Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2008, pages 5-6

Letters to the Editor

Rep. Doris Matsui’s (D-CA) Anti-Palestinian Voting Record

I READ with interest the article in the July 2008 issue of the Washington Report (p. 46) by Pat and Samir Twair which blended the narrative of the U.S. government’s abuse of Japanese Americans in the early 1940s with that of current-day Muslim Americans. As one who follows the voting profile of congresspersons relative to Middle East issues, I wonder if the Washington Report or the Twairs themselves might find it propitious to bring to the attention of West Coast Japanese-American groups such as “Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress” the consistently anti-Palestinian rights voting record of Representative Doris Matsui and her late husband, Robert Matsui, whose 5th District of California seat she occupies in the U.S. House. 

I suspect this political reality is unknown to most California Japanese Americans and it seems worth an attempt to inform them of it. I would appreciate the Washington Report’s consideration of this matter and if possible would you make it known to the Twairs.

Eugene V. Fitzpatrick, via e-mail

We shall certainly forward your excellent suggestion to our Southern California correspondents. Readers can view Representative Matsui’s voting record in our next issue, which will contain the voting records of all members of the 110th Congress, along with our ever-popular congressional “Halls of Fame and Shame.” While as of April 15 Matsui had received no donations from pro-Israel PACs for this year’s race (see p. 26), she received $3,000 in 2006, for a career total of $6,050. Her late husband, who died in 2005 (and who earned a place in 2004’s “Hall of Shame”), received a career total of $10,700 from pro-Israel PACs.

The Palestinians’ “Crime”

In Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, scholar Norman G. Finkelstein demonstrates that the Zionist version of the founding of Israel is largely untrue. As far back as Theodor Herzl the Zionists were planning to drive the Arabs from Palestine, and when the time came they did. As Finkelstein’s mother, survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Maidanek concentration camp, put it, “What crime did the Palestinians commit except to be born in Palestine?”

There can be personal cost to telling the truth. Last year Finkelstein and supporter Mehrene Larudee were denied tenure by DePaul, their university.

Charles W. McCutchen, Bethesda, MD

More recently, Finkelstein—who, as a Jew, has the right to “return” to Israel as a citizen—was arrested at and deported from Ben-Gurion Airport while trying to visit his close friend Musa Abu Hashhash in Hebron.

For more evidence that the Palestinian Nakba was not a spontaneous occurrence, we also recommend Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (both books are available from the AET Book Club). Pappe now teaches at Exeter University in England, following calls for his ouster from Haifa University, where he was a senior lecturer from 1984-2007.

For some reason, apparently, many Zionists and their supporters seem not to believe that “the truth shall set you free.”

Middle East Truths

When it comes to the Middle East, you are by far the greatest truthteller America has. The enclosed check for $500 is to express our gratitude for your courage. This is sent in both my name and that of Aston Bloom. In the spirit of peace with justice.

Rev. Rosemarie Carnarius, Tucson, AZ

We are greatful for your kind words and continued support, and proud to have you as a member of the AET Choir of Angels.

Education and Exposure

First, I would like to thank you for the fine article “Voices of the Nakba” that appeared in your May/June 2008 Vol. XXVII, No. 4 issue of your magazine. It gave voice to the plight of a people who are too often ignored in this country. I would like to order five copies of that issue.

Next, I would like to order eight one-year subscriptions to your magazine, one issue each to be sent to the people named on the enclosed list. If possible, please include a copy of the aforementioned issue as part of each subscription.

Enclosed is my check for $322.00 to cover the cost of the subscriptions and the eight requested copies of the one issue. Please accept the remainder as a donation to your worthy organization.

I am doing what I can to educate as many people as I am able and expose them to a news source about the situation in the Middle East that is less biased, more comprehensive, and more truthful than we get in the regular American news media.

Abbey Bourghei, Van Nuys, CA

We thank you for your check, for your support, and for your invaluable help in introducing this magazine to new readers.

