Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June 1998, Pages 3, 98-102

Letters to the Editor

Taxpayers’ Holocaust Museum

In the March 1998 issue of the Washington Report, p. 53, it is stated that the cost of upkeep to the U.S. Holocaust Museum is $31 million per year. Will you please advise where this information was obtained? I showed this information to a friend who simply refuses to believe that it is costing the U.S. taxpayer this much money each year to maintain this museum. In fact, he thought that the museum was totally privately funded without taxpayer dollars. I accept your information to be correct but, how can I convince my skeptical friend?

William Dautrich, via The Internet

Managing Editor Janet McMahon has been explaining to telephone callers for years that the Holocaust Museum gets more federal money than does the nearby Kennedy Center. The funding first appears in President Clinton’s annual budget request, in the same category as funding for the Smithsonian Institution, Kennedy Center, National Gallery of Art and National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, meaning it’s part of the “arts” budget.

It then goes to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies, chaired by Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH), and of which Rep. Sidney Yates (D-IL) is the ranking minority member (and former chair). Janet called the subcommittee’s office—(202) 225-3081—a year or so ago and got the appropriations for the Holocaust Museum and other agencies. Here are the figures:

FY 97: Holocaust Museum $31,272,000 Kennedy Center $19,875,000 Nat’l Gallery of Art $59,841,000

FY 96: Holocaust Museum $28,707,000 Kennedy Center $19,306,000 Nat’l Gallery of Art $58,841,000

FY 95: Holocaust Museum $26,609,000 Kennedy Center $19,306,000 Nat’l Gallery of Art $56,918,000

Americans Who Weren’t Fooled

Before the defeat of our American Zionist government lately at Ohio State University, I thought that you Washington Report people were the only Americans who decided not to be fooled by the media. I am glad to see that other Americans are willing to limit the Zionists’ attempts to use them for the benefit of Israel. What happened surprised and cheered me. Maybe that was the best lesson from Iraq’s crisis.

Mahdy Mahgoub, Minneapolis, MN

What If....

What if a foreign country, or the U.N., discovered that the United States was producing and storing prohibited weapons and decided to enact an embargo against us?

Then, to add insult to injury, they insisted on inspecting, against our will, our factories and our government offices—even the White House. And if we refused to submit, they threatened to bomb us. What kind of reaction would that elicit from the American public, our government and our allies?

The main reason the U.S. is attacking Iraq is because of Israel. Israel wants the U.S. to destroy its enemy. Israel determines what the U.S. policy is in the Middle East. Clinton said that Iraq must obey the U.N. resolutions. What about Israel? It hasn’t obeyed any of the U.N. resolutions put on it. Israel has weapons of mass destruction. Why is it allowed to have them?

Another reason Clinton wants to attack Iraq is that he wants to divert attention away from his many scandals.

America has become proud, arrogant, and the bully of the world. It is high time that we pull our troops back to U.S. soil and start minding our own business. We currently have troops in more than 100 foreign countries, all of whom are playing the role of policemen and social workers. As a result of our sticking our nose in the business of every other region of the world, we, for the first time in our country’s history, have to start worrying about terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Ray F. Dively, Baden, PA

Another Argument Against Gun Control?

The terrorist slaughter of thousands of civilian men, women and children currently going on in Algeria is typically described by one of the survivors who said, “They slaughtered them with knives like sheep, just like sheep, despite the cries of the children. Pools of blood, and clothes and shoes, were scattered everywhere.” The terrorists are believed to be government troops in disguise.

Villagers said around 30 girls had disappeared after the attack, a pattern familiar from past massacres. The girls, sometimes as young as 12, are taken for sex and later killed, usually by having their throats cut.

Logic dictates that such massacres could not possibly take place unless the civilian population is first disarmed. Is there any better argument against gun control?

John L. Kucek, Watchung, NJ

But then there’s the problem of 11-year-old kids who steal weapons collected by a gun-happy grandfather and use them to kill teachers and fellow students. We guess if there were easy answers, there wouldn’t be a need for magazines like this one.

You’ve Got the Picture Wrong!

I was born and raised in Lebanon, and have come to rely on the Washington Report for providing in-depth and factual information about the Middle East. I, too, watched in horror as Clinton answered questions about sex while Arafat sat there smiling politely. The scene epitomized, in ghastly black humor, American hard-core resilience to the plight of Palestine. I wondered how WRMEA would treat all this. When I found out, I was so disappointed. I hope you take the time to read this explanation of why.

