Abourezk Calls for National Ad Campaign to Educate Americans About U.S. Aid to Israel

By Pat McDonnell Twair

Between his birth in 1931 on South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation and becoming the great-grandfather of—at last count—11, James Abourezk became the first Arab American elected to the U.S. Senate, authored revolutionary legislation for the flawed policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

While the Democrat from South Dakota distinguished himself in the Senate for bringing justice and dignity to American Indians, he didn’t fare so well in seeking a more balanced foreign policy in the Middle East—largely because the pro-Israel lobby doesn’t have the same designs on American Indian property as it does on Palestinian land.

While on a brief visit to California, Abourezk discussed prospects for peace in the Middle East at Cal Poly Pomona and met with the Washington Report.

Learning he was in town, a coalition of Palestinian groups and the Southern California ADC chapter approached Abourezk, who agreed to speak the following day, May 11, at a program to raise funds to send an ambulance to the West Bank. However, one of the sponsors, U.S. Organization for Medical and Educational Needs (USOMEN), feared it might lose its charitable status if a former U.S. senator spoke about the situation in the Middle East, and the invitation was withdrawn.

Abourezk’s reaction?

“This is chilling,” he stated. “The fact that an Arab-American group must censor itself and be put in that position is un-American. It’s new McCarthyism.

“Ever since 9/11,” Abourezk continued, “Arab Americans and Muslims have watched their rights diminish with each new edict of [Attorney General John] Ashcroft. USOMEN was particularly fearful after federal authorities raided the offices of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and froze its assets Dec. 4. Now, with the closure of the HLF, there aren’t many charitable agencies left to send humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. It’s outrageous that the attorney general can intimidate people that way.”

Nor did the outspoken statesman mince words in his assessment of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plans for the Palestinians:

“Sharon has no intention of pulling out of the West Bank or vacating the settlements,” Abourezk maintained. “He needs the settlers to remain in office. Everyone thinks George W. is dumb, but he learned very quickly that Sharon is the boss. The Palestinian issue will be a long drawn-out affair. They are living like Indians on impoverished reservations right now. The U.S. Congress is so dependent on the Jewish lobby for money that it’s lost its dignity.”

Asked if he thinks Sharon would carry out the “transfer” option, Abourezk responded: “Blood would be running in the streets if Sharon tried to forcibly remove the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to neighboring Arab states. I don’t think he will try this.”

Regarding President Bush’s prediction of a career change in Saddam Hussain’s future, the former senator commented: “No country neighboring Iraq will give the U.S. a base. [Bush’s] only option will be for an air campaign, and the Iraqi civilians will again be the victims. His intent to destroy Iraq is being done at the behest of Israel and, in any event, has nothing to do with American interests.”

Iraq and Cuba

This brought to mind the crippling sanctions on Iraq and the similar boycott imposed by the U.S. on Cuba for more than four decades. In 1977, Abourezk captured international headlines when he led two South Dakota university basketball teams to Cuba in an effort to re-open relations between the two countries. According to Abourezk, the boycott against Cuba and the sanctions on Iraq benefit few—but powerful—Americans.

“The sanctions against Cuba have done no good except to titillate the gusanos [the Cuban exile community in Florida],” he explained, “and the Iraqi sanctions have succeeded in killing Iraqi children. But it makes the U.S. politicians look good by keeping the sanctions on.”

Generally a man of good humor, Abourezk turned pensive when asked about his efforts over nearly three decades to bring justice to the Palestinians. After being elected to the Senate in 1973, he made his first tour of the Middle East, meeting with Yasser Arafat, as well as Lebanon’s president, in Beirut, King Hussein in Jordan, Anwar Sadat in Egypt, Syria’s Hafez Al-Assad, King Faisal in Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussain in Iraq. All told the South Dakota senator that if Israel would withdraw to its pre-1967 borders, they would recognize and make peace with the Zionist state.

“When I returned to Washington,” Abourezk recalled, “I called a press conference and repeated what the leaders had told me. Wolf Blitzer, who at that time worked for AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee], wrote an article published in January 1974 accusing me of selling out to the Arabs. That was the Israeli response to the peace proposal. And that’s the same proposal that Crown Prince Abdullah has put on the table, with the same response by Israel.

“If the American public could be made to understand that our congressmen perpetuate aid to Israel so that it can humiliate and subjugate the Palestinians, things might change,” he added. “But the people must learn the facts. Americans don’t know they are sending $20 million to Israel every day. If people knew how Israel uses this aid to oppress the Palestinians, they would put a stop to it. All we need to do is put this scandal in the headlines of U.S. newspapers for one week.

“In 1985,” he continued, “I ran full-page ads at the cost of $30,000 each for four days straight in The Washington Post. These ads specified how much this aid costs Americans and what it was being used for. A few days later, Alex Odeh, the ADC representative in California, was assassinated by a pipe bomb rigged to his office door. This was a message to ADC to stop those ads.”

Were he to find someone today willing to pay for similar ads in, say, five metropolitan newspapers, Abourezk said his message would be “the same thing essentially: That while we are giving Israel some $6 billion a year to oppress Palestinians, American farmers are going broke, our schools have difficulty paying teachers, and our highways and basic infrastructure are rundown. I would ask why our Congress is giving away our money to Israel while our own citizens are homeless and in need of medical care. The point is to inform Americans as to how much Israel is taking from our treasury at the expense of Americans.

“Anyone anywhere in the world could pay for those ads,” Abourezk noted. “Just have them get in touch with me.”

Turning to the topic of Israel’s systematic destruction of the West Bank, and whether the EU, Japan or the U.S. would finance its reconstruction, Abourezk opined, “The U.S. taxpayers paid for the destruction of the West Bank and they will most likely pay for its reconstruction.”

After having been in the national spotlight as a maverick senator championing liberal causes and founding the country’s largest Arab-American organization, the witty iconoclast described what he does for excitement these days:

“I live in Sioux Falls, S.D., with my wife, Sana’a, and daughter, Alya, 5, where I practice law. I have become known as an expert in Indian Law issues, but I also deal in medical and psychological malpractice cases.”

A sparkle came into his eyes as Abourezk began to describe the accomplishments of his Syrian-born wife, who earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture from Damascus University and a master’s degree in nutrition from Cal Poly Pomona.

“Sana’a was trained as a chef in Florence, Italy, and studied at the Cordon Bleu School of Paris,” he proudly enthused. “She writes a weekly column on food and nutrition for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader and is the author of two cookbooks—you can check out her columns on the Internet by looking under the Argus Leader, and she has a Web site for her cookbooks.”

Asked why, during the fearful days of Israel’s invasion of the West Bank, he hadn’t appeared on national talk shows, which instead interviewed Middle East “experts” like Fouad Ajami and Daniel Pipes, Abourezk replied, “I don’t get invited.…At one point, Alan Keyes of MSNBC asked me to go on his show, but after his producer asked my opinion of Ariel Sharon, she never called back.”

Finally, asked if he thinks his successor as South Dakota senator, Tom Daschle, will be the Democratic Party’s 2004 presidential candidate, Abourezk responded with his usual bluntness: “I can’t predict what will happen in 2004, but Daschle is too bound up with the Israeli Lobby to do anything to get the IDF to withdraw from the West Bank, which is needed to make peace. Daschle was a member of my Senate staff for five years,” Abourezk noted, “but, like most politicians, he wants Israeli Lobby money for his campaigns so he doesn’t dare say anything against them.”

Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.