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/ |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S
/ /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East
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LATEST PALESTINE UPDATE
Heavy clashes took place today throughout the West Bank and Gaza with at
least 250 Palestinians injured and 4 Palestinians killed. A strict internal
Israeli-imposed closure remains in place throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
The Israeli military attacked Palestinian residential areas in Beit Sahour,
Beit Jalla, and Ramallah with tanks, heavy machine gun ammunition, and grenades.
More than 5000 Palestinians have now been shot by the Israeli occupation army
in the past month. Taking into consideration population sizes, this would
be
the equivalent in the U.S. of nearly the entire population of Washington,
DC
being shot in just the past month alone.
NADER AND THE GREENS CALL FOR SUSPENDING AID TO ISRAEL
MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 10/19:
The world of politics is a complicated place. Vying for attention as their
poll numbers slip Ralph Nader and the Green Party have taken an usual public
stand in the U.S. by calling for "suspension" of aid to Israel. It's clearly
a move designed to appeal to Arab and Muslim groups, even though there has been
considerable "liberal" Jewish support for Nader around the country. The Green
Party's goal is to achieve a 5% national vote as that is the threshold which
would put the party on the ballot nationwide four years from now and provide
millions in public finance money for the campaign.
The largely undiscussed aspect of all this is that Ralph Nader has been in
public life since the 1960's, is of Arab Lebanese ancestry, but has throughout
most of his life nearly totally avoided issues involving the Middle East. Lebanon
went through a terrible civil war, was invaded and occupied, but Nader was not
involved and did not speaking about these major historical developements at that
time. The same can be said when it comes to the Gulf War and to the original
Intifada -- no one remembers any significant statement or action taken by Nader
when these issues were the major ones involving the U.S. and the Middle East.
In short, the whole Middle East political thicket is one it appears Ralph
Nader has spent most of his life carefully avoiding. Some say it was a calculated
decision by Nader not to draw attention to his Arab ancestry and not to run the
risk of being targeted by the powerful Jewish organizations and Israelis interests,
thus freeing Nader to pursue his public safety, environmental, and anti-corporate
agenda.
Of course Nader has no chance of winning the Presidency, and few if any Green
Party candidates are expected to actually come to Washington as elected officials.
But even so, by pushing forward the basic issue of "suspending aid to Israel",
the subject itself has been to some degree further legitimized.
A few isolated American Jews have at times called for a serious re-examination
of the U.S. relationship with Israel, and a "suspension of aid" to Israel, but
this has not been done in recent years in a coherent, credible, or sustained
way. Back during the first Palestinian Intifada, a group of American Jews --
mostly professors, journalists, and professionals -- did organize as "The Jewish
Committee on the Middle East". During the years of the Intifada, from 1988 through
1991, JCOME did take out dozens of full page ads in THE NATION, THE NEW YORK
REVIEW OF BOOKS, THE PROGRESSIVE, and other intellectual publications. A series
of about 20 creative ads and Statements opposing Israeli policies and calling
for a suspension of aid to Israel were published by JCOME during these years
and a one-hour video titled "We Dare To Speak", whose theme was suspending aid
to Israel, was shown throughout the country on local cable access TV Channels
in 1992. But the organization has not been active since that time.
The small country of Israel receives about 20% of all U.S. foreign aid to
countries throughout the world. Aid to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan -- the two
Arab countries that have signed a peace treaty with Israel -- makes up about
35% of all U.S. foreign aid.
NADER'S GREEN PARTY CALLS FOR HALT OF AID TO ISRAEL
GADFLY CHARGES GORE, BUSH "TAKING SIDES" FOR ISRAEL
By NACHA CATTAN
THE FORWARD - 27 October: Ralph Nader's Green Party called this week for a suspension
of United States aid to Israel and blamed the Jewish state for the current violence
in the Middle East.
The statement paralleled a series of recent declarations by Mr. Nader, in which
the third-party presidential candidate reportedly accused Vice President Gore
of being "cowardly" in his stated support of Israel and criticized Mr. Gore and
Governor Bush for "taking sides" on Israel's behalf in the Middle East conflict.
Mr. Nader, a son of Lebanese immigrants who is said to be fluent in Arabic, is
best known as a consumer advocate. His views on the Middle East were not commonly
known until a recent series of appearances.
