19 dec 1994
The Controversy Over the "PLO Compliance Report"
A political storm is brewing in Washington, involving the peace process. The major parties to this developing struggle are the U.S. Department of State, and the pro-Labor and pro-Likud lobbies in the U.S. and their supporters in the U.S. Congress.
What has set the stage for this conflict was the December 1, 1994 issuance of a document that has become known as the “PLO Compliance Report.” In the report, the State Department reviews PLO behavior over the past six months in an effort to determine whether or not the Palestinian leadership is honoring its commitment to the Middle East peace process.
The State Department is required to submit this report to Congress under the terms of the Middle East Peace Facilitation Act of 1994. According to this Act, all U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian Authority is conditional on the PLO’s:
a) renouncing the Arab League boycott of Israel;
b) urging the nations of the Arab League to end the boycott of Israel;
c) cooperating with efforts undertaken by the President of the United States to end the Arab League boycott of Israel;
d) condemning individual acts of terrorism and violence;
e) amending its National Covenant to eliminate all references calling for the destruction of Israel.
The 13 page State Department report covers the period from June 1, 1994 to November 30, 1994, and for the most part focuses on the PLO’s response to violence against Israelis and the PLO’s “commitment to seek a peaceful and negotiated settlement” with Israel.
While noting, what it terms, some “difficulties and failures (especially with regard to changing the “PLO’s Covenant”), the State Department report “confirms the PLO’s commitment” and notes that the organization has “abided by its commitment to renounce terrorism.” Nevertheless, the report notes that this last area (being Israel’s most central concern) presents the PLO “with its most difficult challenge” and the report concludes that the Palestinian Authority “should do more in this critical area” and that, for its part, the U.S. Administration “will continue to press the PLO to take the necessary actions to prevent acts of violence, to bring those responsible to justice and to abide by all its other commitments.”
Since the report is only mildly critical and is genuinely supportive of PLO efforts, it appears to be the intent of the State Department that the President certify the PLO as being in compliance, so that U.S. economic aid can continue. It is this unspoken subtext to the report that has caused a flare-up among pro-Israel groups.
***
It should be noted, however, that all of this discussion ignores several fundamental questions that will never be asked in Washington:
--· Why is there no legislation requiring that aid to Israel be conditional on its compliance with the terms of the peace process?
--· Is Israel in compliance with its commitments?
--· What has happened to the U.S. aid to the Palestinians? And is it worth jumping through hoops to get it?
***
The origin of the Compliance Act in question is the result of the work of the pro-Israel lobbyists and their supporters in Congress.
Because the pro-Israel lobbies have spent the past 20 years building a political powerhouse based on the war against the Palestinians, for a number of reasons the lobbies are finding it difficult to simply accept the movement toward peace in good faith and work to support the peace process. Among these reasons are:
--· They have built a national constituency among members of the Jewish community and in Congress based on a fear of Palestinians and opposition to their goals.
--· Even those who have endorsed the peace process fear losing support in the Jewish community to pro-Likud forces, who are trying to portray them as “weak on the Palestinian issue.”
--· Quite simply, their power was built on this fear of Palestinians and opposing cooperation with the Arab world, and power is never easy to surrender.
Instead of moving to remove the encumbering anti-Palestinian legislation of the past 20 years and whole-heartedly supporting U.S. aid to Palestinians, the largest pro-Israel group, AIPAC, and its supporters in Congress wrote new legislation that “conditionally” removes old sanctions against the PLO and links U.S. aid to the Palestinians to conditions that are difficult to achieve or interpret.
At this time, AIPAC is being pushed hard from the right by the very pro-Likud Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which has capitalized on latent anti Palestinian sentiment (created in some measure by AIPAC over the years) among many in the Jewish community and the knee-jerk support for such attitudes (also largely created by AIPAC) among many members of Congress.
Even before the Compliance Act was passed, the ZOA formed its own Peace Accords Monitoring Committee (PAM) in the Congress and quickly drew over 50 members to its ranks. The purpose of PAM was simply to monitor PLO compliance and pressure the Administration to force the PLO to continue to make one-sided concessions to Israel. And while both the Israeli government and the U.S. opposed the formation of PAM and the passage of the Compliance Act, AIPAC went along with both efforts out of fear of losing ground to the ZOA.
This dynamic has continued to the present day. Before the State Department released its compliance report, both the ZOA and AIPAC issued their own studies in an effort to shape the State Department’s findings at the PLO’s expense.
The AIPAC report, entitled “Problems in the PLO’s Compliance with its Commitments,” is sharply critical of the PLO performance in “meeting Israel’s security concerns” through its failure to take “Firm, effective action against…the terror of extremists…and incitement to violence against Israelis.” While nominally “pro-peace” (like the Labor government it says it supports), AIPAC attempts to walk the fine line of “supporting the peace process” and covering its rear flank against attacks from the ZOA that it is “caving in to the PLO.”
In a real sense, this is a pattern of behavior displayed by the Labor government itself. The net result is that the extreme right wing is driving the political debate and determining the political behavior of both the Labor government and its lobby in the U.S.
The ZOA report was issued on the November 28th and entitled “On the Eve of the State Department Report on PLO Compliance, the ZOA finds the PLO is not in compliance with Accords.” It is a shrill attack on 12 areas of PLO behavior, with most of the reporting based on false conclusions and disinformation. It blames the PLO for “violating its obligation”...to halt terrorist attacks by PLO groups, to refrain from hostile propaganda against Israel, to change the Covenant,” etc.
After the State Department report was released and it became clear that the U.S. was prepared to certify the PLO’s compliance, the ZOA immediately attacked the official U.S. report, terming it a “whitewash” that “ignores, minimizes and whitewashes the PLO’s numerous serious violations of the Accords.”
The ZOA’s President concludes:
“President Clinton has pledged $500 million to the PLO and he will be considering the State Department’s report as he decides whether or not to send that money to a group that has not always shown it has transformed itself from the terrorist organization it always was. We hope that the President will take into consideration Congressional opinion and the many serious flaws in the State Department’s report. As U.S. law appropriately requires, the PLO should not receive U.S. aid so long as the PLO is violating the accords, by not condemning terrorism, not punishing terrorists, not urging Palestinian Arabs to give up violence, and not changing the PLO Covenant, which calls for Israel’s destruction.”
Not to be outdone, but still seeking to walk its tightrope, AIPAC issued a statement of its own, expressing its “disappointment” with the State Department report and noting that “peace requires Arafat to change his conduct,” but the State Department “report fails to hold Arafat to a high enough standard.”
An interesting twist to this struggle between the ZOA and AIPAC for the best anti-PLO credentials, has been the fact that the Labor government immediately responded by attacking the AIPAC response as not being in the interest of peace. The Israeli Ambassador to Washington, in a conference call to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, personally urged them not to criticize the State Department report. And Israeli Foreign Ministry officials made it clear to Jewish pro-Israel lobbyists that the Israeli government sees continuing U.S. aid to Palestinians as important to maintaining the peace process.
Three days after its initial critical statement, AIPAC was forced to issue a clarification which, while not backing away from its prior criticism of the PLO, notes that AIPAC “is not opposed to the continuation” of U.S. aid to the Palestinians, since this aid is “critically needed to improve the desperate economic situation in the impoverished Gaza Strip.”
Other Jewish organizations, for example, Americans for Peace Now, the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, did issue statements more favorable to the State Department report and called for a continuation of U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian Authority.
