Opinion Editorials, April 2010

Hidden Truths:

The Difficult Complexities of the Middle East and the Hiding of the American Mind

By Sam Hamod

Al-Jazeerah, ccun.org, April 12, 2010

“To kill one innocent person is to destroy all of mankind; to save one innocent person is to save all of mankind.” The Holy Qur’an

“The Message of Jesus was one of love, not hate, war or killing.” Paul Tillich, noted Christian theologian

"We must live in peace, with the Christians and Muslims, who follow God."  Moses Maimonides ,Jewish Theologian

Would that we had peace so that Arab Christians, Muslims and Jews could live together in peace as they did for centuries, as they did in Jerusalem, in Spain under the Muslim Moors, and in the Arab and Muslim countries of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Iran, Turkey, Algeria, Iraq and elsewhere. Unfortunately, since the advent of Zionism, which is a political movement, not Judaism or necessarily Jewish, in fact, many Rabbinical groups in Israel and in other parts of the world do not recognize the state of Israel as Jewish, but as Zionist, there has been an unfairness and a misunderstanding about the realities in the Middle East, especially in the American people because the real truths of the situation have been hidden from them by our mass media and by our political leaders, and by the covering of it even in the universities.

As many of us Muslim and Jewish leaders have made clear, we should find peace, not war and killing, but some of the political messiahs of Zionism go against the basic tenets of Judaism in their quest for power and use the rhetoric of hatred when it should be one of love and brotherhood—unfortunately, at times, the same happens on the Arab and Muslim side as well but this is brought about by frustration that their message and their rights as human beings are being attacked and violated every day in Gaza, Palestinian refugee camps, in Israel and in Lebanon and Syria.

Too often, on both sides of the issues, people write with anger and frustration about the Middle East, especially the Palestinian / Israeli matter—but this is natural when they are engaged in a battle of survival. The Palestinians are in some ways parallel to the Jews who fought back against Hitler in the Warsaw Ghetto, and they see the Israelis as the Hitlerian force that is trying to destroy them. Many Israelis, in Israel and in America, see the Palestinians as taking what they wrongly feel is “their land,” and I use the term “their land” because many historians have written that there was no real Jewish state there before the Palestinians, who are also the first direct descendents of Abraham through his first born son, Ishmael.

Interestingly, in several recent articles and in studies, it appears that Palestinians and many Israelis living in Israel are more prone to understand one another than the pro-Israelis living in the United States. Also, because of the dominance in the U.S. media of pro-Israeli owners of the media, Rupert Murdoch, the Sarnoff family, the owners of the New York Times and the Washington Post and the other major media outlets on TV and radio, even NPR that has Jewish reporters on the Middle East, with no Arab reporters, and its two major talk show hosts, Scott Simon and Daniel Shorr, are both Jewish and pro-Israeli (I’ve known all these people such as Scott, Daniel and Linda Gradstein for decades, so I personally know of what I speak). In the American media, there is no voice allowed like that of Uri Avnery of Ha’aretz, published in Israel and in the world.

And even on the “liberal talk shows,” like that of Bill Maher, and even the best of them, COUNTDOWN, with Keith Olbermann, or on HARDBALL, with Chris Matthews, or in such magazines as NATION, there are very few of us who are educated and from an Arab or Arab and Muslim background who are let on the air.

I remember, dealing now with the “right wing” in America, the “born again “ group supports people like Rush Limbaugh and the Fox group of talking heads, like Beck, O’Reilly and Rivera.  But I will say this for Rivera, I was invited on his show one night, and things went pretty well, and I was able to have decent dialogues with Rivera and Lawrence Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, and some anonymous retired colonel, who talked like a right wing set-piece, and who was always talking as if he was the only one on the show, basically talking with his set lines. After getting into the show, the colonel and I got into an argument about the accuracy of our “precise missiles.” I pointed out that they often were 50 to 100 yards off target and that this caused a lot of pain and suffering to civilians who were not the target of the missile, or, as Henry Kissinger euphemistically put it, “just collateral damage.” At that point, Rivera took a break, but after the break, he did let me return to the air. Thereafter, when the show returned, Rivera asked Mr. Korb who he agreed with, me or the colonel. Mr. Korb answered, “I hate to admit it, but I agree with Dr. Hamod, our missiles are not as precise as we say they are.” The colonel fumed and sputtered and did not say another word as Rivera then went on to another subject.

The producer of the show called me back and said they would like to put me on O’Reily and Hannity and Colmes, to which I said, “great.” But, as we all know, it never happened. One producer called me anonymously from Fox and said that, “You were very good, too good for your own sake, so it probably will never happen.” And o f course, it has never again happened. But, in my case, I have no beard, no accent, since I was born in Gary, Indiana, have a Ph.D. and had excellent training in speech and debate at Northwestern University at one of the fines t communications schools in the world. But, I do not fit the stereotype of the “Muslim,” or the “Arab,” and it is even so bad that so many say to me, when I tell them who I am and what I am, “But you can’t be, you don’t look like an Arab, and you don’t sound like a Muslim.”

