Harsh Truths, Harsher Realities

By Paul N. McCloskey, Jr.

It was three years ago in Geneva that I addressed a similar conference of non-governmental organizations and I said at that time what I would like to repeat now—that the solution to the problem that this convention addresses will be determined by public opinion in the United States. I do not think that anyone questions that if the United States chose to say to the State of Israel: "We will cut off $4.5 billion in aid next year unless you cease building your settlements on the West Bank, unless you allow free and fair elections of Mayors on the West Bank, unless you honour Resolution 242 and leave the occupied territories with your military forces," I do not think there is any question but that in Israel's current circumstances, Israel would sooner or later take those steps. What has preserved the injustices to the Palestinians has been the posture of the United States Government. In our system of Government, unlike many around the world, we elect representatives, not leaders. Our Congress and our President do what the American people will permit them to do in the limited terms of office that they hold.

In the last 20 years that I have been involved in the political scene in America, I have seen four major changes in American public policy. Not one of those changes has been initiated by the American Government. They have all been resisted by the American Government, but in each case the Government's position has been changed by the will of the American people and the public opinion of the American people. I refer to the civil rights movement which took perhaps a hundred years following our Civil War before we gave equal rights to Black people; the women's rights movement which took perhaps 50 years; the environmental movement which took perhaps 20 years; and finally, the movement to end the war in Viet Nam from the time we initiated that war in 1964 until the people elected a Congress that voted an end to that war nine years later in 1973.

Now we are engaged in two new movements in the United States—one to achieve justice for blacks in South Africa, one to achieve justice for Palestinians. Both of these movements are presently opposed by the American Government and there are growing numbers of people in the United States who will one day change both policies. I want to make only four points in these brief remarks.

The Struggle for U.S. Public Opinion

The first is that this battle for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people will be won or lost in public opinion of the United States. If you accept that first point, the second point is very simple. Public opinion will be changed by non-governmental organizations equipped with proper information. If you accept that second point, we now move to the third and fourth points, both of which require realistic, new actions by the people we would like to help—the Palestinians themselves, as represented by their sole legitimate representative, the PLO. Now what are those two steps that the PLO must take?

First, public opinion in America is determined by a network of newspapers, radio and television commentators, and organizations which communicate with the radio, the press and television. There is no organization today in this world that represents the Palestinians and the PLO as a news agency. Now this is a matter which has been caused and certainly assisted by the strength of the Jewish community in America. The Jewish community does not want books circulated in America that are critical of Israel. The Jewish community does not want movies made that are critical of Israel. Every American has seen the movie, The Holocaust, at least once every six months over the last five years. When the Palestinians have tried to present, even on public television, movies that reflect the treatment of Palestinians on the West Bank, they are generally blocked by prominent Israeli sympathizers in the news distribution media.

But the first step for the PLO to consider is that for non-governmental organizations to be able to network information throughout the United States and to educate the minds and the hearts of the American people so that American public opinion will recognize the injustices that are being done to the Palestinians, the first thing we need is a source of information, a credible spokesperson for the PLO located in the one place in America where the PLO is allowed to operate legally, and I am speaking of New York, Mr. Terzi, at the United Nations. But I want to say with all due respect to my friends in the Palestinian movement that until now you have been ill-equipped to wage a war for public opinion. You need television studios, you need reporters, you need the ability to communicate instantaneously and respond to inquiries from non-governmental organizations in America; you need a network that is just as much public relations-oriented in our country as any of the great companies which sell soap or automobiles or gasoline. There must be, in a war for public opinion, not an emphasis on arms but an emphasis on communicating ability. For some reason, my Palestinian friends send their sons and daughters to engineering schools, medical schools, law schools, but they do not go to communications school, They do not learn the arts of television communication, radio communication and news-writing.

