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Things Come 'Round
Twenty five years ago I stared into the eyes of Michael Berman, chief operative for his Congressman brother, Howard Berman. I was a neophyte running for the state assembly in a District which the Bermans claimed belonged to them.
“I represent the Israeli defense forces”, Michael said. I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. Michael seemed to imagine himself the gatekeeper protecting the Westside for Israel’s political interests, and those of the famous Berman-Waxman machine. Since Jews represented one-third of the Democratic district’s primary voters, Berman held a balance of power.
All that year I tried to navigate the District’s Jewish politics. The solid historic liberalism of the Westside was a favorable factor, as was the strong support of many Jewish community leaders. But the community was moving in a more conservative direction. Some were infuriated at my sponsorship of Santa Monica’s tough rent control ordinance. Many in the organized community were suspicious of the New Left for becoming Palestinian sympathizers after the Six Day War; they would evolve into today’s neo-conservatives.
I previously had traveled to Israel in a generally supportive capacity, meeting officials from all parties, studying energy projects, and befriending peace advocates like the writer Amos Oz. I also met with Palestinians and wrote favorably on the works of Edward Said. As a result, one of Berman’s allies prepared a file in an attempt to discredit my candidacy with the Democratic leadership in Sacramento.
This led to the deli lunch with Michael Berman. He and his brother Howard privately leaned towards an upcoming young prosecutor named Adam Schiff, who later became the congressman from Pasadena. But they calculated that Schiff couldn’t win without name recognition, so they were considering “renting” me the assembly seat, Berman said. But there was one condition: that I always be a “good friend of Israel.”
This wasn’t a particular problem at the time. Since the Seventies, I had favored some sort of two-state solution. I felt close to the local Jewish activists who descended from the labor movement and participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements. I wanted to take up the cause of aging Holocaust survivors against the global insurance companies that had plundered their assets.
While I certainly believed the Palestinians had a right to self-determination, I didn’t share the animus of some on the American left who questioned Israel’s very legitimacy. I was more inclined towards the politics of Israel’s Peace Now and those Palestinian nationalists and human rights activists who accepted Israel’s pre-1967 borders as a reality to accommodate. I disliked the apocalyptic visions of the Israeli settlers I met, and thought that the most hard line Palestinians would grudgingly accept a genuine peace initiative.
I can offer my real life experience to the present discussion about the existence and power of an “Israel lobby”. The so-called Lobby is not as monolithic as some argue, but it is far more than just another interest group in a pluralist political world. In recognizing its diversity, distinctions must be drawn between voters and elites, between reform and orthodox tendencies, between less-observant and more observant. During my ultimate 18 years in office, I received most of my Jewish support from the ranks of the liberal and less observant, but also from many conservatives who felt themselves excluded by the traditional Jewish [and Democratic] establishment.
However, all these rank-and-file constituencies were sensitive to the question of Israel, even in local and state elections, and would never vote for a candidate perceived as anti-Israel. I had to be certified “kosher”, not once but over and over again.
The certifiers were the elites, beginning with rabbis and heads of the multiple mainstream Jewish organizations. The vetting process was coordinated loosely by the American-Israel Political Action Committee [AIPAC], a group closely associated with official parties in Israel. When necessary, Israeli ambassadors, counsels general, and other officials would intervene in American politics with statements declaring someone a “friend of Israel.”
In my case, the Israeli ally was the Los Angeles-based counsel general, Benyamin Navon. Though politics drew us together, our friendship was genuine enough. I think Benny, as he was called, wanted to pull myself [and my wife Jane Fonda] into a pro-Israel stance, but he also was an old school labor/social democrat with sympathies similar to our own. He also personally believed in a negotiated political settlement. I keep a wooden sculpture by his wife Dora, of an anguished victim of violence, on my bookshelf.
Benny’s de facto Israeli endorsement would be communicated indirectly, in compliance with the law. We would be seen and photographed together in public. Benny would make positive public statements that could be quoted in campaign mailings. As a result, I was being declared “kosher” by an ultimate source, the representative of the State of Israel.
Nevertheless, I was accused of being a left-wing madman allied to PLO terrorism and communism throughout the spring 1982 campaign. During a local visit, the Democratic leader Walter Mondale commented jokingly that I was being described as worse than Lenin. It was a wild ride.
I won the hard-fought primary by 51-45 percent. The Bermans didn’t fund an opposing candidate, and stayed neutral. Willie Brown, Richard Alatorre and the most of the Democratic establishment were supportive. I easily won the general election in November.
But that summer I made the mistake of my political career. The Israeli Defense Force invaded Lebanon, and Benny Navon wanted Jane and I to be supportive. It happened that I had visited the contested border in the past, witnessed the shelling of civilian Israeli homes, and had interviewed the Israeli and Lebanese zealots – crazies, I thought - who were preaching preventive war. I opposed both cross-border rocket attacks and naively favored a demilitarized zone.
Ever curious, and aware of my district’s politics, I decided we should go – but only as long as the Israeli “incursion”, as it was delicately called, was limited to the ten-kilometer border zone as a cushion against rocket fire. I was assured by Benny Navon that the “incursion” was limited, and would be followed by negotiations and a solution. I also made clear our opposition to the use of any fragmentation bombs in the area, and my ultimate political identification with what Israeli Peace Now would say.
