Author Archives: Hussein Ibish

David Horowitz Acknowledges Charges against Ibish are a “Fraud,” Issues Public Apology, Retraction

Columnist David Horowitz has publicly apologized to Hussein Ibish, Communications Director of the American- Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), for publishing false claims by that he had secretly celebrated the 9/11 attacks on the United States. In his latest column Horowitz’ website FrontPageMagazine.com, entitled “An Apology to Hussein Ibish,” Horowitz writes that “Hussein Ibish is rightly upset that the letter from the alleged ‘Saudi Citizen’ contains what are in his words ‘false accusations’ which ‘constitute not only a vicious and absurd slander, but also an incitement to violence against me.'” Horowitz’ apology can be read online.

Horowitz’ March 15 column, based on an unsigned “letter from a Saudi citizen,” presented unattributed claims that a Saudi individual was with Dr. Ibish on Sept. 11 and that he was “cheering and singing” in private before denouncing the attacks on TV. Horowitz prefaced the unsigned letter with a note saying that “I have no way of knowing whether it is authentic, but its particulars seem accurate to me.”

Horowitz writes today that “The fraudulent nature of the claim in the ‘Saudi’ letter (at least insofar as it may have been intended to refer to this Hussein Ibish) was brought to my attention on the evening of the day it was posted (Friday March 15) by my friend Christopher Hitchens, whose word on this matter as far as I am concerned is conclusive. I received Christopher’s e-mail Friday night when I returned from a weeklong trip to the Northeast and immediately sent an e-mail apology to Hussein Ibish.”

Horowitz cites “political disagreements” with ADC, Ibish and Hitchens, but affirms that “these are irrelevant to the fact that this is a matter of a man‘s character and reputation, and it is important to set the record straight. I have therefore removed the letter from our site and am taking this occasion to make a public apology.”

On Friday, Joseph Farrah, editor and CEO of WorldNetDaily.com which had linked to the March 15 column, wrote to ADC that the website offered “an immediate retraction.”

“We do apologize for any bad judgment made in linking to material that may be incorrect or wrongly injurious,” Farrah added.

What Went Wrong in the Arab World? Ask Yourself

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/nov/25/opinion/op-8094

A growing chorus of American and Israeli voices is demanding that the Arab world engage in some serious introspection. Such self-criticism is clearly warranted. However, those handing down this prescription may not care for the results, and they are badly in need of a dose of the same medicine themselves.

There is no doubt that the state of political, social and economic malaise and stagnation in the Arab world generally demands self-examination. For decades, the Arab world has been dominated by repressive and parochial regimes that have failed to mine the region’s only great resource, its people. Public discourse all too often is stultified. Dissent is regarded as treason. Education is reduced to a third-rate patronage racket. And religious bullying is tolerated, even encouraged.

Under such circumstances, social and national consciousness withers. Politics becomes the art of back-room manipulation, and political discourse becomes paranoid and given to the most absurd conspiracy theories. Worst of all, absent a functional political process, people seeking change are easily driven to various forms of extremism.

Westerners demanding Arab introspection seem to expect that this will mean the adoption of their perspectives. However, a truly empowered and dynamic Arab public would surely demand not only stronger and more direct support for the Palestinians but also would raise serious questions about the level and role of American military and corporate presence.

It would insist on using the region’s natural resources in a very different manner. It would mean the assertion of Arab national interests in a manner not seen in many decades and which has been regarded as threatening in the past. It would not, and could not, mean greater subordination to the interests of others.

Israelis and their supporters, who lead the calls for Arab introspection, are in no position to do so. Israeli society is engaged in an extended exercise in neurotic denial about the basic facts of its own brief history, which remain a largely repressed scene of national trauma.

Israel proceeds as if it had not violently wrested control and ownership of all its territory from the Palestinians. Worse, it is utterly blind to the nature of its relationship with the Palestinians living under Israeli military rule and the effects its actions have on the people it is abusing and killing.

In truth, Israel acts as a predatory, 19th century-style colonial power toward the Palestinians, and yet it insists on seeing itself as democratic and equitable.

Never, for the sake of its own future, was a society more desperately in need of introspection, not to mention a simple reality check.

Which brings us to the United States.

