Focus on Arabs and Islam

By Samir El-Sayed

ADC, NAAA, and AAI Working Together to Defend Arabs Jailed in California

Shortly after eight Arab nationals and one Kenyan were arrested in California and accused of being members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA), the Arab American Institute (AAI), and a number of concerned individuals and organizations formed the Committee for Justice to provide monetary and legal support for the defendants. THe defendants and their lawyers deny the charge and contend that the defendants were denied due process. The American Civil Liberties Union, the National Lawyers Guild, the American Friends Service Committee, and civil rights attorney Marvin Weinglass are also monitoring the case. Also, the groups are calling for the investigation of federal agents who reportedly subpoenaed an American citizen of Arab ancestry on January 28 to identify one of her friends arrested in the case. According to the woman (who wishes to remain anonymous), the agents took her from a library to a residential area, handcuffed her to a metal pole and left her there for more than three hours to force her to testify against the defendants.

ADC National Conference

ADC's national conference will be held April 2-5 at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Crystal City, Virginia. Entitled "Arab America: A Strong New Voice," it will feature FBI director William Webster, Reps. Lee Hamilton (D-IN) and David Bonior (D-MI), Ambassador James Akins, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Columbia University professor Edward Said, Israel Foreign Affairs editor and publisher Jane Hunter, and author Cheryl Rubenberg. Panels will cover grassroots lobbying by Arab Americans, Political Violence in America, and Arab Americans in the media.

Arabs and Jews Expose Racism in Book Distributed by Israeli Consulate

A year after Israel's consulate in San Francisco distributed complimentary copies of John Laffin's book, Know the Middle East, to Bay Area high schools, Richard Hill, a librarian and ADC-San Francisco board member, working with the Bay Area Chapter of New Jewish Agenda, has exposed racist statements in the book to city leaders, education officials, and community and religious groups. According to Laffin's book, published in England in 1985 as a traveler's guide, the Arab "is neither a vicious liar nor, usually, a calculating one; he lies naturally and normally." Laffin further contends that "the (Arab) code of sexual behavior is so strict and restraining that whenever an Arab or Persian man finds himself alone with a woman he makes sexual approaches to her."

The Israeli consulate had lauded Know the Middle East as a "comprehensive and non-biased information source on a particularly complex region." In response to Arab-American demands for apologies and explanations, Israeli Consul General Yaacov Sella replied: "The charge of racism is a serious accusation and is a term that should not be flippantly exploited in order to delegitimize a scholar by defaming his character and motivation."

NAAA Spotlights Israeli Origin of Arms-for-Hostages Plan

Through presentations and press releases to the media and conversations with Members of Congress and their staffs, the NAAA is drawing attention to the central roles Israel and its American supporters played in the shipments of arms by the US to the government of Iran.

At the same time, the NAAA is pointing out that US aid to Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, and Oman was cut by 40 to 50 percent in the 1987 fiscal year. The group favors a more equitable distribution of resources in a foreign aid bill that presently provides Israel and Egypt with more than 50 percent total worldwide aid.

Although no significant opposition to the Reagan Administration's letter of intent to Congress to sell arms to Egypt, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia has surfaced, both the NAAA and aircraft industry officials are stressing to Congress the importance of the sales to the security of US allies in the Middle East.

The NAAA, along with the Departments of State and Defense, are campaigning against a bill that would make sales of US weapons to Arab states almost impossible. The bill, propsed by Rep. Mel Levine (D-CA) and Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) would, place all Arab countries except Egypt in a "non-consensus" category, and make it possible to block weapons sales to such countries by a simple majority vote of Congress. At present, the President can veto a bill to prevent such a sale, and Congress can only override his veto by a two-thirds vote.

AAI Conference

The Arab American Institute's third nationa conference, March 13-14 in Washington, DC, will focus on "A Strategy to Win: An American Agenda for Election 1988." The AAI conference will include: a White House briefing on Middle East issues; a Capitol Hill dinner hosted by Reps. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va) and Mary Rose Oakar (D-Ohio), Arab American Members of Congress; and a speech by Rainbow Coalition leader Jesse Jackson.

Samir El-Sayed is Promotion Director for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Focus on Jews and Israel

By Andrea Barron

Israel and the Iran Arms Scandal

The usually united pro-Israel community appears deeply divided over the Israeli role in the arms-to-Iran affair. Congressman Robert Toricelli (D-NJ), for instance, a strong supporter of Israel who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, criticized Israel for becoming involved in the arms sale. "Israel thought the Iraqi military posed the immediate threat," he said. "(But) the larger threat is Islamic fundamentalism, with which Iran threatens to transform the entire Middle East." Toricelli added that Israel is more secure than it once was and should no longer be selling weapons to countries like Iran, Chile, and South Africa, which "don't share its standards of social justice or democracy."

