PART 13 OF 13 :THEY DARE TO SPEAK OUT PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS CONFRONT ISRAEL'S LOBBY:AMERICA'S INTIFADA

THEY DARE TO SPEAK OUT
PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS 
CONFRONT ISRAEL'S LOBBY 
by Paul Findley

Chapter 13 

America's Intifada 

When the first edition of this book appeared in 1985, I had little reason to expect that voices at the community level would soon begin a healthy discourse concerning u.s. policy in the Middle East. Heard only from scattered places in the countryside during 1986, the voices have steadily become louder and more numerous, suggesting the beginnings of America's own uprising. 

The populist uprising known as the Palestinian intifada began in the Israeli occupied West Bank and Gaza in 1987, and, of course, ·it reaches far beyond America's intifada in violence, intensity, and human misery. The one in the occupied territories is broad, deep, and powerful shaking Israeli society to its roots. The one in America, by contrast, is only beginning and is perhaps tentative. But, despite their vast difference in form, process, and effect, the movements continue in both places, reinforcing each other and challenging the status quo with growing strength. 

In the territories occupied by Israel, the Palestinian movement responds to violations of human rights that are visible, brutal, and often lethal. After living for twenty-two years in degrading circumstances under the Israeli gun and waiting vainly for outside sympathizers to redress their grievances, Palestinians have literally taken matters into their own hands-throwing rocks and setting fire to tires in one of history's most spontaneous rebellions. They demand reform and often pay with their lives. 

In the United States, the threat is to the integrity of institutions, not to life itself. The American uprising comes from citizens who, for the first time, see the dark side of Israel,radically different from past images. They see a foreign state that infiltrates and corrupts the U.S. political process, hires spies to steal classified documents, lies repeatedly to our highest officials, reneges on solemn promises, and, to an alarming degree, undercuts our national security interests to suit its own purposes. Still worse, they see an Israel that violates brutally the human rights of the Palestinians it holds in captivity. 

Their concern is deepened by the spectacle of U.S. inaction amid this human tragedy, the failure of our government to respond to the agony of Palestinians in the occupied territories, where Israel-using U .S.- supplied weapons-meets the uprising with measures that leave hundreds dead, thousands maimed and homeless, and thousands more imprisoned without due process. They are shocked to find the U.S. government, universally recognized as Israel's military and financial patron, kept under the Israeli thumb as firmly as the Palestinians themselves. 

These alarmed citizens conclude that Israel, long regarded as our most devoted friend and ally, at times betrays our friendship and subverts its own principles and ideals. They respond by taking in hand pens, petitions, and ballots-not rocks-and by igniting fires of public conscience. 

As readers of preceding chapters must recognize, Israel, like other states, has always had shady corners it tried to hide. From its earliest days it spied on the United States, manipulated our political system, made illegal use of U.S.-supplied weapons, and often brutalized its Arab neighbors. 

But until America's intifada, the searchlight of publicity rarely illuminated these infractions. A vigilant nationwide watch by Israel's friends in the United States stifled most critical reports and commentary, while carefully-regulated tours of the Holy Land and a torrent of publicity about Israel's positive achievements served to perpetuate the faulty vision of an unblemished, gallant outpost of human rights and democracy. 

Accustomed to criticism of their own government and society but not of the Jewish state, those taking part in this U.S. uprising see for the first time an Israel with warts and scars. The elaborate public relations mechanism that for years kept only the attractive side of Israel before American eyes now finds itself overwhelmed by the sheer volume and diversity of Israeli misdeeds. 

"Aid Dollars Into the 

Pockets of Traitors" 

The first nationwide shock wave that revealed Israel in an untrustworthy posture emanated from a bizarre spy case, one of the most extraordinary in American history. Jonathan Jay Pollard, Jr., 31, a Navy counterintelligence analyst, was arrested in November 1985 for stealing classified documents as a paid spy for Israel. 

"We have a moral problem," a former official of Israel's principal spy agency, Mossad, said when he learned of the arrest. "You can't take the money of the United States, and then use that money to buy information about that country." Immoral .or not, that is exactly what happened. 

Before the arrest, the prosecution of Israeli espionage had been taboo at the Federal Bureau of Investigation despite long-standing evidence that placed other federal employees under suspicion. Like officials at the State Department, where a senior diplomat describes as "fantastic" the level of spying for Israel, FBI officials habitually chose to look the other way, viewing pro-Israel political influence as great enough to make attempted prosecution an exercise in futility. 

The FBI "knew of at least a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified information to the Israelis, " according to Raymond W. Wannal, Jr., a former assistant director of the FBI. None was prosecuted. The files gathered dust. 

John Davitt, a career official and former chief of the Justice Department's internal security section, says: "When the Pollard case broke, the general media and public perception was that this was the first time this had ever happened. No, that's not true at all." He adds that, during his tenure, only the Soviet Union did more spying in the United States than Israel. 

Pollard's thievery, however, was so gross and frequent it could not be ignored. On several occasions he took large boxes of classified documents from the Pentagon, abusing flagrantly his "courier" clearance. 

In the wake of Pollard's arrest, William Safire, a columnist who rarely criticizes Israel, warned, "The stark fact is that if the espionage charges hold up in court, American aid dollars will have been channeled by Israel into the pockets of American traitors. That will blow up, not over. " 

Supporting this forecast is the volume of publicity the case continues to produce. From the day of his arrest until this writing, aspects of the scandal have appeared frequently in nationwide headlines and newscasts. 

As it came to light, the Pollard case had all the trappings of a fiction thriller-free luxury trips to faraway places, expensive gifts for the spy's wife, shady spymasters who handled the cash and stolen documents, dashes to elude surveillance teams, and finally arrest just steps away from political asylum-in the Israeli embassy. 

The spy deal was cut in the summer of 1984 when Pollard, an ardent Zionist, met Aviem Sella, an Israeli aviation hero who doubled in espionage. He promised Sella military secrets in return for $1,500 a month compensation. The process began with a flourish. Pollard and his wife, Anne, 26, traveled first class to Paris for a luxury holiday and meetings with Sella, as well as with Rafael Eitan, the famous Israeli Nazi-hunter and spymaster who gave the Pollards $10,000 to cover expenses. Anne received a sapphire ring worth $7,000 from their hosts. They were also introduced to Joseph Yagur, a member of the Israeli embassy staff in Washington who subsequently became Pollard's main "handler," 

Returning to Washington, Pollard stole documents from U.S. military files about three times a week and delivered them for copying to either Yagur or Irit Erb, another embassy employee. 

The next spring, the Pollards enjoyed another $10,000 luxury trip, this time to Israel-where Jonathan received an Israeli passport under a new name, a raise in pay to $2,500 a month, and a promise that the pay would continue for the next nine years. He was informed that a Swiss bank account had been established in his name. 

Six months later-just over a year after the espionage began-the operation fell apart. FBI agents stopped Pollard for questioning in the parking lot near his Washington work station. Pollard broke away long enough to telephone his wife and, with the code word "cactus," warned her to remove all stolen documents from their apartment. While he returned for further questioning by the agents, Anne gathered remaining papers and took them in a suitcase to Erb's residence. 

