Articles
December 2011, Pages 44-45
Southern California Chronicle
Diana Buttu Addresses Palestine Children's Relief Fund "Healing Hands" Benefit
By Pat and Samir Twair
Harvard University Law School Fellow Diana Buttu was the keynote speaker at the Palestine Children's Relief Fund's (PCRF) annual Southern California chapter's "Healing Hands" benefit dinner Sept. 24 in the Anaheim Hilton Hotel. Before an audience of more than 450 people, she discussed the significance of the Palestinian bid for admission to the United Nations as a member state.
In the third week of September, Buttu noted, the Palestinians took center stage in the world media without a massacre or invasion of their shrinking land by one single act: a simple request for recognition by the U.N. as a member state.
In response, U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rushed to insist statehood can only be achieved through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
"Isn't it odd that Israel, who has a stockpile of nuclear weapons and the lion's share of U.S. aid, suddenly begs PA leader Mahmoud Abbas to sit down and negotiate?" Buttu asked rhetorically. "Could it be Netanyahu experienced a dramatic turn-around?"
"If statehood won't be significant, why these pleas to Abbas to negotiate?" she added. "Israel reaps all the benefits from pretending to negotiate."
Buttu went on to note how the Oslo peace process brought Israel recognition from 34 countries, its greatest economic boost, and the PA's collaboration in policing the Palestinians—all while it built new settlements on Palestinian land.
While statehood would bring the Palestinians the right to seek redress of illegal Israeli settlements on their land, Buttu said, Abbas excluded Palestinians in the diaspora from his statehood bid. Concluding that "the negative outweighs the positive for statehood," Buttu argued that the solution is to demand better representation in municipal and parliamentary elections and within the PLO. The last time the PA parliament met was in 2007, she pointed out. "We need to bring life to a lifeless system. Reconciliation [with Hamas] has been on hold. We need a genuine reconciliation."
PCRF/Southern California President Lily Karam announced that since its foundation in 1991, the organization has brought 1,000 injured children to the West for medical treatment and cared for more than 7,000 ill youngsters in the Middle East, sends medical teams to Palestine, and has recently opened a pediatric cancer ward in Beit Jala hospital and a cardiac ICU in East Jerusalem's Makassat Hospital.
She then introduced three children newly arrived from Gaza who will receive treatment in the U.S.: Ahmad Bassem al-Saloul, 8, who suffers from a congenital hip deformity, and burn victims Hala, 11, and Fatma al-Najjar, 10.
Irvine 11 Found Guilty
There was an emotional reaction by Muslims and Zionists alike in the Santa Ana courthouse Sept. 23 when Judge Peter J. Wilson announced that, after two days of deliberation, a jury had found the Irvine 11 guilty of criminal charges for disrupting a February 2010 speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at the University of California at Irvine.
The judge did not sentence the students—some of whom are headed to medical school and graduate studies at prestigious institutions—to jail time, however. Instead, each was fined about $200, ordered to perform 56 hours of community service before Jan. 21, 2012, and put on probation for three years.
Their crime? The Muslim students each nonviolently interrupted the speech of the American-born Israeli ambassador in an auditorium full of Israel supporters. As each student voiced his objection to Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians, video cameras recorded the ranting of Israel-firsters who threatened mayhem against the dignified dissenters as they were handcuffed.
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has never prosecuted students who interrupted classes or destroyed UCI property during other protests, but, mindful of the political power of affluent Zionists, did press charges against the Muslim students. The litigation gave rise to a national debate on free speech rights that will last for decades and be the topic of future books, films and documentaries.
UCI law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky described the charges as draconian and said it was a shame that the students now have misdemeanor convictions on their records. Others accused Rackauckas of political grandstanding.
"You can heckle the U.S. president [or] high-ranking government officials," commented Salam al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, "but if you heckle an Israeli diplomat you will be prosecuted."
