Et Tu, Berkeley? Intended Victim Strikes Back at Intimidation

Seventeen faculty members of the University of California at Berkeley who attempted to intimidate sponsors of an off campus lecture by Professor Noam Chomsky received a blistering response on July 9 from Dr. Barbara Lubin, executive director of the Middle East Children's Alliance. Her organization was the beneficiary of the lecture by Dr. Chomsky, and both were maligned in an April 26 letter by the faculty members.

The technique of "guilt by association " was vintage pro Israel McCarthyism. What was surprising was that the venue was the freewheeling university which gave birth to the free speech movement " of the Vietnam protest era. Following are full texts of the April 26 letter sent to the bookstores that cosponsored the event and to a Berkeley Pacifica radio network station for whom the benefit was also held, and Dr. Lubin's reply.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
Department of Comparative Literature
Prof. Robert Alter

Dear Mr. Masteller and Ms. MacDonald:

We are troubled by your co-sponsorship of "The Middle East and the New World Order, an Evening with Noam Chomsky" on March 16 at the Berkeley Community Theatre. We understand that the event was, in part, a benefit for the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), and we have no doubt that your sponsorship was well intentioned. We wonder, however, whether you are aware of MECA's actual agenda and of Noam Chomsky's support for extremist causes and personalities.

MECA's founder and executive director, Barbara Lubin, has been an outspoken supporter and advocate of Yasser Arafat and the PLO cause. Lubin has visited Arafat several times, most recently last January in Baghdad, against the backdrop of Arafat's unrelenting support for Saddam Hussain. In the US, she has participated in many pro-PLO activities, including forums sponsored by the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Palestine Aid Society, and the Palestine Human Rights Campaign; she and her organization also joined the campaign for the deceptive ballot initiative Measure J in Berkeley, a measure which exploited the plight of the Palestinian refugees for the purpose of anti Israel propaganda (the measure was overwhelmingly defeated).

Lubin's MECA is not, as its name implies, a humanitarian organization concerned with children in the Middle East. Rather, Lubin's organization speaks only when doing so furthers the goals of Arafat and the PLO. Over the last month Arafat's ally Saddam Hussain has been brutally driving out two million Kurds. According to the UN, the death toll of the fleeing refugees reached two thousand a day, most of them young children and babies, but we hear nothing from MECA. Earlier, when Saddam Hussain crushed the uprising against him, slaughtering thousands of Kurds and other Iraqi civilians, many of them also children, we heard no outcry from MECA. When we heard reports of Iraqi troops executing Kuwaiti parents in front of their children and murdering Kuwaiti children, we heard no outcry from MECA. When thousands of Kurdish children were gassed and slaughtered by the Iraqis in 1988, when Lebanese children were recently killed by the Syrians, and earlier during the Lebanese civil war by the PLO and other factions in Lebanon, we heard no outcry from MECA.

The composition of MECA's advisory board further underscores the pro PLO bias and its cooperation with anti Israel organizations. The board includes Fathi Arafat, brother of PLO's Chief Yasser Arafat; Edward Said and Ibrahim Abu Lughod, members of the Palestine National Council (PNC), the PLO decision making body; and leading pro PLO activists James Abourezk (cofounder of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee ADC) and James Zogby (cofounder of the ADC and founder of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign and the Arab American Institute). These are among the major pro PLO organizations in the United States. MECA's professed concern for children is misleading; it appears to be nothing but a propel, anti-Israel organization that cynically and hypocritically exploits the plight of suffering children to advance the PLO cause.

Noam Chomsky (who is also on MECA's advisory board) has been a defender of the PLO even when it was carrying out murder missions against Jewish children. He has also frequently defended, apologized for, or attempted to explain away other extremist activities, lending his name and prestige to give credence to those activities. For example, at the very time of the "Killing Fields" in southern Asia, Chomsky defended the Cambodian Khmer Rouge regime against its critics. He cited reports that drastically minimized Khmer Rouge atrocities, reducing its horrendous genocide to a "few thousand" and advancing the claim that "massacre reports were false" (see his article in The Nation, June 25, 1977).

