Starting in Columbia University and rolling out across the country and beyond, college students organized in Spring 2024 to demand ceasefire, transparency, and halts to arms transfers to Israel. With accounts from Haverford, Georgetown and the University of Connecticut, and overview commentaries from USC and University of San Francisco, this issue of The Link documents the character of the encampment protests in 2024, and the draconian and tonedeaf response from college administrators and large donors. In an era where governments failed abjectly to protect innocent lives from the deadly actions of a rogue state, students stepped forward and lead by example.

Against the unrelenting backdrop of Gaza, The Link issue 57.2 asks, "Where are the voices of the American churches...?" Baptists, Catholics, Evangelicals and Anglicans have all been challenged by the horror of Gaza. We sample from those pulpits and join people of good will everywhere for an end to violence and for the justice that will breed peace. This issue's pages are graced by Sliman Mansour's iconic art, and close by saying goodbye to Fr. Ed Dillon, who was one of a kind. (Authors: Ashlee Wiest-Laird, Gary Burge, Bruce Fisk, David Crump, Wendell Griffen, Allan Aubrey Boesak, and H.E. Michel Sabbah)

We solicited past Link authors (among others) for abbreviated reflections on the "Day After" the assault on Gaza ends. Contributions come from academics, clerics, former US military, concert musicians, MDs. Collectively, they grieve and cringe and resist. The issue includes notes from a Jewish Liberation theological tradition, in response to Gaza. We remember our friend and colleague and past President Robert Norberg.

Woman, Life, Freedom: Resistance in Iran one year after the murder in custody of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini. George Mason scholars frame the issue. Sumud and devastation in Gaza, from Georgetown University's Professor Laurie King. Second Annual AMEU Mahoney Awardee named: Just Vision's Julia Bacha. Cover art by Iranian Canadian artist Hajar Moradi.

From the Editor American conversations about the Middle East too often get short-circuited by the simple, seemingly casual admonition, “It’s complicated…” Lobbed in through the transom, this friendly advice squelches debate, implicitly challenging who does and doesn’t have standing to speak. Given AMEU’s mission, which is to improve American understanding […]

Labeling Israel's occupation as "apartheid" has been much debated in recent times. Now, with the detailed reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the matter would appear to be settled. Chris McGreal, a seasoned frontline journalist, provides a comprehensive review of the history of the appellation, and the legal ramifications in 2022.

Labeling Israel's occupation as "apartheid" has been much debated in recent times. Now, with the detailed reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the matter would appear to be settled. Chris McGreal, a seasoned frontline journalist, provides a comprehensive review of the history of the appellation, and the legal ramifications in 2022.

Labeling Israel's occupation as "apartheid" has been much debated in recent times. Now, with the detailed reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the matter would appear to be settled. Chris McGreal, a seasoned frontline journalist, provides a comprehensive review of the history of the appellation, and the legal ramifications in 2022.

In early 1967, six Americans met to form an organization they called Americans for Middle East Understanding. In August of this year, AMEU’s Board of Directors selected Nicholas Griffin to be the organization’s fourth Executive Director in 54 years. In this issue of The Link, our bimonthly publication, retiring Executive Director, John Mahoney, welcomes Nicholas to the job and invites all of us, as we look to the future, to take a few minutes to visit our half-century old archive, where the past has something important to tell us.

The dictionary describes rant as a noisy jollification. If you've never been on one, now's a good time to start.

A former officer in the Israeli army takes a critical look at the Israel Defense Forces and asks how long will this colonial state get away with it?

The times, they are a-changin’, even when it comes to the interminable Israeli-Palestinian “conflict.” On January 5, 2018, The New York Times ran a piece entitled: “As the 2-State Solution Loses Steam, a 1-State Solution Gains Traction.”

Let’s begin with a cautionary tale. When suicide bombers connected to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) set off bombs in the Brussels airport in March 2016, the Israeli government did not convey its condolences as most other governments did.

Ian Lustick holds the Bess Hayman Chair in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. His latest book is Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality, on which his article for The Link is based.

In 1947, 85% of Bethlehem's population was Christian, with 15% Muslim. Today 85% of Bethlehem is Muslim and 15% Christian. Why the dramatic reversal? That is the subject of our July-August Link.

Whatever happened to the suspected murderers of Alex Odeh? Our April-May issue of The Link investigates.

