Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1992, pages 7-8, 89-91

The AIPAC Politics of Smear

The Secret Section in Israel's U.S. Lobby That Stifles American Debate

By Gregory D. Slabodkin

During the reign of terror that Senator Joseph McCarthy unleashed in the 1950s, when the reputations and lives of many loyal Americans were ruined by false charges of "communism" and "treason," American Jewry was overwhelmingly opposed to the Wisconsin senator and his blackmail by blacklists. According to the Gallup polls of the time, the percentage of U.S. Jews who opposed McCarthy's smear tactics was twice that of the rest of the population. Many Jewish organizations passed resolutions condemning McCarthy's ruthless character assassination.

Today, however, such national Jewish organizations as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are using the same tactics to stifle open debate of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Secretly Circulated Lists

To conduct this "neo-McCarthyism," AIPAC operates a covert section within its research department that monitors and keeps files on politicians, journalists, academics, Arab-American activists, Jewish liberals, and others it labels "anti-Israel." AIPAC selects information from these files and secretly circulates lists of the "guilty," together with their alleged political misdeeds, buttressed by their statements, often totally out of context.

Just as McCarthy's permanent investigations subcommittee labeled criticism of specific policies of the U.S. government as "anti-American," or "pro-Soviet," AIPAC labels criticism of Israeli government policies "anti-Israel," "pro-Arab" or "pro-PLO." Still worse is the pro-Israel lobby's redefinition of "anti-Semitism" to include any such criticism of Israel or its actions.

To date, revelations about AIPAC's blacklisting and smear tactics have barely scratched the surface of the pro-Israel lobby's secret activities. Former Congressman Paul Findley, in his 1985 best-selling book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, documented what he could see of that lobby's impact on U.S. politics, defense, foreign and economic policies, as well as academia and the media. However, as an insider who worked within AIPAC's stealth section, I can confirm what Findley could only surmise. That an organized blacklisting operation exists is a tragic fact that no longer should be ignored.

AIPAC's "opposition research" department traces its roots to I.L. (Sy) Kenen, who founded AIPAC in 1954. As editor of AIPAC's weekly Near East Report, he often attacked critics of Israel in his aptly titled column, "The Monitor." Besides monitoring, analyzing, and responding to "anti-Israel" comment and activities in the United States, Kenen also kept files on AIPAC's "enemies." In his final year AIPAC began to expand its intelligence-gathering operations.

Kenen's memoirs, Israel's Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington, record how AIPAC pooled resources in 1974 with the American Jewish Committee and other national Jewish organizations to create a "truth squad." Its purpose was to combat "pro-Arab propaganda" and the emerging "Arab lobby," which Kenen believed to be a growing threat to the U.S.-Israel relationship.

"While vigorously defending Israel's perceived interests, the organizations that created the truth squad turned into a kind of Jewish thought police," journalist Robert I. Friedman explains. "Investigators—sometimes overzealous Jewish college students, sometimes sources with access to U.S. intelligence agencies—were used to ferret out critics of Israel, Jew or gentile, wherever they might be. At ADL and AIPAC, files were opened on journalists, politicians, scholars and community activists. Their speeches and writings were monitored, as were, in some cases, their other professional activities. And they were often smeared with charges of anti-Semitism or with the pernicious label of self-hating Jew. The intention was to stifle debate on the Middle East within the Jewish community, the media and academia, for fear that criticism of any kind would weaken the Jewish state."

When Kenen stepped down as executive director of AIPAC in December 1974, the task of monitoring Israel's "enemies" was left to the department of research and information at AIPAC, where it has remained ever since.

Monitoring Israel's "Enemies"

Morris Amitay, Kenen's successor as AIPAC executive director, did not follow Kenen's practice of countering "pro-Arab propaganda" with polished editorials in the Near East Report. Amitay was more concerned with developing AIPAC into a first-rate lobbying organization, as demonstrated by the fact that AIPAC grew dramatically during his six-year reign. These also were key years in the growth of intelligence gathering.

Some of the growth resulted from the challenge presented by a small, dovish, Jewish organization of the late 1970s known as Breira. "Breira," the Hebrew word for "alternative," was organized by a tiny group of American Jewish rabbis, professors and other activists from the civil rights and anti-war movement of the 1960s.

