American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing US policy? President Bill Clinton as well as most members of Congress support Israel-and they know why. US Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign coffers.

The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere-among those who support Israel but don’t really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel-and Zionism-often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.

I am one of those. I grew up listening to stories of a mystical, allegorical, spiritual Israel. This was before a modern political entity with the same name appeared on our maps. I attended Sunday School and watched an instructor draw down window-type shades to show maps of the Holy Land. I imbibed stories of a Good and Chosen people who fought against their Bad "unChosen" enemies.

In my early 20s, I began traveling the world, earning my living as a writer. I came to the subject of the Middle East rather late in my career. I was sadly lacking in knowledge regarding the area. About all I knew was what I had learned in Sunday School. And typical of many US Christians, I somehow considered a modern state created in 1948 as a homeland for Jews persecuted under the Nazis as a replica of the spiritual, mystical Israel I heard about as a child.

When in 1979 I initially went to Jerusalem, I planned to write about the three great monotheistic religions and leave out politics. "Not write about politics?" scoffed one Palestinian, smoking a waterpipe in the Old Walled City. "We eat politics, morning, noon and night!"

As I would learn, the politics is about land, and the co-claimants to that land--the indigenous Palestinians who have lived there for 2,000 years and the Jews who started arriving in large numbers after World War II. By living among Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, I saw, heard, smelled and experienced the police state tactics Israelis use against Palestinians.

My research led to a book entitled Journey to Jerusalem. My journey not only was enlightening to me as regards Israel, but also I came to a deeper, and sadder, understanding of my own country. I say sadder understanding because I began to see that, in Middle East politics, we the people are not making the decisions, but rather that supporters of Israel are doing so. And typical of most Americans, I tended to think the U.S. media was "free" to print news impartially.

"It shouldn’t be published. It’s anti-Israel."

In the late 1970s, when I first went to Jerusalem, I was unaware that editors could and would classify "news" depending on who was doing what to whom. On my initial visit to Israel-Palestine, I had interviewed dozens of young Palestinian men. About one in four related stories of torture.

Israeli police had come in the night, dragged them from their beds and placed hoods over their heads. Then in jails the Israelis had kept them in isolation, besieged them with loud, incessant noises, hung them upside down and had sadistically mutilated their genitals. I had not read such stories in the US media. Wasn’t it news? Obviously, I naively thought, US editors simply didn’t know it was happening.

On a trip to Washington, DC, I hand-delivered a letter to Frank Mankiewicz, then head of the public radio station WETA. I explained I had taped interviews with Palestinians who had been brutally tortured. And I’d make them available to him. I got no reply. I made several phone calls. Eventually I was put through to a public relations person, a Ms. Cohen, who said my letter had been lost. I wrote again. In time I began to realize what I hadn’t known--Had it been Jews who were strung up and tortured, it would be news. But interviews with tortured Arabs were "lost" at WETA.

The process of getting my book Journey to Jerusalem published also was a learning experience. Bill Griffin, who signed a contract with me on behalf of MacMillan Publishing Company, was a former Roman Catholic priest. He assured me that no one other than himself would edit the book. As I researched the book, making several trips to Israel and Palestine, I met frequently with Griffin, showing him sample chapters. "Terrific," he said of my material.

The day the book was scheduled to be published, I went to visit MacMillan’s. Checking in at a reception desk, I spotted Griffin across a room, cleaning out his desk. His secretary Margie came to greet me. In tears, she whispered for me to meet her in the ladies room. When we were alone, she confided, "He’s been fired." She indicated it was because he had signed a contract for a book that was sympathetic to Palestinians. Griffin, she said, had no time to see me.

Later, I met with another MacMillan official, William Curry. "I was told to take your manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for mistakes," he told me. "They were not pleased. They asked me, ‘You are not going to publish this book, are you?’ I asked, ‘Were there mistakes?’”

“Not mistakes as such. But it shouldn’t be published. It’s anti-Israel."

Somehow, despite obstacles to prevent it, the presses had started rolling. After its publication in 1980, I was invited to speak in a number of churches. Christians generally reacted with disbelief. Back then, there was little or no coverage of Israeli land confiscation, demolition of Palestinian homes, wanton arrests and torture of Palestinian civilians.

The Same Question

Speaking of these injustices, I invariably heard the same question, "How come I didn’t know this?" Or someone might ask, "But I haven’t read about that in my newspaper." To these church audiences, I related my own learning experience, that of seeing hordes of US correspondents covering a relatively tiny state. I pointed out that I had not seen so many reporters in world capitals such as Beijing, Moscow, London, Tokyo and Paris. Why, I asked, did a small state with a 1980 population of only four million warrant more reporters than China, with a billion people?

