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- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Path: sparky!uunet!gumby!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!daemon
- From: GDMENDEN%MTUS5.bitnet@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu
- Subject: Anti-arab racism
- Message-ID: <1992Nov10.221517.18166@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.activism.d
- Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Sender: news@mont.cs.missouri.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Organization: ?
- Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
- Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 22:15:17 GMT
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Lines: 41
-
- From ADC Times, Sept-Oct 1992:
-
- Sept. 29 this year CBS News President Eric Ober met with ADC President
- Albert Mokhiber and ADC Director of Legal Services Gregory T. Nojeim at
- CBS News headquarters in NYC to discuss the issue of anti-Arab bias
- at CBS. ADC had called for a meeting with Ober after learning that
- CBS News anchor Dan Rather, CBS board member Dr. Henry Kissinger and
- CBS Mideast consultant Dr. Fouad Ajami made racist anti-Arab remarks
- at a fundraise held last June to help settle Jewish immigrants in
- Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
-
- ...The ADC-San Francisco chapter, in coalition with the Council
- of Presidents of Arab American Organizations and the Arab People's
- Coalition, sponsored a panel discussion on the topic 9/26 and collected
- over 2000 individual and organizaitonal endorsements on a petition to
- CBS News. ...endorsers included Jewish peace groups, church organizations
- and representatives of the labor movement.
-
- ...At the fundraiser, Rather had said, "many of us celebrate 25 years
- after the city was united under Israseli rule". On this point, Ober
- asserted that CBS News has never shown a map of Israel showing Jerusalem
- as its capital on its television news programs. ...Rather wrote "I had
- no intention of taking a position on the status of Jerusalem..."
-
- Part of (other) discussion touched on Ajami's anti-Arab and anti-
- Muslim remarks at the June fundraiser where he had described "the
- ceremony of eating with a Bedouin" as an "ordeal" and suggested that
- Arab and Muslim countries are incapable of democracy...On 9-1, Ajami
- finally wrote back to ADC, "That remark was off-handed, and anyone
- taking offense to it has my apology."
-
- Although Ober would not admit to wrongdoing or evidence of anti-
- Arab bias at CBS News, his willlingness to implement remedial steps
- indicates a clear desire to improve CBS' reporting on Mideast and Arab
- issues..Rather's Oct 2 letter to ADC was also conciliatory.
-
- [One of the deeper ironies here is that the customs of the Arab
- bedouin, particularly in the areas of food, living, and human relations,
- are the most closely related to the Jews of the Old Testament. Maybe
- not in exact detail, of course, but strikingly reminescent of things
- you would read in the Bible. gdm]
-