Jewish Press Wages Ongoing Progaganda War, But Acknowledges Settlements Are Obstacles to Peace

By Delinda C. Hanley

As Israel parks its F-16s—for now—and makes cease-fire noises, Ariel Sharon’s government returns to waging war in its customary way—using bulldozers, roadblocks, settlements, and most especially, the media. Spin-doctors are cranking out fiery articles in the American Jewish press to rally support for Israel.

One example of this special brand of journalism is Rabbi Sidney Schwarz’s article in the May 17 Washington Jewish Week entitled, “The Road to Peace is Filled With Stones.” While the rabbi’s article is emotionally charged as he describes the beating and stoning deaths of two Israeli teens in a cave near Tekoa, “a settlement town that most of the world considers illegal,” a neutral reader would find many of his statements quite reasonable. The alarm bells didn’t go off until Rabbi Schwarz began to describe an incident that just didn’t happen at a March rally attended by this writer.

The rabbi first told readers about a pet program he helped start in 1988 that “brings more than 1,000 of the most outstanding Jewish teens to Washington to learn about Jewish values, social justice and political activism.” After the Oslo accords, when Israel seemed well on the road to peace, interest in the Israel-related advocacy program waned, Rabbi Schwarz lamented—perhaps because students and their parents “felt less of a need to be Israel’s protectors.”

By March of this year, all that had changed. With the heightened tensions in Israel and Palestine, plenty of students attended this year’s high school program in Washington, DC. “Participants learned about the intifada,” Rabbi Schwarz wrote, “Arab anti-Semitic propaganda and the importance of lobbying for congressional aid packages for Israel” in sessions at the Israeli Embassy and with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Jewish students also participated in a rally outside the Washington Hilton, where Israel’s new prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was addressing AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference.

Rabbi Schwarz began spinning in earnest as he launched into a moving story of two pro-Israeli students “who were hit by rocks thrown by teens from the counter-demonstration. Fortunately,” the rabbi assured readers, “they weren’t seriously hurt.”

Alluding to the stoning of the teens near Tekoa, he added, “The entire group, though, was shaken by the realization that many Israelis live with the threat of stoning—and more—on a daily basis.”

Rabbi Schwarz began to describe an incident that just didn’t happen.

Not only is this incident a complete fabrication, but it calls into question other stories reported as fact in the propaganda war waged on behalf of Israel. Newspaper readers assume articles are based on truth, and the printed accounts become part of history.

Because this writer and other Washington Report staff were present, however, we know beyond any doubt that no one among the hundreds of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish demonstrators standing together on the anti-Sharon side of Connecticut Avenue threw stones across four lanes of rush-hour traffic. The crowd calling for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to go home and also for the right of return for Palestinians was as peaceful as every pro-Palestinian demonstration held in the United States—where most protesters are not greeted by sharpshooters, live ammunition, tear gas or rubber-coated metal bullets.

We did see a parade of Jewish students, preceded and followed by teachers, marching in the street within six inches of the anti-Sharon group on the sidewalk. I recall feeling appalled as these children taunted our protesters and ridiculed the signs we held. I also remember thinking that the parents of these students had entrusted their youngsters to leaders who seemed to be, at best, risking their lives walking in the busy streets of DC, and, at worst, trying (and failing) to instigate a confrontation. I asked one of many helpful DC policemen standing nearby to please tell the young people and their teachers to move along—which he did. Was this group of troublemakers the same Jewish children Rabbi Schwarz described as facing stones hurled by pro-Palestinians?

Unpopular Settlements

Some articles in the Jewish press, however—perhaps because they are less likely to be accused of “anti-Semitism”—present the situation in Israel far more fairly than does the mainstream American press. Israeli newspapers recently revealed that the Sharon government has proposed an extra $350 million for settlements. Israeli officials insist this is just for “natural growth” not for new settlement development. With both the Egyptian-Jordanian cease-fire plan and the Mitchell Commission’s report calling Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and Gaza an obstacle to peace, Douglas Bloomfield addressed the issue in the May 24 Washington Jewish Week:

“Sharon can expect little help from American friends if he decides to dig in his heels and force a confrontation over settlements,” Bloomfield wrote. “Jewish leaders here agree: only a small fringe of American Jews support a vigorous settlements policy. That mirrors recent polls showing that 62 percent of the Israeli public would freeze settlements in return for a cease-fire.

