Arab Gov'ts Should Do More To Counter Jewish Lobby In The US

Jordan Times ^

[RCW2001]

By Francesca Sawalha

AMMAN — Edward Walker, who heads Washington's Middle East Institute (MEI), on Tuesday urged Arab governments and institutions to do more to counter the influence of the powerful Jewish lobby in the US. For too long, he said, US congressmen have heard only one voice — “the voice of the very committed supporters of the Israeli right.” While the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israeli Washington Institute and the Israeli embassy are bombarding Capitol Hill with reports, press releases and fact sheets, objective information on the Middle East conflict and Arab and Muslim issues remain scarce. “I do not object to the Washington Institute and AIPAC; they are part of our system,” said Walker, who served as assistant secretary of state for near east affairs under former US President Bill Clinton. “But you, the Arabs, can no longer afford to just ignore Washington. Arab governments and institutions should start considering how to affect public opinion in the US.” Walker, who arrived here on Sunday as part of a high-profile tour of the region that has already taken him to Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, was speaking at a roundtable organised by the Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS) at the University of Jordan. He was expected today in Saudi Arabia, from where he was to continue to Israel and the Palestinian self-rule areas. He said his tour was aimed at discussing with regional leaders and opinion-makers the US-led campaign against terrorism and other repercussions of the Sept. 11 attacks. On Monday, he was received at the Royal Court separately by His Majesty King Abdullah, with whom he discussed the international and regional political situation, and Her Majesty Queen Rania, with whom he tackled the problem of rectifying misconceptions on Islam in American public opinion. Walker, who was also an ambassador to Israel and Egypt, met on Sunday with local business leaders, in a bid to raise funds for the MEI. The institute is generally viewed on the American think-tank scene as a counterbalance to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which disseminates largely pro-Israeli, rightwing views. But the task is not easy, Walker pointed out yesterday. WINEP, with a $15 million budget, can invite speakers from the region, organise visits, sponsor publications, and influence big media corporations. The MEI's $1.2 million budget allows for much less. Exerting immediate efforts to influence American public opinion and Capitol Hill becomes more crucial should one agree with Walker and believe that the next few months will be decisive to forge the US' Middle East foreign policy over the next decades. “The next six months will be crucial for American foreign policy in the next 20 years,” he told an audience of former ambassadors, foreign ministry officials and scholars at the CSS. In Washington, politicians affiliated with the Jewish lobby are working fast and furious in the wake of the terror attacks to discredit Secretary of State Colin Powell and his policies based on multilateralism and coalition-building. “These people believe that we should not only be attacking Osama Ben Laden in Afghanistan, but also Saddam Hussein in Baghdad,” Walker warned. “They have tried to attack the secretary of state personally, but found it was not very practical, because he is very popular.” So, Walker continued, the Jewish lobby and its politicians started attacking Powell's policies, especially by disseminating “baseless and untrue” reports suggesting that Arab countries, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, were not supporting the US-led war against terror. The Sept. 11 attacks triggered a major change in the US, whereby average Americans “are starting to realise that there is a whole world out there,” and have started asking questions about Islam and the Middle East. The attacks came at a time when the administration of US President George W. Bush had already started appreciating that “not being engaged in the [Mideast] peace process was a mistake,” Walker argued, adding that the new president has by now realised he “pulled back too far.” “It took the administration some time to understand that this [disengagement] was damaging US interests in the region,” he noted. Now that Bush appears finally determined to play as active a role as his predecessor in Mideast peace-making, a “crescendo” of charges and counter-charges between the administration and Israeli premier Ariel Sharon has dominated bilateral exchanges lately. “This is because the US has a concept of negotiations and Sharon has a completely different one,” Walker said. “At some point, I believe, they will clash,” he contended. Meanwhile, as Washington is back in the middle of Mideast negotiations and American public opinion is willing to hear about the region, Arab governments and institutions cannot miss this chance of being heard.

[cake_crumb]

Hey, that looks like a European woman lighting that flag ( far right, right-hand photo )!!

[veronica]

See the Saudi Prince bungle his $10 million dollar donation to the victims of the Islamic lobby.

That worked out great, didn't it? Heh.

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

New Kach Now

Here ya go, but don't expect much.
The Arab *lobby* is now the butt end of the Kyber Pass. May it be shat on forever.

