Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2000, pages 47-50

Southern California Chronicle

Suhaila Nasir Honored for Her Care of Maimed, Wounded Arab Children

By Pat and Samir Twair

Since 1996, the Southern California chapter of American Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam has presented a memorable program at its annual lifetime commitment to peace awards presentation. The 1999 event was no exception as the tradition of excellence was carried out with a concert by Palestinian oudist Simon Shaheen and Israeli cellist Ohad "Udi" Bar-David.

Tom Kremer and Shireen Najjar, who both were born 19 years ago at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (Oasis of Peace), discussed their lives growing up in the village housing 35 Jewish and Arab families in Israel. Father Bruno Hussar, a Dominican monk, established the community in the 1970s in the Latrun Pass, where it sponsors the School for Peace, youth and adult encounter workshops and a primary school conducted in Hebrew and Arabic.

Recipients of this year's peace awards were Ilse Kahn and Suhaila Nasir.

Kahn came to the U.S. from Germany in 1939 with her husband and has devoted her life to the betterment of children. She was educated in England as a physiotherapist and worked with L.A.'s Best, an enrichment program for children in the African-American/Latino community of Watts.

Nasir has worked since 1988 with Steven Sosebee, founder of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, to bring more than 100 severely wounded and maimed Arab children to the U.S. for medical treatment. The wife of a physician, Nasir has cared for many of these injured children in her home and has personally transported them for exhaustive checkups at Shriners Hospital for Children in Los Angeles.

Nasir gave an impassioned speech as she accepted her award. "I want to tell you a story, my mother's story, because the [Western] media have not told the true story," she said.

"In February 1999, my mother became an American citizen—it was the fifth citizenship she has held in her 92 years. She was born in 1906 in Haifa as a Christian citizen of the Ottoman Empire. During the period of the British Mandate over Palestine from 1918 to 1948, she held a Palestinian passport. In 1948, she and my father and we five children were forced out of our two villas in Jerusalem. We had no choice but to live as penniless refugees on the West Bank, where we were considered Jordanian citizens. When Israel occupied the West Bank, my mother received Israeli identification documents.

"There were no TV cameras in 1948 to record our panic and fear when the Israelis drove us from our homes, their loudspeakers threatening: 'Flee, the massacre is coming,'"

Recalling the first time she saw the film "Exodus," Nasir said she wanted to scream "this wasn't the case," in the theater.

"Why isn't there a Steven Spielberg to tell our story? The most painful wrong is for our people to be labeled as Palestinian terrorists. This is the first time in history that the victim is portrayed as the villain."

Nasir then introduced the audience to Bourhan Shuqir, a 17-year-old triple amputee who also lost his eye when he jumped from an olive tree onto a hidden land mine in his Palestinian village. He is receiving prosthetic arms and a leg at Shriners Hospital and is staying at Ronald McDonald House for the half-year he will be undergoing therapy.

A talented artist, he produces sketches by drawing with a pencil attached to his arm stump with velcro. Already some of his drawings have been on exhibit at Ronald McDonald House.

Anyone caring to assist in transportation or finances for Bourhan's care is asked to phone (626) 445-4028.

Jordan's Prince Hassan Addresses World Affairs Council

Acknowledging that the peace process "has not been as remarkable as hoped for," Jordan's Prince Hassan bin Talal addressed the Los Angeles World Affairs Council Nov. 4. His message was either to repatriate Palestinian refugees or compensate them and the nations who are supporting them. He also called for a greater sharing of wealth by oil-producing Arab states with the Arab countries that provide labor to the petroleum producers.

While borders and security, water, industrial zones and trade all are ingredients for peacemaking, the Hashemite leader stressed that the status of refugees must also be a factor.

"We can't talk about [Palestinian] refugees without realizing the dilemma of the countries they fled to," he said. While Jordan has paid a high price to take in refugees, Prince Hassan made it clear that Amman is in need of financial assistance if it is to continue to sustain this burden. Jordan's dilemma, he said, is that "The Arab states say the refugees have the right to return and Israel says they cannot return."

The Oxford-educated prince called for the Framework Agreement on Permanent Status, which is to be reached early in 2000, to solve such issues. "There is no initiative for reconciliation, we only hear talk about security," he said.

While pluralism seems to be a dirty word these days, he said, the politics of difference might be the answer since "melting pots don't necessarily melt." The alternative to a modern state system is balkanization, which should be averted, he advised. When there are no jobs, then despair becomes the breeding ground for extremism.