You know better than most that the Arab—more specifically, Palestinian—voice in this country is a peep-peep compared to that of Israel, at least from the listener’s point of view. For this reason, Palestinian issues do not figure in with any complexity in the basic knowledge of the average American (I am aware of the loose terms I am flinging about; please bear with me). Therefore, when, for example, the Palestinian perspective is advanced in your magazine, it probably sounds to the said average American much like the hysteria we hear in those alarming FLAME advertisements. The difference is that FLAME is indeed hysterical, while the WR, most of the time, is simply telling it like it is, just from the Palestinian point of view. The December ’97 cover that was so well-received is a case in point. Yes, WR is basically one-sided; yes, WR was making a blatant appeal to emotion, but the facts are facts. The cover worked because it was factual.

However, WR faces this problem: These facts so overwhelmingly illuminate Israel’s failings that the aforementioned American reader, assaulted with so much evidence that contradicts his/her basic understandings, teeters on a fine line between outright rejection of what appears to be hysteria and coming around to face the facts.

So your difficult job (one among many, and I assume your goals extend beyond merely preaching to the converted, as they say) is to educate, and your new readers are no tabula rasa. To wit, you need to prevent the reader from reacting to factual evidence the way we do to the misleading hysteria in FLAME advertisements.

Your March 1998 cover was appalling in this respect. I expect it lost a good number of potential or teetering readers, as well as gave smug satisfaction to those who would give all to bury your voice. This cover reeks of Middle Eastern plot-theory mania, which anyone who has lived in the region knows is the manifestation of a sadly misguided assumption that whatever Arab issue or event in question is of paramount importance in U.S. politics. You quoted Fisk, and I am sure you read Pity the Nation, in which he often bemusedly discusses this tendency to deduce Plot in every move by a superpower. You give this absurd way of thinking credence with your cover, which has the sensationalist working and graphics of a tabloid.

In addition, your article was more a list of sensational possibilities rather than a presentation of fact. I was disappointed to find that WR, too, is poised to jump on the rumor bandwagon.

Putting this aside, I would like to point out one moment of illogic in your article that was truly insulting to my intelligence.

When you say we can’t categorically rule out Monica Lewinsky entrapping the president, you base this deduction on “her extraordinary sexual history.” I can only wonder what you mean. Clearly, Ms. Lewinsky has not brought down any other presidents or world leaders, or we would have heard it by now. I can only assume that your choice of the word “extraordinary” is faintly disdainful, and reflects your attitude to, perhaps, the number of her sexual relationships? Or is it that she had them with such repulsive men, such as that worm of a drama teacher-turned-stage tech? Or is it that she is willing to perform this or that sexual act in various places? I don’t know, but I strongly suspect one of the above.

So let me say this: Monica Lewinsky’s failings, as far as I can make out, have far less to do with sex itself than with an inability to judge character—or a moth-to-the-flame inability to avoid bad, and in the case of Clinton, downright stupid, relationships. Or perhaps she is the star-struck girl she has been called. The point is, regardless of her habits and whatever distaste you may have for them, how does her sorry little trail of relationships with zeroes evidence the guile and profound intent it would take to carry out this cabal?

Now, proving that would be extraordinary. For now, pending further evidence, I’m ruling out that Monica Lewinsky is the crafty Jewish orchestrator of the president’s moral-political downfall.

The day this story broke, I called my husband at work and joked, “Lewinsky, sounds Jewish. Must be a Jewish plot to derail Arafat.” We laughed together, because, having grown up in Beirut, we knew exactly what was coming. Running such a breathless, overexcited cover and article was perfect fodder for those who would see you done in.

Patricia Ward, Allentown, PA

You take us to task for presenting “a list of sensational possibilities rather than a presentation of fact.” But we don’t know the facts, as our articles surely have made clear. What we suspect, however is that Newsweek and others who have known elements of the Monica story for months might not have broken it so suddenly and sensationally if Bill Clinton had not outlived his usefulness to the Israel-firsters. We believe some of them had concluded that Israel’s purposes might be better served if Al Gore finished out Bill Clinton’s second term. This is not 20-20 hindsight. It’s exactly what we predicted way back in the spring of 1996 when we wrote that if Clinton were to be re-elected in the fall of that year he would find that his immunity from press criticism had vanished. We share your belief that Monica Lewinsky just happened to be there—as apparently were others before her. Therefore you’ll surely agree that the manner in which all of the Washington media jumped on this particular “bimbo eruption,” after virtually ignoring all the previous outbreaks, and even the Kathleen Willey story, which dates all the way back to 1994, provides grounds for awe and wonder. We accept your criticism in the spirit in which it was offered—to preserve our credibility. But we think we have done even better, since we called this shot almost two years before it happened.

