ATERSON, N.J. -- At midafternoon Friday, Mohamed El Filali was master of ceremonies at a pro-Palestinian rally here, leading a couple of hundred protesters in a cheer: "Sharon, Hitler are the same. Only difference is the name."Posted on 04/06/2002 10:40:15 PM PST by sarcasm
ATERSON, N.J. -- At midafternoon Friday, Mohamed El Filali was master of ceremonies at a pro-Palestinian rally here, leading a couple of hundred protesters in a cheer: "Sharon, Hitler are the same. Only difference is the name."
At night, Mr. El Filali, manager of a pediatrician's office, was at a catering hall in the suburbs, wending his way through an impossibly long buffet at a fund-raiser for a congressman organized by Arab-American professionals. "American due process," he said, helping himself to a second plate. "You protest and go on with your life."
Friday was a kind of coming out for the Arab-Americans of South Paterson, which has one of the largest concentrations of Arabs in the country. In the days after Sept. 11, Arab storeowners here so deliberately displayed their American allegiance that one businessman said, "It's a contest: Whose flag is bigger?"
But on Friday, the biggest flags on the south end of Main Street were Palestinian. After the rally, young men waved them with abandon, as if to announce that they were back, as Arabs as well as Americans.
"You have to let your frustration and your message out somehow," said Sami Merhi.
Mr. Merhi embodies his fellow Arab-Americans' frustration and message, however complex and contradictory it might sound after Sept. 11.
He came to the United States from Lebanon 28 years ago and prospered as a businessman. He's president of a hospital for the elderly run by Passaic County and he's pals with the movers in both the Arab community and the local government. He's Sami to Arabs and simply Sam to everyone else.
It was Mr. Merhi, 53, who organized the dinner on Friday for Representative William Pascrell, which drew about 250 people.
Mr. Merhi's bond with America grew hideously stronger on Sept. 11. His godson, a financial trader, vanished in the attack.
"They are coldblooded murderers and things I can't say to you on paper," Mr. Merhi, wearing a tie in the design of an American flag, said of the suicide hijackers. "Crazy fanatics. They're as far from God and Islam as hell itself." But asked if these feelings extend to the Palestinian suicide bombers, whom the United States asks the world to condemn, Mr. Merhi said, "I can't see the comparison."
Over lunch at a Lebanese restaurant, he told of a would-be suicide bomber who, after being captured by the Israelis, explained his intended act as an inevitable response to a life under Israeli occupation. "I think he spoke for everybody," Mr. Merhi said.
Along Main Street here, everyone has an analogy to explain the bombers. "I'm a pharmacist," said Amjad Abukwaik. "If someone came to me and says, `I have a migraine,' I don't tell them to take an aspirin. I would ask what caused this. I would go into their family background. What's their cultural and economic background? Suicide bombing is wrong, but why does it happen?"
Mr. Merhi attended the rally on Friday, but only briefly. "I like to speak to people's minds, not to the air," he said. "So what if I say Sharon is Hitler? What does this change?"
Mr. Merhi's forum was the evening fund-raiser. It was a classic political affair, overflowing with food and speeches. An Arab-American medical association presented a $20,000 check to a fund for children of Sept. 11 victims. On the surface, there was no obvious tension within the hyphenated identities of the dinner guests.
But then Mr. Merhi rose to introduce Representative Pascrell. Speaking without notes, Mr. Merhi faulted American foreign policy for allowing Osama bin Laden to take root in Afghanistan, and denounced the long detention of Arab-Americans after Sept. 11.
Moving to the Middle East, he condemned "violence, whether it's committed by a person, a group or a state," and praised Israelis and Palestinians working for peace. Then he told the tale of the captured would-be bomber. "Since I'm dead while I'm still alive," Mr. Merhi said the man told the Israelis, "I decided I'm going to take you with me."
Mr. Merhi's story had echoed the view of Main Street Paterson. But an aide to Mr. Pascrell considered it over the line. Outside the banquet hall, the aide nervously told a reporter that the congressman did not agree with everything said at the dinner and heatedly told Mr. Merhi that he should not have told the story of the suicide bomber.
"It's the truth," Mr. Merhi responded.
For Mr. Pascrell, who represents a large Jewish constituency as well as Arab-Americans, there is more than one truth. "There is not all right on either side," he said.
If ever they start doing here what they're doing in Israel, we'll all be celebrating the "going-out" of the Arab-Americans (back to where ever they came from.)
Not that suicide bombing is wrong, just that he should not have told the story.
Agreed. Isn't joisy wonderful? I live with these creeps every day, who knows how evil they really are? I'll tell you all this, let one more thing happen in this country, caused by a Muslim, or Arab, and then all hell will really break loose. Because I, myself, I will raise Cain on that day.
LOL, good idea, let's get her back from Camdem, pronto! (Bayonne was sooooo annoyed about her going there in the first place)
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