Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1998, Pages 3, 94-98

Letters to the Editor

A Government Betrayal

Richard Curtiss’s piece on p. 93 of your January issue is the most honest, direct, knowledgeable, least punch-pulling and angriest commentary on our Middle East foreign policy I’ve ever read. Anyone who reads it has to credit his forthrightness and can’t have much cause to argue with the content.

His anger, I presume, comes from his having been betrayed by a government whose current foreign policy is so bereft of ethics. The betrayal would come from his having dedicated his career in the Foreign Service to promoting an America that operated on ethical principle.

If I’m angry for the same reasons but without having made the contributions he has, I can only guess at what rages within him. You have cause, my friend, you have cause.

I’d like to offer my “Middle East in Focus” radio audience in Southern California copies of the essay. With your permission, I can do that by merely copying the two pages. Or, if it’s an advantage to WRMEA and practicable, we can offer them a free copy of the Jan./ Feb. issue and ask them to write directly to WRMEA. Which works better for you?

Warmest regards,

Don Bustany, Orange County, CA

So long as we have extra copies of that issue we’ll send free introductory copies to listeners who contact you, or contact us directly. That’s how we introduce ourselves to potential subscribers. Thanks for the idea and, yes, the rage within our executive editor has risen steadily as people die because the Israel lobby that used to boast about its victories over the U.S. foreign affairs establishment now has become the U.S. foreign affairs establishment.

Same Article, Same Guilt

Please accept our $1,000 check in gratitude for your work on behalf of the American people and world peace. We certainly see little in the news about which to be encouraged. I have sent copies of your executive editor’s excellent article, “Guilt for American Deaths Overseas Lies in Washington,” to many friends here and overseas.

With best regards,

Vince and Louise Larsen, Billings, MT

One Million Postcards

My name is Kouthar Al-Rawi and I am 10 years old. My sister is Marwa and she is 9 years old. We have a dream, and this dream involves your help.

We want to tell everyone that 150 children die each day in Iraq because of the U.S.- and U.N.-led embargo. We thought the U.N. was created to save children’s lives. We understand that there are international laws that protect children from starving to death.

The Iraqi children are totally innocent of oil power, weapons, and politics. They do not deserve to starve to death at the hands of world leaders and politicians. Children everywhere deserve a happy and healthy life.

That is why my sister and I started a campaign called Remember the Iraqi Children, One Million Postcards to President Clinton. We are calling on people, especially other children, to send a postcard to President Clinton calling for the end of the embargo on Iraq, for the sake of the children. Please send your cards to us, Kouthar and Marwa Al-Rawi, Remember the Iraqi Children, One Million Postcards to President Campaign, at P.O. Box 1141, San Pedro, California 90733.

Sincerely yours,

Kouthar and Marwa Al-Rawi, San Pedro, CA

P.S. Always remember we are all a family under one sky.

Never Mention “The Lobby”

I have a little story for you which illustrates the stranglehold the Israel lobby has on Middle East affairs.

I attended a meeting yesterday of the “Great Decisions” discussion group sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association here in Sanibel, Florida. The topic was the influence of special interest groups on U.S. foreign policy. The program started with a video in which Professor Peter F. Krogh of Georgetown lobbed creampuff “questions” to Tony Lake, also affiliated with Georgetown. It was all pretty insipid. Interestingly the topic was introduced with a film clip of the flags at the United Nations and it focussed on the Irish and Israeli flags. When I saw that I thought the program was going to be interesting. As it turned out that was the last reference to either “lobby” in the entire program!

Worse, when Krogh got around to asking Tony if he thought that U.S. ethnic groups had too much influence on U.S. policy (to which Tony finally got around to answering, “Oh, no!”) Krogh reeled off a list of groups which included such powerhouses as the Armenians, Pakistanis, etc. but notably not including Israel! Or Ireland. As an Irish activist I would have welcomed a comparison of the two “lobbies” since the contrast in real power is immense and illustrative.

Anyway, the idea that the subject of foreign influence could be discussed in a supposed sophisticated format without mentioning the 800-pound gorilla of influence tells you something about the fear which is on establishment Washington! The lobby you must never mention, but never forget! God help Georgetown. Whatever happened to Jesuit intellectualism? Well, maybe they had no say in the program. I hope not.

Albert Doyle, Sanibel Island, FL

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews

With all your effort to document the tens of billions of dollars going to Israel by public and private subsidy, there are some aspects that have not even been mentioned. One is the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

Its pitch, aimed at the evangelical Christians, is “Help Soviet Jewry escape persecution, and death. Send $300 today that will buy one ticket for a Jew to Israel. But do it now. The window of opportunity now open could close at any moment!”