Friends of Sabeel Stage 1999 Conference

The Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, director of Sabeel Ecumenical Theology Center in Jerusalem, gave the keynote address at a Nov. 1 through 3 conference sponsored by Friends of Sabeel-North America in Pasadena.

"Hope for Holy Land Christians" was the theme of Dr. Ateek, whose liberation theology seeks to promote international awareness of Palestinian Christians. The program was energized by the original lyrics of Anglican singer/guitarist Rev. Garth Hewitt. He led off the event with a song he wrote, entitled "Where is the Land of Palestine?"

"Palestinians are obsessed with the issue of justice," Dr. Ateek said. Then borrowing a quote from anthropologist Margaret Mead—"Never doubt that a small group of committed, intelligent people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that will"—he predicted that though small in number, Palestinian Christians will survive in the Holy Land.

Although many Christians are planning to celebrate the 2,000th birthday of Christ in Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Dr. Ateek emphasized that Palestinian Christians living in villages will not have access to these sites because of Israeli regulations banning the free movement of Palestinians.

In the struggle over Jerusalem, Dr. Ateek explained that Israel is trying to promote the conflict as one between Jews and Muslims and not as a Jewish dispute with both Muslims and Christians.

"By marginalizing Christian Palestinians, the Israelis know that if it comes down to a choice of giving Jerusalem to the Jews or Muslims, the West will give the city to the Jews."

"We must continue to emphasize that Jerusalem is a city for three faiths," he continued. "When we talk about the Palestinian Christian community, we must make it clear that these are the faithful who have borne witness to Christ for 2,000 years."

Dr. Ateek ran through a list of events that have weakened the Christian community, beginning with theological controversies in the 4th and 5th centuries that led to the earliest divisions in Eastern Christianity. The arrival of Islam in the 7th century further diluted the community. The Crusades brought on new divisions among Eastern Christians, as many Orthodox Christians converted to Catholicism.

The introduction of Western missionaries as European powers divided the Middle East into colonies meant that many members of both the Orthodox Christian and Catholic communities became Protestants. Finally, with the establishment of Israel, many Christian Palestinians departed, so that today they account for only 2 percent of the Palestinian population.

Hope, Dr. Ateek reasons, will come from ecumenical movements within the remaining Christian groups. Another source of hope is the one million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens who speak Hebrew. Many of them are educated and striving for better representation. Palestinian Americans took one generation to become accustomed to the American system, Dr. Ateek said, but today more and more second- and third-generation Palestinian Americans are seeking justice in the Middle East.

"Growing numbers of American Jews also are standing with us in our bid for justice," he added.

"We fear [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat will be forced to make more concessions to the Israelis," he concluded. "We tell him not to sign an unjust peace agreement because the way history is working is toward a just peace.

"If Arafat is coerced into signing a pact that gives us no rights, I believe the Palestinian people will reject it.

"We will continue to be small in number, but it doesn't take too much salt to make food taste good and we will continue to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

"Miracles can happen," he concluded. "Who would have believed that change could occur in South Africa?"

Methodists Learn About Middle East

With so many distinguished speakers converging in Pasadena for the Sabeel conference, Rev. Diane Kenney and Dr. DarEll Weist decided to open their spacious Los Angeles home to three different Methodist congregations who might want to learn more about the plight of Christians in the Holy Land.

Speakers for the well-attended event were Jean Zaru, vice chair of Sabeel, Sandra Olewine of the Middle East Council of Churches, and Janet Lewis, executive director of Friends of Sabeel-North America.

Zaru, a woman of extraordinary grace and strength, led the Ramallah Quaker Friends Meeting for many years and provided shelter to each new wave of refugees who came to the old meeting house over the decades.

"Sabeel is struggling for equality on many levels: ecological, political, economic, religious—because we are witnessing how the Bible is being used as a tool of oppression in our land," she declared. "What's more, Sabeel is one of the few religious movements in the East that involves women's participation."

Ecumenical work is very important to Sabeel and the three women have coordinated efforts to get all Christian leaders in the area together. The first undertaking was five years ago when Sabeel sponsored a picnic in Tiberius.

One Methodist at the Los Angeles gathering asked who the refugees are.

