> Sam Husseini
November 1998

One of the tricks of the West is to use or create images. They create images of a person who doesn't go along with their views and they make certain that this image is distasteful and that anything that person has to say from there on in is rejected and this is a policy that has been practiced pretty well by the West. It perhaps would have been practiced by others had they been in power, but during recent centuries, the West has been in power. They've created the images and they've used these images quite skillfully and quite successfully.

--El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

The American historian Richard Hofstader, in his noted essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, explains that "I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind." Hofstader wrote that he viewed the U.S. political mainstream as rather immune from such delusional thinking, only citing far right wing political groups like the John Birch Society as well as left wing groups. Emphasized Hofstader, "In America it has been the preferred style only of minority movements."

Whether indeed, such paranoid views infected more than the perimeter of U.S. political culture before Hofstader wrote those words is a separate subject, but the attitude of the U.S. political system and media towards Islam and Arabs has shown striking similarity to the same sort of twisted ideas that Hofstader outlines: a belief in "demonic forces of almost transcendent power," which must be confronted by "an all-out crusade." What is at stake is "the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values." To the paranoid, "time is forever just running out" and "the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable."

This is an apt description of Harvard University professor Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilization" thesis and similar sentiments expressed in much of the popular media. The notion that the conflict between the West and Islam has replaced the Cold War paradigm and that "our" existence depends on this crusade is expressed explicitly or implicitly in much of the major media. There is a paranoid center, as well as from conservatives and liberals when it comes to Arabs and Muslims. The "Islamic threat" is frequently portrayed as totally fanatical, non-negotiable and out to destroy the U.S. for absolutely no reason.

The media system of the U.S. is a complex one and generally does not act in a monolithic manner. There are periods, however, when biases that lurk beneath the surface become evident. The pro-war media chorus during the Gulf War, various "stormletes" against Iraq throughout the 1990's, as well as attacks on other Mideastern countries, for example. Instances of "rushes to judgement" like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing or the 1996 crash of TWA 800 also reveal a pervasive anti-Muslim and anti-Arab current in the U.S. media.

The media at times are so full of reports on the "Islamic threat" emanating from "Islamic radical terrorist" groups plotting "Islamic fundamentalist violence" that it could lead a viewer to conclude that the "fundamentals" of Islam include a course in TNT training. When reporting on "Islamic violence" the media often identify Muslims by their religion as in the AP headline "Muslims Convicted in [World Trade Center] Case."

Would a major newspaper headline read "Jews Convicted" or would an anti-abortion activists be described as engaging in "Christian violence?" Does the fact that the offensiveness of these phrases only becomes apparent to many after drawing such analogies mean that the biases are even deeper? Violence from people of certain backgrounds is attributed to that background, while for others, it is merely viewed as the evil side of human nature. In fact, it is often portrayed as happening despite the perpetrator's religious affiliations, rather than because of them.

The "Blame the Arabs First" Crowd

The stereotype of Arabs and Muslims as terrorists leads some to knee-jerk reactions when there is an explosion. "Whatever we are doing to destroy Mideast terrorism, the chief threat against Americans, has not been working," declared A. M. Rosenthal of The New York Times after the Oklahoma City bombing. After the TWA 800 crash, Rosenthal again decided to forgo evidence, finding that the plane was "apparently" the victim of a bombing, he called on the Clinton administration to "retaliate militarily against the sponsors of terrorism," by which he means Arabs and Iranians.

Such irresponsible statements were not limited to commentators. Virtually every major news outlet pointed to Arabs and Muslims after Oklahoma City and presumed TWA 800 was brought down because of foul play, probably emanating from the Mideast. "The fact that it was such a powerful bomb in Oklahoma City immediately drew investigators to consider deadly parallels that all have roots in the Middle East." reported ABC's John McWethy. After the TWA 800 crash, McWethy stressed a "piece of evidence [that] seems to point towards terrorists from the Middle East. ABC News has learned that a written warning was sent by a group calling itself the Movement for Islamic Change." Officials speaking on the record later dismissed the vague message as the routine posturing of a domestic Saudi guerrilla group, but not before McWethy got away with a "scoop" that made the link between "explosion" and "terrorism" on the one hand and "Arab" and "Muslim" on the other that much stronger. McWethy's colleague, Brian Ross, claimed flatly that "it could not possibly be a simple fuel explosion."

Since there are some limits to how brazen journalists can be about rendering opinions, "Terrorism experts" and various think tanks also play a role in this system of distributed guilt in the media system. Terrorism "expert" Neil Livingstone said after the Oklahoma City bombing, "Since the end of the Cold War, the biggest threat to the U.S. has come from the Middle East. I'm afraid what happened in Oklahoma has proved that." Daniel Pipes, editor of Middle East Quarterly, commented with eerie irony that "People need to understand that this is just the beginning. The fundamentalists are on the upsurge, and they make it very clear that they are targeting us. They are absolutely obsessed with us."

To Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of CIA counter-intelligence, the Oklahoma City bombing had "the marks of a Middle Eastern group. Meanwhile, on CNN, Larry Johnson, a former counter-terrorism official with the State Department, said of the bomb, "I think as we sort through the evidence, in my judgement, this has the hallmarks of Islamic ties." The following year, CNN again brought Johnson on about TWA 800, "This was a bomb on board, without a doubt," he told the network. After the terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa in August 1998, Robert Kupperman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies lumped together an entire ethnic group: "The Arabs did it,"he told the Associated Press.

While many journalists and "experts" go with the prevailing sentiment out of ignorance or a laziness that feeds "pack journalism," there are some who are outright Islamaphobes, who seek to attack Islam and Arabs at virtually every opportunity. Hours after the Oklahoma City bombing went off, the "CBS Evening News" featured Steven Emerson, who proclaimed: "This was done with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible. That is a Middle Eastern trait."

Emerson has been treated seriously by media outlets like Fox News Channel, CBS, PBS and the Wall Street Journal editorial page despite remarks such as these, made as B'nai B'rith honored his work:

The level of vitriol against Jews and Christianity within contemporary Islam, unfortunately, is something that we are not totally cognizant of, or that we don't want to accept. We don't want to accept it because to do so would be to acknowledge that one of the world's great religions--which has more than 1.4 billion adherents--somehow sanctions genocide, planned genocide, as part of its religious doctrine.

Similar brazen bigotry can be heard from some extremely popular talk radio hosts. The day after the Oklahoma City bombing, WABC, then the most listened to station in the country, featured this exchange on its most listened to program, the Bob Grant show:

Grant: Tommy from Brooklyn, hello. Caller: How you doing Mr. Grant? Grant: What's on your mind, sir? Caller: Well, I'd like to say that it's very amazing that both, as far as the O.J. Simpson trial and this awful tragedy that happened yesterday, people are saying that O.J. is guilty and nobody ever saw nothing. And now they're talking about Muslims and Mr. Salameh and all this, this is what you're saying, and no one ever saw anything. That's just as worse -- Grant: Now -- yeah -- we did see a lot of things. We saw the Simpson case -- Nicole with the throat slashed. Ron Goldman stuck dozens of times with a knife. We saw two dead bodies. Somebody created those dead bodies. In the Oklahoma case, you klutz, in the Oklahoma City case, we don't know how many more dead people we need to convince you that somebody did that. And the indications are that those people who did it were some Muslim terrorists. But, a skunk like you, what I'd like to do is put you up against the wall with the rest of them, and mow you down along with them. Execute you with them. Because you obviously have a great hatred for America, otherwise you wouldn't talk the way you talk, you imbecile. Gary you're on WABC, hello. Caller: I'd like to be standing right beside you when you do it, Bob....

[Next caller:]
Grant: Jacob, you're on WABC, hello.
Caller: Bob, in the book "The Islamic Invasion" by Robert Morey he infiltrated mosques all over America. And way they pray, is they pray for the destruction of America, destruction of Israel and Jews and even the children pray like this. So Bob, [laughs] we're going to have more bombings, and we can't stop it, because these people -- like you said, it's a violent religion.

Grant: It is violent. It is violent. We're supposed to be fake, phony frauds and say, 'oh, no, it's fine.' No it's not fine, cause they preach violence for heavens sake!

Caller: Bob, they actually pray like this and he has tapes and I saw a documentary on Channel 13 [Steven Emerson's "Jihad in America"] that showed the same thing, so when the hell are we going to wake up?

Grant: I don't thing we will. Because for every guy like you and every guy like me there's a guy like the jerk who was on two calls ahead [sic: behind]. And it's obvious what he's about.

Caller: He's probably a Black Muslim.

Grant: Yeah.

Caller: No question about it.

Grant: Yeah, thank you Jacob.

The next caller suggested executing the culprits and putting their bodies in pigs skin so they won't be "going on to Allah." Note how Grant makes threats of violence -- and then immediately alleges that Islam is violent. The same day's New York Times was certainly more polished, but contained much the same subtext, writing of Oklahoma City, "Some Middle Eastern groups have held meetings there, and the city is home to at least three mosques," thus, houses of worship became cause for suspicion for the nation's leading paper of record.

As Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon pointed out in their nationally syndicated column following the Oklahoma City bombing:

What is haunting about the performance of these mainstream, "quality" news outlets is that they exhibited the paranoia and xenophobiaalbeit in milder doses -- that one hears from right-wing militia groups: fear of foreigners, belief in dark conspiracies beyond our nation's control.

The New York Times engaged in a fair amount of unwarranted finger-pointing, and also covered up for the most reactionary, bigoted and violent elements of the media. In an article about talk radio, the Times wondered if that medium wasn't ahead of the curve, seeing the Waco connection to Oklahoma City before others did. The piece featured an excerpt of Grant having a nice chat with a Muslim caller -- without noting that it took place well after Timothy McVeigh was arrested. Talk of terrorism "coming to our shores" not only showed a xenophobic element, but covered up for a long history of racist violence in the U.S., much of it garbed in Christianity, such as the KKK.

