Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November/December 1996, pages 62-64

California Chronicle

Islamic Center Director Addresses Town Meeting on Palestinian Uprising

by Pat and Samir Twair

On Sept. 24 when the Israelis secretly opened a second entrance to a tunnel abutting the foundations of Islam’s sacred Haram al-Sharif, it wasn’t to enable several hundred thousand tourists to walk annually through the subterranean chamber, but to give notice to Palestinian Christians and Muslims that Jerusalem is solely the property of the Israelis. So said Dr. Maher Hathout at a town hall meeting on the three-day uprising in Palestine.

The Islamic perspective and political options to the latest affront from the Likud government were discussed at the Oct. 9 session in the Islamic Center of Southern California. Dr. Hathout said that 35 mosques and Islamic centers in the area have joined forces since the tunnel incident, but town hall participants appeared surprised to learn of the systematic attacks on Haram al-Sharif since Israelis began their occupation of Arab East Jerusalem in 1967.

“After the Israelis confiscated the keys to the Western Gate of the city, there was wild celebrating and two days later, Friday prayer was forbidden Muslims for the first time since 1099 when the Crusaders conquered the city,” he said. To secular Jews, Jerusalem was the symbolic rallying point of Zionism, Dr. Hathout noted. To Jewish religious fanatics, it was the site where a third temple must be erected for the arrival of the messiah, and to do this the Islamic structures must be swept away. Hundreds of assaults on the holy site have since occurred the Israeli government always dismissing them as the work of mentally deranged individuals or extremist fringe groups. Nonetheless, even when attacks resulted in the deaths of Islamic faithful as in the case of Alan Goodman, an American-born Israeli soldier who murdered two and wounded more than 30 worshippers in 1982 the perpetrators soon are released from jail and free, as Goodman was on a recent 48-hour pass from prison, to seek entry into the third holiest shrine of Islam.

 “In June 1969, when the Australian Dennis Michael Rohan set the mihrab of al-Aqsa on fire, the Israelis dismissed his action as that of an insane person,” Dr. Hathout stated. The same explanation was offered five months later when the southeastern wall was scorched by right-wing arsonists.

Throughout the Israeli occupation, tunnels have been dug by messianic groups wanting to undermine the foundations of the Islamic structures and by the Israeli government seeking evidence of ancient Jewish occupation. “So far, they haven’t found any artifacts proving a second temple or a first temple were there, but they keep digging,” Dr. Hathout continued.

The Islamic Waqf is the religious body that owns and administers the Haram al-Sharifwhich the Jews call the Temple Mount. Beginning in March 1982, a campaign of threatening letters was pitched at the Waqf denying its authority and intimating violent death to its members.

Clandestine digging has endangered many structures including the partial collapse of the Rabat al-Kurd building and cracks in the walls of al-Juwhariya School. In March 1983, the entrance to the Waqf caved in. Encroachment on the site has never abated. On Aug. 21, 1985, Israeli police allowed Jews to pray on al-Haram. One year later, rabbis dedicated to asserting Jewish sovereignty over what they call the Temple Mount issued orders to build a synagogue on the site. In 1990, fanatic Jews announced plans to insert a cornerstone in the Islamic walls for the construction of the third temple. Riots broke out in which 17 unarmed Muslims were killed and hundreds more were machine-gunned by Israeli police. In July 1995, Israel’s high court of justice decreed that Jews can pray on al-Haram.

 “The Israelis have tried to make the Muslims look like unreasonable people who are rioting because of a tunnel,” Dr. Hathout concluded. “The tunnel was the final link in a long chain of efforts to compromise the symbol of an Islamic presence on the land. Muslims do not have a shrine mentality. It is not the dome, the rock or the mosque, but if they monopolize our history and our geography, it is the surrender of Muslim civilization to the Zionists.”

Dr. Gasser Hathout took a more political perspective to the latest crisis and outlined documentation that Israel systematically violates all Palestinian human rights through the practice of torture, collective punishment and right to a homeland. “We must make it clear to our elected officials that we understand the laws of the land and the U.S. government cannot legally send aid to countries who violate internationally established human rights,” he said.

