 By Grace Halsell May/June 1998
American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of government where Middle East decisions are made. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? The President and most members of Congress support Israel—and they know why. U.S. 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 the Zionist State of Israel existed. 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 like many U.S. Christians, I considered 1948 Israel to be a homeland for the Jews persecuted by the Nazis -- a replica of the spiritual, mystical Israel of my youth. When (in 1979) I 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 "who owns the land": the indigenous Palestinians who have lived there for 2,000 years; or, the Jews, who started arriving en masse after WW2. By living among Israeli Jews, Palestinian Christians, and Muslims -- I saw, heard, smelled, and witnessed "first-hand" the police state tactics Israelis use against Palestinians.
My research led to "Journey to Jerusalem". My journey not only enlightened me on Israel but gave me a deeper, sadder understanding of my own country. I say "sadder" because I saw the supporters of Israel setting Middle East foreign policy -- not WE THE PEOPLE. And I also learned that the U.S. media was not, in fact, "free" to print news impartially.
“THAT SHOULDN'T BE PUBLISHED -- IT'S ANTI-ISRAEL.”
When I first went to Jerusalem in 1979, I did not know editors could and would classify “news” depending on who was doing what to whom. On that Israel-Palestine trip, about 25% of my interviews with dozens of young Palestinian men exposed stories of torture.
Israeli police would come at night, drag them out of bed, and put hoods over their heads. Then the Israelis isolated them, besieged them with loud noises, hung them upside down, and sadistically mutilated their genitals. I had not read such stories in the U.S. media. Wasn’t it news? I naively thought the U.S. 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 told him I had taped interviews with brutally tortured Palestinians he could use. I got no reply. After several phone calls, I was connected a Ms. Cohen of public relations. She 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 any interviews with TORTURED ARABS were “lost” by WETA.
The process of getting "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 he, himself, would edit my 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. After checking in at a reception desk, I saw Griffin cleaning out his desk. His secretary, Margie, greeted me and, in tears, whispered for me to meet her in the ladies room. Once there, 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.
I later met another MacMillan official, William Curry. “I was told to take your manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for mistakes,” he said. “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 1980 publication, 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, or the torture of Palestinian civilians.
The Same Question
Speaking of these injustices raised 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 seeing hordes of U.S. 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, 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 Israel. I could openly criticize France, England, Russia, or the United States -- but not the Jewish state. I lost more than one Jewish friend after the publication of "Journey to Jerusalem"—all sad losses for me and one, perhaps, saddest of all.
In the 1960s and 70s, prior to my Middle East trip, I had written on the plight of blacks in "Soul Sister", the plight of American Indians in "Bessie Yellowhair", and the problems endured by undocumented Mexican workers in "The Illegals". These books had come to the attention of the “mother” of The New York Times -- Mrs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
Her father started the newspaper, her husband ran it, and her son was the publisher. She invited me to her fashionable apartment on Fifth Avenue for lunches and dinner parties. And, on many occasions, I was a weekend guest at her plush Greenwich, Conn. home.
She was liberal-minded and praised my speaking for the underdog, even going so far in one letter to say, “You are the most remarkable woman I ever knew.” I had little concept that from being BUOYED SO HIGH I could be DROPPED SO SUDDENLY when I accidentally discovered—at least, from her point of view—the “wrong” underdog.
I was a weekend guest in her spacious 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 saw the Jewish holocaust but ignored the modern-day holocaust of the Palestinians.
I realized, quite painfully, that our friendship was ending. Iphigene Sulzberger had not only invited me to her home to meet her famous friends but also, at her suggestion, The Times had requested articles. I wrote op-ed articles on various subjects -- including American blacks and American Indians, as well as undocumented workers. Since Mrs. Sulzberger and other JEWISH OFFICIALS AT THE TIMES highly praised my efforts to help these groups of oppressed peoples, the dichotomy became apparent: most “liberal” U.S. Jews stand on the side of all poor and oppressed peoples save one—the Palestinians.
How handily these liberal Jewish opinion-molders tend to diminish the Palestinians, to make them invisible, or to categorize them all as “terrorists.”
Interestingly, Iphigene Sulzberger told me a great deal about her father, Adolph S. Ochs. She said he was not one of the early Zionists and had not supported 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.
Since 1948, Zionists have killed Palestinians with impunity. And in the 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Qana, Lebanon, the Israelis killed more than 100 civilians sheltered there. Israeli journalist Arieh Shavit said of that massacre, “We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and The NY Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same as our own.”
Anti-Zionist Jew Israel Shahak says: "Israelis 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, Talmudic Jewish laws are ‘the Bible.’ And the Talmud teaches that any Jew can kill any non-Jew with absolute impunity."
Christ's saying "heal the wounded and comfort the downtrodden" contradicts the Talmud.
The danger for U.S. 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 rampant Israeli-government-approved violations of human rights.
While Israel and its dedicated U.S. Jewish supporters know they have the president and most of 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 U.S. 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 that any Christian ever learned what was really behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This is changing, and that disturbs Israelis. Delegates attending a Christian conference in Bethlehem complained that 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 Israeli policy is to discourage us from visiting the Holy Land -- EXCEPT UNDER THEIR SPONSORHSIP. They don’t want us Christians to start learning everything they have never been told about Israel.” |
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Copyright © DOD 2008
