Rating: 
Summary: Garbage!
Review: Paul Findley is so utterly ignorant, it is mind blowing.
Israel is not perfect, but it is 100 times more democractic than any country within 1000 miles of its borders.
Rating: 
Summary: Enlightening and disturbing
Review: Some years ago, after reading several histories of Israel and Palestine, I wondered why I was previously so misinformed about recent history. Paul Findley's book explains why. "They Dare To Speak Out" is the most enlightening and disturbing book that I have read about the workings of the American political system. The book provides ample evidence of how the pro-Israel lobbying group, AIPAC, dictates America's public policy towards the Middle East and even stifles freedom of speech in America. Paul Findley knows first-hand the power of AIPAC: after twenty-two years in Congress, he was successfully targeted for defeat by AIPAC because he dared to question the amount of U.S. foreign aid to Israel. How powerful is AIPAC? In 1983, when queried by a reporter about a bill he had sponsored, Senator Clarence Long answered, "I cleared it with AIPAC." Another Congressman said, "What distresses me is the inability of American policy-makers, because of the influence of AIPAC, to distinguish between our national interest and Israel's national interest." Perhaps even more alarming than the influence of pro-Israel lobbyists over the legislative process is their assault on the freedom of speech in American academic institutions and media. For example, after printing several articles critical of Israel's policies, the "Berkeley Graduate", a magazine at the University of California at Berkeley, had its funding slashed. A producer with Minneapolis Public Radio was fired after airing a one-hour program of interviews with local people of Palestinian origin. Findley relates a number of disturbing incidents at the Pentagon, from which, according to his sources, Israelis routinely pilfer classified information, and where U.S. military personnel are constantly pressured to fulfill Israel's requests for weapons. In 1977, Senator Richard Stone of Florida brought to President Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a list of military officers who were not sufficiently supportive of Israel's weapons needs. Although his demand to transfer them was not met, one officer remarked, "I find it ironic that a U.S. Senator goes to a U.S. President's National Security Adviser and tells him to fire Americans for insufficient loyalty to another country." This book reveals a number of startling facts not generally reported in mainstream newspapers. For example: (1) Israel traded U.S. secrets, stolen by Jonathon Pollard, to the Soviet Union; and (2) Israel's spy agency, Mossad, withheld intelligence information from the U.S prior to the 1983 bombing of U.S. Marines in Beirut. After reading Findley's book, you may never again read a newspaper, or look at your Congressman, with the same amount of trust or respect. You might react in the way predicted by Admiral Thomas Moorer, quoted by Findley as saying, "the American people would be [expletive] mad if they knew what goes on." Read this book and find out what goes on.
Rating:
Summary: Apologizes for reactionary terror, attacks human rights
Review: There is a difference between criticizing various Israeli decisions and policies and championing the expulsion of Jews from the Levant and the banning of those who wish to enter. This book is of the latter nature. Modern Israel came into being in 1948 for a specific immediate reason, namely to get rid of the British White Paper of 1939 that basically prohibited Jewish immigration to the Levant. By being against human rights for Jews, this book winds up being against human rights for everyone.
What is new in this 2003 version? Well, we start by learning that Jews are stifling free speech! That it takes courage to speak out against Israel, and against the post-9/11 "incursions into the occupied territories." Um, these are actually disputed territories, but whether they are or not, acts of war launched from them are likely to meet with some sort of response, sooner or later. And I think we can all tell where the book stands on terror when it treats responses to terrorist attacks as crimes. Actually, I deplore the fact that there is so little criticism of those who speak out in favor of such terror. Given how mild this criticism is, I find it outrageous to refer to those who engage in apologizing for terror as courageous.
The book also tells us that it is open season on Arabs. Here, Findley may have a point sometimes. There is plenty of suspicion of Arabs in general since 9/11. But I do not see how this will get better if more of us adopt a policy of applauding terror!
Findley makes it appear that Israel is awfully important. And it raises the question of why some folks insist on defending it (or, as in my case, insist on opposing those who support attacks on it). If Israel is indeed evil, why bother? Well, Findley has it all worked out: Jews are doing this counterproductive thing of defending Israel out of loyalty. And those who are not Jews are simply being moral. Even some Jews are too moral to defend Israel.
Well, I have a countertheory. I think some reactionary Arabs simply couldn't accept the liberation of dhimmis such as the Jews, and are demanding to get rid of Jewish rights once and for all. And they have used their money and threats to propagandize and pressure plenty of people into adopting some very racist and counterproductive policies. And I think that while some Jews indeed do support Israel out of loyalty, others simply feel pressured not to. In addition, I think that some "Jewish" antizionists who are not particularly loyal to Zionism don't seem to consider themselves Jewish either. As I see it, Israel is neither particularly important nor much of an issue. The issue is Arab terrorism in opposition to human rights.
Findley complains that some Jews cried out "No more Arafat!" Well, I applaud them. I think these are people who simply prefer that human rights be supported and that thugs be opposed, even if it might mean permitting Israel to survive.
AIPAC gets heavily criticized in this book. But, as AIPAC leader Hyman Bookbinder once said, the Jewish lobby is not as strong as its critics pretend it is, but it is stronger than they wish it were.
There is a section about the US ship, the Liberty, which we now know was attacked by accident by Israel during the Six-day war. But it seems that the author has not noticed that this truth is now known. Maybe, hopefully, the author wrote this section before it became so well known that the whole affair was an accident.
And there is a chapter about subverting academic freedom. Is this a joke? Has anyone gone into the bookstore of any elite university for the past two decades and looked at the Middle East section? I sure have. And that section is generally flooded with academically dishonest books of an anti-Zionist nature. Findley has the problem backwards. What we need are standards of academic honesty. We've already got academic freedom, and we need to keep that too!
