|
SUPPORT ADC |
|
|
|
ADC
FACTSHEET |
| |
The illegal Israeli
occupation of Palestinian land
is the foremost obstacle to
peace.
Learn
more >> |
|
|
US
Tax Dollars Sent
to Israel: |
|
| B) See the
Results
|
|
 |
|
July 29th, 2002
Full Text of Al-Ahram Interview with ADC President
Ziad Asali
The following interview
with ADC President Dr. Ziad Asali appears in the latest issue
of the English-language version of the Egyptian newspaper
Al-Ahram:
www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/596/intrvw.htm
Fear and loathing in America
Nyier Abdou
talks to American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee President
Ziad Asali about hate crimes, secret detentions, playing by
the rules and the American way
The Washington
offices of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
(ADC) are bustling with activity ahead of the group's annual
conference which draws activists, luminaries and ordinary Arab
Americans to a series of seminars and events focusing on
everything from racial profiling and the local political scene
to Palestine. ADC, the most powerful Arab-American civil
rights force, has seen the weight of responsibility it carries
mushroom amidst the fallout of 11 September.
For a
fairly small space, ADC's offices are surprisingly
labyrinthine, replete with several doors opening onto a
somewhat dismal outer corridor -- a wayward journalist might
easily take the wrong turn. But behind one such door lies the
spacious and tastefully-furnished office of Ziad Asali, ADC's
president. As with most prominent figures, Asali is both
stately and engaging, his earnest dedication to civil rights
and race issues swathed almost imperceptibly in a sense of
quiet satisfaction. He is warm in his welcome, unhurried in
his attentions -- the voice of prudence to ADC's brasher
public persona, Communication Director Hussein Ibish.
A doctor by training, Asali was born in Jerusalem.
Though many of ADC's programmes focus on the nuts and bolts of
fighting discrimination in America -- from inaccuracies in
schoolbooks to launching several legal suits against American
airlines for ejecting passengers from flights based on their
perceived Arab ethnicity -- it is hardly surprising that the
ADC also turns its attention to the explosive issue of
Palestine. When I spoke to Asali, the United Nations
fact-finding committee set up to investigate Israel's violent
operation in Jenin had recently been disbanded due to
unacceptable Israeli demands. A high-level ADC committee,
including Asali, had met with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
not long before and was assured by him that he was certain the
mission would go forward quickly.
But news came the
next day that there would be no mission. Asked if he felt
betrayed by the development, Asali insisted that Annan was not
to blame. "I want to state, for the record, I do not feel
betrayed by Secretary Annan," Asali said. "I know that he
tried fully and that he was sincere in his efforts to get this
mission to go through."
Many have suggested that the
disbanding of the mission was a straight exchange: burying the
demons of Jenin for the release of Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat from his besieged compound. Asali disagrees, saying
that there are many factors at play. Having only returned from
the region a week before, he stressed that the inclination to
view events through the prism of a "conspiracy theory" is rife
among the disaffected. He denounced the allure of pinning
everything on foreign plots and the fatalistic attitude that
is the inevitable result of such beliefs. "This is completely
self-defeating and takes away the responsibility of people for
decisions that they make and analyses that could help them
forward their cause." It also robs people of any sense of
empowerment. "If you are the subject of a conspiracy somewhere
else, which is so powerful, then you might as well just watch
TV and go to bed. This is not how it should be, at all."
Following 11 September, reports began to circulate
that Arabs were being racially profiled in airports and on
airplanes. This phenomenon was addressed during the conference
in a seminar titled "Flying While Brown". There was also a
surge in incidents of hate crimes in the US against persons
believed to be of Arab origin. Asali says that in terms of the
numerous individual cases of "anger-based" crimes against
people of Arab or Muslim appearance -- from cases of
vandalism, to discrimination in the work place, to murder --
that have been reported to ADC, "we have had tremendous
support from the government in confronting this sort of thing
and we still do." In fact, instances of individual hate crimes
are back down to pre-11 September numbers.
