For decades, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has successfully worked behind the scenes to influence U.S. policymakers to pass pro-Israel legislation. Supported by some of the country’s most politically active voters, AIPAC has become one of the nation’s most effective lobbies, even if other powerhouse organizations such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) overshadow it outside the Beltway.
AIPAC’S relative anonymity has suited the organization just fine, judging from its strong track record. But earlier this year, AIPAC began making headlines for all the wrong reasons, raising questions about the organization’s future effectiveness and what may be needed to shore it up.
The problem began when two high-ranking officials, Steven J. Rosen, AIPAC’s director of foreign policy issues, and senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman became the targets of a federal espionage investigation. They were charged in August with conspiring to obtain and disclose classified information to reporters and a foreign government, reported to be Israel.
“No lobbying group wants to have a senior employee on the front page of newspapers being indicted,” said Washington Post columnist Jeffrey Birnbaum, also the author of “The Lobbyists: How Influence Peddlers Work Their Way in Washington” (Three Rivers Press, 1993). “Lobbying is increasingly a public and not a private insider effort. To the extent there is a public question mark over a high-ranking employee of any organization, that is not a good thing.”
Predictably, AIPAC has attempted to distance itself from the controversy. In April, the group fired Rosen and Weissman, although AIPAC reportedly continues to pay their legal fees. AIPAC won’t comment on the case, but in May, AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr told a record crowd of 5,000 at the annual Policy Conference in Washington that neither AIPAC nor any current employees are targets of the investigation. Subsequently, AIPAC hired a law firm to review its policies and procedures on the collection and dissemination of information, a group spokesman said.
AIPAC officials argue that the investigation has had no impact on its ability to raise money, attract members or effectively push for legislation. On the policy front, the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate this summer passed by record margins a $2.52 billion aid package to Israel, including $40 million to help Jews from the former Soviet Union settle there. In late April, just after the firings, the Senate followed the House by passing a resolution urging the European Union to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
“I don’t detect any dilution in their effectiveness,” said Rep. Howard Berman (D-Van Nuys), an ardent AIPAC supporter. “I think their cause is good enough and that they’re strong enough to survive this just fine.”
AIPAC’s relationship with Congress will not suffer because the scandal involves only a couple of former officials, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior scholar at USC’s School of Policy, Planning and Development. Besides, she added, AIPAC is simply too important and influential to be ignored.
“AIPAC represents a lot of high propensity voters, many very significant campaign contributors and politically active people,” Jeffe said.
Washington Post columnist Birnbaum said he thought Congress would continue to support Israel, regarding it as an important U.S. ally — and it’s AIPAC that has helped cement this consensus on an ongoing basis.
Still, some observers see a potentially weaker AIPAC. The scandal, coupled with perceptions that AIPAC supported the war in Iraq, have made the organization more vulnerable than at any point in the past decade, said AIPAC critic Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine and author of the forthcoming, “The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back for the Religious Right” (HarperSanFrancisco).
“AIPAC could be perceived as not caring about the interests of the United States,” he said.
AIPAC officials always strongly assert that the organization is run entirely by Americans — ones who believe that close ties with Israel represent the best interests of the United States. Officials also insist that AIPAC took no position on the Iraq War.
Lerner’s analysis underscores that some Jews, including supporters of Israel, are not necessarily enthusiastic about AIPAC. The federal investigation could prove a blow to the group’s credibility and might alienate the “people in the middle,” said Republican political consultant Arnold Steinberg. AIPAC should consider changing its name, Steinberg added.
So how would a Hollywood press agent handle this image problem?
For one thing, said veteran Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman, AIPAC could investigate itself and report its findings to the media as soon as possible. Otherwise, damaging details might slowly drip out and keep the story in the headlines.
But it hasn’t yet become clear that AIPAC has an image problem, at least not where it matters to AIPAC, which is in the halls of official government power. Most people in public life will see the organization’s present difficulties as nothing more than “an anomaly,” Democratic political consultant Bill Carrick said. The present brouhaha notwithstanding, AIPAC should continue to express its point of view and lobby Congress, he added.
And to hear AIPAC officials tell it, the organization is doing better than ever. So far, no one has offered persuasive evidence to the contrary.
In 1991, Carroll was the acting editor of The Washington Jewish Week, a highly decorated and well-respected independent newspaper. In 1992, he wasn’t. The reason? He went to a picnic.
Generally, the worst that’ll happen at a picnic is ants or the theft of a lunch basket by your smarter-than-average bear. This particular outing found Carroll representing his paper before a consortium of left-of-center Israeli groups, a reasonably standard weekend activity for a Jewish journalist. But also present was an intern from AIPAC, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, who was quietly huddled in the crowd, scribbling out a record of the day’s events, notably Carroll’s speech. Awhile back, AIPAC had asked Carroll to replace the reporter on the AIPAC beat. Carroll had refused.
When the intern’s report was handed in, the story goes, AIPAC’s all-purpose enforcer quickly pulled a few quotes from Carroll’s talk, turned it into a memo, and circulated it among The Washington Jewish Week’s board members. Shortly thereafter, Carroll was demoted and stripped of responsibilities. He subsequently resigned.
And so I ask again: Who’s afraid of the big bad AIPAC?
The answer is nearly everybody. Many of my colleagues were horrified to learn I was writing an article on the lobby, repeatedly warning me that it’d mean curtains for my career — I half expected to wake up one morning to find a dismembered menorah in my bed.
While reporting this piece, I spoke to numerous former AIPAC employees, many professionals knowledgeable about their operations and a number of journalists who’d written on them in the past. Almost no one was willing to go on the record. But they were willing, even eager, to talk, like kids with long-bottled secrets who’d finally found someone to tell. As often happens, however, the actual information, so long concealed, seemed more tantalizing than it really was. For that matter, AIPAC, while looming large in their minds, wasn’t nearly so intimidating in the retelling.
