    I Was Israel’s Dupe

    By TOM HAYDEN

    Twenty-five years ago I stared into the eyes of Michael Berman, chief
    operative for his congressman-brother, Howard Berman. I was a neophyte
    running for the California Assembly in a district that the Bermans
    claimed belonged to them.

    “I represent the Israeli defense forces,” Michael said. I thought he was
    joking. He wasn’t. Michael seemed to imagine himself the gatekeeper
    protecting Los Angeles’ Westside for Israel’s political interests, and
    those of the famous Berman-Waxman machine. Since Jews represented
    one-third of the Democratic district’s primary voters, Berman held a
    balance of power.

    All that year I tried to navigate the district’s Jewish politics. The
    solid historical liberalism of the Westside was a favorable factor, as
    was the strong support of many Jewish community leaders. But the
    community was moving in a more conservative direction. Some were
    infuriated at my sponsorship of Santa Monica’s tough rent control
    ordinance. Many in the organized community were suspicious of the New
    Left for becoming Palestinian sympathizers after the Six Day War; they
    would become today’s neoconservatives.

    I had traveled to Israel in a generally supportive capacity, meeting
    officials from all parties, studying energy projects, befriending peace
    advocates like the writer Amos Oz. I also met with Palestinians and
    commented favorably on the works of Edward Said. As a result, a Berman
    ally prepared an anti-Hayden dossier in an attempt to discredit my
    candidacy with the Democratic leadership in the California state
    capital.

    This led to the deli lunch with Michael Berman. He and his brother were
    privately leaning toward an upcoming young prosecutor named Adam Schiff,
    who later became the congressman from Pasadena. But they calculated that
    Schiff couldn’t win without name recognition, so they were considering
    “renting” me the Assembly seat, Berman said. But there was one
    condition: that I always be a “good friend of Israel.”

    This wasn’t a particular problem at the time. Since the 1970s I had
    favored some sort of two-state solution. I felt close to the local
    Jewish activists who descended from the labor movement and participated
    in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements. I wanted to take up the
    cause of the aging Holocaust survivors against the global insurance
    companies that had plundered their assets.

    While I believed the Palestinians had a right to self-determination, I
    didn’t share the animus of some on the American left who questioned
    Israel’s very legitimacy. I was more inclined toward the politics of
    Israel’s Peace Now and those Palestinian nationalists and human rights
    activists who accepted Israel’s pre-1967 borders as a reality to
    accommodate. I disliked the apocalyptic visions of the Israeli settlers
    I had met, and thought that even hard-line Palestinians would grudgingly
    accept a genuine peace initiative.

    I can offer my real-life experience to the present discussion about the
    existence and power of an “Israel lobby.” It is not as monolithic as
    some argue, but it is far more than just another interest group in a
    pluralist political world. In recognizing its diversity, distinctions
    must be drawn between voters and elites, between Reform and Orthodox
    tendencies, between the less observant and the more observant. During my
    ultimate 18 years in office, I received most of my Jewish support from
    the ranks of the liberal and less observant voters. But I also received
    support from conservative Jews who saw themselves as excluded by a
    Jewish (and Democratic) establishment.

    However, all these rank-and-file constituencies were attuned to the
    question of Israel, even in local and state elections, and would never
    vote for a candidate perceived as anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian. I had
    to be certified “kosher,” not once but over and over again.

    The certifiers were the elites, beginning with rabbis and heads of the
    multiple mainstream Jewish organizations, especially each city’s Jewish
    Federation. An important vetting role was held as well by the
    American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), a group closely
    associated with official parties in Israel. When necessary, Israeli
    ambassadors, counsels general and other officials would intervene with
    statements declaring someone a “friend of Israel.”

    In my case, a key to the “friendship issue” was the Los Angeles-based
    counsel general Benjamin Navon. Though politics drew us together, our
    personal friendship was genuine enough. I think that Benny, as he was
    called, wanted to pull me and my then-wife, Jane Fonda, into a
    pro-Israel stance, but he himself was an old-school labor/social
    democrat who personally believed in a negotiated political settlement.
    We enjoyed personal and intellectual time together, and I still keep on
    my bookshelf a wooden sculpture by his wife, of an anguished victim of
    violence.