When the New York Times ran an editorial noting that Muslims were most likely not responsible for the Oklahoma City blast, writing that events "should give pause to all those who jumped to hair-trigger accusations." But in more subtle ways, the paper couldn't help betraying bias once again. It seems, wrote the Times that "this was a domestic act of terrorism against the Government, perhaps in retaliation for government raids on fringe groups or individuals. The early theory that the bombing might be the work of terrorists from abroad, possibly Islamic radicals bent on punishing or frightening the Great Satan, is fading." Note how the Times explains the motivations of the "domestic" terrorists -- "in retaliation for government raids" -- while any grievance that Muslims may have with the U.S. is mocked as "punishing or frightening the Great Satan."

The aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing caused media outlets to reconsider the government's action in Waco, as well as Ruby Ridge. Ted Koppel announcing that Nightline would have "another look at the Waco tragedy, which is widely believed to have motivated the Oklahoma City bombers." In contrast, the World Trade Center bombing was not viewed as an appropriate time to reconsider U.S. government policy towards the Mideast -- to discuss the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Rather, Judith Miller of The New York Times issued defacto threats to American Muslims, announcing on CNN that the "Muslim community ought to be worried about distancing itself and denouncing such acts of terrorism."

Such incidents involving Arabs -- real or imagined -- have fed anti-immigrant sentiment. For example, after the World Trade Center bombing, William Buckley, wrote: "So we are going to have to take explicit notice of the incompatibility of our own culture and that of the fundamentalist Muhammadan, and we need to organize our immigration laws with some reference to this problem. The idea of welcoming the alien doesn't call for inviting him to blow up Ellis Island en route to citizenship." Along similar lines, Patrick Buchanan wrote that "For a millennium, the struggle for mankind's destiny was between Christianity and Islam; in the 21st century, it may be so again. For, as the Shiites humiliate us, their co-religionists are filling up the countries of the West."

Despite genuine strides in recent years, Arab and Muslim Americans are one bombing away from being scapegoated to death, most clearly on right-wing talk radio stations. Just after a Palestinian shot several innocents atop the Empire State building in 1997, WGY in Albany, New York, featured a host, Mark Williams, spouting hatred against Palestinians. A Palestinian girl, Mariam, called to challenge him, resulting in this exchange:

Mariam: The Palestinians -- all of the Palestinians -- should not be accepted into this country?
Williams: Absolutely, they should not be.

Mariam: Why?

Williams: Because they are tree-swinging savages.

Mariam: My whole family is Palestinian. Right? I do not know one person in my whole family who would ever think of going and blowing up a bus. So what's your point?

Williams: Do you walk upright?

Mariam: What?

Williams: Do you walk upright?

The "Arab Mind" in the Media Mind

In spite of the paranoid, hysterical speculation frequently found in the U.S. media, a common refrain in the press is the alleged irrationality of Arab culture. As the U.S. was preparing for the Gulf War, a U.S. Information official, analyzing Arab opinion, told the New York Times that "Even though a story can be incredibly preposterous in the Western mind, it can resonate deeply in other parts of the world." He continued, "The key is predisposition to believe, not the crudity of the charge."

Richard Butler the executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission to disarm Iraq, was quoted as saying he is fascinated by "the wide variation there can be between cultures on what constitutes telling the truth." Mr. Butler explained that while he comes "from a Western intellectual and literary tradition that says truth is something rather objective," he suspects that "truth in some other cultures is kind of what you can get away with saying, and what you can get the crowd to believe" Henry Kissinger's comment that "you really can't believe anything an Arab says" summarized the view of many in the West.

The terms "Arabs say," or "Muslims say" are often used to cast doubt on things that are plainly true, as Linda Gradstien of NPR has reported that "Palestinians say" that they were forced from their homes in 1948, when that's been recognized by Israeli historians, to say nothing of journalists who seek to get beyond various claims. Similarly, when Serge Schmemann of The New York Times wrote of "Deir Yassin, a village near Jerusalem, in what Palestinians hold was a massacre of noncombatants," he implied that there is a legitimate denial of a massacre or that there is another side to the story.

The New York Times writes that "'Jihad' is sometimes translated as 'holy war,' but other Muslims insist that it encompasses all kinds of struggle." Apparently the resources of Times were too meager to confirm this. The mass media's frequently translate "jihad" simply as "holy war" though "effort," "striving," or "struggle" (or perhaps "crusade," with its ambiguities) would be more appropriate. Thus, the media become the mirror image of the most fanatical elements in the Muslim community who also limit their view of "jihad" to "holy war."

When the Iraqis had a demonstration/funeral, of children, CBS's John Roberts commented, "Saddam Hussein today used the deaths of dozens of children as a political weapon against he United Nations. Iraq says they died because of strict sanctions the country has been living under since the end of the Gulf War." Similarly, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski -- reporting from Baghdad -- described the opening of a children's hospital with these words: "Playing for world sympathy, Saddam also opened a children's hospital to foreign reporters to show what Iraq claims is the suffering inflicted by UN sanctions." Arab life is devalued by dehumanizing them as well as casting doubt on the facts.

Just before the Gulf War, the Judith Kipper of the Brookings Institution remarked to US News & World Report."We go in a straight line; they zig-zag" Kipper continued, "They can say one thing in the morning, another thing at night and really mean a third thing." This was part of an effort to prevent the possibility of a negotiated settlement to the Gulf Crisis, replayed in many respects in late 1997 and early 1998 as the U.S. once again threatened to bomb Iraq. The point is to avoid negotiated possibilities, so that dealing with Arabs with anything but violence seems foolish. One report on NBC News attempted to undermine diplomatic efforts by showing footage of carpet merchants, trying to demonstrate that negotiating with Arabs is like haggling in a bazaar. A common refrain is also that while some Arab governments might question US policy publicly, privately, they are saying something quite different.

The crude depiction of Arabs as deceitful renders the dearth of Arab or Arab American opinion in the American media more palatable. Since Arabs and Muslims are portrayed as irrational, backward, at times savage, why should any sensible person care what they think? Diversity of ethnicity is necessary, but not sufficient for a diverse newscast. Diversity of opinion is also needed. Unfortunately, the most cited Arab American in the U.S. media is an "Uncle Tom" of sorts, Fouad Ajami, of Johns Hopkins University, consultant to CBS News and good friend of Martin Perez (The New Republic) and Mort Zuckerman (US News & World Report).

As virtually the only Arab American with regular access to major media, Ajami "explains" Arab culture with such comments as, "We get lost in the twisted alleyways of the Middle Eastern bazaar" -- yet another attempt to dismiss negotiating with Arabs during the build up to the Gulf War. Ajami proved to be quite a broken record. When the US bombed Iraq in January of 1993, "the diplomatic bazaar is open" he said, and again, as the US was threatening more bombings in November of 1997, "The bazaar is open."

He dismissed Arab opposition to the U.S. war as "the Palestinian mob"and "some few gullible souls.demonstrating in Algeria." William Safire called Ajami the best commentator of the war "for the amazing way he reads the Arab mind." Ajami once commented that the difference between the two major branches of Islam is that "the Sunnis are homicidal and the Shiites are suicidal," showing that when distinctions are made among Arab and Muslim groups, it is often derogatory. At a fundraiser for illegal Israeli settlers he declared "I've never really wanted democracy in any Arab or Muslim country." He recounted a reluctant visit to Bedouin Arabs, "I insisted on only one thing: that I be spared the ceremony of eating with a Bedouin," he stressed. Incredibly, Ajami was brought on with "terrorism expert" Steven Emerson for CBS's hour-long special the night after the Oklahoma City bombing, anchored by John Roberts.

When the U.S. bombed Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, some raised questions about holes in the U.S. evidence, of alleged terror links to the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant, but Ajami was unswerving: "The evidence, the American evidence must be good."

Big Brother's Pop Culture

In American popular culture, Muslim Arabs are commonly depicted as savages, terrorist, ridiculously rich or over-sexed. Jack Shaheen, author of "The TV Arab" estimates there are from 25 to 30 negative depictions of Arabs or Muslims every week on US television, typically shown as "Bombers, Billionaires or Belly-dancers." These include repeats of sitcoms, movies and cartoons on cable TV. Arab Americans, Christian Arabs and non-Arab Muslims are largely invisible. A host of movies come out of Hollywood with Arab Muslim baddies, such as "Executive Decision" and "True Lies."

Perhaps the company that has inflicted the most egregious harm on Arabs is Disney. Throughout the mid-90's, the movie studio's vision of diversity seems to be that characters of various ethnicities and both genders get to slam Arabs. In 1997, Disney gave us "G.I. Jane" killing Libyans with her Navy SEAL comrades and Jackie Chan in "Operation Condor" slugging out Arabs. In 1996, "Kazaam" with Shaquille O'Neal had numerous Arab stereotypes; 1995 saw "Father of the Bride, Part II" with Steve Martin dealing with a grotesque Arab character throwing cash around and in 1994, "In the Army Now" showed G.I.'s clobbering desert Arabs, encouraging the Air Force to "blow the hell out of them." My father, who was fond of taking me to cartoons as a child, notes the irony of a company that got its start humanizing animals has made dehumanizing people a major endeavor.

Meanwhile there are virtually no positive Arab or Muslim American characterizations. The last regular character of Arab heritage was "Klinger" played by Jamie Farr on MASH. The character ran around dressed as a woman, an unusually positive portrayal of an Arab. The 1950s witnessed the last genuinely positive major Arab American character, Danny Thomas on "Make Room for Daddy." Combining Arab and Muslim Americans, you have 8 million Americans all invisible on TV, even as the medium is periodically lauded for its racial diversity.

