October 1990, Page 17, 18

Media

Israel's "Amen Corner in the U.S.": No Longer Preaching to the Choir

By Richard H. Curtiss

"The only two groups beating the drums in favor of U.S. military action against Iraq are the Israeli Defense Ministry and its 'Amen Corner' in the United States." -Patrick Buchanan, Aug. 26, 1990

The words above were tossed out almost casually on the televised "McLaughlin Group" discussion show by conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan, who has alternated stints as speech writer/political adviser to Republican presidents Nixon and Reagan with an extraordinarily successful media career. At present, Buchanan has a syndicated column, his own newsletter, his own CNN television discussion/interview program aptly entitled "Crossfire," and a regular slot on NBC's "McLaughlin Group," probably the most widely viewed and certainly the noisiest of the public affairs discussion shows.

Preserving Their Rice Bowls

There is not a serious journalist in America who would disagree with what Buchanan said. A very few have essayed less direct ways of conveying the same message. Most, seeking to preserve their rice bowls from cracks and blemishes, however, wouldn't be caught dead voicing such a sentiment in public. Therefore, as in the case of the child who suddenly shouted, "the emperor has no clothes," the crowd hushed.

McLaughlin takes a public swipe at Israeli extremism from time to time himself, because his ratings, based upon the frenetic pace and combative style of his show, make him nearly as impervious to network or advertiser intimidation as Buchanan. McLaughlin sought, on his Sept. 2 show, to engineer another confrontation between Buchanan and the two "Amen Corner" regulars also on the show, Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke. Barnes dismissed Buchanan as "wrong," but wouldn't elaborate, and Kondracke sought refuge in discussing motives rather than the issue.

"Pat now has a venomous attitude toward Israel and all of its supporters, for reasons I do not understand," said Kondracke, who, like Barnes, is an editor of The New Republic, owned by Martin Peretz, a publisher whose pro-Israel fanaticism has destroyed what, before he took it over, was once a respectable voice of American liberalism.

Buchanan's remarks were not made on the spur of the moment, however. His Aug. 23 newsletter had observed:

"Some voices-the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, Henry Kissinger, neoconservative columnists-are urging Mr. Bush to. . . launch a pre-emptive U.S. air strike on Iraq's chemical weapons plants, its embryonic nuclear plants, anti-aircraft positions, Scud missile factories, munitions plants. Castrate him militarily while we have the chance, they said. . . If we start the shooting war, how long would our NATO allies stand with us? How long would the Security Council remain unanimous? How long would our Arab allies stand, as pro-Iraqi nationalists descended on their palaces? How long would Mr. Bush's backing remain at 76 percent? Such a war would unleash all the forces of Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, which would likely do for the royal houses of the Arab world what World War I did for the royal houses of Europe."

It's easy to keep American military aid flowing to Israel if it seems to be threatened by leaders easily depicted as monsters like Saddam Hussein.

That, of course, is exactly why Israel's friends in the U.S. want such a war. It's easy to keep American military aid flowing to Israel if it seems to be threatened by leaders easily depicted as monsters like Saddam Hussein. It would be a lot harder to keep American economic aid flowing to Israel so that it could continue to refuse to make peace with Arab League members like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, whose own donations and purchases of American goods and services have become economic aid to the United States.

Within the organized American Jewish community, Buchanan's remarks drew the predictable intimidating reactions.

Executive Director Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations called them "outrageous, unfounded and unacceptable."

Director Abraham Foxman of B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League said they were "reminiscent of scurrilous charges made during World War II that Jews were the only ones who sought American entry in the war against Nazi Germany."

Aside from those statements for public consumption, however, there were worried discussions, confined largely to the Jewish press. In Iraq, insisted David Harris, Washington representative for the American Jewish Committee:

"The United States has been acting in its own interests, and it has enjoyed the support of the American Jewish community, along with other groups. We are singing in a chorus, and not a solo part, unlike what Pat Buchanan would like the American people to believe. . . I think that he poses a certain danger if left unchecked. On the other hand, his views are beyond the mainstream and are taken with a grain of salt by the mainstream of public opinion."

A quick look at what actually is being said by members of Israel's "Amen Corner," both in the media and in the "think tank-former government official" categories, indicates that Buchanan's thesis should not be taken "with a grain of salt."

The Amen Corner's basso profoundo, Henry Kissinger, wrote in an article published Aug. 19 by The Washington Post:

"The United States cannot afford to be diddled, and it simply cannot afford to lose. If it should be concluded that sanctions are too uncertain and diplomacy unavailing, the United States will need to consider a surgical and progressive destruction of Iraq's military assets, especially since an outcome that leaves Saddam Hussein in place and his military machine unimpaired might turn out to be only an interlude between aggressions."

Shocking Our Allies

Such chilling cries for American military action if sanctions don't work, even before the United Nations had voted to put the sanctions in place, shocked America's European and Middle Eastern allies, many of whom were unaware that Kissinger, secretary of state in both the Nixon and Ford administrations, has not even remote ties with the tight policy-making circle around Bush, but retains a symbiotic relationship with Israel and its ever-narrowing circle of American admirers.

For pure shrillness, few can beat William Safire, once a speech writer for Richard Nixon, now a media sage on etymology, the history and usages of words. This occupation enables him to fill about a quarter of his New York Times columns with apologetics demonstrating that, no matter what horrible things the Israelis do to the Palestinians and their other neighbors, it's okay because it all was done to them first, if not by Muslim Arabs, then certainly by Christian Europeans.

