The New York Times · 20 July 1986

CP-1986-024

Attacks on U.S. Arabs: The Middle Eastern Link

By COLIN CAMPBELL

Scan 1244 × 892 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

A Congressional hearing dealing with violence against Arab-Americans has reflected a growing perception that such violence rises in waves originating in the conflicts of the Middle East. Federal investigators and Arab-American groups say anti-Arab violence, threats and harassment all increase whenever Americans, in particular, are threatened by Arabs or Moslems.

This was the pattern after a Trans World Airlines jetliner with 104 Americans was hijacked to Lebanon in June 1985, after the cruise ship Achille Lauro was seized by Palestinian gunmen last October and after American planes bombed Libya in April, an attack that was itself a reply to Libyan-sponsored terrorism in Europe.

Some of the deepest worries among Arab-Americans have focused on the murder of Alex Odeh, the West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Mr. Odeh was killed by a bomb last October in Santa Ana, Calif., soon after the Achille Lauro hijacking. Although the murder has not been solved, Oliver B.

Revell, executive assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice on Wednesday that the bureau suspected that “Jewish extremist elements” were responsible for the Odeh murder as well as for similar bombings aimed at purported Nazi war criminals. Mr.

Revell also said that a recently disclosed Secret Service memorandum stating that the F.B.I.’s investigation of the Odeh killing had failed and had been “closed” was inaccurate. It is not just the Odeh killing, however, that is causing concern among Arab-Americans.

They also say they are worried by the signs that anti-Arab violence rises in waves, that it seems to be fueled by widespread ethnic stereotypes and that at least some of the violence appears to have been spearheaded by militant groups such as the Jewish Defense League and the Jewish Defense Organization.

Faris Bouhafa, a spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, was asked Thursday if anti-Arab violence had risen in the United States after terrorist attacks in Europe last spring were linked to Libya and followed by American air raids on Tripoli and Benghazi. Mr. Bouhafa replied from the group’s Washington headquarters, “Yes, absolutely.”

“In Dearborn, Mich., the night of the attack, three individuals went through the Arab community smashing the windows of restaurants,” Mr. Bouhafa said, consulting his log. “Outside of a pub in Syracuse, N.Y., two days after the attack, an Arab student was jumped by 10 individuals and blinded in one eye.”

Ten days later, he said, a Detroit radio station reported that an Egyptian medical student in Cicero, Ill., had been badly beaten. Two weeks later, an Arab-American restaurant owner in New Haven reported threatening phone calls from the Jewish Defense League.

In recent months acts of anti-Arab violence appear to have receded at a time when there has been a relative absence of successful terrorist attacks against Americans, Europeans or Israelis.

After the Achille Lauro hijacking, in which Leon Klinghoffer, a retired New Yorker, was shot to death and thrown from the ship in his wheelchair, many anti-Arab incidents were reported in addition to the bombing that killed Mr. Odeh and injured seven other people. Anti-Arab language also grew heated.

The head of the Jewish Defense League, Irv Rubin, publicly approved of the killing of Mr. Odeh while denying that the league was involved in terrorism. Mordechai Levy, head of the Jewish Defense Organization, said in a telephone interview that the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, whose national chairman is former Senator James G.

Abourezk of South Dakota, was a “front” for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Levy said the Jewish Defense Organization had 3,000 members and that it encouraged them to train with firearms for self-defense. He denied that he was anti-Arab or anti-Islamic.

Unlike the Jewish Defense League, he said, “We don’t advocate throwing all the Arabs out of Israel.” He said his colleagues had beaten people but had not murdered anyone or planted any bombs. Last Dec. 10, two months after the Odeh killing, the Director of the F.B.I., William H.

Webster, told reporters that Arab-Americans had entered “a zone of danger.” Referring to extremist Jewish groups, he warned that some Arab-Americans had become targets of a conspiracy aimed at “enemies of Israel.” This year, according to Mr. Bouhafa, cases of anti-Arab violence have included the Jan.

9 shooting of a Palestinian grocer in Milwaukee by two men who took no money; the unexplained beating of the editor of an Arab newspaper in Philadelphia on Jan. 17, and threats and vandalism elsewhere.

Cite this clipping

More from The New York Times

• The Maine Colony in PalestineThe New York Times · 12 November 1866
• Jewish Colonization in PalestineThe New York Times · 9 December 1883
• Jewish State in Palestine OpposedThe New York Times · 9 July 1897
• ZIONIST CONGRESS IN BASELThe New York Times · 31 August 1897
• ROME FEARS THE ZIONISTSThe New York Times · 12 September 1897
• PROGRESS OF ZIONISMThe New York Times · 16 December 1901
• 852 more from this paper in the full text →

More from the 1980s

• In West Bank, Israeli Policies to Improve the ‘Quality of Life’ Get Mixed ReviewsThe New York Times · 5 January 1986
• Marilyn Klinghoffer Dies at 58; Wife of Victim of Ship HijackersThe New York Times · 10 February 1986
• Jews Are Not Helped by Rewriting HistorySt. Louis Jewish Light · 5 March 1986
• F.B.I. Chief Doubts Anti-Arab Terrorists Caused Capital FireThe New York Times · 15 March 1986
• Views on terrorism differThe Daily Ledger · 18 April 1986
• Italians Say Abbas Masterminded Ship HijackingThe New York Times · 11 June 1986
• All 527 clippings from the 1980s →