The Public Policy/The Democrats' Dilemma

...Once we sit down and negotiate seriously with the Sandinistas, their neighbors, and such honest brokers as Mexico (!), all good things will materialize and all bad things disappear: Nicaragua will redemocratize...

...Both Arabs and Druze hold seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament...

...THE PUBLIC POLICY THE DEMOCRATS' DILEMMA E since the humiliating defeat of .1.: / Jimmy Carter in 1980, the Democrats—through their allies and surrogates in the media—have been announcing their rediscovery of "realism" in foreign policy...

...Fair enough...

...And from time to time hardline statements can be heard from Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia or former Virginia Governor Charles Robb, both moving forces behind the DLC, as well as from Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan or Bill Bradley...

...Every Knesset, since the founding of the state in 1948, has had Arab and Druze members...

...The role of outside forces (the Soviet Union, Cuba, East Germany, Bulgaria, e tutti quanta) must be minimized almost to thepoint of invisibility...

...To favor sanctions combines action and inaction in perfect balance: moral posturing (at apparently low cost or no cost) combined with a perverted kind of zero-sum reasoning (bad governments are inevitably and always replaced by better ones...

...To be in favor of all good things and against all bad is not a foreign policy, simply because the world outside the United States doesn't offer such easy, pleasant options...

...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987...

...The literacy rate among Israeli Arabs is 95%, virtually the same as for Israeli Jews...

...Soon there will be no place to hide, and ready or not, the Democrats will have to face the full consequences of policies which even now it is dangerous and risky for them to espouse and for the rest of us to endure...

...It Mark Falcoff served on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 99th Congress...

...Israeli universities and technical institutions are freely available to the Arab population...

...They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages...

...Israeli health institutions are freely open to all Arabs, on the same basis as they are to Jews...

...The Democratic Leadership Council recently issued a report on foreign policy issues which the New York Times characterized as "a move toward the Center...

...You deserve a factual look at . . . The Arabs of Israel Are they a "persecuted minority...

...Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work and for these messages...

...Some innocents might imagine that treaties worth observing are worth ratifying...

...Israeli and Druze men are required to do three years of military service (women do 18 months) and then serve one month every year until they are 50...

...Like all other Israeli citizens, they have full rights to vote and to hold elective office...

...All religious communities in Israel enjoy the full protection of the State...

...Israeli Arabs—Moslems, as well as many Christian denominations—are free to exercise their faiths, to observe their own weekly day of rest and holidays, and to administer their own internal affairs...

...The former carries its own dangers...

...the latter would assuredly be a national humiliation, with repercussions near and far...

...There was Walter Mondale's speech to the Coalition for a Democratic Majority in 1984, which at least in theory held out the possibility of a return to his party's internationalist traditions...

...Stephen Solarz...

...This was partly due, one imagines, to inertia, and partly out of reluctance to face a bruising debate which would mobilize all of the "peace" constituencies that gave it so THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 29 much trouble over El Salvador in 1981...

...Not that we were breaking our word (the treaties had never been ratified) or even that we might be destabilizing the U.S.-Soviet relationship—but rather, that Senator Dole or Senator Helms might actually bring the treaties up for a definitive vote...

...Under Arab dominance, they were always third-class citizens and subject to harassment and to persecution...

...Different religions, cultures, and social traditions coexist...

...They publish what they please, subject only to the same military censorship as Jewish publications...

...troops...

...Israeli law grants women equal rights, including the right to vote and to be elected to public office, prohibits polygamy and child marriage, and has thus vastly changed the status of women, to far above that of any country in the region...

...Or will the Democrats persist in being—as they have been for a dozen years now—a species of Third World at prayer...

...This is a viable strategy, perhaps, for an exotic sect which never expects to exercise power...

...Protection of such diversity is embedded in Israeli's traditions and confirmed by the government...

...This explains why Democrats are constantly misrepresenting the external environment: not out of perversity, but because, truly, they have no other choice...

...Take just two foreign policy issues which agitated the 99th Congress...

...Now that the putative majority party has'fecaptured control of both houses of Congress, and arguably stands within striking distance of the White House, it is fair to ask whether there has been a serious shift in its mood on international issues...

...Those who imagine that this is an unfair caricature are invited to peruse the Congressional Record—Senate, for August 12, 13, and 14, 1986...

...But there are now 700,000 Arabs in Israel, as against 150,000 in 1948—a more than four-fold increase...

...For more than six years the Reagan Administration continued to observe the SALT II treaties negotiated by its predecessor—accords which even President Carter did not dare submit to a Senate controlled by his own party...

...And all of this somehow has to be reconciled with a basic fact which can no longer be denied, even by the likes of Senator Howard Metzenbaum—namely, that the Sandinista state is Communist and, in spite of the convenience of both Democrats and Republicans, persists in acting as such...

