Jeffrey Blankfort to Michael Neumann

Jeffrey Blankfort to Michael Neumann:

Re: Blame Yourself: American Power and Jewish Power By MICHAEL NEUMANN

Sometime around the 1940s or 1950s it was cool to talk about the capitalist power structure, and in the 1960s to speak of a white power structure. In both cases one could say, in annoying-geezer talk, "Now that was a power structure!" Because if you looked at what the capitalists or the whites controlled, well heck, it was everything! And as a measure of just how everything it was, both the capitalist and the white power structure contained the entire Jewish power structure. Has something changed? Have the white folks been dethroned by the Jews?

First, American Jews are, for the most part, "white folks," and are treated us such. When was the last time some one was stopped by the police for "driving while Jewish."

Talk of a Jewish power structure is increasing at two levels. In the nether regions of the internet, there's more about Jewish control of the US' Israel policy, or perhaps of the US itself. Higher up, one hears about a Jewish lobby, or a Jewish-Israel lobby, or, more often, about mean-spirited, unpleasant people who control the government, and who, it is said or coyly suggested, are Jews.

There is inconclusive but considerable evidence to support these claims. Jews loom large among the high ranks of government policy advisers, and in influential non-governmental policy organizations. Most media push a Zionist line; many are owned by Jews. And there are well-documented cases of senators and congressmen who have learned to regret, come election time, wavering in their support for Israel. Some suggest that Jewish pressure groups had a role in the downfall of Bush the First.

It is clear that American Jews are deeply involved in the formation of US policy towards what they call the Jewish homeland, the self-styled Jewish state of Israel. It is also clear that the interests of Israel are not identical with those of the United States. This naturally raises questions about the ultimate loyalties of these policy-makers, so the collection and distribution of such evidence is quite justified.

But another question arises: evidence for what, exactly? To my mind, it is evidence for the enormous, disgraceful complicity of American Jews in Israeli crimes, a complicity which includes very serious sins of omission throughout the Jewish left. The evidence also supports the notion that Jews have considerable political influence. But it does not support the claim that Jewish power somehow amounts to Jewish control of America or Americans, or even of American foreign policy. Whether or not the claim is antisemitic, it is annoying, because it lets the real culprits for American policy off the hook. Their identity is no dark secret. They are the Americans.

Only the far right claims "Jewish control of America," so that is a straw man, as is the generalization that Jews control "American foreign policy" beyond that of the Middle East.

The notion that Jews control America stems from a couch-potato school of political analysis. If your world is the TV screen, the Jewish-control theory makes some sense, because Jews really do pervade the entire range of your remote. And if you should look at the newspaper during commercials, you may find something similar. But contrary to popular belief, the sinews of reality are not found in the media. They reside in armies, oil fields, auto plants, factories, farms, mines, forests, oceans, roads and airports. Here the Jews do not prevail, nor do they prevail even in the financial world. Even in the media, their power is exaggerated.

Jews like Charles Hurwitz of Maxam and David Fisher, owner of the GAP, are two of America's largest owners of forests. However, the suggestion that auto plant owners have more clout than owners of the communications industry is simply a reflection of a pre WW2 mindset. I notice that you don't mention corporate real estate where Jews are dominant. As for their power in the media being exaggerated it is anything but. Here is enough of a sampling to indicate that it is not:

First of all, Sumner Redstone (nee Murray Rothstein) owns $8 billion dollars worth of Viacom, which gives him controlling interest in CBS, Viacom, MTV worldwide (Brian Graden, president) , and most recently bought Black Entertainment Television and proceeded immediately to cut down its public affairs programming. The president of CBS is Leslie Moonves, the great nephew of David Ben-Gurion.

Michael Eisner is the major own of Disney-Capitol Cities which owns ABC. David Westin is the president of ABC News. Although it has lost viewers, Nightline host Ted Koppel is a strong supporter of Israel. Lloyd Braun is chair of ABC Entertainment. And there is the perennial Barbara Walters.

