Neo-nazi Group Proposes That At&t Stop Providing Products to Israel

The National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group that owns 100 shares of stock in the American Telephone & Telegraph Co., has called on AT&T to stop providing products and services to Israel.

In a shareholder proposal put forward in a proxy statement, the National Alliance calls upon the phone company to ‘ "phase out all sales of AT&T products and services to the State of Israel and to Israeli businesses" because "sales of AT&T products and services to the State of Israel and to Israeli businesses may contribute toward violations of the human rights of Palestinians."

The AT&T proxy statement was made public last week in advance of the company’s annual shareholders meeting, scheduled to be held April 17 in Chicago.

The National Alliance’s supporting statement in the proxy cites a report enumerating Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights, published by the Swedish Save the Children organization.

The author of that report, Anne Nixon, objected to the National Alliance’s use of her figures in the proxy statement.

AT&T’s directors recommend against the proposal and noted that the National Alliance’s "professed concern for human rights lacks credibility and is even misleading, given the consistent anti-Semitic bias in the proponent’s literature and public statements.

"Clearly, the proponent is using the proxy process not to attempt to advance human rights, but to achieve anti-Semitic goals."

Melvin Salberg, national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, praised AT&T’s recommendation in a letter to Robert Allen, chairman of AT&T’s Board of Directors.

Salberg wrote that the resolution by National Alliance, which is based in Arlington, Va., is "replete with gross distortions and misleading information regarding Israeli policy toward the Palestinian Arabs living under Israeli administration."

PROPOSALS DEFEATED LAST 3 YEARS

The National Alliance has owned 100 shares of AT&T stock since at least late 1987, when the racist group submitted a proposal to be included in AT&T’s 1988 proxy.

Each of the three annual proxies since then has included a National Alliance proposal that AT&T end its affirmative action program. And each of those three years the proposal has been overwhelmingly rejected by over 90 percent of AT&T’s shareholders.

The racist group this year moved the focus of its proxy statements from the black community to Israel, because it is "trying to exploit the Middle East situation and use that as a tactic for divisiveness," according to Jerome Chanes, co-director for domestic concerns of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.

"The best counteraction is public exposure and education," he said.

Using proxies as a platform to air anti-Semitic views may be a new strategy for groups like the National Alliance, say experts at national Jewish defense organizations, who have not seen this kind of effort before.

"This a very harmful tactic," according to Annette Kolski-Andreaco, executive director of the American Jewish Committee’s Pittsburgh office. "It has the potential to provide a lot of misinformation to people. Millions of stockholders may not understand that these are lies."

Over 2.5 million shareholders own approximately 1.09 billion shares of AT&T stock.

According to Irwin Suall, ADL’s fact-finding director, the National Alliance’s effort "has not been effective except that it has brought them a certain amount of publicity and attention."

The National Alliance, an outgrowth of the Liberty Lobby and the old American Nazi Party, is led by William Pierce, who wrote "The Turner Diaries," an anti-Semitic diatribe in the form of a novel, published in 1978 under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.

The group distributes a wide variety of Nazi propaganda, including Adolf Hitler’s "Mein Kampf" and "Imperial," a book by Francis Parker Yockey, which advocates the preservation of Western culture through Hitlerian racism.