BUT HERE, WE HAVE THE CORE OF THE PROBLEM. THE IMAGE OF ARABS AND MUSLIMS IN AMERICA, PUT FORTH BY OUR MEDIA AND BY THE PRO PAGANDA MACHINES OF THE ZIONISTS IS THAT WE ARE ALL WILD EYED, ILLITERATE, BLOODTHIRSTY, UNEDUCATED RABBLE, WHO DON’T DESERVE TO HAVE A LAND AND WHEN ONE OF OUR PEOPLE IS KILLED, IT DOESN’T MATTER, BECAUSE WE, LIKE THE WAY SOUTHERNERS FELT ABOUT THE AFRICAN SLAVES AND AFRICAN AMERICANS, WERE LESS HUMAN THE ISRAELIS AND AMERICANS.

WITH THIS IN MIND THEN, IT BECOMES DIFFICULT TO GET A FAIR SHAKE, OR TO EVEN GET ON THE PROGRAMS ON THE MASS MEDIA. I REMEMBER WELL, WHEN I WAS DIRECTOR OF THE ISLAMIC CENTER IN WASHINGTON, DC, I ASKED TO BE ON THE DIANE REHM SHOW, ON THE D.C. NPR STATION, TO DISCUSS ISLAM PROPERLY. INSTEAD, SHE INVITED JIM ZOGBY, LIKE ME AMERICAN BORN, BUT HE WAS, AND IS, A CHRISTIAN ARAB, AND DOES NOT KNOW MY KNOWLEDGE OR EXPERIENCE IN AND OF ISLAM. SCOTT SIMON, WHO I’VE KNOWN SINCE THE MID-80s BECAUSE WE WERE BOTH FROM THE CHICAGO AREA AND BOTH WERE MEMBERS OF THE WATERGATE HEALTH CLUB IN D.C., WOUD PUMP ME ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND ISLAM, AS WOULD DANIEL SHORR WHEN WE WOULD MEET WHILE WALKING IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD,WOODLY PARK ARE OF WASHINGTON, DC, BUT NEITHER WOULD PUT ME ON THE AIR, BUT THEY WOULD PUT OTHERS LESS PRESTIGOUS OR KNOWLEDGEABLE ON THE AIR, OR THE LINDA GRADSTEIN TYPES WHO WERE OR ARE ALLEGEDLY “EXPERTS,” BECAUSE SOME MAJOR NEWS ORGANIZATION SPONSORED THEM, THOUGH THEY WERE OFTEN BIASED AND THAT IS WHAT KEPT THEM IN THEIR JOBS (SEE ALSO JUDITH MILLER OF THE NY TIMES, WHO HAS YET TO BE CENSORED OR FIRED FOR HER CRIMINAL LIES THAT HELPED LEAD US INTO THE GW BUSH LED IRAQ WAR.)

Add to these things the lies the right wing evangelists are telling about the Arabs and Muslims, people like Haggee, Robertson and others. They keep saying, the Arabs and Muslims are children of the devil and worship satan. Yet, they fail to mention that the first real Christians were Palestinians, Arabs, who, to this day, are in charge of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That Jerusalem was an early Christian center, and they were Arabs, and when they pray to God in the Christian churches, whether t hey be Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, they use the Arabic term for God, which is Allah. But these mad and uneducated evangelists and their Zionist cohorts love to say that Muslims worship “Allah,” not God, but no one asks them who the Spanish worship when they use the word, “Dios,” or who the Greeks worhip or the French worship when they use words from their own language for God other than the English word, “God.”

In this same vein, when Palestinian and Lebanese or Egyptian Christian leaders come to America to plead their cause against Zionism, and that they live in peace with the Muslims, these church leaders are very rarely even invited on any talk shows or interviewed or written about in any of our major mass media organs—THEY ARE IGNORED, AS IS THE TRUTH, THEY AND THE TRUTH ARE HIDDEN FRO M THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

Thus, it is understandable that the majority of Americans, those civilians and those in the U.S. military, see the Arabs and Muslims as less human than we Americans are; once again, it harkens back to that old concept of “the other,” as the white southerners in the past and the militant anti-blacks of today, when looking at blacks saw them as “less human”, 2/3rds to be exact. I have no idea how much less of a human Arabs and Muslims are to the American elite or to the masses of uneducated Americans who tune in regularly to Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly or Hannity and Colmes or who are lulled by NPR and its one-sidedness, along with the stifling of thought and fairness that comes out in our “papers of record,’ the NY Times and the Washington Post, not to mention the Sunday morning inundation of evangelists on the radio and on TV with their blistering attacks on behalf of Israel, attacks that many Israelis find incredible and unfortunate when they visit America.

