Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2002, pages 59-61

Southern California Chronicle

Los Angeles Motorists Startled by “Israeli Checkpoint”

By Pat and Samir Twair

As motorists stopped for a red light on busy Wilshire Boulevard, several helmeted youths in khaki uniforms and Star of David armbands sprinted into the intersection, kneeled and took aim at windshields with their cardboard M-16 rifles. Other “soldiers” carried a large cardboard sign identifying an “Israeli Checkpoint.” As the light switched to green, the actors fled to the sidewalk and one more enactment of an Israeli roadblock was staged July 25 in front of the Los Angeles Israeli Consulate.

Los Angeles Jews for a Just Peace decided to enact an Israeli checkpoint outside the consulate to demonstrate to the American public what Palestinians endure on a daily basis.

Across the street, a throng of about 40 irate Israel supporters waved large Israeli flags and screamed through a bullhorn: “We want peace, you want war.”

Large Palestinian flags were unfurled by many in the crowd of some 250 demonstrators, who carried signs reading “The Occupation Is Killing Us All,” “Stop the Holocaust in Palestine, Stop the Palecaust” and “Tired From Work? Try Ducking Israeli Bombs.”

When the actors once more ran into the intersection, the pro-Israel faction ran to confront them and the police ordered the “soldiers” to remain on the sidewalk. This led to impromptu skits in which a “pregnant” Palestinian woman with a keffiyeh draped over her shoulders struggled with Israeli “soldiers” who refused to let her pass the checkpoint to go to a hospital.

The incensed pro-Sharon group hurled insults through a megaphone, shouting that no decent Jew could be against Israel.

“I’m not against Israel,” explained Elana Golden, who grew up in Tel Aviv, where she owns a condo, “but the only way it can exist is if the Palestinians have a state beside it. Otherwise, war will continue endlessly. Anyone who is for Israel must call for an end to occupation.”

A car filled with men wearing yarmulkes on their heads brandished a sign with a large Star of David and the message “Nice Hit” (in reference to the Israeli missile that killed 15 people in a Gaza apartment building on July 15).

Commented veteran peace activist Ruth Persky: “They’re doing here in L.A. just what they’re doing in Israel—they’re shouting at but not talking to each other.”

Another young Arab woman in jeans and a keffiyeh struggled with a burly Israeli soldier while apprehensive police made sure the altercation was just acting.

A Jewish high school teacher, David Rapkin, told a reporter: “What we need is for Israel to be secular and democratic. Until people in Israel realize this it will not be a democracy, but an apartheid state.

The demonstration was the first action staged by L.A. Jews for a Just Peace, but members were passing out fliers for a series of programs calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and self-determination and equal rights for all peoples in the region.

KinderUSA Hosts First Fund-Raiser

History was made July 21 when the four-month-old KinderUSA hosted its first fund-raiser for needy Palestinian children. More than 350 guests gathered for the dinner program in Sequoia Conference Center, Buena Park, where emergency plans were discussed for Palestinian children left homeless and traumatized since Israeli tanks rolled into their towns and refugee camps in April, and again in June.

The evening’s emcee was Dr. Laila Marayati who, along with Dr. Riad Abdelkarim and three other physicians, founded KinderUSA in March, after the U.S. government closed in November the bank accounts and offices of the Holy Land Foundation, the foremost U.S. charitable organization for Palestinians. The HLF’s denials that its aid went to anything but needy Palestinian civilians has gone unheeded by Attorney General John Ashcroft, who froze the HLF’s assets after a visit to the U.S. by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Noting that the U.S. gives six times more financial assistance to industrialized Israel than it does to all of impoverished black Africa, Dr. Marayati said it is up to charitable organizations like KinderUSA to tend to the emergency needs of Palestinian children.

Staff members have been on the West Bank to assess immediate needs, she said, which include providing school uniforms, backpacks and classroom supplies before schools reopen in early September. Already 2,000 food packets have been distributed to the hardest hit areas where malnutrition is running rampant among children.

“It has been unheard of for Palestinian youngsters to go hungry,” stated KinderUSA treasurer Dalell Mohmed, “but Israeli roadblocks are stopping truck transport from delivering commonplace food supplies such as milk, flour and vegetables.”

The urgency for food delivery to besieged towns and villages was impressed upon the large audience when a telephone call was placed to Jerusalem. From there Khalil Marouf of Terre des Hommes described his success in delivering the 2,000 KinderUSA food packets to deprived children living behind Israeli blockades.

In his address to KinderUSA’s inaugural fund raiser, Presbyterian Rev. Darrel Meyer described the deprivation he witnessed Palestinian children living under when he visited the West Bank in April.