 “Let’s get technical. Let’s look where Israel’s financial support is coming from. There is clear-cut evidence that Israel receives $1 billion annually in charitable donations that are tax-deductible for the donor. Yet similar donations to any other country are not tax-deductible. It is time to bring these issues up to the federal courts. Israel’s human rights abuses have been so flagrant for so long and the silence has been so great that everyone seems to have given up. Let’s take these issues to the authorities.”

Salam Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) commented that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is a radical Jewish fundamentalist in a suit and tie who uses American public relations techniques to camouflage the campaign to make Israel a pure Jewish state. He pointed out that after protests over the tunnel ignited Sept. 24, five Palestinians were killed and 300 more were wounded by Israeli bullets on Sept. 25. It was only on the third day that Palestinian police fired back, killing 11 Israelis. It was at this point that President Bill Clinton called for a summit in Washington.

 “Now the occupying force says its security is threatened,” he continued. “It is absurd to equate stones with bullets. The debate has been reduced to Palestinians carrying rifles.”

The discussion that followed called for a means to educate Americans on the facts of Jerusalem. Yet even if the Islamic Center were to produce a half-hour video on Jerusalem, it is doubtful it could get past opposition to show it in schools and other public places.

Demonstrations in L.A.

It did not take long for Los Angeles Arab and Muslim organizations to comprehend the deadly uprising sparked in Jerusalem and Palestine by the opening of the al-Aqsa tunnel. Within days, groups convened at the Arab Community Center, formed an Arab American Coalition for a Just Peace and decided to demonstrate Sept. 30 in front of the Los Angeles Israeli Consulate on Wilshire Boulevard.

The demonstration was back-to-back with a protest by Catholic Workers to free Mordachai Vanunu (held in solitary confinement by the Israeli government for releasing information on its Dimona nuclear installation). Three TV stations and the Associated Press were on hand to hear the statements protesting Israeli insensitivity to opening the tunnel and to the use by Israeli authorities of live ammunition, Cobra helicopter gunships and tanks to quell the civilian uprising.

On Oct. 1, another coalition marched in front of the Israeli Consulate protesting Zionist human rights violations and the opening of the tunnel.

Likud Victory Ends Palestinian Conductor’s Dream

 “This is craziness to go back in history and resume hitting our heads against a wall. I thought the days of Israeli leaders looking down on Palestinians was over.” stated Dr. Nabil Azzam as he put down the receiver from a phone call with Haifa, Israel. “They wanted to know when I was coming,” he explained. “How can I go back when the funds are uncertain and the Likud regime disregards the Palestinian population?”

Last year, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs reported on Dr. Azzam’s feat of being hired by the Israeli government to conduct the Galilee Orchestra in Nazareth. More than 90 percent of the musicians were Russian Jews who enjoyed working under the innovative Azzam, who received his doctorate in ethnomusicology from UCLA. A native of Nazareth, Azzam received a full scholarship to UCLA from Hebrew University. “I grew up debating politics with Israelis,” he quipped. “I would break out in a rash if I didn’t have my daily argument with an Israeli hard-liner.”

After the historic September 1993 handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, Azzam grew optimistic over a new Israel in which Palestinians would be granted some of the human dignity they deserve. In the United States, he accepted the offer to travel with the leading Israeli pop singer David Broza. “The chemistry worked from our first concert in Washington, DC with David singing his hit songs and me performing on the violin or oud to our final gig in San Francisco,” Azzam recalled.

Last April the Arabic Theatrical Group was opened in Haifa. Knesset member and Israeli Ministry of Culture and Art Shulamit Aloni was on hand for the opening of the Haifa theater. “Don’t think anyone is doing you a favor,” the left-wing Meretz party leader told her largely Palestinian audience, “you deserve this theater and the budget that goes with it.” The mood in the hall was incomparable, Azzam recalled: “The Israelis had nothing to fear from our cultural expression they seemed to relax.”