The Arab is commonly depicted in popular culture as smelly, dirty, and dim-witted. In the late 80's and early 90's, Andrew Dice Clay thrilled crowds with: "You know, I'm cool with black dudes. I grew up with them, I can relate. We can hand out, play some basketball. But what about these people who aren't black, they're not white -- they're just sorta urine-colored. What am I going to say. 'Hey mom, I'm going to shoot some hoops with Ach-med?'" Clay's audience shouts in unison, "Look if you don't know the language, get the fuck out of the country." Thus, bigotry is directed against "generic" immigrants, lumping together Arabs, Muslims, Hindus, Latinos and other "miscellaneous" groups. Throughout the mid 1990's one of David Letterman's favorite themes was mocking immigrant New York City taxi drivers as "smelly cab drivers." His infamous "Top Ten" list once features the names that New York City cabbies have for their passengers. Among the entries were "Americans" and "Soapaholics."

The Fox TV series Married with Children featured this exchange between the main characters:

Husband: A Pakistani dirt vendor make more money than I do

. Wife: Yeah, but he probably smells better.

In early 1998, just as the Monica Lewinsky affair threatened to unravel Clinton's presidency, and Clinton was meeting with Netanyahu and Arafat, Rush Limbaugh told bestiality jokes about Arafat to his audience of millions: "Did you guys hear that Yasir Arafat gave Clinton some advice? Arafat said, 'Mr. President, goats don't talk'." These latent prejudices are then used by elites to further particular political ends. They make dehumanizing Arabs and Muslims rather easy in times of political turbulence.

But this view of smarmy Muslims is not confined to crude popular culture. Daniel Pipes, touted as a Mideast scholar wrote in the conservative National Review that "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene."

The February 1996 issue of the American Spectator had an article: "A Week in Ayatollahland" which has an almost unrelenting tone of condescension about the writer's recent visit to Iran: "In the doorways and lobby lounged the secret policemen; knots of seedy men with hard eyes. You could feel them watching as you walked through the lobby or waited for the elevator. They wore stained suits and collarless shirts buttoned up at the neck. They all needed a shave. They gave off an air of cruelty and stupidity."

The American Spectator continued, "Tehran is an ugly city of at least 6.5 million people." And "we sat down to a hearty lunch of rice, grilled chicken, vegetables, and some homemade wine. It was vinegary, but I pretended otherwise." It's not at all surprising that such a piece would appear in the American Spectator. What might surprise some is that the writer of the piece is Richard Carlson -- the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Public TV has developed a fondness for travel video diaries of a Westerner, typically a Brit, traveling through "exotic" Muslim countries. While these documentaries can be educational, they sometimes solidify stereotypes of backwardness. They also give a virtual monopoly of speech to the Western traveler, as the story is told in their words and through their eyes, the Arabs, Muslims and others are rendered mere props.

All Together Now

The paranoids and fanatics that Richard Hofstader was concerned with lumped together Freemasons, Catholics and Mormons as anti-American, despite the fact that these groups often disliked each other. "Yet their detractors did not hesitate to couple staunch foes." Hofstader notes, "The ecumenicism of hatred is a great breaker-down of precise intellectual discriminations." The same pattern holds for anti-Muslim paranoids in our day. After TWA 800, Jeffrey Hart of the Washington Times argued that the correct response is an "immediate" and "devastating attack" against a Mideastern country. "There is no reason not to treat Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya as a single entity."

Not only is Anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment itself rather indiscriminate, but it flows, in varying amounts and in different ways from virtually every quarter. Some use "Shiite" as synonym for "extremist nut," as when progressive columnist Molly Ivins chastises a "Shiite Republican" for being "mean, nasty and ideological." Thurgood Marshall once described the Nation of Islam as a group "run by a bunch of thugs organized from prison and jails and financed, I'm sure, by some Arab group."

The Categorization

Arab Muslims bear the brunt of manufactured anti-Muslim sentiments, as Arab Christians are viewed as more palatable. Time magazine, noting that Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi is a Christian, wrote that, "This woman looks civilized, unthreatening...She has a good ear for saying the right thing the right way, says a member of the peace delegation--not talking, as Palestinians are wont to do, out of two sides of her mouth." By depicting "good" Arabs as a novelty clearly "bad" Arabs are the norm.

Similarly, a Fortune article, "Indonesia on the Move," pointing out that it is the most populous predominantly Muslim country, stated that most Indonesians "claim to be Muslim, but they exhibit none of the fanaticism of Islamic fundamentalists in the Mideast."

There are a host of distortions and simplistic lumping together by the media, as Turks, Kurds and Persians are assumed to be Arabs and all Arabs are presumed to be Muslims. The Nation of Islam, whose membership is tiny compared to the number of African Americans who have embraced orthodox Islam, puts itself forward as representative of "Muslims." Thus, the day of the "Million Man March," Rush Limbaugh on over 600 radio stations read a document put out by the Nation of Islam entitled "What Muslims Believe" filled with gibberish about the racist origin of various ethnicities and flying saucers. The Nation of Islam garnishes attention from the mainstream totally disproportionate to its numbers. It was hardly for naught that Farrakhan during his speech at the "Million Man March" actually thanked the mass media for the attention they had given the event: "Thank you, mass media, too, because even though you planned it [the attention they gave the event] for mischief, God planned it for good." Such a tactic by the media of giving publicity to individuals or groups that are critical of the powers that be, but are fatally flawed, gives the illusion of diversity, but the larger effect is to discredit critics in general. They give a false choice between a horrible status quo and nutty "alternative." Similarly, during the Gulf War, virtually the only domestic critics of the war noted by the major media were flag burners.

The term "fundamentalism" itself is borrowed from self described Christian groups. It is generally used as a pejorative when dealing with Islam and is applied inconsistently. Its frequent proximity to "terrorist" implies that rigorous adherence to Islam entails a greater propensity towards violence. And the Saudi government is often described as "moderate" even though the "fundamentalist" label would be appropriate there if anywhere in Islam. [Generally, "Islamist" would be a better term for political movements that seek to establish a theocratic state as some wish to do with Christianity in the U.S.]

Depending on the Side They Are On

Anti-Muslim bigotry is held back when the Muslim faction in a conflict is a U.S. ally. In Afghanistan, the U.S. government and media backed the mujahidin in the 1980's since they were fighting the despised Soviets. Even into the 1990's, much of the West continued, for financial reasons, to back the Taliban. When Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country, invaded largely Catholic East Timor in 1975, it produced little outcry, suggesting that, racist tendencies are exploited for political ends, rather than actually driving policy. Even Islamist groups like Hamas were looked upon with some favor when they serve the interests of a party in the West. For example, in 1989, Clinton Bailey wrote an op-ed for the New York Times headlined "An Alternative to the P.L.O. -- Fundamentalists" in which he argued that "Surprisingly, these fundamentalists may hold the key to a Middle East peace settlement." As Bailey wrote, Hamas's "leaders express no doubt that an armed clash [with the PLO] will ultimately come," and thus helping them would divide the Palestinian ranks. During the 1980's, the Israelis actually did back Hamas in various ways, helping set up an infrastructure of Islamic institutions that led to Hamas gaining favor with the Palestinian population and undermining the secular P.L.O.

Typically, however, groups like Hamas are viewed solely as terrorist groups though they support medical and other community services. At times the valid criticism that Islamists groups are not democratic is used to justify their not being able to participate in the democratic process. Judith Miller noted without irony that the Egyptian government has questioned the "sincerity of the Muslim Brotherhood's commitment both to the democratic process and to freedom of expression if and when they should be permitted to participate officially and legally in an election." One could instead ask if the Egyptian government itself has any serious democratic credentials, for example, it had banned the organization Solidarity of Arab Women just after the Gulf War.

The "Other" Minority -- "Us" vs. "Them"

Since defaming Arabs and Muslims comes from virtually every media quarter, they are "the other." They are the "them." After the Oklahoma City bombing, media critic James Ledbetter noted that "On April 20 [1995], the [Daily] News frontpage headline blared, 'they blew up the babies,' and the top of each inside page carried the banner 'they killed the kids.'" The following day, when the suspects in the Oklahoma City bombing were being described as "white males," the "they" disappeared as the headline subject. Rush Limbaugh had similar intonations of "you people" as the culprits of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Following the TWA 800 disaster, Charles Grodin began his program by attacking "Them": "They blow up 241 Marines in Lebanon. They blow up 19 airmen in Saudi Arabia. Two hundred and thirty people are blown up in the plane over New York." Grodin continued: "What religion puts you closer to what God that you're responsible for blowing up 230 people?" What religion could Grodin have in mind? After declaring "It's a war!" Grodin shouted, "We don't stand for this! We will not! People will pay a price if they want to come after us." Nor should we waste any time investigating the matter: "Unless we move quickly on these people, we let them think they can get away with this and move more quickly on us."

After the suspects in the Oklahoma City bombing were arrested, there was some recognition that the media had done something wrong, but that did not mean that they were giving Muslim and Arab Americans a fair shake. The sub-head of Jonathan Alter's column in Newsweek stated "'John Doe' is one of us." It still had not dawned on many that Arabs and Muslims are part of America -- "they" are "us."

To many "we" don't even worship the same God as "them." The (Glasgow) Herald reports that the boxer "Tyson is praying to his new god, Allah." Of course, "Allah" is just the Arabic word for God --it is used by Christian Arabic speakers. Journalists, do a severe disservice when they do not translate "Allah" to "God," as they are translating only portions of Arabic statements. The journal America went so far as to refer to "the conflict between the will of Allah and the will of God," rendering the "Muslim God" not just different from, but in opposition to the "Jewish/Christian God."

Towards a New Crusade

If there is an "us" and there is a "them," then we should fight. That seems to be the conclusion of former cold warriors like Samuel Huntington of Harvard University who anticipates and seems at points to encourage "The Coming Clash of Civilizations." Writes Huntington, "Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years. This centuries-old military interaction is unlikely to decline." Huntington continues, "The West must also limit the expansion of the military strength of potential hostile civilizations... This will require a moderation in the reduction of Western military capabilities, and, in particular, the maintenance of American military superiority in East and Southwest Asia." One can hear lobbyists for General Dynamics breath a sigh of relief, since a new rationalization has been found for the U.S. taxpayers to foot an enormous military bill.