    The de facto Israeli endorsement would be communicated indirectly, in
    compliance with laws that prohibit foreign interference in an American
    election. We would be seen and photographed together in public. Benny
    would make positive public statements that could be quoted in campaign
    mailings. As a result, I was being declared “kosher” by the ultimate
    source, the region’s representative of the state of Israel.

    Nevertheless, throughout the spring 1982 campaign I was accused of being
    a left-wing madman allied to terrorism and communism. The national
    Democratic leader Walter Mondale commented jokingly during a local visit
    that I was being described as worse than Lenin. It was a wild ride.

    I won the hard-fought primary by 51% to 45%. The Bermans stayed neutral.
    Willie Brown, Richard Alatorre and the rest of the California Democratic
    establishment were quietly supportive. I easily won the general election
    in November.

    But that summer I made the mistake of my political career. The Israel
    Defense Forces invaded Lebanon, and Benny Navon wanted Jane and me to be
    supportive. It happened that I had visited the contested border in the
    past, witnessed the shelling of civilian Israeli homes, and interviewed
    Israeli and Lebanese zealots—crazies, I thought, who were preaching
    preventive war. I opposed cross-border rocket attacks and naively
    favored a demilitarized zone.

    Ever curious, and aware of my district’s politics, I decided we should
    go to the Middle East—but only as long as the Israeli “incursion,” as it
    was delicately called, was limited to the 10-kilometer space near the
    Lebanese border, as a cushion against rocket fire. Benny Navon assured
    me that the “incursion” was limited, and would be followed by
    negotiations and a solution. I also made clear our opposition to the use
    of any fragmentation bombs in the area, and my ultimate political
    identification with what Israeli Peace Now would say.

    There followed a descent into moral ambiguity and realpolitick that
    still haunts me today. When we arrived at the Israeli-Lebanon border,
    the game plan promised by Benny Navon had changed utterly. Instead of a
    localized border conflict, Israel was invading and occupying all of
    Lebanon—with us in tow. Its purpose was to destroy militarily the
    Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) haven in Lebanon. This had
    been Gen. Ariel Sharon’s secret plan all along, and I never will know
    with certainty whether Benny Navon had been deceived along with everyone
    else.

    For the next few weeks, I found myself defending Israel’s “right” to
    self-defense on its border, only to realize privately how foolish I was
    becoming. In the meantime, Israel’s invasion was continuing, with ardent
    Jewish support in America.

    Finally, a close friend and political advisor of mine, Ralph Brave, took
    me for a walk, looked into my eyes and said: “Tom, you can’t do this.
    You have to stop.” He was right, and I did. In the California
    Legislature, I went to work on Holocaust survivor issues while
    withdrawing from the bind of Israeli-Palestinian politics. When the
    first Palestinian intifada began, I sensed from experience that the
    balance of forces had changed, and that the Israeli occupation was
    finished. Frictions developed between me and some of my Israeli and
    Jewish friends when I suggested that Israel must make a peace deal
    immediately or accept a worse deal later.

    It is still painful and embarrassing to describe these events of nearly
    25 years ago, but with Israel today again bombing Lebanon and Israeli
    officials bragging about “rolling back the clock by twenty years” and
    reconfiguring the Middle East, I feel obliged to speak out against
    history repeating.

    How do I read today’s news through the lens of the past?

    What I fear is that the “Israeli lobby” is working overtime to influence
    American public opinion on behalf of Israel’s military effort to “roll
    back the clock” and “change the map” of the region, going far beyond
    issues like prisoner exchange.

    What I fear is that the progress of the American peace movement against
    the Iraq war will be diverted and undermined, at least for now, by the
    entry of Israel from the sidelines into the center of the equation.

