How the press will cover the next war

Author Harry M. Zubkoff in the mid 1980s

The media was Harry’s professional domain. I discovered the following hard-copy article filed with the title in the graphic below, “How the Press will Cover the Next War.” Then I found a published version in International Combat Arms magazine with the title “The Media’s Role in Modern Warfare”, January 1987. Yes, the 1980s may seem ancient, but Harry makes several points I believe you’ll appreciate. And, you may find this piece entertaining.

In the late 1930s I saw a movie that recreated a period when the occult arts reigned in ancient Egypt. A beautiful princess had a crystal ball – more like a sunken bathtub in her living room – in which she could see anything and everything that was going on in any part of her world. She could, for example, focus on a scene in any town or village in her domain. She could, if she so desired, focus on a battle taking place a hundred or more miles away. And, if the spirit moved her, she could even tune into someone’s bedroom to see who was doing what to whom.

Now, some 4,000 years later, and about fifty years after that fantasy film, we have the capability to do just about the same thing – to see and hear anything going on in our world. The technology is here, the equipment is more or less in place, or at least available, and all we have to do is press a button, flip a switch, twist a dial, whatever.

With this kind of capability, the media, both print and broadcast, can cover events occurring anywhere, from the winter Olympics in Switzerland to a war in the Falklands. Right now, of course, the reporters and the video cameras have to be on the scene, and there may be a problem getting to where the action is, but the day is not far off when that may not be necessary. Cameras mounted on satellites and positioned in space so that any spot on Earth can be kept under constant surveillance, will be available to the media. Communications gear is already available so that the media no longer have to rely exclusively on military communications facilities and cooperation to transmit their stories back home from the war zone.

Given these capabilities, do you think it will ever again be possible to exercise the kind of censorship or controls over the media that existed during World War II? I doubt it. So how will the next war be reported? Fully, I think, though not necessarily accurately.

But let’s first define what we mean by war. If there is an all-out exchange of nuclear weapons in the future, the question of how it will be reported by the media is irrelevant. It will probably not be reported at all except, perhaps, by the sages or patriarchs gathered around the campfires that warm the remnants of the human race. In any case, no one will care. However, since we have avoided a nuclear war over the last four decades since World War II ended, and since our deterrence policy is still operative, it seems most unlikely that this kind of catastrophe will occur in the near term.

In all probability, therefore, if there is to be a war, it will be a conventional war, either a large scale World War II type of conflict or a smaller scale Vietnam or Afghanistan type of conflict, fought with so-called conventional weapons. In either case, the way in which it will be reported will undoubtedly be the same as that in which all of the recent conflicts in the world have been reported. That is, in the same old traditional ways that wars have been reported until now.

There are two major problems in reporting on a war: to obtain the information necessary for conveying some measure of understanding to the consumers; and to transmit that information. Until now, the information has largely been controlled by those who conduct the war – that is, the military spokesmen on the scene. Reporters have always had to rely almost entirely on those sources. Moreover, the reporters have had to rely almost entirely on the cooperation of the military to transmit their information.

If reporters felt that on occasion their sources were not sufficiently forthcoming in providing information, they have been known to fabricate information – or, at least, to speculate to the extent that they might as well have been fabricating. That’s SOP, more or less.

Some of them, the more enterprising ones, will try to seek out some other than “official” sources. They might go out into the field with combat units, where they can experience firsthand a “small slice” of the war themselves. This may produce some human interest stories and even, perhaps, help convey a partial sense of reality to the viewer or reader. It cannot, however, by itself, convey an understanding of how this one small unit action fits into the overall strategy in the conduct of the war, or even to the tactics used in carrying out that strategy. Nor can it accurately reflect the overall progress in the larger war in achieving our military objectives. In short, the best it can do is describe a small action which may or may not be inconsequential.

Other reporters may congregate around the bar in the hotel where they are all being housed, passing along to each other any tidbits of gossip or rumor making the rounds on any given day. Then, each night, they will dutifully file their stories in time to meet their deadlines, with the maximum number of words needed to fill a column and the minimum amount of information needed to qualify as a news story.

With the technological developments becoming available, however, they will no longer have to rely so exclusively on the military, either for the information itself or for the means to transmit it. And, since the information will be available to their editors, too, the reporters may well be forced to greater objectivity and honesty in the quality of their reports. In fact, the day may come when it will not even be necessary to send reporters out to the scene of the action. They may be able to view the action in the relative comfort of their home offices and write their stories at their own desks.

But let’s not look at the future; let’s look at the recent past. There has already been a technological revolution over the last few years in the art of news gathering, with the advent of portable video cameras and satellite ground stations that can transmit news and pictures in real time. As a result, the networks now devote more than twice as much time to the coverage of foreign news, directly from location, as they did five years ago, and three or four times as much as they did ten years ago.

Unfortunately, just as the media have learned to use the increasingly sophisticated technology to transmit the news, so have others learned to use it to manipulate the news – and the media as well. I don’t want to belabor the point – that’s another story that deserves extensive discussion by itself – but there is a real question as to whether the press has mastered the new technology as an instrument for disseminating the news or whether it has become a captive of the new technology as an instrument for manipulating the news.

Now let’s consider another aspect of the reporter’s dilemma. In the past, in our wars if not in all wars, almost all a reporter’s information has been obtained from only one side – our side. Information obtained from the other side, the enemy’s side, if available at all, has invariably been suspect. Indeed, all our previous experience indicates that the “enemy” has been exceedingly clever in using the media to advance his own views and perspectives. The result is propaganda which obscures the truth of any situation and also casts doubt on the veracity of our own spokesmen.

For that matter, even factually accurate reports do not necessarily convey the truth about a situation. When a television camera focuses upon a riot – say in Saigon, or in any city, for that matter – it actually obscures the fact that the rest of the city is going about its business normally and peacefully, which is a strong indication that the riot may well have been staged for the camera.

Whenever I look at television news reports, I am reminded of what W.C. Fields said the first time he met Mae West. He looked her over carefully from head to foot with that inimitable scowl on his face. “There is less here,” he said, “than meets the eye.”

