Washington Report, August 11, 1986, Page 9

Page 65

By Richard Curtiss

Whether or not it's a US. media conspiracy, when Qaddafi demands war it's on Page I and when Arafat offers peace it's on Page 65. Israel's triumphs are on Page I but when Israel breaks US. laws to achieve them and needs more American money to pay for them, that's on Page 65. Editors who break the rules lose advertisers. Most U.S. dailies have no Page 65 at all. Since papers of record, like the New York Times do, however, the U.S. has a free press although few Americans learn much from it about the Middle East. Here's something you may have missed from Page 65.

The idea that (the Achille Lauro) hijackers were freedom fighters is a bunch of baloney ... You can throw that in the junk pail. —Secretary of State George Shultz, July 10, 1986.

George Shultz's persistent refusal to admit that addressing the Palestinian grievance would end much of the terrorism against Americans may be justified when one limits the field to terrorism within the United States. The FBI reports that during 1985 Jewish extremists committed four of the seven terrorist acts recorded in the United States and were responsible for both of the deaths and 9 of the 10 injuries recorded.

Of the three terrorist acts for which Jewish extremist organizations were not responsible, two were attributed by the FBI to the Organization of Volunteers for the Puerto Rican Revolution and one to the Red Guerrilla Resistance which accuses the U.S. of world-wide militarism and imperialism.

I pointed out to (to Prime Minister Menachem Begin) that I had seen public opinion polls ... in which a substantial majority of the Israeli people were willing to accept a peace treaty with an end to the settlements ... and the yielding of substantial portions of the West Bank. I ... said that my position represented the Israeli people better than his. —From Former President Jimmy Carter's account of the Camp David summit meeting, Time Magazine, Oct. 11, 1982.

Like Israelis at home, American Jews may be a lot more forthcoming than their leaders in conceding a right to a homeland to the Palestinians. In a letter published July 1 in the New York Times, Steven M. Cohen, professor of sociology at Queens College in New York, writes:

In surveys of national samples of American Jews I conducted for the American Jewish Committee in 1983 and with a City University of New York grant in 1985, I found that about half the samples actually agreed with the statement "Palestinians have a right to a homeland on the West Bank and Gaza, as long as it does not threaten Israel;" only a quarter disagreed, and another quarter were "not sure," (1985 figures 50 percent; 24 percent; 26 percent.) Incidently, the Israeli Labor Party also endorses such a view.

With half of the Israelis, half of American Jews, the Israeli Labor Party, a consistent majority of the American people, and all three living former U.S. Presidents on record agreeing with the Arabs that the Palestinians are entitled to a homeland on the West Bank and Gaza, it appears that the only remaining obstacles to a land-for-peace agreement are President Reagan, Secretary Shultz, the big-money and media guys who tell them what to do in the Middle East, and the extremist leaders of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

—Richard Curtiss