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of the newly released book "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine." We invited Professor Khalidi to write a feature article for The Link based on his book. Here, with gratitude, is our March 2020 issue, likewise entitled "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine."

Have you read a good novel lately? How about "The Exodus Betrayal" by Gilbert Maguire. And who is this little known novelist? And what is his novel about? All this is explained in our December Link, including how to obtain the novel.

In this issue we turn to a short story writer to convey the terrible truth of what has been called the world’s largest maximum security prison. Rawan Yaghi is a young Gazan who graduated from the University of Oxford. How she managed the checkpoints to get in and out of Gaza was the subject of her January-March 2018 Link. Here she lets her characters tell what hell is really like.

The only way Israelis can be made to sit up and take note of the disaster unfolding next door in Gaza, it seems, is when they fear the fallout may spill out of the tiny coastal enclave and engulf them too.

Recently U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speculated that President Trump may have been sent by God to save Israel." To which our May-June Link author Ed Dillon asks "What in God's name is going on?"

At a time when 26 states have passed some form of pro-Israel legislation requiring a loyalty oaths to Israel in order to receive aid, get contracts or apply for state jobs, it is more urgent than ever for American Jews to stand up and affirm that being anti-Zionist is not anti-Semitic --- which is what 24 Americans do in the video that is the subject of our January-March Link.

Over the past several decades, activists, grassroots organizations, and institutions generally deemed congressional advocacy focused on Palestinian rights as a completely futile exercise. Many avoided direct engagement with lawmakers, often expressing it would be a waste of time.

So, why the title “Judaization of Jerusalem / Al-Quds”? For one thing, says Basem Ra'ad, author of our Sept.-Oct. 2018 Link issue, the taking of land from one people and giving it to another based on an exclusive blood line is, simply put, racist and the worst form of apartheid.

In 2006, former president Jimmy Carter wrote a book which he entitled "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. In our June-July issue of The Link, Palestinian lawyer Jonathan Kuttab tells why, 12 years later, the president's worst premonition has come to pass.

The Link is doing a series of issues on how the concept of apartheid in international law applies to the different situations in which Palestinians find themselves: citizens of Israel, occupied West Bankers, imprisoned Gazans, and residents of Jerusalem. This issue examines the status of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Our writer is Jonathan Cook, a freelance journalist who lives with his family in Nazareth, Israel.

The world's focus is now on Jerusalem. But, as Rowan Yaghi narrates in our January-March Link, it should be on the West Bank and Gaza.

Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron called anti-Zionism a form of anti-Semitism. Not true, says Allan Brownfeld, editor of ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism. Indeed, as he shows in our Dec. issue of The Link, there is a long and well articulated history of Jewish anti-Zionism.

Our feature writer, Tom Suarez, spent long hours in The National Archives in England "connecting the dots," as he puts it, between Zionism and fascism, including Nazism, and between what British intelligence knew about the true intent of Zionism and when it knew it. Much of his research has never seen the light of day.

Perhaps it was fitting that the most significant act of organized mass resistance by Palestinians to the occupation in many years was launched from behind bars. In April of this year more than 1,500 political prisoners began an indefinite hunger strike against their increasingly degrading treatment by the Israeli authorities. Some called it a prison “intifada,” the word Palestinians use for their serial efforts to “shake off” Israeli oppression.

On March 7, 2016, Washington D.C. litigator Martin F. McMahon filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Washington, DC seeking $34.5 billion in damages from eight U.S. billionaires. The plaintiffs were 37 Palestinians (increased to 62, as of this writing) who accuse the billionaires of civil conspiracy, war crimes against humanity, and genocide; aiding and abetting the commission of war crimes; and aggravated and ongoing trespass.

This is not a celebration. How does one celebrate 50 years of a brutal military occupation? This is a singling out of a few Americans who, over a span of 50 years, had the guts to say “No”. “No” to our country’s enabling the theft of another people’s land. “No” to our tax dollars fueling that injustice.

What do Native Americans, African Americans, and Palestinians living under occupation have in common? That is the subject of our December Link, "The Wheels of Justice," by Steven Jungkeit.

The Palestinians' struggle to shake off their 50-year military occupation has given the world such neologisms as intifada. Now, as veteran journalist Jonathan Cook reports in our Sept.-Oct. issue of The Link, comes agro-resistance. As it turns out, it's one that the reader can actually buy into.

A terrorist attack occurred in Southern California. 30 years ago. But, the murderers have yet to be named, questioned, or indicted. Our June-July issue of The Link asks Why.

