Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2000, pages 90-92

Arab-American Activism

Protesters Shout “Yemenis Are Not Our Enemies”

Following the release of “Rules of Engagement,” a movie that perpetuates negative stereotypes of Arabs, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) organized a protest in front of the Cineplex Theater in Washington, DC on April 18 to denounce the film and its maker, Paramount Pictures. A crowd of protesters gathered in front of the movie theater and across the street facing rush-hour traffic, holding signs that read “Hollywood Stop Bashing Arabs,” “Paramount Is Racist,” “No Profits From Racism,” and “Shame on Paramount.” The event was covered by various media including CNN and Voice of America.

The Arab-American community has articulated various objections to the film, beginning with some very basic inaccuracies such as the presence of actors who speak pure Moroccan dialect dressed in North African garments while playing the roles of Yemenis living some 2,000 miles away. Yemen is presented as a nation whose local government is mysteriously absent and where chaos and disorder are presumably ways of life. Nowhere does the movie present a logical explanation of why Yemenis resent the American presence, as if hatred of America is somehow inherent in the Arab psyche.

Rather, the only hypothesis to which the movie alludes is an over-exhausted concept of jihad, a word repeated throughout the movie to imply that millions of Muslims, even children, naively engage in this “holy war” seeking to slaughter Americans mercilessly. Repeating such a hypothesis serves not only to make audience members frightened of Arabs, but also to systemically dehumanize them, and thus justify the killing by U.S. Marines of 83 Yemeni protesters. That, in fact, is the final conclusion of the movie, as “Colonel Childers,” who ordered the shooting, is set free.

Thus to a young and impressionable American viewer, the message might be this: a U.S. Marine who kills civilians perceived as “hostile” may go unpunished, with a bonus given if the victims are Arabs. It is this very malicious anti-Arab, anti-Muslim filmed message emanating from Hollywood, and certainly not for the first time, that the Arab-American community has chosen to combat by organizing protests around the country at movie theaters playing “Rules of Engagement.”

Responding to those protests, Paramount Pictures released a statement saying that “‘Rules of Engagement’ is a dramatization and a fictional account of the consequences of extremism in all its forms. The film is not an indictment of any government, culture, or people. Rather, it explores the human tragedy and consequences that can result when people of any society are put in extreme situations.” ADC’s spokesman, Hussein Ibish, thinks otherwise. He said flatly that the movie is “probably the most racist film ever made against Arabs by Hollywood.” (See also the review of “Rules of Engagement” by film critic Jack Shaheen on p. 15 of this issue.)

—Asma Yousef

CPAP Examines Future of Muslim and Arab World

In an April 27 review of more than a century of Zionism culminating in the creation and development of Israel, Abdel Latef Arabiat, secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front (IAF), asked what the future will hold for the Arab and Muslim world. Speaking at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in Washington, DC, Arabiat cited the first Zionist Congress in 1897, and such subsequent developments as the Balfour Declaration, the various Arab-Israeli wars, and the “peace process” starting with the Israeli-Egyptian agreement in 1979. Challenging the idea that the Arabs have gained from “normalization” of relations with Israel, he focused instead on the importance of unity in the Arab and Muslim world.

Arabiat, formerly the secretary-general of Jordan’s Ministry of Education and speaker of Jordan’s parliament from 1990-1993, argued that instead of concentrating so much on Israel, the Arabs should place more emphasis on seeking their rights and in achieving solidarity. In an attempt to help reach this goal, Arabiat is involved in a coalition of divergent political groups from the communist, nationalist, and Islamist streams. He argued that this was the only such coalition in the Arab world.

To demonstrate the value of national unity, he pointed to the strong cultural and historical role the Arab world played, particularly prior to being divided arbitrarily by colonialism. “We were, in the past, a nation,” he said. Now he views Israel as a “foreign body” which was “injected” into the Middle East.

“Do we need to have ‘normalization’?” he asked. “[We have] changed from revolutionary aspects [of relating to Israel] to having negotiations with Israelis,” he said. Yet the peace process has brought the Arabs very little, he argued, adding that Jordan’s economic situation has worsened. “Everything is still as it was” before the beginning of the Oslo process, he said. The conditions are even “worse than before.”

With the “Zionist strategy still [focusing] on clear points of expanding [Israel’s] borders,” Arabiat asked what “normalization” really means. He said that for “Palestinian people to go back to their homes” in what is now Israel is the truly “normal” thing to do. Why is it, he asked, that Israeli troops “dismissed me from my homeland” and now the Israeli government insists that he “agree” to it?

Instead, he said, “It is time for a new project for the whole [Arab and Muslim] nation,” adding that Arabs and Muslims have “a right” to put forward their objectives and ideals. “We all must work together,” he said.

