THE RELENTLESS ISRAELI PROPAGANDA MACHINE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R002000090173-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2004
• Sequence Number: 173
• Publication Date: February 1, 1978
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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TUBE BX 3
DATE
TRANSMITTAL SLIP
16 ,Tan 78
TO:
OLC
ROOM NO.
BUILDING
REMARKS:
T~ .~ Q X -~
Per our conversation today
concerning Senator Abourezk's
article in PENTHOUSE.
FROM
ROOM NO.
BUILDING
1F04
HQS
RfIR6A NA _A I ~ REPLACES FARM 36-8
~~
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 Ar~o~l ~~
BY SEN. JAMES ABOUREZK
The author has represented South Dakota in the
Senate since 1472. He is not seeking reelection
this year because, he says, "nothing ever
really changes. IYs the system itself."
0~0~?~~~DP81 M009
OPINEc~N
he penod~c flare-up of the Arab-Israeli conflict ~s a matter
~' of no sma,l consequence to the United States. To those .
people who have an emoAOnal ar paAtical interest in the
Middle East, the straggle there takes on the d+mensions of an
Armageddon. To the majority of the Ame~~can people, what
appears to be modern tribal warfare serves only as a minor .
irritant each time the shoonng begins. Why, it is asked, are the
Arabs and Israelis fighting over purely desert land? How can
Israel, a nai~on of some 3 million people, hold military
superiority over some 100 million very unfriendly neighbors?
The slrugg!e in the Middle East is of greater significance to .
Americans tf,an most realize. What hap(,ens there will deter-
mine for us the shape of our own future-avhether cr nct we wilt
be embroiled m war or con(rantation with the Soviet Union, .
whether or not the price and supply of oil will ban,crupt.the
Western powers, including the United States, and 4vhether or
not we can maintain our moral position against one nation's
taking another's territory by force of arms. -
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EASTERN CONFLICY
In 1894 the Arab world was in the final 20 years of what was to
have been 400 years of military occupation by the Ottoman
Turkish Empire. The Arabs, who had contributed so much to
art, medicine, and science during Europe's Dark Age, were
themselves experiencing a dark age under the stern heel of
Turkish rule. The year 1894 was the year an Austrian Jew,
Theodor t-lerzl, brat gave expression to tf~,e theory of Zionism,.
the hope that Jews would find a homeland, ending the histori-
cal abuses against them by host countries throughcut the
world. The Zionist movement grew, oons~dered a variety of
different Locations for the homeland, then eventually agreed
on Palestine. Palestine had been the center of the Jewish
tribes 1,800 years earlier and seemed the logical location to
the Zionist leaders. One major problem existed. Palestine was
populated with Arabs who had lived therevirtually from the be-
ginning. Hoynever,ZionistleaderstotaliyignaredlheArabpres-
ence there and moved with total and single-minded concen-
tration toward the estabGshmeni of an exclusive Jewish state.
At the outset of World War I, British and Arab leaders
agreed that if the Arabs rase up against the Turks (then allied
with Germany). the Arabs would be granted their tndepen- '
Bence after the war.- This was the period. of the new 'Arab
Awakening," and the alliance was readily agreed to by Arab
leaders. The exploits of Lawrence of Arab;a provided soma
interesting stories resulting irorn this alliance. -
But at the same time the British prornised independence to
the Arabs, they were making other deals inconsistent with .
these promises. In 1916 a secret British-French agreement
was made to divide up the postwar Middle East between
Britain and France. Political connivance did not stop there. In
the next year British Foreign Secretary Lord aaltourpromised -..
the Zionist movement that Palestine would become a "home-
land for the Jews," provided that the rights of the Arabs living .
there were not adversely ailected. in 1917, of those living in '
Palestine, 96 percent were Arabs and 4 percent were Jaws..