What makes a president of the United States shun the advice of his State Department and embrace the colonization of another people’s land? More astoundingly, yet, what makes leading intellectuals of their day do the same? The answer, in part, is mainstream Protestantism. Ironically, though, as our feature writer notes in our May-June issue of The Link, it is today’s mainstream Protestant churches that are publicly voicing opposition to the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land.

There are two Gazas. One is the Gaza you get when you Google Gaza. The other is the Gaza you will discover in our January-March issue of The Link.

In 1997, Tom Hayes authored our Nov.-Dec. Link article “People and The Land,” a behind-the-scenes look at his documentary by the same name. That issue turned out to be one of our most requested; more significantly, his DVD People and the Land has easily been our best selling video. In 2014, Tom and his film crew returned to Palestine. The documentary that survived his cutting room floor was not the one he expected. How his latest documentary, Two Blue Lines, came to be is the subject of this issue.

The author begins with these words: “I was once on track to be a nice Jewish girl, growing up in the small New England town of Sharon, Massachusetts, with liberal minded parents who fled the narrow confines of shetl Brooklyn for the dreams of 1950s exurbia, a sparkling lake, and a moderately out-of-tune though touchingly aspirational civic orchestra. I played the cymbals, perhaps a warning of crashes to come.

“Kill Bernadotte” is a story enfolding several stories, beginning during the last years of World War II and continuing through into the 1947-48 war in Palestine. Time and space do not permit a discussion here of the history of Zionism from the late 19th century, the Zionist attempts at collaboration with a variety of colonialist powers from Cecil Rhodes to the Turks, French and Russians—none of which worked until the British Balfour Declaration in 1917—and the next quarter century of Palestine as a British “Mandate” (a post World-War I term for colony). Our focus will be on one man.

Morbid thoughts—both predictable and unexpected—fill my mind as I arrive at the Freedom Theater in Jenin’s refugee camp. The large steel gates at the entrance are familiar from the photographs that widely circulated four years ago of the spot where a masked gunman executed the theater’s founder, Juliano Mer Khamis, in broad daylight.

There is a word in our Link issue that needs explaining. It’s prosopographic. Google tells us it comes from prosopography, and it turns out to be a fancy word for investigating the common characteristics of an historical group. This particular group signed Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence.

Daniel Maguire, our feature writer, is professor of religious ethics at Marquette University, where he specializes on issues of social justice and medical and ecological ethics. He is the author of 11 books, including “The Horrors We Bless: Rethinking the Just-War Legacy” and “The Moral Core of Judaism and Christianity.”

The International Criminal Court opened its doors on July 1, 2002. It is the first treaty-based international court set up to prosecute individuals for the worst acts known to man: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Currently, 122 countries are parties to the Statute of the Court, 31 others have signed the Statute but have not yet ratified it.

Tradition has it that Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque were built upon the ruins of King Solomon’s Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70AD. But what if the ruins aren’t there?

According to Dr. Charles Villa-Vicencio, the author of our April-May Link, the church is in a constant struggle between being a church in captivity to the dominant powers of its time and an alternative church that seeks to be obedient to one who resisted the occupation of first-century Palestine by choosing to be on the side of the poor and the oppressed. This May, Pope Francis goes to the Holy Land. Which prompts the obvious question that underlies our issue: Which tradition will this unpredictable pope represent?

Grace Halsell is a familiar name to most readers of The Link. During the 1980s and ‘90s, her essays on the politics of Christian Zionism, the dispossession of Palestinian Christians, violence against Muslim women in Bosnia, Macedonia and Kosovo, and her illuminating portrait of Yasser Arafat, were among the most widely circulated articles to appear in these pages.

The New York Times of November 1, 2013 reported that the Palestinian negotiators engaged in peace talks with Israel offered their resignations. A senior American official, however, insisted that the negotiators would remain committed to the nine-month negotiations. Pamela Olson, in her December 2013 Link feature article, unmasks this disconnect we call the "peace process."