The whole world has a stake in American introspection, but we seem to be perfect postmodern subjects, incapable of even the most basic kind of historical memory.

Each international crisis is treated as if it had no context whatever, at least no context involving ourselves, which prevents us from learning any lessons from the past. Our current bout of willful amnesia involves forgetting the role we played in promoting right-wing Muslim extremism in Afghanistan and throughout the Islamic world over many decades.

Americans denounce the “foreign invaders” in Afghanistan, but who sent them there? Who launched the first great global jihad? Whose massive covert war resulted in the collapse of all forms of civil society in Afghanistan, which led to the rise of the Taliban?

The most dreaded word in Washington is “blowback.”

What we in the U.S. are forgetting is the long history of American and British promotion of the most right-wing Muslim politics as a counter to socialism and nationalism in the Arab world. We call for democracy and openness in the Arab world, but our government steadfastly opposes everything that tends in that direction. We seem unaware that the contemporary Middle East is as much the product of our own meddling, and that of France and Britain, as it is of any local forces.

“I’m amazed that people would hate us,” remarked President Bush, “because I know how good we are.” A discourse that casts the American role in the world as simply “good” and acknowledges none of our own self-interested brutalities and exploitations is profoundly dangerous to the entire planet.

Arab introspection is urgently required, but given the current state of affairs, everybody needs a hard look in the mirror.

Orwell Would Revel in “Collateral Damage”

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/apr/09/local/me-48764

Timothy McVeigh, who is scheduled to be executed May 16, has solidified his position as the poster boy of cold-blooded villainy. The Oklahoma City bomber has once again outraged the American public when he described the 19 dead children among his 168 victims as “collateral damage” in an interview.

Although it scarcely seemed possible, this appalling comment has made McVeigh an even more despised figure in American society. It produced widespread and justified expressions of revulsion and anger at his lack of regard for even the most innocent of his victims.

There is no doubt that McVeigh is an exceptionally malevolent and brutal criminal. Yet the rest of us may not be as distant from his propensity to rationalize the killing of innocents as we prefer to believe. All too often, good people allow themselves to believe that the end justifies the means, that “war is hell.” Or they find some other means to dismiss the deaths of those who did nothing to deserve being killed.

It is worth recalling where McVeigh got this chillingly antiseptic phrase “collateral damage.” It was coined by the Pentagon during the Gulf War to describe the deaths of innocent Iraqis during the massive bombing campaign in 1991 and was an attempt to obscure and rationalize these deaths through Orwellian jargon.

“Collateral damage” during the Gulf War included, in only one instance, 313 people incinerated at the Amiriya bomb shelter in western Baghdad, which was deliberately attacked.

When asked about the extent of Iraqi casualties toward the end of the Gulf War, then-military Chief of Staff Colin Powell blandly remarked: “That is really not a matter I am terribly interested in.”

Indeed, it is not a matter that has ever seemed to concern too many Americans. The same applies to the effects of sanctions on innocent Iraqi civilians over the past decade. Asked by an interviewer if the deaths of 500,000, not 19, Iraqi children because of sanctions could possibly be justified, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright did not dispute the figure or the causality, but instead simply remarked: “We think the price is worth it.”

McVeigh was a gunner on a Bradley fighting vehicle during the Gulf War and told his relatives that “after the first time, it got easy” to kill Iraqis. It is possible that by invoking the awful phrase “collateral damage,” McVeigh is not only repeating a rhetorical device for denial he learned in the military service, but he is actually taunting the government, and even society at large, for its own propensity for callous indifference.

“Collateral damage” also was invoked to describe the effects of attacks on civilian passenger trains, refugee convoys and the headquarters of Radio Television Serbia during the war in Kosovo.

And who remembers, or ever even cared about, the night watchman killed during the missile attack on the Shifa factory in Sudan, a facility no one now denies was simply making badly needed medicines, not chemical weapons?

Of course, these psychological defenses are not confined to U.S. society. They approach a depressing universality. To take another example, the process of rationalizing the deaths of innocents is clearly evident on both sides of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Objections from Americans that the Gulf and Kosovo wars were “just,” from Palestinians that liberation must be achieved “by any means necessary” or from Israelis that they must ensure their security “at all costs” merely illustrate how the process of rationalization actually works. Once we begin to accept the pernicious notion that the ends justify the means, a callous moral blindness is the inevitable result.