“When Bush One blocked loan guarantees to try to force a settlement halt,” he continued, “friends of Israel didn’t rally around the settlements but around an Israel that needed help absorbing hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from the crumbling Soviet Union. Pro-Israel lobbyists have generally avoided defending settlement policy, recognizing the issue as a nonstarter in the public policy debate here.…

“Are settlements an obstacle to peace?” Bloomfield asked. “Of course. That’s what many of the most ardent advocates intended. Sharon once boasted to this reporter that scattering enough settlements throughout the West Bank would make it impossible to carve out a Palestinian state…Long past is the day when settlements served as frontier outposts to hold off an invading army as the heroes of Yad Mordechai did in 1948.”

Bloomfield suggested focusing American policymakers’ attention on aid instead of settlements: “Israeli officials and their friends in Washington are turning up the heat under the issue of supplementary military aid.”

(Asked by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) if the Bush administration was considering new aid to boost Israel’s military, Secretary of State Colin Powell, testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that the issue is “under consideration.”

To urge the Bush administration to consider the extra aid, Israeli Finance Minister Silvan Shalon met in Maywith National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), chair of the Foreign Operations appropriations subcommittee, and other congressional officials. Pro-Israel leaders are hoping to tuck the extra aid into a supplemental military appropriation for U.S. forces that is likely to get strong bipartisan support in Congress.)

Washington Jewish Week correspondent James D. Besser also tackled the settlement issue in a May 11 article. “American Jewish leaders continue to try to keep the administration’s attention focused on Palestinian provocations, not on settlements…Our community will not declare war with this administration over settlements,” Besser quotes Thomas Smerling, Washington director for the Israel Policy Forum, as saying. “No Israeli government has ever been able to mobilize American Jews on behalf of settlement expansion; settlements aren’t even popular in Israel, as recent polls show.”

New U.S. Ambassador to Israel

The appointment of an Orthodox Jew as U.S. ambassador to Israel has created more waves among American Jews than when Daniel Kurtzer was named ambassador to Egypt, his last assignment. Career diplomat Kurtzer will replace outgoing ambassador Martin Indyk. Indyk, the former director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an AIPAC spin-off, was asked to stay on until the Bush administration chose a successor—this despite his unprecedented suspension during the Clinton administration for failing to observe security precautions when using his laptop computer. (Between Indyk and John Deutch [see p. 47], one has to wonder if laptops have a special ability to get users with close ties to Israel in deep doodoo, as a former president might put it.)

According to the Washington Jewish Week, Kurtzer supported the Oslo peace process and “has a track record of complete ‘even-handedness’ and pushing for Palestinian rights.” Perhaps that is what is worrying supporters of Israel.

ADL’s Criteria for “Hate”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was too involved in lobbying against Libya and Iran (see pp. 29 and 30) to help Rabbi Michael Lerner, the founder and editor of the leftist Jewish magazine Tikkun, when he started receiving e-mail death threats. A far-right, pro-Israel Web site posted Lerner’s home address after describing him as “a self-hating Jewish worm.” Rabbi Lerner told Forward on May 25 that he is being attacked because he is a Jew who sympathizes with the Palestinians. One e-mail message read, “One bright day, someone will come and kill you.” Another said, “You subhuman leftist animals…should all be exterminated.”

When Rabbi Lerner told the ADL’s San Francisco office that he had been the victim of a hate crime, the office disagreed. As director of the ADL’s San Francisco office Jonathan Bernstein told Forward on May 25, “He’s not being targeted solely because he’s Jewish,” but for his pro-Palestinian views.

“For a civil rights organization,” Rabbi Lerner commented, “they are a little lax in defense of the civil rights of those who disagree [with the Israeli government’s policies].”

More Anti-Israel Than Thou

And finally, another critic of Israel has run into some problems with the Israeli government, according to the May 25 International Jerusalem Post. A recent Israeli Foreign Ministry memo attacked Gideon Levy, who appeared on a panel in Italy with Palestinian human-rights activist Bassam Eid, because Levy “effectively painted a more anti-Israel picture than his fellow panelist did.”

In response, Levy, a left-wing Israeli journalist at the daily Ha’aretz newspaper, told Israel Radio that the memo causes more harm to the State of Israel and its image as a democracy than a thousand appearances by him. “The diplomats want to shut the mouths of journalists,” Levy said, “and afterward claim that it is the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Delinda C. Hanley is the news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.