The Ziornst movement used the Balfour Declaraticn as a
basis for the ~rnm~grabon of Jews into Arab Palestine iot;owrng
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.~ Israel s crltlcs are always
accused of anti-Semitism, a charge that serves
to silence even the mildest questioning
of that country's policies.
the war. When the Arabs saw the full effects of their betrayal by
the British and the obvious intentions of the Zionists, they
protested, often violently, but without noticeable effect. In
1922 the Balfour Declaration was written into the League of
Nations mandate, and continued Jewish immigration into
Palestine became official British policy. Immigration and pro-
testled toriots and killings until 1939, when Britain, threatened
by?war with Germany, became anxious to ease the pressure
building in Palestine and raversed itself. Although under lim-
ited quotas after 1939, Jewish immigration continued, espe-
cially during the war years, when Jews were attempting to
escape Europe and Hitler's genocidal policies. Jewish ter-
roristgroups, most notably Menachem Begin's Irgun, and the
Stern gang, formed to retaliate against Arabs, now turned
their terrorism against the British, the goal being eventually to
drive the British out of Palestine. After World War II an
exhausted Britain had had enough of the conflict raging in
Palestine and announced that on May 15, 1948, it would
withdraw its forces and end its mandate over the area.
The world Zionist movement had by then shifted its political
focus to the United States, the new world power, a strategy
that was to produce excellent results. In November 1947 the
U.N. General Assembly voted to partition Palestine between
Arabs and Jews. To understand the extent of political chican-
eryused by the Zionist movement to achieve its ends, and the
anger of the Arabs, one muss consider the proposal voted on
by the United Nations. Although Jews constituted only 30
percent of the population, much of it by illegal settlement, the
U.N. plan proposed for them a 56 percent slice of Palestine.
Arabs, who made up 70 percent of the population, were to get
only 44 percent. of their own horrieland. In 1947 outright
Jewish ownership of land was no more than 5 percent.
The General Assembly vote so outraged the Arabs that riots
broke out as far away as the southern tip of Aden. As a result
of Arab protests, the U.N. Security Council never got around
to voting on ratification of the partition plan, and the United
States delegate began working on a U.N. trusteeship plan for
Palestine. But unknown even to him, the issue of a Jewish
state was being plunged into American politics. Harry Truman
was in deep political Yrouble as he approached the 1948
presidential elections. He could not afford to lose the support
of American Jews, because of both votes and money. Thomas
Dewey the Republican candidate for president, was making
much of the? establishment of a Jewish state, threatening to
strip Truman and the Democrats of their traditional Jewish
electoral support. As terrorism by the Irgun and the Stern
groups escalated in Palestine, in Washington, D.C., Truman
made preparations to support the creation of Israel.
Un May 14, one day before the announced British
withdrawal from Palesrine, Israel declared itself to be an ex-
clusiveJewish state. Eleven minutes later, against the counsel
of his foreign-policy advisers, President Truman extended
U.S. recognition to Israel. Thus, thirty-one years after British
promises of independence for Palestine, the Arabs witnessed
the ultimate betrayal-the establishment, in their midst, of a
new colony by the world's big powers, controlled, not by
. Middle Eastern natives, but by Europeans. Hundreds of
thousands of Palestinian Arabs who had Ivied in peace on
their own land were destined never to see their homeland
again. What had begun as the Zionist movement's clever
manipulation of American and British palit~cians ended as a
mechanism for the death and suffering of countless numbers
of human beings ~n the Middle East.
Although Israel's claim was that of a socialist democracy
implanted amidst the monarchies and dictatorships of the
Arab world, no public expression was given to the question. of
how such a democracy coutd also be an excluswe Jewish
state while the Arabs held a numerical maiority within the new
boundaries. The question was soon resolved without debate
and without the necessity of a vote.
The genesis of that resolution began in Apr,l 1948, in a small
Palestinian Arab village called Deir Yassin. Amid general
fighting between Arabs and Jews, the terrorists of the Irgun.
and Stern groups decided to attack Deir Yassin. It ~s claimed
today by Israeli historians that the attack was only intended to
put the villagers to flight. Whatever the intent, the action
changed the entire demography of the M~ddie East, resulting
in the status existing today As the terrorist attack began and
Arab defenders of the v~liage returned fire, the Jewish ter-
rorists moved from house to house. blindly spraying the inte-
riors with automatic-weapons fire. Then dynamite was thrown
in!o the houses, with Irgun, and Stern gunmen shooting dosvn
anyone who escaped the dynamita No one was spared,.
whether defender or women and children. Any Arab who
moved was shot, even those who had already surrendered.
