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Issue Paper
The
American Task Force on Palestine: Setting the Record Straight
By
Hussein Ibish
ATFP Issue Paper
October 16, 2007
(click here for PDF)
1: What ATFP does and why
it does it
Since its founding four years ago, the American Task Force on
Palestine (ATFP) has been crafting a serious and constructive
approach to advocacy for Palestine in the United States. ATFP’s
strategy is centered on promoting the US national interest in the
establishment of an independent, sovereign and democratic
Palestinian state, and an end to the occupation negotiated between
Israel and the Palestinians and anchored in international law. All
polls and surveys indicate that a solid majority of the Palestinian
people supports this outcome. ATFP believes that there is an
intersection among American, Palestinian and Israeli national
interests in achieving an end to the conflict based on an end to the
occupation.
The mission of ATFP is to promote this agenda, as American citizens,
among American policymakers and opinion leaders at the highest
possible levels by engaging the political system in an organized,
systematic and consistent manner. A substantial and increasing
number of American policy and opinion makers are becoming convinced
of our national interest in the establishment of a Palestinian
state, and this has been formally adopted as a US foreign policy
goal. However, we have yet to achieve the critical mass whereby this
aim is promoted consistently as a policy priority and is advanced in
spite of domestic political opposition. ATFP’s work is focused
precisely on the effort to create this critical mass for ending the
occupation. ATFP is determined to take full advantage of the
declared American policy aim and the emerging international
consensus in favor of peace based on two states, Israel and
Palestine. ATFP’s clear and consistent position is that it is not
opposed to Israel – it is opposed to the occupation – and, more
importantly, it is in favor of the American national interest and in
favor of Palestine. ATFP seeks to help develop a national coalition
for a two-state solution, involving all those groups – Arab, Jewish,
or other American institutions and organizations – that seek an end
to the conflict based on a negotiated end to the occupation,
regardless of the reasons they adopt this position.
ATFP has achieved a surprising amount of progress in its mission
over a short period of time and with a small staff and limited
budget. It has accumulated a number of significant achievements and
garnered substantial recognition and support. Surprisingly, however,
the organization has also endured periodic attacks by a small group
of online activists in the Arab-American community. They have
persistently accused the organization of saying and doing things
that it has not said or done, misunderstanding or misrepresenting
what ATFP stands for and what type of organization it is. ATFP has
generally abstained from replying to these distortions and unfair
criticisms, choosing instead to focus on its own work. However,
remaining silent indefinitely allows such critics too much scope in
shaping perceptions of ATFP through both ad hoc and systematic
misrepresentations of its activities and positions.
This issue paper is intended to set the record straight about what
ATFP does and says, and what it does not do and does not say.
At the center of ATFP’s strategy is the art of building credibility.
This involves being frank and honest, and telling the truth as we
see it, however painful, to all audiences and in all languages.
Pursuing a strategy of building this kind of credibility certainly
comes with a political price, as the critiques of ATFP cited below
demonstrate, but the long-term benefits of redefining the image of
Palestinian Americans and their relationship to the political system
are invaluable and indispensable.
This strategy also means refusing to allow others alone to define
the Palestinian cause or the Palestinian American community. There
is a prevailing assumption when it comes to Palestinian and other
Arab Americans (as with many other communities rooted in the
developing world) that the more strident or extreme the voice is,
the more authentic it must be. This is unacceptable. Palestinian and
other Arab Americans cannot allow themselves to be defined by the
most vociferous voices on the far-right and the ultra-left.
Obviously, there is a wide spectrum of opinion in this community,
all of it legitimate in its own way. But there is no reason to
continue a trend whereby solidarity only flows from the center
towards the extremes, and reasoned approaches are somehow assumed to
have less authenticity than more strident ones.
Among the most important characteristics of ATFP's approach is our
commitment to embracing, in every possible sense, the rights and
responsibilities that come with our status as Americans.
With regard to our rights, this commitment means that we stand
second to no one and no other group in helping to define the
national interests of our country. We are convinced, and there is
ample evidence to support the idea, that the American political
system is open to us as Palestinian and Arab Americans. To exercise
our political rights as Americans we must organize ourselves and
spend the requisite time and resources to develop our influence
within American political structures. This seems obvious, and many
respected Arab Americans over recent decades have made this point.
However, for some in our community engaging the political system as
it exists can be challenging for a host of obvious, and some more
subtle, reasons. Suffice it to say that those involved with ATFP are
determined to exercise our rights as American citizens to the
fullest extent and to engage with our country’s political
institutions with as much vigor and enthusiasm as any other group in
the United States.
