United for Peace

While the Middle East continues to form the backdrop to religious conflict and play stage to US foreign policy, a group of young Adelaide professionals are uniting to show us that interfaith peace is possible, as HANNAH FRANK reports.

It’s well past a respectable closing hour on a Tuesday night when I pull up to the Digimob phone shop in Pultney Street; the last customer left hours ago but the lights are still shining through the showroom windows into the street. I’m here to catch the end of a committee meeting for new not for profit organisation United for Peace. After dark, the store has been transformed into a theatre for animated debate between the committee of Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims, Orthodox, Catholic and Maronite Christians and Druze members, who form a ‘mini-UN’ as they sit on a mix of office chairs and armchairs around the perimeter of the showroom.

Well into their agenda items when I arrive through the back door, it’s clear this dispute has nothing to do with religion. Instead, the committee is debating the performance fee for a well known Lebanese singer, who they are flying from interstate for the next United for Peace fundraiser. This is no small event; talk of television advertising, contracts and media coverage fills the room as each person volunteers their time to contribute to the project. In the Middle East, where religious segregation and cultural conflict form part of everyday life, such a scene of interfaith dialogue and cooperation is a long way from realized.

United for Peace formed last year after the 2006 Lebanon War, which saw a 34 day military conflict between Lebanon and northern Israel end in more than 1000 mainly Lebanese deaths and displaced more than 1.5 million people. It was the result of fighting between Hezbollah militants and Israeli forces; after the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers the country sought to enforce air and naval blockades against Lebanon whilst inflicting massive airstrikes which damaged the international airport in Beirut as well as much civilian infrastructure. More than 1.5 million people, approximately two thirds of whom were Lebanese, were displaced. Both Lebanon and Israel supported a United Nations resolution to end the conflict on 11 August and the ceasefire came into effect on 14 August.

Set up to educate Australia about the the complex political, cultural and social issues in the Middle East, United for Peace also aims to provide financial aid to the region through fundraising events. Sitting next to me at the meeting is Faten Shahin, a 20 year old university student and a ‘full Palestinian’. Last year her relatives in Lebanon were devastated by the war along with thousands of other families. ‘My dad’s nephews have a plastic company where they manufacture all the plastic equipment for hospitals, like IV tubes. That whole company got destroyed and it cost them about $20million dollars. Now they’ve started to rebuild it, but just a fraction, just one [production] line, not twenty. They had to start again from scratch…each person is affected in different ways’.

The chair of the organisation is Houssam Abiad, who at 31 is the CEO of Digimob, which he proudly tells me is the second largest mobile phone repair company in Australia; this is his shop. He’s also got a double degree in biomedical science with honors, and is currently studying for an MBA. There’s no shortage of qualifications on the UFP committee; at tonight’s meeting there’s also Hala Abokamil, 26, a graduate psychologist ‘but still kind of attached to uni at the moment’, and Heba Najjar, 22, who has a double degree in Health Science and Social Science. She is currently studying for a Masters of Audiology. Among the other committee members are a property developer, a lawyer, several business owners, and more than a handful of management and finance students.

The strength of the committee in business and finance has obviously served United for Peace well. In just over a year, UFP has raised more than $10,000 for a variety of organisations, including a recent quiz night which attracted more than 100 people in support of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Faten considers the night her favourite moment so far in the short life of the organisation. ‘I was put up to be MC –they know I hate public speaking! So when they put me up for it I was a nervous wreck, but once I did the intro it was fine’.
Other events have included a 600-strong concert with famous Lebanese singer Ramy Ayash as well as highly successful film nights, bowling and karaoke fundraisers and participation in the Government funded ‘Bringing Communities Together’ event in Rundle Mall. This in particular is the kind of event UFP seeks to participate in. Hala cites this as one of the most important activities for United for Peace, most importantly because it allowed the public to interact with Muslim people and see that they aren’t so different.

It hasn’t always been easy to fulfill that goal. ‘I think a lot of the events that we do we tend to attract the converted anyway – which is great that our family and friends come and support us, and we get such a great level of support from the Lebanese community – we wouldn’t be where we are right now without it – but I think the best thing for us to do is to get out there and reach out to the wider Australian community, and get our message across and let them know what’s going on. You know, make them more informed… we wouldnt just want to make ourselves a cause for the Lebanese people or the Middle Eastern Community, we want to be a cause for everyone.’

This task is undoubtedly made more difficult in the current political climate post-September 11 and the Iraq War, where foreign governments and the media have invariably linked the phrase ‘Middle East’ with Islamic fundamentalism, dictatorships and terrorism. But Hala has a surprising assessment of the influence of US foreign policy on the portrayal of Middle Easterners. “I wouldn’t fault the agendas of any certain governments”. It seems odd that this intelligent and well spoken woman would hesitate to acknowledge the vilification the Middle East has suffered, so when I press her about the influence of media on Middle Eastern stereotypes, she admits that her position has more to do with her self-critical nature than any desire to validate US foreign policy.