Shaken by the interview, Pollard asked Yagur for guidance. He suggested that the Pollards "lay low" for awhile, elude their FBI surveillance, and then find political asylum at the Israeli embassy. On November 21, 1985, they made the break but failed to shake their surveillance. They were refused asylum just inside the embassy gates and arrested as they left the property. Meanwhile, Yagur and Erb left for Israel. 

After Pollard's arrest, embarrassed Israeli officials apologized for the spying. They denounced it as an unauthorized "rogue" operation unknown by anyone at cabinet level, and offered full cooperation in a U.S. investigation. They pledged that "those responsible will be brought to account." [Bullshit,on it being a rogue operation DC]

Secretary of State George Shultz warmly accepted the apology, and the State Department quickly attempted a cover-up. Shultz sent a team headed by legal adviser Abraham Sofaer, an ardent Zionist who maintains a home in Israel, on a brief investigation there. Returning, Sofaer falsely reported that Israel had provided "full access" to all persons with knowledge of the facts. Within a month of the arrest, the department announced that Israel had returned all stolen documents and that the United States had resumed sharing intelligence with Israel "in all fields." The "matter," for the State Department, was now closed. 

"More Damage Than 

Terrorists Could Dream Of" 

Elsewhere, the "matter" was far from closed. 

At the Justice Department, U.S. Attorney Joseph E. diGenova pressed the prosecution vigorously, and the case remained in the headlines for more than three years, giving the American people frequent reason to question Israeli cooperation and reliability. For example, the Pollard spy ring, far from being a "rogue" operation, reported to the highest levels of the Israeli government, including the Defense Ministry. 

The "return" of stolen documents was a mockery. Of the thousands copied by the Pollards, Israel bothered to return only 163 and, given its appetite for top secrets, surely retained extra copies of these as well. 

Instead of cooperating, Israel stonewalled attempts by U.S. Justice Department to investigate the spy ring, refusing to permit key officials to be interviewed either in the United States or Israel. One U.S. official, reflecting on the Sofaer mission, said, "The question is whether we got the truth. Quite frankly we didn't." 

The two Israelis who had the most prominent roles in the spy episode were "brought to account" by the Israeli government in a curious way. Each won higher position. 

Colonel Aviem Sella, identified by Pollard as his first principal "handler" and later indicted by a U.S. court for complicity with Pollard, was later promoted to commander of Israel's Tel Nof air base, usually the last rung in the command ladder before becoming air force commander. As a further reward, Israel refused to permit Sella to return to the United States for prosecution. Rafael Eitan, the man who headed the spy program, received similar' 'punishment" -appointment as the chief executive officer of Israel's largest state-owned company. 

The promotions inspired embarrassing headlines and a delegation of Jews flew to Israel, urging the government to rescind the decisions. In the face of these protests, Sella resigned as air base commander but later quietly assumed a posh job at Electro-Optic, a major defense corporation. When they learned of this latest salute to Sella, the outraged editors of Defense News, a respected publication, called for a $200 million cut in Israeli aid each year until the U.S. government has recovered the full cost of the Sella-Pollard espionage. 

The case returned to prime news coverage on June 4, 1986, when Jonathan Pollard, after engaging in extensive plea-bargaining interviews, pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide U.S. military secrets to the Israelis, and Anne to conspiring to receive and embezzle government property. 

In return for Jonathan Pollard's cooperation, the prosecution did not ask for a life sentence, but the judge, Aubrey Robinson, impressed by a forty-six-page memorandum from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, selected that punishment nonetheless. He sentenced Anne Pollard to five years. 

Weinberger wrote that the thievery caused "substantial and irrevocable harm," risking the lives of U.S. agents and creating the danger that "U.S. combat forces, wherever they are deployed in the world, could be unacceptably endangered through successful exploitation of this data. " He added that Pollard had "both damaged and destroyed policies and national assets which have taken many years, great effort, and enormous national resources to secure." 

In the wake of sentencing, Israel doubled Pollard's pay. The same government that earlier denounced the affair as an unauthorized "rogue" operation now deposits in Pollard's bank account $5,000 each month, assuring the Pollards a comfortable life in Israel if he is released for good behavior. 

The imprisonment of the Pollards, U.S. officials believe, has not ended Israeli espionage in the United States. Most of the secret information, as in the past, is furnished by U.S. citizens without compensation. One official complains, "Mossad is the most active foreign intelligence service on U.S. soil." 

For years Israel has been able to learn virtually every secret about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Reporter Charles Babcock of the Washington Post, basing his estimate on a 1979 CIA report and recent interviews with more than two dozen current or former U.S. intelligence officials, concludes, "This remarkable intelligence harvest is provided largely, not by paid agents, but by an unofficial network of sympathetic American officials who work in the Pentagon, State Department, congressional offices, the National Security Council, and even the U.S. intelligence agencies." [Most likely those with a twisted view of the Middle East,and Jews place in it.They think they are doing god's work,but they are mistaken DC]

Meanwhile, Pollard became a cause celebre in both the United States and Israel, where public protests against his sentence were organized and legal defense funds raised. These funds were only a pittance, as the Israeli government provided most of the $200,000 that American lawyers for the two Pollards collected. 

Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard professor and an attorney for Pollard, cited Weinberger's assessment of U.S. security damage as the main reason why the court ordered a life sentence, which Dershowitz considered excessive, and challenged Weinberger to prove that Pollard's thievery actually harmed U.S. security .. 

It was a limp challenge, because the public record already disclosed overwhelming evidence of damage. Items stolen by Pollard included photographs of security-related installations taken by high-flying U.S. surveillance planes, sensitive data on laser technology and U.S. weapons, secret information on naval forces, mines, and port facilities in the Middle East, and the text of a large handbook nicknamed the "bible, " which contained strategies the U.S. Navy would use if attacked. The stolen documents were voluminous enough, the court was told, to fill a box six by six by ten feet in dimension. 

Israel made quick use of the secrets. Information provided by Pollard enabled Israeli warplanes to evade U.S. naval and air surveillance in the Mediterranean during  Their October 1985 air strike against the Tunis headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization.  precision-like attack, first dismissed by President Ronald Reagan as "legitimate self defense" but later denounced by other administration officials, left nearly one hundred dead, mostly Tunisian civilians, and the PLO headquarters in shambles. 

The gravest harm to U.S. interests occurred when the Soviet Union acquired documents stolen by Pollard, perhaps all of them. The Soviets acquired the data through two separate secret channels. Israel opened one of them directly, offering U.S. secrets in an attempt to influence Moscow's policy on Jewish emigration. Using some of these same contacts, the KGB, Moscow's intelligence service, opened the other channel without the knowledge of Israeli leadership, establishing a spy network within Mossad. 

These shocking revelations came in a news report distributed by United Press International on December 13, 1987. The author, Richard Sale, reported that the Soviet Union had breached Israeli intelligence and that information stolen by Pollard "was traded to the Soviets in return for promises to increase emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel." A State Department source told Sale, "It began as a straight data-for-people deal," but through it the Soviets "penetrated the Israeli defense establishment at a high level." 

This new scandal belied Pollard's excuse that, in helping Israel, he did not hurt the United States. U.S. intelligence sources said stolen documents reaching Moscow by this route included "sensitive U.S. weapons technology and strategic information about the defense forces of Turkey, Pakistan, and moderate Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia. " 

Soviet acquisition of documents stolen by Pollard was discussed during an urgent review of the scandal by CIA, FBI, and other U.S. intelligence officials: "One of the guys was commenting that if Pollard had stolen the stuff, at least it was going to a U.S. ally, but a CIA guy spoke up and said that if Mossad was involved it meant that copies of everything were going to [the KGB's] Moscow center." 