With regard to our responsibilities, this commitment means a firm
and unshakable dedication to the national interests of the United
States and to keeping uppermost in our thinking and efforts our
country’s well-being and welfare. We are not Arabs living in
America, continuing to look at the world through lenses crafted in
the Middle East. We are Palestinian and Arab
Americans, who
have made a conscious and principled decision to not only reside in
this country, but to deliberately affiliate with its values,
Constitution and institutions. This does not mean accepting any form
of irrational jingoism, bowing before misguided triumphalism,
endorsing ill-advised military adventures, or automatically
supporting any one party over another. It does not mean surrendering
the right to criticize and critique anyone or any actions. It most
certainly does not mean automatic support for specific government
policies. But it does mean upholding a healthy respect for our
country’s political processes and the system of government that
underlies them. It means not only crafting arguments based on the
national interest of our country but also thinking in those terms
from the outset. It means understanding and respecting the
sensibilities and sensitivities of our fellow Americans. It means
not just taking our country and its institutions seriously, it means
taking ourselves seriously as Americans. It is easy to say these
things and to believe one means them – but quite another to put them
into practice in a meaningful way. This is a core element of the
both the strategy and ethos of ATFP.
Being seriously engaged with the policy conversation as it actually
takes place is like being pregnant – either one is, or one is not.
There is little room for anything meaningful in between. Choosing to
engage our country’s political system as it exists and attempting to
influence decision and policy making on Palestine means operating
within very specific parameters that may not be applicable to
organizations and individuals operating outside or on the margins of
the political system. This process is, of course, an arduous one.
However, as an organization slowly builds credibility and political
capital, it increasingly finds itself better positioned to calibrate
its words and actions to achieve results on the issues for which it
advocates. To conclude from this that ATFP’s goal is not to
influence US policies, but rather to change Palestinian attitudes
towards those policies, is to miss the point entirely. Indeed, why
any Palestinian or Arab American group would want to engage in a
project simply to change our own attitudes towards US foreign policy
is difficult to imagine. The whole point of ATFP’s work is to help
build a partnership based on the national interests of all parties
to create a state of Palestine alongside Israel – in other words, to
create quite a dramatic change in the political landscape of the
Middle East, entirely for the better.
By definition, what we are attempting to do means involving
ourselves, as an organization, in the policy conversation on
Palestine as it actually takes place at the highest levels of
government. This might be termed “access.” ATFP has, in fact, been
able to go a great deal of the way to achieving this in a mere four
years of existence. The more complex and difficult task is to
achieve the kind of impact whereby one can have an effect on how
policy is formulated and even to help revise existing policies. This
might be called “influence.” Some have critiqued ATFP’s approach as
producing “access without influence.” However, it is vital to keep a
historical perspective in mind when judging an organization or
community’s success in developing influence on national policies. It
took many decades of similar, and indeed far more intensive, efforts
for other ethnic American communities – such as Greek, Armenian,
Irish, Jewish or African Americans – to reach the stage where they
could seriously attempt to influence or revise national policy.
Palestinian and Arab Americans cannot expect to achieve the same
results overnight or without similar serious and sustained efforts.
And, it is crucial to understand, there is no such thing as
influence without access, even though the former is more difficult
to accumulate than the latter. Therefore, the first step in any
serious effort to gain influence is, obviously, to acquire access.
As an American organization, ATFP focuses mainly on developing its
relationship with the US government in order to provide input on
issues related to Palestine. However, ATFP has built serious
contacts with all three central governments involved – the American,
Palestinian and Israeli governments – in view of the fact that all
three parties will need to come together to forge an agreement to
end the conflict and end the occupation.
It is important to note that ATFP is not and does not claim to be a
grassroots or membership organization. It does not claim to speak on
behalf of anyone other than its volunteer Board of Directors, its
supporters, and its staff (some of whom, including the president –
who has volunteered his full-time services for over four years – and
this author, are entirely unpaid). We have defined our approach –
which intentionally breaks with the political orthodoxy that has
characterized decades of failure in Arab-American advocacy for
Palestinian statehood in the United States – and are happy to let
others follow their own strategies and tactics. It is perfectly
legitimate for anyone to disagree with and criticize the ideas or
activities of ATFP, but not to level false accusations against it.
What the Palestinian and Arab American communities need is an honest
dialogue in which disagreements are thrashed out at the level of
ideas and based on accurate characterizations of what other people
are saying and doing.
The following false allegations – and one honest difference of
opinion – have been contained in numerous critiques of ATFP that
have been circulated on the internet and some email lists by a small
but vocal group of increasingly shrill detractors. They reflect the
kind of misinformation and misperceptions that have been all too
common about the organization since its founding. This is not so
much a response to any individual critique, each of which in and of
themselves are relatively unimportant, as it is a long-delayed reply
to dozens of similar diatribes against ATFP over the past few years,
the sum total of which calls for this detailed response.
