'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb responds

[In a follow-up to the exchange that I blogged here yesterday, Dr Amal Saad-Ghorayeb has written the response that follows. I will be happy to publish, in full, any further remarks that Dean Grant Hammond or any of his staff at the NATO Defense College (NDC) cares to submit. The subject of how, exactly, officials in key NATO structures like the NDC define NATO's "mission" in the Israeli-Arab theater is an important one that citizens of all democracies-- in Lebanon and elsewhere-- should certainly be ready to discuss. Anyway, here is Saad-Ghorayeb's contribution. ~HC]

Despite the very personal nature of Dean Grant Hammond’s last e-mail (apparently sent to me by mistake), I had no intention of dignifying his vulgar outburst with a reply. However, given the publication of his response to Helena Cobban’s queries, I feel obligated to alert the reader to the distortions of reality, inconsistencies, and omissions which characterize his defensive tract, all of which can be readily discerned from the—as yet unpublished-- e-mail exchanges that took place between myself and the NATO Defense College staff.

But more important than my efforts at clarifying the episode, is my endeavor to underline its exact magnitude, lest it appear a mere tit-for-tat exchange between myself and NDC staff.

The episode is nothing short of a botched attempt to enlist me --on account of my “academic expertise [on Hizbullah] and reputation” to borrow Hammond’s words-- to deliver a lecture on the Lebanese resistance movement to an audience of Israeli and other NATO officers and diplomats,  and then, in clear violation of my country’s laws, to engage IDF officers and diplomats in back-channel talks, in the context of the scheduled “Q&A” session. It is crucial to repeat here that these Israeli guests were not private citizens but diplomats and IDF officers, and that accordingly, I was invited to not merely engage in cultural normalization with Israeli academics, but in security normalization with Israeli officers. 

I will take as my starting point  Dr. Hammond’s argument that Dr. Florence Gaub was ignorant of Lebanon’s laws which ban interaction between Lebanese citizens and Israeli military officers. This is an insult to the intelligence, particularly when one considers Gaub’s earlier admission to me that : "We are not under Lebanese law and invite academics in their private capacity, not as government officials. It is for this reason that we have been able, in the past, to invite scholars from very different backgrounds and to ensure frank discussions even among Israelis and Arabs, and even among Israelis and Lebanese." Gaub’s involvement in or observation of these back-channel talks,  presupposes her familiarity with the laws that necessitate that such meetings remain confidential and confined to academics rather than government officials. Hammond’s comparison of my seemingly incredulous ignorance of NATO’s partnership with the Mediterranean Dialogue with Gaub’s ignorance of Lebanon’s laws concerning Israel, is an absurd and irrelevant analogy. Moreover, the fact that I conditioned my acceptance of the NDC’s invitation on the absence of Israeli officers, suggests that I knew they would be present at my lecture.

Second, Hammond’s saccharine platitudes on NDC’s respect for Lebanon’s laws and my abidance by them are disingenuous to say the least. Gaub’s assurance to me that NDC is “not under Lebanese law” and as such, offers “a free academic environment under Chatham House rules, meaning that nobody can be quoted from discussions taking place here,” hardly  vindicates Hammond’s argument about NDC’s respect for Lebanese law. Furthermore, Gaub’s attempt to persuade me to take part in “frank and open discussions” with Israeli officers as other Arabs and Lebanese have done before me after I had made it clear to her that I could not give a lecture with Israeli guests present, does not exactly corroborate Hammond’s claim  that “We would not expect her to break the laws of her nation.”

But it is Hammond’s own words which most clearly betray his contempt for the rule of law in Lebanon. His insistence that Florence had “done nothing wrong” in trying to convince me to commit a crime bordering on treason says it all. Hammond’s depiction of my denunciation of Gaub’s supercilious approach  as “unjust” and “vitriolic”, the likes of which he has apparently “never encountered” before, is intriguing.  That a hardened military man with decades of experience under his sleeve, would respond in such hysterical fashion to a non-threatening e-mail, written in an “academic” –albeit “claptrap”--style by his own account, leaves one wondering whether he has been isolated in his ivory tower for too long or is simply acting out a subconscious fear of the recalcitrant native who refuses to play the role of native-informant.

But to be fair, it bears mentioning here that NDC’s agenda is not unique to the institution but is rooted in a wider NATO policy of promoting security normalization between Israel and states such as Lebanon which do not have relations with it. This policy was clearly articulated by NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in a speech that he delivered January 11, 2009, in a session in Tel Aviv jointly organized by the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies and the Atlantic Forum of Israel.  He talked enthusiastically there about, “NATO’s role as a political agenda-setter”, and said that,“The [Mediterranean] Dialogue now offers us the opportunity to conduct open and frank discussions on regional security, including with countries with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations.”

As a citizen who refuses to violate Lebanese laws which criminalize normalization with Israel, I find it highly “offensive”  and “disrespectful” of Gaub to dare suggest that I engage in off-the-record talks with the Israeli military, knowing full well that neither her nor Hammond would ever dare to encourage  citizens of western countries, or Israel for that matter, to flout their country’s laws and undermine its security by holding secret meetings with enemies of their state. It was my indignation at the injustice inherent in such double-standards, rather than my imputed “cultural sensitivities”, that prompted me to invoke the charge of “crude neo-Orientalism.” In fact, that is the least offensive term I could employ to describe this undignified treatment of Lebanese scholars as potential informants and agents.

Gaub’s allusion to other Arabs and Lebanese who have held “frank discussions” with Israelis as a reference point for me, only confirms my observation that all Arab scholars are expected to conform to the template of perfidious, unprincipled opportunists, bereft of nationalist loyalties, who are all too eager to jump on the Israeli bandwagon when approached by purportedly prestigious western institutions such as NATO. If some Lebanese and Arab scholars choose to betray their countries and relinquish their dignity by engaging with Israeli military officers and diplomats, that is not sufficient grounds for over generalizing that all Arabs are culturally predisposed to surrender and  treason, and can be approached as such. 

It is in this context that Hammond’s observation that “Dr. Saad Ghorayeb appeared to hold her invitation as her paramount concern and not an appreciation for the circumstance of the College, Dr. Gaub or the NATO Alliance in this matter,” appears particularly ridiculous. In the first place, Hammond need only refer to my e-mail exchanges with NDC staff to see that it took me a full 3 months to conditionally accept their invitation—hardly the behavior of someone whose paramount concern was her invitation. Second, my e-mails focus far more on NDC’s disrespect for my country’s laws than Gaub’s revocation of my invitation. Furthermore, it might interest Hammond to learn that I was similarly “disinvited” from my position at the reputable Carnegie Middle East Center for refusing to conform to their “standards and approaches”, which necessitated that I change my “way of thinking and writing” and that required me to become a “different” kind of scholar . As this example illustrates, I am but one example of many Arabs and Lebanese who value their dignity and integrity far more than any association we could have with supposedly prestigious western institutions that require us to relinquish them.

In closing, while I appreciate Hammond’s apology for accidentally sending me that memorable mail, I was far less insulted by the manner in which he attempted to demean me as an academic, than his endorsement of Gaub’s complete disrespect for Lebanon’s sovereignty by asserting that she had not committed any mistake. If NATO and its member states are as genuinely concerned with Lebanon’s “state-building” process and respect for the “rule of law” as they claim to be, I suggest that they respect Lebanon’s sovereignty by discontinuing their campaign of promoting normalization with Israel. As the Dean of Nato’s Defense College, I suggest that Professor Grant Hammond and his faculty do the same.