Recognizing that the U.S. Jewish community was not monolithic on the subject of Israel, Breira encouraged American Jews to question Israel's policies in the occupied territories after the 1967 Six-Day War and to engage in an open and frank debate on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Many Breira positions reflected those of the Peace Now movement in Israel.

However, American Jewish organizations would not tolerate in the U.S. the dissent that characterized political debate in Israel. Instead AIPAC and other Jewish organizations set out to silence Breira by discrediting its members. Although these Jewish peaceniks were motivated by love and concern for Israel, they were smeared as "anti-Israel," "pro-PLO," and "self-hating Jews."

Kenen, still serving as acting editor of AIPAC's Near East Report, charged that Breira "undermined U.S. support for Israel." Only one prominent Jewish leader defended Breira. He was Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, who called the attack on Breira a "witch hunt." He was ignored, however, and the swift and successful campaign to snuff out Breira set the "rules" for dissent in the American Jewish community, as well as who would be the "enforcer" of these "rules."

As Edward Tivnan observed in his book, The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy: "By attacking Breira, Jewish leaders had turned over much of their power to AIPAC, Israel's most loyal agent in the U.S. and a proved enemy of dissent from Israeli policies, among Jews as well as gentiles."

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, AIPAC published an annual "Who's Who" of "anti-Israel organizations and personalities, providing important background information for AIPAC members who must deal with them in the political arena." AIPAC photocopied these "enemies lists" to meet increasing requests by its members for materials on "anti-Israel" forces.

AIPAC's "War for Washington"

Thomas Dine, a former legislative assistant to Senator Ted Kennedy, who replaced Amitay in 1980 as AIPAC executive director, expanded AIPAC's opposition research. This was part of Dine's "War for Washington," inspired by what he portrayed as the dramatic growth of "anti-Israel" organizations in the nation's capital. AIPAC was particularly worried about the Arab-American community, just beginning to organize.

In August 1982, AIPAC hired Amy Goott as its first full-time employee to monitor Israel's "enemies." Goott was recruited from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, where she had similar duties. In a speech at the 1983 AIPAC Policy Conference, Goott called on AIPAC members to send useful information to her in Washington.

In June 1983, AIPAC published The Campaign to Discredit Israel, coauthored by Goott. As Dine explained in the handbook's preface, its purpose was to update the activities of "anti-Israel" organizations and individuals, and to provide a "more complete and convenient analysis of this activity" to "meet the needs of AIPAC members." Yet, despite its glossy cover and carefully worded and seemingly objective descriptions, The Campaign to Discredit Israel was nothing more than a blacklist. By lumping them together, it sought to categorize critics of all kinds as "enemies" of Israel. The final chapter, "A Directory of the Actors," profiled 21 organizations and 38 individuals to be monitored and discredited whenever possible.

At about the same time that AIPAC published The Campaign to Discredit Israel, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith published its own document entitled Pro-Arab Propaganda in America: Vehicles and Voices. Overlaps in the texts and the timing reflects Ms. Goott's employment by both organizations during the period both publications were in preparation.

"The primary accusation leveled against the groups and individuals listed in the B'nai B'rith and AIPAC books is that they are 'pro-Palestinian' or 'pro-PLO,'" Cheryl Rubenberg writes in her book, Israel and the American National Interest. "Pro-Israeli groups have succeeded in associating the words 'Palestinian' and 'PLO' with terrorism in the minds of Americans; then with techniques reminiscent of the McCarthy era, they smear their opposition with the label 'pro-PLO.'"

The smear campaign did not go totally unchallenged within the U.S. Jewish community. In December 1983, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis criticized AIPAC's tactics, particularly the inclusion in its "enemies list" of Walid Khalidi, a Palestinian intellectual living in Boston, as does Lewis.

Khalidi supports a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In its handbook, however, AIPAC quoted selectively from one of his articles to depict him as an extremist calling for the destruction of Israel.

"Joe McCarthy could not have produced a nastier distortion" of Khalidi's views, Lewis wrote. He suggested that Israel's lobby should welcome Palestinian moderation instead of trying to "smear" it.

