Lobby Activities

By George F. Smalley

For Arabs:

Both the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) are planning intensive media campaigns in 1985 to alert Americans to the unprecedented increases in U.S. foreign assistance to Israel that are now being considered. NAAA, which says its past efforts to criticize aid to Israel have been unfairly suppressed, recently went before a national TV audience to present its case.

On December 27th, CBS Morning News featured a 14-minute program examining whether or not the subject of America's economic and military assistance to Israel is adequately debated. Presented by CBS newsman Bill Moyers, the program included taped remarks by David Sadd, executive director of NAAA, Malcolm Hoelein of the Jewish Community Relations Council and several radio station executives. Live interviews were conducted with former Congressmen Paul Findley (R-IL), who was targeted for defeat by the pro-Israel lobby in 1982, and Clarence Long (D-MD), who lost his 1984 reelection campaign despite strong financial support from pro-Israel political action committees. A spokesman for NAAA, Ronald Cathell, said that NAAA had "worked very closely" with CBS for about two months to help it with the program.

Mr. Moyers described the pressures that advertisers and listeners had put on one radio executive in New York City last October who aired one of NAAA's paid advertisements—an ad which challenged the wisdom of giving Israel $2.6 billion in grant aid. Twenty other radio stations that were asked by NAAA to run the ad refused. NAAA has encountered similar experiences in other U.S. cities.

In his commentary, Mr. Moyers said: "If one minority can be stifled by public intimidation, so can another, and another—until we end up in a position where no minority gets to be heard. How the government divides up tax dollars should be fair game for all views…"

Jan Albert, the producer of the CBS program, told The Washington Report that CBS received about 75 letters and telephone calls—an "above average" response—from viewers, and that more than half were favorable.

For Israel:

For years, Israel has been able to count on its friends within the Jewish-American community to lobby Congress successfully to win ever-increasing amounts of U.S. economic and military aid for the Jewish state. And so far this year, no prominent Jewish supporter has broken ranks by publicly refusing to get behind Israel's current efforts to obtain from the U.S. $4.9 billion in additional funding—$800 million in emergency economic aid for this fiscal year, and $4.1 billion in military and economic aid for fiscal 1986. But that this could happen today is more conceivable than perhaps at any time in the past, because many American Jews simply are not now supportive of Israel's whopping aid request.

That is the view of "professionals in Jewish organizations," according to David Silverberg, a former staff member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who now writes for the Washington Jewish Week. In the January 3 issue of that publication, in a front-page article headlined "American Jews Balk at Israeli Aid Request," Mr. Silverberg wrote that "many Jewish professionals...feel the Israeli aid request is unreasonable and unrealistic." This criticism comes not only from some Jews who in the past have objected privately to large U.S. aid transfers to Israel, he said. It also has been "frequently voiced by Jews sympathetic to Likud," the hard-line party in Israel, whose supporters in the U.S. traditionally have backed whole-heartedly campaigns to increase U.S. funding to Israel. "It appears," concluded Mr. Silverberg, "that if the Israelis really want the aid amounts they have requested, they will have to convince the American Jewish community just as much as they need to convince Congress and the U.S. government."

Dire assessments similar to this have been made before to help drum up more active support for Israel within the Jewish American community. But if Mr. Silverberg's story contains a call for action, it is being directed not to American Jews, but rather to the Israeli government. He notes, for example, that Jewish community leaders and pro-Israel lobbyists have been urging Israel's new unity government to implement substantial economic reforms in order to help win U.S. government and congressional support for its unprecedented aid request. Mr. Silverberg seems to be making the point that unless these self-help economic steps are taken, Israel might not get the full support of the Jewish American community, support that is crucial.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) can be counted on to push at least two arguments on Capitol Hill to help secure an aid increase. The first is that Israel's current economic crisis is due to its high costs of defense spending, and not to mismanagement or the comparatively high standard of living enjoyed by Israelis. Secondly, AIPAC can be expected to stress its contention that Israel is a "strategic asset" to the U.S., if not an integral component of the U.S.'s own defense system. Recently, for example, AIPAC published an interview in which Representative Jack Kemp (R-NY) was quoted as saying that "aid to Israel is in the (U.S.) national defense orbit. It is security assistance, not only for Israel, but for the United States... I view it in almost the same framework as a naval base." For Representative Kemp, AIPAC said, it is only "a technicality" that assistance to Israel is included in the U.S.'s foreign aid budget, instead of a separate and much larger budget from which the U.S.'s own defense expenditures are drawn.

George F. Smalley is managing editor of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.