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Making Sense of the Middle East
/_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\ ARAB AMERICANS - REALITIES NOT DECEPTIONS
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MER FLASHBACK - Four Long Years Ago
MER - Washington Scene:
THE REAL CONTEXT OF SATURDAY'S "RIGHT OF RETURN" RALLY
"Instead of anything really useful and effective,
the Arabs have a bunch of squabbling, incestuous,
incompetent, corrupt, and petty "client organizations"
that are all controlled and manipulated by the very
Arab regimes who have caused all the problems in
the first place..."
"The basic issue is finding serious and effective ways
to oppose the entire despicably misnomered 'peace process',
one in fact supported and promoted by the key Arab 'client
regimes' who support the U.S.-based 'client organizations'
who then control and manipulate the Arab activists --
no matter how sincere they might be."
MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 9/14/00:
There is no American group that has had a better cause, large numbers,
much press interest, and lots of money; but that has done a worse job
of promoting its concerns than the Palestinian and Arab communities in
the USA. It's a long and complicated story of gross failures,
incestuous self-serving "leaders", political manipulation and
prostitution, and false-flag "client organizations".
This simple yet basic reality was dramatized in a most visible way in
Washington at the time of the 50th anniversary of the 1948 War a few
years ago -- the "nakba", the "disaster" as far as the Arabs are
concerned.
After half a century of time for the community to seriously organize
and build up support, the one grass-roots organization that actually
exists, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), spent
most of the year organizing for, and came up with a large list of
"co-sponsors" for, a Sunday demonstration at the U.S. Capital.
In order to get a large turn-out, it was scheduled for right after the
completion of the ADC annual convention. It order to get a large
turn-out the focus was on a large "Palestinian quilt" with panels
representing destroyed Arab villages -- nothing controversial or
critical about the ongoing "peace process", Oslo, Arafat, regimes,
Clinton, Israel lobby, etc. And as it turned out it was a bright
and sunny Sunday afternoon -- so no excuses here either!
Yet, it was so pathetic, so shameful. At this important
anniversary time of the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian defeat, and
while American Jews were throwing huge parties at Madison Square Garden
and TV spectaculars, working at their hardest and drawing on everything
and everyone they could, the Arabs managed to bring no more than 500
persons to their much promoted demonstration! Gosh -- the list of
supposed "endorsers" must have been a hundred in itself!
Moreover, not one Congressman or Senator...not even one prominent
former such.
The ADC was in fact so disorganized and incompetent that it couldn't
even arrange to get the couple of buses that were supposed to go from
the convention Hotel to the Capital to show up; and a few people who
came from out of town even complained they had been given the wrong
information and never even found the demonstration before it was over!
To juxtapose matters even more, literally at the same time the Arab
American community was disgracing itself with such a disastrous turn
out, the Free Tibet movement was gathering at Robert F. Kennedy stadium
in Washington, just a few miles away, with a crowd approaching a
hundred thousand!
The bottom line is very simple. Today in Washington the
Israeli/Jewish lobby is extraordinarily well-organized and
powerful. But the Arabs don't even have a lobby worthy of using
that term. In fact the one organization they pretended was
seriously lobbying for them for two decades, the "National Association
of Arab Americans" (NAAA), recently totally collapsed -- though the
President was rewarded (rather than being booted out for his gross
failures) by being made a V-P of the same ADC just mentioned!
Instead of anything really useful and effective, the Arabs have a bunch
of squabbling, incestuous, incompetent, corrupt, and petty "client
organizations" that are all controlled and manipulated by the very Arab
regimes who have caused all the problems in the first place and who are
actually themselves working closely with the U.S. Government and the
Israelis, albeit often under-the-table.
In recent years this collection of rag-tag and disingenuous Arab groups
has been joined by a few Muslim organizations, again all creatures of
and controlled by the Arab "client regimes" in one way or
another. The leaders of the largest of these, the American Muslim
Council (AMC), are off today paying homage to Crown Prince Abdullah in
New York, the regional country that has helped the most to bring about
the genocidal destruction of neighboring Iraq.
This then is the real overall backdrop to this weekend's "Right of
Return" demonstration, one which is itself manipulated by a group of
persons essentially ADC in origin but trying to mask that reality a bit
because of ADC's terrible reputation for being such a bunch of
self-serving and deceptive bunglers.
Bottom Line: Palestinian and Arab Americans have failed miserably
in attempting to promote Palestinian rights and protect Arab lives at a
crucial time in history when matters Middle Eastern have been higher
than ever on the U.S. national radar. They have stood by as
Lebanon was destroyed, Iran was bloodied, the Palestinians were
increasingly dispossessed, Algeria exploded, and Iraq was pulverized --
completely unable and unwilling to stand for anything principled and to
do anything serious.
