By Michel Shehadeh

Dear sisters and brothers,

I am thrilled, proud, and humbled to be here today - to take part in this annual memorial to commemorate a flagrant historical injustice against the Japanese American community, and to reaffirm, at the same time, a pledge that similar injustices will never happen to anyone else.

The story of the Japanese Americans internment seems to be an integral part of me. I grew up with it in different stages of my life. When I was a boy in Palestine living under Israeli occupation, I began to read about the oppression of other peoples, because when you suffer from oppression you begin to look for hope in the experiences of others who survived and overcame oppression. And then you connect with those experiences and draw from them strength and hope. To your soul you say that since they found the strength to overcome, then, I will find my strength and do the same. You cling to that power of hope and persevere.

Then, I came to the United States as an immigrant. Totally believing in the ideals embedded in the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the freedoms it guarantees to everyone. At College, I began interacting about my Palestinian experience under Israeli occupation with fellow students. For that, I was arrested, along with six other Palestinians and a Kenyan woman, charged with "aiding" terrorism, detained in maximum security cells for 23 days, and targeted for deportation. This campaign was conducted under the banner of "President Reagan's war on terrorism." A familiar theme today I may add.

In prison, we learned of a secret document entitled "Alien terrorists and undesirables: a contingency plan," which was leaked to and published in the Los Angeles Times. It described in great details concentration camps designed for Arab Americans in Oakdale, Louisiana, where gas hookups, blankets, tents and all the necessary material stored and ready for the tenants to come, in case of war with an Arab country. Again, I looked to the Japanese American experience for inspiration, empowerment, and advice, and I found them. You, as a collective, a community, suffered, persevered, overcame, raised you families, and prospered, despite tremendous odds and injustice. And for that, I thank you from the bottom of my being.

Japanese Americans understood the meaning of the L.A.8 case and were first to embrace and come aboard the Committee for Justice, established to defend the Palestinians respondents. The case is still pending in the courts, even after 15 years of the government's failure to produce a shred of evidence of any wrong doing on our part.

And here I am, once more, living at a time when the Japanese American experience is a source of motivation to me personally and to us collectively as a community. Remembering the past, during the US war with Japan, the Japanese Americans were viewed as having a greater sympathy for the enemy, propensity for disloyalty, and for being a source of threat to national security.

We, Arab Americans, know that feeling very well. Since the tragic events of September 11, our community has been treated in the same manner. More than 1200 Arab Americans were detained since. Only a dozen were designated as material witness to the September 11 events. Arab males, between the ages of 18 and 33, visiting the United States, were called in by the FBI for interviews about terrorism, creating a sense that this class of individuals is a source of danger that should be feared.

And recently, when law enforcement decided to go after the absconders, those ordered deported but didn't comply. Again, Arabs were singled out. 6000 Arabs, out of 315,000 absconders, were given a special focus, adding credence to the idea that young Arab males are a dangerous species. This is a classic case of unlawful racial profiling, when people are targeted solely on the basis of their ethnicity, age and gender.

For Japanese Americans, discrimination didn't start with Pearl Harbor, The legacy of anti-Japanese sentiment pre-dated the anti-Japanese internment, reflected in over 400 anti­Japanese ordinances throughout the country that legislated prohibitions against intermarriage, land ownership, citizenship and so on and so forth.

Arab Americans also experienced discrimination and negative stereotyping pre­September 11. The negative stereotyping of Arabs in the media as villains are transparent to everyone who wants to see. A recent new book, written by Dr. Jack Shaheen, documents 900 Hollywood films that portray Arabs negatively. In the political and judicial systems, the Los Angeles 8 case, the anti-terrorism Act of 1996, the secret evidence provisions, which were exclusively used against Arab Americans, are but few examples of this discrimination.

The main stream media played a major role in whipping up the hysteria against the Japanese American community by reporting sabotage and espionage incidents, none that were ever concluded in any arrests, indictments, prosecutions or convictions.

After September 11, Arab Americans have been suffering from a backlash emanating from ignorance, misguidance, and twisted propaganda and misinformation spearheaded by the so-called experts and pundits. They want us to believe that terrorism and violence reside in the very nature of our Arab and Islamic cultures. We, as Christian and Muslim Arab Americans counter with a genuine pride in our American citizenship, our country, and our Constitution, and project at the same time pride of who we are, descendants of a great Arab Islamic culture, which has contributed greatly to human civilization in all spheres of knowledge and accomplishments. And as citizens and human beings, we will not standby and accept in silence this orchestrated racism, and ill-intentioned campaign, to reduce the rich Arab civilization, and Islam, to a two dimensional caricature of backwardness and violence by the media. This is true for any other culture and religion.