But Asali
also maintains that the numerous measures that have been
implemented by the US government since 11 September -- from
secret detentions of Arabs due to technical visa problems, to
the government's decision to track visa holders from certain
Arab countries, to the singling out of young Arab males as a
possible security risk everywhere from campuses to aeroplane
cabins -- amount to a "subtle but insidious" reintroduction of
ethnic discrimination in America's immigration procedures and
law enforcement. Admitting that the government is grappling
with a potent fear of further threats to national security --
"I must say that it is a genuine fear ... I know that in the
Arab world they think this is nonsensical" -- and noting that
this fear has become embedded "deep in the psyche of the
American individual and [that of] the American government",
Asali went on to note that this vigilance should translate
into stepped-up security across the board and not a focus on
any specific ethnic minority or group.
Such profiling
will, in all likelihood, prove fruitless, Asali suggests.
Those who plotted the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks
were well-
organised and clever. It follows that their
next move would not be so predictable as to fit a pattern
similar to 11 September. "We think this [racial profiling] is
wasted time, money and effort," Asali said. "And also, we
think it is unconstitutional; it generates a lack of
cooperation with the government and lack of sympathy at a time
when more cooperation is needed."
Asali notes that
when it comes to the literature from the Department of
Transportation, the guidelines for airport security are
completely "politically correct". The application, he says,
"leaves something to be desired". People must still endure
"subjective and 'unenlightened' behaviour on the part of the
airlines and [their] agents". Under these unofficial biases,
any Arab or Muslim male, aged 18 to 40, is worthy of
suspicion.
The ADC does not know if less foreigners
are being given student visas,
but even a false perception within the Arab world that this is
the case is enough to make Asali's worse fears come true. "I
worry very much that this may intimidate Arab men from coming
to study in the United States," Asali said. "I think it would
be a strategic setback for the Arab world." When I mentioned
that many Arabs have been deterred from applying for visas,
Asali was adamant: "I think they would be wrong," he says. "I
think they'd be wrong," he repeats. Noting that there are
indeed political forces within the US who would like to see a
halt to young Arab men travelling to the US as students --
among them Senator Dianne Fienstein -- Asali insisted that to
indulge these forces is only to the detriment of the Arab
world itself. "The future of the world, unstoppably, is going
to be for more integration and higher communication. And the
Arab world cannot keep itself insulated and unconnected with a
country that is the only standing superpower -- except at a
great price, a huge price, to the Arab people and democracy."
Besides, he adds, "People must understand: if you are here
legally, the laws of the United States apply to you. And we at
the ADC can promise protection."
Asali stressed this
point repeatedly, noting that so long as students are in the
US legally and their actions are lawful, "there is no
arbitrary intrusion of government agencies or police that can
hurt these students... They just can't -- and they won't, in
fact." To wit, they can keep files on them -- "and they will
keep files; my own guess is that they keep files on everybody"
-- but keeping files is one thing. "Preventing you from
getting an excellent education and getting to understand your
neighbours, and have them understand you, and you being an
ambassador, is something else. Let us not concede this defeat
to people who do not want development of the Arab world to
take place. Let's not volunteer it."
Asali points to
the "hate speech" that has been allowed to "seep into the
discourse of [American] TV and radio". This "right-wing wave
of anti-Arabism and anti-Islamism" has had a profound effect
on the image of Arabs and Muslims in the minds of ordinary
Americans, but Asali insists that this wave "has to crest".
Asked if he thought this had happened yet, he responded that
there are, in fact, "voices of reason" -
- though they may
not be as loud. "In fact, the polls and the surveys do not
support these right-wing crazies," Asali said. "They are the
soul mates of Bin Laden, you know. They are the other side,
the Western side, the suit and necktie version of Bin Laden."
After 11 September, thousands of people were either
detained or questioned, most of them for visa infringements.
These so-called secret detentions seem to have fallen off the
media radar but the ADC has been following the case closely.
