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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1987, page 8 Letters to (and From) the Editors Richard Curtiss July 29, 1987 Dear Dick: I feel you have finally managed the classic definition of the word chutzpah by mentioning Fulbright and Percy as examples of the impartiality of your Middle East Report. Both have been the standard anti-Israeli public figures in this country. It will give many people a good laugh. Sincerely, Ed August 1, 1987 Mr. Edmund Schechter Dear Ed, The word we used was "non-partisan," and the point in mentioning AET Foreign Policy Committee members Senators J. William Fulbright and Charles Percy as evidence of it is that one is a Democrat and one is a Republican. It will be interesting to see how history regards these long-time chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, both of whom worked so hard to make senatorial advice and consent representative of long-term American interests, instead of the me-tooism we see at present from both sides of the aisle in matters pertaining to Israel. We may also see how history regards those who conspired to assemble huge sums from outside Arkansas and Illinois to finance negative campaign advertising attacking these two statesmen who questioned the wisdom of annual blank checks for Israel. The conspirators are the same people who, by paying speaking honoraria to congressional "friends" of Israel, and now by illegally coordinating the campaign donations of between 80 and 100 pro-Israel political action committees, have extracted for Israel, according to the Los Angeles Times, $58 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, as much as all of Western Europe received from the Marshall Plan which put it back on its economic feet after World War II. This fantastic sum went to a tiny country with only 1.5 percent of the population of post-war Western Europe and which, by any standard, is still an economic basket case. I hope you saw or will see Ofra Bickel's film, "Israel, the Price of Victory," on PBS, so you can hear from Israelis themselves how they became, in the words of one Israeli interviewee, "the parasites of America" and "the mercenaries of America." It wasn't Senators Fulbright or Percy who did that to them. Instead it was Americans who call themselves friends, but who have made Israel a country where Jewish emigrants outnumber immigrants, and where a Yitzhak Shamir or an Ariel Sharon, after years in the moral and political wilderness, have both credibility and clout, thanks to that untied, annual $3 billion from a cowed US Congress. I suspect history will judge Israel's "friends" in America harshly for what they've done to both countries. I won't have "a good laugh," however, over the mischief caused by heedless "friends" who should have known better. Sincerely, Dick |