Neil Shapiro is the president of NBC News. Jeffrey Zucker is the head of NBC Entertainment and Jack Myers has some important post there, as well.

Although Rupert Murdoch of Fox is not Jewish, Mel Karamazin, the president of the corporation is, as is Peter Chernin, the second in command at Murdoch's News Corps.
Sandy Grushow is chairman of Fox Entertainment, and Gail Berman is president. Murtdoch has received numerous awards from various Jewish charities.

Jamie Kellner is chair and CEO of Turner Broadcasting.

Walter Issacson is the News Director of CNN which also has Wolf Blitzer, host of Late Edition, Larry King of Larry King Live, Paula Zahn, and Andrea Koppel, Ted's daughter.

Jordan Levin is chairman of Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Howard Stringer is chair of Sony Corp. of America.

Robert Sillerman is the founder of Clear Channel Communications,

Ivan Seidenberg is chairof Verizon Communications

Terry Semel, former co-chair of Warners is CEO of Yahoo.

Barry Diller, former owner of Universal Entertainment, is the chair of USA Interactive.

Joel Klein is chair and CEO of Bertelsmann's American operations, the largest publishing conglomerate in the world.

Mort Zuckerman, the Chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, owns US News and World Report and the NY Daily News.

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. publishes the NY Times, the Boston Globe and a host of other publications.

Marty Peretz publishes the New Republic, which is unabashedly pro-Israel, as is

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard.

Donald Graham, Jr. is the chair and CEO of Newsweek and the Washington Post.

Michael Ledeen, of Iran-Contra fame, edits National Review.

Ron Rosenthal is the Managing Editor of the SF Chronicle and Phil Bronstein is the Executive Editor.

David Schneiderman owns the Village Voice and a number of other "alternative" weeklies.

Columnist William Safire, Tom Freidman, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Cohen, Jeff Jacoby, are among the most widely syndicated columnists.

There are a number of widely syndicated talk show hosts such as Michael Savage (ABC) on more than 100 stations, Michael Medved, 124 stations, and Dennis Prager who has an Israeli flag on his website. Others include Ron Owens, Ben Wattenberg, and former ZOA official Jon Rothman, all in San Francisco on ABC.

In Hollywood, which was founded by Jews, there is of course, Stephen Spielberg, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Kranzberg of Dreamworks, Eisner of Disney, Amy Pascal, chair of Columbia, and many, many more.

For the intellectuals, we have NPR, with pundit Daniel Schorr and weekend hosts Scott Simon and Liane Hansen, Robert Segal, Susan Stanberg, Eric Weiner, Daniel Lev, Linda Gradstein (a well-known speaker at pro-Israel events) covering Jerusalem, Mike Schuster (whose soft-ball interview with Ariel Sharon after Sabra and Shatila should have brought him before the court of Hamarabi). Brook Gladstein.

And that's just for starters. From the boss to the delivery it's an impressive list. While they certainly can't be put in the same box when it comes to Israel, they more or less guarantee that there will be limits to any criticism they may make of Israel.

The exaggeration comes from looking only at the activities and assets of Jews, which is a bit like looking at Paris and saying, correctly, that it contains a large number of Arabic-speakers: yes, but what about the French-speakers? It is not just that there are other powerful lobby groups like the Christian coalition. It is also that one needs to ask: what proportion of the "petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, consumer goods, lumber, mining" sectors of the economy--the list is from an almanac--is owned or controlled by gentiles? I await a table with two columns,

Jewish control non-Jewish control

sector1 xx yy

sector2 zz vv

arranged by market capitalization of firms or by some other significant indicator of control, which indicates that Jews dominate in any sector. Until then, I can't help noticing that most of the captains of industry I hear about aren't Jewish. They have many times more dollars to spend than the Jews have put into influencing US policy.

