January 1990, Page 58

Publishers' Page

In an article entitled "Knowing When It's Over," we pointed out last April that the outlines of the eventual Palestinian-Israeli settlement are clear: Two states, based upon the pre-1967 (green line) borders; two sovereignties in Jerusalem with free access and equal rights for all of its residents; internationally-monitored arms limitations and water-sharing agreements, and no restrictions on the future economic pacts that will, inevitably, bring Israel, Palestine, and probably Jordan either into a Benelux-type arrangement among themselves or individual arrangements with regional groups like the European Community and the Arab states.

Knowing how things eventually will turn out doesn't necessarily get people to the peace table, however. If there are no threats of strings on US aid to Israel in the first Bush term, there will be no peace negotiations.

If there are no peace negotiations, the cycle of violence will begin again. The fallout is totally unpredictable, but it will cost American lives and untold American treasure, as have previous Arab-Israeli wars. Count on that and pray that it doesn't also revive an oil embargo or an Islamic world boycott of American goods.

That's why "knowing when it's over" means the exact opposite of easing up on efforts to persuade Congress, the administration, the media and the public to take action. Middle East peace has to start in Washington, because until Congress and the administration put the brakes on Israel, no amount of effort by Palestinians, other Arabs, Europeans and Israeli doves will suffice to get the hardliners dominating the Israeli government to start negotiating peace.

There has never been a more important time for readers who agree with the sentiments above to put their shoulders to the wheel. Here are some ideas for how we and our readers can work together to be effective.

Stealth PACs: How Israel's Lobby Took Control of US Mideast Policy

It's a whopper of a title, but then our book of that name can have a whopping impact on the 1990 elections. It shows American voters how to beat the Israel lobby's secret armada of deceptively named PACs. Readers will learn from the narrative exactly how, as congressional goodwill for Israel dissipated, the directors of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) set out to obtain through fear what they could no longer get from congressmen voluntarily.

It was almost undetectable at first, but as the bloated Israeli military and civilian bureaucracy grew, its needs became insatiable. Finally, in 1988, Israel's lobby had 78 PACs spending more than $5.5 million to bribe Congress to vote more aid for Israel. That was more than total contributions together of the two next largest special interests in the United States—the real estate lobby and the teamsters.

This book tells readers exactly how much dirty money their two senators and one representative, and everyone who has run against them in the past 14 years, has taken from 111 pro-Israel PACs. It's a manual for whistleblowers and a roadmap to cleaner government.

AET is publishing it at $9.95 and, as usual, discounting it to one copy for $7.95 and two for $9.95. We lose money if you buy two, but do it anyway. Give the second to a friend willing to do something personally about corruption, or the editorial writer on your local newspaper, or let us mail it in your name to your local library.

In 1988, when the public learned through an expose by Mike Wallace on CBS's "Sixty Minutes" that AIPAC had targeted Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island for defeat, and was "steering" pro-Israel PACs to donate $242,000 to his opponent, public opinion reversed and Chafee won, with 54 percent of the votes cast.

An informed public can beat the lobby in virtually any state in the United States this year, because public opinion, which used to wink at violations of US law by Israel and its supporters, won't any more. The book will help you be Paul Revere in your own state. It will be supplemented throughout the 1990 election year with quarterly updates in the Washington Report of exactly how much every congressional candidate is taking from pro-Israel PACs. We've published the book. Now let's all get the rascals out.

AET's Points of Light

Our 1989 campaign was heartening in terms of the hundreds of individuals who came up with 15 names and $75 to fund $5 subscriptions to opinion molders (libraries, journalists, educators, members and employees of members of congress, educators and clergy). It didn't attract more than a handful of big donors, however. One group which gave $20,000 last year and pledged $30,000 this year hasn't even given us excuses. Another consortium, which promised to step into the breech if we added 6,000 names to our media donation subscription list, didn't. We've got 6,000 media names and addresses plugged into a computer at our own expense, and not even the postage money to send them an introductory issue.

Dun and Bradstreet rated us "slow" to pay our bills in 1987 and 1988. Apparently those were to be the last of our good years. Our board debated closing down at the end of the year. We decided, literally, that we can't afford to.

Since our circulation mushroomed throughout 1988 and 1989,just to make good on the unfinished portions of our subscriptions, hundreds of them for three years, would wipe out the personal assets of the directors. So we're going ahead, prisoners in a weird way, of our success. It has, we believe, brought us more paid subscribers than the total subscribers of all other comparable Middle East magazines in the United States.

We think that's important. In downtown Washington, we can't walk into a room, or even an elevator, without someone telling us how we opened his eyes, or showed her how to channel her anger into constructive political action. It's a tremendous ego trip, but rave reviews don't pay staff salaries, printers, book publishers, or the utilities.

Neither the publisher nor the chief editor of the Washington Report, nor any member of American Educational Trust boards, takes a cent of salary, fees or compensation. If you think their dedication, the contents of their three periodical publications, and the tens of thousands of books they circulate every year are sending a message, and that they ought to keep their doors open at least until there's a just peace in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, then please, for God's sake, help them pay their bills.

Make a Difference, This Month

In this paragraph we normally suggest things readers can do to influence Congress. We know a lot do, because we hear about it from unhappy congressmen. Sometimes a reader calls to explain why he let us down in a given month. We realize that this zeal results from the fact that we haven't made these recommendations self-serving. This month, however, we're financially frantic and all the rules go out the window. Our only excuse is that what we propose below is tax exempt if you make your contribution to the AET Library Endowment.

If you give an opinion molder (see definition above) an AET information package, you may save his soul. You can be certain that you're helping save AET. For $5, your opinion molder gets 12 issues of the Washington Report. Add $5 and he gets a copy of Stealth PACs. Add $5 more and he gets a copy of Paul Findley's book, They Dare to Speak Out. Do all of this for several opinion molders, and AET gets to pay its bills. That will Make a Difference, This Month.