NEW YORK CITY – The New York Press’ current edition “Best of Manhattan 2002” lists ADC Communications Director Hussein Ibish as “Best TV Spokesperson For the Arab Cause.”
Lonely at the top
Toss a rock in any direction in down-town Washington, DC. There’s a good chance you’ll hit a kickass spokes-person for the Israeli side of the Middle East conflict – articulate, on message and unflappable. On the other
side? Well, there’s James Zogby of the Arab American Institute…and then there’s Hussein Ibish, the communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Ibish is the only spokesperson for the Arab cause who inspires dread in the opposing chair, and his loquacious appearances on cable tv shoutfests have made him the bete noire of the Israeli lobby and the “Bomb Iraq Now” crowd. One of Ibish’s best tv lines this year came on an August Crossfire, when he dubbed a lawsuit over an Islamic reading assignment at the University of North Carolina as “people suing the university for the right to remain pig-ignorant and still get a degree from the University of North Carolina.”
Ask the New York Post’s Daniel Pipes about Ibish’s devastating blasts.
On a March 5 edition of Alan Keyes’ now-defunct chat show, Ibish reduced the Middle East Forum director to impotently ranting, “Shut up.” Pipes’ response to this public spanking was to pen a column for the Post a few weeks later, demanding that the doors of American tv “be closed” to Ibish. Pipes’ column was pathetic, undignified and all-too-obvious-and it demonstrates how Ibish can drive even his smoothest opponents completely batshit.