Excerpts from my novel: The Exodus Betrayal: A President Confronts Israel

BUY THE BOOK: The Exodus Betrayal: A President Confronts Israel

Excerpt #1: TO HIGH OFFICE [Hailey Hannagan’s Rise to the Presidency]

1.      FAST TRACK

“Senator, the White House just called,” one of my aides said. “The president would like to meet with you right away.”

“Whatever for?” I hardly knew the man. Couldn’t stand him even if he was the head of my party. Bluster and demagoguery had got him elected but his presidency had been disorganized and chaotic. The Republican brand was in tatters.

“To what do I owe the honor, Mr. President?” I asked as I was ushered into the Oval Office. President Frederick Forsythe was tall and portly, with a shock of red-orange hair; not a strand of gray.

He remained sitting at his desk, bruskly waving me to a chair.  No handshake. “Senator, as you’ve probably heard, the Attorney General is about to indict the Vice President for corruption. The evidence against him is overwhelming. I’m going to demand he resign, and I intend to appoint you to replace him.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had barely even spoken to the president before this meeting. “Why me? I can think of a dozen people who’d be a better choice.”

“The public’s going to be very angry about this,” he said, “and they’re already pissed off at me. I want someone who looks clean and independent, a bipartisan choice. I need a quick confirmation and no more controversy. I’ve got a reelection campaign to worry about.”

“But why me?” I persisted.

He smiled thinly. “The Senate and House minority leaders are demanding a veep that’s outside my administration and outside my wing of the party. Otherwise they intend to oppose confirmation. You turned out to be the only Republican choice they’d all accept. You’re seen as moderate, you’re liked and admired by the public, and you don’t seem to have any major political axes to grind. And, if Congress bucks you, it’ll put them in an awkward position. They’ll look obstructionist and unreasonable, especially if they’re denying the job to what would be the nation’s first female veep. In short, you’re my best shot.”

He stood up. “Think it over and let me know by tomorrow morning. Your country needs you, Senator.”

I suppressed a smirk. “Sounds more like you need me, Mr. President.”

I accepted thinking it would be good experience, but I knew he would dump me before the next election. I was sworn in the next day and quickly confirmed by Congress.

Being veep was a bore. I felt isolated, unimportant, out of my league. The president barely acknowledged me. I had no real responsibilities unless he assigned me something, which was rare. I did manage to worm my way into a few cabinet and national security meetings and learned a bit about how the presidency and executive branch work. I also got a brief introduction to the complicated world of national security and foreign policy. Still, I missed the Senate and its conviviality. It was lonely being an accidental vice president.

But there were two things I didn’t miss: I no longer had to make a dozen phone calls each day from a list of potential donors to finance my next senate campaign in return for my promoting their favorite cause. And I no longer had to meet with lobbyists all day, listen to their spiels, and feign interest in what they were promoting. As veep at least, I no longer had to see myself as a commodity, a vote available to the highest bidder. But feeling like a nobody wasn’t much better. None of it was what I thought I’d signed up for. So much for democracy and serving the people.

A few weeks after my appointment, my world came apart. We’d finished dinner and were watching the president being interviewed on Fox.

“So, Mr. President,” said the pretty blond host, “what are your plans for a second term?”

He’d been doing fine up to that point, but suddenly he was struggling to answer. The left side of his mouth began drooping and his hand came up to the side of his head. The skin on my scalp prickled. Something wasn’t right.

“Shecond… shecond term plants, many… plants, lecshun plants, lecshun-lecshun, lecshooo…” Fred’s face scrunched up as if he was in pain, then his eyes rolled up as he slowly tilted over onto the empty side of the couch he was sitting on. The host ran to him as two Secret Service agents appeared, one yelling for medical help into a collar mike.

“Mom, something’s wrong with the president!” My eldest daughter, Molly said. Erin, my sensitive child, began to cry.

“Dios mio,” said Consuela, my friend and our long-time family majordomo.

“Oh God, Fred. No!” I yelled at the screen.

“Are you OK, Mr. President?” asked the flustered host. He clearly was not. The screen switched to another announcer who began to describe what had just happened in somber tones.

Suddenly there was a loud banging on my front door. My two Secret Service agents appeared before me.

“Madam Vice President, we think the President’s had a stroke. They’re taking him to Walter Reed. We need to get you to the White House. As of now, you’re acting POTUS.”

Someone handed me a coat, but I couldn’t seem to find the sleeve. I was in a daze, trying to fathom what had just happened.

“We need to move,” the other agent said, and my mind cleared enough to get my coat on and begin to compose myself. They hustled me out and into a black SUV. “We can answer all your questions once you’re in the Oval Office, Madam President.”

Madam President? That title hit me like a bucket of ice water. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I was the Madam President they were referring to, and I was about to take over the most important job in the world totally unprepared. If I’d campaigned for the office, I’d have had years of preparation, surrounding myself with experienced advisors and prospective cabinet members. We’d have discussed all the issues and developed policy papers and positions on each one. I would have debated, given speeches, been interviewed, and only taken office some ten weeks after winning the election. Plenty of time to prepare the groundwork for a presidency. But I had none of that. This was spur-of-the-moment, starting from scratch. I’d gone from an unimportant, unqualified vice-presidential appointee to the highest office in the land in an instant. I did my best to breathe slowly to stem my rising panic.