Another problem confronting the media is the dwindling proportion of reporters who have any military experience or who will be able to understand the complexities of modern warfare. Military policies, strategies, doctrine and tactics are subjects of professional study, not easily or quickly absorbed by newcomers to the field. Even experienced reporters, used to covering all kinds of news stories and adapting to all kinds of breaking news events, would have considerable difficulty in understanding and reporting on a war in a way that would make it comprehensible to the audience at home. Of course, that won’t stop them from trying. The media will undoubtedly send droves of young, inexperienced reporters to “cover” the next war, all of them eager to don the glamorous mantle of “war correspondent” – and all of them willing to learn on the job. And the media will no doubt print thousands upon thousands of words of copy, with little or no regard to how much they all add to or detract from the public’s understanding of the true nature of the conflict.

In my view, the media would do well to seek out some retired professional military personnel who can write – there are many such – and whose background of knowledge and experience could add immeasurably to the quality of their reports. After all, don’t the networks constantly seek out retired professional athletes to provide knowledgeable commentary on sports events? Is not the adequate coverage of a war at least as important as the coverage of football games?

In any case, the manner in which news events are covered today, and the manner in which they will be covered in the near-term future, is changing because the technology is changing. It is impossible to predict with any degree of confidence all the ramifications attending these changes, or to predict what the ultimate impact will be on public perceptions or public opinion. But one thing is for sure – the public’s demand for news is insatiable and the media will do their best to satisfy that demand. Even if they’re only partially successful, the mere fact that our press is free to try is a cause for some celebration.

Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman

Reflections on mortality, learning new things

My parents in 2004 and 2005; Harry at home in 2004

Harry always had his camera close by. Snapping photos at special occasions and distributing prints to friends and family was one more activity that kept him busy and learning new things during his elderly years. Recently I found the three photos above in a file on Harry’s computer with a couple hundred others I’d never seen. I also retrieved the following email he apparently wrote to a friend’s daughter on Sept. 2, 2007, after her father passed away. I hope she will see this blog and feel inspired anew because others are enjoying Harry’s reflections, too, and possibly taking his advice.


Dear Cathy:

A few years ago, an old friend of mine died – I should say a long-standing friend of mine since I have many young friends as well as a few old friends, by which I mean those around my age. I was 86 in June, and there are not many my age left any more. Anyway, when he died in his early 80s, he left two daughters in their late 50s and several grandchildren in their late 20s to early 30s. His wife had died ten years before he did. When he died, TIME magazine was going to write an obit about him and sent a reporter to interview his daughters. What they found out was more than they expected. In the end, they decided to do a story on what they called middle-aged orphans, which is a growing phenomenon in our country as people are living longer and children are generally parents themselves when their own parents die.

You understand, of course, that whenever someone close to you dies, either a relative or a friend, you can’t help reflecting on your own mortality, and this is especially true of those of us who manage to reach their 80s. We know that we do not have many years left to us and we have a desire to impart as much as possible of the wisdom we have acquired over the years to our heirs and younger friends. But, more important, we tend to reflect on just what we have learned from our own experience and just what constitutes wisdom that is worthy of passing on to anyone else. 

Harry in 2007, around the time he wrote this email

When I was young, middle age was considered the 40s and 50s. Old age was considered the 60s and 70s. People who lived into their 80s were called octogenarians; they were few and far between, ancients. My own parents died in their mid-50s, nine months apart, when I was 19 and 20 respectively. Almost all my peers had lost their parents by the time they were 30. It was a rare teenager who had both sets of grandparents still alive then. It’s different now. I keep going to weddings of grandchildren of people I know, where both the bride and the groom have both sets of grandparents attending and dancing at their weddings. In fact, in a few weddings recently, there were four sets of grandparents attending, because both the bride and the groom were marrying a second time and their parents had been divorced and remarried, too. Relationships for them had become extremely complicated, I must say, and after a few explanations I was confused beyond words. Suffice it to say that the wedding party of family alone, in one case, consisting of parents, grandparents, siblings and step-siblings, etc., amounted to 47 people. 

For a couple like Jeanette and myself, who have been happily married for 64 years now, it is sometimes amazing to see the number of divorces among younger couples these days. And yet, when I talk to them separately, I can understand why they found it necessary to separate. What I can’t understand is why they married in the first place. Except for raging hormones and the sexual attraction, they should have known they were incompatible. One of the few advantages of advanced age (like mine) is that we see some things clearly that younger folks find cloudy or obscure. Which is not to suggest superior wisdom – only a different perspective.

I am the youngest of four siblings, two sisters and a brother. We were close in some ways, distant in others. The oldest, a sister, was ten years older than I. My brother was seven years older. My second sister was four years older. The standing joke in the family, after we were all adults, is that my second sister was always referred to as my younger sister, which, by definition she was. My oldest sister died six years ago, at the age of 91. My brother died nine years ago at the age of 84. By the way, he was career Air Force, enlisted in 1940, right after WWII started in Europe in 1939, started as a Flying Sergeant and graduated to the maintenance field and served until he retired with 25 years as a Chief Warrant Officer in the mid-1960s at the age of 55. My “younger” sister is 90 now, living in a nursing home in California. We visited there for her 90th birthday less than a year ago.

The deaths of my older siblings made me feel like an orphan all over again, as I had when my parents died so many years ago, and started me thinking about my own mortality. Every time a friend dies now, every funeral I attend, finds me thinking of all the things I want to do yet and how little time I have left. That’s why I try to do as much as I can each day and why I commit myself to do many things that just a few years ago I would not have done. Because, like most people, just a few years ago I behaved as though I were immortal, as though the thought of death simply didn’t occur to me. Even now, it’s not so much the thought of dying that bothers me – it’s the urge to do as many things as I can while I have the will and the strength to do them.  

I have noted, with a few rare exceptions (your Dad was one of the exceptions), that most of the funerals I attend nowadays involve people who are not doing anything special – not working, not involved in ongoing projects, hobbies, avocations, studies, mind-occupying activities, etc. I don’t mean that they’re just vegetating or sitting in a rocking chair all day. Sure they have a sort of social life, they go out to dinner now and then, they see friends, they play cards, they go to movies. But they’re not doing anything constructive. They’re not using their talents or their skills or their minds. I so admired Tom, I’ll tell you, because his mind never stopped working and gnawing at problems and seeking solutions to all kinds of perplexing things. I felt about him in some ways as if he were my younger brother and he kept asking me why things are the way they are and why can’t we do something to fix them, and the very fact that he kept asking why forced me to think about things I didn’t want to think about. He’s the only person in the world, except for my own brother, with whom I could spend hours on the telephone and enjoy every minute of it – and not begrudge the time taken away from anything else. 