The Israel-Moscow spy link enabled "highly placed" Soviet "moles" to penetrate Mossad, the most serious blow to Israeli intelligence in twenty years. One U.S. intelligence analyst fixed the blame on "right-wing Jews" in Israel. U.S. agents first learned of the Israeli-Soviet spy link when information stolen by Pollard was "traced to the Eastern bloc." 

The reported diversion of stolen documents to Moscow made headlines in nine newspapers but competing news services and television networks ignored it. The New York Times and the Washington Post printed not a word. 

In another episode, Israel used data stolen by Pollard as the basis for a proposed military strike. Alarmed by the possibility that Pakistan might be building its own nuclear weapons-a concern shared by India and armed with satellite photographs stolen by Pollard that showed a secret nuclear facility, Israel officials approached New Delhi in June 1985 with a daring plan. They urged that the two governments destroy the facility in a joint air attack. India refused. 

The Pollard case continued to make headlines. In April 1988, Israel refused to let Howard Katz visit the United States for questioning. In June, two committees of the Israeli parliament, previously citing "lies, whitewash, and contradictions, " closed their official report on the Pollard affair by blaming senior officials of both Labor and Likud parties but recommending no action. 

From all this, columnist Safire concludes, "The Pollards in America, and their spymasters in Israel, have done more damage to their respective countries than any terrorists could dream of doing." 

Satire's assessment is not overdrawn. The damage to the United States is incalculable in security terms, causing consternation in many friendly capitals, especially in Arab states, which must now assume that both Israel and the Soviet Union have all the military information useful to them that is possessed by the United States. 

CIA officials agonize over the possibility that Pollard may have compromised the way the United States gathers intelligence and enabled Israel to crack secret U.S. codes. 

The damage to Israel, too, is incalculable. As the American people learn the awesome extent of damage-especially the transfer of highly sensitive data directly to the Kremlin-they inevitably will rethink America's Israeli connection. Citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, who, in their innocence, believed the Jewish state to be honest, open, and trustworthy in all its U.S. dealings are already expressing their outrage. 

"You Can't Let Jews 

Be Tried By Gentiles" 

Pollard's accomplices are not the only people the government of Israel shields from prosecution for crimes committed in the United States. Headlines in June and July 1988 reported that Robert S. Manning, 36, a Los Angeles-born member of the Jewish Defense League who is wanted in connection with a 1980 mail bomb murder of a California woman, is also a prime suspect in the October 1985 bombing that killed Alex M. Odeh, 41, who was employed part-time as the west coast director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. 

Odeh, a quiet, scholarly father of three young children and a naturalized citizen born in Palestine, became a bomb victim twelve hours after he praised PLO chairman Vasser Arafat as a "man of peace" during an evening interview on a Los Angeles television news program. During the program he deplored the killing of Leon Klinghoffer, brutally murdered the day before aboard the Achille Lauro cruise ship in the Mediterranean. But Odeh asserted, "The media has mistakenly linked the (Klinghoffer murder) with the PLO." [No mistake,just the media narrative DC]

When Odeh opened the door of the committee office the next morning, he triggered a blast that nearly severed his body and ripped through the office suite. In a similar occurrence earlier in 1985, two policemen were critically injured trying to defuse a bomb left at the door of the organization's Boston office. Manning was also suspected in that bombing. 

Manning, a self-styled demolition expert, is also wanted in connection with two bombings aimed at men suspected as former Nazis. Along with three other suspects in the Odeh murder, he now lives in Kiriat Arba, a Jewish settlement in Israeli-occupied West Bank territory where followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane congregate. Kahane is a founder of the U.S. Jewish Defense League and heads Israel's anti-Arab Kach party, a group so radical it could not receive permission to field a slate of candidates in Israel's November 1988 general election. 

Kahane's party, however, retains great political strength. Its influence, and that of other right-wing forces in Israel, is one reason that Manning and his cohorts have not been arrested. Many Israelis, including some of Kahane's supporters, view Jews who kill PLO supporters as heroes, not criminals. They try to frustrate the prosecution of Israelis who engage in anti-Arab crime. For example, when twenty-eight Gush Emunim terrorists were convicted in 1985 of bomb and grenade attacks against the West Bank Arabs, protests generated by right-wing elements were so heavy that all but seven have since been set free. 

This type of pressure is so great that Israel's officials refuse to cooperate with the FBI's long-standing effort to secure telephone and travel records so that the agency can keep track of the movement of J.D.L members like Manning to and from the United States. In fact, despite his indictment in the United States, Manning served recently in the Israeli Defense Forces as an active duty reservist near Nablus in the occupied West Bank. The California prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Stock, is not optimistic about securing Manning's extradition, because no one has been extradited from Israel for thirty-two years. She says, simply, "The record speaks for itself." 

Another fugitive, Richard K. Smyth, owner of Milco International, indicted in California for illegally exporting nuclear triggering devices to Israel, jumped bail in 1985 and, after rumors of kidnapping and murder, turned up in Israel. A senior Israeli official explains, "There's a sort of feeling here that you can't hand a Jew over to be tried by Gentiles." 

It has to do with 2,000 years of Jewish history, of Jewish persecution at the hands of Gentiles ... 

"Zone of Danger" for 

"Enemies of Israel" 

Public relations experts who specialize in protecting Israel's image in the United States have a busy life. 

In December 1985, FBI Director William H. Webster, noting Odeh's murder, warned that Arab Americans had entered a "zone of danger" and were targets of violence by groups seeking to harm "enemies of Israel." In an annual report three years later, the Justice Department reported 160 episodes of violence or harassment of Arab Americans. Concerning attacks on Arab-American groups, Mordechai Levy, who heads the Jewish Defense Organization, a group denounced by other Jewish organizations, adds a militant note, "We aren't claiming credit, but it couldn't happen to better people, more deserving people. " Former Senator James G. Abourezk, national chairman of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, comments, "The authorities are finally beginning to realize that we've been brought into a war situation against our will." 

Examples of some recent Israeli "image" problems: 

• Despite public protests, Maj. Gen. Amos Yaron, reprimanded and stripped of command for his role in the 1982 massacres that left over eight hundred dead in Palestinian camps in Beirut, was welcomed to Washington four years later as Israeli's new military attache. Yaron, the senior Israeli officer on the scene at Sabra and Shatila, had failed to stop the commander of Lebanese Christian Phalangist forces from ordering the massacre of women and children in the camps. 

• In July 1986, network television news reported that U.S. Customs Service and Justice Department officials were investigating charges that Israel illegally smuggled U.S. technology to build cluster bombs, which, when detonated, release hundreds of small explosives. The United States has prohibited the export of these bombs since 1982, when Israel violated agreements by using them against civilians during its invasion of Lebanon. The Reagan administration apologized for the publicity surrounding the allegations, and, as one of its last acts, resumed shipments of the bombs to Israel in late 1988. 

• Americans watched with astonishment the treatment Israel accorded its citizen, Mordechai Vanunu, a nuclear technician who moved to England and furnished classified information about Israel's nuclear facilities to the London Times. 

