Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 1988, Page 7
Special Report
What’s Special About Pro-Israel PACs?
By Richard H. Curtiss
"Does your congressman take money from pro-Israel political action committees? To find out at no charge, telephone 1-800-368-5788, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs."
Telephones are ringing continuously in the editorial offices of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs because of the text above, placed in tiny display ads in newspapers and magazines around the United States. The first 4,000 calls broke into four easily defined categories.
One thousand were harassing calls. Sometimes the caller screamed obscenities. The first threat was humorous. "if you're not out of your office by 8 o'clock you'll wish you were," the caller said menacingly. We'd advertised that day in Los Angeles and Denver. He didn't know it was already 9:15 p.m. in our Washington, DC, office when we took the call.
It is the ability of pro-Israel PACs to outspend their opposition, if any, by at least 80 to 1 that has enabled them to rent congressional acquiescence.
The majority of the harassers said nothing. They hung up as soon as the connection was made and the long distance call was charged to our account. One caller, realizing he had connected with our late night answering machine, just left the line open until he had run through 15 minutes of tape, at our expense. We don't use the answering machine any more. The telephone company has a section that deals with this kind of problem and says it is working on it.
Most callers just want to know about their own representatives. We send a chart in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, that shows the total for every incumbent and challenger in 1988 who has accepted such donations. Callers can see whether their representative has taken a lot or a little in comparison with other candidates in their state.
Two thousand of the first 4,000 callers gave us names and addresses to which we would send the charts. Most made it clear they didn't approve of candidates who take money to vote according to instructions from Israel's lobby. A few of the screamers made it clear they did approve, and said they would personally donate to the same candidates to whom the pro-Israel PACs were donating. Coals to Newcastle.
There was a fourth category of callers. "I don't want to be on your list," they would say angrily, and hang up without providing a name and address. Not, however, until after they had asked some probing questions.
Unwelcomed Answers
"What's wrong with people helping Israel?" some demanded. "Why are you doing this? Who's paying you? What's so special about pro-Israel PACs? Why aren't you exposing Arab lobby PACs?" Most galling was the mocking question, "What do you think you can do about it?"
The questions are reasonable, but when we answered, most questioners hung up. So here are the answers such callers didn't want to hear:
Why are we doing this?
We believe political action committees exist to bribe congressmen to vote against their own consciences and the best interests of their own constituents. If a congressman wanted to vote for those things, the PACs wouldn't have to pay him to do so. Are PACs illegal? Unfortunately, no. Are they bad for America? Unfortunately, yes.
Who's paying us to do this?
Virtually everyone answering the telephones is a volunteer. The ads were paid for by individual donations. We're frantically looking for more. So far we've spent a grand total of $5,500 nationwide to place the ads—about what the pro-Israel PACs provide friendly congressmen who aren't in tight races—just to show such candidates they care. If someone were raising money for us at the same rate money is raised for pro-Israel PACs, we would have blanketed the nation with our advertisement.
What's special about pro-Israel PACs?
Political action committees arose when Congress moved to end previous special interest group abuses by putting caps on the personal incomes that could be earned by its members. Until then, the Israel lobby had worked both through private donations and speech honoraria. A congressman on committees important to Israel, such as foreign affairs, military affairs, appropriations, and intelligence, and whose votes earned him the label "friendly to Israel," found himself being invited to speak regularly to Jewish groups all over the United States.
If he was too busy to write the speech, someone at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) would do it for him. If the congressman was too busy to deliver the speech in person, a member of the host group would do it for him. Whether it was for an appearance or a non-appearance, the senator or House member received an honorarium of $1,000 to $5,000. One such engagement for each friendly and important congressman every month or so went a long way in the 1970s to enable the Israel lobby to assume near total control of US Middle East policy.
Congressional reform put a ceiling on the personal incomes of congressmen. It also limited to $1,000 individual donations to their campaigns. A political action committee could donate up to $5,000 to a congressional campaign, but such committees were not allowed to coordinate their efforts with other, like-minded PACs. Theoretically, these measures returned sovereignty to each congressperson's constituents. Or did they?
Purposes of most PACs are obvious from their titles. They may be affiliated with a company, an industry, a trade association, a labor union, or a public interest lobby. But in 1984, in the space of only a few months, some 50 political action committees were created with such non-descriptive tifles as Badger PAC, Desert Caucus, Five Towns PAC, Goldcoast PAC, Metro PAC, and National PAC. Washington investigators were still speculating about this phenomenon when one slip gave away the game. The only political action committee registered with the FEC which mentioned Israel in its title suddenly changed its name that year to "Texas PAC." A quick check revealed that after Texas PAC's name change, there was not a single political action committee in the entire United States which mentioned Israel, Zionism, Judaism, or even the Middle East in its name. Newsmen began to call every PAC with a nondescript name and ask the same question.
Every dollar invested by pro-Israel PACs in the campaigns of friendly congressmen nets about $750 in US taxpayer funds for Israel.