Now, Cathy, I’ve gone on and on bending your ear (eye?) too long and getting a little maudlin, too, but what I started out to say, and took the long way around, is to keep busy – keep your mind working learning new things and dealing with old things in new ways.


Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman

The Jewish People’s struggle toward independence

Harry Zubkoff, eternally photogenic

One year ago, I began this blog to honor my father’s memory and stay connected with his family and friends, far and wide. Because Israel was near and dear to his heart, today, on Israel’s Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut), I’m sharing two articles Harry wrote for his synagogue newsletter. He was 88 when he filed the original computer documents, dated January and March 2010. Most of us have never seen these articles, and some of us are learning lessons in Jewish history.

The relationships between the Jews and the Arabs in the Middle East did not start with the establishment of the State of Israel. Long before Israel came into existence in 1948, the Arabs were opposed to the growing presence of Jews in the area, known as Palestine. While Jews had been coming to Palestine in small numbers for the past 2,000 years, the numbers started increasing in the late 1800s, when oppression of Jews in Eastern Europe stimulated emigration to Palestine as one of the few places open to them.

When Theodore Herzl organized the Zionist movement into a formal, recognized group and convened the first Zionist Congress in 1897, emigration of Jews from Europe to Palestine picked up speed. Those Jews returning to Palestine were already talking about establishing a Jewish homeland there either under Turkish or German rule. Early in the 20th century, the Jews established a number of farming communities, most notably at Petach Tikvah, Rishon Letzion and other locations. They also started building a new city, Tel Aviv, just north of Jaffa. As the Jews built new facilities in Palestine, increasing numbers of Arabs came into the area, seeking to share in the new prosperity and opportunity provided by Jewish enterprise. By the time WWI started in 1914, there were about 600,000 Arabs and 100,000 Jews in Palestine.

The First World War put a stop to everything. It was hard on both the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine with outbreaks of disease, both cholera and typhus, affecting both populations. An Ottoman military government ruled the area and was detested by Jews and Arabs alike. The Ottoman Empire joined with Germany and Austria-Hungary against the Allies during the war, and many Jews fled the area to avoid being drafted into the Turkish army. A small group of Jews, however, organized an underground unit that provided critical intelligence information to the British which helped their invasion effort. Their help was but one of many reasons why Britain endorsed the concept of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. At the same time Britain also promised the Arabs a state in the area in return for an Arab revolt against the Ottomans led by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). 

In the spring of 1920, and again a year later in 1921, and eight years later in the summer of 1929, Arabs, who opposed the idea of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, organized simultaneous violent riots and pogroms against the Jews in a number of locations – Jaffa, Haifa, Hebron and Jerusalem. Throughout the decade of the 1920s, other sporadic acts of violence by Arabs against the Jews took place, but never rising to the level of riots or pogroms. As a result, the Jews organized a self-defense force, the Haganah, since the British did nothing to protect them. A major instigator of violence against the Jews was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the foremost Arab religious leader, who later in the 1930s became a Nazi collaborator.  

In the late 1920s and through the 1930s, Arab antagonism to the Jews increased dramatically. They claimed that Jewish immigration and their land purchases, though legitimate, were displacing and dispossessing Arabs, even though all the economic indicators showed that the Arabs were benefiting from Jewish investment in the area. In fact, the Arab standard of living in Palestine was higher than in any other area of the Middle East, and Arabs were flocking there in record numbers to share in the prosperity engendered by the Jews.

Anti-Jewish violence was fueled by lies which the Arabs trot out periodically, even to this day, that the Jews were planning to build a Synagogue at the Wailing Wall, and thereby encroach upon the Temple Mount compound and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The technique of telling lies about the Jews in order to incite violence against them was perfected and expanded by Joseph Goebbels. As Minster of “Propaganda and Enlightenment” for the German Third Reich, Goebbels made lying about the Jews into an art form. “If you tell a lie big enough,” he said, “and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Thus, the Germans came to believe that the Jews were sub-human and perpetrated the greatest atrocity in human history, and the best documented mass-murder rampage. The Third Reich was obliterated in World War II, but the technique of lying about Jews to incite violence against them lives on in the Arab world and in some European states, as well. 

A public opinion survey taken in Europe just a few years ago disclosed that Europeans view Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. This kind of public attitude is a direct result of lies repeated relentlessly about Israel’s attempts to defend itself against incessant attacks by Palestinians and other Arabs. The most outrageous lies are told about the Jews: for example, a British report stated that Jews were killing Palestinians in order to harvest their vital organs; a Norwegian report stated that Jews were killing Christian children in order to use their blood to bake matzah, etc. The reporters involved disregard the tenets of their own profession – a search for truth and verification. Indeed, when confronted with questions, they declare that they do not know what is true, only what they are told. In Arab schools today, children are taught from earliest childhood to hate Jews and that their highest goal is to kill Jews and become martyrs. In Arab newspapers Jews are insulted and derided every day so that the Arab “man in the street” is conditioned to hate all Jews everywhere.   

Despite Arab objections and British obstacles, Jewish immigration increased substantially in the 1930s as the Germans tightened the persecution screws and Eastern European countries did the same. The pivotal point came in 1936 when widespread riots took place, which were dubbed the Arab Revolt or, in some media reports, the Great Uprising. Fully half of the 5,000 residents of the Jewish quarter in Old Jerusalem were forced to flee and the few Jews remaining in Hebron after the killings of 1929 were also evacuated. The Arabs were not only warring against the Jews, but against the British, as well, and as many as a thousand or more Arabs were killed in the fighting. 

In the aftermath, the Peel Commission of 1937 came up with a plan to partition the remaining Mandate area into a small Jewish state and a much larger Arab state. (Remember, more than three quarters of the original Palestine Mandate had already been given to the Arabs for their state, now called Jordan.) Meanwhile, in a further response to the riots, the British began restricting immigration of Jews, despite the growing evidence that Germany had embarked on a program of killing all the Jews of Europe. These restrictions culminated in the British White Paper, issued in 1939, which limited the number of Jewish immigrants into Palestine to 15,000 a year for five years, after which any additional immigration would be subject to Arab approval. In effect, this meant no more would be allowed, a situation which was intolerable to the Jewish people, especially in view of Germany’s inexorable move toward a policy of genocide against them.

