Prager on Israeli-Arab Conflict

What the Arab-American community had feared the Persian Gulf crisis would precipitate--anti-Arab racism--has ominously begun to emerge in the Op-Ed pages of The Times.

Prager’s article represents the type of anti-Arab racism that the community had hoped could be avoided.

To lump together all Arabs and Muslims, of which there are almost 1 billion Muslims and of which Arabs comprise maybe one-quarter of that figure, is racism in its most invidious form.

Furthermore, to claim that Arabs and Muslims hate democracy is absurd and fallacious. Muslim Pakistan had a democratically elected woman prime minister. The Arabs, on the other hand, have never had the opportunity to develop democratic traditions. Every single state in the Middle East, including Israel, is the product of French, British and American imperialism over the last two centuries.

What is ironic is that Prager advocates that the U.S. and the international community undertake a military effort to obviate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The irony is that this military intervention is precisely the same technique that fomented the present circumstances he condemns: Western militarily imposed undemocratic governments which perpetuate the anti-Western feelings among the Arab people.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee believes that the United Nations should be allowed to resolve the conflicts in the Middle East, not U.S. military forces. The ADC endorses an international peace conference under the aegis of the United Nations.

ARCH MILLER, Board Member, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination, Committee, Los Angeles Chapter