NOVANEWS
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‘Can you answer the question why the Obama Administration is so intent on squandering what little goodwill it might have in the Arab world?’
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What this moment means
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‘The Times’ lies about Charles Percy’s record
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‘Washington Post’ column refers to ‘powerful Israel lobby’ as factor in 2012 campaign
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Glenn Beck, the American Right and the myth of ‘the International Jew’
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Ismail Khalidi seeks to rewrite the American understanding of Palestinian identity
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Siegman says US has blessed Israeli ‘crimes’ going back to ’48 landgrab
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Congress sees Middle East through AIPAC-colored glasses
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The privileged divide– non-Jews want to talk the issue, Jews don’t
‘Can you answer the question why the Obama Administration is so intent on squandering what little goodwill it might have in the Arab world?’
Sep 17, 2011
Philip Weiss
The State Department “applauds” the Libyan transition council getting a UN seat– while insisting that opposing a Palestinian seat will not isolate the U.S. in the Arab world. The State Department spokesperson challenged a reporter who kept raising the isolation angle to produce “polling data” showing Arab opinion.
Though as the reporter pointed out, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey (yes Muslim, not Arab) have all made their positions clear.
That’s the news from Thursday and Friday’s press briefings at the State Department by spokesman Mark Toner, relevant sections are below. I gather the dogged questioner is Matt Lee of Associated Press. A great reporter. First Thursday, asking about the Palestinian statehood initiative:
QUESTION: I’m asking why you lack the creativity to use this as leverage to get them back to the negotiating table, instead of trying to fight a losing battle in which you’re going to be the only – you’re going to be isolated, the Israelis are going to be isolated, because if they go to the General Assembly, they’re going to win.
MR. TONER: Precisely because —
QUESTION: So why don’t —
MR. TONER: — because we think it’s —
QUESTION: Why isn’t there anyone in this Administration that has the brainpower, the creativity, to use this as a positive thing to build momentum instead of regarding it as completely a negative thing?
MR. TONER: Because it’s counterproductive.
Then here is Friday’s briefing:
Spokesman Mark Toner: And before beginning, I did want to note that the UN General Assembly, as many of you saw, has voted to give Libya’s seat in the world body, the UN, to the former rebels’ National Transitional Council. We certainly applaud this significant milestone in Libya’s remarkable transition.
And with that, I’ll take your questions.
QUESTION: Great. Why can’t the Palestinians even get a seat?…
QUESTION: Okay. So the Israelis have said that the threat – and I put that in quotes, because I don’t know if it’s a threat or if it’s just an advice – piece of advice as to the consequences – that if this does happen, that they could start annexing settlement blocs in the West Bank, that they could withhold millions and millions of dollars in tax money that they – tax revenue that they collect for the Palestinians. Is that counterproductive as well?
MR. TONER: Again, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We’ve been clear on our position on settlements.
QUESTION: What’s more counterproductive, a symbolic gesture at the UN or actually choking off (inaudible) —
MR. TONER: I’m not going to grade what’s counterproductive —
QUESTION: — maybe so much (inaudible) —
MR. TONER: — what may be more counterproductive.
QUESTION: — actually makes a difference on the ground —
MR. TONER: And Matt – and Matt —
QUESTION: — and not about whether the Israelis’ feelings —
MR. TONER: Matt, our efforts remain focused on getting the sides back to the negotiating table. We’ve said all along neither side, or both sides, rather, should refrain from any action that impedes that progress. And that remains our position.
QUESTION: Can you answer the question why this Administration is so intent on squandering what little goodwill it might have in the Arab world?
MR. TONER: I disagree with the premise, so that’s my answer…
QUESTION: Mark, are you saying that you disagree with the fact that this position that you’ve taken is unpopular among Arab countries?
MR. TONER: Again, you’ll have to go out and produce your own polling data and ask these Arab countries themselves.
QUESTION: I’m asking you. You said you disagreed with the premise of my question. I’m asking you are you aware of the –
MR. TONER: You ask an extremely leading question. What I’m saying is –
QUESTION: — are you aware the Turkish Government, the (inaudible) Government, Jordanian Government, the Government of Saudi Arabia, for example?
