A tragedy far away can quickly become personal

James Zogby

• Last Updated: November 08. 2009 12:18AM UAE / November 7. 2009 8:18PM GMT

I stopped over in London at 6:30 in the morning and turned on my BlackBerry. It was flooded with e-mails sent while I had been in the air, flying back to the United States from the Middle East.

Looking at just the “sender” and “subject” lines, I observed that some were “news alerts”. Others came from various members of my staff at the Arab American Institute in Washington. The last group included statements and press releases issued by other Arab American and American Muslim organisations.  

My curiosity piqued, I commenced reading these e-mails in the order they had been received. The “news alerts” began midafternoon providing just the bare outlines of the horrible murders of what was thought to be 12 military personnel at Fort Hood in Texas.

Reading on, the story unfolded with new details emerging and early reports corrected as facts became known. Early on, for example, I read that there were thought to be three shooters before it was established that there was just one. At one point there was a report that the lone shooter was a Muslim, possibly a convert, and that he had been killed.

Only later did it become clear that the killer was an Arab American and a 39-year-old army Major. He was Jordanian-Palestinian, born in the US. He was a psychiatrist counselling soldiers returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Next came a flurry of missives from my staff writing to me or to each other reporting on their handling of this crisis and what they were hearing from reporters who were calling for a reaction or those from the Arab American community seeking guidance. My first response to this particular set of e-mails was a pang of guilt. My current staff, though extraordinarily talented and dedicated, is quite new – new enough not to have been on board when we last faced similar crises.

I know the pressure they are under dealing with demands from all sides. They would even need to put in place mechanisms to deal with any threats that might arrive. One such call, I learnt, had already come into the office shortly after six in the evening.

Though I wanted to be with them, to provide whatever guidance I could, I found that they had the complex demands of the situation well in hand. I used my wait in the airport lounge to give my best advice on next steps: what a follow-up statement might include; what messages to avoid. I noted that among the e-mails I had received were statements for some other groups with headlines condemning the killings and warning against anti-Arab or anti-Muslim backlash. My advice: “Don’t go there.” This is not about us right now. It’s about the victims and the pain of their families. If it were to be about anyone or anything else, it shouldn’t be about the potential this horrible act poses to Arab or Muslim American groups.

After those immediately involved, concern should be shown for the challenges this tragedy will pose for the thousands of patriotic Arab Americans currently serving with distinction in the US military, some of whom may now unfairly be targets of suspicion.

In the more than three decades I have been engaged in this work within my community, we’ve weathered many storms – from hijackings and terrorist acts (some of which were perpetrated by Arabs, while in other cases there was a rush to judgment, wrongly accusing Arabs) to wars, some involving the United States fighting in the Middle East, others involving Israel. In each of these instances we’ve had to face down challenges.

In our media age, where news is instantaneous, we don’t just read about stories as detached observers, we live them. We become caught up in the drama unfolding with each new morsel of information becoming “breaking news”. As a result, more than being just a story, a crisis becomes an event in which we become participants. It draws us in and drives our emotions.

I have been here before, riding this roller-coaster – forced to live these stories but wondering what it would be like to just watch them: to be able to just mourn the senseless loss of life without having to look over my shoulder because someone holds my community responsible and may strike out, or at least create fear by threatening violence. To not have to, as one of my staff members wrote in an e-mail “hold my breath and pray that it’s not an Arab involved” – because we know that if it is some may hold us all responsible.   

James Zogby is president of the Arab American Institute