Mr. Nader is polling as high as 11% in several key states and worrying Democratic
activists who fear he is draining support from Mr. Gore.
Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan are hotbeds of Nader support
as well as toss-up states in the dead heat between Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore.
Democratic activists are calling the Green Party's statement one of the most
anti-Israel ever attributed to a party engaged in a presidential campaign.
They are demanding that Green Party Jews abandon Mr. Nader and his running mate,
Winona LaDuke, a Native American activist whose mother is Jewish. Some 3% of
Jews said they planned to vote for Mr. Nader, according to a recent survey by
the American Jewish Committee.
The Green Party holds a "distorted view of Israel that is naÔve at best and malevolent
at worst," the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council,
Ira Forman, told the Forward. The party's statement, he said, "is representative
of Ralph Nader's own views on the Middle East."
Mr. Nader's Jewish supporters, including some of the party's top officials, expressed
surprise at their party's positions on the Middle East, most saying that they
had not been aware of them. Most, however, said they would continue to support
Mr. Nader based on his views on the environment, corporate accountability and
opposition to standing global trade agreements.
Nader supporters also said that the Green candidate's foreign-policy positions
do not matter because the candidate has no chance of being voted into office.
Mr. Nader's New York state coordinator, who is a former Yeshiva of Flatbush student
and former resident of Israel whose father lives in the Galilee, said she did
not know about the Green Party's statement. Masada Disenhouse declined to comment
on the statement or Mr. Nader's stance on the Middle East.
The co-chairman of New Mexico's Green Party, Elisheva Crowell, said that she
disagrees with the Green Party's statement, which was approved after being distributed
via e-mail among state party chairmen. However, Ms. Crowell said that she will
vote Green to help the party capture the 5% of the national vote needed to earn
federal matching funds for the 2004 campaign.
"Ralph Nader presents the Jewish views of justice and giving a voice to groups
that traditionally have been voiceless," Ms. Crowell said.
The statement by the Association of State Green Parties "condemns the excessive
use of force against Palestinians" in the current conflict and lays the "greater
responsibility [on] Israel for the conflict both in this immediate crisis and
in Israel's continuing history of non-compliance with international law and U.N.
resolutions." The statement calls for a cessation of all further aid to Israel
until the Jewish state agrees to withdraw from land acquired since 1967, transform
Jerusalem into a "shared city" and honor the Palestinians' "inalienable rights
to return."
A co-publisher of the left-leaning Jewish magazine Tikkun, record producer Danny
Goldberg, who helped raise $30,000 for Mr. Nader, said that he continues to support
Mr. Nader despite the statement. He said that he would only switch his vote if
he felt Mr. Nader was against Israel's security and against giving foreign aid.
"I don't support using aid as the vehicle of putting pressure on the U.S." said
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor and co-publisher of Tikkun and member of the Nader
2000 committee. However, he said, "I wouldn't be supporting him for his positions
on the Middle East, because his campaign is not about foreign policy."
Mr. Nader has yet to release an official position on Israel. Nader campaign aides,
when questioned about his views on the Middle East, referred a reporter to recent
articles in the press.
According to a report in the online journal NewsForChange.com, Mr. Nader told
a St. Louis press conference last week that the United States should use its
influence to push its ally to "stop provoking the much-weaker Palestinians."
Said Mr. Nader, "Maybe if the U.S. is a bit more forceful, and answers questions
like [those asked by] Vice President Gore a little more candidly, instead of
so cowardly ... there will be an agreement reached, and in a few years both
Palestinians
and Israelis will wonder why it took 'em so long.".
In an October 6 interview with Columbia University's Columbia Daily Spectator,
Mr. Nader is quoted as saying, "The idea of using lethal force against people
who are throwing rocks — youngsters — is abhorrent; I don't think anybody can
justify that kind of bloodshed when one party has such huge military superiority
over the other."
There is evidence that some Jewish leftists have been turning away from Mr. Nader
in recent days, but not because of his Middle East views. "As much as I sympathize
with what the Green Party stands for, I'm afraid that the new Supreme Court picks
will be detrimental if Bush is elected president," said the executive director
of the Los Angeles-based Progressive Jewish Alliance, Daniel Sokatch.
MiD-EasT RealitieS - www.MiddleEast.Org
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