MR. TONER: Matt –
QUESTION: Are you aware of their feelings about – their statements –
MR. TONER:
We can go around and around on this. All I can say is that our position remains that we want to see the parties back into direct negotiations. We’re going to remain focused on that goal. We believe it’s the right path to pursue, regardless of public opinion or opinion elsewhere. We believe it’s the right path to pursue because it’s going to result in two states living side by side in peace and security.
What this moment means
Sep 17, 2011
Joel Kovel
The situation leading up to the UN Palestine vote is fascinatingly indeterminate. So many people, some brilliant, some fools, some saintly, some vicious (even Elliott Abrams!), all weighing in. Each claims to have a unique grip on the truth of the matter: It’s an Israeli plot; it’s an Israeli nightmare; it’s the PA takeover; it’s the PA’s last gasp; it will provoke civil war; it will provoke the third intifada; the settlers will go berserk; the US will never let anything happen; the Palestinian Right of Return will be scrapped; BDS will lose out; BDS will prevail . . . on and on.
In times like this I turn to Tolstoy in War and Peace: there is an underlying flow to history, which intellectuals, savants, experts think they understand and try to control. But it’s like a rider on a horse who thinks he’s making the horse go. The flow here, the horse, if you will, is the immortal struggle of Palestine to be free, and the condition making this possible, the disintegration of Zionism and its dream of the “democratic Jewish state.” Back to Tolstoy: the thing is to be alert and to be faithful, like General Kutuzov, to the drive to be free from the invader. There will be surprises and they will always exceed our dreams of omnipotence. But we need to keep the faith and act in the moment. The time of freedom is coming.
Joel Kovel is the author of many books, includingOvercoming Zionism.
‘The Times’ lies about Charles Percy’s record
Sep 17, 2011
Ed Moloney
I noticed this obit in the NYT, which omits surely one of the things Charles Percy’s life will be remembered for, AIPAC’s successful tilt against then-Senator Percy in 1984 when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. How could they leave that bit of the story out?!?!
1. The Times:
But just as Illinois voters had tired of Mr. Douglas by 1966, Mr. Percy was old goods by 1984. In a strong Republican year, with President Ronald Reagan campaigning for him, he could not overcome his Democratic opponent, Representative Paul M. Simon.
His position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee seemed remote to Illinois voters, as did his manner. The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal all described him as “pompous.”
2. From Walt and Mearsheimer’s book, The Israel Lobby:
Perhaps the most renowned example of the costs that can befall a politician who crosses AIPAC is the defeat of Senator Charles Percy (R-IL) in 1984. Despite a generally pro-Israel voting record, Percy incurred AIPAC’s wrath by declining to sign the AIPAC-sponsored “Letter of 76” protesting President Ford’s threatened “reassessment” of U.S. Middle East policy in 1975. He also made the mistake of calling PLO leader Yasser Arafat more “moderate” than some Palestinian terrorists. Percy’s opponents in both the primary and general election in 1984 received large sums from pro-Israel PACs, and… Michael Goland… a major contributor to AIPAC [from California], spent $1.1 million on anti-Percy advertising in Illinois… As [AIPAC’s] Tom Dine boasted after Percy’s narrow defeat, “All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians–those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire– got the message.”
3. From Washington Report on Middle East Affairs:
Former Illinois Democratic Sen. Paul Simon reveals in his newly published autobiography how he came to run against former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Charles Percy in 1984. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s principal Washington, DC lobby, has long considered Percy’s defeat by Simon a high water-mark of its influence on Congress. Simon, who was in the House of Representatives at the time, said that first “two longtime friends, Bob Schrayer and Stan Weinberger,” begged him to run (read pledged financial support) against Percy, who not only had voted to permit Boeing to sell Saudi Arabia AWACS aircraft (which later served the U.S. and Saudi-led coalition so well in the Gulf war), but also had suggested that not only were there Palestinians, but also that they had “rights.” Then, Simon wrote, he received a call from “a nationally respected Jewish leader from Chicago, Bob Asher” (an AIPAC board member).
