Quatsch Watch

(The British say rubbish, Americans say nonsense, we won't print what the French say, and Germans say Ouatsch, which rhymes with watch, watch what the column does.)

Was the 1973 War an Arab Attempt To Wipe Out Israel or Recover Israeli-Occupied Syrian and Egyptian Territories?

Quatsch: "[Egyptian President Gamal Abdel] Nasser died of a heart attack in 1970, but his successor, Anwar Sadat, renewed the battle cry for Pan-Arabism in 1973 when he attacked Israel on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, an act that provoked Baghdad to proclaim 'aggression in the Arab world necessitates directing a blow at American interests in the nation."'

—Senior Writer Craig Donegan, San Antonio Express-News, Aug. 18,1991

Quatsch: "Twenty years ago on this Jewish day of atonement, Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal to launch a war against Israel. That event prompted a world oil crisis. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) nearly quadrupled the price of oil, pushing most industrial nations into a deep recession."

—Columnist David R. Francis, Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 24,1993

Watch: In fact, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad made it very clear when their forces attacked Israeli occupation forces in Egypt's Sinai and Syria's Golan Heights on Oct. 6, 1973 that their intention was not to attack Israel but solely to liberate their own occupied lands. Although Israeli defenses collapsed before the initial Syrian onslaught, Syrian tanks and troops did not descend from their own territory in the Golan Heights into Israel. The petroleum boycott against the U.S. and some European countries deemed to be supporting the U.S. was imposed by Saudi Arabia on Oct. 20, two weeks after the United States, at the insistence of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and over the resistance of Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and other Nixon administration cabinet members, opened on Oct. 7 an unprecedented arms airlift and sealift that enabled Israel to reoccupy all of Syria's Golan Heights and most of Sinai. It also enabled Israeli Gen. Ariel Sharon's forces to cross the Suez Canal and, for more than a week after Israel and Egypt both had accepted a U.S.-brokered cease-fire on Oct. 22, continue military operations to cut supply lines linking Egypt to its forces in Sinai. It was Kissinger's unwillingness to halt continuing and extensive Israeli cease-fire violations west of the Suez Canal that prompted Soviet threats to intervene unilaterally against Israeli depredations, and Saudi Arabia to sustain the petroleum boycott. The authors would have stated the situation accurately had they linked the Saudi political boycott that triggered a deep and lasting recession that cost the United States and Western Europe hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars throughout the 1970s, and increased the price of petroleum over a long period, to Israeli refusal to withdraw from Arab territories occupied in 1967 or to abide by the cease-fire to which Israel had agreed on Oct. 22, 1973.

Does U.S. Aid to Israel Support or Undercut a Peace Settlement?

Quatsch:"The funding that the United States provides to Israel helps it maintain its qualitative military edge in a region where all but one of its neighbors refuse to recognize its right to exist."

—Near East Report, weekly newsletter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, June 28, 1993

Watch: At the time those words were written, Egypt had signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization had publicly recognized "Israel's right to exist" in 1986 and many times subsequently, and the 21-member Arab League had adopted the Fez Principles of Peace, based upon U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for Arab acknowledgement of Israel's right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries in return for Israeli withdrawal from "lands seized in the recent [June 1967] conflict." It was Israel that, until Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed an agreement with Yasser Arafat on Sept. 13, 1993 at the White House, did not recognize Palestine's right to exist.

Is the ADL Engaged in Legitimate Information Gathering in the U.S.?

Quatsch: "The Anti-Defamation League has been fighting haters for 80 years, and American society and the Jewish community have been the main beneficiaries . . . The information ADL collects on racists, anti-Semites and extremists is disseminated to the media, law-enforcement agencies, and the Jewish community and the American public to expose the haters . . . As part of its fact-finding, ADL does use undercover sources to gather information . . . who are independent investigators or current or former members of racist and extremist groups . . . ADL's research capabilities are no different than those used at large newsgathering operations, such as ABC News or The New York Times. These organizations also quite legitimately collect and disseminate information about individuals and organizations considered 'newsworthy."'

—ADL National Director Abraham Foxman writing in The Jewish Week, Queens NY, June 7-13, 1993

Watch: There are many differences between ADL and legitimate news organizations. ADL's targets have not been just "racists, anti-Semites and haters, " but also Arab Americans, peace activists, environmentalists, educators, public broadcasters, journalists and others with the "potential" to criticize Israeli policies publicly. The information is not published, giving the victims no opportunity to respond or sue for libel if it is untrue. Instead it is privately circulated, usually through sympathetic third parties who disguise its source, to political or professional rivals and present or potential employers to silence critics of Israel without giving them a chance to see or respond to false or misleading smears.

—RHC