It was a sad day in America on December 10, 2006 when only one protester arrived to greet Israel’s most famous racist, Avigdor Lieberman, the advocate of ethnic cleansing of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and their transfer onto reservations, in much the same way as the white American population were relieved of the presence of American Indians in the 19th century. Leiberman, as everyone knows, was invited to speak at the Saban Center on a platform, which included Henry Kissinger, the Clintons, and other Democratic celebrities. Kissinger, apparently embarrassed at having suggested a similar transfer option to get rid of the Palestinians two years ago, excused himself from attendance. Not so the other dignitaries who waited hand and foot on this vile bigot, who now sits on Olmert’s cabinet as the Minister of External Threats, as if he were the answer to all of Israel’s problems and dreams.
The sole protester who greeted otherwise unchallenged Lieberman was Michael F. Brown, who wrote about his personal experiences at the Saban Center on the The Electronic Intifada on January 12, 2007
Michael F. Brown is a Board member of Interfaith Peace-Builder. He was previously executive director of Partners for Peace and a Washington correspondent for Middle East International.
As Brown wrote,
Every once in a while I end up at precisely the right spot at precisely the right time. Sunday 10 December 2006 was one such instance. I raced over that morning to the Ritz-Carlton at 22nd and M Street in Washington, DC with the hope that Member of Knesset Avigdor Lieberman was indeed speaking at 8:30 am.
I parked, charged up the stairs, and then calmly walked in. I was sporting my wedding suit and a classy yellow tie. Hair cut short. Other than the touch long beard and some scuffs on my black dress shoes, I very much looked as though I belonged. And, in fact, it's a shame I was not invited to the Saban Forum 2006 on "*America and Israel: Confronting a Middle East in Turmoil*."
I would have liked the opportunity to stand up and ask how attendees plan to confront a region in turmoil with a racist like Lieberman at their side. I would have liked to question Lieberman directly on his bigotry. The transcript has not been posted to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy website as of yet and so it's unclear to me whether anybody participating in the conference had the integrity to do so.
Do I hold out hope that Lieberman could change? Yes, of course, such things have happened on rare occasions and I hope this will be one, but there is little prospect of it when members of Congress and other officials fail to call Lieberman to account.
What Lieberman said at the conference is therefore unknown, but why the Saban Center would stall giving us the words of wisdom that Lieberman spoke, one can only imagine.
Brown confronted other supposedly Democratic voices in attendance at the Saban Center, such as Tom Lantos. Lantos recently co-sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, an apparent supplication to the Israeli hasbara services which, since 9/11, have been most interested in getting the largely Muslim Palestinians implicated as "terrorists" in the US war on terrorism. It is of course not a relevant fact that the Palestinian people have been living a deadly and brutal life under 40 years of military occupation by Israel, of which Lantos seems unaware. Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, apparently has little to say about the racist Lieberman nor the plight of the Palestinians.
As brown recalls,
At the bottom of an interior set of steps in the Ritz-Carlton I encountered Rep. Tom Lantos. I had seen Lantos on Friday evening (in front of the State Department when I was holding a one-man demo/vigil and asking Saban Forum guests to speak out against Lieberman's racism) and so this was the second time I was asking him to challenge Lieberman's viewpoint. He quickly moved away without saying a word. That was a shame because Rep. Lantos is a man who should be speaking out strongly against Lieberman. Congressman Lantos is a determined defender of Israel, though all too often he defends practices that ought not be defended.
Still, I had very much hoped MK Lieberman would prove to be a proponent of views too bigoted for Lantos. If they are, Lantos certainly is not saying. This is doubly troubling as Lantos is now the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. His opinion counts more than ever and yet when it comes to oppression administered by the Israeli government he is silent.
Unfortunately Brown did not have the opportunity to confront the Clintons and other Democratic dignitaries. However, Brown was able to confront Lieberman himself:
After my encounter with Lantos I paused to consider my options. I clearly was not getting into the conference room. I decided to head back up the steps to see if anybody was milling around at the top. I had just gone a few steps when suddenly I saw Avigdor Lieberman descending. This was a stroke of tremendous good fortune. Yet despite this encounter having been my fervent hope, I quickly realized I had not prepared for the moment as fully as I might have.
As I had not thought through what I would say I simply blurted out what was most on my mind and what ought to have been on the minds of all the Saban Forum participants. This man is a racist. And so that's what I said.
You are a racist. You are a racist and your views are not welcome here. He looked fairly taken aback. I presume he had not anticipated such a response at Saban. We were just feet away. I am not sure if it was his entourage and security with him or not, but I suspect it was. In any event, the former bouncer did not attempt to bounce me down the steps and, in fact, nobody said a word. I continued, projecting my generally soft-spoken voice as best I could without shouting. He was quickly out of sight.
As a consequence of this encounter, I know that at least one person confronted him. But did anybody else? Did any members of the House or Senate attending the forum challenge him later that morning? Sen. Joe Lieberman was the scheduled respondent to MK Lieberman's talk. Did he challenge him on his infamous anti-Arab statements and his proposals for land swaps that amount to ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel? How about James Wolfensohn and Ami Ayalon? The Clintons? Rep. Jane Harman? Saban's Martin Indyk? The New York Times's Thomas Friedman? The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl?
Doubtful that they did. But we will have to await the Saban Center transcript, if they ever have the balls to release it in the raw, especially Lieberman’s words and the response of illustrious AIPAC operatives like Hillary Clinton.
Brown also did not find himself in confrontation with Dennis Ross, Israel’s best equiped propagandist for the Israeli right wing. But he have some remarks about him.