2. Falsehoods and
fabrications
• ATFP “consistently disregards and polarizes the
Palestinian-American community” and “has persistently worked to…
attack the Palestinian-American community”
This assertion comes from those who simply disagree with the views
and opinions of ATFP, and is plainly designed to try to discredit
the organization for narrow political purposes. ATFP’s Board of
Directors is made up of numerous proud and active Palestinian
Americans, including many leading members of the community
nationwide. These include representatives from the Arab American
Institute (AAI), the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF)
and most recently an observer from the American Federation of
Ramallah. A complete list of ATFP’s Board of Directors can be found
at:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/about.php
At its first annual gala in 2006, ATFP honored three outstanding
Palestinian Americans: Senator John E. Sununu, Mr. Jesse Aweida and
Professor Mujid Kazimi. The 2007 gala awardees were Ambassador
Theodore Kattouf, Mr. Farouk Shami and Dr. Theodore A. Baramki,
another group of leading Palestinian Americans.
In addition, ATFP has established the Palestinian Humanitarian Fund
appeal and American Charities for Palestine, which have raised and
distributed tens of thousands of dollars for health care and other
humanitarian causes in the Occupied Territories and distributed
charitable donations to organizations such as St. Luke’s and Al-Makassed
hospitals.
ATFP has posted its signed financial audit statements online for the
entire history of the organization – an unusually high level of
financial transparency. ATFP’s signed financial audit statements for
2003-2006 can be viewed in full at:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/financials.php
This is all hardly the behavior of a group that “disregards and
polarizes,” let alone one that “attacks,” the Palestinian-American
community.
• The over $155,000
ATFP raised for its Palestinian Humanitarian Fund and distributed
mainly to hospitals in the Occupied Territories is a “meager sum”
This might be considered a matter of opinion; however, no
individual, blog, website or organization that has not raised
significantly more for humanitarian efforts in the Occupied
Territories during this same period is in any position to describe
this sum as “meager.” ATFP is not primarily a charity and was not
established for this purpose. However, as the humanitarian
conditions facing the Palestinian people steadily deteriorated in
recent years, the organization took the time to try to help as best
it could. To be criticized for doing so seems bizarre, and almost to
imply that those who do nothing or less are in a morally superior
position to those who did the best they could. Neither St. Luke’s
nor Al-Makassed seemed to feel that the donations ATFP organized
were irrelevant or “meager.” To attack an organization for
humanitarian fund-raising indicates much about the values and
mindset of those making and promoting this deeply misguided
critique.
• ATFP does not
“forward any substantive points on the two-state solution” and
ATFP's “idea of an independent secular Palestinian state is a
US-backed government of thieves and their enforcers”
In fact, ATFP has been quite substantive and specific about both the
need for a peace based on ending the occupation and having two
states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side and the nature of
the Palestinian state for which it advocates. Indeed, ending the
occupation is the sum and substance of ATFP’s work. This is an
organization uniquely dedicated to that single, over-riding goal.
The publications, articles, speeches and more in which ATFP has
explained the need for an end to the occupation and two states
living in peace are too many to list, but a small sample includes
the following:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/media/ziad31507.php
http://www.americantaskforce.org/media/bos63007.php
http://www.americantaskforce.org/media/rafi120406.php
In addition, ATFP has been specific about the nature of the
Palestinian state for which it advocates, urging that it be
democratic, pluralistic, non-militarized and neutral in conflicts,
and most decidedly not led by “thieves and their enforcers.” The
ATFP vision for the character of a Palestinian state, first
published in the New York Times on February 2, 2006, can be
downloaded in PDF at:
www.americantaskforce.org/atfp_vision.pdf
• ATFP “stifles any
criticism of Israel”
In fact, ATFP has been deeply critical of many Israeli policies,
especially those that underpin the occupation. Most notably, in
testimony given before the House of Representatives Committee on
International Relations (an exceedingly rare opportunity for
Palestinian Americans to present their case before the highest
levels of Congress), ATFP President Ziad Asali was critical of many
Israeli policies. In his prepared statement submitted for the
record, Asali specifically and in detail criticized settlements and
land expropriation, the “separation barrier,” checkpoints, home
demolitions and other policies of the Israeli occupation. Far from
stifling criticism of such abusive policies, Asali’s testimony
before a hearing of the full Committee has probably been the most
high-level presentation of detailed and sustained criticism of the
occupation – at least by a Palestinian or Palestinian American –
before high levels of the US government in many years. This is only
one, particularly high-profile, example of ATFP’s work in opposing
the occupation and criticizing the policies that have led to so much
suffering for the Palestinian people.
The full testimony can be downloaded in PDF at:
http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/archives/109/98602.PDF
The most recent ATFP statement criticizing Israeli occupation
policies, in this case the ordered seizure of 1,100 dunams of land
from four Arab villages in the occupied West Bank and the potential
resumption of the E-1 project, can be read at:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/media/10-12-2007.php
• ATFP “opposes the
Palestinian Right of Return”
This is one of the most frequently repeated falsehoods about ATFP.
