| Guest | | Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 4:24 am Post subject: Breaking the Silence on the Israel Lobby |
| Breaking the Silence on the Israel Lobby
by Jeffrey Blankfort
On a Saturday in mid-February a little less than a year ago, I had two
experiences, one very positive and encouraging --the other negative and
disturbing. The first was at the Marin Community Center in Mill Valley,
across the Bay from San Francisco, where more than 200 ( 210 signed in)
people, and not what we refer to as "the choir" or "the usual suspects,"
turned up to hear Palestinian legal scholar Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian
professor Jess Ghannam, Stanford-based Israeli scholar Yael Ben-Zvi and
myself speak on the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The event was sponsored by a relatively new organization, "If Americans Only
Knew." initiated by Alison Weir, a Marin county resident who had been
stimulated into action in behalf of the Palestinians after a visit to
Israeli-occupied Gaza the year before.
All of the presentations were well received but the enthusiastic reception
for mine, in particular, was significant because my subject was the pro-
Israel lobby and its negative influence on the American body politic.
I placed much of the blame for the escalation of violence in the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict on the actions of the organized American Jewish
community and by individual Jews working independently who over the years
have successfully stifled, intimidated, and marginalized critics of Israeli
policies.
I expected an uproar from the audience because, from my experience, Marin had
always been another "occupied territory," but even among the many Jews
there, none challenged by premise or my evidence.
What they heard and saw was factual and visual evidence of the power of
Israel's supporters over Congress and politicians at every political level
and. equally damning, their effectiveness in preventing the various anti-war
and anti-intervention coalitions over the years from taking any position that
might touch on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even one as mild as, "US Out
of the Middle East."
After I spoke and after the applause, a number of people, Jews and non-Jews,
and several students came up to me wanting more information .
Then I went over to Berkeley to the second day of a three-day conference
organized by Students for Justice in Palestine where the issue of the Israel
Lobby was nowhere on the agenda.
I arrived during Phyllis Bennis's presentation. Bennis, a fellow of the
Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington-based liberal think tank, is one
of the left's more well known talking heads on the Israel-Palestine conflict
and can frequently be heard on KPFA and other Pacifica stations.
Over the years, like most of the other "experts, from the "left," with the
notable exceptions of Columnist Alexander Cockburn and Prof. Ed Herman, she
has never recognized, let alone been willing to discuss, the power of the
Israel Lobby over US policy in the Middle East, despite overwhelming and
indisputable evidence of its existence and of its influence.
What happened when I arrived in the auditorium was astonishing. Seeing me in
the back of the auditorium where I was sitting with a friend, totally out of
the blue and raising her voice, she interrupted her talk to blurt out,
"Congress is not Israeli Occupied Territory!"
I assumed she was referring to an article that I had written 10 years earlier
that was published in the 1992 edition of the City Lights Review, entitled,
"Occupied Territory: Congress, the Israel Lobby and Jewish Responsibility."
In the article I had criticized the left supporters of the Palestinian
movement for their failure to deal with the issue of the Israel lobby.
My response to Bennis was immediate "Yes, it is!, " I said aloud. "No it
isn't!" she shot back, sharply, rather displeased, and went on to describe
an effort that some members of the Congressional Black Caucus were making
regarding the illegal use of US arms by the Israelis. against Palestinian
civilians..
In the question period, it became obvious that she didn't want me to get
the floor. While answering a question as to what actions people should take
to help the Palestinian cause, she seemed to be filibustering as if she was
hoping the question period would draw to a close.
What would she have activists do? Believe it or not: write letters to the
editor once a week. The system's safety valve. As far as contacting members
of Congress or protesting their support for Israel, the Washington-based
Bennis said nary a word.
Finally, despite what was an obvious effort on her part to get the moderator-
-who had promised me the next question, to give it to someone else--I
finally got the floor. I proceeded to describe four situations in which the
Israel lobby clearly demonstrated its power over Congress and explained how
"the lobby" had run those black congressmembers who criticized Israel out of
office and were trying to do the same with the main critic at that time,
Atlanta's Cynthia McKinney.
This was, of course, several months before she and Albama's Ear; Hilliard
went down to defeat thanks largely to funds sent by Jews from outside of
Georgia and a smear campaign within her district engineered by the Israel
lobby.
Then I took the anti-war movement to task. Like every other political sector
of US society, I said that pro-Israel Jews within its ranks and others who
are fearful that raising the issue of the pro-Israel lobby would provoke
"anti-Semitism, have not only kept the lid on that issue, but have kepy the
Palestinian cause isolated from the movement's overall agenda..
