismissed any concern Netanyahu may feel about straining his relationship with the U.S. or the U.S. Jews who for years have donated generously for tree planting or other Israeli causes, saying “you can have your forest now or you can have it later.”

As for any likelihood that Israel’s Labor Party leader Ehud Barak will mount effective opposition to Netanyahu’s tactics, Friedman said, “Barak has basically taken the position that Israeli politics is tribal; 45 percent of the voters are Labor, 45 percent are Likud. The election is about the remaining 10 percent” and “the balance of power is primarily in Netanyahu’s favor.”

Friedman said that “if the process collapses and you get another explosion like the tunnel, it will be politically devastating for Prime Minister Netanyahu. Forty-three percent of Israelis said they favor the American plan. Forty-six percent opposed it. Sharon and others on the far right are firing blanks.

In his presentation, New York Times State Department correspondent Steven Erlanger said that upon assuming the position of secretary of state Madeleine Albright “made a cardinal error and that was to worry about spending too much time on the Middle East. She stayed out of the region for nearly nine months and I can’t think of a single thing good that came of a nine-month moratorium.”

Erlanger said that “the Arab-Israeli problem is not a foreign policy problem in this country. It is a domestic problem...It is hard to underestimate the level of frustration in the American bureaucracy with Mr. Netanyahu.”

The journalist, who noted he had lost “at least three jackets” in the process of following Albright around the world, said that even had the Israeli election, in which Shimon Peres lost to Netanyahu by “30,000 or fewer votes, gone the other way, there would have been a slowdown” in the peace process.

“It is customary to say that Netanyahu has put a terrible block in the process, but it is my view that it was going to slow down anyway,” Erlanger said. “But what made it worse, in my view, was that Albright really did walk away.” Erlanger mused that “perhaps it would have been better for Dennis Ross and the others to step down” since the U.S. now has “wasted so much time” and finds itself with so little to show for it, while major problems such as Kosovo, the economic problems in Asia, problems in Russia and the India-Pakistan problems have suffered for lack of focused, high-level U.S. attention.

Interestingly, Erlanger believes that “the Americans and Israelis were very, very close to an agreement in London.” Noting, however, that “between Albright and Clinton on this issue there is a gap of more than 13 percent,” Erlanger said “Albright is a doer.”

He noted also that Albright has looked to Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, a former ambassador to both Israel and Jordan, for guidance on the regional implications of walking away from the peace process. “Pickering has a very realistic understanding of the regional context, more so than the peace team. He understands what it is doing to the credibility of the Arab leaders,” Erlanger said.

Erlanger observed also that “It’s always easier for a Republican to have some sort of confrontation with the Likud.” Explaining Clinton’s unwillingness to back up Albright on Middle East peace, Erlanger said “Clinton seems to feel that his real legacy is going to be the election of Al Gore, and not to get into a public confrontation with a democratically elected government of Israel.” This, Erlanger said, is the explanation “for Bill Clinton to be as reluctant as he is for Albright to get into a serious confrontation with Netanyahu.”

Discussing the “American plan” which, in response to Netanyahu’s threats, the U.S. has never made public, Erlanger said that Ha’aretz political reporter “David Makovsky’s copy is exactly what mine is. It’s almost exactly what Albright brought to London. Area B will grow a little and there will be a little less to A. The settlements that will be isolated will be the very settlements that previous American administrations have called ‘obstacles to peace.’”

Expressing impatience with Clinton administration diplomacy, Erlanger said, “We’ve already had all the possible effects of a public confrontation [with Israel]. What else could there possibly be?”

Erlanger described Netanyahu as “an odd combination of being both stubborn and weak at the same time.” The journalist noted also that “every time we’ve come close to solving anything, another [suicide] bomb comes along,” and he noted that there is no reason to believe that this will not happen again in the future.

