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Editor's Letter from page A5
A Disquieting Attack
In a shockingly facts-be-damned guest column published
Aug. 9 in the Dearborn-based Arab American News, Michelle
J. Kinnucan, an Ann Arbor writer, lambasted Zionism. She
branded "A Fair To Remember" a "triumphal celebration of
racism and genocide" and the "Zionist Fair of Shame." She
took issue with the Jewish community negotiating a group
rate, certainly not an uncommon practice, with the state for
exclusive use of the fairgrounds one day before the Michigan
State Fair opened to the general public.
In the two-page article titled "Detroit Jewish Federation:
Celebrating racism and making money at it;' she claims the
State of Israel's creation "was a settler-colonial project that
systematically and violently uprooted more than 750,000
Palestinians Arabs from their lands and homes."
"Sixty years age she wrote, "Zionist militias and gangs
ransacked Palestinian properties and destroyed hundreds of
Palestinian villages. How can people of conscience celebrate
this catastrophe?"
Sympathizers, of course, call that baseless version of what
happened the nakba, which in Arabic means "catastrophe."
Further, Kinnucan argues that Israel still denies "Palestinian
refugees their U.N.-sanctioned right to return to their
homes and receive compensation." This misreading of U.N.
Resolution 181 denies the right of a majority Jewish state,
which was explicit when the U.N. carved Israel out of part of
Palestine after the Holocaust. (The Arabs, of course, refused
the state allotted to them in order to attack the Jewish state.)
Incidentally, many of the Arabs who fled Palestine left on their
own accord; they soon regretted doing so given the deplorable
conditions of the U.N. refugee camps in surrounding areas.
the organized Jewish community.
She incredulously ignored Rev. King, America's most
revered black leader. In a "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend"
published in the August 1967 issue of the Saturday Review,
King equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
King wrote: "Anti-Semitism, the hatred of the Jewish peo-
ple, has been, and remains, a blot on the soul of mankind. In
this, we are in full agreement. So know also this: Anti-Zionist
is inherently anti-Semitic and ever will be so!'
He added, "The anti-Semite rejoices at any opportunity
to vent his malice. The times have made it unpopular, in the
West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the
case, the anti-Semite must constantly seek new forms and
forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new mas-
querade! He does not hate the Jews; he is just anti-Zionist'!"
King concluded his brilliant analysis by declaring, "Let my
words echo in the depths of your soul: When people criticize
Zionism, they mean Jews — make no mistake about it."
Standing As One
The Arab American News is the newspaper of record of the
local Arab American community. Its publisher, Osama Siblani,
fashions himself as one of the architects of interfaith relation-
ship building in Metro Detroit. For him to allow a guest writer
to move beyond criticism of Israel's governmental politics, as
specious as her arguments are, and directly attack the Detroit
Jewish community has sadly sent local Arab-Jewish relations,
fragile as they were, reeling.
We, the Detroit Jewish community, stood together
16,000 strong — at the Michigan State Fair last Thursday to
celebrate our beloved ancestral homeland and recommit to
strengthening our connections with all Israelis: Jew, Christian,
Muslim, Druse, Beduoin.
Secondarily, our record turnout at "A Fair To Remember"
— about 1,000 more than the number of Detroit Jews who
convened at the fairgrounds in 1949 to hail the one-year anni-
versary of Israeli statehood — was extraordinary.
It told the world that yes, we, Detroit Jewry, acknowledge
the democratic right of anti-Zionists to peacefully protest, but
that doesn't mean we also must stand idly.
In celebrating Israel at 60 in such a glorious, giant-sized
way, we repudiated the "Zionist Fair of Shame" protest spon-
sored by a coalition called the Middle East Task Force.
—
Poor Examples
Curiously, Kinnucan went back to 1970 to cite Detroit black
"civil rights activists" who, based on a Committee of Black
Americans for Truth About the Middle East ad in the New
York Times, stood in "complete solidarity support with our
Palestinian brothers and sisters."
Their appeal, she wrote, also "noted the alliance of apart-
heid South Africa and Israel." It quoted that great champion of
coexistence, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died before
he could realize his wish to destroy Israel: "Our political
vision for a free Palestine is a democratic, secular, non-racial
state where all Palestinians — Christians, Jews and Muslims
— will have equal rights."
Our Unity
If all that twisted history disguised as a credible voice in
What Rabbi Paul Yedwab of Temple Israel in West
the mainstream newspaper of Metro Detroit's Arab American
Bloomfield told me amid the mingling throngs at the Israel
community weren't bad enough, Kinnucan chose Malcolm
shuk at the fairgrounds is sure to echo a lot longer than the
X as the black leader of choice to spotlight. He "vis-
"End Israel Apartheid Now" chants of the protestors.
ited Gaza in 1964 and repeatedly spoke out against
Recalling the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and
Zionism;' she wrote.
the Arab border states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan,
She quoted him as saying in the Sept. 17, 1964,
Yedwab paused for an instant, then said: "At that
issue of the Egyptian Gazette: "Did the Zionists have
time, my Jewish friends who were entirely secular,
the legal or moral right to invade Arab Palestine,
who didn't even care about Judaism at all, were sud-
uproot its Arab citizens from their homes and seize
denly wearing blue-and-white and donning Israeli
all Arab property for themselves just based on the
flags and T-shirts in support of Israel.
`religious' claim that their forefathers lived there thou- Rabbi Yedwab
"I've really found that Israel has always been the
sands of years ago?"
force that brings Jews together because we're not sim-
Malcolm X added, "In short, the Zionist argument
ply a religion, but a religion and a nation as well.
to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no
"I think every Jew feels that in their kishkas."
intelligent or legal basis in history ... not even in their reli-
I do, too ... thank God.
gion. Where is their Messiah?"
Am Yisrael Chai! The Jewish Nation Lives!
Kinnucan didn't mention current Detroit black church
leaders like Rev. Glenn Plummer, Rev. Nicholas Hood III and
Rev. Kenneth Flowers, all respected, fair-minded people who
For related commentary, see Community View: page A30.
espouse Israel's right to exist and who have active ties with
❑
A6
August 28 2008
Jt