In November 1984, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the largest organization of Middle East educators in the United States, unanimously condemned AIPAC and ADL blacklisting. MESA called on both national Jewish organizations to "disavow and refrain from such activities" as soliciting "unbalanced information on students, faculty and other parties at American university campuses" and "listing factually inaccurate and unsubstantiated assertions that defame specific students, teachers and researchers as 'pro-Arab propagandists,' who 'use their anti-Zionism as merely a guise for their deeply felt anti-Semitism.'"

When it released the first edition of The Campaign to Discredit Israel in 1983, AIPAC had announced plans to publish updated versions annually. However, due to the negative publicity it engendered, the first edition was also the last. Instead, AIPAC continued its monitoring of "anti-Israel" activities, but disseminated the results secretly.

Going Underground

AIPAC's decision to take its opposition research underground coincided with the hiring in the mid-1980s of Michael Lewis and Anna Gottlieb. Gottlieb joined AIPAC after a stint at the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI). Lewis came to AIPAC from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank closely associated with the pro-Israel lobby. He is the son of Princeton University "orientalist" Bernard Lewis, whose writings have been criticized in the Middle East for denigrating Islam as a religion and Arabs as a people.

Michael Lewis, the present head of AIPAC's stealth section, innocuously named Policy Analysis, describes it as a "clearing-house" for information on anti-Israel organizations and activists to provide a "resource, and fulfill a need, unreplicated anywhere else." He has provided negative information both to rival politicians and to journalists about prominent individuals whom AIPAC considers to be "anti-Israel."

In one case Lewis provided information that became the basis of a racist brochure mailed to voters in California's 44th congressional district by candidate Randy "Duke" Cunningham's campaign in the spring of 1990. The brochure accused former U.S. Ambassador to Qatar Joseph Ghougassian, Cunningham's Republican primary election opponent, of being "bank-rolled by Arab oil interests." The brochure, featuring a photo of Ghougassian with a drawing of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, asked: "We don't need a congressman bought and paid for by these special interests. Do we?"

What made this brochure particularly offensive was the fact that Cunningham's campaign listed contributors to Ghougassian with Arabic sounding last names, all of whom were in fact U.S. citizens, and included the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA). Ghougassian, an Egyptian-born Armenian and naturalized U.S. citizen, lost the primary race against Cunningham who, with AIPAC's support, went on to win a seat in the 102nd Congress.

Lewis reports that AIPAC also "provided Steve Emerson with information on Alexander Cockburn." That followed a heated exchange between Israel-apologist Emerson and frequent critic of Israel Cockburn on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal in May 1990. Emerson then turned to Michael Lewis at AIPAC for some defamatory material on Cockburn. The result was a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal on June 4, 1990, in which Emerson attacked Cockburn for his "financial agenda."

"It ought to be remembered," Emerson wrote, "that several years ago Mr. Cockburn secretly took $10,000 from an organization that had been funded primarily by the governments of Iraq and Libya and by a bank known as the PLO's bank."

Emerson's charge was based on a story which had appeared in a weekly alternative newspaper, The Boston Phoenix, on Jan. 10, 1984. The Phoenix reported that Cockburn received in 1982 a $10,000 grant from the now defunct Institute of Arab Studies to write a book on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and, because Cockburn did not inform them, editors of the Village Voice "indefinitely suspended" him due to the "appearance of conflict [of interest] and nondisclosure."

Not surprisingly, AIPAC was the source of the original Phoenix story as well as Emerson's attack based on it in The Wall Street Journal. Alan Lupo, The Boston Phoenix reporter who broke the story back in 1984, said AIPAC had told him the Institute for Arab Studies was "linked to a $100 million campaign to sway U.S. policy against Israel." In fact, the Institute had U.S. tax-exempt status and listed individual contributors within the United States until it closed down in 1983 due to a lack of funds.

Deploring the AIPAC-generated "misinformation," editor David Schneiderman of the Village Voice wrote on Jan. 24, 1984: "What Cockburn did not do was take money from an 'Arab propaganda group.' Moreover he was not 'bought'—he clearly received the grant because of views he already firmly held. The Phoenix offered no evidence that the Institute [of Arab Studies] is anything more than what it purports to be. And despite the reporter's clumsy attempt to say so, Arab does not always equal Palestinian which does not always equal terrorist. His unquestioned adoption of claims by the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, hardly disinterested parties, is poor journalism."

