American Jews are now in a collective state of handwringing, asking "How could all this have happened? Who could have foreseen this terrible downturn of events?"
With all due respect, we at AFSI forsaw it in our conferences, on these pages and in the pamphlets that opposed the anti-Israel left and the dreadful policies of surrender and concessions that were demanded of Israel-and carried out by her leaders. Most appalling were the number of ostensible "supporters" of Israel who prodded the state to take so-called "risks for peace" in exchange for a risible "recognition of her right to exist" by a few Arab tyrants. The Jewish establishment, the media, and delusional pacifists fell for this absurdity hook, line and sinker.
With the Camp David Accords, land for nothing became the basis for Israeli policy. While Israelis and American supporters of Israel were still euphoric about Sadat's visit to Jerusalem and the signing of pieces of paper with Egypt, we published, in 1979, Sadat's Strategy by Paul Eidelberg, which exposed Sadat's strategy as a trap: a temporary truce in the framework of a blueprint to reduce Israel to the untenable 1949 borders, preliminary to her destruction.
In 1977 AFSI published The Palestinians: A Political Masquerade by Arthur Kahn and Thomas Murray emphasizing that the so-called Palestinians were in fact "an anti-nation, one that derives its entire meaning and purpose from the desire to destroy another nation."
We were the first to expose the real agenda of those purportedly Jewish groups which lent credibility to Israel's enemies. In 1977 we published Rael Jean Isaac's monograph on Breira, founded and funded by anti-war, anti Israel, and anti-American activists. In 1987, long before the Jewish treason of J Street, Isaac wrote The New (Anti)Jewish Agenda and in 1990, long before the recent flap in Israel over its activities, AFSI published Irving Moskowitz's The New Israel Fund: A New Fund for Israel's Enemies.
With The Friendly Perversion by David Kirk we became the first organization to expose the way the "right thinkers" (in this case Quakers via the American Friends Service Committee) were forfeiting moral credibility through moving into anti-Israel activism. Since then Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have followed in those footsteps.
When Israel's Lebanon War unleashed a torrent of media distortion, AFSI produced a documentary by Peter Goldman NBC in Lebanon: A Study of Media Misrepresentation which documented instance after instance of outright lies which were taking their toll on Israel's case in the general public. While the Jewish establishment largely ignored us, the New York Times's media critic John Corry, in the Times of February 18th, 1984, had this to say: "The documentary, judiciously using NBC's own film, suggests that NBC was indeed taking sides and pressing the viewpoint of the PLO."
AFSI was front and center in denouncing the Oslo surrender. We did not engage in mealy-mouthed appeals to the PLO to renounce terror and its genocidal charter. We denounced Oslo because it was another step in the dismemberment of Israel and abrogated Jewish rights. As Israel engaged in subsequent retreats with the Wye agreement and the Gaza withdrawal, we predicted these would lead the Arabs to the gates of Jerusalem. They are there now.
In Outpost we continually warned that a two state solution meant Israel's dissolution, that the Moslems would not abandon their jihad and that once Israel was perceived as weak, anti-Semitism would become viral throughout the world, most especially in a Europe rapidly headed toward Eurabia. "Cassandra Says," in these pages, gives more examples of AFSI's visionary warnings.
OUTPOST is the monthly publication of Americans for a Safe Israel
