Washington Report, March 7, 1983, Page 4

Lobby Activities

For Arabs:

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is well on its way toward establishing an institution designed to provide free legal advice to its 44 chapters across the country.

The ADC National Legal Council, as it is being called, was started at the suggestion of chapter leaders who met in late January at a training conference in Washington. These leaders, according to ADC officials, felt they needed a body of legal expertise from which to draw when considering, for example, whether a certain book or television program might contain defamatory remarks about Arabs and might thus warrant a lawsuit against its author or producer.

So far, more than 25 lawyers have agreed to work on the Council on a voluntary basis and ADC officials are hopeful that eventually there will be 44 members—one from each of its chapters.

Another group of attorneys whose members are Americans of Arab origin is the little-known Arab-American Bar Association in Washington, D.C. Founded three years ago as a professional rather than a political advocacy group, its more than 30 members meet about once a month to discuss legal and Middle East issues, according to Denyse Sabagh, the association's president and a lawyer with the firm of Metzger, Shadyac & Schwartz. Richard Shadyac, of the same firm, told The Washington Report that a similar association is operating in Los Angeles, and that he would like eventually to help organize a network of these groups and to form a national office to coordinate them.

Meanwhile, five members of the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) have held a meeting in Los Angeles with Congressman Robert Badham (R-Calif.), who represents their district in the House of Representatives. One of the NAAA organizers of the meeting, Maureen Chaarani, serves as a coordinator in Mr. Badham's district and is charged with arranging such meetings on a regular basis as part of an effort launched by NAAA last fall to increase grass roots lobbying. Ms. Chaarani and her colleagues urged Congressman Badham to support a cut-off in aid to Israel until Israel withdraws its troops from Lebanon.

For Israel:

The findings of a recently released Harris Survey which went largely unnoticed by the major media indicate that American support for Israel is declining, despite the efforts of American Jewish groups to prevent any such trend. The survey was made in the wake of the release by Israel's commission of inquiry on Israel's involvement in the Beirut massacre.

According to the poll, which was conducted between February 11 and 16, 69 percent of the respondents felt that Israel was either a close ally or friend of the U.S.—compared with 72 percent in a similar survey taken in November of last year. There was an even larger drop of 15 percent—from 84 percent to 69 percent—in the "close ally /friend" response between the latest Harris figures and those of a poll done in November, 1981.

The Harris results show that most Americans have strong misgivings over Prime Minister Begin's handling of the Israeli judicial report, particularly the decision allowing Ariel Sharon to remain in the cabinet. Seventy-two percent of the 1,248 persons queried agreed that by permitting Sharon to stay in the cabinet Begin has "created a real doubt that his government is really admitting it was wrong to have allowed the Lebanese troops (of the Phalange militia) into the PLO camps." And 80 percent approved of the statement that "unless Israel punished those who allowed the massacre to take place, then Israel will lose much of its claim to be a moral, democratic country." Begin's own standing with Americans also fell sharply, with 38 percent saying they had "hardly any" confidence in him, while 11 percent responded that way when asked in 1977, Begin's first year in office.

Earlier, a Gallup poll conducted in January, before the Israeli inquiry commission released its report, found that American support for Israel had increased from what it was shortly after the Beirut massacre. The poll was commissioned by the American Jewish Committee.

Companies Go Public

Meanwhile, the American Jewish Congress (AJC) says that nine U.S. companies have agreed to make public their lobbying efforts to win approval of the 1981 AWACS sale to Saudi Arabia and their lobbying on Middle East issues in general, as requested by shareholder resolutions drafted by the AJC and submitted by sympathetic stockholders to 23 American firms (See The Washington Report of Dec. 13, 1982). The nine corporations cited by AJC are: Aluminum Co. of America; American Airlines; Deere and Company; Eastern Airlines; Kellog; NL Industries; Republic Steel; Smith Kline Beckman and Westinghouse. According to the AJC, seven other companies have decided not to release the information unless requested to do so by a vote of the shareholders. This group includes: Dresser; FMC Corporation; Ford; Mobil and United Technologies. (Other sources report that Boeing and Halliburton are also in this group.) The remaining companies that have not indicated publicly how they plan to respond include Blount, Dravo, Heinz and Northrop.

Another American-Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, has released two publications this year, including an 18 page pamphlet on U.S. aid to the Middle East—distributed to members of Congress—which argued that cutting off aid to Israel would be the equivalent of "shooting oneself in the foot." The ADL also published the first edition of a 118 page "handbook" titled "Pro-Arab Propaganda in America: Vehicles and Voices," which provides brief descriptions of 31 organizations and biographical data on 3-4 individuals.