Invitation to Ashrawi at 9/11 Draws Protest at Colorado College

Invitation to Ashrawi at 9/11 Draws Protest at Colorado College


Hanan Ashrawi

WASHINGTON, August 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Palestinian lawmaker known to Americans as spokeswoman for the Palestinian Authority is the cause of a heated debate in the western U.S. state of Colorado after a local university invited her to open an anniversary symposium on the September 11 attacks.

Hanan Ashrawi's invitation to open a three-day debate “September 11: one year later,” at Colorado College in Colorado Springs has outraged some local politicians, student groups and media, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

The invitation and Ashrawi's acceptance have angered Jewish groups in Colorado and Jewish students at the school, who accused the college of insensitivity for scheduling her to speak one day after the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

College President Richard Celeste said he is standing by the invitation.

“Unfortunately, much misinformation and innuendo, some of it 'guilt by association,' is in the air about one of our guests, Ashrawi, a strong voice for Palestinian causes,” he wrote.

Speakers of diverse origins and fields often participate in university sponsored symposiums, he wrote, including the president of the Israeli Political Science Association, who is scheduled to answer Ashrawi's speech, AFP added.

Pauline Hale, a university spokeswoman, said university officials had received “a handful of complaints so far” over Ashrawi's appearance. Efforts to reach Ashrawi on the West Bank were unsuccessful.

The conflict at Colorado College is the latest incident on an American college campus in which a Middle Eastern perspective has prompted controversy.

Considered a moderate voice, Ashrawi sharply criticized President George W. Bush at a debate in Idaho in April, saying he has “turned the very highest office in the United States into a transparent and cheap propaganda machine for Israel,” AFP said.

She also called the Israeli settlers in the West Bank “legitimate and select targets of Palestinian resistance.”

The website (http://www.coloradocollege.edu/news_events/)for Colorado College said that Hanan Ashrawi, founder and secretary general of the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, which she founded, and Gideon Doron, professor of political science at the University of Tel Aviv, will keynote the symposium.

Ashrawi will open the symposium at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, September 12, in the Armstrong Theatre. An influential voice in contemporary Middle Eastern politics, Ashrawi has served as an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council since 1996 and has been a central player in the struggle for a Palestinian homeland, the website added.

From 1991 to 1993, she served as an official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East Peace Process. In 1998, she founded the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, and has served as secretary general of that organization since that time. Her most recent writings include “From Intifada to Independence” and her autobiography.

College officials said the conference, which will have nine other speakers, including a former adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, was not intended as a memorial to Sept. 11. Separate events on campus are scheduled for the 11th, they said, the New York Times reported.

Richard F. Celeste, a former Democratic governor of Ohio who became the college's president last month, conceded that the conference name, “September 11: One Year Later, Responding to Global Challenges,” might have led some to assume it was a commemoration.

“But it's not,” Celeste said today in an interview, adding that none of the speakers were asked to focus exclusively on Sept. 11.

“The focus is the challenges we face in the world, post 9/11,” he said. “Critics I've had a chance to talk to have been understanding of that, if not supportive,” the paper added, the paper reported.

Even so, Rabbi Dollin, one of the critics who spoke to Celeste, said his group planned a vigil outside the building when Ashrawi appeared, and members of the college's Hillel chapter are planning a “civil protest,” the group's faculty adviser, Ofer Ben-Amots, a professor of music composition, said.

No such demonstrations have been planned for Ashrawi's other scheduled appearances in Colorado: a speech on Sept. 14 in Boulder, sponsored by several groups, including a student organization at the University of Colorado; and a private fund-raiser on Sept. 15, sponsored by another group at the university, the Coalition for Justice in Palestine.

Ashrawi, a Christian Palestinian who has both served and opposed the Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, has become a leading figure in promoting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Despite her moderate views, she is still considered by many Jews to be “an apologist,” as Rabbi Dollin said, for Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization, New York Times said.

Supporters of Ashrawi in the United States defend her as a visionary peace activist. “She tells it as it is,” said Leila Suleiman, of Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, one of the groups sponsoring the Boulder appearances.