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4.2.12
WC: 191694

as “so proud” and so “endowed with intelligence,” but who “have in the main given their acquiescence or their support to the Nixon ethos” which has led to the death, maiming, and displacement of “some six million Southeast Asians.” Berrigan referred to the ironic figure of 6 million as “one of those peculiar facts which must be called free-floating” and concluded with a veiled threat to both American Jews and to Israel: “To put the matter brutally, many American Jewish leaders were capable of ignoring the Asian holocaust in favor of economic and military aid to Israel ... It is not merely we nor the Vietnamese who must live with that fact. So must Israel. So must the American Jews.”

Reaction to Berrigan’s polemic was swift and sharp, especially among lawyers who had represented left-wing causes and individuals. Battle lines were quickly drawn. Some, like William Kunstler, supported Berrigan. Others – among them lawyers who had represented Berrigan and Kunstler – were appalled at Berrigan’s diatribe.

In 1970, the guild sent a delegation to the Congress of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers – an organization consisting largely of Communist lawyers from Eastern Europe and “progressive” lawyers from Western Europe. The International Association of Democratic Lawyers passed a resolution supporting Palestinian terrorism, characterizing it as “heroic” and “legitimate resistance and ... the expression of a national liberation movement constituting an integral part of the world struggle for liberation against imperialism.” The guild delegates were subjected to considerable pressure from the PLO to conform their organization’s policy to the consensus of “democratic” and “progressive” lawyers. It agreed, therefore to commit “the resources of the organization to continuing and expanding our internal political education on the Palestinian question.”

As part of this educational process, the guild subsequently decided to send what it called an objective delegation to the Middle East. The organizer of this “objective” group was Abdeen Jabara, the founder of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates and the editor of Free Palestine, a paper that justified the planting of terrorist bombs in universities and marketplaces. Jabara arranged for the funding of the three-week, ten-person trip and for its itinerary. The major funding for and sponsorship of this objective educational adventure came from none other than the “objective” Palestine Liberation Organization.

The grateful delegation showed its appreciation for the PLO grant by beginning its education in PLO camps and, according to one member of the delegation, limiting its interviews almost exclusively to PLO-approved Palestinians and Israeli anti-Zionists.

The resulting report contained few surprises: it presents a sordid caricature of Israel as a repressive totalitarian society which tortures, imprisons, and expels its Arab population without even a semblance of reason or justification. Nowhere in the report’s 127 pages is there any discussion of the PLO terrorism that plagued the civilian population of Israel and the West Bank. Indeed, the single mention of terrorism that I was able to find in the report is a quoted reference to “acts of terrorism” by Israeli authorities against the peaceful Arab occupants of the West Bank.

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