The Malpractice of the National Lawyers' Guild
THE MALPRACTICE Of THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD A SPECIAL REPORT "Each generation has the right to make its own mistakes." But it is a waste and a shame when the best it can do is to imitate the...
...Of the other eight members of the delegation, four were Jews: Matt Ross, a Boston attorney...
...an uneven level of development, knowledge and understanding throughout the organization...
...The reporters, perhaps, may be forgiven, for they know not...
...He is a member of the steering committee of the national Gay Rights Task Force...
...And he is eager to dissociate himself from the majority of his colleagues on the delegation, which, upon its return, held a press conference at which it charged that the use of torture against Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza was officially sanctioned by the Israeli government...
...Accordingly, it is of more than passing interest to know the composition of the delegation, which spent three weeks in the Middle East— Lebanon, Jordan and Israel—in August of 1977, just before the Seattle Convention...
...The photographs—of destitute Arab children, of lush Israeli kibbutzim, of Arab refugee camps and of high rise buildings in Jerusalem, and of course, of the victims of Israeli torture—were a useful foil for the comments, which included such observations as these: the large plaza facing the Western Wall had required the demolition of hundreds of Arab homes "in order that rich Western tourists can visit the Wall...
...The Middle East delegation had prepared a 90 minute slide show, with about a hundred color slides and a commentary provided chiefly by Malea Kiglan, a member of the delegation (San Francisco, attorney, Lebanese descent) and Garay Menicucci (San Francisco, a legal worker), also a member of the delegation...
...On these questions, Dickstein is a defender of Israel, and professes puzzlement as to why so many Jewish members of the Guild—"who have joined the Guild because they are Jews, because concern for the oppressed is so deeply ingrained in them by virtue of their Jewish education," can so casually be led to take positions "against their own people...
...It was not until 4:30, however, after long discussions of Guild finances, the site for the next Guild convention, and several other resolutions, that the consensus resolution on the Middle East was presented...
...Whereas, the National Lawyers Guild recognizes that the core of the Middle East conflict is the issue of the national rights of the Palestinian people, and whereas the Palestinian people have been subjected to inhuman repression in each of the countries to which they have been forced to go: namely, the massacre of some 20,000 Palestinians by the United States backed Jordanian regime during Black September in 1970, the attacks on the Palestinians in Lebanon by the Phalangists and other right wing elements maintained in power by the U.S...
...But lest that clause be taken as a victory for the forces of Zionism, Article 5 offers a cryptic reference to Israel's Law of Return, demanding its repeal...
...There was some intense back and forth, the New York delegation moved to table the resolution, and its motion was approved by a vote of 199-173...
...The confusion persisted for a time, causing considerable anguish to various groupings within the Guild...
...infant mortality on the West Bank has doubled between 1972 and 1975...
...The NLG sends a delegation to the quinquennial Congress of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers...
...But the Guild, for all its pandering language, was quite clearly uncertain...
...Too much was at stake: specifically, the credibility of the Guild in the "progressive" movement...
...The Communist Party was probably the most reactionary group represented here...
...His name is Abdeen Jabara...
...By now the scenario should be clear...
...Sourani, who was the PLO delegate to the Congress, and who was, according to the Guild rapporteur, "extremely understanding of our position...
...There was no applause when Stavis concluded his suggestions, but there was an extended debate, centrally between those who endorsed the consensus, whatever their reservations, and those who insisted on their reservations, whatever the consensus...
...Marcia Greenfield, an attorney from the San Francisco Bay area...
...They may not know all this...
...In the New York Post article, there is a short paragraph on the Guild, which concludes with one sentence, "Critics call it 'radically' left-wing...
...he is a member of Breira, a man who is comfortable with his Jewishness and with his support for Israel as a legitimate expression of Jewish national self-determination...
...An organization called "Chutzpah," and described as "a collective of Jewish working women and men in Chicago," sought to provide Guild chapters a more balanced view of the Middle East, and came away from the experience feeling "isolated" and "frustrated," concluding "even our best presentations may never have made a dent in the hard-liners' romance with their own misconceptions about the PLO...
...The Colorado chapter of the Guild, for example, had available to it the help of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, with which, in May of 1976, it co-sponsored an International Day of Solidarity with Palestine, joining for that purpose with the Boulder Organization of Arab Students, the Communist Party, and others...
