Forum; Abdeen Jabara and the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee

I'll see you soon! This is Olive Graham for Forum. This week, Forum features the president of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, Optine Jabara. There have been actually three separate migration periods in American history of people from the Middle East. The first one occurred in the latter part of the last century. Muslims facing Arab Americans this week on Forum. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, welcome

to Forum. I'm Olive Graham. We see the need to participate in a broad-based coalition of peoples from different backgrounds and different interests in changing both the domestic agenda and the international agenda in this country. Abdine Jabara, National President of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee. Today Forum features an interview with civil rights lawyer Abdine Jabara, the new president of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee. Founded in 1980 by former U.S. Senator James Aberresque of South Dakota, the organization is dedicated to combating defamation, discrimination and stereotyping of Arab Americans. The number of problems facing Arab Americans escalated

after the 1973 Middle East War and the subsequent oil embargo. ADC President Abdine Jabara describes the events that precipitated the formation of the civil rights organization, Mr. Jabara. Perhaps more than any other single stimulus was the abscam operation in 1980 in which the FBI used a Italian-American FBI agent dressed him up as an Arab in a sting operation to entrap certain corrupt elected public officials. Those of you who recall abscam will remember that abscam stood for the words Arab scam or Abdol scam and this FBI agent was taped in a hotel room dressed as an Arab engaging in bribing senators and congressmen.

This occurred despite the fact that there had been no instance in which an Arab-American had engaged in the subordinate of public officials and when we asked the FBI director why they had chosen to attach this kind of a probium to Arabs by using an agent dressed as an Arab, he said, well, we needed a credible figure and what he meant by that was we needed a believable figure because the FBI knew what the public sentiment was and knew that it would be believable that an Arab would try to bribe a public official. When in point of fact, the targeting of this particular ethnic group for the use in this

sting operation, all it did was to further emphasize and further solidify in people's minds the negative images of Arabs and that's when Arab-Americans said that we must organize ourselves across the United States to combat this endemic defamation and stereotyping of Arabs in Arab-Americans in American society. How large is your organization now? Our organization now is 15,000 members in some 70 chapters throughout the United States. Are you also bringing to light any earlier attitudes that you feel need rectification or some kind? Well, the thing that I think people have to understand is that there has historically been either misinformation or a lack of information about Arabs in American culture and I think

part of this stems from the history of the Crusades. The Christian West came into conflict with the Muslim East during the period of the Crusades despite the fact that many Arabs are Christians and indeed many of the Arab-Americans in this country are Christians and many of the members of our association are Christians. But many Americans still think of Arabs as being Muslims and therefore bad people stemming from the history of the Crusades. What about the migration patterns of Arabs into this country has been so small that they

haven't really touched a large section of our population? Well, there have been actually three separate migration periods in American history of people from the Middle East. The first one occurred in the latter part of the last century, beginning, say, in the 1880s and ending in the 1920s, spanning a 30 or 35-year period. They came out of villages in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine at that time. It was all part of the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire. There was no Lebanon, no Palestine, but they came here seeking to build new lives like millions of other immigrants before them.

Many of them going out peddling and settling in small towns throughout the East Coast and the Midwest, settling in major cities like Detroit, which has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in North America, numbering some 200,000. They worked in the auto industry there where they were getting $5 a day for on-skilled labor. That was one wave of immigration. My grandfather, for instance, first landed in Mexico and he and his brother rode in a wagon across Texas up to North Dakota, where they homesteaded in North Dakota back in the late 1800s. They were part of the process of building this country, and that's what I say to Arab Americans as I go around the country. In this period of the celebration of the Statute of Liberty, I tell them that they too helped

build this country were part and parcel of the process of making this country what it is, and therefore they should be able to ensure for themselves and their children the fruits of the country and the rights and liberties that entered all American citizens, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin. A second wave occurred, which was a wave after the independence of the Arab countries from the colonial powers. The Middle East, and particularly the Levant, was divided up by the British and the French after the First World War into separate countries like Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, and the mandate over Palestine. They were controlled by these colonial powers, and in the 1940s they received their independence after struggles for independence, and after these countries became independent there was

a wave of students that came here to study in the universities in the 1950s and the 1960s. Many of these students remained on, married, and settled down, and became a new element and more educated element than the earlier wave, which was largely peasants, like so many peasants that emigrated here. The third wave is a wave that is occurring now that began in 1967 with the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and subsequent to that the continuous bombing attacks against southern Lebanon, driving the people of southern Lebanon to the north, and then subsequently the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the civil war that has taken place in that beleaguered country.