They Are Out to Get Him

In a telephone conversation with your circulation director I referred to a letter (based on information from several issues of the Washington Report) which I had sent to columnist Jack Anderson and to Jack Nelson of the L.A. Times, neither of whom replied. A copy is enclosed.

As I mentioned, I had considered sending a slightly revised version to other nationally known journalists but have not done so since I’m not sure it’s that good a letter. However, if it can benefit the Washington Report I would be glad for you to use it, but please do not attach my name to it in any way whatsoever.

As soon as the media furor about Clinton-Lewinsky erupted I quite naturally suspected the Republicans were responsible, but when it seemed that the most embarrassing questions were being asked by the pro-Israeli media personnel I began to suspect that it was they who were out to get him. Needless to say, I was delighted to see your executive editor’s theory beginning on page 7 of the March ’98 issue of the Washington Report, that the Israelis would prefer that Clinton step down because of the scandal since a President Gore, as the incumbent, would have a better chance to beat the Republican nominee, and would be even easier to manipulate than Clinton.

Seymour Hersh’s Dark Side of Camelot says or implies throughout that the media in those days knew a great deal about Jack Kennedy’s unethical, illegal and immoral behavior but seldom reported it because they were seduced by his charm, good looks and wit.

Are today’s journalists seduced by the Israel Lobby or are they intimidated? Or, incredible though it seems, can it be that some of them don’t know what’s going on?

Name withheld by request, Maine

Maybe all of the above, with the caveat that at least three of the mainstream journalists are key components of the Israel lobby. As for your letter to Mssrs. Anderson and Nelson, we thought it was good enough to reprint in “Other People’s Mail,” starting on page 84, to serve as a model to readers wanting to write letters of their own. Wish you’d tell us what malign influence in your seemingly peaceful and pastoral state makes you unwilling to let us attach your name to two such excellent letters. It sounds like the makings of a “Pro-Israel McCarthyism” article—unsigned if necessary.

Enlightening Taxpayers

First I want to thank you for your excellent work in enlightening and educating the unsuspecting American taxpayers about how they have been duped to subsidize one of the most cruel and deceitful governments in the world for more than 50 years!

Your extremely valuable magazine, the Washington Report, does a tremendous job. And I know how much effort you are making to make it successful. I had the pleasure and honor to meet your executive editor at a lecture he gave at the University of California at Irvine. Now a friend of mine has found other publications and brought me copies which I found confirm his suspicion about the causes of President Clinton’s troubles.

Mir Nisam, Laguna Hills, CA

Thanks for the clippings by other writers who share our own suspicion that the full press coverage given to Monicagate probably would not have happened if the administration had not been preparing for a confrontation with Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over his destruction of the Oslo accords and the resulting deterioration of U.S. relations with all of the countries of the Arab and Islamic worlds.

All Too Rare

We are very pleased to send you our contribution of $1,000 to the Washington Report, and we are grateful to you and your staff for the wonderful job you are doing. You reflect a depth of character and integrity that is all too rare. Your many contributions to truth and understanding are immensely important to our country. You can count on our support next year and we wish you the very best.

James and Betty Sams, Washington, DC

Continue Your Clarification

Just a note to say thank you for your efforts. It is very refreshing to see a magazine with such a dedicated staff working to clarify issues that need to become known. You have my full respect.

Fawaz Hamoui, Columbus, OH

Do You Know About This Booklet?

I have a hunch you’re familiar with a booklet called “The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict” published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East.

The founder, Ken Stone (which name he tells me is an alias he uses for his family’s security) has been on “Middle East In Focus” twice over the past year earning my respect and admiration for his straightforward and persistent approach to explaining to his fellow Jews, and to all others who’ll listen, the fundamental causes of the conflict.

The contents of his booklet have appeared in the WRMEA many times in one form or another, quoted from one source or another. But they are the points that need to be repeated forever—if it takes that long to get the majority of Americans, especially including American Jews, to understand why there is an Arab-Israeli conflict and, thereby, how to resolve it.