‘Washington Post’ column refers to ‘powerful Israel lobby’ as factor in 2012 campaign
Sep 17, 2011
Philip Weiss
Morton Abramowitz and Henri Barkey in the Washington Post are concerned about the Turkey-Israel tensions, and want the U.S. to convey to Turkey that it won’t take its side against Israel. They regard “American interests” and Israel as fully aligned, but recognize that the lobby may become politicized:
Israel could become a significant issue in the 2012 presidential campaign, especially if the United States is defeated in its opposition to a General Assembly vote to create a Palestinian state. The situation will generate concern on Capitol Hill and give Republicans another opportunity to attack Obama for not defending American interests and Israel….
A resolution recognizing the 1.5 million Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks has repeatedly failed to garner enough support for a floor vote. But its backers may calculate that the worsening conditions between Israel and Turkey would prompt the powerful Israel lobby to no longer support Turkey on this matter, raising the likelihood that the resolution would pass.
Glenn Beck, the American Right and the myth of ‘the International Jew’
Sep 17, 2011
Paul Mutter
Glenn Beck will likely soon regale us all with the valuable lessons he learned in Israel. Perhaps the rally turnout was lower than expected, but you can bet that any book he writes about it will become a bestseller in the U.S.
Rather than wait for the inevitable write up of the tour, why not just get a copy of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and alternate among replacing every reference to “Jew” with your choice of the following categories: “the Left,” “African Americans,” “George Soros” (okay, he is Jewish) or “Muslims.” People like Beck are pamphleteers in search of a Dreyfus, a Trotsky or a Rothschild to pin the world’s ills on – someone on which to base a screed against the “liberal elite,” in the interest of demagogues, ultranationalists and corporate oligarchs.
Beck routinely gushes over with praise for the Jews – unlike African Americans and welfare queens, he argues, “the Jews conquered slavery.” But he also denigrates particular Jews with Holocaust references and suggests that Left-wing Israelis are self-hating Jews. I think that Beck has, unconsciously, incorporated anti-Semitism into his screeds because anti-Semitism is part of the foundation of modern anti-Left ideologies.
These ideologies have “evolved” from castigating Jews as subversive capitalist financiers to seeing their (now communist) hands in the civil rights and labor movements that the American Right despises so. Christian Zionism is useful to Beck and his cohorts because by loudly proclaiming their support for Zionism, they don’t have to look their anti-Left dogmas hard in the mirror and acknowledge that they have roots in early 20th century Western anti-Semitism. As the conservative Jewish magazine FrontPage puts it about anti-Semitism today,
“The International Jew” mythos “can be boiled down to an idea that still resonates: every attempt to achieve some kind of extra-national organizing, aka “globalization,” can be traced back to the Protocols.”
Beck has, of course, found his Dreyfus/Trotsky/Rothschild in the person of George Soros. Soros, as an “extra-national organizer” philanthropist, is depicted among the American Right as an accomplice in the Nazi Holocaustand a financial puppet master pulling the strings of “the Left” to achieve his sinister “liberal” agenda. The accusation prompted significant outrage, but Beck stayed in the saddle at Fox (as Soros is controversial enough anyway that Fox could fob off the resulting rabbinical condemnations and outcry from other media outlets). While the corporatists who bankroll the American Right are for corporate extra-national organizing, any other manifestations of globalization – i.e., what the Soros Foundation, the National Labor Relations Board or Amnesty International do – are anathema and Bolshevist. This is why anti-unionism and anti-regulation sentiment loom larger in GOP tirades than their bases’s well-expressed anti-globalization sentiments.
Some sources believe that Fox decided to cancel Beck’s show earlier this year after he attacked Simon Greer, head of Jewish Funds for Justice. When Greer offered his thoughts on charity, Beck called him out: “This [talk about the common good] leads to death camps. A Jew, of all people, should know that. This is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany.” “Elites” like Greer, Beck argues again and again, will seek to build a “Progressive utopia, that only ends in death camps.” But Greer is not nearly as partisan as Soros; and his faith-based approach is something the American right claims to support over “welfarism.”
Beck, who insists he is not anti-Semitic, isn’t above alluding to Jews as a whole being self-destructive, closet communists/fascists. Just before he held his “Restoring Courage” rally in Jerusalem, he said that the Tel Aviv J14 protests were Left-wing subversives. He sarcastically intoned the specter of “Islamocommunist” – J14 was presumably handing out flyers with Hamas reps – and suggested that the whole protest movement is being funded by an international conspiracy of Left-wing financiers.