We've had an influx of refugees, that's essentially what they are because they are not coming here necessarily by choices because of the civil strife and conditions of war and the death and destruction that has occurred in their homelands in Palestine. That is the West Bank in Gaza or in Lebanon. Large communities of this new influx exist in Brooklyn, New York, in New Jersey, Northern New Jersey, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and in parts of the West Coast. These are the three distinct waves of immigration from the Middle East and to the United States, and each group of people, of course, bring with them a different level of consciousness about America and different experiences about the homeland.

But there has emerged in the aftermath of the 1967 war, a developing Arab-American consciousness that transcends the country of origin, religion, village, or region. In the past, most of the immigrants were connected with their church or their mosque. Their consciousness as a homogeneous entity in the United States was somewhat restricted. The first effort to establish a national Arab-American presence in the United States was that which occurred in 1967 with the formation of the Association of Arab-American University graduates of which I was the first executive secretary.

There was a subsequent establishment of an association called the National Association of Arab-Americans, which was intended to be a lobbying organization on behalf of Arab-American causes. And the third and most recent and the largest effort is the effort of Senator James Aberriske in 1980 to establish a national civil rights and advocacy organization in the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. That organization is a grassroots organization that reaches out into villages and towns and cities and counties all over the United States and is attempting to bring Arab-Americans together and promoting on a common platform the rights and interests and concerns of Arab Americans to be treated on an equal basis along with their fellow Americans.

Is this then a civil rights organization in the 60s and more like? Yes, that's exactly what it is. It is a movement organization, it's a civil rights organization. And that is why we have been able to build ties, fraternal ties of understanding with the number of other civil rights organizations. We have been active in support of the rainbow coalition. We have been active in support of the trans-Africa movement for freedom in southern Africa. We have been in support of the committee in solidarity with the people of El Salvador because we see the need to participate in a broad-based coalition of peoples from different backgrounds and different interests in changing both the domestic agenda and the international agenda in this country. When you are listing organizations a moment ago, they did seem to have different functions.

Does this mean that your organization doesn't do any kinds of legislative lobbying? No, we do some legislative lobbying. For instance, on the immigration bill, we had seminars and we participated with other ethnic organizations in opposition to restrictive immigration laws because there is now a major movement abroad in this country to restrict immigration from abroad because of the demographic changes that have been occurring in this country, largely because of the Hispanic in migration. And the Anglo-Saxon majority, and I'm not so certain to what extent it constitutes a majority, was becoming extremely concerned by these demographic changes because they have political consequences. And therefore, there was a huge movement abroad for immigration reform, which has now partially

been addressed in the Simpson-Mazoli bill that was passed. There have been other matters of legislation that we've been concerned with. We are basically concerned with the entire program of Congress, the whole question of the Graham Rudman bill, cutbacks, foreign aid, the foreign aid program of the United States, which has been totally lopsided and has been very oppressive of people in the Middle East because of the large amounts of grant aid and military aid that are being funneled to oppressive countries abroad in the Middle East and in Central America. That has been a question that we've been concerned with. First recently, we have been battling the acceptance by the United States government of the appointment by Israel of a new military at a Cheyenne, Washington, who was held to be

responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres in West Bay Root in September 1982. He was held to be responsible by the Israeli Qahan Commission that was formed to investigate that massacre and was removed from his commission in the Israeli Army for a period of three years. After he completed that three-year period, he was then promoted to Major General and assigned to the most prestigious position in the Israeli military, that of military at a Cheyenne, Washington, to oversee the $1.8 billion worth of arms transfer from the United States to Israel annually. Amos Yaron, the general in question, has been accepted by our Department of Defense despite the fact that previous administrations, including the Reagan administration, have rejected

other diplomatic appointments to Washington. The Carter administration rejected an Argentinian military at a Cheyenne, who had engaged in torture of prisoners. The Reagan administration rejected the appointment of Nora Astorga, as ambassador of Nicaragua, to Washington, on the grounds that she had participated in the assassination of one of Samoza's top generals, a Noan CIA asset. Amos Yaron falls clearly under the Geneva conventions, the four Geneva conventions of which the United States is a signatory. We said that if the United States doesn't choose to prosecute, they should at least not grant him diplomatic status and diplomatic immunity to operate in Washington as a respected diplomat. What's your success on that front?

