Less than two hours after the bombing and before any suspects were identified or arrested, the CAIR national office issued a press release condemning the attack.  This was done in anticipation it may be a terrorist attack and possibly carried out by Muslims.  Each and every CAIR chapter across the country quickly issued similar statements and CAIR activists began a futile campaign aimed at proving the humanity of the American Muslim community they purport to represent.

It goes without saying that what makes this behavior problematic is not the condemnations of the bombing, but rather the disingenuousness, and political motivation that drives them. To be clear, they are not disingenuous because CAIR activists are not sincerely opposed to exploding a bomb among a crowd of civilians, they are.  However, the excessive and continuously repeated expressions of moral outrage are obviously amateurish political posturing rather than assertions of a basic moral objection which all minimally decent human beings of any ethnic or religious background would share.

Another troubling aspect of this behavior is the apparent acceptance of the principle of collective guilt. Even if the Boston marathon bombings turn out to be a terrorist attack (and that’s yet to be determined) carried out by two murderous misfits that happen to be Muslims (as of this writing both suspects are presumed innocent) it is certainly not the collective responsibility of 1.5 billion Muslims or even the much smaller American Muslim community.

CAIR’s response in the immediate aftermath of the Boston bombing also shows that the organization’s behavior is dictated by the very worst elements within American society.  Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, and the other anti-Muslim, career agitators in this country are fringe elements unrepresentative of the vast majority of Americans that do not assign collective guilt or spend their days trying to convince everyone that Muslims are driven by an irrational hatred for the United States and prone to senseless violence against innocent civilians. CAIR’s impulsive and sophomoric reaction completely ignored these Americans and instead focused on making Muslims less repulsive to the same Islamophobes and religious bigots that are usually their favorite, and easiest, targets of condemnations.

Instead of this self-demeaning behavior what the American Muslim community would like to see from CAIR and others that claim to represent US Muslims is to simply condemn Islamophobia without accepting the burden of having to prove the humanity of Muslims each time one of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world is suspected of committing a crime. Moreover, whenever the issue of terrorism needs to be addressed CAIR and any other group purporting to speak for the community must also have the moral courage to speak candidly and truthfully about the root cause of terrorism which is entirely unrelated to Islam and cannot be addressed as part of any “interfaith meeting.”  CAIR & other establishment Muslim organizations and individuals never address this issue, and it’s usually left to others Americans like Glenn Greenwald who, less than ten days after the Boston bombing, wrote the following about Muslims that have actually carried out or attempted to carry out terrorist attacks:

“…they emphatically all say the same thing: that they were motivated by the continuous, horrific violence brought by the US and its allies to the Muslim world – violence which routinely kills and oppresses innocent men, women and children… There seems to be this pervasive belief in the US that we can invade, bomb, drone, kill, occupy, and tyrannize whomever we want, and that they will never respond. That isn’t how human affairs function and it never has been. If you believe all that militarism and aggression are justified, then fine: make that argument. But don’t walk around acting surprised and bewildered and confounded (why do they hate us??) when violence is brought to US soil as well. It’s the inevitable outcome of these choices, and that’s not because Islam is some sort of bizarre or intrinsically violent and uncivilized religion. It’s because no group in the world is willing to sit by and be targeted with violence and aggression of that sort without also engaging in it (just look at the massive and ongoing violence unleashed by the US in response to a single one-day attack on its soil 12 years ago: imagine how Americans would react to a series of relentless attacks on US soil over the course of more than a decade, to say nothing of having their children put in prison indefinitely with no charges, tortured, kidnapped, and otherwise brutalized by a foreign power).”

It is unimaginable that CAIR would make such a statement lest they appear to be justifying terrorism, yet it’s this basic reality that needs to be understood by an American public repeatedly lied to by its government and regime media about the causes of terrorism and America’s own criminal behavior abroad.  The folks at CAIR are well versed in the lexicon of American clichés and patriotic slogans about the constitution, but apparently they’re unable to explain the simple difference between causation and justification.