Additionally (supposedly on the ground of freedom of speech), Chomsky defended Robert Faurisson, the revisionist author of a book denying that the Holocaust occurred and even wrote the introduction for the book. (Faurisson terms the holocaust the "alleged genocide of the Jews" and says it is really a "lie ... largely of Zionist origin. ") Faurisson's credo is: "Hitler never ordered (nor permitted) that someone be killed because of race or religion." Chomsky described Faurisson as a "relatively apolitical liberal."

It is unseemly that a business such as yours, devoted to the dissemination of books, enlightenment and honest intellectual pursuit, should sponsor and promote an event that raises money for a propaganda organization dedicated to distortions and support of terrorists.

Such organizations, with hidden agendas, often masquerade as humanitarian, peace loving groups. We urge you to act responsibly and cautiously in evaluating the events you sponsor.

Prof. Robert Alter, Dept. of Comparative Literature Prof. Eugene Bardach, School of Public Policy

Prof. Stanley Berger, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering Prof. William Brinner, Dept. of Near Eastern Studies Prof. Thomas Barnes, Dept. of History

Prof. Jack Citrin, Dept. of Political Science Prof. John Coons, Boalt School of Law

Prof. Edwin Epstein, Dept. of Business Administration Prof. Gerald Feldman, Dept. of History

Prof. Martin Malia, Dept. of History

Prof. Austin Ranney, Dept. of Political Science

Prof. Harry Rubin, Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology Prof. Justin Sweet, Boalt School of Law

Prof. Martin Trow, Dept. of Public Policy

Prof. Steven Weber, Dept. of Political Science Prof. Aaron Wildavsky, Dept. of Public Policy Prof. Raymond Wolfinger, Dept of Political Science

Dear Prof. Alter et al,

I recently received a copy of the letter you sent to the bookstores who cosponsored "An Evening with Noam Chomsky," and frankly I was disgusted by what I read. Not only were the statements made about myself and the Middle Eastern Children's Alliance blatant lies, but I was horrified at your crude efforts to intimidate these independent bookstores and stifle opinions with which you might disagree and outraged at the racism of singling out only the Arab American members of our advisory board and Palestinian rights organizations with which we have worked.

Virtually every statement you make about either myself or the Middle East Children's Alliance is demonstrably false, slanderous and so baldly designed to smear us that I hope you and the other professors who signed this letter apply more rigorous standards of scholarship to your own work and that of your students than you have done here. Contrary to what you write, the Middle East Children's Alliance is a humanitarian organization; over the course of our three year existence we have delivered more than $1.5 million worth of medicine, food and clothing to needy children in the Middle East. Just last month the Middle East Children's Alliance delivered $960,000 in emergency medicine to both Iraqi and Kurdish children through the Middle East Council of Churches.

If you had read any of the materials we have produced including our own mailings and newsletters, a full page ad that was placed in The New York Times and the many, many newspaper articles in which I was quoted or heard me speak on the radio, on television or at public forums, you would know that no one has been more critical of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait than 1, that we publicly deplored the treatment of Kuwaiti children as well as his brutal treatment of the Kurdish children. We publicly deplored Saddam's hurling of Scud missiles at Israel.

As for my own personal commitment to children, let me just say that I served four years on the Berkeley Board of Education and have spent a lifetime fighting for the rights of children, especially disabled children, in this country. To spend more time defending myself to you is beneath my dignity.

As well, your use of "guilt by association" throughout your letter is not befitting someone in your academic position. I have met Arafat, Arafat supported Saddam, therefore I supported Saddam; is that the way it goes? Frankly, you should be embarrassed to have committed such nonsense to paper.

Yes, it is true that I have met with Yasser Arafat three times over these past three years. He is recognized around the world as the legitimate leader of the Palestinians and I have met with him not only to show my support for the Palestinians' right to self determination, but to learn for myself what he thinks and feels, without it having filtered through the distorting lens of the US media. The heads of state from around the world have met with Arafat. He has addressed the United Nations. Members of the Bush administration including Secretary of State James Bakerhave met with PLO representatives. Are they all nothing more than "PLO propagandists" as well?

