Washington Scene: TV "ARABS"
FOUAD, JAMES,
AND CLOVIS
"He has criticized the Secretary of
State...
and I think that is wrong!"
James Zogby; CNN 8/27
[MER - Washington - 10/08): When the
American mass media needs to flash "Arab" on the screen pretending to some
kind of semblance of "balance", they know whom to call on. These are the
faces, names and "Arab" identifications one sees on the screen politely
commenting these days about "terrorism" and "peace process". These are
the tried and true, always politically correct, "tamed" and controlled
Arab Americans. Largely despised by the Arab American grassroots -- the
more you know them the more you loath them -- they are always ready, waiting
and willing to play the TV Arabs game.
At the top of this list is Fouad Ajami,
an academic cum "analyst" ofsouthern Lebanese and Iranian ancestry. The
darling at CBS and of Dan Rather -- where he has earned his widespread
infamy -- Fouad actually got his start as an Arab protege of the Israeli/Jewish
lobby. For the past two decades Ajami has been pushed forward, very well
paid in the process, by a number of major Zionist publishers in Washington
eager to promote this intellectualized Uncle Tomish Arab -- most especially
Martin Peretz at The New Republic and Morton Zuckerman at U.S. News &
World Report. To make this easy to understand, think of Fouad this way:
Justice Clarence Thomas is to the American black community as Professor
Fouad Ajami is to the American Arab community. Need more be said?
Then there is James Zogby, a kind of
public relations guy put in place by the conservative Arab regimes, most
especially the Saudis, to misrepresent Arab Americans as badly as the regimes
do their own people. True, in the way he craftily expresses his views Zogby
is one step up from Ajami. But actually Zogby is both more dangerous and
more misrepresentative, for after his name flashes the association: "Arab
American Institute". Ajami, to his miserable credit, doesn't publicly claim
to represent Arab Americans. Zogby does!
Indeed, Zogby is the darling of the
Saudis and their many cut-out organizations. Among other things they feature
James weekly on their cable TV system, "Arab Network of America", ANA,
which they use unashamedly to propagandize Arab Americans, just as they
use Middle East Broadcasting in Europe as well as a number of print publications,
including MEI in the UK and Washington Report in the US.
True enough, there is little grass-roots
reality to this "AAI" concoction other than a few dozen of the most right-wing
Arab American businessmen who are closely aligned with the Arab regimes
and who are continually rewarded by them for their efforts. But Americans
don't know any better. Most actually think Zogby and his cabal are for
real. Overall, what a disgraceful situation for those of Arab and Muslim
ancestry.
Additionally, when it comes to Zogby,
there are the long-present rumors, difficult if not impossible to completely
confirm, that Zogby and friends have for a long time had under the table
relations not only with major players in the Israeli-Jewish lobby, but
also with the CIA. Indeed, Ghossan Zogby was the first CIA station chief
in Lebanon back in the 1960s, and some in the know believe that the Zogby
family has had very shady connections of various kinds for a very long
time. It should also be remembered that when Bill Clinton was first elected,
quickly proceeding to appoint the most Israeli-connected personalities
ever to key positions in his Administration, it was none other than Jim
Zogby who publicly came forward to compliment Clinton for his "great" and
"even-handedness" appointments. Hard to believe...but true!
And then there is the granddaddy of
them all. And since he has been around the longest and has allowed, indeed
aided, this dastardly situation to develope in order to promote his own
fortunes, in a sense he's the worst of all. In a way "Dr. Clovis" Maksoud
can be compared to "Dr. Ruth" -- he's always got something verbosely interesting
to say for anyone who will listen; but one has to always wonder, as with
Dr. Ruth, if he really knows very much about what is is constantly gabbing
about.
Largely a creature of another of those
patheticly co-opted institutions, the Arab League, Clovis masquerades these
days as an academic at American University, where he helps bring them money
from the arms and oil bazaars of the Arab elite -- including that of international
swindler Adnan Khashoggi whose name prominently adorns the huge building
near Clovis' tailor-made and well-financed "Institute".
But in reality Clovis is also at heart
a political hack, in his case a kind of bombastic baffonish rhetorical
entertainer who in Washington for decades now has long served the regimes
as a kind of "enforcer" keeping everyone else of Arab background either
in line or excluded from the party.
Bottom Line: Maksoud is a very big
talking and a very small doer who shifts in the political winds in whatever
ways will most feather his own nest. Those who know Clovis best listen
to him least; while those who know him least are oftentimes impressed with
his rhetorical gab, unaware how hollow and without substance Clovis' rhetorical
flourishes always prove to be as well as how unbelievely hypocrital and
self-serving Clovis always is.
The larger importance of Clovis in
Washington, where he has been since the 1970s, is that he and a few other
Arab Ambassadors have grandfathered the entire despicable situation that
today exists in the U.S. capital among "official" Arab Americans. He and
his friends gave birth to the current crop of impotent and incestuous Arab-American
organizations. And these days they preside over it all making sure everyone
toes the line, speaking the assigned lines at the right time and in the
right places.
There are other "tamed" and subsidized
Arabs around; this list is hardly complete.
There's Khalil Jahshan, who for many
years now has bled dry the "National Association of Arab Americans" (NAAA)
of both funds and credibility. Jahshan gives the others a run for the most
self-serving award; but he's not important enough to be elevated to the
big leagues.
There's Hassan Rahman, now-a-days "Ambassador"
of the Palestinians. Rahman has nothing of credit to his name other than
years of loyalty to Yasser Arafat and considerable money he's managed to
squirrel away that belngs not to him but to the Palestinian people. A protege
of Clovis, Rahman is so oily he makes some of the others look good at times.
And there is the tragic case of Osama
Siblani, publisher of the "Arab American News" in Dearborn, Michigan, the
largest center of Arab Americans in the US. Like small publishers in the
Middle East who are either co-opted or frightened into submission by the
"client regimes" that control their people -- let's not call it govern
or even rule -- so too with once-aspiring journalists like Siblani. In
danger of total failure and bankruptcy after years of attempting something
worthwhile, Siblani sold out in the years after the Gulf War and rather
than pursuing his goal of publishing a serious and respectable national
Arab American weekly he today publishes a small, local, mediocre rag which
features columns from non other than Zogby and Jahshan.
All of these "Arab spokesman" have
a few things in common:
They are all tamed, politically correct,
and working in one way or another for, or with, various Arab regimes and/or
the Jewish/Israeli lobby, however under the table.
They are all rhetorically gifted, but
like a beautiful woman they trade on that gift selling themselves to those
buying mouths rather than bodies (not that a great deal of the body buying
isn't going on as well...but that's a totally different story).
They are all extraordinarily self-serving,
exceedingly hypocritical, and very much tuned-in to the prostrate ways
of contemporary Washington where three things rule when it comes to the
Middle East -- the power of the Israeli/Jewish lobby, the money of the
Saudi and other Gulf regimes, and the terrible corruption of the media
brought about by the previous two.
