Posted on 03/26/2002 8:37:26 PM PST by My Identity
He sports the modest title of communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a lobby group, but Hussein Ibish is a fast-rising star who appears frequently on the top-rated television talk shows, in leading newspapers, at think tanks, and in the corridors of power.
He has been appearing in places like The Los Angeles Times and on The O'Reilly Factor. He's spoken for the Woodrow Wilson Center and his group turns up often at the White House.
The remarkable thing is how extremist his views are. Unlike most of today's prominent Muslim spokesmen, however, the 38-year-old Ibish does not advocate militant Islam. Instead, he pushes a set of far left-wing views.
These start, not surprisingly, with a deep antagonism to the American government. Ibish, an immigrant from Lebanon believes that Washington has American "imperial ambitions" in the Middle East. To achieve these, he says, it relies extensively on terrorism.
First, it has stitched together a system of puppet rulers who "terrorize the region." Second, it "has the ability to murder and rampage at will" and sometimes does just that - as in its "terrorist" 1986 air strike against Libya.
The anti-Americanism gets worse. Ibish has described former secretary of state Madeline Albright as "vermin" He has compared comments by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell about Iraqi civilian deaths during the 1991 war to those by Timothy McVeigh about the children he murdered in Oklahoma City.
He may be tough on American diplomats, but for the second-worst mass murderer of the 20th century, China's Mao Zedong, Ibish shows a touching affection ("The achievements of Mao can hardly be overstated"). Ignoring the crash of Pan Am 103, he declares that the Libyan leader's words "do not threaten Americans."
Ibish apologizes for many groups the US government deems terrorist, starting with Osama bin Laden. "I'm skeptical," was his reaction after a federal grand jury indicted bin Laden for bombing two US embassies in east Africa. Ibish dismisses bin Laden as a blowhard who gives "blood-curdling interviews," a guy who "lives in a cave in Afghanistan," and someone seen by Arabs as "a crank and a dangerous fanatic." The list goes on. President George W. Bush calls Hamas "one of the deadliest terrorist organizations in the world today" but our lobbyist friend touts its accomplishments "running hospitals and schools and orphanages."
Ibish's record prompts some other comments:
* He plays with facts - at will doubling US governmental aid to Israel or tripling the number of Iraqis killed by the sanctions regime. One exasperated columnist (Ed Cutting of The Minuteman Newspaper) judges Ibish's writings to be "wholesale lies" and another (Andrea Levin of Camera) characterizes them as "systematic deceit."
* Anyone he dislikes is liable to be compared to Nazis. Officers of the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission are "stormtroopers." A mild newspaper article about Islam is "genocidal" and "reminiscent of the most bizarre passages of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf." US sanctions on Iraq are "genocidal."
* He bandies about accusations of espionage for Israel. American journalists he disagrees with are "hyenas É transparently operating in concert and at the direction of the Israeli government." The Anti-Defamation League is an arm of Israeli intelligence.
* As co-editor of the Graduate Voice at the University of Massachusetts, Ibish turned the publication into what one writer calls "such an anti-Semitic rag" that the university chancellor established an anti-Semitism task force to address his activities. The UMass Jewish affairs director found Hussein's articles "anti-Semitic."
* In a bizarre twist, Ibish takes pride in his own immoral lifestyle, advocating "redemption through intoxication." He contends that "Those of us who smoke, drink, speak freely and have unauthorized sex occupy both the intellectually sound position and the moral high ground" compared to the "neo-puritans" who frown on such activities.
* In 1997, while a teaching assistant at the University of Massachusetts, he railed against a university regulation prohibiting sex between employees (like himself) and students, calling this an "all-out assault on f...ing." He especially decried the impact this would have on homosexuals, furious at the exposure this could bring "If you are gay and don't feel comfortable in announcing that fact to a homophobic world."
Anti-American, anti-Semitic, inaccurate, and immoral; Hussein Ibish makes for a peculiar choice to serve as the public face of Arab-Americans.
More broadly, the media, think tanks, and politicians should consider Ibish's record and close their doors to someone so far removed from the American mainstream.
(The writer is director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum <www.DanielPipes.org>.)
Tough to argue with this. If he throws in Clinton and Reno I'd be forced to applaud!
And here's his rant about the Turkish-Israeli-American plot to conquer the middle east. Hussein Ibish: US set to lash out in desperation against Iraq
It sures says a lot that this organization, supposedly for Americans, picks a semi-delusional ideologue rather than some moderate P.R. type as its spokesperson.
If you have seen this guy on TV, you have to wonder who he is having sex with? Is it Jabba the Hut?
Bump. The guy always creeped me out.
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