December 1995, Pages 121-122

Publishers' Page

A Year-End Report to Our Stockholders

Other non-profit groups don't have stockholders, but we do. Our "common stock" holders are individual subscribers to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. They vote all year long with their letters, some of which are printed every month. Our "preferred stock" holders are the members of AET's "Choir of Angels," and the unpaid ex-diplomats and ex-congressmen comprising our boards of advisers. Each year we report to all of these stockholders our accomplishments to date and our goals for the future.

Where We Stand

We've maintained since the founding, in January 1982, of the American Educational Trust, that real stability in the Middle East and real security for both Arabs and Israelis must start with an Arab-Israeli land-for-peace settlement based upon U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. This would include full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and the Golan Heights and equal rights for all of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim residents of a shared Jerusalem. And we have suggested that the dispute is not between Arabs and Israelis, but rather moderates versus extremists in each camp. Now we include the objective of fair and free elections to choose the Palestinian leaders to finalize the peace with Israel. Our goal, therefore, has been the fine-tuning of U.S. Middle East policies to support the moderates in Israel, in the Arab states, and in the Islamic world.

Result: These proposals for bettering U.S. relations with all Middle East countries have been characterized as "Arabist" or "Israel bashing" by partisans of special interests in the Middle East. But they provided the underpinning for the Declaration of Principles for Peace signed Sept. 13, 1993 that has generated momentum toward a settlement that will be hard for its opponents to stop. It will be stopped, however, if either party is allowed by its backers to deviate from those principles.

Where Credit Is Due

Many individual activists, some organizations and periodicals, and a few historians, journalists, religious leaders, elected officials, civil servants and diplomats who, in former Congressman Paul Findley's words, "dared to speak out" deserve credit for all of the "results" listed in this report. Our role has been to inspire, inform and increase the numbers of people in all of those categories, and provide some measure of coordination for their efforts.

A Pioneering Book

One of AET's first activities was publication in 1982 of the book A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute. Its unique depiction of U.S. involvement from the viewpoint of those inside the government who had devoted their public careers to working on the problem garnered letters of praise from former Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter. No book on the Middle East had ever before received letters of commendation from every living ex-president of the United States, nor has it happened since.

Result: Points made in this popularly written book that told the whole story from a viewpoint never before touched upon in the U.S. mainstream media increasingly have become the accepted version among Middle East specialists, Israel's "New Historian" writers, and among an expanding segment of the American public as well.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Also in 1982, AET launched the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs as an eight-page semi-monthly newsletter mailed on a complimentary basis to every member of Congress and a broad list of journalists and diplomats. For two years everyone waited for disaster to befall an informed publication that defied U.S. media taboos by audaciously debunking what Dr. Alfred Lilienthal has called the Middle East "myth-information" that blames only the Arabs and never Israel or its U.S. supporters for America's problems in the Middle East.

Result: By the time all of its "seed money" had run out, the Washington Report had a sizable and growing paid circulation among those very same "opinion molders," who had become addicted to this unprecedented, but authoritative, approach to the Middle East. It's now a 124-page magazine.

Opening Book Markets

Because A Changing Image sold out even faster than we could reprint it, we imported objective books on the Middle East published in England. Quartet Books in London became the collection point to which other British publishers would send the copies we ordered and, twice a year, our orders of several thousand books would be shipped to us in a sea container.

Result: Discovering such a large American market, British publishers began bringing out U.S. editions of their Middle East books. Then U.S. publishers brought out original books of their own, usually after checking with us to see how many copies we could sell through the Washington Report. When the magazine began in 1982 there were no more than a half-dozen objective books on modern Middle East history in print in the U.S. Today our book catalog alone lists more than 140.

Uncovering U.S. Aid to Israel

Every year we set goals. Some years ago we sought to make the public aware of the total of U.S. aid to Israel, a figure that was very hard to pry out of the U.S. government and one that never appeared in the mainstream U.S. media. We vividly recall the first time we said on a Washington, DC radio talk show that Israel was receiving $3 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds in that year alone. The startled host thought we had misspoken. "You mean $300 million, don't you?" he asked. We later received a tape recording of that show from the station engineer's booth in which, when we explained that indeed we meant $3 billion, a voice can be heard asking the engineer, "Did you hear what that guy just said ?" The engineer answered, "Man, that's a lot of money."

Result: The taboo was broken, but until about 1991 the mainstream press invariably reported only that Israel "receives $1.2 billion in economic aid" or "Israel receives $1.8 billion in military aid," thus avoiding revealing the combined figure.

Whistle Blowing on Loan Guarantees

In August 1991, a month and a half before then-President George Bush's famous press conference on the subject, the Washington Report published an analysis of the proposed $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Israel, pointing out that they would cost U.S. taxpayers between $3 billion and $117 billion, depending upon whether and how much Israel actually repaid. We refuted Israel lobby claims that Israel "has never defaulted on a U.S. government loan" by pointing out that in fact Israel never has repaid a U.S. government loan. All eventually are forgiven by Congress which, by means of the Cranston Amendment attached to every U.S. foreign aid bill since 1984, also pays all of the interest on U.S. loans to Israel until they are forgiven. This and additional facts about the loan guarantees revealed for the first time in the Washington Report eventually appeared in virtually every major U.S. newspaper, either via paid advertisements, which most U.S. dailies accepted only to avert public charges of censorship, or in letters from our readers to their local editors. The Israel lobby dropped its claim that the loan guarantees "will cost U.S. taxpayers nothing."

Result: When President Bush asked Congress to delay consideration of loan guarantees until after the opening of Middle East peace talks, a poll revealed that he was supported by 86 percent of the U.S. public. The resulting shock brought down the Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir in January 1992. In June 1992 it was replaced by the Labor government of Yitzhak Rabin.