...One such question: "Given the accomplished fact of Israel for thirty years, you've got people who have been there for two or three generations, children who were born there, who were raised there, isn't one compelled to go beyond the strict definition of the Jewish people as a religious entity, aren't there some national rights that the Jewish people might have...
...Basically," as one observer of the Guild noted, "you had a situation where a bunch of third-world types wanted to insure that the Jews in the Guild—and the Jews are almost certainly a majority—would be forced to eat crow, to choose sides...
...Again, the consensus was defended, amendments resisted: "After years of struggle and pain by the Palestinian people, they will now be acknowledged to have the right to exist...
...Jabara was not, however, the only resource for the Guild...
...They're angry, and rigid, and there's no better test of their control of the Guild than forcing the old-timers to grovel, and there's no better evidence of their own mili-tance—if they're Jews—than toadying up to the PLO...
...Discussion then shifted to the human rights resolution...
...it would blow the whole thing...
...And why not...
...I feel Jewish when I think about the Holocaust...
...For those who may not be familiar with the IADL, its politics may be inferred from the following excerpts from the Middle East resolution adopted at its Helsinki Congress in 1970: the resolution referred to "Israel's continuing escalation of its aggression with the support of World Imperialism headed by American Imperialism which prevents the establishment of peace in the area...
...The National Lawyers Guild, author of nonsense and, by virtue of its resolution, sponsor to terrorism, does know it...
...At Last, Seattle...
...finally, that all the "whereas" clauses after the first two be stricken as divisive...
...In his report, moment's observer at the convention noted the general ambience at the convention...
...He was graduated from law school in 1965, following which he lived and traveled in the Middle East and North Africa for a year, and has practiced law in Detroit since his return—save for relatively frequent visits to the Middle East, and a hectic schedule of lectures around the country...
...Howard Dickstein is not ignorant...
...In short, in 1975, at the same time that it decided to commission a study to determine the extent, if any, of Israeli violations of the civil and political rights of Palestinians, the Guild authorized and "directed" its National Office to "provide legal support and resources, if requested, in connection with political actions which are supportive of the civil and political rights of the Palestinian people here and in their homeland...
...Dickstein does not question the veracity of the reports the group heard from those who alleged they had been the victims of Israeli torture, but he is exceedingly careful to qualify the charge, limiting the group's competence to verification of "torture of uncertain extent during the interrogation of suspected PLO terrorists in occupied territories—that is, we can't say whether it happens in Israel proper, or whether it's government policy, and we heard nothing to suggest that there is 'gratuitious' torture, torture outside the context of interrogation...
...Thus, in October of 1976, the Middle East Subcommittee of the Guild distributed a pamphlet by Jabara entitled "Israel's Violations of Human Rights in Arab Territories Occupied in June 1967...
...And, later, "I really can see that there are a lot of aspects of this situation that are incredibly complex to a person like myself who hasn't devoted years or even months to it and doesn't know...
...Here the debate was essentially between members of the New York chapter and Jabara...
...in his view, "the Jewish people have some certain national rights, the Israeli people do, so I don't accept the PLO's position, I don't quite agree with that...
...The fact that the delegation issued a statement even before it reported to the Guild convention, and long before its formal report—not due until December— was prepared, was to prove very important to the fate of the human rights resolution which it later presented for Guild approval at Seattle...
...a Jewish person in a foreign country has more political rights in Israel than does a Palestinian Arab who had lived there prior to the creation of Israel...
...They will merely report what they hear...
...They may well not know that the PLO—termed by the Guild "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people"— issued a Formal Communique at the conclusion of the Thirteenth Session of its National Council (Cairo, March 20, 1977), asserting its "adherence to the PLO's strategic objective to liberate Palestine from the racist Zionist occupation so that it will become a home for the Palestinian people...
...The story that follows is about political burlesque, about how grown men and women make fools of themselves—and of how such foolishness takes on political significance...
...It did, however, have Abdeen Jabara, and it was Jab-ara who was instrumental in setting up meetings with PLO leaders, including Arafat, as well as meetings with the Israeli Left...
...Except that it is, for all its aspects of absurdity, not a funny story...
...The official briefing paper prepared as background to the proposed resolution on the Middle East at that meeting was winsomely humble in its claims...
...The New York chapter of the Guild did make a somewhat more serious effort at self-education, scheduling five forums with a variety of presentations, as a result of which it was reported in the chapter's newsletter that "it's probably fair to say that more of us now view the Palestinians as a national entity waging a just struggle for national liberation and self-determination...