One can see threads of Huntington's thinking throughout the major media. Here's CNBC pundit and syndicated columnist Christopher Matthews after the TWA 800 crash, which the Arizona Republic ran under the headline, "TWA Terrorism Deals Blow to 21st Century Confidence," as Matthews argued that the crash marked the beginning of a new age:

Before this, we were coasting toward the millennium with the reasonable assurance that the century's great menace totalitarianism had been slain. Now we sit, awaiting the next century, fully warned that it comes with a menace perhaps more frightening than its predecessor.

Its name is terrorism. Instead of wars between nations, we will now face wars among peoples. Instead of the neat military competition between armies, Flight 800 shows us vulnerable to something far messier: bloody assaults by a political or religious faction against an entire people.

Such attacks are not so easy to trace or to punish. A group in one land, financed by a second, may strike at a third. There are numerous candidates for the first of these two elements, with the USA playing its predictable, if passive, role as the third.

The U.S. devastates Iraq, places sanctions against Iraq, Libya, Iran, and the Sudan, destabilizes some regimes in the region; while arming others and generally calls the shots; yet the U.S. is still deemed by Matthews as "passive." After each incident it is as if innocence is suddenly lost -- as though all was well with the world until these unexplainable attacks against America. So now, in dire straits, we must lash out. This can be portrayed as a reasonable course of action only because the pain that the U.S. has inflicted on Arab and Muslim countries is masked by the major media. There is an overwhelming impression given by the major media that the U.S. has been the victim in its relations with Arab and Muslim countries. History seems to begin with an "Arab crime." While the bombing of a U.S. embassy prompts some media outlets to publish all previous attacks on U.S. targets in the Mideast, when the U.S. "retaliates," few outlets think to list all the previous times that the U.S. has bombed Arab countries.

This is part of a general context that portrays the U.S. government as a benevolent player on the world stage. Mort Zuckerman of U.S. News, for example, took the occasion of the U.S. bombing Afghanistan and Sudan in August of 1998 to claim in an editorial entitled, "It's time to fight back" that "We extend the hand of friendship and aid across the globe."

Still, the media's jumping to conclusions about Arabs and Muslims being culprits is tied not only to stereotypes of them as terrorists but also a deep-seated guilt over what the U.S. government has done to the Arab people. The media, and the people of the U.S., at some level see that through government policies, the U.S.'s Mideast policy is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arabs, for the exploitation of natural resources and for installing repressive regimes. The "jumping to conclusions" has a ring of a criminal fearing that he has been caught. There is an expectation that retribution will be sought.

Islam is often depicted as having no cultural or literary value, rather to many it is noteworthy only as a menace. Dinesh D'souza of the American Enterprise Institute argues that "Young people need to know something about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism which may be the only serious ideological rival to liberal democracy in today's world. To know about Islamic fundamentalism [it] helps to read the Koran." Are there no other, more compelling, reasons to read the Koran than enemy research? Not for literary value, for cultural understanding for spiritual growth?

Irrational Hatred

The line "clash of civilizations" gained currency in an essay from the Atlantic "The Roots of Muslim Rage" by Bernard Lewis, who attempts to obscure injustices perpetrated by the U.S. against Muslims such as the 1953 reinstallation of the Shah of Iran by the CIA, or that agency's setting off a car bomb in Lebanon, or the USS New Jersey's bombing of Lebanon, or the shoot down by the USS Vincennes of an Iranian civilian airliner, or the illegal bombings of Libya or the almost weekly bombing of Lebanon by Israel, to name a few. Lewis maintains that the real source of "Muslim rage" is a "rejection of Western civilization as such, not only what it does but what it is, and the principles and values that it practices and professes."

A New York Times "Week in Review" front page story, "The Red Menace is Gone -- But Here's Islam" framed the debate between John Esposito of the Georgetown Center for Christian Muslim Understanding and Bernard Lewis. While Esposito basically argues that Muslims are just like anyone else, with human strengths and weaknesses, Lewis holds that Muslims' culture likely makes them threatening, beings out to rampage against us. In the U.S. media system, the truth is generally regarded as being somewhere in the middle. While Lewis is frequently cited and shapes the political discussion about the Mideast, Esposito and his colleague, Yvonne Haddad -- though they are consistently cited by religion writers -- are regularly excluded by the agenda-setting political media. Similarly, such articles as "The Phony Islamic Threat" in The New York Times Magazine by Edward Said are exceptions that virtually prove the rule.

In the summer of 1993, after the U.S. once again attacked Iraq for an alleged plot to assassinate George Bush and more arrests surrounding the World Trade Center bombing were made, George Will on This Week with David Brinkley asked, "Isn't the root cause [of 'Islamic terrorism'] the existence of the West?" Later, Sam Donaldson warned of "a Muslim fundamentalism that hates the West, to a large extent, and spawns a lot of groups now. And we're not going to be able to do anything but continue to fight it where we find it and try to safeguard our shores. But we can't stop it in one fell swoop."

David Brinkley chimed in: "All the evidence is they hate us. We drink. We are licentious and we're all kinds of things they detest, or say they do." George Will added, "Well, we also have democracy and human rights and other things -- totally strange to their region.",br> Brinkley concluded, "Which they hate."

After he ordered scores of cruise missiles strikes at Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Clinton stated from the Oval office that the U.S. is a target of terrorism because it is noble:

America is and will remain a target of terrorists precisely because we are leaders; because we act to advance peace, democracy and basic human values; because we're the most open society on earth; and because, as we have shown yet again, we take an uncompromising stand against terrorism. Mort Zuckerman wrote along similar lines, crediting Lewis:

As Bernard Lewis, a historian of Islam, points out, the hatred springs not from this or that American policy in defense of Israel's right to exist, for instance but rather as the inevitable consequence of America's leadership of the West. To the fanatics, Western ideas are seen as a threat to Muslim life, Muslim society, and eventually the Muslim family

. This theme resonated through the culture. The "why" question rarely gets asked, as in why have U.S. embassies been targeted, but not Canadian embassies? Just about the closest the major media got was Jack Ford of NBC's "Today" show asking Richard Haass of the Brookings Institute, and formerly of the Bush administration, "Richard, what is it that these terrorists want from the United States? Why have we become such a target for them?" Haass replied:

Well, the answer is it's not anything we're simply doing. It is who we are, Jack. It's the fact that we're the most powerful country in the world. It's the fact that we're a secular country. It's the fact we do support Israel. It's the fact that we're rich and powerful. So, again, there is no way we can placate them. It is simply who we are and it is our existence that really bothers them, and it is a fact of life now.

Thus, the attempt to lead the American public down a horrible path with virtually no discussion of the policies that their government is exercising in the Mideast. American citizens can continue to be killed, have their civil liberties restricted, risk wars, but no examination of the U.S. policy will ensue.

The subtext is that there can be no peaceful co-existence between the West and Islam because of the alleged inherent intolerance of the Muslim world. This makes "Arab American" and "American Muslim" seem like oxymorons -- since "American" (open, democratic, noble) seems opposed to both "Arab" and "Muslim" (sinister, authoritarian, sleezy). The promotion of this sentiment further inhibits Arab and Muslim Americans, who can be a large part of the solution, from expressing their views.

The link between the timing of terrorist attacks by Arabs and U.S. or Israeli policies is constantly obscured. The bombing of Pan Am 103, if the U.S. government allegation that it was the work of Libyan agents is to be believed, would have to be seen as retaliation for the U.S. bombing of Lybia. Similarly, the Hamas bombings of 1997 against Israel were clearly sparked by the Israeli assassination of the Hamas leader and bomb maker known as "the engineer."

Damned if you do...

Often "they" just can't win. When the U.S. media are out do demonize a certain group, no matter what they do, it will be viewed negatively. On This Week with David Brinkley Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia was chastised for not clamping down on his population enough by Cokie Roberts -- and then immediately criticized for not being more democratic by George Will. Asked Roberts, "Will the [Saudi] government...crack down on this anti-Western attitude and anti-Western behavior?" The next moment, George Will argued "There's something radically wrong in the Middle East by in the fact that we're still awaiting the first Arab democracy. Why? What is there about Arab culture that seems hostile to democracy?"

American commentators almost simultaneously demand that Arab governments be more and less democratic. This is particularly true of attitudes towards Palestinians. For example, in early 1997, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times argued that Arafat should autocratically round up every Hamas radical he could get his hands on as a condition for continuing the Oslo process. Then, a month later, he bemoaned Arafat's despotic rule, claiming that "Arab political culture" was the cause of the Palestinian Authority's anti-democratic practices while maintaining that the Oslo process actually fosters democratic principles. Apparently to the media, Islamist movements should be denied basic rights. Applying democratic principles selectively is itself exceedingly undemocratic.

For a time the practice of female genital mutilation was viewed as evidence of barbaric Islamic behavior as when the New York Times referred to "the ritual of female genital mutilation in some Muslim countries." After a while, the message got through that this was a cultural, not a religious, practice done in some parts of Africa and Asia by people of many faiths. But this fact was exploited to further anti-Islamic sentiments when the media mantra became that Muslims are persecuting Christians. The Washington Times reported under the headline "Rights activists protest persecution of Christians in lands around globe," that female Christians are "sometimes forced to undergo female 'circumcision' and have their genitals mutilated," without noting that this was done by Christian relatives -- not evidence of "radical Muslim" persecution at all.

After the bomb and missile theories for the TWA 800 disaster both seemed to fizzle out, some media outlets noted that there was indeed a precedent for a 747 blowing up in mid air a plane belonging to the Shah's air force had blown up in 1975 and the flight that would become TWA 800, a sister ship of that plane, was also part of the Shah's fleet. Fox News Channel used this to portray Iran as suspect in the case asking why a U.S. carrier would buy a plane from an unfriendly nation like Iran without noting that this all happened under the allied Shah regime.

