ISRAEL'S BLANK CHECK

...Congressional liberals who speak out against the use of American weapons in El Salvador and Guatemala remain silent when it comes to Israel...

...McGovern added, in reference to the current situation, "We should not offer unconditional aid to any nation that spurns the path to a just and lasting peace...

...Senators Edward Kennedy, Paul Simon, Howard Metzenbaum, and other liberals joined Jesse Helms, Charles Grassley, and like-minded figures on the Republican Right in a successful effort to close down the Palestinian Information Office in Washington, though no one at the office had ever been accused of criminal activity and the office had complied with all applicable U.S...

...Washington Mayor Marion Barry, a former leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, spoke at a rally sponsored by right-wing Jewish groups in support of the invasion...

...foreign policy, also made an exception regarding Israel...

...More than a dozen other labor leaders are forcibly exiled from their country, and still others are shot dead by soldiers in demonstrations...

...Similarly, when the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which has taken progressive positions on Central America, nuclear disarmament, and other issues, tried to join with similar organizations in the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy in 1983, the Committee was initially refused admission, with opposition spearheaded by Americans for Democratic Action...

...It accounts for 38 per cent of all U.S...

...These politicians believe, she contends, that PLO moderation of recent years is simply a phased plan to destroy Israel...

...It's one foreign-policy issue where liberals can show they're tough," says an aide to a prominent liberal member of Congress...

...These so-called 'liberals' are supporting repression...

...This past summer, when a two-state initiative was placed for consideration on the state party platforms in Massachusetts and California, it was opposed by virtually every elected official, including some leaders in Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition...

...Therefore, to criticize U.S...

...In some sense, we are even the mercenaries of America to fight the wars of American interests, or what the ruling persons in America consider to be American interests," says Israeli intellectual Ishawa Leibowitz...

...Political action committees supportive of the Israeli government contribute more than $7 million to Congressipnal campaigns, primarily those of liberal Democrats...

...The United States is not helping Israel, but ruining Israel...

...In the United States, religious groups—particularly Catholics and Quakers, whose schools were directly affected—also encouraged an end to the denial of educational rights, citing the negative impact on the children's cognitive development...

...It targets those who do not fully support its agenda with well-organized and well-financed campaign efforts...

...She sees a parallel between the role Israel has played for Western powers and the historic role certain Jews played for the ruling class in Europe as visible agents for an oppressive order...

...Any movement that attempts to challenge liberal acquiescence to U.S...

...Gary Hart's 1984 Presidential campaign withdrew funds from Washington's First American Bank when campaign aides learned that the bank had Arab investors...

...If my boss is ever given flak about being soft on defense or weak in backing our allies, we can always point to his support of Israel...

...During the fighting, California State Assemblyman and former antiwar activist Tom Hayden toured Israeli-occupied sections of Lebanon with his wife, actress Jane Fonda, and both praised Israeli actions...

...We should have done Israel the honor of rebuking those political leaders who betray the high traditions of the Israeli nation and the great ideals of Judaism...

...Rather than get drawn into divisive ideological debates on Zionism, activists should simply emphasize concerns over peace and human rights...

...Machismo is a factor, too...

...Just as an older generation of leftists often dismissed legitimate concerns about human-rights violations in socialist countries as an imperialist disinformation campaign, so this generation of liberals, in its dream of the Zionist ideal, dismisses legitimate concerns over Israeli human-rights violations as anti-Semitism...

...Young agrees: "The problem is that many Americans mistakenly believe U.S...

...In Israel, peace and human-rights groups as well as two Jewish teachers' unions worked for the reopening of schools...

...government support...

...Even Secretary of State James Baker called for the reopening of schools...

...and international law, is contrary to both U.S...

...laws...

...But these efforts were systematically attacked by leading liberal political figures...

...When it comes to appropriations," says Nancy Alexander, "it is impossible to talk about any conditional reduction of aid to Israel without being completely marginalized...

...Ironically, the liberals who have most criticized the PLO for its attacks on non-combatants also thwart PLO attempts to codify its recent change in tactics...

...It's as wrong in the West Bank as it is in Chile...

...Leaders of the Democratic Party, at their mid-term conference that summer, endorsed the invasion as a means of bringing peace to the region...

...In a Third World country, scores of trade-union activists are rounded up and held without formal charge on orders from a military government...

...In Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, the campaign against the voter initiative was chaired by liberal Representatives Barney Frank and Joseph Kennedy...