If you don’t follow Washington lobbying — or official efforts to boost Israel — you might draw a blank on hearing the word AIPAC. First of all, it isn’t a PAC in the campaign-finance sense; the name predates the rise of Gingrich-style political action committees in the popular consciousness. That’s led to some confusion, as AIPAC doesn’t actually donate to candidates. Instead, it compiles copious research on voting records and other activities. This research is then relied on by many donors — primarily Jewish ones — when deciding whose coffers to fill. Impressing AIPAC, then, is one of Washington’s quickest routes to significant fundraising, especially if AIPAC doesn’t hold your opponent in high esteem.
In addition, the organization has a powerful lobbying operation, so powerful, in fact, that Fortune magazine ranked it in the top five, and both Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton have called AIPAC the best in town. But much of this influence comes from a carefully protected image that relies on two main components: The first is the grand conference, where speakers have included Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Bill Frist, Condoleeza Rice, Howard Dean, Dennis Hastert, John Kerry, Gingrich, John McCain and numerous others. The upcoming conference in Los Angeles features an address from Bill Clinton.
Psychologists call this social proof. It’s why companies pay celebrities to wear their products and evangelists pepper their literature with testimonials: When others are doing something, particularly high-status others, bystanders tend to attach value to the action or product in question. So if Tiger Woods is wearing Nikes, that says something about Nikes. If Madonna is sporting a red string, it makes a point about the Kabbalah Centre. And if every major politician of the past few decades believes it de rigeur to drop in on AIPAC, so will every politician of the next few decades. One wonders if they even know why they’re doing it anymore.
The second is a reputation for defeating any and every politician who crosses them. But as one senior house aide argued to me, “The idea that members who cross AIPAC are defeated is very rarely true, but it’s nevertheless an effective myth.” What AIPAC actually does, he said, “is shoot the dead and the wounded,” attacking already-weakened politicians who AIPAC knows can be defeated — and thus used to bolster its image. When it goes after strong incumbents, as it did in 1988 with Rhode Island’s John Chafee, AIPAC can and does fail. Nor does AIPAC support spell certain success. Indeed, one analysis found that, in 1992, five of the top 10 recipients of pro-Israel donations lost their elections.
But that may be beside the point. Politicians not only want to avoid defeat, they want to avoid trouble. And AIPAC specializes in presenting the implied threat of serious bother. Comfy incumbents who know they can’t be toppled nevertheless don’t want to be hounded by Jewish constituents, denounced by local rabbis, abandoned by Jewish contributors and challenged by a suddenly richer, pro-Israel candidate. So they go along to get along.
That, however, is how the game works, how lobbies operate — and not just AIPAC. It’s not that AIPAC invented the game or perfected something new, but it helps that AIPAC’s actions have been so shrouded in secrecy and innuendo that its reputation has become far darker than its reality. And that’s the fault of the press. With so many of my colleagues scared to write on AIPAC and so many half-known stories wafting round the office, it’s inevitable that few would look deep enough to demythologize AIPAC. So it’s perhaps a bit ironic that the journalist most willing to soften the lobby’s image was the one at the center of a storied act of press intimidation.
I reached Carroll at his office in New Jersey. Now editor-in-chief at The New Jersey Jewish News, Carroll was fully willing to retell his tale, but insistent that it’s time to update the story. AIPAC, he said, is not the organization it once was. Pre-Rabin, the organization enthusiastically stifled debate, but once the left rose to power in Israel, AIPAC’s more conservative members, not to mention the larger Orthodox community, realized they needed room for dissent. Indeed, Rabin himself, in a meeting with AIPAC, is reported to have demanded that AIPAC stop the intimidation, real or implied, and allow the Jewish community to speak freely again. After that, Carroll says, AIPAC has been much less involved in controlling the press.
Fears of retribution then are somewhat vestigial. In any case, Steven J. Rosen, the pit bull whom Carroll blamed for his demotion (and AIPAC’s reputation), is now standing trial in the wake of an espionage investigation and being denounced by his former employer. Is that ingratitude or maturity on the part of AIPAC — or merely savvy?
Carroll’s ordeal was almost 15 years ago. So are most of the tales of AIPAC intimidation. Since that time, America has changed, Israel has changed and so has AIPAC. What hasn’t changed is AIPAC’s reputation.
Maybe it’s time that it did.
Ezra Klein is a writing fellow at The American Prospect.
As every political and charitable organization knows, there is nothing like access to Hollywood stars and influential players to collect crowds and hefty donations.
So when American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) supporters arrive in Los Angeles Sunday for a national meeting to listen to policymakers and pundits, their agenda also includes a visit to the Warner Bros. Studios and a chat with television producers and writers.
But AIPAC officials want more than a good time out of Hollywood. They want broader support, lots of money, and, if needed on occasion, celebrity cachet.
In other words, AIPAC is like every other Jewish organization worth its man of the year plaque. The strange thing is that AIPAC has to work so hard to make Hollywood inroads, given that AIPAC’s clout in official Washington is legendary.
AIPAC officials insist they are making progress.
“We are seeing significant number of people in the Hollywood community involved in AIPAC,” said its national spokesman Josh Block. As evidence, he cites increasing attendance by entertainment industry people at Los Angeles and national AIPAC events.
Block’s appraisal was endorsed by some enthusiastic AIPAC members in Hollywood, but the organization doesn’t provide membership lists or totals so the anecdotes cannot be verified.
The most optimistic estimate put Hollywood membership in “the hundreds,” but even that figure was questioned by some outside observers.
One of the best-connected political analysts of Jewish Hollywood, who, like most respondents, did not wish to be identified by name, pointed to a basic problem.
“It is always a real challenge getting Hollywood people involved in organized Jewish life or Israeli causes, except through synagogue membership,” the observer said. This fact-of-L.A.-life applies to AIPAC as well as to other Jewish groups.