***
The next step in this process will come on January 1, when President Clinton is required by the Compliance Act to accept or reject the State Department report and to certify (or not) the PLO as qualified for continuing U.S. aid. It is almost certain that Clinton will certify continuation of the aid. But the matter will not rest there. When the new Congress convenes in January, PAM members (under the strong influence of the ZOA, which founded the group) will continue to pressure the Administration and will most probably call for Congressional hearings on the PLO’s compliance.
Since Senator Jesse Helms, the incoming Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senators Arlen Specter and Richard Shelby (the authors of the PLO Compliance Act) are all members of PAM, there will be pressure to convene such hearings – even over the objections of the U.S. Administration and the Israeli government.
The lessons in all of this are clear. The asymmetry of political power in Washington continues to shape the debate one Middle East issues. Influential pro-Israel groups are largely responsible for generating the political pressure on Congress and on the Administration to deal with compliance issues in a one-sided fashion.
For the peace process to be real and for the U.S. to be able to truly serve as an even-handed arbiter, there must be a constituency for a balanced peace. It is clear, by their behavior, that the major pro-Israel groups (AIPAC included, despite its statements to the contrary) are not committed to balance. They, like the leadership in Israel, are still driven by their prejudices and fear of the past. They expect Palestinians, all other Arabs and even Arab Americans to change, but have not made the same change themselves.
This does not mean that the peace process will end, but the one-sided pressure exerted by right wing groups has distorted and disfigured the peace process, to the point where it has become an unrecognizable caricature of the process observers hoped for just over a year ago.
(Next week’s article will be a look at other unasked questions: what of Israel’s compliance to its commitments under the peace process and what of U.S. aid to the Palestinians.)
A political storm is brewing in Washington, involving the peace process. The major parties to this developing struggle are the U.S. Department of State, and the pro-Labor and pro-Likud lobbies in the U.S. and their supporters in the U.S. Congress.
What has set the stage for this conflict was the December 1, 1994 issuance of a document that has become known as the “PLO Compliance Report.” In the report, the State Department reviews PLO behavior over the past six months in an effort to determine whether or not the Palestinian leadership is honoring its commitment to the Middle East peace process.
The State Department is required to submit this report to Congress under the terms of the Middle East Peace Facilitation Act of 1994. According to this Act, all U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian Authority is conditional on the PLO’s:
a) renouncing the Arab League boycott of Israel;
b) urging the nations of the Arab League to end the boycott of Israel;
c) cooperating with efforts undertaken by the President of the United States to end the Arab League boycott of Israel;
d) condemning individual acts of terrorism and violence;
e) amending its National Covenant to eliminate all references calling for the destruction of Israel.
The 13 page State Department report covers the period from June 1, 1994 to November 30, 1994, and for the most part focuses on the PLO’s response to violence against Israelis and the PLO’s “commitment to seek a peaceful and negotiated settlement” with Israel.
While noting, what it terms, some “difficulties and failures (especially with regard to changing the “PLO’s Covenant”), the State Department report “confirms the PLO’s commitment” and notes that the organization has “abided by its commitment to renounce terrorism.” Nevertheless, the report notes that this last area (being Israel’s most central concern) presents the PLO “with its most difficult challenge” and the report concludes that the Palestinian Authority “should do more in this critical area” and that, for its part, the U.S. Administration “will continue to press the PLO to take the necessary actions to prevent acts of violence, to bring those responsible to justice and to abide by all its other commitments.”
Since the report is only mildly critical and is genuinely supportive of PLO efforts, it appears to be the intent of the State Department that the President certify the PLO as being in compliance, so that U.S. economic aid can continue. It is this unspoken subtext to the report that has caused a flare-up among pro-Israel groups.
***
It should be noted, however, that all of this discussion ignores several fundamental questions that will never be asked in Washington:
--· Why is there no legislation requiring that aid to Israel be conditional on its compliance with the terms of the peace process?
--· Is Israel in compliance with its commitments?
--· What has happened to the U.S. aid to the Palestinians? And is it worth jumping through hoops to get it?
***
The origin of the Compliance Act in question is the result of the work of the pro-Israel lobbyists and their supporters in Congress.
Because the pro-Israel lobbies have spent the past 20 years building a political powerhouse based on the war against the Palestinians, for a number of reasons the lobbies are finding it difficult to simply accept the movement toward peace in good faith and work to support the peace process. Among these reasons are:
--· They have built a national constituency among members of the Jewish community and in Congress based on a fear of Palestinians and opposition to their goals.
--· Even those who have endorsed the peace process fear losing support in the Jewish community to pro-Likud forces, who are trying to portray them as “weak on the Palestinian issue.”
--· Quite simply, their power was built on this fear of Palestinians and opposing cooperation with the Arab world, and power is never easy to surrender.
Instead of moving to remove the encumbering anti-Palestinian legislation of the past 20 years and whole-heartedly supporting U.S. aid to Palestinians, the largest pro-Israel group, AIPAC, and its supporters in Congress wrote new legislation that “conditionally” removes old sanctions against the PLO and links U.S. aid to the Palestinians to conditions that are difficult to achieve or interpret.
At this time, AIPAC is being pushed hard from the right by the very pro-Likud Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which has capitalized on latent anti Palestinian sentiment (created in some measure by AIPAC over the years) among many in the Jewish community and the knee-jerk support for such attitudes (also largely created by AIPAC) among many members of Congress.
Even before the Compliance Act was passed, the ZOA formed its own Peace Accords Monitoring Committee (PAM) in the Congress and quickly drew over 50 members to its ranks. The purpose of PAM was simply to monitor PLO compliance and pressure the Administration to force the PLO to continue to make one-sided concessions to Israel. And while both the Israeli government and the U.S. opposed the formation of PAM and the passage of the Compliance Act, AIPAC went along with both efforts out of fear of losing ground to the ZOA.
This dynamic has continued to the present day. Before the State Department released its compliance report, both the ZOA and AIPAC issued their own studies in an effort to shape the State Department’s findings at the PLO’s expense.
The AIPAC report, entitled “Problems in the PLO’s Compliance with its Commitments,” is sharply critical of the PLO performance in “meeting Israel’s security concerns” through its failure to take “Firm, effective action against…the terror of extremists…and incitement to violence against Israelis.” While nominally “pro-peace” (like the Labor government it says it supports), AIPAC attempts to walk the fine line of “supporting the peace process” and covering its rear flank against attacks from the ZOA that it is “caving in to the PLO.”
In a real sense, this is a pattern of behavior displayed by the Labor government itself. The net result is that the extreme right wing is driving the political debate and determining the political behavior of both the Labor government and its lobby in the U.S.
The ZOA report was issued on the November 28th and entitled “On the Eve of the State Department Report on PLO Compliance, the ZOA finds the PLO is not in compliance with Accords.” It is a shrill attack on 12 areas of PLO behavior, with most of the reporting based on false conclusions and disinformation. It blames the PLO for “violating its obligation”...to halt terrorist attacks by PLO groups, to refrain from hostile propaganda against Israel, to change the Covenant,” etc.
After the State Department report was released and it became clear that the U.S. was prepared to certify the PLO’s compliance, the ZOA immediately attacked the official U.S. report, terming it a “whitewash” that “ignores, minimizes and whitewashes the PLO’s numerous serious violations of the Accords.”
The ZOA’s President concludes:
“President Clinton has pledged $500 million to the PLO and he will be considering the State Department’s report as he decides whether or not to send that money to a group that has not always shown it has transformed itself from the terrorist organization it always was. We hope that the President will take into consideration Congressional opinion and the many serious flaws in the State Department’s report. As U.S. law appropriately requires, the PLO should not receive U.S. aid so long as the PLO is violating the accords, by not condemning terrorism, not punishing terrorists, not urging Palestinian Arabs to give up violence, and not changing the PLO Covenant, which calls for Israel’s destruction.”