The Mossad used female attraction to lure Vanunu from London to Rome, then abducted him from a Rome street and hustled him to Israel for trial in secret. While being hauled off in a Jerusalem van, Vanunu provided a bizarre finale to the drama by displaying to reporters through a van window a message written on the palm of his hand, "kidnapped in Rome. " He received an eighteen-month sentence for divulging state secrets. 

For defenders of Israel, a greater-and graver-public relations challenge lay ahead. 

"Shoot on Sight" 

Just as the Pollard spy scandal, which damaged the U.S. image of Israel as nothing before in history, receded from the headlines and evening newscasts, the American people began to receive daily glimpses of even more shocking Israeli behavior. This time the offensive conduct was in response to a popular uprising that has become historic in its spontaneity and sustained power. 

Beginning in December 1987, Palestinians, principally women and young people, began expressing their opposition to Israel's control over their lives in the West Bank and Gaza by pelting stones at the occupying forces. The Israeli occupation had entered its twenty-first year with no end in sight. Nearly unanimous in their loyalty to the Palestine liberation Organization and its leader, Yasser Arafat-long outlawed by Israel-and weary of waiting for outsiders to address their grievances, the protesters took to the streets, harassing military personnel with stones and blocking streets with piles of burning tires. 

The grievances that produced the uprising are overwhelming. Life for 1.7 million Palestinians is rigidly controlled-even the planting of a tree or the digging of a well requires an Israeli permit-and the thousands of Palestinians who have jobs in Israel, most of them menial, must return each night to their homes in the occupied territories. Israel has permitted no elections there since 1976, and today every community except Bethlehem is governed by a mayor chosen by Israeli authorities. 

Although they have not enjoyed independent statehood for centuries-they were successively under Ottoman, British and Jordanian control-Palestinians now find Israel threatening all hope for national identity. 

The threat comes from relentless policies that make almost every aspect of Palestinian life miserable. Especially damaging is the Israeli program of constructing Jewish settlements at strategic points scattered throughout the West Bank and Gaza, a process that began within months after Israel conquered the territories in the June 1967 war. These settlements keep expanding in number and size, encompassing more and more arable land, and shrinking the space on which the growing population of Palestinians must struggle for existence. Efforts by the world community, led by the United States, to persuade Israel to return conquered Arab territory in exchange for peace agreements, have succeeded only in the Sinai, a desert area returned to Egypt under the Camp David Accords. 

The Likud party, which has dominated Israeli politics since 1977 and negotiated the deal with Egypt, has defiantly opposed any land-for peace arrangement with the Palestinians, contending that the West Bank and Gaza historically belong to Israel and are not subject to bargaining. Leaders of the party, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, were prominent in acts of terrorism against Arabs during the early days of Israeli statehood. These included the massacre of Deir Yassin village and the bombing of the King David Hotel. Even its present-day partner in the governing coalition, the Labor party, talks less and less in favor of land-for-peace, because each new settlement built in the occupied territories is seen as a step toward ultimate annexation. 

The settlements have become flash points of controversy. Populated by heavily-armed militants, the settlements now total 110 in the West Bank, encompass 55 percent of the land area, control 70 percent of the water resources and have an aggregate population of 67,000. Nearly a million Palestinians live on the remaining 45 percent of the land with only 30 percent of the water. Even more painful is the situation in Gaza, one of the world's most heavily populated areas, where 2,500 Jews live in settlements that occupy 35 percent of the land, while 650,000 Palestinians are crowded into the remainder. Israel plans to build eight additional "flash points" in the near future, and the U.S. government, although opposed to the plan and possessing ample leverage over Israel, does not force the issue. When Israel went ahead in March 1989 with the first of the new settlements, the Bush administration uttered barely a word. 

In its own powerful way, the uprising forces the issue-not just the question of new settlements but harmful facets of military occupation, posing an unexpected challenge that the Israeli military machine-one of the world's strongest-has been unable to master. 

Protests grow in intensity as military measures become more harsh. In 1988, Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin authorized his troops to arrest and imprison Palestinians for up to six months without due process in any form, and prisons soon bulged with over four thousand Palestinians. He announced a policy of "force, might, and beatings" to put down the uprising. This gave Israeli troops authority to club unarmed civilians even to the point of fracturing bones, and prison officials, in clear violation of international convention, began routine beatings of those in prison. Three months later, a team of U.S. physicians reported that several thousand Palestinians had suffered bone fractures. 

In the wake of sporadic fires, Israeli civilians were authorized to "shoot on sight" anyone seen carrying a fire bomb. 

The brutality of the repression is such that a growing number of Israeli soldiers refuse to serve and mass demonstrations within Israel are commonplace. In May 1988, American Ambassador Thomas Pickering notified Israel that the United States is "deeply opposed" to Israel's "harsh measures," including "deportations, administrative detentions, and the destruction or sealing of houses. . . without due process, " but the diplomat served no ultimatums or even warnings. In July, 350 Israeli scientists, academics, and retired generals, protesting the violation of Palestinian human rights and warning that these violations will damage Israel's principles and idealism, publicly urged their government to withdraw from the occupied territories. 

The most significant result of the uprising, from the standpoint of the American people, is its intense and sustained coverage by television networks. For more than two decades, the Palestinians had experienced repeated humiliations, even torture, but news of these harsh measures rarely received attention in the U.S. media. Now, reports of Israeli brutality. including a running total of killings, have become daily fare. Television viewers see homes of suspected protesters blown up, young Palestinians beaten, and women and children dragged off to prison. 

For the first four months of the uprising-until Israeli authorities kept journalists from areas of greatest protest-the coverage was close up and vivid. One unforgettable sequence, filmed by a CBS cameraman hidden inside a building, showed two Israeli soldiers using rocks to engage in a prolonged beating of a young Palestinian, finally fracturing one of his arms. Broadcast worldwide, the episode probably made the greatest impact of any single event. When Palestinians in Gaza killed a soldier by dropping a concrete block on his head, Israeli troops fractured the skull of a six-year-old girl and shot to death a twenty-year-old man. 

Israel's use of clubs, tear gas, bulldozers, gunfire, indiscriminate arrests, deportations, curfews, closing of schools and universities, and even torture seems to quicken, not quell, the spirit of the protesters. 

With all its horror and sacrifice, the uprising has brought a profound unity and self-confidence to families in the occupied territories. Women and children have new respect, as they stand with adult males on the ramparts of resistance and often lead the charge against offending Israelis. 

A Quaker Palestinian who helps young people suffering from stress l.D Gaza, reports, "Women now have equal rights. Period." She witnessed an episode in which a group of unarmed women overwhelmed two soldiers until a nine-year-old Palestinian they were beating could escape. Visiting a ten-year-old recovering in a hospital from stomach wounds inflicted by a plastic bullet, she was shocked by the intensity of his response when she asked, "Could I look at your wound?" Pointing first to his stomach, then to a shoulder wound sustained in an earlier altercation with Israeli troops, his face beamed with pride as he asked eagerly, "Which one?" 

"Troops Used Clubs to Break Limbs" 

In the wake of mounting international criticism, Israel nonetheless employed still tougher measures. Rabin authorized the use of plastic bullets in situations that are not life-threatening, making gunfire more prevalent and harmful, although the army acknowledged later that the bullets, far from being non-lethal, caused forty-seven deaths during the first four months of their use. Responding to complaints about killing, blindness, and other injuries from the plastic ammunition, Rabin said, "The rioters are suffering more casualties. That is precisely our aim." 

