The other America
The United States is not the monolith many Arabs presume it to be. It is more accurate, writes Edward Said, to apprehend America as embroiled in a serious clash of identities whose counterparts are visible as similar contests throughout the rest of the world
A small item in the press a few days ago reported that Prince Ibn Al-Walid of Saudi Arabia had donated 10 million dollars to the American University in Cairo to establish a department or centre of American Studies there. It should be recalled that the young billionaire had contributed an unsolicited 10 million dollars to New York City shortly after the 11 September bombings, with an accompanying letter that, aside from describing the handsome sum as a tribute to New York, also suggested that the United States might reconsider its policy towards the Middle East. Obviously he had total and unquestioning American support for Israel in mind, but his politely stated proposition seemed also to cover the general American policy of denigrating, or at least showing disrespect, for Islam.
In a fit of petulant rage, the then Mayor of New York (which also has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world), Rudolph Guiliani, returned the check to Al-Walid, rather unceremoniously and with an extreme and I would say racist contempt that was meant to be insulting as well as gloating. On behalf of a certain image of New York, he personally was upholding the city's demonstrated bravery and its principled resistance to outside interference. And of course pleasing, rather than trying to educate, a purportedly unified Jewish constituency.
Guiliani's churlish behaviour was of a piece with his refusal several years before (in 1995, well after the Oslo signings) to admit Yasser Arafat to the Philharmonic Hall for a concert to which everyone at the UN had been invited. Typical of the cheap theatrics of the below average American big city politician, what New York's mayor did in response to the young Saudi Arabian's gift was completely predictable. Even though the money was intended, and greatly needed, for humanitarian use in a city wounded by a terrible atrocity, the American political system and its main actors put Israel ahead of everything, whether or not Israel's amply endowed and highly mobilised lobbyists would have done the same thing. In any case, no one knows what would have occurred if Guiliani didn't return the money; but as things turned out he had nicely preempted even the well- oiled pro-Israeli lobbying apparatus.
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weekly.ahram.org.eg
Now, the $60,000 question is, if a prominent Israeli Likudnik had criticized the US diplomacy in the Mideast for being too soft on Arafat and the Palestinians, would our brave NY Mayor-turned-hero Giuliani have turned down a $10 mil check offered to him by the aforementioned Israeli?
I guess that's what "double standard" is all about: any Israeli moneybags can routinely lash out at the US policy in the Mideast as soon as it departs from the Likud line, and then publicly grease the palms of US politicians, and get away with it....
Gus |