...Why do so many liberals have a double standard on aid to Israel...

...The results are similar, she argues: The victims blame a convenient scapegoat rather than the real source of the unjust system...

...ernment's invasion of Lebanon, American liberals gave the invasion all-out support...

...On Capitol Hill, Senators Tom Harkin, Paul Simon, Alan Cranston, John Kerry, and other liberals recently wrote a letter to Secretary of State James Baker commending him for his opposition to Palestinian statehood and encouraging him to withdraw all U.S...

...loyalty to Israel reflects support for U.S...

...Ruth McCormick, an aide to Representative Nielson who followed the legislation closely, called the process "a real education...

...Anti-Arab racism is implicit—and sometimes explicit—in the attitude of liberals toward the Palestinian cause...

...policy towards the Middle East is somehow different than it is elsewhere...

...And the country in question was Israel...

...Allan Kellum, who for seven years edited the Mideast Observer, a nonpartisan monthly report on U.S...

...The liberals' reluctance to challenge U.S...

...This role of Israel as surrogate unsettles American Jewish activist Cherie Brown...

...S.Z...

...policy, Young believes, is based on the naive assumption that "U.S...

...This amounts to more than $1,000 per Israeli, the most generous foreign-aid program between any two countries in the world today...

...Liberals tend to be the worst, he adds, since "individual Jewish donors are far more important" to their campaigns...

...They have never had to be held accountable for their actions...

...foreign-policy interests...

...Other bills that would have created universal foreign-aid standards based on human rights and enforcement of nuclear nonproliferation have also been blocked because of their impact on aid to Israel...

...Much of the weaponry responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon—as well as the tear gas, guns, and troop carriers utilized in the occupied territories today—comes to Israel courtesy of the U.S...

...As one Congressional aide observed in reference to his boss, "If the peace movement pressured him on the Palestinian question anything like the pressure they have given him on Central America or the [nuclear] freeze, he would come around in a minute...

...Dellums was forced to drop two key provisions of his South Africa sanctions bill (involving South African raw materials processed in third countries and pressuring other countries to cease arming the apartheid regime) because they would negatively affect Israel...

...taxpayer...

...If these people think they are supporting Israel, they're wrong," says retired Israeli General Mattityahu Peled, a former Knesset member and peace activist...

...Hilda Greenberg of the American-Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace concurs, but adds, "AIPAC deliberately builds on that stereotype by throwing money around and applying threats and pressure...

...Strikes, meetings, and even unions themselves are outlawed...

...Middle East policy isn't helping Israel any more than our Central America policy is helping El Salvador...

...The Arab-American Democratic Federation, upon its formation in 1986, had difficulty even getting a meeting with Democratic Party officials...

...Congress then passed a compromise resolution commending Israel's action and insisting that these schools "will not be used for political purposes...

...Dellums even refused to endorse a sister-city initiative last year between Berkeley and a West Bank refugee camp...

...In several cities last year, activist groups placed popular referenda on the ballot calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state alongside Israel...

...California Democrat Howard Berman, who has one of the most liberal voting records in Congress, threatened to introduce a substitute motion supporting Israeli policy which he claimed would have "an automatic 300 votes," forcing Nielson to withdraw the resolution...

...The bias in U.S...

...There are widespread reports of torture and other mistreatment...

...And Israel serves U.S...

...A Democratic National Committee staffer admitted that they "don't want Arabs in the party...

...California Senator Alan Cranston, an outspoken defender of the rights of other minority groups, called a vice-chair of Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign "a crazy Ay-rab" to his face and recently accused a political opponent of engaging in a "Shi'ite brand" of politics...

...While this approach is similar to the Reagan and Bush Administrations' "quiet diplomacy" toward Latin American dictatorships and "constructive engagement" towards South Africa, its defenders observe that Israel's isolation and the Jews' history of persecution dictate the utilization of such a cautious strategy...

...However, peace activists are increasingly adamant about the need to go public...

...Federal court and the International Court of Justice as a violation of American guarantees to the U.N...

...In July, several liberal members of Congress, including Patricia Schroeder, Barney Frank, Ted Weiss, Howard Wolpe, and Lee Hamilton, signed a letter encouraging the Swiss government to refuse PLO efforts to become a signatory to the Geneva Conventions...

...The same bill limited the public activities of PLO representatives in the United States and tried to close the PLO mission to the United Nations, though this latter provision was subsequently ruled illegal by both a U.S...

