The U.S. government contains an “ingrained streak of anti-Semitism” and the State Department exhibits a “long-standing and barely hidden pro-Arab tilt,” according to Oliver North.
North levels these charges in his new book, “Under Fire,” co-written with William Novak and published Thursday by HarperCollins.
The former National Security Council aide makes a similar accusation against Casper Weinberger, writing that the former defense secretary “seemed to go out of his way to oppose Israel on any issue and to blame the Israelis for every problem in the Middle East.”
Among the hypotheses North offers to explain Weinberger’s antipathy toward the Jewish state is the latter’s “sensitivity about his own Jewish ancestry.”
Weinberger was in London and unavailable for comment, according to Kay Leisz, an aide at the Washington law firm of Rogers and Wells.
In a 1983 speech to the American Jewish Committee, Weinberger denied the allegation that “I, personally, have some animus against Israel.”
“I am a strong supporter of Israel, and an admiring witness to the democracy they have built and preserved under the most trying conditions,” he said at the time.
North claims Weinberger’s “anti-Israel tilt” affected “our planning for counterterrorist operations,” because he “apparently feared that if we went after Palestinian terrorists, we would offend and alienate Arab governments — particularly if we acted in cooperation with the Israelis.”
At the State Department, North writes, “there seemed to be a constituency that actually relished any antagonism that could be fostered between us and the Israelis.”
‘ONCE AGAIN A VICTIM’
North attributes much of the anti-Semitism in U.S. government circles to the fact that many federal officials “are sons and grandsons of the great elite American families, where a genteel, discreet anti-Jewish prejudice was often taken for granted.
“In early 1983,” North goes on to relate, “an adviser to a senior government official sent me a weird magazine clipping about an Israeli conspiracy to dominate the world — and suggested that I might want to look into it. When I went to see him, he showed me the publication where the article had appeared; it was put out by Lyndon LaRouche and his followers.”
Anti-Semitic sentiment in the U.S. government, says North, “has been growing since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, after which many Americans (including some conservatives) blamed Israel for the Arab oil embargo, and the devastation that followed in our economy.
“This hostility grew more pronounced in 1981, when Israeli planes destroyed Iraq’s nuclear facility — which really infuriated the State Department. It wasn’t until early 1991, when the Israelis were repeatedly attacked by Iraqi Scud missiles during Operation Desert Storm and did not retaliate, that Israel once again enjoyed widespread support in Washington.
“Unfortunately,” concludes North, “it took a situation where Israel was once again a victim to bring about this change.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