When asked what role women play in his movement, he pointed out that as the Qur’an stipulates, “women are equal with men in their rights and their duties” within their coalition. He added that his party has several women in leadership positions.

Yet, in conclusion, he cautioned that his group’s goals will not be realized overnight because “social change is very hard and very slow.”

—Wendy Lehman

Roni Ben Efrat Challenges Oslo

Roni Ben Efrat, Israeli Jewish editor of the Jerusalem-based magazine Challenge , discussed ramifications for Palestinians of the Oslo accords and offered critical commentary on the possible alternatives in an April 13 briefing at the Center for Policy Analysis in Washington, DC.

Israel has revealed its negotiation methods, Ben Efrat said. Prime Minister Ehud Barak bargains about every road, every prisoner and every inch of land. Then he postpones or reneges on signed agreements. As Israel and the Palestinian Authority pass from interim agreements into creating a final status framework, Ben Efrat asserted that the current round of talks will only serve to codify the status quo. She said the parties are mismatched. Israel, the militarily and economically superior negotiating “partner,” has forced the interim phase of the peace process into a holding pattern, during which, she said, “interim” has come to mean, for the Palestinians, “until you get used to it.” Of the land Israel gained by theft and war previously, Ben Efrat said, 40 to 50 percent of it will bear the world’s Kosher stamp seal of approval when the borders are finally drawn.

The Oslo process has made the gap between Israel and the Arab world even larger, she said. As Israel “turned the level of abuse [against the Palestinians] to the level of science...the Arab world withdrew” its support for the peace process. Now if the Arab world continues to participate in the U.S.-trumpeted peace process it must accept the two terms of U.S./Israeli hegemony over the Middle East: 1) the Arab economies must be restructured and their markets opened to Israel, and 2) all decisions affecting Middle East politics and economics must go through Tel Aviv.

The Palestinian people should insist upon the supremacy of international law in defining Palestinian self-determination, Ben Efrat suggested. If Chairman Yasser Arafat had done this right along, he could have withstood U.S. pressures and fostered international solidarity, she concluded. To subscribe to Ben Efrat’s Challenge, a magazine on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, write to Challenge , P.O. Box 41199, Jaffa 61411, Israel

—Delinda C. Hanley

Robert Fisk Discusses Lebanon’s Forsaken Palestinians

Robert Fisk, an award-winning and internationally acclaimed journalist, discussed the situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon at a Jerusalem Fund lecture on April 12 in Washington, DC. Fisk has covered the Middle East for 24 years and is the author of Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War, considered to be one of the best accounts of the Lebanese civil war.

Palestinian refugees comprise an estimated 12 percent of the population of Lebanon and represent the poorest segment of that society. Fisk especially emphasized the massacre of September 1982 at Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, which began when Israeli forces seized West Beirut after a lightning assault. Fisk was there while the killing continued, trying not to get killed himself. What he saw was gruesome. For example, he said he saw a woman who had been hanging out her washing when she was shot in the back a number of times. When she fell, she had a “halo” of the clothes and line around her head, with blood streaming from her back.

Recently, Fisk took a friend to this site, now largely a place where waste and refuse are dumped, without a memorial on behalf of those massacred, but still with Palestinians living there. The friend told him, “If I lived here, I would go mad.”

A group of executives and editors, most from New York, went to the camp and visited with a Palestinian who asked them, “Why does the United States allow this?” When one executive just nodded in sympathy, Fisk told them: “I think she wants a reply.” All the executive could venture was, “It’s not that simple.....”

Fisk says he goes to Sabra and Shatila time and again, to get more information and to try to understand what was happening when he himself was there. He said that had this happened to Israelis, the photographs taken would be published repeatedly in all the newspapers, and American presidents would go there to honor the victims.

But these Palestinians were killed by “the wrong murderers supported by the wrong ally.” So, not only did this not occur, but no memorial was built.

“Semantics, rather than straightforward mendacity” is used by the United States government, the Israelis, the media and, in some instances, even adopted by Arabs, Fisk told the audience. “Now, the U.S. press writes not about the ‘right of return,’ but of compelling Israel to ‘hand them [occupied territories ] over or give them up.’ The Boston Globe recently wrote describing Palestinians as displaced persons rather than as refugees. They no longer refer to a peace plan, but to a peace process.”

Asking, “Where did this come from?” Fisk warned listeners not to use such terms as “back on track” and pointed out that the State Department no longer uses the term “occupied” to describe the Palestinian territories under Israeli military occupation, but instead calls them “disputed.” He also charged that Israel has no intention of complying with U.N. resolutions calling for the repatriation of Palestinians to their homeland, and for their compensation for lost properties and possessions. With a derisive smile, he reminded us of the description, “This will be a wild game park.”

—BettyMolchaney