Platform for an AIPAC Defector

In July 1992 the Washington Report printed an article by AIPAC defector Greg Slabodkin, who could not get a hearing from any other U.S. publication he approached, revealing the existence of a clandestine "opposition research" section in AIPAC. Directed by Michael Lewis, son of "Orientalist" Bernard Lewis, it gathers and manipulates information on "enemies of Israel," particularly Jewish critics of Israeli policies, which it secretly passes to rival journalists and politicians for use in smearing those critics. Slabodkin also revealed the names of some journalists who had used this material, including "terrorism expert" Steven Emerson.

Result: Slabodkin's revelations in the Washington Report, subsequently picked up and amplified in other publications, became a catalyst for a series of events. One of these was the taping by a Jewish donor, disgusted by AIPAC's McCarthyite tactics, of boasts by AIPAC's chairman about his organization's influence on top-level personnel placements within the Clinton administration. Since then, most AIPAC staff directors have been replaced and both its chairman and vice chairman have resigned. Meanwhile, the best-funded component of the Israel lobby in America, B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League, has been investigated and exposed for using illegal methods to compile and circulate files similar to those Slabodkin described.

Upping Foreign Aid Consciousness

By 1993 the press was reporting routinely that "Israel receives $3 billion in U.S. aid." By then, however, the total of U.S. economic and military aid and loan guarantees to Israel actually had reached at least $6.3 billion. We helped force that figure into the public consciousness by printing 40,000 copies of a bumper sticker containing the figure and mailing one to every subscriber, all funded by one former U.S. foreign service officer member of AET's "Angels' Choir."

Result: Because it took place in the middle of the "peace process," mass mailing of the bumper sticker is one of the most controversial things we've done. But within days the general media description of current U.S. aid to Israel became "in excess of $3 billion." The $6.3 billion figure by now also has begun to appear in the mainstream media, often introduced by letters from Washington Report readers.

Increasing Library Subscriptions

Other goals for 1994 and 1995 were to increase the number of library subscribers by getting the Washington Report "indexed" by a major service. Regular readers don't need further briefing on what a highly politicized battlefield public libraries, and even university libraries, have become where Middle East affairs are concerned.

Result: Since 1994, the Washington Report has been among 1,600 periodicals indexed by the Public Affairs Information Service, one of the most heavily used indexes in academic libraries. By late 1995, Washington Report library subscriptions numbered more than 4,300. Donated subscriptions, libraries, newsstands, and daily participation by its publisher, editors and writers in radio talk shows all over the United States are the Washington Report's most important sources of new subscribers.

Informing Voters

As in the past, the Washington Report made available to voters throughout the 1994 election year reports drawn from the Federal Election Commission of how much every candidate for Congress was taking from the 116 deceptively named pro-Israel political action committees (PACs) AET has named publicly over the years. This and similar information for the 1996 election cycle will be added to a new, fourth edition of AET's 200-page book, Stealth PACs: Lobbying Congress for Control of Middle East Policy.

Result: This is a continuation of an AET project, begun in 1984, to keep voters informed of how much everyone who has ever run for Congress has received from PACs on all sides of Middle East-related issues since PACs were created in 1976. A copy of each new edition of Stealth PACs, containing all of this information, goes gratis to every member of Congress. It demonstrates to congressmembers that there now is more than one constituency that is deeply concerned about their votes on foreign aid and the Middle East, and that the information the book contains is available both to their constituents and to their challengers.

Goals for 1996

At present, we also are preparing a computer compact disc containing an index and the contents of our first 14 years of publication to make them available to journalists, scholars and the public on computer disks and on the Internet.

Result: In the future, those writing on any aspect of U.S.-Middle East relations will have at their fingertips not only what the standard computer reference services bring up, but also what the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs has reported on each subject. It will be available to Internet users via the Washington Report World Wide Web home page. Through use of key words any user can quickly check out everything we have written on any given subject. This should have a discernible impact on U.S. media interviewing and reporting on Middle East affairs.

Involving Our Readers

The question we most frequently are asked is how completion of the first two stages of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement affects the Washington Report. The answer is that it affects the magazine in exactly the way it affects all Americans—profoundly. If all parties to the Oslo agreement implement the crucial final stage reasonably and in good faith, it can remove the problem underlying most U.S. troubles in the Middle East. But it can exacerbate those troubles if either party seeks special advantage, as already seems to be the case with orchestrated calls for Arabs to lift their primary economic boycott (in addition to the secondary and tertiary boycotts which most already have lifted) before Israel agrees to final borders, a water-sharing agreement, and a shared Jerusalem.

The alacrity with which President Clinton, key members of his administration and members of Congress have picked up this demand, straight from Israel's American support groups, demonstrates how much remains to be done to educate U.S. journalists, politicians and the American public about the promises and pitfalls in the agreement.

Beyond what we sometimes call THE problem, there are many others. Some, like Kashmir, Bosnia, Azerbaijan, and religious extremism, won't wait for the U.S. to finish dealing with Israel/Palestine. The Washington Report will cover them all, now, while things need to be done.

Our Pledge

That's our pledge to our subscribers, advisers and donors. In return, we hope they all will continue to support us, both with gift subscriptions to others, and with the extra donations without which none of the accomplishments we've outlined would have been possible.

Make a Difference

There still is time to make a tax-deductible donation for 1995 by mailing your check to the American Educational Trust Library Endowment (Federal ID #52-1460362), using the envelope at the center of this magazine. Names of donors of $100 or more in cash, donated subscriptions and donated books will be printed in the next listing of AET's "Angels' Choir" members, unless they specifically request anonymity. If you haven't yet donated, we hope you will now.

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