There is no doubt that Syrians in the United States searching for a role in Syrian current events must carefully avoid reifying American imperial power without eschewing their ethical duty to stand against the killing, injuring, arrest, and other abuses of protesters, the vast majority of whom have been peaceful despite the ruthlessness of the security services.
That space is difficult to find when the past decade has seen a U.S. establishment that is perpetually waiting for the next opportunity to undermine the Syrian government, not because it cares about the welfare of Syrians or wishes to weaken dictatorships as a general matter, but because Syria has not knelt to American and Israeli agendas in the region — despite its participation in the war on Iraq, its cooperation with the War on Terror through the extraordinary torture of people like Maher Arar, and its satisfaction with the status quo with regard to Israeli apartheid and the occupation of the Golan Heights.
What should be certain, though, is that today even a single word in defense of the Syrian government’s actions is morally indefensible. That maxim must also extend to indirect actions that function to deceptively embellish the government’s image while it continues to pursue an agenda of violence and brutality against the Syrian people.
It is outrageous, then, that, according to Syria News, a “delegation of Syrian-Americans” recently met with Bashar al-Assad (I will not call him ‘president’ today) and rendered free propaganda services for the regime. The event was clearly a public relations stunt by the Syrian government meant to whitewash the crimes that have led to the death of 1,300 protesters, not to mention the deplorable state of Syrian affairs overall. In organizing the event, the Syrian government sought to convey the image that Syrian-Americans stand by the government even as thousands of demonstrators stand against it.
Even more troubling is the fact that, according to Syria News, this so-called delegation included Jay Salkini and Assad Jebara, two board members of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). While I doubt that they intend their actions to reflect a personal endorsement of regime violence, even if the publicity around it conveys that image, their meeting represents a style of elite political engagement — one, perhaps, that many other upper middle and upper class Syrians would gladly partake in — that must be done away with.
One cannot draw an analogy between this meeting and the recent conference of Syrian opposition figures in Damascus, where the dissidents — many of whom have served jail time – were unrestrained in their criticism of the government. In contrast, Jebara remarked in an interview with Syria News that the meeting was “very positive” and that “President Bashar al-Assad was very realistic and open to all opinions, reaching the limits of candor and honesty.” Here, Jebara himself reaches the limits of flattery and obsequiousness!
Salkini continued to promise al-Assad that Syrian-Americans would call on Congress and the American government to give Syria a “chance to implement reforms adopted by the Syrian government.” Had the Assad regime presented its people with a credible plan for reform, Salkini’s statement might not have been so objectionable. As of yet, however, endless committees continue to “study” reform at a snail’s pace, even as the government swiftly and ruthlessly mobilizes the army and security services to attack its people. It seems this government is more competent at some tasks than others.
Reprehensibly, Salkini told Syria News that Syrian-Americans would aim to support Syria’s economy with more investments, especially because “the tourism industry was harmed most by the events in Syria.” Were it that such a callous phrase never left his mouth to remind us of March 14th’s disgusting whining about the tourism industry while Israel was bombarding Lebanon in 2006, killing over a thousand people!
It is truly embarrassing for Jebara and Salkini to participate in this event, given that they are board members of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). How unbecoming of people who defend Arab civil rights in America to function as allies of a government that recognizes civil rights for no one. In doing so, they give fodder to anti-Arab factions in the United States who accuse people who criticize United States and Israeli policies of hypocrisy in order to distract from the egregiousness of those policies. Jebara, Salkini, and other members of this “delegation” insult the Syrian protesters and, in Jebara and Salkini’s case, further damage the credibility of the ADC, which is barely recovering from the last Syria-related flap, the dis-invitation of Malek Jandali.
Of course, Jebara and Salkini’s meeting with Bashar al-Assad has nothing to do with the ADC. It has nothing to do with civil rights. It has everything to do with preserving and protecting social, political, and business ties. Salkini and Jebara are well within their rights to feel, despite mounting evidence and mass graves to the contrary, that al-Assad is capable of leading the country on a path to reform. They are well within their rights to feel that supporting al-Assad’s endless reform committees is the best way for Syrians. But they should not do so in their capacity as representatives of Syrian-Americans nor while they are board members of an organization that needs impeccable credibility to be an effective champion of Arab-American civil rights. And they certainly should not do so while protestors continue to be killed in the streets.