"There are four million Palestinian refugees living in exile," Zaru answered. "What is so terribly sad about the peace process is that it does not address the problem of refugees. It is especially difficult for refugees in Lebanon who are not wanted and will never be absorbed there. Yet, [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak says the refugee problem cannot be included in peace negotiations."

Lewis explained that Friends of Sabeel-North America was born out of Sabeel's 1996 conference in Jerusalem.

"We realized we needed a support group in North America that could start educating the public that Christian Palestinians do exist. And the best way to stand up against the pro-Israel lobby is to work through churches in the U.S."

Interjected Zaru: "One of the problems of Christian-Jewish dialogue is that Jews set guidelines for the dialogue in which Christians must accept guilt for the Holocaust and they must accept Jewish claims to the land of Israel.

"Why should I accept something that denies what I am?" she continued. "When Jews tell me they can't hear this, I tell them it is much more difficult for me to live with it than it is for them to hear it."

Zaru explained to the incredulous Methodists that she lives in Ramallah but, as a Palestinian, she cannot drive to her Sabeel office 10 miles away in Jerusalem. She said that each day, she must cover up and disguise herself as an elderly woman in order to ride in a service taxi to her headquarters.

"Imagine," she said, "50 percent of all the doctors, all the hospital beds of the West Bank are in Jerusalem, but the Palestinians of the West Bank are banned from the city. Our Christian schools are going bankrupt because students cannot commute to Jerusalem to attend them."

Exhibiting a beleaguered sense of humor, Zaru said she often goes through an identity crisis when she confronts strangers from the West.

"When they learn I am Palestinian, they look at me as if I might be a terrorist, but since I'm a woman, they ask if I'm Muslim. When I say no, they say 'shalom,' assuming I must be Jewish. When I tell them I am Christian, they ask me when I converted. Believe me, I inform them my family was Christian probably centuries before theirs was."

Olwein says she wants visiting Christians to learn about the struggle of contemporary Christians living in Jerusalem. She has devised a special tour in which she demonstrates the pain of the Palestinians at each station of the cross along the Via Dolorosa.

She also is working with 18 Christian, Muslim and Jewish students to develop models on how to prevent religion from being used as an instrument of violence. She has applied for a Ford Foundation grant to train 250 students to put this nonviolent program into action.

"Since peace negotiations began, Israel has talked about apartness," Zaru commented. "Apartheid didn't work in South Africa. The Jewish state is not a reality. There are 3.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. There also are one million Palestinians inside Israel and there are one million Russian immigrants, many of whom are not Jewish. In fact, a priest goes to visit a large community of Orthodox Russians living in Jaffa. The numbers say it all."

"No one wants to see barricades in Jerusalem," Lewis added. "There are some very creative municipal models for Jerusalem, but they aren't discussed in the West."

U.N. Chapter Honors Laila and Salam al-Marayati

The Pasadena/Foothills chapter of the United Nations Association presented its 1999 World Citizen awards to Dr. Laila and Salam al-Marayati at an Oct. 24 luncheon in Anoush Restaurant in Glendale.

Presenting the awards was Stanley Sheinbaum, who led an historic 1988 delegation of American Jews to Stockholm, Sweden to persuade Yasser Arafat to recognize the state of Israel.

In presenting the dual awards, Sheinbaum said: "I left a New York City sweatshop where I earned $10 a week as a photo offset lithographer for a job that paid $50 a week in Houston. I was good at my work, but never once was I invited to a home of a co-worker."

As the decades have passed, bias against Jews has receded, the publisher of New Perspectives Quarterly noted, but he sees it now being directed toward Muslims.

"As the U.S. becomes more nationalistic and continues to get away with not paying its dues to the U.N., the knee-jerk reaction to pounce on Muslims is scary," he said. "Even the Russians are guilty of this as we see in Chechnya."

Sheinbaum noted that Salam al-Marayati was appointed to an anti-terrorism commission by House of Representatives Democratic leader Richard Gephardt and the "Jewish community went to work by climbing all over Gephardt by taking advantage of this bias," until Gephardt withdrew the appointment.

In accepting her award, Dr. Laila al-Marayati, who served on the official U.S. delegation to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, stressed her sense of urgency to halt hostile misconceptions of Islam that generate animosity toward and fear of Muslims.

Salam al-Marayati commented on the media's insistence on associating Muslims with violence.