I also linked this query with my findings that The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post -- and most of our nation’s print media -- are owned and/or controlled by Jews supportive of Israel. It was for this reason, I deduced, that they sent so many reporters to cover Israel -- and to do so largely from the Israeli point of view.

My learning experiences also included coming to realize how easily I could lose a Jewish friend if I criticized the Jewish state. I could with impunity criticize France, England, Russia, even the United States. I could criticize any aspect of life in America. But not the Jewish state. I lost more than one Jewish friend after the publication of Journey to Jerusalem -- sad losses for me.

In the 1960s and 1970s, before going to the Middle East, I had written about the plight of blacks in Soul Sister, the plight of American Indians in Bessie Yellowhair, and the problems endured by undocumented workers crossing from Mexico in The Illegals. These books had come to the attention of the "mother" of The New York Times, Mrs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Her father had started the newspaper, then her husband ran it, and in the years that I knew her, her son was the publisher. She invited me to her fashionable apartment on Fifth Avenue for lunches and dinner parties. On many occasions, I was a weekend guest at her spacious Greenwich, Conn. home.

She was liberal-minded and praised my efforts to speak for the underdog, going so far in one letter to say, "You are the most remarkable woman I ever knew." I had little idea that from being buoyed so high I could be so suddenly dropped when I discovered -- from her point of view -- the "wrong" underdog.

As it happened, I was a weekend guest in her Connecticut home when she read bound galleys of Journey to Jerusalem. As I was leaving, she handed the galleys back with a saddened look, "My dear, have you forgotten the Holocaust?" She felt that what happened in Nazi Germany to Jews several decades earlier should silence any criticism of the Jewish state. She could focus on a holocaust of Jews while negating a modern day holocaust of Palestinians.

I realized, painfully, that our friendship was ending. Iphigene Sulzberger had not only invited me to her home to meet her famous friends but, at her suggestion, The Times had also requested articles. I wrote op-ed articles on various subjects including American blacks, American Indians and undocumented workers. Since Mrs. Sulzberger and other Jewish officials at the Times praised my efforts to help these groups of oppressed peoples, the dichotomy became apparent--most "liberal" US Jews stand on the side of all poor and oppressed peoples save one -- the Palestinians.

How handily these liberal Jewish opinion-molders diminish the Palestinians, to make them invisible, or to categorize them all as "terrorists." Interestingly, Iphigene Sulzberger had talked to me a great deal about her father, Adolph S. Ochs. She told me that he was not one of the early Zionists. He had not favored the creation of a Jewish state.

Yet, increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a nationalistic movement that passes for many as a religion. While the ethical instructions of all great religions- including the teachings of Moses, Muhammad and Christ - stress that all human beings are equal, militant Zionists take the position that the killing of a non-Jew does not count.

Over five decades now, Zionists have killed Palestinians with impunity. And in the 1996 shelling of a UN base in Qana, Lebanon, the Israelis killed more than 100 civilians sheltered there. As an Israeli journalist, Arieh Shavit, explains of the massacre, "We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same way as our own."

Israelis today, explains the anti-Zionist Jew Israel Shahak, "are not basing their religion on the ethics of justice. They do not accept the Old Testament as it is written. Rather, religious Jews turn to the Talmud. For them, the Talmudic Jewish laws become ‘the Bible.’ And the Talmud teaches that a Jew can kill a non-Jew with impunity."

In the teachings of Christ, there was a break from such Talmudic teachings. He sought to heal the wounded, to comfort the downtrodden. The danger, of course, for US Christians is that having made an icon of Israel, we fall into a trap of condoning whatever Israel does, even wanton murder as orchestrated by God. .

Yet, I am not alone in suggesting that the churches in the United States represent the last major organized support for Palestinian rights. This imperative is due in part to our historic links to the Land of Christ and in part to the moral issues involved with having our tax dollars fund Israeli-government-approved violations of human rights.

While Israel and its dedicated U.S. Jewish supporters know they have the president and most of the Congress in their hands, they worry about grassroots America -- the well-meaning Christians who care for justice. Thus far, most Christians were unaware of what it was they didn’t know about Israel. They were indoctrinated by US supporters of Israel in their own country and when they traveled to the Land of Christ most all did so under Israeli sponsorship. That being the case, it was unlikely a Christian ever met a Palestinian or learned what caused the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is gradually changing, however. And this change disturbs the Israelis. As an example, delegates attending a Christian Sabeel conference in Bethlehem earlier this year said they were harassed by Israeli security at the Tel Aviv airport.