That campaign is continuing. We have now published a two-page open letter to the president and members of Congress that appeared in the Nation magazine about one month ago that was signed by over 170 prominent Americans and American organizations, peace groups, religious groups, people like George McGovern, Jackson Brown, Randall Robinson, and other prominent Americans and we will continue in this campaign until Amos Yaron is expelled from this country. What kinds of leaders do Arab Americans have who are some of the figures that you look

to? Well there are two things here. I think number one, we have a number of people who are Arab Americans that have been success stories in the American mold that a number of Americans are unaware of. Like the renowned heart surgeon here in Texas, Michael DeBakey, the former president of Pan Am Corporation whose daughter is currently the wife of the King of Jordan, Doug Flutey, F. Murray Abraham, Casey Kasim, Ralph Nader, and other figures who have achieved some measure of success within the American context. Now when you say who do we look to as leaders, I think that former Senator James Aberersk who was born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and who has continuously

espoused a progressive and populist concept and defended Native Americans, defended an anti-interventionist policy by the United States. I think people such as Senator Aberersk have provided excellent leadership for our community and we very much respect the role that he has played despite the fact that he could have turned his back on his ethnic community and sought to find his own way as a senator. We have other members of Congress who are of Arab background, Nick Joe Ray Hall from West Virginia, a member of Congress who was elected as the youngest member of the House of Representatives several terms ago, he was 28 years old when he was elected, Mary Rose

Ocar from Cleveland, also an Arab American, and the former Senator who was just defeated from South Dakota, Mr. James Abnor who was defeated by Tom Daschle, there are several governors that are of Arab American background, John Sanunu of New Hampshire, and Mr. Victor Atiyah of the State of Oregon. Who are some of your friends in high places in Washington that you can rely on as advocates for your cause? Well, as far as the administration is concerned, I have to say that we don't have many friends. The administration has been a source of anti-Arab attitudes, although there were some Arab Americans that supported the re-election of the Reagan administration. In Congress, we have built very good and solid ties with members of the Congressional Black

Caucus, and we have relations with several former congressmen, people who were defeated Pete McCloskey of California, and former Illinois's congressman, Paul Finley, who wrote the book They Dare to Speak Out. The Arab Americans have come a long way in the past six years in which this organization has existed, but they have very, very long ways to go. We do not have much in the way of clout or influence in Washington at this particular juncture, which is something that we're trying to change, and we're trying to change it on the basis of a slogan of mass action on critical issues in a timely fashion. We do not have a great deal of material wealth that is one of the determinants of power in the United States, but we are trying to gather up what resources that we do have and

mobilize our community so that they can affect the conditions that operate on their lives. Does this limited cash flow mean that you're not able to use the media as much as you might like? There's no question about that, just from the standpoint of the amount of staff that we're able to have to deal with these problems. We're stretched very thin, while we have 19 staff members in Washington in our national office and eight regional offices around the country, including a regional office and a regional organizer in Houston, Mr. Ronnie Hammond, we still face gargantuan problems in dealing with the myriad of requests that come in. For instance, talking about the media, the number of instances in which Arabs are defamed or depicted in a stereotypical fashion in the media are legion.

Let me give you an example. We had to spend some time on a record recently published by Electra Records Company, which is a division of Warner Communications entitled Killing an Arab. At first, they totally rejected any notion that it was somehow anti-Arab for them to have a song entitled Killing an Arab as a lead record on an LP album. But we had to spend considerable amount of time, but you should multiply that type of situation a thousandfold in the media. And we're not just talking about the song industry, we're talking about television, we're talking about cartoons, we're talking about characters, we're talking about children's toys. There's a new children's toy, a ramble toy, about a terrorist saying that he was born in the desert, and Rome's homeless, because he has no home, and it clearly depicts this

person as an Arab. There's a whole host of these things. Now, as far as the media is concerned, some of these portrayal of Arabs is mindless ignorance on the part of people in the media. And we've been successful in many instances in reaching out to these people who are products of this culture, products of this educational system. But there is another segment of it, which is premeditated attempts to malign and defame. There has come out a spate of movies that have been Israeli produced by global productions, such as Iron Eagle and Delta Force, which portray the Arabs as a frenzied mass of people who only know hatred and should be bombed and strafed and napalmed in the ramble fashion

of good old American go-to-itness. So we have these two elements in the media, and we are organizing ourselves, and I'm very optimistic, because I think our experience in the past six years has been indicative of the fact that Arab Americans are organizing themselves and that they are finding many allies in other communities who will stand with them and say, no, this is wrong, this is anti-American, this is not what America is all about. We want to make a reality, those lofty words in the Declaration of Independence, that all men and women are created equal, and that they should enjoy the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In other words, what we're doing as a civil rights and advocacy organization is trying to bring into reality for all Americans those principles. Abdeen Jabara is national president of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee. He was a guest at the campus of the University of Texas at Austin of the American Arab Understanding Committee, a graduate student organization. If you have a comment or wish to purchase a cassette copy of this program, write to forum, the Center for Tomah Communication Services, the University of Texas at Austin 78712. Our technical producer this week is David Alvarez. Our production assistant is David Archer, I'm your producer and host Olive Graham. Forum is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University

of Texas at Austin, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or this station. This is the Longhorn Radio Network.