Panicked Israelis Have Elected a War Criminal

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/feb/08/local/me-22706

As if things weren’t bad enough already, Israelis have now elected Ariel Sharon, of all people, to become their new prime minister.

Sharon enters office promising to ignore the agreements he inherits, strengthen and solidify the occupation and crush all forms of Palestinian protest and resistance. Should Palestinians persist in their rock-throwing protests against the occupation, he warns, Israel will move quickly to impose “unilateral separation,” annex large chunks of the occupied territories and place a permanent siege on Palestinian population centers.

Much of the world views his election with justified dread and revulsion. After all, Sharon’s blood-spattered resume is so grim that, were he a Serb or a Rwandan, the world would surely be preparing to haul him in front of an international war crimes tribunal rather than recognizing him as the leader of a U.N. member state. The existence of Israeli military contingency plans, in case conditions deteriorate significantly–for everything from retaking Palestinian cities in the West Bank to large-scale ethnic cleansing throughout the occupied territories–only add to deep international unease.

It’s not just Sharon’s massacres–such as Sabra and Shatila in 1982, Gaza in the early 1970s and Qibya in the 1950s–that prompt deep anxiety. His whole career is marked by a willingness to use extreme brutality against unarmed people, not only without moral restraint but even without any sense of how counterproductive it can be for his country and career. His political style is marked by reckless individualism and an unwillingness to cooperate with or inform colleagues, so that the normal checks and restraints of government seldom have any effect on his actions.

 

Handing power to such a man at this moment, when Israel is already using excessive force to suppress the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories, is exceptionally dangerous.

When challenged to “let the army win” in the West Bank, Prime Minister Ehud Barak explained that while Israel has the military power to kill 2,000 Palestinians in one day, it does not do so because this would only make matters worse. Sharon is the one Israeli political figure who might conclude that since Barak’s tactics of shooting demonstrators, rocketing houses and murdering political leaders have not ended the uprising, another massacre ought to be given a chance.

Yet this darkest of clouds may well have a substantial silver lining. Israel under Sharon will almost certainly be held to a different and more acceptable standard of behavior than was applied to Barak’s government. Barak was treated by the U.S. government and in the media as a dove of peace who could do no wrong. The shooting of hundreds of unarmed demonstrators–many of them children–the cold-blooded assassinations, the frantic settlement activity and the refusal to abide by agreements under his leadership did not produce any significant criticism of Israel. Sharon can expect to be subjected to a kind of American scrutiny from which Barak was immune.

More important from an Arab point of view, Sharon’s election ought to be the catalyst, at long last, for a unified and coordinated Arab stance against Israel’s brutal reaction to the Palestinian uprising. In particular, Egypt and Jordan should inform Israel that there is a very real diplomatic price to be paid for shooting down hundreds of unarmed Palestinians and refusing to end the occupation.

And, in the end, it is the occupation that this election is all about. Many feel that the election of a man most Israelis have long regarded as, at best, a loose cannon and embarrassment is a clear sign of panic. This is widely misinterpreted as fear of violent Palestinian demonstrations, but the fact is that these demonstrations have almost all taken place in the occupied territories, far from Israel’s population centers. The panic results more from the shattering of an illusion held dear since 1993, that Israel can have peace without really ending the occupation. The violence in the streets has disabused them of this.

Barak’s proposals, after all, offered the Palestinians not genuine statehood and liberation but a kind of super-autonomy, with Israel retaining permanent control of all the borders, most of the water and much of the land of the West Bank and abrogating the rights of the Palestinian refugees. The Palestinians are correct in rejecting such a future of subordination and dependency. They have confronted Israelis with the choice they are unable and unwilling to make–a choice between peace and occupation. The realization by Israelis that they simply cannot have both has come as a profound and existential shock and produced the panic that elected a war criminal.

The Palestinians Must Have a Right of Return

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jan/12/local/me-11353

President Clinton’s formula for Israeli-Palestinian peace is predicated on an unworkable and disastrous concept: that the world’s largest group of refugees should renounce their basic human rights.