The photographs on pages 3, 5, 6, and 7 (PDF version) come courtesy of our author, Miko Peled; they are pictures of four individuals who caused him to think twice about what he had been taught as a boy about his country. His hope is that they will cause his country’s best friends, us Americans, to think twice as well. Miko’s article is based on his book “The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” published in 2012 by Just World Books. Permission to reproduce excerpts contained in the article must be obtained from the publisher (rights@justworld books.com). The Pulitzer Prize winning author, Alice Walker, has granted AMEU permission to reprint her poem (page 2 of PDF), as well as excerpts from her Foreword to Miko’s book; see pg. 14 (PDF). Copies of Miko’s book are available from the publisher (www.justworldbooks.com) and from AMEU; see pg. 15 (PDF). Also on pg. 15, our video selections include the Oscar-nominated documentary “Five Broken Cameras,” recommended by Miko Peled in his article. It is a snapshot of Israel’s ongoing colonization.

Its name comes from the biblical town, mentioned in Joshua 15:21-22, that was one of the Caananite cities said to be totally annihilated by the Israelites. Today's Dimona, the third largest city in the Negev, knows something about total annihilation—something even Joshua would have had a hard time imagining.

For many Americans, the Muslim Brotherhood has become a catch phrase, a convenient category for encapsulating a wide range of images and fears swirling ominously in the post-9/11 world. On many occasions during Q and A following a public lecture, in media interviews, or in private conversations with interested non-specialists during the past decade, a surprising array of people have confidently summarized their perspective with a declarative sentence or rhetorical question: “The Muslim Brotherhood is the problem.” “It is really all about the Muslim Brotherhood, isn’t it?”

The Link has never had a centerfold lay-out — until our current January-March issue. We decided this was the most dramatic way to lay bare the naked truth in a way that words alone could never convey.

Our December, 2012, issue of The Link is about two young girls, an army that hurt them, a physician who healed them, and an unprecedented letter from 15 religious leaders to every member of of the U.S. Congress.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI visited Nazareth. Palestinian Christians living there were excited. Their revered leader would come and, through his eyes, the world would see their plight. But after waiting for hours along Nazareth's main street, the police urged the crowds to go home; the Pope had been advised that it was not safe for him to meet the residents. In this issue, journalist Jonathan Cook tells us what the Pontiff would have learned, had he met the area descendants of the boy Jesus.

The names of those pictured on our front cover are, on the left, from top to bottom: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby, and Douglas Feith; and on the right, from top to bottom: David Wurmser, William Kristol, John Bolton, and Michael Ledeen. Each of the above played a prominent role in the buildup to the U.S. war in Iraq, as detailed in our Sept.-Oct. 2004 Link “Timeline for War.” Eight years later, Americans are again being told that another Middle East country is threatening us — and Israel.

Let’s say it clearly and categorically: the two-state solution is dead. If the possibility ever genuinely existed—a subject historians are welcome to debate—it is gone as a political option. We should even stop talking about it because constant reference to an irrelevant “solution” only confuses the discussion.

My name is Maysoon Zayid. I am a Palestinian- American, comedian, actress, writer and producer. The following is my story in three chapters! Please keep in mind I am a comedian first, foremost, and for life. Some facts have been been changed to protect the innocent.

Basem L. Ra’ad, the writer of this Link issue, is a professor at Al-Quds University, Jerusalem, and the author of “Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean.”

On the surface it would appear that the only two populations unaffected by the recent upheaval in the Eastern Mediterranean are the Israelis and the Palestinians. In our September-October issue of The Link, West Chester University professor Dr. Lawrence Davidson looks beneath the surface and concludes that the Palestinians and Israelis may have to go through another winter before their springtime arrives.

Question #1: How many Palestinian olive trees have been destroyed by Israelis during their recent 22-day invasion of Gaza?: (a) 5,000; (b) 9,000; (c) 13,000. Question #2: How many Palestinian olive trees have been destroyed by Israelis since 1948?: (a) 100,000; (b) 500,000; (c) over 1,000,000. Question #3: Why?  The answers follow.

In his more than 40-year career, our feature writer, Geoff Simons, has authored nearly 60 books focusing on international politics, history and philosophy. His latest book is “Pakistan: A Failing Nuclear State?”  This is Geoff’s third article for us, and we are pleased to welcome him back to the pages of The Link.

What do a Pulitzer Prize winner, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and two former U.S. Ambassadors have in common? They are all featured in our January-March issue of The Link. Chris Hedges is the author of our main article “What Price Israel?” Jeff Halper is interviewed about his organization’s website. And Ambassador Robert Keeley reviews the latest book by Ambassador Chas Freeman.

Author is a former British journalist for The Guardian who now resides in Israel. In this issue he tells of the difficulties in reporting on Israel’s brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Palestinian journalist Khalid Amayreh takes the reader down the main thoroughfare of Hebron, the second most populated West Bank city after Jerusalem—and by far its cruelest.

