To: "mer" <MER@MiddleEast.Org>
Subject: Time for JEWISH Americans to Shape a New Relationship with Israel

HISTORY - 1989 - During Intifada I:
Mid-East Realities - www.MiddleEast.Org


Jewish 'liberal' magazines censor call by establishment
American Jews to suspend U.S. funding to Israel

"Shortly before publication the publisher of TIKKUN, Rabbi Michael Lerner, ordered the already
scheduled and paid for Statement which had appeared in other publications and been printed in the
Congressional Record censored from the magazine and payment returned."

    Soon after the first Intifada began in December 1987, a group of distinguished American Jews quickly came together to publicly support the Palestinian struggle for independence and to call for a major reduction of U.S. aid to Israel.  The Jewish Committee on the Middle East (JCOME) first published this Statement titled "Time for Jewish Americans To Shape A New Relationship With Israel" on the back cover of The Nation Magazine on 13 February 1988.   The "Statement" was then subsequently published in The New York Review of Books, The Christian Science Monitor, LAWeekly, The Progressive, the Congressional Record, and other publications.   A page was also purchased for this same Statement in the Jewish Magazine Tikkun, but shortly before publication Tikkun's editor, Rabbi Michael Lerner, ordered it censored from the magazine and payment returned.
     Within months many hundreds of American Jews, mostly professors and professional people with advanced degrees, had both endorsed this "Statement" and contributed funds for its further publication.   What appears below was then published on the back cover of the 1 May 1989 issue of The Nation Magazine.   The print is small and difficult to read, so the full text is below after the reproduced page.  This Statement is important not only for its historical importance but because the basic issue of U.S. support and financing of Israeli policies is more urgent for public debate than ever. 

"At the very least the citizens of the United States should stop financing
and supporting [Israeli] policies that are contrary to the principles and
values we hold precious as Americans and Jews"


DO NOT USE THE P.O. BOX INDICATED AS IT HAS BEEN CLOSED

First published with 18 signers on the back cover of the 13 February 1988 issue of The Nation, this Statement above was then published on 29 February in The Congressional Record after a hearing at which representatives testified.  With hundreds of  additional signers it was next published in the 31 March 1988 issue of  THE NEW YORK REVIEW  OF BOOKS followed by many other magazines and newspapers during the next two years.
The above was published on the back cover of the 1 May 1989 issue of The Nation.  Many other full-page ads, and two video documentaries, were made by the Jewish Committee on the Middle East before activities ended in 1994 when disagreements over the Oslo agreement caused the needed financial support to wither.  
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TIME FOR JEWISH AMERICANS TO SHAPE A
NEW RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL

We are Americans and Jews and we come together at this time publicly to express our strong desire to see the United States take meaningful steps to dissociate our country from the policies of Israel.

For some years we have witnessed Israel increasingly deviating from political policies that we find acceptable and from moral values that we hold dear.  These developments are not the responsibility of any particular political party in Israel but rather stem in our judgment, from a tragically misguided approach toward the Arab world in which Israel is located, a racialist ideology and a growing militancy.  We can no longer condone or be associated with such Israeli behavior, nor, do we believe, should our country.

In recent years Israel has twisted away from basic commitments made at Camp David in 1978, annexed further territories, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, while continuing to expand settlements in all the occupied territories, and grotesquely invaded Lebanon, resulting in the death of tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians as well as hundreds of Israelis and Americans, and the taking as hostages of many others.

Furthermore, Israeli policies and attitudes toward the Palestinian people have made it evident that only major changes in Israel's basic posture will allow for a peaceful political settlement with the Palestinians.

Israeli complicity in Irangate and Contragate coupled with Israel's employment of American Jews as spies against our country further underscore the growing dangers inherent in the current U.S.-Israeli relationship.  the close identification in the public mind between Israel and Jews -- an equation vigorously fostered by both the Zionist movement and the American Jewish lobby which has come under its control -- threatens to stigmatize Jews everywhere.

The recent acts of killings, beatings, curfews, expulsions and house arrests -- all against unarmed Palestinians living in areas Israel has occupied for 20 years -- further demonstrate that Israel has become a badly divided country with many unfortunate similarities to the situation that prevails in South Africa.