Invisible Populations

"They" are often invisible. That is the crux of the Zionist myth -- "a land without a people for a people without a land," rendering the Palestinian people invisible. At a fundraiser for illegal Israeli settlers, CBS's Dan Rather called "Jerusalem of Gold" one of his "favorite poems." This work proclaims that prior to the 1967 war, "no one goes down to the Dead Sea by way of Jericho," treating Arabs as non-entities many people went to the Dead Sea by way of Jerico but they were Palestinians. Similar myths were echoed during the celebrations of Israel at 50. On a special on CBS, Clinton talked of Israel "making a once-barren desert bloom." Gore, speaking in Israel, talked of both the U.S. and Israel taming their "frontier." Along similar lines, talk of "our oil" implicitly reduces the significance of the people above it.

Domestically, the Clinton administration has made some outreach to the Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S. As Clinton ordered missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan in August of 1998, he commented:

I want you to understand, I want the world to understand that our actions today were not aimed against Islam, the faith of hundreds of millions of good, peace-loving people all around the world, including the United States. No religion condones the murder of innocent men, women and children. But our actions were aimed at fanatics and killers who wrap murder in the cloak of righteousness.

It was clearly a double-edged sword for the president to mention Islam under the circumstances -- though he too could be accused of wrapping "murder in the cloak of righteousness." In any case, at best the words rang hollow -- since Bill Clinton had not been to a mosque in the U.S. or spoken to an American Muslim group. Just a few months earlier, on May 7, 1998, Clinton spoke to the Arab American Institute, saying he was "disappointed" that he was the first sitting president to address an Arab American conference. How could Clinton say that his actions were not against Islam when the context of U.S. culture and his actions treats Islam in such an unwelcome way. Though there have been proclamations from the White House during Muslim holidays, and Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken part in ceremonies, no Muslim leader was allowed to speak at the commemoration for the victims in Oklahoma City.

Arabs are not part of "the people" in presumably democratic Israel when Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, Rush Limbaugh and William Safire all argue that the 1996 Israeli election was not really close, since Netanyahu got a substantial majority of the Jewish vote. This is akin to a KKK member arguing that George Bush really won the 1992 U.S. election, since he got a majority of votes from white males

. George Will picks up a similar theme, the "Jordan is Palestine" thesis, when he writes that "Jordan is geographically, historically and ethnically a Palestinian state." Will continues, "Israel lives in a bad neighborhood which has been inhospitable since Jewish immigration into sparsely populated Palestine accelerated after the Russian pogroms of 1881." (This offers a variation of the "Holocaust justifies Israel" view pogroms justify Jewish immigration.)

The "Jordan is Palestine" motif recalls the plight of the Miami Native Americans, of the Ohio who were removed to and from whom Miami got its name. The "sparsely populated" myth has resonance not only in the conquest of the Western Hemisphere, but also in the Nazi expansion. Indeed, the historian Arnold Toynbee once observed that it was the same "biblically recorded conviction of the Israelites that God had instigated them to exterminate the Canaanites" that sanctioned the British conquest of North America, Ireland and Australia, the Dutch conquest of South Africa, the Prussian conquest of Poland, and the Zionist conquest of Palestine.

Former New York City mayor Ed Koch on his WABC radio program has claimed that Arabs arrived in Palestine "700 years ago," which would mean that the Crusaders fought no body. Sometimes, Arabs are not invisible, but their population is deemed a worry to major media figures, as when Dan Rather, at a fundraiser for Jewish settlers in Jerusalem, articulated concern about a "population explosion" among Palestinians and the negative effects that may have on Israel.

Invisible Casualties

"They" are most invisible in death, or at least marginalized and justified. George Will in a piece entitled "Honing Our Consciences Too Fine" writes that "the US raid on Libya cost lives but probably saved more." The endless talk in the media of "Palestinian terrorism" and "Israeli security" -- usually referred to simply as "terrorism" and "security" -- is based on the implicit assumption that Israelis are not responsible for terrorism and that Palestinians don't need security. That is, the frequent media depiction is that Israelis want peace and Palestinian lives don't count for much.

As the U.S. began bombing Iraq in 1991, Ted Koppel proclaimed, "great effort is taken, sometimes at great personal cost to American pilots, that civilian targets are not hit." The unstated but obvious truth, as Jim Naureckas of Extra!, pointed out, was that "by carrying out an air war that was unprecedented in its ferocity, US strategy sought to reduce US military losses at the expense of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties." And a week later on a day when clear weather allowed 2,000 bombing runs over Iraq, Koppel reported that "Aside from the Scud missile that landed in Tel Aviv earlier, it's been a quiet night in the Middle East."

NBC's Dennis Murphy concluded a segment on video evidence of victims provided by the Iraqi government by taking a tone that was ubiquitous in the media: "until we get some Western reporters and photographers in there to vouch for it, I think we'll have to call it propaganda." Anchor Garrick Utley agreed: "That's a pretty good name for it." When reporter Jon Alpert did get into Iraq and was able to confirm civilian casualties, NBC president Michael Gartner ordered that his footage not be aired -- and then banned Alpert from working for the network ever again.

The loss of Iraqi life is often written off without batting an eyelash: A 1992ABC News report on Americans killed by "friendly fire" in Iraq featured a US General saying of the gunners: "I think they made a dumb mistake. They didn't kill someone intentionally." Of course, they were trying to kill Iraqis -- but they don't qualify as "someone." When Clinton bombed Iraq in the Summer of 1993, Jim Stewart of CBS remarked that "The problem with bombing is that you don't always know if you destroyed everything you aimed at" -- not, apparently that you might destroy things you were not aiming at. A similar neglect of human life was evident in Tom Aspell's report from Baghdad that "the sanctions are only now taking effect." In fact, The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that more than 46,000 Iraqi children died from the combined effects of war and trade sanctions in the first part of 1991 alone.

It should be noted that the media are not always subservient to government policies. Clinton's own continuation of Bush Iraq policy is largely the creation of the major media. Just as Clinton was coming into office, he stated: "I am a Baptist. I believe in deathbed conversions," suggesting that he would judge Saddam Hussein by his actions, and if Hussein abided by UN mandates, Clinton could actually move toward not only lifting the sanctions, but actually normalizing relations. This was immediately attacked by the major media, most notably Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Clinton, in typical form, realized that he had crossed a line set by the establishment and backed off, "There is no difference in policy," from the Bush administration Clinton said, "I have no intention of normalizing relations with him, and I was not asked that question."

As the U.S. threatened to bomb Iraq in late 1997, the media continued to view dying Iraqi civilians as propaganda points for Saddam Hussein and as a political liability for the U.S. since its one time allies were experiencing "sanctions fatigue," given the UNICEF estimates of over half a million dead Iraqi children. In perhaps the most disturbing trait of the U.S. media, it did not give these people significant coverage -- it was as though their suffering had no inherent news value. Virtually the only time Iraqis were shown on TV was when they gathered at Saddam Hussein's palaces. Similarly, in August of 1998, as evidence emerged that the U.S. government was putting out false information to justify its missile strike against a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, it was often deemed more a "propaganda" victory for the Sudan than a scandal for the U.S. government. The Washington Post reported on the Sudanese government's "gleaming public relations opportunity." In such instances, the term "propaganda" itself became an instrument of propaganda.

Not only were Iraqi civilians continuously forgotten throughout the 1990s, but so was any hint of the incredible damage that the U.S. has inflicted on Iraq. Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post wrote that "Except for the 100 hours of Desert Storm in 1991, the U.S. and its allies have treated Saddam's regime as an acceptable evil." Similarly, Richard Cohen claimed "The war lasted, you will recall, just 100 hours." The forty days and forty nights of the U.S. raining down death on Iraq -- the largest conventional bombardment of all time -- were simply "forgotten" by these two gentlemen, to say nothing of the additional attacks in 1993 and 1996, never mind the sanctions. They only recalled the "ground war" -- possibly because that was the only time that there was the slightest chance of more than nominal U.S. casualties.

Few commentators are as blood thirsty as Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post who denounces Clinton as a "weak president" for merely launching "absurd pinpricks," like "bombing an empty building at night," since such a technique would lessen the chances for some gore that this former physician apparently craves.

Holy War

It is however, apparently Muslim Arabs who worship the idea of war. A Washington Post editorial entitled "The Next Terrorist" posits that Libya and Iran "have made an ideology out of their defiance of international norms." Similarly Martin Kramer in The New Republic argued that the Lebanese group Hizbollah's "attacks against Israel's security zone constituted a jihad against the very idea of peace." Kramer accepts Israel's Orwellian term "security zone" for its illegal occupation of southern Lebanon, and then turns the situation on its head, as Israel had just conducted a terrorist attack against Hizbollah, killing a leading cleric and his family

. In the days building up to the start of the Gulf War, Billy Graham visited the White House as Bush called for a "crusade," asserting that the US is "on the side of God," Bush's "pro-life" concerns caused him to proclaim the first Sunday that the U.S. bombed Iraq "Sanctity of Life Day." He called on "all Americans to reflect on the sanctity of life in all its stages and to gather in homes and places of worship to give thanks for the gift of life and to reaffirm our commitment to respect the life and the dignity of every human being." Iraqis apparently did not qualify. When a church goer rose to protest the killing of Iraqis at a church Bush was attending and the rest of the congregation stood up singing "God Bless America" to drown him out, it drew little attention.

In 1993, Clinton ordered missile attacks on Iraq, hitting the al-Rashid hotel and killing the well-known Iraqi artist Layla al-Attar and a man found with his baby son in his arms. On his way to church the next day, Clinton said, "I feel quite good about what transpired and I think the American people should fell good about it." The much revered David Brinkley later recalled on NPR's Talk of the Nation that the Gulf War was "In the service of the Lord." Thomas Freidman wrote that "Saddam Hussein is the reason God created cruise missiles," leaving open the question as to what God Mr. Friedman was referring.

There are of course opportunities for those protesting U.S. policy. On February 22, 1998, as the U.S. prepared to attack Iraq once again, a group of protestors gathered outside the church where Clinton was worshiping. The resulting AP story noted: "while a preacher was inside urging President Clinton to face up the 'the bullies of the world', about two dozen people stood outside the Foundry Methodist Church on Sunday and reminded the president...'Hey Mr. Bill, thou shalt not kill'."

