Israeli Elections Come and Go, But Israel Remains an Outlaw State
A Palestinian family reacts after Israeli bulldozers demolished their home in the Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina, Feb. 5, 2013. (AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
Two Views: Israel’s Parliamentary Elections
Newly elected Israeli Knesset member Yair Lapid (l), leader of the Yesh Atid party, speaks to Naftali Bennett, head of the hard-line national religious party the Jewish Home, during a Feb. 5 reception in Jerusalem marking the opening of the 19th Knesset. (URIEL SINAI/GETTY IMAGES)
Richard H. Curtiss (1927-2013) Devoted His Life to Telling People Stories
Richard Curtiss at work in his Washington Report office. (STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY)
Israeli License to Cheney-Linked Energy Firm on Golan Heights Raises Eyebrows
Then-Vice President Dick Cheney (l) and Likud chairman Benyamin Netanyahu, out of office at the time and serving as the official Israeli opposition leader, at a March 23, 2008 breakfast meeting at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. (PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
Peace at Last in the Southern Philippines?
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III (r) shares candies with Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chief Murad Ebrahim during a Feb. 11 visit to the rebels’ stronghold in Sultan Kudarat on the island of Mindanao. (KARLOS MANLUPIG/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
Two Palestinian, Israeli Documentaries Depict Evils of Military Occupation
Emad Burnat views his five broken cameras in his documentary of the same name. (PHOTO COURTESY KINO LORBER)
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2009, page 52
Arab-American Activism
AAI’s Kahlil Gibran Awards Gala
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THE ARAB American Institute Foundation held its annual Kahlil Gibran Spirit of Humanity Awards gala on April 23 at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC. Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Liaison Valerie Jarrett (who was born in Iran) conveyed personal greetings from President Barack Obama and a promise that the gates to the White House are open to everybody, including the Arab-American community. Noting that the Obama administration is preparing to unveil an initiative to increase the number of volunteers working in the U.S., she challenged Arab Americans to think of new ways they can serve their communities and this country.
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, last year’s Najeeb Halaby Award recipient, and Queen Noor of Jordan presented the Halaby Award for Public Service to Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, who served as the appointed director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 2002 to 2008. “NIH is rightly called the crown jewel of the federal government,” Zerhouni said.
The Algerian-born Muslim completed medical school and came to the United States with his wife in 1975, speaking no English. He enjoyed a successful research and academic career at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore before President George W. Bush sent him to NIH.
”An immigrant from Algeria became the director of NIH. You can’t imagine what that says about the United States,” Zerhouni enthused. He called on the country to “make health care equally accessible to all, not just here but throughout the world...Yes we can,” he concluded.
Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, accepted the Award for Individual Achievement, on behalf of the “many people who worked together” to produce the “Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World Festival,” which from Feb. 23 to March 15, 2009 showcased Arab culture at the Kennedy Center (see May/June 2009 Washington Report, pp. 60-62). Like so many Americans, Kaiser said, he knew little about Arab people—only oil and politics. Through his work on “Arabesque” he discovered Arab hospitality and warmth. “Art is the best tool for understanding,” Kaiser concluded.
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Virginia businessman James Kimsey presented the Gibran Award for Institutional Excellence to the Marshall Legacy Institute, which trains mine-detection dogs and sends them to countries like Bosnia, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Kimsey declared that in all the arsenal of weapons, the landmine is most insidious. Unexploded ordnance still litters the landscape in Vietnam, and now in Lebanon.
In his acceptance speech Marshall Legacy chairman Anthony Lake, former national security adviser under President Bill Clinton, said his organization has sent 12 dogs to Lebanon over the past year, replacing six dogs sent in 2001 who were ready to retire—including Utsi, who came to the stage, tail wagging.
Lake said he met with survivors whose faces and stories he can never forget. He described meeting a farmer in Hardene, Lebanon, whose tractor was rusting in a field he couldn’t cultivate, surrounded by signs saying:“Danger Landmines.” “Landmines take lives, limbs and livelihoods,” Lake emphasized. (Visit <www.marshalllegacy.org> to make a tax-deductible contribution.)
Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) presented the Award for International Commitment to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), whose commissioner general, Karen AbuZayd, accepted the award on behalf of the 29,000 UNRWA staff in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the occupied Palestinian territory. AbuZayd dedicated the award to the 4.6 million Palestine refugees the agency serves and whose protection and care are the reason for UNRWA’s existence. The award, she proclaimed, also “recognizes the trials Palestinians and Palestine refugees endure, the anguish of their dispossession and the legitimacy of their aspirations for a normal life of security and prosperity in a state they can call their own.” Their hope is “inextinguishable”and their dreams “realistic and attainable,” she concluded, to great applause.
—Delinda C. Hanley