ATFP’s “Statement of Principles on the Palestinian Refugee Issue,”
the organization’s definitive document on the issue, states clearly:
“The right of return is an integral part of international
humanitarian law, and cannot be renounced by any parties. There is
no Palestinian constituency of consequence that would agree to the
renunciation of this right.”
At the same time, the statement holds that:
“Although the right of return cannot be renounced, it should not
stand in the way of the only identifiable peaceful prospect for
ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: a resolution based on a
state of Israel living side-by-side with a Palestinian state in the
occupied territories with its capital in East Jerusalem.
Implementation of the right of return cannot obviate the logic of a
resolution based on two states. The challenge for the Israeli and
Palestinian national leaderships is to arrive at a formula that
recognizes refugee rights but which does not contradict the basis of
a two-state solution and an end to the conflict.”
This is a serious, nuanced and pragmatic approach that recognizes
the right of the refuges for return and compensation as a principle
that must be defended, while at the same time also taking return
seriously insofar as the modalities of its implementation have to be
negotiated. This means, in practice, separating the right as a
principle and the return as a practicality. Only Palestinian
officials can be authorized to negotiate the details of such an
agreement, subject to the ratification and consent of the
Palestinian people.
ATFP also supports the Arab League peace initiative, which calls for
the “achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee
problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly
Resolution 194.”
Therefore, in no sense does ATFP “oppose the Palestinian right of
return.”
The full statement can be read on ATFP’s website at:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/refugees.php
• ATFP serves as a
“diplomatic front for the Palestinian Authority”
This allegation reflects an unwillingness to comprehend the
difference between cultivating working relations with a national
leadership, whether American, Palestinian or otherwise, and serving
as a “front” for one. ATFP is an American institution that is funded
by its Board of Directors and its supporters. It has never received
any financial backing from any government at any time. The PA has a
mission in Washington led by Ambassador Afif Safieh that serves as
its diplomatic wing in D.C., and another at the United Nations in
New York City headed by Riyad Mansour, and it needs and has no other
such diplomatic support in the United States. It should be noted,
however, that some of the individuals and websites, most notably the
Electronic Intifada, which have falsely labeled ATFP “a diplomatic
front” for the PA have also called on all Palestinians to “boycott”
(whatever that might mean in practice) the Palestinian missions in
their countries and Palestinian diplomats such as Ambassadors Safieh
and Mansour.
To offer only one recent example that demonstrates the hollowness of
the accusation that ATFP serves as a “diplomatic front” for the PA,
a recent ATFP issue paper described Fateh as “a hotbed of corruption
and mismanagement” and “a morass of petty personal domains of
influence and corrosive rivalries” that engaged in “years of
cronyism under Arafat and the systematic pilfering of funds that
ought to have benefited the public.” The issue paper plainly states
that “Fateh was, and is, in desperate need of internal reform and
radical restructuring, or it needs to be replaced by an alternative
secular nationalist party.” We will leave it to readers to judge
whether or not these are the words a “diplomatic front” of any
variety whatsoever would use to describe its alleged political
masters. ATFP would respectfully suggest that such words reflect a
certain measure of independence, distance and critical judgment.
ATFP’s Issue Paper, written by this author, which includes these
frank criticisms of Fateh can be read in full at:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/ibish/ibishfinal.htm
• ATFP constitutes
the “Dahlan lobby in DC”
Not only is ATFP not the “Dahlan lobby in DC,” ATFP is not a lobby
group at all and has never claimed to be one. ATFP does not now and
has never in any way served the personal political interests of Mr.
Dahlan. It has never organized any Washington event for him, has
never conveyed any messages to or from him at any time, or performed
any other service for or joint effort with him. ATFP is a 501(c)(3)
non-partisan, not-for-profit group. Organizations with 501(c)(3) tax
status are not permitted to lobby, and ATFP has never had a
registered lobbyist on staff or outsourced to any other professional
lobbyist or lobbying organization. Many people might not be clear
about the difference between an actual lobbying group and an
advocacy organization, but it is unfortunate that such confusion
should frequently emanate from people who fancy themselves to be
political scientists of sorts. The only reason some critics of ATFP
have repeatedly, one might almost say obsessively, deployed this
formulation is that it is intended to inflame their target audience,
without the slightest regard for the truth. Such people clearly feel
that the ends justify the means and minimal honesty is of no
consequence when political advantage is sought.