The concept of a cabal of financiers funding world dissent – we’ve heard that before. Whether Beck realizes it or not, Adolf Hitler often prophesied that “if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” And it’s a favorite propaganda theme of Iran’s bombastic Mahmoud Ahmadinejahd and other tinplate tyrants trying to distract their own publics from domestic problems.
But Beck’s ideological grandfather is Henry Ford, who gave “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” a print run in a national newspaper and was honored by Nazi diplomats,actions that have stained his reputation forever.
Ford, being an automaker, had a lot of interchangableconspiracies. He liked to interchange “the Jew” with “the union” or “Wall Street” in his post-WWI rants, a time period when he became increasingly close-minded and fatalistic. The industrialist claimed that unions were actually run by Jewish financiers and that he, ever the humanitarian, would not allow them to harm his workers (he had his own “Service Department” for doing that: Detroit gangsters armed with machine guns and lengths of pipe). Ford only publicly reputed his anti-Semitism after it became a serious PR problem for him, though according to those closest to him. “The Jew” became an implicit member of the elite, and Ford (despite his wealth), always saw himself as being outside that elite.
It is worth nothing that some of the most prominent Beck supporters have been opponents of civil rights legislation and opposed to the very principle of unionism. They claim that these things sap American greatness and are secretly tied to communism. Ford fought tooth and nail to keep the United Auto Workers Union out of Detroit – his scorn for them redoubled by the presence of Jewish union organizers. The union’s Detroit leader was Walter Reuther, was a socialist immigrant who worked closely with American Jewish leaders to organize workers in the 1930s. Reuther was also, in his later years, a supporter of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s civil rights movement, along with many other secular Jews and reform-minded rabbis (Reuther, who was also a Zionist, clearly saw the Jewish struggle for equal rights playing out among African Americans in the 1960s).
The role American Jews played in organizing American workers and the early civil rights movement was significant – and all such organizing efforts have been and are loathed by conservatives. Red baiting, Jew baiting and black baiting increasingly came together, but this was approaching the fringes of respectability (and electability).
So, by the 1990s, pro-segregation and anti-labor forces had come together – consciously, in fact – to try and reverse the gains of organized labor and non-whitesunder the “anti-elitist” banner of restoring “states rights.” The anti-immigrant, anti-regulation, anti-labor populism in the U.S. today is very much the cloth that modern American conservativism is cut from. Gone is the wording “The International Jew,” but the spirit is very much there, and that spirit animates Glenn Beck’s ideologies: “liberal Jews” alias “the elite,” alias “the communists,” have once again become the enemies of American freedom and dignity – that is, they areDemocratic sheeple and, in actuality, insufficiently Jewish!
One of Beck’s recommended readings for his listeners, “The Red Network,” is a good example of how “the Elite” can be easily conflated with “Jews.” Written in the 1930s by a pro-Nazi American historian named Elizabeth Dilling, Beck proclaimed on his show (starting at 1:10 in this clip)that the work is an authoritative volume on communism. He also noted that the book cogently demonstrates the links between organized labor and communism – then started castigating the U.S.’s “communist” teachers’ unions.
Beck seems to have missed the parts in the book where those labor activists were called scheming Russian Jews. “The Red Network,” when not railing against African Americans, portrays Jews as either self-defeating pacifists or militant Bolshevik agitators, responsible for Germany’s WWI defeat: “conspiring, revolutionary Communist Jews” betrayed Germany in WWI and then, according to Dilling (and Hitler), sought to take the country over in the 1920s on Moscow’s orders. Beck’sresponse to criticism of the book was to claim that he hardly remembered reading it a few days before and to denounce “the Left” for trying to paint him as an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer.
Some of the Henry Ford pedigree is visible in the man the Jewish Journal calls Beck’s “mentor and guru, Mormon extremist W. Cleon Skousen, a hardcore racist and anti-Semite. Beck frequently totes Skousen’s writings on his show, even though Skousen has long been an ardent opponent of African-American civil rights and sees communists behind everything (including African-American civil rights, of course).
