Strange Kind of Freedom

Monday July 29, 2002 20:07

by Jimmy Gralton - Culchies Against Capitalism

By Robert Fisk

One in the eye for the Zionists- and Robert Fisk's contribution to the AFA / IMC debate raging between Aidan and Pat C...Shalom/Salaam!

Inside the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, the Californian
audience had been struck silent. Dennis Bernstein, the Jewish host of
KPFA Radio's Flashpoint current affairs program, was reading some
recent e-mails that he had received from Israel's supporters in
America. Each one left the people in the church —Muslims, Jews,
Christians — in a state of shock ..

"You self-hating Jewish piece of shit. Hitler killed the wrong Jews.
He should have killed your parents, so a piece of Jewish shit like
you would not have been born. God willing, Arab terrorists will cut
you to pieces Daniel Pearl-style, AMEN!!!"

Bernstein's sin was to have covered the story of Israel's invasion of
Jenin in April and to have interviewed journalists who investigated
the killings that took place there — including Phil Reeves and Justin
Huggler of The Independent — for his Flashpoint program. Bernstein's
grandfather was a revered Orthodox Rabbi of international prominence
but neither his family history nor his origins spared him. "Read this
and weep, you self-hating Jew boy!!!" another e-mail told
Bernstein. "God willing a Palestinian will murder you, rape your wife
and slash your kids' throats." Yet another: "I hope that you, Barbara
Lubin and all other Jewish Marxist Communist traitors and anti-
American cop haters will die a violent and cruel death just like the
victims of suicide bombers in Israel." Lubin is also Jewish, the
executive director of the Middle East Children's Alliance, a one-time
committed Zionist but now one of Israel's fiercest critics. Her e-
mails are even worse.

Indeed, you have to come to America to realize just how brave this
small but vocal Jewish community is. Bernstein is the first to
acknowledge that a combination of Israeli lobbyists and conservative
Christian fundamentalists have in effect censored all free discussion
of Israel and the Middle East out of the public domain in the
US. "Everyone else is terrified," Bernstein says. "The only ones who
begin to open their mouths are the Jews in this country. You know, as
a kid, I sent money to plant trees in Israel. But now we are
horrified by a government representing a country that we grew up
loving and cherishing. Israel's defenders have a special vengeance
for Jews who don't fall in line behind Sharon's scorched-earth policy
because they give the lie to the charge that Israel's critics are
simply anti-Semite."

Adam Shapiro is among those who have paid a price for their beliefs.
He is a Jew engaged to an American-born Palestinian, a volunteer with
the International Solidarity Movement who was trapped in Yasser
Arafat's headquarters in the spring while administering medical aid.
After telling CNN that the Sharon government was acting
like "terrorists" while receiving $3bn a year in US military aid,
Shapiro and his family were savaged in the New York Post. The paper
slandered Shapiro as the "Jewish Taleban" and demeaned his family
as "traitors". Israeli supporters publicized his family's address and
his parents were forced to flee their Brooklyn home and seek police
protection. Shapiro's father, a New York public high-school teacher
and a part-time Yeshiva (Jewish day school) teacher, was fired from
his job. His brother receives regular death threats.

Israel's supporters have no qualms about their alliance with the
Christian right. Indeed, the fundamentalists can campaign on their
own in Israel's favor, as I discovered for myself at Stanford
recently when I was about to give a lecture on the media and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, part of a series of talks arranged
largely by Jewish Americans. A right-wing Christian "Free Republic"
outfit posted my name on its website, and described me as a "PLO butt-
kisser" and asked its supporters to "freep" my lecture. A few
demonstrators turned up outside the First United Methodist Church in
Sacramento where I was to speak, waving American and Israeli
flags. "Jew haters!" they screamed at the organizers.

They were also handing out crudely printed flyers. "Nothing to worry
about, Bob," one of my Jewish hosts remarked. "They can't even spell
your name right." True. But also false. "Stop the Lies!" the leaflet
read. "There was no massacre in Jenin. Fiske [sic] is paid big bucks
to spin [lie] for the Arabs..." But the real lie was in that last
sentence. I never take any payment for lectures — so that no one can
ever claim that I'm paid to give the views of others. But the truth
didn't matter to these people. Nor did the content of my talk — which
began, by chance, with the words "There was no massacre" — in which I
described Arafat as a "corrupt, vain little despot" and suicide
bombings as "a fearful, evil weapon". None of this was relevant. The
aim was to shut me up.