CAIR’s behavior in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing was slavish, counterproductive, and did not help address the very real and legitimate fears of the American Muslim community which lives in a climate of hostility, fear, and intimidation.  It also failed to promote greater understanding between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans, a stated objective of CAIR and one which it never tires of speaking about.  American Muslims should not be striving to prove their humanity to anyone, let alone bigots and Islamophobes.  Nor should Muslims be made to feel the primary responsibility of any civilized Muslim is to continuously condemn the alleged transgression of every single one of their coreligionists, a group which amounts to almost 25% of humanity.  In the end, CAIR’s response to the Boston bombing served only to reinforce the never-ending cycle of negative self-identification and political weakness of the American Muslim community.  So on behalf of American Muslims we are pleased to present CAIR with the April, 2013 Ikhras Shoe of the Month.

***

Every month Ikhras awards the Muntadhar Zaidi “Shoe of the month” to the House Arab or Muslim individual or organization whose behavior that month best exemplifies the behavior of what Malcolm X described, in the language of his own time, as the “house negro” (see video). The award is named in honor of the brave Iraqi journalist Muntadhar Zaidi who threw his shoes at the war criminal George W. Bush at a time House Arabs and Muslims were dining with him at the White House and inviting him to their mosques.  Arab dictators and puppets of the empire are also qualified to enter the shoe of the month competition based on their own subservience to U.S.-led global imperialism.  Contest guidelines prohibit any one individual or organization from winning the award more than 3 times a year. 

When she [Nasr] was first hired I called Bernard Shaw, who was the chief anchor and I knew him some from DC and he interviewed me many times.  I told him that she worked for the Lebanese Forces militia station, and he was shocked.  He told me that they were under the impression that LBC is the state TV station of Lebanon.  I spoke to him at length and he asked me to wait to take notes. He said that he would bring it up with management but nothing happened.  I also mentioned I remember that her English was pretty weak.

Nasr begins her article reminiscing about the “countless stories about Haifa’s golden days pre-1948.”  The reader can almost detect a mocking undertone, as if life in pre-Nakba Haifa was not quite as “Golden” as relayed by the Palestinian refugees she encountered growing up in Lebanon, or was at least only part of the story of Haifa. Sure enough Nasr then goes on to share her awakening:

“Then the awakening came at my first meeting with a current Haifa resident more than twenty years ago…I listed all the locations that grew dear to my heart over the years: Saint Elias Church, Mount Carmel, College Des Freres school, Selizian School, Wadi al-Nasnas… To my surprise, they were all still there and flourishing with fresh new generations of Palestinians. I later met a Jewish family from Haifa and got to know a different side of the story of the majestic city. I learned about the Hadar area, Hertzel Street and Ben Gurion Boulevard. From the Druze of Haifa I learned about Isifya and Daliya village on Mount Carmel. Not to forget the Muslim community of Haifa which can be found everywhere in the Arab sections and the very prominent Baha’I faith with its majestic gardens and Abbas Dome, one of the most beautiful gardens and architectural structure in the world.”

Nasr, does refer to the “atrocities committed and the complete takeover of the land and displacement of its original people”, but only in passing.  What goes unmentioned, however, is that the perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing that paved the way for the establishment of the racist, colonial entity remain there today as occupiers and continue to deny the original inhabitants of Haifa the right of return to their homes, land, and city. It’s as if the Nakba was a passing event in the distant past rather than an ongoing crime against the vast majority of the original inhabitants of the majestic seaside city that gets its name from the ancient Canaanite Arabic word al-Hayfah. The Canaanites emerged from the shores of the Arabian Peninsula to become the first group of people to settle Haifa in what originally came to be known as the Land of Canaan.

The very recent history of Haifa and the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arab population of Palestine in order to establish a Jewish-exclusivist, colonial-settler entity have been well documented by Palestinians, Arabs, Westerners, and Israel’s own “New Historians.”  Only a select few Zionist fanatics continue to cling to the myth of a “Land without a people…” or the lie that the Palestinian Arabs, after inhabiting this land since the beginning of time, in 1948 suddenly decided to pick-up and leave voluntarily.

