About five years ago my wife and I noted that a longtime friend was a guest on a major talk show. The subject was Syria, where my friend, Ghazi Khankan, had lived in his youth. At some point my friend changed the subject slightly to the Palestinians. When the show was over my wife predicted, “Ghazi will never appear on this show again.”
I was a little stunned by this prediction but, sure enough, when next I saw my friend a year later I asked, “Have you been on any major talk shows in the last year?” Not a one, he replied. When I asked Ghazi why his talk show spots suddenly had dried up, he said exactly what my wife had said. The talk show host knew he was on dangerous ground when Ghazi turned the subject to the Palestinians.
When I saw Ghazi again a year later I asked him the same question — and got the same answer. A well-known master of ceremonies in the New York area, Ghazi regularly hosts local events as the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) New York office. Although he speaks regularly to academic audiences, to PBS’ Washington, DC-based “News Hour,” with its nationwide audience, he remains a nonperson.
Dozens of other American and foreign guests have had the same experience. No one ever is quite sure what their cardinal sin was, but they no longer were invited back, as the major talk shows suddenly dropped them like a stone.
This writer believes the same thing may happen equally abruptly in the case of Youssef Ibrahim. Ibrahim has had a long and particularly distinguished career with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and currently is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Because Youssef Michel Ibrahim is primarily a master of the written word, I had forgotten how startlingly effective he can be on television. Ibrahim was one of two guests on the Aug. 14 edition of “News Hour.” Each time it was his turn for another round of questioning, Ibrahim almost effortlessly picked up on the previous guest’s remarks and swiftly segued right back into what he had been discussing before. He didn’t try to dominate the conversation, but just effortlessly finished what he had to say. The results were devastatingly effective.
In the space of a few well-chosen sentences, Ibrahim named the three principal conspirators in what I’m inclined to call the “American war party.” He listed them as Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith, undersecretary of policy in the Department of Defense.
When it was time for Ibrahim to speak again, he added the name of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and, in the closing minutes, described the entire Wolfowitz-Perle-Feith cabal. He tried to explain that they were attempting to create a full-fledged new war on Saddam Hussein even before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved.
The “News Hour” interview with Ibrahim was followed by several others, some of them pitting him against very professional debaters with contrary views. Time and again Ibrahim prevailed and the Israel lobby’s most polished apologists were left devastated.
What is happening here? For one thing, the Palestine issue will not go away, because it is crucial for the entire United States to hear the truth. As a result, no matter how it tries to distract the public, the Israel lobby cannot avoid coming back to the same unanswered questions, starting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his war on the Palestinians. It makes no sense to jump into a new war against Saddam Hussein before resolving the current problem of the Palestinians, and most Americans will understand that. So it is unlikely that a war against Saddam Hussein will happen now.
Strangely, however, if a war against Saddam Hussein does not prove popular at this point, the Perle-Wolfowitz-Feith cabal already has set forth to find yet another new quarry. That is Saudi Arabia, which even before the 1991 Gulf War was the most useful major ally the United States had. For that matter, Saudi Arabia and the US have been working in partnership ever since the 1930s. All allies in the world have problems, but Saudi Arabia has done everything possible to be a faithful member of the United Nations and the Arab League, and a strong ally to the United States. When Washington has asked the Saudis to look for illegal assets and smuggled profits, and made other requests for cooperation, the Saudis have come through.
Sometimes — when it is too difficult to put a particular hero on the media sidelines — the Israel lobby just has to give up. Hanan Ashrawi, for example, turned out to be the best spokesperson for the Palestinians and nearly unstoppable. These days Israel has made it very difficult for Palestinians to get permission to leave their country to go to the United States. When they couldn’t silence Hanan, they tied her up in red tape.
The same thing almost certainly is going to happen to Saudi Foreign Policy Adviser Adel Jubeir, who is the most effective Saudi spokesperson in history. A Saudi citizen who spent much of his youth in the US, he is quite comfortable dealing with American interviewers, even when they are hostile. All he needs is an audience, and he can do the rest.
This time it won’t be so easy to fool or distract the American people. There are plenty of credible spokesmen to continue America’s own campaign of truth. James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, for example, is well-versed with the facts on both Palestine and Israel, and on what Americans think.
There are other equally effective Arab and Muslim Americans. They include Hussein Ibish of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR communications director, or Ali Abunimah who writes from Chicago and whose letters appear all over the United States.
Those are just four of many competent spokespersons in the Arab-American community. I think the time has come when most Americans really desperately need to hear the truth about the United States, the Israelis and the Palestinians. This truth will lead the American people to new ones about the Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Kashmiris and Indians. It is time for Americans to hear — and listen to — the opinions of Middle Easterners in their own words.
Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
