Making our presence felt in US with an Arab-Israeli lobby

1] interview with Ayman Odeh, 2] Haaretz on Odeh’s rapturous reception at their conference in New York.

MK Ayman Odeh speaks at the Israel Conference on Peace. Photo by Dudu Bachar

Why the US is part of Middle East problem, not the solution

Joint List head Ayman Odeh, recently celebrated as one of Foreign Policy’s top global leaders, argues in an interview with Al-Monitor that the US administration is an obstacle to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

By Shlomi Eldar, trans. Simon Pompan, Al Monitor/ Israel Pulse
December 14, 2015

In early November, Arab Knesset member Ayman Odeh, the chairman of the Joint List, received a surprising email from Foreign Policy magazine: He had been selected as one of its 100 Leading Global Thinkers for 2015. Yet, Odeh could not pop the champagne cork right away, as he was asked to keep his selection under wraps until the official announcement was made in early December. Unfamiliar to most of the Israeli public until about a year ago, he suddenly found himself rubbing elbows with Pope Francis, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, the negotiators of the Iran nuclear deal and other world leaders and thinkers.

The announcement indicates that Odeh was chosen for the prestigious list thanks to his ability to unite Israel’s Arabs. “Odeh yoked diverse leaders — Islamists, secular feminists, socialists — with a forthright argument that Arabs deserve the same rights as Jewish citizens,” it read.

Odeh called his father, a construction worker, and whispered the news into his ear so that none of his associates or aides could eavesdrop. He later drove home to tell his wife the happy news. He then had to hold his tongue for nearly a month until the magazine made the official announcement.

In early December, Odeh went on a US tour to voice his own opinions and to serve as a mouthpiece for Arab Israelis and their predicaments. According to him, the decision-makers of the world’s largest power are hardly familiar with the population that makes up 20% of Israel’s citizens.

Odeh returned to Israel earlier this week with at least one operative goal. He wants to set up an active lobby of Arab Israelis living in the United States who attended American universities and speak English. What he would like is for them to do everything they can to raise public awareness in the United States concerning the issue of Arab Israelis.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Odeh relates that during his tours in Washington, Philadelphia and New York and after addressing various crowds and more than 20 research institutions, he has arrived at the conclusion that not only is the American establishment not part of the solution, it is in fact one of the main obstacles to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“These are perhaps harsh words,” Odeh tells Al-Monitor, “but it is indeed the truth.  US foreign policy is predicated on interests and not on morality. They shouldn’t be selling this democracy fiction to us. Americans are best friends with tyrants and primitive leaders in the Persian Gulf — those who prevent women from driving. But all of a sudden, if there’s one Arab leader they don’t like, they take down the flag of democracy, come riding roughshod with large forces, allowing fundamentalist movements to take control over everything. We’ve seen this in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, too.”

Touching on the American conduct concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Odeh observed, “Saying that the United States has supposedly bailed out on the conflict — and that we saw this after the meeting between [President Barack] Obama and [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu — is simply untrue. It hasn’t given up. It keeps paying billions for what is called ‘security’ and ‘Israel’s army.’ All those statements about the administration wanting a two-state solution but not Netanyahu are an outright lie. The United States is pleased with what’s going on in the Middle East, selling weapons to Israel and Saudi Arabia. It is the only one that maintains ties with everyone, but the others don’t maintain any ties with each other. It stands to gain by not having peace in the Middle East, which is why I directly point a finger at the United States for being the main stumbling block to peace in the region. If the US really wants the two-state, it can force the Israeli government to act, but it doesn’t do so on purpose. When it comes to the issue of peace, it only pays lip service.”

The rest of the interview follows:

Al-Monitor: If that’s your opinion of the United States, what were you looking for there?

Odeh: You know where I stand in regard to Netanyahu’s government, so what am I doing in the Knesset? I’m a person who has an opinion and wants to make a change, and I also know it can’t be done by a knockout. There are over 300 million people in America. There are African-American movements from which I have learned and still do. I’m learning from the American civil rights movement and want to knit ties with it. One of the things I’m trying to do is to tell them that there are relations between the official United States and the official Israel. But it is high time, for the first time in history, that ties were fostered between the progressive forces in both countries, for example between the Arabs and the blacks and between democratic forces in both Israel and the US. This is what I’d like to advance.

The US also has a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who has called on banning the entry of Muslims to the US; how do you feel about that?

An entire public counting over 1.5 billion people is being demonized, and that’s part of the collision between civilizations. So I hope he’ll lose.

Had Trump invited you to meet with him, maybe to tone down the criticism about his stand on Muslims and after cancelling his trip to Israel, would you have accepted it?

No, I wouldn’t. In principle, I’m willing to meet with almost everyone. But in every meeting I need to ask myself who would stand to gain and who wouldn’t. I don’t want people using me.

It’s possible that Trump will become the next president. Have you taken that into account?

As broken down as American politics is, it still hasn’t gone that far south for a person like him to be elected president.

During your US tour, you refused to enter the building of the Jewish Agency in New York when you arrived there to address the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Why?

You know how much I want to meet with people. I was told “the Conference of Presidents” and I replied, “Sure thing.” Someone whispered in my ears that they are very right wing. I said, “Bring them on.” I don’t need to preach to the converted. I want to talk with them. I thought I was going to address them in their offices. Suddenly at the entrance I see signs for Aliyah, the Jewish Agency and the Zionist Congress. So I asked, “Where am I?”

