JEDDAH, 19 August 2003 — For over 21 years The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine has focused on news and analysis from and about the Middle East and US policy in the region.
Arab News spoke to the magazine’s news editor, Delinda C. Hanley, on the challenges facing the publication.
“It was started 21 years ago by Edward Firth Henderson, a British foreign service officer, and two American foreign service officers, Andrew I. Killgore, the former US ambassador to Qatar, and my father Richard Curtis, who was stationed all over the Middle East throughout his career,” she said.
“When they retired from the Foreign Service they just wanted the opportunity to express how they felt about US Foreign policy regarding the Middle East. They had always had to say what their government wanted them to say, and finally they could say what we should be doing in the Middle East.”
What started out as just a newsletter is today a 100-page magazine published 10 times a year out of Washington, DC by the American Educational Trust, a non-profit foundation whose foreign policy committee included former US ambassadors, government officials, and members of Congress.
The Washington Report’s financial support has always been gradual and inconsistent, but the day-to-day overheads of running the magazine are minimal. “We have a small paid staff of around five people and we also have correspondents everywhere that each cover a particular beat for just $150 per article, and that helps keep our costs low,” Hanley said.
“But what all our contributors have in common, whether they are Jewish American, Muslim American or Christian American, is their love, concern and interest in the Middle East.”
The magazine and website contain a wealth of information about all issues concerning the Middle East, from post-war Iraq to the role of the media after Sept. 11. But the case that takes center stage in the Washington Report is the Arab/Israeli conflict. The website provides a “Your tax dollars sent to Israel” ticker, with the latest figure well over 88 billion dollars.
“I think all news about the Middle East is filtered to what’s good for Israel. A lot of the mass media in the West, like newspapers and television, are owned by Zionist-leaning Americans,” she said. “And they defiantly filter and censor our news, giving it an anti-Arab twist.” The Washington report is not short of enemies either, including other non-profit organizations like the pro-Zionist group FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East), which lobbies by placing pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian ads in different mass-media outlets.
One resent ad had this to say about Palestinian refugees: “You have heard about those ‘Palestinian refugees’ who claim ‘right of return’ to Israel. Of course, virtually none of them ever lived in Israel — they are the children and mostly grandchildren of those who fled in 1948.”
Recently FLAME president Gerardo Joffe wrote a letter to the Washington Report calling 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie an “idiot” and “not a promoter of peace.” Corrie was killed last March while trying to stop a bulldozer from tearing down a building in a refugee camp in Gaza in the West Bank.
The Washington report compared Corrie to Andrew Goodman, who died fighting for his civil rights in Mississippi in 1964. “We don’t usually get letters like that, so we felt we had to publish it, and he upset a lot of Americans,” Hanley said.
The Washington Report also encourages grass-roots petitioning. In the latest issue, a postcard is available for people to send to their Congressmen to stop aid to Israel till it takes down the illegal wall they erected around the West Bank, and also compares the security fence to the cold-war Berlin wall. “I’m sure people in the Middle East are well informed about this issue, but in the Western press the issue is being ignored. You don’t see the how ugly, disfiguring, and disruptive this wall is to the peace process. America in the 80s was a catalyst in bringing down the Berlin wall, and now we are now financing this one.”
But how do we change US foreign policy? “If Muslim Americans, who outnumber Jewish Americans, were to get organized and contribute, especially financially, the US foreign policy can be changed,” Hanley said.