*****

Beginning in the mid-1930s and throughout the World War II period from 1939 to 1945, the Arab leadership in Palestine maintained ever stronger ties with the Nazi government in Germany. The wartime cooperation was exemplified by a “fatwa” (religious edict) issued by the Arab religious authority in Palestine for a holy war against England in May 1941. In a meeting with Adolf Hitler in 1941, Amin al-Husayni, leader of the Supreme Muslim Council in Palestine, discussed Britain’s endorsement of establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine. Hitler promised him that he would eliminate the Jews from Palestine after Germany won the war in Europe. During the war, Amin al-Husayni served with the Nazis in the Waffen SS in Bosnia. 

Meanwhile, the Jews of Palestine organized a 5,000-man Brigade, which served with the British Army during the war in Europe. After the war, the Brigade succeeded in spiriting thousands of survivors of the Holocaust, the remnants of Europe’s Jewish population, out of that forsaken continent and smuggling them into Palestine, under the noses of the British, who had steadfastly refused to allow Jewish immigration. At the same time, the Jewish leaders in Palestine, the Yishuv, as it was known, decided to make a major effort to bring the Jewish refugees into Palestine. They organized a huge illegal immigration enterprise using small boats and operating in total secrecy. Many were intercepted by the British and detained in makeshift prison camps on the island of Cyprus, but even so, during 1946 and 1947, some 70,000 European Jewish refugees were smuggled into Palestine. 

As details of the full dimensions of the tragic slaughter of the Jews of Europe by the Nazis in pursuit of a “final solution” emerged, it had a major impact on public opinion around the world and inspired additional support for the Zionist cause. And Britain, which had restricted every attempt to bring Jewish refugees to the area, finally decided to return its Palestine Mandate to the newly organized United Nations. 

The UN recommended that the Palestine Mandate be split into three parts – a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a separate area to include Jerusalem and Bethlehem under UN control. Neither side liked this partition plan, but the Jewish Agency, the de-facto government of the Jews, accepted it and campaigned for it. The Arabs rejected it.

All the Arab leaders in the Arab League objected in principle to the right of the Jews to an independent state in Palestine. But the UN General Assembly voted for the Partition on Nov. 9, 1947, with 33 countries in favor, 13 opposed, and 10 abstaining. The official partition was scheduled to take effect as soon as the British withdrew from the area, on May 15, 1948.
   
Almost as soon as the UN Partition vote was announced, the Arabs started carrying out attacks against the Jewish population. The consulates of countries that had voted in favor of the Plan were attacked, bombs and Molotov cocktails were thrown at shops and cafes, synagogues were set afire and many businesses looted.

With the British withdrawing, there was no force responsible for maintaining law and order. In December 1947 and January 1948, more than 1,000 people had been killed and 2,000 wounded. By the end of March 1948, more than 2,000 dead and 4,000 wounded. 

On May 14, the day before the British Mandate expired, David Ben-Gurion announced to the world that the State of Israel had been established in accordance with the UN Partition Plan. As required by the UN’s resolution, Israel agreed to ensure that all its inhabitants would enjoy equal social and political rights, regardless of race, religion or gender.

You can find several other articles about Israel in previous posts on this blog.

Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman

Is the United States the world's policeman?

Author Harry M. Zubkoff

In May 1993, Harry wrote the following article and filed it on his computer with the title “DMR”, likely for Defense Media Review. That’s the name of the private newsletter he started after he retired from government in 1986. Harry’s professional bio called the newsletter “a summary analysis of media coverage of defense related news and commentaries.” The New York City Tribune printed a story about it, shown at bottom of this page. In 1989, Harry sold the newsletter to Boston University, but evidently still submitted articles. 

The most popular and widely repeated cliche of the past half century is that the United States cannot be the policeman. Now that the Cold War has ended, that cliche has become even more entrenched in the public consciousness. Every media pundit who comments on foreign policy and international security affairs has embraced it, as has almost every politician and every military spokesman. Indeed, it has been repeated so often that it has assumed the status of a mantra. Repeat after me – “the U.S. is not the world’s policeman, the U.S. is not ...” – etc., etc.    

But is this really a true expression of our national will, or of our national character? Are we really unable or unwilling to help right the world’s wrongs, or are we inhibited from expressing strong views on international conflicts by this omnipresent cliche? Maybe it’s time to review the phrase, and to reevaluate our policy, as well.    

The United States never really sought or wanted a position of world leadership. It was, so to speak, thrust upon us when we emerged from World War II as the one true superpower. Throughout the period of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a superpower only militarily; in all other respects it was basically a third world country. With the end of the Cold War, the United States remains the only world superpower and Russia is still a third world country, as are all the states that once comprised the Soviet Union. But the end of the Cold War brought new credence to another aspect of international relations, the United Nations.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the United Nations has become more like the effective international force for harmony that it was meant to be. At the same time, the need for an effective international agency has multiplied as the long repressed nationalistic fervor and ethnic hatreds of Eastern Europe have been revived. Throughout the Cold War period, the Soviets blocked the UN from playing any really meaningful role in world affairs. What’s more, the Soviets never helped the UN in those situations where the UN was allowed to play an active role. In every case in which the UN played its proper role, it was because the United States was a strong participant. There is no question that without the Soviet Union, the United Nations is a stronger force for good in the world community.

It is also true, unfortunately, that the UN cannot act at all without strong backing by the U.S. Like it or not, the U.S. is the leading power in the world, which brings with it the responsibility to use its power as a force for international stability. The question is, can we make such a contribution by using our power or by withholding it? And if we decide to use it, can we do so unilaterally, or must it be done in concert with others? These questions emerge as the most relevant with respect to the current situation in the former Yugoslavia. If ever there was a conflict anywhere that cried out for intercession, this is it. The outrageous acts by the participants, the entire concept of “ethnic cleansing”, the crimes against humanity, demand intercession.

The European nations, in whose immediate neighborhood these things are happening, profess to condemn the mass rapes, the mass deportations, the concentration camps, the tortures and the murders – all the horrors perpetrated in the name of ethnic cleansing. The best they are willing to do, however, at least until now, is to provide some humanitarian relief – food and medical supplies. They are unable to organize an effective military intervention, which would require the deployment of a substantial ground force. They are unwilling to make any substantial commitment of military force, even if the United States provides the lion’s share of such forces, including the essential element of air power. They would prefer to wait and see if a solution can be found through diplomacy, though all diplomatic efforts to date have failed.