"When right-to-lifers blow up an abortion clinic, they're not identified as Christian fundamentalists, when Serbs committed atrocities in Bosnia, they weren't called Christian radicals, but if a Muslim perpetrates an act of violence he is identified as a Muslim."

He brought up the 24 Muslims held in U.S. prisons without knowing the charges against them because of a 1996 law permitting the use of secret evidence. Such bias against Muslims is creating a generation of young Muslims who feel victimized, he warned.

Muslim Achievement Awards Go To Hathout Brothers

The Islamic Center of Southern California conferred its l999 American Muslim Achievement awards on two Egyptian-born brothers, Dr. Hassan Hathout and Dr. Maher Hathout, at an Oct. 16 banquet at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Special tribute was paid by fellow Egyptian Ahmed Zewail, the 1999 Nobel Prize recipient in chemistry, who offered his congratulations to the two physicians, who have dedicated their lives to Islam, medicine and their families.

Dr. Hassan Hathout was born in Shebin El Kom, Egypt in 1924 and graduated from Cairo Medical School in 1948. He then joined the struggle in Palestine and subsequently wrote a book, The Memoirs of a Physician in Palestine.

He completed post-graduate medical training in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and later co-founded the Kuwait Medical School. He came to the U. S. in 1989 with his physician wife, Salonas, and has since served the Islamic Center of Southern California. He also lectures tirelessly around the world, communicating a progressive Islamic ideology.

Dr. Maher Hathout was born in Cairo in 1936 and received his medical degree from the University of Cairo in 1960. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1971 with his physician wife, Dr. Ragaa Mostafa Hathout, where both completed post-graduate medical specialties. His efforts on behalf of the Islamic Center have made it a respected California institution. He is the only Muslim to chair the Inter-religious Council of Southern California .

Dr. Eba Hathout received the award for her father, Dr. Hassan, who was in Kuwait on the evening of the ceremony. She recalled how during the battle for Palestine in 1948 her father provided medical treatment to captured enemies who were wounded. The Israelis later recognized this.

Dr. Maher's daughter, Samer, an attorney, and son Gasser, an assistant professor of radiology at UCLA, commented on their father.

Dr. Gasser Hathout said his earliest memory of his father was when he was 5 years old and he was awakened by a commotion at 3 a.m. For the first time he set eyes on his father, who had been a political prisoner for three years.

"I don't remember the day my father was imprisoned because he had sent my mother and me away so I wouldn't see him shackled or manhandled when he was arrested," Dr. Gasser said. "But my father had left behind a diary that was read to me daily so that I would understand who he was and the principles he stood by."

Early memories were of his father giving zakat (charitable contributions) to the poor in Cairo's streets. Gasser Hathout thanked his father for the religious training he instilled in his son and the comfort it provided. "Islam is a practical religion offering a smooth, harmonious way to lead a life," Gasser explained.

Dr. Maher Hathout expressed gratitude for having such a community, such great children and his "sweet love," Dr. Ragaa.

Southern California CAIR Hosts Third Conference

During the third annual conference of the Southern California Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), national executive director Nihad Awad announced the organization has purchased a building on Capitol Hill for its headquarters.

"Why will our national office be next to Congress?" he asked rhetorically. "Because it's long overdue."

In the five years since CAIR was established, Awad said, the organization has made an impact on the media and the government has started to respond to its appeals when students or workers are treated unfairly because of their Muslim beliefs.

Hussam Ayloush, CAIR's Southern California director, pointed out that his office has made its presence known to many Hollywood studios. In turn, Warner Brothers hired Muslim consultants to more fairly portray Iraqi characters in the film "Three Kings." In addition to serving as a reference resource for the media, CAIR's Southern California office has conducted sensitivity training for the police and educators.

Imam Siraj Wahhaj of Masjid at-Taqwa in New York City was keynote speaker. He noted that by the year 2025 the Muslim population in the U.S. could number 18 million.

The choice facing American Muslims is either to shape society or be shaped by society, he said. Society, he continued, must view all American Muslims as an entire building and not as individual bricks which make the building. Making another comparison, he said that while a thermometer merely registers temperature, a thermostat can help control it. It is up to the individual to decide if he will be a thermostat or a thermometer. CAIR, Imam Siraj Wahhaj said, is a thermostat which can help cool things down when they become too hot.

More than 650 guests attended the event, which raised pledges to meet the regional office's budget for the coming year.

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

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