Erlanger also told his audience that, in his opinion, Madeleine Albright never planned to give Netanyahu an “ultimatum.” “She never used the word ‘ultimatum’ or ‘deadline,’” he said. “What she did was make it clear after Netanyahu announced [in London] that he’d been invited to Washington that it was a conditional invitation.” Netanyahu then returned to Israel and turned the seeming U.S. ultimatum to his advantage at home, assuring himself of domestic support when he defied it.

As for the dynamics of the peace process in Washington, “The White House is more in charge,” Erlanger explained. “No secretary of state is a free-lancer. Madeleine and {National Security Adviser Samuel] Berger are nice to each other in public and keep their battles private.”

In answer to questions, Erlanger said, “I don’t think anyone accuses Berger or Albright or Pickering of being a strategist.” He also described Hillary Clinton’s statement on a telecast that the Palestinians should have a state as “an accident that had consequences.”

Pressed by a questioner as to whether he faces limits on his own Middle East reporting because of the Jewish ownership of the New York Times and the fact that many of its advertisers and readers are Jewish, Erlanger replied: “I don’t feel limits on topics. There are inevitably limits on space. In general I feel that most editors push me to be more skeptical about what governments say. I have had two stories killed in 11 years with the Times. I don’t think there is a particular ethnic or religious bias.”

Also in answer to questions, Zogby said he believes there is some potential for a Democratic presidential candidate who is less supportive of Israel than Al Gore. He also noted that “35 percent of those who call themselves evangelical Christians vote Democratic,” while “a majority of Republicans feel that the Christian right hurts the party.” However, “there is a substantial group who feel that the Republicans cannot win without them.”

Asked to comment on House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s extraordinary pandering to Binyamin Netanyahu on a recent trip to Israel, Zogby noted that Gingrich probably believes that is part of running for the presidency. In fact, Zogby said, when Gingrich adopted a low profile earlier this year he “climbed from 18 percent to 28 percent by keeping out of the public eye.” Now that he has chosen to return to media attention “Gingrich is the one factor that could lose Republican control of the House,” Zogby opined.

Asked about the possibility of the European Union stepping in to replace the Clinton administration as an “honest broker” for the peace process, Friedman said, “the Europeans can deliver no one, not even themselves.” Asked about Netanyahu’s tactics of cultivating U.S. domestic critics to intimidate Clinton, Friedman said, “I think it’s an enormous sign of weakness that the prime minister of Israel felt he had to turn to [the Reverend Jerry] Falwell for support.”

Describing the peace process as “a triumph of hope over history,” Friedman said, “Albright’s positions are good and she understands that you only get progress under conditions of extreme pain and extreme pleasure.” As an example, he cited the extraordinary progress toward a peace between Egypt and Israel made in the wake of the 1973 war, which was extremely painful for Israel.

—Richard Curtiss

Georgetown University Lecture Series on 50 Years of Palestinian Dispossession

Georgetown University’s Arabic Club, with the support of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and other groups, held an extraordinary series of seven panel discussions and a final banquet discussion this Spring. The first panel was covered in the June issue. Following are reports on the next six panels. The final banquet will be covered in the September issue of the Washington Report.

The second panel held April 19 and entitled “Selective Morality II (Plus ­a change…): U.S. Policy Today,” brought together Prof. Michael Hudson of Georgetown University, executive editor Richard Curtiss of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and Ambassador Edward Peck, a retired career foreign service officer.

Speaking on “The Future of the Oslo Agreement,” Professor Hudson reminded the audience that the intractability of the conflict cannot be understood without taking into account the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages, with 418 of those villages destroyed, along with continuing land confiscations and closures of the remaining villages by the Israeli government.

He said that between 1949 and 1982 diplomats pursued 23 Arab-Israeli peace initiatives, with only the Camp David agreement even partially successful. The second partially successful initiative came in the form of the Oslo accords, which had their genesis in the U.S.-initiated 1991 Madrid conference.

