Published by Americans for The Link Middle East Understanding, Inc. Volume 40, Issue 4 Link Archives: www.ameu.org October-November 2007 Avraham Burg: Apostate or Avatar? BY JOHN MAHONEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMEU vraham Burg is the author of a new book, A “Defeating Hitler,” and the subject of a recent— and provocative—article in The New Yorker magazine. In these publications Burg announces the end of the Zionist enterprise. Want to know, he asks fellow Israelis, why Palestinians blow themselves up in our restaurants? Look at how we treat them. Think our dependence on U.S. dollars and weapons is good? Think again. Want to keep a Jewish majority in our country? No problem. Ex- pel the Arabs or wall them up into Bantustans. These pronouncements have triggered condemnation all across the Israeli political spectrum and have stirred controversy in the American-Jewish media. His critique, to be sure, does represent something new. But the new- ness lies not in what he says. As we shall see, other Jews, Israeli and American, have expressed similar viewpoints. (Continued on Page 2.) The Link Page 2 AMEU Board (Continued from Page 1.) of Directors Jane Adas (Vice President) Future of the Zionist Nation State Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr. How might a Catholic feel were the pope to announce he We are already dead. We haven’t re- Elizabeth D. Barlow was turning Protestant, moving ceived the news yet, but we are dead. It Edward Dillon to Germany, and writing a book doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t work. called “Luther Won”? John Goelet —Avraham Burg, Ha’aretz Richard Hobson That, say some Israelis, is Weekend Magazine, June 6, 2007 how they feel about Avraham Anne R. Joyce Burg, former Speaker of the Hon. Robert V. Keeley Knesset, now a businessman The Israeli nation today rests on a scaf- living in France. folding of corruption, and on founda- Kendall Landis (Treasurer) Is Avraham Burg deserting tions of oppression and injustice. As Robert L. Norberg (President) the Zionist ship of state? Or is such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is Hon. Edward L. Peck he — to use a biblical image— already on our doorstep. There is a real Lachlan Reed a prophet hurling hard truths at chance that ours will be the last Zionist corrupt leaders? Donald L. Snook generation. There may yet be a Jewish Rosemarie Sunderland This issue looks at the con- state here, but it will be a different sort, troversy surrounding one of strange and ugly. James M. Wall Zionism’s political elite. —Avraham Burg, The Guardian, AMEU’s book/video catalog Sept. 15, 2003 is on pp. 13-15. AMEU National Council * * * The Israeli reality is not exciting. Peo- Hon. James E. Akins AMEU is saddened to an- ple are not willing to admit it, but Israel nounce the death of longtime has reached the wall. Ask your friends Isabelle Bacon National Council member John if they are certain their children will live William R. Chandler Trever. here. How many will say yes? At most David S. Dodge In 1948, as Acting Director fifty per cent. In other words, the Israeli Paul Findley of Jerusalem’s American elite has already parted with this place. O. Kelly Ingram School of Oriental Research, Dr Trever was involved with the And without the elite there is no nation. Moorhead Kennedy newly discovered Isaiah “A” —Avraham Burg, The New Ann Kerr scroll. His photographs of the Yorker, July 30, 2007 Mary Norton first three scrolls helped to pre- Marie Petersen serve the rare find for future researchers. At Claremont Don W. Wagner ami Esmail’s mother was one of the School of Theology in Califor- S Miriam Ward, RSM nia, he served as Director of few survivors of the Deir Yassin massacre in the Dead Sea Scrolls Project. 1948. She and her husband eventually came Executive Director to Brooklyn where they started a dry goods John honored us by lending John F. Mahoney the prestige of his name to our business. When they retired, they moved to efforts to help the people in the Ramallah on the West Bank. land of the Isaiah scrolls. He understood that the words of In December 1977, Esmail, a U.S. citizen, AMEU (ISSN 0024-4007) grants Isaiah ring as true today as was called to the bedside of his dying father. permission to reproduce material when they were first scratched As he deplaned at Ben Gurion Airport, he from The Link in part or in whole. down on parchment: Yahweh is was arrested and interrogated for hours by AMEU must be credited and one still calling on