Not to be outdone, but still seeking to walk its tightrope, AIPAC issued a statement of its own, expressing its “disappointment” with the State Department report and noting that “peace requires Arafat to change his conduct,” but the State Department “report fails to hold Arafat to a high enough standard.”
An interesting twist to this struggle between the ZOA and AIPAC for the best anti-PLO credentials, has been the fact that the Labor government immediately responded by attacking the AIPAC response as not being in the interest of peace. The Israeli Ambassador to Washington, in a conference call to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, personally urged them not to criticize the State Department report. And Israeli Foreign Ministry officials made it clear to Jewish pro-Israel lobbyists that the Israeli government sees continuing U.S. aid to Palestinians as important to maintaining the peace process.
Three days after its initial critical statement, AIPAC was forced to issue a clarification which, while not backing away from its prior criticism of the PLO, notes that AIPAC “is not opposed to the continuation” of U.S. aid to the Palestinians, since this aid is “critically needed to improve the desperate economic situation in the impoverished Gaza Strip.”
Other Jewish organizations, for example, Americans for Peace Now, the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, did issue statements more favorable to the State Department report and called for a continuation of U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian Authority.
***
The next step in this process will come on January 1, when President Clinton is required by the Compliance Act to accept or reject the State Department report and to certify (or not) the PLO as qualified for continuing U.S. aid. It is almost certain that Clinton will certify continuation of the aid. But the matter will not rest there. When the new Congress convenes in January, PAM members (under the strong influence of the ZOA, which founded the group) will continue to pressure the Administration and will most probably call for Congressional hearings on the PLO’s compliance.
Since Senator Jesse Helms, the incoming Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senators Arlen Specter and Richard Shelby (the authors of the PLO Compliance Act) are all members of PAM, there will be pressure to convene such hearings – even over the objections of the U.S. Administration and the Israeli government.
The lessons in all of this are clear. The asymmetry of political power in Washington continues to shape the debate one Middle East issues. Influential pro-Israel groups are largely responsible for generating the political pressure on Congress and on the Administration to deal with compliance issues in a one-sided fashion.
For the peace process to be real and for the U.S. to be able to truly serve as an even-handed arbiter, there must be a constituency for a balanced peace. It is clear, by their behavior, that the major pro-Israel groups (AIPAC included, despite its statements to the contrary) are not committed to balance. They, like the leadership in Israel, are still driven by their prejudices and fear of the past. They expect Palestinians, all other Arabs and even Arab Americans to change, but have not made the same change themselves.
This does not mean that the peace process will end, but the one-sided pressure exerted by right wing groups has distorted and disfigured the peace process, to the point where it has become an unrecognizable caricature of the process observers hoped for just over a year ago.
(Next week’s article will be a look at other unasked questions: what of Israel’s compliance to its commitments under the peace process and what of U.S. aid to the Palestinians.)
12 dec 1994
It is an axiom in politics that the side that defines the issues in a political debate will almost always win that debate. The debate is not won by facts or by political realities or even by concepts such as justice, but by the way the it is shaped. For over 60 years now, pro-Israel forces have been aggressive in shaping the U.S. debate on a variety of Middle East issues. And they have been winning.
From the earliest days of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it was the pro-Israel forces, not the Arabs, who recognized the power of ideas in shaping policy, and so it was they who first brought the debate to the American people and defined its terms. The pro-Israel definition of the conflict was a simplistic equation. As expressed in 1936 by the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, the Middle East was the scene of a struggle between “the forces of civilization and the forces of the desert, destruction.”
While there have been many variations on this theme, this essentially is the message that Americans received during the past six decades of the one-sided non-debate over U.S. Middle East policy. In this view, there is no other side; Israelis are seen as the only human beings in the Middle East.
Framed again in the film “The Exodus,” the Jews once more defined the terms of the debate, and they established parallels familiar to Americans. In American eyes, the Israelis became the victims fighting for their lives. Having escaped the horror of Nazi Germany, they came to a “new land” only to find themselves and their desires for a better life opposed by heartless Arabs. For Americans, it was a replay of the “pioneer versus the Indians.”
In the public mind of America, informed in this one-sided manner, Israelis were understood to be complex human beings with hopes and fears. They came to exist in the public mind as individual people who had suffered and continued to suffer. Americans knew them, they could see them in their mind’s eye and identify with them.
On the other hand, Arabs, and Palestinians in particular, were viewed not as people but merely as an abstract “political problem.” When they were presented at all, it was in caricature or in the collective. They were Palestinian terrorists (objects of contempt) or Palestinian refugees (objects of pity). When they were bombed by Israeli jets, their homes became Palestinian “strongholds” or Palestinian “targets” (objects of invisibility). They were, in any case, “faceless” objects.
Lebanon and the Lebanese fared no better in the public mind. For years, Lebanon existed in the American mind only as a “beautiful place.” More recently, Lebanon came to be described as a “once-beautiful place.” In fact, Lebanon became in the public’s mind no more than a “vacant lot,” where Israel fought first the Palestinian “problem” and now “radical Muslims,” and where the Lebanese fought themselves.
Throughout the past few decades, Lebanese, as real people, have not been seen; and Lebanese, as individuals, were not known. Lebanese were reduced to caricatures; they were “militiamen” or “terrorists.” And Lebanon itself was reduced to a pawn in a strategic game between Israel and Syria.
The same has been the fate of the rest of the Arab world, which was also grossly caricatured. Arab wealth is resented: it is viewed as ill-gotten gains and is therefore held in suspicion and/or contempt. Each year, for example, my congressman sent the voters in his district a questionnaire polling their attitudes on issues of both domestic and foreign policy. Yearly, he would ask a question like “should we forsake our alliance with the tiny democracy of Israel to work more closely with the feudal oil barons of the Arab world?”
Given this gross misrepresentation of Arab humanity and Middle East realities, is it any wonder that there has been, up until recently, no serious public debate in the U.S.? If, as the public had come to perceive the situation, Israeli humanity was struggling for survival against the “Palestine problem,” or “forces of destruction,” most Americans saw no reason for discussion. Of course, they would say, we should support humanity. And since Palestinians were only a “problem” to be solved, and didn’t really exist as an equal people with rights and feelings, then why shouldn’t Israel’s security concerns be the foremost concern of U.S. politicians?
These perceptions were not, of course, in even the roughest conformity with reality. But reality has not been widely known and is not a part of the debate because Arabs have not engaged in the U.S. debate as vigorously as have pro-Israel forces.
There have been a few remarkable exceptions. The Kuwaitis, for example, made a significant effort to shape the public debate during the confrontation with Iraq. Had they not waged a successful public relations campaign, it is debatable as to whether George Bush could have mustered, on his own, the public support needed to wage a war.
Money and organized political power are obviously key components in the making of public policy – but information work is a critical component in shaping the debate over that policy. Policy is not made in response to political reality or the requirements of justice (if it were, Arabs would have won a long time ago). Policy is made in response to perceptions of reality – perceptions that are created by information campaigns.
Our problem is that Arab information work in the U.S. has been, at best weak, and for the most part nonexistent. And while Arab Americans have been waging a valiant struggle for the past 20 years – and with some success – we cannot do the job alone.
Arab leaders seem to feel that discussion with U.S. government officials are enough. Arab intellectuals seem to feel that complaining in the Arab press (as if the side that complains the loudest will win) is enough. Neither is the case.
American policy is frequently wrong. But it is wrong because Arabs do not engage aggressively in the debate in the U.S.
