Damage Control in Tel Aviv

By Jane Hunter

In the early days of the Iran-contra scandal, American Jewish leaders urged Israel to get all the facts out early. Instead, Israeli officials have repeatedly denied that they suggested the Reagan administration trade arms for hostages with Iran, or that Israel proposed that profits from those deals be diverted to the anti-Sandinista contras. However, the unfolding story has clashed with Israeli denials at every turn.

After initial denials, and weeks after the initial story broke in early November, Israel finally admitted that it collaborated with a small group in the National Security Council (NSC) staff and sold arms to Iran. But Tel Aviv continued to contend that it sold arms to Iran only at the request of the US. Israel has not commented on charges that it kept the program alive by insistently suggesting that the sales, enormously profitable for Israel, would ransom US hostages held in Lebanon.

When the potentially even more damaging part of the story broke, that "representatives of Israel" had diverted profits from the arms sales to help fund the contras, Israeli officials denied that too.

In December, when it was leaded that the White House had asked the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to omit from its investigative report a letter from Prime Minister Shimon Peres urging President Reagan not to halt contacts with Iran, Peres categorically denied writing such a letter.

Israel even denied well-documented reports in the Intelligence Committee's report that its Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, had proposed to ship a load of captured Eastern-bloc weapons to the contras. "What is attributed to me is total nonsense," said Rabin on a recent CBS evening news program. "In the contras hands there is no weapon that came from Israel." Rabin's denials fly in the face of dozens of documented reports that Israel shipped arms to the contras as far back as 1983.

When the White House released a memorandum and a presidential "finding" which highlighted Israel's leadership in the affair, Israeli leaders were livid. President Herzog said "there are a great number of people in the States that are on the defensive and it may be convenient for them to try to use Israel as a whipping boy in order to protect themselves." Other high officials expressed themselves anonymously through the media as astonished, resentful, appalled, angry, and "trapped in the web of lies and deceit spun by the NSC officers dealing with Iran."

President Reagan quickly sent messages to Israel assuring it that the documents did not "place any responsibility on Israel for actions taken by the US administration." But the Israeli denials grew harsh, even menacing: "We cannot and do not want to react to every malicious report or leak," said Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in mid-January. "What is attributed to Israel has no basis in reality," he said on another occasion. Israel's leaders, said one report, "still have some bullets in their gun" and if pushed, might use them. As to what these might be, Israel's armed forces radio reported that "a senior (Israeli) government official" said that "we have heard US proposals of a much more sensitive and far-reaching nature in the past." The government is "absolutely confident that no investigation on earth will ever be able to find a link between Israel and the decision from somewhere in the NSC and CIA to circumvent Congress," said another report.

Israel Critical of US

In Israel, however, the discussion of the Iran-contra scandal is somewhat more revealing. The Israeli media is reporting its government's denials piecemeal, and with skepticism. In a recent editorial, the Jerusalem Post said that while it was plausible that Israel had not diverted Iran arms sales profits to the contras, "the rest of the government's self-serving argumentation in favor of its participation in 'Irangate' left some gaping doubts."

On the other hand, even those who mock the government's denials are angered by suggestions coming from Washington that Israel was a prime mover in the whole affair. The same Post editorial charged that the Reagan administration's release of the memo and "finding" constituted "a breach of confidence in relations between friendly states." The right-wing daily Ma'ariv railed that the documents coming out of Washington "depict Israeli Prime Ministers as liars" and, said the paper, gave credence to "anti-Semitic" accusations that Israel was "running US foreign policy."

Israeli papers also debated Israel's policy in the Iran-Iraq war. Although the US actions provided de facto support for Israel's long-range policy of prolonging the Gulf War and selling arms to Iran now as a means of influencing future Iranian governments, Israeli critics say their government was deluded with arrogance to think it could influence events in Iran. Others have argued that a gesture toward Iraq might have resulted in a priceless opportunity for Israel to make peace with its neighbors.

In Israel, much as in the US, there has been considerable commentary about what went wrong in the decision-making process. In Israel the focus has centered on the non-accountability of the present national unity government, a coalition formed by equal representation from the Labor Coalition and Likud parties. Decisions on the Iran-contra affair were made by what has been called the triumvirate of Shamir, Peres, and Rabin. All three have been Prime Minister at different times.