I find it curious that you exclude the media, but Jews dominate the telecommunications industry, as well, although, again, your question has very little do with the setting of Middle East policy in which pro-Israel interests encounter little corporate opposition. What is more significant is to look at the list of donors to the major political parties that can be found on the Mother Jones website (see Mother Jones 400). This list is overwhelmingly dominated by Jews, eight of the top 10 and 13 of the top 20, almost all to the Democrats. Haim Saban, an Egyptian-born Israeli, was fifth on the 1999-2000 list, with $1,250.000. Last year, he gave $7 million to the Democrats, the largest single donation in the party's history. Please don't tell me that there is any Gentile capitalist he can't play poker with.

One might reply: ah, but the Jews control such crucial elements of American life. This is another couch-potato hypothesis, that media control is all. The claim would be that, despite non-Jews and like Ted Turner, Steve Chase and Rupert Murdoch, Jews control enough of the media to control our minds and their decisions.

The inherent implausibility of this hypothesis has two components. The first is that it must postulate Jewish control over all the gentiles in a position to have some media influence of their own. Oil company execs, agri-business magnates and lumber potentates must have succumbed to the subtle messages of Seinfeld re-runs and become incapable of pursuing their own interests, unable to withstand Jewish media despite all their riches. If so, one can only marvel at the merciful generosity of the Jews, who appear from the goodness of their heart to have left non-Jews with an inexplicably enormous remnant of power and wealth.

Again, you introduce irrelevant arguments in what seems to be a desperate attempt to disapprove the influence of Jews. You create the hypothesis that you destroy. Your dismissal of the significance of Jewish control over most key aspects of US media, without mention to the racist images of the Arabs that have become increasingly prevalent in film and television, is extraordinary. By injecting Seinfeld reruns into the discussion, your argument borders on the ludicrous.

The second implausibility lies in the presupposition that Americans are deluded media slaves. (Saying this to a leftist is like telling Virginia there is no Santa Claus.) Briefly--the issue is too large to cover here--media bias does not take the form of censorship as often as many love to think. The mainstream media, for instance, provide more than enough information to build a conclusive case for Israel's criminality, and no one has to stick to the mainstream media. Equally important, the media may at times play a role in forming opinion, but at least as often they are anxious or happy or simply so unoriginal as to reflect opinion. Perhaps the reason so many people believe what the media tells them is that the media tells them what they already believe.

And where, pray tell, do they get those beliefs? How it works was stated clearly in a sports column by Selena Roberts in the January 8th New York Times. She was interviewing Doug Williams, who was one of the first black quarterbacks to break the barriers in the NFL that saw potentially great black quarterbacks who had starred in college being shifted to running back because they were not considered intelligent enough to play quarterback, and even now, those who have broken the colour line will be lauded for their "mobility" or their "athleticism" and not for their "mental capacity."

"It's the people who have the mike," said Williams, "The networks lead perception." As this is true of sports, so it certainly is when it comes to reporting the news and crafting opinions.

Finally, there is a huge difference between media influence and media control. SUV ads may make some men (and perhaps some women) fantasize that they have a large penis, and desire to purchase 4-wheel proof of this, but it never makes them actually believe they have a large penis. Similarly, teenagers know that smoking won't make them as cool as Joe Camel, and that cigarettes aren't risk-free fun. No guy thinks that drinking Pepsi really gets you a shot at Britney Spears. So the idea that Jewish influence in the media could turn us into helpless robots is simply a non-starter.

Again, you have created a straw man. No one is saying that.

Were Jewish media influence as important as many would have us believe, the Jews have had done with it a long time ago. Israel would already have wiped out or expelled every single Palestinian. A Zionist US government would have suppressed all anti-Israel material as 'hate literature' or terrorist propaganda, overthrown every pro-Palestinian Arab government, and used American troops to deal with the consequences. That this hasn't happened is symptomatic of a deep incoherence within the view that Jews don't control everything, but only the crucial things. If the things were really crucial, Jews really would control everything after all.