The utility of the Jews For Justice booklet is, first of all, that it’s written and published by Jews. Second, it’s only 28 pages. Third, it’s distributed free, compliments of JFJ.

Ken has asked me if I’d recommend your slipping a copy, as a bonus, into each order your book department sends out. I’ve thought about it and decided that I would recommend it, recognizing, of course, that I’m not standing in your shoes. But, if it works for WRMEA, JFJ will supply you with all the booklets you need.

Donald S. Bustany, Host, “Middle East in Focus,” KPFK/Pacifica, Orange County, CA

We have a letter from Ken Stone in this issue’s Other People’s Mail (p. 84) which will enable all readers to receive a copy of the Jews for Justice booklet free of charge. We’ll also request copies to include in our AET Library Endowment gift packages for public and educational libraries.

A Correction From Cyprus

Greetings from Cyprus! I am writing to follow up on an article that appeared in the March 1998 issue of WRMEA. I read your magazine regularly as the Middle East Council of Churches receives your fine publication. There is no doubt that your publication is a valuable tool and alternative voice on the situation in the region, especially for the audience in the United States, and we appreciate your efforts.

I write to offer a correction to the article entitled “AFSC National Coordinator Visits Portland to Promote Month of Solidarity With Iraqi People” (March 1998, pp. 89-90). On the second page of the article, in the second column, you write:

“‘The amounts are only symbolic as needs are so great,’ Bergen said, adding that the materials are purchased in Jordan by Voices in the Wilderness with funds provided by the Middle East Council of Churches and taken overland into Iraq.”

While this statement seems to give us credit for assisting financially the efforts of Voices, we cannot accept credit where it is not due. The MECC, as you may be aware, has been active in the procurement, shipment and distribution of humanitarian supplies, such as blankets, medicine, medical supplies and nutritional goods to the Iraqi people, who are suffering disproportionately and, we feel, unjustly, under a sanctions regime that has lasted almost seven years now. Our Ecumenical Relief Services (ERS) program is the relief arm of the MECC and was established in 1991 to offer relief to the victims of the Gulf war. I serve as the coordinator of ERS in Cyprus, and we have a Coordinator in Amman as well as in Baghdad. The MECC has recently launched an appeal through Action by Churches, requesting over $2 million in material aid to the Iraqi people.

The MECC has been in contact with the Voices delegations and we do support their cause, appreciating the risks they take as Americans publicizing their delegations’ trips to Iraq. We have discussed the effects of sanctions on the humanitarian situation in Iraq with them, but we are simply not in a position to offer more than verbal and moral support. We cannot offer financial support to them as, generally speaking, we are not a funding body.

I hope this explanation is clear. I simply intended to clarify our role in Iraq. I am glad to follow up with you if necessary. Please do not hesitate to be in contact with me if we can be of service to you in any way. The MECC appreciates your coverage of our activities, mentioned in the “Christianity and the Middle East” column. Thanks again for your coverage of the region and keep up the good work!

Peter E. Makari, Coordinator for Interpretation and International Linkage, The Middle East Council of Churches, Limassol, Cyprus

Your Candle of Truth

I’m enclosing a check of $15 to cover a one-year subscription to “Other Voices.” How remarkably refreshing to see your singular candle of truth brightly shining amid the total black-out of our nation’s media where the blind comfortably lead the blind. How sad!

John Gwynn, Minneapolis, MN

Was It Something I Said?

I wonder how many other subscribers find that WRMEA is the only part of their mail that goes either late or missing? I find it interesting that I had no trouble until I got your name mentioned in the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Or maybe I’m just a suspicious old coot.

Also, is it just me or—since the drop in federal funding for PBS—does it seem that there are more programs showing up that have been produced and/or funded by various Jewish organizations? Last year, the Orlando PBS station aired an hour-long “documentary” celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Exodus incident. It had lots of contemporary film and interviews with surviving Zionist supporters who carried out the operation. Their blithe refusals to acknowledge any law but some “higher” law has not changed among most Zionist supporters today.

The makers of this film made one small slip, however. Despite all the Zionist claims over the years that the Jews in Palestine at the time were weak and in danger of annihilation at any time, the show stated that—when it looked as if the Exodus would make a run for the beach and face British land opposition—the Zionist commander on the spot sent out a call to Palmach HQ and requested that 30,000 armed fighters be sent to battle the British troops. Not quite the pitiful handful they would have one believe, is it?