A few sirened minutes later, there I was at the front door of the big house, Marine guards saluting and opening the door for me. Then I was in the Oval, not sitting at the big desk, that seemed way too presumptuous, but on one of the two facing loveseats in front of it, trying to pull myself together. Hailey Hannagan, the little-known rookie reliever, was on the mound, the manager placing the ball in my glove, the catcher, shortstop, and second baseman hovering, mumbling words of encouragement but with eyes betraying doubt. Their star pitcher had been injured. Bottom of the seventh, bases loaded, one out, season on the line. No pressure.

I felt like sobbing and puking but remembered my father’s advice when I’d suffer a childhood setback: “Suck it up, Pumpkin. Great ballplayers play their best under pressure.” I forced back the panic and tried to focus as the chief of staff updated me on the president’s condition.  He’d had a stroke. They’d know more in a couple of hours. Then I was ushered into the Situation Room, where I got the football lecture on how I was expected to order the extermination of the other half of the world if an enemy launched enough nuclear-tipped ICBMs to exterminate our half. I also got a two-hour orientation on what was going on internationally and what I was facing. None of it did anything to calm my anxiety or diminish the adrenaline coursing through me.

After a quick visit to Walter Reed and a glum conversation with the doctors—President Forsythe wasn’t doing very well and was still unconscious—I asked to be left alone with him. I spoke quietly, desperately, telling him he would soon get better, that he must get better. He didn’t blink or speak or move except for saying “Shhhhh, CLUNK, Shhhhh, CLUNK” every few seconds. But that wasn’t Fred. That was the miracle machine breathing for him, keeping him going even though he should have been long dead and gone. I put a hand on his cheek before I left and impulsively bent down and kissed him on the forehead. He was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve this.

I managed to strangle my tears until I was in the back seat of the limousine that would take me to my new home. Frederick lived alone, a bachelor president, abandoned by his wife when his sexual escapades became public. When I got back to the empty White House, I called my daughters, who were in Suela’s safe hands at the veep house, to tell them good night and that all was well, even though it most definitely wasn’t. At the insistence of the Secret Service, I stayed at the White House and slept in the Lincoln bedroom, or tried to. The next day my girls, Molly, age 18, a freshman at Georgetown and Erin, 16, a junior at Sidwell Friends, moved in as temporary guests. Just like me, I thought.

My husband Phillip was off again to his office on the West Coast. He called, but I had an aide tell him I was too busy to talk. Things had been strained between us for months. He’d been avoiding me, and I didn’t feel like filling him in on all the inside details of the last 24 hours.  If he’s going to be an absentee husband and father, fuck him.

Two weeks later the doctors declared Fred to be in a semi-permanent comatose state. So, under the rules of presidential succession, I was sworn in as president-in-fact and became master of the big house. Fred died not long after without ever regaining consciousness. The only change had been the gradual appearance of his grey roots. ICU’s are not big on cosmetic grooming. Grey on orange-red. Nice touch.

So I wasn’t to be just a temporary reliever. This was the real deal. Like it or not, I was the new starting pitcher.

We had the solemn lying in state in the Capitol rotunda followed by the long military march to Arlington. The nation paused to absorb the blow, and for a brief few days we appeared united in our grief much as we had over half a century before.

I was eight when President Kennedy died, and I remembered standing on Pennsylvania Avenue with Dad, Mom, and my older brother Jack, watching the parade of somber soldiers, sailors, and airmen march slowly past to the deep, slow beat of the drums, the flag-draped casket mounted on a gun caisson, drawn by a team of four horses followed by a skittish, black, riderless stallion with empty black boots facing backwards in the stirrups. The clip-clop of the horses, the steady beat of the heels of marching feet, and the deep rattling roll of the drums marked the somber cadence. Glistening tears, quiet sobbing, and a three-year-old-son’s uncomprehending salute completed that indelible picture of our time.[1]

Looking back, none of us were the same after that horrible day, that dreadful week in the autumn of 1963. It was one of those turning points in American history, a bursting of our flawed self-image. We had emerged economically strong from a great depression, overwhelming victors in the greatest war in history, the unquestioned leader of the Free World. We had seen ourselves as a near-perfect nation, prosperous, free, even noble. But beneath it all, there were rumblings of trouble. We were in the middle of a great civil rights struggle for black Americans. Only months before, JFK had sent American paratroopers to enforce the desegregation of Alabama schools and allow brave little black girls to walk past screaming white mobs into their new all-white classrooms

Meanwhile the trauma of war was again rearing its ugly head. The Cold War was in full throat. We’d survived the Cuban Missile Crisis, but American military advisors were beginning to die in a far-off place called Vietnam, a country rocked by civil war with a government that seemed to change monthly by coup. Soon President Johnson would plunge us with both feet into that morass. It would take us twelve years, 58,000 American dead, and countless billions of wasted dollars to extricate ourselves. There would be urban race riots, the torching of our inner cities, mass demonstrations against the war, assassinations of major leaders like Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and a breakdown of political cooperation and civility before it was all over. We were one nation, united, after World War II, and we emerged one nation, divided and flawed, after Vietnam.