The point is, all the European countries together have not thus far been able to stop the horror, either diplomatically or militarily. Can the U.S. do it alone? Of course not. If a military intervention is ever to be decided upon, and if it is ever to be successful, it must be an international effort under the auspices of the United Nations, and with the United States, as the most powerful nation, bearing the brunt of the burden. It seems as though the U.S. has become the epitome of the “Have gun, will travel” syndrome. Our leaders may be willing to participate in an international effort. The question is, are we the people willing to do so? Are we willing to act as the world’s policeman, even in concert with other nations? Or, to put it more bluntly, are we willing to become the world’s mercenaries?

Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman 

I believe Harry continued to submit articles to Defense Media Review after he sold it in 1989.

Memories from the War, the Eisenhower years

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day (or Yom Hashoah) on May 5, I’m posting a note Harry wrote to an individual 50 years after his Army service ended. I found the note, plus another one on the Eisenhower years, in Harry’s computer files. I believe both are worth sharing for history’s sake. Harry’s loved ones will enjoy these photos from his time in Germany. (I will not post the gruesome Holocaust photos also in his collection.)






In every photo, Harry is on the left.

Holocaust reflections

In November 1996, Harry wrote to someone (unknown) with a few details on World War II and concentration camps. He had served with an Army mission to hunt down Nazi war criminals and gather evidence for the Nuremberg Trials. (You can read about his experience in an earlier post on this blog.)

When the Allies invaded the continent of Europe in June 1944, the Russians were already moving west toward Europe’s heartland. A great many Germans could see the handwriting on the wall and started making preparations for their inevitable defeat. The Russians were the first to come across the concentration camps, most of them in eastern Poland, and the word started to spread about the horrors they were finding. By the way, most people only hear about the major camps and believe there were only about a dozen or so. The truth is, there were several hundred camps, all of them competing to see who could kill the most people in the shortest period of time. Anyway, those Germans who could see ahead, wanted to avoid the Russians, realizing that the atrocities the German armies had inflicted on the Russians the previous year were about to be returned by a vengeful Russian army. Hundreds of thousands of them fled westward, hoping to be captured by the Americans.    

Starting in October/November 1944, about six months before the war ended, some Germans decided to hedge their bets, so to speak. They would pick the strongest or healthiest young Jews, mostly young women but some men, too, who could be expected to survive under the harsh conditions they would face until the war was over, and help them to “escape”. They would also provide shelter, such as it was, and some food – enough to keep them alive. The survivors could then testify, if need be, to the fact that their benefactors had saved their lives. True, it was a risk for them – they could perhaps be sent to the camps themselves if caught. But it was a calculated risk, and for most of them it paid off. It’s also true that there were some righteous people among them who acted for humane reasons, but not very many.    

When the invading armies got close, the Germans who were stationed at the camps almost all fled, tearing off their uniforms and joining the thousands of refugees streaming along the roads. Your grandmother was one of hundreds of similar survivors we found at that time, all with similar stories to tell. What had happened to them was terrible, worse than anyone in your generation can ever imagine. But what happened to them in the immediate aftermath of the war, at the hands of us Americans, was enough to break your heart. I don’t think that part of the story has ever been adequately told. You should ask your grandmother what happened after she was freed, and how she found her way to America.


The Eisenhower years
In March 2010, Harry jotted these thoughts to someone (again, unknown). He refers to Presidents Eisenhower and Truman, Secretary of Defense George Marshall, and Senator McCarthy. History buffs may especially appreciate this. (You can read about his experience during the McCarthy era in an earlier post on this blog.)

This is my understanding of Eisenhower’s treatment of Marshall. Senator McCarthy, whose claim to fame rested solely on his fiery anti-communism and his accusations that there were communists in the State Dept. and the Defense Dept. (though he never, never once, named one), attacked George Marshall. He called him a man “steeped in falsehoods” and accused him of harboring communists in the State and Defense Depts. and of catering to Russian requests, etc. etc.  Eisenhower, who owed his career to Marshall, and was now the Republican candidate for President, had ignored McCarthy while he was an Army officer, but as a political candidate he had to take a position. I got this from the speech-writing fraternity (a small world in the government, especially at State, Defense and White House).

While campaigning in Wisconsin, McCarthy’s home state, Ike had a prepared speech defending Marshall in strong terms against McCarthy’s charges. But, when it came time to use it, he gave the speech but left out all references to Marshall. He did what all politicians do, he backed away from a fight he thought he couldn’t win – and to hell with principle. The newspapers all commented on it, and I remember that TIME magazine especially gave him a hard time about it. But, what the hell, he won the election and became President – twice, two terms. But he could have stopped McCarthy a lot earlier. As it was, McCarthy figured he had nothing to fear from Eisenhower, so he went ahead to accuse the Army of harboring communists and started holding hearings. That’s when Eisenhower finally decided to stand up and fight – now he was President. Those famous hearings were televised and drew the biggest TV audience ever – up to that time – 1953, I think. McCarthy was finally discredited, later reprimanded by the Senate, and died in disgrace.

But Ike never defended Marshall. He resigned as Sec/Def in 1951, while Ike was campaigning for Pres. The scuttlebutt was that Truman wanted him to stay on with the expectation that Ike would also ask him to stay on if he were elected, but Marshall declined and – get this – because he did not want to put Eisenhower in the embarrassing position of deciding whether to keep him on or not.

Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman

Are the media doing their job?

Author Harry M. Zubkoff

As readers of this blog know by now, writing was a huge part of Harry’s life, and he saved a lot – letters, emails, articles, poems, stories, novels and more. Much of what I’ve posted in the past year, I found in his paper files, organized neatly in about a dozen boxes and in folders on his shelves. Starting in the 1990s, he also saved writings in computer files. Those documents, too, wow me with more about my dad – his interests, knowledge, experiences, and feelings from both professional and personal aspects of his life. I hope you continue to enjoy these discoveries, too.

Harry wrote this piece on Dec. 6, 1996, likely for a publication. I was especially struck with his comments on our environment, Vietnam, and gun control. See what you think.

The American Constitution begins with this statement: We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.    

These purposes are listed not in descending order of importance, but rather as matters of equal importance. This paper will concentrate on the fourth listed goal – to provide for the common defense. (The American spelling of “defense” has superseded the British spelling.) Surely this is among the most important purposes of the Union, and the “common defense” in modern parlance has come to be known as the national security.

Most Americans have only a vague idea of what is meant by “national security”. They know that we have an Army, a Navy, an Air Force, and a Marine Corps, but informal surveys disclose that fewer than one in a million knows what the roles and missions of these armed forces are. Which of them, for example, is responsible for defending the nation against a surprise attack by submarine launched ballistic missiles? Or by land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles? Or which of them, if any, is responsible for the research and development of nuclear weapons, or of laser weapons?