He noted that Secretary of State James Baker’s 1991 letter of assurances to the Palestinians are a far cry from what is taking place on the ground today. These assurances stated that no party could take unilateral actions that would affect the outcome of negotiations, and that the United States does not recognize the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem or the expansion of Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries. However, according to Hudson, it became clear by 1993 that the bilateral and multilateral talks were going nowhere. Out of this stalemate, the “Oslo Surprise,” as the secret talks between Israel and PLO representatives came to be called after their existence was revealed, seemed to reinvigorate hopes for a final peace in the region, Hudson said.

By the fall of 1995, the Israel Defense Force had pulled out of 3 percent of the West Bank and 80 percent of the Gaza Strip. Hudson added, however, that before Shimon Peres’ defeat in the May 1996 Israeli general elections, he had stopped the Israeli-Syrian peace talks and sealed off the West Bank. With the election of Binyamin Netanyahu and his stalling of the peace process, the West Bank Palestinian population was left in isolated enclaves within Israeli-controlled areas. Thus, Hudson stated, the Israeli leader has achieved his aim.

In his talk entitled “U.S. Policy or Israeli Lobby Policy,” editor Richard Curtiss, a retired foreign service officer, said, “U.S. history of the past half-century is filled with instances of the pro-Israel community in the United States taking on the U.S. foreign affairs establishment—and winning.” He cited President Truman’s insistence on recognizing Israel before it defined its borders because his domestic political adviser, Clark Clifford, warned that Truman would lose the 1948 presidential election if he did not. Truman won the presidential election, Curtiss said, but “50 years later Israel still has not defined its borders.”

A major factor underlying the turbulent history of the Middle East during the past half-century, according to Curtiss, was that the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947 gave the Jewish state-to-be 53 percent of the land and the Palestinian state-to-be 47 percent, even though the population was one-third Jewish and two-thirds Muslim and Christian Palestinian. Jerusalem was to be placed under separate international jurisdiction. By the end of the 1948 war, Israel occupied half of Jerusalem and 78 percent of Palestine, and in the subsequent four wars, three of them started by Israel (in 1956, 1967 and 1982) and one by Egypt and Syria (1973), Israel occupied the rest of Palestine and parts of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Curtiss said that while most people know that Israel receives $3 billion in U.S. foreign aid annually, few realize how much additional aid it receives from other parts of the federal budget. In the 1997 fiscal year, for example, Israel received an additional $525 million in direct grants and $2 billion in loan guarantees, bringing U.S. financial assistance to Israel that year to a total of $5.5 billion in grants and loan guarantees. Curtiss said that since 1949 tiny Israel, with a self-declared population of 5.8 million people, received more U.S. economic assistance than all of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined, with a combined population of 1,054,000,000 people.

Describing how Israel has lobbied Congress to approve these immense amounts of aid, even though Israel’s GDP is higher than that of Spain and Ireland and approaching that of England , none of which receives foreign aid, Curtiss revealed that over the years some 126 deceptively named pro-Israel political action committees have been active in the United States, with more than 50 of these involved in every campaign for nearly two generations. Such pro-Israel PACs mask their identities with names like San Franciscans for Good Government, Cactus PAC in Arizona, Chili PAC in New Mexico, and Beaver PAC in Wisconsin. Thus constituents are never informed that their representatives in Washington may be taking huge sums—as much as half a million dollars in a single election cycle—for voting according to instructions from lobbyists for Israel.

Curtiss summed up by stating that the Israel-centered policies pursued by the United States, particularly under the Clinton administration, are leading the U.S. toward disaster and maybe even war.

The final panelist in the April 19 session was Ambassador Edward Peck, speaking on “Selective Morality: U.S. Policy in the Middle East.” His engaging persona was evident when he opened with the assertion that you can always tell a good diplomat by “his ability to tell you to go to hell and make you look forward to the trip.” He described the United States as an isolationist nation, with Americans learning about the world mostly through what they are told by the media.