...role in supporting Palestinian self-determination and an end to Israeli human-rights violations now come from many Israeli and American Jews, as well as from more traditional critics of U.S...

...For example, California Representative Ron Dellums admits that while he has been in the forefront of foreign-policy issues on South Africa and Central America, "If I stick my neck out on this one, I'll get beaten...

...The Human Rights Political Action Committee, which raised funds for candidates based on their support of a human-rights agenda in U.S...

...The Coalition also refused to include Israel in its strict standards for linking human-rights and nuclear-nonproliferation issues with U.S...

...As much as I hate to admit it," says one activist for Palestinian rights, "a lot of our supporters are closet anti-Semites...

...Nancy Alexander of the Friends Committee on National Legislation notes the widespread antipathy on Capitol Hill towards the PLO...

...When a largely Jewish delegation from the American-Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace tried to visit one Congressional office, the legislative assistant insisted he would talk with them only out in the hallway...

...For more than a year and a half, the Israeli civil administration in the West Bank closed all Palestinian educational institutions—from elementary schools and vocational training centers to community colleges and universities...

...policy is supporting Israel...

...Liberals can "wring their hands indefinitely about the human-rights situation, but aid to Israel is what matters," says Dick Curtis, a thirty-seven-year veteran of the State Department and the United States Information Agency now with the American Education Trust...

...Perhaps the most important factor for many liberals is a strong ideological bond to the Jewish state...

...Middle East policy, argues that the problem is "less that of an all-powerful pro-Israel lobby, but the lack of a pro-Arab or even a pro-peace lobby...

...military backing for such undeserving governments stems not from a desire to see any nation destroyed by outside forces, but instead from a belief that such assistance violates U.S...

...Senate, praised Israel's "willingness to allow all options to be put on the table...

...Middle East policy, some of this country's most outspoken liberal politicians have staked out positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which place them to the right of Republican Administrations—and of large numbers of Israelis as well...

...A 1981 Coalition statement reaffirmed the group's support for the "sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence" of Middle Eastern states, but explicitly stated that this principle "does not necessarily apply" to lands seized by Israel in the 1967 war...

...It's not an issue of Palestine versus Israel," says Nanlouise Wolfe, "but of military rule versus democratic rights...

...Many people find such an analysis uncomfortable because it conjures up ugly anti-Semitic stereotypes of rich and powerful Jews conspiring to manipulate public policy for their own narrow interests...

...The latter has been able to dominate the movement only because they receive such a generous subsidy from the United States...

...Abourezk is of Arab descent...

...This subsidy amounts to more than $3 billion a year in military and economic aid, and comes in the form of outright grants, not loans...

...Refusing to deal seriously with one of the two major parties in the conflict thus makes a negotiated settlement impossible...

...support of the Israeli government should be addressed in the same terms as support for the regimes of El Salvador, Turkey, Morocco, Zaire, or any other repressive government: A campaign against U.S...

...Until constituents of these liberal politicians make them realize that supporting Palestine's right to exist is as important to voters as supporting Israel's right to exist, there will be little incentive for them to alter their stance...

...funding for the United Nations or any of its member agencies, including the World Health Organization, which recognize Palestine...

...interests and basic human decency, and promotes intransigence and warfare rather than negotiations and peace...

...treasury...

...Human-rights groups have widely criticized Israel for its military-occupation policies, particularly since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising, the intifada...

...Not only do these liberals oppose the Palestinians' right to self-determination, they would deny the Palestinians any opportunity to present their perspective to the American public...

...Fifty prominent rabbis signed a letter arguing that the reopening of schools would be a "small but significant first step towards creating an environment within which progress towards a political settlement is possible...

...At the 1988 Democratic convention, a minority plank was proposed calling for a two-state solution, with the language taken directly from a 1985 New York Times advertisement endorsed by dozens of prominent Jewish leaders...

...Like the National Rifle Association, AIPAC has influence over Congress far out of proportion to its public support...

...In July, Israel reopened some West Bank elementary schools...

...foreign policy...

...Rabbi Balfour Brickner of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations called it "a defeat for peace in the Middle East and the right of free speech...

...policy elsewhere," says Ron Young, a leader of the U.S...

...The Senators described Shamir's proposal for Israeli-managed elections in certain Palestinian areas as "sincere and far-reaching," and called on the Bush Administration to give Shamir's plan its "strong endorsement...

