| August 2000 - Current Index Complete Index This Month MiddleEast.Org 8/07/00 |
|
|
To receive MER regularly email to INFOMER@MiddleEast.Org |
ARAB-AMERICAN HACKS HIJACK
NATIONAL MOBILIZATION AGAINST IRAQI SANCTIONS
" ADC = BULLSHIT "
Washington Scene - MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - 8/07/2000:
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)
folk were at it again this weekend in Washington - client-organizations
fronting for their client regimes.
Aware of how skeptical people have become of Arab American
organizations when they show their true colors, and needing to mask their
involvements for a variety of reasons, ADC didn't even send any official
spokesman to the weekend's National Mobilization to End Sanctions Against
Iraq. Thankfully everyone was spared another hypocritical oration
by former Arab League Ambassador Clovis Maksoud, who along with his chums
installed his wife Hala as "President of ADC" a few years ago.
Instead ADC sent one of their loyal stooges to the main
organizing meeting of the still embryonic National Coalition. The
goal of the meeting was to quickly build-on the momentum of the weekend
protests by creating a national organization and planning a national conference
-- long overdue and long put off developments. But just as the meeting
was about to endorse these steps Rania Masri twisted them out of it, deceptively
convincing the 60 or so persons who had gathered to put off the much needed
national conference and instead (believe it or not!) follow the lead of
the "highly successful" Arab American groups. Hold the laughter now!
With their brand new "Right of Return" T-shirts, Masri
rattled off a litany of misinformation, and as time for the meeting ran
out managed to hijack the needed steps toward a serious national organization
and national conference. Instead, using a few others she brought
with her to endorse her suggestions, she got unenthusiastic and half-hearted
agreement to use her egroups internet discussion forum (which pathetically
has only about 400 email addresses on it after years of organizing) as
the forum for continued discussion about what should be done.
How sad and tragic of course -- and the "peace movement"
wonders why so many are turned off, disgusted, and unwilling to get involved.
Ten years after the war, 10 years into the awful "genocidal"
sanctions, nearly 1.5 million Iraqi deaths and counting, and the organizers
of the Washington demonstration still don't have any idea how Washington
works and how they are manipulated, infiltrated, and used. With a
sheet of paper listing dozens of groups that make of their rather anarchistic
"coalition", they have yet to even decide on an actual name for the national
organization, there is no one in charge, there is no date for the urgently
needed national conference.
Meanwhile, Martin Sheen and other big-name persons listed
as endorsing the demonstration and calling for an end to sanctions were
no-shows. Missed his plane the organizers said, unconvincingly.
Indeed, there were no major stars from TV land,
only a few church spokesman, a couple of note, a lone Congressman,
and a highly articulate and dedicated British Member of Parliament.
And oh yes, Ralph Nader did come and speak -- and good for him.
Worst of all though, this whole effort is now going to
be further manipulated by the Washington-based Arab client-organizations
who are themselves short-leash creatures of the very Arab client-regimes
from whose countries U.S. and British warplanes continue to destroy Iraq
and enforce the hated "sanctions" they are protesting!
We'll continue to have a special focus on the realities
of the "Washington Scene" in the weeks and months ahead. Right now,
for the unknowing, and for the hijacked, this FlashBack article to three
year ago this month.
A D C = B U L L S H I T
"Most of what I've heard from this panel is BULLSHIT."
First audience comment at
ADC annual conference
MER - Washington - 8/27/97:
.
There are many reasons the Israeli/Jewish lobby rules in Washington
with hardly any effective opposition.
.
One of the main reasons is that the various Arab-American organizations
that exist are all controlled, manipulated, and usually paralyzed by the
political and financial corruption of the Arab world. That corruption and
impotence is translated to Washington by Arab ambassadors and the many
they employ, most especially by Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, now one
of the longest-serving Arab representatives in Washington.
.
