A Choice Not an Echo on the Middle East in Wyoming’s Lone Congressional District

By Jan Mallery

In most congressional elections, voters are tormented by the spectacle of both major party candidates tripping over each other in an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the powerful (and generous) pro-Israel lobby. Each candidate pledges full support for the policies of the Israeli government, no matter how egregious. Neither candidate would dare to suggest a reduction in the astronomical level of financial aid given by the United States to Israel.

This year’s congressional election in Wyoming, however, offers a refreshing change—a real choice between a typical “Israel-firster” member of Congress and a challenger who has a long history of supporting a just resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Scott Farris, who won the Democratic Party nomination for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat, is a former journalist who has spoken out against the inequitable policies of the United States in the Middle East.

As a political columnist for Wyoming’s largest and only statewide newspaper, the Casper Star-Tribune, Farris wrote several columns questioning the level of aid given to Israel, particularly the unique policy that allows American citizens to deduct donations to Israeli charities from their income tax. That column generated from former Illinois Rep. Paul Findley an appreciative note.

Farris, 41, has also contributed articles to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, including a 1989 profile of former Wyoming Rep. Richard Cheney and his views of the Middle East when Cheney was named Secretary of Defense by President George Bush. Farris has also reviewed books on the Middle East for such publications as The Bloomsbury Review .

Farris’ knowledge of Middle East affairs, expressed during a foreign policy seminar at the University of Wyoming, so impressed the guest seminar leader, former Under secretary of State David Newsom, that Farris was invited to participate in the 1989 Georgetown University International Leadership Seminar while Newsom was a professor there at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.

Farris’ opponent, on the other hand, two-term incumbent Rep. Barbara Cubin, has taken the usual line of unflinching support for even the hardest line of Israeli policies—policies a significant number of Israeli citizens often oppose, but never the United States Congress.

“There can be no peace without recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.”

Mrs. Cubin, a Republican identified with the most conservative wing of her party, has taken the usual all-expenses-paid junkets to Israel, courtesy of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has been unwavering in the support of every conceivable form of aid to Israel, and has been a routine signatory on letters to U.S. foreign policy officials demanding that no U.S. policy ever run counter to the desires of Israeli hard-liners.

Farris, an aide to former Wyoming Gov. Mike Sullivan, said that while foreign policy has not been a major theme of his campaign this year, there is no doubt that Middle East politics plays a role even in the American West.

“I had a conversation with former Wyoming Sen. Malcolm Wallop, for whom I interned in 1979-80, who recalled how during his 1976 Senate campaign he had been asked once about U.S. policy in the Middle East during a rally in a small town in north central Wyoming,” Farris said. “Malcolm said he had suggested the United States needed to be more evenhanded in its dealings between Israel and the Arab nations of the region. That remark was buried in a long article in the local newspaper, which had a circulation of about 2,000.

“Malcolm said he had not been in Washington a week after his election when he was visited by a member of the Israeli Knesset who had a copy of the newspaper article and asked Malcolm to explain what he meant by ‘evenhanded.’ Under such watchful eyes, it is easy to see why so many officeholders and office seekers decide the easiest course, absent any strong local voice to the contrary, is to simply go along with the AIPAC line.”

Farris said his interest in Middle East affairs dates to his childhood. His family had lived briefly in Jordan in the mid-1950s while his father, a career Department of Interior employee, worked under the old “Point Four” program, teaching modern farming techniques to Jordanians.

He was born a year after they returned to the States, “but we regularly reviewed slides my father took in Jordan,” Farris said. “Included were photographs of Palestinian refugee camps. I was aware very early on in my life of the tragic situation of the Palestinian people.”

Farris, who has also worked in the Catholic press as editor of The Wyoming Catholic Register, said the Middle East is important to U.S. interests for a variety of reasons, economic, military and religious, and U.S. interests require the goodwill of all the region’s residents.

“Supporting justice for the Palestinians does not mean negating the security concerns of Israel,” Farris said, “but real security comes only from peace. There can be no peace without recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians. To me, this quite obviously includes the creation of an independent Palestinian nation, side by side with Israel, as was contemplated by the United Nations in 1948.”

While assassins’ bullets and occasionally incompetent leadership on all sides have made peace an elusive commodity in the Middle East, Farris said it should not dissuade people of good will from continuing to work to promote peace, prosperity and justice in the region.

“Most Americans blithely assume the conflict between Jews and Arabs has been going on for thousands of years, but of course this is not true,” Farris said. “The origins of this conflict go back a hundred years, a rather short time compared to some other world ethnic conflicts. I am optimistic about peace because it is the only answer that makes sense. But it will come only when we elect people willing to consider the claims on all sides, not just those with political muscle.”

Jan Mallery teaches high school in Oregon.