Washington Report, May 31, 1982, Page 4

Lobby Activities

For Arabs:

David Sadd, Executive Director of the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA), said at a recent press conference that NAAA's newly elected President, Robert Joseph, has written to President Reagan asking him to suspend the planned U.S. sale of 11 additional F-15 jet fighters to Israel.

NAAA maintains that Israel used American-supplied warplanes in two "unprovoked bombing attacks" in Lebanon in late April and early May and says Israel violated the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. The act states-, in part, that U.S. supplies weapons are to be used "solely lot- internal security, for legitimate self-defense and to permit the recipient country to participate in regional or collective arrangements or measures consistent with the Charter of the United Nations."

Mr. Sadd also said that letters were sent from Mr. Joseph to the chairmen of the various House and Senate committees dealing with foreign affairs and military affairs, urging them to disapprove the sale and to hold hearings to investigate "Israel's use of American weapons" in bombing attacks, including the Israeli raid on a Iraqi nuclear reactor last June.

For Israel:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has held its 23rd Annual Policy Conference, with over 600 delegates attending from 10 geographic regions across the country and Canada. Fifty members of the U.S. Congress were also reported to have attended various events of the three-day meeting, held in Washington, D.C. Many also had individual appointments with AIPAC delegates and conferred with others during receptions in House and Senate buildings.

AIPAC's delegates met on the first day of the convention for "training" seminars on such diverse subjects as organizing student groups, discussing strategies to oppose U.S. arms sales to Jordan, working in the 1982 U.S. national elections, and "countering the Arab propaganda offensive." Themes addressed in the latter seminar included "monitoring and confronting Israel's detractors: planning an effective response campaign: building an ad-hoc response coalition; and designing effective counter propaganda." A pamphlet titled "Who's Who in Arab Propaganda" was handed out to delegates which contained the names of 22 organizations and individuals said by AIPAC to promote pro-Arab propaganda. Delegates were also alerted in the pamphlet to an upcoming reunion in Washington of survivors of the U.S.S. Liberty, an intelligence ship that was attacked by Israeli forces in 1967, leaving 34 American crewmen dead and 171 wounded. "The event," AIPAC says, "is being touted by Arab organizations and publications."

Meanwhile, AIPAC is continuing to lobby Congress to modify President Reagan's supplemental foreign aid requests for fiscal 1983 to include terms more favorable to Israel. (See The Washington Report issue of May 3, 1982.) It noted approvingly in its newsletter, Near East Report, that the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted in mid-May to '-forgive" two-thirds of the additional $300 million in military aid requested by the President for Israel.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, a proposal to increase the proportion of grants in the military aid package for Israel was approved by the Foreign Relations Committee. The Reagan Administration had proposed that Israel receive $500 million in grants and $1.2 billion in loans. But on a voice vote, the Committee boosted the grants to $850 million and reduced the loans to $850 million. In addition, an amendment was introduced by Senator Alan Cranston (Democrat, California) that would require the U.S. to give Israel enough additional economic aid—about $545 million over the next three years to help Israel pay back loans to the U.S. that were received in the past for the purchase of military hardware. Committee Chairman Charles H. Percy (Republican, Illinois), obviously unhappy, said it was an "extraordinary" proposal which "makes the American taxpayer responsible for all Israeli debts and future debts."