Henry Siegman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, wondered how Israel could ask Congress to oppose arms transfers to Jordan and Saudi Arabia after it has been providing weapons to Iran, a nation which has been calling openly for its destruction. Siegman commented that the Israelis are in "never-never land" if they don't think someone in Congress will argue that if it's OK to sell arms to Iran to encourage moderates, it certainly should be OK to talk to the PLO to encourage moderates.

Siegman let it be known that he disputes Israel's claims that it only provided weapons to Iran to help rescue American hostages. Israel, after all, has been in the business of selling weapons to the Islamic Republic since 1979. Nathan Perlmutter of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL), on the other hand, indicated that he believed Israel had merely been cooperating with the US, recognizing that it is a "beneficiary of US largesse."

The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), meanwhile, made it perfectly clear where it stands on the question of Israeli arms sales to Iran and other countries as well. Eric Rozenman, the editor of AIPAC's Near East Report, said it all in an editorial entitled "Arms Exports: No Apologies." Israel has no choice but to maintain a domestic arms industry, Rozenman wrote last month. The Jewish state can't forget the arms embargo imposed on it by the US in 1948 and by France after the 1967 war. And Israel needs to export weapons so it can afford to keep its stock of weapons as technologically sophisticated as those of its enemies.

Wolf Blitzer, who writes regularly for the Jerusalem Post and many American Jewish publications, is concerned about how the Iranian affair could negatively affect Israeli relations with the US Congress. Israel may be in trouble, he observed, if future investigations confirm that it was actually David Kimche, former Director-General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, who suggested that the US sell arms to Iran in the first place. It would be even worse for the Jewish state, however, if the evidence showed that Israel played a part in the diversion of funds to the Nicaraguan contras. That would mean Israel had gone against the wishes of Congress, the same Congress that is providing it with over three billion dollars in aid this year. Certain Congressmen would also be placed in a difficult position. Stephen Solarz of New York, for example, is a leading pro-Israeli spokesman in the House of Representatives and also a vocal opponent of aid to the contras.

Michael Ledeen and JINSA

Why was Michael Ledeen, an American Jewish counterterrorism expert and part-time consultant to the National Security Council, asked to help Colonel Oliver North and David Kimche develop the contacts with Iranian moderates which resulted in arms sales to the Islamic Republic?

Ledeen won't comment, except to say that whatever he did with regard to Iran, he did only to encourage democracy in that country. In a March, 1985 article in Commentary magazine, published by the American Jewish Committee, Ledeen followed the Jeane Kirkpatrick line, which divides the non-democratic world into two camps—the communist and the authoritarian dictatorships. Iran belongs to the second group—states which under the right conditions, according to Ledeen, could emerge democratic.

A relatively benign view of non-communist dictatorships is not the only thing that Michael Ledeen and Ambassador Kirkpatrick have in common. Both are also on the advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), established to stress the importance of Israel to the American government and military leaders. (Also on JINSA's Board are Senator Rudy Boschwitz (R-NY), AIPAC founder Si Kenen, Nathan Perlmutter of the ADL, and Retired Admiral Elmo Zumwalt.) The executive director of JINSA is Shoshana Bryen, wife of Stephen Bryen, now a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, who was accused by a witness of offering Israeli government officials classified intelligence when he was a Senate staffer.

An interesting question to ponder is whether Michael Ledeen has been telling the truth when he insists he knew nothing at all about the contra connection to the Iran arms sale. Maybe he didn't. But one does have to wonder after reading his Commentary article, where he states again and again the need for the US to "challenge totalitarianism in Nicaragua."

Pollard says he had no choice

In a response to a sympathetic letter from Boston physician Julian Ungar-Sargon, convicted spy Jonathan Jay Pollard used the Hebrew words "Ein brera" (there is no alternative) to explain why he decided to provide US military secrets to Israel. Pollard wrote: "It would have been an outright betrayal of my heritage, my personal integrity and an entire family lost in the ovens of the Holocaust if I had simply taken the safe route and closed my eyes to what had to be done."

Pollard, of course, thought that what "had to be done" was to deliver classified US information that he believed the Americans had wrongfully denied to the Israelis. Pollard told Ungar-Sargon that if what he did ended up in saving Jewish lives—either in war or indirectly by preventing a war—"something good will have come" from his own personal tragedy.

Andrea Barron, a Ph.D. candidate in international relations at American University in Washington, DC, writes frequently about the Middle East. She is active in Washington Area Jews for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace (WAJIPP) and New Jewish Agenda (NJA).