• ATFP “attacked…
Edward Said”
This is a fabrication, pure and simple. ATFP has never criticized or
critiqued the late Professor Edward Said, who was a personal friend
of many of us. There was never an issue of contention or acrimony
between Professor Said and ATFP. Indeed, in 2002, shortly before he
passed away, Professor Said condemned attacks on Ziad Asali from
other Arab Americans in a brilliantly argued and heartfelt article
in Al-Ahram Weekly
called “Disunity and factionalism.” In it, Professor Said condemned
exactly this kind of irrational and inaccurate criticism and “the
needless personal harm it did to the late Hala Salam Maksoud, who
literally gave her life to the cause of ADC, and to its current
president Dr Ziad Asali, a public-spirited physician who voluntarily
gave up his medical practice to run the organization on a pro bono
basis.” He decried this “idle and malicious gossip… [that] harmed
the collective Arab cause, leaving anger and more factionalism in
its wake” – gossip that corresponds to the persistent falsehoods
spread about ATFP. Professor Said also noted that the campaign of
vilification was motivated “because
of… success under Asali” (emphasis in the original). Professor Said
tellingly pointed out that, “organizations like ADC [and ATFP for
that matter] are first of all American organizations,” an
observation we also repeatedly emphasize, and the significance of
which cannot be overstated. Professor Said concluded that there is a
disturbing pattern among Arabs and Arab Americans in which when such
“individuals and organizations… try to do something on behalf of a
cause they are gunned down by troublemakers who have little else to
do but destroy and disturb.”
The entire Edward Said article can be read online at:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/599/op1.htm
• “ATFP actually
goes as far as conflating Abunimah, Massad, Said, and all advocates
of a one-state solution with HAMAS and terrorism in Iraq”
ATFP has never conflated anyone with Hamas or terrorism in Iraq.
Those Arab-American commentators mentioned in the ATFP issue paper
cited above – a group by no means synonymous with the advocates of a
one-state solution in general, let alone Professor Edward Said – who
have passionately defended the actions of Hamas cannot expect to
have such comments go unchallenged by those of us who disagree with
them. They alone are responsible for the meaning of their own
unequivocal words. One should note that current opinion polls appear
to show that Fateh gaining considerable support among the
Palestinian people and Hamas declining in popularity – 48 percent
versus 31 percent respectively about two months ago, and 50 percent
to 14 percent in the most recent poll – so obviously there are quite
a few Palestinians who disagree with opinions enthusiastically
praising Hamas, and condemning Fateh and the PLO in the strongest
possible terms. This is not to mention indefensible rhetoric
accusing honorable Palestinians like Mahmoud Darwish of being, in
effect, political prostitutes. Such views and such language are
properly the subject of disagreement and challenge, as are the views
of ATFP for that matter – as long as the dialogue is conducted
honestly and without fabrications or willful misrepresentations.
ATFP’s Issue Paper, also cited above, which takes issue with some of
the rhetoric of some Arab-American commentators, but not that of
Professor Edward Said, can be read in full at:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/ibish/ibishfinal.htm
• According to ATFP,
anyone critical of the PA, PLO or Fateh is “either a Hamas supporter
or is unwittingly serving their cause”
As noted above, ATFP is itself critical – and at times harshly – of
the PA, PLO and Fateh, so obviously this cannot be true. However,
ATFP does maintain that those who heap praise on Hamas, defend its
actions, and support its efforts to seize power and hold it by force
can indeed be reasonably described as defenders and admirers of
Hamas. To defend and praise Hamas is, in fact, to defend and praise
Hamas, and people should have the courage of their convictions. This
is especially true of those who claim that Hamas represents some
sort of democratic and authentic movement of the Palestinian people
while Fateh are simply collaborators – what one might call the
“martyrs versus the traitors” mythology.
In other words, it is not criticism of the PA, PLO or Fateh – all of
which ATFP engages in forthrightly and with frankness – but actual
enthusiastic praise of Hamas that identifies certain commentators as
admirers or defenders of Hamas, even though some are clearly not in
any sense Islamists. No reinterpretation of their words is
necessary. They speak loudly and clearly for themselves, as one can
only assume they were deliberately intended to. The irony is that
those who describe ATFP as a lobby or front for the PA or PLO while
praising Hamas at every stage would no doubt (correctly) reject any
effort to describe them as “diplomatic fronts” for Hamas. This is
not in any sense an accusation ATFP or I have made or are making
now. But were one to apply the same logic to these individuals and
their statements that they use in describing ATFP as a “front” for
the PA, it would inevitably produce that very conclusion. And this,
of course, shows precisely what is wrong with their logic. One
cannot have it both ways.
• ATFP “rules out
accommodation between Palestinian political factions” and derides
reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas as "utopian”
ATFP does not in any sense “rule out” an accommodation between
Palestinian political factions. In its policy focus paper on
“Palestinian National Unity: The Question of Hamas” published on
August 29, 2007, ATFP argues in favor of a resumption of national
unity and lays out the basis upon which it feels that could best
take place:
“…the best way out would be through an agreement with Hamas and
Fatah that would allow the former to reenter the PA. However,
attempts to reach such an agreement must draw lessons from the
failure of past attempts. Primarily, for any agreement to be
sustainable it should deal with the fundamental political issues at
stake. Hamas must accept a negotiated two-state solution as included
in the PLO charter, renounce violence and terrorism, and abide by
previous PLO agreements.”
