Articles
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2008, pages 38-39
Three Columns
Charley Reese Bids Farewell
Goodbye
Aug. 30, 2008
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Years ago, the first time I saw my friend Brother Dave Gardner after he had survived a plane crash, the comedian smiled and said, “The devil like to got me.” That’s a good explanation for my last trip to the hospital.
I’ve been running a footrace with piled-up years and bad living habits, and they have pulled even and will soon be ahead. I know it may not seem to normal people that writing three columns a week requires any hard work, but it does require energy to do the research and an alertness of the mind that I can no longer muster. Hence, this will be my last column.
It’s been a difficult decision to make. In one sense, I’m not sure there is even a Charley Reese without the column, but I would rather quit now than to reach a point where the editors and readers know that I should quit. Those of you who have read my column have made me a sort of guest in your home, and I don’t want to overstay my welcome.
I don’t intend to croak, but that’s not something we can control. I have some tidying up to do. One of the things I have to do is to say a heartfelt thanks to the readers and to the editors. I’ve stirred my share of controversy, and the easiest solution to controversy is to simply drop the column. I greatly admire those editors who stuck with me. I deeply appreciate the loyalty of my readers. The sales reps and the staff at King Features are the best in the business. I feel honored to have been associated with them. To them, freedom of the press is not a slogan.
I’ve had a good run. In 1955, when I started as a reporter, newspaper city rooms were full of tobacco smoke, alcoholics, gluepots, steel rulers, copy pencils and typewriters. There was a lot of profanity and an occasional fistfight. Editors excelled in sarcasm. But they taught me how to write clear sentences.
One afternoon when I reported in, I asked an editor if he would like to get a cup of coffee. He glared at me and said, “Reese, I just spent $15 getting a buzz on, and I ain’t about to ruin it with a (expletive) 10-cent cup of coffee.”
Today’s newsrooms look more like insurance offices. Computer keyboards don’t make much noise. If the reporters smoke anything at all, it’s not tobacco. Instead of greasy grills, most newspapers have salad bars. I’m sure H.L. Mencken would have seen salad bars as a sure sign of decline.
John McCain can have the last laugh, since I’ve said several times that he’s too old to be the president. He is, even if he is more durable than I am. There are some who will celebrate my going, and it galls me to give them that pleasure. I was never ambitious, but I’ve always been competitive and pugnacious.
At any rate, it’s a great time to be an American. George W. Bush, who turned out to be a gift to comedians but a blunderer of the first order, will soon be out of office. It is historic and a good sign that a black man, Barack Obama, can win the nomination of a major party. When I started in the business, the South was still segregated, and blacks were invisible both as employees and as subjects of news stories, with the exception of crime stories.
The great advantage of a free society is the capacity to self-correct itself. You’d think dictators would have figured that out, but if they are not paranoid when they seize power, they become so trying to hang on to power.
Well, enough random thoughts. My goal as a columnist has always been to stimulate and, if necessary, provoke people into thinking for themselves. If we fail to do that, a free society won’t last. I wish you all a fond farewell.
Middle East Pop Quiz
June 7, 2008
It’s time for another pop quiz on America’s favorite region of the world—the Middle East. Let’s get started with the subject of nuclear weapons.
Which country in the Middle East actually possesses nuclear weapons?
Israel.
Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
Israel.
Which country in the Middle East refuses to allow international inspections of its nuclear facilities?
Israel.
Which countries in the Middle East have called for the region to be a nuclear-free zone?
The Arab countries and Iran.
Which country in the Middle East occupies land belonging to other people?
Israel, which occupies a piece of Lebanon, a larger piece of Syria, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
Which country in the Middle East has for 60 years refused to allow refugees to return to their homes and refused to consider compensation to them for their lost property?
Israel.
Which country has roads on which citizens who are Arab may not drive and housing developments where Arabs may not live?
Israel.
Which country in the region has violated more United Nations resolutions than any other?
Israel. The United States has on more than one occasion gone to war ostensibly to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions, but when it comes to resolutions directed against Israel, the U.S. is like the amoral monkey that sees, hears and says nothing. That raises the question of who’s the dog and who’s the tail?
Which country in the region has in the past been led by men who at one time were terrorists with a price on their heads?
Israel. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir once led the Stern Gang and ordered, among other things, the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat working for the United Nations. Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin led the Irgun, a terrorist gang that among other things blew up one wing of the King David Hotel, killing nearly 100 people.
Which country in the Middle East openly employs assassination against its political enemies?
Israel. There have been assassinations carried out by some of the Arab governments, but they usually don’t own up to them. Israel has created a euphemism that the suck-up American press has readily adopted: “targeted killings.” A British journalist told me once, “The Palestinians have a talent for picking bad leaders, and the Israelis have a talent for murdering their good ones.”
What are the top five countries from which we import oil?