"By waging a decisive, conventional World War 2 1/2, we avert a nuclear World War III," Safire wrote in the Aug. 20 New York Times. "The world interest in bringing down Saddam Hussein is to insure that the means of mass destruction never fall into the bands of a mass murderer."

A.M. Rosenthal, the former editor of The New York Times who is now an editorial page columnist, is even shriller than Safire with his explanations, in column after column, that whatever Israel does to its Palestinians is okay for the rest of the century because Syria's Hafez Al-Assad did something worse in Hama in 1982 and Iraq's Saddam Hussein did likewise in Halabja in 1988.

Right now, Rosenthal told readers of the Aug. 23 New York Times, a quick little American war would be okay too:

"If the U.S., with or without the allies and the United Nations, removes Saddam Hussein's missile, nuclear and chemical warfare bases, Iraqis will remove Saddam Hussein."

Just to Be Sure

In case anyone didn't guess what else was on Rosenthal's mind, he added in the same column:

"Now U.S. diplomacy studiously pretends Israel does not exist. But the whole world knows that if necessary the U.S. will rely on Israel as a critical, steadfast reserve of power in the Middle East war."

Two weeks after the invasion, Congressman Larry Smith (D-FL), one of the Amen Corner's five or six most strident members in the House of Representatives, urged that the U.S. send military planes right into the Kuwait airport to pick up all Americans trapped there. Reminded that the airport already was ringed by Iraqi-manned Soviet-built surface-to-air missiles, Smith airily suggested that President Bush tell the Iraqis that, if there was trouble, "the President of the United States will consider it an act of war."

Harrison J. Goldin, a general partner of Goldin Associates which, in the words of The New York Times, "advises corporations on restructuring," wrote on the Aug. 28 Times Op-Ed page that "Arab leaders (with the possible exception of King Hussein of Jordan) are reconciled to the inevitibality of a military solution. In an inherently destabilizing situation, minimizing political damage in the region requires rapid and decisive action."

Fortunately, there is no indication that Mr. Goldin has been engaged to restructure U.S. Middle East policy.

Is Buchanan correct in saying that "Israel's Amen Corner in the United States" echoes war lust in the Israeli Ministry of Defense? Readers can judge from this excerpt, translated by Dr. Israel Shahak, from an article in the Aug. 31 issue of Ha'aretz by "Poles," pen name of the major Israeli daily's senior political commentator.

"Israel is not proffering any advice to Washington. We could deceive ourselves, however, if we refuse to acknowledge our hopes that the U.S. leadership will complete the act that it has begun. Certainly, a possible negotiated Iraqi retreat from Kuwait would bring us a relaxation of sorts, but only for the time being. The threat of Iraqi aggression against Israel would remain."

Only Temporary Relief

In case that's not specific enough to make the point, a quote that does come from an Aug. 31 article in the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha'ir by political correspondent Shalom Yerushalmi:

"While talking to Israeli right-wing politicians, it is easy to detect their fervent hope that the present crisis in the Gulf will not be solved by peaceful means."

Buchanan's theme was developed at greater length by Richard Cohen in his Aug. 28 Washington Post column:

"The problem I have with those who argue for a quick military strike is that they seem to be arguing from an Israeli perspective. . . Our national interest is to maintain the status quo in the Middle East, to keep oil in friendly hands and to ensure the survival of moderate regimes. . . The United States faces no holocaust and a resort to military action is not yet justified. Those who plump for war are a bit premature, attempting to make the Middle East safe for not only oil but for Israel as well. A war, though, is one way to imperil both."

Cohen and other nationally prominent Jewish journalists like David Broder and Anthony Lewis definitely are not in Israel's "Amen Corner." Another reason that Buchanan's remark can't be turned into an anti-Semitic canard is the fact that Israel's "Amen Corner" does contain some prominent non-Jews.

In the media, George Will and Jeane Kirkpatrick come readily to mind, although Will has been uncharacteristically silent on Israel in recent weeks, and Kirkpatrick may actually be turning away from her devotion to the Jewish state, or at least the line that American soldiers should fight its battles instead of their own.

Who's in Charge Here?

In the "think tank ex-official" category there's still the Strangelovian former NATO commander-in-chief and initial Reagan administration secretary of state, General Alexander Haig. Those hearing what he is saying these days will sleep better knowing Haig has not, since the second year of the Reagan administration, been "in charge" of anything.

What those in the media who are close to current administration thinking are saying demonstrates that they are poles apart from the "Amen Corner."

"Now U.S. diplomacy studiously pretends Israel does not exist."

Tom Wicker of The New York Times Washington Bureau wrote on Sept. 2:

"Americans and Israelis eager for war with Iraq may consider collective security measures-an international peace-keeping force for example-inadequate to contain Saddam Hussein; but the achievements of the U.S. and its allies, including the Soviet Union, argue for trying them." An August 28 editorial in The New York Times opined:

"Perhaps more than any comparable action this century, the embargo against Iraq can work, can break President Saddam Hussein's will-provided that those who demand instant military solutions are held at bay."

Even more to the point, syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, who are close to the Bush administration and who have been accurate prophets on Middle East matters for a generation, wrote on Aug. 24:

"Behind Israel's call for American action against Iraq may be concern over how the crisis will affect its standing with Washington. . . The sideline role required of Israel comes as the United States makes new promises to such old friends as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and even opens closer relations with longtime enemy Syria. . . Saudi and Egyptian arms deals with Washington, often blocked in Congress over the years by friends of Israel, are quietly being approved under the stress of crisis. They may be down payments for building mutual confidence and trust in the future."

Richard H. Curtiss is chief editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.