AJC Head Urges Communal Action for Israel

American Jewish Committee
Wednesday, 8 May 2002

American Jews must constructively draw on their passion and activism to help Israel win its political and public relations wars, says American Jewish Committee executive director David A. Harris.

In the wake of terror attacks on Israeli men, women and children, and virulent anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, the Jewish community response has been steadily increasing, said Mr. Harris, in his opening address to the AJC's 96th annual meeting. "The sleeping giant is waking up and fast," he asserted.

Using slides, Mr. Harris focused attention on biased news coverage of Israel and the Middle East conflict. He presented a number of anti-Semitic cartoons and clippings drawn from worldwide mainstream media sources, which make clear in too many cases there is the blending of traditional anti-Semitic motifs and anti-Israel sentiment. Especially disturbing were materials from American college campuses, including Columbia University in New York and the University of Pennsylvania.

Last month on Yom HaShoah, for example, San Francisco State University's student associations posted a drawing mixing anti-Israel and anti-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon viciousness with anti-Semitic blood libel imagery.

"All of this is going on on our watch, under our noses," said Mr. Harris.

"I don't believe that Israel doesn't make mistakes," he said, but many journalists, rather than attempting to grasp the complexities of the story are either "clueless" or "intimidated." Israelis and Palestinians are frequently treated differently by the media, the former with an accusatorial tone, the latter with kids gloves, he declared.

During Ted Koppel's recent TV interview of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, he did not even broach the subject of Arafat's connections to terrorism. "This from one of America's best journalists with a reputation for toughness," Mr. Harris said.

Recent Israel solidarity rallies across the country, most notably in New York and Washington, drawing hundreds of thousands of people, show that "people are rapidly waking up," he said. And as more good news he cited strong congressional backing for Israel and an Administration that "understands." With these realities, Mr. Harris declared: "I'm not a pessimist."

Mr. Harris praised President George W. Bush as someone who in his "gut" connects to Israel. "We've been blessed with a president who understands the storyline here, who gets it right."

Sending a warning about the geostrategic implications of U.S. dependence on imported oil from unstable and unfriendly countries, Mr. Harris pointed out that the U.S. is Saddam Hussein's best customer for oil. Citing AJC's recently adopted energy policy, he chided Washington for its inadequate response despite 29 years of warning bells, referring to the 1973 Arab oil boycott, and he called for a "Manhattan Project" for alternate energy sources, to end the "addiction to fossil fuels" that makes the U.S. dependent on "dangerous, unstable, unfriendly countries in the Middle East."

Mr. Harris cited AJC's long and prescient history warning of the dangers of Muslim extremism, beginning with the 1979 taking of American hostages in Iran. However, he said, "Too often we were a voice in the wilderness."

"The world [still] owes a big thank you to Israel" for destroying Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor 21 years ago, he said, but "don't expect the UN as we now know it to act anytime soon, if ever."

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