The Clinton plan proposes that–in exchange for a partial Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 and the creation of a Palestinian “state” that lacks contiguity, control of its own borders and natural resources and is subject to unprecedented restrictions on its “sovereignty”–Palestinians renounce the right of millions refugees to return to their homes in what is now the state of Israel.

The ironies are almost overwhelming. In 1999, the Clinton administration led NATO into a brutal war with Yugoslavia in the name of enforcing the right of return for the Kosovar refugees. The same American officials and media pundits who thundered then about the inviolability of refugee rights and the immorality of dispossession and forced exile now demand that Palestinians drop their “unrealistic demands” about refugee rights. These principles, held to be both sacred and a justification for international military intervention, are now dismissed as a fantasy, a ploy and an insidious plot to destroy Israel.

Consider also the barefaced racism in the juxtaposition between Israel’s Law of Return and its opposition to the Palestinian right of return. Since its founding, Israel has opened its borders, and those of the occupied Palestinian territories, to anyone it considers Jewish, but has steadfastly refused to allow Palestinians to return to their own homes and lands simply on the grounds that they are not Jewish.

Without in any way denigrating the profound attachment that Jews around the world feel for the land of Israel, it is important to note that the concepts of return expressed in the Law of Return and the right of return are fundamentally different. The return expressed in the Law of Return–every Jew has the right to immigrate to Israel–is to a generalized area of religious and historic importance to the Jewish people. In sharp contrast, the right of return for Palestinians is not religious or ancestral, but is attached to specific homes and land in specific villages to which many Palestinian refugees hold legal deeds.

President Clinton is essentially asking Palestinians to forget about their homes and property and adopt a Zionist-like attitude that would see “return” as satisfied by physical presence in any part of historic Palestine. This formulation is a grand betrayal of the basic human right of refugees to return to their homes.

The right of return is guaranteed to all refugees by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Fourth Geneva Convention. After their expulsion in 1948, it was specifically applied to the Palestinian refugees in U.N. Resolution 194, which demands that ” the refugees wishing to return to their homes” should be permitted to do so.

Indeed, the Geneva Convention prohibits the renunciation of rights that Israel and the U.S. are trying to force the Palestinians to accept. Drafted in the aftermath of World War II, the Convention recognizes that a conqueror is often able to force a subjugated people to sign away their rights. Therefore Article 8 forbids any renunciation, in whole or in part, of any of the rights it guarantees.

This is perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Clinton plan–not the disregard it shows for the rights and interests of the Palestinian refugees themselves, or the flawed notion that “peace” and reconciliation can be based on a massive denial, indeed a renunciation, of human rights, but the deep damage it does to the very concept of universal human rights.

Fifty years ago, after the Nazi rampage in Europe, the human family committed to outlining a set of basic human rights inherent to all individuals. The Universal Declaration, Geneva Convention and Resolution 194 were all adopted in this context. However imperfect our collective efforts at enforcing these rights have been, the international community at least upheld our commitment to them in principle.

The rights of refugees, above all the right of return, are central and indispensable elements of universal human rights. It is tragic and appalling that the start of the 21st century should see the U.S. leading an effort to coerce an entire people to renounce this right.

A workable Israeli-Palestinian peace must ensure not only a viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem and the right of Israel to live in peace in secure borders, but must also recognize the right of return. The specific modalities of return are a separate matter, to be determined through negotiations and mutual agreement, but the right itself must be recognized.

If their right of return is permanently abrogated, Palestinian refugees will not be the only ones to suffer. Humanity in general would be deeply impoverished if we start renouncing and repudiating rights long since upheld as inviolable, and our slow and painful quest to build a world that provides equal protection to all people will be dealt a crippling blow.

To Stop the Violence, End the Occupation

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/oct/18/local/me-38207

The explosion of anger that has rocked the cities of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories was predictable and inevitable. The latest “cease-fire” agreement–as if this has been a conflict between two armies–is unlikely to produce anything more than a temporary lull in the protests. The Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza is the violent context that makes such protests inevitable. There is, in the final analysis, only one way to “stop the violence,” and that is to end the occupation.

The desire for liberation will, eventually, always bring an occupied people out into the streets, stones in hand, ready to face the might of powerful armies, preferring to risk death than live in bondage. This is not extreme nationalism or racism or religious fervor. It is the need to be free.