...They will not know that the "senior" member of the delegation was Ab-deen Jabara, who in 1971 spoke approvingly of Arafat's call to the Palestinians to "go in to the new year with our finger on the trigger," who was described on his appearance as the featured speaker at a Denver celebration of Palestinian solidarity in 1975 as "a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause...
...And so forth...
...So I was interested in the Middle East to test out these principles against certain sorts of attitudes I had as a result of my Jewish background...
...The chairman, Jim Lar-sen, pointed out that there had already been considerable discussion at earlier convention workshops, and the resolutions as now presented reflected some aspects of those earlier discussions...
...For the uninitiated: "non-Arab progressive people" in this context means Jews who oppose Zionism...
...But he was only the spokesperson...
...if New York was willing to accept the consensus, then everyone should be willing to...
...The Guild has changed, it has more progressive tendencies...
...Gunnar Sievert, a delegation member, indicated that the delegation, after conferring with representatives of the New York chapter, had accepted the six-point consensus in an effort to meet the concerns of "some people...
...He is quite uncomfortable with those Guild members who try to "backpedal their Jewishness because it detracts from their credibility as radicals...
...The meeting was, therefore, adjourned without taking any action...
...Coming, as it did, shortly after a spate of similar reports, especially the June 19 London Sunday Times Insight Team report, the statement was fairly widely reported, and Quigley, as spokesperson for the delegation, was invited to appear on various radio and television shows to describe the delegation's experience and the evidence it had gathered...
...As Dickstein was to phrase it later, "it's likely that only a minority of the Guild members actually agree with the consensus resolution, but a majority can live with it...
...The proposal was to insert, after the word "sex," "or sexual orientation...
...Jabara then presented the case for the human rights resolution, noting that the Guild had publicly stated on several occasions that there had been Israeli violations of human rights in the occupied territories, and adding that the delegation had found these violations to be ongoing and continuous...
...of how, at its Seattle convention in August, it came to adopt the resolution it did on the Middle East...
...It explained its abstention at some length to a Mr...
...In the meantime, however, while the education was happening and the commission was investigating, the Guild could scarcely sit on its hands...
...They will not know that long before the delegation was dispatched, the Guild had committed itself to support for the Palestinian "resistance" movement...
...Twenty minutes were allocated to the discussion—but a full hour and a half was used, much of it in a rehash of the morning's debate...
...He indicated that the process of compromise the resolution reflected had been "extensive, intensive and painful for all concerned," and went on to argue that the critical test of the resolution was whether it was "related to the level of consciousness of our own membership and the communities that we seek to represent...
...It is a story of wasted talents and perverted principles...
...Ross accepted that restatement of his motives as accurate, and went on to describe how and why the trip had offered him ideological confirmation...
...military intervention in Lebanon in 1958, and the massacre by the rightists at Tal al Zaatar refugee camp in Beirut in the Spring, 1976, the military invasion of Lebanon by Syria in the Spring of 1976 against the Palestinians and progressive democratic 1 Calls for the cessation of all Israeli settlement in the occupied territories and effect a complete withdrawal from all territories occupied in 1967...
...It explained that the ability of the Guild to "arrive at a definitive resolution on the Palestinian Question at this stage is hampered" by "the lack of experience of people in the organization who have dealt with this question . . . ; the absence of long-time Guild involvement in studying the political and historical questions involved...
...Lawyers Say Israel Tortures Arab Prisoners...
...But it is a "mechanical approach to the problem" to conclude that "once you have a people who constitute a nation they have the right of self-determination...
...I saw it several times...
...let the plenum decide...
...Sourani was assured, however, that the issue would be taken up at the August meeting of the Guild's National Executive Board...
...Sievert was followed by Martin Popper, speaking on behalf of the New York delegation...
...It is the story of the National Lawyers Guild...
...Surveillance of Jabara intensified after the Munich massacre in 1972, and the FBI questioned Jabara's neighbors regarding his whereabouts after the murder in Washington of Colonel Yosef Alon, Israel's military attache, in 1973...
...The militant pro-PLO faction felt that the withholding of full support from the PLO was a result of "Zionist influence within the Guild...
...A large number of people who are Guild members support the idea that Israel has a right to exist...
...The Time...