Your arguments are seriously off the wall. You are taking the most outrageous statements from the right-wing, classical anti-Semites, lumping them together with those who have made a more sophisticated analysis. Your statement also assumes there is one Jewish position, even one Zionist position on the Middle East which you know is not the case. The Clinton administration was dominated by liberal Jews who supported the idea of a truncated Palestinian Bantustan, a two-state solution that they could live with. The main opposition came from the neo-cons and the Zionist Organization fo America who support deporting the Palestinians to Jordan. Most Jews, in polls, support the former, but then, most Jews, probably two-thirds are not involved in the Jewish community or pro-Israel activities.

Your statement is also ahistorical. Even if its leaders wanted to, Israel was prevented from doing what it wanted to the Palestinians during the Cold War by the presence of the Soviet Union, and currently, it is held back by its dependence on Europe for the bulk of its trade.

Jewish control was no more telling in the past than it is in the present: when they worked to turn America towards Israel, the Jews never overcame any serious opposition. The historical record shows that, far more than Jewish lobbyists or the Jewish vote, worries about communism pushed the US into an alliance with Israel. The alliance developed in lock-step with growing alarm about Soviet inroads in the Middle East.

While worries about communism, stressed by David Ben-Gurion, did get the US to lean towards Israel, it wasn't done that eagerly, and that's why (1) Eisenhower didn't hesitate in telling Israel to get out of the Sinai in 1956 and why (2) France was Israel's major source of weaponry and aid until 1967. If Neumann's last sentence were true, which it isn't, it would have been reflected in the amount of aid offered to Israel at the time, and it was paltry. One of the reasons is that until 1967, their was relatively littl interest in Israel on the part of most American Jews, Israel's economy was stangnant, and more Israeli Jews were emigrating than were arriving. So, until the triumphalism of the Six-Day War captured the imagination of American Jews, and created the fighting Zionist of Beverly Hills and Brooklyn, most Jews here, while voting Democratic, did not have Israel high ot even on their agendas.

From before 1948 on, the US was concerned to counter Soviet influence by helping BOTH Zionists AND Arabs. This was the objective of all US policymakers regardless of their religion or personal sympathy for Zionism. The Soviets initially did the same. The shifting alliances had everything to do with great power rivalries, and very little to do with the machinations of American Jews or with any concern for the fortunes of Israel.

As I recall, Secretary of State George C. Marshall as well as his immediate successors were not concerned enough about Soviet influence to help the Zionists. Marshall opposed even recognizing Israel.

In the early 1950s, Israeli-Soviet relations soured and Arab-Soviet relations prospered.

They soured before that, because Ben-Gurion and his Mapai Party were fiercely anti-Soviet and they dominated the pro-Soviet Mapalm.

But despite Zionist pressure, the US did not rush to back Israel, nor indeed the Soviets to abandon her.

What Zionist pressure? AIPAC was one man, Si Kenen. There was nothing like the lobby that exists today.

As late as 1956 the Soviet Union was supplying Israel with cheap oil to circumvent the Arab boycott, and Israel refused to supply NATO with military bases to counter a Soviet threat. The US imposed an arms embargo on Israel in 1948, and maintained it with minor exceptions until the Hawk missile sale of 1962. (Even then, according to some authorities, the sale was to be linked to the repatriation by Israel of some 100,000 to 150,000 Palestinian refugees!) The American-Israeli alliance was forged only when American attempts to keep the Arab world onside foundered.

Onside? When Neumann speaks of the Arab world, he makes it seem monolithic. US-Saudi relations were going quite well. Egypt was another matter.

The great motivator in this process was not love or fear of the Jews. It was fear of Nasser. (Who? For judaeocentric Americans, the idea that an Arab or Egyptian could put his stamp on modern history just isn't on the radar.) He sought, quite naturally, to improve his position by exploiting great power rivalries. In March 1955, he refused to join the anti-communist Baghdad Pact. A month later, at the Bandung Conference, he moved to form a neutral bloc of exactly those nations the West was trying to recruit against the Soviet Union. Immediately after the conference, he announced a sale of cotton to Communist China, a country then embroiled in a frightening confrontation with the US over Quemoy and Matsu. Next he built on barter agreements with the Soviet bloc to conclude, in September, a major arms deal whose impact was felt throughout the Arab world and beyond.