Between the partition plan adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 29, 1947 and the 1949 ceasefire between the newly established Zionist entity and the Arab states that ended the war, the vast majority of the indigenous population of Palestine became victims of a pre-meditated expulsion plan by foreign invaders backed by the most powerful empire at the time.  It was a deliberate and systematic political-military strategy carried out through mass violence, terrorism, and massacres in order to lay the groundwork for the establishment of the modern state of Israel as envisioned by the Jewish exclusivist ideology of Zionism

As for Haifa, the attack began on April 21, 1948 when 5000 heavily armed fighters from the Zionist terrorist militia known as the Haganah descended upon the city which was poorly defended by 300-400 Palestinian volunteers. Of the 61,000 Palestinian Arabs that inhabited Haifa only 3500 were allowed to stay. The rest of the Arab population was literally pushed into the sea and forced to flee by boat to Acre, Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut, Lebanon. Some of the Palestinians that ended up in Acre were ethnically cleansed again a few weeks later and forced to flee to Lebanon.

Almost 65 years later the people of Haifa continue to be denied their basic right of return, a fact to which Nasr appears oblivious when she writes:

“For some reason, Haifa was always a common denominator and it kept creeping up into my world, as the example of how integrated living between — not just Arabs and Israelis would look like — but also how the harmony among Christians, Sunnis, Shiites, Druze, Baha’is and Jews can be exemplified.  During a recent visit to this great city, I learned that indeed Haifa is a symbol of tolerance and co-existence.” (Emphasis ikhras editors).

The questions that immediately jump out to the reader are, first, how does a city ethnically cleansed of an indigenous population that has not yet been allowed to return become a “symbol of tolerance and co-existence”? And how can a city ruled by a colonial regime as part of a racist, exclusivist entity be described as an example of “integrated living” and “harmony”?

It’s not surprising to read such pro-Zionist bile from a militant supporter of the fascistic, Lebanese right-wing that has always been allied with Israel. Nasr began her journalism career in Lebanon at the LBC network, the propaganda arm of the Lebanese Forces established by Bashir Gemayel with the help and support of Israel. This right-wing, sectarian Christian militia was responsible for some of the ugliest massacres and crimes during the Lebanese civil war including the Sabra and Shatila massacres.  This fringe element within Lebanon has always been openly hostile and racist towards Lebanese Muslims, Palestinians, Syrians, and Arabs in general and very sympathetic to Zionism and Western colonial powers.  With her background in journalism and an extremist, right-wing political orientation Nasr was well prepared to move on and spend 20 years at CNN as the token Arab carefully following the script of mainstream US media before her career-ending tweet hastened her exit.

In her short piece Nasr, like many of her colleagues in the Western media, found the space to lecture the Palestinians on the virtues of non-violence.

“People who still believe in the military struggle as the only way to Palestine should learn a lesson from Haifa. Peaceful Palestinians have found a way to protect the land and safeguard it despite all the pressures and abuses.”

She seems to forget that it’s only through the continuing inherent violence of the occupation that the people of Haifa have yet to return to their city. Nasr also fails to mention that for 20 years after the start of the Nakba the Palestinian refugees did not engage in any armed resistance, and whenever those “peaceful Palestinians” attempted to visit their homes unarmed during that period they were shot and killed by the same Israeli army the right-wing sectarian militias she supported in Lebanon considered a natural ally and friend.

Nasr concludes her piece with the following obscene passage:

“I know a little boy who was baptized in the Saint Elias Maronite Church in Carmel some seventy years ago. He might never see that church again, but it must be comforting for him to know that it is still standing and brings together Muslims, Christians, Jews and Druze for worship and for lessons in co-existence only Haifa can offer!”

Yes, you read that correctly. Nasr is actually saying that a Palestinian refugee forced to flee his own city can, nevertheless, find “comforting” in knowing an Israeli-occupied Haifa to which he is denied the right to return or even visit remains a place that offers lessons in “co-existence.”  Haifa’s history does indeed offer lessons in co-existence, but Haifa’s present can only serve as a blatant illustration of racism, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, exclusivism, and intolerance. Haifa under Israeli occupation is not the city of co-existence and tolerance it was prior to the advent of Zionism. Haifa will inevitably return to its tolerant, cosmopolitan past, but only after the liberation of Palestine and the return of her indigenous population and rightful owners to her.