A bit of good news...My local library has assured me that they will be happy to accept my box full of back issues of WRMEA and keep them on file. Perhaps less important than other places in this age of the Internet, but a great many seniors in these parts prefer to sit and read a magazine rather than squint at a computer terminal.

Back to my opening sentence. Experience taught me long ago that I was somehow a most forgettable individual. The past two issues of the WRMEA have once again shown me just how good I am at it. In each issue you printed a letter from me to you and stated that another letter of mine was in “Other People’s Mail.” But it wasn’t.

Please don’t think that I take any special umbrage at that. After all, it certainly isn’t as if any letter of mine could possible serve others as a guide to winning friends and influencing people.

Keep up the good fight.

Jack C. McMonigle, Edgewater, FL

Thanks for the two library subscriptions, the list of 12 other public libraries in your part of Florida to which you or some other donor may later give subscriptions, and your purchase and then presentation to your local library of a 16-year file of Washington Report back issues. As for your missing letters, you can be sure they’re alive and well in our computer and, some time in the next 16 years, may find their way out and on to our pages. Sometimes at the last minute we create space for breaking news by cutting out letters pages. Obviously yours were on such pages, but they may yet rise again.

The Cover Yells Peace

I received my copy of the Jan./Feb. issue of WRMEA yesterday and was immediately struck by the beautiful—marvelous—photo of young Nihad Jnaidi and her baby. That picture yells “peace” and would be a wonderful calendar picture for the new year. I have seldom seen anything like it on a magazine cover and hope you find another good use for it. A modern Madonna it is!

I’ve been a subscriber to your magazine for a little less than a year. I was alerted to what is going on in the Middle East this spring when I was a part of a Presbyterian group that went to Israel/Palestine and learned what real injustice is! Now, the more I read, the angrier I get and the more helpless I feel about the situation.

I predict that eventually all Palestinian Arabs will be 1) in South African-like villages, or, 2) on reservations like American Indians; that there will be no more Christians in that sad land; all Christian Holy Land sites will be as museum places with admission charged and that Americans may wake up too late to their part in a holocaust that has been perpetrated against the Palestinian people.

I am so full of frustration I don’t know what further to say to you. Thank you for your wonderful magazine and for that beautiful cover. I shall surely resubscribe when the year is up.

Henry Brayton Gifford, Cornwall, PA

What About the Tax-Exempt Status?

I attended an event a few days ago at the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, where I heard your executive editor encourage American Muslims to become more politically active. As an American Muslim, this sounds good to me, but it seems that some of the specifics of your action plan would force the mosques to forego their tax-exempt status. Is it possible to address this issue in a future edition of WRMEA and/or with interested individuals and groups?

Ehab T. Shehata, via the Internet

It’s a good question with a simple answer. If instead of making its own voting recommendations a mosque simply reports or posts coordinated voting recommendations made by local Muslim groups in the case of municipal, county and state offices and joint recommendations made by the national coordinating council for Muslim political organizations in the case of presidential elections, these actions will not jeopardize a mosque’s tax-exempt status.

You Make Your Contribution and I’ll Make Mine

I am a graduate student in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Texas at Austin. I appreciate the contribution your magazine makes to the intellectual discussion on the Middle East. I have enclosed a check for $20 as a contribution to help cover the cost of publishing the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. I wish I could donate more.

Please persevere in your efforts to turn the tide of U.S. policy in the Middle East!

Mark S. Sullivan, Jr., Austin, TX

Said’s Speech Twenty Years Too Late

The problem with Edward Said’s intelligent and thoughtful speech on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration is that it is at least 20 years too late. Said speaks of the need for honest dialogue between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews concerning their mutual history and suffering, that “neither experience is equal to the other, and neither should be minimized.” I don’t believe American Jews need to be reminded that neither experience is equal. Theirs is the only experience as far as some of them are concerned. The controversy of the last year or so concerning plundered Jewish gold and money hidden away in secret Swiss bank accounts by the Nazis with the full cooperation of Swiss bankers is ample proof. Fifty years from now will not Palestinians be doing the same perhaps—trying to recover lost money, property, dignity, destiny and lives? Will the files of the successive Begin, Shamir and Netanyahu governments be opened for international scrutiny? If I am accused of disrespecting the suffering of the Jewish people—are many of them not disrespecting the present suffering of the Palestinian people? Is the Jewish Shoah more important than the Palestinian Nakba?