...This ad has been published and paid for by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America P.O...

...Therefore all of the facts have to be rearranged...

...Theirs is a geographical, not political, position...

...milk and honey will flow...

...Castro is naturally in favor of resolving his differences with the United States...

...When—as must, unfortunately, occur from time to time—reality pokes its ugly head onto the scene, the Democrats either express tepid "disappointment" with our adversaries (never, please note, our enemies) or find a way to blame everything on the Reagan Administration...

...Particularly when it happens to be a great power, on whom the survival of liberal and democratic values throughout the world depends...

...Most of them are slanted to make one believe that they are an oppressed and downtrodden minority, and that their political rights, their religious rights, their civil liberties, and their communal status are severely circumscribed or virtually nonexistent...

...A careful reading of Mondale's speech shows his internationalism to be so hedged in with qualifications as to be almost meaningless...

...The Democratic case against such aid—which stretched out over three days and nights—can be stated somewhat telegraphically without seriously misrepresenting its content: The Sandinistas are bad—repressive, totalitarian, allied to the Soviet Union, Cuba, the Eastern Bloc, etc., etc...

...The recent revelation that the Reagan Administration was selling arms to Iran—apparently in exchange for hostages—elicited a reaction from Democrats which should properly have struck fear into the hearts of terrorists near and far...

...Surely no nation can create its own set of easy options, just because it finds foreign policy an unpleasant diversion from more agreeable tasks at home...

...Education and literacy of the Arab population in Israel is as high and probably higher than in any Arab country...

...The holy sites of all religions are administered by their own authorities and protected by the government...

...It is instructive and sobering to compare the condition of the approximately 700,000 Arabs in Israel with that of the pitiful remnants of Jewry in Arab countries...

...90% of Arab children attend school, probably the highest ratio of any Arab population anywhere...

...It is official policy of the Israeli government to foster the language, culture, and traditions of the Arab minority, in the educational system and in daily life...

...The problem is that the number of states like South Africa are dwindling in the world, and the number of regimes which are partly the product of Democratic mismanagement and failure of nerve—Iran and Nicaragua, to name just two—are growing...

...the Soviets have no interest in the Third World, and so forth...

...And those who imagine that the party can now make hard choices need to resurrect and read the text of the candidates' forum at the 1984 New Hampshire primary, when all seven hopefuls were forced to conceptualize a response to a hypothetical Communist revolution in Mexico...

...No future Democratic Secretary of State is likely to assert that the Soviet "leaders" share "the same hopes and aspirations for the future" as our own...

...People who think that the Democrats have come home to patriotism need to read the Congressional Record for the first forty-eight hours after the liberation of Grenada by U.S...

...But this alone does not provide the combination of moral superiority and papier-mache realism which the party's tactical rule book requires...

...Put another way, by Mark Falcoff if you start with the idea that the United States should spend less and less of its Gross National Product on defense and more and more on education, welfare, the environment, and various bureaucratic boondoggles intended artificially to level social, class, and gender distinctions—in other words, if you want the United States to resemble more nearly Sweden or Holland, you have to look at the world as it appears to the Swedes and the Dutch...

...they will constitute no threat to their neighbors or to us...

...When, however, in 1986 the State Department finally announced that it would no longer continue to observe the accords, what was it that struck terror into the hearts of Senate Democrats...

...Moreover, to oppose the Sandinistas in this way may lead to U.S...

...At least as long as the outcome of any electoral contest is in doubt...

...No more anti-Americanism...

...no more "history" (on whose side we weren't but presumptively ought to be...

...About 3,000 Arab students attend such schools...

...is most apparent in rhetoric...

...but hardly one which can serve the nation's putative (and perhaps actual) majority party...

...The contras somehow have to be made at least as bad, and probably worse, than the Sandinistas...

...no more apologetics for Third World Marxist regimes—not even, now, for the Sandinistas...

...Your tax-deductible contributions are welcome...

...No wonder Democrats are so fascinated with South Africa: it provides the kind of foreign policy choices, they prefer—or rather, the only kind they prefer, which is to say, none at all...

...With the exception of such obvious ideologues as Jesse Jackson or Donald McHenry (or, at times, Jimmy Carter himself), most Democrats no longer sound like watered-down Marxists...

...Jews have been living in Arab countries for almost 2000 years...

...Israel is a democratic country—an open, pluralistic, and egalitarian society...

...Each community has its own religious councils and courts, and has full jurisdiction over religious affairs, including matters of personal status, such as marriage and divorce...

...So better to shift the premises of the argument altogether: somehow not to observe a flawed treaty is worse than the fact that it is flawed in the first place, and to discuss the matter rationally then becomes a threat to world peace, arms control, and all other desiderata in the Democrats' Christmas stocking...

...In summary, they enjoy the highest standards of living and liberty of any Arabs in the Middle East...

