Silence is Approval
War in Iraq, deliberate civilian bombing in Lebanon, ongoing Palestinian murders, Afghanistan, Iran, the list of problems in the Mideast goes on. In case you think that Arab-American s would be involved in any of this, you are wrong. They don’t get involved. But they say they have their reasons. I say they are simply cowards, and their cowardice has turned them into traitors to their country and enemies of their families.
“The term "Arab Americans" refers to the immigrants to North America from the Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East and their descendants. The Arabic-speaking countries today include Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, pre-1948 Palestine and the Palestinians, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Somalia and Djibouti are also members of The League of Arab States and have some Arabic-speaking populations.” (From Arabs in America)
For the United States, the major players belong to different top ten lists. In the financial/oil theater, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq top the list, but émigrés from those countries are scarce in the United States. Socially, the largest number, 46%, of ‘Arab-Americans’ arrived from Lebanon over a century ago, and are largely Christian.
That means that the extraordinary silence from Americans is largely due to the cowardice of the oldest, richest, most established Arab-American community: the Lebanese-Americans.
The Value of Wealth
George Soros is a Jew. He isn’t an especially religious one, nor is he especially fond of Zionism. He’s about as wealthy as the richest of the rich Lebanese-Americans, such as, for example, Dr. Ray Irani, president of Occidental Petroleum, whose executive salary last year was $46 million, and whose stock options gave him another half-billion.
Soros, good citizen that he is, puts his money to the highest social use he can imagine by supporting his beliefs with action. He not only contributes to public television and the rest of the obligatory charities supported by the wealthy, like Irani. Soros has built organizations comprised of hundreds of paid and volunteer staff to advance causes of interest to him, because he can imagine it, and he can afford it. He isn’t afraid to put his money where his mouth is.
Irani and the Lebanese Americans have one organization, the American Task Force for Lebanon, ATFL, started over twenty years ago. 300 of the richest Lebanese-Americans in the country, including Irani and a couple of other billionaires, and many millionaires, support it. Its single significant annual effort, despite decades of crises in Lebanon, is an annual dinner party. It still has a staff size of two. AIPAC alone has a staff of over 150. Even Florida’s relatively tiny and poor Cuban community is better organized. In just one of his projects, Open Society Institute, Soros has many times more employees than ATFL.
Group ATFL millionaires and billionaires together with the rest of the Arab Americans, and they contributed a grand total of $788,000 across all candidates in the last election cycle. American Jews contributed over $56 million.
The Arab-American Anti-Defamation Committee, headed by former Congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar, is another flagrant example of cowardly Lebanese Americans. One of the stars of the congressional check cashing scandal a few years ago, Oakar and her group of Muslim women are only interested in protecting the ‘rights’ of Arab nationals trying to gain entry into the United States. Like CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, their actions do not extend beyond concerns for Moslems from Arab countries. Call ADC and waste time to discover that they don’t have the money for any more than advocacy of pet projects.
Arab-American Writers Fail the First Amendment Test
It is difficult getting Americans to believe that censorship of their political thoughts occurs in mainstream media. A limited selection of books available in the current events nonfiction section of the local chain bookstores is partly responsible. Few understand what it means to acknowledge that three bookstore chains control 95% of the political book market sales. Overwhelmingly, the titles they select to display on the typical four shelf, 250-book selection are written by mainstream media pundits and American Zionists. Not a single Arab-American political writer is represented.
Stark evidence of mainstream media corruption is not the almost total invisibility of Arab-American political writers, but the absolute terror in the publishing industry of being associated with Edward Abboud because he expresses politically incorrect views. Edward Abboud is politically dangerous because he challenges the Israeli regime’s American propaganda.
A number of Arab-American’s could have done the work of the easiest target: Edward Abboud. Orefala wrote a nice text on growing up Lebanese-American in America.
Michael Corey’s work on intelligent design ignited another chapter of the long-running religious debate in American politics: God (biblical creationism) v. Darwin (godless evolution). Corey, however, never made it into mainstream media’s debates because his heritage is an ‘enemy’ of Israel.
Ralph Nader, one of the only genuine political voices of the 20th century, did not speak the word Israel outside of the context of the Green Party platform. Instead, he tells cute stories about eating ethnic food to private ethnic gatherings.
He surely overshadows Lisa Halaby, fighting for her title of Lebanese-American Princess of goodness and light with the ever-not-really-there Marlo Thomas. Then there’s ancient Helen Thomas, doing white house gossip, and her sidekick Nora Bustany identifying diplomatic parties each week.
Who could forget Youssef Ibrahim of the New York Times, promoted to the rank of Pulitzer prize winner along with Tony Shadid, also promoted for his work of actually being a New York Times Arab-American reporter who is ethnically correct and can speak Arabic. He talks about Iraq, not Israel, and his work is good journalistic observation. He got his two books on the chain bookstore bookshelf for three months. He’s a good reporter, but he doesn’t bite the hand that feeds him. Everyone thinks he’s really smart for that because, well, they say, ‘look what happened to Edward Abboud.’ And thank you, Peter Blatty, for your Exorcist, a study of graphic, violent imagery.
Arab-American Michael Corey, an amazing writer in his field, is also clearly unable to get his books into the chain bookstores, or get the kind of media air time that a Dr. Phil, Andrew Weil, Suzie Orman, or Dr. Ruth get practically free from public television. Corey is suppressed because he is an Arab-American writer on a serious issue, and the Jews don’t want any such persons in American media or consciousness.
Everyone knows Edward Said was a Palestinian living in America, not an ethnic Palestinian-American, right?
So there are a lot of Arab-American writers on the market, but aside from The Great Crusader, Nader, when he’s talking about the Green Party platform, none are observers of the current American political situation with respect to Israel’s impact on US media, politics, and culture.
None of them. Shadid didn’t. Thomas dosen’t. Orfalea dosen’t. Nader doesn’t. Oakar doesn’t. Only former senator James Abourezk comes close, and he paid a heavy price. They don’t want to jeopardize their images, or sacrifice Jewish contributions to St. Jude’s Hospital. That threat keeps them silent about anything Edward Abboud says about Israel.
Of the other Arab-American’s who could have supported alternative political thought we find a growing proliferation of minor politicians too eager to play the power status-quo game in Washington, or in their local political establishments, to want to be associated with Edward Abboud.
Most have followed the path of Oregon’s former senator Atiyeh, and ADC’s Oakar, from aspiring elected officials to congressional dupes to positions on the fringes of government. They were spared harsh criticism or damage to their reputations or careers because they steered clear of Israel.
Too much money in politics comes from Jewish sources to risk even acknowledging Edward Abboud. Even though they recognize this problem, they don’t acknowledge it publicly. So go the clothing millionaires and billionaires, the investors and bankers. They keep their heads down. They just talk money.
Lebanese American Fear and Terror
Fancified, rich Lebanese-Americans like Irani, the Farrahs, Haggars, Ashers, Kassoufs, Orfaleas, Shaias, and others, are no match for Jewish organization, and both sides know it. In cities with sizeable ethnic Lebanese populations, the Jews have essentially told the Lebanese to shut up about Israel or face social assault. Cleveland is the case in point, where Lebanese-Americans are so terrified to speak out about their own civil rights that not a single one is significantly involved in political activity.
They are afraid to speak about Lebanon or Israel, or discuss current politics. They are too terrified to assert their democratic right to free speech, or to assemble even in their churches. They are even silent when the Jews attack their own family members. The precedent is an ominous bellwether for democracy. If Lebanese-Americans are too terrified to speak out on current American foreign policy concerning Lebanon, then no one has a right to speak out about any foreign policy.
Their resulting silence is silent approval for a US foreign policy. Damaged from the international level right down to their very families, with deliberation, the Arab-Americans are politically dead.
Unlike their Jewish cousins, or their ancestors in Lebanon who refuse to roll over and die, America’s Lebanese have been dead for years. They are socially and politically unorganized, terrified, and intimidated. The overwhelming pressure of refugees has fragmented their churches and mainstream media hype.
Last year, when AIPAC wanted specific legislation passed, they put out the word, and thousands of emails and faxes descended on Washington offices every day for the next five days. When Israel bombed Lebanon last June, the American Task Force for Lebanon was able to get a message out the following March, in their annual banquet dinner. Irani and the other cowards will have their Armani suits and Rolexes flashing for the star-studded event that no serious US official would dare attend for fear of immediate ostracism on Capital Hill. It was a parade of hollow Americans.
Unorganized, disorganized, or dis-organized?
What keeps these Lebanese-Americans silent? Are they unable to access mainstream media? Are they uninterested in their own family, culture and history? Are they unwilling to risk the social damage that normally follows criticism of Israel, as the Mearsheimer and Walt, and Jimmy Carter affairs recently pointed out?
Unorganized implies that they have no pre-organizational structure, which is untrue: they have ethnic churches, Catholicism, a cultural history much longer than that of the Jews, and strong family traditions.
Lebanese-Americans are disorganized. They have shrunken church and social groups, and are unable to connect existing organizations. In part this is because the first generation of Lebanese used the churches for their social gatherings. The Lebanese didn’t establish relationships with different Arab cultural groups, so a common communication infrastructure, an ‘Arab’ social network, never developed. In addition, the churches crumbled in the wake of mainstream media’s ‘hypocrisy’ onslaught against Christianity.
But more importantly for the Lebanese, the failure of their civil rights is mainly a result of their fear of social retaliation, the same as American politicians.
They are also disorganized. Current American political structures and mainstream media have virtually shut down the Lebanese-American political voices. Resistance to attacks against their civil liberties is at an all-time low for them in American society. The surveillance and actions against them have been in place for so long that community leaders were identified over decades, and ethnographic researchers attached to their family members, hunting for family secrets and ways to commit social damage.
Conclusion
Lebanese-Americans are politically and socially invisible. They are alienated from issues of the day, just like the rest of the mainstream media audience.
Social organization has great value in a democracy, and costs money. George Soros knows that. Arianna Huffington knows that. So do Ross Perot, Bill Gates, and a few other wealthy Americans. The Lebanese, however, are unable even to connect existing organizations together, or to make one strong, useful organization to protect their particular rights and interests.
Bringing Lebanese-Americans and their thoughts and writers into mainstream media won’t solve the problems in Iraq or Lebanon. Kept out, however, they are a clear case of mass suppression of fundamental constitutional rights, with the suppression of Edward Abboud at the center of the controversy, and an obvious demonstration that Americans are no longer able to express opinions on current events.
It's time to get active as Americans, in the American political process, in American political problems American aid to Israel is your problem.
Perhaps they are waiting for some American Jew to tell you your own story Norman Mailer, Elie Weisel, Tom Friedman. None of them are interested in the crisis. They are American Jews, interested in Jewish stories. They have proven their old world racist hatreds over and over again.
Edward Abboud is the sole 20th century Arab American historian to write about Israel's impact on American media, politics, and culture. Invisible Enemy is his major work. This is your history.
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May 4, 2007 By Edward Abboud www.voxpublishing.com Coming next: Great American Cowards Series: part II: America’s Dead Jews. See also: Great American Cowards Series: part III: The Billionaires