Some behavior is barbaric. The cameras did not record a near-tragedy in which four Palestinians, deliberately buried alive by an Israeli-manned bulldozer, miraculously survived when dug out by neighbors. Meanwhile, leaders of the uprising have dealt harshly with those suspected of disloyalty. Thirteen Palestinians accused of conspiring with Israeli authorities have been murdered. 

Nor do journalists escape Israeli-inflicted violence. Bob Slater of Time magazine, chairman of the Israeli foreign press association, reported more than one hundred attacks on foreign journalists during the first four months of the uprising. 

Here and there are touches of humor: the owner of a Nablus ice cream shop, forced by Israeli soldiers to open for business in the winter, remonstrated, "But nobody here buys ice cream in the winter," and the NBC commentator who remarked, "Here you see Israel's new open door policy," as the news film showed an Israeli truck using chains to break open the locked shutters of a Palestinian shop. 

Otherwise, it is grim business. Although journalists are now kept from direct coverage of protest areas, news of the violence filters out, partly from U.S. citizens who visit the occupied territories. Rev. John B. Jamison, returning to his Springfield, Illinois, Methodist pastorate, after living four weeks in a village near Bethlehem, says, "I find that I cannot keep silent. I have to speak out. " Similar responses come from Americans who have traveled to the scene of the uprising under the sponsorship of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. 

America's media coverage of the uprising has inspired widespread editorial criticism of Israeli brutality, letters to editors, and even a few complaints from Capitol Hill, where comments critical of Israel are almost unknown. In March 1988, over two thousand Arab Americans marched in protest past the White House, while a few blocks away, in a rare public sign of sympathy for Israel, about three hundred Jews chanted outside the Washington offices of ABC, expressing their resentment over the network's vivid coverage of the uprising. 

In April 1988, Ted Koppel, in an unprecedented television event, broadcast his popular "Nightline" program live from Jerusalem in a week long series devoted entirely to the uprising. The series included filmed history and discussion, presented from both Israeli and Arab viewpoints. The climaxing program featured a debate between panels of Israelis and Palestinians separated by a low wall-described by Washington Jewish Week as "a town hall meeting of people who don't recognize each other's existence." According to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, the series "set a new high-water mark in balanced U.S. media coverage of this divisive half-century-old dispute, which so many mainstream American editors and commentators have just wished away. " It enabled many Americans to consider the Arab-Israeli dispute for the first time in an arena of civil discourse. 

King Hussein of Jordan gave the uprising new importance in July 1988 and focused its political objectives when he abandoned all Jordanian claims to the West Bank and announced his support for Palestinian statehood. This eliminated from the diplomatic scene the "Jordanian option," a proposal to solve the Palestinian problem by establishing a confederal link between Amman and the West Bank-a possibility that United States and Israeli officials had mentioned frequently and hopefully. 

The American response to Israel's repression reached a powerful and surprising new level when, shortly after the inauguration of President George Bush, the State Department, in its sharpest criticism ever, devoted twenty-one pages of its annual worldwide report to Israeli human rights violations. In sharp contrast to the mild references of previous years, the report used plain language: 366 Palestinians killed; including 13 by beating and 4 from tear gas; over 20,000 wounded, and "about 10,000" imprisoned; 36 deported in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Eleven Israelis have been killed and 1,100 others injured in the course of the uprising. These figures represent the victims in just one year. 

The report charged Israel with "forcing prisoners to remain in one position for prolonged periods, hooding, sleep deprivation, and cold showers," practices employed to elicit "false confessions" as the basis for lengthy prison terms. "There were five cases in 1988 in which unarmed Palestinians in detention died under questionable circumstances or were clearly killed by the detaining officials." 

"Troops used clubs to break limbs and beat Palestinians who were not directly involved in disturbances or resisting arrest, " the report went on. "Soldiers turned many people out of their homes at night, making them stand for hours... At least 154 houses of Arabs were demolished or sealed ... prior to trial and conviction." 

In an exceptional reference, the report said that some human rights violations occur in Israel itself, "where Arab citizens of Israel, who constitute 17 percent of the population, do not share fully in the rights granted to, or the duties levied on, Jewish Israeli citizens." 

Although congressional reaction consisted mainly of complaints that the State Department did not fully "understand" Israel's problems, two key committee chairmen spoke up. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Representative David Obey (D-WI) warned that foreign aid might be jeopardized if Israel's maltreatment of Palestinians continues. 

Copley newspapers joined a nationwide chorus of editorial criticism with these words, "Until Israel figures out how to defuse the Palestinian unrest in ways consistent with the Jewish state's democratic values and traditions, it will risk losing far more than just the uprising." Gerald O. Toy, a retired actuary in Portland, Oregon, puts it bluntly, "Israel is giving Jews a bad name." 

"The Deadly Silence Has Ended" 

Meanwhile, other powerful, historic currents added force to the American tide of sympathy for Palestinian statehood. An unprecedented political movement conceived and organized early in 1988 by Dr. James Zogby, a street-smart Arab-American activist and articulate former university professor, altered the national political landscape as it moved slowly but surely through the Democratic presidential nominating process. 

It reached national media attention in February when more than two hundred Democratic party caucuses in Iowa, inspired mainly by supporters of the presidential candidacy of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, approved resolutions backing self-determination for Palestinians. These resolutions did not mention statehood, but declared the right of people living in the occupied territories to decide their political future without outside interference. Similar resolutions were soon approved by more than one hundred caucuses in Texas. 

The Zogby forces continued their successes at the state level, where the more precise goal of statehood was endorsed by Democratic party conventions in Washington, Vermont, Maine, Oregon, New Mexico,and Illinois. Resolutions supporting self-determination won approval in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa. 

In Illinois, the pro-Palestinian forces won mainly by catching establishment Democrats asleep. Two hundred pro-Jackson delegates from Chicago converged unexpectedly on Springfield, the state capital, where they surprised party regulars at the convention by swiftly winning approval of a resolution endorsing "the rights of Palestinians to safety, self-determination, and an independent state," as well as Israel's right to live within secure borders. Approval occurred so late in the deliberations that pro-Israel forces from north Chicago who normally control party positions on Middle East questions had no time to counterattack. But that did not end their efforts. 

With the convention adjourned, State Senator Vincent Demuzio, Democratic state chairman, responded to pressure from outraged Jewish delegates by charging Jackson supporters with "irresponsibility" and warning that the resolution would threaten Democratic success by dividing the party. In desperation, he considered taking an informal poll by telephone, through which the party's state central committee could somehow delete the resolution from the platform, but, confronted with its obvious illegality, dropped the scheme. Instead, the party made no reference to the offensive resolution in its annals. The record of its approval survived only in newspaper accounts of the proceedings. 

Zogby moved the statehood issue to national center-stage in Atlanta in June 1988. There he gained unprecedented official approval for the question of Palestinian statehood to be debated before the Democratic platform committee and then, the next month, before the full convention, after agreeing, on each occasion, that he would not press the issue beyond a voice vote. The Washington Jewish Week called the debate "quietly historic." It was historic but not quiet. For the first time in history, the emotion-packed question of Palestinian statehood, a theme anathema to most Zionists, became the topic of open debate at a national gathering of a major U.S. political party. 

