Israel's Bill for Heart Balm Produces Setback for Its Image-Makers

By Paul Findley

Just when things seemed to be going nicely for Israel on the public relations front, Yitzhak Modai, Israel's finance minister, pulled a boner that has Americans criticizing Israel as never before.

For days, television screens had enabled Americans to live minute-by-minute through Scud missile alerts in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem.

Thanks to non-stop coverage, they shared with civilians in Israel anxious moments as the Iraqi missiles approached the Israeli cities, cheering when the Patriot missiles intercepted them, and cringing when Scuds got through, or pieces of exploded Scuds and Patriots fell on Israeli civilians. Americans waited anxiously for on-site damage reports, and almost felt pain themselves as the injured were lifted into ambulances. Films of damaged buildings and interviews with worried Israelis were broadcast and rebroadcast at intervals day and night.

A Grossly Biased Report

It was, of course, a grossly biased report of mayhem in Israel. Television brought vivid reports of danger and damage to Israelis, while for almost three years the wanton death, injury and property destruction inflicted by Israelis on Palestinians only a few miles away in the occupied territories has had no coverage. Television has carried no eyewitness reports of the human agony as Israeli military personnel methodically dynamite Palestinian homes, break the bones of unarmed civilians, and shoot many of them dead.

Why no media coverage of this other, more awful violence? Simply because Israeli authorities prohibit coverage of the brutality Palestinians endure as a daily occurrence. They use military force to keep the television cameras out of range. So the carnage goes unnoticed and unlamented in America.

The government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir manipulates television coverage of events in Israel as thoroughly as it manipulates, through Israel's lobby, the American scene.

Shamir wants only a favorable image of Israel to reach the living rooms of America. He wants to build sympathy for Israel and erase sympathy for the Palestinians. And he is usually highly successful in these endeavors.

The American people weep—and should—for the innocent Israeli civilians who are hurt by Scud missiles, but we should weep also—and hang our heads in shame for the suffering inflicted on Palestinians by Yitzhak Shamir's thugs. The weapons and equipment Shamir uses for these outrages are a gift of an uncomplaining US government. For allowing that to happen, the American people deserve some measure of the opprobrium being heaped upon them from Morocco to Pakistan.

Unfortunately, shielded from the truth, the American people feel neither sympathy nor shame, and the Scud attacks have caused sympathy among them for the Israelis to soar. According to one poll, it jumped to a record 65 percent of those surveyed, while sympathy for Palestinians, now identified in American minds as supporters of Saddam, plunged to seven percent.

But meanwhile Israeli Finance Minister Modai made an announcement that reversed the trend. Less than a week after the war started, he told reporters in Jerusalem that Israel will need at least $13 billion in economic aid from US taxpayers, in addition to the usual annual gift of $3 billion.

He explained that the extra money is needed "because of the Persian Gulf war and the cost of absorbing Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union. " Ten billion dollars of the total, according to the finance minister, is needed to help pay for the absorption of one million Soviet Jews by the end of 1992.

That part of the demand is shocking enough. With one million immigrants to be served, the $10 billion comes to $50,000 for a family of five. This is absurd.

Housing remains a large unmet problem in the United States. In every major city, homeless people can be found in community provided shelters—and some of the homeless huddle on sidewalks and alleyways these days, struggling to survive zero weather.

Unmet American Needs

Hundreds of thousands of other families live in unsafe, drafty structures, lacking in modern facilities. Government and other sources have made great progress in meeting the housing needs of poor Americans, but much remains to be done. If spent on housing needs in America, $10 billion would go a long way toward filling the gap.

The American taxpayer has another reason for shock as he hears the Israeli demand. He knows that the federal government has just finished a fiscal year with a deficit of $220 billion and is well into a new year in which tax revenues will fall short of expenditures by even more. The new fiscal year will add $240 billion more to the federal debt, even though government outlays for many programs—including housing for needy families—are being cut back substantially.

Moreover, the US government provides no financial support to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who reach our shores each year. Given that policy, why should the US provide a handsome $50,000 bounty to help Israel welcome each immigrant family?

But the real shocker is not the subsidy for new immigrants. The item that has produced a tide of outrage from coast to coast is the request for $3 billion to compensate Israel, as Modai put it, for "losses from the Gulf war just until mid-February. " The implication is that the bill will keep climbing sharply after the date he mentioned.

President Bush, of course, has asked Israel to keep its military forces out of the war with Iraq, that is, to refrain from retaliating against Iraq's bombing of Israel. And Prime Minister Shamir's government, in effect, put a price on cooperation: $3 billion for the first 30 days.

Modai gave details of Israel's war-induced losses: $1 billion in lost economic output, $1 billion in lost tourism revenue and higher energy costs, $400 million in new military expenditures, $250 million in lost exports, $180 million in higher insurance costs, $ 100 million in lost transport income, and :$30 million in property damage caused by the missile attacks that occurred in Tel Aviv prior to Jan. 24.

The request is an outrageous reaction to the heroic sacrifices by Americans, Saudis and their allies to rid the Middle East of Saddam Hussain and win back Kuwait's independence.

An Outrageous Reaction

One would expect Israel, although not renowned for its gratitude, to express thanks and perhaps, like other nations, offer to pay some of the bills being incurred by the United States. Instead of patting us on the back, Israel's government wants to reach deep into our pockets again. Stung by public protest, Shamir's government withdrew the request—for now.

The irony of the request emerges in the obvious fact that the assault on Iraq serves Israel's own security purposes. In fact, from the time of Saddam Hussain's incursion into Kuwait last August, Israeli officials and their paid and unpaid lobbyists in Washington had been urging war, and demanding that the war not stop until Iraq's military assets and warmaking capacity are destroyed. The war will eliminate one of the greatest threats to Israel, and Israelis are understandably delirious with joy that it is being carried out by other powers.

Karen Elliot House of The Wall Street Journal grasped the irony of the request and spoke for most Americans when she exclaimed to a television audience: "We're going to pay Israel not to do what it doesn't want to do anyway."

Former Illinois Congressman Paul Findley is chairman of the Council for the National Interest. His best-selling book, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, is available from the AET Book Club .