...5 calls for the elimination in all the states in the Middle East of laws, institutions, regulations and practices which have the purpose or effect of discriminating on the basis of religion, national or ethnic origin, sex or race...
...The issue before the Guild in Seattle was not how Guild members feel about the Middle East...
...He was the founder of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc...
...In fact, Dickstein, who is one of the three members of the group who have been assigned the task of authoring its formal report, is considering the possibility of writing a minority report, demurring from several of the group's conclusions...
...Accordingly, the resolution as finally accepted now includes the reference to sexual orientation...
...Several members of the audience expressed irritation at the selection of photographs: the suggestion was that there had been conscious distortion...
...Quigley finished law school in 1966, and then spent a year studying law at the University of Moscow...
...Thus, for example, Article 5 of the delegation resolution, calling for "the safety of the Jewish people" had been added to the original version in an effort to meet some of the objections of the New York delegation...
...It is ominous, sinister...
...government support for the repressive Arab and Israeli regimes Middle East Resolution Whereas, the National Lawyers Guild has resolved to study the question of the Middle East, and to educate itself and its members on the issues involved, and...
...The proposed amendment is an example of factional splitting that would rupture the delicate political process which has united the whole Left...
...And what of terrorism...
...Howard Dickstein, an attorney in Sacramento and a teacher at the University of California Law School...
...I cried through that movie...
...There was acrimony in the air, and little chance of reaching a decision before the plenary session scheduled for Sunday afternoon...
...Two new amendments were proposed: the first, introduced by a Boston delegate, suggested a new "whereas" clause, to read "The NLG recognizes and opposes the role that anti-Semitism has played as a tool of imperialism to separate Jews from their natural allies, the third world and working class people...
...For him, the trip to the Middle East offered an opportunity to "test . . . principles which find easier application in other areas of the world...
...This language may be contrasted with the more "moderate" consensus resolution with which it shared the same "whereas" clauses, and whose text appears in a separate box...
...The task of acquiring a sophisticated understanding of the Middle East, or, as the Guild persistently has it, of the Palestinian question, was considerably eased by the availability, within the Guild, of a resident expert on the issues involved...
...The important event, however, was yet to come...
...The Setting...
...Since that view is the one promulgated by the Guild, his ignorance is not obvious to most of his colleagues...
...He joined the faculty of the Ohio State University Law School in 1969, and the Guild in 1973...
...Late summer, 1977...
...Educating the Members of the Guild...
...An "Ad Hoc Jewish Caucus" proposed the endorsement of a "two-state solution" to the Middle East impasse...
...That is not like reinventing the wheel...
...It is a story of how lawyers ignore the elementary canons of their profession, of how Jews forget the elementary implications of their heritage, of how silliness becomes the norm for the behavior of a professional organization and of how gibberish becomes its language...
...The Times provides its readers no background on the Guild or on the members of the Guild delegation, save for Quigley, who "teaches international law at Ohio State University...
...it "recognized that the armed Palestinian resistance is a legitimate resistance and is the expression of a National Liberation movement constituting an integral part of the world struggle for liberation, against imperialism...
...Fred Solloway of Washington, D.C., who had been a delegate to the Congress of the IADL, insisted that the Guild join its "progressive colleagues around the world...
...Whereas, the progressive movement of Jews in Israel is isolated and under attack within Israel and has called for progressive forces in the United States and internationally to pressure the United States government and to educate the people in the United States on the necessity of a national solution for the Palestinian people, and...
...To do so would be "to reflect an insensitiv-ity to our membership," whose level of "political consciousness" was as yet not fully developed...
...The Guild changed dramatically in the late 1960's and early 1970's, when the veterans of the early days were displaced by the veterans of campus unrest who had gone from SDS to law schools around the country...
...Later, after the convention, Jabara was to restate Popper's position rather more bluntly: "The New York delegation is not yet fully acclimatized to reality," he told moment...
...everyone else voted "yea...
...Whereas, the Middle East is a strategic location for United States imperialist interests in Asia and Africa as well as Europe, and whereas the United States has maintained a policy of support for repressive regimes and is engaged in efforts to impose a settlement on the countries of the Middle East without the independent participation of the Palestinian people which is contrary to the interests of the peoples of the Middle East, and...
...Each was thumpingly defeated, until the very last, the one which would add to the original language ("The NLG calls on the PLO and the State of Israel to commit themselves to the exchange of mutual recognition between an independent and sovereign Palestine and the State of Israel") the following words: "and a full program of peace between them...