With all of the resources that could and should be brought to bear in information campaigns in the U.S., where are the Arab challenges in the U.S. to current pro-Israel campaigns like:
--· The campaign to show Saudi Arabia as an unstable and nearly bankrupt country incapable of being as effective a U.S. ally as Israel?
--· The campaign to show Islam as essentially an anti-Western and increasingly violent religion?
--· The campaign to emphasize Israel’s security needs and not Palestinian political and economic needs or Syrian and Lebanese territorial and security needs as just requirements for a peace settlement?
--· The campaign to discredit Egypt as increasingly insignificant and unstable as a U.S. ally?
All of these campaigns are currently underway in the U.S. And critical issues of public policy will be decided based on the outcome of these campaigns.
Daily, the Arab world press is filled with articles confronting these pro-Israel and anti-Arab efforts. But what is needed is an intense and sustained effort to confront them here in the U.S. Arab Americans, with our very limited resources, are engaged in this effort. But we cannot succeed by ourselves. My invitation to Arab leaders and intellectuals is simple: join us.
Come to the U.S. Travel here. Publish here. Address public policy forums, meet with editorial boards, civic groups and elected officials. Invite U.S. opinion leaders to the region. Show them reality and engage them in debate.
We should even take the initiative and begin to form the debate on Arab terms – and begin our own campaign in which Arabs determine the shape of the debate, define its terms, and shape public perceptions of Middle East realities. Help us balance the debate here, where it’s taking place.
From the earliest days of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it was the pro-Israel forces, not the Arabs, who recognized the power of ideas in shaping policy, and so it was they who first brought the debate to the American people and defined its terms. The pro-Israel definition of the conflict was a simplistic equation. As expressed in 1936 by the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, the Middle East was the scene of a struggle between “the forces of civilization and the forces of the desert, destruction.”
While there have been many variations on this theme, this essentially is the message that Americans received during the past six decades of the one-sided non-debate over U.S. Middle East policy. In this view, there is no other side; Israelis are seen as the only human beings in the Middle East.
Framed again in the film “The Exodus,” the Jews once more defined the terms of the debate, and they established parallels familiar to Americans. In American eyes, the Israelis became the victims fighting for their lives. Having escaped the horror of Nazi Germany, they came to a “new land” only to find themselves and their desires for a better life opposed by heartless Arabs. For Americans, it was a replay of the “pioneer versus the Indians.”
In the public mind of America, informed in this one-sided manner, Israelis were understood to be complex human beings with hopes and fears. They came to exist in the public mind as individual people who had suffered and continued to suffer. Americans knew them, they could see them in their mind’s eye and identify with them.
On the other hand, Arabs, and Palestinians in particular, were viewed not as people but merely as an abstract “political problem.” When they were presented at all, it was in caricature or in the collective. They were Palestinian terrorists (objects of contempt) or Palestinian refugees (objects of pity). When they were bombed by Israeli jets, their homes became Palestinian “strongholds” or Palestinian “targets” (objects of invisibility). They were, in any case, “faceless” objects.
Lebanon and the Lebanese fared no better in the public mind. For years, Lebanon existed in the American mind only as a “beautiful place.” More recently, Lebanon came to be described as a “once-beautiful place.” In fact, Lebanon became in the public’s mind no more than a “vacant lot,” where Israel fought first the Palestinian “problem” and now “radical Muslims,” and where the Lebanese fought themselves.
Throughout the past few decades, Lebanese, as real people, have not been seen; and Lebanese, as individuals, were not known. Lebanese were reduced to caricatures; they were “militiamen” or “terrorists.” And Lebanon itself was reduced to a pawn in a strategic game between Israel and Syria.
The same has been the fate of the rest of the Arab world, which was also grossly caricatured. Arab wealth is resented: it is viewed as ill-gotten gains and is therefore held in suspicion and/or contempt. Each year, for example, my congressman sent the voters in his district a questionnaire polling their attitudes on issues of both domestic and foreign policy. Yearly, he would ask a question like “should we forsake our alliance with the tiny democracy of Israel to work more closely with the feudal oil barons of the Arab world?”
Given this gross misrepresentation of Arab humanity and Middle East realities, is it any wonder that there has been, up until recently, no serious public debate in the U.S.? If, as the public had come to perceive the situation, Israeli humanity was struggling for survival against the “Palestine problem,” or “forces of destruction,” most Americans saw no reason for discussion. Of course, they would say, we should support humanity. And since Palestinians were only a “problem” to be solved, and didn’t really exist as an equal people with rights and feelings, then why shouldn’t Israel’s security concerns be the foremost concern of U.S. politicians?
These perceptions were not, of course, in even the roughest conformity with reality. But reality has not been widely known and is not a part of the debate because Arabs have not engaged in the U.S. debate as vigorously as have pro-Israel forces.
There have been a few remarkable exceptions. The Kuwaitis, for example, made a significant effort to shape the public debate during the confrontation with Iraq. Had they not waged a successful public relations campaign, it is debatable as to whether George Bush could have mustered, on his own, the public support needed to wage a war.
Money and organized political power are obviously key components in the making of public policy – but information work is a critical component in shaping the debate over that policy. Policy is not made in response to political reality or the requirements of justice (if it were, Arabs would have won a long time ago). Policy is made in response to perceptions of reality – perceptions that are created by information campaigns.
Our problem is that Arab information work in the U.S. has been, at best weak, and for the most part nonexistent. And while Arab Americans have been waging a valiant struggle for the past 20 years – and with some success – we cannot do the job alone.
Arab leaders seem to feel that discussion with U.S. government officials are enough. Arab intellectuals seem to feel that complaining in the Arab press (as if the side that complains the loudest will win) is enough. Neither is the case.
American policy is frequently wrong. But it is wrong because Arabs do not engage aggressively in the debate in the U.S.
With all of the resources that could and should be brought to bear in information campaigns in the U.S., where are the Arab challenges in the U.S. to current pro-Israel campaigns like:
--· The campaign to show Saudi Arabia as an unstable and nearly bankrupt country incapable of being as effective a U.S. ally as Israel?
--· The campaign to show Islam as essentially an anti-Western and increasingly violent religion?
--· The campaign to emphasize Israel’s security needs and not Palestinian political and economic needs or Syrian and Lebanese territorial and security needs as just requirements for a peace settlement?
--· The campaign to discredit Egypt as increasingly insignificant and unstable as a U.S. ally?
All of these campaigns are currently underway in the U.S. And critical issues of public policy will be decided based on the outcome of these campaigns.
Daily, the Arab world press is filled with articles confronting these pro-Israel and anti-Arab efforts. But what is needed is an intense and sustained effort to confront them here in the U.S. Arab Americans, with our very limited resources, are engaged in this effort. But we cannot succeed by ourselves. My invitation to Arab leaders and intellectuals is simple: join us.
Come to the U.S. Travel here. Publish here. Address public policy forums, meet with editorial boards, civic groups and elected officials. Invite U.S. opinion leaders to the region. Show them reality and engage them in debate.
We should even take the initiative and begin to form the debate on Arab terms – and begin our own campaign in which Arabs determine the shape of the debate, define its terms, and shape public perceptions of Middle East realities. Help us balance the debate here, where it’s taking place.
5 dec 1994
When assessing the role of the American Jewish community will play in lobbying the next Congress, surface numbers can be misleading. The contributions of pro-Israel political actions committees (PACs), for example, are way down. From a high in 1988 of $4.6 million, the total contributions have fallen to $1.2 million this year. The number of Jewish members of Congress drop this year from 10 Senators and 32 Congressmen in the last Congress to 9 Senators and 23 Congressmen in the next. And while the liberal social agenda shared by most American Jews is threatened in the hands of the new conservative-led Congress, the new Congress will also be more stridently pro-Israel (if that can be believed) than in the past. It is in this context that the Jewish community is actively debating the effects of the 1994 congressional elections on their ability to pursue their agenda in 1995-96.