What is most disturbing about Nasr’s article may not have been what she wrote which amounts to boilerplate Zionist propaganda, but rather its glaring omission.  Not once does Nasr remind her readers that the original inhabitants of Haifa living in refugee camps less than a 90-minute drive from their homes would not have been allowed to accompany her on what appears to have been a lovely vacation.  Nasr, in all likelihood, traveled to Israel on a Business class seat and went through customs at Ben-Gurion airport with a Western passport as it is illegal for any Lebanese citizen to travel to the usurping Zionist entity.*

After her recent visit to Israel in blatant disregard of the anti-normalization campaign in Arab world, and for then sharing her vacation experience in an article that reads like a travel brochure put out by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and on behalf of all Palestinians in the diaspora, the ikhras awards committee is pleased to present Octavia Nasr with the March, 2013 Ikhras Shoe of the Month.

*As of the date of this writing Nasr has not been detained or questioned by the Lebanese authorities regarding her recent trip to Israel.

***

Every month Ikhras awards the Muntadhar Zaidi “Shoe of the month” to the House Arab or Muslim individual or organization whose behavior that month best exemplifies the behavior of what Malcolm X described, in the language of his own time, as the “house negro” (see video). The award is named in honor of the brave Iraqi journalist Muntadhar Zaidi who threw his shoes at the war criminal George W. Bush at a time House Arabs and Muslims were dining with him at the White House and inviting him to their mosques.  Arab dictators and puppets of the empire are also qualified to enter the shoe of the month competition based on their own subservience to U.S.-led global imperialism.  Contest guidelines prohibit any one individual or organization from winning the award more than 3 times a year. 

PART 1 

PART 2

Obama posters crossed out in occupied Ramallah.

As part of an effort to construct and promulgate a public relations narrative in preparation for Barack Obama’s visit to the Middle East, the White House summoned a group of Arab-American “leaders” to a meeting.  Overcome by the lure of being invited to the White House and being part of the mainstream these groups and individuals sacrifice intellectual honesty and personal integrity while adopting all the false pretenses of the American imperial project. 

Barack Obama met with several so called leaders and organizations that allegedly represent Arab and Muslim Americans ahead of his visit to occupied Palestine.  The “Arab-American” groups that attended the meeting were the same unrepresentative, Washington-based cliques that are usually called upon when American politicians need submissive token Arabs to perpetuate the fiction the US government is taking all views into consideration. The groups included the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the two-man American Task Force for Palestine (ATFP), and James Zogby’s one-man shop, the Arab American Institute (AAI).

The ADC considered the meeting “breaking news” and along with the other groups in attendance released the following statement:

We are pleased to have shared with President Obama our recommendations and vital messages that he should convey to the Palestinian people. Today’s meeting was an important opportunity for Arab Americans to share our views, and continue to serve as a bridge between the US and the Arab World. Our meeting underscored the President’s recognition of the importance of our community’s contributions to discussions of policy in the region.

 

The United States, through sustained, balanced, constructive engagement, can facilitate a peaceful, lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—a resolution that is essential to long term security in the Middle East. We thank President Obama for engaging Arab American leaders in this critical dialog, and we look forward to using this meeting as a springboard for robust ongoing conversations on US policy in the Middle East.”

The statement is a perfect illustration of the intellectual dishonesty required of all establishment Arab-Americans and the false pretenses to which they must pledge allegiance before earning an invitation to any event with a US official. To better clarify these false pretenses and the inherent futility in this model of ostensible political advocacy let’s take a closer look at the statement.

It begins as follows:

We are pleased to have shared with President Obama our recommendations and vital messages that he should convey to the Palestinian people.

We’re sure these individuals enjoyed the petty prestige of meeting with Obama but who are they to share any recommendations and messages that should be conveyed to the Palestinian people? Have they been appointed by any Palestinians to speak on their behalf? Do they represent the Palestinian-American community? Do they speak for any Palestinians in occupied Palestine or the diaspora? Are they even aware of what the Palestinians would like to hear from a US president, if anything at all? Are they trained experts in Middle East studies? Or have any insight to offer on Palestinian politics? The answer to all these questions is no.  The omnipresent Zogby, for example, is not Palestinian, does not speak Arabic, and his only exposure to the Palestinian Nakba is a one-hour, 1970’s visit to a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon accompanied by a translator.

Today’s meeting was an important opportunity for Arab Americans to share our views, and continue to serve as a bridge between the US and the Arab World.

This is simply not true.  These organizations and individuals do not represent the views of Arab-Americans and have no significant base of support within the Arab-American community.  Moreover, the strictly defined parameters of acceptable public discourse on Palestine in the US precludes Obama’s guests from sharing the views of Arab-Americans.  These individuals and groups have only a marginal connection to the Arab-American community and are not rooted in the collective Palestinian experience. They were selected solely on the basis of their ability and willingness to strictly follow the official American narrative on Palestine.  And can we please dispense with the old cliché about building bridges. Each time one of these establishment figures attends an event with a US official we’re told they are building bridges between the US and the Arab world.  Most of these individuals are themselves completely alienated from the Arab world and would require someone to hold their hand and help them cross a bridge into any Arab society.

Our meeting underscored the President’s recognition of the importance of our community’s contributions to discussions of policy in the region.

Really? So US foreign policy makers ignore the views of Arab-Americans, 350 million Arabs and 1.5 Billion Muslims only to take the opinions of Zogby, Ziad Asali, the folks at ADC, and a couple of other token US Muslims nobody ever heard of into consideration? This ridiculous notion exists only in the minds of those in attendance at the meeting with Obama.

The United States, through sustained, balanced, constructive engagement, can facilitate a peaceful, lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—a resolution that is essential to long term security in the Middle East.

The glaring dishonesty inherent in such a statement is the idea that the US government represents a beacon of virtue and morality on the global stage and a force for peace in Palestine and the Middle East. These so called Arab-American leaders must engage in this pretense as a requirement for them to earn what Zogby likes to call “a seat at the table.”  This completely ignores the reality that the entire US political establishment continues to be the enabler and protector of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine, supports Israel’s occupation of Arab lands, and is complicit in all of Israel’s crimes. Unconditional and unlimited American political, economic, and military support for Israel enjoys near unanimous, bi-partisan support and is considered an essential component of the US imperial project. No rational, honest observer would suggest this is about to change or that a handful of token Arabs summoned to a White House event to help promulgate a propaganda narrative around a US president’s visit to occupied Palestine will alter US strategic calculations in the Middle East.

We thank President Obama for engaging Arab American leaders in this critical dialog, and we look forward to using this meeting as a springboard for robust ongoing conversations on US policy in the Middle East.”

In other words, we will continue pretending we are Arab-American “leaders” while ignoring the constituency whose collective name we hijacked and claim to represent. We will also continue ignoring the central role the US plays in maintaining the Zionist colonial-settler entity in Palestine and its complicity in all of Israel’s crimes and wars on the Arab world. We also pledge to continue defending the Middle East component of the US imperial project, and all we ask in return is to be invited back in the future.

The various determinants that go into the process of US foreign policy making is beyond the scope of this article. What is obvious, however, is that a select handful of Arab-American opportunists and careerists on the margins of Washington officialdom posing as members of a fictional Arab-American lobby will remain irrelevant to this process.  The only tangible impact these groups and individuals can plausibly claim to have by participating in such events is in helping perpetuate the pretense of an altruistic US foreign policy derived from the myth of American democracy.

By: Ikhras Co-Editor Thabit Al-Arabi, This article first appeared in Al-Akhbar English March 12, 2013.

Ikhras fully supports

Long Live Palestine Arab and Free From the River to the Sea!

p.s. No Zionist should take any comfort in whatever disagreements that may exist within the Arab world or among Palestine solidarity activists.  When it comes to justice in Palestine we are all unified and will continue our unrelenting struggle for the liberation of Palestine and the right of return for all Palestinian refugees to their homeland.

Nihad Awad With George Bush Jr (2000)

After posting a photo of Nihad Awad from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) with George Bush Jr on our twitter feed with a comment (السفاح الذي قتل اكثر من مليون عراقي هو الذي تقف الى جانبه لتآخذ صورة تذكارية) about his willingness to attend a White House photo-op with the butcher of over one million Iraqis Mr. Awad sent us the following message:

لا مانع ان يكون لك رأي مخالف لكن لا تدعي ما لا تعلم. هذه الصورة أخذت في عام 2000 م. فأرجو ان تتحلى بألجرأة وتصحح خطأك.لم التقي ببوش بعد 2001

There is no problem with you having a different opinion, however, do not make assertions about what you don’t know. This picture was taken in the year 2000 so I hope you would have the courage to correct your mistake. I did not meet with Bush after 2001. [Translation by ikhras]

Yes Mr. Awad, we have no problem correcting any “mistake” you can plausibly claim we may have made. We did not indicate the date of the photo, but since we were clearly criticizing your willingness to attend a Bush White House photo-op, we’re willing to point out this photo was taken prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. But this then presents a question for you which we also hope you have the courage to answer honestly. Are you implying that you would have declined an invitation to a Bush White House event after 2003 in protest of the criminal invasion of Iraq? Your own political “activism” and CAIR’s almost 2o-year record of continuous and uninterrupted working relationships with successive US administrations would suggest otherwise.

Your brief bio on the CAIR website includes the following:

In his professional capacity, Mr. Awad has also personally met with former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Colin L. Powell to discuss the needs of the American Muslim community.

Both Albright and Powell were deeply involved in US war crimes against the Iraqi people.

Powell was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first US war on Iraq in 1991. He was a war criminal responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, including the infamous “Highway of Death” massacre, prior to the 2003 US invasion. You must have been aware of Powell’s war crimes when you joined him for an “Iftar Dinner” while he was Secretary of State during the same period you attended that photo-op at the Bush White House.

After the savage war on Iraq in 1991 a genocidal sanctions regime was enforced by the US and its NATO allies which resulted in the death of over one million Iraqis, including over 5000 children every month.  For eight of those years the sanctions were the official policy of the Clinton administration. Albright was the US Ambassador to the United Nations during the first Clinton Administration and was appointed Secretary of State during Clinton’s second term. When Albright, a staunch defender of the sanctions regime, was asked about the death toll sanctions on Iraq have taken on the children (half a million children had been murdered by that time) she responded by saying “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” Your meetings with Albright to discuss the “needs” of the American Muslim community (And we’re not sure what needs we have that can be addressed by the US Secretary of State) took place during the Clinton Administration.

During that same Clinton period you also served on Vice President Al Gore’s Civil Rights Advisory Panel to the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. You have also had numerous meetings over the years with Islamophobic & racist members of Congress that support, fund, and vote for US and Israeli wars on Arab and Muslim countries. You also continue to be a regular participant in the U.S. Department of State’s “International Visitors Program” which means you’re periodically called upon by the State Department to welcome foreign officials on behalf of the US government as a representative of American Muslims.

Mr. Awad,

Next year CAIR will celebrate its 20th anniversary.  During this entire period you and your organization have been focused on ingratiating yourselves with the Washington establishment. This has prevented you from clearly condemning US wars and policies that caused the death of millions of Iraqis.  Sure, you may have expressed mild disapproval (within the limits of acceptable Washington discourse) from time to time, but it’s impossible to reconcile the scope of death and destruction inflicted upon the Iraqi people by successive US administrations with your occasional, excessively polite criticism.

We have now corrected our “mistake” but can you honestly tell the American-Muslim community you would have declined an invitation to the Bush White House after 2003 in protest of the invasion of Iraq? And if, as we and the vast majority of Muslim-Americans believe, the answer is a no then isn’t your request to correct an honest “mistake” nothing more than a deliberate attempt on your part to mislead the Muslim-American community into believing you would not have attended a White House photo-op after 2003?