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Hanan Ashrawi
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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.