Role of Arms Dealers

Some Israeli journalists have been bothered by the amount of influence Israeli arms dealers apparently have on the triumvirate. Yoel Marcus, senior political correspondent for Ha'aretz, Israel's leading daily, wrote that while Israel's need for hard currency was a major factor in its decision to sell arms to Iran, Israel's leading arms dealers were responsible for bringing the US into the picture. Specifically, says Marcus, the Iran gambit was hatched in 1985 by Al Schwimmer, one of Israel's major arms merchants, and Peres, who "ordered that it be proposed to the White House."

Now famous as a key player in the Iran-arms affair, Al Schwimmer held the official post of adviser to Prime Minister Peres, and he was a member of Peres' entourage when the then-Prime Minister visited Washington in October 1985. Marcus, who covered Peres' trip to Washington, wrote that Schwimmer was present during a meeting between Peres and President Reagan, and that Schwimmer was accompanied by other well-known arms dealers, who "behaved as though they were part of the Prime Minister's entourage."

When National Public Radio commentator Daniel Schorr recently asked Prime Minister Shamir how he reconciled secret operations like the arms sales to Iran with democratic principles, Shamir replied: "There are no rules. We do what we think we have to do at any given moment."

Knesset Reviews Arms Sales

The Iran-contra scandal has prompted another of the occasional and half-hearted attempts by liberal members of the Knesset to bring arms sales under parliamentary control. Previous motions to this end have died, however, because leftist members were reluctant to crack down on arms sales, which would mean increased unemployment. The Knesset, the popularly-elected parliament by which Israel pointedly distinguishes itself from many of its Middle East neighbors as a working democracy, is widely seen as being unwilling and incapable of reducing Israel's reliance on arms sales as a means of earning desperately-needed hard currency. It is unlikely that the Israeli public will mount a sustained protest against the kind of statecraft practiced by the Shamir, Peres, and Rabin triumvirate.

Israel Lost its "Special Friends"

Israeli journalists in Washington have warned that the Iran affair could cause long-term damage to Israel's relations with the US, and there is a great deal of concern about this in the Israeli media. Israel's special friends in the NSC—advisers Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter and NSC staffers Oliver North, Dennis Ross and Howard Teicher (called the "kibbutznik" by his co-workers)—are gone, replaced by individuals some Israeli leaders perceive as pro-Palestinian. Likewise CIA director William Casey, with whom Israel had exceedingly close relations, has resigned for health reasons. In the State Department, some officials "are now very suspicious of Israeli ideas and officials," reported the Washington correspondent for Israel radio. Publicly, the US Congress has been forgiving, but Israel's Democratic supporters on Capitol Hill are said to be chagrined that Israel put all its eggs in the basket of the Republican administration.

There are also worries that the US public might become less supportive of Israel, and that pro-Israeli activists might fall away from the cause. Communications Minister Amnon Rubinstein has called for an inquiry to prove, in the words of an armed forces radio report, "to our US friends that we are also investigating the affair and will not settle for denials." This Israeli report, the radio said, "would counter the one issued by the Senate intelligence committee, (and would) prevent any doubts and strengthen our friends in the US Congress, Administration, and public."

At least partly to this end Abba Eban, chair of the Knesset's Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee and also an advocate of "getting on top of the story," convened a "select intelligence subcommittee" of his committee to investigate the affair. Eban's committee summoned Amiram Nir, a former aide to Peres, and David Kimche, the former director-general of the Foreign Ministry and an alleged Israeli government key player in the Iran-contra affair. Before the committee went behind closed doors, one member said that he would be asking "hard questions." However, the next day, after its second session, the committee released a statement saying their testimony gave it "no reason to question the government of Israel's statement on Israel's role in the various stages of this action." Eban said that the statement did not mention the allegations about Israel's role in the contra aspect of the affair because the committee "was convinced that no such involvement had existed."

However, Tel Aviv isn't taking any chances. The government has told the main players in the affair—David Kimche, Amiram Nir, Al Schwimmer, and Ya'acov Nimrodi—that they may not make oral statements to investigators or appear before the US Senate committee investigating the affair. Earlier the four were ordered to stop making statements to the media.

Jane Hunter is editor and publisher of Israeli Foreign Affairs, P.O. Box 19580, Sacramento, CA 95819.