My family had paid a price for the Good War; my childhood was punctuated by my father’s night terrors, these days known as PTSD. He’d also lost his younger brother in the permanent stalemate of the Korean conflict. The Vietnam War would deal our family another crushing blow. So I was intimately familiar with the toll paid by our nation’s families for our wars, both good and bad.[2]

Now, over half a century later, I was attending my second presidential funeral. But this time I was in charge, and our nation’s wars were about to be in my lap.

BUY THE BOOK: The Exodus Betrayal: A President Confronts Israel

---

[1] I describe my upbringing and formative years in Appendix 1: 1: A-C, (p. 299).

[2] The impact of war on my family is described in Appendix 1, D-H, (p. 304).

My New Novel: THE EXODUS BETRAYAL: A President Confronts Israel

My new novel, The Exodus Betrayal: A President Confronts Israel, is about Hailey Hannagan, the first female president of the United States who lands in that office as a matter of fate, with little of no experience in higher office.  The overarching subject of my novel is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is centered around a hypothetical but not unlikely attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear program.  The novel deals with the run-up to the attack and the president’s failed attempts to prevent it.  The war then takes unexpected and precarious turns for Israel, Iran, and the US. Its climax and ending suggest a possible resolution to the generations-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Phil Weiss, editor of Mondoweiss, interviewed me about my novel. The interview: (“Imagine a US president taking Iran’s side in conflict with Israel, and you get Maguire’s thriller ‘Exodus Betrayal’”) also contains reader comments about the interview and about my novel.

As the novel deals with the politics of the conflicts in the Middle East, I’ve attempted to introduce some history and differing perspectives about these conflicts through various characters: American, Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, and Iranian.  Since this is in large part a historic novel, some of the characters may appear to be recognizable or at least very similar to real-life characters.  Despite any apparent similarities, this is a work of fiction and each character is purely fictional, although many of the events they participate in are historically accurate.

To broaden the historical perspective and context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I’ve used a device I call the London Calling interviews which consist of fictional interviews by a well-known radio correspondent of actual historic characters at different points in time in which they attempt to describe and interpret historic events they were a part of.  There are nine of these London Calling segments.  None of these segments is directly related to the plot of the novel.  Sources for the historic events in each segment are contained in the Endnotes with hyperlinks from the event to its endnote source. If the source is available on the internet, a hyperlink is present that will take the reader directly to the source’s website.  Most are Wikipedia sites which I chose for simplicity of reading, and quick access by the reader.  I’ve also cited several well-known histories of different aspects of the conflict which are far more detailed and authoritative. For anyone interested in the complicated history of this conflict, these books are well worth reading.

The real-world politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are complicated and told through the narratives and lenses of the various participants and the groups they represent, both in the Middle East and in the US.  While I have attempted to be balanced, my novel may well be accused of having its own narrative and perhaps an inaccurate and/or biased one at that.  Any reader who wishes to point out inaccuracies or otherwise comment can contact me through my website/blog at http://www.irishmoses.com by replying to the “My New Novel The Exodus Betrayal” post in the Leave a Reply box at the bottom of that post.  Normally I respond within 24 hours.

My blog, Irish Moses, has the subtitle and theme, “How to Save Israel in Spite of Herself: Solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” which comes from the title of an article written by the renowned American diplomat, George W. Ball in the April 1977 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. In the article he criticized US Middle East policy and recommended it use its vast power and influence to force Israel to abandon the Palestinian territories it conquered and occupied during the 1967 Six Day War and enter into a permanent peace settlement with the Arab nations and allow the Palestinians to have the land and country of their own promised them in the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.

While my writings on my blog demonstrate a critical view of Israel’s post-1967 Six Day War conduct and annexation and settlement policies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, I remain a strong supporter of Israel and firmly believe the U.S. has a moral obligation to protect Israel’s existence from any foreign threat.  However, I also agree with George Ball’s prescient article that Israel’s illegal settlements and annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are causing great harm to U.S. vital national security interests, and that it needs to enter into a fair and reasonable settlement that both guarantees Israel’s security and provides the Palestinians with the homeland and state of their own promised to them by the United Nations in 1947.

Irish Moses, my blog, is named in honor of an American Episcopalian who played a crucial role during the founding days of Israel.  In 1948, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, called the American who directed and led Operation Magic Carpet, “the Irish Moses”  because he and his fleet of silver C-54 transport planes and pilots flew tens of thousands of Jewish refugees from all over the world to the new homeland for the Jews, the state of Israel.  That American was my father, Robert F. Maguire, Jr. He and the pilots that flew for him were all World War II veterans, most had served in combat, but few if any were Jews.

In 2004, just a year before his death, my father was awarded the Medal of Valor  by the Simon Wiesenthal Center for “his heroic efforts that helped to rescue tens of thousands of Jews” during 1948-49 after the founding of the State of Israel.  Paradoxically, my father, the “Irish Moses” for Israeli Jews, became very critical of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians in his later years, and refused an invitation to attend ceremonies in Israel celebrating the 50^th anniversary of its independence in 1998. His refusal and criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians sparked my interest in the Israeli-Arab conflict over Palestine and was the motivation for my blog and my novel, The Exodus Betrayal.

As the youngest son of the Irish Moses, I hope my blog, writings, and novel, The Exodus Betrayal will contribute to a greater understanding and empathy for the plight of the Palestinian people, and the re-creation of a promised land and a homeland of their own they too can return to and live peacefully in alongside the existing Jewish homeland of Israel.

