The Squeeze Is On

February 28, 1997 - The Jewish Press Magazine
By Emanuel A. Winston: A Middle East Analyst and Commentator

Whenever the Arabists within the U.S. government wish Israel to comply with Administration plans, there is a sudden media hype against Israel. The ritual is always the same, with certain news channels leading the pack.

According to The New York Time (Monday, February 24), on Sunday afternoon, an unidentified gunman began shooting a pistol on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, wounding seven and killing one man. He then shot himself in the head. To spice up the story, The New York Times said that authorities believed he was from the Middle East and could be Israeli, Palestinian or Egyptian. Monday night CNN already had Mayor Giulani reporting that his passport showed he was a Palestinian who entered the U.S. December 24, 1996 and that he shouted: "Are you from Egypt?"

Before he started shooting Tuesday morning, CNN reported that he was identified from documents in his pockets including a Palestinian passport as Ali Abu Kamal. There was a note in his pocket, indicating that he hated America, Israel, England and France. The New York Times, in its next day's edition, attempted to give it a soft spin, indicating his attack was not politically motivated. He was from Ramallah, a town under the Palestinian Authority.

Always count on The New York Times to find a way to blame Israel on the front page with no front page apology to follow. Since the man was clearly a Palestinian Arab from the documents in his pockets, would blaming Israel first blur the fact that once again an Arab had hit against America? The leading indicator of an American government push against Israel is to put into print, usually through their flagship journal, the NY Times, an unfounded accusation against Israel disguised as NY Times speculative reportage.

The reason this is a convincing "indicator" is because of another incident immediately prior. The FBI discovers a low-level engineer in a Flint, Michigan tank factory who was supposed to have passed classified information to Israel on tanks and Patriot missiles. Strange that Israel would bother with tank technology since Israel's technological base on tank and tank warfare is superior to the United States!

In fact, the Merkava, Israel's originally designed tank, is a far better and more reliable tank than America's own Abrams, with which the U.S. has had enormous problems. As I recall, Israeli engineers were brought to the U.S. to help fix the Abrams fuel guzzling problems, its turbine engine which sucked up prodigious amounts of sand, and its need for frequent repairs reducing its operational tank hours.

As for the Patriot missile system, the U.S. had already provided Israel with the Patriot during the Gulf War where it proved to be a lemon. Long before the Gulf War, Israel had turned down this weapons system because it was a dud. During Desert Storm, Israel took 39 direct hits by Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles, with the Patriot failing entirely to hit the incoming Scuds, and managing to blow them up directly overhead, so the warheads dropped into the Israeli cities together with the Patriot missile debris.

The Saudis suffered from the same poor performance of the Patriots, and so the American soldiers were vulnerable. One Iraqi Scud killed over 25 American soldiers from Pennsylvania stationed in Saudi Arabia. That's when President Bush stopped the winning American team before victory was achieved, leaving Saddam Hussein in power.

No, Israel did not need to steal technology for this system. But a good spy story is always useful for pressuring Israel into more suicidal concessions as dreamed up by the American Arabists in Washington who are firmly linked to the teats of Arab oil and Arab countries' wishes.

The concessions Israel is being manipulated into making effectively give the terrorist nation of Syria (so labeled by the U.S. government) the high ground of the Golan Heights right on down to the sea of Galilee. Syria's promoters, including Messrs. Bush, Baker and now Clinton, wish to bend Israel on the issue. The method of choice is to portray Israel to the American people and Congress as a "non-friend." To accomplish this duplicity, they need front page accusations in The New York Times or booming out from CNN with a "tsk, tsk" expression on the faces of their news announcers.

All this has played before. The spectacular accusation, the front page story, Israel bends to this pressure; then the courts disprove the original accusation but the news conduits tied to the Administration and State Department, by their "leak and exclusive interview" trick, do not print a front page retraction.

Who can forget when in 1985 the FBI showed up at the Recon Optical factory in Barrington, Illinois with a TV film crew to accuse Israel of stealing technology for night vision equipment? The story, as it unfolded in court, was that Israel had openly contracted with this factory to develop night vision equipment. After Israel paid for the development work, the factory refused to deliver the technology and also refused to refund the money.

It is significant that Israel was, as usual, being pressed to comply with Arabist State Department plans to appease their Arab oil friends. The media went along with the front page exposé, but resorted to silence when the charges were thrown out of court.

Two other manipulated two news stories for the gullible that year again accused Israel of stealing American technology for cluster bombs and chroming of tank barrels. When it was revealed that tank companies, Bofor in Sweden and Reinathal in Germany, already had this (secret) technology and were bidding to be the suppliers, the lie had already made the front pages.

The fourth blockbuster of 1985 continues to this day. On November 21, 1995,

Jonathan Pollard

Bobby Inman and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger had withheld

• Arab troop movements
• data on Libyan air defenses
• Soviet deliveries of military equipment to Arab client states
• status of nuclear weapons development by Pakistan with funds from Arab states
• location of Syrian and Iraqi

  poison gas factories

  and sources of that equipment in West Germany

Don't tell the Israelis about gas factories; they're too sensitive about gas.

Because of Pollard's information, Israel accelerated the development of civilian gas masks and baby anti-gas tents, enabling Israel to protect its citizens when President Bush and Sec. Baker forced Israel to absorb 39 Scuds.

On January 16, 1991 at 3:59 a.m. during the first Iraqi missile assault on Israel, Caspar Weinberger said in an interview on Israeli radio: "It's a shame that Israel has to suffer a poison nerve gas attack." Saddam never did send gas warheads on his scuds to Israel, but Weinberger knew that Saddam had them, and that

Israel knew thanks to Pollard. Weinberger arranged for Pollard's life sentence without parole.

Aldridge Ames accused Pollard of being responsible for the deaths of scores of American agents in the Soviet Union. Even after Ames confessed that he was the traitor who caused their deaths, Pollard is still in jail - now in his 12th year -

longer than any other American jailed for the same offence.

Clearly, the intelligence community cannot admit a mistake and continues to influence President Clinton not to issue a commutation of Jonathan Pollard's sentence.

So, when we see the media manipulation hot at work again, accusing Israel in many minor and major stories, we know it presages major American pressure for Israeli concessions. Watch it work!