The Invisible Bigotry

Bigotry against "them" is itself so acceptable, that it is rarely recognized as such. When Clinton delivered his speech in San Diego in the summer of 1997, launching his commission on race relations, he referred to events after the Oklahoma City bombing as a great, shining example of what racial harmony should be like in the US, as the hatred against Arabs and Muslims in the days following the bombing went down the memory hole.

Much has been made of the persecution of Christians in various countries, especially predominantly Islamic countries and China. This movement has put religious persecution before other forms and it has focused on persecution of Christians rather than people of any other religion, largely ignoring, for example, Muslims in China -- or Europe. There have been bogus accusations against the Palestinian authority persecuting Christians -- ignoring the obvious fact that Arafat's wife is Christian. In one of his columns on this subject, A. M. Rosenthal of the New York Times, while condemning China, wrote that he hopes that "Israel shows the US the path to righteousness by ending arms trade with China." Apparently, this was the most that could be said of Israel on the question of persecution of Christians. This even as a rather notable Christian community, Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem, do not have the rights they would have if they were Jewish. Muslims and Christians throughout the West Bank have their land confiscated, homes destroyed and are restricted in their movement, including going to worship in Jerusalem.

Indeed, the theocratic, ethnic basis of Israel is regularly ignored. The "who is a Jew debate" compelled The Nation to run a headline, "Identity Politics Comes to the Knesset." The Law of Return and other discriminatory aspects of Israel -- like the prohibiting of non-Jewish citizens of Israel from owning or leasing property in 90 percent of Israel -- are not recognized as the bigotry they are. The New York Times when discussing disagreements among Jews writes that "No nation, least of all Israel, should discriminate against a religious minority," but The Times does not see that Arab Christians and Muslims are discriminated against. The "who is a Jew" debate should be a cause for criticizing the edifice that gives people of one religion more rights than others, not as an opportunity to argue the legalism of who qualifies for membership in the privileged group. Part of the media's subtext is that a "Jewish state" is a good thing -- something to receive sympathy and support, while a "Muslims state" is a danger.

Anti-Arab statements against Arabs by the Nation of Islam are commonly overlooked. While Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam looks down on whites, Jews and Arabs, the latter receives little attention. For example, when Khalid Abdul Muhammed, then an official of the Nation of Islam, spewed such statements as "Who is sucking our blood in the black community? A white imposter Arab and a white imposter Jew," his anti-Jewish, anti-white prejudices where portrayed as the leading source of bigotry in the U.S. and were made the subjects of Nightline programs and Time magazine spreads, but his anti-Arab rantings received little note.

While Louis Farrakhan is branded only as anti-Jewish, Pat Robertson is let off the hook by the likes of Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, largely because he is pro-Israeli. Abraham Foxman of the Anti Defamation League wrote that "While Mr. Robertson's conspiratorial flights are indeed troubling, important distinctions between Mr. Robertson and Mr. Farrakhan can and should be drawn. Mr. Farrakhan's preachings derive from racial hatred; clearly, Mr. Robertson's do not." Such statements can be made only because there is a pecking order of bigotry and the brazen anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Hindu bigotry that Robertson has expressed is not viewed as seriously as his coded anti-Jewish sentiments

. Others, such as liberal New York Times columnist Frank Rich and former conservative Michael Lind, document Robertson's coded anti-Jewish tendencies, but they too make no mention of Robertson's far more brazen anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Hindu bigotry. Lind chastises the Republican establishment at length for not denouncing Robertson for his anti-Jewish views, but Lind himself totally ignores Robertson's more obvious bigotries.

A former business associate of Pat Robertson says he once "banged his fist on the table and said: 'You can never trust the Arabs. Those sand niggers are worse than the Jews, you just can't trust them with money.'" It should be noted that Pat Robertson denies making that statement, but he also denied saying that Muslims and Hindus shouldn't be trusted with public office. Then, according to Vanity Fair, People for the American Way produced a video tape of him saying it. So the Reverend changed his story. "When I said during my presidential bid that I would only bring Christians and Jews into the government, I hit a firestorm," Robertson wrote in his book The New World Order. In fact, there is barely a mention about this fact in any major American newspaper. Robertson explained:

If anybody understood what Hindus really believe, there would be no doubt that they have no business administering government polices in a country that favors freedom and equality.. Can you imagine having the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as defense minister, or Mahatma Gandhi as minister of health, education and welfare?

When Muslims requested that Islamic symbols be placed along side Christian and Jewish symbols in Grand Central Station in New York in December of 1995, Metro North decided to forgo plurality and remove all the religious symbols. Pat Robertson twisted the facts, claiming that the Muslims "want to take away Christmas." While observant Muslims often begin speaking by saying "God, the compassionate, the merciful," Robertson claims that they worship "not the kind of compassionate, loving God that we have in Christianity who cares for his people, and who is active in the affairs of people to answer their prayers."

Terrorism

No term has done more to smear Muslims and Arabs than the selective use of the term "terrorist." Religion is viewed as an explanation for terrorism in the case of Muslims, but in the case of Christians and Jews, their violence is viewed if anything, as having taken place despite their religion. There was shock, for example, after the assassination of Yitsak Rabin that "Jew kills Jew"-- as if such a thing had never occurred.

When the State Department released the list of "terrorist organizations" and spokesperson James Rubin was asked why activities by the Mossad do not qualify that organization for inclusion, given that it had just attempted an assassination with chemical agents in Jordan, he responded that "United States has long made it a practice of not second-guessing the Israeli government when it comes to the decisions in the fight against terror." Note how Rubin's statement shifts the "terror" label from Israel being the perpetrator to Israel as the victim.

When a Jewish settler/soldier terrorized Palestinians at a Hebron vegetable market, the Newsweek picture caption under Friedman shooting up Palestinian civilians was "Jewish Terror?" The question mark reveals Newsweeks disbelief that such a thing could exist. While violent acts by Palestinians are almost always taken as proof of a collective propensity, violence by Jews or American Christians are viewed as personal glitches.

The Washington Post described the settler in a headline this way: "Israeli Soldier Opposed to Accord." And what does the use of those five words instead of the single "T" word accomplish? It gives Friedman's actions some explanation, if not excuse. Palestinians are rarely afforded that same understanding. And unlike Noam Friedman, rarely are their names mentioned -- thus denying them a degree of humanity.

Here's Jim Lehrer on the PBS's NewsHour after the Hebron attack refraining from using the word "terrorism" to describe Friedman's actions, but using it about the potential for an attack from Palestinians: "Militant Palestinian groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have vowed to avenge the Hebron shooting. In Washington, a State Department spokesman warned Americans traveling in Israel and the West Bank of increased threats of terrorist attacks." Similarly, the day Israel intentionally kill over 100 innocent people in a UN shelter in Qana, Lebanon, Ted Koppel framed his Nightline program this way: "Imagine, for a moment, what a group like Hizbollah might do in the wake of today's Israeli attack on Lebanon, more than 100 Lebanese civilians dead. Imagine what Hizbollah would do if, instead of Katyusha rockets, it had access to a small nuclear device?" And so, imaginary Hizbollah atrocities took precedent over real Israeli ones.

While the prospect of an "Islamic bomb" from Iraq, Iran or Pakistan has caused much consternation, Israel's 200 to 400 nuclear weapons are rarely noted. At times, they are omitted from maps that supposedly indicate weapons of mass destruction in the Mideast. Like children with fire, Muslims are not to be trusted with such weapons. The perceived irrationality of Muslims comes into play here, as it is often inferred that while deterrence worked with a "rational" enemy such as the Soviet Union, the same will not work with "fundamentalist Muslims."

"Islam" and "terrorism" are often a couplet in media-speak. The Daily News reported that investigators in the TWA 800 bombing are "checking on everybody from Islamic terrorists to Serbian nationalists." The News did not refer to "Islamic radicals to Serbian terrorists." Sometimes, even when the most prominent members of the political establishment label others "terrorists," much of the media still do not adopt the term. The bombing of family planning clinics lead to the Washington Post headline: "Dole Says Clinic 'Terrorism' Calls for Tough U.S. Action." Similarly, government findings about the rash of church burnings in 1996 led to the New York Times headline: "Links Sought in an 'Epidemic of Terror'." Terrorism from domestic, "understandable," sources rarely made it out of the quotation marks. When the B'nai B'rith headquarters in Washington, DC were evacuated during Passover of 1997 because a note was found in a package claiming to contain anthrax and two mailroom clerks fell ill, it was a one-day story. It is safe to say that it would have received more coverage, and would have been remembered by the media, had it been done by a Muslim group, rather than an extremist Jewish group.

Similar biases appear among scholars as well. For example, Martin Marty, head of the Fundamentalist Project, dramatically underestimated the violence of Christian-identity groups. On NPR's Fresh Air, after showing concern about violence from Muslims, he stated that "Some of the abortion fronts in America that block clinics and so on are self-described fundamentalists and they're militant, but I think they'd just as soon not kill anyone along the way." Such groups had already been involved in violent attacks on abortion clinics and a year later, anti-abortion extremist Paul Hill who had been a guest on Nightline and other programs, murdered a doctor who preformed abortions.

Terrorists professing to work on behalf of Christianity receive very little scrutiny, and are allowed to frame much of the debate. The media adopt the term "anti-abortion," thus giving the terrorists cause. Media outlets do not call Hamas "anti-Zionist." No TV anchor calls Hizbollah "anti-imperialist." They are simply called "terrorists," and "opponents of peace." They are written off as deranged people practicing a freak faith and have no legitimate concerns or rationales that any thinking person could relate to.