Gil Maguire

Oxnard, California, June 2019

SILENCING DOROTHY THOMPSON: Lessons in Courage for Our Fifth Estate

SILENCING DOROTHY THOMPSON:

Lessons in Courage for Our Fifth Estate

[This piece was originally posted at Mondoweiss.net which has pictures of Dorothy as well as a video link of her narration of Sands of Sorrow, a 1950 documentary of the plight of 750,000 Palestinian refugees who Israel refused to allow to return to their lands, homes, and property at the end of the 1948 war.] 

By Gil Maguire

Many readers will find President Obama’s toast to the press at the end of Saturday night’s White House Correspondents Association dinner encouraging. He reminded journalists of their actual mission:

“In the words of the American foreign correspondent Dorothy Thompson: ‘It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.’”

There’s a supreme irony in Obama quoting Thompson, whose truly stellar career ended in charges of antisemitism from Zionists, to a crowd of journalists who quake in fear of having their careers destroyed by Israel supporters who more recently smeared Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Octavia Nasr, and Jim Clancy for off-hand, ill-conceived remarks.

Thompson’s long life and career was documented in her biography, American Cassandra.  She was born in 1983, the daughter of an impoverished Methodist preacher.  After graduating from Syracuse University, she became major player in New York’s suffrage movement as an organizer and speaker.  In 1920, Thompson went to Europe with a friend to pursue her pursue journalism career.  The ship was filled with Zionists heading to a conference in London and during the 12 day voyage she learned everything she could about Zionism, becoming a strong advocate for their cause.

In London, she convinced a paper to allow her to cover the Zionist conference as a free-lance journalist and later covered the Irish Rebellion.  The popularity of her articles in the US led to further positions.  By 1925, she was head of the Berlin bureau for the New York Post.  She married author Sinclair Lewis in 1928.  She exposed and criticized the Nazis early on, and, in 1930, was one of the first journalists to interview Adolph Hitler.  She predicted the Germans would start a new war by the end of that decade.  In 1934, her aggressive anti-Nazi reporting caused Hitler to expel her from Germany.

Thompson returned home a national hero, her story on the cover of newspapers and magazines throughout the country.  Her fame increased as she became a syndicated national columnist and radio commentator for NBC.  By 1936, she was writing a political column for the New York Herald Tribune and was considered the leading voice in the war against fascism.   By 1939, she was on the cover of Time magazine.  A movie about her life stared Katharine Hepburn and a play stared Lauren Bacall.  She was named the second most popular and influential woman in America behind Eleanor Roosevelt.  She spoke out about anti-Semitism and the plight of the Jews in Europe, and urged a relaxation of immigration restrictions so the US could be a safe haven for the Jews under threat in Europe.

In the summer of 1941, she went to London to report on the Blitz and met with the Queen and with Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  She fought against isolationism and urged the president to declare war on Germany.  In 1942, at a Zionist convention at the Biltmore hotel, she was the keynote speaker and gave a rousing pro-Zionist speech advocating unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine.  By the end of the war, she was considered one of Zionism’s most effective spokesmen.

All that changed early in 1945 after a fact-finding trip to Palestine.  Up until 1945, her anti-Nazi and pro-Zionist credentials were impeccable. What she saw in Palestine totally changed her outlook.  She began to write that the proposed establishment of the State of Israel was a formula for disaster, “a recipe for perpetual war” in the Middle East.  During her 1945 trip, she discovered that Zionism was not “the liberal crusade that the Zionist leaders envisaged”, and that Israel was to be “not a small state of Jews who chose to live in Israel, but a Zionist state destined to become the leading power in the Middle East.”

Her anti-Zionist statements and reporting began losing her the support of American Zionists.  Her boss at the New York Post dropped her “On the Record” column at the beginning of 1947.  He was a strong supporter of Zionism and very close to the Irgunists and Menachem Begin, the leader of this Jewish terrorist group.   Thompson had told him, after her trip to Palestine, that “…the situation there is not the way it has been presented by many of the Zionists.  It is one of the most complicated and difficult problems on the earth today.”

Despite the loss of this important column, she continued her criticism of Zionist actions in Palestine.    She concluded, after the 1948 war, that Zionism was “an aggressive, chauvinist movement” and that the new State of Israel was “an expansionist power.” She was angered by Jewish terrorism in Israel and appalled by Menachem Begin and the Irgun being treated as heroes in New York City.  She was the first and only American journalist to speak out in defense of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab nations, and was also the first and most prominent American journalist to be smeared with the label of “anti-Semite”.

Still, she wouldn’t back down.  In a 1949 column, she detailed the problems caused by Israel’s aggression toward the Palestinian Arabs and urged the UN to establish specific borders for the State of Israel.  Her 1949 speech before the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism resonates today:

Miss Thompson expressed alarm at the way, she said, American Jews are being indoctrinated by Zionist propaganda, “with the idea that they exist in this country–as everywhere outside of Israel–on dubious sufferance and that whatever happened in Germany could happen here any minute.” She denied that there was any analogy between the outbreak of Nazism in Germany and the danger in this country. In addition to this fear, the speaker said, “there is another tendency equally dangerous as it affects non-Jews, and that is to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.”

