June 1993, Page 61

Arab-American Activism

By Catherine Willford

10th Annual ADC Convention: Christopher Promises to "Actually Be Evenhanded" in Middle East Peace Talks

Secretary of state Warren Christopher became the first secretary of state ever to address the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), at its 1993 national convention, held April 22-25 at the Crystal City Gateway Marriott in Virginia. Warmly received at the Friday night banquet of a convention attended by some 3,000 persons, Christopher expressed relief at the end of the five-month hiatus in U. S. -sponsored Middle East peace talks. "Too much time has been lost," he said. "Now is the time to help the peacemakers—not those determined to destroy any possibility of making peace in the region."

The secretary of state said he considers Palestinian self-government possible as an interim stage toward a negotiated final settlement based on U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. According to Christopher, a comprehensive peace settlement in the region would be built on the principles of land for peace, the realization of the political rights of the Palestinian people, security for all parties and the normalization of relations in the area.

Commending Palestinian leaders for "making the difficult and courageous decision" to return to the negotiations, Christopher noted that "as a full partner in the search for solutions, the U.S. has had to convince the Palestinians that this time negotiations can lead to tangible results. " Calling bilateral talks between Israel and Syria, Lebanon and Jordan "on the right track," Christopher stated that "with continued commitment and hard work, the parties involved can find that peace is increasingly possible, desirable, and I hope will become irresistible."

During his February visit to the Middle East, "the first trip President Clinton asked me to take," Christopher noted, the secretary of state went to Lebanon "to signal—in the most direct way I could—our support for that nation and for the progress the Lebanese people have made. " Announcing the restarting of the International Military Education and Training program (IMET) for the Lebanese armed forces, in any of the files seized in the case. Christopher stressed that the U.S. continues to support full implementation of the Taif Accord, including the disarming of all militias and the withdrawal of all non Lebanese forces from Lebanon.

Christopher acknowledged concern both within and outside the Middle East over Islamic fundamentalism and its effect on the stability and policies of several states in the region. "Islam is not our enemy, nor do we consider Islam a threat to world peace or to regional security," the secretary of state assured ADC members, to warm applause. "What we do oppose is extremism or fanaticism, whether of a religious or secular nature."

"As long as I am secretary of state you will always have access to me," Christopher assured his listeners. The Arab-American audience gave sustained applause to his concluding promise: "I am determined that we not only seem evenhanded but that we actually be evenhanded."

The San Francisco ADL Case

Several speakers and panels at the ADC national convention discussed the current status of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and San Francisco Police Department investigations of alleged spying activities involving former San Francisco police officer Tom Gerard and Bnai B'rith Anti-Defamation League (ADL) employee Roy Bullock, who are accused of maintaining files on some 950 organizations (including Greenpeace and Mills College) and 10,000 individual Arab Americans and other peace and anti-apartheid activists, supplying this information to the ADL, and selling information to South Africa and Israel. Police investigators seized 12,000 files in raids on ADL offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Edwin M. Lee, director of the human rights commission of the city and county of San Francisco, presented ADC with more than 700 pages of unsealed documents covering interviews with the FBI, local police and Bullock. He offered the full assistance of his office with ADC investigations in the case, saying, "We need to band together to know how extensive the damage is and what can be done."

ADC Vice Chairman Abdeen Jabara updated the ADC members at the convention's Saturday luncheon, saying, "We don't spy on the ADL and we don't want the ADL to spy on us." Two notaries helped conference attenders fill out forms requesting notification from the San Francisco Police Department if they are named Wallace Criticizes Media

Coverage of ADL Case

Mike Wallace, co-editor of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) program "60 Minutes," moderated ADC's Friday morning media seminar with panelists Saul Landau, senior fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, and William Grieder, national editor of Rolling Stone Magazine. Wallace's "60 Minutes" stories include breaking the true story of the Al-Aqsa mosque massacre by Israeli police in Jerusalem in 1990, revelation of political campaign manipulations by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and exploration in the 1970s of false or exaggerated allegations of persecution of the Syrian Jewish community in Damascus. Responding to charges that he is a "self-hating Jew," Wallace said, "I come from a middle-class Jewish Zionist family from Boston and I am proud of my heritage, but I am equally proud that there be evenhanded coverage of this peculiarly prickly situation. "

Wallace and the other panelists encouraged ADC members to press for national media coverage of the ADL spy case currently under investigation in San Francisco, calling press attention to date "insufficient" considering the potential magnitude of the offense in terms of civil rights and invasion of privacy violations.