Whatever the reason, I emphasized, there are no excuses for the silence of
the movement on the issue of the lobby nor for it's genuflecting to "Jewish
sensibilities" regarding the overall struggle.
Neither Bennis nor her co-panelist, a Jewish professor, said a word when I
finished. After the program, I went down to say hello to her, and jokingly
mentioned that she still had not yet understood the role of the Israel
Lobby.
She was neither friendly or amused. "The issue is dead and has been dead.."
End of conversation.
What is disturbing is that her position regarding the Israel lobby is that
long held by Noam Chomsky, as well, as by professors Joel Beinin of Stanford
and Stephen Zunes of USF. Bennis's position is puzzling since she is based
in Washington, where, for the politically aware, "the lobby's" power is a
given..
To their credit, all of them, and Chomsky in particular, have, through their
writing and speaking, have exposed American audiences to the history of the
Israeli-Palestinian struggle, but their refusal to acknowledge the critical
domestic aspects of the struggle are indefensible and can no longer be left
unchallenged..
(In 1989, Zunes wrote an excellent piece on the power of the pro-Israel
lobby for The Progressive, but he soon changed his position, perhaps when he
realized that "blaming the Jews" is the fastest way to get marginalized in
US academia. The facts and the quotes in his article, however, did not
change.
In his recent book, Tinderbox, he writes that Arabs have mistakenly blamed
Israel for its problems and that Israel is actually a victim of US policies.
He would have us believe that Israel is forced to play the same role for the
United States that Jews played under feudalism when they were the
middlepersons between the lords and the serfs.
This analysis would have us believe that Israel and its Jewish supporters
today are somehow in the precarious position that European Jews found
themselves in several hundred years ago This is absurd. The first situation
represented Jewish weakness. Today, Jews have more than at any time in their
history.
Zunes ignores the fact that Jewish supporters of Israel are far and away the
leading contributors to the Democratic Party and dominate every sector of the
media: movies, TV., radio, and the press.
Since 1978, the amount of money contributed by pro-Israel PACs alone is over
$34 million, as compared to Enron whose $6 million over 10 years given to
many of the same politicians is held up as an example of an abuse of the
system.
That $34 million does not account for soft money and contributions from
wealthy Jews such as the $1.1 million given by real estate mogul Nat Landow
to Al Gore nor the $1.5 given to Joe Biden some years back by Walter
Shorenstein, the biggest commercial property owner in San Francisco, the
sometime head of the state Democratic Party Central Committee and a member
of the AIPAC Board of Directors.
On the Mother Jones magazine website <www.motherjones.com> one finds the
leading individual contributors to both political parties in the 1999-2000
cycle. Eight of the top ten are Jews who contributed, with one exception,
exclusively to the Democratic Party. That one exception was Chiquita
Banana's Carl Lindner who contributed to the Republicans as well.
One of those top ten was Haim Saban, currently a regent of the University of
California, appointed to that post by Gov. Gray Davis, in February, 2001.
Saban, an Egyptian-born Israeli Jew, contributed $1,250,500 in that cycle to
the Democrats which put him in fifth place. This year, his contribution to
the Democrats of $7 million established a party record.
Saban, who made his fortune by creating Fox TV's Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers, has also built the Haim Saban Center in Washington which this summer
hosted a meeting of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee),
Israel's officially registered lobby with Jewish college students from around
the country. Their focus: How to counteract pro-Palestinian activity on
college campuses and combat the divestment campaigns that target Israel such
as that initiated by the Students for Justice in Palestine.
In every other political and social struggle in this country we learn who is
funding the other side and the identity of their lobbies in Washington,
e.g., the oil lobby, armaments lobby, the tobacco lobby, the gun lobby, the
insurance and banking lobbies, the hospital and mecical lobbies, the airline
and transportation, etc.
Why is the Israel Lobby a taboo subject among the left and the anti-war
movements?
Why was it not on the agenda of the conference in Berkeley that weekend?
There were three days of meetings so its organizers had plenty of time.
Why was there no discussion on the failure of the peace and anti-war
movements to integrate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the over-all
anti-war movement?
These questions need to be asked and we need to get answers. Those who shine
us off with the same kind of comment that Phyllis Bennis gave to me that day
have to be challenged to explain themselves and be willing to debate the
question of the lobby's role in determining not only policy in Washington
but the agenda of the peace movement.
As for Bennis, I was later told by an activist against sanctions in Iraq,
that earlier in the day she had spoken in support of military sanctions
against Iraq to prevent it from building "weapons of mass destruction."
(This is an updated version of an article that originially appeared in the
Anderson Valley Advertiser in February, 2002.) | |