Thompson addressed the group again in 1951, and her comments against the special relationship and about Palestinian discrimination were reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

Miss Thompson went on to say that the state of Israel and its relations with the Arab countries “is contributing to an international problem in which Americans as a whole are concerned.” She asserted that peace between the Arab states and Israel was possible “only if the U.S. ceases to treat one state in the Middle East as its particular protection and pet, and adopts more detachment and equality of treatment, and until the displaced Arabs are properly compensated for their losses.”…[She charged] “that discrimination was practiced against the Arab minority population in Israel, Miss Thomson said: “Despite all the claims of the Zionists, the minuscule Arab population, who represent not more than 15 percent of the original indigenous Arab inhabitants, live as second-rate citizens, with serious restrictions on their rights. The fact that Arabs can sit in the Knesset does not give them equal rights as citizens with Jews. And it is these statutes which are responsible for a flow of Arab refugees from Palestine that has never stopped to this day.”

In a long and thoughtful 1950 article published in the Jewish magazine Commentary, Thompson warned American Jews of the dangers of dual loyalty and of “the terrorism of criticism”.

“…there is another tendency equally dangerous as it affects non-Jews, and that is to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. This really amounts to making anti-Semites, by appointment, of everybody who either does not believe in Zionism or criticizes any phase of Zionist and Israeli policy.”

As Thompson began to increase her criticism of Zionist policies, she was shunned by the Jewish community and by many of her life-long Jewish friends who had “turned on her in a gathering tempest of resentment.”  Rumors were circulated that she was an alcoholic, and that her husband had been a Nazi sympathizer or even a former member of the Nazi general staff.  The Washington Star, which published her “On the Record” columns, censored and refused to publish any more of her columns on Zionism.

Thompson wrote in 1950, “The Zionists would like us to believe that there is no such thing as an Arab”, and that “They have also adapted the attitude that the State of Israel, unlike every other state on earth, is sacrosanct, and outside any criticism whatsoever.”  She called Israel, “the 49^th state of the Union”, and “the only nation in history to have been canonized at birth.”

Thompson’s editors warned her that in the American press a hostility toward Israel was “almost a definition of professional suicide.”  Nonetheless, she would not be intimidated and said, “I refuse to become an anti-Semite by appointment”, and refused “to yield to this type of blackmail.”    The campaign against her strengthened and she began to be dropped from other papers.  Her once lucrative speaking career began to dry up because of the organized campaign to label her as an anti-Semite, a label that stuck for the rest of her career.

Dorothy Thompson’s is truly a remarkable story.  Her apex was probably 1948 when Claire Booth Luce and others wanted her to run for president.  She’d been one of Zionism’s most famous and influential spokesmen.  Her defection, in 1949, created great anger in the Jewish/Zionist communities, and in few short years her career was in tatters and her influence largely gone.  Today, Dorothy Thompson is virtually unknown and unremembered.  This fascinating woman who deserves to be an icon of the feminist movement, is rarely, if ever, mentioned as an important female historical figure.

I suspect there were very few members of the press at the White House Press dinner Saturday night who have any inclination toward investigating and reporting the plight of the Palestinians, or the pernicious influence of right wing Jewish billionaires on American foreign policy, and now American presidential candidates. President Obama’s gratuitous praise of the American press, at least the television version, was largely undeserved.  Many are little more than talking heads on “news” networks that offer mostly infotainment and shameless touting of marginal news stories accompanied by frequent and breathless claims of more “breaking news”.   The entire bunch couldn’t fill Dorothy Thompson’s left shoe.  To suggest that our TV press is focused on preserving our liberty is ludicrous when ratings and advertising revenue are the obvious focus.

One can only wonder why President Obama praised our press corps using a true icon of journalism as an example.  Was he trying, indirectly, to make a point, to remind them of a journalistic icon of the past in the hope they would recapture their own courage and return to true investigative journalism?  I’d like to think so.

Dorothy Thompson was the first to pay the price of standing up and reporting the excesses of Zionism.  If America’s journalists truly want liberty to survive, they need to exercise that liberty by practicing their craft with the courage and determination of Dorothy Thompson whose incredible story will be told in the soon-to-be-released documentary, “The Silencing of Dorothy Thompson”.

When Occupation Becomes Apartheid

By Gil Maguire

Israel’s military occupation and control of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza has gone on almost half a century, since it conquered those territories during the 1967 Six Day War.  While many fear Israel will become an apartheid state unless it relinquishes all or most of these occupied territories, the evidence is overwhelming that Israel created an apartheid system and became an apartheid state at the end of the 1967 war, 48 years ago.

 THE LAW OF MILITARY OCCUPATION

Under international law and Section III of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, a conquering army becomes an occupying power once military operations have ceased.  The occupying power has the duty to restore public order and safety and protect the local civilian population.   Under Article 49, it cannot seize or annex any part of the territory occupied or forcibly deport civilians, nor can it permanently transfer its own citizens into the occupied territory.  It must also relinquish control of the occupied territory and return it to civilian authority and control as soon as reasonably possible once order is restored.

