Tikkun lobbying for Congressional support for Israeli withdrawal

[IMRA: Tikkun proposes that Israel trade security for complete and total
reliance on third parties. It is remarkable that letists such as Lerner (no
relation), who under normal circumstances are typically cynical about
American foreign military involvement and a strong US military want Israel
to rely completely and totally on just that.]
----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2002 7:22 AM
Subject: My meeting with Congresspeople

July 14, 2002

Hi. I wanted to share with you some of what I found out in a series of
conversations I've been having with people in Congress in the past
two weeks. The conversations were off the record and very candid,
and for that reason I can't tell you exactly who was involved. But I
can tell you what I learned. Here are the key points:

1. There are somewhere between 25-30 Congresspeople at the
present moment who would sign on to the TIKKUN Resolution
for Congress as presented in the Strategy section of The Tikkun
Community section of our website www.tikkun.org

2. Most agree that they are going to be subject to the same attack
from AIPAC and related forces whether they take a faintly pro-peace
stance or a strong pro-peace stance: AIPAC will go after and
demonize anyone who suggests that Palestinian human rights
deserve support and attention in the U.S., no matter how otherwise
pro-Israel those people or elected officials might be. For that
reason, the stance of The Tikkun Community is not "too radical."

3. What makes the stance of The Tikkun Community particularly
appealing is that it includes the call for Israel to be given either
membership in NATO or a mutual defense pact with the U.S. That
element can be used to offset those who would seek to demean the
rest of the package (including withdrawal to the pre-67 borders of
Israel with slight border adjustments mutually agreed upon,
reparations for Palestinian refugees, troops to intervene and
protect each side from the other, etc.) as anti-Israel. Calling for
this defense of Israel's security in concrete terms goes a long way
to reassure people that our call for security for Israel is not just
a meaningless phrase and that our "real" agenda is only to
end the Occupation while leaving Israel vulnerable.

4. There may be more Members of Congress who would support
this kind of stance, except that they are all certain that this would
put their careers in jeopardy. This fear has increased since Jewish
pro-Sharon forces managed to run another Black candidate against
incumbent Congressman Hilliard and defeat him in a primary a few
weeks ago.

The next such primary is that of
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, from Georgia, because
the same pro-Sharon forces have targeted this African American
Democrat for defeat for her strong stance in favor of both Israel and
Palestine. I was told by almost every Member of Congress to whom
I spoke that people need to a. send money contributions to her
re-election committee and to identify that they learned about this
through The Tikkun Community and want to help. Equally important--
b. some people need to physically go down there and help her
campaign by volunteering time and energy to it. The election is in
mid August, so the help is needed now. I was told that people who
wanted to help in these ways should call her Congressional Office
and from there be directed to her campaign staff--202 334 3121 and
ask for the office of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia.
If McKinney loses, it will be far more difficult to get others to take
any risks.

The TIKKUN COMMUNITY does not make
recommendations on how to vote, and has not been involved in any
study of the candidate's positions at this point. So I am not
conveying to you some decision or endorsement, but merely the
information I was told by Congress people who support our
position on Israel.

5. There is widespread support for our particular approach to
strategy, particularly the attempts to get our resolution debated
in local city councils.

Congresspeople informed me that the
Democratic party leadership will block any attempt to bring this
kind of a resolution to the floor of the Congress, and for that reason
they thought that it would very important to loosen things up for us
to bring hundreds of people to Washington this coming April 27-29
from every Congressional district in the U.S. Doing so would be an
important first step in countering AIPAC's image of invincibilitiy,
particularly if we could do this every year for the next many years.

Everyone felt that what the TIKKUN COMMUNITY was trying to
do was particularly important, though several wondered if we
could actually pull it off (and I made it clear that that depends
entirely on you and your friends--because I certainly can't do
this without your active involvement, financial support, and
emotional commitment to ask friends and people in your
community to get actively involved with us).

One of the themes
that was continually raised to me by the more skeptical members
of Congress was their experience that the progressives and people
of conscience who agree with The Tikkun perspective tend to be
less willing to express strong convictions in public, challenge
biased media coverage, or make it clear to their elected
representatives that they really could imagine that this specific
issue might decide how they would vote, whereas people on
the other side are well organized, have no problem calling the
media several times a day and insisting that their perspective be
covered, and make it very clear to their elected officials that their
votes will go to anyone who supports their perspective no matter
what other issues may be involved. In this regard, many pointed
out to me the recent alliance between the Jewish establishment
and the Christian fundamentalists, many of whom disagree with
the Jewish world on every other issue but have become strong
allies with Jews because of this Christian support for Israel.

I told
them that we at the Tikkun Community were organizing a Rapid
Response Team for the media (check it out at www.tikkun.org),
and that we were organizing Jews and non-Jews to speak out
on these issues.

In all, I found great receptivity to our plans, considerable fear about
people making themselves too vulnerable in the face of attack,
a hopefulness that something could happen. Congresspeople
were particularly hopeful about the fact that Cornel West and
Susannah Heschel have joined in leadership positions, and
that we were making our organization not only for Jews, but
explicitly for non-Jews as well (since, many told me, they
doubted that there would be enough Jewish progressives to
make a difference, but an organization that also included
Christians, Muslims, secular humanists, etc. just might have
the clout to make a difference). They wished us well.
...