Americans seem stunned by the uprising, but few have any real grasp of what living under Israeli military occupation since 1967 has meant for Palestinians.

It means a reality of unending violence. It means being surrounded by an abusive foreign army that enforces a social system indistinguishable from apartheid; confiscations of land that is then given to hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in Jewish-only communities linked by Jewish-only roads; home demolitions; torture; cities cut off from each other, closed down, besieged on a regular basis. It means living in a massive prison, bereft of all normal civil, human and national rights.

The seeds that produced the new uprising were sown seven years ago at the White House Rose Garden. If American foreign policy lies in ruins, it is because it was based on a fundamentally false premise: that the Palestinians would accept something less than their own freedom. At Camp David this summer, the Palestinians were told bluntly they could expect nothing of the kind. Israel, they were told, would keep large chunks of the occupied territories, including the Old City of Jerusalem; would continue to control all the borders and the water; and would have a veto on many policies of their “state,” the territories of which would be a patchwork lacking any geographical coherence. This, they were told, was “generous” and the best they could ever get from any Israeli. In other words, forget about liberation.

The predictable result was the massive uprising of recent days.

Since 1967, there has been only one workable solution to the conflict. The plan is articulated in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which sets up a two-part “land for peace” solution. Part one holds that Israel must withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967 (land). Part two calls for all states in the region to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries (peace).

Every “peace process” document, from the Madrid Summit to the final Camp David communique, reiterates that the aim of the negotiations is the implementation of 242. The Palestinian obligations under 242 were fulfilled years ago. The Palestinian Authority recognized Israel in its 1967 borders and its right to live in peace and security in those borders.

The Israeli obligation, withdrawal from the occupied territories, is utterly unfulfilled. Any doubts that the occupation continues in all its grim brutality were irrefutably demonstrated in recent days. Israel simply refuses to end its occupation, especially of Jerusalem, as Ariel Sharon’s invasion of the Muslim holy site was intended to show. The original sin of the U.S.-dominated Oslo process is that it pushed aside international law and the U.N. in an attempt to provide cover for Israel to avoid complying with 242. We have witnessed the results of this shortsightedness over the past weeks. The latest agreement in Egypt continues this fatal error by allowing the United States to monopolize the international investigation into recent events.

But 242 is a solemn commitment by the international community to the Palestinian people. It is the key to security for Israel, liberation for the Palestinians and peace for the Middle East. Until the international community, including the United States, seriously commits itself to ensuring the complete implementation of 242 by all parties, and ending the occupation, the “peace process” is going to keep producing results that look a lot more like war.

Know Now That Arab Lives Are as Worthy as Israelis’

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/may/26/local/me-34292

As the Lebanese people have finally liberated themselves from more than two decades of Israeli occupation, most American commentators are reacting with only one concern: Will northern Israel be safe from attack?

The focus on this misleading question is the result of a widespread acceptance of the official Israeli line that its 22-year rampage in southern Lebanon was in essence a futile quest for peace in a hostile region. This view is consistent with the pattern of putting Israeli lives and concerns over those of Arabs, but it is completely inconsistent with the history of the occupation and the experiences of its Lebanese victims.

It is blind to the tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians killed by Israel during the occupation, the hundreds of thousands made homeless and the scores of destroyed villages and cities. It forgets the ghastly massacres of unarmed civilians for which the Israelis have been responsible in Lebanon, including the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and the U.N. base at Qana. It ignores the Lebanese civilians held hostage to this day in Israeli prisons and the hundreds of Lebanese men, women and children held prisoner and tortured at the notorious Khiam detention center run by the Israeli-controlled militia, the South Lebanese Army. It does not acknowledge the pain of the Lebanese nation at being divided for almost a quarter of a century and subject to continuous attacks on its civilian population and infrastructure.

No wonder, given this history, that the scenes of liberation from south Lebanon have been truly extraordinary. Hundreds of Lebanese streamed back into villages and towns from which they had been expelled by Israel. Tears of joy flowed as relatives were reunited after years of separation. Hundreds of civilians stormed Khiam, freeing about 140 prisoners and exposing the hideous apparatus of torture and terror employed there.

