http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jan/12/local/me-11353

President Clinton’s formula for Israeli-Palestinian peace is predicated on an unworkable and disastrous concept: that the world’s largest group of refugees should renounce their basic human rights.

The Clinton plan proposes that–in exchange for a partial Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 and the creation of a Palestinian “state” that lacks contiguity, control of its own borders and natural resources and is subject to unprecedented restrictions on its “sovereignty”–Palestinians renounce the right of millions refugees to return to their homes in what is now the state of Israel.

The ironies are almost overwhelming. In 1999, the Clinton administration led NATO into a brutal war with Yugoslavia in the name of enforcing the right of return for the Kosovar refugees. The same American officials and media pundits who thundered then about the inviolability of refugee rights and the immorality of dispossession and forced exile now demand that Palestinians drop their “unrealistic demands” about refugee rights. These principles, held to be both sacred and a justification for international military intervention, are now dismissed as a fantasy, a ploy and an insidious plot to destroy Israel.

Consider also the barefaced racism in the juxtaposition between Israel’s Law of Return and its opposition to the Palestinian right of return. Since its founding, Israel has opened its borders, and those of the occupied Palestinian territories, to anyone it considers Jewish, but has steadfastly refused to allow Palestinians to return to their own homes and lands simply on the grounds that they are not Jewish.

Without in any way denigrating the profound attachment that Jews around the world feel for the land of Israel, it is important to note that the concepts of return expressed in the Law of Return and the right of return are fundamentally different. The return expressed in the Law of Return–every Jew has the right to immigrate to Israel–is to a generalized area of religious and historic importance to the Jewish people. In sharp contrast, the right of return for Palestinians is not religious or ancestral, but is attached to specific homes and land in specific villages to which many Palestinian refugees hold legal deeds.

President Clinton is essentially asking Palestinians to forget about their homes and property and adopt a Zionist-like attitude that would see “return” as satisfied by physical presence in any part of historic Palestine. This formulation is a grand betrayal of the basic human right of refugees to return to their homes.

The right of return is guaranteed to all refugees by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Fourth Geneva Convention. After their expulsion in 1948, it was specifically applied to the Palestinian refugees in U.N. Resolution 194, which demands that ” the refugees wishing to return to their homes” should be permitted to do so.

Indeed, the Geneva Convention prohibits the renunciation of rights that Israel and the U.S. are trying to force the Palestinians to accept. Drafted in the aftermath of World War II, the Convention recognizes that a conqueror is often able to force a subjugated people to sign away their rights. Therefore Article 8 forbids any renunciation, in whole or in part, of any of the rights it guarantees.

This is perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Clinton plan–not the disregard it shows for the rights and interests of the Palestinian refugees themselves, or the flawed notion that “peace” and reconciliation can be based on a massive denial, indeed a renunciation, of human rights, but the deep damage it does to the very concept of universal human rights.

Fifty years ago, after the Nazi rampage in Europe, the human family committed to outlining a set of basic human rights inherent to all individuals. The Universal Declaration, Geneva Convention and Resolution 194 were all adopted in this context. However imperfect our collective efforts at enforcing these rights have been, the international community at least upheld our commitment to them in principle.

The rights of refugees, above all the right of return, are central and indispensable elements of universal human rights. It is tragic and appalling that the start of the 21st century should see the U.S. leading an effort to coerce an entire people to renounce this right.

A workable Israeli-Palestinian peace must ensure not only a viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem and the right of Israel to live in peace in secure borders, but must also recognize the right of return. The specific modalities of return are a separate matter, to be determined through negotiations and mutual agreement, but the right itself must be recognized.

If their right of return is permanently abrogated, Palestinian refugees will not be the only ones to suffer. Humanity in general would be deeply impoverished if we start renouncing and repudiating rights long since upheld as inviolable, and our slow and painful quest to build a world that provides equal protection to all people will be dealt a crippling blow.

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/oct/18/local/me-38207

The explosion of anger that has rocked the cities of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories was predictable and inevitable. The latest “cease-fire” agreement–as if this has been a conflict between two armies–is unlikely to produce anything more than a temporary lull in the protests. The Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza is the violent context that makes such protests inevitable. There is, in the final analysis, only one way to “stop the violence,” and that is to end the occupation.

