Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About U.S.-Israeli Relationship.

One of the most abiding features of the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the asymmetrical nature of the balance of power between its main protagonists: Politically, militarily, financially, linguistically, and organizationally, the Zionists have almost always enjoyed the upper hand. Nowhere is this asymmetrical nature more dramatically illustrated than in its linguistic dimension. The effectiveness with which the Zionists combined the propagandistic use of language with their organizational and political skills to construct a towering edifice of mythologies about the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict was unmatched by anything the Palestinians and the Arabs could do or say.

So powerful was the edifice of Zionist mythologies about the conflict that it marginalized any competing version of the historical realities of the conflict, and indeed negated the very existence of the Palestinian people themselves. So dominant was Zionist propaganda that it defined the limits of most Western debates, discussions, coverage and analysis of the conflict in mainstream media and scholarship. This in turn made it possible for Western politicians, particularly American leaders, to remain ignorant of and insensitive to the fundamental causes of the conflict and of the validity of claims of the various parties, on the one hand, and their consistency with the norms of justice and international legitimacy, on the other hand.

Recently, Israeli historians and writers delved into declassified Israeli cabinet and military documents, interviewed politicians and military leaders, and found realities inconsistent with the "official" version of the conflict dominant in Israel and the West. These Israeli writers include Simha Flapan, Tom Segev, Benny Morris, Amnon Kapeliouk, and Meron Benvenisti.

The works of these Israelis directly challenged established Zionist mythologies about the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus, Simha Flapan stated at the beginning of his book that he wrote it "in the hope of sweeping away the distortions and lies that have hardened into sacrosanct myth . . . and had become accepted as historical truth."

Israeli historian Benny Morris said about the official Israeli version, dominant in the West, about the Palestinian exodus in 1948-49: "People's minds have been warped by 40 years of nonsense."

There have also been other challenges to the Zionist propaganda dominant in America. Foremost among writers and scholars with crucial contributions in this area are Alfred Lilienthal and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod; other persistent challengers of "official" knowledge about the conflict include Noam Chomsky, Cherryl Rubenberg, and Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens.

The edifice of fabrications and mythologies has now been thoroughly discredited; it is shaken but it has not yet crumbled. This is partly because of the strength of the long-dominant propaganda and the growing effectiveness of Israel's friends in the United States and their ability to continue to influence the media as well as policy makers. There is also the fact that most of the works cited above have not reached a large enough audience to fundamentally and inalterably modify entrenched popular perceptions and prejudices shaped by a flood of distortions and historical falsifications.

Therein lies the significance of Mr. Findley's work. Paul Findley has put together a most useful tool to refute the assaults on truth from the teetering but still dominant edifice of Zionist fabrications. And he has done this in a straightforward style accessible to the general reader and likely to reach large audiences.

Paul Findley was a U.S. Representative from Illinois from 1961 to 1983. His courage in trying to challenge the myths and half-truths which filled whatever little Middle East policy discussions there was in Washington brought him the ire of the Israeli lobby; it targeted him in congressional elections and may have been instrumental in bringing about his defeat after a distinguished career in Congress for 22 years. Findley then wrote They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby which went on to become a best-seller. It was the first time an American public figure directly took on the Israeli lobby and decried its unduly great influence over American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Deliberate Deceptions goes further than Findley's previous book. It systematically takes on just about every fallacy and fabrication which went into the careful construction of the edifice of mythologies about the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The format of the book is intended to refute (and does an admirable job of it) the fallacies propagated by AIPAC (American-Israel Political Action Committee, perhaps the most effective lobby group in America) and by Israeli politicians.

Relying on Israeli and American sources and drawing from the database compiled by historian Donald Neff (author of the successful trilogy about the 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars), Findley covers a wide range of issues from Israel's claim to Palestine; its wars with its Arab neighbors; its support of dictators and brutal tyrants around the world; and its relationship with the UN, to U.S. aid to Israel, Israeli spying on America, and the illusion of Israeli-American shared values.

Did the vastly superior Arab forces start a war of extermination against Israel in 1948? No. The Jewish forces started the war shortly after the UN adopted its partition of Palestine resolution in November 1947. By 19 December 1947, Ben-Gurion was ordering Jewish forces to strike aggressively: "In each attack, a decisive blow should be struck, resulting in the destruction of homes and the expulsion of the population." Had the ill-prepared, ill-equipped and vastly outnumbered Arab forces not intervened on 15 May 1948 to save whatever was left of Palestine, the Zionists would have completed their plans for the conquest of all of Palestine and the expulsion of as many Palestinians as possible.

Indeed, the UN partition plan had provided for a Jewish state which, although larger than the proposed Palestinian state, still contained 435,000 Palestinians to its 498,000 Jews. Expulsion of the Palestinians and expansion of the Jewish state were inherent in the imperative of creating a Jewish-only state. And thus many Zionists argued that "the uprooting of the Arabs should be seen as a solution to the Arab question in the state of Israel."

Was Israel threatened with extermination by the Arab states in 1967 and forced into attacking its neighbors? This is a total fabrication and one of the most successful propaganda strokes of the Israelis. Findley quotes the confessions made many years later by Israeli leaders including Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and David Ben-Gurion to the effect that Israel did have a choice; its attack on its neighbors was deliberate. Israeli cabinet member Mordecai Bentov admitted in 1972 that Israel's entire story about "the danger of extermination" was "invented of whole cloth and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories."