Historically, the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community has voted for Democrats, and this past election was no exception. While the national vote was split evenly (50%-50%) between the Democratic and Republican parties (due to the fact that several Democratic incumbents won by large margins, while many Republican victors won by narrow margins), the Jewish vote, on the other hand went 78% for the Democrats.
The American Jewish community has been aligned with the Democratic party largely because of the party’s social agenda: social liberalism, a commitment to civil rights, feminism, abortion rights, a redistributive tax policy, and the separation of church and state – all are major domestic concerns of the Jewish community. Many American Jewish leaders are now worried that progress already achieved on these issues may be rolled back and new progress made impossible by the more conservative leadership recently elected to Congress.
Indeed, the early initiatives calling for a constitutional amendment supporting prayer in the U.S. public school system has caused great concern among liberal Jews (and many liberal Protestant Christian denominations, as well). They fear that such an amendment would erode the separation between religion and the state which small religious minorities see as an important protection of their rights.
But while liberal Jews have historically led the community, there is a vocal and increasingly active minority of conservative Orthodox Jews who have become organized against this liberal agenda – and are now voting Republican and creating a deep fissure within the American Jewish community.
In the past, both the dominant liberal and minority conservative wings of the Jewish community were at least united on issues of foreign policy; but now, in the face of a Labor government in Israel that has made some peace with the Palestinians, there is even a rift on that question.
The more liberal Jewish leadership maintains that they have no problem with the Republican sweep of the November elections. They note a history of strong bipartisan support for Israel and its policies, a make brave public comments to that effect. AN AIPAC leader recently noted, “these guys are all friends of Israel.” But in private, these same liberal Jewish leaders express a fear that the newly elevated conservative Republican leadership in Washington and their conservative supporters in the Jewish community do not share their support for the Labor government of Israel or for the basic tenets of the peace process itself.
The Democrats who ruled Congress for 40 years consistently supported Israel, that is, whatever Israeli government was in power. At times, Congress would pursue the Israeli government’s agenda even when it directly challenged the policy of the U.S. Administration. Congress would take these actions at the behest of the powerful pro-Israel lobby which either supported their election campaigns or threatened to work against their reelections.
More often than not, the scene in Washington was one of Congress pushing and the Administration seeking to restrain excessive Congressional action – on Jerusalem, on restricting arms sales to Arab countries, or on denying aid to Arab countries – with successive Administrations feeling quite threatened by this Congressional pressure. It is this interplay that has often shaped the Middle East policy debate in the United States.
With the Republican takeover, this dynamic will be somewhat altered. There will not only be new players in leadership roles, but these new leaders in the House and Senate are driven by ideologies which are more stridently pro-Israel than their predecessors, though not necessarily tied to the Israeli government in power.
Some pro-Israel lobbyists (both liberal and conservative) are celebrating the diminished roles of some of Israel’s Democratic nemeses in Congress. No longer will Israeli policy be questioned by such Democratic committee chairman as Congressman Lee Hamilton (outgoing Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee), Congressman David Obey (outgoing Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee), Senator Patrick Leahy (outgoing Chairman of the Senate Foreign Operations subcommittee), and House Majority Whip David Bonior. All of these Democrats were strongly opposed to Israeli settlement policies and, while not supported by the majority of their own party, they were frequently able to act as a thorn in Israel’s side.
Replacing this Democratic leadership will be Congressman Newt Gingrich (the new Speaker of the House who only last month cosponsored a letter to President Clinton that opposed Administration actions which – in accordance with the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles – have treated the status of Jerusalem as undetermined and argued instead that all of Jerusalem should remain solely under Israeli sovereignty), Senator Mitch McConnell (incoming Chairman of the Foreign Operations subcommittee who is also one of the largest recipients of pro-Israel PAC funds and holder one of the most pro-Israel voting records in the Senate), Senator Arlen Specter (incoming Chairman of the Technology and the Law subcommittee and founder of the anti-peace process “monitoring committee” in the Senate), Senator Robert Packwood (incoming Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the most pro-Israel member of either House of Congress) and Senator Jesse Helms (incoming Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).
The two most central forces driving the Middle East policy debate in the Republican party today are the neoconservatives and Christian right wing. Both of these groups, while strongly allied to former President Reagan, were opponents of President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker. These two forces, for different reasons, have a narrow Israel-centered view of the Middle East and are more strongly allied with the position of the Likud than with that of the Labor party of Prime Minister Rabin.
As a group, they will exert real pressure on the White House on a number of Middle East-related issues – and not only because they are Republicans who will be able to obstruct the foreign policy of a Democratic President, but also because they are not committed support the Labor government in Israel.
Senator Helms, for example, while questioning foreign aid in general (he likened it to poring money down “foreign rat holes”) had the following to say to Itamar Rabinovich, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. in a meeting just two weeks ago:
“If Israel hadn’t existed in the Middle East it would have had to be invented, because the United States could have found itself in sad shape. Anyone who wants to understand Israel’s importance to the United States needs to figure out how much the defense of the region would have rested in the Pentagon’s budget without it.”
In the Gingrich letter to the President, Jerusalem was described in the following way:
“Jerusalem is Israel’s capital – and only Israel’s capital – and that it must remain a united city under Israeli sovereignty. ....we support the action taken by the U.S. Congress to prohibit any new offices or official meetings in Jerusalem to deal with the Palestinian Authority. Jerusalem is the capital of only one country, Israel, and we urge you to implement a policy that does not in any way support a Palestinian claim to the city.”
And Senator Specter’s Peace Accords’ Monitoring Committee (PAM), whose creation was opposed by the Rabin government, succeeded in conditioning U.S. aid to the Palestinians and passing other legislation that attempts to tie the hands of the Administration with regard to Palestinian aid and to dealing with Palestinians in the city of Jerusalem.
Not only are Democrats temporarily down on the Hill, but the more traditional pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC) may also be negatively affected by the fall elections.
AIPAC has always played by the rules traditionally accepted by the mainstream of the American Jewish community – they support whatever Israeli government is in office. Since the start of the peace process, AIPAC has been challenged by an upstart group, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) which, in violation of the above-mentioned rule, has severely criticized the Labor government policies and pushed its allies in Congress to criticize or encumber the peace process with negative legislation.
While AIPAC has stated that they are confident that they can work with the new Congress, most analysts of the American Jewish community feel that the ZOA’s star is rising on Capitol Hill.
Already ZOA President Mort Klein has expressed his strong support for Senator Jesse Helms (Helms has joined the ZOA-sponsored PAM committee which the outgoing Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic senator Claiborn Pell, refused to join), and he is extremely pleased that two of his strongest allies, Senators Specter and Shelby (a former Democrat who recently switched to the Republican party) will be in a strong position to carry out his group’s agenda.
In short, the final assessment of the impact of the Republican takeover on the Jewish community is mixed:
--· the liberal Jewish social agenda will be threatened;
--· the liberal-conservative split within the American Jewish community will deepen;
--· the newly organized (and even radicalized) Orthodox Jewish community will become a force with which others will be forced to contend in U.S. politics;
--· American Jews will no longer be regarded as monolithically liberal Democrats;
--· pro-Israel PAC money and individual contributions to candidates, while still an important factor in elections, will not play as powerful a role as it has in the past. With neo-conservatives and Christian fundamentalist ideology is a more significant factor in their pro-Israel stance;
--· the peace process, as it is presently constructed, will face real challenges because the next Congress will not be inclined to give either the Democratic President or the Labor government of Israel an opportunity for a new ceremony on the White House lawn before 1996. Progress may still be made, but it will not be easy.
