Carter and the Jews XI. In Which the Insignificant Is Exploited

...Brzezinski's "comprehensive peace,' with its aim of bringing the Palestinians into negotiations for an area-wide settlement, has upset many Jews from the beginning, they view it as a tentacle, covert and creeping, toward legitimizing the PLO The "comprehensive'' plan first surfaced to general notice in the 1975 Brookings Institution report, Toward Peace in the Middle East, said to have been masterminded by Brzezinski and including among its 16 signers attorney Rita Hauser and Philip Klutznick, Carter's recently-appointed Secretary of Commerce, long an active Zionist The Brookings report asks "the Arab parties" to put an end to their hostility in return for Israeli acceptance of "Palestinian self-determination " Although the document came to be regarded as the foundation of Carter's Middle East policies, it was somewhat more tentative than another Brzezinski formulation on the same subject, appearing only a few months earlier in the Summer 1975 issue of Foreign Policy (Brzezinski, then Director of the Trilateral Commission, shared authorship with a Briton and a Japanese) With differing degrees of pressure, both publications-Brzezinski at the heart of each-urged negotiations with the PLO...

...It wasn't just 'social' It meant something...

...Arafat grumbled that the Europeans, in stopping short of official recognition of the PLO and its claim to sovereign status, had merely thrown him "a piece of bone" Yet if the present European mood is any indication, before long he may have the rest of it...

...Almost simultaneously, factions of the PLO were planning other lands of incursions "As many as 60 Israeli settlements and towns are within the range of our missiles," Ahmed Jabreel, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, boasted on June 9, Jabreel's Soviet-made rockets have a range of up to 35 miles Majed Abu Shrar, a spokesman for Arafat's own Al Fatah, announced that organization's decision to renew the launching of terror raids into Israel from Jordan Hussein had put an end to such activity a decade ago, when his own regime was threatened Abu Shrar is nevertheless ripe for another go "We will try to convince King Hussein We are committed to our goal We have the men, we have the weapons, and we have the will ". The proposed rationale for this heightened flurry of terrorist ambition is the early June bombing assault upon three West Bank mayors These, like the three whom Israeli authorities deported in May following the gunning down of Jewish worshippers in Hebron, had expressed vociferous PLO attachments Bombs were planted m their cars, one mayor had both his legs blown off, another a foot The third was warned away m time by an Israeli demolitions expert, who lost his eyes m an attempt to dismantle the explosive Meir Kahane and his Kach group came under immediate suspicion-but Kahane was already under detention, in accordance with an old British Mandate law, for having threatened retaliation after the Hebron murders In the wake of the bombings, a few Jewish settlers voiced angry satisfaction that feelings of uneasiness and fear were being experienced by the side that had previously inflicted them Israeli officials, starting with Prime Minster Begin, universally condemned the assault on the mayors as a horrible crime In the United States, American Jewish leaders in pained chorus cried out against the unknown assailants...

...No accommodation may be necessary...

...Is it accurate to say that Jews are "divided" about the PLO...

...Bernice Tannenbaum of Hadassah "A clever man, adept at fielding questions He answers in his own way He makes no secret of his point of view ". First anonymous speaker "Brzezinski is not a friend He was the one person I didn't want to meet in Washington Don't say this, but I was afraid I might lose control over my emotions ". Mark Siegel "About the arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Brzezinski said 'This will break the back of the Jewish lobby once and for all...

...When words just like my own come out of the mouth of someone like Andy Young or John Connally [who in his Middle East speech had alluded to a public letter by Fern], I feel bad But I'll go on saying these things anyhow " Although Fein repudiates a PLO-ruled state, it is not difficult to find other members of the movement in the U S who say they would welcome it, and "would take the risk...

...Probably But that division is something like 99-1 Among Jewish Americans who believe that "Israel should speak to the PLO" are U S Human Rights Ambassador Shestack, and the editor of a Zionist magazine (he bars the use of his name) who says he does not distinguish between the Palestinians and the PLO According to the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff, Israeli Knesset member Un Avneri met with PLO officials, who afterward denied knowing who he was The mainly Leftish Israeli "Peace Now" movement expresses its willingness to talk to the PLO "The only precondition is an end to terror " Some do not require this precondition "Peace is made with enemies ". In this country the majority of Jews -regarded by supporters of "American Friends of Peace Now" as "trained to equate public criticism of the Israeli government with subversion"-think that placing hope in the possibility of coexistence, or even negotiations, with the PLO shows preposterous naivete Jewish idealism earned to the extreme of self-destructiveness (And "self-de-structiveness" is the word Gershom Scholem, that majestic scholar m Jerusalem, assigns to the current Jewish character ) The counterargument is that Sadat turned around from total intransigence and war-making, and it could happen again A few of the Peace Now people support the PLO's claim to being the new Algerians, a national liberation movement whose only goal is self-rule Yehuda Blum, Israel's Ambassador to the UN, finds the analogy flawed, the Algerians, he retorts, wanted to get the French out of Algeria, not to dismantle France...