You all remember very well that in less than three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President issued Executive Order (9066), and actions that implemented the forced relocation and internment were initiated. There was little public resistance to the internment. This was made possible by the dehumanization and skewed ideas of those who perpetuated their racism and hate that the Japanese people and culture is evil and should be dealt with accordingly.

A similar campaign of vilification is now underway against Arab Americans by people who want the world to be divided. By those who preach "clash of civilizations," who are looking backward to the dark ages of history. While peace­loving people everywhere are working to move the march of humanity in an opposite direction; a direction of a universal value system which, doesn't differentiate between one people and another, a direction toward tolerance, mutual respect, and the exploration of a win-win shared existence, and justice for all. We struggle toward asserting our common humanity, because human civilization is the result of world societies contributing together towards a global heritage, their accumulation and interaction of which leads to the elevation of humanity and nobility of consciousness.

We must reject the notion that the world is black and white, absolute good vs. absolute evil. The world is made of many beautiful colors and shades. Therefore, when our country searches for reasons to explain the animosity towards its foreign policies, (an animosity, I assure you, not held towards us, the American people, or our globally popular culture), our country must distance itself from the concept of the "conflict of cultures." It should also give up this addiction to identify an ever present enemy, necessary to check "western supremacy." Instead, it should move into a political arena, where the United States can ponder the honesty of its foreign policy. In particular, it should reexamine its failure in the Middle East, where the great American values of freedom, democracy and human rights, have stopped functioning--especially in the Palestinian situation where the Israeli occupation is blatantly violating international law, while the U.S. gives it all it needs of ratification and validation to its colonial and exclusionary brutal military occupation of Palestine, and to the suppression of the Palestinian people's aspirations of return, freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The best weapon to eradicate terrorism from the soul lies in the solidarity of the international world, in respecting the rights of all peoples of mother Earth to live in harmony. It lies in the reduction of the ever increasing gap between the rich north and the poor south. And the most effective way to defend freedom is through fully comprehending the meaning of justice and working towards it. Security measures alone are not sufficient, since terrorism carries within its folds a multiplicity of nationalities and recognizes no boundaries. The world never can be divided into two sections, one for the rebels and the other for the officers of the law.

We should not allow those who try to pit security against Civil Liberty succeed. We can enhance our security, while at the same time preserve and protect our civil liberties, it is never either or. Like Japanese Americans, Arab Americans truly appreciate the civil rights and liberties that were achieved through the struggles and sacrifices of many generations of the civil rights' movement. There is big intimidation to these rights today. We must work hard and diligently to build alliances, all civil and human rights and ethnic communities to reverse this threat. We must work hard and astutely to close the chasm between the ideals and principles embedded in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the actuality of the lives of so many law abiding citizens.

Americans keep asking, "Why do they hate us?" But that question is deceitful and precarious. It assumes a general "they" which, lump sums the whole Arab and Muslim worlds. It does not distinguish between the terrorists and the vast majority of people who condemn violence and injustice. It also presupposes that Arabs and Muslims do not appreciate the great ideals and values of justice, peace, security, freedom. But many have been denied these rights, and often as a direct result of American influence or intervention. But even when we Americans ask, "Why do they hate us," very few of us actually seem to be willing to hear the answer. And this is wrong.

The Japanese American internment was a unique historical event. It is the only instance where all three branches of the government acted at the very highest levels in enacting an abridgement of civil rights (Presidential Executive Order; Act of Congress; Supreme Court decision.) The Commission on the (Wartime Internment and Relocation of Civilians) found that the internment was the result of three factors (Wartime hysteria; Failure of Political Leadership; and Race Prejudice).

Thankfully, the degree of these elements operating as they did in World War II is not taking place in the same manner or intensity. But they still can go that way. Just imagine what happens, God forbid, if another similar attack to September 11 happens again by Arab or Muslim perpetrators?

The Japanese American experience is, hopefully, a deterrent to a re-occurrence of similar events. But again, the hidden and deeper danger lies in the impact on the most vulnerable in the community. The experience of being viewed as suspect leaves deep wounds and takes place in the privacy of each individual. It drives the way a people see themselves, their elders and their children. It becomes a foundation for identity. If left negative, the consequences are troubling and long lasting. On that note I thank you for your invitation, your attention, all is left is your action.