January 1990, Page 43

Jews And Israel

By Andrea Barron

Jewish Groups Split over Newspaper Ad Welcoming Shamir

Yitzhak Shamir was able to avert a confrontation with President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker when he met with them in November to discuss Israel's proposal for talks with non-PLO Palestinians. But Israel's prime minister was not so adept at preventing an open split in the mainstream Jewish community over his adamant refusal to trade land for peace with the Arabs.

The trouble started when some liberal Jewish organizations refused to sign a newspaper ad drafted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations welcoming Shamir to Washington. According to The Washington Jewish Week, the initial draft was written with the assistance of Shamir's top aide, Yossi Ben Aharon, and supported two of the hard-line conditions Shamir has placed on proposed talks with a Palestinian delegation.

The Israeli prime minister has insisted that the PLO have no influence on the make-up of the Palestinian delegation. He also demands that talks with the Palestinians be limited to West Bank-Gaza elections, and not a final settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Neither the Israeli Labor Party, the US government nor, apparently, liberal American Jews have agreed to Shamir's conditions.

The groups which refused to sign the initial newspaper ad included, not surprisingly, the American Jewish Congress and the Reform Union of American Hebrew Congregations. But at least eight other groups reportedly joined in. One was the 100,000-member National Council of Jewish Women, which said it was "deeply distressed" over Shamir's rejection of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's 10-point peace plan, which endorses the land-for peace idea.

The controversial ad welcoming Shamir did finally appear in The New York Times on November 15. It stuck mostly to the original draft that had been proposed by the Presidents' Conference and rejected by the liberal Jewish groups. But the sponsor was B'nai B'rith International alone, and not the Presidents' Conference.

Jewish Officials Side with Labor Against Shamir

Liberal Jews had a big surprise waiting for Israel's prime minister when he arrived in the United States. They remembered how Shamir had returned to Israel after a March 1988 visit to the United States claiming to have the full support of American Jews. On that visit, Shamir had exulted over the reception he had received after addressing the United Jewish Appeal Young Leadership Conference. Forty-one prominent Jews who sympathize with Israel's relatively dovish Labor Party decided to stop this from happening again.

They sent a letter to Shamir informing him that most American Jews support the land-for peace principle (proven in poll after poll), and that he should not confuse "courtesy for consensus, or applause for endorsement" of all his policies. "We owe you honesty and clarity as well and it is in this spirit that we write this letter, " the 41 signatories said.

They made it clear that while there is no consensus among American Jews on Shamir's policies toward the Palestinians, the community remains united in its concern for Israel: "Let no one, friend or foe, mistake our differences with regard to particular policies as signifying any attrition whatsoever in our support for Israel's people and their right to a national life free of terrorism and war."

The letter was initiated by Theodore Mann, past chairman of the Presidents' Conference, and Hyman Bookbinder, former Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee. Among the other signatories were Theodore Bikel, senior vice president of the American Jewish Congress, Eugene Lipman, past president of the Reform Central Conference of American Rabbis, Judith Peck, executive committee member of the United Jewish Appeal in New York, Esther R. Landa, past president of the National Council for Jewish Women and, most interesting of all, Edward Sanders, a past president of AIPAC.

AIPAC Newsletter Publishes Racist Cartoon on "Arab Mind"

The Nov. 6 edition of the Near East Report (NER), AIPAC's semi-official newsletter ' published a controversial cartoon "reminding " American policymakers not to forget the Arabs' "emotional need for vengeance" when considering "political" solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The cartoon entitled "Reading the Arab Mind," showed the head of man meant to resemble an Arab divided into sections such as "fanaticism," ,'vengeance," "double-talk," "blackmail," and "no peace with Israel." The cartoon makes it appear that these elements combined make up "Arab culture."

The cartoon accompanied an article headlined "Arab States Seek Revenge," based on a paper written by former State Department official Harold Glidden in 1975. Glidden, known for years before his retirement as a severe critic of the Arabs and an apologist for Israel, argued that because of an alleged innate desire for revenge, Israel's military superiority encourages Arabs to make war not peace. "Westerners place peace high on their priority lists. But for Arabs, 'the emotional need for vengeance to eliminate the ego-destroying feeling of shame takes precedence. "' This argument, NER stated, "is still central today."

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen criticized the cartoon and the article in a Nov. 17 Op-Ed piece, writing that if I 'such a cartoon appeared in an Arab publication-as they sometimes do-Jews could justifiably yell anti-Semitism. " The article makes it look like the Arabs' conflict with Israel is based mainly on emotions, race, genes or culture when it really is about land.

"It hardly serves Israel's interests to portray Arabs as psychopaths," Cohen asserted. "Their grievances against Israel are not only real but—from their point of view—justifiable. Jews really do live in lands once occupied by Arabs. Jerusalem, a city holy to Islam, is now the capital of a Jewish state. If Arab or Palestinian irredentism is emotional, then what shall we call the thousand-year longing for Israel that was so much a part of Jewish life in the diaspora? "

Cohen wrote that while traditional anti-Semitism has "infected" the Arab cause to some extent, a West Banker's hatred for Jewish Israelis should certainly not be confused with a Nazi's hatred for European Jews. "Not every quarrel with Jews has to have anti-Semitism at its roots. "

The Washington Post columnist said that when he inquired, AIPAC officials told him they also found the article and the cartoon "revolting" and that they had established new publication guidelines for the Near East Report. AIPAC, Cohen wrote, should tell its 50,000 subscribers the same thing because "They need to know it more than I do."

Andrea Barron, a Ph.D. candidate in international relations at the American University in Washington, DC, is a member of the Jewish Committee for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.