Press Room

AAI in the News

Arab-Americans Decry US Apathy Over Arafat's Death

The Associated Press
Posted on Saturday November 13, 2004

First, American comedian Jay Leno described him as Yasser “Weekend at Bernie’s” Arafat – a reference to a character in a 1989 comedy film about two men desperately trying to prop up their murdered boss to avoid being blamed for his death.

Two days later, CBS television news offered viewers an apology for cutting into the end of a popular TV police show with coverage of the Palestinian leader’s death, blaming the move on an overzealous news producer. The producer was later fired, the broadcasting industry Web site Broadcasting & Cable reported Friday.

Even as tens of thousands of Palestinians mourned Arafat, Arab-Americans argue the apparent lack of sympathy, respect, or even recognition by Americans for Arafat and his efforts again underscores the shortcomings of US efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

“He certainly had his faults. But the way the press and the (US) government makes him out to be a dirt bag makes people here look at him like some sort of Rodney Dangerfield of the Middle East,” said Karim Abdel-Majid, a 32-year-old Egyptian-American store clerk.

Abed Awad, a Clifton, New Jersey-based Palestinian-American attorney said “even detractors and opponents of Arafat still recognize his contribution to his people’s aspirations.”

“Even if you disagreed with President Arafat and his political style, do you not have the respect … for the people of Palestine who are under occupation, who have been devastated and displaced for over 40 years,” Awad said.

Arafat, who died early Thursday, was buried Friday in Ramallah. His funeral, held earlier Friday in Egypt, was attended by about 60 world leaders, including Arab royalty with whom he had clashed in the past. The United States, which had labeled Arafat an obstacle to peace, was represented by Assistant Secretary of State William Burns. Israel sent no representatives to the funeral.

In Manhattan, construction worker Lloyd Clemens didn’t watch the funeral. Clemens, who lives in Brooklyn, said he “wasn’t interested,” and said the United States was right to have not sent a higher level official.

“Why should we care about a fat guy with stubble, and a table cloth on his head?” Clemens said, while waiting for a train at Pennsylvania Station.

“We’ve already done too much for that area. We’ve got our troops in Iraq, dying there. We’ve tried to help [Palestinians] find peace, but all they’ve done is carry out attacks and, from what I understand, Arafat didn’t exactly do much to stop it.” But Arafat, in 1993, signed the landmark Oslo Accords with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin – an agreement that earned them both the Nobel Peace Prize a year later.

For Arab-Americans, such comments, though troubling, come as little surprise – even when it means that political apathy prevails over a prime-time television show.

“The dehumanization of Yasser Arafat by the Bush administration, and the Israeli lobby, has led to this,” said Osama Siblani, publisher of the Dearborn, Michigan-based Arab-American News, adding that “Arafat is not going to turn in his grave because some people in the United States don’t like him.”

Robert Thompson, a professor of media and culture and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, says that Americans’ frustration over having the hit show CSI-NY interrupted by news of Arafat’s death underscores the country’s troubling disconnect with outside affairs.

Arafat’s death is “obviously…an awful lot more important than playing a hit show, anybody knows that,” said Thompson. But “what we know is right and feel is right is vastly different than what we want to consume. At nine o’clock, people want to forget that Yasser Arafat exists.”