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Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 17:29:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: Franklin Wayne Poley <fwp@vcn.bc.ca>
Subject: SNET: ForeignCorrespondent HARDLINERS HAVE HIJACKED U.S. MIDEAST POLICY (fwd)
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Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 09:31:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Colin P. Ryan <cryan@PROPHETSERV.COM>
To: foreignc@tao.ca
Subject: ForeignCorrespondent HARDLINERS HAVE HIJACKED U.S. MIDEAST POLICY
Foreign Correspondent
Inside Track On World News
By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>
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HARDLINERS HAVE HIJACKED U.S. MIDEAST POLICY
by Eric Margolis
September 11, 1997
NEW YORK - US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is in
Israel reading the riot act to Yasser Arafat over last
week's suicide bombings in Jerusalem.
Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and President Clinton,
blame Arafat for the latest terror attack. They are
demanding Arafat crush Hamas and other Palestinian
extremist groups- though both know perfectly well Arafat
can do neither. Netanyahu also seized on the bombing to
suspend the peace process which he has always opposed. .. .
Among the victims of the suicide bombers was a 14-year old
Israeli girl named Smadar. Her death fills me with special
anguish.
I knew and admired Smadar's grandfather, the late Major-
General Motti Peled. He was an outstanding symbol of what's
good about Israel.. Gruff, no-nonsense, without pretensions,
Peled seemed the reincarnation of an ancient Hebrew mountain
warrior. But he was also a keen intellectual, and a man with
a powerful sense of morality.
Having helped defeat his nation's enemies on the field of
battle, Peled had the wisdom to understand the dictum of the
great military thinker, J.F.C Fuller: peace, not victory,
is the true object of war. He realized that Israel, in spite
of having won all of its wars, still had not won peace, and
would not, until Palestinians were allowed their own
homeland.
Peled became an early leader of Israel's peace movement. He
was vilified as a `self-hating Jew.' But he soldiered on
until his death. Seeing his granddaughter killed by a
Palestinian bomb is a bitterly painful tragedy.
Nurit Peled- Eichanan, Gen. Peled's daughter, and mother of
the slain Smadar, spoke with fury at her child's funeral.
She blamed the terror bombings on the steadily increasing
oppression of Palestinians by the rightwing Likud government
of PM Netanyahu.
`They( meaning Netanyahu's government) sacrifice our
children for their megalomania - for their need to control,
oppress. dominate,' she told the Israeli media. Large
numbers of Israelis agreed with her. Half of all Israelis
still support the peace process, in spite of the terror
bombings. Like Peled-Eichanan, they feel Likud and its
powerful American supporters have sabotaged the peace
process.
A decade ago, the influential American Jewish Congress here
in New York circulated a private memorandum to senior
members. It warned the increasingly powerful, rightwing pro-
Israel lobby in Washington, the American-Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was becoming too dominant and
`arrogant.' AIPAC's pervasive influence in Washington,
cautioned, the AJC, would undermine chances for Mideast
peace and even risk igniting anti-semitism among Americans.
Today, the Clinton Administration, which claims to be an
honest broker between Israel and the Arabs, is seen by
everyone as having given the Netanyahu government carte
blanche. A former AIPAC's president boasted his lobbying
organization had positioned its people in all senior
positions of the Clinton Administration dealing with the
Mideast.
This includes Madeleine Albright herself, and her senior
deputies in charge of Mideast peace talks: Dennis Ross, ex-
AIPAC employee Martin Indyk, and Aaron David Miller - all
three of whom have lived in Israel. No wonder the Arabs
can't tell where Likud ends and the Clinton Administration
begins.
Madeleine Albright's trip to dress down Arafat this week was
described by even the staunchly pro-Israel New York Times as
`under pressure from Congress and domestic American
politics.' Of course she will urge Netanyahu to continue
trading bits of land for peace. America's other interests in
the Mideast demand appearance of balance. But this is a
charade.
The American Jewish Congress' predictions have sadly come
true. US Mideast policy and Congress are under the thumb of
Israel's rightwing extremists and their US supporters.
Moderate American Jewish groups have been sidelined. So
have the majority of Israelis who desperately want peace.
Like Mrs Peled-Eichanan, who bears the pain of Netanyahu's
reckless folly.
Copyright E. Margolis, September, 1997
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