If we can put throughout America a network of Palestinian spokespeople capable of writing and speaking on radio and television, the battle for public opinion will be immensely accelerated. But it starts with a central spokesperson for the Palestinian cause. And if I may make the suggestion to my good friends in the PLO, with all due respect to male leadership in the Arab world, in my judgment, the spokesperson should be a woman. This is because in recent years we have been up against the concept that somehow the Palestinian is a terrorist. I think I have told you the story of leaving West Beirut in 1982, going down to Jerusalem and meeting successively with Mr. Sharon, Mr. Begin and Mr. Shamir. We had rather outspoken confrontations. I suggested that Mr. Sharon was a butcher, that Mr. Begin was killing a hundred civilians for each Palestinian soldier he was killing with his artillery and aerial bombardments of West Beirut. I had little more sympathy with Mr. Shamir's point of view.

After these meetings, I was invited to appear on American public television that night, on five minutes of prime time over NBC with a man you have all seen, known throughout the world, Tom Brokaw. That broadcast by television was monitored by the Israeli military censor. Mr. Brokaw asked: "Congressman, what do you think of Mr. Begin?" And I said, "Mr. Begin, in my judgment, is a terrorist, and is still a terrorist." "What do you think of Mr. Sharon?" I said he was a butcher. I thought that his use of cluster bombs in West Beirut, in violation of the Israeli agreement with the United States, was an outrage and should have caused us to cut off military aid. The military censor allowed these words to pass unchallenged. Mr. Brokaw then said, "Well, Congressman McCloskey, what did you think of Yasser Arafat?" I said, "I thought he was a moderate leader among the Arab leaders that I had met in that part of the world." Whereupon, the censor cut the television broadcast off instantaneously. As I left the studio, I heard the military censor talking with the young producer of the American programme, saying: "The Congressman can say whatever he wants to about our leaders—we don't always like them either. But he cannot use Israeli television to say anything good about Yasser Arafat, who is a terrorist."

The entire Israeli network, their entire network of sympathizers throughout the United States, have sought for years to convince the American people that the PLO is a terrorist organization. And the unfortunate part of it is that there has been no news organization to respond.

It was not until January 8th of this year, 1986, that President Reagan sent over to the State Department for some information to justify our militance against Libya. Some employee, deep in the State Department, well below the Assistant Secretary level, dredged up four pages which were the first accurate information that the United States people have ever heard about the PLO. In those four pages, the State Department advised the President of the United States that the PLO in 1974 had given up terrorism; that Chairman Arafat had directed PLO agencies around the world, and in the Mideast, to stop terrorism; that the terrorism which had been occurring since 1974 was largely due to a man named Abu Nidal, a renegade who had sworn to try to assassinate Arafat himself. But the entire Jewish communication network in the United States, the public relations organizations, were putting out the word that it was Yasser Arafat and the PLO who were the terrorists. Thus it is that after 12 years, since 1974, of constant drumming into American public opinion that the PLO is a terrorist organization, when in fact it is not the PLO that has conducted the terrorist acts, this is what has made it so difficult to change American public opinion.

The Myth of the Palestinian Threat to Israel's Survival

But let me go to the fourth point. I asked Secretary [of State George] Shultz, who like me, was a professor at Stanford University, what had changed his posture on the Middle East after he took office as the Secretary of State. And he said, "Pete, to understand our policy toward Israel in the Middle East, you must understand that the cornerstone of our policy is that Israel must feel secure." And I can tell you that every Jewish citizen in America, whether he believes in the existence of Israel or not, has been drawn into a network of roughly two-and-a-half percent of the people of America, who insist of their elected representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and in the White House, that they stand for the security of Israel.

Now most of the American people, on the other hand, have seen, since the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in the limited pictures they have seen of the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories and more recently, and most effectively, in the tours that Non-Governmental Organizations have sponsored all over America for members of the peace movement from Israel and Palestinians who recognize the existence of Israel, most Americans are beginning to get a different picture of Israel. The meetings held for Palestinians and Israelis throughout the United States, sponsored by NonGovernmental Organizations, attended usually reluctantly initially, by major and minor media people in the United States, these events are slowly changing American public opinion to support the Palestinian cause. But there is one great barrier to the support of the Palestinian cause. And that is the remaining myth that the Israelis and their sympathizers have managed to create and to maintain that the Palestinians still want to destroy Israel. They point to the PLO's original covenant, they point to the militant statements of Palestinians around the world. They cannot debate any longer the merits of the Palestinian position, nor the injustices of the Israeli position. But by pointing to the fact that the PLO refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, they have thus far been able to keep the debate away from the merits of the Palestinian cause and the injustices on the Israeli side. They have been helped by events like the Achille Lauro, the bombings of the Vienna and the Rome airports; they have been managing to preserve the image of the PLO as a terrorist organization that wants to destroy Israel. That is the single greatest barrier to achieving a view of American public opinion, even in the Jewish community, that the Palestinians ought to have a separate homeland, and there ought to be direct negotiations with the PLO.