...Those who share such concerns are beginning to speak out, informing liberal backers of Israel in the United States that the support given to the Shamir government is threatening Israel by encouraging the hard-liners and increasing Israel's isolation in the world...

...Members of Congress would "leap at anything that would hurt the PLO," she says, with most Congressional liberals believing that the PLO is a "monolith led by its worst historical elements...

...When Representative Lee Hamilton informed Rabbi Jim Ponet, the Jewish chaplain at Yale University, that many liberals fear that any criticism of Israeli government policy could unleash an avalanche of anti-Israel sentiment, Ponet replied that anyone who really cares about Israel's future must oppose Israeli policies in the occupied territories...

...The pronouncement was widely interpreted as an attack on Baker's call the previous month for the Likud government to give up on the idea of a "Greater Israel," thereby placing these lawmakers to the right of even the Bush Administration...

...Few Israelis believe their country could afford the heavy economic burden of the occupation without U.S...

...Consequently, liberals reject any peace plan—or international conference—that would include the PLO...

...The most popular explanation is the power of the pro-Israel lobby, particularly the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC...

...Despite the admission by Moshe Au-mann, Israel's Consul General in Washington, that the closings were a deliberate form of collective punishment, liberal Democrat Mel Levine of California accused the Palestine Liberation Organization of using the schools "as a staging ground for terrorism...

...Unfortunately, many critics of Israeli human-rights policies do not share such universal principles...

...sion are not far removed from the minds of liberal policy makers...

...Such efforts can be difficult...

...The socialist-dominated city council of Santa Monica, California, passed a resolution supporting the invasion, much to the chagrin of the city's Jewish activists...

...Middle East policy will succeed only if it makes it clear that its opposition to U.S...

...support of the Israeli occupation is not just pro-Palestinian but ultimately pro-Israeli as well...

...In Joe Kennedy's 1986 Congressional election campaign in Massachusetts, a contribution from James Abourezk, former Democratic Senator from South Dakota, was returned...

...The resolution was endorsed by peace and human-rights groups, including a number of Jewish organizations...

...He was Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and one of the most liberal members of Congress...

...On several occasions in recent years, liberals have compromised on cutting aid to Third World dictatorships in return for increasing aid to Israel...

...Even home schooling and the distribution of homework assignments were prohibited, and some Quaker educators and United Nations relief workers were threatened with arrest for the "crime" of distributing education kits to elementary-school children...

...There has been a slight shift in terms of lip service, but there has been no discernible change in voting patterns...

...Commenting on the unconditional support by his former Senate colleagues of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, longtime Israel supporter George McGovern argued that such blindness "is not the way to treat a friend who has gone astray...

...The ugly racist stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims found in political cartoons and on televi'A Real Education' In the current climate on Capitol Hill, even the mildest criticism of Israeli military occupation policies can be blocked by otherwise liberal members of Congress...

...No nation—not even South Vietnam in the war years—has ever received as much Congressionally mandated aid as Israel...

...While he has to also think about his large Jewish constituency, he sincerely believes that Israel can do no wrong...

...On Capitol Hill, a lawmaker blasts the Administration for the action, demanding the investigation be stopped...

...On May 16, Representative Howard Nielson, a Utah Republican, introduced a carefully worded sense-of-Congress resolution calling on Israel to "take immediate steps to reopen schools in the West Bank," emphasizing the importance of reducing tensions in the occupied territories...

...Zionism is no different from any other nationalist movement," says Nanlouise Wolfe, who has worked with several peace groups on Middle East issues, "in that it has a progressive wing dedicated to principles of democracy and pluralism as well as a reactionary wing composed of militarists and chauvinists...

...Some Congressional offices, however, do offer quiet assistance on certain human-rights cases, Alexander says...

...Wilson Goode refused to accept money from an Arab-American civic group for his 1983 mayoral campaign in Philadelphia, and the 1984 Mondale Presidential campaign for a time refused to take money from Arab-Americans...

...Though calls for a more active U.S...

...policy believe that a confrontational approach is counterproductive, that there should be no threats of a reduction of aid, and that any criticism of the Israeli government should be kept private...

...Representative Benjamin Gilman of New York argued that "these children were being educated in the arts and artifices of guerrilla warfare...

...policy sounds like criticism of Israel itself...

...In 1982, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated against their govStephen Zunes teaches in the department of politics at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington...