Even The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper with a demonstrated pro-Israel editorial bias, questioned the AIPAC-originated charges. In a Jan. 13 1984 editorial, WSJ editor Robert Bartley wrote: "Among all the things I can imagine Alex doing, this one seems fairly innocuous...On all this we have no opinion, except that even Arabs should enjoy freedom of speech."

The Wall Street Journal continued to run Cockburn's monthly column opposite the editorial page. Said the Journal, tongue only partly in cheek, "We hired him because of his biases, which we're sure are totally incorruptible."

Public outrage might follow disclosure of their covert activities.

In both of the cases cited, AIPAC attempted to discredit critics of Israel not by refuting their arguments, but by trying to tie them to Arab money. Making an Arab connection can damage the victim's reputation, the pro-Israel lobby believes, so long as it can encourage a mindset in the United States that anything Arab-related is tainted.

Ironically, it is precisely the same kind of racist stereotype to which the Jewish community is so sensitive, particularly the charge that Jews exert tremendous influence through the use of their money. Jewish organizations can and do talk about the power of "Arab money" and "petro-dollars," yet are quick to decry as anti-Semitic similar innuendo regarding Jewish financing.

In another case, AIPAC executive director Dine asked Lewis to analyze the positions of Brookings Institution Middle East specialist Judith Kipper. In an Aug. 17, 1990 memo, Lewis responded: "For the most part, Kipper is extremely skillful in her writings and statements to avoid being pinned down as 'anti-Israel.' She often achieves her goals by presenting the views of 'moderate Israelis' to state her case."

In The New Republic, an ardently pro-Israel magazine, writer David Segal put a more positive spin on Kipper's views in its March 25, 1991 issue: "Her analysis throughout the Gulf crisis said little about the politics of the Middle East, but a great deal about the politics of Judith Kipper. It's not that she's anti-Israel—her criticism would put her not far from the center of the Israeli Labor Party—or that she is pro-Arab. Rather, her politics stem from an unwavering quasi-religious faith in the power of dialogue."

There is no greater admission of guilt and wrongdoing than AIPAC's strenuous attempts to conceal its blacklisting activities. Senior AIPAC officials fear that public outrage might follow disclosure of their covert activities. The name change from "Opposition Research" to "Policy Analysis" was designed to conceal AIPAC's surveillance, monitoring, and intelligence-gathering operations. In an Aug. 7, 1990 internal memorandum to Steve Rosen, AIPAC Foreign Policy Issues director, Lewis boasted: "There is no question that we exert a policy impact, but working behind the scenes and taking care not to leave fingerprints, that impact is not always traceable to us."

As part of its intelligence-gathering operation, Policy Analysis has created a fictional person and a bogus company to infiltrate opposing organizations by paying membership dues or making donations to them. This AIPAC creation is "Paul Hunt" of "Paul Hunt & Associates." AIPAC rents a post office box on Capitol Hill for Mr. Hunt's mail, and has installed a separate Paul Hunt telephone line in the AIPAC office. "Paul Hunt" has even been listed as a donor to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Secret Activities

Nowhere is secrecy more meticulously applied than to the production and distribution of Activities, the weekly AIPAC publication which disseminates information on individuals and organizations critical of Israel or Israeli policies. Although Activities is the most visible product of its Policy Analysis section, AIPAC takes great pains to hid its connection with Activities, in order to avoid the controversy that arose over its blacklisting of "enemies" in its 1983 publication of The Campaign to Discredit Israel.

Activities' select and tightly controlled recipients are encouraged to use the material as they see fit, "subject only to the proviso that AIPAC not be attributed as its source." Activities is distributed to AIPAC's Washington and regional staff, its officers, the major Jewish organizational leaders, Jewish Federations and Community Relations Councils around the nation, pro-Israel activists and academics.

