Panel Acts to Stop ‘Arab-Bashing’

The Orange County Human Relations Commission unanimously adopted a resolution Thursday condemning an increase in hate crimes against Arabs since the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War.

The eight-member commission appointed by the Board of Supervisors also voted to write a letter to mayors, police chiefs and school superintendents alerting them to the possibility of Arab-bashing.

Board members voted to take action after listening to testimony from several Arab-Americans who live in Orange County. They spoke angrily of vandalism, threats and other forms of harassment directed at people of Arab descent and other nonwhites who are perceived as looking Arab.

Among those who testified was Sammi Odeh, whose brother Alex was killed in 1985 by a terrorist bomb that exploded at the Santa Ana office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Odeh urged the commission to send a letter to public school superintendents to help stop the harassment of Arab-American schoolchildren.

“I think a lot of these teachers are getting too carried away with these yellow ribbons,” Odeh said, after the meeting. “That’s why you’ve got things going on like children (of Arab descent) wanting to change their names.”

There has been a rash of reports of harassment and other incidents directed at Arab-Americans across the nation, according to a recently released report by the anti-discrimination committee. Fortunately, member Nadia Bettindorf said Thursday, Orange County has not been plagued by the violence directed at Arab-Americans that has occurred in the Los Angeles area and in other parts of the country.

“In Orange County, we have not seen deaths and violent actions like the burning of grocery stores in Los Angeles and Detroit,” Bettindorf said. “But we would like your help to keep it that way.”

Bettindorf said, however, that Arab-Americans in Orange County have been subjected to vandalism and threats. She told the commission of graffiti painted on businesses in Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Tustin and Westminster. A La Palma woman, she said, recently received an anonymous phone call from a person who reportedly said, “You’re a dead woman,” then hung up.

Bettindorf said a woman in Cypress who was wearing a headdress was surrounded by a group of women at a grocery store who told her to “go back where you came from.”

Bettindorf and others who testified said they now plan to urge individual cities to adopt ordinances condemning hate crimes against Arabs.