And how many would recognize the different uniforms the military services wear or the various insignia they display? According to random questions asked on college campuses just after the Gulf War, I would guess that fewer than one in ten million Americans – that’s one in ten million – would know the difference between an Army officer and a Marine Corps officer, or between an Air Force officer and a Naval officer, if he saw them all walking down the street in their respective uniforms. And that, I submit, is a sad state of affairs.    

This level of ignorance extends to some of the most important public policy questions confronting our nation today. What size military forces should we build and what should the proper numbers of men and women allocated to each of the services be? What kinds of weapons systems should we develop and procure? What is the nature of the threat confronting us over the next ten years, and how should we prepare to meet it? How much of our national budget should we spend on military preparedness? Of course, these are complicated questions, and even the experts can disagree on the answers, but if there is one thing we all agree about in this country, it is that the people must be participants in the policy-making process. The problem is that they cannot participate if they have no foundation of knowledge on which to base their decisions.    

And there’s the rub. Who’s at fault here? Is it the government for failing to disseminate the necessary information on which informed decisions can be taken? Partly, although the government is constrained in many ways from providing more than the most basic information to the people. The main source of information for the public at large is the giant industry collectively known as the media. And the media, or the one small piece of the media that any individual looks to for information about public policies, is inadequate for the task.   

I don’t know how to solve this problem, though I have some suggestions. To begin with, the public policy quandaries and dilemmas confronting the country are extremely complex, and no single element of the media has the resources to cover them all and to explain them all to the public – not the wealthiest of the newspaper conglomerates, not the weekly news magazines, or even the broadcast networks with all the facilities at their disposal. I have stated many times and still believe that the major responsibility for keeping informed about public affairs lies with each individual; that only by reading widely in the various elements of the media – newspapers, magazines and broadcasts – could you be well enough informed to make decisions on public policies. But study after study has shown that the great majority of individuals in this huge, diverse society of ours spends less than 30 minutes a day on the news, and most of that time is spent on television news, which may be entertaining but is only marginally informative.   

What to do about it? I believe public policy studies should be incorporated in the teaching curricula of all public schools, elementary through secondary through college levels, so that all Americans will have a solid grounding in the public policy questions that the various levels of our government must deal with. And foremost among those questions is the provision of national security.    

So, what is national security? 
In my view, the national security embraces three major aspects of national activity: first, the nation’s military and defense policies; second, the nation’s foreign policies; and third, the nation’s economic policies. These three components are inextricably intertwined; you can’t have one without the other.                

The military and defense policy component of national security is covered only superficially by the media. The recruiting of men and women for military service, for example, once a subject of national concern and debate because of the draft, has subsided in the national consciousness since the draft ended in the mid-1970s. To this day, however, the implications of the all-volunteer service are not well understood in all their ramifications, and their devastating effect in terms of isolating our “mercenary” forces from the mainstream of our society is never discussed in the media. If the public truly understood what is happening, how a wholly new and culturally different element of our society is taking root in our midst, I suspect there might be a renewed effort to reinstitute conscription in order to maintain a genuine citizen’s army that would more nearly reflect our societal values.

Yet, the only media discussions about manpower and personnel problems take place when a cheating scandal emerges at a military school or a sex scandal at a military base, which places a skewed picture of military life before the public and further distances the military from the general public. News coverage of foreign policy matters is scanty, at best, unless an international crisis occurs. Unfortunately, international crises emerge quite often, but for a citizenry that needs to stay informed, the only time international affairs receive intense coverage is when a crisis develops and surprises the public. But crises do not develop and explode overnight. Every international event that assumed the proportions of a crisis since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War was foreseeable.

What’s worse, not only were they foreseeable, they were actually foreseen and predicted. And, more to the point, they could very possibly have been averted or blunted had the media been more aggressive in informing the public, and had the government been more willing to act before public opinion could be mobilized instead of waiting for the full-fledged crisis to emerge.

The economic component of national security is even less well-covered than is defense or foreign policy. It is generally recognized that international trade agreements are important elements of our economy, but how many are aware of the impact of such agreements on the security of our country? For example, for decades the Defense Department tried to control the export of sensitive technologies, but only after Iraq invaded Kuwait did the public suddenly become aware of the need to prevent some countries from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

Even today, with the world’s expanded awareness of the danger involved in allowing Saddam Hussein, or any of the other rogue states such as Libya and Iran, to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, there seems little doubt that he and they continue to pursue them clandestinely. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait exposed still another aspect of our economic national security – our increasing dependence on the Middle East sources of energy. In fact, a great many other countries around the world are even more dependent on Middle East oil supplies, which make the integrity of the entire region a matter of international security. 

A huge and complex problem
There are other elements of national security seldom mentioned in the media, but which will surely affect us all in the coming years. There is a problem confronting us so huge and so complex that its dimensions are almost impossible to describe – the management of our planetary environment.  We are, without a doubt, poisoning the planet, and the consequences will ultimately be disastrous, but the media are doing very little to keep the public apprised of the steady erosion of the environment. The destruction of our tropical rain forests is taking place at an ever increasing pace with a foreseeable impact on the ozone layer. The explosion of the world population is a phenomenon to which no attention is paid. 

From the beginning of history to 1830, we reached the one-billion mark. The second billion took 100 years, from 1830 to 1930. We added 3 billion more in the next 60 years, from 1930 to 1990.  The next billion will be complete only 11 years after that, in 2001. The pressures generated by an expanding world population can be predicted, with the developing countries competing with the developed countries for a larger share of the increasingly scarce natural resources. And, not the least of the international environmental problems facing humanity, the widespread distribution of toxic and nuclear waste materials is slowly rendering substantial areas of the planet uninhabitable.
 
If you don’t think that’s a national security problem, you’re living in another world with the media, which seem completely oblivious to this growing catastrophe.

More media failures
Let’s just mention a few other areas of enormous importance in which the media are failing to keep the public informed. Take the question of arms control and disarmament; the public generally believes that, since the Cold War has ended, arms control is no longer a priority consideration and may even be a moot question. The fact is, however, that missiles with nuclear warheads are still aimed at targets in the United States and the process of dismantling them is on hold. Moreover, the nuclear materials and other essential components of warheads are disappearing from Russian storage, with their ultimate destinations the subject of considerable speculation. Surely there is a threat to our national security involved.    