U2 singer Bono recently expressed his hope that “the people in places filled with rage and despair, places like the Palestinian Territories, will in the days ahead find among them their Gandhi . . . ” We urge Bono to go to the Territories and to meet with Palestinians such as our feature writer, Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, a former Yale University scientist, author of “Popular Resistance in Palestine,” and a nonviolent human rights activist.

What does putting a computer chip on the top of a prescription bottle have to do with peace between Palestinians and Israelis? Dr. Steven Feldman explains.

Question #1: How many Palestinian olive trees have been destroyed by Israelis during their recent 22-day invasion of Gaza?: (a) 5,000; (b) 9,000; (c) 13,000. Question #2: How many Palestinian olive trees have been destroyed by Israelis since 1948?: (a) 100,000; (b) 500,000; (c) over 1,000,000. Question #3: Why?  The answers follow.

Hasbara is a Hebrew word. Its root meaning is "explanation." But, as Jane Adas explains, there's much more to the word than that.

If you ride the Tri Rail in Miami, the RTA in New Orleans, the Sprinter in San Diego, the Metrolink in Los Angeles, or any of the Blue-Van SuperShuttles serving 32 major airports, your transportation is being managed by Veolia Transport. Why is that significant? This Link has the answer.

Discrimination against Jews—anti-Semitism—teaches us why hatred of any people is so insidious. But what about philo-Semitism? Is it possible to love Jews too much? That is one of the questions that Jim Wall, former editor of Christian Century, addresses in this issue.

They include a businesswoman, journalist, member of the British Parliament, international lawyer, university professor, rabbi, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. And, as this issue of The Link will reveal, they all have two things in common.

Joel Kovel believes that no state has an inherent right to exist. This principle is not original with him. He finds it enshrined by Thomas Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence. In this Link issue, Dr. Kovel, who is Jewish, asks the question-that-must-never-be-asked: Does the Zionist state of Israel have an inherent right to exist?

Musicians have long sensed that their music can pretty much transcend whatever it is that separates us humans. Beethoven called it “the wine which inspires one to new generative processes,” and added: “I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind.” Billy Joel saw music as healing, an explosive expression of humanity, “something we are all touched by.” These verities are discovered anew in our December issue of The Link by a violinist from New York and his two colleagues from the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

It’s been called the 80-20 solution: the percentage of Palestinian citizens of Israel that must never exceed 20 per cent of the population. So how does a government keep a minority population from passing a precise mathematical number? British journalist Jonathan Cook lists the ways in this issue.

Two types of trauma are generally recognized: One-time trauma, such as a natural disaster, rape, robbery, or life-threatening accident; and prolonged trauma, such as physical or sexual abuse as a child, war, or life in a prison camp, a concentration camp, or a refugee camp. But what happens when prolonged trauma is prolonged from one generation to another? Then, as psychologist Eyad Sarraj reports, you are in Gaza.

Many political analysts, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, have advised that peace between Israelis and Palestinians is not possible without the participation of the democratically elected Hamas organization. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe goes further. With our without Hamas, he writes, Israel has to do one indispensable thing for any peace agreement to be effective.

The U.S. invited more than 40 countries to attend the Middle East peace conference held in December, 2007, in Annapolis, Maryland. Just about everyone of any importance was there, everyone, that is, except the elected representatives of the Palestinian people. This Link examines the background, activities and philosophy of the Islamic organization known as Hamas.

It has been said that the murder of one person is a tragedy, while that of millions of persons is a sanitation problem. So, too, the uprooting of one family can be grasped as a particular calamity, while that of thousands of families is seen as a logistical challenge. This Link puts a human face on the million-plus Iraqis who have had to flee their homeland in fear of their lives.

Avraham Burg is the author of a new book, “Defeating Hitler,” and the subject of a July 30, 2007 New Yorker Magazine profile. In these publications Burg announces the end of the Zionist enterprise. Want to know, he asks fellow Israelis, why Palestinians blow themselves up in our restaurants? Look at how we treat them. Think our dependence on U.S. dollars and weapons is good? Think again. Want to keep a Jewish majority in our country? No problem. Expel the Arabs or wall them up into Bantustans. These pronouncements have triggered condemnation all across the Israeli political spectrum and have stirred controversy in the American-Jewish media. While his critique represents something new, this Link issue quotes similar viewpoints expressed through the years by other Jews, Israeli and American.