Azzam was to be the conductor of the Haifa Arabic Music Ensemble, but he noticed a different mood as the Israeli elections neared. One week before the May 29 elections, an official came to his home and said the Ministry of Education’s Division of Art and Culture was prepared to subsidize the orchestra in the same manner as a Jewish orchestra is subsidized. Nothing was said about what might happen if Likud were to win.

Likud won and Azzam returned to California in June, one week after the elections, to be with his family for the summer. Transcontinental phone calls have become commonplace for the composer-musician-conductor, but as the Netanyahu regime cracked down on Palestinian human rights, hopes dimmed that the Likud would allocate money to Palestinian schools or cultural projects.

“Even if the money was guaranteed,” Azzam frowned, “I would have to face my people and advocate the policies of the Likud. We couldn’t perform live concerts because of the imminent threat of violent clashes. Everything would have to be in a recording studio or TV station. I couldn’t take an orchestra of Russian Jews to perform in Egypt.”

The man who one year ago said he “welcomed a smaller income and the opportunity to develop new Arabic music in Israel/Palestine over earning a larger salary in the U.S. and teaching American kids to play the oud” has had to put his dream on hold.

“The atmosphere of hope is gone, Netanyahu has thrown everything away,” he stated.

Nonetheless, diminished hopes and loss of an immediate income seem to have stimulated the creative juices within this fiery artist. Working with local musicians, Azzam has invented a new form of music which he calls mutlak, a fast rhythmic composition for an instrument in interaction with an ensemble. He also has composed a work, entitled “Izzat Gaza” (The Glory in Gaza), and is midway through an opera entitled “Al Sahib al Deke” (The Man and the Rooster).

His nationalistic dream of creating a new Arabic music form may not come true in Palestine. Already, however, he is is collaborating with serious Arab-American musicians in California, so maybe Israel’s loss is America’s gain.

IIS honors Edward Said, John Esposito

Obviously overcome at strides the American Islamic community has made in three decades, Dr. John Esposito paused and cleared his throat as he accepted the third annual Outreach Award of the Islamic Information Service (IIS). Scholar Edward Said was to have received a twin award, but illness prevented him from attending the ceremonies in the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel.

Esposito, who heads the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, recalled that he once told ABC TV’s “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel that both of them owe their careers to Iran’s late Ayatollah Khomeini. He explained that in the five years after he received his doctorate in Islamic studies, only four of his articles were printed and three of them were published in the Muslim world. However, in the five weeks after the U.S. Embassy staff was taken hostage in Teheran in 1979, he received three book contracts and has since published 80 articles on the Islamic world. Koppel, in the meantime, began to host a late night special, “America Held Hostage,” that evolved into “Nightline.”

A downside of the Iranian Revolution, Esposito noted, is that the West has come to look at the Muslim world as a threat. “The plus side is the explosion of information on Islam and that texts dealing with Islam are being re-examined by teachers who have been properly trained in the workings of Islam.”

Citing the progress Islam has made in the United States, Esposito said there now are Muslim chaplains in the military, Muslim U.S. government officials, and Muslim Americans have been guests in the White House.

“The growth of Islam in the U.S. has been phenomenal,” he continued. “We no longer talk about the Muslim world and the West because the capitals of Islam now are in Detroit, New York and Los Angeles. Some would argue creative thought about Muslim tenets can take place more freely here than in traditional Islamic centers.”

The challenge, he said, is to make Muslim youth feel comfortable about being Muslim in an American context. The task is to train the next generation in all fields, not just law or medicine. It would be sad if the next generation of Muslims would be like many American Christians and Jews who love their religion but don’t know much about it, he warned.

“If Jews and Christians need to know about Islam, Muslims equally need to know about Judaism and Christianity. This is a new period and it is up to you to invite your non-Muslim neighbors into your homes. Make the other feel like the other.”

The IIS airs the television show “Islam” in more than 100 cities in the U.S. and abroad and produces educational videos on Islam.