Peck said all nations employ selective morality in dealing with each other. As an example, he noted that the United States endeavored to protect the Kurds from the Iraqi government after the Gulf war, but stands by while U.S.-allied Turkey kills hundreds of them. He said that most countries in the world now see the United States as less moral than the majority of nations, largely because of the policies the country pursues in the Middle East. Nevertheless, Peck said, Americans have come to believe that only bad things will happen if the U.S. disengages from Israel.

Peck closed by stating that one of the problems with trying to change U.S. policy vis-ö-vis Israel is that Americans are largely apathetic on international affairs. Therefore, if a small but powerful advocacy group such as the Israel lobby is at work, the general population takes its cues from that group, perpetuating a “tyranny of the minority.”

The third panel in the Georgetown series was held April 21, on the subject “Your Tax Money at Work: U.S. Aid to Israel.” Speakers were Prof. Duncan Clarke of American University, Shawn Twing, news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and retired U.S. Ambasador Andrew Killgore, president of the American Educational Trust.

Dr. Clarke opened with a run down of the funding the state of Israel has received from the United States, totaling more than $76 billion since the program began, not taking inflation into account. Clarke recounted that besides the several billion dollars of money given directly to Israel every year by the United States, Israel also receives numerous special privileges from the U.S., including the fact that $475 million of Israel’s annual U.S. military aid can be spent anywhere the Israeli government chooses. Dr. Clarke reminded the audience that other recipients of U.S. military aid must spend all of it on U.S. products, whereas Israel can and does use these funds to enhance its own weapons programs.

In another deviation from U.S. foreign aid procedures for all other countries, Israel receives its annual aid during the first month of each fiscal year, instead of in four quarterly installments. This enables the Israeli government to put the money into U.S. banks to draw interest.

Dr. Clarke then refuted three popular assumptions about the U.S.-Israel relationship: (1) that aid to Israel is essential to the success of the Arab-Israeli peace process; (2) that Israel is a strategic asset; and (3) that U.S. national interests dictate the close relationship.

On the first point, Clarke pointed out that Israel was more secure than at any time in its history in the period of time just before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But with the advent of Netanyahu, and his poisoning of the peace process, Clarke said the United States would be well-advised to use the economic levers it has on Israel to turn the dangerous stalemate around.

On the matter of Israel as a strategic asset, Clarke noted that this could not be further from the truth, since in fact Israel is a strategic liability to the United States. He pointed out that because Israel possesses the only indigenous nuclear weapons program in the region, U.S. efforts to promote cooperation on eliminating nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction are nearly impossible. Clarke added that the uncritical relationship the United States maintains with Israel is damaging U.S. relations with all of the other countries in the region.

Clarke also noted that Israel has violated the Arms Export Control Act on several occasions. Its sale to China of technology from its Lavi fighter jet, built with U.S. funding and technology, is but one example of this violation. Clarke related also that for many years Israel has conducted one of the most aggressive campaigns of espionage against the United States of any nation in the world.

On the final point, concerning U.S. domestic political interests and Israel, Dr. Clarke quoted former Pentagon official Dov Zakheim as saying that virtually all Israelis realize U.S. congressional support on all matters related to Israel occurs as a result of acquiescence to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s Washington, DC lobby. Clarke noted that in elections candidates need votes and money, and Israeli lobbies orchestrate both, including 25 to 30 percent of all funding to candidates in general and 50 percent of all funding to Democrats.

In his talk entitled “Hidden Aid,” editor Shawn Twing, asked rhetorically, “What is hidden aid?” He answered by listing nearly half a billion dollars a year given to Israel by the United States in addition to the $3 billion in U.S. foreign aid that Israel receives annually.

Examples of extra aid to Israel, according to Twing, include $868.9 million from the State Department from 1948 to 1996 to resettle Jewish refugees in Israel, $100 million in anti-terrorist equipment given in 1996 and 1997, more than $600 million for the Arrow missile, not including Israel’s “share” of $98 million paid with U.S. military aid, hundreds of millions of dollars for defense items produced by Israeli companies, many of which are not even requested by the Pentagon but are placed in the Pentagon budget by member of Congress, and placement of U.S. military stores in Israel totaling some $650 million, ostensibly for U.S. use but also available for Israel’s emergency use. As proof of the real purpose of those military stores, Twing pointed out that the latest installment of $250 million worth of hardware stored in Israel was hand-picked by Israeli defense officials.