...His private practice is small, chiefly criminal appeals and gay rights litigation...
...that Article 6, calling for mutual recognition, should also call for "the development of a full program of peace between [Israel and the PLO...
...The second proposed amendment sought to add three words to Article 5, calling for an end to discrimination by Middle East states on the basis of religion, national or ethnic origin, sex or race...
...Everything is relative, after all, and there was considerable pressure within the Guild to evade the Middle East question entirely, or, at the least, to soft-pedal it...
...better, by Mort Sahl...
...Ross and Dickstein provide an interesting contrast in background and perspective, moment spent four hours in conversation with Ross just after his return from the Middle East and before the Seattle convention...
...So much for Munich, Ma'alot, all the sordid rest...
...That issue had long since been decided...
...Jabara, in a telephone conversation with moment, was perfectly clear: "Given the implementation of the other clauses, I can live with the last clause...
...And then, almost as an afterthought, "The publication of this study does not mean that the positions expoused (sic) represent the policy position of the Guild...
...Because that is the level of their political consciousness it is important that the Guild understand and respect that state of mind...
...At that point there was an urgent huddle among the managers of the consensus resolution—Jabara, Ross, Greenfield, Sievert, and Lar-sen, the chairman—and it was announced that the delegation would accept the amendment as friendly...
...He is 37 years old, and was born in Mancelona, Michigan, the son of Lebanese parents...
...After some additional desultory discussion, the meeting turned its attention to a debate over the two resolutions that were soon to come before the full convention...
...they know, but care not...
...2 recognizes the right of self-determination and national independence for the Palestinian people...
...The Guild was not prepared to vote for consensus at any price, but, evidently, the endorsement of peace was considered a tolerable price...
...American, Israeli, and Syrian imperialism are what prevent Lebanon from being a happy country...
...Occasional comments were also provided by Ross and Jabara...
...Human Rights, Too...
...Indeed, one member of the delegation, boasting of Jabara's "fair-mindedness," reports that Jabara was very receptive to the proposal that the delegation spend some time at a kibbutz in Israel—suggesting, of course, that Jabara was the de facto organizer for the group...
...The discussion following the slide show was led by Marcia Greenfield, Ross, and Jabara...
...the radicalism of the Guild's Jewish members, whose continuing refusal to embrace the PLO and to renounce Israel cast doubt on their radical authenticity...
...Popper led the opposition, on behalf of the New York delegation, arguing that the mode of the resolution's presentation violated the regular processes of the Guild, and, perhaps even more important, that its acceptance, given the circumstances of its presentation (that is, before the report of the delegation was prepared) would do "incalculable" damage to the Guild...
...The Mid-East Delegation...
...But the gay delegates insisted that the amendment was friendly, and it carried...
...The answers were evidently satisfying, although Ross demurs from total acceptance of the PLO program...
...In the meantime, education, selection of a delegation to visit the Middle East and report back on its findings, and preparation for the ultimate showdown in Seattle...
...nobody as far to the relative right as the American Civil Liberties Union was anywhere in sight...
...Endorsing the PLO has become a litmus test for Jewish radicals...
...JNF forests are almost always planted over Arab villages...
...The central differences are contained in Articles 5 and 6 of the consensus resolution...
...It is a story that should be told by David Steinberg...
...It was, instead, quite narrow: would the New York delegation—heavily Jewish, many old-timers—stand in the way of "progress," forcing the Guild to accept a modified endorsement of the Palestinian movement, or would the "new" Guild have its way, and provide a flat and all-embracing endorsement of Palestinian goals...
...the delegation had no official chairman...
...of its "inquiry" into the Middle East...
...Article 6 is important, and relatively moderate, because it proposes that the PLO recognize the State of Israel...
...But the consensus resolution was the latest compromise, acceptable both to the Middle East delegation and to the New York chapter...
...the slide show and its commentaries were not nearly strong enough...
...He accepted Articles 1 and 3, but felt that Article 2, asserting the Palestinian right to self-determination and national independence, should assert an equivalent right for the Israeli people...
...Popper was followed by Mort Stavis, another veteran Guild member, who indicated his support for the "general political line" of the resolution, but expressed the conviction that some clarifications would strengthen it without doing violence to its intent...