Then there are the bizarre sermons of American evangelical leader John Hagee, a man Beck has had on his show numerous times. Hagee blames the Rothschilds, the Federal Reserve and the Illuminati for America’s economic woes, seems to be taking a page from “The Eternal Jew,” a Nazi propaganda film that saidthat:
“The Jews are sitting at all junctions of the world’s money markets . . . their capital enables them to terrorize world exchanges, world opinion, and world politics.”
Hagee’s views are, on the surface, pretty straightforward. He is a Muslim-bashing, Christian Zionist. His favor has been courted by people like Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman (who once favorably compared him to Moses). And he believes that Christians are the shepherds of the Jews. What more could a Zionist ask for?
Well, a Zionist might want to ask what happens to the sheep in the long run. For the end of the world to go as Hagee envisons, all Jews must return to Greater Israel and prepare for the end times. After most of the world is destroyed, Jesus Christ will return to Earth and reign from Jerusalem for a millennium. And then, as a reward for their shepherding of the Jews up to this point, Jesus will send the good Christians into Heaven for a seven year grace period while the anti-Christ moves to destroy Jerusalem.
Perhaps because of the role Jerusalem must play in this scenario for the end times is why Glenn Beck is saying that:
“The last one to attack is Jerusalem. It is the symbol of so much power. It is not their [Muslims’] most sacred site. It is a sacred site and the root of all of us. It cannot be lost. It cannot be lost.”
This is the legacy of the tsarist spies who wrote the Protocols, of European fascism, of members of the American Right such as Father Charles Coughlin, David Duke and the John Birch Society, and most recently, of repressive foreign leaders who have used Israel’s depredations as a rallying point for their people to take attention away from their own.
And it is a legacy that Glenn Beck is part of. As theJewish Journal rightly puts it, Beck and all of his cohorts are no friends of Israel (or Palestinians). They are a false front for reactionary racism and anti-labor agendas that have been blended together in DC backrooms. And, increasingly, American Jews are buying into this spiel as social conservativism and all or nothing pro-Israel politicsturn traditionalists against liberals.
A Gay German Jewish anti-Christ. Illuminati, Alan Greenspan and the Rothschilds. Gestapo Soros and Kapo Greer. Socialism with Islamist Characteristics. All of these thoughts can fit comfortably inside Beck’s head because they come back to the original boogeyman of the 20th century whose specter has made his, and Hagee’s, careers possible: the enduring myth of “The International Jew” among the American Right.
With friends like this, who needs Ahmadinejad?
Ismail Khalidi seeks to rewrite the American understanding of Palestinian identity
Sep 17, 2011
Lisa Mullenneaux
Locked in a British brig in 1939 Palestine, Arab nationalist Yusef has a vision: “All this,” he tells his nephew Tariq, “is just a complicated real estate deal. I can almost see myself disappearing.” Arab dispossession, Zionist aspirations, and British betrayal are the themes Ismail Khalidi explores in Tennis in Nablus, playing at Stageworks in Hudson, NY, through Sept. 25.
In this award-winning play, Khalidi, 28, shows the Brits used the same brutal tactics against Arab rebels they’d used to smash popular revolts in India and Ireland. In the crucial years (1917-1947) that preceded the birth of Israel, British colonialists fueled ethnic hatred by promising the land to both indigenous Arabs and Jewish immigrants.
Tennis in Nablus takes place as Arab nationalists make a dying attempt to drive the British out. They are being shot in the street or arrested and tortured while their rulers plan their next costume ball. Lieutenant Duff models his tennis whites; General Falbour can’t decide between Zulu war paint or a Nazi uniform. As the play begins, we see how this conflict is tearing apart the Al Qudsi family. Yusef is fighting for independence, his nephew for the best business deal he can get from the Brits or Zionists. But when the two are forced to share a jail cell, Tariq, the “rational nationalist,” quickly realizes that for his governors, he’s just a dirty Arab, who can be ordered to fetch their tennis balls. This shock brings him closer to his uncle, who has blamed Tariq for wanting to sell the family land. “We’ll be the foreigners soon enough in Palestine,” Yusef warns his nephew: “I was forced to steal an orange from my own orange grove.”