The terrorists then tried to burn the bodies. They stuffed some
bodes into a well in an effort to hide them from the Interna-
tional Red Cross representatives. who came on the scene. the
next day later 250 bodes were buried, and a few dazed
survivors were loaded into a truck and unceremoniously
dumped in Jerusalem.
Word of the Deir Yassin massacre spread like wildfire
throughout Palestine, and as the fighting continued through
1948, the fear engendered by the words "Deir Yassin" and a
general fear of being caught in the fighting eventually drive
more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs out of Palestine. After
that, Jewish terrorists had only to repeat the name of the
village to drive out the Arabs.
By the end of 1948, Israel had a Jewish majority. The ffl-
equipped and poorly trained Arab armies, both regulars and
irregulars, had lost. Three quarters of a million Palesttinians,
who had once had their own homes on their land in Palestine,
found themselves homeless, living rn the inhumane squa-
lor of refugee camps. Israel has never allowed them to return.
Thus were the seeds of eventual world conflict sown. Barely
three years after the big powers had formed the United .
Nations-for the purpose, they said, of putting an end to war
and the taking of territory by war-they became openly
committed to supporting, in the case of Israel, an exception to
their rule. In searching for reasons for their action, one Cannot
dismiss the feelings of guilt held by the big powers because
they had refused to provide a haven for Jews attempting to
escape from Hitler. But the question asked to this day fay the
Arabs is: Why should they be made to pay for someone else's
sins? Although both guilt and sympaG~y played a part in the
events leading up to the establishment of Israel, political
COV'.~NUED DV RaGc r22
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 A~4~i~~r~r~e~e se ~~0~/s~ ratey to het Is~ra~el; so they 173-0
rely on the sraell obey to e t~t~llr~ti l~~c~~, 4a~~t4~R~4~
from Israel and then lays down the party line to them.
chicanery provided the grease for the
skids on which Israel rode to its creation.
Israel proved that, under certain circurn-
stances, crime pays! And with the prece-
dent established in 1948, Israel has con-
tinued to rob the Arabs of their lands, with
bosh the approval anti the active support of
the U.S. government.
ISRAEL'S LOBBY IN WASHINGTGN
effective critic. It has used direct threats of
political reprisal on recalcitrants. It has con-
tacted Jewish contributors, warning them
that the politician in question does not
deserve the support of American Jews It
generates hate mail to target politicians,
and even bomb threats have been used to
prevent speeches critical of Israel from
bung given.
Politicians ordinarily courageous on
such issues as the Vietnam War, busing,
abortion, or what have you are reduced to
One well-known axiom in political circles is meek puppets in the face of a threat from
that the noisiest wheel gets the most the (sraell lobby. Many of the seventy-six
grease. That old saw is especiall;~ true senators who signed the lobby's letter to
wherr it refers to Washington's attitude to- President Ford in 1975 privately complain
ward the Middle East. U.S.- policy on the about the tactics to obtain their signatures
Mideast is virtually directed by Tel Aviv. So on the letter. Such private grumbling has
long as the public ignores U.S. government changed nothing publicly, however, since
actions in the Middle East, Israel will con- those same senators have renewed their
tinue to dictate our policies there. When a public support for Israel.
politician gets na message from his
constituents on a particular issue, he is THE UNDERDOG IMAGE AND THE
completely free to vote and act as he AMERICAN PRESS
n
re o
l
pressu
chooses. Thus the only rea
politicians concerning the Middle Eastern
question comes from the Israeli lobby. Al-
ways capable of raising money for political
campaigns, the lobby enlists the active aid
of American Jews in every state of the
Union. it takes its orders from Israel and then
lays down the party line to the American
Jewish community in a variety of ways-
newsletters, community newspapers, and
syriagague speeches. American Jews
want desperately to help Israel; so they rely
on the Israeli-lobby to tell them how. Highly
organized, smart, and constantly alert, the
Israeli lobby uses political intimidation if
everything else fails.
If a member of Congress should be so
foolish as to withhold his support from an
issue desired by the lobby, telegrams and
phone cail5 immediately start pouring in
from contributors, campaign workers, and
others expressing their concern. Few
politicians can hold out for Fong under such
pressure. Liberals are made to feel guilty
about not supporting the needs of a "small
nation surrounded by hostile Arabs." The
worst kind of intellectual terrorism is
reserved for those politicians who dare to
question Israel on its policies. Israel has so
wrapped itself in its slate religion, Judaism,
that any Criticism of its politics is im-
mediately branded as criticism of its reli-
gion. Thus the critic is accused of anti-
Semitism, acharge that has served to si-
lence even the mildest questioning of Is-
rael's policies. In fact, it has become much
easier for American politicians io criticize
Yheir own government than to criticize Is-
rael or its policies.