The desire for liberation will, eventually, always bring an occupied people out into the streets, stones in hand, ready to face the might of powerful armies, preferring to risk death than live in bondage. This is not extreme nationalism or racism or religious fervor. It is the need to be free.

Americans seem stunned by the uprising, but few have any real grasp of what living under Israeli military occupation since 1967 has meant for Palestinians.

It means a reality of unending violence. It means being surrounded by an abusive foreign army that enforces a social system indistinguishable from apartheid; confiscations of land that is then given to hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in Jewish-only communities linked by Jewish-only roads; home demolitions; torture; cities cut off from each other, closed down, besieged on a regular basis. It means living in a massive prison, bereft of all normal civil, human and national rights.

The seeds that produced the new uprising were sown seven years ago at the White House Rose Garden. If American foreign policy lies in ruins, it is because it was based on a fundamentally false premise: that the Palestinians would accept something less than their own freedom. At Camp David this summer, the Palestinians were told bluntly they could expect nothing of the kind. Israel, they were told, would keep large chunks of the occupied territories, including the Old City of Jerusalem; would continue to control all the borders and the water; and would have a veto on many policies of their “state,” the territories of which would be a patchwork lacking any geographical coherence. This, they were told, was “generous” and the best they could ever get from any Israeli. In other words, forget about liberation.

The predictable result was the massive uprising of recent days.

Since 1967, there has been only one workable solution to the conflict. The plan is articulated in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which sets up a two-part “land for peace” solution. Part one holds that Israel must withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967 (land). Part two calls for all states in the region to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries (peace).

Every “peace process” document, from the Madrid Summit to the final Camp David communique, reiterates that the aim of the negotiations is the implementation of 242. The Palestinian obligations under 242 were fulfilled years ago. The Palestinian Authority recognized Israel in its 1967 borders and its right to live in peace and security in those borders.

The Israeli obligation, withdrawal from the occupied territories, is utterly unfulfilled. Any doubts that the occupation continues in all its grim brutality were irrefutably demonstrated in recent days. Israel simply refuses to end its occupation, especially of Jerusalem, as Ariel Sharon’s invasion of the Muslim holy site was intended to show. The original sin of the U.S.-dominated Oslo process is that it pushed aside international law and the U.N. in an attempt to provide cover for Israel to avoid complying with 242. We have witnessed the results of this shortsightedness over the past weeks. The latest agreement in Egypt continues this fatal error by allowing the United States to monopolize the international investigation into recent events.

But 242 is a solemn commitment by the international community to the Palestinian people. It is the key to security for Israel, liberation for the Palestinians and peace for the Middle East. Until the international community, including the United States, seriously commits itself to ensuring the complete implementation of 242 by all parties, and ending the occupation, the “peace process” is going to keep producing results that look a lot more like war.

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/may/26/local/me-34292

As the Lebanese people have finally liberated themselves from more than two decades of Israeli occupation, most American commentators are reacting with only one concern: Will northern Israel be safe from attack?

The focus on this misleading question is the result of a widespread acceptance of the official Israeli line that its 22-year rampage in southern Lebanon was in essence a futile quest for peace in a hostile region. This view is consistent with the pattern of putting Israeli lives and concerns over those of Arabs, but it is completely inconsistent with the history of the occupation and the experiences of its Lebanese victims.

It is blind to the tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians killed by Israel during the occupation, the hundreds of thousands made homeless and the scores of destroyed villages and cities. It forgets the ghastly massacres of unarmed civilians for which the Israelis have been responsible in Lebanon, including the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and the U.N. base at Qana. It ignores the Lebanese civilians held hostage to this day in Israeli prisons and the hundreds of Lebanese men, women and children held prisoner and tortured at the notorious Khiam detention center run by the Israeli-controlled militia, the South Lebanese Army. It does not acknowledge the pain of the Lebanese nation at being divided for almost a quarter of a century and subject to continuous attacks on its civilian population and infrastructure.