One difficulty is the “idiosyncratic” nature of the entertainment industry, which is not easily understood or penetrated by outsiders seeking the help of show-business Jews, the observer said. This analyst added that many creative people come to Hollywood to get away from the “stale traditions” of New York and other East Coast cities.
As a final point, the observer noted, Hollywood Jews tend to fall on the liberal side. Thus, the few who are Jewishly involved are more likely to support Americans for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum or American Jewish Committee, while AIPAC is perceived as “conservative.”
The latter perception is strenuously contested by AIPAC officials and supporters.
“We cut across all lines and partisanships in terms of U.S. politics. That’s why we are successful,” said Joel Mandel, a Hollywood business manager and AIPAC member.
Practically speaking, AIPAC traditionally either supports the current Israeli government or sits on the sidelines steadfastly supporting Israel even as that nation’s factions battle over control, policies and ideas.
Mandel acknowledged that AIPAC could do a better job at communicating with the entertainment industry, but also cited recent improvements.
“We are talking to politically sophisticated people,” he said. “If we provide with them facts, they’ll get it.”
A similar positive assessment was given by Joan Hyler, former senior vice president at the William Morris Agency and enthusiastic AIPAC advocate.
“We’re small, but we’re growing,” she said, “and the field is wide open.”
What AIPAC lacks in Hollywood is a high-profile celebrity to draw attention and colleagues with open wallets. In the past, Peace Now has benefited from the active presence of actor Richard Dreyfuss, while the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee are generally able to “honor” some bright star at their annual events.
However, AIPAC can now point to influential multimedia mogul Haim Saban, who is backing the organization’s Saban National Political Leadership Training Seminar. The semiannual seminars in Washington each draw some 300 college student activists for three days of intensive pro-Israel advocacy training. Saban is no Streisand, nor even Madonna, but he’s got the resources to back up his politics.
As for the future, a Hollywood executive who requested anonymity, sounded a hopeful note.
“I think AIPAC is making progress, especially among the younger people in the industry,” he said. “We’ll see a lot of growth over the next couple of generations.”
More than 1,000 pro-Israel activists from across the United States will meet in Los Angeles for the Oct. 30-31 National Summit on Foreign Policy and Politics of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
They will join former President Bill Clinton, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, members of Congress, Israeli military leaders and journalists, scholars and top AIPAC officials in analyzing key issues facing Israel in the Middle East and in its relations with the United States.
Among forum and panel topics are terrorism threats against Los Angeles and other American cities, attitudes of the Latino community, Iran’s nuclear program, Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, innovative Israeli technology, challenges on American college campuses, the role of European Jewry and development of the Negev and Galilee.
For a Hollywood break, participants will take a studio tour and join a panel discussion with producers of “The West Wing” and “Commander in Chief.”
Attendance at the two-day meeting at the Westin Century Plaza Hotel is limited to members of AIPAC’s Capitol Club, who annually contribute $3,600 or more.
The meeting comes at a time when the influential pro-Israel lobby finds itself the object of much unwelcome media attention.
Two former top AIPAC officials in Washington, D.C. are currently facing trial in federal court on charges that they conspired with a former Pentagon analyst to communicate secret information to an Israeli diplomat.
AIPAC has dismissed the two officials, but is paying for their defense in accordance with its bylaws.
The legal charges have not impacted the organization’s clout in Congress nor its membership and fundraising figures, AIPAC officials maintain.
On the contrary, they say, since the beginning of the second intifada five years ago, AIPAC membership has almost doubled from 55,000 to 100,000, and its annual operating budget has risen from $17 million to $40 million.
Over the last two years alone, membership has grown by some 25 percent and conferences across the country have scored record attendances, according to AIPAC officials, who are not obliged to document this information.
They attribute the rise mainly to the violence of the initifada and the impact of Sept. 11, factors that emphasized the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
While figures regarding AIPAC could not be independently verified, a number of key L.A. Jewish activists asserted in interviews that the indictments of the two ex-AIPAC officials have not, so far, had a detrimental effect on support for the organization.
About half of the attendees at the summit meeting are expected to come from the Southern Pacific region of AIPAC, which has an estimated 10,000-15,000 members in Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii.
“Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life” (Scribner, $27.50).
Arlene Blum describes her new book, “Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life,” as an answer to a question she has often asked herself, as she did on Annapurna in the Himalayas: “What’s a nice Jewish girl from the Midwest doing at 21,000 feet, going down a knife-edged ridge all alone?”
In mountain-climbing parlance, breaking trail refers to creating a path across difficult terrain. In her climbing and in her pioneering work as a chemist, Blum, 60, has broken much new ground. She organized and helped lead the first all-woman climb up Denali in Alaska — the highest peak in North America — in 1970 and was the first American woman to attempt Mt. Everest in 1976. Two years later, she led the first-ever team of women up Annapurna I, the subject of her best-selling book, “Annapurna: A Woman’s Place” (Sierra Club Books, 1998)
A Berkeley-based researcher with a doctorate in biophysical chemistry who was one of very few women in the field when she began her career, she is responsible for having several toxic chemicals, used in children’s sleepwear, banned.
When I reached her by phone in Maine last week — she was about to climb New Hampshire’s Mount Washington with a group of friends to celebrate the publication of the book at the summit — and asked her about fear, she laughs and says that she’s a person who will only ride her bicycle on trails, not on roads and highways.
“I try to ignore fear,” she says. “I’m very goal-oriented. If I want to climb a mountain, I’m so focused on the goal that I don’t pay much attention. I will even take risks if the goal is important.”
In the book, she links her tenacity to childhood adversity. The child of divorce, which was rare in the late 1940s, she grew up in an overprotected, Orthodox home, where little was expected of her other than marriage. From an early age, she found a haven in the outdoors from the claustrophobic apartment she shared with her mother and grandparents, where the smoke-filled air was full of fighting and the blaring sounds of television. Then, the outdoors meant their Chicago street, and for the young Blum, the colder outside, the better. That was her first taste of freedom.