In televised deliberations before the platform committee, Zogby noted "a greater awareness and sensitivity in this country on the question of Palestinian rights. " When the issue reached the convention floor, Zogby and Congressman Mervyn Dymally of California, speaking for Palestinian statehood, squared off against Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Congressman Charles E. Shumer of New York before the convention hall audience dominated by delegates waving pro-Palestinian posters. An acrimonious debate raged for twenty minutes, with full coverage by all television networks creating an enormous audience, probably the largest ever to hear a discussion of Palestinian rights. Inouye rejected the Palestinian resolution as "an enormous kick in the teeth of American interests in that part of the world. " When Shumer tried to dismiss Zogby' s arguments as "clever but duplicitous," booing became so loud that Speaker Jim Wright, chairing the convention, had to bang the gavel for order. Dymally declared, "I am proud of this debate. This is history. Jesse Jackson and his call for peace and security can be heard." 

Zogby summed up, "The deadly silence on Palestinian rights has ended. Peace in the Middle East is too important to be left without a principled debate. What is so clear today is that Israeli peace and security and Palestinian peace and security are interdependent." Denouncing Israel's treatment of Palestinians, Zogby declared to a wildly cheering convention hall, "We are already winning. We don't need a vote today." 

Pro-Palestinian delegates rejoiced, citing the debate itself as a significant victory. Salam Al-Maryati, a member of the California delegation staff, looking over the vast sea of Palestinian posters, declared, "It looks like Palestine for president!" Fifteen hundred of the 5,500 delegates signed a pro-statehood petition circulated on the convention floor, and a network-sponsored poll showed that a majority of the delegates would approve Palestinian statehood if the vote were secret. Pro-Israel delegates blamed the support on "the Palestinian uprising's effect on public opinion" -as though that isn't what is supposed to happen in a democracy. 

The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles saw challenges still ahead: "There is a growing sense in political circles that the pro-Israel forces were out-generaled by Jim Zogby," and predicted that Zogby, "not one to rest on his laurels," will soon "launch a nationwide campaign to generate state and local resolutions similar to the defeated platform plank." 

Zogby continues his political activism for Palestinian statehood and other Arab-related issues, as executive director of the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based group that encourages citizens of Arab ancestry, Republicans and Democrats alike, to engage in partisan activity. One of his achievements is the formation of Democrats for Middle East Peace, which consists of over one hundred Arab Americans and Jewish Americans who served as delegates, alternates, and standing committee members at the 1988 Democratic national convention. 

Palestinian statehood showed remarkable support in two referendums on election day, November 8, 1988. In the communities of Cambridge and Newton, Massachusetts, voters approved, 53 to 47 percent, a proposition supporting both self-determination and statehood for Palestinians and an end to U.S. financial support for Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In San Francisco, statehood won the support of one third of the voters. 

"The Ball Is in the American Court" 

As the post-convention presidential campaign-totally lackluster on the Arab-Israel conflict-came to a close in November 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organization brought to top billing internationally the statehood issue that the Jackson forces had advanced months earlier on the U.S. domestic scene. A series of surprising developments won broad new support for the Palestinian cause and diminished, perhaps demolished, the negative stereotype that has long handicapped the PLO cause in the United States. 

In Algiers, executive committee chairman Yasser Arafat persuaded the Palestine National Council-the PLO's congress-to take two historic, controversial steps: first, to endorse United Nations resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis for peace negotiations and, second, to declare the existence of a Palestinian state encompassing the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. 

These decisions proclaim PLO acceptance of a new Palestinian state side-by-side and at peace with Israel and the abandonment of the organization's long-standing commitment to "one democratic state for all of Palestine," in which Israel would cease to exist. 

The decisions offer hope for better days to both the Palestinians in the uprising and their Israeli masters. The statehood proclamation provides a practical, worthy political objective behind which those engaged in the Palestinian intifada can rally and, equally important, the promise to the Israelis that the turmoil, so threatening to Jewish values and traditions, can be ended without sacrificing Israel itself. 

They provide a powerful impetus, as well, to the uprising in America, where many citizens sympathetic to Palestinian grievances have long been troubled by the PLO's insistence that Israel must disappear when the new Palestine comes into being. Support for the survival of Israel is so pervasive in the United States, that, forced to choose between Israel and a new Palestine, most Americans-including those deeply supportive of Palestinian rights-would choose Israel. Actually, in recent years the PLO has finessed this grim choice, approving at Palestine National Council meetings several resolutions that show clear support for a two-state solution, while remaining ambiguous at other times. 

The Algiers resolutions, of course, do not stop criticism of Arafat, Palestine's new president. Critics question his ability to control his own members, citing occasional cross-border attacks on Israel and other "terrorism." These episodes reflect the wide assortment of splinter groups within the PLO organization-some strongly opposed to the Palestine National Council's decisions-and the dispersal of the Palestinian population throughout the Middle East. 

In making his announcement in Algiers, Arafat declared, "Our political declaration contains moderation, flexibility, and realism, which the West has been urging us to show. We feel now that the ball is in the American court." 

A few weeks later, the U.S. Secretary of State hit the ball back in another development of historic importance that improved the PLO's public standing in the United States. It occurred just a few days before the close of Ronald Reagan's presidency. After a dismal December, during which Secretary of State George Shultz, acting against the advice of most of his advisers, prohibited Yasser Arafat from addressing the United Nations in New York, Shultz gave in to mounting international pressure. He shocked the world by announcing that the United States would begin direct talks with PLO officials. 

The decision came as a surprise even to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel's powerful lobby in Washington, an organization that traditionally not only keeps close tab on all Middle East developments but normally has a big voice in making U.S. policy in that region. It learned of the decision only an hour before Shultz's public announcement. 

Quiet but effective work by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. made the difference. On the telephone frequently with Arafat and Shultz during the tense weeks following the Algiers declaration, he persuaded each to accept changes in wording that finally produced the U.S. decision to talk with PLO representatives. Although protesting that he had already met every requirement, Arafat gave a final, convincing clarification in a press conference in Stockholm. The respected New York attorney Rita Hauser, prominent in the work of the American Jewish Committee, sat at Arafat's side and imparted a unique Jewish respectability to his position. 

The U.S. decision to open direct talks and the PLO decisions at Algiers gave the Palestinian organization a promising new image in the United States. Public opinion polls showed rising support for Palestinian statehood, and, at the same time, lessening support for Israel. 

A February 1989 Washington Post-ABC survey reported that a majority of Americans-56 percent-characterize Israel as an "unreliable ally" of the United States, the highest negative rating since the poll began eight years ago. Only 44 percent expressed a favorable view of Israel-one percentage point less than the 45 percent who viewed the Soviet Union positively.  

"Not a Single Pro-Israel 

Letter in Six Months" 

Other less visible events and activities reinforce America's.uprising. The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee lost its aura of invincibility when its 1988 campaign endeavors failed to either unseat Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island or reelect Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut. The organization, registered to lobby for the interests of Israel, also found itself prominently on the defensive when the CBS "Sixty Minutes" television program, a report in the Washington Post, and a complaint filed by a group headed by former Ambassador George W. Ball charged the lobby with engaging in illegal partisan activities in federal general elections. 