I was informed that that was a Jewish Agency building, so I asked if they could find another venue. Then somebody came over and in very blunt language said to me, “You don’t want to talk to us; you’re against us.” That was Malcolm Hoenlein, their president. I said, “I want to meet you, but please understand me. I won’t go in there.”

What do you have against the Jewish Agency?

Israel has built over 700 Jewish communities and zero Arab ones. The Jewish Agency played a big role in establishing the Jewish communities, and part of it came at the expense of our lands. It’s not just the Nakba and not just the discrimination, but even today, in connection with the unrecognized communities. It’s the Jewish Agency that gives trouble to the young people there, together with the Jewish National Fund, which is the one that expelled the Arabs from their lands and continues to do so. So with all due respect, let me say that I can’t address you, not here at the Jewish Agency offices.

Coming back to Israel, you evoked the idea of setting up an active lobby of Arab Israelis living in the United States in order to raise public awareness there concerning the issue of Arab Israelis. Why is such a lobby necessary?

As I have said before, and let me reiterate this, the United States isn’t the solution — it’s the problem. To date, there is no one unified group of Arab Israelis in the United States holding events and talking to the public in general as well as to people who carry influence and trendsetters. This is my primary goal at the moment, to set up such a body in America through which I can influence American public opinion.

New European Jewish immigrants, everything arranged for them by the Jewish Agency for Israel, proudly show off their new passports. Compare and contrast with the treatment of Palestinian refugees who want to return to their once-homeland. Photo from Jewish Agency.

The Verdict Is In: Left-wing American Jews Adore MK Ayman Odeh

Israeli Arab leader gave HaaretzQ audience a clear condemnation of Netanyahu and the Israeli right, paired with a hopeful call for a ‘shared future’ between Palestinians and Jews.

By Allison Kaplan Sommer (New York), Haaretz
December 14, 2015

MK Ayman Odeh was greeted like a rock star with an enthusiastic standing ovation as he gave a fiery speech as the closing keynote speaker at the HaaretzQ conference in New York City.

The Joint List leaders’ sharp speech, repeatedly punctuated by applause, seemed to supply the two elements that many of the conference’s handwringing conversations concerning the feared death of the two-state solution and growth of regional threats lacked and that the crowd, made up largely of left-wing American Jews, were hungry for. The dual elements: bold clear-throated condemnations of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right, paired with a hopeful call for a “shared future” between Palestinians and Jews based on mutual empathy and recognition of each other’s pain.

“As a Palestinian, I cannot accept that there will be a world without a place for Palestinians to shape their own future. As an Israeli citizen, I know that Israel cannot be a just and true democracy so long as it occupies another people. As an Arab citizen of Israel struggling for political, civil and social rights, I see how these problems are chained to one another,” Odeh said.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu would like us to think the conflict can simply be managed. But we have seen what managing the conflict managed has looked like in recent weeks. A horrific and bloodstained reality.”

Odeh declared that that “the conflict cannot be managed. It can only be solved,” adding that “the occupation is the Palestinian people’s tragedy but it is also Israel’s prison. We must liberate both peoples from the prison of occupation.”

Odeh detailed for his American audience the numerous ways discrimination is felt by “unwanted” Arab citizens,  from “piercing stares” on public buses to job and housing discrimination, insufficient municipal services, destruction of “unrecognized” Bedouin villages to “a Prime Minister who see your right to vote as a threat.”

He said he was inspired by American history and and had recently met with civil rights leaders at the Atlanta church of slain leader Martin Luther King Jr. “The civil rights movement believed that white people and black people had to struggle together to reach freedom and justice. I have hope because when the government tried to throw us out of the political process and undermine our rights, we chose to struggle together and established a Joint List, Arab and Jewish.” His Joint List party, he said “is living proof that Arabs and Jews can refuse to be enemies and that we can share our society as equals.”

For such a shared future to be possible, “the state must recognize the crimes of the past military rule over Arab citizens, the massacre at Kfar Kassem and the Nakba. I know that recognizing our history and pain is not only necessary step in our struggle for justice t will also make our shared society stronger.”

Odeh’s Joint Arab List, an amalgamation of Arab and Arab-Jewish factions, is the third-largest party in the current Knesset. Odeh has served as the secretary general of Hadash since 2006 and is a member of the Knesset House Committee, the Knesset Committee on Labour, Welfare and Health.

Odeh’s appearance at the HaaretzQ conference capped a high-profile two-week stint in the U.S. that included meetings with congressmen and senior Obama administration officials at the White House and State Department, Arab-American groups and progressive think tanks, interviews with major media organization and get-togethers with both American Jewish individuals and Jewish organizations.

The purpose of his visit, Odeh said in his speeches was an effort for Palestinian citizens of Israel “raise our voices and bring our stories to the international stage.”

Three days before the Haaretz conference, Odeh sparked controversy when he cancelled his meeting with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization after learning that the group shares office space with the Jewish Agency, saying that as a representative of the Arab public in Israel, “ I cannot in good conscience participate in meetings in the offices of organizations whose work displaces Arab citizens.” A statement issued by the umbrella group said it was “disturbed and shocked” at Odeh’s refusal.

Links
100 leading global thinkers

Foreign Policy

Odeh is in the Challengers group (as is Nicola Sturgeon), rewarded for uniting Israel’s Arabs.

The other groups are Decision-makers, Innovators, Advocates, Artists, Healers, Stewards, Chroniclers, Moguls

Natan Sharansky rebuts Odeh’s criticism of the Jewish Agency from his office in the Jewish Agency.