Twing also noted that Israel—sometimes defined by members of Congress and the Clinton administration as a U.S. “strategic asset” in the Middle East—was rewarded with $775 million in U.S. military hardware from stockpiles in Western Europe for staying out of the 1991 Gulf war.

Discussing the timing of U.S. gifts to Israel, Twing said that on two recent occasions Israel was rewarded with U.S. military aid shortly after it unilaterally violated the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. The first such violation occurred after Israel’s opening of the disputed Hasmonean tunnel adjacent to the Haram Al Sharif in East Jerusalem, which resulted in riots in which 13 Israeli soldiers and more than 40 Palestinian civilians were killed. The second such occasion was after Israeli bulldozers broke ground for the Har Homa settlement in East Jerusalem. On both occasions Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai traveled to the United States and was given additional U.S. military hardware. Twing maintained that this only reinforces the conviction of Israeli officials that they can ignore U.S. concerns with impunity.

Finally, Twing discussed the $475 million in annual U.S. foreign aid which Israel is permitted to use to purchase Israeli defense items, in complete contradiction to the intent of U.S. foreign military aid. What began as a “one-time only” provision in 1977 to use $107 million for Israel’s Merkava tank has given Israel more than $4 billion to invest in its own defense industries. Twing said there currently are more than 20 contracts in which American firms are competing against Israeli companies subsidized by this U.S. aid. Three such contracts were won by Israeli firms in 1997 alone.

Twing closed by saying that Israel will continue to receive massive amounts of additional U.S. aid because there is no counter-lobby to AIPAC and associated organizations like the AIPAC spinoff think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The final presentation by Andrew I. Killgore, former U.S. ambassador to the State of Qatar, was entitled, “U.S. Aid: Help or Hindrance to Peace?” Killgore began by emphasizing that there is no evidence to support the contention that giving Israel lots of aid will make it feel secure and thus able to make concessions for peace. The competing view, Killgore said, is that threatening to cut back on aid is the only way to induce Israel to make concessions for peace. He added, however, that to advocate this idea too strongly in government circles is usually dangerous to State Department careers.

Killgore presented as an example of successful U.S. pressure on Israel the 1957 threat by President Dwight Eisenhower to end the tax-deductible status of private American contributions to Israel if Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion did not withdraw Israeli forces from the Sinai after the 1956 Suez war. Killgore noted that George Bush repeated this type of pressure when he delayed administration approval of $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for resettling Soviet Jews in Israel as leverage to force Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to participate in the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference.

Killgore then cited examples of negative consequences of excessive U.S. favoritism to Israel. President Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to keep media and congressional support for the Vietnam War through favorable treatment of Israel was a direct factor leading to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which opened with what the Israelis called a “pre-emptive attack” on Egypt and Syria. Killgore stated the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was almost certainly precipitated by U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s assurances to Israel that it would suffer no condemnation from the United States if it invaded.

His final example was that of President Clinton’s failure to support more vigorously the candidacy of Shimon Peres over Binyamin Netanyahu in the May 1996 elections that brought Netanyahu to power on a platform of no more land for peace.

Killgore noted that just as in earlier years when those within the State Department who were knowledgeable about the Middle East and spoke Arabic were known as “Arabists,” so today’s State Department point men on the Middle East, Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and Aaron David Miller, all of whom have lived in Israel and are fluent in Hebrew, are best described as “Israelists.”

Ambassador Killgore expressed hope for a change in current U.S. policy toward Israel because of several factors. He said that both he and his colleague, Richard Curtiss, have separately noted a shift in U.S. public opinion as expressed by callers on radio talk shows in which they both have participated extensively. Whereas 15 years ago most such callers were confrontational, now most also express deep skepticism over the wisdom of unconditional U.S. support for Israel.