A second theme Khalidi brings to light—with hilarious effect—is the natural empathy the British soldiers O’Donegal and Rajib have for their Arab prisoners. In an early scene O’Donegal and his captive Yusef trade ethnic slurs, then laugh and say “touché.” Equally revealing is a scene in which Samuel Hirsch, an idealistic Jew, overhears General Falbour and his subordinate Duff eviscerating Jews. Undeterred, Hirsch presses them to act quickly to stop Hitler’s aggression.
In the end Tariq’s real estate deal goes up in smoke, but before he escapes to Beirut, he gives his aunt Anbara keys to the family house. The play closes on a somber note as Yusef’s wife faces an uncertain future.
Khalidi expertly mines rich elements of tragedy and comedy, and he has a superb cast to support him. Nasser Faris—a veteran of TV, stage, and film—is the oud player turned rebel Yusef Al Qudsi. Maria Silverman plays his wife Anbara, a journalist and freedom fighter modeled on feminist organizer Tarab Abdul Hadi. Yusef’s nephew and British collaborator Tariq Al Qudsi is played by Fajer Al-Kaisi. Chet Carlin takes on the roles of both the goose-stepping general and vegetable peddler Hajj Waleed, whose eggplants conceal rifles. Matt Falber mimes a flawless British accent as the priggish Lieutenant Duff. Christopher Smith unpacks the complexities of Samuel Hirsch.
One of Khalidi’s goals in Tennis in Nablus is to debunk the violent, barbaric, and anti-Semitic Palestinian stereotype. “As a Palestinian-American playwright,” he says, “I am deeply committed to challenging the myths and distortions about Palestinians that abound in American discourse. In Tennis in Nablus, I try to expose some of the often obscured human dimensions of Palestinian identity.”
Tennis in Nablus, which had its 2010 world premiere at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, draws on history in which Khalidi’s family has a very personal stake. “The Khalidis are an old Jerusalem family,” says the playwright. “Records of their presence in the city date to the 12th or 13th century.” Ismail himself was named for his paternal grandfather, a UN official.
John Sowle’s set and lighting are creative and evocative of the period. A rattan screen and single window give the illusion of a jail cell, lit from behind to simulate daylight. Gray stone arches surround the stage. About choosing to stage Tennis in Nablus director Laura Margolis says, “I’m always looking for compelling stories that take us on a journey. Khalidi succeeds in giving us something to feel and think about. His characters try to answer the question: ‘What will happen to this land?’”
Siegman says US has blessed Israeli ‘crimes’ going back to ’48 landgrab
Sep 17, 2011
Philip Weiss
The great Henry Siegman has broken with so many communal vows of the Jewish establishment, and herehe is with angry words at Foreign Policy, about colonialism, land grabs, “consensus of thieves,” and the Israel lobby’s collusion. Notice especially how Siegman thinks a fair partition would be on the original ’47 lines. I wonder how long before Siegman is talking about the rights of Palestinian refugees…
And is there anyone who witnessed the frenzied applause that greeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most recent speech before the U.S. Congress in which he left no doubt about his government’s intentions for East Jerusalem and for the West Bank, or heard President Obama’s assurances to AIPAC’s conventioneers that the ties that bind the U.S. to Israel are forever “unbreakable,” who still believes that the U.S. will ever exert the kind of pressure on Israel that will finally change its cost/benefit calculations with regard to its colonial project?….
The Palestinian “crime”– turning to the U.N. for relief from one of the longest military occupations in modern history, in part to deter those within its own ranks who have lost all hope from resort to violence — that has elicited so draconian an American response might in fact be seen as an act of statesmanship, to be encouraged and rewarded. But stealing the Palestinian people’s territorial patrimony — which is how the U.N. Partition Resolution of 1947 defined not only the West Bank but territory twice its size — is a crime in international law, as is the transfer of Israel’s citizens to those territories. Yet these crimes have never drawn more than empty American reproaches, invariably followed by solemn reaffirmations of the immutability of America’s bonds with Israel..
[U.N. General Assembly affirmation of Palestinian state] is likely to trigger a global reaction to Israel’s continuing efforts to dispossess Palestinians from the 22% of Palestine that has been left them.