...The son of radical parents, he is a graduate of the SDS at Berkeley during its "best" years—1966-70...
...This young man, chosen to help provide the Guild a competence to assess the Middle East situation which it confessed it did not have, "was raised in a culture where Exodus was my awakening point...
...The Background...
...The New York spokespeople, including Popper, argued strenuously that it had been an error for the delegation to hold a press conference and to release a statement before reporting to the Guild, and it would compound that error for the Guild to vote a condemnation of Israel before the delegation had prepared its full report and members of the Guild had had a chance to study it...
...he was counsel to a group which, in 1972, sought to end the tax-exempt status of the UJA...
...It is inconceivable that it does not...
...Article 5, he felt, should specifically exclude the Law of Return, which was, after all, the raison d'etre of the State of Israel, the "substitute for Hitler's Final Solution...
...In any case, the delegation spent its allotted time, returned, and issued its wholly predictable statement: "We came away convinced that the Israeli government implements a policy of torture for the annexation of the occupied areas...
...While Dickstein is insistent that there was no unanimity within the delegation regarding either Zionism in general or human rights issues in particular, it appears that he may well have been alone in his dissidence...
...And the NLG abstained again at the 1975 IADL Congress, which was graced by the presence of the President of the Supreme Court of the USSR...
...You walk through a foyer crowded with long tables loaded with literature of every description, representing the Communist Party-USA, the Coalition for Progressive Legislation, the Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women, the League for Proletarian Socialists, diverse Maoist groups, Gay Lib, Black freedom movements, groups concerned with Chile, South Africa, and many others...
...But the trip permitted him to put critical questions to PLO members...
...If that seems a bit awkward, what it comes down to is a desire to determine whether his radical ideology was adequate to overcome his personal biases...
...It is, therefore, a story of danger, clear and present...
...I can't see the creation by the Jews of what I see as an exclusivist state...
...He was also the only member who speaks Arabic, and, so far as could be ascertained in the course of our inquiry, the only member who had any prior experience in the Middle East...
...The central difference revolves around the issue of whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, which in turn raises the question of whether the Jews are more than a religion, and hence entitled to self-determination...
...Accordingly, it was made part of the consensus resolution...
...The pamphlet carries the following note: "This study is being published and circulated by the National Lawyers Guild pursuant to a policy decision of the National Executive Board of the Guild (August 1975 NEB) to conduct studies into the violations of civil and political rights of Palestinian Arabs and progressive Israelis and enhance the education of Guild members and others around these issues...
...Which, of course, comes in very handy if you want to engage in a crash program of political education...
...Of the 500 or so delegates, about half men and half women, almost all were very young—twenties, early thirties—and there were very few Blacks or Chicanos...
...of how the PLO wins allies and of how truth gets trampled...
...The plenary session, at which the full convention would re-debate both the political and the human rights resolutions, was convened at one o'clock...
...it noted "that the Palestinian people expulsed from their homes and prevented by force by the Israeli Government from returning therein, that the Palestinian people, also subjected to all forms of terrorism, could only resort to heroic resistance which had developed into a National Liberation movement with all the legal consequences which follow, thus proving the existence of a Palestinian people and a Palestinian nation to be an objective reality...
...3 recognizes the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and its right to participate on an equal footing as a principal party in any discussion of the Palestinian Israeli conflict...
...The recently-returned Middle East delegation proposed its own text, which included five operative clauses: 1. The NLG recognizes the right of the Palestinian People to self-determination, and 2. Recognizes the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and 3. Calls for Israeli withdrawal from all territories occupied since 1967, and 4. Calls for the termination of the U.S...
...It represented a good way to sort of sound out and test some convictions I had...
...As did Argentina...
...In 1972, the FBI admitted that it had been keeping track of Jabara's activities since 1967—even before he served as Sirhan Sirhan's attorney...
...The defense of this amendment was particularly impassioned, and centered on the need to distinguish, somewhere in the resolution, between Zionism and the Jewish people...
...So, after its admission of non-expertise, of its lack of knowledge and understanding of the issues, the Board agreed to embark ' 'on a number of limited programmatic endeavors to support the Palestinian people...
...After all, the document asserts, "our political education to date leads us to conclude that the Palestinian people were arbitrarily and wrongfully deprived of their homeland in Palestine...
...His remarks were greeted by sustained applause...
...lawyers claimed yesterday...