...Leonard Fein, editor of the Jewish periodical Moment and a foremost activist in the American Friends of Peace Now, does insist on a difference between Palestinians and the PLO Asked about possible PLO misuse of Peace Now gambits, Fern confesses sorrowfully "I would feel very bad...

...Second anonymous speaker "Brzezinski...

...Hyman Bookbinder, the American Jewish Committee's liaison in Washington, had scolded me for my inquiry about that incident in Algeria last November 1, when Brzezinski extended his hand to Arafat Brzezinski was in Algeria, the Times reported, "to show that United States policy was ready to accommodate Third-World revolutions, no matter how radical, as long as they were independent of foreign powers " Bookbinder counsels, "Forget nonissues Don't look for exploitation of the insignificant...

...To deflect rumblings that Brzezinski's disposition is anti-Semitic, much has been made of the warming fact that his father, a Polish aristocrat, saved Jews in Poland during World War II But all that-like the reported behind-the-scenes expressions of Carter's Georgia clan-is not the real point Brzezinski theorizes that the United States is in competition with the Soviet Union for the allegiance of the "emerging countries," 1 e , the Third World This puts him in the position of wanting to woo the very people who are implacably ranged against the Jewish State They are usually implacably ranged against America as well, but the National Security Adviser means to win them over by espousing some of their causes...

...In the past, assassinations have been deliberately pinned on Israelis by rivalrous PLO groups Yet in assuming that the attackers were Jews, no one was more explict about the significance of the bombing incident than Al Fatah's Abu Shrar "What has been done against the three mayors is an important announcement," he declared, "that after 30 years Israel has returned to the kind of terror that forced the Palestinians to abandon their homes " Whatever distortions his historical premises may have reflected, the chief burden of this "important announcement" by a PLO spokesman was to acknowledge that no Jewish attack of this kind had occurred for at least three decades Thirty sears and no Jewish terror at all-a recognition of the adversary's peaceful intent from the very mouth and maw of terror s true believer...

...In Which the Insignificant Is Exploited What is eating the Jews is best represented by the thought system of Zbigniew Brzezinski-the Aristotle to Carter's Alexander, the Columbia professor who has shaped the President's mind on Middle East, East-West, and North-South issues...

...An uptight, defensive type of person, sensitive to criticism, his body language shows it The difference between Carter and Brzezinski is style, not substance Peace treaty or no, Brzezinski hasn't deviated an iota from his original plan of settlement-giving the Palestinians a 'national entity,' bringing in the PLO Everything is the same as before That handshake with Arafat...

...Another flawed analogy was contrived by President Carter when he compared the PLO to the American civil rights movement Many blacks, Jews and other Americans were annoyed by the equation of PLO terror with civil rights nonviolence Jews were stunned by an equation that not only put them on the wrong side of civil rights, but also conferred homage and respectability on the very organization the Administration had pledged to shun...

...The PLO is a band of assassins," responds Squadron, "though it's not inconceivable that they might do what Sadat did Recognition of Israel would be a smart tactic to gain their end ". "A shrewd and conscienceless tactic," Perlmutter adds, "but Arafat avoids it There are people in his coalition who are bloodier than he is If it looked as if he were making an accommodation, even a staged one, they would destroy him...

...Brzezinski is rather a ghostly figure He materializes now and then on a television news show or in a newspaper interview, for the most part he is not much in evidence, particularly since Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine replaced Vance as Secretary of State Yet his mark is everywhere...

...The number of countries which have given recognition to the PLO exceeds the number that have recognized the State of Israel, for 32 years a sovereign nation," Tannenbaum points out Even more recently, Arafat has been making impressive political incursions in European capitals, and now they are beginning to pay off Common Market leaders, convening June 12 on a Venetian island, called for Palestinian "self-determination" and agreed that the PLO "will have to be associated with the negotiations " Israeli settlements and control of Jerusalem were criticized, Camp David was not mentioned...