The results of the elections pose new difficulties to an already encumbered peace process.
Historically, the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community has voted for Democrats, and this past election was no exception. While the national vote was split evenly (50%-50%) between the Democratic and Republican parties (due to the fact that several Democratic incumbents won by large margins, while many Republican victors won by narrow margins), the Jewish vote, on the other hand went 78% for the Democrats.
The American Jewish community has been aligned with the Democratic party largely because of the party’s social agenda: social liberalism, a commitment to civil rights, feminism, abortion rights, a redistributive tax policy, and the separation of church and state – all are major domestic concerns of the Jewish community. Many American Jewish leaders are now worried that progress already achieved on these issues may be rolled back and new progress made impossible by the more conservative leadership recently elected to Congress.
Indeed, the early initiatives calling for a constitutional amendment supporting prayer in the U.S. public school system has caused great concern among liberal Jews (and many liberal Protestant Christian denominations, as well). They fear that such an amendment would erode the separation between religion and the state which small religious minorities see as an important protection of their rights.
But while liberal Jews have historically led the community, there is a vocal and increasingly active minority of conservative Orthodox Jews who have become organized against this liberal agenda – and are now voting Republican and creating a deep fissure within the American Jewish community.
In the past, both the dominant liberal and minority conservative wings of the Jewish community were at least united on issues of foreign policy; but now, in the face of a Labor government in Israel that has made some peace with the Palestinians, there is even a rift on that question.
The more liberal Jewish leadership maintains that they have no problem with the Republican sweep of the November elections. They note a history of strong bipartisan support for Israel and its policies, a make brave public comments to that effect. AN AIPAC leader recently noted, “these guys are all friends of Israel.” But in private, these same liberal Jewish leaders express a fear that the newly elevated conservative Republican leadership in Washington and their conservative supporters in the Jewish community do not share their support for the Labor government of Israel or for the basic tenets of the peace process itself.
The Democrats who ruled Congress for 40 years consistently supported Israel, that is, whatever Israeli government was in power. At times, Congress would pursue the Israeli government’s agenda even when it directly challenged the policy of the U.S. Administration. Congress would take these actions at the behest of the powerful pro-Israel lobby which either supported their election campaigns or threatened to work against their reelections.
More often than not, the scene in Washington was one of Congress pushing and the Administration seeking to restrain excessive Congressional action – on Jerusalem, on restricting arms sales to Arab countries, or on denying aid to Arab countries – with successive Administrations feeling quite threatened by this Congressional pressure. It is this interplay that has often shaped the Middle East policy debate in the United States.
With the Republican takeover, this dynamic will be somewhat altered. There will not only be new players in leadership roles, but these new leaders in the House and Senate are driven by ideologies which are more stridently pro-Israel than their predecessors, though not necessarily tied to the Israeli government in power.
Some pro-Israel lobbyists (both liberal and conservative) are celebrating the diminished roles of some of Israel’s Democratic nemeses in Congress. No longer will Israeli policy be questioned by such Democratic committee chairman as Congressman Lee Hamilton (outgoing Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee), Congressman David Obey (outgoing Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee), Senator Patrick Leahy (outgoing Chairman of the Senate Foreign Operations subcommittee), and House Majority Whip David Bonior. All of these Democrats were strongly opposed to Israeli settlement policies and, while not supported by the majority of their own party, they were frequently able to act as a thorn in Israel’s side.
Replacing this Democratic leadership will be Congressman Newt Gingrich (the new Speaker of the House who only last month cosponsored a letter to President Clinton that opposed Administration actions which – in accordance with the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles – have treated the status of Jerusalem as undetermined and argued instead that all of Jerusalem should remain solely under Israeli sovereignty), Senator Mitch McConnell (incoming Chairman of the Foreign Operations subcommittee who is also one of the largest recipients of pro-Israel PAC funds and holder one of the most pro-Israel voting records in the Senate), Senator Arlen Specter (incoming Chairman of the Technology and the Law subcommittee and founder of the anti-peace process “monitoring committee” in the Senate), Senator Robert Packwood (incoming Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the most pro-Israel member of either House of Congress) and Senator Jesse Helms (incoming Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).
The two most central forces driving the Middle East policy debate in the Republican party today are the neoconservatives and Christian right wing. Both of these groups, while strongly allied to former President Reagan, were opponents of President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker. These two forces, for different reasons, have a narrow Israel-centered view of the Middle East and are more strongly allied with the position of the Likud than with that of the Labor party of Prime Minister Rabin.
As a group, they will exert real pressure on the White House on a number of Middle East-related issues – and not only because they are Republicans who will be able to obstruct the foreign policy of a Democratic President, but also because they are not committed support the Labor government in Israel.
Senator Helms, for example, while questioning foreign aid in general (he likened it to poring money down “foreign rat holes”) had the following to say to Itamar Rabinovich, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. in a meeting just two weeks ago:
“If Israel hadn’t existed in the Middle East it would have had to be invented, because the United States could have found itself in sad shape. Anyone who wants to understand Israel’s importance to the United States needs to figure out how much the defense of the region would have rested in the Pentagon’s budget without it.”
In the Gingrich letter to the President, Jerusalem was described in the following way:
“Jerusalem is Israel’s capital – and only Israel’s capital – and that it must remain a united city under Israeli sovereignty. ....we support the action taken by the U.S. Congress to prohibit any new offices or official meetings in Jerusalem to deal with the Palestinian Authority. Jerusalem is the capital of only one country, Israel, and we urge you to implement a policy that does not in any way support a Palestinian claim to the city.”
And Senator Specter’s Peace Accords’ Monitoring Committee (PAM), whose creation was opposed by the Rabin government, succeeded in conditioning U.S. aid to the Palestinians and passing other legislation that attempts to tie the hands of the Administration with regard to Palestinian aid and to dealing with Palestinians in the city of Jerusalem.
Not only are Democrats temporarily down on the Hill, but the more traditional pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC) may also be negatively affected by the fall elections.
AIPAC has always played by the rules traditionally accepted by the mainstream of the American Jewish community – they support whatever Israeli government is in office. Since the start of the peace process, AIPAC has been challenged by an upstart group, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) which, in violation of the above-mentioned rule, has severely criticized the Labor government policies and pushed its allies in Congress to criticize or encumber the peace process with negative legislation.
While AIPAC has stated that they are confident that they can work with the new Congress, most analysts of the American Jewish community feel that the ZOA’s star is rising on Capitol Hill.
Already ZOA President Mort Klein has expressed his strong support for Senator Jesse Helms (Helms has joined the ZOA-sponsored PAM committee which the outgoing Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic senator Claiborn Pell, refused to join), and he is extremely pleased that two of his strongest allies, Senators Specter and Shelby (a former Democrat who recently switched to the Republican party) will be in a strong position to carry out his group’s agenda.
In short, the final assessment of the impact of the Republican takeover on the Jewish community is mixed:
--· the liberal Jewish social agenda will be threatened;
--· the liberal-conservative split within the American Jewish community will deepen;
--· the newly organized (and even radicalized) Orthodox Jewish community will become a force with which others will be forced to contend in U.S. politics;
--· American Jews will no longer be regarded as monolithically liberal Democrats;
--· pro-Israel PAC money and individual contributions to candidates, while still an important factor in elections, will not play as powerful a role as it has in the past. With neo-conservatives and Christian fundamentalist ideology is a more significant factor in their pro-Israel stance;
--· the peace process, as it is presently constructed, will face real challenges because the next Congress will not be inclined to give either the Democratic President or the Labor government of Israel an opportunity for a new ceremony on the White House lawn before 1996. Progress may still be made, but it will not be easy.