These scenes have potentially far-reaching implications. Can others in the Middle East living under foreign military occupation, such as the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, have failed to register what real liberation looks like?

Everywhere Hezbollah fighters, derided by the Israeli and U.S. governments as “terrorists,” conducted themselves in an exemplary manner, handing prisoners over to government troops and ensuring that the liberation was not marred by acts of vengeance. These supposed fanatical terrorists were once again shown to be a disciplined and responsible liberation force.

How quickly it is forgotten that Hezbollah is itself a product of the Israeli occupation, founded in 1982 with the aim of driving out the Israeli army and freeing the south of the hellish experience of occupation. The fretting about potential Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israeli towns is misplaced, given that since 1996 Hezbollah has almost always carried out such attacks in response to Israeli killings of Lebanese civilians, often only after repeated atrocities. By contrast, in recent months Israel repeatedly attacked Lebanese civilian targets, such as power stations, in response to attacks on its soldiers in Lebanon.

The Israeli army may have fled Lebanon in chaos and humiliation, but not without issuing dire threats of massive attacks against Lebanon. Israel’s retreat from Lebanon is incomplete and insufficient. Israel was driven out of most of southern Lebanon by an extraordinary campaign of popular resistance, but continues to occupy the Shabaa Farms area. It holds numerous Lebanese hostage.

There is every indication that Israel still feels it can attack the Lebanese people with impunity. Israel’s foreign minister, David Levy, recently threatened that Israel would continue to target Lebanese civilians “blood for blood, child for child.”

The international community, while paying lip service to Lebanese territorial integrity, failed to exert any pressure on Israel to end its occupation. Instead it was left to resistance groups such as Hezbollah to enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 425, which in 1978 demanded Israel’s unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon “forthwith.”

The United States, Israel’s main patron, financier and arms supplier, has been particularly culpable by repeatedly using its diplomatic muscle, including its Security Council veto, to protect Israel from international criticism after its invasions and atrocities. Rather than helping enforce Resolution 425, which it voted for, the U.S. government line has been that “all foreign forces should withdraw from Lebanon.”

 

Know Now That Arab Lives Are as Worthy as Israelis’

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/may/26/local/me-34292

As the Lebanese people have finally liberated themselves from more than two decades of Israeli occupation, most American commentators are reacting with only one concern: Will northern Israel be safe from attack?

The focus on this misleading question is the result of a widespread acceptance of the official Israeli line that its 22-year rampage in southern Lebanon was in essence a futile quest for peace in a hostile region. This view is consistent with the pattern of putting Israeli lives and concerns over those of Arabs, but it is completely inconsistent with the history of the occupation and the experiences of its Lebanese victims.

It is blind to the tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians killed by Israel during the occupation, the hundreds of thousands made homeless and the scores of destroyed villages and cities. It forgets the ghastly massacres of unarmed civilians for which the Israelis have been responsible in Lebanon, including the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and the U.N. base at Qana. It ignores the Lebanese civilians held hostage to this day in Israeli prisons and the hundreds of Lebanese men, women and children held prisoner and tortured at the notorious Khiam detention center run by the Israeli-controlled militia, the South Lebanese Army. It does not acknowledge the pain of the Lebanese nation at being divided for almost a quarter of a century and subject to continuous attacks on its civilian population and infrastructure.

No wonder, given this history, that the scenes of liberation from south Lebanon have been truly extraordinary. Hundreds of Lebanese streamed back into villages and towns from which they had been expelled by Israel. Tears of joy flowed as relatives were reunited after years of separation. Hundreds of civilians stormed Khiam, freeing about 140 prisoners and exposing the hideous apparatus of torture and terror employed there.

These scenes have potentially far-reaching implications. Can others in the Middle East living under foreign military occupation, such as the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, have failed to register what real liberation looks like?

Everywhere Hezbollah fighters, derided by the Israeli and U.S. governments as “terrorists,” conducted themselves in an exemplary manner, handing prisoners over to government troops and ensuring that the liberation was not marred by acts of vengeance. These supposed fanatical terrorists were once again shown to be a disciplined and responsible liberation force.