This position may not be pleasing to those who admire, defend or
support Hamas’ extreme positions opposing all existing Palestinian
agreements and the corpus of international law on the question of
Palestine, but it hardly amounts to “ruling out” an accommodation.
In fact, it is a specific conceptualization of what a real
accommodation would look like in practice. Moreover, at its October
3, 2007, briefing at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
on the same topic, ATFP Advocacy Director Ghaith Al-Omari repeatedly
stressed that the issue facing the Palestinian parties in terms of
reconciliation was essentially a matter of timing and conditions,
not the obvious desirability of an accommodation.
As for the assertion that ATFP “derided reconciliation between Fateh
and Hamas as ‘utopian’” in the issue paper "Sense, Nonsense and
Strategy in the New Palestinian Political Landscape," anyone who
came away with this impression did not read the paper carefully.
What it says is: “And it is in the possibility of an agreement to
end the occupation that realistic hope for the future of Palestine
lies. The real alternative is not some utopian reconciliation and
post-nationalist bliss, but rather unending conflict and untold
suffering.” Plainly, the agreement to end the occupation referred to
here would be between Palestinians and Israelis, not Fateh and
Hamas. The “utopian reconciliation and post-nationalist bliss”
again, of course, would between Israeli and Palestinian societies,
not rival Palestinian groups. The obvious meaning of the text is
that an “unending conflict and untold suffering” would be the
consequence of not crafting an agreement between Israelis and
Palestinians to end the occupation, not anything to do with
relations between Palestinian factions.
The policy focus paper on “Palestinian National Unity: The Question
of Hamas” can be read in full at:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/policypaper1.php
The October 3 briefing on the same subject can be listened to in
full at:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/media/10-3-2007.php
• ATFP makes an
“unqualified assertion that Israel's occupation is not analogous to
Apartheid South Africa”
This is a complete misreading and misinterpretation of the reference
to South Africa in a recent article by ATFP Executive Director Rafi
Dajani and Advocacy Director Ghaith al-Omari. In the article, they
refer to what they call a “false South African analogy” not in the
context of the nature of the occupation – which indeed does resemble
and in some ways even is significantly worse than conditions in
apartheid South Africa – but in the context of visions for the
political future of Israelis and Palestinians. One might note that
while ATFP has not done so, the respected Palestinian-American
historian Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University has in
fact raised serious questions about the analogy between the system
of apartheid and the mechanics of the Israeli occupation (although
he too feels that in some ways the latter is worse than the former).
In his most recent book
The Iron Cage
(Beacon Press, 2006), Khalidi argues that “the parallels with South
Africa are only superficially accurate” and that “there are only
limited parallels between the defunct apartheid system and the
comprehensive and sophisticated matrix of control that Israel has
created” in the Occupied Territories. At any rate, is perfectly
clear from the Dajani-Omari article that they are referring to and
rejecting the idea that a one-state solution between Israelis and
Palestinians along the South African model is a sensible analogy or
a workable model as a
solution to the conflict. That is completely different
from rejecting an analogy between the characteristics of the Israeli
occupation and the system of apartheid that used to be enforced in
South Africa. Indeed, ATFP does consider the analogy of a South
Africa-style solution between Israelis and Palestinians to be, as
the article clearly states, “an impossible illusion that… distracts
dangerously from difficult yet achievable goals,” but this in no way
characterizes, and does not in any sense address, the nature of the
occupation.
The Dajani-Omari article can be read in full at:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/media/dsjt9242007.php
• The Bush
Administration “offers a more complimentary and accurate depiction
of the Palestinian people than ATFP”
One of the most telling features of several recent critiques of ATFP
has been the willingness of some bloggers to rip ATFP statements
radically out of context in order to try to cast the organization
and its leadership in a bad light. One very glaring example of this
kind of dishonesty was the recent use of the following quotation
from ATFP President Ziad Asali, which has been widely circulated on
the internet: “The Palestinians, frankly, are a ragtag people, many
who barely speak English. And whatever they say is often offensive
and then used against them.” This was then juxtaposed with a
statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the 2006 ATFP
gala: “The Palestinians are some of the most talented, best
educated, and hardest working people in the Middle East.” This
juxtaposition is a transparent effort to suggest that ATFP – a
Palestinian-American organization – is somehow less sympathetic to
the Palestinian people than the Bush Administration and to “reveal
how the organization truly views those it alleges to represent.”
That, among many other efforts to enhance the image of Palestinians
in the United States, ATFP hosts an annual Washington gala
specifically dedicated to honoring the achievements of Palestinian
Americans is apparently not a significant enough indication of its
sentiments.
