Wonderful reporting by Grant Smith on the nascent Israel lobby, and the fact that the American Zionist Council (or AZC) in the 1960s worked hard to oppose efforts by American presidents to bring justice to the refugees expelled from Palestine and Israel in ’48. (I have written about this myself, showing that over several decades American presidents sought to honor the refugees’ rights; Smith fills out the picture). The lobby did so by working the media and, as always, cultivating elites– "molders" of opinion.
Notice the presence in the Atlantic, writing against refugees’ rights, of Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway’s dashing wife for a time. Gellhorn was considered a great reporter during the Spanish civil war days, but the lobby seems to have gotten to her. Not all the dots can be connected from the archive Smith is exploring, but he points out the "rewards" that the Atlantic got for publishing this stuff. Big circulation boosts. And a 64-page Supplement on Israel that the Atlantic printed– what was that worth? There are many examples of Gellhorns today, glamorous truth-finders in their youth for whom access and attention prove more alluring than truth. Do I need to be specific? Smith:
In the early 1960s the AZC’s Magazine Committee [.pdf] met regularly with writers to prepare articles for top U.S. magazines such as Reader’s Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, and Life. In its program [.pdf] for “cultivation of editors” and “stimulation and placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines,” the committee pushed lighter subjects with prepared texts such as the thirteenth anniversary of Israel’s founding while killing investigative pieces at such publications as the Christian Science Monitor. The committee confronted two major news items challenging Israel: fallout from the “Lavon Affair” (a cover-up of failed false-flag Israeli terrorist attacks on U.S. government facilities in Egypt) and American peace proposals calling for the return of some expelled Palestinian refugees to their homes and property in Israel. The Israeli government and its U.S. lobby invested heavily in arguing against the return of Palestinian refugees through The Atlantic, according to yet another secret AZC report [.pdf]:
“The Atlantic Monthly in its October issue carried the outstanding Martha Gellhorn piece on the Arab refugees, which made quite an impact around the country. We arranged for the distribution of 10,000 reprints to public opinion molders in all categories. Acting on information that anti-Israel groups were bombarding the Atlantic with critical letters, we stimulated a letter campaign designed to counteract their impact. …
“Interested friends are making arrangements with the Atlantic for another reprint of the Gellhorn article to be sent to all 53,000 persons whose names appear in Who’s Who in America…
“The November issue of the Atlantic carried a special 64-page Supplement on Israel, with articles by some of Israel’s top names. …
“Our Committee is now planning articles for the women’s magazines for the trade and business publications.”
The Jewish Agency, an Israeli quasi-governmental organization with pre-legislative review powers and access to Israeli government tax revenues, laundered overseas tax-exempt charitable relief funds into U.S. public relations and lobbying through its American section. The AZC was incapable of independently raising its own revenue and received $5 million ($36 million in 2010 dollars) from the Jewish Agency over two years for public relations and lobbying. The Jewish Agency received AZC bi-monthly media action reports. Up to $6,300 ($45,360 today) was budgeted for reprints of “The Arabs of Palestine,” which erroneously concluded that “Palestinian refugees will merge into the Arab nations, because the young will insist on real lives instead of endless waiting.” It is clear from contemporary news reports and the heavily redacted Senate record that the AZC and the Jewish Agency seriously violated IRS regulations and the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act.