The first time she climbed a mountain, as a student at Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1970, she was hooked. She loved the splendor of the high, snow-covered peaks and the serenity she felt. At once, she knew that the mountains were where she belonged.
As she explained recently, she finds clarity and focus on top of mountains and engages in a kind of “extreme meditation.” The experience of being up high, “when where you put your foot determines whether you’ll live or die,” stills her otherwise overactive mind.
But there have been tragedies along the route of her hiking career. She has lost some of her closest friends to avalanches and other disasters. Several times, she vowed never to climb again, but then invitations to places she’d never been enticed her back to the glorious steep slopes. But once she gave birth to her daughter, now 18, she gave up the dangerous kind of climbing for more gentle — but still arduous and daring — trekking.
For city dwellers who associate great heights with rooftop terraces and roller coasters, this is an eye-opening book, great armchair reading. Blum is a very likeable and humble guide, with an optimistic spirit. She details her adventures, capturing the natural beauty she encounters, the challenges of climbing with and leading others and cultural exchanges with people from, literally, all over the world. As a woman and also as Jew, she faced episodes of discrimination in the early years in an expedition world that was dominated by wealthy non-Jewish men. She includes photographs (and many more are available on her Web site in color, www.arleneblum.com). Blum may inspire some readers to head to the mountains after a snowfall.
With much candor, Blum looks back at her early life, beginning each chapter with some recollection from childhood, and then leaps ahead to her mountaineering journeys. As a child, she was discouraged from learning to swim but she persisted; she wasn’t allowed to accept a scholarship to a private high school that recognized her talent. After being taught Hebrew prayers by her grandfather and able to read better than any of the boys in her class, she stopped going to Hebrew school when she wasn’t allowed to read the prayers out loud because she was a girl.
The early memories are told in the present tense. Only later, the author comes to learn about her family’s background. Her mother grew up in an affluent home in Davenport, Iowa, with three sisters. She married early, to a German-Jewish immigrant, a doctor, just as she and her mother had dreamed. But their marriage was troubled, in part for the tragedy that befell his family, left behind in Germany. Both of her parents were emotionally unfit for this marriage; her mother suffered greatly and was hospitalized, treated for her emotional wounds in ways from which she would never recover.
When Arlene was a toddler, she and her mother moved in with her grandparents who, out of shame, left Davenport for Chicago. Arlene’s father went to New York and she didn’t meet him until she was a teenager. In fact, she grew up looking at family photos where he had been cut out. The Holocaust was never mentioned in her home.
Life in Chicago for Arlene was dominated by her grandparents. Her mother really couldn’t care for her. Her grandmother had little education, many fears and many strict rules, while her grandfather showed her some kindness.
At a recent reunion of her Annapurna team, she and a friend mused about their painful childhoods and thought that perhaps they were able to take huge risks as climbers because they didn’t think their lives mattered that much. It wasn’t that they felt suicidal, just unimportant as individuals. It was only after Blum became a mother that she came to understand the difficulties of her mother’s and grandparents’ lives, and the tragedies her father had experienced. She realized that indeed she had received much love and attention, which, ultimately, gave her strength.
Now, she says, she feels both curiosity and sympathy toward her family, sorry that she didn’t ask more questions when she had the opportunity. One of the pleasures of her book tour is that she is meeting many cousins who are able to fill her in on family stories — and literally fill in the names of a family portrait from 1919 that she is carrying around.
Several years ago, she returned to the Judaism she’d been angry at as a child, attending egalitarian services at Hillel in Berkeley. She was moved by seeing women leading services for the first time, loved the music and felt embraced by the community, which included old friends from her climbing and scientific worlds. When asked to carry the Torah, she was trembling and thrilled. During the Mourner’s Kaddish, when the leader suggested that she say the name and a memory of the person she wanted to remember, she spoke of her grandfather.
“I was coming home at last,” she writes.
Her daughter celebrated her bat mitzvah, and Arlene remains involved in the Jewish Renewal movement, where she finds “real substance and spirituality” she didn’t know in her early years.
“I feel a lot of connection and appreciation for how Jews have traditionally cared about making the world a better place,” she says. “I want to be part of that tradition.”
Now that her daughter, who doesn’t much like walking, is on her own, Blum plans to do more climbing, again leading trips, but not the life-threatening ones. She also hopes to return to her scientific work and public policy work on toxic chemicals, as she is “heartbroken at the destruction of our planet’s environment and at the increasing gap between rich and poor.”
“I’ve had success if I dream things up,” she says. “I can make things happen.”
In his riveting new film, “Paradise Now,” Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad paints an ugly picture of Israeli occupation and the harsh consequences he believes flow from it, namely suicide bombers. The movie, which won the Blue Angel Award for best European film at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, explores the friendship between Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman), and their transformation from unremarkable auto mechanics into would-be bombers.
Underlying Abu-Assad’s movie is a chilling but powerful message: Decades of illegal and brutal Israeli rule, he argues, have wiped out hope among young Palestinians and created a growing pool of dispossessed souls willing to sacrifice their lives to snuff out those of innocent Israeli men, women and children in the name of Palestinian liberation. Simply put, many suicide bombers believe that only by undertaking such an inhumane act can they reclaim their humanity.
“From their logic, and you have to put yourself in their minds, they’ve lost their dignity,” Abu-Assad said in a recent phone interview. “The attitude is: If we can’t be equal in life, then we can be equal in death. If we can’t live equally, then we can die equally.”
Abu-Assad, also the director of critically acclaimed “Rana’s Wedding” (2002), personally decries suicide bombing because, in his view, it turns the victim into the oppressor. Still, “Paradise Now,” which was partly filmed in Nablus in the West Bank, sets out to humanize would-be bombers and explain their motives.
As part of his research, the director said he interviewed family members and friends of suicide bombers, talked to a lawyer who represents failed bombers now in Israeli jails and read in-depth reports on the subject.
