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June 17, 2002

 Re: 1. Ariel Sharon's Statement on Jews Controlling America
       2. Proportional reactions to Palestinian and Israeli terrorism
       3. Edward Said on Yasser Arafat and the need for Reform

Rep. David Price
2162 Rayburn House Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Congressman Price:

I thank you for generously spending an hour and a half with the Coalition for Peace with Justice on June 12 at the Community Church in Chapel Hill.

In the context of asking you a question on that occasion, I quoted Ariel Sharon saying that Jews control America.  Since the quotation is extremely controversial, I thought that I ought to document it for you.  The source is the web site for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, quoting a report on Israeli radio.  I hope that I can authenticate the quotation further through Israeli sources, but have not yet done so.  The first attachment is a printout of that reference and the quotation.

Although it is shocking to read these words from an Israeli Prime Minister, the dominating influence of the pro-Israel Jewish lobby in Congress is a common topic, and Sharon's view, not so boldly stated, certainly is held by many in this country.  As an example, I enclose the second attachment, an article from the June 10 issue of The Nation on "The Israel Lobby."

I had no hostile intent in asking the question.  I feel that if we ignore the Israel lobby in our discussions with you, or any member of Congress,  then we are leaving cards off the table.  If your chances of re-election would be seriously impaired by voting against all Palestinian-bashing resolutions, then we could not expect you to do so.  If being attacked by the Israel lobby is not your concern, then I do not understand your voting for H Res 292 after voting against bringing it to the floor.  The statement that you made criticizing the bill was eloquent and correct.  So I asked you the question in order to try to understand a little better the tangle of factors that led you, and the great majority of Congressmen, to vote for that resolution.  If it is possible for you to let me know a little more clearly why you apparently are voting against your convictions, I would appreciate it.

Advocates of peace with justice need to understand the reasons for these votes in order to pursue our goals rationally.  I believe that our principal task, as amateur lobbyists, is to persuade a large number of Congressmen to switch their votes at about the same time, to afford some protection from being on AIPAC's attack list.  I hope that through several national efforts we are involved in, the new Jewish organization Brit Tzedek v'Shalom (Jewish Alliance for Peace with Justice, of which I am a member), and the AFSC-IPS initiated US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation,  we can bring many other Congressmen up to your level of knowledge, and then hope that together they will apply that knowledge to reforming this country's destructive Middle East policy.

I apologize for enclosing so many attachments.  I hope that you have found a new legislative aide who can assume some of the burden of reading them.  (My regards to Doug Bend, and apology if he has to read them all.)  This is a big and crucial topic, for Israel, and for the integrity of governance in this country, and so I include the third attachment, my personal thoughts, as a Jew and Israeli, on the Jewish lobby as a question of conscience for all Jewish Americans.  The remarks are from an email message that I sent last November to a local listserve after two Jewish subscribers (names omitted) protested publication of the Sharon quotation as "insensitive to Jews."

2
In answering my question, I believe that you made a reference to someone's having complained about newspaper photographs of victims of suicide bombings.  I had not heard anyone make such a complaint, although someone had mentioned that there seems to be more news coverage of the victims of suicide bombings than of victims of tank, F-16, Apache helicopter, and bulldozer attacks on Palestinian houses.   It is difficult to point out the unbalanced reporting without being perceived as defending the suicide bombings.  Nevertheless, we must find a way to do so, because the imbalance of the reporting, and especially of the interpretation, distorts the nature of the conflict.

There appears to be a vicious cycle of Palestinian atrocities perpetrated in reaction to Israeli atrocities, and vice versa.  But these cycles have starting points.  The current wave of violence clearly was instigated by Ariel Sharon, who, on September 28, 2000, entered the courtyard of Al Aqsa Mosque with a thousand armed men, provoking the rage of local Palestinians, who began throwing stones at Jews beside the Western Wall.  The episode might have ended then, but 13 Palestinian demonstrators were killed that day in Jerusalem or the next day in Gaza by snipers firing at long range.  That was truly an atrocity, and one, which ought to have brought immediate strong condemnation from this country.  If 13 demonstrators against the WTO in Seattle had been killed by police snipers, there would have been a huge wave of revulsion in this country.  These cold-blooded killings were hardly noticed in this country, but they set off a wave of revulsion among Palestinians, and the intifada.

The US press, swallowing the Israeli government's propaganda line, blames Arafat for starting the intifada after walking away from Camp David.  But this assertion can be believed only by an ignoramus.  Camp David was in July, more than two months before the beginning of the intifada.  In the first months of the intifada there were only a few isolated shootings of Israelis, no suicide bombings.  The suicide bombings began only after months of outrageous atrocities by the Israelis, and the shooting or assassination of several hundred Palestinians.  The suicide bombings are barbaric and despicable, but the Palestinians clearly are not the initiators of this conflict.  The Israelis are, but most US (not European) news coverage turns the facts on their head.  That is why we complain.

It would be better for the Palestinians if they would find a way to struggle for freedom non-violently.  But people so terribly abused over such a long period of time seldom, like Gandhi, react with dignity and compassion for their tormenters.  As I mentioned in my last message to you, the conflict now in Palestine resembles the Algerian war for independence, which also was marked by startling cruelty on both sides.  This colonial struggle can be ended only by ending colonialism.   If we do not learn from history we are bound to repeat it.

3
The fourth attachment is a column published this week by Edward Said on the need for holding Palestinian elections now.  I believe that Said's observations are so significant and so clarifying of much of the tangle of lies that we hear about the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat, that it should be the "document of the month," required reading for understanding the Middle East crisis.

        Next year in free Jerusalem

Andrew G. Silver
Hillsborough, NC

enc.: 4
 

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