No wonder, given this history, that the scenes of liberation from south Lebanon have been truly extraordinary. Hundreds of Lebanese streamed back into villages and towns from which they had been expelled by Israel. Tears of joy flowed as relatives were reunited after years of separation. Hundreds of civilians stormed Khiam, freeing about 140 prisoners and exposing the hideous apparatus of torture and terror employed there.

These scenes have potentially far-reaching implications. Can others in the Middle East living under foreign military occupation, such as the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, have failed to register what real liberation looks like?

Everywhere Hezbollah fighters, derided by the Israeli and U.S. governments as “terrorists,” conducted themselves in an exemplary manner, handing prisoners over to government troops and ensuring that the liberation was not marred by acts of vengeance. These supposed fanatical terrorists were once again shown to be a disciplined and responsible liberation force.

How quickly it is forgotten that Hezbollah is itself a product of the Israeli occupation, founded in 1982 with the aim of driving out the Israeli army and freeing the south of the hellish experience of occupation. The fretting about potential Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israeli towns is misplaced, given that since 1996 Hezbollah has almost always carried out such attacks in response to Israeli killings of Lebanese civilians, often only after repeated atrocities. By contrast, in recent months Israel repeatedly attacked Lebanese civilian targets, such as power stations, in response to attacks on its soldiers in Lebanon.

The Israeli army may have fled Lebanon in chaos and humiliation, but not without issuing dire threats of massive attacks against Lebanon. Israel’s retreat from Lebanon is incomplete and insufficient. Israel was driven out of most of southern Lebanon by an extraordinary campaign of popular resistance, but continues to occupy the Shabaa Farms area. It holds numerous Lebanese hostage.

There is every indication that Israel still feels it can attack the Lebanese people with impunity. Israel’s foreign minister, David Levy, recently threatened that Israel would continue to target Lebanese civilians “blood for blood, child for child.”

The international community, while paying lip service to Lebanese territorial integrity, failed to exert any pressure on Israel to end its occupation. Instead it was left to resistance groups such as Hezbollah to enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 425, which in 1978 demanded Israel’s unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon “forthwith.”

The United States, Israel’s main patron, financier and arms supplier, has been particularly culpable by repeatedly using its diplomatic muscle, including its Security Council veto, to protect Israel from international criticism after its invasions and atrocities. Rather than helping enforce Resolution 425, which it voted for, the U.S. government line has been that “all foreign forces should withdraw from Lebanon.”

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/may/26/local/me-34292

www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Dec/12/opinion/IBISH12.htm

The imminent resumption of peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, announced this week, resurrects the possibility of a historic agreement ending five decades of conflict between the two nations.

During the final years of the Rabin government in Israel, significant progress in these talks had clearly been achieved. But with the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, they collapsed completely. While the Syrians insisted that talks proceed from where they left off in February 1996, Netanyahu demanded a return to ground zero.

The sticking-point was the return of the Golan Heights, Syrian territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. The Syrian government has maintained, and reports in the Israeli press confirm, that Rabin accepted in principle that a full peace would include the return of the entire Golan Heights. The Israeli government has maintained that no such commitment was ever made, but the terms under which the new negotiations are starting indicate that an ultimate withdrawal to the borders of June 4, 1967, will in fact be the underlying premise of the talks.

Simply put, without an assurance to this effect, the Syrians would not be returning to the table.

Israel must, as Nelson Mandela reminded them in his recent visit, be willing to “pay the price of peace.” Israel’s leading newspapers, Yediot Aharonot and Ha’aretz, have already called on the government to accept a full withdrawal from all occupied Syrian territory in exchange for a full peace. Indeed, this is the model of the treaties already concluded with Egypt and Jordan, and the Syrians have consistently made it clear that they would accept nothing less.

The outstanding issues are likely to be water and security arrangements. There are ample precedents for overcoming such obstacles. The Camp David Treaty between Israel and Egypt provides the model for sharing natural resources, in that case the oil reserves in the Sinai Peninsula. It also provides a model for the removal of Israeli settlers from occupied territories. Security arrangements could involve staged Israeli withdrawals, a demilitarization of the area or the presence of multinational observers.

