The strangest Culver City Democratic Club program in memory — featuring two ill-prepared speakers — abruptly took an electrifying turn near the end last night.
Enraged that one of the meandering orators had just blamed Israel for the notorious 1988 Lockerbie airline bombing, the club’s feistiest, perhaps oldest, member, octogenarian Lee Welinsky, sprang to her feet, furiously wagging her tongue and one finger at the stunned accuser for vilifying the Jewish state.
“As a Jewish American woman, I defy you to say that,” the peanut-sized Ms. Welinsky thundered, “because it is not true.”
Somewhere in Los Angeles at the same hour, her son Howard Welinsky, Board Chair of the influential Democrats for Israel group, must have been beaming with pride over his mom’s popular fiery outburst.
Deterioration already had been setting in, albeit more subtly, across the Rotunda Room of the Vets Auditorium, unsurprisingly since Jews have formed the spine of the club throughout its 60-year history. Three of the last four club presidents have been Jews.
Departing from its conventional political fare, the Democratic Club program was billed as an intimate examination of the Arab Spring, the Middle East revolutions of the last six months, as interpreted by two insiders.
The innovative idea quickly foundered.
Easy to Get Confused
Their sometimes-bizarre, frequently amorphous views to the side for a moment, both disorganized speakers rambled in an undisciplined and marginally coherent manner that consistently failed to enlighten. Except for context and content, they were terrific.
If you were unfamiliar with the Arab Spring at the outset, you probably still were an hour later. The notion was to explain from the Arab side of the table why and how democracy was making its Middle East debut outside of Israel.
Never happened. Not close.
To the astonishment of his audience, Dedon Kamathi of KPFK-FM, repeatedly seemed to praise the globally condemned Libyan dictator Kadafi who has been killing his people and others throughout his four decades in power.
Mr. Kamathi strenuously objected to branding Kadafi as a tyrant.
Not only have Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others surveyed the war-splintered country and found Kadafi innocent of violations, he said, skeptics should remember that the beloved Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also were called tyrants.
That hardly mollified the crowd. Former club president Darryl Cherness declared himself “shocked” that “the speaker is deifying Kadafi.”
Later after an Arab woman who is a club member stood to offer not only a stout endorsement of the Arab Spring but the only insight of the evening into the uprisings, she promptly was chastised by a woman who strode over to her chair and rather noisily confronted her.
No Improvement
The other speaker, Marium Mohiuddin, a young woman journalist who is Pakistani but grew up in North America, most recently Texas, is the Communications Coordinator for the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Her indiscernible message suffered from terminal garble. Like Mr. Kamathi, she did not possess insights into or comprehension of the arguably democratic revolts.
Her centerpiece contribution may have been a tiringly long, analysis-free narrative of the Egyptian uprising written by a schoolgirl who probably is not an “A” student.
When a club member, frustrated by Ms. Mohiuddin’s gaping lack of orientation and information, asked where the revolutions were leading, she eschewed a thoughtful answer for this unhelpful one:
“I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll just have to wait and figure it out.”
Just before moderator Bill Wynn closed the program, Ms. Mohiuddin stood to strongly, and correctly, refute the charge that she came armed with an agenda. Undoubtedly a nice person, the purpose of her disconnected speechmaking, however, never was evident.
The 61-year-old Mr. Kamathi was a far more troubling story. He seemed to be on fire about something related to Libya. He barely stopped short of recommending Libya as a vacation haven, citing numerous cultural, political economic accomplishments that he suggested are underappreciated.
“I will never say that Kadafi is perfect,” he said. “In my opinion, only heaven is perfect.” Mr. Kamathi failed to distinguish further between the two.
He sympathetically portrayed Libya as an unfortunate underdog to the months of President Obama-authorized bombing raids by “the 28 nations of NATO and the United States.”
The locus of his support was unmistakable.
Mr. Kamathi’s uneven, sometimes ranting, oratory was like erasing the lanes from the 405 Freeway, telling 10,000 drivers to follow any path they chose and to reach their destination within 20 minutes.
He was dizzying to follow.
Then came the explosion.
Mr. Cherness opened his comments by scoring Mr. Kamathi for “deifying” Kadafi.
Before reciting terrorist attacks by Kadafi, Mr. Cherness said: “The reality is Kadafi and his regime were responsible for the Lockerbie bombing,” and that ignited Libya’s arch-defender.
“It is an established fact,” Mr. Cherness confidently went on, “there is no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press in Libya. He is a tyrant. There is no point in trying to pretend otherwise.”
The Lockerbie assertion stung Mr. Kamathi, and he lashed back with what the room regarded as an outrage.
“Lockerbie,” Mr. Kamathi said, “was an undercover operation, done by the Mossad (Israeli CIA), to set up Libya.”
With that, Ms. Welinsky shot out of her prominent chair, No.1 in the front row, shouted “Hey,” and Mr. Kamathi was treated to a dressing down he is unlikely to forget.