It also goes to the Israeli Embassy in Washington and to other Israelis both in the U.S. and in Israel. AIPAC employees are not permitted to take Activities out of the office and may not mention the existence of Activities outside AIPAC's walls. A disquieting breach of security wa revealed at the 1990 national convention of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) when that organization's president, Abdeen Jabara, referred casually to having received an AIPAC study entitled Activities.

Assessing the problem, Lewis wrote in an April 2, 1990 memorandum to Dine: "Activities is distributed to some 400+ people, so it will probably be impossible to trace the source of the leak. There is nothing in Activities which points to who is its originator and it is sent out in plain envelopes, so the material obviously did not just accidentally get passed on to ADC. This is the first time that any of these groups have made any reference to their being in receipt of Activities."

Information contained in Activities has been used by the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), American Jewish Congress (AJC), Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), National Jewish Coalition (NJC), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

According to Lewis: "Because Activities is read by many of the major Jewish and pro-Israel organizational players, Activities ensures that there is a cognizance of the activities of the anti-Israel forces both in Washington and the grassroots and the issues on which they are focusing...Ultimately, of all the information disseminated from AIPAC, Activities may well be the most eagerly sought, read and used to good advantage."

One of the ways that this information was "used to good advantage" was in a 1990 American Jewish Congress fund-raising letter. It accused Executive Director James Zogby of the Arab American Institute of "the new anti-Semitism" (criticism of Israeli policies) and compared him with white supremacist David Duke and black nationalist Rev. Louis Farrakhan because Zogby criticized pro-Israel political action committees. No sources were given in the letter for quotations attributed to Zogby.

When Zogby protested, AJC Executive Director Henry Siegman, whose name appeared at the bottom of the letter, denied prior knowledge of the mailing and blamed overzealous fund-raisers for its wording. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote in an Oct. 3, 1990, column, "There's no doubt in my mind that the American Jewish Congress' letter writers went off half-cocked—and without Siegman's knowledge." It might surprise Cohen to know that Siegman, not AJC's fund-raisers, is one of the select recipients of AIPAC's Activities, from which every one of the quotes attributed to Zogby had been taken.

Nor, after publication of Cohen's article, was it some unnamed "letter writer" but Siegman, personally, who contacted AIPAC's Michael Lewis for help in trying to build a case that Zogby was indeed an "anti-Semite." Lewis faxed an AIPAC "living memo" of Zogby's statements, actions and affiliations to Siegman in New York.

"I hope this information is of help," Lewis wrote on the cover sheet. "The compilation as such should not be sent to Richard Cohen, and the information should not be attributed to AIPAC."

Writing in the Village Voice on Jan. 22, 1991, Nat Hentoff argued that the AJC letter had "resurrected the spirit of Joe McCarthy." Hentoff also quoted Zogby's reaction to his own personal ordeal with neo-McCarthyism: "When the ADL and AIPAC falsely and maliciously labeled me a 'terrorist member of the PLO'...speaking engagements were canceled, political candidates refused to associate with me, and my family and I were harassed and threatened with violence...Now, I know that ADL and AIPAC were not involved in the harassment or the violence—but vilification and scurrilous attacks of the sort that they indulged in can create the atmosphere in which ugly actions occur."

Siegman never apologized to Zogby for the actions of his "overzealous fundraisers."

Disingenuous Disclaiming

AIPAC is careful never to advocate specific actions to be taken against individuals and organizations named in Activities. In fact, it puts on the front cover of every edition the disingenuous disclaimer that "the inclusion of material in Activities implies neither endorsement nor criticism of any group." By distributing derogatory allegations about critics of Israel, however, AIPAC in effect tells pro-Israel activists, "Here are the people who are your enemies—now go out and do something abut it!"

AIPAC's Policy Analysis section works closely with its college liaison department, the Political Leadership Development Program (PLDP). When AIPAC is informed of an upcoming speech by an "anti-Israel" personality, summaries of that person's standard arguments, question-and-answer style, and a list of possibly damaging quotations are sent to pro-Israel activists at the host institution, who also are asked to send tapes or accounts of the speech back to AIPAC. AIPAC also draws up questions for "plants" in the audience, and suggests other strategies suited to the particular venue.