Ehud Barak, Hafez al-Assad and Bill Clinton all have strong incentives to close this deal. For Assad, who is ailing, an honorable peace with Israel and the recovery of Syrian territory, lost during his tenure as defense minister, would be a crowning moment in his career. As Clinton’s own term in office comes to an end, any significant international accomplishment would help keep the Lewinsky affair from dominating his

legacy. Perhaps, as with Richard Nixon, personal foibles notwithstanding, foreign policies achievements could confer upon him the mantle of respected statesman. And for Barak, whose “red line” demands and settlement expansions have made progress with the Palestinians all but impossible, a Syria deal could gain him the stature of peacemaker.

A deal with Syria would also facilitate Israel’s withdrawal from its quagmire in South Lebanon, which Barak promised to achieve within one year of his election. An unconditional Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon was ordered in 1978 by U.N. Security Council Resolution 425 but has been ignored for decades. The Lebanese government, backed by Syria, has made repeated assurances that it will secure its southern border if Israel withdraws. Hezbollah, the resistance movement founded in 1982 to resist the Israeli occupation, would have no reason to maintain its military activities.

Complaints about existing Arab-Israeli accords tend to emphasize that they lead only to a “cold peace” and that in spite of the absence of conflict, resentment and ill will continue. This is because Arabs cannot be unaffected by the ongoing plight of the Palestinian people. No Syrian-Israeli treaty will assuage these sentiments. No matter how many treaties are signed between Israel and Arab nations, until the Israelis and Palestinians find an equitable means to share what is historically, geographically and economically the same land, continuing conflict is inevitable.

Whether through the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state in all of the occupied territories, or, infinitely preferably, through the development of a single secular, democratic republic for all Israelis and Palestinians, genuine Arab-Israeli peace and reconciliation can emerge only where the conflict began – in Palestine. A Syrian-Israeli treaty should help to clarify this simple fact.

http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Nov/21/opinion/IBISH21.htm

Here we go again. In the wake of the tragic crash of EgyptAir Flight 990, Arab Americans once more find themselves subjected to wild speculation and rushes to judgment based on grotesque cultural misunderstanding and insidious stereotypes.

Essentially, we are being asked to believe that a veteran Egyptian pilot with a spotless record and apparently everything to live for, decided to commit both suicide and mass murder because he reportedly uttered a reference to God in Arabic.

Combined with the lack of an obvious mechanical explanation for the bizarre and terrifying behavior of that aircraft, the “cryptic reference to Allah” has been taken to indicate a sinister or demented state of mind.

Worse, this media speculation follows the insidious and highly irresponsible lead of the crash investigators who released premature, incomplete and inaccurate information such as the “cryptic reference.”

We should be well past the point when a reference to God in Arabic, a language infused with religious references, is so readily associated with violence and dementia. Would any Christian American make such an association with the Lord’s Prayer?

What this week’s orgy of lurid, baseless and offensive speculation has reminded Arab Americans of is that the our language, culture and faith are still stigmatized by both the government and the media. On Friday, USA Today “informed” its readers that “Cairo . . . is dominated by fundamentalists whose views are more in line with the likes of Iraqis and other U.S. foes.”

There have been many rushes to judgment in recent years but surely none so insidious as those involving stereotypes of Arabs.

Following the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, some professional Muslim-bashers and elected officials were quick to point the finger at the Arab American community.

The New York Times reported that there were, ominously, no less than three mosques in Oklahoma City, and the FBI circulated sketches of two “Middle-Eastern looking” suspects. An Arab American arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport from Oklahoma City was arrested for possessing “bomb-making equipment,” a hammer and a spool of wire, in his luggage. When the real culprit turned out to be an all-American neo-Nazi from upstate New York who was trained in explosives by the U.S. Army, the rush to judgment and the stereotypes that had driven it were starkly exposed.

Many in the government and media vowed not to repeat the mistake. But when TWA Flight 800 exploded over the ocean off Long Island in July 1996, it became readily apparent that neither the media nor the government had learned any lessons. Once again the media engaged in wild speculation about Arab culprits, and “experts” such as Steve Emerson were again relied upon to assure us that the crash was caused by an Arab bomber. Vice President Gore chaired a commission on airport security that recommended the “profiling” of potential terrorists at airports. Even after it became clear that the crash was caused by a frayed wire that ignited an explosion in a fuel tank, the profiling system was mandated anyway. As a predictable result, there is hardly an Arab American who has not been “profiled” or who does not know a friend or relative who has been abusively singled out at an airport.

