Washington Report, January 27, 1986, Page 7

Lobbies and Activists

Focus on Arabs and Islam 

The Jonathan Jay Pollard spy affair has given new impetus to the National Association of Arab Americans' (NAAA) call for an investigation into the granting of high level security clearance to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Stephen Bryen. 

In a December 23, 1985 report based on documents relating to the Bryen case obtained under a 1980 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit, NAAA called on the Pentagon's Inspector General and the Armed Services and Judiciary Committees of both houses of Congress to investigate the Justice Department's handling of the case and "the adequacy of the procedures employed by the Defense Department in granting Bryen a security clearance for his present position". 

[Before Congress confirmed Bryen's Defense appointment, the FBI had investigated allegations that Bryen had passed U.S. defense secrets to Israel while a senior staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the late 1970s. Despite a recommendation by the head of its own internal security section that a grand jury examine Bryen's conduct, the Justice Department dropped the case at a relatively early stage, effectively exonerating Bryen. Details of the case are laid out in Michael Saba's Armageddon Network, available through AET's Book Challenge Program at $6.95 a copy.] 

In a press release announcing the report, NAAA argued that "national security interests of the United States are at risk," noting: 

The fact that Bryen, in his DOD position, is responsible for keeping inventories of American technology with military applications and protecting it from foreign powers, is alarming in view of the information contained in the Kirkpatrick & Lockhart [the law firm preparing the report for NAAA] report. NAAA's concern was heightened by a December 22 New York Times article in which John Davitt chief of the Justice Department's internal security section during the Bryen investigation was quoted as saying he disagreed with the decision to award Bryen a top secret clearance. He said, "I find it difficult to understand how anyone reading this file could conclude 'Well, this matter was investigated and he was Oven a clean bill of health and all the allegations were resolved in his favor.' " [In the same article, Davitt charged that] "the Israeli intelligence service was the second most active in the United States, to the Soviets." 

Neither DOD nor the congressional committees have responded to the NAAA report as of this writing. 

Last month's column reported that the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC) was circulating a statement denouncing domestic terrorism. This statement, under the headline, "Let Us Resolve Together: Don't Let Terrorism Spread to America," took the form of prominent advertisements in the New York Times (January 5) and Christian Science Monitor (January 10). Placed by the Ad Hoc Coalition Against Terrorism in America, the ad denounced the recent attacks on the ADC which resulted in the death of an ADC official in California and injuries to two policemen in Boston as well as a fire in the organization's Washington, D.C. headquarters last November, and called upon all "Americans of good will" to fight against domestic terrorism. One paragraph of the ad read as follows: "Those of us who are Americans of Jewish or Arabic origin feel a special obligation to prevent this miasma (domestic terrorism) from spreading. We would like instead to set an example of fraternity that may help to heal the tensions between our kindred in the Middle East." Among the scores of signatories were leaders of the Arab American community, prominent Jews, blacks, religious leaders and scholars. 

In a related development, Clarence M. Pendleton, chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, has invited Arab American leaders to attend the Commission's February 11 meeting and discuss their concerns that the recent attacks on ADC and the harassment of Arab Americans in general are attempts to stifle expression of their views and suppress their legitimate political activities. 

Pendleton's invitation came in a response to a letter by James Zogby, executive director of the Arab American Institute (AAI). Zogby wrote that attacks and harassment are making Arab Americans afraid to exercise their rights to organize and speak out on issues which concern them. "Blacklisting" Arab Americans and "baiting" them as "terrorist supporters," he continued, "serve to embolden political opponents of Arab Americans to the point where some have escalated their opposition to include acts of violence against Arab Americans and their organizations. It is this complex of concerns we urge you to examine." [AAI has prepared a brief for the meeting entitled "The Civil Rights of Arab Americans." For copies call the Institute at 429 9210.]

—Anthony B. Toth 

Anthony B. Toth, of Arlington, Virginia, is a freelance writer specializing in U.S relations with the Middle East 

Focus on Jews and Israel 

American Jews expressed outrage at the December 27 attacks by Palestinian radicals on the El Al check in counters in the Rome and Vienna international airports. Kenneth Bialkin, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the "indiscriminate terror in Rome and Vienna reflects a barbarism and primitive mentality which cannot be reached by reason or the rule of law." Not surprisingly, Bialkin tried to blame the airport massacres on the PLO, although a breakaway faction of the organization led by the notorious Abu Nidal claimed responsibility for the attacks. Bialkin said one way the world could combat terrorism would be to end all diplomatic support for the PLO, and called on the United Nations to expel the organization's observer delegation. 

Unlike Bialkin, Near East Report, the organ of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), did not attribute the airport massacres to PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat, but still accused Arafat and the "mainstream PLO" of being behind a worldwide wave of terrorism. The newsletter said it did not matter that Arafat had not organized the attacks, nor that Arafat and Abu Nidal had split over "minor differences." [in the early 1970s, Abu Nidal tried to assassinate Arafat over one of these "minor differences" Arafat's indication of willingness to negotiate a peaceful solution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.] The only difference between Arafat and Abu Nidal that Near East Report could perceive was that one carried "a gun and an olive branch" and the other "only a gun." 

On a more positive note, several prominent American Jews and a few small Jewish organizations joined Arab Americans who signed an ad placed in the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor the week after the Rome and Vienna terrorist actions. 

Among well known Jews who signed the ad were: Congressman Barney Frank (D MA); Rabbis Max Tichtin and Harold White of Washington, D.C.; Rabbi Balfour Brickner of New York City; and the distinguished journalist I.F. Stone. Jewish organizations which signed on included New Jewish Agenda, Kadima (from Seattle), and Washington Area Jews for an Israeli Palestinian Peace. Rabbi Sherwin Wine, a leader in the Jewish Humanist Society in the U.S., was one of the co chairs of the Ad Hoc Coalition Against Terrorism in America, which placed the ads. 

A Jewish leader who did not sign his name to the ad was Hyman Bookbinder, Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee. David Silverberg of the Washington Jewish Week quoted Bookbinder as indicating that one reason he would not sign his name was he thought too many of the signatories spoke out on this particular issue (terrorism directed at Arab Americans) "primarily and even solely because of their pro Palestinian, anti-Israel stand." 

Meanwhile controversy has broken out in the Jewish community about a book published last year Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab Jewish Conflict Over Palestine. The Jewish Book Council awarded it first prize as the best American book of the year on Israel. Using countless quotes and figures, Peters claims that Palestine was essentially "uninhabited" in the late 19th century and that Arabs started to immigrate there en masse from surrounding Arab countries to take advantage of the new economic opportunities created by the first Zionist wave of immigration from Europe. The implication of her argument is that the Palestinians did not, as they say, live in Palestine since "time immemorial" and that their claim to the country is therefore bogus. 

On December 12, the Jewish Week published a critique of the Peters book by Jesse Zel Lurie, who had reviewed it for the Jewish Book Council. He called it a "revisionist polemic posing as history" and accused Peters of fudging many of her facts to "prove" that the Palestinians' case is a false one. 

Nearly a month later, the Jewish Week published an article and several "Letters to the Editors" which criticized Lurie's analysis. One letter writer recalled historian Barbara Tuchman's charge that American critics of the Peters book were guilty of "some of the worst kinds of anti Semitism." (Yet, even Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, Vice President of the World Jewish Congress, accused Peters of "cooking the statistics" and denounced her scholarship as “phony.")

—Andrea Barron 

Andrea Barron, a PhD Candidate in International Relations at the American University in Washington, D.C., is active in Washington Area Jews for an Israeli Palestinian Peace and writes frequently about the Middle East.