Amb. Dennis Ross? In fact, I am most doubtful about Amb. Ross. Later that same week, Amb. Ross countered Hisham Melhem in a radio interview with Diane Rehm by saying that, in fact, he had just heard MK Lieberman and that he does not back ethnic cleansing but rather redrawing the map. Left unsaid by Ross was that it amounted to the same thing as it would strip thousands of Arabs living in Israel of citizenship without their approval and consign them to a Bantustan of a Palestinian state under the threat or reality of constant domination by Israel.
After his meeting with Lieberman, Brown reported that he was searched and then escorted out of the Saban Center. Other difficulties he encountered for his one man protest of Lieberman’s adulatory presence in the United States involved his subsequent investigation by the FBI. Apparently, if you protest bigotry in the US today, it can be considered an offense against democracy if not a proArab gesture in the war on terrorism.
Brown concluded his one man protest article by confronting Israeli and American-Jewish organizations about their support of such a racist Israeli official:
MK Lieberman has certainly not reined in his racism and in fact is backing his colleague, MK Esterina Tartman, in her anti-Arab bigotry. On 11 January Tartman blasted the decision of Labor MK Amir Peretz to appoint Israel's first Arab minister, MK Raleb Majadele. She dubbed it "a lethal blow to Zionism" that would harm "Israel's character as a Jewish state." In a frenzy of racist hatred she declared, "We need to destroy this affliction from within ourselves. God willing, God will come to our help."
The racism of Yisrael Beiteinu reached a feverish pitch before both MKs Tartman and Lieberman backed down and said they would vote for Majadele (presumably following considerable pressure and consternation at such open racism).
Nevertheless, it is time for the participants in a December 2006 off-the-record session with MK Lieberman hosted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, "the coordinating body on international Jewish concerns for 52 national Jewish organizations [51 listed on website]," to release any comments they made denouncing or supporting MK Lieberman. They need not further report on what Lieberman said or others stated, but they should have the courage to say what, if anything, they themselves said to Lieberman about his racist outlook.
The Conference of Presidents website merely presents a brief summary of what MK Lieberman stated alongside a photograph of Harold Tanner (Chairman of the Conference of Presidents), Avigdor Lieberman, and Malcolm Hoenlein (Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents). No indication is provided that either Tanner or Hoenlein did the right thing and called MK Lieberman to account for his explicitly racist views.
Instead, his presentation was summarized as follows:
"Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman addressed the Conference of Presidents in an off-the-record session, and spoke about Iran, Israeli-Palestinian relations, and the Israeli-Arab community. The Iranian threat is directed not only towards Israel, but to the international community as a whole. Comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler, Minister Lieberman said that should Iran acquire nuclear weapon capacity, this would lead to a regional nuclear arms race." [My note: Ahmadinejad's rhetoric certainly is vile. Apparently the Anti-Defamation League agrees with Lieberman's comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler as it has not stepped in and criticized such language as it usually does with Hitler and Nazi comparisons. It is also the case that Israel already started this regional nuclear arms race decades ago.]
The document continues:
"He also spoke about the Oslo Accords, and said that the process was based on three misconceptions:
- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the main cause of violence in the Middle East. 2. The conflict is a dispute over territory. 3. The conflict is limited to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, he said, it includes the Israeli-Arab community as well.
He advocated an exchange between Israel and the PA of territory with Jewish and Arab populations, which he referred to as the Cyprus model. There is a clash of civilizations - a conflict of values - between Jews and Arabs, and there can only be peace if there is separation between them."
The final paragraph here should be well noted. Here is a major Israeli official speaking directly of separation between Jews and Arabs -- referred to in different world circumstances as a component of apartheid, Jim Crow, or ethnic cleansing -- without being roundly condemned as a racist. Are the organizations that comprise the Conference of Presidents prepared to stand by and accept such bigoted notions from a prominent Israeli Member of Knesset? He is, after all, suggesting that nearly 20 percent of Israel's population ought not to be included in Israel.
Brown notes that not all Israelis or American Jews support Lieberman. Not surprising considering the active peace movements that have lurked in the background of Israeli society for the past thirty years that have urged a fair and just peace with the Palestinians.
Debra DeLee of Americans for Peace Now, a member organization of the Conference of Presidents, has vigorously challenged MK Lieberman in the Jerusalem Post. She stated in her article: "'In my opinion [Lieberman's], the main problem, the obstacle, are [sic] Israel's Arabs,' Lieberman told a reporter in 2002, asserting that '90 percent of Israel's Arabs will have to find themselves in the Arab entity that will be established there,' not within Israel. 'It may seem brutal and sound brutal, but there is no other solution,' he said. 'They have no place here. Let them take their packages and go to hell,' he added, using a Hebrew slang profanity borrowed from his native Russian."
The position of Americans for Peace Now is clear, but what about the other 51 member organizations such as AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, JINSA, and the ZOA? Did they speak out and if so what did they say? Did the organization members uphold basic human rights, common decency, and the values DeLee, for her part, put forward so powerfully?
MK Lieberman is not going away and appears not to be moderating his views. As the second most popular politician in Israel -- after the demagogic Binyamin Netanyahu -- serious thought must be given to the prospect of Lieberman as a future prime minister of Israel. Are organizations that could challenge Lieberman on his racism doing so or are they standing quietly by and being used as Lieberman climbs to power?
Brown poses these same questions to American politicians: are they going to support Lieberman and give his racist views credibility.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reportedly met with Lieberman during the same visit and took advantage of the opportunity to practice her Russian. It was thankful that he was not a piano player. However, whether she called him out for his racism in English or Russian is not the issue.
Did she do it at all?
Crossposted at Eternal Hope: http://eternalhope.blog-city.com/