Yet, even in the hands of a sympathetic filmmaker, each would-be bomber becomes a kind of monster from the moment he straps on his belt of explosives and sets out in search of people to kill. Ironically, Abu-Assad’s understanding and nuanced portrayals of sensitive Said and hotheaded but lovable Khaled underscore that point.
Moviegoers first encounter Said and Khaled as they are working in an auto repair shop. When a particularly annoying customer complains, Khaled loses his cool — and his job — by taking a sledgehammer to the car’s bumper. As for Said, a romantic at heart, he can’t disguise his boyish attraction to a gorgeous Palestinian human rights worker named Suha (played by Lubna Azabal) who brings her car in for repairs. She shamelessly flirts with the uneducated, rough-at-the-edges Said, a boy from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks.
Close friends Said and Khaled soon repair to a hillside to sip tea, smoke a hookah and decompress. Said later pays a visit to his beloved mother, whom he has watched over since his father’s execution by Palestinian militants years earlier for allegedly collaborating with Israelis.
The film’s mood quickly darkens when Jamal (performed by Amer Hlehel), a middle-aged representative of an unnamed Palestinian faction, approaches Said. He tells him that now is the time for him and Khaled to carry out in Israel a suicide attack they had volunteered for years earlier.
It is here that Said’s and Khaled’s humanity begins to drain away and the friends begin acting and sounding like shrill propagandists for such terrorist groups as Islamic Jihad and Hamas. In conversation and in their “martyr video,” Said and Khaled become the embodiment of deaf, dumb and blind rage.
Khaled: “Under the occupation, we’re already dead.”
Said: “We must continue our struggle until the end of occupation. Our bodies are all we have left.”
Khaled: “I have decided to carry out a martyr’s operation. We have no other way to fight.”
Already dead?
Nonsense. Khaled’s joie de vivre and Said’s intense love for his mother and budding romance with the sophisticated Suha make them very much alive, until now.
No other way to fight?
How about civil disobedience? How about electing Palestinian leaders more interested in making a stable peace with Israel? How about accepting Israel as a legitimate state and partner for peace?
Said and Khaled, in turning into would-be bombers, voluntarily make themselves one-dimensional, shedding the complexity and color that initially made them so engagingly human. As bomb makers outfit them with explosives, their journey to the other side is nearly complete. All that remains is a boom and the blood — which the film implies comes soon enough.
But not before “Paradise Now” takes some interesting, unexpected and telling detours.
Suha, the Palestinian woman, appears most closely to represent the views of director Abu-Assad. Before the film concludes, she persuades a would-be suicide bomber to choose life. She asserts that attacks will do nothing to weaken Israeli resolve or to improve Palestinian fortunes. Better to live, she says, than to die in vain.
At the same time, “Paradise Now” squarely contends that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is the original sin that gives birth to the evil of the suicide bombings. Through his probing lens, Abu-Assad captures the gritty details and myriad humiliations of life under Israeli rule, including the abject poverty in Nablus’ ramshackle storefronts and the miasma of rotting garbage on its streets. When Khaled sees an Israeli military checkpoint, he seethes, as, presumably, do many Palestinians: “Mother——s!” he shouts.
“The full responsibility [for the suicide bombers] is on the hand of the oppressor, the hand that controls the border,” Abu-Assad said in an interview. “Yes, Palestinians make mistakes. They have an unhealthy society, but they’ve been living under occupation for 60 years.”
It perhaps underscores the complexity and difficulty of the Middle East conflict when a gifted and nuanced filmmaker nonetheless oversimplifies this subject. To be sure, the occupation fuels rage that helps to create a combustible climate for would-be bombers like Said and Khaled. But corrupt Arab governments, violent Islamic fundamentalism and a steady stream of anti-Semitic propaganda in mosques and Palestinian media surely play a seminal role as well. Is it too much to suggest that Palestinians — like Israelis, like all people — have free will and must take personal responsibility for their choices?
Still, Abu-Assad argues persuasively that as long as Palestinians believe or are conditioned to believe that the bleakness and hardship in their lives stems from the occupation, then suicide bombers will continue to multiply like cancerous cells. But Abu-Assad offers a path of hope, even in a place where many find little that is hopeful.
“When there is an acceptance of basic Palestinian rights — not even the implementation of them — the climate will change,” Abu-Assad said. “The Palestinians are willing to accept Israelis as equals.”
In 1927, a popular duo called The Happiness Boys had a hit song called, “Since Henry Ford Apologized to Me,” which lampooned the car magnet’s supposed contrition for the anti-Semitic content of his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.
Its catchy lyrics proclaimed:
“I was sad and I was blue,
But now I’m just as good as you,
Since Henry Ford apologized to me!”
A recording of that song is among the finds that will be on display in “From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America,” which opens Nov. 10 at the Skirball Cultural Center. The exhibit traces American Jewish history — from the 1654 arrival of 23 Sephardic refugees in New York through the 19th century’s waves of Jewish immigration to a typed Phillip Roth manuscript and Mel Brooks and Adam Sandler.
The 250 photographs, documents and artifacts showcase Jewish life in a country that has been free of pogroms and still values religious plurality. The Skirball exhibit caps a year of “350” commemorations across the United States.
“From Haven to Home” starts the American Jewish story in September 1654, when 23 Jews fled Brazil and landed in New Amsterdam harbor (now New York City), with those Jews granted trade and travel rights the following year. The exhibit’s march of time continues with an 1818 letter from Thomas Jefferson to influential Jewish American Mordecai Noah and also a copy of a copy of George Washington’s famed 1790, “to bigotry no sanction” letter, sent to the Jews of Newport, R.I.
Among the Civil War Judaica is: A Confederate two-dollar bill bearing the face of Judah Benjamin — a U.S. senator who defected to become one of Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ Cabinet members — and Abraham Lincoln’s note rescinding Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Union Army order expelling Jews from Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi. The exhibit also shows an 1876 receipt for a $10 contribution to Washington, D.C.,’s first synagogue, which was made by Grant while he was president.