Killgore closed by saying that he sees in the growing number of Muslim Americans a potential counter-lobby to AIPAC. A concrete example of this trend, he said, is that Senator James Torricelli attributes his narrow win in the 1996 New Jersey senatorial race to a last-minute switch from support of his opponent by the state’s thousands of Muslim voters.

The fourth panel in the Georgetown Arabic Club series was held April 28 to examine “Zionism and its Discontents.” Panelists were Prof. Shimona Sharoni of American University, Prof. Adrian Wing of the University of Iowa, and Prof. Marc Ellis of Harvard University.

Professor Sharoni began her presentation, entitled “Rethinking Zionism from the Victims’ View,” by commenting on Israeli government efforts to perpetuate a mythical version of the country’s history and to silence its own “revisionist” historians who have debunked those myths. She also cited the efforts of Sam Husseini, who at the time was with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), to write an op-ed for The Washington Post, which reduced it to a small human interest piece. She reserved particular disdain for an April 15 CBS program entitled “To Life,” which presented a whitewashed version of the history of Israel, and included President Clinton congratulating Israel on “making a barren desert bloom.” This she called the “central myth” of Zionism.

The next speaker, on “Apartheid, Israeli Style,” was Adrian Wing, who has worked extensively with the African National Congress in forming a government and who assisted in writing the new South African constitution. She noted that since the end of apartheid the situation in which the Palestinian people find themselves now is being compared to that repressive system. She went on to say that the plights of the American Indians and the Palestinian people also have many parallels.

Wing noted that Aaron Miller, part of the State Department’s Middle East team, has said that 99 percent of the Palestinian population is under the administration of the Palestinian Authority. This, she said, is very misleading, as only 3 percent of the West Bank is under PA control. She next stated that the 13 percent of additional land the U.S. is urging Israel to return to the Palestinians is the same amount of land that blacks held in South Africa during apartheid. She added that the system of apartheid which exists now in Israel/Palestine sickens and corrupts everyone involved. She interprets this as a self-perpetuating cycle of victim and victimization, as evidenced in the PA’s use of torture against prisoners just as Israel has routinely done to Palestinian prisoners both before and since.

Professor Wing closed by advising the audience that living in the United States is both a privilege and an obligation, with concerned individuals needing to pressure their leaders not to let bantustans in Palestine become the ultimate outcome of the Oslo process.

The final speaker of the fourth panel, Dr. Marc Ellis of Harvard University, in his talk on “The Future of Judaism and Zionism,” presented a powerful assessment of what political Judaism, in the form of Zionism, has done to corrupt that great religion. He began with a description of Sharon’s Map, the final state of the peace process as envisioned by right-wing extremist government official Ariel Sharon. This picture is one of Israel keeping the vast majority of the West Bank, with small enclaves of Palestinian habitation interspersed throughout. Ellis noted that many see this as a future possibility to be avoided, while others see it as a goal to be achieved. In reality, Ellis said, it is a map of Palestine today.

One could hear in his voice and see in his demeanor a man who is deeply distressed by the current state of events in Israel/Palestine. He said that the pure rabbinic tradition of Judaism present since ancient times has been destroyed by the destruction of Palestine and the strangling of Palestinian society.

Referring to the situation in which many Jews who express solidarity with the Palestinian people find themselves, as he called it, “the last exile of the Jews,” nevertheless, the Jews who work for peace with their Palestinian neighbors are the real keepers of the covenant God made with the ancient Israelites, Ellis said. He said the dreaded ultimate “assimilation” of the Jewish people will be their assimilation into the power structure of modern Israel, and its destruction of the Palestinians as a cohesive society.

The fifth and final panel of the lecture series on April 29 was entitled “Facts, Lies and Videotapes: Media Reporting.” Participants were Dr. Thomas Stauffer, formerly of Harvard and Georgetown University, Hisham Melhem of As Safir newspaper in Beirut and Dubai Television News, and Dr. John Borne of New York University.

Dr. Stauffer led off with a stinging critique of the mainstream media in the United States and its attempts to deceive the public through misinformation and the withholding of important information. He told a tale of two ships, the Achille Lauro and the USS Liberty, which he described as two tragedies with very different portrayals in the media. While enormous media attention was devoted to the death, at the hands of a Palestinian guerrilla group, of Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly and disabled Jewish passenger on the Achille Lauro cruise ship, the attack on a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Liberty, by Israeli patrol boats and fighter aircraft during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in which 34 crew members were killed and 171 wounded, was largely ignored by the U.S. media after it was ascertained that the attack was deliberate and not accidental as was claimed by the Israeli government.

Stauffer next related several instances over the past 25 years of misinformation on the part of the media for many months, including the refusal of the media to acknowledge the disastrous effects on the world economy of the Arab oil embargo, imposed as a result of heavy U.S. support for Israeli forces in the Sinai peninsula in the 1973 war. Yet another example was U.S. media exploitation of a false report last fall that a network of giant irrigation pipes in Libya were really subterranean highways for the movement of troops and materiel.

The next speaker was Dr. Borne, who provided background information on the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty before describing media patterns in reporting the event in the months after it took place. He noted that controversy began almost immediately, as Israel claimed it was an accident, while the surviving crewmen insisted that the attack was certainly deliberate.

Borne noted that in the first few weeks after the attack, editor William Buckley asked in his National Review why no congressional investigation was taking place, and Newsweek reported that U.S. officials described it as a deliberate attack. However, Borne said, after about six months both these and other publications “forgot” what they had said previously.

In the days immediately after the attack, Borne reported, Liberty crew members were ordered to remain silent about the incident. They were even forbidden to discuss it with their families or with Navy colleagues. He closed by remarking that there was an amazing lack of curiosity on the part of the usually inquisitive press corps on the entire matter of the attack on the USS Liberty.

The final panelist was Hisham Melhem, who began by stating that U.S. media and think tanks have tried for a long time to promote Arabs and Palestinians as enemies of the West. He also cited President Clinton’s reiteration of the Zionist myth during the recent CBS celebration of Israel’s 50th anniversary that the Israelis had made a barren desert bloom.

Melhem noted that the U.S. media are adept at using the term “Islamic terror,” but would never call Israeli attacks on Arabs “Jewish terror,” or Serbian attacks on Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo “Christian terror.” In addition, Melhem bristled at the description by the U.S. media of Israel’s belt of occupation in southern Lebanon as a “security zone,” and the media’s use of the term “terrorist attack” to describe Lebanese Hezbollah actions against Israeli military forces occupying southern Lebanon. Melhem reminded the audience that “terror” is defined as unprovoked attacks against innocent civilians, which he pointed out could not possibly be used to describe the war Hezbollah is waging in southern Lebanon today.

Melhem closed by noting that Ron Arad, an Israeli fighter pilot who was shot down over Lebanon during the early 1980s, was termed by the media in the U.S. as a “hostage,” instead of the prisoner of war which he really was.

—Michael S. Lee

Introduction of President Bill Clinton by James Zogby, President, Arab American Institute

Well, Mr. President, some of the applause you hear makes it clear that this is an audience that truly loves you, but also there’s a little bit of love here for Hillary Clinton....

Mr. President, you honor us by your presence here tonight. This is a special time for my community. I, therefore, want to take a moment to talk about who we are as Arab-Americans and what we want.

We are, of course, immigrants and descendants of immigrants who are celebrating now over 100 years as an American community. We are a diverse people, about three million strong coming from all parts of the Arab world. We’re part of the American success story. Arab-Americans are an example of the contributions an ethnic community can make in this land of opportunity and freedom. That’s why we came here.

