Zionist Responds to Attacks in the State Department on Israel

The Zionist Organization of America has responded to attacks on Israel and Zionism in meetings conducted at the State Department for personnel of the U.S. foreign affairs establishment by the tax-funded “Secretary’s Open Forum” directed by a State Department official.

The ZOA accepted an invitation to have a representative address the Forum after the Jewish Telegraphic Agency had reported last December that the Forum had listened to pro-PLO and anti-Israel speeches by Edmund Harouer, who had discussed “Is Zionism a Form of Racism,” and James Zogby, head of the Palestine Human Rights Organization Committee which is under Department of Justice investigation. Rep. William Brodheod (D. Mich.) asked the Department for a determination on whether the committee should be registered as a foreign agent.

Ivan Novick, the ZOA president, said the ZOA accepted the invitation because “we must correct the record regarding the role of Zionism in the United States, as well as the place of Israel in the scheme of American political and military strategy in the Middle East as a de facto ally of the U.S.” Novick expressed concern that “government officials, especially those who deal with foreign policy, would be subjected to indoctrination of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments which could inadvertently lead to the obstruction of official U.S. policy which has rejected the anti-Zionism concept, as well as accommodation of the PLO.”

RESPONSES BY ZOA OFFICIAL

Dr. Paul Riebenfeid, a national vice chairman of the ZOA Public Affairs Committee, appeared before the Forum. His audience, according to the Forum’s director, Paul Molineaux, numbered between 80 and 90 — “about the same as came out for Honauer.” Riebenfeld’s discourse and responses to questions included the following points:

A generation gap affects the premises of Zionism. The younger generation considers that Zionism stems from the Holocaust and the birth of Israel in 1948. Actually, Zionism began 82 years ago to establish a homeland for Jews in what was then called Palestine.

Premier Menachem Begin is castigated for using judaea and Samaria but the United Nations General Assembly partition resolution in 1947 referred to Judaea and Samaria. In addition, Samaria and Gaza are mentioned in the Palestine Mandate agreement. Thus, those names are not — as the media assumes — used for sloganeering by Begin and a fetish of the Gush Emunim.

Arabs are done a disservice by generations of maps in Christian Sunday schools in America that depict an area as Palestine when There was no actual existence of a state called Palestine. Such maps feed the notion that Arabs were deprived of a state called Palestine. The British under the 1919-1948 Mandate called it Palestine. Actually, maps in Syria today show Israel, the West Bank and Jordan as parts of Syria. The Turks controlled the area for centuries. When, in the 19th Century, a question arose about the Turkish-controlled area, the general view was that it should be given back to the Jews. Should an independent state be set up it would not remain a Palestinian state but revert to Syria or some other Arab entity.

The allegation the Palestinians have no nation is a fiction created to contest the legitimacy of Israel. Jordan is the Palestinian state. Until 1970, Jordan was the target of first preference for a PLO takeover. King Hussein makes this point in his own writings. Answering Hanouer’s thesis, Riebenfeld said that Zionism is the foundation of the Jewish State. To call it racism, is to call into question the legitimacy of the State of Israel.