Here they are in order of volume: Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela. The next time you hear some blowhard politician ranting about how the Arabs control our oil imports, remind him or her of the facts. By far, a majority of oil imports come from non-Arab countries.
Which country in the region receives an annual gift of $3 billion or more from Congress?
Israel.
Which foreign-aid recipient is the only one allowed to receive its aid in a lump sum and which routinely invests part of it in U.S. Treasuries so that taxpayers pay them interest on the taxpayers’ gift?
Israel.
Which country in the Middle East has the most powerful lobby in the U.S.?
Israel.
Which country in the Middle East are most American politicians, journalists and academics afraid to criticize?
Israel.
On behalf of which country has the U.S. vetoed the largest number of U.N. Security Council resolutions?
Israel.
What country do the people in the region consider the world’s biggest hypocrite?
The United States.
Which countries in the Middle East have attacked U.S. ships in international waters?
Iraq and Israel. A lone Iraqi plane fired one missile at a U.S. ship by mistake. The Iraqi government quickly compensated the U.S. In 1967, Israeli airplanes and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 Americans. The U.S. government declared it an accident even before the ship limped into port, and to this day Congress has never held a public hearing and allowed the survivors to tell their story. Their story, by the way, is that the attack was deliberate. Israel compensated the families of those who were killed, but resisted for years paying compensation for the ship.
My Palestinian Wife
April 1, 2004
Every now and then, the rumor arises that I have a Palestinian wife. Some of my kin were highly amused by a debate on that subject that was being conducted by letters to the editor in their local paper recently.
Apparently, it does not occur to anyone simply to ask me. As a matter of fact, I don’t have a wife. I’m a widower, and the one wife I had was a sweet Midwestern girl of Methodist, German and Swedish extraction. I don’t have a Palestinian mistress or girlfriend. I don’t even have a Palestinian bowling pal.
The recurring Palestinian wife rumor, I believe, is a result of some people finding it impossible to believe that an American would have any sympathy for the Palestinian people without an ulterior motive. That is a credit to the effectiveness of the Israeli propaganda machine, which has, for more than 50 years, stereotyped Palestinians as a wild, violent people. It is a stereotype helped greatly by the news media, which rarely reports in depth on anything foreign, and by Hollywood, where lately the venerable Nazi has been replaced as the chief villain by the Arab terrorist.
Actually, Palestinians are a gentle people. If you get to know some and hear their side of the story, you will feel sympathy for them, too, unless you have a flint heart. The Palestinians were run over by history. I know that various ethnic groups in the United States fiercely contend for the title of victim, but the Palestinians had it imposed on them.
There was nothing they could do when the Ottoman Empire absorbed their land. There was nothing they could do when the British Empire took their land away from the Ottoman Turks at the end of World War I. There was nothing they could do when the British Empire created the Palestine Mandate. There was nothing they could do when the British Cabinet, for reasons historians still argue about, decided Palestine would make a nice national home for European Jews when and if the British Empire ever decided to give up its occupation of Palestine.
That it did in 1947, after considerable encouragement by Jewish terrorist organizations—the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, and the Stern Gang, led by Yitzhak Shamir. Yes, Jews used terrorist tactics against the British occupation, and now Palestinians are using terrorist tactics against the Israeli occupation.
In 1948, about 700,000 Palestinians were made refugees and then told they could not return to their homes. Their homes, land and businesses were eventually confiscated. In 1967, Israel seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. These are now the “occupied territories.” The state of Israel has no legal claim to even 1 square inch of any of this territory, but with the backing of the United States it has been able to tell the rest of the world to go stuff it.
Palestinians appreciate the irony of the fact that the United States went to war allegedly to get Albanian refugees back into Kosovo and went to war twice against Iraq allegedly to enforce United Nations resolutions. Of course, we’ve done nothing for the return of the Palestinian refugees, and we’ve ignored the fact that Israel is in open defiance of more than 60 United Nations resolutions. We’ve also ignored the fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that really does have weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs.
For us, it’s all about domestic politics. I’ve never heard of a Palestinian donor invited to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom.
All Americans should feel a great deal of sympathy for the younger generations of both Palestinians and Israeli Jews. These young people were born into a conflict started by people long dead or now in their dotage. The issue is simple: It’s land. Both sides are dying over land. Unless some outside power forces an agreement on them, they will go on dying, generation after generation after generation.
You don’t need a Palestinian wife to feel sympathy for these people. All you need is to know the facts. Learn the truth, and you will feel sympathy for Palestinians—but not very proud of American Middle East policy, which is a continuing failure driven by greed and cowardice on the part of American politicians. The hypocrisy of it has poisoned our image around the world.
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years, reporting on everything from sports to politics. From 1969”“71, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states. He was an editor, assistant to the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 1971 to 2001. Charley Reese can be reached at P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802. All columns copyright Sun Belt Syndicate, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