You accuse the Middle East Children's Alliance of "cooperation with anti Israel organizations," when nothing could be further from the truth. As you would also know if you paid attention to our public statements and materials, we wholeheartedly support the "two state" solution; independent and secure states of Israel and Palestine. You make the mistake, I presume it is just more intellectual flabbiness on your part and not a deliberate attempt to distort, of equating criticizing the policies of the Israeli government with being anti Israel. You further say that we ourselves are "anti Israel" yet you could not produce one shred of evidence to support such a ridiculous assertion.

As for your malicious statements that the Middle East Children's Alliance "appears to be nothing but a pro PLO, anti Israel organization that cynically and hypocritically exploits the plight of suffering children to advance the PLO cause" and is "a propaganda organization dedicated to distortions and support of terrorists" let me simply say that I hope you are prepared to prove these statements in court.

I found it particularly telling that your letter singled out the Arab and Palestinian members of our advisory board. I think more than smearing us we are proud that these honorable people are part of our organization your focus reveals your own racism against Arabs. Every member of our advisory board is fully informed of all of our activities and programs and every one of them shares our feelings toward the children and toward the fair and just solution for peace in the region. We are very proud that our advisory board represents a wide cross-section of people from many different communities who all support our work.

I'm also very proud that we, along with KPFA, were the beneficiaries of the Noam Chomsky lecture. You may be aware that Prof. Chomsky is one of the most sought after speakers in the country, and often books several years in advance. You may be aware as well that his talk sold out at the Berkeley Community Theatre in a matter of days proof that there is ample interest in what he has to say. Certainly I hope you are not saying that everyone does not have the right to speak in this community, for surely you know where that slippery slope leads.

Dr. Chomsky has been described as "arguably the most important intellectual alive" by The New York Times. (Perhaps you should add the publisher to your "enemies list" and see if you can get their boxes removed from our city streets.) I find it contradictory and hypocritical that a group of university professors would attempt to harass local booksellers into ignoring one of the most crucial issues of the day, whether you disagree with Chomsky's analysis or not. None of us, not the Middle East Children's Alliance, not KPFA and not the bookstores had any advance knowledge of what the content of his presentation would be. Ideas, freely debated and discussed, should not be feared but encouraged.

I am happy to tell you that the money we raised at the event helped us send nearly $1 million in medicine to the Iraqi and Kurdish children and helped pay bookmobile in Gaza. Despite your efforts to insinuate otherwise, we did not use the money to write a check for the PLO. The whole notion that we financially support the PLO or in any way condone terror anyone is so patently absurd as to defy belief.

As for your claims about Chomsky support for the genocide in Cambodia, I know his entire written and spoken history, but, knowing Noam personally, do not believe that he would in any way condone or defend genocide. As for your implication that he is a Nazi sympathizer, I can say outright that that is one of the foulest lies I’ve ever heard. And, having gone back and read the introduction he wrote in the Faurisson book, I notice that Noam takes pains to point out several times that he disagrees in with the book's premise and conclusion. Again, the hideous tactic of “guilt by association" is used to splatter mud where it doesn't belong. I am, however quite familiar with Noam's analysis of US Policy in the Middle East and consider it a valuable contribution to the debate and extremely cogent. We hope to bring him back to the area as soon as possible.

You falsely claim that the Middle East Children's Alliance has a hidden agenda when it is you and the other signatories to this abomination who have unspoken motives. Clearly, the goal of this letter is to stifle debate about the Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and the US role in the region. By smearing myself, my organization, our advisory board, Noam Chomsky and major US-Arab organizations, you hope the bookstores will not cosponsor similar events in the future and that finally, they will allowed to be held. Shame on you!

I know that in the past these tactics have been used to intimidate people, to muffle opinions and to frighten people into silence. And that usually these tactics have been kept quiet and used in the shadows. I believe that you thought you could get away with it this time in that same way. Let me tell you that you are not only ignorant of the real, honest work of the Middle East Children's Alliance, of my own deep and long-standing commitment to children, but you have no idea at all who I am. Each of the lies, smears and slanders you told about me, about the Middle East Children's Alliance, about the members of our advisory board, about Noam Chomsky and about your attempts to bully these independent bookstores will be dragged into the light where they will shrivel and die.

Barbara Lubin, Executive Director