The Israeli lobby has neither qualms nor
scruples when the objective is to silence an
drums of Israet~ aropaganga nave beat into
our consaousness the comparison must.
be n-i~xde ba:v~cer: our :mega of the Middle .
Easterrr conu~ct aria .ts reat~ty. The prop-'
agenda foundation upon which: Israel's
house of cards has been bu~ft rs that the
United NaGOns created Israe`. When that lie
is repeated again and again and eventually
accepted as truth, apologists for tsrael can '
successfully appear righteous, especiaNy
with the generous cooperaGOn given to Is-
raeli propagandists by the. American -
press.
The fact is that the U.N. vote in 1947 was
nonbinding. The fact rs that tsraer created
itself while sighting down the barrel at Cne
gun. But the mytn of U.N. creation has been
repeated so often that even high-school.
textbooks have picked it up and repeated
it. This "big lie" technique has been used
very effectively to stand the truth on its
head, making the Arabs look tike agressors .
and Israel beleaguered de~ender: .
THE AMERICAN PRESS HAS FAILED
The notion advanced by some that Ameri- THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
can Jews own the press is a racist canard
and should be rejected as an argument.
But it is clear that for various reasons, a
great many members of the press are sym-
pathetic to Israel, providing the ease with
which propagandists for Israel are able to
maintain their point of view, exclusive of all
others.
It has been fashionable from the begin-
ning to write stories favorable to Israel and
unfavorable to the Arabs. Israel was
depicted at the outset as an underdog, and
Americans will by nature side with that par-
ticular role. With exceptions, journalists will
write only what is fashionable, fearing that
different concepts boldly stated will sub-
ject them to ridicule. Author .Timothy
Crouse has described this phenomenon as
"pack journalism," and former Sen. Eugene
McCarthy has likened most American jour-
nalists to a flock of blackbirds sitting on a
fence. When one flies away, the rest will
follow. Although times are changing, sto-
ries about a "good" Israel are still in vogue,
and those who write anything to the con-
trary are suspect.
Thus the optic through which Americans
view the Middle Eastern struggle is al-
most exclusively Israeli. That overly one-
sided point of view would not be possible
without the generous help of the American
media-newspapers, television, radio,
and the movie industry. Some of the most
glaring examples will demonstrate the dis-
tortionsthat exist and the subsequent ease
with which the history of the struggle has
been revised to make Israeli aggression
appear to be salt-defense.
If we are to realize I~ow consistently the
Americans. i am convinced. are the most
fair-minded people in the world. Given both
sides of any sory, they wilt atmost always.
make a fair and ust decision. But. the Amer-
icanpeople have Heard oniyone side of the-
Middle Eastern story. The resat[ has been
to make it easier for American politicians to
support Israel s objective of expanding
deeper and deeper into Arab territory. The
critical importance of American political
military and financial support is not lost on .
Israeli propagandists.
Incredibly. once it was made to appear
that the 1948 war was only the fruit of Arab
aggression, continued land grabbing be-
came no problem. Cgnsider the familiar
Israeli argument that the Golan Heights is
"vital" to Israel's security.. Following the
truce in 1948, the Huleh Valley, just betaw
the Golan Heights, became neutral terri-
tory, awarded to neither side in either the
fighting or the truce agreement that fol-
lowed. it was populated with Arab farmers.
Unable to defend themselves. they be-
came immediate targets of tsraef's expan-
sionism. Israeli military forces removed the '
Arab farmers from the Land and replaced
them with Israeli farmers. Syria reacted to
the provocation by periodically shellinrf the
valley from the Golan t-feights. Few Ameri-
cans heard about ilia land grab: however
all of us have been led to believe that be-
cause of the so-called barbarity of the Sy-
rians, the Israelis were justified in conquer-
ing and holding. the Golan Heights.
It is understandable that Americans
would not object toe strenuously to the fur-
nishing of arms to tsrael,. since the Ameri-
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