Of course, there is more to the current speculation about a crazed Egyptian pilot than anti-Arab prejudice. As in the case of TWA Flight 800, where theories of an errant Navy missile also abounded, in the face of such a disaster people seem to be comforted by theories of human agency. Human behavior, as opposed to catastrophic nonhuman factors, seems far more controllable. Pilots rightly complain that they are the first to be blamed whenever something goes wrong during a flight.

When there is no person to blame for such a catastrophe, we are uncomfortably reminded of the extent of our own vulnerability to natural or mechanical disaster. We want a quick and relatively reassuring explanation and look therefore for an individual scapegoat.

The demand for this kind of explanation has combined with anti-Arab stereotypes to produce the defamatory theory for the EgyptAir crash, which has caused so much harm to a probably blameless man’s reputation, and the feelings of his grieving family, the Egyptian nation and the Arab American community.

Arab Americans are left to wonder whether the media and government will ever abandon a reliance on anti-Arab stereotyping. For now, at any rate, “blame Arabs first” clearly remains the rush to judgment of choice. It is, as they say, “deja vu all over again.”

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Aug/31/New-spy-scandal-comes-as-major-blow-to-Israel-AIPAC.ashx#ixzz2axJijiVV

Washington was rocked late last week by allegations that a Pentagon policy analyst on Iran, Laurence A. Franklin, had passed classified information to Israel through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading pro-Israel lobby group in the US. He is also said to have had extensive meetings with Naor Gilon, head of the political department at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and a specialist on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

While both AIPAC and the Israeli government have issued categorical denials of any espionage activities, most observers say that law enforcement officials would not leak the accusations if they did not have the evidence to prove their charges. Franklin is said to have provided the Israelis with a secret presidential directive on Iran related to its ongoing nuclear program.

The New York Times reported on Aug. 30 that, “news reports about the inquiry compromised important investigative steps, like the effort to follow the trail back to the Israelis.”

The leak seems less designed to pressure Franklin, who is said to have been cooperating with federal agents for several weeks, than to stymie the investigation, which is said to be far broader than the allegations made public at this stage. If the allegations are true, they could have serious implications for both US-Israel relations and for the reputation of AIPAC, which is regarded as one of the most powerful and effective lobby groups in the US.

Journalist Steven Green, a long-time observer of Israeli espionage efforts in the United States, told the Daily Star that he had spoken extensively with individuals involved in the investigation, and that “I know from personal experience that its scope is much wider in terms of the targets than we have been told so far.”

He said that more senior officials than Franklin “should be extremely nervous about this.” Green speculated that the scandal might involve exchanges of information between “sophisticates in the intelligence communities of Israel and Iran at the expense of the United States. … There is a possible quid-pro-quo involved in Iran receiving US intelligence codes through the neocon favorite Ahmed Chalabi and the Israelis getting our latest thinking on Iran’s nuclear program. …You can see how that would benefit both parties, but not the US.”

USA Today reported Monday that law enforcement officials said “there may be some crossover” between the Franklin and Chalabi investigations.

The scandal has already drawn comparisons to the Jonathan Pollard affair, in which a Jewish American was caught spying for Israel in 1985. Israeli officials have said that after the Pollard incident, the country made a firm decision not to spy on the United States in order to preserve its relationship with Washington. Several newspapers have quoted unnamed Jewish American leaders as expressing grave concern about the impact this brewing scandal could have on the reputation of AIPAC and Israel, but the Israeli daily Haaretz described one as being “positively relieved” that Franklin is not Jewish.

“The insinuation that AIPAC, an American Jewish lobby, is engaged in espionage is in some ways worse than Pollard, who as a single individual could be described as off-balance,” Yossi Alpher, a former Mossad official told the Washington Post.