Typical of this kind of preparation was a confidential memo sent in 1985 to AIPAC opposition researcher Anna Gottlieb by AIPAC regional director Murray Wood in Los Angeles. For an October 20th "Conference on Peace With Justice in the Middle East" at Mira Costa College, arrangements were made to "monitor the conference...have a corps of 'our' people in the audience, well-trained and briefed...call a meeting with the local ADL and American Jewish Committee directors to develop a coordinated strategy...(and provide) background material" on the speakers.

Human rights activist Noam Chomsky, a linguistics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, described the ADL file compiled on him: "It's just like an FBI file—150 pages of material, clips from newspapers and inter-office memos saying I was going to show up at this or that place, surveillance of talks I have given, characterization of what was said in the talks [often falsified]. All this material goes into a central source. Then when I give a talk somewhere, my file will be given to the appropriate local group, who will be able to dig through it, and come up with statements that I allegedly made at some time during the last 15 years to be publicized in unsigned pamphlets."

Under lock and key in the office of Michael Lewis are literally hundreds and hundreds of such files on people and organizations that AIPAC deems to be "anti-Israel." Among politicians upon whom such files exist are former Bush administration White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, former Reagan administration Secretaries of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Frank Carlucci, former President Jimmy Carter and former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, Republican Senator John Chafee, House Majority Whip David Bonior, and Democratic Representatives John Conyers, John Dingell, Mervyn Dymally, Mary Rose Oakar, Nick Joe Rahall, James Traficant and many others.

The largest file that AIPAC keeps on any single person is that of District of Columbia "Shadow Senator" Jesse Jackson. While AIPAC's surveillance and monitoring is mostly confined to an individual's professional statements and activities, in Jackson's case, AIPAC was caught venturing into personal innuendo. As revealed by CBS' "60 Minutes," an internal AIPAC memorandum dated Nov. 3, 1987 proposed generating media interest in allegations that Jackson had extramarital affairs.

AIPAC also maintains files on what it characterizes as "anti-Israel" journalists to stifle open media discussion of the Middle East. AIPAC maintains files on Peter Jennings, Mike Wallace, Patrick Buchanan, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Thomas Friedman, Anthony Lewis, Richard Cohen, Carl Rowan, Alexander Cockburn and Joseph Sobran, among others.

Reminiscent of Senator Joe McCarthy's scouring of Hollywood for "communists," and their "fellow travelers" in the entertainment industry, AIPAC also has opened files on Ed Asner, Woody Allen, Richard Dreyfuss, Vanessa Redgrave, Casey Kasem, Mike Farrell, Barbara Streisand, Michael Moore, Peter Yarrow, and many more.

"Have You No Shame?"

In the spring of 1954, a nationwide audience watching the televised Army-McCarthy hearings sat transfixed as Boston attorney Joseph Welch stood to demand of Senator McCarthy, "Sir, have you no shame?" Only after that dramatic confrontation, pictured over and over as intimidated journalists and politicians finally dared to speak out, did the shadow of "McCarthyism" slowly recede from American public life.

Today some Jewish organizations finally are asking that same question of the Israel lobby. Two years ago, several local Jewish community relations organizations issued a statement condemning an attack by the hard-line Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI) against the New Israel Fund (NIF).

This local initiative inspired a resolution adopted nationally by the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC) condemning the "McCarthy-like" tactics used by some Jewish organizations. The resolution proposed guidelines for dealing with "the right of dissent" on Israeli policies, and emphasized the importance of open and thoughtful exchange in an atmosphere of "mutual tolerance and civility." However, while NJCRAC denounced such fringe groups as AFSI, it failed to address the problem of neo-McCarthyism within more mainstream Jewish organizations.

AIPAC and ADL must be held accountable by the organized American Jewish community for their blacklisting and smear tactics and for the climate of hatred and repression they have created. Let American Jewish organizations demand that AIPAC stop circulation of its blacklists and destroy the files it keeps on the "enemies of Israel."

Only if Americans refuse to be silenced by false charges of hatred and racism can there be free and open debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East. And only through such debate will the U.S. be able to contribute toward a lasting solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Gregory D. Slabodkin, a free-lance writer in Washington, DC, was an opposition researcher for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in 1990 and 1991.