The lobby has retained enough influence on Capitol Hill, however, to inflict heavy damage on the U.S. arms industry. The staggering economic burden it has imposed came prominently to public attention in October 1988. The retiring secretary of defense, Frank Carlucci, charged that Israeli opposition to selling arms to Arabs had cost the United States economy "tens of billions of dollars worth of jobs, " not to mention the cost in terms of lost political influence in the Arab world. His comment came just before Saudi Arabia announced it would buy $36 billion in fighter planes from Britain and mobile missiles of undisclosed value from the People's Republic of China. 

Carlucci's statement followed a precedent-breaking speech in which Senator Chafee, addressing his Senate colleagues, incurred the ire of Israel's lobby by deploring congressional disapproval of arms sales to Arab states. In recent years, Congress, bowing meekly to lobby pressure, has routinely blocked these sales or imposed restrictions no self respecting government would accept. On one such occasion, Senator Barry Goldwater expressed a vain plea, "I hope this is the last time that we are subjected to the intense pressure, money and threats of another country." 

Secretary Carlucci's "tens of billions of dollars worth of jobs" figure is a conservative appraisal. The fifteen-year loss may rise as high as $260 billion. This figure is based on losses caused by Israeli opposition to the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia alone. The estimate is derived by compiling the aggregate value of the sale of merchandise and services that normally occur as the result of basic arms sales. When the total value of arms sales to other Arab states-lost as the result of Israeli opposition-are added, the cost to the United States economy rises still higher. The London Economist estimates that Israel's lobbying against arms sales to Arab states cost the U.S. economy as much as $20 billion in 1986 alone. Opponents warn that arms sales tend to escalate a dangerous build-up of arms in the Middle East, but the U.S. decision to sell, or not, has little to do with the pace of escalation. As recent events prove, Arab states need not look to the United States as a source of weapons and equipment. 

The loss to the United States in political and security terms cannot be measured. Leaders of Arab states, embarrassed publicly by repeated congressional rebuffs, will be less dependent on U.S. spare parts and training as they look to Britain and other countries for arms. As this process continues, the United States will still need to protect its own vital national interests in the region but will have fewer avenues through which it can influence the decisions of Arab states. 

While U.S. jobs and international influence are being destroyed by lobby "money and threats," several Washington-based organizations are moving forward projects that improve public understanding of Arabs, Islam, and the political problems of the Middle East. 

Two retired U.S. foreign service officers, Andrew I. Killgore and Richard H. Curtiss, founders of the American Educational Trust, launched in 1982 a highly successful monthly magazine, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and provide a growing book, film, and lecture service. Through newspaper advertising, they enlivened the 1988 political campaign by inviting voters to telephone a toll-free number and learn how much money, if any, pro-Israel political action committees provided to their local senators or congressmen. The organization answered more than four thousand calls. 

Since 1983, the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, headed by Dr. John Duke Anthony, has conducted fifty-one study tours of Arab states, each ten to fourteen days in duration. These tours have provided firsthand knowledge of the region to more than five hundred political leaders and academicians in the United States. 

The American Arab Affairs Council, headed by George Naifeh, a former U.S. foreign service officer, publishes a scholarly quarterly and organizes two-day conferences about three times a year on university campuses where professors, journalists, diplomats, and business leaders debate Middle East issues. 

Fortunately, America's intifada is all being expressed in direct political action. Citizens of Arab ancestry, who number over four million, are beginning to assert themselves after years of political quietude. 

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, founded by former senator James Abourezk, the Arab American Institute, and the National Association of Arab Americans-all with increasing effect are providing Americans of Arab ancestry with opportunities to work together in order to influence public policy. United States citizens of Muslim faith, now approaching eight million, are making headway on the political front. They do so in a variety of ways-through new groups based on Muslim affiliation, as well as through membership in Arab-American organizations and direct participation in the activities of Republican and Democratic party organizations. The untapped potential of these citizens is enormous,as only a relatively few citizens of Arab ancestry or Muslim affiliation have been aroused to political action or even to organizational membership.  

Also being heard on the political front are the voices of Jewish citizens who are alarmed at the damage Israel is doing to both the United States and to Judaism. Among the groups strongly criticizing Israeli policies are the New Jewish Agenda and the Jewish Committee on the Middle East. In a surprising development, Theodore R. Mann, prominent in the American Jewish Congress, has endorsed an Israeli think-tank proposal that contemplates a Palestinian state. Professor Jerome Segal of the University of Maryland is the author of a book, Creating the Palestinian State: A Strategy for Peace. 

The Jewish News of New Jersey, the nation's largest Jewish weekly, reported in March 1989 a "sharp" increase in mail to Capitol Hill critical of Israel: "One strongly pro-Israel senator revealed that his office has not received a single pro-Israel letter in more than six months. " In some Capitol Hill offices, mail critical of Israel outnumbered supportive mail by as much as eight to one. Heaviest criticism followed publication of the State Department report that charged Israel with widespread violations of human rights in its treatment of Palestinians. 

"You Call the Big Contributors First" 

No matter what their national origin or religion may be, citizens who are concerned about the damage being done by Israel's lobby to cherished national institutions, as well as to our national interests in the Middle East, can make a difference. As James Zogby demonstrated in the 1988 Democratic presidential nominating process, the commitment of just one individual can have great impact. 

Each citizen can easily become an instrument of political action . in the public arena-for example, as a monitor demanding equal time-or space-for response whenever news reports are unbalanced or biased, or, equally important, whenever the accusation of antisemitism is made recklessly. Success in these endeavors requires perseverance, as news editors tend to ignore or reject an initial request but, being human, will usually yield to pressure that is firmly but decently applied. 

Citizens can also become committees-of-one, each following the political scene in Washington, keeping track of performance by representatives in both the House and Senate and, when circumstances suggest, challenging them with questions and advice. Even more effective are the messages delivered publicly during the "town meetings" that most congressmen conduct periodically for their constituencies. 

Each person can also engage in political action in the partisan arena, undertakings that may be less conspicuous but often are more productive than public appeals. The first step is to establish a personal relationship with candidates seeking election, or reelection, to Congress by helping in their partisan campaigns, either with money or time, or both. Suggesting the importance of this relationship, Senator Paul Simon of Illinois, with surprising candor, recently told a reporter: "At the end of a busy day, you find a stack of yellow slips on the spindle, each a call-back request. You can't call them all. Which calls are you going to return? If there are any big contributors in the stack, you start with them. " 

Still better is group action. When like-minded people band together, the effect can be multiplied, as the supporters of Israel demonstrate every day. A group that demands equal time or space from the editor of a newspaper or the director of a radio or television program will usually get cooperation more quickly than an individual. And a congressman is certain to pay close attention to a viewpoint, whether expressed privately or at a "town meeting," if he or she knows that it represents a group of constituents. 

The responsibility for political action should not be placed only on citizens with ethnic ties to the Middle East. The d~mage caused by Israel's lobby hurts citizens, like myself, who have no such ethnic ties whatever. Donald McHenry, United States Ambassador to the United Nations during the administration of Jimmy Carter, in effect, challenges all citizens with this somber warning: "Because of the Israeli lobby's influence, our government is unable to pursue its own national interests in the Middle East." 