From 1889, the Skirball has a Torah binder from rural German Jewish settlers in the Rocky Mountains.
“It shows that not only did German Jews immigrate to the cities, but also settled throughout the land,” said Michael Grunberger, head of the Hebraic section at the Library of Congress, which hosted the original “From Haven to Home” exhibition last fall in Washington.
More established Jewish communities speak through the Skirball exhibit’s 1879 invitation to a Hebrew charity ball and an 1881 invitation to a Purim “fancy dress ball.” The immigrant experience includes such items as Harry Houdini’s 1913 passport application and Albert Einstein’s 1936 Declaration of Intention statement to U.S. immigration officials.
“From Haven to Home” also features a display of Jewish American posters. A 1917 color poster advertises English-language classes for Ohio’s Jewish immigrants, bearing the headline, “Cleveland — Many Peoples, One Language.”
A circa 1940s United Jewish Appeal lithograph seeks aid for Jewish refugees. Its Hebrew script reads: “Their fight is our fight.” Ben Shahn’s 1946 marching-in-the-streets poster encourages voter registration.
The exhibit’s view of modern American Jewish life includes a handwritten 1961 seder guest list; a Yiddish translation of the Dr. Seuss classic, “The Cat in the Hat” (“Di Kats der Payats”); the eye-catching 2000 presidential campaign button, “Gore/ Lieberman in 5761,” and the 20-something magazine, Heeb: The New Jew Review.
Along with most of the items found in the original Library of Congress exhibit, the Skirball exhibit will have 25 new items not displayed in Washington last fall, including a copy of Al Jolson’s sheet music for the tune, “California Here I Come.”
Since last September and for much of this year, Jewish organizations nationwide have celebrated the 350th anniversary. Versions of the “From Haven to Home” exhibit have made stops in Cincinnati and Boston.
“Our version of the exhibition is the closest to the Library of Congress,” said Skirball senior curator Grace Cohen Grossman. “This is the culminating exhibition.”
Three years in the making, “From Haven to Home” became the largest Library of Congress display presenting its American Jewish cultural artifacts, with the Skirball being the exhibit’s largest outside provider of items.
Both in its Skirball and Library of Congress incarnations, the exhibit has sought to capture the evolving quality of Jewish culture’s uniquely American experience. Fittingly, the last item in Skirball’s gallery space will be a 1968 TV clip showing Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts with composer Irving Berlin, all singing his classic, “God Bless America.”
“From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America,” will run Nov. 10 to Feb. 12, 2006, at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. The exhibition will be open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays 12-5 p.m.; Thursdays, 12-9 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission will be $8 general, $6 seniors and students, free on Thursdays. For more information call (310) 440-4500 or visit ‘350’ Exhibit Spends Winter at the Skirball Read More »
Gaza 1995. Though my tank brigade is stationed in the Jordan Valley, I am deployed to Rafiah. Rafiah lies in the southern Gaza
Strip, on the Israeli-Egyptian border.
Together with some of my colleagues, I am charged with the mission of delivering weapons to the Palestinian Authority. Some of my fellow soldiers refuse this job, but I volunteer for it. Recently immigrated to Israel from Switzerland, bedazzled by “Oslo” and soaked with hope, I try to comprehend the logic of acting Prime Minister Shimon Peres, or at least not to question it. Weapons, lots of weapons are to be handed out to the Palestinians, so that they can provide quiet and order in the territories. OK then.
I try to ignore the fear that these weapons, handed out to the Palestinians in the course of the “peace process,” might be used against Israelis — as history would evidence later on.
So I travel to Rafiah in winter of 1995. Upon our arrival, I see Israeli officers and representatives of the Palestinian Authority. I am guided to a huge container that is opened. And I do not believe my eyes. Inside the container there are hundreds of guns, all Kalashnikovs, sent from Egypt.
“Foreign aid for the little, suffering brother,” flashes through my head. The brand new “Kalashim,” as they are affectionately named, are of Russian origin, most accurate in hitting their target. My duty is to count these guns, lubricate them and hand them over to the newly appointed Palestinian “officer” waiting next to me.
I start my work, and my hands turn black.
“What doesn’t one do for peace?” I say to myself.
After several hours of counting, cleaning, lubricating and, most of all, perspiring, I deliver the last gun to the Palestinian officer. And just then, something happens that I will never be able to erase from my memory. The man looks at the gun, then lifts his head and looks straight at my face. And then, all of a sudden, he starts to grin. It is a brutal grin, full of malice. My blood runs cold; thoughts flash through my head: How long will we Israelis play this naive game? In the reflection of his teeth I see the raped innocence of the Jewish people and those Arabs who really want peace. It almost feels to me as if sympathy for our naivety, for our foolishness resonated in his grin. In my head it echoes: “Israeli! You know very well that this very gun one day will be pointed against you and your people!”
Paralyzed, I watch the man as he — still grinning to himself — walks to his container, “my” last Kalashnikov in his hands.
On our journey home I cannot speak a word, the following day I cannot eat a bite. In the course of the following months and years there will be nights when I wake up drenched in sweat and see the grinning face of that Palestinian officer in front of me. Especially on those days when Jews are shot like ducks in the streets of Israel by murderous Palestinian terrorists, a thought keeps running through my head: “Perhaps this was your gun? One of your well-lubricated Kalashims?”
Gaza 2005. Over the last years, and especially after living through the second intifada, I, as well as many other Israelis, have become aware of the fact that weapons must not be given into the wrong hands. Specifically in view of the recurring mad cycle of giving weapons to the Palestinians, waiting till they are misused, and confiscating the same weapons some time later in the course of a military action unnecessarily costing many lives. And then, later, we return these weapons as new “endeavors for peace” to the Palestinians — with the next “date of confiscation” probably nothing but a matter of time. Is the handing over of a potentially explosive strip of land perhaps not too different from handing over a weapon?