I did wonder how Findley would excuse the fact that a noted terrorist leader, Sami al-Arian was kept on the payroll of a Florida university for so long. Well, guess what? Findley didn't need an excuse. Instead, he called al-Arian a "veteran champion of Arab and Muslim rights." And he said that al-Arian was "the first tenured professor in American history to be fired for exercising his right to free speech."
Hopefully, those words too were written before the full scope of the case against al-Arian became public knowledge.
Golly, this book is awful.
Rating:
Summary: An Eye Opening Account of Intimidation versus Courage
Review: This is a very well written and researched book by former congressman Paul Findley. Every patriotic American who cares about the U.S. national interests and its wellbeing, not some narrow alien interests, should read this book. It's also vital for anyone who wants to understand the real reason why until this moment there's continual conflict in the Middle East with no end in sight. The book documents AIPAC's (Israel's lobby in the US and its outreach) intimidation tactics and the fear it inspires in all sections of the US establishment and society to provide uncritical, unqualified, and unquestioned support for Israel, even if that support is detrimental to US interests. It mainly covers the period from the late sixties to the late eighties. Findley did a meticulous research and interviewed many key personalities especially for the book. The book starts with Findley's own experience, when the lobby played a key role in his defeat in congressional elections by excessively funding his opponent and using smear tactics because he was urging Congress to make the vital US aid to Israel contingent on Israel's cooperation in a just peace with the Palestinians, to establish good relations with Arab nations that are very eager to do so with the US (e.g., Yemen and Syria), and to force Israel to stop illegal settlement activities in the West Bank and Gaza. Then it covers similar experiences with other Senators and Congressmen who criticized Israeli policies. Although all of these legislators voted in support of Israel 90% to 98% of the time, including Findley himself, the lobby demanded absolute loyalty and practically ousted all of those who don't have an unblemished voting record for Israel. Findley also illustrates the lobby's outreach, especially the so-called stealth PACs (Political Action Committees) who represent Israel's interests, although their titles mask this fact, to circumvent legal limits on funding for contestants. Even the Oval Office is not immune from the Lobby's pressure. For example, Ronald Reagan had to use the Lobby's help to pressure Congress to approve extension of US Marines' stay in Lebanon in 1982. The Lobby's power doesn't stop at the legislative body, Findley argues, but also permeates the executive branch as well. Many State Department and Pentagon officials complained that their departments are thoroughly infiltrated by Mosad spies and that Israel has more inside information than most top officials. For example, during the Yom Kippur war of 1972, the Pentagon made an inventory search for 90mm ammunition to replenish Israel but couldn't find any, only to be flabbergasted that Israel knows better and found the ammunition in a depot in Hawaii! Others complained that Israel has access to top-secret R&D departments and knows classified codes and specifications that even top officials in the Pentagon are prohibited to know they even exist! These rampant spying operations culminated in 1985 when Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy, caught by the FBI after he smuggled to Israel volumes of vital US secrets. These secrets eventually ended up in the KGB hands and caused the US irreparable damage. Findley demonstrates that the Lobby's intervention is undermining US values of free speech and academic and journalistic honesty. For example, during the 1976 Israeli aggression against its neighbors, Israeli jetfighters and torpedoes launched an hour-long attack on the intelligence ship USS Liberty, murdering 34 and wounding 171 American sailors. Within 15 minutes of the onslaught the Sixth Fleet stationed in the Mediterranean dispatched jetfighters to defend the ship but were later called back midway after learning it was Israel attacking the ship, leaving the sailors to Israel's mercy. An ensuing investigation proved that the attack was deliberate to prevent the ship from learning Israel's covert activities during the war, but the incident was virtually blacked out. Intimidation of the media is widespread and many journalists who criticized Israel's oppression of the Palestinians were forced to resign. For example, during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Thomas Friedman's description of Israel's bombing of Beirut as "indiscriminate" against civilians was censored out of the New York Times. In 1974, National Geographic magazine was forced to make the first retraction since its establishment in 1888 of an article proving that Syrian Jews were treated well. The Lobby pressured the magazine to twist the facts to cast Syria in negative light. Even the clergy weren't immune from intimidation. For example, the Reverend Francis Sayre had his career ended when he criticized Israel's maltreatment and dispossession of Palestinians in Jerusalem. Most disturbing, according to Findley, is the Lobby's smear campaign against Americans of Arab ancestry and its active opposition to any academic program that treat Arabs fairly. For example, in 1977, three colleges (Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr) were forced to withdraw request for funding of a Middle East Studies program because "Arab money is too hot to handle". In 1982, the University of Arizona's Near East Center was virtually shut down, its heads resigned, and its material banned in the community because it illustrated Arabs in positive light, even though the coordinator's material covered the period from 600 to 1948, before the establishment of Israel! Edward Said, a prominent Columbia professor, was constantly harassed and picketed by the Lobby's campus outreach using the Lobby's "Creative Packaging" strategy when he spoke for the Palestinian cause. They disrupted many of his lectures by shouting and insulting him. "It's a pure fascism, outright hooliganism", Said laments. Those who libel Findley as anti-Semite apparently haven't read the book. He dedicates an entire chapter to contest that "not all Jews toe the line". Many courageous Jews stood up to the Lobby and embraced Palestinian rights to dignity and self-determination. Unfortunately, they were degradingly branded as "self-hating Jews" and shunted as pariahs from the organized community. Findley counters that the Lobby abuses the "anti-Semitic" slander to silence criticism of Israel and that the exploitation of the slander to cover Israel's misdeeds harms Jewish interests in the long run. Findley concludes that only knowledge and activism by concerned citizens can curb the Lobby's abusive power.
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