Along with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and 20
other organisations, they have filed a suit against the
government for information on the detainees, who have yet to
be charged. Under the new anti-terrorism laws enacted after 11
September, it is not clear whether withholding information
about the detainees is illegal. Asali says the case is
"borderline". From the maximum of about a thousand detainees,
a few hundred are still being held, most on immigration
charges. "We assume that these people are innocent until
proven otherwise."
Asali underscores the significance
of the "political component" of 11 September, saying that
security issues are only half the battle. Security and
intelligence are intertwined with the political component, he
says, and the ADC has told the government "in no uncertain
terms" to look into the political issues that have fed
resentment in the Arab world against America. "We resist the
notion that dealing with the issues that cause discontent is
yielding to terrorism; we think
this is a crock and a cop-out. We think that it is imperative
that the world become a more fair and just place."
For
all its flaws in application, Asali is a believer in the
American system of justice and government. And herein lies the
conceptual foundation on which the ADC was built. The United
States, says Asali, is a country with an open system of
government. "I wish people would understand this once and for
all: decisions in the United States are not made wilfully and
arbitrarily by the president when he wakes up in the morning.
Decisions are contested, and fought for, and advocated, and
undermined by many, many forces inside this country and
outside." Eventually, the parties that win out do so because
of the stronger power behind them, be it better access to
government, the more valid strategic argument, or even an
advantageous private agenda. "We, like every other group in
the country, have access to this system -- to be able to work
within the system. To have the power that eventually could
have itself heard at decision-making time."
"Instead
of just complaining and saying that it's all hopeless, and the
Zionists are in control, and the whole world is against us,
and it's a crusade against the Arabs, and there's nothing we
can do about it", warns Asali, Arabs and Arab Americans should
not be so ready to give up. "We think that is something our
opponents would like us to conclude." On the contrary, Asali
maintains that there is no overwhelming, unified position on
the Middle East crisis. He says he sees divisions everywhere:
within the US government, within US society, within the Arab
world and Palestine, even inside Israel. "We think there is
room for people to agree on some formula for peace." In fact,
he says, the formula is fairly well understood by everyone
involved. Appearing in various forms, it cropped up in US
Secretary of State Colin Powell's policy speech last November,
in the Saudi initiative and the peace plan put forward and
adopted by the Arab Summit in March. "There are people who do
not want these plans to work out. But we should not concede
veto power to them."
To see the US as a dishonest
broker, a bully, a superpower resting on its laurels -- all
this is beside the point to one who wishes to change the tide
in his favour, insists Asali. "America prides itself on being
a nation of laws, not a nation of men," he says. "In the law,
there is no distinction between races and genders, religions,
colour, creed... it is absolutely essential for the American
government, American society at large, to live up to this
ideal, in theory." The government, says Asali, "must uphold
the full rights of Arab-Americans, to be consistent
internally".
What should Arab-Americans be doing to
make their own Arab lobby a formidable force, then?
"Arab-Americans should think American, and should act
American," says Asali. They should avail themselves of the
opportunities offered to them in a system that allows them to
organise, associate freely and "climb up the ladder of
political and civic empowerment". Arab-Americans, Asali sums
up, "have to act like other groups have acted in the past; not
to set themselves apart." One of the main mistakes of the
Arab-American organisations, says Asali, is that they are
overly mistrustful and inward-looking, criticising the system
as unjust and biased towards Zionist forces, sublimating the
belief that all efforts are hopeless. "This has to change. It
must change," Asali says.
Pointing to the efforts of
other oppressed minorities in the past, among them the
Japanese after the First World War, the Jews after the Second
World War, Italian-Americans and African-Americans, Asali
insists that as a group, Arab-Americans are facing the same
difficulties that these groups encountered. "We're not
separate from anybody else, so we need to establish bridges
with all these other people -- and now we are. You are now
looking at the accumulation of years and years of
experimenting with what needs to be done and now we know what
needs to be done and we're on our way to doing it. We're on an
equal footing with everybody else. We're no better than
anybody else, but we're no worse."
|
| | |
 |
|
 |
Complete recap of INS special "call-in" registration 
