Ayoon wa Azan (Daniel Pipes)

Jihad Al Khazen     Al-Hayat     2003/08/18

Can there be anyone lower and filthier than Ariel Sharon? I vote for Daniel Pipes, a radical Zionist who supports Sharon whenever possible.

I wouldn't have written about this sick American-Jew with all of history's grudges and illusions had President Bush not appointed him to become a member of the American Peace Institute board. In fact, it is a peculiar appointment, which Arab-American organizations, as well as Islamic and religious organizations, as well as liberal and moderate Jewish groups opposed, as they all are familiar with that man's ideas.

Daniel Pipes serves peace as mush as Mother Theresa served the high jump in the Olympic games, as he is a racist war advocate whose activities against the Arabs and Muslims I used to follow; then I became more interested in him when he attacked my friend, Professor Edward Said, and claimed that he was not from Jerusalem and had not lost his family house during the Naqba.

I know Edward Said very well, and I used to know his mother and siblings. His sister, Joyce, worked with us, and I used to visit the family's apartment on Makdessi Street in Ras Beirut, which is no further than 200 meters from my old house on that same street. I clearly remember pictures of the family in Jerusalem, over a round table in a corner of the living room. And then comes Pipes denying Said's origins. It is just as if I were denying the holocaust, which I will not do, and leave Pipes to lie alone.

Surely, lying about Edward Said is nothing compared to Pipe's racism against the Arabs and Muslims. He actually comes from a long dynasty of Zionists who imitated the Nazis in their racism, starting with Jabotinsky, who said that no peace shall reign unless the Arabs are psychologically, not only militarily, oppressed, not to mention Ben Gurion who wrote in 1936 that the rise of Israel necessitated the total despair of Arabs, and last but not least, there is Pipes. Actually, a man who denies Edward Said's origins would also be denying the fact that the Palestinians were forced to leave their country in 1947 and 1948. Hence, he believes there is no reason to negotiate the right of return. Moreover, he is demanding a complete Israeli military victory and a total Palestinian defeat, so as to crush the Palestinians' will to resist. So Pipes believes that "Palestinians need to be defeated more than Israel needs to triumph," an opinion that I won't argue with, but will settle with spitting in Pipe's face.

This man maintains the same radical attitude towards the Arabs and Muslims in general, as he accuses American Muslims of radicalism and says they will not stop until they carry out their plan by starting a second American revolution to impose Islamic law on the U.S. He also criticized President Bush when he said that Islam was a peaceful religion, and literally said, "All Muslims are, unfortunately, suspects." Then he said that 10 to 15 per cent of Muslims are radicals. This means that he is condemning hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the U.S., and around 150 million Muslims worldwide. According to Pipes, American armed men in the army or the security bodies or the diplomatic corps, "ought to be observed to uncover any relations with terrorism."

There is nothing easier than facing racism with racism, as any Muslim can say that there are six million American Jews who support Israel, and not only the U.S, and hence should be supervised in case they work in the army, or the security bodies or the diplomatic corps, as they might be spying for a foreign country, which would threaten the American interests in the Middle East and the entire Muslim countries. However, such racist talk is unacceptable, as a mistake or a crime does not justify another mistake or crime.

It is every Arab and Muslim's duty inside and outside the U.S. to remember that most Jews are liberal moderates, and Pipes does not represent them in any way. The man who refuses the Roadmap, which is the only available peace plan, is continuously facing two-thirds of the Israelis, who support the Roadmap and peace with Palestinians.

How did President Bush think of nominating such a lecherous to become a member of a peace institute? The answer lies in the parties supporting this radical racist, such as the Christian alliance, or the Zionist Christian groups, which supported his nomination, and so did the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, otherwise known as the Jewish lobby, not to mention the Jewish-American convention and the American Zionist Organization.

People like Frank Gaffney, a neo-conservative, or member of the Israeli gang I wrote about a couple of months ago, also backed Pipe's nomination.

At that time, Pipes was not on my list of this gang, as he was a sole gangster, representing the worst kind of racism and opposition to peace in the Middle East, not to mention that he despises Arabs and Muslims and demeans them whenever he has the opportunity, and he even mocks their traditions and what they brought with them to the U.S. as immigrants.

Then comes President Bush and nominates him for the membership of the American Peace Institute board; he actually tries to avoid presenting this nomination to the Congress to ratify it, by adopting another way that all peace advocates from different confessions and political orientations in the U.S. oppose. We shall wait and see whether radicalism and crime or moderation and peace will triumph.