Take the question of our national defense industries: With the end of the Cold War, the need for new weapons systems has understandably declined, and as procurement contracts shrink, the industrial arsenal of democracy also shrinks. In order to stay afloat, defense industries are realigning themselves, and mergers are the order of the day. Where once we had dozens of large corporations and hundreds of smaller concerns in the defense business, today there are only a half dozen major corporations and a few dozen smaller ones left.

Hundreds of thousands of skilled workers have lost their jobs in this industry in the last five years. That’s the bad news. The good news is that many of these industries and skills are becoming engaged in other enterprises that are changing America’s lifestyles even as we speak. But how much of the media and of the public are truly aware of the tremendous technological revolution taking place right now? And how many are aware that the explosion of electronic wizardry, from computers to the Internet, is the direct result of the military research and development process?     

Look at just one weapon – the B-2 Bomber: Study after study has confirmed the fact that the public derives most of its news from television, so how have the networks covered the B-2 Stealth bomber? This case provides an illustration of how the networks distort the news and paint a curious picture of events. The public roll-out took place in November 1988, on the 25th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. All three major networks focused on the cost of this airplane, varyingly described as ranging from 250 million dollars to 500 million dollars. Not a word was mentioned about the capabilities of the plane or the purpose it was meant to serve. When the plane carried out its initial taxiing tests in July 1989, the networks again fixated on the cost and spoke derisively about its ability to travel six miles on the ground at a cost of a half billion dollars. They were all uninterested in discussing any substantive issues involving the advanced technology represented. 

Indeed, television will not or cannot talk about complicated events or problems unless it can present pictures to accompany the discussion. This means that no intelligent discussion reaches the great mass of the public on one of the most potent weapons systems ever developed. The fact is, this bomber, and the F-117 Stealth fighter, are together rewriting the rules of air warfare with technological advances that are fully as impressive in the field of aeronautics as the nuclear warhead is in the field of physics. But the media, and consequently the public, are completely unaware of the developmental marvels involved.                 

Do the media influence public policy?
There is more than one answer to that question. The first answer is one that the media do not like but that I believe to be mostly true. I believe the media has little or no impact on the formulation of public policies. Let’s look at a little history to document my view. The military and a substantial segment of the public believe that the media was responsible for losing the Vietnam War. They look at the news reports and they truly believe that the media was against the war from the start and in the end persuaded the public to turn against the war which, in turn, forced the government to settle for a phony peace and get out.    

Every objective study of the media’s performance during those years, however, proves differently. Actually, the media supported the war, from the time President Eisenhower first sent Americans to Vietnam in the mid-1950s, after the French were defeated and left. It was not until the American public turned against the war and began mass demonstrations on campuses all over the country and in Washington in the late 1960s that the media began opposing the continuing war effort. Helping to turn the public and the media against the war was the opposition of a number of congressmen and other prominent public figures. And while it is true that the government bowed to the pressure of public opinion in getting out of the war, it is not true that the media played a significant role in shaping that public opinion. Indeed, it was public opinion that shaped the media’s performance. 

Of course, other factors were at play, as well. One was the fact that President Johnson’s role in escalating the war was based on a lie – the incident in the Tonkin Gulf never happened and the lie was subsequently exposed. Another was the increasing number of casualties we were suffering. Still another was the failure to enunciate a clear declaration of policy by the President, and the seemingly incomprehensible conduct of the war itself under the leadership of Secretary McNamara.

Only in the last two or three years, two decades after the war ended, has McNamara finally confessed to the fact that the war was unwinnable under the rules he himself laid down. But it was widely known from the early days of the war that it could not be won under the conditions imposed by him and the President. The lessons drawn from that sad experience were directly reflected in the successful conduct of the Persian Gulf War five years ago, when victory was the goal, clearly stated, and the forces assigned to the task were adequate to carry out the strategic and tactical actions involved.    

There is plenty of other evidence to support my contention that the media has little effect on the formulation of public policies. To put it another way, the policy makers at the top levels of our government make their decisions based on other considerations, not on media support or opposition. The media, for example, was generally opposed to sending ground troops into Bosnia. The President did it, anyway. The media, too, was generally opposed to the NAFTA agreement; the government entered into that agreement, anyway. The Democratic President acted despite strong opposition from his own party and succeeded only with the support of the Republicans in the Congress. And take the elections of 1992 and 1996; despite a drumbeat of media comment about the President’s character, and poll after poll showing that the public did not fully trust him, he was still elected. I can only conclude that the media has little effect on the public itself, as well as on the policies that the government adopts.   

Measuring media performance
But let’s go on to another way of looking at the media’s impact. This involves looking at how the government’s policy makers view the media and measure the media’s performance. While it is true, as I noted earlier, that the public gets most of its news and opinions from television, this is not true for the decision makers. Most high-level officials cite CNN reports, which has emerged since the Persian Gulf War as a major source of news on breaking stories, but they rely on the print media for in-depth coverage. Now this is an interesting twist on the impact of the media on public policies. The CNN and television news reports often break a story, which is to say that they report on a news event with whatever pictures are available, thus providing a sort of headline service. Then the print media go after the story in a sort of feeding frenzy to obtain every possible scrap of information and conjecture they can get. Thus, TV has a multiplier effect by provoking the print media to pursue stories in ways that TV cannot. And it is the print media that the decision makers read and reread as they examine all the ramifications of the policy options open to them before they come to a final decision.

To be sure, they take public opinion into account in the decision-making process, and it is true that they would like to have public support for their decisions, but it is not the major consideration in the momentous decisions of our times. Sometimes, Presidents or Administrations or even the Congress will do what they think is “right” for the country, despite contrary public opinion.

Gun control is a case in point. Both the electronic and the print media have strongly supported gun control for the last 30 years, ever since President Kennedy’s assassination. What’s more, every poll taken since 1968, when both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed, has indicated that as much as 70 percent of the public favored gun control. Yet, every Administration and every Congress voted against gun control, despite public opinion and media pressure, until President Clinton and the 1992 Congress enacted the crime bill and the Brady bill. In fact, the 1994 Congress started agitating against gun control and wanted to repeal the Brady bill and the part of the crime bill prohibiting the sale of certain weapons, despite growing public and media support for those measures. And the 1996 Congress is again threatening to take these actions, despite public opinion and the certainty of a Presidential veto. So, I repeat, where’s the impact?                            

