Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2007, page 45

Outside the Beltway

Welcome to New York City Public Schools

By James G. Abourezk

THE NEW YORK POST had not had an Arab-bashing moment for some time and, feeling the need for that kind of satisfaction, decided to invent one on its own.

A Yemeni woman, Debbie Almontaser, described by The New York Times as a veteran public school teacher, was asked by the New York public school system to work as principal of a new school dedicated to the study of Arabic language and culture.

That was when the New York Post swung into action. The school had been a lightning rod for criticism ever since it was announced in February. According to The New York Times,early critics of the school included parents at the public school who were asked to share space with the Khalil Gibran International Academy, as well as local conservative columnists who said the school could promote radical Islam.

A reporter from the New York Post called Almontaser to ask about T-shirts being sold by the Brooklyn-based Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media. The T-shirts displayed the phrase, “Intifada NYC.”

Quoting Almontaser in the Times, “The word basically means ”˜shaking off,’ she told the reporter. ”˜That is the root word if you look it up in Arabic.’”

For most people the definition should have been enough. But it was not enough for the Rupert Murdoch-ownedNew York Post, which was hell-bent on sensationalizing the issue. The paper ran a headline and a story that said Almontaser was defending “Intifada,” and that she refused to denounce the word. The Post also ran an editorial headlined, “What’s Arabic for ”˜Shut it Down?’”

Almontaser, seeing the damage the headlines were doing to the new project, made a public apology. But that was not enough for the hard-line radical Zionists, who came down on her like a ton of cluster bombs. So she resigned from her position as the founder and headmistress of the Arabic Language school.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg—who, it seems, wants to be president of all Americans—fell in line and said he continued to support the school but welcomed Almontaser’s resignation.

A bit more surprising was the reaction of the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, who rebuked Almontaser, saying that the word “Intifada” is “something that should be denounced, not explained away.” Weingarten piled on more later, saying, “she has no experience as a principal, and there was no support for her.”

So much for a union protecting its members. I’ve wondered for years why union memberships were vanishing, so Weingarten’s attack on one of her members explains a great deal to me.

One of the reporters who wrote the New York Times story told me that she had searched around for an Arab American group to respond to the firing of Almontaser, but was unable to find anyone. A response from any of the Arab groups could have put the matter into context.

The Times was left only with a balancing quote from former New York Mayor Eddie Koch, who said the effort to establish the school was “worth it if you have gone into the Muslim community and found a tremendous desire to have a school like this.”

School officials hurriedly found a replacement principal for Debbie Almontaser. She is Danielle Salzburg, who does not speak Arabic—a choice that did not bother Mayor Bloomberg, who was quoted as saying, “You don’t have to speak Arabic in order to run a school.”

But Eddie Koch thought it curious, saying, “To put a principal totally unimmersed in the culture seems like spitting in their eye.”

For those people in America who have a sense of proportion and of history of the Middle East, the word, “Intifada” is much more appropriate than the words, “Illegal Occupation of Palestine.” Would T-shirts with those words on it excite the New York Post the same way Intifada did? Have we forgotten that “Intifada” is precisely what George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and friends did in the late 18th Century? Did our founding fathers not “shake off” the British occupation of the American colonies?

My reaction to bullies is probably the same as that of most Americans, and bullying is what the newspaper did, joined by the mayor and union head who piled on their victim, Debbie Almontaser.

But isn’t that what bullies do?

James G. Abourezk is a former U.S. senator (D-SD) and founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He now practices law in Sioux Fall, SD.