There is a serious apprehension expressed by many leading military experts that now, after the total pullout, Gaza will become an unprecedented hotbed of terror, just a few kilometers from Israeli towns. Shouldn’t certain preconditions have been imposed on the beneficiaries of this territory prior to a risky handing over of land? Is it reasonable to deliver a gun to a man who publicly threatens to use it against him?
Thank goodness I was not mobilized as a reservist for the Gaza evacuation. I could not have gone there. Not that I am against any pullout from the Gaza Strip (though I considered the plan to evacuate it without any Palestinian reciprocity disastrous and a reward to terrorism), not that I do not appreciate Israeli democracy, not that I have personal feelings against Ariel Sharon. None of that. I simply could not stand to see that grin again.
Emanuel Cohn was born and reared in Basel, Switzerland, and moved to Israel 12 years ago. In his army service he served in the Israel Defense Forces tank corps. He now lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Naomi, and their two children.
As some 1,250 delegates gather in Los Angeles under the banner of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to celebrate the deepening ties between the United States and Israel and to strengthen those ties through political activities, I am mindful of two who will not be there.
Two former AIPAC staffers, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, will be back in Washington preparing for their January trial, which could be completed on the eve of AIPAC’s National Policy Conference in March. The timing is ironic given the loyal, instrumental roles that Rosen and Weissman played for AIPAC, and given the extent to which AIPAC has deserted them both.
These two individuals, in fact, deserve the unqualified support of both AIPAC and the Jewish community for their service to Jews and Israel — and also because they are, to all appearances, innocent of any wrongdoing. The current criminal indictment arises out of nothing more than law enforcement entrapment. But even putting that aside, the former AIPAC staffers still acted in a logical, defensible and ethical matter. Jews should be rising to their defense, but there is, so far, only a shameful silence.
Rosen, a longtime Washington lobbyist, was the chief of AIPAC foreign-policy staff. Weissman was a specialist on Iraq. No one who knew Rosen would argue that he was the soul of AIPAC or its most visible public face, but all who came close to the organization swiftly understood that Rosen was its brains.
It was he who shaped the concept of Israel as a strategic ally of the United States, refashioning American support for Israel from that of a big brother assisting a poor relation to a genuine, mutually beneficial partnership.
It was he who shifted AIPAC from an organization that was solely centered on Congress to one that also lobbied the president, his officers and his advisers — in Democratic and Republican administrations alike — as well as the think tanks and policy wonks.
Rosen recognized that he ruffled too many feathers to be out front. So he groomed protégés to assume that role. He mentored one so well that he became the head of AIPAC; another became the first Jew to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
One cannot overestimate his importance to the organization and his contribution to it over the past two decades.
One did not have to agree with his politics or AIPAC’s — as I certainly did not — to recognize the genius: While everyone was focusing on Iraq, he was concerned about Iran and North Korea. Anyone in his position traffics in information, seeking to understand what is known, attempting to fathom what is on the mind of government officials both in the United States and abroad.
What happened with Rosen and Weissman is simple enough. They were set up.
They are victims of a sting operation that relied on government analyst Lawrence Franklin, a compromised source who was in trouble for allegedly keeping unauthorized classified information at home. In order to win a more lenient sentence, he carried out an FBI plan to tell Rosen and Weissman about “secret information” that Israeli operatives were to be attacked in Iraq. Lives were seemingly at stake. Real lives, Jewish lives of people allied with the United States and presumably working in Iraq with the knowledge and consent of the United States, in alliance with the United States. Remember, this information came from a U.S. government analyst. And they had every reason to presume that he was giving them information both with permission and for a purpose.
Not surprisingly, Rosen and Weissman tried to check this information out. At one point, they apparently sought to see what a journalist covering Iraq knew. They also warned Israeli officials of the clear and immediate danger to their operatives. We now know that Franklin’s information was false and manufactured, with the specific goal of ensnaring Rosen and Weissman.
Of course that wasn’t the impression created when CBS broke its sensational account on Aug. 27, 2004, courtesy of a leak from either the FBI and/or Department of Justice.
Elements of the evidence remain shrouded in secrecy — the defendants are currently challenging the government’s attempts to conceal their own statements made on wiretaps.
Why would the U.S. government obstruct the defense in this way?
One plausible explanation is that Rosen and Weissman will recognize the circumstances in which their words were recorded and hence understand the scope of the federal surveillance — not just of them but also of those with whom they were in contact. One wonders: Does the U.S. typically spy on Israeli diplomats or diplomats of other countries?
We shall soon learn whether the government will drop the charges rather than reveal its evidence. The surveillance apparently lasted for five years and yielded such meager results that the defendants had to be entrapped into committing an alleged crime. If they were really up to something, investigators should have found it without the FBI having to engage in a Hollywood-style stunt — fictionalizing a scenario and manufacturing a crime.
This is not the Jonathon Pollard Affair redux. Pollard was a paid agent of the Israeli government who transmitted classified information to Israel. And unlike with the legal principle at stake in the Valerie Plame case, there was no possibility that lives would have been endangered by this leak; no sources were compromised. Unlike Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, Rosen and Weissman wanted to save lives, not weaken political opponents.
Yet AIPAC has run for cover; so have too many Jews. Some members of AIPAC’s own leadership are under the impression that the organization has actively defended its former employees. The word on the street, however, is that Rosen and Weissman have been hung out to dry. AIPAC bylaws require that the organization cover their legal defense, yet Rosen’s lawyers and Weissman’s lawyers have not been paid in many months. A reporters committee has come out against the indictment; a scientific group has challenged the secrecy provisions. But unless I’ve missed something, American Jewish organizations have been virtually mute.
We should be outraged by the setup!
We should be outraged by the selective prosecution — Rosen and Weissman are the first to be charged under the provision of the law being cited. Maybe it’s truly AIPAC and the vaunted American-Israeli alliance that is on trial or that is the actual target.
So why the hushed, muted tones of organizational leaders?