Power of the media
The real impact, I submit, lies in the power of the media to spark a national debate and to stimulate a national discussion about the problems confronting our country and our policy makers. This, actually, is what the media is supposed to do – to report on governmental activities and other current events and thus to keep the people informed. The real debate and discussion takes place in the Congress, which, through its system of conducting hearings in order to obtain information leading to legislation, keeps the media occupied in conveying that information to the public.

So, information takes a circular path; the media breaks a story usually with a minimum of information to start, followed by other media pursuing the story and obtaining additional information, followed by governmental pursuit of the story in its deliberations, followed by media elaboration of the story based on information disclosed by the government, and so forth and so on ad infinitum – or until the media in its wisdom decides that the story has been milked dry and goes on to repeat the cycle with another story. The life-cycle of a “big front page story” varies from a few days to a few weeks at most for 99 percent of them; only once in a great while will a story last longer.

Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman

'The Jerusalem Affair' still applies today

Author Harry Zubkoff

When it came to Israel, Harry used to mention that certain news media got their stories all wrong. He had a chance to make stories right in articles he wrote for his synagogue newsletter. He also enjoyed sending articles from his trusted news sources via emails to family and friends. In a way, he was our trusted news source.

Harry wrote the following article in April 2010. It makes sense to share it now because the circumstances when he wrote it six years ago are amazingly similar to those today. His comments still apply, too, except Secretary Kerry is in the place of Secretary Clinton. 

I took the photo in the graphic below when I visited Israel, coincidentally in April 2010.

A funny thing happened on the way to the peace process. Well, funny may not be the right adjective. Looking back (it was just a month ago, in March) it seems surreal. It started with VP Joe Biden scheduling a trip to Israel advertised as an effort to reassure the Israelis of America’s continuing support and friendship for the Jewish state. Such an effort was deemed advisable because the warm relationship between the two countries that had existed during the Bush administration was obviously deteriorating. Mr. Biden’s good-will trip, however, ended with the most serious crisis in American-Israeli relations in several decades. It was triggered by an announcement of Israeli government approval of a 1,600-unit apartment project in East Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood. 
   
There are other Israeli housing units in this part of East Jerusalem, as well as Arab housing units, although the Arabs regard this area as “disputed territory”, which means its status has yet to be negotiated. Of course, the Arabs regard all of Israel as disputed territory and have thus far even refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state itself. As for this area of Jerusalem, populated largely by a community of Orthodox Jews, it complies fully within Israeli policy guidelines, and both the U.S. and the Arabs were aware of it. In fact, PM Netanyahu, who back in October had announced a 10-month freeze on settlement building in order to bring Palestinians back to negotiating, had specifically excluded Jerusalem from the freeze. Jerusalem, he had declared, is not a settlement. Secretary Hillary Clinton had understood and accepted his declaration and even praised his “unprecedented concessions” in imposing a temporary construction freeze on settlements. 
   
There is no doubt that the announcement of this building project while VP Biden was visiting was incredibly stupid, and PM Netanyahu delivered an abject apology, both privately and publicly. But was it a gaffe or an insult to America, so grave as to precipitate a genuine crisis and a permanent rift in American-Israeli relations? The unusually harsh language that Ms. Clinton and the State Dept. used would seem to indicate so. State Dept. spokesman Philip Crowley made it clear that Israel’s actions “undermined American interests”, and he reported that Secretary Clinton now felt that it was up to Israel to show that it was committed to our bilateral relationship not through words but through specific actions. America’s angry reaction to this incident has also emboldened the Palestinians to back away from the peace talks once again – the indirect peace talks, since they simply refuse to negotiate directly with Israelis.

Interestingly, American spokesmen have never spoken so harshly to the Arabs or the Palestinians as they have to their “friends and allies”. Some of the most knowledgeable observers of American political and diplomatic behavior have noted that the escalation of tensions with Israel is not simply the result of a misunderstanding or of events spinning out of control, as sometimes happens unexpectedly. On the contrary, it seems to be premeditated and calculated, and if it had not been this housing project announcement, another excuse would have been found. It seems obvious to them that the current American policymakers look upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as undermining American interests in the Middle East and that Israeli housing projects are impeding the peace process.
   
So it all comes back to the so-called peace process. America sees it as in its best interests for the Israelis and the Palestinian Arabs to agree on a peaceful solution to their conflict by establishing a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state. Forgotten is the fact that more than three-quarters of the Mandate land that the League of Nations had designated for a Jewish state had already been given to the Arabs for their own state. That state is now called Jordan. Overlooked, also, is the fact that the Arabs have consistently refused to establish another state alongside Israel, a fact that American policymakers seemingly cannot grasp. What the Arabs of Palestine want is the elimination of the state of Israel, another fact that American policymakers seemingly cannot grasp. To look upon a housing project in Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel, as an obstacle to peace seems very strange when dozens of rockets launched by the Arabs of Gaza against Israeli civilian targets do not raise similar concerns.      
   
The American policy rests on a faulty assumption. It is not settlements, construction, or housing projects that are obstacles to peace. It is the Arab refusal to negotiate directly with Israel over the terms of any agreement; it is their resolute refusal to accept the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state in the region; it is their unwillingness to accept the idea of any Jews residing in any area that might someday be a part of their state; and it is their unwillingness to establish a state alongside the Jewish state. Over the years they’ve had many opportunities to do so and always refused. Three times they have gone to full-scale war to eradicate the Jewish state instead. Each time they lost. They have persisted in dozens of smaller-scale hostilities and lost those, too. And still, there are those among us who continue in the mistaken assumption that Israel is sabotaging the peace process, and that if Israel will only stop building new apartments or expanding settlements, peace will ensue. 
   
Over the years America and Israel have devoted time and effort into building a strong and mutually beneficial relationship. The freedom that the peoples of these two countries enjoy has provoked those who cannot abide the notion of liberty to perpetrate acts of terrorism against them both. Israel and America are opposed by the same enemies. In the face of a common enemy, the two countries have formed a union of joint effort in military training and intelligence gathering and sharing, and close cooperation in many areas of research and weapons development that have strengthened both. This is what makes the U.S. attitude toward Israel so puzzling to Middle East analysts. It is sad but true that Israel has only one friend in the world today – the United States. Without this powerful friend, Israel cannot long survive in an unfriendly world. And this friendship rests on a foundation that is no longer firm and solid, as it has for the past half century. To preserve and strengthen this friendship for the next half century and beyond is our first priority now.

Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman