Antiwar Groups Renew Their Efforts
News: Israel's incursions into Lebanon and Gaza have galvanized the peace movement in the United States, where surprising new alliances are being formed.
August 2, 2006
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To hear it from organizers of the recent protests against Israel's offensives against Lebanon and Gaza, there is a familiar feeling in the air. Brian Becker, the national coordinator for the ANSWER Coalition, an antiwar umbrella group, has observed it while leafleting in the street. Leaders of Arab-American organizations such as the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) say it is reflected in the number of phone calls their offices have been receiving of late.
"It's like the way things were right before the Iraq war," Becker says. "Before the Iraq war we had huge support, and now we're getting a similar response at the grassroots level."
In the past three weeks alone, 3,000 new people have registered on ANSWER's website, and the group has helped plan a five-city protest against Israeli aggression that will occur on August 12. Last week, 400 people rallied outside Diane Feinstein's office in San Francisco, protesting the senator's support for the bombing of Lebanon—the largest such protest yet. (The rally, organized by a newly-formed coalition called the Break the Siege Campaign, came in response to an 1,000-strong pro-Israeli rally in the same spot earlier that week—an indication that antiwar groups are still far behind their counterparts.) In Houston, meanwhile, a benefit held on Sunday for the Lebanese Red Cross drew 500 attendees and raised over $70,000, even though it was organized only a few days earlier. Smaller protests and benefits have also been held in Boston, Washington DC and Los Angeles.
The protest last week in San Francisco drew a hodge-podge of activists together to denounce occupation in the Middle East, with the placard-holders ranging from die-hard Bush-bashers to liberal retirees to disheveled passersby who appeared unlikely to have any idea what they are protesting. The main difference between this protest and those against the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003, however, was the preeminence of Arab-American and Muslim protestors—or at least people whose sympathies clearly lie with those communities. In San Francisco, at least a dozen demonstrators wore kaffiyas, and many of the signs pre-made for them denounced the Lebanon invasion using the Arabic word for "stop:" khalas.
In that sense, the recent rallies resemble less the mass mobilizations that took place prior to the war in Iraq and more the protests held on April 20, 2002, against the IMF and World Bank in both Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Mixed in with those crowds, ANSWER leaders say, was the largest number of Americans who have ever demonstrated in support of Palestinian rights—most of them Muslim or of Arab descent themselves. It was the first time that ANSWER, a general-interest collection of progressives and peaceniks, had joined forces with Arab-American and Muslim organizations such as the ADC—an alliance that today is leading the protests against the war in Lebanon.
Mahdi Bray, Executive Director of the Muslim American Society's (MAS) Freedom Foundation—one of the groups organizing the five-city August 12 protest—says that the cooperation between progressive antiwar groups and Muslim and Arab groups began taking root 15 years ago, due to shared opposition to the sanctions the United States imposed on Iraq after the First Gulf War. Those who participated in the protests against the sanctions regime "became a lot more aware about the Middle East," he explained. "So there was a natural transition to not just the Iraqi war but Palestine and other issues in the region."
Still, the strength of the present movement has surprised some leaders in the Arab-American community. The outpouring of support they are seeing today among Arab- and Muslim-Americans for antiwar activism, these organizers say, is stronger than it has been in years.
Dr. Jess Ghannam, an executive committee member of both the Free Palestine Coalition and the National Council of Arab-Americans (NCA), chalks it up to the gradual alleviation of the "fear factor" which has persisted among Arab-Americans since September 11.
"Large numbers of people in our community have been harassed; pulled out of cabs; detained. We have people who are still missing," Dr. Ghannam said, referring to the mass detentions of Muslim and Arab Americans in the United States following 9/11. "That has generated so much fear in our community, and made it hard for people to say that they're against the occupation in Iraq or against what's happening in Palestine. People have been very hesitant." By his reckoning, though, that reluctance has begun to soften, partly due to the worsening situation in Iraq, the United States' efforts to help undermine the democratically-elected Hamas regime in Palestine, and now the invasion in Lebanon.
"Now we're getting calls instead of us calling people—people are calling us and saying, hey what can we do?," he said.
Significantly, Israel's offensive against Lebanon also appears to have roused Lebanese-Americans, traditionally a more reticent part of the Arab-American community, into action. In Boston, where many in the Lebanese-American community have lived for three or four generations, the war has sparked an interest in antiwar activism among young people of Lebanese descent, even those with few lingering ties to the country of their ancestors, according to Caline Jarudi, Executive Director of the ADC in Massachusetts. "It's definitely bringing the community out of the woodwork," she observed.
All of that is good news for activists who want to help reverse the nearly monolithic support for Israel's attacks on Gaza and Lebanon among American politicians and newspapers. But to have a real impact, antiwar activists will need to draw support from more groups than only Muslim and Arab communities.
To that end, organizers like Becker and Ghannam say that they have begun to engage with immigrant and minority commuunities, especially African-American and South Asian groups. Organizers say that many in those communities have a natural empathy for victims of military aggression. As Bray of the Muslim American Society points out, "Many African-Americans, if the issues are explained correctly, can realize that what is taking place in Iraq, and what is taking place in Palestine, is the same soup in a different bowl. We had occupation for years in the South." He also underscores the importance of better antiwar organizing efforts in the African-American community, especially on the part of Black Voices for Peace, an organization founded in 2001.
Finding support from Congress, however, is a different matter. Only eight representatives voted against a recent resolution affirming the United States' support for Israel; in the Senate, a similar bill met with no opposition at all. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, usually a strong advocate of the 70,000-strong Arab-American community in Houston, rankled many of her supporters by voting in favor of the Israel resolution. Appearing at the benefit on Sunday, she told the assembled crowd that she had not been fully aware of the bill's implications.
"Even the most strident allies of our community voted for this," reflected Ramiz Rafeedie, the president of the ADC in the Bay Area and an organizer of the rally in San Francisco last Thursday. Arleen Scully, one of the 400-odd protestors convened on the corner of San Francisco's Market and Montgomery Avenues, shared his frustration: "I'm a Democrat and I'm really ashamed of the Democrats; they are worse than the Republicans on this issue."
Jarudi, of the ADC in Boston, says that her group has run into this near-universal pro-Israeli stance whenever they call on politicians. She lamented that not a single state representative in Massachusetts declined to sign onto a recent ad in the Boston Globe expressing solidarity with Israel, making the ADC's advocacy efforts against the war nearly impossible. "[Massachusetts politicians] are generally good on issues of immigration; the Patriot Act; all of that—but when it comes to Israel, they are out the door,” she said. “It's very hard."
The media is not much better. Jarudi says that all of her organization's efforts to place op-ed pieces critical of the war have been rebuffed—and it's little wonder. A week into Israel's invasion of Lebanon, Editor and Publisher, a media-monitoring publication, reported that only a handful of newspapers in the entire nation had opposed it on their editorial pages. Last Friday, columnist Greg Mitchell observed that with the passage of another week, calls for ceasefire, at least, have become more common—but always with the caveat that Israel is justified in its actions. Another conspicuous omission, Mitchell writes, is a discussion of all that the United States has done to enable and perpetuate the conflict, both by condoning the current offensive and by providing Israel with $6.3 billion in weaponry last year alone. As a result, the American public appears unaware of just how far from neutral Washington has been throughout this conflict.
The people turning out for the recent protests, by contrast, are generally acutely aware of the United States' role in facilitating Israel’s actions. Last week's protest in San Francisco was specifically meant to target Sen. Feinstein for her professions of support of Israel at a rally four days earlier—a connection that organizer Rafeedie said "really galvanizes people."
If pointing out the ties between the United States and Israel is a way to invigorate opposition to the war, then peace activists should not have much trouble. As Dr. Ghannam, who spoke at the protest in San Francisco, explained in mock-amazement, "The US has said we don't want a ceasefire, that it's okay for [Israel] to carpet-bomb people in Lebanon and starve people in Palestine. You don't have to infer that—they're saying that!" The crucial task facing organizations like the NCA, he adds, is convincing people that the invasions and occupations of Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon are all linked, and that, as part of the same plan to redraw the Middle East along lines favorable to the US and Israel, they ought to be opposed flat out. That may not leave room in the coalition for liberals who oppose the Iraq war but are sympathetic to Israel, but in Brecker's opinion, "They all left a while ago anyway."
Paige Austin is an Editorial Intern at Mother Jones.
