Issue No. 591
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20 - 26 June 2002 Issue No. 591 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Tax, slaughter and lies
What can Arab Americans do? James Abou Rizk* offers suggestions in an abridged version of a speech he gave to the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee conference
The 2 May US House of Representatives vote, 352 to 21, expressed unqualified support for Israel. On the same day the US Senate voted 94 to 2 for the same motion. That these votes occurred at the same time the Israeli army was slaughtering Palestinians in the West Bank sent the signal that no matter what Israel did it was OK with our senators and congressmen.
I do not recall my member of congress asking me if I was in favour of patting Israel on the back for its criminal violations of international law. No one else, no average American, has been asked either.
But that is the state of American politics today. The Israeli lobby has put together so much money power that we are daily witnessing US senators and representatives bowing down low to Israel and its US lobby.
Make no mistake. The votes and bows have nothing to do with the legislators' love for Israel. They have everything to do with the money that is fed into their campaigns by members of the Israeli lobby. My estimate is that at least $6 billion flows from the American Treasury to Israel each year. That money, plus the political support the US gives Israel at the United Nations, is what allows Israel to conduct criminal operations in Palestine with impunity. While the Europeans protest loudly at Israel's actions, and at Israel's ignoring of world opinion, such protests are brushed aside by Israel because its support comes from the only country that counts, the US.
What the lobby has actually done is to intervene in our democracy, manipulating one branch of our government so that it is in conflict with the other branches. And this is done for the benefit of a foreign power. Never in our history has a foreign power had such a grip on our government. We have witnessed the lobby manipulating the American media by planting stories in the press, utilising Israel's supporters in the press, the Defence Department and in the Congress to effectively tie the hands of any administration that might want to make Israel do the right thing.
Israel has, over the years, gradually pursued a strategy to align America with their fortress mentality, so that when we became victims of a terrorist attack Israel was able to commence its long planned invasion of the West Bank. The timing was perfect: Bush was retaliating in Afghanistan and could not consistently criticise Israel for what it was doing. This criminal opportunism was brought to you by the same people who attacked and destroyed the USS Liberty, who deliberately allowed the truck bombers in Beirut to drive their explosives into the Marine Barracks there, and who paid Jonathan Pollard to steal our secrets so some of them could be sold to the Soviet Union.
Congress and the administration support Israel's crimes because of the Israeli lobby's money. By paying taxes Americans are paying for the destruction of Palestine and of Palestinians. And when the time comes to rebuild the cities and villages of the West Bank, Americans will pay for that as well.
The Israeli lobby operates in the shadows. The reason for this is that members of Congress and the mainstream media allow them to do so by not speaking or writing about the lobby.
One would think that an organisation that is as widespread as the lobby deserves some kind of press coverage, that the amount of taxpayers' money handed to Israel each year deserves some commentary. But the obvious result of exposing the lobby's activities would be that the American people demand an end to this handing over of money to criminals who are slaughtering and abusing Palestinians.
If anyone else did what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians we would send in troops to put a stop to it. We did so in Bosnia, we did so in Kosovo, and we did so in Haiti. Instead, we are sending more money so Israel can continue the slaughter.
In case you're wondering, I haven't forgotten our president, George W. Here is a man torn between two conflicting urges. One urge is to keep good relations with the Arab oil countries so his family and his friends can be taken care of. The other urge is to kiss the feet of the Israelis.
Do we remember when George W first "ordered" Sharon to withdraw from the West Bank? Do we remember when Sharon effectively told the president of the most powerful country in the world to stick it up his nose?
Those who say George W is dumb had better review how quickly he learned who was the real boss of the world -- Ariel Sharon. And if you think what members of Congress have been doing is undignified, compare that to the disgraceful retreat George W conducted when Sharon told him to. This is truly an example of the tail wagging the dog, and is not befitting the man who presumably leads us, and who did not ask our permission to have him kowtow to the war criminal, Sharon.
George W Bush lied to the Arab American community during his election campaign when he said, in Michigan, that he was against the policy of using secret evidence to convict Arab Americans or to have them deported. He needed Michigan's Arab American votes and based on that policy statement, he got them.
Now that he is safely in office we see a different George Bush. When FBI and CIA shortfallings recently became public, he sent out members of his administration to say that there was no way they could have known about the World Trade Centre bombing ahead of time. Dick Cheney said that the duty of the president and himself was to make certain it wouldn't happen again. The vice-president was lying when he said that. He and Bush are not doing all they can to prevent another such attack. What they are doing is making certain that there will be another attack by announcing their support for Ariel Sharon and Israel's continued brutality against the Palestinians. They are continuing to send money, and the political support they've given Israel is criminal complicity itself. Don't kid yourself. They know what they're doing by giving some terrorist somewhere more reasons to attack the US, our citizens, and American interests somewhere around the world.
It's no secret that people around the world are distraught at our support for Israel and what it's doing to Palestinians, which is the single greatest grievance people in the Arab countries and in Moslem countries have against us. It is not, as some of the propagandists try to say, that these people hate America because we have freedoms here. Anyone who knows anyone in the Arab world will tell you that they love our freedoms. It is our policies they hate, because it is our policies that cause so much suffering in Palestine and other places.
It's appropriate now to discuss some of the other stars of the administration and the Congress. Each political party in Congress elects its own leader. In the case of the Republican House members, they elected Congressman Dick Armey. You remember him. He's the fellow who stood up on television and recommended ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Then there's Vice President Cheney, who said he sympathised with Israel in its trouble trying to occupy the West Bank. In the past he couldn't say enough nice things about Arabs when he was head of the Haliburton Company, and both he and Haliburton have gotten rich doing business with the Arab oil countries. And don't forget Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, both of whom believe that Sharon is not tough enough on the Palestinians.