...And in the opinion of one key actor in this drama of the absurd—Abdeen Jabara himself— Article 6 is not independent of the other Articles...
...A Zionist "Victory...
...John Quigley, who was later to be elected Vice President of the Guild, was inaccurately identified as the group's chairman in press reports on the trip...
...That is, given the right of all displaced or dispossessed Palestinians to return to Israel, given Israeli repeal of the Law of Return, given an autonomous Palestinian state, that state should recognize Israel—if, of course, there is still an Israel to recognize...
...Whereas, it is the declared policy of the State of Israel to deny the national rights of the Palestinian people through such acts as continued occupation of and absorption into Israel of the West Bank and Gaza strip territories, and the refusal to negotiate with the recognized representatives of the Palestinian people, and...
...Stavis' several proposals were put to the vote...
...Before the trip, his "sympathy for the Palestinians" was an "abstract position...
...Whether these were simply instances of over-zealousness on the part of the FBI or not, Jabara is generally perceived as a leading American spokesman for "the Palestinian struggle," as he puts it...
...Ross is hardly malevolent...
...it is not a story of isolated madness, but of spreading infection...
...front in Lebanon, and the continued Syrian occupation of the country under the guise of "keeping the peace", and the open and acknowledged military cooperation between the Israelis and the fascist Phalangists in Southern Lebanon...
...Whereas, the Palestinian Liberation Organization is overwhelmingly endorsed by the Palestinian and Arab people, progressive Israelis and by 120 countries in the world as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, 4 recognizes the right of return or compensation for all Palestinians displaced or dispossessed in the creation of Israel in 1948 pursuant to the United Nations resolution # 194...
...William Montross, an attorney from Columbus, Ohio...
...Mark Kadish, for example, a Chicago attorney, argued that dialectical materialists were required to face concrete reality...
...A press conference will be called, and sober journalists will no doubt appear, and write stories that begin—as did Newsday's on August 2, 1977, after the delegation's return from the Middle East—"Israeli security agents frequently use torture to extract confessions from Arab prisoners in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip areas, a group of U.S...
...But it is a waste and a shame when the best it can do is to imitate the mistakes of its fathers...
...presumably the Guild's own delegation to the Middle East would provide fresh insights and would help, at last, to clarify the Guild's position...
...Do it, but keep it quiet...
...During the course of the debate, it was suggested—and accepted by the author of the amendment—that it be reworded to sharpen that point, reading "The NLG recognizes and opposes the role that anti-Semitism and Zionism have played . . ." (Emphasis added...
...large numbers of armed Israeli soldiers "are present everywhere as part of the continuing repression...
...Popper is a Guild old-timer, and he, too, rose to endorse the consensus resolution...
...Ross was eagerly looking forward to Seattle, where he was to play an important role in the debate...
...Accordingly, the NEB felt that "it would be inappropriate for the organization to come to a final, clear cut resolution on the major political issues of the Palestinian Question...
...Jabara is patient: "It's only a matter of time until a human rights resolution is passed...
...6 calls on the Palestine Liberation Organization to commit itself to the exchange of mutual recognition between an independent sovereign Palestinian state and the state of Israel...
...We cannot separate ourselves from the fact that a large number of Guild members have a level of political consciousness that will only permit a resolution of this character...
...But they'll come around...
...and, Whereas, the Palestinian liberation movement is a national liberation movement which represents a destabilizing threat to both United States imperialist interests in the area as well as the repressive Arab and Israeli regimes, and...
...Some time in December, the delegation report will be finished and made public...
...Instead, it chose to commit "the resources of the organization to continuing and expanding our internal political education on the Palestinian question," and to "commission a study, leading to a position on the treatment by Israel of Palestinians in Israel and occupied territories, to determine the extent, if any, of violations of the civil and political rights of those people and to further explore the incidence of repressions against non-Arab progressive peoples within Israel...
...The American delegation—that is, the National Lawyers Guild delegation—abstained when the vote was taken...
...Various other proposals were put forward, including one that would acknowledge the right of the Jewish people to self-determination (nine people voted "yea" on that one), and finally, the full consensus resolution—as amended to call for a full program of peace between Israel and the PLO and for nondiscrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation was overwhelmingly passed by voice vote...
...The Guild did not flinch from the issue: "Under the guidance of a number of political organizations [the Palestinian people] are carrying on a struggle to regain their national homeland and political rights...