How quickly it is forgotten that Hezbollah is itself a product of the Israeli occupation, founded in 1982 with the aim of driving out the Israeli army and freeing the south of the hellish experience of occupation. The fretting about potential Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israeli towns is misplaced, given that since 1996 Hezbollah has almost always carried out such attacks in response to Israeli killings of Lebanese civilians, often only after repeated atrocities. By contrast, in recent months Israel repeatedly attacked Lebanese civilian targets, such as power stations, in response to attacks on its soldiers in Lebanon.

The Israeli army may have fled Lebanon in chaos and humiliation, but not without issuing dire threats of massive attacks against Lebanon. Israel’s retreat from Lebanon is incomplete and insufficient. Israel was driven out of most of southern Lebanon by an extraordinary campaign of popular resistance, but continues to occupy the Shabaa Farms area. It holds numerous Lebanese hostage.

There is every indication that Israel still feels it can attack the Lebanese people with impunity. Israel’s foreign minister, David Levy, recently threatened that Israel would continue to target Lebanese civilians “blood for blood, child for child.”

Syrian-Israeli efforts highlight need to address Palestinians

www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Dec/12/opinion/IBISH12.htm

The imminent resumption of peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, announced this week, resurrects the possibility of a historic agreement ending five decades of conflict between the two nations.

During the final years of the Rabin government in Israel, significant progress in these talks had clearly been achieved. But with the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, they collapsed completely. While the Syrians insisted that talks proceed from where they left off in February 1996, Netanyahu demanded a return to ground zero.

The sticking-point was the return of the Golan Heights, Syrian territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. The Syrian government has maintained, and reports in the Israeli press confirm, that Rabin accepted in principle that a full peace would include the return of the entire Golan Heights. The Israeli government has maintained that no such commitment was ever made, but the terms under which the new negotiations are starting indicate that an ultimate withdrawal to the borders of June 4, 1967, will in fact be the underlying premise of the talks.

Simply put, without an assurance to this effect, the Syrians would not be returning to the table.

Israel must, as Nelson Mandela reminded them in his recent visit, be willing to “pay the price of peace.” Israel’s leading newspapers, Yediot Aharonot and Ha’aretz, have already called on the government to accept a full withdrawal from all occupied Syrian territory in exchange for a full peace. Indeed, this is the model of the treaties already concluded with Egypt and Jordan, and the Syrians have consistently made it clear that they would accept nothing less.

The outstanding issues are likely to be water and security arrangements. There are ample precedents for overcoming such obstacles. The Camp David Treaty between Israel and Egypt provides the model for sharing natural resources, in that case the oil reserves in the Sinai Peninsula. It also provides a model for the removal of Israeli settlers from occupied territories. Security arrangements could involve staged Israeli withdrawals, a demilitarization of the area or the presence of multinational observers.

Ehud Barak, Hafez al-Assad and Bill Clinton all have strong incentives to close this deal. For Assad, who is ailing, an honorable peace with Israel and the recovery of Syrian territory, lost during his tenure as defense minister, would be a crowning moment in his career. As Clinton’s own term in office comes to an end, any significant international accomplishment would help keep the Lewinsky affair from dominating his

legacy. Perhaps, as with Richard Nixon, personal foibles notwithstanding, foreign policies achievements could confer upon him the mantle of respected statesman. And for Barak, whose “red line” demands and settlement expansions have made progress with the Palestinians all but impossible, a Syria deal could gain him the stature of peacemaker.

A deal with Syria would also facilitate Israel’s withdrawal from its quagmire in South Lebanon, which Barak promised to achieve within one year of his election. An unconditional Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon was ordered in 1978 by U.N. Security Council Resolution 425 but has been ignored for decades. The Lebanese government, backed by Syria, has made repeated assurances that it will secure its southern border if Israel withdraws. Hezbollah, the resistance movement founded in 1982 to resist the Israeli occupation, would have no reason to maintain its military activities.

Complaints about existing Arab-Israeli accords tend to emphasize that they lead only to a “cold peace” and that in spite of the absence of conflict, resentment and ill will continue. This is because Arabs cannot be unaffected by the ongoing plight of the Palestinian people. No Syrian-Israeli treaty will assuage these sentiments. No matter how many treaties are signed between Israel and Arab nations, until the Israelis and Palestinians find an equitable means to share what is historically, geographically and economically the same land, continuing conflict is inevitable.