Arab victims of terrorism are all but invisible in U.S. media. When Israel bombs civilians in Lebanon, as it has done on a weekly basis for twenty years, the media don't label that as "terrorism" -- after all, the victims -- not the perpetrators are Arabs. Even when Arabs are terrorized in the U.S. it does not get the coverage it deserves. In 1985, Alex Odeh, the regional director of the ADC was killed by a terrorist bomb planted in his office in Orange Country by members of the Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League. In 1995, in the wake of the media rush to judgement in the Oklahoma City bombing, thugs threw stones, shattering the windows of Saher Al-Saidi's home in Oklahoma City. Al-Saidi, a refugee from Iraq, was seven months pregnant and internal bleeding her baby was still born. Media coverage has real consequences.

Perhaps the ultimate stereotype of Arab as violent perpetrator is the "Arab as Nazi" parallel, which is used occasionally by the most diehard pro-Israeli commentators. In a discussion about a possible visit by Arafat to the Holocaust Museum, guest Tom Oliphant of the Boston Globe said that he "can't imagine a person who needs to go through that building more than Yasser Arafat" -- apparently forgetting that there is a Nazi party in the US. Widely-syndicated columnist Cal Thomas then claimed, without citing evidence, that Arafat has "aligned himself in many of his speeches with what Hitler did." Thomas then continued about Arafat:

He doesn't need to go to the Holocaust museum to find out what it's all about. He knows what it's all about and this is part of the difficulty in dealing with this region. It's the idea that Yasser Arafat and people in the Middle East have the same moral structure as the rest of us and if we could just get them to the table, they are just like us. They have one head, two eyes, some of them even speak in English and because we're reasonable and decent people and we can disagree across a table, everybody must be like that. Yasser Arafat is one of the most evil men on the world's stage today.

Note the moral equivalence between the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination and the Nazi holocaust. Even more telling, Cal Thomas actually adopts a central precept of Nazism by categorizing a certain group (note, "people in the Middle East") as inferior to others.

Double Anti-Semitism

Robert Fisk of the London Independent has said, "I could believe, I think, if I spent my life in London or Washington that the Arabs were ungrateful souls, that the broken people of Bosnia deserved each other, that compassion fatigue was excusable in cities whose security and isolation of pity would be unimaginable to a medieval, even a 19th century mind." Unfortunately, many reporters have spent a good deal of time in the Mideast have continued to cling to such notions

. When a Jew commits a terrorist act, we do not see the anti-Jewish sentiment to parallel the anti-Arab attitude we see in the major media when an Arab commits such an act. Instead, what often arises in the media landscape is a deriding of both peoples -- a certain "double anti-Semitism" motif. So, for example, Bob Simon on CBS ended a report on an Israeli soldier shooting at Palestinians in a vegetable market by saying that Hebron "measures its past not in years, but in massacres." The image presented of the Mideast is of two peoples forever at each others throats, tied to primitive hatreds, with the (Christian) U.S. tirelessly attempting to convince the parties that peace and reason are the best option. Rarely touched upon is the history of when Muslims, Jews and Christians lived relatively peaceably side-by-side in Palestine well before Israel was founded, as well as other areas often under Muslim rule.

The U.S. government is frequently depicted as "peacemaker," "striving for Mideast peace," even as it bombs or threatens Iraq. Edward Peck, a former US ambassador to Iraq, offered this analysis on NBC without irony just as the US began the Gulf War. He depicts Muslims as backward and unforgiving, unlike the Christian West, which was displaying its forgiving nature with the largest conventional bombardment of all time:

Where we in the West tend to think of our New Testament heritage, where you turn the other cheek and you let bygones be bygones and forgive and forget, the people of the Middle East are the people of the Old Testament, if you willif the Muslims will let me say thatwhere there's much more of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and you don't forget and you don't forgive and you carry on the vendetta and the struggle long after people in the West would be prepared to say all right, it's over, let's not worry about it any longer.

Litany of Lunacy

As the U.S. was gearing up for bombing Iraq once again in February of 1998, renewed interest in Iraqi deaths was evident on "60 Minutes," the Washington Post and elsewhere--not deaths resulting from U.S.-led sanctions, but deaths caused by Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds a decade earlier. Inside the media fun house, the fact that Saddam Hussein killed some of his own people seemed to give the U.S. carte blanche to finish off some of the rest. As if the blood-soaked record of the Iraqi leader was not bad enough, a litany of supposed "threats" by the Iraqi regime were trotted out to justify a U.S. attack against Iraq

. With virtually no hesitation, journalist frequently accept the most fantastic horror stories about Arabs, swallowing allegations that Iraq's presumed possession of VX gas may cause global devastation. The media constantly overlooked that Iraq apparently had, but did not use chemical weapons during the Gulf War. There's a history of bogus or dubious stories the media have disseminated that are tantamount to "mini Oklahoma Cities": The "Levon Affair" during the 1950's where attacks against U.S. interests in Egypt proved to be the work of pro-Israeli operatives; The "Libyan hit squads," that were alleged to have been stalking President Reagan in the mid-1980s, found by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward to be largely a fabrication of CIA director William Casey; and the alleged attempt to assassinate President Bush by Iraq in 1993, found to be dubious by Seymour Hersh.

One such fabricated story displayed one of the few times that Arab lives have been grieved over in the U.S. media. During the buildup to the Gulf War, the "baby incubator story," where Iraq soldiers were alleged to have taken babies out of their incubators, leaving them to die, was used to rally the country for war. This hoax echoed through the media, pushed by the Bush administration and Hill and Knowlton, the public relations firm hired by the Kuwaiti government. The media prominently showed the "witness" to this charade -- who turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US -- "testifying" before the House Caucus on Human Rights chaired by Rep. Tom Lantos. In contrast, for seven years, the networks could hardly find time for a witness to the sheer devastation that the U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iraq have brought on an entire country -- causing the deaths of an estimated half a million Iraqi children. In 1998, during another buildup, dubious allegations of human experimentation by the Iraqi regime were again dispersed throughout the media, particularly by Andrea Mitchell and David Bloom on NBC to justify another U.S. attack. Just because the Iraqi regime makes a claim does not mean it is automatically false.

When critics of the U.S. policy are allowed into the media debate and note how murderous the U.S. policy has been to the people of Iraq, they are frequently dismissed with the accusation that this was tantamount to a defense of Saddam Hussein's regime. This reveals how the pro-war, pro-sanctions crowd thus bought into the very same argument--confusing leader and country--that has kept Saddam Hussein in power so long.

Assume the Characteristics

With observations similar to Hofstader's, David Biron Davis in an essay on "counter-subversive" movements wrote that the nativist "professed a belief in democracy and equal rights. Yet in his very zeal for freedom he curiously assumed many of the characteristics of the imagined enemy." The "rallying around the flag" during the Gulf War attempted to stamp out all dissent -- as we were told freedom was being preserved. Exactly one year after the Oklahoma City bombing, Clinton signed the "Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act," which included several unconstitutional provisions including allowing the use of secret evidence in U.S. courts. It also made contributing to the humanitarian efforts of groups deemed "terrorist" by the Secretary of State to be illegal. Thus donating blankets to a hospital run by Hamas is punishable by ten years in jail.

After the TWA 800 crash, the Gore Commission on Airline Safety and Security adopted airport "profiling," which singles out people based on undisclosed criteria. In the months after TWA 800, the ADC received over 200 complaints of Arab Americans being singled out at airports. These restrictions were alluded to by the media in their initial coverage of the TWA 800 crash and their complicity in implementing these restrictions curtails their coverage of these limits on civil liberties.

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a spinoff of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, not only produces "experts" with a pro-Israeli bent for consumption by the major media, they promote ideas that seek to eroded ties between the US and Muslim and Arab countries, like prohibiting students from "terrorist sponsoring" countries from studying scientific fields while in the U.S.

Problems and (Perhaps) Solutions

In many circles, there is the hope for a narrative to replace the Cold War. For some there is the need for an enemy and the need to distract attention from the alternative over-riding global narrative that would take hold if the "West vs. Islam" does not, namely, the "Poor South vis a vis the Rich North." Other than celebrity scandals, the major media's blood only really gets flowing when there is the possibility of major confrontation involving the Mideast. Otherwise, international affairs are largely on the back burner in the U.S. press.

A fundamental problem is that Islam is not viewed as part of the American landscape. There are reports of the IRA engaging in violence, but there are other images of Irish folk -- some based on stereotypes, but relatively benign ones. In contrast, there's little incidental mention of Arabs or Muslims. Other religions are viewed as part of the cycle of life -- of birth, struggle, love, marriage, death.

For example, The New York Times Magazine "Lives" page ran a story by Jonathan Rosen about the advice given to a son by his father before his wedding and the Jewish custom of breaking glass. Rarely is there such a matter of fact mention of Islam made -- to see it as part of the fabric of people's lives. There are occasional positive pieces on Islam, particularly around Ramadan. They are valuable, yet to quote Christopher Hitchens, often have a "permanent note of surprise." Though there is a link between bigotry and policy, many media professionals who are "culturally" open to Islam, such as Ted Koppel, are ironically among the first to beat the war drums in a time of crisis.

Reporters often put out such unsubstantiated stories while citing unnamed government sources. Thus, journalists hide behind anonymous government officials who themselves hide behind anonymous quotes, and as they pass the buck, Arab Americans pay the price. Arabs end up stereotyped, shunned, victimized by hate crimes and have their civil liberties infringed upon. Much of the American public becomes amenable to bombing Arabs since the killing of Arabs has become acceptable.

Tremendous damage is done by a thousand casual derogatory lines by journalists. After evidence of life from Mars was allegedly discovered, Newsweek wrote of the possible theological implications of such a discovery, "Does the revelation of God on Mount Sinai apply to beings from another planet? If Christ died for the sins of a fallen humankind, would his death redeem beings from a distant galaxy? And must Muslims wage holy war with aliens to extend Islam?"

There is no simple, realistic solution for the problem I am addressing. However, one significant step that should be taken -- to move away from clash to civilization, is simply diversity in the newsroom. Ted Koppel, presenting a constructive program on Islam shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing noted that "President Clinton, to his everlasting credit, sounded a voice of reason." Indeed, Clinton did urge that no one rush to judgement, and he does deserve credit for that, but the fact is that Clinton did so only because he was asked to by Helen Thomas of UPI, one of the few Arab Americans in the press corps.