We must remember, too, Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has given new meaning to the word "fascist". How else can you describe what he's done since 11 September? He has single handedly destroyed more civil liberties in this great country of ours than any other government official since Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln abolished habeas corpus during the civil war, but Ashcroft has carried that to ridiculous heights. He has authorised the wiretapping of conversations between attorneys and their clients, a little loophole that has resulted in the arrest of attorney Lynn Stewart, indicted on flimsy charges arising from the FBI listening in on her conversations with her imprisoned client, Sheikh Omar Abdel- Rahman. He has, too, supervised mass arrests of Arabs in this country, without charges and without allowing them to consult a lawyer.
Secretary Colin Powell, who seemed to have the only level head in the administration, was on television the other day telling America that, "Yes, the settlements are going to be a big problem in settling this conflict." His attitude in that respect is very much like the piano player in the house of prostitution who claims he has no idea what's going on upstairs. Here is the secretary of state of the United States, which provides Israel with some $6 billion in aid who pretends he doesn't know that it is our money that is building settlements, and that it is our money that is buying the tanks, fighter jets, and helicopter gunships for Israel to allow them to build and hold onto settlements.
But George W Bush and his administration have discovered that when our country goes into crisis, as happened on 11 September, the president's popularity polls go upward. Do you think that explains why Bush wants his war on terrorism extended forever, or at least until after the congressional elections this year and his own re-election in 2004? And when I say re- election, I do not concede that he was elected in 2000. Not to say that Al Gore would have been any better on the Middle East conflict, but at least he got more votes than Bush did.
We now know that the FBI had several strong hints that the attack was planned ahead of time, but did nothing with it. My wife's brother, who is a simple farmer in Northern Syria, has had difficulty getting a visa to visit me in South Dakota, but Mohamed Atta, the reputed ringleader of 11 September hijackers, was granted the courtesy of having his visa extension delivered to him by the INS some six months after he flew a plane into the World Trade Centre.
Bad things have been happening to us as Arab Americans for at least two reasons: first of all, we have failed to organise ourselves into a powerful political force, which is the best protection we can have against governmental abuse. And secondly, we have failed to organise ourselves to combat the depredations of Israel and its lobby.
But we cannot shy away from exposing the Israeli lobby for what it is, the lobby of a foreign government that forces Congress to act against American interest. And it does so in the shadows, which prevents the public from knowing what they and our members of congress are doing. The lobby has intimidated politicians, the press and even our president.
We will never put a stop to that until we organise and raise enough money to combat what the lobby is doing. By exposing how much money the lobby is taking from us each year we can make great progress to defend ourselves from the government and the lobby.
If the American media were doing its job reporting on the Israeli lobby and on what is happening in Palestine, it would be much easier to discuss this with the American public. But all we get from cable news networks is the one-sided trash they put out that passes for news programmes.
I want to tell you about the first time I visited the Middle East. It was in 1973, shortly after the 1973 War, and not long after I began serving in the US Senate. I spoke with every Arab leader in the area, with the exception of Saddam Hussein. To a man they told me that if Israel would withdraw to 1967 borders, allow the Palestinians a state in the West Bank, they would then sign a peace treaty and recognise Israel. That is the same proposal that Crown Prince Abdullah put on the table. But back then there was no reaction from either the US or Israel. I made a speech at the Federal Press Club about my trip, telling those attending about the offer from Arab leaders. There was a journalist in the audience who rose and asked me several hostile questions, after which he got up and left. His name was Wolf Blitzer, and he wrote a nasty article attacking me, saying, "Abou Rizk has sold out to the Arabs." You remember Blitzer -- he also wrote a book advocating that the US government release Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy.
I also want to tell you what happened in Los Angeles recently, in addition to Dr Abdel-Karim being arrested for taking humanitarian aid to Palestinians. When I was in Los Angeles two or three weeks ago on other business I was contacted by people who represented what was described as a new coalition of Palestinian groups in the area. I was told they were having a meeting to raise money for ambulances in the West Bank, and asked if I would speak to them. I readily agreed to do it, and was preparing for the appearance when, the next day, I was contacted and told that my speech was cancelled because one of the groups had non-profit, tax free status, and that they were afraid if I spoke Ashcroft would have their tax- free status revoked.
My point in telling you this is that Ashcroft's objective is to frighten Arab Americans into silence, so they can't protest giving money to Israel and so they can't try to counter the Israeli lobby. I'm here to tell you that it is a fatal mistake to allow Ashcroft to frighten you. We still have the courts in this great nation to act as a shield against such fascist activities. I know it's difficult, but you need to be aggressive in your protests against the Israeli lobby and against wrong-headed government policies. If we do not stand up for our rights, no one else will stand up for us. We have to do it ourselves, no matter how much pain and suffering it causes us. We must do it for our children and for our grandchildren. We do not want to leave them a legacy of fear and of oppression.
In closing, I'm going to tell you how to stop the suicide bombings in Palestine. There are two ways to do it.
Give the Palestinians the same weapons that the US has given Israel, the same fighter jets, the same tanks, and the same rockets and other small arms. Then the suicide bombers will no longer find it necessary to bomb pizza parlours and passover celebrations. Providing such weapons will no longer make it necessary for Palestinians to martyr themselves. They can then shoot it out with the Israeli army on an equal basis.
The second option is for Israel and the US to get the hell out of the West Bank. We must acknowledge that Israel stole most of Palestine, but that if they will relinquish what is now only the West Bank the war will be over. There would be no more suicide bombers. And the Palestinian people would be able to have some sort of peace that they deserve and that has been owed to them ever since 1948.
* The writer is a former member of the US Senate.
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