“Most major Christian denominations—not to be confused with the Jerry Fallwell-, Pat Robertson-led Zionist Christian right—are calling for an end to Israel’s military occupation of Palestine,” the cleric said. “Most of us resent the manipulation of biblical script to carry out Israel’s expansionist agenda.”

KinderUSA Board Chairman Dr. Riad Abdelkarim said he helped found the organization in March to fill the vacuum when the government closed traditional charities assisting Palestinians.

“As the need intensifies,” he stated, “the Israelis make it harder to fill these needs.” When the California-born and -educated internist traveled to the West Bank in April to assess medical and social needs, he was arrested by the Israelis and held for two weeks without being charged.

“My detention has spurred me to continue our work,” Dr. Abdelkarim asserted. “We will not be intimidated.”

Noting that no other charitable agency travels to assess needs to make sure aid is not redundant, Dr. Abdelkarim said broken bones can be observed, but psychological trauma suffered from war experiences runs very deep. KinderUSA is establishing psycho-social clinics for children who have become aggressive, depressed or bed-wetters, to name a few symptoms.

Showing slides of schools that have been bombed or turned into Israeli army barracks, of a school bus run over by an Israeli tank, and of the deliberate destruction of the 1,000-year-old Al-Khadra Mosque of Nablus, the medical humanitarian said that in Jenin alone, 600 homes have been demolished and 250 more damaged and made uninhabitable.

He also showed slides of children who appeared to be dazed and bewildered, and others who were smiling.

“So long as these children smile,” he said, “there is hope.”

Turning to the tragedy of Samantha Runnion, who had been kidnapped and murdered just days before, Dr. Abdelkarim confided: “I shed tears for Samantha and her family, who live just miles from here, but imagine how this tragedy has happened over 450 times in the past two years for Palestinian parents.”

In the closing speech, Dr. Maher Hathout spoke out against the “tragedy endorsed by our government and financed by our dollars.”

“I am here to tell Mr. Ashcroft and those crafting the PATRIOT Act that it is inhuman to freeze assets of charitable organizations without trying them in a court of law,” he emphasized. “Palestinian children need to be helped. We are expressing our humaneness when we take the side of the downtrodden.”

PA Launches U.S. Palestinian Congress

Dr. Anise Barghouti, Palestinian Authority deputy minister of planning and international cooperation, met with Southern California Palestinian Americans on July 19 to organize elections of local delegates to a national Palestinian American Congress which will convene before Sept. 25 in Washington, DC.

Dr. Barghouti has been traveling throughout the U.S., Europe and Latin America this summer to organize diaspora Palestinians into a political body. His goal is to bring all Palestinian political factions into the process. Whereas in the past Palestinians in the diaspora have formed charitable groups to aid Palestinians in the homeland, the Palestinian American Congress will be a lobbying group and cast votes in PA elections.

All Arab Americans are welcome to be supporting members of the PAC, but only people whose family lines originated in Palestine will be eligible to vote. Preparatory meetings were scheduled for August, when delegates were to be elected to the inaugural PAC session in Washington, DC. The PAC will have a direct input into Palestinian elections planned for January 2003.

MPAC Hosts 11th Media Awards

For 11 years the Muslim Public Affairs Council has honored personalities in the entertainment field who show courage and a conscience in combating negative images of Muslims. This year’s awards went to actor/activist Edward James Olmos, TV producer and writer Brenda Hampton and Elaine Arata, and filmmakers Robert and Char Gardner.

More than 400 guests were on hand for festivities in the Los Angeles Wilshire Grand Hotel. Laughter filled the banquet room at humorous remarks by actor Kamal Marayati, who described himself as a whacky Iraqi married to an Indo-Paki and their son named Zaki.

MPAC executive director Salam Marayati praised the honorees for the courage to search for the truth despite the easier choice of perpetuating negative stereotypes in their work.

“The media plays a role in which all of us perceive the world,” Marayati said, “yet TV news shows more police car chases than its reporters chase the news.”

He called upon the silent majority to be less silent and never to take one’s civil rights for granted, because in the U.S. they must be earned.

In presenting the “Voices of Courage and Conscience” Award to Olmos, Omar Ricci said that in the hours after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the Southern California Islamic Center received hundreds of phone messages, “most of them unkind.” One call, however, was from Olmos, asking for directions to the center. When the actor arrived, Ricci recalled, he said that on that horrific day, as people were going to grow angrier, he wanted to be at the center in solidarity with American Muslims.

