NEW YORK, 5 September 2004 — It was almost like the Republican National Convention was a party of Arab bashers, thanks in part to one of the opening night speakers who set this ugly tone, Rudy Giuliani.
The comments of the former mayor of New York may not seem surprising to some, since he was in office when 19 terrorists attacked and destroyed the World Trade Center and murdered nearly 3,000 innocent victims on Sept. 11.
But Giuliani’s comments shattered all barriers of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred, and he sounded more like one of the fanatic cable news talk show hosts who disguise hate for opinion, and demagoguery for news.
His vitriolic attacks may have rallied the emotional spirits of the Republican delegates gathered at Madison Square Garden, but it did little to strengthen their moral compass.
Giuliani masterfully pushed every hateful anti-Arab button he could, disparaging the Palestinians, the Arab world, Muslims and even Arab-American organizations, all based on a philosophy that began with President Bush that has been bastardized just as clearly as Osama Bin Laden bastardized the true meaning of Islam.
“You are either with us or you are with the terrorists.”
No. The real formula is that you are either with justice or you are against justice. But that would mean that people like Giuliani, whose careers have been built on embracing heavy-handed injustices, would have to set aside their partisan political agenda.
And Giuliani can’t do that.
His clarion wasn’t sounded for the world, but for those in America who dissent from his racist, conservative views. His narrow vision of “terrorism” is defined not by reason but by hate and bias. Every example was intended to promote a partisan, anti-Arab agenda that he has carried since the day he was first elected to office in New York.
His message was one of searing emotion and irrational vengeance.
I was sickened by his claim that he cared at all about the “poor people of Iraq,” who he now says was the real reason why America invaded a sovereign nation that posed no real threat, only an imagined threat that was based on Bush’s lies. And I shivered when I heard Giuliani, who has never shown compassion for the poor in his own city, claimed to be the patron saint of victims of Sudanese terror or the women of the Arab world.
If Giuliani really cared anything about the women of the Arab world, why doesn’t he have hijab-wearing Muslim and Arab women working on his staff?
Worse was his exploitation of the suffering of Sept. 11.
As an American, I fear living in a Giuliani world. As an American, I am frightened by the policies that have put the tang in one of the most bitter and divisive election campaigns in American history.
As an American, I fear the message of hate that Giuliani was permitted to send out from what should be a beacon of freedom and justice; Giuliani’s token abuse of those terms put all who have died to protect this country to shame. Giuliani spoke with the same fervor and hysteria that once stirred the German people to put a Jewish face on the troubles that plagued their nation in the 1930s.
But there was an accidental truth in his acerbic tirade. He said, “When it catches hold there is nothing more powerful than freedom. Give it some hope, and it will overwhelm dictators, and even defeat terrorists.”
If there is a remedy for people like Giuliani, it is true freedom, not the bastardized freedom that Giuliani today represents.
— Ray Hanania, the former national president of the Palestinian American Congress, is an author and syndicated columnist based in Chicago.