"If I send my money to you," the reporters asked innocently, "how can I be sure that every cent of it will go to help Israel? "
The answers were frank and reassuring: "That's our only interest," one PAC officer answered cheerfully. "That's the reason we organized this PAC," said another. "That's what we do," said a third. Edward Roeder of Sunshine News Services counted 54 such PACs in 1984. They had spent more than $4 million on congressional races by June 30 of that year.
In 1986 the number of such pro-Israel PACs, still all with nondescript names, exceeded 60 according to separate compilations by Common Cause, the Wall Street Journal, the National Association of Arab Americans and the American Educational Trust. They had spent $2 million by the end of June 1986, and $4,302,765 by the end of the year.
By 1988 the number of such PACs registered had reached 91, although not all were active. By June 30, however, 51 active pro-Israel PACs had made donations of well over $2 million, with four months still to go before election day. What's special, therefore, is that these are the only PACs that systematically conceal their purpose from the Federal Elections Commission and the American people.
What's wrong with helping Israel?
Bribing congressmen to support $3 billion in no-strings direct US government grants to Israel year after year is not really helping Israel. It has become a subsidy for the extremism which is destroying Israel, jeopardizing moderate Arab governments seeking to maintain good relations with the US, and discrediting the US, as Israel's mentor, everywhere.
Every dollar invested by pro-Israel PACs in the campaigns of friendly congressmen nets about $750 in US taxpayer funds for Israel. From Israel's point of view, it's an incredibly profitable investment. From an American taxpayer's point of view, it's unconscionable.
The technical answer to the question, however, is that there is nothing wrong with Americans helping any cause, so long as in doing so they do not violate US laws. In the case of many of the pro-Israel PACs, however, there is a strong appearance of illegal conspiracy.
The Smoke-Filled Room
Pro-Israel congressmen in trouble receive an astonishing total of donations. Some of the major pro-Israel PACs on the East and West coasts seem to donate their funds to candidates in sparsely populated Western, Midwestern, and Southern states, where Jewish voters are few and far between. For example, as of June 30, one of the top 10 pro-Israel PACs, the Delaware Valley PAC, headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, had not made a single donation in Pennsylvania or Delaware. Its $86,850 went to 26 Democrats and six Republicans in states where dollars buy a lot more television time than in the industrial East where the money is raised.
How do widely scattered PACs with nondescript names disburse funds so efficiently that every Israel-friendly member of Congress on an appropriate committee receives what he needs to overwhelm challengers? How do well funded challengers appear for every unfriendly congressman on the key committees? PAC officers shrug off the questions. "We're a small, highly informed, and like-minded community," one explained. "We don't have to get together to know what's good for us all." The record shows, however, that key officers of many of these diverse pro-Israel PACs do get together. Many pro-Israel PACs have at least one officer on the board of AIPAC, which meets regularly. The smoke-filled room exists. The pattern of contributions indicates that conspiracy takes place in that smoke-filled room. That's what's wrong with "helping Israel" in this manner.
The Barely Visible Arab Lobby And what about "Arab lobby" PACs?
The more you search for the "Arab lobby," the more you realize that it doesn't exist. It certainly is not based upon oil, aerospace, or other industries which have a lot to gain from improved US-Middle East relations. Whether because of pro-Israel ownership, management, stockholders, or perhaps just fear of bad press or consumer boycotts, companies and industry associations in these fields eschew the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Instead, to butter up Arab countries, they may subsidize exhibits of Middle Eastern antiquities, folk dancers, or pretty, non-political books.
They leave political action to Arab-American groups, Muslim groups, and organizations seeking to stimulate bilateral US trade with such countries as Türkiye, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Of groups answering any of those descriptions, only the National Association of Arab Americans had an active political action committee (NAAA PAC) in 1984. It donated $17,350 in that election. In 1986 a few such groups were registered, but again apparently only NAAA PAC was active. It donated $49,225. In 1988, of nine such Middle East-oriented committees registered with the FEC, only NAAA PAC had made significant donations, totaling $19,100 by June 30.
These are the only PACs that systematically conceal their purpose from the FEC and the American public.
By the most optimistic projections, total contributions by all such "pro-Arab" groups will not exceed $50,000 in 1988. Since pro-Israel PAC donations had already exceeded $2 million by June 30, they probably will again exceed $4 million by the end of 1988, as they did in the two previous elections. It is the ability of pro-Israel PACs to outspend their opposition, if any, by at least 80-to-1 that has enabled them to rent congressional acquiescence, if not buy it outright, for a US Middle East policy virtually dictated by Israel for at least the past eight years.
What can Americans do about it?
There won't be an even-handed US Middle East policy until the American people understand how the Israel lobby controls Congress. That's why the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, is advertising, and why its staff is insisting that Americans consider the answers to these legitimate election year questions. When enough Americans understand, they can liberate Congress by vowing to work against any congressman, of either party, who accepts this tainted money. Domestic PACs are bad enough. PACs organized to buy US military and political support for foreign countries are intolerable. They have sent more than 260 young Americans to unnecessary deaths in Lebanon in this decade alone. It may be too late to make much difference in 1988. It surely can make a big difference by 1990.
Richard Curtiss, a retired US Foreign Service information officer, is the author of A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute, and editor of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