The results of the elections pose new difficulties to an already encumbered peace process.
16 may 1994
For at least the past two decades the mainstream of the U.S. Jewish community operated as a disciplined political force. They were largely unified in their political goals and well-coordinated in their tactics.
The three pillars that formed the base around which the major Jewish groups built their consensus were:
--· opposition to arms sales to Arab countries;
--· support for U.S. aid to Israel;
--· opposition to the PLO or any recognition of Palestinian national rights.
But events of the past four years have weakened those pillars and are threatening the consensus that forged U.S. Jewish political unity. The U.S.-Arab coalition that fought the Gulf War, the constraints on the U.S. budget, and now the Israel-PLO peace accord have all combined to create a real crisis for the leadership of the Jewish organizations. In some cases there is disarray, in other instances turmoil.
In recent months signs of this internal discord have appeared repeatedly over such issues as President Clinton’s nomination of Strobe Talbott as Undersecretary of State, the decision of the Clinton Administration of to support a UN Resolution condemning the Hebron massacre, and the Israel-PLO peace agreement.
There are a number of factors which account for each of these and other instances of discord within the American Jewish community. They are in part a reflection of the Labor-Likud split in Israel, but there is a domestic power struggle underway as well.
A principle factor in the current difficulties has been the reemergence of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) as a political power within the Jewish community. All but dead only a few years ago, the ZOA has been given a new lease on life with the election of Morton Klein, a wealthy Philadelphia businessman, as its President.
The ZOA is, in fact, an affiliate of the Likud in the World Zionist Congress. But that alone doesn’t account for its recent troublemaking. Klein, it appears, is not supporting the peace accords. He also has aspirations of being a domestic political force in Jewish American politics. So it is not surprising that Klein and the ZOA have begun to attack the Israeli government, the U.S. Administration, and the peace agreement.
What is disturbing is that their attacks have won support for the right-wing group from a number of members of Congress and several Jewish organizations. But their initial success has come at some cost. While many mainstream Jewish groups were hesitant to challenge the ZOA at first, some are now voicing their displeasure at Klein’s tactics as are leading figures in Israel’s Labor government.
Part of the difficulty that many Jewish leaders have in attacking Klein and his group is that the issues that the ZOA is raising have been central for so many years to pro-Israel thinking in the U.S. “It is,” as one liberal Jewish leader said recently, “difficult for the community to adjust its thinking overnight. Even if Rabin is working with `Arafat, how do we now start lobbying for foreign aid to the PLO?”
So when Klein attacks the Clinton Administration for the Talbott nomination (because of Talbott’s past negative comments about Israel) or its support for a UN Resolution (because of the resolution’s mention of Jerusalem as “occupied”) – he finds support from some other Jewish groups and from members of Congress who are eager to support causes favorable to pro-Israel Jewish contributors.
What complicates the picture is that in both cases the most hard-line pro-Israel group in the U.S., AIPAC, has taken the opposite position on mentioned above. AIPAC took these stands because they were in line with the positions of the government of Israel. Rabin’s government supported the nomination of Strobe Talbott and did not strenuously object to the UN Resolution as a necessary trade-off in the move toward peace.
AIPAC’s Board of Directors, as previously reported in this column, are deeply divided between traditional Washington professionals and liberals on the one side, and right-wing big-money contributors on the other. At their recent convention the AIPAC Board split on the question of U.S. support for the UN vote. Rabin’s and Clinton’s interventions were sufficient to win the group’s support for the U.S. stance. But when AIPAC President Steve Grossman, a pro-Labor liberal, announced the organizations’ decision to support the U.S. stance, he was heavily booed by the membership in attendance.
Another more recent example of the ZOA’s counter-peace strategy was in evidence in the past few weeks when a group of Congressmen, at the urging of Klein, announced the formation of a Peace Accords Monitoring Group (PAM). The purpose of PAM, according to a press release issued by its chairman, Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY), will be to:
“focus on assuring that the PLO lives up to its commitments, particularly in light of the fact that the United States plans to channel $500 million in aid to the West Bank and Gaza over the next five years. Members of the PAM Group will work in Congress and through the media to call attention to both PLO violations and compliance in regard to commitments made to Israel by Yasir `Arafat.
”`Aid from the United States must not be used to build the foundation of a terrorist haven. The PLO leadership has to understand this from the outset and take specific steps to prove their deeds will match their words,’ Engel said.”
The State Department is outraged at this effort to meddle in the peace process, as are leaders in the Labor government. But the ZOA, with its big-money supporters and its ability to play into the fears of many in the Jewish community, have now secured 15 members of Congress (with more expected to join) to become members of PAM.
At a recent closed-door meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Israeli Ambassador to Washington Itamar Rabinovich, criticized such efforts which, he held, destroy the unity and discipline of the Jewish community and which meddle in the affairs of the Israeli government.
Klein did not attend the meeting. Nor would it have made a difference if he had attended since, as several Jewish commentators noted, it is precisely the intention of the ZOA to destroy the unity of the Jewish community (if that means unity in support of the peace process) and to meddle in the affairs of the Labor-led government of Israel.
At this point, several observations can be made:
AIPAC is no longer the sole pro-Israel voice in Washington. Many members of Congress would, in the past, only act on a resolution if AIPAC gave them the signal to do so. But now that AIPAC has at least come out on the record in support of the peace process, other groups like the ZOA, which reflect the fears of some in the American Jewish community and have the ability to direct organized money in the political process, have attained the ability to get members of Congress to do their bidding. This attack from the right has, in turn, weakened AIPAC’s influence and forces the lobby to be even more cautious in its support for the peace process.
So, for the foreseeable future, it can be expected that Congress and pro-Israel forces in Washington will continue to make life difficult for the PLO and the peace process. In doing so, they will not only be running afoul of the wishes of the State Department, but even the wishes of the government of Israel.
Organized Jewish dissent against the policies of the government of Israel is not an entirely new phenomenon. During the period when Likud led the government of Israel, Americans for Peace Now regularly opposed the settlement policy (even to the point of supporting George Bush’s decision to withhold the loan guarantees in 1991). But opposition from the left was never as strong as this new opposition from the right and the growing movement of Jewish opponents to the Labor government present a real problem to supporters of peace.
Many in the Jewish community place blame for this on the Labor Party itself. They note how effective Likud was during the past 12 years in courting the American Jewish leadership and how unconcerned Labor seems to be making an effort to win them back.
So while Jewish dissent against the government of Israel is not new, it is novel that the organized dissent is so powerful and influential (and monied). This has inhibited some Jewish groups from being more outspoken in support of peace.
While the American Jewish Committee recently visited the Palestine Information Office in Washington and Americans for Peace Now recently sponsored a press conference with the National Association of Arab Americans, the President of Americans for Peace Now recently noted, “While several American Jewish groups have a general stance supporting the peace process, they have not put their resources behind that stance like they have done with other issues, like foreign aid and arms sales.”
***
While Arab Americans are struggling with the issues of peace and how to respond to the new circumstances created by the peace process, it is important to see that the same debate is also taking place within the Jewish community. Playing on old fears and muttering old slogans is always easier to do than creating new realities. In politics, fear is a more effective organizing force than hope.
What is clear, however, is that for peace to work, a constituency for peace must develop. In its absence and in the absence of an aggressive campaign by leaders who support peace, those who seek to take advantage of old fears will find an open playing field on which to play, and on which they will win support.