Said is a true intellectual. I personally remember the effect he had on some of his students at Columbia University when I was attending graduate school there. But for too many years he has been the lone voice speaking out about the Palestinian diaspora. For most of my 40 years the term “Arab intellectual” has been an oxymoron. The fact, as Said says, that “you cannot find a single institute devoted to the study of Israel, Judaism, the Holocaust, or even American studies” in the Arab world speaks volumes. It is hoped that a younger, more highly educated and pragmatic generation of Arabs and Arab-Americans will follow. Particularly one not tied to old dogmas and inflammatory rhetoric.

The magnitude of Edward Said’s call for mutual recognition of the sufferings of Arabs and Jews is enormous. One only has to pick up the latest issue of the Jewish Sentinel dated Dec. 19, 1997. On the editorial page is an opinion article signed by Rabbis Avi Weiss and Emanuel Rackman titled “The Big Lie Still Tainting Jonathan Pollard.” In an example of pure Orwellian newspeak, they describe Pollard as “a Zionist ideologue distraught at his discovery of an undeclared intelligence embargo against the Jewish state.” The Jewish Sentinel is a free Jewish newspaper that can be found on many street corners in New York City. But this is the same kind of misinformation one can find in any major American newspaper. One that will always describe a “ jihad” as a “holy war” against Israel, rather than its true definition in the Qur’an as a “striving” or “exerting oneself” in the Way of God. Mutual understanding and recognition has an awfully long way to go.

Larry Deyab, Brooklyn, NY

The Indian Elections

I would like to bring to the attention of your fine readership a serious development with possible global implications. The country of India recently held the third and final phase of its national elections. The winning party is the BJP (Bharata Janata Party), a coalition of Hindu nationalist groups with the avowed goal of making India a Hindu supremacist nation while relegating other religious groups into a second- or third-class status. The platform of these extremists resembles the Ku Klux Klan Charter and that of Serbian ultranationalists in the Balkans. The BJP has a track record of instigating anti-Muslim riots, the most serious of which occurred in 1992 after the destruction of one of the oldest mosques in India by a group of these Hindu zealots. The BJP also wishes to aggressively pursue India’s nuclear program, which may possibly create security concerns for India’s neighbors. The BJP leadership has even called for the annexation of “occupied Kashmir,” a characteristic similar to that of religious extremists in Israel, who have continuously called for the annexation of the “occupied West Bank and Gaza.”

I kindly urge your readers to closely observe the election results in the second most populous nation. The results can put a fifth of humanity in jeopardy and bring undue harm to millions of innocent civilians. According to a recent CNN report, India is now the world’s largest arms importer. The world has seen from time immemorial what madmen are capable of doing with weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. is India’s leading trade partner, and the BJP has threatened to impose protectionist measures if it assumes power. It would not behoove U.S. national security or economic interests to support a BJP-ruled India. Although the BJP claims to have softened its tone, actions speak louder than words, and the past actions of this organization do not make it appealing to those who cherish freedom and democratic values.

Srinidhi Anantharamiah, Ph.D., Brandon, MS

The Smithsonian Is Going All Out

Have you read about the Smithsonian and its program on Israel for the 50th anniversary (I thought they claimed 3,000 years)? They cancelled the co-sponsor because they thought it was too pro-Palestinian. It was the New Israel Fund. Do you know anything about them? I hesitate to write the Smithsonian until I know more about the Fund.

I forgot to tell you how beautiful was the “Madonna” cover on the Washington Report. A lot of people thought it was the best yet, probably because it was at an appropriate time.

Marion A. Fitch, Washington, DC

The New Israel Fund supports a decent, not fanatical, Israel and the program it was devising was aimed to present that country objectively and with all its complexities. In content it sounded very much like the many- sided series being presented by Israeli TV that so upset the Israeli narrator that he quit in mid-series. Unfortunately, the Israeli TV series went on, but the Smithsonian co-sponsored series didn’t. When the Smithsonian, National Public Radio and other tax-funded organizations are so fearful of the wrath of Jewish donors and pro-Israel members of Congress that they begin to exercise a self-censorship, then they no longer are a viable alternative to the commercial media with its inordinate fear of its advertisers.

