A time for spreading happiness

It's the holiday season for all three Abrahamic faiths. Over the next three weeks, a mix of solemn religious observation and festive merrymaking accompany Hanukhah, Christmas and Eid Al Adha, as well as the more secular, global New Year celebrations. Yet it seems as if the Grinch has already made off with all the good cheer.

There's Syria, asccused of murdering outspoken democrats in Lebanon; the White House's ongoing defence of torture abroad and secret wiretaps at home; Russian and Chinese collusion at the United Nations Security Council that allegedly gave Syria carte blanche to assassinate at will; or "donor fatigue" among the world's richest nations that has stalled urgent humanitarian supplies from reaching homeless earthquake victims in Pakistan.

Quite tragically, that's just an infinitesimal fraction of all that ails the world's 6 billion or so inhabitants. One more disturbing factoid: about 3 billion survive on less than $2 (Dh7.34) a day.

But the holidays are a time for spreading joy, not for harbouring animosities or succumbing to hopelessness. As we gather with friends and family, we share a mindfulness of the needs of others; we are commanded to share our bounty, however modest, with those who are less fortunate. That common bond, among others, unites us even as many among us work so diligently to tear us apart.

So perhaps it's time to dispel the gloom and focus instead on some good news.

Two princes, one a Saudi royal, the other a Hollywood icon, are hard at work debunking myths and misconceptions that perpetuate the camps of "us" and "them". For their enlightened outlook, they have been derided by the same set of narrow minded, fear mongering critics.

Who are they and what are they up to?

To bridge the divide between the United States and the Arab world, Menlo College (California) alumnus and billionaire businessman Prince Al Waleed bin Talal has committed over $50 million (Dh183.5 million) to four universities: Harvard, Georgetown, American Universities of Beirut and Cairo. There are no strings attached. Really.

Last year, I sat in on one of AUB's first organisational meetings for the Al Waleed-funded American studies programme. John Waterbury, the university's president, made it clear that the prince's only instructions were to use $5 million to improve students' understanding of the US. Full stop. Al Waleed trusted Waterbury to do what he does best create and manage a first-rate academic centre. He has taken the same approach at Harvard and Georgetown. But that did nothing to quell right-wing fury. Saudi-bashers had found a way to blast Riyadh.

The rekindled US-Saudi bilateral relationship generated ideological heartburn among hardliners, particularly neo-conservatives. All that handholding in Crawford got under their skin. But loyalty to the White House prohibits any attempts to undermine the Bush-Abdullah relationship. What to do? Go after Al Waleed.

As one American Enterprise Institute researcher put it, "Accepting money from a member of the royal family legitimises the regime." In the neo-con world view, all Saudi royals are interchangeable.

Such ambiguity is unthinkable in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There, the right crystallises the conflict quite clearly, and are quite adamant that others do the same. The Israelis are the "good guys"; the Palestinians, "bad".

Global enterprise

Into this starkly defined territory steps Steven Spielberg. He has spent millions of dollars founding and sustaining a video archive of interviews with Holocaust survivors, a global enterprise he undertook in 1994 after filming Schindler's List. From this, one might infer that he too shares a predilection for excusing Israel's bad acts and vilifying Palestinians regardless.

Not so. His latest release, Munich, makes him as much a target of right-wing, knee-jerk defenders of Israel as Al Waleed. His unforgivable sin? Humanising Palestinian terrorists, even those who kidnapped and murdered the Israeli Olympic team in 1973, and depicting the moral quandary that increasingly consumed the Israeli assassins as they completed each mission.

So there they are, thousands of miles apart, a Saudi and an American using their status and wealth to challenge stereotypes, weathering considerable abuse in the process, and all towards the same goal: illuminating the dark chasm to reveal the space between us is actually quite bridgeable. In the end, what unites us really is far more compelling than what divides us. Think that's an empty slogan? Think again.

In the November 21 issue of the New Yorker Magazine, Pulitzer Prize winning author Steve Coll writes, "Less than a mile from the main Jamaat ud-Dawa (formerly the banned Lashkar-e-Tayyba/Army of the Righteous) in the Azad Kashmir capital, the US Army has erected a field hospital. American Humvees on break from chasing remnant Al Qaida elements in Afghanistan were sharing Muzaffarabad's streets with ambulances from the Al Rashid Trust, a Pakistani charity whose funds were blocked by the Bush Administration in 2001... small crowds of local men gathered to watch with apparent admiration as female European soldiers shopped in their food stalls."

After the October 8 earthquake that devastated Pakistan and Kashmir, jihadists, Nato forces and Western NGOs have put the needs of the survivors ahead of ideology as winter sets in and tens of thousands still have no shelter, little food and scant medical supplies. They have suspended mutual ill will to prevent a second wave of deaths. Not a Grinch in sight.

Alhamdulillah.

Maggie Mitchell Salem is a political and communications consultant based in Washington, D.C. Previously, she was director of communications at the Middle East Institute and a special assistant to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.