Quatsch Watch

By Nathan Jones

Did ADL Break the Law?

QUATSCH: "The Founding Fathers understood both the majesty and the impact of free speech, and so does the ADL. The rightto speech must be respected, but so must the right to note it and subject it to critical analysis. . . The recent attacks against the ADL imply that private organizations should . . . be restricted from keeping information. The ADL's effort to monitor extremists is deemed 'spying' by some civil libertarians." —David A. Lehrer, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in Los Angeles, CA in the Los Angeles Times, March 12,1993

WATCH: "The recent attacks against ADL," as the ADL official quoted puts it, do not "imply that private organizations should . . . be restricted from keeping information. " They imply that private organizations should not break the law. B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League has been caught with files stolen from the San Francisco police department. Further, the ADL has committed libelous and slanderous acts by taking unverified information from whatever source and surreptitiously circulating it to sympathizers in academia, the media and even the clergy in order to discredit critics of Israeli policies, defenders of Palestinian rights, peace activists and others. ADL's purpose was to discourage use of its victims' books, articles or films or their employment as speakers, writers and instructors. Because ADL does not make its charges public, and the privately circulated smear sheet on each victim never leaves the hands of ADL employees and their confederates, the victims are deprived of a chance to learn the substance of its allegations, and defend themselves against it, or, in Mr. Lehrer's words, "subject it to critical analysis. "

The charge against ADL is not just "spying, " which is slimy but not necessarily illegal. The charge is violating the law by commissioning the purchase of stolen goods, and accepting and using those stolen goods to commit libelous acts.

Is George Ball "Ethnically Correct"?

QUATSCH: "For George Ball, a statesman with long and distinguished service inthe United States government, and his son Douglas . . . the American interest is the central standard. But how is that standard to be defined? The Balls seem to feel that American diplomacy should be made by disinterested, high-minded leaders who cannot be pressured by one-issue groups...Is the American interest best defined by American Brahmins, who mistake the prejudices oftheir class for universal principles? The essential doctrine of our democracy is that the national interest is not some disembodied essence. It is defined by the purposes, political and moral, that various segments (James Madison called them factions) of American society affirm through their interactions."—Arthur Hertzberg, visiting professor of humanities at New York University, reviewing The Passionate Attachment by George and Douglas Ballin The New York Times, Feb. 21,1993

WATCH: Unwilling to address on its merits what he describes as "unrelenting and one sided denunciation of Israel" in the Balls' book, the reviewer has set up two new standards for writers on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and its effects on U.S. international relations and domestic political life. Authors should be ethnically correct (no "Brahmins") and must not be "disinterested." With "Brahmins" out, if The New York Times plans formally to adopt this racist rubbish in selecting future book reviewers, it may involve little change in its present policies for selection of reviewers of books by or about Arabs and Islam, who so frequently are Israelis or American Jewish scholars. It is exciting to anticipate, however, that in the future the Times will be selecting mostly Arabs, Arab Americans or Muslims to review books about Israel and Judaism.

QUATSCH: "Total foreign aid is less than 1 percent of the total U.S. budget overall and aid to Israel is only 0.175 percent of that budget . . . The 'loan guarantees'—of which so much has been written—are not grants. No money from the U.S. Treasury will be transferred. Israel will borrow the money from American banks. Israel has a perfect repayment record on foreign loans."

—Laurence Sharpe, in op-ed article in the Herald-Mail, Hagerstown, MD, Aug. 30, 1992

WATCH: The above is deceptively worded so that, while technically true, it is totally misleading. Aid to Israel from all sources in the U.S. budget is about half of the total of U.S. bilateral foreign aid to all other countries in the world. The writer is correct in saying the loan guarantees "are not grants"—unless Congress converts them to grants. Because eventually Congress does convert all U.S. government loans to Israel to grants, Israel does have a perfect repayment record on loans from the United States government. It has never repaid any of them. All eventually have been forgiven by Congress. Israel has paid interest on such loans until they were forgiven. However, even the interest was provided by the U.S. taxpayer. Under the Cranston Amendment, attached to every U.S. foreign aid bill since 1984, the U.S. is obligated to ensure that total annual U.S. economic aid to Israel covers the total annual interest on all outstanding Israeli loans from the U.S.

QUATSCH: "Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's lengthy meeting with President Clinton at the White House appears to have brought American-Israeli relations back to their more or less traditional level of cordiality and close agreement on broad principles, though perhaps at the cost of weakening U. S. influence with the Palestinian participants in the Middle East peace talks."

—Editorial, Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1993

WATCH: In their "lengthy meeting," President Clinton promised Prime Minister Rabin there would be no diminution in U. S. aid to Israel in fiscal year 1994 from the 1993 level of $4.3 billion plus $2 billion in U.S. Loan guarantees. The president also made it clear that no pressure would be applied to Israel to comply with U.N. Security Council 242's land-for-peace formula during the peace talks; and that the U.S. would veto any U.N. sanctions on Israel, even if Israel continued to defy U.N. Security Council Resolution 799 (for which the U. S. had voted during the Bush administration) mandating immediate repatriation of the 400 Palestinian Muslims expelled by Israel to Lebanon last Dec. 19. If this is the "traditional level" of U.S. -Israel relations, the editorial writer is correct. He certainly is correct in his statement that such total capitulation to Israeli defiance of policies endorsed by all six of President Clinton's predecessors since 1967 may weaken "U.S. influence with the Palestinian participants in the Middle East peace talks." In agreeing to participate at all, Palestinian moderates counted on U.S. pressure on Israel to keep the talks on track. So did such U.S. Arab allies as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who pressured the Palestinians to attend. By these actions, President Clinton has weakened dramatically the forces of moderation among the Arabs, in the Islamic world, and in Israel as well.