In May 1956, while the Quemoy-Matsu crisis was still smouldering, Nasser recognized China. With his modern weaponry and vigorous diplomacy, he was widely seen as the leader of the entire Arab world. The West became dismayed enough to withdraw financing for his most important development project, the Aswan Dam. In response, Nasser nationalized the Suez canal. In the 1956 Suez war, America sided with Egypt, but only to co-opt the Soviet Union, which had stated that any further Franco-British advances into Egypt would be met *by force*. This was the end of attempts by the great powers to play both sides of the street.

This contradicts Neumann's earlier statements about the strength of the US-Israel relationship that was forged back in 1948. He also neglects to note that the US opposed the British and French mucking about in the region.

The 1956 war for the first time showed Israel as a militarily capable power which could, on its own, defeat Arab forces armed with Soviet weaponry. And to the US, communist-backed Arab forces began to seem worth defeating. Nasser maintained increasingly close relations with the Soviet Union, and the launch of Sputnik in October 1957 increased American anxieties about a worldwide Soviet threat. Egypt's union with Syria in February 1958 made its ties will the USSR all the more disturbing.

By October 1958, when the Soviet Union announced it would provide financing for the Aswan Dam, the lines were clearly drawn. The Arabs, led by Egypt, were on the Soviet side, and the Israelis became the very useful proxies of the West. (One of the first services Israel rendered to the West was when, in July 1958, it allowed "a British and American airlift of strategic materials through Israeli airspace to prop up the embattled Jordanian monarchy that was being challenged by a radical nationalist uprising fomented by Egypt's Nasser."*)

That's not much of a proxy, simply allowing British and US planes to fly though its airspace. It was in 1958, that Ike sent the Marines to Lebanon to prop up the reactionary regime there. The notion of Israel as a US proxy or cop on the beat does not stand up to scrutiny. Not a single Israeli soldier has ever lifted a finger in America's behalf, and its arms deals to countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, Somoza's Nicaragua, Pincohet’s Chile, as well as South Africa, were essential to maintain the viability of Israel's arms industry.

This is the origin of the United States' deep commitment to Israel. Though Zionist influences were at work throughout this process, they were never decisive, and in the end it was American security concerns that cemented the US-Israel alliance. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the rationale for the alliance ceased, but the alliance itself rolls on, its inertia abetted by the disinclination of Americans to put any obstacle in its course.

This argument is simply a restatement of Chomsky's position that has been welcomed by many Jewish non-Zionists because it takes the onus off of the lobby. From a standpoint of political action, however, it has thoroughly disarmed the Palestinian solidarity movement which has never even attempted to begin a campaign at the congressional level, urging the cutting off of aid to Israel, preferring to focus, helplessly, on whoever is in the White House. At this moment in time, one must admit that the Palestine solidarity movement in the US has been an utter failure and when people are beginning to look at the root causes of that failure, among them, the faulty analysis that Chomsky has purveyed and that you have repeated, you, in effect, are dragging the movement back to repeating its errors.

None of this changes the facts that (a) Jews, either individually or through their 'leaders' or collectively or in some combination of these, play a huge role in the making of policies that consistently and blindly favour Israel, (b) anyone anywhere in government who opposes these trends seems to get dumped or ignored. To explain this it is helpful to conceive of Jewish power in America somewhat like eunuch power in the Ottoman Empire.

In the Ottoman Empire, eunuchs were of course slaves or servants, yet at times their influence was pervasive. Sometimes they became key government advisers, sometimes even generals and admirals. At times it would not have been at all implausible to suggest that eunuchs were 'running things'. But in the end, no one could take such a claim too seriously. The Ottoman Empire never looked like some great machine turning out treats for eunuchs. The eunuchs simply took a certain limited advantage of the power vacuums appeared in a decaying, increasingly ignorant and feckless ruling circle. If anyone trembled before these neutered potentates, it was only at the good pleasure of the society that bought or castrated them in the first place.

