Carter and the Jews XIV. Who, Not Counting Brzezinski, Really Wants the PLO?

...American Jews who are friends of Israel must think about this: You cannot have Carter without also getting his teacher...

...Schindler came away dejected The sole lesson Secretary of Defense Harold Brown appeared to have derived from the anguish over Iran was that Israel should yield to the PLO Why7 To save Saudi Arabia from external aggression and internal subversion The Saudis, for fear of sabotage or assassination, appease Arafat The U S, for fear of the loss of oil, must appease the PLO to appease the Saudis The assassin is in the saddle, and rules...

...Alexander Schindler went to a meeting in the Pentagon with such a thought in mind-that American Middle East policy would now be profoundly and profitably instructed by Khomeini The whole world, after all, saw Khomeini and Arafat embrace It was Hilarion Capucci, the PLO's gun-running priest, who presided over the painful public display m Iran of the broken and burned bodies of eight Americans who died in the aborted hostage rescue (The Pope, having banned Massachusetts' Representative Father Dnnan from a political career devoted to social conscience, has still to act on Capucci's political career...

...It is a process that pushes all governments, including Arab governments, toward its only likely consummation: a PLO state...

...comprehensive," as in Brzezinski's keystone phrase "comprehensive settlement " The idea had attained currency, and some notoriety, before Sadat's trip to Jerusalem scuttled Brzezinski's hope for a Geneva conference "Comprehensive" in the Brookings report was used circumspectly, tiptoeing around the sensitive question of PLO inclusion In Brzezinski's Foreign Policy article, the notion cropped up as "a required international framework," less speculatively providing for PLO participation Now, with the Europeans issuing their own Middle East policy statements in precisely such an international framework, the proposition appears as "all the parties involved," and there is no doubt that the PLO is meant to be one of those parties Little by little, the career of the "comprehensive settlement" has pressed forward, spilling into the Common Market, moving the PLO from the periphery toward stage center...

...Vance is gone, apparently unregretted...

...Brzezinski has all along been the foremost advocate of "comprehensiveness...

...he does not turn his back on it now...

...Despite the President's reassurances, disavowals, election-year abstentions, cajolings, caressings, despite all those calming Jewish appointees-Linowitz, Stuart Eizenstat, Neil Goldschmidt, Klutznick, Edward Sanders, Brown, Alfred Moses, Strauss-Rrzezinski has written three burning letters all over the once unsullied board: PLO...

...But Carter is no longer an unspoiled slate...

...The revolution in Saudi Arabia was suppressed, in both senses The world does not know what really happened there, and what it will mean if it happens again The only thing certain is that not one of the countries surrounding Israel wants a PLO-Khomerni-Fidel state, particularly not Saudi Arabia The very nations supporting the PLO are afraid of it-terrorists who might turn against their Dr Frankensteins overnight...

...A single concept puts him there...

...And the terrorists who held the hostages were said to include either PLO members themselves, or men trained by the PLO...

...Signifioantly, Israel is not the only country in its neighborhood to worry about the cadres of the PLO Jordan massacred them wholesale Sadat threw them out Syria fought them in Lebanon, and now "sponsors" them there in order to keep an eye on them The Lebanese long to be rid of them (Before the PLO made its appearance there, Lebanon's border with Israel was reliably quiet for over a decade, there was a de facto Israeli-Lebanese peace) The Saudis fund and fear them Possibly one of the most important events in recent months-next to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, with its Soviet arrow pointing down toward Persian Gulf oil-was the strange rebellion in the mosque at Mecca, which lasted about three weeks Religious fanatics, we were told-first they said only 50 of them, then maybe 200, then 700 Finally, the beheadings One fugitive report let it slip that there might have been some Arafat-style insurgents behind it all As the Shah, so the Saudis...

...Muskie is here, his direction only beginning to define itself...

...Brzezinski has left his mark...

...Theodore Mann again "Khomeini has succeeded in giving terrorism a bad name where we Jews couldn't ". Has he...