U.S. Diplomat Optimistic About Post-Assad Syrian Government
According to Frederic C. Hof, a senior State Department adviser on U.S. policy toward Syria,"The challenge now for the opposition is to convince millions of Syrians of what a post-Bashar Syria will look like so they'll get off the fence." Hof was speaking at a Sept. 24 Syrian American Council meeting in the Anaheim Hilton.
"I'm here to help," he said, explaining that his lifelong attachment to Syria began as a 17-year-old foreign exchange student who was welcomed into the Damascus home of Issa and Rose Lutfi.
The diplomat emphasized President Barack Obama's commitment to a democratic Syrian government ruled by the consent of the people as cemented in the president's Sept. 18 call for Bashar Assad to "step down."
"Who and how Syria will be governed will be decided by the Syrian people," Hof stated. "They will devise their own formula tailored to their needs."
He declined to predict how long it will be before the Assad regime falls, but added that, despite the fact that his security forces remain intact, the Syrian leader is living in a bubble, unaware that the revolution is beyond his control.
Hof concluded by remarking that the cost in deaths and injuries has been unconscionably high for the opposition.
Poet and University of Arkansas professor Mohja Kahf gave a stirring description of Syrian women's role in the movement to achieve freedom. "This is a revolution born of love and nonviolence," she averred. "The armed effort to resist Hafez Assad failed in the 1980s. This revolution has a nonviolent morality born among women in Daraa, Daraiya and Homs."
In December 2010, Kahf explained, schoolchildren in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, inspired by the uprising in Tunisia, wrote anti-Assad graffiti on walls. Government police arrested 35 students and jailed them in Damascus.
"It was in January and February that women concerned over the imprisoned students pre-heated the revolution," Kahf told the audience of 200 Syrian exiles. On March 16, she noted, mothers staged a rally demanding the return of their children. Eighteen women were arrested and jailed, and the Syrian revolution of nonviolence began.
"Women rock the Syrian revolution!" Kahf shouted to cheers.
Dr. Najib Ghadban, who teaches political science at the University of Arkansas, discussed the Syrian National Council (SNC) officially formed Sept.15 in Istanbul, which is an umbrella for all Syrian opposition blocs inside and out of the country. Its 140 members represent all sects, religions and tribes, women and men, regardless of social status, he said, and described its three principles as being to overthrow the Assad dictatorship by nonviolent means, recognize all Syrians on an equal footing, and reject all foreign military intervention.
During the question-and-answer period, an audience member complained that Washington has been too soft on Syria for killing its citizens who demonstrate against the regime.
"There has been no secret handshake," Hof responded, "or I wouldn't be here in the service of the U.S. government. I fully expect Bashar will soon be an ex-president. There is a crying need for international protection of civilians and," he emphasized, "the revolution must continue to be nonviolent. The regime wants to do its crimes in the dead of night—that's why we must have international witnesses and the press inside Syria."
AAJA Focuses on Middle East
Munira Syeda of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Washington Report Southern California correspondent Samir Twair joined Asian journalists Linh Van Nguyen and Gwen Muranaka as panelists at a Sept. 10 ethnic community roundtable sponsored by the Asian American Association in a Los Angeles Korean restaurant. The emcee was Henry Fuhrman, assistant managing editor of the Los Angeles Times.
According to Syeda, who is communications manager of CAIR/LA, there are an estimated 7 to 10 million Muslims in the U.S. She described 9/11 as a double tragedy for the Muslim community, which mourned the loss of 3,000 Americans in the terrorist attack but also was cast as the enemy. It was the Japanese-American leadership who immediately called mosques and offered support during tense times following 9/11, she noted.
Asked to assess Arab-American newspapers, Twair said each reflects the political stance of the country its publisher is from. The Internet is replacing these papers as a source of news from the Arab world, he added, and since most of the new generation don't read Arabic, these publications likely will die out. On the other hand, Twair said, the Washington Report covers political events related to the Middle East which generally are ignored by the American establishment media.
Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.