Some News Remains Unreported

While our papers are filled with Netanyahu making absurd demands for more Palestinian security promises, I have seen nothing about the letter Israeli ex-generals and police chiefs sent to the Israeli prime minister asking him to abandon Israel’s expansionist policy. Or about the CIA, headquartered in Israel and associated with the Shin Bet, now training Palestinian security forces to “combat terrorism.”

In mid-March over 1,500 reserve officers from Israel’s army and police force, including a former army chief of staff, a former police inspector-general, and 11 retired major generals called on Binyamin Netanyahu to abandon his policy of extending Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas. The letter, signed by the cream of the country’s security establishment from the past decade, claimed that “A government that prefers maintaining settlements beyond the Green Line to solving the historic conflict and establishing normal relations in our region will cause us to question the righteousness of our path.”

These stories cast Israel’s security demands in what may be to some an entirely new light. Why isn’t the American media telling the other side of the story?

Karin Brothers, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

P.S. The articles to which I refer are from the International page of the Guardian Weekly of March 15, 1998.

Please Use My Suggestions

Many and sincere thanks for your willingness to cover some of the more intimate details of the pain here in Palestine/Israel by publishing Sister Elaine Kelley’s article on my speech to the First Presbyterian Church in Seattle in your Jan./Feb. issue. I was surprised and grateful (for the most part!) to find a report on my talk in print.

May I make a suggestion, however, because the dangers here are significant. Whenever you run a “news” piece in the WRMEA on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and about people engaged in reconciliation and development work here, could there be some mechanism for a checking of the facts before publishing?

There were several troubling misstatements in the article that could put people here at risk...as well as some misinterpretations of what I said that corrected could have made the article much stronger.

The most egregious issue was around the matter of the alleged “World Vision employees, who were usually able to sneak into Jerusalem to get to work” during the comprehensive closures. I was not referencing WV employees! To suggest in print that my staff was breaking the law is to put very committed people in an awkward if not dangerous predicament. You of all people will know that this is unwise and bordering on foolish. I was instead referring to a cleaning contractor who we use from time to time (maybe twice a year) from Bethlehem. In his desperation to provide for his family, he was arrested in Tel Aviv during the 100 days of closure and fined 3,500 shekels (not dollars). The point of the illustration is to show the pressure to which we in the humanitarian community are put by this unjust regulation that vitiates work permits for Palestinians who work in Israel. It, as well, of course undermines the Israeli government’s stated intention to expand the Palestinian economy and reduce the significant social problems of the 300,000 guest workers from places such as Malaysia and Romania.

I am rather certain too that my friend Congressman Jim McDermott may have wanted an opportunity to correct or edit any references to him in light of the present realities. In this regard you will be pleased to know, however, that Major Avi Legmann commander of the Erez (not Eretz!) checkpoint in Gaza was grateful for the positive mention of his intervention at the congressman’s request to reunify the separated family in which the mother and children were stuck during the closure in Jerusalem. There certainly are occasional and encouraging acts of kindness that give suggestion that people of good will such as Major Legmann will play a much more important role in the future.

Thank you for your attention to my suggestions, which I believe could strengthen your news reporting. If I could be of help in the future to correct facts or edit for Israeli security concerns and referenced individuals’ safety, please feel free to contact me. And once again, thank you for your attention to the personal heartache and challenge here in the not so holy land.

Tom Getman, Country Director, World Vision, Jerusalem

P.S. Major Legmann would appreciate a copy of the Jan./Feb. issue in which he is mentioned. Please send me two copies and bill me for the cost of the magazines as well as the shipping.

We do expect our writers to check their reports with their sources whenever possible. In this case, with our correspondent in Portland and you in Jerusalem, obviously it wasn’t. The extra copies are on their way at no extra charge.

A Unique Solicitation

I received a rather unique solicitation for funds from Oral Roberts in which he wanted to send me his new book, Don’t Park Here, free of course. The return form included “Step 1” in which I was to list “My Greatest Need and Desire”; “Step 2” in which I was to “Plant My Seed,” listing the amount of money (obviously to him, but it wasn’t explicitly stated); and “Step 3” in which there was an entire empty, lined page in which I was invited to send Oral my personal greetings on his 80th birthday.

I had a lot of fun filling out the various “steps,” mostly because it provided a forum to express my thoughts and feelings. You may be interested. The unique “step” procedure is the reason the usual letterhead is missing.

