It was significant that Dr Clovis Maksoud, the former Arab League ambassador and a diehard supporter of Palestinians, passed away on May 15. This is the day in 1948 that Palestinians and all other Arabs call Al Nakba (The Catastrophe), when Israel was established in accordance with the United Nations Partition Plan, which unfairly awarded the Jewish people 55 per cent of the British mandate and the indigenous Arabs only 45 per cent — mostly mountainous areas.
That coincidence further underlined the great affection, respect and admiration for the 90-year-old US-born Lebanese-American and former diplomat who was greatly admired in the Arab and Muslim worlds, having served as ambassador to India and Southeast Asia, the US, the UN and the 22-member Cairo-based League of Arab States.
Besides his diplomatic career, he also served as senior editor of the prominent Egyptian daily, Al Ahram, as well as the Lebanese weekly Al Nahar. Following the devastating so-called Six-Day War with Israel in 1973, which the Arab world lost badly, ambassador Maksoud was sent to the US and the UN to combat what has been described as “the negative Arab stereotyping in the American media”.
An English translation of his pace-setting memoir, From the Confines of Memory: My journey with Arab Nationalism, is expected to be released shortly, which, hopefully, may encourage other envoys to follow in his footsteps.
Dr Maksoud has also marvelled in the US academic world. Dr Michael C. Hudson, a former professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University, told a full house of mourners last week at the St Peter’s and St Paul’s Orthodox Church in Washington suburb that Dr Maksoud played “an indispensable role in the establishment of our Centre for Contemporary Studies at Georgetown University”. He added: “During the many years that I was director of the Centre ... we were proud to have created an endowed Chair at the Centre in the name of Clovis and his wife Hala Maksoud,” who had earned her PhD in Political Science at Georgetown.
He continued: “The Arab world has lost one of its stellar public intellectuals, a man of vision and humanity. Of a long and distinguished career as journalist, diplomat and professor, Clovis Maksoud steadfastly advocated for a socially conscious, inclusive and liberal Arab political order. Never descending to mean-spirited partisanship, he fought against foreign domination, sectarianism and authoritarianism. He was a progressive Arab nationalist, unencumbered by slogans, factionalism and parochialism. Along with legions of friends and admirers I will miss him deeply.”
Dr John Duke Anthony, founding president and chief executive officer at the Washington-based National Council for US-Arab Relations, attended Dr Maksoud’s funeral service. In a lengthy statement, he summed up: “Whatever the subject he happened to be addressing, Clovis was invariably not only articulate; he was also frequently eloquent ... Who can forget Clovis’ forever repeating that, among the biggest obstacles to strengthening an expanding Arab-US relationship were the United States history and policies with respect to Palestine? These, he never tired of emphasising, lay at the heart of what he aptly termed America’s ‘crisis of conscience’.”
He continued: “What [Clovis] epitomised — in his manners and elemental decency, in his unfailing kindness and in his manifesting the gamut of Arab, Islamic, Middle Eastern Christian, Druze and other humanistic values, ideals and principles to which so many aspire, has left an indelible impression not just upon me, but many.”
And on the other side of the coin, an Arab-American activist was recruited this week for the first time to help in drafting the influential Democratic Party platform in America, that is, a statement of principles and policies. This unprecedented step is the result of the advocacy of Bernie Sanders, the forceful Democratic challenger to Hillary Clinton, who had repeatedly urged a fair Palestinian-Israeli settlement. Sanders immediately used his new power granted by the senior Democratic Party leaders to tone down his criticism of Hillary, to name a well-known advocate for Palestinian rights to help in drafting the Democratic policy. He is James Zogby, a Lebanese-American president of the Arab American Institute.
The platform committee, according to the Washington Post, “Is among the most important party bodies, since it writes the policy on which the presidential candidate runs and around which Democrats are supposed to rally, although the platform is non-binding and some presidents have ignored part of it in the past”.
Hillary is known to be very supportive of Israel and thus there may be doubts as to whether the platform can tie her hands.
George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com
