Anti-Zionist Times ad spurs controversy, wins support

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The following is an interview with Ralph Schoenman, executive director of the Campaign to End All Aid to IsraellFor a Democratic and Secular Palestine. The Campaign published an advertisement in the March 13, 1988, New York Times, which was signed by over 300 prominent individuals. [See text below. The full list of signatories appeared in the April 1988 issue of Socialist Action.] Socialist Action: What has been the response to the ad you published in The New York Times?

Ralph Schoenman: The response has been quite substantial. We've had some 1500 people write in overwhelmingly in support of the text. Only about 10 letters were hostile. We've also been able to raise a considerable amount of money from their contributions.

This response is important because it facilitates developing a network across the United States. Each of the 1500 people who has written us is being sent five copies of the text of the ad and being urged to contact five people for their support. Each of those five will be asked in turn to contact another five on a chain-letter principle.

This way we hope to obtain the basis for repeating the ad in other newspapers. We've already reprinted the text of the ad in the largest English-language Arabic newspaper in Detroit, Sada Al Watan (Voice of the Nation.)

Some of the people who have written us asking that they be listed among the signatories in future ads are of some renown. They include Kurt Vonnegut, the author; the former director of the United Nations Refugee Aid in Gaza; and a number of prominent university professors from around the United States.

I've also been interviewed by the Associated Press, which is apparently doing a piece on our ad and on other ads which have appeared in The New York Times, apparently in response to our own.

S.A.: The New York Times printed two letters to the editor attacking the Campaign's ad. Have you responded to these attacks?

Schoenman: Of course. The letter by the B'nai B'rith, which was published on March 20, was responded to immediately in a letter signed by Rabbi Elmer Berger, terrorism. He singles out Gore Vidal as a "Jew-hater" and "anti-Semite." He states that one of our signers, the Palestinian writer and poet Fouzi El-Asmar, "served in an Israeli detention center as a suspected terrorist organizer after a captured Jordanian terrorist fingered him as very active in the field of sabotage and terrorism."

Fouzi El-Asmar was held in Israel a decade ago under administrative detention and has never been charged, tried, or convicted of anything. There is a particularly interesting history to this case.

Ten years ago, when Fouzi El-Asmar was imprisoned in Israel, he received a visit in prison from a person who said he was a member of the "American New Left." Fouzi was questioned by this person about Yassir Arafat and the liberation of Palestine.

Fouzi said to this visitor, "Look, to see members of my own family. Anybody who came in here pretending to be of the 'American New Left' would not be permitted to see me, and if brought here would be monitored. I don't want to continue this discussion."

Whereupon this visitor left, went outside, and gave a press conference in which he stated that administrative detention without trial or habeas corpus was essential in Israel. He also stated that Fouzi El-Asmar was a terrorist and should never be released from prison. That man was Alan Dershovitz.

There were two other attacks of note in the established media. One was in The New Republic by Leon Wieseltier, who is an avowed Zionist and right-wing Democratic Party commentator. He wrote a piece titled "Abu Vidal" —a play on words which creates an amalgam between P.L.O. dissident Abu Nidal and Gore Vidal. His main point is that people who are calling for a democratic and secular Palestine are seeking the destruction of the Jews.

The bourgeois press, when it is hostile, attempts to equate the state with the Jews as a people and to ignore the fact that the text of the ad speaks of Jews and Palestinians having full rights as equal citizens in a democratic and secular society.

The other instance is that of a talk-show host for a live radio program in Cleveland who is known as an insult specialist. His name is Merle Pollis. He called up two of the sponsors of the ad to abuse them in a scurrilous fashion, calling them "Jew-hating, anti-Semites." He also harassed and slandered the signers in this manner on the air.

When I heard about this, I telephoned Pollis while he was on the air. I was on his program for a half-hour. He (continued on next page)

Sunday, March 13, 1988