...The vote on that amendment was a tie, 40-40...
...Accordingly, the directive to the National Office to provide support and resources to the Palestinians ' 'here and in their homeland" was followed by a denial of authorization to the National Office "to lend the name of the Guild to sponsor or endorse such political actions, rallies, demonstrations, etc...
...Novices to the internal politics of radical organizations may be forgiven if they do not immediately see why the "consensus" resolution was thought more moderate than the delegation's resolution...
...He is intense, and terribly, terribly genuine...
...Prior to the full debate on the proposed political resolution and on the human rights resolution which was submitted by the Middle East delegation, and which called for the condemnation of alleged Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, several "educational" sessions were scheduled, and much preliminary debate and caucusing took place...
...They will not know that Matt Ross viewed the trip as an opportunity to test the strength of his radicalism, and they will not know that a representative of the PLO brought his movement's greetings—and thanks—to the Seattle convention on Friday night, before the resolutions had been formally presented and acted upon...
...The Lemieux Auditorium of Seattle University, a Jesuit college which had rented space to the National Lawyers Guild for its 40th anniversary convention...
...that Article 4, calling for the right of return or compensation of displaced Arabs should, to accord with the realities of the situation, permit Israel the option of choosing between return and compensation, and should also provide for equivalent recognition of the rights of the large number of Jews who had been expelled from the Arab countries...
...better still, by Don Rickles...
...To which accusation Ross responded by stating that he had been "all knocked out by the severity of the occupation and how brutal it was...
...he is •merely, and incredibly, ignorant...
...The Plenum...
...During the debate, he did not feel it necessary to repeat what he said quite plainly when we spoke with him: "I would not be surprised if my familiarity with the Zionist movement was at fault, because I'm very fresh to these problems...
...And the centrist group, concerned with the survival of the NLG itself, sought to duck the question...
...And so it was...
...In the words of Doron Weinberg, President of the NLG in 1975, while "I personally . . . support the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination and am in basic agreement with the program put forward by Yasir Arafat on behalf of the PLO at the United Nations, I am just as firmly convinced that it is incorrect for the Guild as an organization to take a position on the Palestinian question at this time...
...Jabara explained that the issue had been before the Guild for eight years, that it had been extensively studied, that the membership was fully competent to come to a decision on the matter...
...Headline writers will again do what the New York Times did that same day, creating a headline which reads: "U.S...
...Numerous caucuses huddled to discuss this, and the New York delegation finally announced that it was not prepared to accept the amendment...
...When put to a vote, the amendment failed, 142-141...
...The journalists who cover the story will most likely not know that the delegation was the guest of the PLO in Lebanon...
...The Guild—most particularly, those Jewish members of the Guild who battled for "moderation" and accepted a resolution which implies the death of Israel in the name of a progressive consensus—cannot be forgiven...
...Why await the findings of the study...
...That position, simply stated, was that the Guild had decided to study the "Palestinian Question" further before taking a definitive stand, and that its program of study had scarcely begun...
...the satisfaction of several prominent Guild activists who had been lobbying for the PLO within the Guild for some years...
...Those who still assume that professors of international law at major universities are thoughtful, wise and judicious will have no way of knowing that Quigley and his colleagues were not sent to the Middle East to gather facts, but to confirm preconceptions...
...Therefore be it resolved that the national lawyers guild: and to the strategy of achieving a Middle East settlement without the independent participation of the Palestinian people, and 5. Calls for safety and security for the Jewish People to live in peace throughout the Middle East...
...Tomorrow...
...The IADL, he noted, had taken a position far more "advanced" than what the Guild was now proposing...
...it is like rediscovering the flat tire...
...And he will almost surely stay ignorant, since his primary motive in acquiring new data is to reinforce a very deeply-held view of the world...
...But not for terrorism: the Guild was distressed that "local and state governments have done little to stop the terrorist activities of such groups as the Jewish Defense League aimed at depriving the American people from learning more about Palestine...
...he was the editor of Free Palestine, a paper whose first issue (April/May, 1969) asserts that "planting the bombs in the Hebrew University and in a Jerusalem supermarket were answers in kind to the ruthless acts of the Israeli authorities," the acts of Palestinians "encouraged by their freedom-fighting brothers...
...It was this Article, as amended, that Jabara later took such pains to say had no status without the full prior implementation of the other five Articles...
Vol. 2 • October 1977 • No. 10