...However, few liberal Democrats agreed to co-sponsor the resolution...

...While such people are certainly a minority among those critical of U.S...

...Under pressure from human-rights groups, the Reagan Administration reluctantly orders an investigation into the labor situation in that country—a major U.S...

...support of the Israeli government carries just such a hidden agenda...

...Says Zogby, "There is a latent anti-Semitism at work, with this perception of this powerful, monolithic, intolerant Jewish community...

...Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East, an organization of American Christians, Jews, and Muslims supporting the national aspirations of both peoples...

...In June, just four days after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir restated that Israel would never give up the West Bank and Gaza and would continue to encourage Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, a statement in The Washington Post, signed by every liberal member of the U.S...

...policy is not due to AIPAC, but due to the same problems as U.S...

...As James Zogby, an Arab-American activist in the Democratic Party, observed, supporters of Israeli policy "can't win on the mass level, but they can control elected officials...

...The only remaining option for Congressional liberals, then, is continued violence and occupation, financed in large part by the U.S...

...In San Francisco, a similar initiative backed by a variety of peace, human-rights, and religious organizations (including progressive Jewish groups) was opposed by virtually the entire liberal leadership of the city, including Mayor Art Agnos and City Supervisor Harry Britt, vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America...

...These liberal politicians simply "can't afford to cross AIPAC," says Curtis...

...American public-opinion polls in recent years have consistently shown overwhelming support for a two-state solution...

...For this reason, many who support a two-state solution and a more even-handed U.S...

...foreign aid, even though Israel makes up just .001 per cent of the world's population and already has one of the world's higher per capita incomes...

...policy in the Middle East, most liberal political leaders assume any criticism of U.S...

...When PLO chairman Yasir Arafat was scheduled to speak before the United Nations last fall and declare his willingness to recognize Israel, Senate liberals successfully pressured then-Secretary of State George Shultz to deny Arafat an entry visa, despite the legal responsibility of the United States, as host country, to allow foreign dignitaries access to the world body...

...Congressional human-rights crusader Tom Harkin refuses to take calls or even respond to letters from those concerned with human-rights cases involving Palestinians...

...Such policies violate Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires that "The Occupying Power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children," and Article 33, which states, "No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed...

...The critic was not Jesse Helms or another member of the Republican Right...

...It's this obsession with military solutions to political problems, the underestimation of the power of popular movements, the tendency to see everything in an East-West perspective, and the insistence on unilateral initiatives...

...Large contributions for the campaign against the initiative came from other liberal California political leaders, including Representatives Robert Matsui, Henry Waxman, Howard Berman, and Mel Levine, state comptroller Gary Davis, and Kathleen Brown, sister of the former governor...

...trading partner—as required by U.S...

...Israelis recognize this—and some resent it...

...Agrowing international consensus has emerged over the past twenty years in favor of the recognition of the rights of both Israeli Jews and Pal-estinian Arabs for national self-determination...

...Even though the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had not engaged in any cross-border attacks for more than a year prior to the Israeli invasion, such leading Congressional liberals as Patricia Schroeder, Thomas Downey, and Bill Bradley argued that Israeli actions were a legitimate response to Palestinian terrorism...

...In reality, U.S...

...The profound shift in public opinion in recent years towards a realistic peace settlement, has had "no impact on aid to Israel...

...aid for Israel...

...military aid...

...An Atlanta Constitution-CNN poll revealed that fully 70 per cent of the delegates supported the minority plank, but although the resolution was debated, party leaders prevented it from coming to a vote...

...Support for the Israeli government harms other foreign-policy concerns of peace and human-rights groups...

...Similarly, Gretchen Eick, a former Coalition leader who now directs National Impact, a new progressive lobbying coalition that claims to provide "leadership on peace and justice issues," has declared that the group considers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "off limits...

...Similarly, Al Stern, chairman of New Jewish Agenda's National Advisory Board and an active supporter of Senator Metzenbaum, has complained that the Ohio Senator is "an ardent supporter of present Israeli policies," and has sought to change his perspective...

...He really believes in Israel," says an aide to a progressive member of Congress...

...From its founding in 1973 until its demise last year, the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy was one of the leading liberal lobbies on Capitol Hill, but it consistently refused to address the issues of Palestinian rights or U.S...

...In reality, it appears that it is the perception of a powerful "Jewish lobby," rather than its reality, that creates this mystique of power...