This deliberate deception is fully revealed only when Dr. Asali’s
quote is placed in its full context, which was part of a debate with
Mitchell Bard on media coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
held at 16th World Media Forum in August, 2007. At the event, Asali
was analyzing various structural factors that lead to western media
coverage that is more sympathetic to Israel and Israeli perspectives
than to those of the Palestinians. He explained that one of Israel’s
built-in advantages stems from its status as a well-organized state
as opposed to a people living under occupation. The full paragraph
reads:
“There is the other factor that Israel is a real country. It is a
country with establishments and institutions that deal with the
press. Part of their State Department – foreign ministry, it’s
called – has its own many multi-faceted media outlets that connect
with the Western-based reporters in the region, making it easy to
get the Israeli story. The Palestinians, frankly, are a ragtag
people, many who barely speak English. And whatever they say is
often offensive and then used against them. So it is not hard to see
that there is a built-in problem here.”
Can anyone deny that the Israeli propaganda machine and government
efforts to spin the press have no analogue on the Palestinian side?
Is what Palestinians often say not well calibrated to connect to a
western media audience and then indeed used against them? More
importantly, in context do these words not convey a completely
different impression than when ripped out of the media analysis of
which they were a part and juxtaposed not to the Israeli
media-management system but to a random statement by Secretary Rice?
Are people not being deliberately misled?
The text of Ziad Asali’s comments at the 16th World Media Forum can
be read in full at:
http://www.wmassociation.com/proceedings/16index.html
Those who disagree with ATFP should take issue with its actual views
and actions, and not false and fabricated allegations, or with
quotations ripped from their context and re-presented to create a
completely misleading impression of what ATFP is saying and doing.
We are a mature and intelligent community with plenty of room for
many views, approaches and orientations. And we should feel free to
disagree with each other. But we must do so respectfully, and with
due regard for accuracy and the facts.
2. Falsehoods and
fabrications
And so, at last, to an honest difference of opinion:
• ATFP was wrong to
welcome Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as the keynote speaker
at its first annual Gala in October 2006
ATFP is an American
organization. It argues that a change in our approach to the
question of Palestine is in our country’s national interest, and
does so in part by dealing with the most senior policy makers in our
country. While ATFP is not a lobby, we do work within the American
political system, including engaging the White House, Congress, the
media, think tanks and other influential policy organizations, since
history strong suggests that this is the approach that, for other
constituencies and communities, has yielded the greatest successes.
There are many other approaches to promoting the cause of the
Palestinian people in the United States, but this is the one we have
chosen. We strongly believe that our approach is an indispensable
contribution to advocacy for Palestine in Washington, D.C., and
beyond.
We were very proud that the Secretary of State spoke at our Gala
last year. Some of ATFP’s critics derided the organization for
having “honored” Dr. Rice with the invitation. But the bitter truth
is that no Arab- or Palestinian-American group is in a position to
“honor” the senior policy makers of our country with an invitation
to speak at our events – as a community we simply have not acquired
that level of clout or leverage, and narcissistic fantasies about
our inherent greatness and importance by virtue of simply being
Arabs are merely self-deluding. In fact, the Secretary of State
honored us by speaking at our event, and her presence was in itself
a valuable recognition of the importance of the issue of Palestine
to the United States. Is it better to shun and be shunned by those
who make policy, or to have them begin to engage and take us and our
issues seriously?
What was even more significant was what Secretary Rice had to say,
including this remarkable sentence: “I can only tell you that I,
too, have a personal commitment to that goal because I believe that
there could be no greater legacy for America than to help to bring
into being a Palestinian state for a people who have suffered too
long, who have been humiliated too long, who have not reached their
potential for too long, and who have so much to give to the
international community and to all of us.” Let me emphasize that
phrase: “there could be no greater legacy for America than to help
to bring into being a Palestinian state.” Stop reading and think
about that for a minute. Is it the Balfour Declaration? Not quite.
Is it an announcement of a major shift in policy? No, it’s not. But
is this the tone we are used to coming from the senior most American
officials on the issue of a Palestinian state and an end to the
occupation? Have we ever heard this kind of language before from a
secretary of state? Obviously not, and it is plainly significant,
perhaps even historically so.
Some of the Arab and Arab-American reaction to these unprecedented
words was muted or dismissive – “kalaam,
kalaam” some said derisively, “words, words.” However,
language shapes both the tone and substance of policy – indeed, the
aforementioned Balfour Declaration was just that: words. And, of
course, we do not hesitate to become deeply concerned and even
outraged about words that run in the opposite direction. A mature
political movement regards words like these as valuable political
capital and indeed an achievement, and does not cast them derisively
aside with contempt and disdain as if they had no meaning or value.
