[(Continued from p.9)]
On Thursday, February 13, a high school student and I stopped by your office in the Rayburn Building to drop off our most recent publication, Dubious Allies: The Arab Media's War of Words Against America, a report on the PA, Egyptian, Saudi and Jordanian government-controlled media attacks against the U.S. I asked if Mr. Diamond could see me for just a minute in order to provide him with a quick thumbnail about this report. To my shock and embarrassment, Mr. Diamond summarily dismissed me and the report, saying that Congressman Ackerman's office no longer accepts representatives or literature from Americans for a Safe Israel since we advocate transfer of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.
Contrary to this assumption, AFSI does not take a position regarding transfer. Rather, AFSI's policy has been to provide a forum for ideas regarding solutions to Israel's security concerns.
Such uncivil treatment of an American citizen who simply wishes to exercise his constitutional right of expression is unbecoming an elected representative and his staff. I am sure that were you to meet, for example, with Ibrahim Hooper, Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, you would extend to him all the courtesy due any visitor, despite CAIR's known ties to Hamas, and Hooper's past expressions favoring the destruction of the State of Israel. As a defender of Israeli citizens' right to live without fear from murderous suicide bombers, and of the right of Israel to exist within secure borders, shouldn't I expect nothing less?
Congressman Ackerman, I am prepared to consider this incident an aberration and resume our civil discourse if you can confirm that this affront was not a consequence of an explicitly stated directive from you personally.
AFSI is an organization with headquarters in the state you represent and many of our members reside in your district. We urgently request your personal response to this matter so that we can assure your constituents as well as our national members that your door and mind are open to any American citizen who desires access within the parameters of politeness and mutual respect.
Sincerely yours,
Jeff Daube
Member of the Executive Board
Americans for a Safe Israel
Daube received the following automated response:
Thank you very much for contacting my office about an issue that I know concerns you greatly. Please know that I have acknowledged and registered your opinion, and I greatly appreciate hearing your views.
If you reside in the 5th Congressional District and have included your name, address and zip code, you will receive a more detailed response shortly.
As a matter of Congressional Courtesy, I can only respond to correspondence from within my own district.
Thank you once again. Your comments are an integral part of the political process, without them I would not be able to make the decisions that affect our community and our nation.
In any discussion of alternatives to the failed policies which require Israeli withdrawal to the pre 1967 boundaries, there is a third rail: the mention of transfer of the Arab population. Those who blandly advocate the transfer of about 300,000 Jewish citizens of Gaza, Golan and Judea and Samaria will not even discuss relocation of Arabs. They are sanguine about the "ethnic cleansing" of all those areas, but just mention even a peaceful population exchange when it comes to Arabs and they go into self righteous orbit.
Even some of Israel's more hawkish advocates recoil from a discussion of transfer. Daniel Pipes, an eloquent critic of the "road maps" and the Oslo debacle, dismisses the forced removal of terrorists and their families as well as the more peaceful relocation of those Arabs who cannot accept Israeli sovereignty as "impractical."
Instead of examining genuine alternatives, all parties return to the same 1969 Rogers plan which proposed Israel's withdrawal to the 1949 borders in exchange for peace. Now, after 30 years of repeating this formula, it is time to face up to the fact that it will not work. No amount of concessions by Israel will bring peace between Israel and the Arab states.
Moslem law explicitly forbids a treaty with an infidel state. While a truce is permitted it is only binding for ten years. The Camp David treaty with Egypt did not even last that long. Within two years the Egyptians had violated every relevant paragraph: there was no trade, no Egyptian tourism to Israel, above all, no cessation of incitement to violence and hatred.
The Palestinian Arabs signed the Oslo Accords (note it was never a treaty) and embarked on the worst terrorist rampage in Israel's history. The more Israel conceded, the more suicide bombers were activated. It certainly is time to entertain other alternatives.
Here is mine: all parties must return to the 1922 boundaries of Jewish and Arab Palestine. When, in that year, 80% of Palestine was given to the Arabs to create Trans-Jordan (now Jordan), the Jewish homeland under the British Mandate retained the area west of the Jordan. (In the 1920s and 30s, massacres by Arabs who would accept no Jewish presence in their midst caused
[(Continued on p.11)]
Outpost - 10 - April 2003