ADL’s Unconvincing Charges Against Salam Al-Marayati

By Rachelle Marshall

One of Salam Al-Marayati’s accomplishments as director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and member of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission was to win the respect and admiration of the many Jewish political and religious leaders who worked with him to promote human rights and religious tolerance. But Al-Marayati’s close ties with the Jewish community of Los Angeles did not deter the zealots of the AntiDefamation League, the Zionist Organization of America, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations from protesting his appointment last June to the National Commission on Terrorism. Rep. Richard Gephardt, who had made the appointment, promptly withdrew it.

The next day the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) faxed a memorandum to its member agencies across the country listing statements by Al-Marayati compiled by the Anti-Defamation League as evidence that he “was not an appropriate participant” on the commission on terrorism. ADL complained that AlMarayati had criticized the Counterterrorism Act of 1995 for not addressing the roots of terrorism, had called starving the children of Iraq by means of sanctions “a terrible act of terrorism,” and had condemned the bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan by the United States. Also, according to ADL, Al-Marayati compared supporters of Israel with Hitler. Last on ADL’s list was Al-Marayati’s claim that the United States “is in full partnership with Israel. Where Israel goes, our government follows.”

The JCPA memo included quotes from a series of editorials harshly critical of Israel in The Minaret, a magazine published by the Islamic Center of Southern California. Al-Marayati serves on the editorial board but did not necessarily approve the editorials.

By coincidence, on the same day the JCPA memorandum was sent, a three-quarter page advertisement sponsored by FLAME (Facts and Logic about the Middle East), appeared in the Northern California Jewish Bulletin. The text began: “Josef Goebbels, the infamous propaganda minister of the Nazis, had it just right. Just tell people big lies often enough and they will believe them. The Arabs have learned that lesson well. They have swayed world opinion by endlessly repeating myths and lies that have no basis in fact.” The ad concluded: “The web of lies and myths that the Arab propaganda machine has created plays an important role in the unrelenting quest to destroy Israel.” It is not hard to imagine the cries of outrage that would come from ADL and ZOA if, in a similar ad, the words “Jews” or “Israelis” were used instead of “Arabs,” or if “Palestinians” replaced “Israel” in the last sentence. Yet FLAME regularly places virulently anti-Arab ads in the Bulletin and other magazines without arousing any protest from these watchdogs of human rights.

A Troubling Charge

The only charge against Al-Marayati that is troubling is that the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which he heads, was the only Arab organization to defend the French writer Roger Garaudy when he was fined by the French government for declaring that the Holocaust was a hoax. Al-Marayati has devoted much effort to reducing tensions between Muslims and Jews, and since the Holocaust is a sensitive subject to almost all Jews it would seem wiser for a Muslim organization to leave the defense of Garaudy to civil liberties groups.

Otherwise, ADL’s charge sheet against Al-Marayati reveals him to be an unusually perceptive and compassionate human being. In his statements on terrorism cited by ADL, Al-Marayati calls on Congress to “address the roots of extremism.” He “mourns the loss of innocent lives, whether they be Christian, Jewish or Muslim,” but lays much of the blame for the violence on Israel’s occupation of Palestine and Lebanon. “Because the Palestinian people have no avenues to redress their grievances,” he wrote after the bombing of a Tel Aviv cafe, “some of them have been pushed beyond the margins of society and have adopted violent reactions to express their despair and suffering.” According to ZOA President Morton Klein, these statements “justified Arab terrorism against Israel,” but in fact, as long as Al-Marayati’s message is ignored and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain condemned to live in squalid refugee camps, where sewage flows in the streets and there is no hope of jobs or a future, outbreaks of violence are inevitable.

ADL’s charge sheet reveals Al-Marayati as unusually perceptive and compassionate.

Al-Marayati’s condemnations of U.N. sanctions against Iraq and the U.S. bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan, which ADL finds offensive, only point out the obvious. If terrorism consists of committing violence against an innocent population in order to send a political message, why isn’t it also terrorism to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians by denying them clean water and adequate food and medicine, in an effort to punish their dictator? If the terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa were unconscionable, why wasn’t it also unconscionable for the United States to bomb a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that produced much needed drugs and antibiotics?

ADL accuses Al-Marayati of comparing apologists for Israel with Hitler, but in fact he only pointed out that they use a tactic similar to Hitler’s by encouraging divisiveness. The quote came at the end of an article by Al-Marayati in the Washington Report (“The Rising Tide of Hostile Stereotyping of Islam,” p. 27, June 1994) in which he compared the wave of anti-Muslim sentiment following the World Trade Center bombing (which he condemned) to the anti-Semitism in Europe during the 19th century. In the same article he also quoted statements by several contemporary Jewish writers and Israeli leaders who attack Islam as a religion that promotes violence against nonMuslims. “Just as Hitler forged a conflict between Judaism and Christianity,” AlMarayati wrote, “apologists for Israel crave for Islam to be at odds with both Judaism and Christianity.” He concluded his article by asking Americans “to recognize that those who choose to break the law do so as individuals, not as adherents or representatives of any religion.”

It is worth noting that it is Jewish extremists, not Muslim leaders, who equate their Israeli adversaries with the Nazis. A few weeks before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a poster went up in downtown Jerusalem depicting him in the uniform of a Nazi officer. Rabin was accused by many right-wing Israelis of committing a crime equivalent to the extermination of Jews by promising to return some West Bank territory. Jewish zealots made an even grosser reference to the Holocaust last February, when TheNew York Times reported that a group of American Reform rabbis who were attempting to pray at the Western Wall were surrounded by a hundred Orthodox yeshiva students who shouted, “go back to Germany to be exterminated!”

Al-Marayati’s assertion that “our government is in full partnership with Israel,” which ADL and ZOA find objectionable, is a simple statement of fact. Why else have successive U.S. presidents, along with Congress, declared it their goal to maintain Israel’s “qualitative and quantitative military superiority” over its neighbors by providing Israel with at least $4 billion a year in military and economic aid—nearly a third of the foreign aid budget? Why else does the United States frequently stand alone with Israel (and Micronesia) and against almost the entire membership of the U.N. in voting against resolutions condemning Israel’s violations of international law? Why else does Israelenjoy fervent support in Congress, many of whose members refer to Israel as “our strategic ally?”

The final proof of Al-Marayati’s statement is the fact that his appointment to the National Commission on Terrorism was withdrawn. In one of the editorials from The Minaret that ADL claims are guilty of “bashing Israel” the editor points out that despite the intense concern in the United States about the threat of terrorism, Muslim Americans have been deliberately excluded from official deliberations on the subject. Salam Al-Marayati is eminently qualified to take part in these deliberations. Unfortunately he has been denied the opportunity to do so because of the determination of a few Jewish leaders to silence any criticism of Israel, and the willingness of Congress to do their bidding.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.