I have heard this pitch, for at least the past three years, on local “Christian” radio stations. They are paid commercials, of course, but the adulation and reverence bestowed to Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the organization’s founder and president, is free. According to the rabbi, some Christians bring whole families over; some even charter an entire planeload. And when they arrive in Israel, they are given special gift packages from the donor, letting them know that there are Christians who care.

No mention, of course, is given to the $10 billion in “loans” that the U.S. taxpayers already are providing for that purpose, or the heavy emigration of Russian Jews from Israel to the USA, and other countries, because they can’t stand Israel.

The program is all tax-exempt, of course. However, it seems to me to be a money-raising scheme for the major international Jewish Zionist organizations, with no oversight at all.

Patrick F. Flynn, Yorba Linda, CA

Enclosure: Shoresh Newsletter

We had never heard of the group, which seems to be one of several tax-exempt groups organized to raise money from Christian fundamentalists to help causes in Israel. The Shoresh newsletter you enclosed can be obtained from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, 309 W. Washington, Suite 800, Chicago, IL 60606-3200. We’d welcome information from readers on other tax-exempt organizations supporting projects in Israel, some of which may not be quite so benevolent-sounding as this one.

Tax-Deductible Contributions

With everyone else, I say: Keep up the good work! I hope by the end of the year to have several new subscriptions for you!

Do you think you might also do a report on how much Israel gets in tax-deductible contributions from the U.S.? The reports should be public knowledge, and not too hard to get, and would give a great supplement to the work you keep doing in revealing the astonishing amount of money our government already donates to Israel.

Finally, enclosed is a letter I wrote to The Baltimore Sun in response to its three-page piece on U.S. Christians who support the settlers. It was never published, of course, but maybe it might find its way into “Other People’s Mail”—?

Blessings on you and your work.

G. Simon Harak, S.J., Religious Studies Dept., Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT

Your suggestion on tax-deductible contributions by Americans to Israel is a good one. First we’ll start by asking readers if they are aware of any earlier work on the subject such as a Ph.D. thesis and then we’ll seek to update it.

As for your very moving and informative letter to The Baltimore Sun, it is the first item in this issue’s “Other People’s Mail” on p. 59.

Persecution Allegations

Since there seem to be a lot of stories circulating about alleged persecution of Christians by Muslims, I thought you might find it useful to reprint the Nov. 13, 1997 statement by the Catholic Patriarch of Jeru salem, available on the Internet. I sent this text to The New York Times Magazine following their Dec. 21 article, “The Rage Over Christian Persecution,” but don’t suppose they will print it.

Thank goodness for WRMEA!

Louise Green, St. Louis, MO

We have reprinted your unpublished letter to The New York Times and Patriarch Sabbah’s statement in “Other People’s Mail” starting on p. 59 of this issue.

Adopt an Endangered Family

I would like to invite your readers to join the Campaign for Secure Dwellings (CSD), organized by Palestinians, Israelis and Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members who’ve been doing violence-reduction work in Hebron, West Bank, since June 1995. It also springs from the immediate needs of families facing the imminent demolition of their homes. We are calling on families, churches and peace groups in North America to partner with a Palestinian family threatened with the loss of their home and to make a commitment to write letters to government officials, organize public witnesses and educate people on be half of their Palestinian partner family. As Palestinian Atta Jabber writes in a letter of invitation, “I encourage you to join the CSD because when I have North Americans and Israelis pledging to stop the demolition of our home, it will be the same as though they are with me in my home.”

Co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions Harriet Lewis writes in a letter also in this packet: The Committee and the Campaign “are important both to give individual Palestinian families and villages a sense that people know and care about what is happening to them...and because if enough people act as advocates for Palestinian families vis-?-vis Israeli government authorities—this can have a powerful cumulative effect in inducing a change in Israeli policies. Accordingly, as Israeli peace activists, we urge you to join the CPT’s Campaign for Secure Dwellings—without delay.”

For more information, contact CPT at P.O. Box 6508, Chicago, IL 60680; cpt@igc.org, tel. (312) 455-1199; fax (312) 666-2677.

Wendy Lehman, via the Internet

The Model Arab League

Thank you for advertising the National Council’s Model Arab League/Leadership Development Program in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. The ad looked wonderful and I am sure that your readers will appreciate your support for this program.