Whether through the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state in all of the occupied territories, or, infinitely preferably, through the development of a single secular, democratic republic for all Israelis and Palestinians, genuine Arab-Israeli peace and reconciliation can emerge only where the conflict began – in Palestine. A Syrian-Israeli treaty should help to clarify this simple fact.

Speculation after jetliner crash revives bitter Arab stereotypes

http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Nov/21/opinion/IBISH21.htm

Here we go again. In the wake of the tragic crash of EgyptAir Flight 990, Arab Americans once more find themselves subjected to wild speculation and rushes to judgment based on grotesque cultural misunderstanding and insidious stereotypes.

Essentially, we are being asked to believe that a veteran Egyptian pilot with a spotless record and apparently everything to live for, decided to commit both suicide and mass murder because he reportedly uttered a reference to God in Arabic.

Combined with the lack of an obvious mechanical explanation for the bizarre and terrifying behavior of that aircraft, the “cryptic reference to Allah” has been taken to indicate a sinister or demented state of mind.

Worse, this media speculation follows the insidious and highly irresponsible lead of the crash investigators who released premature, incomplete and inaccurate information such as the “cryptic reference.”

We should be well past the point when a reference to God in Arabic, a language infused with religious references, is so readily associated with violence and dementia. Would any Christian American make such an association with the Lord’s Prayer?

What this week’s orgy of lurid, baseless and offensive speculation has reminded Arab Americans of is that the our language, culture and faith are still stigmatized by both the government and the media. On Friday, USA Today “informed” its readers that “Cairo . . . is dominated by fundamentalists whose views are more in line with the likes of Iraqis and other U.S. foes.”

There have been many rushes to judgment in recent years but surely none so insidious as those involving stereotypes of Arabs.

Following the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, some professional Muslim-bashers and elected officials were quick to point the finger at the Arab American community.

The New York Times reported that there were, ominously, no less than three mosques in Oklahoma City, and the FBI circulated sketches of two “Middle-Eastern looking” suspects. An Arab American arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport from Oklahoma City was arrested for possessing “bomb-making equipment,” a hammer and a spool of wire, in his luggage. When the real culprit turned out to be an all-American neo-Nazi from upstate New York who was trained in explosives by the U.S. Army, the rush to judgment and the stereotypes that had driven it were starkly exposed.

Many in the government and media vowed not to repeat the mistake. But when TWA Flight 800 exploded over the ocean off Long Island in July 1996, it became readily apparent that neither the media nor the government had learned any lessons. Once again the media engaged in wild speculation about Arab culprits, and “experts” such as Steve Emerson were again relied upon to assure us that the crash was caused by an Arab bomber. Vice President Gore chaired a commission on airport security that recommended the “profiling” of potential terrorists at airports. Even after it became clear that the crash was caused by a frayed wire that ignited an explosion in a fuel tank, the profiling system was mandated anyway. As a predictable result, there is hardly an Arab American who has not been “profiled” or who does not know a friend or relative who has been abusively singled out at an airport.

Of course, there is more to the current speculation about a crazed Egyptian pilot than anti-Arab prejudice. As in the case of TWA Flight 800, where theories of an errant Navy missile also abounded, in the face of such a disaster people seem to be comforted by theories of human agency. Human behavior, as opposed to catastrophic nonhuman factors, seems far more controllable. Pilots rightly complain that they are the first to be blamed whenever something goes wrong during a flight.

When there is no person to blame for such a catastrophe, we are uncomfortably reminded of the extent of our own vulnerability to natural or mechanical disaster. We want a quick and relatively reassuring explanation and look therefore for an individual scapegoat.

The demand for this kind of explanation has combined with anti-Arab stereotypes to produce the defamatory theory for the EgyptAir crash, which has caused so much harm to a probably blameless man’s reputation, and the feelings of his grieving family, the Egyptian nation and the Arab American community.

Arab Americans are left to wonder whether the media and government will ever abandon a reliance on anti-Arab stereotyping. For now, at any rate, “blame Arabs first” clearly remains the rush to judgment of choice. It is, as they say, “deja vu all over again.”