These are not the first allegations of Israeli spying in the United States involving AIPAC, but none have led to indictments, which are expected in this case.  In an article in the online journal Counterpunch in February, Green detailed a 1979 investigation of Stephen Bryen, then a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Bryen had been overheard in the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop, offering classified documents to an official of the Israeli Embassy in the presence of the director of AIPAC,” Green wrote. In spite of strong evidence, the investigation was dropped but Bryen was asked to resign from his Senate committee post. Bryen has close ties to Richard Perle and other key neocons in and around the Bush administration.

Jason Vest, a journalist who has written extensively on US military and intelligence issues, told the Daily Star: “I would describe the reaction to this scandal in the intelligence community as one of anger and of contempt, but not of surprise. No one believes, at all, that Israel does not spy on the United States, and no has believed that since Pollard. … Of course.”

He added that “this could be an ‘off-the-books’ operation – like the Iran-Contra affair for example – a project without official status but that was run at a senior level. Every country’s intelligence operations involve such unofficial activities, which this very well may be.” The allegations are also likely to fuel questions about possible Israeli influence on US policy toward Iran and, more significantly perhaps, the build-up to the invasion of Iraq last year. Franklin, who was once stationed in Israel, works under Deputy Under Secretary William J. Luti and, ultimately, Undersecretary for Policy Douglas J. Feith.

Neoconservative hawks, Feith and Luti oversaw the work of the Office of Special Plans and the Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, two offices set up in the Pentagon which sought

to provide alternative analysis of intelligence on the former Iraqi regime’s allegedly weapons of mass destruction programs and links to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.

The OSP is said to have had extensive links to a similar ad hoc intelligence analysis unit set up in the office of Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon, both dedicated to countering assessments by official US and Israel intelligence agencies that cast doubt on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities and ties to Al-Qaeda.

The investigation of Franklin appears to have been sparked by unauthorized meetings he helped set up between US officials and Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms-dealer who played a central role in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s in which the US supplied Iran with missiles through Israel. Franklin and his superiors are understood to have helped arrange for the unauthorized meetings with Ghorbanifar, according to some analysts in order to sabotage an agreement between the White House and Iran to exchange Mujahideen-e Khalq prisoners captured by the US in Iraq for Al-Qaeda suspects in Iranian custody. Ghorbanifar allegedly provided highly suspect allegations that Iraq had transferred nuclear materiel to Iran.

Vest, whose work has covered some of Franklin’s activities in the past, said “Franklin is not an unfamiliar figure to those of us who have been covering these issues, yet he is still somewhat enigmatic. He is known to be a career intelligence analyst who apparently specializes in Iran, but it is very difficult to find anyone in intelligence and policy circles who can describe the highlights of his career. The only thing for which he is well-known is that he was instrumental in setting up these bizarre meetings with Ghorbanifar.”

James Bamford, a leading observer of the US intelligence community and author of the recent book “Pretext for War,” said, “These allegations don’t surprise me at all, since Franklin works for Feith, who is essentially a pro-Israel extremist. It certainly should encourage another look at the influence of Israel in the motivations for the Iraq war. Sharon was pushing the US very hard to go to war in August, 2002.” Bamford added: “The neoconservatives surround themselves with people who are fanatically pro-Israel, and maybe they were too over confident, or felt that no one would notice or no one would care, or that they were running things so it wouldn’t matter, but luckily the FBI is independent of the Pentagon.” Bamford said it is significant that while the FBI had informed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, it had not told Feith about the investigation.

Some observers warned that, while it is important for all the facts to be uncovered in this case, there is the danger that if the scandal develops further it could lead to unfair accusations of “dual loyalty” against Jewish Americans. Vest said that, in the past, his work on pro-Israel neoconservatives had never raised issues of dual loyalty, although his neocon critics falsely alleged this.

Ziad Asali, President of the American Task Force on Palestine, also warned that, “Arab and Muslim Americans are often unfairly accused of disloyalty because of their ethnic and religious affiliations, and it has got to stop. The last thing we need is for Jewish Americans to now face a similar stigma. … On the other hand,” Asali said,adding that “these allegations against AIPAC serve as an object lesson for all ethnic American organizations about the need to be absolutely scrupulous in our conduct.”