New U.S. Zionist Quarterly Attacks Other Mideast-Oriented Journals

By Kurt Holden

"We are going to need subsidie's for the first few years. I hope we can build enough of a circulation so that the journal will be self-sufficient after three years or so."

—Middle East Quarterly editor Daniel Pipes, Jr., quoted in Near East Report, April 18, 1994

When it comes to U.S. interests in the Middle East, virtually the entire American academic establishment is out of step but Dr. Daniel Pipes, Jr., according to the editor of the brand-new Middle East Quarterly, who just happens to be Dr. Daniel Pipes, Jr. Go to any meeting of the 2,400-member Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Pipes told the Philadelphia Inquirer, and "you'd find widespread agreement that strong ties with Israel have harmed the United States."

That, Pipes told Inquirer staff writer Leonard Boasberg, is because many academic and media specialists—even Jewish ones—tend toward a pro-Arab position. He was even more specific about his isolation among Middle East specialists in an interview with Near East Report, the weekly newsletter affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's principal Washington, DC lobby.

"If you think that a strong tie with Israel is good for the United States, you are pretty much excluded from the existing PC [politically correct] thinking," the 44-year-old Pipes said. "There is a de facto censorship in existence. The editors don't accept articles by people who believe in this tie. We have done a survey of the last few years in the quarterlies, and you just won't find articles presuming a pro-Israel outlook. It is a gaping hole."

How does Pipes, who will have an article in his magazine's first issue about "the myth of imperial Israel-from the Nile to the Euphrates," plan to fill the gap? The magazine will be "quasi-academic." That means it will look like an academic quarterly, with "footnotes" and "complex arguments," he told Near East Report, but he will ask "our authors to present their arguments and facts in a way that is accessible to a larger audience."

And who might those authors be? In the first issue there will be an interview with Martin Indyk, the former AIPAC official who presently is President Bill Clinton's top adviser on Middle East affairs, and Princeton Professor Emeritus Bernard Lewis, an "Orientalist" writer and scholar whose son, Michael Lewis, just happens to direct AIPAC's super-secret opposition research section, which supplies accommodating academics, writers and journalists with material to smear any of their rivals who happen to be among the majority of Middle East specialists who express doubts about the value of the Israeliconnectionto the United States. The Lewis article, Pipes told Near East Report, will explain "why Turkey is the sole democratic Muslim state."

The second issue, according to Pipes, will have a "literary gem" about the Kurds by former foreign service officer David A. Korn, author of a recent book about the killing by Palestinian terrorists of two U.S. diplomats in Khartoum in 1972. Korn, who learned Hebrew while serving in Israel, retired after serving as U.S. consul general in Calcutta. As a Hebrew speaker and Israel desk officer serving among the "Arabists" of the Near East and South Asia Bureau of the Department of State in the 1970s, Korn was described in a Washington magazine as the bureau's "house Zionist."

Middle East Quarterly will be published by the Middle East Council, a division of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a West Philadelphia think tank founded in 1955 by Robert Strausz-Hupe, who was U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 1981 to 1989. The magazine will emphasize U.S. ties to Turkey as well as to Israel, and will be co-edited by MEC associate director Adam Garfinkle. Managing editor will be Roger Donway, who also is managing editor of Orbis (which both Strausz-Hupe and Pipes have edited at different times), the Foreign Policy Research Institute's quarterly journal of world affairs.

The Middle East Quarterly's board of editors, according to a listing in Near East Report, includes many names familiar to readers of this magazine: David Fromkin, Haim Shaked, Anthony Cordesman, Zalmay Khalilzdad, Khalid Duran, Martin Kramer, Patrick Clawson, Eliyahu Kanovsky, Fouad Ajami, Michael Curtis, Paul Henze, Kemal Karpat, David Pollock, Robert Satloff, Steven Spiegel, Marvin Zonis, Peter Rodman and Korn.

With New Republic, Commentary, Atlantic Monthly and U.S. News and World Report, not to mention the dozens of weekly Jewish newspapers and the Near East Report itself, already purveying more views of such editors than even the most dedicated Zionist has time to read, where will the Middle East Quarterly find subscribers? Pipes already has picked out a large and growing reader niche for his magazine.

"It is our hope," he told the Inquirer, "to make the journal substantial enough so that even those who disagree with our outlook will find it necessary to read us." That, perhaps, explains the optimism in his statement at the top of this column that, after starting as a subsidized publication, "we can build enough of a circulation so that the journal will be self-sufficient after three years or so." Caveat emptor!

Israeli Journalists Visit Arab Nations

The Sultanate of Oman reversed an earlier decision and allowed Israeli journalists to attend the multilateral Middle East peace talks on water resources held there in March. The Emirate of Qatar also allowed Israeli journalists to attend, along with Israeli delegates, the multilateral talks on regional arms control held there in May.

Last year Israeli journalists also accompanied Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on his visit to Morocco en route home from signing the Middle East peace accords in Washington. This April, Israeli journalists accompanied Israelis of North African origin on the annual pilgrimage to a historic synagogue on the Tunisian island of Jerba, where a tiny Jewish community still keeps Maghribi Jewish traditions alive (see "Issues in the News" p. 22).

Albania Pardons Journalists

The largely Muslim country of Albania has pardoned five journalists convicted this year of press law violations, the government newspaper announced on May 4. The journalists had received sentences ranging from five months to two years on charges including insulting Albanian President Sali Berisha, publishing state secrets and slandering the nation's secret service. One pardoned journalist already had completed his sentence, one was serving his term, and three were outside appealing their sentences when all were pardoned.

Palestinian Newsmen Revisit Prison Cells

Among the first visitors when incoming Palestinian police opened up the Gaza Central Prison to the public in May were two correspondents for Western news agencies who had been held and tortured there by Israeli military authorities. Qassem Ali, who covered Gaza for the Associated Press, was jailed there three times, once for smuggling Western journalists into places declared closed military areas by the Israeli army.

"When you spent time here, you felt you were in a slaughterhouse, constantly being beaten up, slammed around and crying," he told fellow journalists.

Taher Shriteh of Reuter wrote after his return as a visitor to the prison that "it took some time to find our cells in the vast complex. When we were in custody, we were forced to wear hoods much of the time and were hurried from cell to interrogation room, tired and dazed...

"The cluster of cells where Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agents interrogated us was called 'the Slaughterhouse.' A row of children's chairs where we sat blindfolded, listening to others' screams before our turn came, was known as 'the Bus.' A special cell where air-conditioning units blasted out freezing air in the already chilly winter became 'the Refrigerator.'

"Like many prisoners, I had no clear idea of what my captors wanted. On the first day, I confessed to receiving faxes from underground Palestinian groups as a journalist, but they were not satisfied ... Once I offered to sign a false confession that I planned to assassinate Yitzhak Shamir, then Israeli prime minister...

"I remember being surprised at how powerful a weapon personal hygiene could be. Often, we would not eat even when starving because we had nowhere to go to the toilet. We stank in filthy clothes that we were not allowed to wash...

"Back then, Gaza Central Prison—'the Palace' as it is known from the days of Egyptian administration before Israel captured the Gaza Strip in 1967—was a place of fear. During the 38 days I was held there, beaten, deprived of sleep, heat and sight, I often wanted to die just to get out."

Kurt Holden is a retired filmmaker from Southern California who divides his time between the U.S. and the Middle East.