His people “to let copy forwarded to our office at 475 the oppressed go free.” Israel’s secret police, who wanted him to con- Riverside Drive, Room 245, New fess to having received military training in York, New York 10115-0245. Tel. John F. Mahoney Libya. It was not true, he told them. Israel 212-870-2053; Fax 212-870-2050; Executive Director E-mail: [email protected]; Website: was supposed to be a democracy, he said. If www.ameu.org. The Link Page 3 they had evidence, let them present it in a court of me and give me moral support and guide law. They laughed. There’s no democracy here, they me. She has been more than a mother to me. scoffed, that’s for foreign consumption. The fact that Felicia came out publicly and said that I consider Sami as my second son, Then, they said, they’d prove it. They stripped and the fact that I have mutual feelings, this him and made sexual jokes. They spat at him. They is the greatness in it all, as I see it, that Jews handcuffed him and brought him to Baedaktic Police and Palestinians can come to a true under- Station, and put him in a room 7 by 4 feet. For days, standing. My hope is that this will be like a day and night, seven different people interrogated sign of hope for the future; that there can be him. At one point he collapsed on the floor, due to understanding, a real understanding be- lack of sleep. He was dressed and undressed many tween people. times. He was punched, his hair was pulled. And they reminded him that his father was dying. Felicia Langer knows the trauma Sami’s mother experienced. Her own family had to flee Poland for At some point he went Russia following the out- crazy and broke out crying break of World War II, and and screaming. “Okay,” he her husband is a survivor of told them, “Just leave me Nazi concentration camps. alone. What do you want She came to Israel in 1950, me to write?” They dictated where she received her law a confession saying he was degree in 1964. Following recruited by so and so, his the 1967 war, she spent 23 code name was such and years defending Palestini- such, that he learned how to ans, most often unsuccess- mantle and dismantle ex- fully. Burnt out, and claim- plosives and rifles in Libya. ing the military justice sys- On June 12, 1978, Esmail tem had become a farce, she was sentenced to 15 months left Israel in 1990 for a self- in prison; he was released imposed exile in Tübingen, on October 18, 1978. In an Germany, where she contin- exclusive interview with The ues to this day to denounce Link in our November- the occupation. Here, as in December 1978 issue, we Felicia Langer Israel, she is attacked by asked him: How do you as- other Jews who accuse her sess the role of your Israeli of treason and threaten her with death. defense attorney, Felicia Langer? His answer: In 1990, Felicia Langer traveled to Stockholm to I consider Felicia Langer as a mother to me. receive the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize for I could see in her face that she was holding “exemplary courage in her struggle for the basic me as a child for ten months. She suffered a rights of the Palestinian people;” in 1991 she was lot for me. Many times her tears would just awarded the Bruno Kreisky Award for Outstanding start streaking down her face when I would Achievement in the area of Human Rights; in 2005, tell her about the things that were happen- she received the Erich-Mühsem Prize for her con- ing. And all the little things that she does tinuous service to the Palestinian people. for you. The second time she came by she Like Burg, Langer has been telling the western brought me a towel and toothpaste and a world that its images of Israel as a “democratic” soap bar, and later on she brought me a country and of Israel’s occupation of Arab lands as shirt, and, when I left, she gave the consul “among the most benevolent” are false. Her message $20 so I would have spending money. And to Israelis is spelled out in the title of one of her all the times she would just sit down with The Link Page 4 books: “Israel Is Losing Its Soul.” words, “went to jail twice because he would not act as a jailer in Lebanon.” * * * Increasingly, Jacobo Timerman felt like a non- nce the military junta took over, they came person not only in Israel but on the lecture circuit in O for him. On the walls of the interrogation the United States. “People like me,” he told Richard room hung swastikas and a picture of Hitler. “Are Curtiss of the Washington Report on Middle East you a Jew?,” they taunted him.