SEP 12, 2001

In U.S., Echoes of Rift Of Muslims and Jews

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Muslim women in headscarves were advised to stay indoors. Mosques and Muslim schools in Los Angeles were shut down, and Muslim leaders in Michigan and other states reported receiving telephone threats.

Even though there was no definitive information yet about who was behind the terrorist attacks that struck New York City and Washington yesterday, Muslims and Arab- Americans in the New York region and across the country immediately braced for the backlash with the grim panic of students rehearsing a duck-and-cover air-raid drill.

A terrorist attack on the United States detonates particular repercussions here among both Muslims and Jews, whose kin in the Middle East are locked in a bitter battle that many people immediately assume has now arrived like an unwelcome immigrant on American shores.

In the face of suspicion and discrimination, Muslims struggled to assert their identities as loyal American citizens and to say that their religion does not approve of violence against innocents. Jews, meanwhile, could not help linking the victimization of Americans to that of Jews in Israel.

Yasser Ahmed, manager of an Arab-owned candy and grocery store on Broadway in Upper Manhattan, said about 10 people had come in shouting, "You guys did it!" and other accusations.

At an Arab-owned grocery store on West 177 Street, a shouting match erupted among customers when a Palestinian woman blamed American support of Israel for the terrorism.

"I'm Arabic and Palestinian and I have just one thing to say," said Yasmeen Hindi, 19, a customer at Uptown Deli Grocery. "I feel bad, but Americans have to understand something: If we're going to get killed, they're going to get killed back. Stop supporting the Israelis."

As several customers berated her, the store owner, Ahmed Naqi Mater, said: "Maybe it's not Arabs. Remember Oklahoma."

The news revived fresh memories among Muslims and Arab-Americans of the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, when snap judgment blamed Muslim terrorists, and mosques were defaced, Muslim travelers detained in airports, and families harassed in their homes.

Yesterday in Dearborn, Mich., where one of nearly every three residents is Arab-American, Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Arab American News, said he and his colleagues had already received several hostile phone calls, including a death threat. One caller said, "Is this Osama Siblani?" Mr. Siblani recalled, sitting at his desk with a large blue bottle of Mylanta that he had brought with him for the ulcer he anticipated would act up. "I said it was, and they said, `Pray to God that this wasn't Arabs' " because if it was, repercussions would follow.

American Muslim and Arab organizations rushed to condemn the attack in strongly worded news releases, some issued less than two and a half hours after the first plane hit the World Trade Center.

"American Muslims utterly condemn what are apparently vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism against innocent civilians," the American Muslim Political Coordination Council said in a statement. "We join with all Americans in calling for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators."

The group's members had been scheduled to meet at the White House yesterday with President Bush, whom they had endorsed in the presidential election last year.

For many Jewish leaders, the wail of sirens and the ensuing panic was all too reminiscent of the suicide bombings that have recently paralyzed Israel.

Yesterday morning, from their picture windows overlooking the World Trade Center, the staff members of United Jewish Communities, the umbrella group of Jewish charitable federations, looked on dumbfounded as smoke billowed from the first tower. When the second tower was hit by a second plane, some staff members shrieked and burst into tears, said Gail Hyman, vice president for public affairs.

As they were evacuating the building, Ms. Hyman said, one of the Israelis on the group's security staff said, "It's an awful thing to say, but it will deepen the understanding of what Israelis live with day in and day out."

Yet several leaders, like Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, were uncomfortable suggesting that terrorism in the United States will lead Americans to have more compassion for Israelis.

"On the one hand it brings us closer, but it is a high price to pay for that realization of what we share as two peoples," said Mr. Foxman, stranded in a Queens hotel when his morning shuttle flight was unable to leave La Guardia Airport. "So people will now understand, but at what price? It's not worth it."

Like the oil crisis in the 1970's, he said, an event like this provokes anxiety among American Jews that the rest of the country will conclude that the United States' alliance with Israel "is too high a price to pay."

For both Jewish and Muslim Americans, some of the most disturbing television images broadcast came not from New York City or Washington, but from Palestinians in the occupied territories who were celebrating joyously, honking horns and tossing sweets in the air.

"Does that mean they were behind this? I have no way of knowing," said David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee. "But the fact that they are celebrating means they become our enemy. If they celebrate our tragedy, it speaks volumes of who they are and who we are. Those who find joy in this day are not friends of the United States."

Though they were aware of such images from Palestinian towns and refugee camps, Muslim and Arab leaders in the New York area emphasized that they were reacting to the emergency first and foremost as Americans. They urged their colleagues to donate blood, and their doctors to volunteer at the site.
"We have to show them we are part of the community," said Ahmed Shedeed, director of the Islamic Center of Jersey City. "This affects me as much as my neighbor. This is our country."
Mr. Shedeed said he had spent the day helping five teachers at his center whose husbands or relatives had worked in or near the towers.
People should not blame Arab- Americans for the attacks, said Sam Meheidli, a data processing supervisor in Dearborn.
"We're proud to be American, we haven't had any problems, we're doing our duty as American citizens," Mr. Meheidli said outside a polling place as he distributed flyers endorsing Abed Hammoud, an Arab-American candidate in the Dearborn mayoral primary yesterday, which was held as scheduled.
Across the nation, prominent Muslims reported receiving phone calls from worried men and women in their communities. "One of the people who called me said, `Are they going to put us in concentration camps like the Japanese?' " said Mohamad el-Behairy, a retired college professor in Buffalo. In response, he told the caller not to worry, that such a thing as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was unthinkable.
And Mr. Behairy said he reminded all who called that the destruction was "a tragic situation that has to be condemned by everyone who has an iota of decency."


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