Not widely known, Bandar has actually been working closely and personally
with some of the main elements of the Israeli/Jewish lobby for years, even
before the Gulf war in 1991. His goal is simple -- use the power and influence
of the Israeli/Jewish lobby to perpetuate the rule of the al-Saud family
in "the Kingdom" -- everyone else be damned. For many matters involving
commenting to the often gullible press, the Saudis use Jim Zogby, a kind
of public relations flak masquerading under the guise of the "Arab American
Institute" (AAI).
.
When it comes to the only Arab American organization that has any grass-roots,
the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the situation is
a bit more complicated. ADC does a few useful, though always very easy,
things in the area of discrimination. Indeed, nothing could be easier in
America then to oppose discrimination; and actually ADC doesn't really
do that very well either. But far more importantly, when it comes to the
serious and historical political issues of our day, here ADC is worse than
a failure, it is a fraud and a deception -- one largely perpetrated on
its own membership.
.
That fraudulent reality might well have been behind the private and
unheeded call a few years ago by ADC founder, former Senator James Abourezk
from South Dakota, for the organization to be closed down. Instead, some
of the long-time Washington opportunists, with former Arab League Ambassador
Clovis Maksoud and wife Hala in the lead, pushed ADC to make a kind of
pact with the Arab establishment. In return for financial support from
Arab businessmen closely aligned with the American-sponsored client regimes
in the Middle East, ADC would not involve itself in anything politically
controversial (i.e., anything important), would support the "peace process"
and the Arafat regime (no matter how much corruption and repression), and
would not involve itself in any way against the terrible abuses and corruption
so rampant in many of the key Arab countries -- most especially Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Kuwait and Jordan.
.
In short, on matters political and historical, ADC has become a kept
woman of the Arab regimes. All kinds of simplistic press releases go out
to unknowing ADC supporters around the country touting as grand ADC accomplishments
what are really very small, usually relatively insignificant, always easy
matters. But when it comes to any major political issues, ADC hardly ever
has anything to say and even when it does it is always the tritest of slogans
always corresponding to whatever the Arab "client-regimes" are pushing
at the time.
.
This sad reality couldn't have been better demonstrated this summer
then what took place at the ADC annual conference which came during the
month of the 30th anniversary of the 1967 war, a theme which was in fact
one by which the conference was promoted.
.
After 30 years of brutal and crippling occupation, after a decade of
the "Intifada", after the catastrophe that befell Lebanon, the 1982 war,
the Gulf/Iraq War, and the apartheid-type "Peace process", all that ADC
could muster for this 30th anniversary was a dull and self-serving panel
of Arab Ambassadors representing the very governments (plus the new Arafat
regime) who are historically responsible for what has happened and have
every motive to misrepresent it!
.
Nothing more from ADC. Not a single independent commentator. Not a
single important academic personality. Not a single notable journalist.
Not a single comment about the subject that couldn't have been written
by the Saudi press office. And incidentally, other than their own paid
press services, no important media even bothered to come.
.
At the end of the session, the usually compliant ADC audience had a
lot of questions. Right off the bat the first person succinctly indicated
that what he had just heard was mostly "bullshit". The next couple of questioners
took a similar tone, especially in severely challenging Arafat's representative
on the panel (let's not contribute to the deceptions by calling him "Ambassador").
But then, all controlled and planned that way of course, the very short
time for questions went by very quickly, and those standing in line with
more disenchantment to express faded away as usual.
.
The kids of Palestine can take on the Israeli army with rocks and molotov
cocktails, suffering so terribly in the process. The ADC, after some two
decades on the Washington scene, can't even hold an honest and thoughtful
session about what has happened.
.
Worse yet, when ADC released the official record of the conference,
the highly critical comments from ADC members were mysteriously missing!
Bullshit indeed.
.
[For additional information about Arab American organizations in Washington
see http://WWW.MiddleEast.Org/adc1.htm. Previously published articles provide
considerable additional information about Prince Bandar and Saudi control
in Washington and can be found at the MER website.]
|
|
Copyright © Mid-East Realities
& The Committee On The Middle East.
|