...the DLC report, it was learned shortly after its release to the press, was seriously challenged by another, quite differentdocument drafted under the direction of Rep...

...hus, the Soviets have no choice but 1 to be serious about arms control...

...First, the good news: there has been a change, at least to the extent of recognizing that there is a problem...

...But the Democrats knew perfectly well that an up-or-down vote would require the kind of examination which would, inevitably, have brought their deficiencies clearly to light...

...the Sandinistas will disarm...

...But whose fault is that...

...But by conniving with ex-National Guardsmen and other undesirable, criminal elements (the sole reference to the social base of the contra movement—as if more than 10,000 peasants and Miskito Indians did not exist)—by conniving, as I say, with such elements (who can never win, but who just might, which would be awful), we are making matters worse...

...Its purpose is to combat media inaccuracies, through public education and publicity...

...Since the surrounding Arab states, with the recent exception of Egypt, are the avowed enemies of Israel and are dedicated to its destruction, this exemption is granted by the Israeli Government to its Arab citizens, so as to spare them conflicts of loyalty and conscience...

...What are the facts...

...There are some 700 Arab educational institutions in Israel, with about 200,000 students-17 times as many as in 1948, when the State of Israel was created...

...Readers will have to indulge your correspondent here, since he played an active role in the floor fight in the Senate which resulted in $100 million in aid being voted to the Nicaraguan resistance fighters...

...There are daily TV and radio programs in Arabic...

...there cannot be a problem in Central America, or if there is, it can easily be resolved through "multilateral negotiations...

...Israel's Arabic press is the most vibrant and independent of any country in the region: there are more than 20 Arabic periodicals...

...These figures alone would seem to prove that things can't be all that bad for Arabs in Israel...

...many of the same people who damned the Reagan Administration for bargaining with terrorists are themselves partisans of negotiations with just about everybody over just about everything...

...Box 590381 ^ San Francisco, CA 94159-0381 CAMERA is a tax-deductible, non-profit educational 50I(c)(3) organization, headquartered in Washington, DC...

...When this proves not to be the case, the same intransigents and hardliners suddenly discover not merely the expediency, but also the moral superiority of "quiet diplomacy" and "constructive engagement" (as in the case of Angola and Mozambique...

...Contrary to propaganda and to what many believe, the Arabs in Israel are full-fledged citizens, enjoy every civil right, and have the same status in law as Jewish Israelis...

...They were about 900,000 Jews in Arab countries in 1948—now there are fewer than 25,000...

...f course, the Democrats are absolutely right about one thing—that a straight-line extrapolation of today's policy of assistance to the contras, if unsuccessful, would lead either to full-scale military action by the United States, or a frank admission that domestic factors make it impossible to do anything about a new Soviet base two hours' flying time from our borders, not to mention the potential for the destabilization of an entire, virtually contiguous region...

...There is, however one difference between the "rights" of Arabs and Jews in Israel...

...A careful deconstruction of this rhetoric illustrates my point perfectly: the Democrats have no stomach for military intervention in Central America, even by proxy...

...Seventeen per cent of the total population (700,000 people) are non-Jews, most of them Arabs, and some Druze...

...The difficulties of negotiating with a Communist regime have to be glossed over as if the Nicaraguan state were something utterly different from what it is...

...But this is not the way to fight them—particularly since an easy solution is at hand, namely, the Contadora process...

...The bad news is that the Democrats have become more "centrist"--if that is indeed the term—out of prudence rather than genuine conviction...

...Please make your check payable to CAMERA and mail to the above address...

...Our overhead is minimal...

...There are almost daily stories in our newspapers and magazines about the Arabs in Israel...

...All transactions in the Knesset are simultaneously translated into Arabic, and Arab members may address the Knesset in their own language...

...military intervention—indeed, it follows logically from President Reagan's definition of the threat—and that is everywhere and always the worst of all possible outcomes...

...Israeli health standards are by far the highest in the Middle East...

...Then there was the little matter of Nicaragua...

...In contrast to the non-Israeli Arab world, Arab women in Israel enjoy the same status as men...

...no future U.N...

...Israeli universities are renowned centers of learning in the history and literature of the Arab Middle East...

...Arabic is taught in Jewish secondary schools...

...The importance (and the diplomatic, political, even military strength) of regional powers like Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama must be exaggerated out of all recognition...

...envoy is likely to present himself—as Andrew Young once did—as a virtual ambassador-withoutportfolio from the Third World Marxist states to Washington...

...Arabs are exempted from military duty and are not required to perform any compensating civilian service...

...But the main problem with the Democrats' supposed centrism is not so much that it is cosmetic—although obviously to some degree it is—so much as that it simply isn't operational...

...Would a Democratic administration in 1988 return to the kind of bipartisan foreign policy associated with Harry Truman or John F. Kennedy...

...Arabic is an official language in Israel, together with Hebrew...