Anna Baltzer writes that it was on a trip to southern Lebanon where, for the first time, “I heard a narrative about the state of Israel altogether different from the one I had learned growing up as a Jewish American.” To see the situation for herself, she traveled to Palestine in late 2003 as a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS), a grassroots solidarity organization dedicated to documenting and nonviolently intervening in human rights abuses in the West Bank. “In spite of my research,” she continues, “nothing could have prepared me for witnessing firsthand the injustices that characterize Israeli rule in the West Bank, including the expansion of Jewish-only colonies on Palestinian land, the virtually unchecked brutality of soldiers and settlers against Palestinian civilians, and Israel’s Apartheid Wall, separating hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land, jobs, hospitals, schools, and each other.”

President Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” unleashed a firestorm of controversy. To suggest that white, racist South Africa’s treatment of its indigenous inhabitants is in any way similar to Israel’s treatment of its indigenous inhabitants, for some, smacks of anti-Semitism. And yet, a Google search of “Israel + Apartheid” brings up 5.5 million references. To help clarify the relationship between Israel and apartheid South Africa, Mahoney, Adas and Norberg put together a timeline, beginning with June 1917, when Dr. Chaim Weizmann and Gen. Jan Christian Smuts met in London to lobby for their respective causes.

This issue begins in a West Bank refugee camp. It is December 1987 and the first intifada has begun. A Wall Street Journal reporter, Geraldine Brooks, profiles a “stone-throwing Palestinian,” 15-year-old Ra΄ed. He tells her that he’d like to be a doctor, but is fated to be a terrorist. Her article in the Journal inspires a Texas ophthalmologist to offer to pay for Ra’ed’s studies to become a doctor. By the time that offer can be relayed to the young Palestinian, he is serving a five-year sentence in an Israeli jail for throwing a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli soldier, and before he is released the Texas physician has perished in the crash of a small plane. Enter journalist Brooks in a private capacity, and subsequently Fahim Qubain, a Palestinian-American living in Virginia.

Simon Shaheen, one of the most significant Arab musicians, performers and composers of our time, explains what it felt like when he first picked up the 'oud, what he experienced as a Palestinian growing up in Israel, and what he is doing today to bridge the cultures and conflicts in the world and to encourage other Palestinian musicians to reach their potential.

Barbara Lubin, a Jewish-American activist, begins her Link with these words: “Israel’s recent invasion of Lebanon brought back painful memories to me of its 1982 invasion for more reasons than one. While Israel’s actions in 2006 were similar to 1982—widespread bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure, the destruction of entire neighborhoods, and the indiscriminate killing of women and children—my reactions then and now were very different. These opposite reactions tell the story of who I was and who I have become.”

The author was active in the South African anti-Apartheid movement. Since 2001, he has served on the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation steering committee. Currently he serves as Executive Secretary, Human Rights & Racial Justice, with the General Board of Ministries, United Methodist Church. He examines divestiture as a nonviolent, moral strategy, and the struggle to bring divestiture to bear on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 1984, along with Palestinian and Israeli activists, Michel Warschawski co-founded the Alternative Information Center, which combines grassroots activism with research, analysis, dialogue and the dissemination of information on Palestine-Israel. He was arrested by Shin Bet in 1987 and refused, during 15 days of interrogation, to reveal the names of Palestinian counterparts and others active in opposing the occupation. The author is a Polish Frenchman and a rabbi’s son who went to Israel to study the Talmud and ultimately chose to risk his personal security in the cause of peace with justice for Palestinians.

In 2001, shortly after the terrorist attacks on the trade towers in New York, the American Association of University Professors set up a special committee to report on Academic Freedom in a Time of National Emergency. Joan W. Scott, professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., was a member of that committee and, at the time, chair of A.A.U.P.’s committee on academic freedom and tenure. The author describes the “well-organized lobby that, on campus and off, has been systematically attacking Middle East studies programs under various guises” in an effort to limit expression on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to pro-occupation viewpoints.

Frequently the path to discovering the plight of the Palestinians begins with acts of conscience with respect to racism, discrimination and civil rights in the U.S. And so it was with David Neunuebel, who recalls the pejoratives and ill treatment meted out to his mother solely for being Polish and poor, and the segregation visited upon blacks simply because of skin color. When Neuneubel returned from visiting Palestine for the first time, he felt compelled to tell other Americans about what he had learned. In addition to producing two film documentaries on life for the Palestinians under occupation, he also created an organization, Americans for a Just Peace in the Middle East.