John S O’Connor, Seattle, WA

We had fun reading it (though of course it made us angry at practitioners of “don’t get involved” Christianity) so we’ll share your response, below, with Washington Report readers.

(Oral Roberts)

Step I

My Greatest Need & Desire

My greatest need is to have my faith in The Church restored. The preacher in my own church was so Hypocritical in his attitude toward Israel’s conquest and subjugation of the Palestinians that, after over 60 years’ membership, I asked that my name be taken off the register.

He, with one of the two other ministers in the church, marched in protest against the Gulf war, but he would not even discuss actions of the Zionist Israelis which created the lack of Peace in the Mideast. He is not alone. I have been working for four years with Washington churches trying to initiate a Middle East Peace Week program. The Church is simply not interested.

How can the Church be so hypocritical? The Church preaches Good Words, but only as Ancient History. It will not even talk about how Zionist Israel has violated the Ten Commandments every day for over 50 years, as well as the principles upon which our country was founded.

Continual confiscation of privately owned Palestinian property in direct violation of two of the Ten Commandments has been the primary cause of conflict. Today it is the primary obstacle to peace. Secondly, government by gunfire in direct violation of the Commandment Thou Shall Not Kill has kept hatred alive.

In the 10 years since the beginning of the intifada, Israeli troops have killed 1,345 Palestinians, over 10 times the number of Jews killed by Palestinians. Proportionate to our population, this would be over 120,000 individuals if this had occurred in the U.S.!

Of those 1,345 Palestinians, 276 were children under the age of 15, equivalent in its emotional impact to more than 25,000 if this had occurred in the U.S.! This included youngsters such as 7-year-old Ali Jarash a couple of months ago, some of whose organs were transplanted into 3 Jewish youngsters.

How can the Church support Israeli actions, both by direct statements and by silence? Israeli actions are in direct violation of both the basic principles of our faith, and the basic principles upon which our country was founded as defined by the Declaration of Independence and Constitution!

My greatest need is to have my faith in the Church restored by the Church practicing what it preaches.

Step # 2...Planting my Seed

A $100 check, sent Dec. 31, to United Palestinian Appeal, a non-profit charity which attempts to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians caused by Israeli human rights violations.

Step 3

Dear Oral:

I feel closer to you than to most, because one of my wife’s college friends worked at Oral Roberts University.

I hope you will see the error of your ways regarding Israel, which you accentuated by signing The New York Times ad last April—”....supporting the continued sovereignty of the State of Israel over the holy city of Jerusalem.”

How could you, a leader in preaching the word of God, take a leadership role in supporting actions in direct violation both of the word of God, and the principles upon which our country was founded as defined by the Ten Commandments, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

Your action supports a pagan God of Might, a God of War! I grew up being taught there was only one God, who was a God of peace, justice and mercy. Israel violates every principle of peace, justice and mercy in the book!

You, in your preaching, were against the racism and cruelty of the Nazis in Germany, of the racism and apartheid in South Africa, and I presume the actions of the Christian Serbs against the Muslims in Bosnia. If that is true, how can you justify the same actions against both Christian and Muslim Arabs in their own country, Palestine?

Further, any court of law would rule at least four of the five reasons given for your support of Israel in that New York Times ad were false and untrue. And some courts would make the same ruling for the 5th reason given in that ad.

So, Oral, on your 80th birthday, my most sincere wish is for you to recognize the error of your ways. Follow in the footsteps of Jesus who led us in the ways of truth, peace, justice and mercy to all of God’s children, even the Palestinians, because He was himself one of the Palestinians to whom He was addressing the message.

John S O’Connor, Seattle, WA

A Distribution Problem?

I am a new subscriber to the magazine. I don’t know what took me so long.

My son, a Middle Eastern studies major of the University of Massachusetts, told me about the magazine—he buys it at a store in North Hampton, MA. Last fall I was able to find it at Barnes and Noble without any problem—but then they stopped carrying it. I could not get an answer as to why. One store in New Haven (Yale Book Store owned by B & N) told me they changed distributors. I finally found it at News Haven in New Haven, CT—they carry everything! However, I never knew when it would be in so rather than chase all over looking for it, I decided to subscribe.

What a great magazine—there’s no other like it. The media is so pro-Israel it is pathetic! Thank you for giving Americans interested in the Middle East a magazine that—at last— is not all for Israel.

Mrs. Wilifred A. Cork, Orange, CT