The American Task Force on Palestine
www.AmericanTaskForce.org is celebrating its 10th Anniversary at this
year's annual Gala. As always, this year we will be honoring the
accomplishments of distinguished Palestinian Americans.
ATFP's
black-tie galas are attended by high-level decision-makers and
opinion-influencers in Washington, along with an unmatched combination
of community members, diplomats, analysts, journalists and other
distinguished guests.
The Gala program will be informative and
newsworthy -- a senior policy-maker (to be announced) will give the
keynote speech, at a time when dramatic events in the Middle East are
leading the news worldwide. Moreover, it will be entertaining: various
musicians, singers and comedians will ensure that the atmosphere is
lively and joyful.
Tuesday October 29, 2013 The Ritz-Carlton 1150 22nd Street, NW Washington, DC 20037
Thank you and your lovely wife Naila, and all of ATFP for
hosting such an inspiring and interesting Gala. My husband and I very
much enjoyed all the art- and the speakers... and the gift bag with
zataar and olive oil and Nabulsi soap.
Meeting one of my favorite
modern poets in person was a moment I will never ever forget. Naomi
Shihab Nye is as welcoming and delightful as her poems.
ATFP's
hard work and good intentions are obvious, as is the talent,
intelligence, dignity and compassion of all the many people who chose to
help support the American Task Force on Palestine... I wish you the
best of luck in your collective efforts to help shape a just, lasting
and comprehensive peace and a real Palestinian state.
Keynote speaker Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stands alongside ATFP President Ziad Asali at the 2010 Gala. (ATFP)
[AS
ALWAYS
PLEASE GO TO THE LINK
TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN
FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and
conversations) THAT EMPOWER
DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE &
PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]
"There
could be no greater legacy for America than to help to bring into being
a Palestinian state for a people who have suffered too long, who have
been humiliated too long, who have not reached their potential for too
long, and who have so much to give to the international community and to
all of us."
These words—among
the strongest ever made by a senior American official about the
importance to U.S. foreign policy of establishing a Palestinian
state—were delivered in 2006 by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the
keynote speaker at the first annual Gala of the American Task Force on
Palestine.
This
was widely reported in Israel but almost totally ignored in the Arab
world. An insightful Israeli noted that Palestinians should regard
Rice's speech as their own "Balfour Declaration," unequivocally
committing the United States to the creation of a Palestinian state.
ATFP's galas are a celebration of Palestinian Americans, their
dignity and pride, their culture and their contributions to the United
States and the world. And they are also an unparalleled statement of the
mainstreaming of Palestinians and Palestine in the United States.
On October 29, my colleagues and I at ATFP will be holding our 10th anniversary gala,
"Generations of Commitment." More than just a gala, it is the
culmination of a long journey to create a defining public event for
Palestine and Palestinians in Washington, and to bring the American
policy establishment together annually under the banner of Palestine.
One
of the most crucial aspects of ATFP's mission has been to change the
image of Palestine and Palestinians in Washington, moving beyond the
traditional binary stereotypes of menacing terrorists or wretched
refugees. There is an all-American story to be told about Palestinian
immigrants to the United States, and a need to celebrate their
contributions to our country and to the world. Every year several
noteworthy Palestinian Americans are honored at the galas.
Beginning
with the first ATFP Gala in 2006 has been a tradition of the
highest-level keynote speakers including, during their terms of office,
Secretaries of State Rice and Hillary Rodham Clinton, National Security
Advisor Jim Jones, and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
ATFP,
led by its founding President Ziad Asali, has emphasized the American
national interest in ending the occupation and creating, at long last, a
Palestinian state to live alongside Israel.
Almost
everyone active in ATFP had a significant history of prior
Arab-American activism. We knew we were essentially starting from
scratch, since the normative approach could not work because it didn't
answer the main questions or address the primary audience.
Traditional
Arab-American approaches emphasized history, justice, international law
and human rights. But they did not explain why the United States
should, in its own interests, adopt ending the occupation as a core
foreign policy goal. It was a conversation of outsiders that, even under
the best of circumstances could not have, and did not really seek to,
influence policy.
It
proved astonishingly easy to fit the agenda of ending the occupation
based on a two-state solution into the existing American foreign policy
discourse. What ATFP demonstrated was that it was not—as many
Arab-Americans may have expected—knocking on a locked door. Rather, ATFP
found itself pushing on one that opened wide.
The primary reaction in Washington was not "what are you talking about" but "where have you been?"
ATFP's
galas are unique in bringing together a set of stakeholders that rarely
appear side-by-side in public. Community members sit alongside senior
government officials and diplomats. Pro-Israel advocates mingle with
ease at an event celebrating Palestine. Prominent journalists engage
with key decision-makers. Typically welcoming over 600 guests, the galas
are gatherings of the who's who in Washington in the Middle East policy
conversation.
Even
more remarkably, they typically applaud the same things at the same
time. Everyone rises for the American and Palestinian national anthems. A
Washington insider marveled privately that such an unprecedented
mingling of different, and often estranged, constituencies could be
assembled.
Any
public event is, by definition, at least in part an exercise in
political optics. ATFP's galas are unique in Washington, for the optics
they project, the stakeholders they bring together, dignitaries they
honor and how they reframe the Palestinian-American community's presence
in their own capital.
The
ATFP Gala is an evening of celebration of Palestinian Americans and
Palestine, and a showcase for what can be accomplished within the
system. "Yes, we can," because in fact we have.
It is what ATFP does in between galas
that makes such a huge range of stakeholders want to attend them. Its
work is typically low-key, steady and cumulative, and designed to have a
long-term impact.
What
ATFP has done is what all other successful American constituencies
have. It has emulated others in learning how Washington works and how to
work in Washington. And in so doing it has shown how Palestinian
Americans—like all others—can work to achieve their goals, empower
themselves, and acquire influence.
Hussein Ibish is a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. His most recent book is What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal. He has a PhD in comparative literature from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
ATFP seeks to support good governance and
living standards for Palestinians, and to bring Palestinians and the
United States closer together at every level. It advocates that American
policies recognize the inextricable interconnection of the issue of
Palestine with our other major policy objectives in the region. The Task
Force holds that the values and interests of the United States are
complementary rather than contradictory throughout the region,
especially as it pertains to Palestine.
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