The Model Arab League is a good example of what both of our organizations are working for. For more than 15 years, students from across America have participated in the Model Arab League and seen the world through Arab eyes. Through this program they have gained a greater understanding of the difficult issues facing the Arab world and the globe. With your help, college and high school students in 19 cities across the United States are exploring the history, culture, religion and politics of the Arab world, learning about its people and aspirations, and developing the understanding necessary to become America’s leaders in the 21st century. Accurate information is essential and publications like yours make an important contribution to our common cause.

With renewed appreciation and warmest regards,

Dr. John Duke Anthony, President and CEO, National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, Washington, DC

For students who may have missed the advertisement on p. 48 of our January edition, the National Council number to call for information on participation in next year’s Model Arab League is (202) 293-0801.

Muslim Coordinating Council

Re: “The Time Has Come to Establish a Coordinating Council of American Islamic Organizations,” as proposed by Abdulrahman Alamoudi in the WRMEA of Jan./Feb. 1998 p. 50.

Mr. Alamoudi proposes setting up a Council of Presidents of Islamic organizations with each organization contributing “perhaps 20 percent of its resources to work cooperatively with others on important issues facing or affecting the entire Islamic community.” The Wisdom Fund supports effective cooperation, but the specifics of the cooperation and needed organization require some debate.

The Wisdom Fund in its strategic action alerts has been proposing some form of cooperation (see http://www.twf.org) for about two years. Much more needs to be done to work toward the common goal of Muslims achieving greater political power (involving media, money, votes, elected and/or appointed positions), thereby playing a bigger role in decision-making at all levels of U.S. society.

Limited resources demand that Muslims develop a clear, consistent, long-term strategy, together with the plan, organization and infrastructure for achieving agreed-upon objectives along the path to political empowerment which we see as the number-one priority. Also a briefing book stating Muslims’ positions on issues on which they are able to agree should be placed in congressional offices, and updated as needed.

I suggest we first agree on the job to be done. In the proper setting, I know from experience that this can be done in a couple of days. It requires the use of structured consensus-building techniques, not your typical meeting, so that all present feel they have a stake in the outcome, and the collective wisdom of those present is utilized.

For the permanent coordinating organization, the issue of tax-exempt status and how it affects the participation of other American Muslim organizations needs to be looked into. We can also learn from other successful organizations besides AIPAC. I suggest we look into the Christian Coalition and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. The former, I’m told, began with only $67,000 in seed money. I participated in the latter for several years and found it to be very effective.

I recognize the need to expedite cooperation. The upcoming elections deserve a coordinated response from the American Muslim community. This task should be addressed now. For other priorities I suggest an ad hoc coordinating committee charged with addressing the longer term needs: i.e., define the job to be done, then suggest an organization to do the job.

Enver Masud, President, The Wisdom Fund, via the Internet

Since you wrote your letter, some like-minded Muslim leaders scheduled the first meeting of a coordination committee for Muslim American organizations on March 21 in Dallas. We hope to present a full report on the results of this highly significant event in the May/June issue of this magazine.

Possible Staggering Results

Numerous suggestions have been made for the need to increase circulation, along with many ways to do it.

I would like to suggest a simple idea from a personal experience. Browsing through a local shop and talking with the owner, I found out that he was a Palestinian. He knew nothing about WRMEA, so when I showed him a copy and told him to keep it, he was so thrilled he offered me wholesale prices.

There are thousands of Palestinian businesses across the country, and if each of us would take our used and up-to-date copies and find a Palestinian to share it, and he in turn with a friend, the results could be staggering!

Name Withheld by request, Minnesota

It works. Last August our executive editor and his wife were vacationing at a North Carolina beach. Each day they noticed a modestly attired Muslim family a few beach umbrellas away and finally ventured over with a copy of the magazine. By December that family, which turned out to be Palestinian, had achieved a pretty distinguished place in our 1997 Choir of Angels with dozens of gift subscriptions to libraries, which in turn will reach hundreds of American library patrons who may never have paid much attention to the Palestine problem but will be outraged when they find out about this 20th century theft of a nation, funded by the U.S. taxpayer. If every subscriber could bring us just one new subscriber in 1998, the results in terms of more and better-informed letters to editors, callers on radio talk shows, and letters, calls and visits to members of Congress would be incalculable.

An Angry, Aging Twosome

You told us in print some years ago that, no, you do not tire of adulation.