Such progress unfortunately takes time, as journalism and related professions are often low on the priorities of immigrants to the US, seeking economic security and stressing technical, rather than linguistic, skills. The stereotypes disseminated by the mass media are themselves a major road block to involvement by Arabs and Muslims, since many cannot picture an alternative and so are less likely to challenge the negative depictions. Also, the myth of a "Jewish conspiracy" controlling the media leaves many Arab and Muslim Americans with a defeatist attitude. The autocratic governments of Arab countries, where articulating political opinion is not the most prudent course, is another obstacle.

Negative images in entertainment programing and in bias reporting on political events reinforce each other, a negative cycle has perpetuated itself for may years. The U.S. pursues policies that create resentment in the Mideast. An Arab group, citing legitimate grievances, conducts a terrorist act. Negative images -- virtually the only images of Arabs -- come out of such tragic events. These images lead the American people to adopt policies that hurt Arab people even more. These images also provide the inspiration for two dimensional Arab villains in for the entertainment industry. These Hollywood caricatures further dehumanizes Arabs and prepares the American public for more policies like bombing Arab countries or curtailing the civil liberties of Arab Americans. A cycle of violence and recrimination that helps the extremes in both camps festers. Eventually Arab (and often all) Americans have their civil liberties eroded; Arabs in the Mideast are deprived of self determination, liberties and often, of life; and the U.S. goes on a near permanent war footing its people squandering their resources and moral being.

This set of circumstances makes objective discussion of U.S. Mideast policy exceedingly difficult, particularly for as Arab Americans, who are fearful of being ostracized. They are sometimes reluctant to speak up against U.S. policies -- which ensures that those polices will stay in place. Clearly what is needed is increased political participation by Arab and Muslim Americans in the political life of the country, on a whole variety of issues.

Just as the Gulf War began, Dan Rather interviewed then FBI chief William Sessions: "If you're an American mother who happens to be of Jewish heritage.do you send your child to school?" The CBS anchor continued, "What should our attitude toward Americans of Arab heritage be?" Sessions was reassuring: The children were safe, and Arab-Americans "all support the president's policy." It was a sentiment Arab-Americans ignored at their peril. The ADC found nearly 100 criminal acts against Arabs in the months following the beginning of the Gulf War. The media's reluctance to cover hate crimes is linked no doubt to the fact that much of their coverage fuels such crimes.

The increasing presence of Arabs, South Asians, East Asians and Latinos in the US -- as well as increasing inter-marriage in the US -- could lead to a way out of the current views of race in America. Too often questions of ethnicity are seen in "black" and "white" stark opposites perpetually clashing, when of course, "flesh" is varying shades of pink and brown and beautiful colors we don't know the names of -- that vary on any individual's skin, no less.

Such insights are sometimes twisted, for example, Morton Kondracke writes in The New Republic:

I think intermarriage is one partial answer to the dilemma cited by TNR's Mickey Kaus in his book, "The End of Equality." Increasingly in a postindustrial economy, he says, people will be ranked according to their skills and their I.Q.s. How will we maintain a democracy based on mutual respect and equality under the law? The best way is to harken unto God and treat each other as His children. Another is to treat each other as family. That would be a lot easier if each of us were related to someone of another color and if, eventually, we were all one color. In America, this can happen.

Kondracke (and presumably Kaus) accepts the questionable premise that people will be judged by I.Q. Even more astonishingly, they seem to accept the explicitly racist notion that I.Q. will necessarily have an unequal ethnic distribution. In any case, the fact is that we are related to someone of another color. There is a distinct lack of revulsion against the heresy against humanity that is racism.

Too often the "problem" is viewed as "race" or "overcoming religious differences" - as politicians are commonly lauded for "facing the race problem in America." The problem is racism and other forms of bigotry.

Many hold out the possibility of a global community stemming from a seemingly diverse alphabet soup of news channels as providers for information for all. The "global media" is something of a misnomer, as it features "fewer than ten mostly U.S.-based media conglomerates towering over the global market." Putting aside inequalities of access, "the whole world may be watching," but only a few are creating. People of various lands look at each other, and sometimes even at themselves, largely through the eyes of Western elites at Time Warner, Disney or Murdoch's News Corporation. Virtually all forms of mass media from newspapers, to radio and television to the Internet have become commercially dominated and largely advertizer driven. The other major "alternative" is government controlled media. Almost totally absent is democratic media independent from both big business and big government. This would allow individuals and citizen groups to be creators as well as consumers. Instead, most typically, the powers collude and the people get screwed, as when the Chinese government demanded that Murdoch remove the BBC from his Star TV satellite if he expected to continue to be allowed to broadcast into China. He complied.

There may be opportunities, however, even within the current corporate dominated system. For example in 1997, after the Arab League was informed by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of several anti-Arab movies made by Disney, the League issued a statement urging member states to consider boycotting the media giant. Disney shortly thereafter seemed more sensitive to the anti-Arab images they were producing. Thus, with civic involvement the occasional tension between government and big business can result in an improved state of affairs, rather than a triumph of the lowest common denominator.

There may also be increasing opportunities for international programing into the U.S. As a plethora of cable channels proliferate in the U.S., hopefully some of them will expose Americans to fare from other countries. While the main audience for these channels may be natives of these countries residing in the U.S., others will hopefully tune in as well. Even if much of this programing is government produced this may help break down stereotypes.

Three Dead in Ohio

Perhaps the most hopeful episode of direct citizen involvement in the media and one of the most exciting media events in memory -- was the CNN "Town meeting" on February 18, 1998 where anti-war activists, including many Arab Americans, were able to make their voices heard in a live world-wide event.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger confronted questions from citizens that they rarely hear from the Washington press corps. The Ohio State activists' questions underscored the subservience of the mainstream media to US foreign policy in the Middle East. Who could imagine Ted Koppel asking a high administration official whether "the US has the moral right to attack the Iraqi nation?" Or Dan Rather asking: "If nobody is asking us for help, how can you justify further US aggression?" Or Peter Jennings wondering whether the US should be "responsible for making financial reparations to Iraq"? Or Jim Lehrer asking "why bomb Iraq when other countries have committed similar violations?"--then following up with: "You're not answering my question, Madame Albright!" Or imagine Tom Brokaw asking Albright: "How do you sleep at night?" None of these principled queries -- all posed by citizens during the Ohio State town meeting -- are conceivable coming from journalists, who accept so much of the administration line. Of course journalists have shown themselves capable of being watch dogs -- or attack dogs -- on Clinton on his personal life, but are lap dogs when he is set to attack Arab and Muslim countries.

Jon Strange, the questioner who told Secretary Albright that she had not answered his question, recounts how the protesters had the odds stacked against them that day:

Two types of tickets were issued: approximately 1,000 red tickets were given to Ohio State University faculty, ROTC cadets, veterans and other military personnel and local politicians. Approximately 5,000 white tickets were made publicly available. Though the Town Hall Meeting was billed as a democratic forum, only red-ticket holders were permitted to pose their questions to the panel.. White-ticket holders were excluded from the microphone, and therefore, from public discourse....It's important to explain that we only chose rude and disruptive behavior because we had no other choice. Our voices had been deliberately excluded from the public discussion, as controlled by CNN....After we explained to [a CNN producer] that we had no voice in the Town Hall Meeting unless we took it ourselves, she offered a bargain we couldn't refuse. She told us that we could send someone down to ask a question at the microphone if, in exchange, we would quiet down. Since I had a list of prepared questions.and since I was a wearing a tie, I was the perfect candidate for CNN's pretty TV picture needs."

Troubled by the sudden eruption of democracy in Columbus, much of the media predictably denounced the event as a "disaster." Others insisted that the event simply illustrated what the US is all about--free speech and democracy--all the while trying to hide their frustration that such a "fiasco" had happened.

It is possible that the international media, including an effective and functioning Arab press (if it existed), could ask US leaders tough questions, thereby influencing US policy. Independent national and international media, utilizing the skills of several full-time reporters, could actually change the course of events, particularly if reporters consistently asked thought-provoking, critical questions at news conferences carried live by C-Span. Given the trivial nature of much press coverage and the persistent focus on scandal, the public would probably welcome reporters posing substantial questions about real issues.

Opportunities for citizens to make their voices heard are quite rare in the U.S., other than to parrot the views of some sector of the establishment, through opinion polls, for instance. Noam Chomsky has consistently urged that the model of solidarity movements be applied to the question of Palestine. Such movements had some success in the debates around Central America in the 1980s, with groups such as the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador laying a major role in thwarting Reagan Administration plans for direct, large scale military involvement in Central America. Such a model, with substantial Arab and Muslim American participation, may help change U.S. media discussion, as well as policy on Palestine/Israel, Iraq and other major issues. It should be noted that while the Central America solidarity movements probably had more success in Congress than they did on the major media.

There was, in fact, a broad-based movement against the Gulf War, but such a movement, with diverse groups, need time to come together effectively. Six months was not enough to initiate such a program. The memory of failure in 1991 doubtlessly sparked energy in people in early 1998. Given the possibility of citizens revolting at the prospect of another attack on a Muslim or Arab country, it is possible that the model of quick strikes, which do not allow substantial debate, such as the bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan, will be the preferred model for the establishment. This will require quicker action on the part of activists as well as a broader challenge to the skewed, racist portrayals in the national discussion.

There was so little media attention to the effects of the sanctions on the Iraqi people that at times they were literally forgotten. When it seemed that US strikes were unlikely, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek bemoaned that the US was doing "nothing" against Iraq. Activists were able to address such biases even with the limited opportunities afforded to them -- or rather that they made for themselves. The sheer genius of the Ohio State chant, "1-2-3-4! We Don't Want Your Racist War!" was that it drew attention to the Anti-Arab racist undercurrent in U.S. policy and media coverage. Racism is the method by which you can dehumanize a population and make their deaths acceptable to a people who would ordinarily not tolerate such a thing.