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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2006, pages 51-53 Arab-American Activism An Arab-American Agenda for Security, Liberty and Peace
“THIS IS OUR day too. As Americans, we got hurt too. We were in the buildings and we were in the planes,” James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute (AAI) told his audience at a Sept. 11 breakfast forum, “A Community Conversation in Remembrance of 9/11,” which was part of a four-day National Leadership Conference entitled “Healing the Nation: An Arab American Agenda for Security, Liberty and Peace,” which began on Sept. 9 and was held at the Capital Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC. Leaders from 19 coalition partner organizations who worked and supported the Arab-American community after the 9/11 attacks each stood and spoke movingly of their experiences on that day and those that followed. Zogby next described his appearance on Ted Koppel’s Discovery Channel program, on Sept. 10, which reported a poll’s findings that 25 percent of Americans think Arab Americans should be incarcerated and 50 percent believe Arab Americans should carry some sort of ID card. “The pain is still real,” Zogby said, “still raw.” That day’s luncheon included interfaith messages by different religious leaders to commemorate the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Zogby opened the forum with a moment of silence “for all the pain, all the hurt that we as a people encountered that day.” There are two Americas, Zogby went on to say. “Some reacted to the fear with hate and some with compassion. Both of these visions define our nation.” Zogby said at the luncheon that Koppel told him that if another attack occurred they wouldn’t be having a discussion, because the U.S. government would simply put all Arab Americans in camps. “I told him I disagree,” Zogby said, because Americans would “remain being Americans.” Imam Mohammed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society spoke of America’s love and compassion. After 9/11, he recalled, hate signs were hung on the Dulles mosque, with such words as “You don’t belong here.” But many non-Muslim community members volunteered to guard the mosque from further vandalism, he said. The imam condemned the 9/11 attacks, saying, “It is a blasphemy, it is not Islam to hate and to take innocent human lives.” Rev. George Rados of the Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church said mankind must remember “the law of Moses, the love of Christ and the peace of Muhammad.” Rabbi David Saperstein opined that the West could have ameliorated the conditions that cause terrorism. Military methods won’t solve anything, he said, quoting from the Talmud: “The sword enters the world because of justice delayed and justice denied.” “Love was stronger than hate,” Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon of the Interfaith Alliance told her audience, and “justice is love lived out.” Citing a Gallup poll which found that 40 percent of Americans are openly prejudiced against Muslims, she said she refused to accept this bigotry. “We’re here because people like you and me believe people can live together in justice and peace,” she explained. After lunch, conference participants attended a plenary session on the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon and Palestine. Andrew Whitley, director of the UNRWA’s New York office, noted that UNRWA is the second largest employer, after the Palestinian Authority, in the West Bank and Gaza, describing the economy there as “flat on its back,” with one-third of Gazans unemployed. He quoted an aide to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who said that the Israelis must treat the occupied territory “like a dieter; we must make the patient thinner without killing him.” As a result of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, Whitley said, 1,200 Lebanese have died since Aug. 31, one million were displaced and 250,000 are still homeless. The Israelis dropped a total of 440 cluster bombs on civilians, 90 percent of them 72 hours before the cease-fire was reached. During the Israeli attacks, Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees opened their camps and their schools to 20,000 displaced Lebanese. “As long as the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza continues, nothing will be resolved,” said Peter Gubser, president of American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), to great applause, “There must be a just solution for all those involved.” According to John Connolly of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), over the summer Israel Defense Forces killed 231 people in Gaza—half of them women, children and the elderly. “I have worked in many countries in Africa that have a better GDP than Gaza,” he stated, adding that CRS is handicapped by the U.S. government because his organization cannot work with Palestinian government agencies, which are run by Hamas. “The U.S. government wants us to create programs that promote democracy,” Connolly noted, “but we can’t have direct contact with the democraticallyelected government.” Former Congressman and 9/11 Commissioner Tim Roemer made a surprise appearance at the conference. Five years after the tragedy of 9/11, he told his listeners, the Bush administration still has not implemented many of the commission’s recommendations. “We have barely approached” issues such as sharing information with different government agencies, protecting the homeland, and preventing future “jihadists,” he warned. U.S. Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA), the keynote speaker at that night’s reception buffet, compared the 9/11 attacks with Pearl Harbor and the way in which the two events affected Arab and Japanese Americans. “We learned that bad things happen when you allow racial prejudices to take over and when you allow the lack of political leadership to take over,” he said. “You are not alone,” he added to applause. “You have brothers and sisters who understand.” The fourth morning began with a breakfast forum on Capitol Hill at which U.S. Sen. Russell Feingold addressed the conference. The Wisconsin Democrat told his audience that the U.S. must play a larger role in Lebanon and help rebuild the war-torn country. He proceeded to call on President George W. Bush to stop using the term Islamofascists. “Fascist ideology doesn’t have anything to do with the way global terrorist networks think or operate,” Feingold said, “and it doesn’t have anything to do with the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world who practice the peaceful teachings of Islam.” Midmorning, several Americans who had been evacuated from Lebanon during the war described their experiences. Lebanese-American Magda Abu-Fadil, director of the Institute for Professional Journalists (IPJ) at the Lebanese American University, described the Israeli massacres in Qana, where Christ performed his first miracle. “As a Christian, I am appalled by what took place there,” she said. “The Bush administration’s actions horrify me as an American.” The presentation shifted with the arrival of two congressmen of Lebanese descent, Charles Boustany (R-LA) and Daniel Issa(D-RI). Boustany had recently returned from Lebanon, where he met with the impressive Prime Minister Fuad Sinora, whom he described as “a one-man show.” Boustany brought with him $80,000 worth of U.S. medical supplies. A practicing surgeon before he went into politics, Boustany said he was very impressed with the “heroic” service performed by the doctors of St. Jude’s Children’s Cancer Center of Lebanon, which opened in 2002. Congressman Issa asked a group of Arab-American Marines attending the conference to stand and be acknowledged. Issa, the first member of Congress to travel to Lebanon during the bombing, showed slides of the destruction. “The travesty of war is that everyone loses,” he said. Noting that Israeli bombing caused an oil spill one-third the size of the Exxon Valdez, he lamented, “It will be at least two years before fresh fish will be caught off the shores of Lebanon.” Issa opined that the Lebanese government has not been able to stand up to Hezbollah, Syria or Israel, and that the Lebanese army needs to be better armed. “Hezbollah won because Lebanon is too weak,” he averred, “not because Hezbollah is too strong.” When AIPAC officials visit his office, Issa concluded, he says he supports Israel’s right to be secure; however, he also says Israel needs to get on board to help Lebanon defend itself. At the luncheon, Sen. John E. Sununu (R-NH) gave out special awards to those Arab Americans who currently serve in the federal government. During his remarks, the senator remembered his father’s (Gov. John Sununu) as well as his own experiences while running for office. “People told my father that with a name like Sununu you can’t get elected,” he said. “And when I decided to run, they said with such a popular name that isn’t fair that you are running.” This, the senator commented, was one of the great aspects of America. After lunch, Stephen Sheehi, an Arab American whose family first arrived in the U.S.in 1898, said he found it hard to describe what he had experienced as an evacuee leaving Lebanon. U.S. policy in the Middle East has failed, he said. Noting that in July his government “resupplied the Israeli army with cluster and depleted uranium bombs and guided missiles,” he concluded, “This was an Israeli-American war.” Jared McCormick, who before the Israeli bombardment was pursuing a graduate degree at the American University of Beirut and is not of Arab descent, described sitting with other students and watching an “X-Man” DVD during the bombing. Each “X-Man” character in the film has special powers to fight evil, and when the Lebanese in his group were asked what special powers they would like to possess, he recalled, they all said “a foreign passport. They wanted to have the option to leave,” he explained. —Jamal Najjab |
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