The US conducted one the most difficult military occupations in history at the end of World War II after it had defeated the combined Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.  Despite the bitterness of the conflict, the US restored public order and safety and took less than eight years to rebuild the infrastructure and civilian democratic institutions of all three countries and return each to sovereign democratic rule.  The US didn’t seize or annex the sovereign territory of these three countries, it didn’t deport civilians, nor did it transfer portions of its own civilian population into the three countries it occupied.  The US post-World War II occupations are models of how military occupations should be conducted, and today, Germany, Italy, and Japan, all former bitter enemies of the US, are healthy, prosperous democracies, and strong allies.

THE UNLAWFUL DEPORTATIONS AND ANNEXATIONS

By sharp contrast, Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza has defied international law almost from the beginning.  Some 300,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to leave their homes during and after the 1967 fighting and then were deported from the territories occupied by Israel, as were another 130,000 from the captured Golan Heights.

Israel also prevented Palestinian refugees from lawfully returning to their homes and lands by denying them entry at the borders and by using force against those who surreptitiously attempted to return.  It destroyed dozens of Arab towns and villages to prevent their Arab inhabitants from returning.  It also seized and annexed Palestinian lands including East Jerusalem and about 27 square miles of West Bank land which became Greater Jerusalem the so-called eternal capital of Israel.  Later it annexed the Golan Heights.  Both annexations have been declared illegal under international law.

DIPLOMACY BY PREVARICATION, FOREIGN POLICY BY DECEPTION

In his meticulously researched study of the two years following the 1967 Six Day War, The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War (2012, Yale University Press), author Avi Raz details how Israel successfully forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to leave the West Bank and then conducted “a diplomacy of prevarication” aimed at deceiving the US and its allies into believing it was willing to allow the refugees to return, and would give back the territories it had captured during the war.  Raz also shows how Israel was approached by both the Jordanian government and by Palestinian leaders who were eager, after the debacle of the 1967 Six Day War, to negotiate a settlement with the Israelis.  Israel used its excruciatingly-protracted talks with both sides to convince the UN and the US that it was interested in and working toward a negotiated settlement while instead it was doing everything possible to delay and avoid any commitment to one.

This diplomatic strategy was aptly described by Israel’s foreign minister, Abba Eban, as tahksisanut or unstraightforwardness .  Raz concludes Israel was never willing to trade captured land for peace and used a “foreign policy of deception” to hide that fact from its allies, mainly the US who it feared would force it to return the captured lands, and refuse to sell it the sophisticated aircraft and weaponry it craved.  Raz argues that Israel’s entire approach to settlement negotiations from 1967, through the Oslo Accord of 1993, to the present day  followed Eban’s strategy of diplomatic tahksisanut.   The goal has always been to delay and avoid an agreement until the number of illegal settlements and settlers in the occupied territories created facts on the ground that would make the permanency of Greater Israel a fait accompli. The collapse and failure of Secretary of State Kerry’s 2013-14 peace talks reflects the continuing success of tahksisanut, of Israeli duplicity.

THE ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS

  Raz quotes then Israeli prime minister, Levi Eshkol, as saying Israel “wanted the dowry” (the land of the occupied territories) “but not the bride” (the Palestinians living on that land).   To solve that dilemma, plans were made and implemented almost immediately after the war to keep the occupied territories as an integral part of Greater Israel or Eretz Yisrael, and create all-Jewish settlements in the occupied areas to create facts on the ground that would make the creation of a separate Palestinian state difficult if not impossible.  In September of 1967, a secret legal memo commissioned by Israel’s prime minister made it clear that transferring Israeli Jewish citizens onto settlements in the occupied territories would be a direct violation of international law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Despite this warning, Israel began the process of transferring Jewish civilians into settlements, establishing 12 in 1967, followed by ever-increasing numbers in the next five decades.  Today, 48 years later, over 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, well over 600,000 Israeli Jews, live in hundreds of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, making the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state virtually impossible, as was the plan from the very beginning.

US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, in a March 1968 memo to the US embassy in Israel, told the US ambassador to warn the Israeli government that the transfer of its civilians into the occupied territories violated Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.  He instructed the ambassador to tell the Israeli government, in the strongest possible terms, the US opposition to any Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.  He also said that creation of Jewish settlements created the impression that Israel had no intention of reaching a settlement and withdrawing from the occupied territories.  Half a century later, Rusk’s memo has proved prophetic.

The evidence is clear that Israel knew its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention but decided to ignore them.  Its illegal actions of forcing civilians out of the occupied territories, refusing to allow them to return, annexing portions of occupied lands for itself, and transferring its own civilians into the occupied lands, all while keeping the Palestinians under strict military rule, demonstrate an intent to keep the occupied territories for itself.   Its negotiation strategy of tahksisanut is further evidence of that intention.

If Israel had no intention of withdrawing from the occupied territories, and deliberately violated most if not all of the legal precepts regarding military occupation, its behavior was and remains illegal under international law and constitutes grave violations of the laws of war, or war crimes.  Even President Obama’s White House seems to have finally acknowledged this hard fact.  On March 23, at the J Street annual conference, White House Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough said,

“Israel cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely”; “An occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end, and the Palestinian people must have the right to live in and govern themselves in their own sovereign state”;  “Palestinian children deserve the same right to be free in their own land as Israeli children in their land,”

THE LAW AND PRACTICE OF APARTHEID

Can Israel’s 48 year illegal military occupation be described as apartheid?  The term was originally used to describe a system of racial segregation in South Africa.  Today, the crime of apartheid, according to the UN Apartheid Convention, applies to acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial, ethnic, or religious group, over another by acts of systematic oppression.  Examples include: denying the one group the right to life and liberty and subjecting members of that group to arbitrary arrest and expropriation of property; depriving the group of the right to leave and return to their country, or of freedom of movement and residence; the creation of separate areas for the members of different racial groups; the prohibition of mixed marriages, etc.