A High School Resource

Enclosed is my check for $294.00, constituting payment of $44 for the subscription renewal for Frankenmuth High School, Michigan, in the name of Dr. Neil W. Love, as well as a contributory payment of $250 as an “Accompanist” financial contributor to your fine magazine. I believe that your magazine should be a prominent part of any public high school’s library of periodicals, as well as required reading for all public officials elected to national public office. If this were accomplished perhaps then the citizenry of this nation would begin to learn the true story of what is occurring in the Middle East on an ongoing daily basis and then would hopefully bring political pressure to bear on our elected officials to alter the course of U.S. foreign policy in regard to not only resolving the world’s longest ongoing most misunderstood unresolved conflict, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but toward revisiting the U.S.’s muddled foreign policy in the Middle East overall. But perhaps this is expecting too much. But in any event, keep up the good work.

Enclosed is a copy of an e-mail recently sent by me to an acquaintance in which I plagiarized from your most recent May-June issue of the 1970 comment made by Bertrand Russell regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I find it most unsettling that almost 40 years later the disgraceful situation he referred to still exists to a degree worse than in 1970. I hope you will forgive me for this slight indiscretion.

Jack E. Love, Escondido, CA

We are sure the late philosopher and Nobel Laureate would be pleased to have his words, reprinted on p. 24 of the May/June Washington Report, circulated as widely as possible—although not pleased at their continued relevance 40 years later, as you note.

And since it is not only U.S. “muddled foreign policy,” but Americans’ tax dollars, that perpetuate Israel’s occupation of Palestine and this country’s occupation of Iraq, we couldn’t agree with you more that the sooner one understands the full extent of the U.S. role in the Middle East, the better.

Come Home, America

Having left the United States more than three decades ago, I cannot profess to be an expert on the country, but it does appear that the United States has ample domestic problems to which the next American government and other future ones might usefully consecrate the country’s diminishing financial resources and still significant human resources. They should do so—and stop terrorizing and brutalizing the rest of the world under the Orwellian banners of “freedom” and “democracy.”

Rebuilding levees and bridges and providing universal health care and quality education may be less sexy, macho and ego-boosting than commander-in-chiefing the remaking of the world to suit one’s personal preferences, but such a shift in objectives and priorities would do far more genuine good for the vast majority of Americans and far less harm to the rest of mankind.

As the rest of the world either shouts or secretly prays “America, Go Home,” Americans need to overcome the long-running consensus of their elites in favor of global domination (commonly propagated, on a bipartisan basis, as “global leadership”) and demand “Come Home, America.”

America and the world would both be far better places in which to live.

John V. Whitbeck, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

A Gluesome Dilemma

I have a recommendation to make about the production of the magazine. To me the glue that glues the end page of the magazine to the “Other Voices” supplement is an annoyance because I can’t read the end page unless I carefully take off the OV supplement. To correct this you could glue “Other Voices” to the back cover or you could stop printing on the last half-inch of the right hand side of the end page, because then it wouldn’t be necessary to take “Other Voices” off the end page in order to read the right hand side of the end page.

Another recommendation: Why not print a magazine or more than one magazine of the lists of books you sell or have once sold, along with the reviews of these books? One magazine of a list of books would contain only thumbnail reviews of books you currently sell. Another magazine (or book) of reviews could contain longer reviews of some other books.

This second of the two publications containing: 1) a list of books, and 2) reviews of those books…could list and review books that are both in print and out of print. However you would organize these publications, I think they would make interesting reading…even if the reader didn’t decide to order any of the books.

Nye Sawyerm, Concord, MA

What! Decide not to order! How could a reader of rave reviews resist? Nevertheless, we shall take your proposal under advisement—although it may come down to a matter of financial and staff resources, both of which are in perennial short supply.

Meanwhile, the AET Book Club Web site, <www.middleeastbooks.com>, does provide a complete list of books, organized by title and author, as well as pottery from Jerusalem, embroidered items and other Palestinian arts and crafts. We encourage you to visit.

With regard to the glue issue, we have asked our printer in the past if there is any alternative, but apparently our options are limited. We don’t want readers to miss any of our precious prose, however, so will redouble our efforts to resolve this irksome issue.