"They asked us," said one delegate, “‘Why did you use a Palestinian travel agency? Why didn’t you use an Israeli agency?’" The interrogation was so extensive and hostile that Sabeel leaders called a special session to brief the delegates on how to handle the harassment.

Obviously, said one delegate, "The Israelis have a policy to discourage us from visiting the Holy Land except under their sponsorship. They don’t want Christians to start learning all they have never known about Israel." ______________________________________
The Zionist Connection II, Alfred M. Lilienthal. 1982.
Reviewed by Grace Halsell November 14, 1983

No one, to my mind, has provided us with better researched, better documented material than Lilienthal, one of America's foremost anti-Zionist Jews. His book is an encyclopedia that covers the story of Zionism from every angle both in Palestine and in the United States. Lilienthal highlights examples of how the U.S. serves the Zionists. First, take the case of the President and candidates for that office. In the last election, all 12 Democratic and Republican aspirants, with the exception of a vacillating John Connally, bowed completely to Zionist power. To help him win Jewish votes, candidate Reagan appointed the ardent Israelist Maxwell Rabb as his campaign committee vice chairman.

Vetting the Staff

Once in office, Reagan hired pro-Israel staff advisors, including Joseph Churba, a long-time friend of the militant Jewish Defense League leader Meir Kahane, as well as two Israeli citizens, Edward Luttwak and Uri Raanan. The Reagan Administration also placed ardent Zionists, including Sherwood Goldberg, Harvey Sicherman and David Korn, in critical State Department posts, where vital policymaking decisions affecting Israel are made.Other Zionists whom the Reagan Administration chose were Myer Rashish, as Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, and Paul Wolfowitz, as Director of the Policy Planning Staff. For additional advice involving the U.S.-Israel special relationship, the President called in two veteran pro-Israel fundraisers, Detroit's Max Fisher and Ted Cummings of Los Angeles.

The Reagan Administration also designated Richard Perle, formerly Senator Jackson's principal liaison with pro-Israel groups, as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. Perle promptly appointed as consultant Stephen Bryen, whom Justice Department officials had earlier said was suspected by them of espionage for Israel.

Lilienthal writes that the Republicans, coming to power with the deepest anti-Soviet sentiment, viewed the Palestinians, and the PLO in particular, as an integral part of the Communist vortex. Although such a polarization was dangerous to the rest of the world, this viewpoint nevertheless was "most pleasing to the Israelis."

Whatever aggressive actions the Israelis take, Lilienthal says, they may expect ultimate, if not immediate, American endorsement. Take the case of Israel's raid on the Iraqi nuclear facilities: Lilienthal reminds us that eight F-16 jet fighter bombers, newly acquired from American factories and escorted by six F-15s, flew from an Etzion, Sinai airbase and destroyed Iraq's $260 million nuclear reactor complex, 10 miles southwest of Baghdad and more than 500 miles from Israel. Reagan declared Israel may have sincerely believed the raid was a defensive move; he added: "It is very difficult for me to envision Israel as being a threat to its neighbors."

The Mossad-CIA Connection

Since the American CIA and Israel's Mossad are as close as two peas in a pod, it is hard to believe that Washington was not aware of Israel's intent, Lilienthal writes. He quotes an Israeli newspaper report: "Israel relied on U.S. intelligence data before deciding to carry out its bombing attack." Another example of Zionists turning U.S. foreign policy into "nonsensical inconsistencies" Lilienthal writes, is that "the U.S. was giving aid to Iranian exiles battling the Ayatollah while Israel was permitted in 1981 and 1982 to ship U.S. arms to assist the Khomeini regime in its war with Iraq." He adds that Washington gave covert approval to Israel's support of Teheran and to the Israeli goal of downing the Saddam Hussein regime, until Washington became alarmed lest an impending Iraqi defeat endanger other 'moderate' friendly Arab Gulf regimes."

Lilienthal's additional material brings us through the summer of 1982's Israeli genocide in Lebanon, with the killing and wounding of 40,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, in the midst of which Reagan received Begin in the Oval office and Congress voted more aid to Israel. Lilienthal believes one thing is certain: the U.S. will never act like a great nation as long as an Israeli prime minister can instantaneously rally American Jews behind him for Zionist goals--while ignoring American national interests.

The book concludes with a warning that without a breakthrough, the tragedy of nuclear war could envelop that area and the world.

Grace Halsell is the author of 14 books, including Journey To Jerusalem and was a White House speechwriter during the Johnson Administration.

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