August 27, 2004/Elul 10 5763, Vol. 55, No. 49
Nader's public view painfully narrowANDREW SILOW-CARROLLIn 1992, shortly before the election of Bill Clinton, I took a job as a publicist for Public Citizen, a consumer-rights organization founded by Ralph Nader. It was a time of idealism, a time of hope - and a time when I was unemployed, with an infant at home, and desperately in need of a job.In general, I supported the organization's goals, which at the time included lobbying for safe pharma-ceuticals and universal health care, campaign finance reform and improved auto safety. Although he had little to do with the organization after founding it some 15 years earlier and turning it over to his associates, Nader's presence was felt in a culture of low pay, long hours and a laser-like - even blinkered - dedication to The Cause. I enjoyed the work, and I got a free graduate-level education in the legislative and regulatory process from Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. But you can safely say I was no Nader's Raider. If there was a single moment when I knew that I never would be, it came on Sept. 13, 1993. That morning, at Public Citizen's Dupont Circle offices, I was sitting restlessly at a planning meeting, probably strategizing the group's opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Meanwhile, a few blocks away, President Clinton was bringing Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat together for their famous handshake. Had I been working in Jewish journalism at that time, I likely would have been watching history being made on the White House lawn. At Public Citizen headquarters, no one even had a television set tuned to the ceremony. I soon left to go to work at a Jewish magazine. I've lost contact with my Public Citizen colleagues, but I thought about that experience again as I read about Nader's recent comments on U.S. support for Israel. Speaking earlier this summer to a gathering of Muslim activists on Capitol Hill, Nader pinned the impasse in Middle East talks on the United States. Said Nader: "The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington, meets with the puppet in the White House, and then proceeds to Capitol Hill, where he meets with hundreds of other puppets." The Anti-Defamation League subsequently wrote Nader to say the puppet metaphor fit into "age-old stereotypes," but Nader was unfazed. His response to the ADL reads as if it were co-written by Michael Lerner and David Duke. From Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, he seems to borrow the reasonable critique that the White House must do more to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the table and that the first move must come from a militarily superior Israel. From the white supremacist Duke, he borrows the usual stuff about a cowardly Congress subservient to the all-powerful Jewish lobby. He repeats the "puppet-puppeteer" charge. And he describes the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's "ditto machine on Capitol Hill," where "many members of Congress ... against their private judgment, resign themselves to sign on the dotted line." The letter is a muddle. Nader writes: "About half of the Israeli people over the years have disagreed with the present Israeli government's policies toward the Palestinian people." Which policies? Is he talking about Ariel Sharon's call for a dismantlement of settlements in Gaza, which has support on the left and middle and is widely unpopular on the right? He quotes, in support of his thesis, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to the effect that "Israel should take the initiative itself unilaterally and start disengaging from the West Bank and Gaza and not keep looking for the right Palestinian Authority." Again, that's Sharon's position as well. The "puppeteer" stuff also falls down on the facts. In his letter, Nader asks the ADL if the Congress or the White House has "pursued a course of action, since 1956, that contradicted the Israeli government's position." Well, the Reagan administration did, condemning the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor and selling AWACs spy planes to the Saudis. Both presidents Bush reduced U.S. loan guarantees to penalize the Israelis for settlement activities. As for members of Congress voting pro-Israel "against their private judgment," can Nader prove this? Even if you want to argue that some lawmakers have private reservations about pro-Israel actions, you'd have to acknowledge that politicians are in the vote-getting business. The Israel lobby is powerful, but poll after poll also shows that support for Israel's security is a grassroots issue, certainly in urban areas and across the evangelical heartland. Besides, for any politician in the post-9/11 era, what is the viable alternative to voting pro-Israel? Supporting Arafat and his violent rejection of a peace deal the previous Israeli government was ready to sign? Joining an anti-Israel bloc in the United Nations that can't seem to condemn the terrorism that inspires Israeli retaliation? Muslim Americans don't need to study the pro-Israel lobby's methods, as Nader suggests. They just need to find a cause that rejects terrorism as a negotiating tactic. It's the "puppeteer" charge, however, that shows how out of touch Nader is, as if, considering his self-defeating presidential campaigns, further proof were needed. It's one thing to argue that the United States needs a more assertive Arab-Israeli policy. But suggesting that American politicians are voting against American interests at the whim of a foreign government is straight out of Der Strmer. I don't know enough about Nader to call him an anti-Semite, and I reject suggestions that just because he has Lebanese ancestry, he has a visceral distrust of Israel or the Jews. Perhaps, like my colleagues gathered around the conference table on the day of the handshake on the White House lawn, he isn't able to see much beyond his focused - some might say narrow - agenda. Often that leads to good things, like safer cars, and better medicines and a more responsive government. And sometimes it leads to a complete lack of empathy with those whose agendas may differ, and to words that label good public citizens as traitors. Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, where this article originally appeared. |
