Issues in Focus Looking for a Scapegoat

The Carter Administration, which has fumbled the Middle East ball for the past year, is currently engaged in a campaign to exonerate itself on this issue by hyping up public opinion against Israel.

Both the White House and the State Department are proclaiming, more openly and frequently than ever, that America will not permit Israel to decide its foreign policy; that the United States, not Israel, will determine what is best in the way of America’s foreign relations and interests. The flip side of this insidious campaign is the myth that Israel and friends of Israel in and out of Congress are united in some nefarious anti-American actions, actions that are calculated to diminish this country’s stature in its diplomatic dealings with other countries.

What makes this campaign insidious is the issue around which the Administration is making its stand for self-determination of its foreign policy. It involves the sale of war planes to Egypt, Israel and what the Administration terms “moderate” Saudi Arabia. Despite Administration signals over the past few days that it is ready to untie the plane package and present the sales to Congress as three separate bundles it remains, Orwellian semantics notwithstanding, a one-shopping bag deal. Having bungled its original presentation of the proposal, the Administration is now shifting the blame to Israel.

During the President’s press conference last Tuesday in Washington, he was asked by a reporter “Do you think it’s right and proper and do you think it’s right for the foreign minister of another government to interfere in the legislative process of this government–I’m talking particularly about your Middle East arms package…?” The reporter was also alluding particularly to Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, who was in Washington at the time.

MAIN ISSUE AT STAKE

Carter’s response was that he had made his sales recommendation to Congress “and will make it shortly on what I consider to be in the best interests of our own nation with a well-balanced and friendly attitude toward our allies and friends in the Middle East.” Continuing, Carter said Congress should make its decision on the sales “by my request to the Congress, by Congress considering my request for approval of the sales on the best interest of our country as judged by me and the Congress.”

Last Friday, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, in a letter to Sen. Frank Church (D.Idaho), the second ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, explained the proposed plane sales with this caveat: “I am sure you will understand that the President must also fulfill his responsibilities for the conduct of foreign affairs.”

This was also an element of White House press secretary Jody Powell’s briefing last Thursday when he said: “The real issue which Congress and the country must decide is whether it is in the best interests of the United States to maintain, without deviation, its historic commitment to the security of Israel, while at the same time we are seeking closer ties with the moderate Arab nations. The President feels strongly that it is.”

But if all this talk by Administration officials and the President seemed a bit hazy and circuitous, the Administration’s apologist, New York Times columnist James Reston, transferred the issue from the subliminal level to the homework of a commercial announcement. Writing in the Friday issue of The Times, he stated: “…the view at the White House is that the main issue at stoke is the President’s right and ability to conduct foreign policy, without excessive interference by Congress or ministers of foreign states.”

Who was challenging the President’s right and ability, specifically on the plane sales issue? Reston dug deep into his journalistic grab bag and came up with an old chestnut: Dayan is in Washington “lobbying for the shipment of planes to Israel, which is understandable, but also against the decision to sell planes to Saudi Arabia, which is not exactly the same thing.”

THE ACCUSING FINGER POINTS

There! Israel’s nefarious activity was uncovered and exposed–lobbying. This is, in Reston’s view, a nasty business; unsavory, to say the least. The columnist appeals to history by noting that there was a time in Washington when a British envoy was recalled to London for expressing a preference for one Presidential candidate over another. That, Reston notes, “was in the days when there were rules and even manners about what was permissible in the conduct of foreign affairs.” Twice more Reston refers to Dayan’s lobbying and once he refers to Dayan’s meeting with some members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a “sort of rump session.”

What’s wrong with pro-Israeli lobbying, this lack of manners and permissible conduct is that it can lead to “an erosion of the President’s influence on the serious questions that lie ahead,” Reston intoned.

Not only is Israel judged guilty of undermining the Administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East but it is now suddenly saddled with the awesome responsibility for eroding Carter’s influence. But even if one were to grant that Dayan was lobbying for planes for Israel and against Saudi Arabia–an allegation the Foreign Minister has steadfastly denied–how can Dayan or American friends of Israel be held responsible for the erosion of Carter’s influence on the issue of international human rights, the deepening rift between the U.S. and NATO, the decline of the dollar on the world market, the impasse between the U.S. and the Soviet Union on various issues, and America’s waning influence in Africa and Asia?

Reading Reston, Israel appears to be an enemy of the U.S. instead of a friend and ally. He stops just short of calling for a quarantine of Israeli officials and friends of the Jewish State for the cardinal sin of what he identifies as Israel’s lobbying.

But what’s wrong with lobbying? It’s an old American tradition. Why should the term “Israel lobby” conjure up such anxieties and misgivings, such images of nefarious activities, such lack of good manners and permissible behavior? After all, there are lobbies for unions, civil rights, ecology, feminist rights, gay rights, oil conglomerates, gun control, industry, abortion and anti-abortion, pro-and anti-Panama Canal treaties, and lobbies representing the interests of countless numbers of countries, including Arab countries, through embassies and information centers.

However, just mention the “Israel lobby” and there are suddenly untold victims of mild cardiac arrests. The term has taken on such a pejorative meaning that the mere mention of it casts a darkening shadow.

ECONOMICS VS. LIFE AND DEATH

The fact is that no one has yet shown that Israel’s requests or those of its friends and supporters in and out of Congress are inimical to America’s foreign interests. The fact is that Israel is not interfering in America’s foreign policy in any way. It is asking merely that America not interfere in Israel’s. It is asking merely that Israel’s foreign policy to assure safe and secure borders not be eroded by sales of war planes to a country which is deeply involved in the Arab wars against Israel.

While the U.S. is determining its foreign policy in the Mideast on the basis of cross economic needs, Israel is seeking to determine its foreign policy in that area on the basis of life and death. The sale of war planes to Saudi Arabia places Israel in a highly precarious position of having a sophisticated Arab strike force minutes from its border. By selling war planes to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is placing itself in a highly lucrative position of gaining additional markets in the Mideast.

No one, least of all Israel, has ever asked the U.S. to conduct its foreign policy as if it were engaged in staging a morality play. But then Israel should not be castigated or vilified for trying to protect itself against sudden death. No one, including Carter and Vance, has shown what makes Saudi Arabia a “moderate” Arab country, except, perhaps, that it is now playing the economic game along the lines of American private enterprise. But in relation to Israel, it is immoderate and bellicose.

Recently, Sen. Wendell Anderson (D.Minn.) urged an investigation into allegations that U.S. weapons sold to Saudi Arabia for defensive purposes ended up in the hands of the Palestine Liberation Organization and were used in its March 11 slaughter of 35 civilians in Israel.

Is it possible that the Carter Administration has forgotten that it had also dubbed Yasir Arafat a “moderate?” Was Israel interfering in America’s foreign policy, or eroding Carter’s role when it pointed out the fallacy and danger of that designation? There is a lesson in that. Perhaps the Carter Administration will search for it without fear of, as Reston put it, “excessive interference by Congress or ministers of foreign states.”