Truth Matters: A response to the Vanguard Leadership Group
April 10th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
"I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Standing in opposition to moral giants like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Ronnie Kasrils — seasoned anti-apartheid activists who resisted injustice and suffered for it — a group called the Vanguard Leadership Group (VLG) has run advertisements in campus papers at Brown University, UCLA, the University of Maryland, and Columbia University, in which 16 of its members criticize Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for calling Israel an “apartheid” state.
The VLG is an organization whose cryptic website reveals little about who is involved, who it represents, what it does, and what it believes in, though the website is peppered with references to the VLG’s participation in AIPAC conferences and tours to the Israeli Knesset.
Nevertheless, under the headline “Words Matter,” this advertisement (offering little in the form of substance, but standing on a slew of bold claims about the intentions and personal qualities of students in SJPs around the country, with whom they have never spoken) boasted the signature of 16 members of the highly opaque AIPAC-affiliated organization.
Apparently that was significant enough to merit international noteworthiness. Before some campus papers like the Columbia Spectator had even had a chance to print the advertisements, the Jerusalem Post triumphantly reported on the VLG’s advertisement, trumpeting what it saw as the very important fact that these 16 signatories are so-called “black student leaders.”
It may be impossible to tell what the VLG members were thinking when they opted to sign this advertisement, since it offers little insight into the reasoning that supports their conclusions about Israel or about SJP — strange qualities for aspiring “leaders.”
What is certain, though, is that moral perspective, sound reason, and the facts of Israeli oppression were not involved in the VLG’s deliberative process. It is unlikely that each of these VLG members made an attempt to reach out to SJP students, and it doubtful that any of them ever took detours from their Israeli Knesset appearances to visit Palestinian refugee camps or witness the Israeli occupation.
Giving the VLG members the benefit of the doubt, maybe they had not bothered to try visiting Gaza for themselves because they were already aware of the fact that the people of Gaza have been under a merciless Israeli military siege since 2006, one that has given dietitians unprecedented influence and prestige in the Israeli military apparatus.
The product of such leadership, then, could not be anything more than the VLG’s incredible claim that: “the Arab minority in Israel enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in the government.”
One might point the VLG student leaders to The Inequality Report, a freshly-minted report by Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which found that “Inequalities between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel span all fields of public life and have persisted over time. Direct and indirect discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel is ingrained in the legal system and in governmental practice,” and that “More than 30 main laws discriminate, directly or indirectly, against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the current government coalition has proposed a flood of new racist and discriminatory bills which are at various stages in the legislative process.” (p. 7).
One might also point the 16 VLG members to the State Department’s Country Report on Human Rigths Practices for Israel and the Occupied Territories, which in 2004, in a rare instance of candor, reported that Israel had done “little to reduce institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country’s Arab citizens. The State Department’s most recent report, published April 8, 2011, confirmed that 7-year-old finding, that “Principal human rights problems [in Israel] were institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against Arab citizens.” (It should go without saying that racism in Israel is not limited to the anti-Arab variety.)
Setting aside how sincerely the 16 signatories of this op-ed might have felt about their views, there is no question that the excitement of outlets like the Jerusalem Post, the Forward, etcetera, and their rush to cover the breaking story about a paid-advertisement in 4 campus papers signed by a mere 16 students, is supposed to convey an image of entrenched support by Black Americans for Israel, as if (a) such support exists at the grassroots level (an empirical question; given the VLG’s secretive and apparently exclusive nature, it is unlikely to be so representative of Black Americans) and (b) such support, if it even existed, would justify the reality of Israeli apartheid (an easily dismissed logical matter, a simple non sequitur).
The real question is not where the VLG stands on Israel, but rather where people who fight against racial injustice stand. In the experience of groups like SJP at UC Berkeley, solidarity between people who care about racism and social justice has formed a strong rebuttal to Israeli propaganda, which is directly at odds with such struggles. If the VLG believes that it participates in a struggle against racism, then it cannot remain true to its ideals while also standing on the side of racism in Israel.
In that light, it is baffling that, at a time when support for Palestinian freedom and opposition to Israeli oppression grows continuously amidst veterans of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and while racism in Israel reaches unprecedented heights, that the 16 members of VLG who issued the statement would make such an uninformed proclamation about Israeli racism and SJP.
Such striking inaccuracy is either the work of a group that is out of touch, or deliberately disingenuous. One hopes that the VLG aspires to be neither.
Cross posted at KABOBfest