So here’s an excerpt from a letter sent me by my college roommate and closest friend who is also a Washington Report subscriber: “The same post which brought your letter gave me the Jan./Feb. issue of WRMEA which, except for a break for dinner, kept me closely engaged from about 4 p.m. to many, many hours past my usual bedtime. It was worth it though, and your two contributions were duly noted and approved of. The current issue is loaded with good stuff, but I see what you mean about the note of desperation and frustration apparent in some of Curtiss’s writing, which has generally had a rather optimistic long-term viewpoint. It would be a tragedy if he and Killgore were to decide to give up the struggle.”

I will tell you that my friend was a lawyer, has a sometimes frustratingly judicial way of viewing politics and is anything but a reformer or a zealot. I join him in wishing you many more decades of enlightening the American public.

C. Patrick Quinlan, Edina, MN

Killgore and Curtiss are, indeed, frustrated to realize at ages 78 and 70, respectively, that in the absence of even-handed U.S. intervention, there will be no just Middle East peace for those “many more decades.” We’re not even thinking of giving up, but can anyone recommend some hormones that will beat the actuarial tables? Meanwhile thanks for your early-bird contribution to the 1998 Choir of Angels.

“Adopt A Library” Program Suggestion

Congratulations on your extraordinary Jan./Feb. issue! I suggest an “adopt a library” program and my check for a library subscription will be among the first to arrive.

Please think twice about a second publication for “Other Voices.” Raise the WRMEA rate to $30 and do a little pruning. Every one of your articles could be 10 percent shorter with a creative editor.

Mr. Darby in Dearborn, Michigan told me about your publication and activities. Are you coordinating group travel to the region during the spring? If so, please send me the details.

I especially enjoyed the Curtiss article on “Breathtaking Gains by Israel and Its Supporters” on p. 28. For some time I have wondered if I was alone in noticing these alarming figures. (My background is a bit un usual. For several years I was the pastor of an Arabic-speaking Christian Orthodox Church. I am grateful that my parishioners enlightened me.)

Richard Rosenbaum, Bloomfield Hills, MI

Some of our authors probably think our executive editor already is a bit too “creative” in shortening their articles—a habit that goes back to the days when we were a 16-page newsletter. The fact is that we can’t afford to pay the reprint rights for 20 or 30 “Other Voices” articles each month based on the Washington Report’s booming circulation, but we can afford to pay vastly reduced reprint rights for their inclusion in “Other Voices,” whose circulation still is less than 1,000. Thus the two-tiered subscription rate, $25 for the Washington Report and an extra $15 for “Other Voices.”

For those who want those extra 160 to 240 “Other Voices” articles every year, an extra $15 doesn’t seem too steep to us. As for organizations who do group travel to the Middle East, you’ll find them in our ads and occasionally in our Bulletin Board.

MENUM Interview Seminars

Please find enclosed pages from recent issues from the St. Louis-Dispatch in which are printed an op-ed piece that I wrote after going to Palestine/Israel for the third time. My three trips were all study-interview seminars conducted by MENUM—Middle East Network for United Methodists. This year’s group was led by Robert and Peggy Han num, former three-year liaisons to the Middle East Council of Churches from the United Methodist Church. The other page shows the two responses six days later to my article. I felt truly encouraged when I received a very complimentary phone call from a Holocaust survivor urging me to continue “telling it like it really is.”

Margaret Hamra, Chesterfield, MO

You’ll find your excellent article from the St. Louis Post Dispatch in this issue’s “Other Voices” (p. S-4), and the letter about it from Ronald Coleman in “Other People’s Mail,” starting on p. 59. With more and more informed Americans like you breaking into major newspapers like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, editing this magazine gets easier for us.

The Ashrawi Visit to Georgia

Regarding my article on p. 80 of your Jan./Feb. 1998 issue, please note that the money for Hanan Ashrawi’s entire trip, which included about $10,000 for the fares, was raised by the membership here, not just the local expenses. Most of it was donated by an anonymous Palestinian member of the board of the Palestinian Human Rights Campaign, Inc. I would have liked a mention of Afaf Ibrahim, Dr. Aida Suidan and Professor W. Cotterman who all did so much to make her visit a success. Otherwise, thank you very much for publication of the article in the “Waging Peace” section of your magazine.

Rita Fairchild, Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Atlanta, GA

We always are looking for articles like yours about regional activities. But authors beware of submitting anything longer than about 10 paragraphs because if you don’t do the cutting, we may have to.