And imagine what it must feel like to be Ramzy Baroud or Fawaz Turki or Kamal Boullatta, very educated,articulate Palestinian writer and artists to hear this garbage, these lies, day after day in America and in Palestine, not to mention people like me of Lebanse Muslim descent who are angry that the American people have never been told about the atrocities visited on the Lebanese and Palestinians in the Isaeli invasions in the 80s into Lebanon and in the late 90s, and the constant attacks on Gaza to this day, with the American presidents, mass media and “Christian”evangelists glorifying Israel and telling the Lebanese and Palestinians to “quit threatening Israel,” and asking Hezbollah, whose only role has been to keep the Israelis out of Lebanon, to lay down their arms so that Israel may attack Lebanon at will! No one can forget that President Sinior of Lebanon was praised by GW Bush for Lebanon’s “democracy,” yet, when Israel attacked Lebanon without provocation (Lebanon had captured some Israeli soldiers who had infiltrated Lebanese soil, and the UN reported that the soldiers were caught on Lebanese land), President Bush and the American media went into high gear to blame the Lebanese, the defending Hezbollah, and did not lift a finger as the Israeli planes and rockets, against which the Lebanese have no defenses, destroyed the infrastructure of Lebanon from Beirut water, communications, electricity, roads, bridges, hospitals and schools, all the way into the south in Nabatiyah and Machgara—but America and its leadership politically and in the media ignored all this and told the Lebanese and Palestinians to “work with Israel and quite threatening Israel.”

So it is today, there is such an imbalance that as of this time, even on the best of the talk shows, such as COUNTDOWN and HARDBALL, and certainly not to mention the Sunday morning hacks who go on and one each Sunday on the major networks, there is no parity, no fairness, only a hiding of the real issues in the Middle East and nary a word is allowed by people such as myself, educated and articulate Arab America Muslims or Christians who could talk intelligently about Palestine, Lebanon, or Islam or Christianity in the Middle East ( a real Christianity that existed centuries before America or the “born again” group were ever thought of). As I write, I do not know of any articulate or educated Arabs or Muslims who have appeared on these shows, and if there have been any, most of us have not been aware of them.

As to Muslims, when they are allowed on the air, they are too often foreign born, have an accent that makes them less than intelligible to the American ear, and they often bearded and appear to the “the other.” Those of us born here, without foreign accents, without beards, who look and sound like the Americans we are, are very, v ery rarely allowed on the mass media air or in the columns of the mass media. If these show are searching for and speaking for the truth, as they allege, then why is it that educated and articulate people such as myself are not allowed on these shows? Put yourself in my position and think about how you would feel if that was done to you or a group to which you belonged.

I know that many Jews suffered in the holocaust and suffered discrimination because of their ethnic and religious heritage, but that does not give them license to practice the same on the Palestinians or Lebanese or anyone else. But somehow, as Professor Finkelstein, Rabbi Lerner, the Israeli writers, David Grossman, and Uri Avnery, and the children of the famed general Peled, have all pointed out, what Zionists are doing to the Palestinians is wrong and should stop; the many thousands who march against the policies of Netanyahu, that follow the old policies of Begin and the hard-line prime ministers of Israel, make clear that in Israel there are many voices against the terrible imbalance In the Middle East and the wrong things being done by Israel, all of which are hidden by the American mass media and political leadership.

This has gotten so bad that when President Obama made clear that illegal Israeli settlements in Jerusalem would not be tolerated, and he was joined in this by the head of the UN, Mr.Moon, 3/4 of the American congress, by the lobbying for Israel by American Israeli Political Action Committee, AIPAC, sent a letter to Obama asking him to be more lenient and tolerant of these illegal activities and not to criticize Netanyahu for figuratively spitting in Obama and America’s face!

I honestly do not know when this matter will get straightened out and fairness to prevail. But, in the meantime, cruelty and anger grows on all sides of the Middle Eastern issue, but this does not have to be the case if America would take on the role of fair broker and demand that both sides abide by the same standards. But, as it stands, Israel is allowed to bomb and destroy Lebanon and Palestine, but when the Palestinians or Lebanese fight back, they are criminals, but not the Israelis who foment attacks on Lebanon or who continue to pound Gaza day after day because some outlawed group sent 3 rockets into Israel, neither killing Israelis or destroying their infrastructure (though sadly, an Asian working for Israel was killed, but that is nothing compared to the thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese who were killed and wounded in the Israeli attacks in the past few years and Gazans who are being killed an terrorized each day by Israeli aircraft and rockets, and at time by tank invasions.

Unless these hidden truths are allowed to come out, the American people will continue to be misled and to support crimes against humanity that they are ignorant of supporting; thus, it is not entirely their fault, but it is the fault of the American leadership and mass media. I hope and pray that someday, they will see as well as so many Israeli see, that this cannot go on and that violence breeds violence, and until there is some fairness in the reporting and in our political leadership, we shall be as a guilty partner n this illegal and wrongful behavior that is supported financially and condoned politically by our media and our government.

We all hope and pray for peace, truth, understanding and justice, but if and when it may come, only God knows--but we hope it comes soon so that more Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Jews do not have to suffer  because of the lies and the hidden truths that would help free us from our this terrible situation.

Professor Sam Hamod writes on world affairs, religion, culture and other matters of interest to humans and animals on the earth; he is also the founder and editor of THIRD WORLD NEWS, late of Washington,DC; is the former Director of THE ISLAMIC CENTER OF WASHINGTON, DC; founder and editor of www.todaysalternativenews.com and in his spare time has published 12 books of poems and teaches graduate course in literature, creative writing and lectures on writing and world affairs.

Dr. Hamod may be reached at: [email protected] for lectures and readings.