As he accepted the award, Olmos, who is UNICEF’s U.S. Goodwill Ambassador, commented that he was humbled by the honor, and that he believed it was insignificant to go to the center on 9/11.

“Men who were praying appeared shocked to see me among them,” he recalled, “and I asked to sit with them during that difficult time.”

The actor said he also called the White House on 9/11 and pleaded with an aide to George W. Bush that the president not use the word war. “Say what you want, but don’t declare war,” he urged. “I will forever remember that is what happened—declaring war is not a way to solve anything.”

Also receiving awards were Hampton, the creator of TV’s “7th Heaven,” and Arata, who wrote an episode dealing with a Muslim family’s persecution after 9/11.

Segments of “Islam: Empire of Faith” were shown on a giant screen before the Gardners, who produced the PBS documentary, were presented their award.

Governor Davis at Islamic Center

California Governor Davis made his first official visit to the Islamic Center of Southern California during a July 8 ceremony in which he signed the Halal Food Bill (AB1828) into law. The bill, which was promoted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was introduced by Assemblyman Bill Campbell. It defines the sale of meat or meat products falsely represented as halal (animals and fowl killed according to Islamic rules) as a misdemeanor.

Pasadena Coalition Parties for Peace

Nearly every weekend this summer, the Pasadena Coalition for a Just Peace has staged rallies, demonstrations and visits to the office of Rep. Adam Schiff. On June 23, more than 50 of the energetic activists gathered in the home of Linda Tubach and Bob McCloskey to raise funds for the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD).

Before gorging themselves on a Middle Eastern potluck dinner, members watched the ICAHD video, “The Right to a Home.” The group raised enough money that Sunday afternoon to finance the construction of several homes demolished by Israeli bulldozers.

Najeeb Khoury Challenges Dershowitz

In March, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz created a storm of controversy when he recommended in an article in the Jerusalem Post that each time there is a terrorist attack, Israel should retaliate by destroying a Palestinian village.

Francis Boyle, who served on the board of Amnesty International USA, responded that by publishing such an editorial, Dershowitz “deliberately and maliciously attempted to incite the Israeli government and the Israeli People to commit repeated Nuremberg Crimes against the Palestinian People.”

And so, just days after the editorial stirred emotions around the globe, second-year Harvard Law School student Najeeb Khoury prepared a handout specifying his objections to Dershowitz’s controversial proposal. Khoury also is president of Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine, and he brought nearly 30 members of his group to Dershowitz’s classroom, where they distributed handouts on desks.

When the renowned professor arrived, Khoury engaged him in a brief conversation in which he argued that the arbitrary destruction of Palestinian villages marginalizes Palestinian lives and perpetuates the cycle of violence.

Dershowitz reportedly was impressed by the “respectful” demeanor of the group and said the dialogue was “exactly the way a demonstration should be.”

Khoury is the son of Dr. Nabil and Raghida Khoury of Glendale.

Open Tent Offers Breath of Culture

On a sultry July evening, Open Tent LA offered a new cultural experience to Angelenos of Middle Eastern origins when it hosted a reading of Egyptian master playwright Tewfiq al-Hakim’s “The Tree Dweller.” The event was all the more memorable for being in the newly opened Pacific Arts Center of Shida Pegahi.

The audience sat in director’s chairs facing a mirrored wall, so that they saw their reflections as well as the readers—all dressed in black—front and back.

Open Tent LA founder Jordan Elgrably coordinated the reading salon with Jawad Ali, a doctoral student in English literature at the University of California at Irvine. They selected Denys Johnson-Davies’ translation of the “Tree Dweller” for the universality of its theme.

“The play was written in 1962,” Ali commented, “and because Tewfiq was the most successful Egyptian playwright, he could write about the ills of society and wasn’t confined to churning out state propaganda.”

When asked why they decided on the reading of an Egyptian play, Ali explained, “The lack of a gathering place for writers and artists to foster a sense of literary community is pronounced among foreign students and expatriates who come from cultures where the arts are a necessary fabric of everyday life. Growing up in Karachi,” he recalled, “I remember the ubiquity of emotion-soaked songs that wailed from street corners, and at night there were ghazals and mushaiaras (poetry readings) on TV; all this while everything else in Pakistan seemed to be falling apart, what with dictators and military regimes.”

While the characters in “The Tree Dweller” are mired in their idiosyncrasies and prejudices, they don’t make long moralistic speeches about the ills of society, and struggle to do the right thing even though they aren’t always successful.

The reading was well-received, and Open Tent LA is discussing the possibility of staging a more elaborate production of the play that would emphasize its allegorical aspects.

Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.