The CBS broadcaster commented also that "there needs to be some self-criticism in Arab and Arab-American analysis of Middle East events, so that it's not always 'us against them.'" At several points he compared the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza with the British military occupation of Northern Ireland, another ongoing conflict which also only receives sporadic media coverage in response to acts of violence. "There is a disturbing anti-Arab bias among Israelis I have known," Wallace noted. "It is really, really deep—similar to the hatreds of Northern Ireland, Protestants against Catholics. It is unreasoning, emotional and from the gut. We in the U.S. media do not do enough to cover this."

Human Rights Elsewhere: Haiti and Bosnia

Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, speaking at the Saturday luncheon, described his homeland as the poorest in the Western hemisphere in material goods but "rich in terms of human values." He asked ADC members for assistance in lobbying Congress for financial aid to retrain the Haitian armed forces as a law-abiding and law-enforcing entity, and in addressing the medical, ecological and economic crises facing Haiti.

Bosnia was discussed throughout the conference. During the Friday luncheon, Saffet Abid Catovic, deputy director of special affairs at the Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Nations, called the goal of Bosnian Serb aggression against Bosnian Muslims "extermination of a nation and the extermination of the idea of peaceful coexistence in the region. " He told the Arab-American audience, "You understand what it means to be denied an identity, " and drew a parallel between the pan-Serbian movement drive for a "Greater Serbia" and the struggle of the Zionist movement for "Eretz Israel. "

At the Saturday night banquet, ADC founder James Abourezk stated, "Although the words 'ethnic cleansing' were invented during the Serbian onslaught against Bosnia, the act of ethnic cleansing was invented by the Israelis in 1948, when they drove as many Palestinians out of Palestine as they could to make Israel a majority Jewish state."

Awards Presented to Authors, Activists

Among those honored at the convention were former Under Secretary of State George Ball and his historian son Douglas Ball, authors of The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present. Others were former U.N. special envoy to Somalia H.E. Mohamed Sahnoun; founder of In'ash ElUsra, Sameeha Khalil; noted physician Dr. Emile Sayegh; president of GulfAmerica, Dr. Michael Saba; Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri; journalist Helen Haje; and civil rights attorney Lynda Brayer. The Alex Odeh Memorial Organizing Award was shared by Omar Kamhieh of the Washington, DC chapter and Maha Jabar of the San Francisco chapter.

AAl Responds to ADL Case

The Arab American Institute (AAI) has mailed an 8-page special report, "Surveillance and Defamation: Arab American Political Rights in Times of Crisis," to its members to inform them of the ADL case and discuss the impact of the investigation into the recent World Trade Center bombing in the context of the "current campaign to see 'Hamas in every mosque,"' and its consequent effect on Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.

According to AAI President James Zogby, members of the community are concerned about the "chilling effect" surveillance such as that alleged in the ADL case could have on Arab-American participation in the political process.

For further information or a copy of the special report, contact AAI at 918 16th St NW, Suite 601, Washington, DC or call (202) 429-9210.

5th Annual Palestine Aid Society of America Annual Walkathon

The 5th Annual Palestine Aid Society of America (PAS) Walkathon, a major fundraising event for PAS-supported projects in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon, will be held Saturday, June 5th. Last year, PAS raised $68,000 for these projects. For information, contact the national office of PAS at 2025 Eye St. NW, Suite 1020,1 Washington, DC or call (202) 728-9425.