Intrusion of the Wrong People

Regarding Richard Curtiss’s “Point of View” in your Jan./Feb. issue, I have some comments to make. Let me explain that I am an American Jew by nationality, I have no religion, I am anti-Zionist, I believe the creation of Israel was an intrusion of a largely European people into a part of the world with the help of the colonial powers and without the permission of or consultation with the inhabitants of Palestine. I believe that Israel forced hundreds of thousands of Arabs from the land, has a racist and arrogant stance, is aggressive and expansionist.

I believed, and still do, that the ideal resolution would be a secular, bi-national democratic state in all of Palestine. I also believe that such a state should be a socialist state integrated in a socialist region.

Having set forth my “credentials,” so to speak, let me address some serious criticism in the hope that this will be one of the rare critical letters that sees print in your journal.

Mr. Curtiss’ article consists almost entirely of a recounting of the legion of Jews in the Clinton administration. As executive editor I assume Mr. Curtiss speaks for the magazine. I submit that U.S. policy in the Middle East would be exactly the same if Clinton had not appointed a single Jew to any position. That policy makes madmen like A.M. Rosenthal even crazier because of a little lip-service scolding of Netanyahu, but it is the same policy of Clinton’s predecessors. The $4 billion a year package, the close liaison, etc., existed under earlier administrations, sometimes with a little harsh er but meaningless rhetoric.

You either believe—or find it expedient to pretend—that Israel determines U.S. policy and pulls the strings of the most powerful economic and military power in the world. Wrong. Israel is a United States pawn, although a feisty pawn. Israel serves U.S. capitalist interests, oil interests and anti-revolutionary interests, and has since its inception when you could count the number of Jews in government on one finger. Your argument to the contrary is a myth.

Another annoying myth is your repeated insistance on labeling Jews as only a religion. The majority of Jews, here and abroad, are secularists, many of us atheists, yet we are of Jewish nationality. There is a whole culture entirely apart from religion. Do not fear that recognizing the nationality and cultural aspect of Jews is an acceptance of the deadly Jewish nationalist movement of this century.

More than just annoying is Mr. Curtiss’s claim that unnamed “Europeans almost unanimously (and perhaps hopefully) predict that such reverses [in America’s alleged separate pro-Israel agenda] will provide the catalyst for American anti-Semitism almost as virulent as that manifested in Germany...” I suppose it is as pointless to ask for names of “almost all” the Europeans who “shake their heads knowingly” as it is to ask for a copy of the purported “record of a staff meeting” at the Treasury Department asserting that Christmas and Easter are the best times to make unpleasant announcements to the 95 percent Christian taxpayers.

Lawrence Hochman, Livonia, MI

If Mr. Curtiss had taken it upon himself to “speak for the magazine” he wouldn’t have labeled his article a “point of view.” However, he speaks for himself and retracts nothing and now you’ve spoken for yourself. We’ve omitted the final two paragraphs of your letter, just as we frequently omit scurrilous, extreme and unfair generalizations from letters written by critics of Israel and its American Jewish supporters. Obviously you and we are going to have to agree to disagree on who is the “pawn” and who the manipulator in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, but it seems we all agree on New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal.

A “False Accusation”

In his “Lobby Watch” column (Jan./Feb. 1998) Nathan Jones most inaccurately accuses MIT professor Noam Chomsky as being one of those academics who “blame the human rights crimes committed by successive Israeli governments on the United States [rather] than on the Jewish state itself.”

Even a casual reading of Chomsky’s seminal study—The Fateful Triangle, The United States, Israel & the Palestinians— would dispel that false accusation. Surely Chomsky, in his voluminous writings and lectures on the Mideast, has to be noted as one of America’s outstanding educators re Israel’s crimes and our nation’s complicity.

Further, Jones pejoratively labels Chomsky as “Marxist-oriented.” Again, Jones cites no evidence to back up his baiting.

Chomsky aside, American Marxists, to my knowledge, unambiguously condemn Israel’s human rights abuses, as well as U.S. complicity in funding and U.N. coddling of its client state.

One further clarification: In her most recent “Northwest News” column, Sr. Elaine Kelley quotes Tom Getman, Jeru salem executive director of World Vision: “Jim [Rep. McDermott, D-WA] is one of 17 congressmen who voted against moving the capital of Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”

If memory serves, my representative, who serves an overwhelmingly Democratic Seattle district, and his handful of colleagues properly voted against moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

McDermott, a physician, has studied the Mideast on three visits, most recently in August when he lead a Physicians for Social Responsibility group. Recently he addressed a new Jewish peace group here on “Is a Mideast Peace Possible?” “Yes,” he said, “But I don’t know how.”