Has Israel always been a reliable ally of the United States? Not when it deliberately attacks American soldiers. On 8 June 1967 Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats repeatedly attacked, in day light, the American intelligence ship USS Liberty, off the Sinai coast, killing 34 of its crew and wounding 171. The Israeli government said it was a mistake, and the Johnson administration accepted the Israeli claim and dropped the matter. Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak discovered that the U.S. embassy in Beirut had intercepted Israeli radio traffic in which an Israeli pilot reported: "It's an American ship." The attack went ahead anyway. Evans and Novak concluded that Israel deliberately attacked the American ship because "[The Liberty] would have picked up every word of communication between [the Israeli army's] headquarters and Israeli units preparing to invade Syria."

The Israeli lobby in America has been fond of claiming that the Israeli occupation of Arab territories is benign. Findley fires back by citing a battery of damning evidence: from the UN Goulding Report of 1988 on Israeli violations of "a broad range of Human rights;" The European Community Report (1988) deploring "the repressive measures taken by Israel, which are violations of international law and human rights;" to the Jimmy Carter Report (1990) in which the former President deplored the "authoritarian" nature of Israeli occupation which is "depriving the people [Palestinians] under its control of their basic human rights."

Is Israel a democracy? Yes, for its Jewish citizens. Findley reviews some of the basic discriminatory practices of the various Israeli governments against their Arab citizens and concludes: "Discrimination against Palestinians living in Israel is deep and endemic, and it is embodied in Israel's laws and government regulations. The most obvious example of this discrimination is the fact that no Palestinian has the basic right to return to his or her homeland while any Jew anywhere in the world can receive automatic citizenship in Israel under the 1950 Law of Return."

Findley also takes on the AIPAC and its questionable tactics. He quotes Gregory D. Slabodkin, who was once an AIPAC researcher, as saying: "To date, revelations about AIPAC's blacklisting and smear tactics have barely scratched the surface of the pro-Israel lobby's secret activities."

Does Israel pay its debts plus interests to the United States like all other borrowers? No. Findley reminds us that since 1985 all U.S. aid (almost $5 billion annually) to Israel has been a grant, meaning that Israel does not have to repay a penny of it. Further, the Cranston amendment stipulates that economic aid to Israel each year will be at least equal to the annual repayments of the debts it contracted prior to 1985; Findley quotes former Secretary of State James Baker's sarcastic remark before the Senate in 1992: "We can always pay ourselves back with the money that we appropriated for Israel to do so."

Has Israel played a progressive role in promoting international peace? Not when you consider its unedifying record of support for Third World dictators and its operations on behalf of the CIA to penetrate newly independent states in black Africa. Thus Israel supported the brutal and tyrannical regimes of Idi Amin in Uganda, Mobutu in Zaire, and the Megalomanic emperor Bokassa (recently released from jail) in the Central African Republic. Israel also promised to exercise its influence to improve the public image in America of some of those murderers. Prime Minister Shamir made such a promise to Zaire. Israel and its friends in America played a role in the generally benign reputation brutal dictator Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania enjoyed in the media and in Washington. They also encouraged Congress to continue to grant Romania most favored nation status during Ceausescu's brutal rule. When Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos wanted to improve their deteriorating image in the United States, they turned to Israel. At the same time Israel continued to be in Central America, according to former Israeli General Mattiyahu Peled as, "'the dirty work' contractor for the U.S. administration."

Findley lists 69 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, all of which were supported or tacitly accepted by the United States; he also provides a list of the 29 resolutions condemning Israel which were blocked by American veto at the Security Council.

Did the famed Israeli intelligence serve American national security? Stanfield Turner, former Director of the CIA, should know. Turner is categorical: "Israeli intelligence has failed. Ninety percent of the statements made about Israel's contribution to America's security are public relations."

Do Israel and America share fundamental values? Findley responds with an effective analogy: "To grasp the absurdity of the notion that Israel is like America," he writes, "one need only contemplate what life would be like if America operated by the Israeli rule book. Under those rules, American Christians, the predominant religious community, would enjoy a highly privileged status. They alone could confiscate property of non-Christians, carry firearms, buy or lease government property, secure subsidized housing, and enjoy other financial benefits. Non-Christians could be shot on suspicion of carrying a gun or Molotov cocktail. Their bones could be broken by police as a means of disciplinary education. Their homes could be entered forcibly without a search warrant, dynamited, or sealed. They would be subject to arrest and incarceration for long periods without due process. . . . Israel practices as state policy a number of measures that are illegal in the United States . . . Israel is the only country that officially sanctions torture."

Findley's basic motivation for writing Deliberate Deceptions is succinctly articulated at the beginning of the book: "If the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict were written today, it would record that the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens, both Christians and Jews, have been either silent about the inhumane policies being carried out by Israel or directly complicit in their implementation."

Findley has written, in his usual forthright style, a remarkably useful book of reference rich in well-documented and damning facts. One wonders why then, knowing all of this, Congressman Paul Findley, while critical of some Israeli policies, consistently supported and voted for the ever - growing American economic and military aid package to Israel. Findley says that his real learning about the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict started only while he was doing research for his previous book. Moreover, he admits to "reflect with sadness" on his own voting record.

Findley wanted his book to provide information that will inspire thoughtful citizens to demand change. This, his book does, and does it very well. The reader should find it not only informative but also inspiring.

Adel Safty is a professor at the University of British Columbia.