‘I will acknowledge that [the media have made it more difficult] but at the same time I will fault the Middle Eastern community and say: “Why aren’t we going out there and presenting a positive image of ourselves to counteract what’s going on?” Personally, I think we do a very poor job of that. We have a very long way to go in presenting a good image. I don’t know why we let certain media organisations run away with that stereotype that they’re trying to paint of Middle Eastern people… I think we need to get a bit more organized and get involved in the community. You just have to appeal to people’s humanity, and make them understand that the value of a child in Palestine is as great as the value of a person who died in September 11.’

Ranim Kaddoura, one of the youngest committee members at 18, was in Saudi Arabia when September 11 happened. Being in an Arabic country rather than a Western one, ‘I didn’t feel it as much. When I came to Australia, I had my headscarf on. Some of my family members were quite concerned before we came here, and they thought “careful, discrimination”. But I am quite surprised and very pleased to say that I have not been bothered by anyone. Everyone’s been very understanding. I just think that the way you treat people reflects on the way you are treated, and I haven’t had any difficulties with it.

Like most people on the committee, Ranim, now a first year university student studying food science has complex ties back to the Middle East. ‘I was born in Saudi Arabia, although I’m Palestinian, but in the Middle East it doesn’t work that way. We came here in 1995, got the citizenship and then went back to Lebanon’. On her return to Australia following a series of moves around the Middle East ‘it was because of my Dad’s work’ she got involved in United for Peace when the 2006 Lebanon War broke out. ‘I really wanted to do something to help…the only thing that I could do personally was to contact Mars chocolate fundraising and I started selling that chocolate. One of the places that I selling it was at a Flinders [University] lecture by Dr David Palmer and Houssam [Abiad] was there and he saw me and asked me if I wanted to get involved’.

Sitting in his office after the meeting, I ask Houssam about his vision for the organization. ‘Obviously we’re a very young organisation… what I’d like to see is something that is beyond me. I might not be around to see it, but I think my ultimate goal at the end of the day is, living in Australia we must all be Australians.’ The statement seems an ill fitting answer to the question, but it’s obviously something he feels need to be said, so I drop the line of questioning and ask him what he means by ‘being Australian’. ‘To me? It means opportunity. It means freedom of speech, freedom of thought…having the ability to express myself at any time of the day without having to feel fear…without having to feel inhibitions.’ His words remind me that many Arab-Australians now feel more pressure to prove themselves as ‘’fair dinkum” Australians, especially after some gave the rest a bad name at the 2005 Cronulla riots.

Heba has experienced the feeling, too. ‘I’ve had to justify myself in a number of situations. Although I’m not Muslim I still have attachments to the Middle East. A lot of people would make assumptions of what my stance was on certain situations. On the other hand, it’s made me think twice about how I look at other people and races. There are extremes in all cultures. You have to give people the benefit of the doubt’.
But personal identity takes a backseat here: more important is the task at hand, developing the policies and direction of United for Peace. Houssam tells me that it is ‘completely apolitical’, and ‘purely humanitarian’, but at present their fundraising channels seem to have a heavy bias towards Lebanese and Palestinian interests. It’s a young organisation but from the outside, the partiality seems to work in noticeable contrast to their mission statement of impartiality.

So does that mean United for Peace, whose committee members are ‘mainly Lebanese and Palestinian’ according to Ranim, would raise money for an Israeli cause? ‘Absolutely’, says Houssam. ‘In fact, just recently Anthony Loewenstein came down and talked’. However, the fact that the Sydney based author of ‘My Israel Question’ is Jewish is not enough. His book has been criticized for being ‘overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian’, and containing ‘aggressive public criticisms of the state of Israel’. These comments formed part of a review in the Sydney Morning Herald written by Philip Mendes, a senior lecturer in social policy at Monash University. Mendes also suggested that Loewenstein ‘depicts the Palestinians as largely defenceless and innocent victims and provides only limited discussion of the long history of Palestinian hatred for and violence towards Israel’.

Given these comments, United for Peace may need to make a more concerted effort in order to avoid being seen as taking a political stance; fundraising on a broader scale and the inclusion of some Jewish committee members could all go a long way to achieving the objective of the organisation. This perhaps, more than anything, would ensure there is a true representation and balance within the group. In the meantime United for Peace continue to build a very important organisation and with a savvy, professional and enthusiastic team, they look set for success in achieving the interfaith and intercultural dialogue that they have set out to accomplish.