American citizen Belal Dalati immigrated to the United States from Syria in 1987, started his own Arab-American newspaper in Anaheim, California, and then, this past year, decided to run for the Anaheim, California City Council. It’s the American way. It is also the American way, apparently, for the people opposed to him to use his race and ethnicity as the primary argument against him, ignoring more important issues like local government services, social security and correcting America’s failed foreign policies.
Dalati is being attacked not for his policies by his conservative Republican foes, or for the issues he hopes to bring to the local council, but rather for his Syrian ancestry and his religion.
A centrist Republican, Dalati is being attacked because he is doing what every Jewish American immigrant did when they came to this country: Holding their heritage and religion in high esteem and helping Americans try to understand them better by publishing newspapers and engaging in free speech events.
The easiest way to public office these days is to hope that someone of Arab heritage runs against you, and instead of addressing the issues you can slander that candidate.
The Arab card was used against me in 1992. After leaving the Chicago Sun-Times and opening a political consulting firm, I decided to toss my hat into the ring to experience firsthand political elections. I had covered them for 18 years but felt I should know firsthand what it is like to be in the fishbowl if I were to offer advice to others.
I was slated for a state legislative seat. Days before the election, the incumbent I challenged began circulating an anonymous and unsigned letter mailed to every Republican voter in the district that began, “Ray Hanania isn’t just a Palestinian, he is an Iraqi.”
Of course, that didn’t go over well in the year after the Iraq war to liberate Kuwait. And of course, if a letter like that had been circulated against a Jewish candidate, all kinds of formal investigations would have been convened to raise issues of hate crimes, racism and anti-Semitism.
No one investigated anything in my case because slandering an Arab or an American continues to be an American pastime, before and even after Sept. 11. It’s just that when I ran, the attacks were always anonymous. Today, the bigots and racists and the Daniel Pipes-like haters do it openly and with the kind of pride that put a gleam in the eye of the Hitler Youth back in the 1930s.
No less than the Republican Party Chairman Shawn Steele has come out attacking Dalati. He claims that Dalati “looks good” on the outside but may have some issues, under a letter titled “Something Scary in Anaheim.”
Steele also attacks the poster child of racist victimization, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), calling it a “pretty radical, nasty group.”
CAIR happens to be one of the leading organizations that expose bigotry and hatred against Muslims in America and since Steele engages in attacking people for their race and religion, you can understand why Steele hates CAIR, too. Just like Daniel Pipes, the David Duke of the American Jewish community.
Ah, according to Pipes, Dalati gave money to Cynthia McKinney, the far left African American congressman who dared to ask in Congress “What about Israel?” during a debate about one-sided Middle East politics. And so did thousands of other American citizens give money to Cynthia McKinney. She was elected and served in the Congress several terms, despite opposition from people like Pipes whose sole purpose for being an American is to advocate for Israel’s interests. What kind of “extremist” is Dalati that the chairman of the Republican Party has to attack him and those around him so viciously?
But rather than screaming in the fashion Steele and other bigots might have Americans believe he would, Dalati was described in the Orange County Register in July 2006 this way:
“Belal Dalati, president of Anaheim-based Arab-American Broadcasting, said those who preach violence misrepresent Islam.
Dalati said it probably won’t make a difference in the way Arabs or Muslims are treated here, because they’re already subject to prejudice and fear.”
The real problem is not the hatemongering that takes place these days so openly and above board by so-called leaders of the American political system like Steele and by bigots like Pipes.
The real problem is that the Arab and Muslim community is living under an oppressive fear and an aggressive campaign of slander that is tolerated and encouraged in America which is not as free nor is it as brave as it sometimes claims to be.
Most won’t stand up to defend Dalati’s rights or confront the hate-campaign against him.
More importantly, the vast majority of Americans who claim they oppose racism and bigotry and are only concerned about defending this great country will also be silent.
The Americans who attack Dalati’s race and religion should be prosecuted for their racially inspired hatred, not given a platform to spew their ugly rants.