As his fellow parishioners in the local St. Mark’s Episcopal Church’s Palestine Concerns group know, McDermott’s extensive first-hand study of the Mideast has yet to be wedded to a forthright congressional stance against Israel’s illegal occupation, our nation’s illicit funding and coddling of the international pariah.

Your magazine is indispensable.

Lyle Mercer, Seattle, WA

Nathan Jones stands on his statements which boil down to Jones’s belief that it is the Israeli tail that wags the U.S. dog, and not vice versa. Your skepticism forces us to ask you, if non-Zionist U.S. presidents, civil servants, military officers, foreign service officers and members of Congress wanted Israel to do these things, why would pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC ($15 million budget), the ADL ($45 million budget) and well-heeled pro-Israel individuals have to spend such obscene amounts of money to bribe or browbeat these American officials into supporting Israel?

We believe the empirical evidence supports Jones’s and this magazine’s position so definitively that we think it’s the America bashers who ought to come up with some “evidence,” to borrow your word, to the contrary.

As for your parsing of that the quote attributed to Tom Getman, we think he was trying to say exactly the same thing you say in the very next sentence. Guess it’s lucky for us that you think we’re “indispensable” or you might have written us a smart alecky letter.

Professor Benzion Netanyahu v. the Washington Report

Dear Editor and Mr. Eugene Bird:

Please be advised that the undersigned has been contacted by Professor Benzion Netanyahu in connection with an article entitled “Netanyahu and Saddam: U.S. Diplomacy’s Problem Children Have More in Common Than Supporters Admit.” In that article, it is suggested that Prime Minister Netanyahu is a product of “Israel’s 1967 ‘pre-emptive’ war...” This sets up the later statement that the prime minister’s conduct was a consequence “of the injunction of his father” who you call “a long-time associate of Menachem Begin...” You then proceed to suggest that you are quoting Professor Netanyahu as follows:

[That the 1967 war] was a great triumph, but within 25 years some Israeli leader will try to give all of this land back for peace.

The heading under which this “quote” appears is entitled, “Same Philosophy, Same Tactics.” In that paragraph you state as follows:

In fact, Netanyahu’s father was one of the top Jewish terrorists, competing for that honor with Yitzhak Shamir, who beat him out as leader of the extremist Jewish revisionists when their founder, Vladimir Jabot insky, died in 1940. (Emphasis added.)

Please allow us to address why this article is clearly defamatory, seriatim:

1. You are allegedly trying to document the mind of a national leader by looking at his father.
   
   
2. In so doing, you quote Professor Netanyahu so as to tie together alleged past associations with future conduct of his son, who became prime minister. The problem, among others, is that Professor Netanyahu never made the statement.
   
   
3. The statement which precedes the fictionalized quote is also untrue. Professor Netanyahu was never a member “in the Jewish national underground,” the Irgun.
   
   
4. Further, Professor Netanyahu never had any association with Menachem Begin when the latter was the leader of the “underground movement” or when Begin led the political opposition movement, the Herut. They did not have any association when Mr. Begin was prime minister either. This makes false your statement that Professor Netanyahu was “a long-time associate” of the late prime minister. Professor Netanyahu did not join Mr. Begin’s political party, and was never an associate of his in any undertaking.
   
   
5. The preceding statements are set forth by your publication as factual support for the conclusion, which is also false: Professor Netanyahu was never a “terrorist,” and never competed with Yitzhak Shamir for anything. When Mr. Jabotinsky died, Mr. Shamir had no position of leadership in the revisionist movement. Professor Netanyahu did not be long to any group that Mr. Shamir belonged to. These two gentlemen, Mr. Shamir and Professor Netanyahu, had no relationship.

This article has been published and circulated throughout the United States and the world, subjecting Professor Netanyahu to a label which is both untrue and obviously degrading.

The definition of a terrorist both in the case law and by virtue of statutory authority is one who illegally murders and causes other forms of destruction. People go to jail in this country for being terrorists. It is without question an imputation of criminal activity, and as such is clearly defamatory.

We are willing to give you one opportunity to clearly, unambiguously and definitively print the correct information so as to inform your subscribers and others to whom the publication has been circulated. The correction must be conspicuous and truthful.

The fact that Professor Netanyahu’s son is Prime Minister of the State of Israel does not ipso facto permit him to be targeted for untruthful, defamatory, or “false light” statements.

Clifford A. Rieders, Esquire, Williams port, PA

We’ve addressed your statements in the letter above, and which we do not contest, on p. 11 of this issue, since it was on that page of the January/February 1998 issue that the article which you are protesting appeared.

