AC writes to Phil Weiss:
There seems to be a lot of unbound optimism being thrown around lately.
Talk of a "sea change" or "the ground shifting under their feet" or
"cracks in the dam" or "this would've been impossible a few years ago"
etc. abounds.
All this talk may be true, but perhaps some perspective is lacking. Three items from the archives:
(1) An article
from the October 1982 issue of New York Magazine, written one month
after the Sabra and Shatila slaughter, entitled "American Jews and
Israel: The Schism" [emphasis added]:
"Less than four months ago, when the Lebanese war was just
beginning…Menachem Begin was in New York. "Never in the past," said
the prime minister, "was the great Jewish community of the United
States to united around Israel, standing together." Today, with the war
over, that unanimity is strained–and perhaps shattered. American Jews
of all denominations are debating their role and their relationship to
Israel. "Maybe," says Rabbi Alexander Schindler, of New York, president
of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, "our past silence in
some way contributed to the present nightmare. But even if it didn't, we are across a threshold."…"We
haven't been completely silent in the past," says Schindler, "but we've
certainly been reticent. I fear that our past public support of the
government of Israel, no matter its policy and no matter our private
reservations, was used the Israelis to project a world Jewish community
completely in accord with its goals and methods. We were used like
cows. We were milked, both for financial and moral support–and for
influence we could bring to bear on Washington–and when we were used
up we were put out to pasture….But we've crossed a watershed now, and our open criticism will continue and increase."
[Eli Ben-Elissar, then-chairman of the Knesset's committee on
foreign affairs and defense, from the same article, speaking with
"disappointment" ("contempt is too strong a word," he says) of the Jews
in America] "I hear from my American Jewish friends that this is
different, that the question this time is a moral one….In many cases,
Jewish leaders in the United States have taken positions without even
making a phone call, without trying to ascertain what really happened
and what is really going on. I know Jews in America are brainwashed, as
are all Americans, by TV. They are on the front line of information.
They see all those awful pictures. So it's not easy for them. But when
has it ever been easy for a Jew?"
That last part is apparently a reference to what Israeli govt.
spokesmen and the like call "massacre propaganda," whereby, if Israel
bombs a family to smithereens, and pictures of the aftermath are
broadcast or published, those who do so are terrorists and the pictures
of the human beings that Israel just murdered are propaganda of the
worst order. By that twisted logic, perhaps Yad Vashem is in need of a
redesign… In any case, that article, with all its talk of "thresholds"
and "watersheds," was written in 1982, 26 years ago.
(2) An article
on Zionist propaganda published in Mother Jones' February 1989 issue
[Weiss: by the late great Robbie Friedman!] titled "Selling Israel to America: The Hasbara Project Targets The U.S.
Media":
In contrast [to the Israeli press], the U.S. press often treats
Israel with kid gloves. Until very recently, for example, very little
was reported about the rise of religious fundamentalism in Israel. And
how many U.S. readers know that well-armed Israeli right-wing
extremists who are financed by American Jews have vowed to overthrow
the government if it tires to trad eland for peace with the Arabs?
…And some prominent U.S. editors and publishers who have dropped
all pretense of objectivity to become public-relations advisers for the
Israeli government hope to keep it that way. At the opening of a
three-day international conference organized by the World Zionist
Organization, the government press office, and the World Union of
Jewish Journalists in Jerusalem in January 1985, Commentary editor
Norman Podhoretz declared: "The role of Jews who write in both the
Jewish and general press is to defend Israel, and not join in the
attacks on Israel." Critical reporting of Israel, he stated, "helps
Israel's enemies–and they are legion in U.S.–to say more and more
openly that Israel is not a democratic country."
"You have nothing to worry about," Brokaw said [speaking to "mostly elderly congregants at the affluent Sutton Place Synagogue on New York's East Side…"]…The media, he assured his listeners, are on your side.
…Many mainstream U.S. journalists share some of Podhoretz's
views on covering Israel. And many others who have tried to defy this
orthodoxy have come under unrelenting attack from the Israel lobby–a
coalition of editors and publishers, pro-Israel PACs, and wealthy
businessmen–which tries to silence dissidents with accusations of
anti-Israel bias of anti-Semitism….Furthermore, the Israel
lobby…has strengthened the hand of Israelis determined to hold on to
the occupied territories. This undermines those in both Israel and the
United States who seek an accord that could lead to Palestinian
self-rule on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
…The U.S. media's long-standing love affair with Israel
soured–temporarily at least– in the summer of '82, when Israel's
horrific siege of Beirut played night after night on network news. The
indiscriminate bombing of the Lebanese capital and the massacre of
Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila under the watchful eye of Israel's
army turned Arabs into victims. NBC commentator John
Chancellor…described the mood of many journalists that summer: "What
in the world is going on?" he asked viewers. "Israel's security problem
on its border is 50 miles to the south. What's an Israeli Army doing here in
Beirut? The answer is that we are now dealing with an imperial
Israel…."
As far as officials at the American Jewish Congress were concerned,
no single event brought home the need for a more effective Hasbara, or
propaganda, campaign that the Lebanon war. In the summer of 1983,
therefore, the congress sponsored a conference in Jerusalem…to seek
ways to improve Israel's darkening image abroad….
…Rick Kaplan, the executive producer of ABC's Nightline,
is one of the many influential journalists who have cooperated with the
Hasbara Project….[former senator Jim Abourezk asks] "You might ask Ted Koppel how many times he has had
Israeli spokesmen on Nightline as compared to Arab spokesmen"…
"Of course a lot of self-censorship goes on," said Menachem Shalev,
a former spokesman for the Israeli consulate in New
York…"Journalists, editors, and politicians, for that matter, are
going to think twice about criticising Israel if they know they are
going to get thousands of angry calls in a matter of hours, The Jewish
lobby is good at orchestrating pressure."
(3) A report called "Ignorance Isn't Bliss" from the July 1976 issue of Mother Jones:
…as a recent survey shows, even the Jewish members of Congress
are not very knowledgeable about the Middle East….The results were
printed in interChange, the monthly review published by Breira, an
organization seeking to promote an alternative voice in the Jewish
community [Sound familiar at all?].
unsophisticated about Mideast issues. A number, for example, said they
got their information…from the Isreali Embassy and AIPAC…
…Still, most Jewish members of Congress constitute a kind of in-house lobby for Israel.
All of these articles were written at least 19 years ago.
In
a sense, it's really rather pathetic. People grow excited and issue
forecasts of "change" when an "evenhanded" envoy with "stature" is
appointed or a new book is published or an article is written or a
single line in an article acknowledges this or that or when some
dauntless soul publicly advocates the two-state solution that's been on
the books for decades. All the while, Palestinians continue to be
liquidated and their land is daily stolen in the name of Jewish
colonialism.
Optimism is all very well, but to call the gushing excitement that
greets every scrap thrown to the anti-occupation or anti-Zionist pack
optimism is perhaps a misnomer. Panglossianism seems more apt.