Dennis Bernstein sums it up quite simply: "Any US journalist,
columnist, editor, college professor, student-activist, public
official or clergy member who dares to speak critically of Israel or
accurately report the brutalities of its illegal occupation will be
vilified as an anti-Semite." In fact, no sooner had Bernstein made
these remarks than pro-Israeli groups initiated an extraordinary
campaign against some of the most pro-Israeli newspapers in America,
all claiming that The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the
San Francisco Chronicle were biased in their coverage of the Middle-
East conflict. Just how The New York Times — which boasts William
Safire and Charles Krauthammer, those giants of pro-Israeli bias,
among its writers — could be anti-Israeli is difficult to see,
although it is just possible that, amid its reports on Israel's
destruction in the West Bank and Gaza, some mildly critical comments
found their way into print. The New York Times, for example, did
report that Israeli soldiers used civilians as human shields — though
only in the very last paragraph of a dispatch from Jenin.

None the less, the campaign of boycotts and e-mails got under way.
More than 1,000 readers suspended their subscriptions to the Los
Angeles Times, while a blizzard of e-mails told pro-Israeli readers
to cancel their subscription to The New York Times for a day. On the
East Coast, at least one local radio station has lost $1m from a
Jewish philanthropist while other stations attempting to cover the
Middle East with some degree of fairness are said to have lost even
more. When the San Francisco Chronicle published a four-page guide to
the conflict, its editors had to meet a 14-member delegation of local
Jewish groups to discuss their grievances.

According to Michael Futterman, who chairs the Middle East strategy
committee of 80 Bay Area synagogues, Jewish anger hit "boiling point"
when the Chronicle failed to cover a pro-Israeli rally in San
Francisco. Needless to say, the Chronicle's "Readers'
Representative", Dick Rogers, published a groveling, self-
flagellating apology. "The paper didn't have a word on the pro-Israel
rally," he wrote. "This wasn't fair and balanced coverage." Another
objection came from a Jewish reader who objected to the word "terror"
being placed within inverted commas in a Chronicle headline that
read "Sharon says `terror' justifies assault". The reader's point?
The Chronicle's reporting "harmonizes well with Palestinian
propaganda, which tries to divert attention from the terrorist
campaign against Israel (which enjoys almost unanimous support among
Palestinians, all the way from Yasser Arafat to the 10-year-old who
dreams of blowing himself up one day) and instead describes Israel's
military moves as groundless, evil bullying tactics."

And so it goes on. On a radio show with me in Berkeley, the
Chronicle's foreign editor, Andrew Ross, tried to laugh off the
influence of the pro-Israeli lobby — "the famous lobby", he called it
with that deference that is half way between acknowledgement and
fear — but the Israeli Consul General Yossi Amrani had no hesitation
in campaigning against the Chronicle, describing a paper largely
docile in its reporting of the Middle East as "a professionally and
politically biased, pro-Palestinian newspaper".

The Chronicle's four-page pull-out on the Middle East was, in fact, a
soft sell. Its headline — "The Current Strife Between The Israelis
And The Palestinians Is A Battle For Control Of Land" — missed the
obvious point: That one of the two groups that were "battling for
control of the land" — the Palestinians — had been occupied by Israel
for 35 years.

The most astonishing — and least covered — story is in fact the
alliance of Israeli lobbyists and Christian Zionist fundamentalists,
a coalition that began in 1978 with the publication of a Likud plan
to encourage fundamentalist churches to give their support to Israel.
By 1980, there was an "International Christian Embassy" in Jerusalem;
and in 1985, a Christian Zionist lobby emerged at a "National Prayer
Breakfast for Israel" whose principal speaker was Benjamin Netanyahu,
who was to become Israeli prime minister. "A sense of history, poetry
and morality imbued the Christian Zionists who, more than a century
ago, began to write, plan and organize for Israel's restoration,"
Netanyahu told his audience. The so-called National Unity Coalition
for Israel became a lobbying arm of Christian Zionism with contacts
in Congress and neo-conservative think-tanks in Washington.

In May this year, the Israeli Embassy in Washington, no less,
arranged a prayer breakfast for Christian Zionists. Present were
Alonzo Short, a member of the board of "Promise Keepers", and Michael
Little who is president of the "Christian Broadcasting Network".
Event hosts were listed as including those dour old Christian
conservatives Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who once financed a
rogue television station in southern Lebanon which threatened Muslim
villagers and broadcast tirades by Major Saad Haddad, Israel's stooge
militia leader in Lebanon. In Tennessee, Jewish officials invited
hundreds of Christians to join Jewish crowds at a pro-Israel
solidarity rally in Memphis.

On the face of it, this coalition seems natural. The Jewish Anti-
Defamation League felt able to run an ad that included an article by
a former Christian coalition executive director Ralph Reed,
headlined "We People of Faith Stand Firmly With Israel". Christians,
Reed claimed, supported Israel because of "their humanitarian impulse
to help and protect Jews, a shared strategic interest in democracy in
the Middle East and a spiritual connection to Israel".