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

kyber=KHYBER
sorry

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

Thee mus' not be reading the latest news, muh friend. Bush is kick-@ss tired of the Paleo-stinians. As is most of the rest of the civilized world. Wanna bet yer anthrax came from Saudi Arabia? I have a few extra pennies to spare...but the bet stands.

[MtnMover]

Perhaps both these constituencies should declare their allegiance to either America or their respective countries and focus their lobbying efforts accordingly. If they choose to be American citizens then they can work to strengthen America, not by fragmenting the House with the black-congress, the jewish-congress, the latin-congress or any other subgroup of the congress. We have enough American special interests fragmenting the American House into subcultures that promote the agendas of foreign nations. The US is not the UN - it is the US of us - without dual-citizenships either. If you want to lobby the UN or promote your country's interests, work through the diplomatic arm of the Department of State, use an international NGO, the news media, or anything else, but do not fragment the American Congress with special ethnic interests groups that serve as a political front for a foreign agenda.

[FITZ]

Those pictures don't show Israelis burning the US flag. These people have to realize that in order to make friends, you have to be friends. Burning flags and having anti-US protests and committing terrorist acts is not how to influence the US in any positive way.

[MtnMover]

I wonder how the two parties would behave if America indicated that in the interest of peace and freedom, it would redirect one-half of the aid it currently provides to Isreal to the Palestinians unless their political representatives did not soon come together in negotiations with the mandate that all aid to either party would be withdrawn if an agreement was not reached within a reasonable and short period of time. Serious conflict in these small territorities has gone on for way too long - and has occupied too much of our global interests. Give them one last chance to find a stable policy for tolerance, and emphasize that if continued serious conflict is the outcome of negotiations, everyone in the allied and non-allied communities will simply walk away and not focus our cameras on the outcome until the swords are turned into plows, regardless of who is planting the seeds.

[veronica]

Stop acting as if a Palestinian state has not been on the table before.

Barak offered one and Arafat balked. Nothing new here re: Bush. He only did it to appease the Arabs, and it won't get any results.

[veronica]

Our relationship with Israel is becoming more of a problem than an asset.

Only to the anti-Israel nutballs. In all recent polls support for Israel among normal Americans is at an all-time high.

[ccmay]

If by that you mean most Americans support Israel's right to exist in peace, then yes. But if by that you infer that most Americans are willing to give Sharon carte blanche in his oppression of innocent Palestinians, then I'm afraid you're mistaken.

I'm not so sure. People were pretty stirred up by the sight of Pallies dancing in the streets. This non-Jew thinks they are scum that should all be pushed over the border at gunpoint. If Sharon wants to muck out every Arab within the borders of Israel, fine by me. And the occupied territories? Those too. They should occupy as much as they can.

-ccm

[ccmay]

“I do not object to the Washington Institute and AIPAC; they are part of our system,” said Walker, who served as assistant secretary of state for near east affairs under former US President Bill Clinton.

“But you, the Arabs, can no longer afford to just ignore Washington. Arab governments and institutions should start considering how to affect public opinion in the US.”

Here is an example of the Arabist bias infesting the State Department, especially under Clinton. These striped-pants blowhards all need to be kicked out.

-ccm

[Don Joe]

"I wonder how the two parties would behave if America indicated that in the interest of peace and freedom, it would redirect one-half of the aid it currently provides to Isreal to the Palestinians..."

Fantastic logic there pal.

Let's run with it in the name of consistency, shall we?

We should also demand that -- "in the interest of peace and freedom" -- half the UK's budget go to the IRA, and half the US's budget go to the Taliban.

Do you actually think this stuff up, or are you just copying from your daily faxed copy of PLO "Ranting Points"?

[Don Joe]

"his oppression of innocent Palestinians"

Next time please give a "put down your coffee" warning when you drop side-splitters like that, OK? You owe me a new keyboard!

[LenS]

The only "innocent Palestinians" are the dead ones. No more negotiations. No more talk. It's time bring peace by the only methods that history has shown to work -- conquest or annihilation. For the first, ask the Japanese or the Germans. For the second, ask the Carthaginians -- oh well, I guess you can't do that unless you're that Crossing Over con man. It's far past time the Palestinians are either killed or returned to their homelands in Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq. It's also past time that the US nuked Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran (Let the returning Palestinians survive in a radioactive wasteland). And take back the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.

NO QUARTER!