Each of these examples applies to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories, and, to a lesser extent, to the 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are non-Jews.  Some 50 laws in Israel discriminate against non-Jewish Israeli citizens, forcing them to live in impoverished Arab communities surrounded by prosperous all-Jewish communities who receive the vast majority of public resources.  Moreover, Israel’s Arab population lived under strict martial law the first 18 years of Israel’s existence, until 1966, even though Israeli Arabs became nominal citizens of Israel in 1952.  Today, there remain about 274,000 Israeli Arab citizens who are internally displaced refugees of the 1948 war who fled or were forced to leave their homes and villages and were not allowed to return to reclaim their homes, land, and property after the end of the war even though they are lawful residents and citizens of Israel.

In the occupied West Bank, conditions are far worse.  Palestinians are forced to live in enclaves (the so-called Area A) surrounded by Israeli military zones (Area B).  Area C, about 61 percent of the West Bank, contains over 300,000 Jewish settlers living in all-Jewish settlements under complete Israeli control.  This area completely surrounds Areas A and B.  Palestinians are forced to live in dozens of separate enclaves, their movement heavily restricted.  Arbitrary arrest and detention of adults and even young children is commonplace, due process a distant dream.

Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is confiscated and used to build all-Jewish Israeli settlements protected by Israeli Army units, and connected by access roads that are restricted to use by Jews only.  Israeli Jews living in the occupied territories have full civil rights including the right to vote while their Palestinian Arab neighbors live under Israeli military law, have no civil rights, and cannot vote in Israel’s national elections.   All of these discriminatory restrictions on the Palestinian Arab population certainly seem to meet the definition of apartheid.

Stephen Robert, a Jewish-American investment banker, and long-time Israel supporter, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former chancellor of Brown University, described the situation in the occupied territories as apartheid after fact-finding visits to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2011.  In a long and detailed article entitled “Apartheid on Steroids”, he concluded,

“How can Jews, who have been persecuted for centuries, tolerate this inhumanity? Where is their moral compass? How can this situation be acceptable to Judaism’s spiritual and political leaders? I don’t have that answer; except to say that Israel’s biggest enemy has become itself.”

That was four years ago.  David Shulman, an Israeli Jew and distinguished professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem described similar conditions in his March 21 post-Israeli election recap, article:

“Israel has, in effect, knowingly moved further toward a full-fledged apartheid system. Those who don’t like the word can suggest another one for what I see each week in the territories and more and more inside the Green Line.” [Emphasis added].

Shulman sees apartheid in the occupied territories and more and more evidence ofit even within Israel itself.  Israeli journalist and author, Amira Hess, sees much the same,

“When you look at the geography of Palestinians in Israel, it’s the same geography, they are encircled in enclaves. They are deprived of their land. Most of their land has been taken by Jews to settle, even though they are Israeli citizens… They are all packed and cramped in houses without spaces to breathe, without agricultural lands…The political geography of the Israeli state is very similar on both sides of the Green Line.”

The treatment of Palestinian Arabs by Israeli Jews is also strikingly similar to the treatment of non-whites by South Africa’s all-white regime under apartheid.  Moreover, all the conditions for apartheid, the deportations, the annexations, the creation of Jewish settlements, the isolation of Palestinians under military law, were put in place by the Israeli government in 1967.  Since both the intent and the fact of apartheid were in place in 1967, and since conditions have only gotten worse, it’s become impossible to call Israel’s near half century military occupation of the Palestinian people on Palestinian lands in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza anything but apartheid.

The only remaining question is why we as Americans continue to support a country whose oppression of its Arab population is so contrary to our own national values, a country who openly practices apartheid.  Israel’s conduct toward the Palestinian people makes a mockery of its claim to be “the only democracy in the Middle East”, as does its claim that Israel and the US share common values.

It’s high time that we, as Americans, face up to the fact that supporting Israel is supporting apartheid, and that our military, economic, and diplomatic support of that country has fostered and abetted nearly half a century of continuing oppression of 4.5 million Palestinians.  It’s also high time we put a stop to it by telling our representatives in Congress that while we as Americans support the state of Israel, we will no longer provide military, economic, and diplomatic support for Israeli apartheid.

Gil Maguire is a retired civil rights attorney and a writer of both non-fiction and fiction.  His interest in the Israel-Palestine issue came from his father’s involvement flying Jewish refugees from around the world to the new state of Israel in 1948-49.  David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister called his father “the Irish Moses” because of his exploits, hence the name of Maguire’s blog site — www.irishmoses.com

A RESPONSE TO MICHAEL DOUGLAS: CRITICIZING ISRAEL ISN’T ANTI-SEMITISM

By Gil Maguire

Michael Douglas, in his op-ed piece in last Sunday’s LA Times, “Finding Judaism, facing anti-Semitism”, tells a compelling story about his young son encountering an anti-Semite at a hotel pool in southern Europe who shouted insults at him because he was wearing a Star of David.    While everyone can agree it’s important to stand up against anti-Semitism, it’s also important to reject false claims of anti-Semitism used as an ad hominem sword to protect Israel and the actions of its government from criticism.  Where real anti-Semitism is present, as in the despicable incident involving Douglas’s young son, it needs to be named and shamed and hopefully soon eradicated.   Where it’s not, where it’s used as a tactic to protect Israel from valid criticism, we need to reject it and avoid the slippery slope that reduces claims of anti-Semitism to little more than political theater.