There followed a descent into moral ambiguity and realpolitick that still haunts me today. When we arrived at the Israeli-Lebanon border, the game plan promised by Benny Navon had changed utterly. Instead of a localized border conflict, Israel was invading and occupying all of Lebanon – with us in tow. Its purpose was to destroy militarily the Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] haven in Lebanon. This had been Gen. Ariel Sharon’s secret plan all along, and I never will know with certainty whether Benny Navon was deceived along with ourselves.
For the next few weeks, I found myself defending Israel’s “right” to self-defense on its border only to realize privately how foolish I was becoming. In the meantime, the Israel invasion was continuing, with ardent Jewish support in America.
Finally, a close friend and political adviser of mine, Ralph Brave, took me for a walk, looked into my eyes, and said “Tom, you can’t do this. You have to stop.” He was right, and I did. In the state Legislature, I went on to work on Holocaust survivor issues while withdrawing from the bind of Israeli-Palestinian politics. When the firs Palestinian intifada began, I sensed from experience that the balance of forces had changed, and that the Israeli occupation was finished. Frictions developed with some of my Israeli and Jewish friends when I suggested the Israelis make a peace deal immediately or accept a worse deal later.
It is still painful and embarrassing to describe these events of nearly 25 years ago, but with Israel today again bombing and invading Lebanon, and Israeli officials bragging about “rolling back the clock by twenty years”, and reconfiguring the Middle East, I feel obliged to speak out against history repeating.
How do I read today’s news through the lens of past experience?
What I fear is that:
- the “Israeli lobby” is working overtime to influence American public opinion on behalf of Israel’s military effort to “roll back the clock” and “change the map” of the region.
- the progress of the peace movement against the Iraq War will be diverted and undermined, at least for now, by the entry of Israel from the sidelines into the center of the equation.
- the rehabilitation of the discredited US neo-conservative agenda to ignite a larger war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. The neo-conservative’s 1996 “Clean Break” memo advocated that Israel “roll back” Lebanon and destabilize Syria in addition to overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The intellectual dean of the neo-conservatives, Bernard Lewis, has long advocated the “Lebanonization” of the Middle East, meaning the disintegration of nation states into “a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and parties.”
Originated by the British colonizers, the divide-and-conquer strategy already is taking effect in Iraq, where the US overthrew a secular state, installed a Shiite majority and its militias in power, and now portrays itself as the only protection for Sunnis against those same Shiites. The resulting quagmire becomes a justification for American troops to remain.
- trepidation and confusion among rank-and-file voters and activists, and the paralysis of politicians, especially Democrats, who only last week were moving gradually toward setting a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq. The politics of the present crisis favor the Republicans and White House in the short run. How many politicians will favor withdrawing US troops from Iraq under present conditions? Isn’t this Karl Rove’s game plan for the November elections?
What I know is that I will not make the same mistake again. I hope that my story deepens the resolve of all those whose feelings are torn, conflicted or confused in the present. It is not being a “friend of Israel” to turn a blind eye to their never-ending occupation.
One might argue, and many Americans today might agree, that Hezbollah and Hamas started this round of war with their provocative kidnappings of Israeli soldiers. Lost in the headlines, however, is the fact that the Israelis have 9,000 Palestinian prisoners and have negotiated prisoner swaps before. Others will blame the Islamists for incessant rocket attacks into Israel. But the roots of this virulent spiral of vengeance lie in the permanent occupation of Palestinian territories by the over-confident Israelis. As in 1982, Israel now virtually admits that the war is not about prisoner exchanges or cease-fires, but about eradicating Hezbollah and Hamas altogether, and quite possibly an escalation against Syria or Iran. It should be clear by now that the present Israeli government will never accept an independent Palestinian state, but reserves a colonial ambition to choose leaders for the Palestinians.
In 1982, the Israelis made the same claims about eliminating PLO sanctuaries in Lebanon. It was after the 1982 Israeli invasion that Hezbollah was born. I also remember Israeli national security experts taking credit for fostering Hamas and Islamic fundamentalism as safe, reclusive alternatives to Palestinian secular nationalism. I remember watching Israelis blow up Palestinian houses and carry out collective punishment because, they told me matter-of-factly, punishment is the only language that Arabs understand.
It is clear that the apocalyptic forces, openly encouraged by President Bush, with his open are gambling on the impossible. They are trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Iraq through escalation in Lebanon and beyond. This is a faith-based initiative.
Assuming the American people do not see through the headlines, the Democrats turn hawkish, and the international community fails to intervene immediately, the peace movement may be sidelined in a prophetic and marginal role for the moment. But we can say the following for now:
Militarism and occupation cannot extinguish the force of Islamic nationalism. Billions in American tax dollars are funding those Israeli troops and bombs.
There needs to be an exit strategy. The absence of any such exit plan is the weakest element of the US-Israeli campaign. Just as the White House says it plans to deploy fifty thousand troops on permanent bases in an occupied Iraq, so the Israelis speak of permanently eliminating of their enemies from Gaza to Teheran. The result will be further occupation, resistance and deeper quagmire.
Most important, Americans must not be timid in speaking up, as I was 25 years ago.
Truthdig.com
July 18, 2006
Note: go to The Huffington Post for more of Tom Hayden's commentary on the Middle East.
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Tom Hayden is national co-director of No More Sweatshops!, a coalition of labor, clergy, community and campus advocates of "sweat-free" guidelines on public procurement and enforceable labor standards for corporate behavior.