Congress sees Middle East through AIPAC-colored glasses
Sep 17, 2011
Medea Benjamin and Allison McCracken
During August recess this year, 81 members of Congress went on a junket to Israel funded by the Israel lobby group AIPAC (well, funded by the American Israel Education Fund, but they are really one and the same) to “learn first-hand about one of our closest friends and allies.” While the representatives insist they got a balanced view, their itinerary belies that claim: 95% of their time was spent hearing the Israeli government point of view, with only one token meeting with Palestinian reps.
CODEPINK has filed a complaint with the Congressional Ethics Committee stating that these trips—and the upcoming ones scheduled for December–violate the Congressional prohibition on traveling with a lobby group. We feel these Potemkin voyages are part of AIPAC’s grand plan to control and monopolize Congress, which is not just unethical, but dangerous. Their bias reinforces a disastrous U.S. policy of unconditional support for Israel that obstructs peace and runs counter to our national interests.
At a recent Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, entitled “Promoting Peace? Reexamining US Aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA)”, we got a glimpse of what happens when Congress views the Middle East through AIPAC-colored glasses. Here are a few of examples of their tunnel vision:
* Asking the wrong questions: Congress is intent on looking into the $600 million a year U.S. taxpayers give to the Palestinian Authority, especially at a time, as a few members brought up, of economic hardship in the United States. But they would not dare hold a hearing about the more important issue: the $3 billion a year we are giving to the Israeli government–which is five times what we give the Palestinian Authority. The question they should be asking, but won’t, is: How can American taxpayers afford to give “military aid” to the wealthy government of Israel, especially when that government uses our funds to drop white phosphorous on civilians in Gaza, kill international humanitarians on boats trying to break the Gaza siege, bulldoze Palestinian homes and orchards, and imprison peaceful protesters?” CODEPINK was in the hearing with signs saying “No More $$ to Israel”, but we were not even allowed to quietly hold them.
* Listening to the wrong people: While the hearing was about Palestine, not one of the four witnesses was Palestinian-American, Arab-American, or even sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view. Like the AIPAC-junkets to Israel, this Washington hearing was completely one-sided. Three of the four people testifying before the Committee were Jewish, and all four were white men from conservative think tanks that take the side of the Israeli government. One of the witnesses was none other than convicted criminal Elliott Abrams, who, after the Iran-Contra scandal, went on to covertly arm Fatah after Hamas won the 2006 elections in Gaza, leading to a bloody conflict and inadvertently, to a Hamas takeover of all of Gaza. What great credentials for giving Congress advice on the Middle East!
When we asked the committee staff why there was not one pro-Palestinian voice on the panel, we were told to be quiet or we’d be ejected from the hearing.
* Polluting the atmosphere with racist comments: Not once was the plight of the Palestinians under occupation even mentioned. Instead, Democrats and Republicans across the board made sweeping statements that were embarrassingly racist. “Sending aid to the PA reinforces bad behavior,” said Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lethinen. “The Palestinians refuse to negotiate and they glorify violence,” she added. Cong. Carnahan wanted to know why there are no “honest actors” among the Palestinians. Elliot Abrams added, “The Palestinians have been cursed by a failure of leadership for 100 years.” There was no mention, of course, that some of the best Palestinian leaders can be found in Israeli jails.
At the end of the day, one message that could clearly be taken away from the hearing was that all Palestinians (except perhaps Salem Fayyad, who they didn’t think was so bad) are ungrateful, Jew-hating, terror-worshipping freeloaders who are too lazy to work for peace and who glorify violence. It obviously didn’t fit into the AIPAC junket agenda to introduce any of the committee members to peace activists in the West Bank who organize nonviolent protests against the occupation on a weekly basis.
* Ignoring history/denying reality: It was painful to listen to the whole hearing, but one particular lament of Congress was arguably the most offensive. “Ah, Israel has given up so much land, and done so much for peace. When are the Palestinians going to make some concessions and do anything at all for peace?”, asked Cong. Rohrbacher, throwing up his hands in disgust. The Palestinians still want the right to return “so that they can destroy Israel,” he added. Cong. Poe complained that Israel has given so much land for peace that “pretty soon they’re gonna run outta land.” Witness Schanzer denounced “100 years of Palestinian nationalism, which has been more concerned with destroying Israel than constructing a viable Palestinian state.”
Putting aside the fact that the West Bank and Gaza territories represent a fraction of historical Palestine, Congress completely ignores the fact that thousands of acres of Palestinian land have been confiscated by the Israeli government to establish dozens of settlements and populate them with hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers. When the word settlement came up, it was not in the context of land theft but to chide the Obama administration for focusing too much on settlements in its first two years and creating a rift with the Israeli government.
* Targeting the victims: As if pointing the finger at the Palestinians for all the Middle East’s woes wasn’t enough, to its delight the committee found a new target to defund and shut down: UNRWA, the United Nations Refugee Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. UNRWA assists about 5 million Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East, including those who were displaced during the creation of the state of Israel and their descendants. UNRWA provides these refugees with basic services such as education and healthcare. The surrounding Arab countries where millions of Palestinian refugees live refuse to grant many of them citizenship, thus denying them the ability to work and receive social services. Without UNRWA, these people would basically be left with nothing.
Instead of acknowledging this sad reality, members of Congress nodded their heads in eager agreement as witness Jonathan Schanzer insisted that UNRWA be shut down. “UNRWA treats the Palestinians more like clients than refugees,” he claimed, thus perpetuating the refugee problem. The only dissenting voice around shutting down UNRWA was David Makovsky, who cautioned that the Israeli government might hate UNRWA, but it would not like to see it shut down because then Israel would have to pay for those services it provides, including schooling Palestinian refugee kids.
* Shutting off the lights: One witness, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, had just returned from Ramallah with news about the “electricity scam.” The PA, he said, was supplying power to Palestinians in Gaza, but Hamas–which controls Gaza–was charging people and pocketing the money. Since the US funds the PA, we were enabling this scam. Committee Chair Ros-Lethinen was horrified and indicated that cutting off funds for electricity (i.e. turning out the lights on 1.6 million people) might be in order. No one mentioned that Israel bombed Gaza’s sole power plant during the 2008 invasion, and today it is still only partially functioning. No one mentioned that Israel continues to restrict the entry of spare parts to rebuild the plant and fuel to run it, leaving the people of Gaza with severe power shortages of up to 12 hours a day!
* Tying aid with plenty of strings: While most representatives expressed a desire to cut all funds to the PA, the witnesses cautioned them–not for humanitarian reasons but for Israel’s interests. The PA security forces have been cooperating with the Israelis on everything from stopping attacks on Israelis to repressing demonstrations. David Makovsky from the Washington Institute speculated that cutting off funds to the PA security forces would only hurt Israel. Jonathan Schanzer said that cutting off the PA could lead to an “intrafada” in which Hamas could emerge even stronger. He stated that money is the U.S. leverage to control the PA. “If we cut the funds, we lose our leverage and open the door for Iran and other anti-Israel actors.”
* Eviscerating the UN: The United States claims that it will veto the Palestinian statehood bid because the peace talks should take place between the two parties directly and not through an outside entity—in this case, the UN. Many of the reps could not contain their distain for the UN. “The UN would vote for any resolution that is anti-Israel,” said Cong. Poe in disgust, even if it said that the world is flat. They suggested defunding any UN organization that endorses Palestinian statehood. Some went even further, suggesting we cut off aid to any country that endorses statehood! Hungry Haitians or Ethiopians will simply have to pay the price. There is no such thing as “going too far” when it comes to standing up for Israel!
* Sheer stupidity: One thing the representatives just couldn’t understand is that if we are giving the Palestinians so much money, how come they don’t like us? “Anti-Americanism among the Palestinians is only second to anti-Israel invective,” said witness Jonathan Schanzer, to the nods of the representatives. Rohrbacher seemed incredulous that we’ve given the Palestinians all this money, and it hasn’t even bought us goodwill. Duh! Of course the Palestinians don’t like us—we are supplying billions of dollars of weapons to their oppressors!
The stranglehold AIPAC has over Congress is putting our nation on a collision course with history. The vast majority of the world’s nations support the Palestinian bid for statehood (120 of them already recognize the state of Palestine). The democratic movements sweeping the Arab world are clamoring for Palestinian rights. Unconditional U.S. support for Israel keeps the region in turmoil, pits us against world opinion and jeopardizes our national security. It’s time for Congress to take off the AIPAC blinders.