But, of course, a fundamental problem — fundamental in every sense of
the word — lies behind this strange partnership. As Uri Avnery, the
leader of Gush Shalom, the most courageous Israeli peace group,
pointed out in a typically ferocious essay last month, there is a
darker side to the alliance.

"According to its [Christian Zionist] theological beliefs, the Jews
must congregate in Palestine and establish a Jewish state on all its
territory" — an idea that would obviously appeal to Ariel Sharon —
"so as to make the Second Coming of Jesus Christ possible." But here
comes the bad bit. As Avnery says, "the evangelists don't like to
dwell openly on what comes next: Before the coming [of the Messiah],
the Jews must convert to Christianity. Those who don't will perish in
a gigantic holocaust in the battle of Armageddon. This is basically
an anti-Semitic teaching, but who cares, so long as they support
Israel?"

The power of the Israeli lobby in the United States is debated far
more freely in the Israeli press than in American newspapers or on US
television. There is, of course, a fine and dangerous line between
justified investigation — and condemnation — of the lobby's power,
and the racist Arab claim that a small cabal of Zionists run the
world. Those in America who share the latter view include a deeply
unpleasant organization just along the coast from San Francisco at
Newport Beach known as the "Institute for Historical Research". These
are the Holocaust deniers whose annual conference last month included
a lecture on "death sentences imposed by German authorities against
German soldiers... for killing or even mistreating Jews". Too much of
this and you'd have to join the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee — AIPAC — to restore your sanity. But the Israeli lobby is
powerful. In fact, its influence over the US Congress and Senate
calls into question the degree to which the American legislature has
been corrupted by lobby groups. It is to an Israeli voice — Avnery
again — that Americans have to turn to hear just how mighty the lobby
has become. "Its electoral and financial power casts a long shadow
over both houses of the Congress," Avnery writes. "Hundreds of
Senators and Congressmen were elected with the help of Jewish
contributions. Resistance to the directives of the Jewish lobby is
political suicide. If the AIPAC were to table a resolution abolishing
the Ten Commandments, 80 Senators and 300 Congressmen would sign it
at once. This lobby frightens the media, too, and assures their
adherence to Israel."

Avnery could have looked no further than the Democratic primary in
Alabama last month for proof of his assertion. Earl Hilliard, the
five-term incumbent, had committed the one mortal sin of any American
politician: He had expressed sympathy for the cause of the
Palestinians. He had also visited Libya several years ago. Hilliard's
opponent, Artur Davis, turned into an outspoken supporter of Israel
and raised large amounts of money from the Jewish community, both in
Alabama and nationwide. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz noted that
among the names of the first list of contributors to Davis's campaign
funds were "10 Cohens from New York and New Jersey, but before one
gets to the Cohens, there were Abrams, Ackerman, Adler, Amir, Asher,
Baruch, Basok, Berger, Berman, Bergman, Bernstein and Blumenthal. All
from the East Coast, Chicago and Los Angeles. It's highly unlikely
any of them have ever visited Alabama..." The Jewish newspaper
Forward — essential reading for any serious understanding of the
American Jewish community — quoted a Jewish political activist
following the race: "Hilliard has been a problem in his votes and
with guys like that, when there's any conceivable primary challenge,
you take your shot." Hilliard, of course, lost to Davis, whose
campaign funds reached $781,000.

The AIPAC concentrates on Congress while the Conference of Presidents
of Major American Jewish Organizations (CPMAJO), made up of the heads
of 51 Jewish organizations, concentrates on the executive branch of
the US government. Every congressman knows the names of those critics
of Israel who have been undone by the lobby.

Take Senator J William Fulbright, whose 1963 testimony to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee detailed how five million tax-deductible
dollars from philanthropic Americans had been sent to Israel and then
recycled back to the US for distribution to organizations seeking to
influence public opinion in favor of Israel; this cost him the chance
of being Secretary of State. He was defeated in the 1974 Democratic
primary after pro-Israeli money poured into the campaign funds of his
rival, Governor Dale Bumpers, following a statement by the AIPAC that
Fulbright was "consistently unkind to Israel and our supporters in
this country". Paul Findley, who spent 22 years as a Republican
congressman from Illinois, found his political career destroyed after
he had campaigned against the Israeli lobby — although, ironically,
his book on the subject, They Dare to Speak Out was nine weeks on The
Washington Post bestseller list, suggesting that quite a number of
Americans want to know why their congressmen are so pro-Israeli.

Just two months ago, the US House of Representatives voted 352 to 21
to express its unqualified support for Israel. The Senate voted 94 to
two for the same motion. Even as they voted, Ariel Sharon's army was
continuing its destructive invasion of the West Bank. "I do not
recall any member of Congress asking me if I was in favor of patting
Israel on the back..." James Abu Rizk, an Arab-American of Lebanese
origin, told the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee
afterwards.

"No one else, no average American, has been asked either. But that is
the state of American politics today... The votes and bows have
nothing to do with the legislators' love for Israel. They have
everything to do with the money that is fed into their campaigns by
members of the Israeli lobby. My estimate is that $6 billion flows
from the American Treasury to Israel each year." Within days, 42 US
governors turned up in Sacramento to sign declarations supporting
Israel. California governor Gray Davis and New York governor George
Pataki — California has the largest Jewish population of any state
except New York — arranged the meeting.

Sometimes the support of Israel's loyalists in Congress turns into
farce. Tom Delay — reacting to CNN founder Ted Turner's criticism of
Israel — went so far out of his way to justify Israeli occupation of
the West Bank that he blurted out on MSNBC television that the
Palestinians "should become citizens" of Israel, an idea unlikely to
commend itself to his friend Ariel Sharon. Texas Republican Richard
Armey went the other way. "I'm content to have Israel grab the entire
West Bank. I happen to believe the Palestinians should leave... to
have those people who have been aggressors against Israel retired to
some other area." Do the people of Texas know that their
representative is supporting "ethnic cleansing" in the Middle East?
Or are they silent because they prefer not to speak out?

Censorship takes many forms. When Ishai Sagi and Ram Rahat-Goodman,
two Israeli reserve soldiers who refused to serve in the West Bank or
Gaza, were scheduled to debate their decision at Sacramento's
Congregation B'nai Israel in May, their appearance was cancelled.
Steve Meinreith, who is chairman of the Israel Affairs Committee at
B'nai Israel, remarked bleakly that "intimidation on the part of
certain sectors of the community has deprived the entire community of
hearing a point of view that is being widely debated in Israel. Some
people feel it's too dangerous..."

Does President Bush?

His long-awaited Middle-East speech was Israeli policy from start to
finish. A group of Jewish leaders, including Elie Wiesel and Alan
Dershowitz — who said recently that the idea of executing the
families of Palestinian suicide bombers was a legitimate if flawed
attempt at finding a balance between preventing terrorism and
preserving democracy — and the AIPAC and CPMAJO heads all sent clear
word to the President that no pressure should be put on Israel.

Wiesel — whose courage permeates his books on the Holocaust but who
lamentably failed to condemn the massacre of Palestinian refugees in
Beirut in 1982 at the hands of Israel's Lebanese allies, said he
felt "sadness", but his sadness was "with Israel, not against Israel"
because "after all the Israeli soldiers did not kill" — took out a
full page in The New York Times. In this, he urged Bush to "please
remember that Ariel Sharon, a military man who knows the ugly face of
war better than anyone, is ready to make `painful sacrifices' to end
the conflict." Sharon was held "personally responsible" for the
massacre by Israel's own commission of inquiry — but there was no
mention of that from Wiesel, who told reporters in May that he would
like to revoke Arafat's Nobel prize.

President Bush was not going to oppose these pressures. His father
may well have lost his re-election because he dared to tell Israel
that it must make peace with the Arabs. Bush is not going to make the
same mistake — nor does brother Jeb want to lose his forthcoming
governorship election. Thus Sharon's delight at the Bush speech, and
it was left to a lonely and brave voice — Mitchell Plitnick of the
Jewish Voice for Peace — to state that "few speeches could be
considered to be as destructive as that of the American President...
Few things are as blinding as unbridled arrogance."

Or as vicious as the messages that still pour in to Dennis Bernstein
and Barbara Lubin, whose Middle East Children's Alliance, co-
ordinating with Israeli peace groups, is trying to raise money to
rebuild the Jenin refugee camp.

"I got a call the other day at 5 a.m.," Bernstein told me. "This guy
says to me: `You got a lot of nerve going and eating at that Jewish
deli.' What comes after that?" Before I left San Francisco, Lubin
showed me her latest e-mails. "I hope that in your next trip to the
occupied territories you are blown to bits by one of your Palestinian
buddies [sic] bombs." Another, equally obscene, adds that "you should
be ashamed of yourself, a so-called Jewish woman advocating the
destruction of Israel".

Less crude language, of course, greeted President Bush's speech. Pat
Robertson thought the Bush address "brilliant". Sen. Charles Schumer,
a totally loyal pro-Israeli Democrat from New York, said
that "clearly, on the politics, this is going to please supporters of
Israel as well as the Christian coalition types". He could say that
again.

For who could be more Christian than President George W Bush?