Revisiting Holocaust Revisionism

Those of us who have studied in depth the entire Zionist-imperialist operation, of which the Israeli enclave is only a part, know that the “Nazi Holocaust” mythos is the linch-pin of the entire enterprise. Israel would never have been voted in by the U.N. without it, and would long since have crumbled without open-ended U.S. support made possible by the relentless drumbeat of monitory guilt-mongering hammered into the Gentile public as variations on the Auschwitz theme.

Chances are that this line of thought makes you very nervous, you don’t want any truck with “Nazis” or whatever, and you just wish that somehow, if you play your cards discreetly enough, don’t rile AIPAC, NBC, CNN and other Zionists too much, conditions in the intra-Beltway dovecote might just be quietly rejiggered around to accepting the right point of view.

If this is your mindset, you are sadly mistaken. Kindly just take a moment to scan the realignment in Mideast thinking of the Holocaust betokened by my enclosures here, and see if it isn’t time for a change.

William N. Grimstad, Woodland Park, CO

We know you mean well for the Palestinians and we’ll grant for the sake of argument that no one can possibly know exactly how many Jews and other categories of victims died or were killed in the European Holocaust. But, unfortunately, the Holocaust in which about half of Europe’s Jews disappeared is no myth. No one can bring back either the Jewish or non-Jewish victims (up to a total of 11 million according to a letter in this issue’s “Other People’s Mail” starting on p. 59) and no one can rescind the tragic history of World War II and the events that led up to it. Our interest is in halting the cycle of religious and ethnic persecution that gives birth to new wars and genocides. To do so one has to acknowledge and deplore both the Holocaust that consumed European Jewry and the Nakba (catastrophe) that has displaced the Palestinian people.

Palestinian National Covenant

The Zionists want the Palestinian Authority to repudiate the Palestine National Covenant’s call for the “destruction” of Israel. Presumably they refer to Article 19 of the Covenant, which says: “The partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of Israel are fundamentally null and void, whatever time has elapsed.” (Encyclopedia Britannica’s article on Palestine includes the modern historical actions on which the Palestinians’ rejection is based.)

In an appearance before a joint British-U.S. Committee of Enquiry [on Palestine], Dr. Chaim Weizmann, at the time head of both the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Palestine, said that injustice in Palestine was unavoidable, and in his view the decision to be taken was “whether it is better to be unjust to the Arabs of Palestine or to the Jews.” (Note that he did not say “the Jews of Palestine”!)

Is this statement by one of the most prominent Jews and Zionists not remarkable, especially so soon after the horrors of the Holocaust had been revealed for all to see?

Is there any other official language in which a mainstream Palestinian organization calls for the destruction of Israel?

If Israel were at some point to cease to exist—to be “destroyed” if I may tentatively use the most extreme of the current language on the subject—would that event necessarily imply that the Jews of former Israel would also be destroyed?

Haven’t some countries, such as the Republic of Vietnam, wartime Slovakia and Croatia and the Baltic states, for example, been “destroyed” without destroying their inhabitants?

Finally, I have a suggestion for the Zionists—which I fear they will never accept or even seriously consider because it is too close to being fair:

In quid pro quo for the Palestinian Authority’s official repudiation of the Palestinian National Covenant’s challenge to the legitimacy of Israel, the government of Israel will officially, by a majority vote in the Knesset, reject as a basis for future economic, military and political action by Israel the Biblical claim that Jews have a “God-given” right to all of the land claimed for ancient Israel!

As to the validity of the Old Testament as an historical record, I quote Voltaire: “Even an omnipotent God can’t change the past—so he gives us historians!”

Finally, on some suitable occasion, you might explain the capitulations that plagued the Arab world—right up to the British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in November 1956—and compare them to the settlements of contemporary Palestine.

Roger D. Leonard, Bowie, MD

Give Us More on Iran

I’m relieved to find such balanced information concerning the friction in the Middle East. However, I strongly feel you are not getting the entire picture on Iran and its extraordinary revolution, nor what it means or should mean to the Muslims of the world. It pains me to find even you have leaned the wrong way on this matter.

Hazem Mansour, Baltimore, MD

Somehow it seems to us that when we think we’re being even-handed, Iranian Americans think we’re “leaning.” Our pages are open to all sides, the revolutionaries of 1979 (the present government), their comrades then who are revolutionaries again, and even those who were the establishment back then. Let’s hear from all with what they think Americans need to understand about Iran today.