    What I fear is the rehabilitation of the discredited U.S.
    neoconservative agenda to ignite a larger war against Hamas, Hezbollah,
    Syria and Iran. The neoconservatives’ 1996 “Clean Break” memo advocated
    that Israel “roll back” Lebanon and destabilize Syria in addition to
    overthrowing Saddam Hussein. An intellectual dean of the
    neoconservatives, Bernard Lewis, has long advocated the “Lebanonization”
    of the Middle East, meaning the disintegration of nation states into “a
    chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and
    parties.”

    This divide-and-conquer strategy, a brainchild of the region’s British
    colonizers, is already taking effect in Iraq, where America overthrew a
    secular state, installed a Shiite majority and its militias in power and
    now portrays itself as the only protection for Sunnis against those same
    Shiites. The resulting quagmire has become a justification for American
    troops to remain.

    What I fear is trepidation and confusion among rank-and-file voters and
    activists, and the paralysis of politicians, especially Democrats, who
    last week were moving gradually toward setting a deadline for U.S.
    withdrawal from Iraq. The politics of the present crisis favor the
    Republicans and the White House in the short run. How many politicians
    will favor withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq under present conditions?
    Isn’t this Karl Rove’s game plan for the November elections?

    What I know is that I will not make the same mistake again. I hope that
    my story deepens the resolve of all those whose feelings are torn,
    conflicted or confused in the present. It is not being a “friend of
    Israel” to turn a blind eye to its never-ending occupation.

    One might argue, and many Americans today might agree, that Hezbollah
    and Hamas started this round of war with their provocative kidnappings
    of Israeli soldiers. Lost in the headlines, however, is the fact that
    the Israelis have 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, and have negotiated
    prisoner swaps before. Others will blame the Islamists for incessant
    rocket attacks on Israel. But the roots of this virulent spiral of
    vengeance lie in the permanent occupation of Palestinian territories by
    the overconfident Israelis. As it did in 1982, Israel now admits that
    the war is not about prisoner exchanges or cease-fires; it is about
    eradicating Hezbollah and Hamas altogether, if necessary by an
    escalation against Syria or even Iran. It should be clear by now that
    the present Israeli government will never accept an independent
    Palestinian state, but rather harbors a colonial ambition to decide
    which Palestinian leaders are acceptable.

    In 1982, Israel said the same thing about eliminating PLO sanctuaries in
    Lebanon. It was after that 1982 Israeli invasion that Hezbollah was
    born. I remember Israeli national security experts even taking credit
    for fostering Hamas and Islamic fundamentalism as safe, reclusive
    alternatives to Palestinian secular nationalism. I remember watching
    Israeli soldiers blow up Palestinian houses and carry out collective
    punishment because, they told me matter-of-factly, punishment is the
    only language that Arabs understand. Israelis are inflicting collective
    punishment on Lebanese civilians for the same reason today.

    It is clear that apocalyptic forces, openly green-lighted by President
    Bush, are gambling on the impossible. They are trying to snatch victory
    from the jaws of defeat in Iraq through escalation in Lebanon and
    beyond. This is yet another faith-based initiative.

    If the American people do not see through the headlines; if the
    Democrats turn hawkish; if the international community fails to
    intervene immediately, the peace movement may be sidelined to a
    prophetic and marginal role for the moment. But we can say the following
    for now:

    Militarism and occupation cannot extinguish the force of Islamic
    nationalism. Billions in American tax dollars are funding the Israeli
    troops and bombs.

    There needs to be an exit strategy. The absence of any such exit plan is
    the weakest element of the U.S.-Israeli campaign. Just as the White
    House says it plans to deploy 50,000 troops on permanent bases in an
    occupied Iraq, so the Israelis speak of permanently eliminating their
    enemies, from Gaza to Tehran. The result will be further occupation,
    resistance and deeper quagmire.

    The immediate conflict should not become a pretext for continuing the
    U.S. military occupation of Iraq. American soldiers should not be stuck
    waist-deep in a sectarian quagmire. Congressional insistence on denying
    funds for permanent military bases is a vital first step. Otherwise we
    will witness a tacit alliance between Israel and the U.S. to dominate
    the Middle East militarily.

    Most important, Americans must not be timid in speaking up, as I was 25
    years ago. Silence is consent to occupation.