Or as if they had no cost. The radical pro-Israel right was
infuriated and enraged in the extreme with Secretary Rice for these
remarks, seeing both their significance and the need to extract a
price for having made them. Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization
of America fumed, “Secretary Rice… delivered the most
pro-Palestinian speech in memory by a senior U.S. administration
official” and protested that, “I was not prepared” to hear such
words from a senior American official. “If the president does not
subscribe to the themes in her speech, he should publicly distance
himself from it immediately,” Klein added. Indeed, for days after
the ATFP gala, White House spokespersons were persistently asked to
repudiate Secretary Rice’s comments or distance President Bush from
them. They declined to do so. For example, at the White House
briefing on October 17, 2006, President Bush’s then-spokesperson
Tony Snow said, in response to a direct question about the “no
greater legacy” statement that, “he [President Bush] stands
absolutely behind what the Secretary of State said.”
The Jerusalem Post
described the speech as an “unprecedented address.” It also
published an op-ed complaining that, “the secretary gave in to the
impulse to rhetorical overkill and wound up implicitly comparing the
Palestinian nationalism to America's founding fathers and the US
civil rights movement.”
The Washington Times
condemned Secretary Rice for calling “for the creation of a
Palestinian state -- likening it to the efforts of America's
Founding Fathers and the heroic leadership that enabled the country
to survive the Civil War and defeat segregation and Jim Crow.”
The Times then
published an op-ed blasting the Secretary for “comparing the
Palestinian cause to her own civil rights struggle growing up in
segregated Birmingham, Alabama.” Israel Insider sputtered, “Come off
it, Condoleezza. You had to have winced reading out some of the
diatribe in that speech, which apologized and lauded terrorism.”
Evangelical columnist Joe Farah was so infuriated by the speech that
he wrote, “I've waited to deal with the following news development
because it is so disturbing to me personally, I needed to let my
rage subside. I can now speak and write coherently about the latest
ghastly statements by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice concerning
the Middle East. But it's not easy.” His conclusion: “She has
deliberately chosen to side with evil – the kind of people with whom
we are supposed to be at war. It means that her boss, President
Bush, is committed to this evil path as well.” David Horowitz’s
Frontpagemag.com held that because of the speech, “Condi is more
than a ditzy cheerleader for Palestinian nationalism. She’s also a
facilitator [of terrorism] par excellence.” Horowitz published
another article chiding, “No, Dr. Rice...there's nothing noble in
such a self-centered, murderous cause.” The Jewish World Review
summed up the extreme pro-Israel right’s reaction to Secretary
Rice’s speech at the ATFP Gala succinctly by demanding her
resignation from office: “She needs to go.”
Those who saw and continue to see no value in the invitation to
Secretary Rice or to her remarks at the ATFP gala need to ask
themselves if the Palestinians would really be better off without
these comments on the historical record. Is it possible that the
pro-Israel right, with its heated and overwrought reaction to these
words, was in fact seeing something that some in the Arab-American
community failed to see? How can providing a platform and an
environment conducive to the delivery of what unquestionably was the
most sympathetic speech to the Palestinian people and cause ever
made by a senior American official have possibly been a bad thing?
The text of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s address at the
first annual ATFP Gala on October 11, 2006 can be read in full at:
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/73895.htm
In addition, the text of the keynote speech by Undersecretary of
State Nicholas Burns at the second annual ATFP Gala on October 17,
2007 can be read in full at:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/media/burnstrans.php
One final point on this issue: some of ATFP’s critics set up a
remarkable “catch-22” for the organization with regard to engagement
with senior government officials. On the one hand, when such
invitations are proffered and accepted, no matter what the result,
the accusations are that the organization “fawns over“ such
dignitaries and “parrots their rhetoric” – in other words that such
engagement amounts to some sort of sell-out to power. However, in
the next breath some of these same critics then complain that ATFP
does not yet have as much influence on “Washington policy makers and
political leaders as other lobbies.” In other words, when such
engagement is successfully pursued, it amounts to a kind of disloyal
betrayal, and when invitations to senior officials are not accepted
or overall progress is slow-going, it amounts to proof that the
strategy does not and indeed cannot work. Either way, ATFP can be
condemned as treasonous or ineffective, respectively – or in some
amazing pretzel-logic formulations, as both simultaneously. Of
course, it is neither.
As patriotic American citizens and as taxpayers, the members of the
Board of ATFP and its staff are proud of its achievements, its
positions and the caliber of its work. Above all, ATFP is confident
that it has found a voice that resonates with policy and opinion
makers in our country to help promote an end to the occupation and
the creation of a state of Palestine. We take the criticism dealt
with in this issue paper as an indication that we are doing things
that matter. We are confident that they matter enough to make a
significant difference. Obviously, the trail that ATFP is blazing is
a long-term one and requires the patient application of effort and
painstaking development of credibility and clout over a sustained
period of time. But there is no shortcut to developing this over
time, and no serious alternative when it comes to influencing US
government policy.
Hussein Ibish is a
Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP). |
