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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 July 1999 Issue No. 439 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 July 1999 Issue No. 439
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Focus Interview Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters More than they bargained for?
By Tarek AtiaThe Zionist lobby's most recent smear campaign against Arab Americans may have succeeded in denying Salam Al-Marayati his nomination to a US House of Representative's Terrorism Commission, but it has also inspired a long-awaited public outcry against the Zionist lobby itself.
"It's been demonstrated here," Al-Marayati told Al-Ahram Weekly by telephone from California, "that these pressure groups are a problem for democracy. They pressure for things that are abnormal, beyond logic, and it puts our public officials in a predicament."
That's exactly where Richard Gephardt, the Republican House minority leader, found himself when he nominated Al-Marayati, who heads the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles, to the Commission, one of several that make recommendations to legislators on counter-terrorism law. Soon after the announcement, the Zionist Organisation of America (ZOA) claimed that Al-Marayati "justified Arab terrorism against Israel, justified future terrorism against America, and accused America of committing terrorism."
"They said I sympathise with terrorism," Al-Marayati remarks. "They called me a supporter of Saddam Hussein, when my family is part of the Iraqi opposition. Their desire to spread hysteria and paranoia went so low that they started saying that having me on the commission would be like the 'fox guarding the hen house', and comparing me to having [notorious white supremacist] David Duke on a civil rights commission."
Despite the allegations and pressure, Gephardt's office announced on 5 July that it was standing by its choice of Al-Marayati for the nomination. In a desperate move, the Zionist lobby's infamous hatchet man Steven Emerson was called in to do what he does best: go around the American Jewish community spreading lies about Arab and Muslim Americans, digging up dirt, trying to stir up fear. Emerson has a long history of Islamophobia. He is most famous for having wrongly pointed the finger at Arabs and Muslims after the Oklahoma City bombing and the crash of TWA flight 800.
This time, however, Emerson's tactics seem to have worked. The Conference of Jewish Presidents, made up of the heads of 55 organisations, soon issued a statement echoing the ZOA's sentiments. They wrote a letter to members of Congress, some asking FBI director Louis Freeh to get personally involved in the case. A few days later Gephardt buckled under the pressure and retracted the nomination, claiming it would take too long to get Al-Marayati security clearance.
According to Jack Miles of the Washington Post, "Gephardt ought to have paid more attention to moderate leaders in the Los Angeles Jewish community who know Al-Marayati... and less to the strident voices of unrepresentative pressure groups. Their success in blackballing Al-Marayati's appointment unfortunately illustrates his own most controversial statement, namely that 'the supporters of Israel have created a quiet reign of terror in the US'."
As for the security clearance excuse, Al-Marayiti thinks it was definitely a bowing-down to Zionist pressure. "If there is a political will, things will go through, and we could have gotten down to business. My wife's clearance went through in a month, because the White House said they needed it."
Laila Al-Marayati is also a political appointee, the only Muslim on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Not surprisingly, her ousting has also been called for by the ZOA.
The controversy over the Al-Marayatis comes in the wake of a similar campaign targeted against Joe Zogby, an Arab-American who was working at the State Department, who was accused by the Zionist lobby of being "anti-Israeli".
As Al-Marayati says, "When it comes to Israel, whatever the ZOA says goes. There's a silencing of any dissenting voices. It shows the hypocrisy of Zionist groups, who rushed to defend convicted US spy Jonathan Pollard, even though defending a traitor is against US interests."
"Their scheming has already backfired," he added, "because some Jewish groups are upset, especially those who make a distinction between Judaism and Zionism."
A joint statement issued by the Council of American-Islamic Relations and the American Muslim Council urged Gephardt to re-instate Al-Marayati's nomination. "The important work of the commission will now be called into question and its deliberations will be compromised by the actions of those who have hung a 'No Arabs or Muslims need apply' sign over the composition... The pro-Israel lobby's manipulation of discussion on this important issue has a negative impact not only on Arab Americans who suffer the stigma of suspicion and exclusion, but also on an American foreign policy that currently lacks Muslim input. This, despite the fact that there are some six million Muslims in this country and that America has strong bi-lateral relations with more than 40 Muslim-majority nations..."
Miles, writing in the 17 July Washington Post, agrees that "a chasm separates the many Muslim cultures from Western cultures. Again and again, I saw Al-Marayati bridge this chasm. Young men are supposed to be rash and brash. This young man was astute and discreet. He listened more that he spoke. When he did speak, typically in press releases for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, it was most often to establish his organisation's paper trail of opposition to terrorism (which is by now quite lengthy). For all these reasons, Al-Marayati is perfectly suited for the seat on the National Commission on Terrorism that, it appears, anti-Muslim bigotry has succeeded in denying him."
Gene Lichenstein, editor of the Jewish Journal in Los Angeles, wrote that he did not believe Al-Marayati condones terrorism and that it was a "disservice to American Jews" to have opposed his participation in the commission.
Al-Marayati himself is not discouraged by what has happened. "This situation has really benefited our cause," he says, citing an article by Ira Rifkin entitled 'A Hollow Victory for Jewish Muscle'. "It has initiated a debate on the role of right-wing Zionist groups that suppress Jewish-American opinion. The mainstream groups have been silenced. There are more liberal Jewish groups and even Orthodox Jews who are disagreeing with their organisations. They say this is bad for the future of Jews in America."