And all this is why in the year 2000 the entire Arab American community
is in the confused and demoralized state it is, with few allies, and
most of its own uninterested in what the the petty organizations say or
do. It is also why some of the younger activists -- in many cases
sincere and spirited though -- are so clueless as to what is really
going on and often just plain ignorant about who is whom and what is
what so that they spend most of their time recreating the wheel.
Bottom Line: All this explains one of the important factors
making it possible that the Palestinians remaining in their once
unified homeland are being subjected to an apartheid-style
disenfranchisement process which continues to shrink their lands,
fragment their continuity, and round them up into "autonomous
population centers" now controlled by a "Palestinian Authority" itself
controlled by the Israelis and the CIA.
This whole situation also explains why the Israelis are so terribly
eager to consolidate and "legalize" today's situation with an
Arafat-signed "final peace". They realize that the current
situation gives them far more control and legitimacy that at any time
in history and offers them a chance to "end the conflict" with the
Palestinians totally on Israeli terms -- the Palestinians under their
control (and that includes Arafat's Authority of course) so confused
and demoralized they hardly even know how to explain what is happening
to them; and the Palestinians abroad, especially in the U.S., not even
able to figure out how to seriously oppose a "peace process" that is
rapidly undermining everything they claim they are so concerned about.
This then is the overall context in which this weekend's "Right of
Return" rally needs to be understood as far too little, far too late,
and far too misdirected.
The basic issue at this point in history isn't making speeches at a
park across from the White House for a few hours telling everyone what
they already know...that there are millions of Palestinian refugees
languishing in refugee camps.
The basic issue is finding serious and effective ways -- not
self-deluding and self-serving ways -- to oppose the entire despicably
misnomered "peace process", one in fact supported and promoted (for
self-serving reasons of their own) by the key Arab "client regimes" who
support the U.S.-based "client organizations" who then control and
manipulate the Arab activists -- no matter how sincere they might be.
Indeed, in many ways the likelihood is that this weekend's mini-march
actually plays into the very clever and very complicated designs being
promoted by the Israelis and their American allies, for these reasons:
1) Even if they now manage to bring out 4 or 5 thousand
demonstrators, deluding themselves about the significance of this in a
city where far larger demonstrations take place all the time, the real
message to the tough-minded politicos in Washington is this:
There's nothing to worry about from Arab Americans...working overtime
they can only mobilize quite few in numbers...they are not even
protesting against the upcoming agreement itself likely to be soon
signed across the street...they know nothing about the power of civil
disobedience...they have no powerful or even significant allies...their
leadership is naive and oftentimes foolish...and the Arab organizations
we work with can be counted on to keep them under control come what may.
2) The Israelis are already working the "Right of Return" issue
very cleverly. If Arafat can be made to sign the "end of
conflict" agreement in one form or another -- and for which he and his
cronies will get billions -- the Israelis know this is a tremendous
accomplishment for them as it will essentially banish the Palestinians
to Bantustan status and permanent Israeli control. In this
context the Israelis may let a very few percent of the refugees
"return" under concepts of "family reunification" and "humanitarian
concern", promising a few more something yet to come. Having then
gotten an agreement which they will claim has the force of
international law and which gives them more than 80 percent of historic
Palestine, with most of the good land and resources, and with
everything else still under their ultimate control -- the Israelis know
very well there isn't anywhere for any sizeable number of Palestinians
to return to. Rather, the real Israeli plot is to twist all this
"Right of Return" stuff to their own purposes in order to obtain a huge
pool of money -- not their own mind you but rather from the Europeans
and the Americans and even from the Gulf Arabs and the Japanese if they
can pull it off -- which will be used to "compensate" the refugees
whether they like it or not. Right after Camp David II, in fact,
the Americans quietly tested the waters with the Lebanese, offering
some $20 billion if the Lebanese government would resettle most of the
350,000 Palestinian refugees -- a sizeable sum for a small country
whose entire national debt is about that amount.
We will have much more about the "Washington Scene" in future MER articles.
Upcoming in the weeks ahead are exclusive reports about a number of
Washington-based groups and organizations that have contributed to this
overall deplorable state of affairs. Among them: Sharabi
and his millions, the Foundation for Middle East Peace hoax, the CNI
"Lobby" deception, "Washington Report" and the Saudis, How the Jewish
Lobby Conquered Washington, The "U.S. Institute for Peace" scandal.
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| Mid-East Realities | www.middleeast.org |
| Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2004/9/1115.htm |