I leave it to their able lawyers to make the legal case for Rosen and Weissman, but the moral case also is compelling. From the standpoint of Jewish principles and tradition, the saving of human lives is an essential.
The Bush administration — or at least some within it — seems determined to crack down on the dissemination of government information, even if it impedes the public’s right to know or the right of citizens to participate in the process.
The Jewish community should not be timid in taking a different view. We dare not be sidelined.
Michael Berenbaum is adjunct professor of theology at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and director of the Sigi Ziering Institute, whose mission is to explore the ethical and religious implications of the Holocaust.
When Californians go to the polls on Nov. 8, many will read Proposition 73 as a proposal to require that health care providers perform the seemingly logical task of informing parents before performing abortions on underage girls.
But the considered opinions of doctors and Juvenile Court judges, as well as a look at the actual text of Proposition 73, reveal that the initiative is fraught with adverse ramifications for virtually all Californians. It also poses particular issues for the Jewish community.
Much of the literature against Proposition 73 correctly emphasizes that many teenage girls will seek underground abortions, rather than have their parents (or guardians, foster parents or other legal designees) learn that they are pregnant. Thus, under the banner, “Protect California’s Teens,” a Planned Parenthood Web page urges that defeating Proposition 73 is essential to ensuring that desperate teenagers retain access to safe and legitimate medical care.
This emphasis is entirely appropriate. But there’s more to object to in this ballot initiative. One of the proposition’s most troubling aspects lies within the fine print. Proposition 73 amends the California Constitution to define abortion as a procedure ending the life of a “child conceived but not yet born.”
This radical definition has profound implications not only for teens, but also for adult women. And this carefully calculated wording should be of particular interest to the Jewish community.
Many Jewish couples undergo genetic screening as part of family planning. Those of us who learn we are dual carriers of genetic mutations (e.g., Tay Sachs) know there is a one in four chance of conceiving a child afflicted with the disease.
Couples who face this risk make the wrenching choice of attempting to have a biological child, while also taking the precaution of undergoing testing after conception. Diagnosis is possible through either chorionic villus sampling 10 to 12 weeks into the pregnancy or amniocentesis in the second trimester. Couples choose such procedures with the hope of having a healthy baby.
But typically, they also have resolved to terminate a pregnancy that would, if carried to term, bring forth a child doomed to endure unconscionable suffering ending in early death. A couple that follows this course of action sometimes has the blessing of Orthodox rabbis who would ordinarily oppose abortion.
Amending California’s Constitution to define abortion as ending the life of a “child conceived but not yet born” has profound implications for adult Jewish couples that rely on pregnancy testing. The proposition’s language would, in effect, shorten the road to outlawing abortion.
Indeed, that appears to be the aim of James Holman, the San Diego millionaire who backed Proposition 73 with $800,000, most of which went to paid signature gatherers to get the initiative onto the ballot. In line with his devout, conservative beliefs, Holman has expressed opposition to contraception, as well as to abortion apparently under all circumstances, including rape and incest.
Defining abortion as terminating the life of “a child that is conceived but not yet born” also could undermine the legality of stem cell research, perhaps the most promising scientific frontier of the 21st century. Here again, the medical implications are heightened for those of us in the Jewish community who recognize that stem cell research may herald the cures for degenerative diseases linked with genetic markers prevalent among us.
This subtle but intentional groundwork for outlawing abortion is reason enough for opposing Proposition 73, but even at face value, this measure would do more harm than good. It is opposed by Planned Parenthood, of course, and other pro-choice organizations, but also by California Women Lawyers, a statewide organization that promotes the general interests of women in society, as well as the California League of Women Voters.
Women’s advocacy organizations are correct to cite the dangers to teens posed by parental notification initiatives. Indeed, efforts to decriminalize abortion in the 1970s were largely spearheaded by doctors, lawyers, and clergy who knew only too well that making abortion illegal did not prevent abortion, but simply made the procedure lethal to many women who sought out illegal abortions.
Today, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists all oppose parental notification laws, citing the risk to teens. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, mandating parental notification does not achieve the intended goal of family communication, but does increase the risk of harm by delaying access to appropriate medical care.
Parental notification is also opposed by Bill and Karen Bell, who lost their daughter to an illegal abortion in 1988. Although Becky Bell belonged to a loving Indianapolis family, this high school junior pursued an underground abortion, rather than tell her parents. The Bells never had the chance to tell their daughter they were not, after all, angry at her.
Instead, they became outraged at the parental notification law, operative in Indiana, that compelled their daughter to resort to the underground abortion that claimed her life. In the wake of their family tragedy, the Bells became activists against parental notification laws.Proposition 73 contains a supposed answer in its “judicial bypass provision,” which would enable teens to seek court orders excusing health care providers from the parental notification requirement in appropriate circumstances. This provision is unrealistic and unreasonably cumbersome both for teenagers and the courts, which is why Juvenile Court judges have gone on record against it.
To activate this provision, California courts would have to appoint guardians ad litem to speak on behalf of teenagers and, in most cases, to appoint lawyers for the minors, as well. In sum, the law would impose a mandate upon all courts, with no source of funding to carry it out.
Like many of my colleagues on the California Women Lawyers board, my personal choices were for marriage and children. I hope, want and expect that my daughters will come to me, however reluctantly, if they became pregnant unexpectedly. But a sweeping parental notification requirement will affect all families, including vulnerable teenagers in broken and abusive families.
As the tragic example of Becky Bell reminds us, even girls in “good” families may resort to underground abortions. And, a close examination of Proposition 73 makes clear that its language and intentions strike far closer to home than many of us previously thought possible in California.
The Jewish community — and everyone else — should oppose Proposition 73 not only because it is bad for teenage girls we may never meet, but also because it is bad — and dangerous — for adults, including ourselves.
Angela J. Davis is president-elect of California Women Lawyers, an independent bar association that advocates on public-policy issues.
