September 1995, pg. 121

Bulletin Board

By Janet McMahon

Convenings

The Bosnia Task Force, USA is sponsoring a march on the United Nations' New York headquarters to demonstrate Muslim support for Bosnia. Organizers hope to draw 100,000 people to the Sept. 16 march, scheduled to coincide with the U.N.'s 50th anniversary. For more information contact the Bosnia Task Force, USA, 843 W. Van Buren, Suite 375, Chicago, IL 60607, phone (312) 829-0087, fax (312) 829-0089.

The Middle East Institute will hold its 49th Annual Conference, "Middle East Uncertainties," Sept. 29-30 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Panel topics include Jerusalem, Algeria in Crisis, Central Asia Looks South, Fault Lines in the Gulf, and The Mashriq. For information and registration contact the MEI, 1761 N St. NW, Washington, DC 20036, phone (202) 785-1141, fax (202) 331-8861.

Exhibitions and Festivals

The Second Annual Mahrajan Al-Fan Arab World Cultural Festival, with programs and activities in music, dance, poetry, film and storytelling, will be held at the Brooklyn Museum Sept. 16 and 17. For additional information contact the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, NY 11238, (718) 638-5000 x372.

"Excursions Along the Nile: The Photographic Discovery of Ancient Egypt," an exhibition of more than 100 photographs taken during the second half of the 19th century, will be on view through Oct. 1 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Museum Drive at N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, (410) 396-7100.

Deaths

Eliahu Amikam, a former leader of the Jewish underground Stern Gang, died Aug. 14 at the age of 80 in Tel Aviv. After his days as a terrorist in the Stern Gang, whose members assassinated British minister for the Middle East Lord Moyne in 1944 and U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, Amikam worked for many years as a journalist for the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot.

Haim Kaufman, a former member of the Jewish underground Irgun Zwei Leumi led by Menachim Begin, died Aug. 7 in Jerusalem. A member of the right-wing Likud party, Kaufman was first elected to the Knesset in 1977 and later served as minister of transport, deputy Knesset speaker, deputy finance minister, and coalition chairman under Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Agha Hasan Abedi, founder of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), which collapsed in 1991 amid investigations of criminal actitivies, died Aug. 5 in Karachi at the age of 74, having suffered a series of heart attacks and strokes. Born in 1922 to a Shi'i family in northern India, he moved to Pakistan after its creation in 1947 and entered banking. He started BCCI in 1972 with $2.5 million in seed money from the ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. At its peak in the 1980s, BCCI had 14,000 employees, 400 offices in 72 countries, and 1.3 million depositors. After his heart attack and a heart transplant in 1988, Abedi sold his interest in BCCI to Sheikh Zayed and retired to Pakistan, where he lived in seclusion and avoided attempts to extradite him for prosecution.

Rabbi Baruch Korff, known as "Nixon's rabbi" for his support of the late president, died July 26 in Providence, RI of pancreatic cancer at the age of 81. Born in the Ukraine, he moved to the U.S. in 1926, where he was active in Jewish affairs. He was particularly concerned with Sephardic Jewish communities in the Middle East, and made several visits to Arab countries. He met Richard Nixon in 1967 during the latter's presidential campaign. In 1974 he founded the National Citizens Committee for Fairness to the President to rally support for Nixon during the Watergate scandal. A week before his death, the rabbi charged that TV journalist Diane Sawyer, a former assistant in the Nixon press office, was "Deep Throat," the reputed source of Watergate information used by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward. Sawyer called the charge laughable.

Khalid Bakdash, head of Syria's Communist Party for over half a century, died in Damascus of a heart attack at the age of 83. He joined the Syrian Communist Party in 1930, and in 1954 was elected as the first Communist member of parliament in Syria and the Arab world. Imprisoned by several Syrian governments, he joined the ruling Ba'th coalition in 1972 and remained a member until his death.

Gen. Mordechai Gur, former Israeli deputy defense minister and commander of the Israeli troops who captured East Jerusalem in the June 1967 Six-Day War, died July 16 at the age of 65 at his home outside Tel Aviv of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had suffered for several years from terminal cancer. Born in Jerusalem in 1930, he joined an elite unit of Haganah, the pre-Israeli Jewish militia. As a paratrooper in the 1950s, he participated in cross-border reprisal raids. He served as army chief of staff from 1974-78, overseeing the 1976 rescue of hijack victims at Uganda's Entebbe Airport and the controversial 1978 invasion of southern Lebanon. He was elected to the Knesset in 1981 as a member of the Labor Party, serving as health minister from 1984-86 and minister-without-portfolio from 1988-90. He acted as a liaison with right-wing Israeli settlers, but said he would participate in talks with any Palestinians chosen in future self-rule elections.

Aziz Nesin, the prolific and controversial Turkish writer, died July 6 in Ankara of a heart attack at the age of 80. A satirist, leftist and atheist from a Muslim family, he angered Islamists by publishing excerpts from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Following a 1993 speech he gave at a conference in the Turkish town of Sivas, he survived when Islamic militants set fire to the hotel in which he was staying, killing 37 other conference participants.

Karim Sanjabi, an Iranian politician who opposed the governments of both the Shah and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died July 4 in exile at his home in Carbondale, IL at the age of 90. Born to the chief of the Kurdish tribe of Sanjabi in western Iran, he was sent by the Shah's government to study in Paris, where he earned a doctorate of law. As a law professor at Tehran University, he was associated with nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who was ousted in the 1951 U.S.- and British-backed coup which returned the Shah to power. Dr. Sanjabi became a leader of Iran's principal opposition party, the National Front, in the 1970s, and served as foreign minister under Ayatollah Khomeini's revolutionary government, but resigned after a series of summary trials and executions. He fled Iran in 1982.