This is the challenge facing not only Arab Americans but also Jewish Americans. Since the power of the Jewish community is at this point greater than ours and since, correspondingly, so is their ability to disrupt or even stymie the peace process, their responsibility to support it is that much greater as well.
The three pillars that formed the base around which the major Jewish groups built their consensus were:
--· opposition to arms sales to Arab countries;
--· support for U.S. aid to Israel;
--· opposition to the PLO or any recognition of Palestinian national rights.
But events of the past four years have weakened those pillars and are threatening the consensus that forged U.S. Jewish political unity. The U.S.-Arab coalition that fought the Gulf War, the constraints on the U.S. budget, and now the Israel-PLO peace accord have all combined to create a real crisis for the leadership of the Jewish organizations. In some cases there is disarray, in other instances turmoil.
In recent months signs of this internal discord have appeared repeatedly over such issues as President Clinton’s nomination of Strobe Talbott as Undersecretary of State, the decision of the Clinton Administration of to support a UN Resolution condemning the Hebron massacre, and the Israel-PLO peace agreement.
There are a number of factors which account for each of these and other instances of discord within the American Jewish community. They are in part a reflection of the Labor-Likud split in Israel, but there is a domestic power struggle underway as well.
A principle factor in the current difficulties has been the reemergence of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) as a political power within the Jewish community. All but dead only a few years ago, the ZOA has been given a new lease on life with the election of Morton Klein, a wealthy Philadelphia businessman, as its President.
The ZOA is, in fact, an affiliate of the Likud in the World Zionist Congress. But that alone doesn’t account for its recent troublemaking. Klein, it appears, is not supporting the peace accords. He also has aspirations of being a domestic political force in Jewish American politics. So it is not surprising that Klein and the ZOA have begun to attack the Israeli government, the U.S. Administration, and the peace agreement.
What is disturbing is that their attacks have won support for the right-wing group from a number of members of Congress and several Jewish organizations. But their initial success has come at some cost. While many mainstream Jewish groups were hesitant to challenge the ZOA at first, some are now voicing their displeasure at Klein’s tactics as are leading figures in Israel’s Labor government.
Part of the difficulty that many Jewish leaders have in attacking Klein and his group is that the issues that the ZOA is raising have been central for so many years to pro-Israel thinking in the U.S. “It is,” as one liberal Jewish leader said recently, “difficult for the community to adjust its thinking overnight. Even if Rabin is working with `Arafat, how do we now start lobbying for foreign aid to the PLO?”
So when Klein attacks the Clinton Administration for the Talbott nomination (because of Talbott’s past negative comments about Israel) or its support for a UN Resolution (because of the resolution’s mention of Jerusalem as “occupied”) – he finds support from some other Jewish groups and from members of Congress who are eager to support causes favorable to pro-Israel Jewish contributors.
What complicates the picture is that in both cases the most hard-line pro-Israel group in the U.S., AIPAC, has taken the opposite position on mentioned above. AIPAC took these stands because they were in line with the positions of the government of Israel. Rabin’s government supported the nomination of Strobe Talbott and did not strenuously object to the UN Resolution as a necessary trade-off in the move toward peace.
AIPAC’s Board of Directors, as previously reported in this column, are deeply divided between traditional Washington professionals and liberals on the one side, and right-wing big-money contributors on the other. At their recent convention the AIPAC Board split on the question of U.S. support for the UN vote. Rabin’s and Clinton’s interventions were sufficient to win the group’s support for the U.S. stance. But when AIPAC President Steve Grossman, a pro-Labor liberal, announced the organizations’ decision to support the U.S. stance, he was heavily booed by the membership in attendance.
Another more recent example of the ZOA’s counter-peace strategy was in evidence in the past few weeks when a group of Congressmen, at the urging of Klein, announced the formation of a Peace Accords Monitoring Group (PAM). The purpose of PAM, according to a press release issued by its chairman, Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY), will be to:
“focus on assuring that the PLO lives up to its commitments, particularly in light of the fact that the United States plans to channel $500 million in aid to the West Bank and Gaza over the next five years. Members of the PAM Group will work in Congress and through the media to call attention to both PLO violations and compliance in regard to commitments made to Israel by Yasir `Arafat.
”`Aid from the United States must not be used to build the foundation of a terrorist haven. The PLO leadership has to understand this from the outset and take specific steps to prove their deeds will match their words,’ Engel said.”
The State Department is outraged at this effort to meddle in the peace process, as are leaders in the Labor government. But the ZOA, with its big-money supporters and its ability to play into the fears of many in the Jewish community, have now secured 15 members of Congress (with more expected to join) to become members of PAM.
At a recent closed-door meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Israeli Ambassador to Washington Itamar Rabinovich, criticized such efforts which, he held, destroy the unity and discipline of the Jewish community and which meddle in the affairs of the Israeli government.
Klein did not attend the meeting. Nor would it have made a difference if he had attended since, as several Jewish commentators noted, it is precisely the intention of the ZOA to destroy the unity of the Jewish community (if that means unity in support of the peace process) and to meddle in the affairs of the Labor-led government of Israel.
At this point, several observations can be made:
AIPAC is no longer the sole pro-Israel voice in Washington. Many members of Congress would, in the past, only act on a resolution if AIPAC gave them the signal to do so. But now that AIPAC has at least come out on the record in support of the peace process, other groups like the ZOA, which reflect the fears of some in the American Jewish community and have the ability to direct organized money in the political process, have attained the ability to get members of Congress to do their bidding. This attack from the right has, in turn, weakened AIPAC’s influence and forces the lobby to be even more cautious in its support for the peace process.
So, for the foreseeable future, it can be expected that Congress and pro-Israel forces in Washington will continue to make life difficult for the PLO and the peace process. In doing so, they will not only be running afoul of the wishes of the State Department, but even the wishes of the government of Israel.
Organized Jewish dissent against the policies of the government of Israel is not an entirely new phenomenon. During the period when Likud led the government of Israel, Americans for Peace Now regularly opposed the settlement policy (even to the point of supporting George Bush’s decision to withhold the loan guarantees in 1991). But opposition from the left was never as strong as this new opposition from the right and the growing movement of Jewish opponents to the Labor government present a real problem to supporters of peace.
Many in the Jewish community place blame for this on the Labor Party itself. They note how effective Likud was during the past 12 years in courting the American Jewish leadership and how unconcerned Labor seems to be making an effort to win them back.
So while Jewish dissent against the government of Israel is not new, it is novel that the organized dissent is so powerful and influential (and monied). This has inhibited some Jewish groups from being more outspoken in support of peace.
While the American Jewish Committee recently visited the Palestine Information Office in Washington and Americans for Peace Now recently sponsored a press conference with the National Association of Arab Americans, the President of Americans for Peace Now recently noted, “While several American Jewish groups have a general stance supporting the peace process, they have not put their resources behind that stance like they have done with other issues, like foreign aid and arms sales.”
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While Arab Americans are struggling with the issues of peace and how to respond to the new circumstances created by the peace process, it is important to see that the same debate is also taking place within the Jewish community. Playing on old fears and muttering old slogans is always easier to do than creating new realities. In politics, fear is a more effective organizing force than hope.
What is clear, however, is that for peace to work, a constituency for peace must develop. In its absence and in the absence of an aggressive campaign by leaders who support peace, those who seek to take advantage of old fears will find an open playing field on which to play, and on which they will win support.
This is the challenge facing not only Arab Americans but also Jewish Americans. Since the power of the Jewish community is at this point greater than ours and since, correspondingly, so is their ability to disrupt or even stymie the peace process, their responsibility to support it is that much greater as well.
