Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 2004, page 96

Bulletin Board

Urgent Appeal for Rafah

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, has set up an Emergency Rafah Relief Fund in response to Israel’s recent incursion into the Gaza refugee camp, killing Palestinian civilians and devastating the infrastructure. A donation of any amount is welcome, and will be directed to UNRWA for distribution to the victims to help them get through the coming months. Make checks or money orders payable to “PRRC,” write “Emergency Rafah Relief Fund” in the memo section, and send to: Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition: P.O. Box 1172 Orange, CT 06477. Credit card donations can be made at <http://al-awda.org/donatenow>. Because PRRC is a non-profit tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, donations are fully tax-deductible under IRS guidelines,.

Online Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem by Issa Nakhleh, a major reference work on Palestine, is now available free of charge on the Internet. Originally published in 1991, the two-volume encyclopedia can be accessed at: <http://www.palestine-encyclopedia.com>. The encyclopedia includes detailed references to many different sources, from eyewitness accounts to United Nationsdocumentation and reports from the Public Record Office in London. In his foreword, John Quigley, professor of international law, writes: “The consequences of Mr. Nakhleh’s analysis are serious. If the government of Israel has committed even a fraction of the international crimes he describes, then virtually every high official in Israel from 1948 to the present is subject to prosecution as a war criminal.”

Iraq After June 30

Washington Post foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid, a 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner and Visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, will speak July 8 at noon, at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, on the June 30 U.S. handover of power in Iraq. The Center is located at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20004. For more information call (202) 691-4000.

New Film Released

A new film entitled “Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” has been released by Arab Film Distribution. Directed by Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally, the pivotal video exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites, working in combination with Israeli public relations strategies, exercise a powerful influence over news reporting about the Mideast conflict. The film combines American and British TV news clips with observations of analysts, journalists and political activists such as Noam Chomsky, Seth Ackerman, Hanan Ashrawi, Mjr. Stav Adivi, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Robert Fisk and many others. DVD Special Features include bonus interview footage, extra media examples and English/Spanish subtitle options. The video may be purchased at <http://www.arabfilm.com/item/281>.

Cannes Award

On May 22, Israeli director Keren Yedaya won the Cannes Film Festival’s Golden Camera award for her film “Mon Trésor,” and dedicated the award to the Palestinian people. “I come from Israel and we are responsible for the slavery of three million Palestinians,” she said in accepting her award. “I love Israel; I love my country. But, please, there are many people in Israel who are fighting this occupation, help them, help the Palestinians.”

Deaths

Former State Department officer and Iran hostage Elizabeth Ann Swift Cronin died May 7 in a horseback-riding accident near her home in Rectortown, VA. The ranking political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Cronin spent 444 days in Iran as a hostage, from 1979 to 1981, and was one of two women among the 52 diplomats held by supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A native of Washington, DC, she graduated from Radcliffe College in 1962. Swift joined the foreign service the following year, serving in the Philippines, Indonesia and Washington, DC before being assigned as deputy political counselor in Tehran in 1979. After returning to the U.S. in 1981, she spent a year at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. From 1984 to 1995, she continued to work for the State Department, serving in Athens, Jamaica and London. Swift was heavily involved in assisting the families of the victims of the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. She is survived by her husband of 10 years, Paul D. Cronin, two stepsons and a step-granddaughter.

Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Samuel Iwry, 93, died May 8 of a stroke at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, MD. A professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University, and vice president and member of the executive committee of the World Zionist Organization, he was one of the world’s leading Hebrew scholars, first making his mark as a Johns Hopkins graduate student under the renowned archaeologist William Foxwell Albright. Born in Bialystok, Poland, Iwry graduated from Warsaw University’s Higher Institute for Judaic Studies in 1937. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, he became a leader in the underground resistance and escaped to Lithuania. He was appointed by David Ben-Gurion, later Israel’s first prime minister, as Far East representative for the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and was assigned to negotiate with British authorities for the escape and subsequent emigration to Palestine of thousands of Jewish families living in the Far East. As a result, he was captured and tortured by the Japanese occupying forces. In 1947 Iwry immigrated to the United States. At Johns Hopkins, he worked on the Damascus document, which required someone with a knowledge of classical Hebrew. His work was crucial in verifying the authenticity of the scrolls. Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Nina Rochman Iwry of Baltimore; a son J. Mark Iwry of Bethesda; and a grandson.

Betty Davis Battle, 89, wife of former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Lucius Durham Battle, died June 4 in a Washington, DC hospital of injuries sustained in a fall at her home. Born in Seattle and raised in the Bay Area, she earned her B.A. and an M.A. in political science from Stanford University, and taught political science at the University of Washington in the 1940s. After accompanying her husband on his overseas assignments, which included Denmark and France, as well as Egypt in the 1960s, the couple returned to Washington, DC. There she worked for about 10 years as a program director for the Woodward Foundation, which donated American art to the official residences of U.S. ambassadors, helped organize international conferences for the State Department, and earned a law degree from Georgetown University in 1979. She is survived by her husband, four children and eight grandchildren.