Armenian Revisionism?

This letter is one of protest concerning David P. Johnson’s article on “Armenian Museum Dedicates Exhibit to Genocide.” The report allowed the Armenians once more to continue their revision of history, to perpetuate a charge of genocide when none took place. Armenians have an agenda in this country. It is to rewrite history and to persuade Americans that they were innocents in the turmoil of Eastern Anatolia. It is decidedly not in our interest to support Armenian anti-Turkey goals, or to believe their anecdotal reports of events in Eastern Anatolia.

This is not an American issue, and has nothing to do with us. Clearly it should have no more relevance to this country than any other ancient, foreign dispute. Their goal is to organize enough congressional support to pass a law maligning a foreign government. Each year since the early 1980s the U.S. House of Representatives debates and deliberates the “Armenian Genocide” resolution. Every year the resources of the Armenian community are brought to press our Congress to pass this resolution. Repeatedly, the government of the Republic of Turkey denounces this as an encroachment into its internal affairs.

It is the opinion of many scholars that if the strife in Eastern Turkey during World War I were characterized as “genocide,” it would strip the word of its meaning. Every administration beginning with Ronald Reagan has opposed this resolution. Each year the American ambassador to Turkey testifies in Washington against the bill. The U.S. secretary of state voices opposition as does the president of the United States.

There has been a Turkish Armenian tragedy. Enormous numbers of lives were lost on both sides. There are powerful voices on both sides, but I never hear Armenians confess any culpability for what happened to them. For example, that they raised an army and merged with the invading Russian army. That they joined in with the Russians as they slaughtered Turkish civilians. To hear the Armenians, one would conclude they were in the fields planting crops, or in church.

They also joined with the invading Greek army in 1919, and when the Greeks were defeated and fled to Izmir (Smyrna) in disorder, the Armenians joined them. The burning of the city referred to in Mr. Johnson’s report was not a Turkish act. They were recovering their own city. Mark O. Prentiss, who was a member of the Constantinople Disaster Relief Committee, a representative of the Near East Relief organization, and an eyewitness to the burning of the city, wrote in a January 1923 article for the North American Newspaper Alliance:

“It was a matter of common knowledge...that Armenians and Greeks were determined not to let this booty [Izmir] fall into the hands of their hated enemies. There was a generally accepted report in Smyrna, for several days before the fire, that an organized group of Armenian young men had sworn to burn the city if it fell to the Turks.”

The Armenians also suffered when the Communists took over Russia in 1917 and withdrew from the war. This left the Armenians alone in Eastern Turkey with the ashes of Turkish villages around them. They joined the Russians and fled to the Soviet Union.

You may print this letter as a response to the “Genocide” article in your December 1997 issue.

Frank Ahmed, Bethesda, MD

Somehow we’re sure that your response will in turn attract some more angry responses, but let freedom of expression ring.

Discriminatory Reparations

First I would like to compliment you for your selection of articles in your magazine. It’s refreshing to see such professional journalism regarding Middle Eastern issues. More journalists should learn from your magazine’s example to stick as unequivocally to the facts as you do. My point of view is as a native-born American of mostly Irish descent who is married to a Palestinian immigrant. Each article I read was substantive and thought-provoking. Some even elicited a passionate remark from me. Please keep up the excellent work!

After watching C-SPAN earlier today, I got the idea that more lobbying/educating needs to be done on behalf of those in our community who have been forgotten by both politicians and the media in general. All too often these institutions neglect Arabs, particularly today’s Palestinians and Lebanese people. I say neglect when I see that Congress wants to authorize a bill that would provide $60 million in reparations to Nazi Holocaust survivors. What about the Arab survivors of the ongoing Israeli Holocaust in Palestine and Lebanon? I have no qualms about aiding the victims of the Nazis. But politicians should remember that the Palestinian people were also affected directly by the Nazis. Many surviving and displaced Arab families from countries all over the Middle East are still coping with this century’s unjust British, Israeli and American policies of aggression. The pain the Arab community has had to endure should not be overlooked. If true peace is to be cultivated in our world, then the issue of reparations for affected Arabs should be thoroughly examined and then implemented.

My suggestion to you is that an in-depth article be written exploring the issues I mentioned above. More American people should know what the real historical facts are surrounding the current situation in the Middle East. This is especially important now that the Israeli propagandists are trying to spin a different history accounting for their 50th anniversary of occupation. As some have said before, history is our best teacher of life’s lessons.

Maura Yasin, Alexandria, VA