The Imperative of Mutual Recognition

The fourth point that I want to make, therefore, is that the greatest single step to assist non-governmental organizations to change American public opinion and thus put the American Government on the right side where it ought to be for a two-State solution, would be for the PLO to come out forthrightly, clearly and unequivocally and recognize Israel. Now why should this be? Americans are basically fair. And Americans have a great deal at stake. We have been drawn into two great wars in this century, as a previous speaker has mentioned, World War I and World War II. At the end of World War II, we pioneered the concept of the United Nations, and a world peace under world law, where no nation would expand its territory by armed conquest as the Israelis have done since 1948 when they came into existence as a State. And if the United States is to follow the United Nations Charter, we would expect, as a people, the American people, that both the Israelis and the PLO would recognize that the rights of both Israel and the Palestinians stem from that act of the United Nations in 1947 when the United Nations General Assembly enacted Resolution 181. Prior to that time Palestine had existed under the League of Nations Mandate whereby the British, forsome 35 years, had exercised a mandate over Palestine which for hundreds of years before that had been dominated and occupied and ruled and oppressed by the Turkish and Byzantine Empires. Palestinian rights, as Israeli rights, stem from the United Nations Charter and they stem from Resolution 181, and to remind you, let me just quote some words from that resolution.

The mandate for Palestine shall terminate as soon as possible but in any case, not later than I August 1948. Independent Arab and Jewish States and the special international regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence in Palestine, two months after the evacuation of the Armed Forces of the mandatory power has been completed but in any case not later than I October 1948. The boundaries of the Arab State, the Jewish State and the City of Jerusalem shall be as described in Part II and Part III below ... [and the lines were drawn.]

You can not claim rights to statehood for Palestinians unless you accept the right of statehood for the Jews. It is imperative if we are to be effective as non-governmental organizations in changing American public opinion, and to achieve the conference that has been requested by the United Nations Resolution 38/58 C, that the steps to achieve that conference start with an unequivocal declaration by the PLO and by this conference as well that two States should be recognized in the area of what was once Palestine-an Arab State and a Jewish State. Where the boundaries should be, and what should be the ultimate status for the City of Jerusalem, this conference need not address. That can be determined by negotiations. But I can assure you, as one who has participated in the great debates in the United States which forced changes in public opinion and thereafter forced changes in governmental policy, that the change in governmental policy of the United States will occur most rapidly if the PLO will take this unequivocal step. I hope that in the resolutions that this body considers, it will consider that which we looked at in 1983 but rejected because, if you will recall, when we met in 1983, we were so taken with injustices to the Palestinians, were so taken with anger and hostility to what Israel had done that we did not insist that our resolution to create Palestinian statehood rest on that same basic resolution which created Israeli statehood, UN General Assembly Resolution 181. If we are to achieve two states, and I am familiar with the argument that this recognition is the PLO's last hole card, we cannot play this card without getting something for it, we have to recognize that U.S. public opinion is the way to success. Every speaker here has agreed that public opinion in the United States is key. We can change U.S. public opinion within the next year if the Palestinians and the PLO in the next month can publicly concede that the same resolution recognizing the state of Israel in 1947 also gave the Palestinians their inalienable rights to self-determination and their own state as well.

To obtain Palestinian statehood we must concede the right to Israeli statehood as well.

Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey, Jr., a former Congressman from California, currently practices law in Palo Alto, California.