American Educational Trust

We’re Holding Our Breath…

As we go to press on this, the 34th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has imposed a total closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel has divided the West Bank into eight isolated cantons, each further divided into six distinct areas cut off from one another. There is no movement, no fuel, and severe water shortages.

As Maj. Gen. Yaakov Orr, coordinator of “Israeli Government Activities” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, told reporters on June 4, “At this stage, we have prevented all movement of the population and members of the [Palestinian] leadership.” Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is prevented from leaving Gaza by air or land. Along with his countrymen, he is a…

Prisoner in His Own Land.

Israel, meanwhile, continues its policy of assassination, invasion, night raids and random arrests. In the skies above, the Israeli air force launched major air exercises, with nearly all its warplanes in the air performing simulated war scenarios. The air force apologized to the Israeli public for the supersonic booms it would have to endure. To the besieged Palestinians, however, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer warned that Israel has its…

Finger on the Trigger.

It is uncertain, however, whether mounting international criticism will have an effect on the villainous Sharon government. As Wilhelm Reich observed in his classic The Mass Psychology of Fascism, the German people supported Hitler, even though it was not in their rational interest to do so, because of the power of the national myth of the strong father demanding obedience. Will the Israeli people similarly follow a madman, and their own myth of victimhood, down a road which can only lead…

To Their Own Doom?

Like Germany under Hitler, however, Sharon will not let Israel go down in flames alone. Palestinians under occupation are facing their most crucial test since the 1948 Nakba, the catastrophe of their original dispossession. This is the moment for them, and the world, to insist on…

A Just, Not a Duplicitous, Peace.

CIA Director George Tenet headed to the region, signifying a possible realization by the Bush administration that the U.S. cannot remain uninvolved, and a days-old tenuous cease-fire still held, despite Sharon’s characterization of Yasser Arafat as a “murderer and a pathological liar” (Freud would have had fun with that). Supporters of the Palestinians under siege can only pray that the killing will end and resolve that, as Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, we will “take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave…

The Last Full Measure of Devotion.”

A New Window on the World…

Awaits visitors to the Washington Report Web site (<http://www.washington-report.org>). Our new executive Web director, Emad Fraitekh, is developing a site that will include all the resources you’ve come to rely on, including searching back issues of the Washington Report, but will be adding additional interactive features, with expanded links to Middle East resources. We will soon have a new, streamlined address as well, but for the moment the old one will lead you to the newly designed site, which we hope to unveil by mid-summer. Those who visit it between now and then will be able to witness…

A Work in Progress in Action.

Angels in Waiting…

Responses to our May donation letter are starting to come in…too late to include in this issue’s Choir of Angels, but we hope you’ll find a greatly expanded choir in our Aug./Sept. issue. As articles in the last several issues—and, in this issue, by Robert Fisk (p. 19), Delinda C. Hanley (p. 21) and Emad Fraitekh (p. 22)—point out, the war that is being waged in the West is a war of words. Israel partisans have seemingly infinite resources, and attempt to frame Americans’ perception of the struggle through misinformation, censorship and intimidation. Unfortunately for them, however…

The Truth Is Their Achilles’ Heel.

And they know it. But so do we. Apparently both sides agree that, when Americans learn the truth about Israeli occupation and apartheid, they will not tolerate their tax dollars being used to support it. And Americans are beginning to learn the truth. We hear it in phone-in questions to radio shows, see it in letters to the editor (even in The Washington Post!), and in such movements as a university divestiture campaign in Californa. It’s critical, therefore, to…

Keep the Momentum Going.

Now is the time to throw everything we have into the struggle for a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What the Washington Report has are words and access to the American public. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are giving their lives to the struggle, and without a sea change in American public opinion their sacrifices might well be in vain.

We’ve been operating on a shoestring for so long that we’ve almost gotten used to it. But right now, this summer, we have three very bright interns who are journalism majors, and who can contribute not only to the current struggle through their work with the Washington Report this summer, but can help begin to redress the pro-Israel imbalance in the mainstream American media as they follow their chosen profession. We could assist them on this path much more effectively if we had enough computers…

For Them to Polish Their Craft.

Many of the responses to our recent donation letter are from former subscribers who now say they can’t live without the Washington Report. One of our summer projects for our dedicated interns (and we have lots of projects for them!) is to call people whose subscriptions have lapsed and make it easy for them to…

Return to the Fold.

We’ve invested in an expanded presence on the World Wide Web to help extend our message internationally and, as you’ll see in this issue’s “Letters to the Editor,” we receive responses from around the world. But we need to get the Washington Report on more newsstands not only overseas, but here at home as well. These far-from-extravagant efforts constitute the minimum of what is required to be a viable participant in the public debate about the U.S.-Israeli relationship. But they require…

An Investment From Our Readers.

We don’t need to say that the Palestinians who are being shot and killed, besieged and bombed, strangled and starved need our support as well. Their needs at this time are immediate and drastic. At the same time as we try to alleviate their desperate situation, however, we must all consider what we can do to put an end, once and for all, to the situation which makes possible their continuing tragedy. We’re convinced that much of that solution resides here in the U.S. That’s why we ask that you support the Washington Report to the greatest degree possible, and…