Douglas goes down that slippery slope when he says,

“A second root cause of anti-Semitism derives from an irrational and misplaced hatred of Israel.  Far too many people see Israel as an apartheid state and blame the people of an entire religion for what, in truth, are internal national policy decisions.”

First, it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel and its government for its policies or actions any more than it’s anti-Russian to criticize Putin’s government for its interference in the Ukraine.  Criticism of Israel doesn’t necessarily indicate an anti-Semitic motive or hatred of all Jews.  Certainly, some who criticize Israel are anti-Semites (David Duke comes to mind), but again, that doesn’t mean all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism.

Israel can’t be held immune to criticism simply because it is Israel and most of its citizens are Jewish.  Tarring all who criticize Israel with the anti-Semitic brush is its own form of bigotry, and placing any individual or country above criticism sets a dangerous precedent.

Second, Douglas says too many people see Israel as an apartheid state and blame all Jews for what are really internal national policy decisions.  Certainly the charge of apartheid within Israel’s pre-1967 borders is unwarranted since all Israeli citizens, both Jews and Arabs, have civil rights, including the right to vote.  However, there are some 50 laws in Israel that discriminate against its Arab-Israeli citizens in favor of Jews.

The real problem lies in Greater Israel, specifically in the Palestinian territories Israel captured and occupied in 1967.  There the apartheid charge has a great deal of validity.  In the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, there are 4.5 million Palestinian Arabs who have lived under Israeli military control and occupation without civil rights or the right to vote for almost half a century.

At most these Palestinians have very limited voting rights within the truncated areas of the occupied territories.  They vote for local leaders who have virtually no control over Israel’s hegemony in the occupied territories.  They live under a harsh military occupation and have no say whatsoever in the national policy or leadership of the Greater Israel that totally controls their borders, their travel, their natural resources, in short, their entire lives.  Self-rule and voting rights for the Palestinians of the occupied territories is little different than that of the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa.

In 2012, Stephen Roberts, the former chancellor of Brown University and a Jewish-American and major life-long supporter of Israel, concluded, after a humanitarian aid trip to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, that “… Israel has created a system of apartheid on steroids.”  Depriving 4.5 million people, primarily Muslims, of their most basic civil rights for half a century certainly looks like apartheid.  Moreover, under those circumstances, Palestinian resistance and hatred of Israel seems understandable.

Third, Douglas criticizes those who label Israel’s actions as apartheid for interfering in what he sees as merely Israel’s “internal national policy decisions”.  In other words, whatever the Israeli government decides is above criticism because it’s really just making decisions involving internal matters of national policy.   Douglas is on shaky ground here.  Would he apply that standard to those who criticized the internal national policy decisions of Nazi Germany, of the Rwandan government during the genocide of the Tutsi, of the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia, or of the South African apartheid regime?

No country, including Israel can be held immune from valid criticism.  Douglas would do well to think about one looming fact: In this week’s election in Israel, the so-called “only democracy in the Middle East”, 35 percent of the population of Israel and its occupied territories, the non-Jewish population of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, weren’t allowed to vote even though they’ve been under Israel control and occupation for nearly half a century.  That’s 4.5 million people that have been waiting to for their freedom and basic human civil rights for now 48 years.  They live, unfortunately, in what most Israelis see as Greater Israel which includes Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, the Eretz Yisrael of their Old Testament dreams.  Does Douglas really believe a 2000 year old claim based on the Old Testament should be allowed to trump the basic human rights of 4.5 million indigenous Palestinians?

Douglas and his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, should be admired for having given back by being leaders in a wide variety of worthwhile progressive causes.  As a Jew, he should be concerned about stopping the scourge of anti-Semitism, as should we all, but as a Jewish progressive he should also be concerned about the current direction of Zionism, particularly the Zionism practiced by the hard-right Likud party and its now reelected leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.  The question he should ask is whether Israeli Zionism, as practiced today, is consistent with Jewish values, and American values.

I would hope that Douglas, as a newfound Jew, would avoid the trap of equating Zionism with Judaism.  Zionism is a very modern and recent offshoot of Judaism, one of the world’s oldest and most noble religions.   Whether this offshoot, in its present form, is consistent with the values and precepts of Judaism is a question for Douglas to answer.  I would hope he would follow the example of Brown University Chancellor Stephen Roberts’ and take his wife and son on an investigative journey to the occupied Palestinian territories, and then come to his own conclusions and give us a 2015 update.

Gil Maguire is a retired civil rights attorney and writer of both fiction and non-fiction.  He lives in Oxnard.   His blog, Irish Moses, is named in honor of his father, Robert F. Maguire, who was awarded the Medal of Valor by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 2004 for “his heroic efforts that helped to rescue tens of thousands of Jews” during 1948-49 after the founding of the State of Israel.