Our ancestors came to the United States because, as a result of their Jewishness, they were discriminated against and abused.  The European experience culminated in the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.  How tragic that in our own time the very state established by Jews in the aftermath of this evil has become a place where racialism, religious discrimination, militarism, and injustice prevail; and that Israel itself has become a pariah state within he world community.  Events taking place today are all too reminiscent of the pogroms from which our own forefathers fled two and three generations ago -- but this time those in authority are Jews and the victims are Moslem and Christian Palestinians.

We believe that Israel's course could not be maintained but for the continuing financial, political, military, and covert support of the U.S. government.  And we fear that unless firm steps of disengagement from Israel are taken now our country might get dragged into a major war for which preparations are under way.

In addition, we believe that unless the United States takes serious steps to distance itself from Israel the Israelis will mistakenly continue to think that the course they are on is one acceptable to the American people.

For all these reasons we believe the time has come to normalize the U.S. relationship with Israel.  A complete re-evaluation of what has become since 1967 the American sponsorship of Israel is required.  The unprecedented amounts of economic aid should be cut back over the next two to three years to much small levels.  Furthermore, the considerable military and intelligence assistance should also be radically reduced.

Unfortunately, during the years of the Reagan Administration much the opposite course has been followed and Israel has practically become a ward of the United States.  In this election year we urge an open debate about the serious problems and dangers which have resulted from the current structure of U.S.-Israeli relations.  Few foreign policy issues are of such importance to our country.  Consequently we urge our leading politicians to resist the widespread inhibitions from speaking up about Israel, inhibitions which result from the severe financial, political and ideological pressures often brought to bear against those who do.

We further believe that the time is overdue for negotiations between the Israeli government and the PLO, which is quite clearly the chosen representative for the great majority of Palestinians -- negotiations that should quickly lead to a Palestinian State in all the occupied territories and reasonable security guarantees for all parties.  In the security guarantees we think our country should participate; but no longer in the financing and supporting of the kinds of policies Israel has been pursuing.  The continual oppression and denial of the Palestinians of their right to self-determination is an injustice which has become intolerable not only to those demonstrating for their freedom in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and throughout Israel itself.

The citizens of Israel, of course, will ultimately choose their own country's destiny.  But at the very least the citizens of the United States should stop financing and supporting policies that are contrary to the principles and values we hold precious as Americans and as Jews.

  
Professor Yigal Arens
Computer Science Department, USC
Santa Monica, CA

Mark Bruzonsky
Former Washington Associate, World Jewish Congress
Washington, DC

Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor, MIT
Cambridge, MA

Rabbi Susan Einbinder
Colgate University
Hamilton, NY

Professor Herbert Hill
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Former Labor Director, NAACP
Madison, WI

Jane Hunter
Publisher, Israeli Foreign Affairs
Berkeley, CA

Jeremy Levin
Former CNN Bureau Chief and Former Hostage in Lebanon
Washington, DC

Professor John Mack
Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Cambridge, MA

Professor Seymour Melman
Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering, Columbia University
New York, NY

Eileen Newmark
Ph.D., Intercultural Communications
Boston, MA

Professor Don Peretz
Professor of Political Science, SUNY
Binghamton, NY

Henry Schwarzschild
American Civil Liberties Union
New York, NY

Professor Steve Schwarzschild
Professor of Philosophy and Judaic Studies, Washington University
St. Louis, MO

Saul Wechter
Retired, General Motors
San Jose, CA

Gertrude M. Welch
Interfaith Peace Coalition
San Jose, CA

Richard Walden
President, Operation California
Los Angeles, CA

Danielle Yariv
Computer Analyst
Pasadena, CA

Solomon Zeltzer
Attorney
San Jose, CA
 

(These are the 18 original signers of first Jewish Committee on the Middle East advertisement published on the
back cover of The Nation Magazine dated 13 February 1988.
Later that month JCOME Representatives then testified before a hearing of the U.S. Congress and
this Statement was then published in the Congressional Record on 29 February.  With hundreds of
additional signatories it was next published in the 31 March 1988 issue of  THE NEW YORK REVIEW
OF BOOKS followed by many other magazines and newspapers during the next two years.)


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