Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1997, Page 137

American Educational Trust Publishers' Page

We Expect You've Read About...

...The woman who was walking on an Oregon beach when she spotted a bottle covered with Arabic writing that had floated all the way across the Pacific. Then, when she opened it, a Genie popped out!

"Salamu Aleikum," the genie said. "Because I have been in the sea for so many centuries, I only have strength remaining to grant you one wish." So the lady said: "I've always wanted to go to Hawaii, but I'm afraid of flying and I get seasick. Please build a bridge so that we Oregonians can drive to that island paradise."

"But Mistress," the Genie said, "get real!" "To make the pilings alone I would have to deplete your rain forest and seal the doom of the spotted owl. I fear that such a project is beyond my failing powers."

"How thoughtless of me," the lady cried. "Instead, please draw on your obvious Middle Eastern insight to devise a just and lasting peace acceptable to both the Palestinians and the Israelis."

For long moments the genie was silent. Then he said:

"About That Bridge—Two Lanes or Four?"

Readers Have Asked How...

...Our in-house Genie and executive editor found the time and energy to write the Sept./Oct. issue of The Link, which describes in some depth, under the title "The Subject No One Mentions," how Israel, between 1949 and Oct. 31, 1997, extracted from U.S. taxpayers some $84,854,827,200.

That's Billions, $84.8 Billion!

Well, for the numbers, which are not his strong point, he used previous research for this magazine by free-lance writer Frank Collins and news editor Shawn Twing, and studies from the Congressional Research Service and charts from the USAID library. Link editor Bob Norberg then took his 32-page double-spaced manuscript and scrunched it into 11 printed pages. Poor Richard admits it was the first time he realized that...

Other Editors Are Sadists, Too.

A further 3-page scrunch of those scrunched 11 pages can be found on p. 43 of this issue, under our regular "The Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers" heading. And, by the way, the cost to U.S. taxpayers of providing $84.8 billion, or $14,630 for every one of 5.8 million Israelis (which is Israel's claimed, but grossly overstated, population), is $134.8 billion, or $23,240 per Israeli!

If You Want the Whole Issue of The Link...

You can contact the publisher, Americans for Middle East Understanding, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 245, New York, NY 10015, tel. (212) 870-2053, fax (212) 870-2050, e-Mail AMEU@aol.com.

As for the Matter of Time and Energy...

When AMEU executive director John Mahoney asked last spring if he had time to do it, Dick said that unfortunately he would, since it looked like the Washington Report was not going to make it through the summer. Then came the magnificent response to our May funding appeal. See the two-page listing on p. 134-35 in microscopic type of members of our 1997 Choir of Angels, and then consider the fact that an even larger number of readers also made contributions under $100. That, plus skipping an issue, got us through to the end of the year.

But Now It's Time to Think About 1998.

In November, subscribers will receive the second and last funding appeal of the year. If you gave your all in May, you're excused. If you meant to but didn't get around to it, here's one of life's rare second chances. We don't ever want to come as close to the brink again as we did last spring. And, frankly, we think long-time readers will agree we deserve some help—to survive and to get back to the eight-issue schedule we need to keep readers informed.

We Have No Ethnic or Sectarian Patrons.

It's our own fault, of course, since we aren't especially ethnic or sectarian ourselves. But for just that reason we think we are the glue that holds the eclectic and as yet not-fully-emerged Middle East peace-with-justice camp together. With the death of the peace process—and of the Oslo accords which so divided our readers—that camp is growing again.

We Think We're a Principal Reason!

And in this and forthcoming issues we have some ideas to further unite the efforts of our readers, and the groups to which they belong, to make all of us more effective in U.S. domestic politics. Until we are, there will be no peace or stability anywhere in the Middle East or South Asia.

This Issue Expanded to 140 Pages...

Because we couldn't say what we had to in less. Our situation reminds us of the old joke about the young man who, after a blind date, went angrily to the matchmaker and said, "Why did you fix me up with a woman who's pregnant?" "Sure she's pregnant," responded the matchmaker.

"But Only a Little Bit!"

Even with 16 extra pages, we had to throw out, for the second issue in a row, an "Other Voices" section made up of wonderful reprints from the mainstream press, and from other publications sent to us by readers. So for future issues we've decided to make our "Other Voices" section into a supplement to the Washington Report.

But Readers Will Have to Subscribe...

...Separately to this supplement of between 8 and 16 pages to every issue. We expect to charge $15 a year for it (less than $2 an issue) and it will be available only to paid-up subscribers to the Washington Reportitself. You can put in your order now and pay now or when we actually begin publishing it sometime next spring. The reason we're doing it this way is that we don't want to begin printing Other Voices on the Middle East and South Asia until we have 5,000 orders on hand. However, it will be full of useful and quotable articles and also encouraging evidence that periodicals around the country are breaking down the barriers between American readers and complete and truthful information about the Middle East and South Asia.

If You Want It Added to Your...

...Washington Report, inform us by phone, fax or e-mail.

Make a Difference.

In our upcoming funding appeal we'll have some comments on why the Washington Report must survive from Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders. We're all the losers if the two most likely catalysts for a nuclear exchange, the Jerusalem and Kashmir disputes, aren't settled soon. To us, solutions to both are as plain as the nose on your face.

If They Are To You Too...

Explain them in short letters to the editor in publications in your area, write to the president and tell him you want some action, and then write to your three representatives in Congress and tell them you support campaign finance reform so that they will have to listen to the people who sent them to Washington instead of to the special interests. (The only things that count in the matters we follow are banning all soft money, forcing your representatives to raise 80 to 90 percent of their hard money donations from their own constituents, imposing spending limits, and severely restricting or banning television advertising, because that is what has made money so important in our presently totally corrupt election system.) If you're not sure what solutions you should be advocating for the Israel/Palestine problem and for Kashmir, keep reading the Washington Report.

Then, in Inverse Order...

Write those letters, answer our funding appeal and...

Make a Difference, This Month!