This is too absurd to require a rebuttal. I suggest that you do more research on the pro-Israel lobby before you go on any further in this vein.

No, the Jews aren't quite the eunuchs of the American Empire. But Jewish power does exist at the good pleasure of non-Jewish Americans, both in government and throughout the general population. This holds even where Jews exercise the most effective control, in Hollywood. That's why you don't see Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the widowed, retired Israeli paratrooper, raining fire and death on the leering Palestinian thugs who killed his children and gang-raped Selma Hayek, their beloved Israeli Arab nanny.

You may yet see that. But they are a little more sophisticated than what you give them credit for. There already have been any number of films (ask the ADC) that expose the Arabs in a stereotyped manner with the implication, unstated, that all Arabs are alike. I would advise you to read Jack Shaheen's "The Arab in Hollywood" to get a better understanding of the subject. As for Jewish power existing at the pleasure of non-Jewish Americans, you are playing into classic Jewish paranoia, that "it can happen here." Ironically, if this power is not challenged by what passes for the left and what passes for academia here, and there is a severe depression, it could possibly happen, but it isn;t likely.

Max Weber said that "'power' [is] the chance of a man, or of a number of men to realize their own will in communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action." Whatever sway Jewish Hollywood moguls hold over their actors, elsewhere they have much influence, but little power. Jewish lobby groups constitute, not a separate power structure, but the department of Jewish affairs within the American power structure. Their will is realized, and the will of Jews is realized throughout the US government, but it is not "against the resistance of others". What resistance? By and large, American gentiles have either been pushing in the same direction, or watching from the sidelines.

The organized Jewish power structure has successfully turned the black political structure into an "invisible plantation," demonstrating the power to select or reject both men and women who might possibly become leaders in that community. The ability of the lobby to successfully target balck politicians who refuse to genuflect to their demands is a given, and the resentment this has stirred within the black community is legitimate. But this story is hardly known because even black activists are afraid to talk about publicly less they be branded as anti-semites. Three other victims of the lobby: Johnetta Cole, because she had once spoken for the Palestinians (and lost an appointment from Clinton), Lani Guinier, because she supported affirmative action (ditto for her with Clinton), and Ben Chavis, driven from the leadership of the NAACP because of his outspoken support of the Palestinians.

It is not, after all, as if America aches with compassion for the Palestinians, but has been crushed by the mighty Jews. If the Jewish lobby has defeated a few maverick black congressional candidates, it is not because mountains of American dollars have been dwarfed by even bigger mountains of Jewish shekels.

No, then please explain, for example, how Earl Hilliard and Cynthia McKinney were the only Democratic congress members to lose in the primaries.

And if non-Jewish leftists have failed to condemn the diffidence of their Jewish counterparts, it is not because the Big Jewish Money police are prowling around in black leather trench-coats. The real culprits in the story of Jewish influence in America are the people who let it all happen.

It isn't a matter of either/or but both.

These are the non-Jewish Americans who, in their opposition to Israel, are so timid that a couple of words from Alan Dershowitz would send them all scuttling like cockroaches back to their dark corners. The few who go further are not 'silenced' by Jewish power. One hears from them all the time: ask a Chinese or Iraqi or former Chilean dissident what 'silenced' means. They are ineffective because they haven't even tried to organize themselves, shrinking from the unpleasantness of offending the 'courageous' Jewish left. One thinks of the immortal words of George Carlin: "Take a fucking risk, for Christ's sake!"

Wrong, or at least partially wrong. Where is the responsibility of all those Jews on the so-called left who have successfully blocked any attempt, not only to raise the aid issue, but have blocked any mention or connection of the Middle East to the global struggle for more than 20 years, and who have blocked, as you are doing in this article, any serious exposure of the Israel lobby and now the role that Jewish neo-cons are playing and have played in writing current US policy towards the Middle East.

That Americans have let the Jews have their way doesn't mean that reporting on Jewish activities in America should stop.

It has hardly begun and already you are putting on the brakes.