The task of breaking Israel's grip on U.S. policy-making is so urgent and crucial that it needs the support of many citizens. For this reason, I report with great satisfaction and high hopes the organization of a new lobby. With my support, a group of United States citizens experienced . in business, foreign policy, and politics, has established the Council for the National Interest. Motivated, as the name suggests, by the national interest of our country in Middle East policy, it is in the process of organizing a network of citizens throughout the United States who will respond with political activism when opportunities and challenges arise. The organization seeks support in each congressional district. Those interested should address the Council for the National Interest, Post Office Box 53048, Washington, D.C., 20009. 

This new organization provides a way for all citizens, regardless of religious affiliation or national origin, to speak out in an effective way. Those who participate can help advance the national interest in the Middle East and at the same time help repair the damage being done to our political institutions by the over-zealous tactics of Israel's lobby. 

Sustained work throughout the countryside, I firmly believe, can transform America's embryonic intifada into successful political action of immense value to our nation. It has the prospect of extending, within a short period of time, a badly-needed freedom and vigor to the public discussion of U.S. policy in the Middle East. It can enable our government once more to pursue its own national interests as it deals with the complexities and hazards that seem to grow each day in the Middle East. 

"We Shall Nobly Save, or Meanly Lose" 

Have the uprisings in the occupied territories and in America brought the Arab-Israeli conflict to an historic watershed? Startling changes suggest that this may be the case. 

The Palestine Liberation Organization recognizes the existence of Israel and pledges that the newly-proclaimed provisional State of Palestine will exist entirely within the West Bank and Gaza areas and remain at peace with Israel. Thus, the PLO carries, along with a handful of stones, the olive branch of peace, while Israel, once seen as a plucky little nation fighting for its life against brutal neighbors, is cast as the tyrant who breaks limbs and fires lethal weapons at defenseless civilians. 

In Washington, changes are equally sweeping. Although reiterating its opposition to an independent Palestinian state, the U.S. government conducts direct talks with the PLO and publishes a document citing in great detail Israel's widespread violation of Palestinian human rights. The United States declares that Israel has no sovereign rights to the West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. Secretary of Defense denounces Israel's lobby for blocking Arab arms sales that could bring "tens of billions of dollars in jobs" to American workers. Considering the record of the previous twenty-five years, during which each succeeding United States administration avoided almost all public criticism of Israel and provided the Jewish state with increasing levels of cooperation and support, these developments are astounding. 

The changes beyond the banks of the Potomac are also remarkable. The chilling taboos of yesterday seem to be eased. Here and there, one can express a sympathetic word about Palestinians or denounce Israel's policies of repression without being accused of antisemitism. 

For the first time, Palestinian statehood is an acceptable topic for discussion on many editorial pages, on radio and television talk shows, and on campuses. In an editorial, USA Today calls for Palestinian "independence. " Statehood is even debated during a presidential nominating convention and within Jewish organizations. The scandalous behavior of Israel leads many Jews to agonize publicly over what is happening to the once-glistening principles and idealism of the Jewish state. 

Do these happenings and trends herald a lasting change in the politics of the Middle East and in the tenets of discourse in the United States? Or, is the American intifada only a passing phenomenon that will vanish as the inevitable Israeli public relations counterattack takes shape? 

The answers to these fundamental, urgent questions will be found mainly in the American countryside, not on the banks of the Potomac, or even in the capitals of the Middle East. Our countryside remains the primary field of battle where the great struggles for peace and justice in the Middle East will be settled. 

America's intifada has been the basic cause of changes in government policies in Washington, Tunis, and Jerusalem-not the other way around. This uprising created the domestic atmospherics that motivated the PLO to make its historic declarations in Algiers and Stockholm, led Egypt's President Mubarak to become the behind-the-scenes conciliator, prompted U.S. Jews like Rita Hauser to embrace the PLO, and, ultimately, produced the agreement for direct talks between the United States and the PLO. 

The events do not reflect a newly-developed courage, conviction, or vision on the part of U.S. leaders. They, and their predecessors, have known all along what should be done. Missing, until recently, has been the assurance of public support for a confrontation with Israel. America's intifada provides this essential political base, but this positive trend in U.S. policy can be expected to continue only as long as the American uprising exerts pressure. 

Public memory is abysmally short. For example, the April 1989 ABC-Washington Post poll showed that Israel's approval rating had returned to 59 percent-where it was before the uprising. If the people of the United States should lose interest in the agony of the Palestinians or in the threat Israel's lobby poses to the integrity of our cherished institutions, further progress toward peace is unlikely to occur. U.S. talks with the PLO will dwindle off to nothingness. Radicals will inevitably gain strength in both Israel and within the Palestinian movement, and the Middle East will once more become a ticking bomb, posing awesome danger to the entire world. 

Intimidation and ignorance, the twin obstacles to peace with justice in the Middle East, seem less formidable than before, but the extent of ignorance is still staggering. How many of your neighbors are aware that the U.S. treasury sends a gift of $3 billion to Israel each year? How many of them know that Israel hired a spy to steal our country's most precious military secrets, traded some of these secrets to the Soviet Union, paid the spy's legal defense costs when he was arrested and prosecuted, then doubled his pay when he went to prison? How many realize that the weapons Israel uses to bomb villages in southern Lebanon and to kill and brutalize defenseless Palestinian civilians are provided free of charge by the U. S. government? 

The greatest struggles lie ahead. The government of the United States must assert, at long last, its own national interests in the Middle East. 

Israel's policies are giving a bad name to America, not just to the Jewish state. The world views our nation-accurately-as Israel's essential partner in its military adventurism and its suppression of human rights. America must clear its good name of this complicity. Opening talks with the PLO and challenging Israel's right to the occupied territories are a good beginning, but only a beginning. 

The next logical U.S. steps: declare that the people in occupied territories have the right to self-determination and, if they choose, independent statehood; demand that Israeli forces cease the detention of Palestinians without due process, as well as halt the beatings of Palestinians, the destruction of their homes and the use of plastic bullets and other lethal weapons against them; demand that new Israeli settlements in the occupied territories be prohibited. The United States has ample leverage with which to force compliance with these demands. 

At some point-the sooner, the better-the United States must issue a clear ultimatum: notify the Jewish state that all U.S. aid will cease unless Israel, in exchange for border guarantees, withdraws its forces from Arab territories. This would be a bold step, but, with each passing day, the immoral burden of complicity in Israel's misdeeds becomes heavier. 

Only Washington can deliver these demands in credible terms, because only Washington serves as Israel's lifeline; no Israeli government could defy an ultimatum from its sole benefactor and survive. And only citizens in the American countryside can persuade Washington to act. 

The challenge is awesome, but, once informed and aroused, the American people have shown a remarkable capacity to rise above any difficulty. The words Abraham Lincoln wrote 125 years ago to a nation convulsed in civil war ring clearly today as a challenge to the American people: "We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, this last best hope of earth." 

Perhaps today's challenge is not the last hope, but surely it is the best. Circumstance has placed squarely on us the opportunity, as well as the responsibility, to rescue ourselves from impending calamity. And, in making a stand for basic human rights in the occupied territories, we will also be liberating ourselves from the heavy hand Israel's lobby lays on our cherished political institutions here at home. We must bestir ourselves, for the opportunity may be fleeting.

notes
source
https://ia800307.us.archive.org/33/items/They-Dare-To-Speak-Out-Paul-Findley/They_Dare_to_Speak_Out_Paul_Findley.pdf