For over a century, we built communities and institutions. We’ve excelled in the professions. We’ve excelled in business and in public service. We’re auto workers in Detroit. We’re grocers in Cleveland and San Francisco and Chicago. We’re investment bankers in New York. And we’re petrochemical engineers in Houston. We’re mayors and judges and congressmen and senators. Successive generations of Arab-Americans have overcome hardship, exclusion and, at times, downright bigotry. But we’ve moved into the mainstream of American life. And through it all, we’ve preserved our common treasures, the ones we brought with us from our native lands, our rich heritage, our deep respect for tradition, our commitment to family, to free enterprise and the creative drive for excellence that brought us here and has propelled us forward. And through it all, we’ve enriched the communities in which we live and helped to make America a better place.

It’s against this backdrop that we come into American politics. In the great debates taking place in our country today, we want to be full participants. We want to discuss civil and political rights from the perspective of a community that has known discrimination and wants it to end in all of its forms, whether ugly slurs on storefront windows or the painful practice of airport profiling that targets individuals based solely on their ethnicity or religion.

We want, Mr. President, to present proposals on economic priorities and education policy from the vantage point of a community that has benefitted from America and wants to insure that its opportunity is available to our fellow citizens and to all who will come in the years to come to our shores. And we want to be full partners in the discussions on foreign policy in the Middle East. We want to be a bridge of understanding.

We want to build new relationships based on mutual respect, on concern for rights, on self-determination and on the establishment of normalized and productive ties in all of the endeavors that humans engage in. We want peace and its benefits to reign in the land of our origin. We want to see the Palestinian people live free and secure in a state of their own.

And we want the same for Lebanon and Syria and Jordan and Egypt and all the countries—all the countries of the Middle East.

And finally, all of us, all of us want to see an end to the unbearable suffering endured by, especially, the children of Iraq.

Mr. President, we’re proud, we are so proud that you are with us tonight. You know, my brother John’s polling shows that Arab-Americans voted in record numbers in 1996. Sixty-two percent of our registered voters turned out. And you won our vote by a substantial 20 percent. We voted for you because of your record and because of your themes of community, of opportunity and of responsibility. They resonated with the values and the concerns that we, as a community, share. I personally supported you because my 92-year-old mother, whose advice I trust and sometimes have shared with you, told me that we needed a president who cared about people, who would be there to help people in need and who would try to make a difference in people’s lives.

Mr. President, my mother was right. And tonight is one of those times that she’s been proven right again. I think you for being with us. And on behalf of everyone here, I welcome you.

Jackson Leadership Banquet Remarks

In his speech at the AAI convention banquet, Reverend Jesse Jackson supplied some of the specifics the audience had looked for in vain in President Clinton’s earlier talk.

Comparing the South African and Palestinian problems, Jackson adopted the cadences of a southern preacher as he said: “End stereotypes. Take Arab Americans off the margins.”

Turning to Zogby and recalling the days in the mid-1980s when the Arab-American leader was an active member of the “Rainbow Coalition” supporting Jackson’s campaign for the presidency, Jackson recalled, “the Rainbow Coalition took a risk with you to take the morally correct position. I thought about this as you sat here tonight with an American president—that this was a deeply earned honor.

“However, the struggle for human rights is not over. A banquet does not make the change we seek...What is the American dream? To live together under one big tent, and not on the margins, with several basic premises: equal protection under the law, equal opportunity under the law, equal access...Our accomplishment is measured by how high we rise. Our character is measured by how one treats the least of these. Leave no one behind. It is better to die trying to save one left behind than to live as a coward.”

Turning to a local problem, Jackson said that opposition to a school for Muslim Americans in Virginia “violates the American dream: Red, black, brown and white, we’re all precious in God’s sight.”

Then Jackson exhorted his largely Arab- American audience, “Don’t just fight for Arab Americans. Leave no one behind. If they’re Arab or Jewish, leave no one behind. Beyond color, beyond religion, beyond culture is something called character. Human rights, self-determination, the right to sovereignty, the right to peoplehood, leave no one behind.”

Finally, turning to the 1998 elections, he advised his audience: “ vote as Americans with the interests of the old country in mind.”