But what is needed is not yet another list of the Jewish court jesters hired by the American establishment, or the groups that lobby for policies the US government anyway wants to promote.

If you consider Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Lewis Libby, Elliot Abrams, John Bolten, merely court jesters, I suggest you find another subject for your expertise. And me think, thou protesth too much.

Nor do we need more dark hints based on collections of scattered facts rather than serious comparative data. Far more revealing and just as damning would be the story of how ordinary Jews either applaud the worst Israeli crimes, or deplore them and support Israel anyway, or denounce them with rhetoric that somehow never gets around to advocating anything that would stop them. It is a story that just lies there, ready and waiting to be told.

Well, tell it then, and while that is a story, it is not the only story. And don't silence others who have something to say.

Jewish tribalism is real and strong, but it does not enslave Americans. For all its prestige, it is not something 'special' or specially powerful.

With all due respect to your expertise, you obviously have only the barest idea of what constitutes the Israel Lobby, at least the Jewish side of it, and it is definitely unique.

It is just another instance of the ordinary, vulgar racism and nationalism found all over the world. It is immoral, but not as contemptible as the whining of those who supposedly want to do something about Israel, yet are astounded to encounter Jewish opposition and slink off, muttering about 'being in the grip of Jewish power'. These people should themselves get a grip, and do something about it.

They may be contemptible but they are not nearly as problematic as academics who would lead us away from the truth by creating straw men and rebutting irrelevant arguments.

Do what? How about an experiment? It involves an unprecedented and essential first step towards real change in America's Middle East policies--actually asking for measures that would hurt Israel.

Right now, what passes for radicalism is a call to stop military aid to Israel, despite the fact that hardly any country in the world is more capable of doing its killing unaided. That this represents the most daring opposition to the American-Israeli alliance is both shameful and absurd. It all but proclaims to the whole world that even the American left would rather moan about the agony of the Palestinians than try to stop it.

At last, we reach a point of agreement!

Publishing something like the following statement would test for the presence of a backbone among American radicals:

Israel has, on many well-documented occasions, committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has violated international law and defied numerous UN resolutions. It manufactures chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as a sophisticated technology for delivering them anywhere in the world. Its settlement policies in the illegally occupied territories endanger the continued existence of the Palestinian people. For all these reasons, Israel is a rogue state and should be treated accordingly. We therefore demand that all nations should:

-- immediately cease all assistance to Israel, military, economic, and 'humanitarian';

-- impose a total trade embargo, including a ban on all transfer of funds to Israel;

-- freeze all Israeli accounts abroad;

-- sever diplomatic relations;

-- cut air links;

-- and cut all cultural, academic, and scientific exchanges.

In addition,

The United States should inform the Israeli government that any use of nuclear weapons, strategic or tactical, will be met by an overwhelming response in kind.

The United States should form a coalition including Arab and Muslim states to contain Israel along the lines of the coalition to contain Iraq during the Gulf War.

Notice how moderate this is: nothing questioning Israel's right to exist, nothing about the Palestinians' right of return, nothing about prosecutions for war crimes, no endorsement of Palestinian violence. How many leftish Jewish notables would sign such a statement?

By listing a list of maximum demands, you guarantee few signers, Jewish or non-Jewish. Who would endorse the use of nuclear weapons under any circumstance? Would you?

In fact, this list appears to be deliberate over-kill on your part. And your bringing in to the picture, as allies, the reactionary Arab regimes is, forgive me, a little suspicious. Merely stopping all aid to Israel, revoking all tax breaks, instituting severe economic sanctions, perhaps penalizing those institutions that refuse to turn in their billions of State of Israel Bonds, and no longer protecting Israel in the international sphere, would do the job, and do it very quickly.

My guess is two, at most. But how many non-Jewish notables would do so? My guess is ten, proportionately fewer than among the Jews. If so, it is a testimony, not to Jewish power, but to American insularity, laziness and cowardice.

Another straw man. Where do you keep all those bales? So therefore, do nothing. I think I understand where you are coming from.

Jeffrey Blankfort
Former Editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin