ADC applauds Helen Thomas for her legendary service,

ADC Thanks Ms. Helen Thomas for Legendary Service 

Washington, DC | June 9, 2010 | www.adc.org |  Helen Thomas, 89, Dean of the White House Press Corp, and lauded as a "Pioneer Journalist" and Trailblazer for female journalists," apologized for her May 27, 2010, response when she was asked "Any comments on Israel...?" and she responded "Tell them to get the [] out of Palestine." Upon further prodding, Ms. Thomas stated that "Remember these people are occupied and it's their land..." and those who are the occupiers should "...go home" to "Poland, Germany...And America and everywhere else."

In her apology, Ms. Thomas wrote:  "I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians.  They do not reflect my heartfelt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance.  May that day come soon."

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) thanks Ms. Thomas for her legendary service, and acknowledges Ms. Thomas' apology.  ADC believes that Ms. Thomas should be judged on her "50-plus years of probing journalism, and not on a 30-second sound bite," as stated by Mr. Zool Zulkowitz, who represents American Jews defending Ms. Thomas.  Mr. Zulkowitz further said that, "We are clear what Helen Thomas meant to say, which is that Israel should cease its occupation of Palestine..." And, as Mr. Paul Jay wrote: "Not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism...Helen Thomas' isn't."

As President Obama recognized in his historic address in Cairo on June 4, 2009, the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have endured the pain of dislocation for more than 60 years.  "Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead.  They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation.  So let there be no doubt:  The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable ..."

It is our hope that other journalists would rise in Ms. Thomas' place and espouse her courage in asking the hard questions.  As Ms. Katrina Vanden Heuvel wrote yesterday in the Washington Post: "...isn't there room for someone who made a mistake, apologized and wants to continue speaking truth to power and asking tough questions?"   We certainly hope so.  We also hope that we will continue to celebrate Ms. Thomas' lifetime of courageous, frontline journalism; and that she will not be intimidated by the recent hateful accusations or deterred from her insightful questioning and reporting.  

                                                                                ###

Contact: Sara Najjar-Wilson, President 

               media@adc.org 

               202-244-2990

NOTE TO EDITORS: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which is non-profit, non-sectarian and non-partisan, is the largest Arab-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was founded in 1980 by former Senator James Abourezk to protect the civil rights of people of Arab descent in the United States and to promote the cultural heritage of the Arabs. ADC has 38 chapters nationwide, including chapters in every major city in the country, and members in all 50 states.

The ADC Research Institute (ADC-RI), which was founded in 1981, is a Section 501(c)(3) educational organization that sponsors a wide range of programs on behalf of Arab Americans and of importance to all Americans. ADC-RI programs include research studies, seminars, conferences and publications that document and analyze the discrimination faced by Arab Americans in the workplace, schools, media, and governmental agencies and institutions. ADC-RI also celebrates the rich cultural heritage of the Arabs.

Principles that should guide Palestinian and Israeli Peace

These are some principles I have fashioned that I hope will become the basis for establishment of Yalla Peace Parties throughout the world to promote peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

1-We can disagree about the past with passion and emotion and still come together for a great future together. We do not have to deny each other's narratives about the past, or challenge them, on order to agree on a mutual future of peace and compromise. This is the first step. Stop using the past as a bludgeon to attack the other side, while closing a blind eye to similar conduct among our own peoples.

2-We apply one principle of fairness, justice, morality to achieve compromise looking within ourselves to find and correct the fault. Israelis must be able to denounce the killing of Palestinians before they can denounce the killing of Israelis. Palestinians must be able to denounce the killing of Israelis before they can denounce the killings of Palestinians.

3-We resist the temptation to blame people for the actions of individuals, and resist the temptation to respond in anger and in kind. This is not about people but rather about politics and government policies that have gone wrong and feed on the suffering, tragedy and confusion of our peoples.

4-We set aside the old paradym of Israelis versus Palestinians and instead define our movement as moderates versus extremists. We use the M Word proudly and reject those who seek to deny it as a means of distracting eyes from their own extremist ways and views.

5-We embrace two-states, Israel and Palestine, and deal with the issues after we achieve a real peace and two states. We create two states on the basis of the bigger principle and later negotiate the final borders, the sharing of Jerusalem, compensation and resettlement of the Palestinian refugees, the dismantling of which specific settlements, the swap of land, etc. Create two states so that Israel and Palestine become equal partners at the negotiating table rather that seeking to achieve the unachievable through an imbalance with Israel as the subjugator and Palestine as the subjugated.

6-We strive to see the bigger picture and not get drawn in to the battle over the "pebble." We see that peace based on compromise is the answer to past violence and terrorism. We don't allow one disagreement to discourage us from seeking the bigger agreement of peace.

7-We resist the rhetoric of hatred. We stop stereotyping Israelis and Palestinians. We reject hate speech, denial of the suffering of others. Palestinians must stop enabling or advocating Holocaust revisionism or questioning the Holocaust. israelis must stop questioning the existence of Palestinians or the facts that they lost many homes and lands as civilians in the 1947-48 war.

8-We view criminal acts (violence, terrorism, all acts of physical injury) not as the consequences of a people but rather as the result of individual conduct. Terrorism and violence must be treated as criminal acts not an excuse to persecute or demonize any other people.

9-We do not allow violence and terrorism to derail compromise and recognize that the more successful we become in reaching peace based on compromise and two-states, the extremists will push harder until it is too late with more violence, and violence of the most despicable kind including suicide bombings and military massacres.

10-We view violence of the past in its context not as a means of defining the future. The massacres in the Gaza Strip are horrendous but the answer is not to respond with violence, but rather to build peace to prevent future events from re-occurring. The same with violence against Israelis. We treat them as horrific incidents, not blanket condemnation of an entire people.

11-We stop blaming others and begin to address the challenges among ourselves. Palestinians stop blaming Israelis and Israelis stop blaming Palestinians. Instead, Palestinians look into themselves and identify their errors, mistakes, misconduct and change them. Israelis look into themselves and identify their errors, mistakes, misconduct and change them.

12-We accept that Peace is the answer and that both sides have injured each other.

-- Ray Hanania

www.YallaPeace.com

American Muslims for Palestine: Obama did not go far enough

President Obama must recognize
the illegal occupation of Palestine

(CHICAGO, JUNE 3, 2009) - President Barack Obama is touring the Middle East this week outlining his administration's plans for peace in that region. It's ironic that his speech to the Muslim world on Thursday in Egypt occurred on the eve of the 1967 Six Day War, which many point to as the cause of the current conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

Obama has been leaning on Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to cease settlement expansion in the West Bank. It's a promising stance, but it doesn't go far enough to address all the issues Palestinians face on a daily basis.

To adapt a phrase from the Clinton administration, “It's the occupation, stupid.”

The United States has to recognize and articulate the truth that Israel's occupation of Palestine is illegal and is in violation of United Nations resolution 242, which firmly states Israel was not allowed to gain territory through war and that it must withdraw from the occupied territories.

For more than four decades, Palestinians have been paying a heavy price because of Israel's expansionist policies. The Six Day War displaced more than 350,000 Palestinians, adding to the already staggering number of people who were made refugees in 1948. Today, refugees and their descendents number more than 7.8 million; 40 percent of the world's refugees are Palestinians.

The Israeli Defense Force, on several occasions, has waged indiscriminate attacks as a form of collective punishment against innocent civilians, such as in the 2002 massacres in Jenin and Beit Hanoun and most recently in Gaza, where more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,300 were wounded. For nearly three years, Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza, brining the region's economy to a standstill and causing major food and medicine shortages. More than 400,000 people have no access to potable water.

A May 27 report, “West Bank Movement and Access Update,” by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, offered other grim statistics about the realities Palestinians face because of the occupation:

* Since 1967, Israeli authorities declared more than 30 percent – 676 square miles – of the West Bank – as closed military zones or nature preserves, prohibiting access to Palestinians, according to the United Nations.
* In a six-month period ending in March 2009, UN officials counted 634 checkpoints and other obstacles impeding Palestinians' free movement in the West Bank.
* Since 1967, 150 Israeli settlements have been constructed on 3 percent of the West Bank, further fragmenting the area to which Palestinians have access. In the last quarter of 2008, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics reported the new or ongoing construction of nearly 4,000 new housing units in West Bank settlements, a 28 percent increase over the same period in 2007. The Israeli Ministry of Housing has plans for an additional 73,000 settlement units.
* The majority – 87 percent - of the West Bank Barrier, which Palestinians refer to as the Apartheid Wall, snakes through the West. Furthermore, Israel has closed to Palestinians the land between the Wall and the Green Line (1948 boundaries). Palestinians, whose homes lie in the newly closed areas, must obtain permits from the Israeli Defense Forces in order to remain. The permits are largely denied.

The trends seen in the last year alone have “resulted in a contraction of the overall space available for Palestinian development and a decrease in the degree of control that Palestinians have over that space,” the report concluded. “The movement of Palestinians within the West Bank remains highly constrained.”

Obama is urging Israel to freeze settlements, because "part of being a good friend is being honest,” he said this week. The American Muslims for Palestine applaud Obama for his stance on settlements. However, AMP believes honest dialogue must also include heavy pressure on Israel to end the occupation or risk losing their U.S. funding. Without the financial incentive, Israel will continue to ignore Obama's requests as it has ignored international law for the past 42 years.

Kristin Szremski
Director of Media and Communications
American Muslims for Palestine
10101 S. Roberts Road, Suite
Palos Hills, IL 60465
708.598.4267 office

Chicago Radio show brings Palestinians and Israelis together on "Say Something Nice" day

I have invited two guests on my show this morning, Fadi Zanayed, president of the Chicago Chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and David Steiner, president of the Chicago Chapter of the American Friends of Peace Now. Zanayed is Palestinian and Steiner is Israeli.

Over the past few weeks, it has been disheartening to watch and listen as some leaders in the Arab community and also in the mainstream Jewish American community, spew hatred and vicious rhetoric blaming others for the unspeakable crimes against women, children and innocent people in the Gaza Strip and in the Israeli towns near Gaza. Instead of leadership, some of these organizations have been denouncing fiercely the crimes committed against their people, but have either remained silent or have justified the carnage and immoral conduct committed against the others.

Both sides are committing crimes, and the worst crime is when the people on either side pretend their side is not committing a crime but scream and cry about the crimes committed only against their people.

That is complicity in the carnage and that needs to stop.

Today on my Radio Chicagoland program (WJJG 1530 AM Radio) I am asking callers, especially Arab and Jewish listeners, to call in and say something nice about the "other side." To show not that the other side is right but that their side has a remaining sense of morality in a conflict filled with a vicious war of words of "moral equivalency."

Innocent people are dying in a conflict that has raged on for more than 100 years. No one incident started anything. The facts so the claims on both sides are untrue. And when people lie or they close their eyes to the truth, they are also participating in the inhumanity that is taking place today.

Our government leaders are failing and are also playing politics on the spilled blood of innocent people. It's up to us, the people, to take the lead and say and do something to force them to do the right thing.

If you are not in the Chicagoland area to hear the show live on the radio this morning between 8 and 9:30 am, you can go to the web site and listen online, including on the live video streaming option,

-- Ray Hanania
http://www.radiochicagoland.com/

New book challenges Arabs and Muslims to defeat extremism to win a Palestinian State

New book challenges Arabs and Muslims to defeat extremism to win a Palestinian State

Chicago -- Palestinians need to overcome the growing movement of secular and religious extremists in their own community before they can be strong enough to overcome the challenges from Israel and create their own independent Palestinian State, says award winning journalist Ray Hanania in a new book "The Catastrophe: The One-State Solution is the No-State Solution. How Palestinians can stand up to the extremistsand create a Palestinian State."

Hanania, whose writings "define the moderate Arab voice," is an outspoken critic of extremism in the Arab and Muslim community.

Consistently denouncing violence on both sides, Hanania argues in his book that Israelis and Palestinians each face an uncertain future as the extremist secular left partners with the fanatic religious right to use violence prevent peace based on compromise, to advance the so-called "One-State Solution," and to exploit Palestinian suffering as a means of preventing them from the only viable option for statehood, the creation of a Palestinian State in the context of a Two-State Solution.

"We are watching as Palestine is being erased not just from the maps but from reality as Israel's government exploits the failures of our leadership and the uncontrolled emotions of our people," Hanania argues.

"Palestinians are being held hostage by these extremists and fanatics on the left and the right who reject any compromise and who live in a dream of the past that has become our nightmare. To save our people, we must reject the rejectionists, embrace compromise and recognize the reality of our situation in the hopes of someday rebuilding a dream that is the cornerstone of justice."

In the book, Hanania also argues that Palestinians must regain the principled moral stand and cannot succumb to the emotions of their failures over the past 60 years of Israel's existence, writing:

"Being honest about one's mistakes -- and failures -- and acknowledging the reality of history, rather than its myths, is a crucial step towards lifting oneself out of defeat. You cannot make something "better" if you do not honestly acknowledge that things are "bad" or you attempt to do so from a "bad" position. Only those who are "better" can make a situation better. Improve it. Correct it. Bring it back to the moral center.

"But just being 'better,' as a relative statement, is not good enough. You are either pregnant or you are not pregnant. There is no in-between. The road to pregnancy is pregnancy. The road to peace is peace. Either Palestinians have a state or they don't have a state. You either support peace or you don't support peace. Those who use violence to achieve 'peace' are not seeking peace at all. The use of violence is in and of itself a rejection of peace. Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims must answer this important issue correctly. We must clean our own house first before we can insist on cleaning out the houses of others, our 'enemies.' We cannot demand justice from others when we deny justice to others in our actions, in our arguments in our beliefs. Doing so is to deny justice to ourselves."

The book is available directly from the author through his web site at http://www.hanania.com/.

"The Catastrophe"
238 Pages, softcover 7 x 9 trade
$24.95
Ray Hanania Enterprises
PO Box 2127
Orland Park, IL., 60462

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