John Cooley, former correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and ABC News, writes that President Bush, Prime Minister Blair and their real or nominal allies had the active or tacit cooperation of many in the media in the run-up to the “war of choice” with Iraq. Cooley adds: “For this writer, after covering Arab and Muslim regions for nearly half a century, there is another issue. Our mainstream media, almost without exception, tip-toe around the role played by Israel in influencing the Bushites toward war in March 2003.”

The New York Times is called “the newspaper of record,” in part because hundreds of other newspapers across the country and around the world subscribe to its New York Times News Service. So, if The Times skewers the news, it’s skewered worldwide. Which is exactly what is happening with its coverage of Palestine/Israel, according to Alison Weir, executive director of If Americans Knew.

Former Washington Post Middle East Bureau Chief Thomas Lippman provides a fascinating, anecdote-laced account of the 1945 meeting of President Franklin D. Roosevelt with Saudi Arabia’s legendary King Ibn Saud. Roosevelt’s probing of Ibn Saud’s views on Jewish settlement in Palestine elicited the King’s response that Germany, being the perpetrator of the Holocaust, should be made to pay the price with appropriated land within Germany. Col. William Eddy, translator between the two principals, is relied upon for the substance of what was discussed, and the Eddy book, “F.D.R. Meets Ibn Saud,” can be accessed on the AMEU website.

A comprehensive survey of Iran, beginning in antiquity. From World War II onward, there are many familiar American names and U.S.-influenced events embedded in this account: John Foster Dulles; the C.I.A. and Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh; Kermit Roosevelt; the Rockefellers; Jimmy Carter and the Americans taken hostage during his presidency, President Ronald Reagan, Oliver North, and Iran-Contra.

James M. Wall, Senior Contributing Editor of Christian Century magazine, explains that Americans have been deprived of a valid and compelling alternative to the Israeli version of the basic elements of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s mythic descriptions of why millions of Palestinians were condemned to expulsion and lives under occupation are accepted wholesale, while facts that confront the legend are ignored by the media. The book and movie “Exodus” are cases in point.

A date-by-date account of how the war with Iraq came about. Beginning in 1992 and running through August, 2004, the chronology is drawn from books by Bob Woodward, James Bamford, James Mann, and Richard Clarke. A Reader’s Guide on pages 8 & 9 provides background information on persons who figure prominently in the timeline. The Guide is based on two articles, “The Men from JINSA and CSP,” by Jason Vest in The Nation, and “Serving Two Flags: Neocons, Israel and the Bush Administration,” by Stephen Green in The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Once the digital photos surfaced, the mainstream media suddenly became interested in a December 2003 report on prisoner abuse in Iraq prepared by the Christian Peacemaker Teams. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh mentioned CPT in interviews he gave, and CNN interviewed a CPT member in Baghdad. Meanwhile, Peggy Gish, a member of CPT’s Iraq delegation, was preparing this issue of The Link. CPT documented abuse not only in the Abu Ghraib prison but in prisons throughout U.S.-occupied Iraq.

On April 21 of this year Dr. Mordechai Vanunu will have served out a prison sentence of 18 years for having publicly exposed Israel’s nuclear weapons program. More than 11 of those years were spent in solitary confinement. Waiting for his release at the gate of Ashkelon prison will be a couple from St. Paul, Minnesota, Mary and Nick Eoloff. Nick is a retired lawyer and Mary taught Spanish before raising six children. Through adoption, Mordechai Vanunu has become the Eoloffs’ seventh child.

Jeff Halper believes the time for a two-state solution has run out. If he’s right, the question is, What do we do now? And, is a genuine Middle East peace possible? For if time is running out on the two-state option, that means time is running out on seriously considering the other options. In this issue, Dr. Halper looks at those options.

Rachel Corrie went to the Occupied Territories believing in (1) the right to freedom of the Palestinian people based on the relevant United Nations resolutions and international law; and (2) exclusive reliance on non-violent methods of resistance. On March 16, 2003, Rachel was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to prevent the demolition of the home of a Palestinian pharmacist, his wife and three young children near the Egyptian border. She was 23 years old. Her mother wrote this issue of The Link.

Practically all polls show that Americans are less esteemed by the world community today than ever before. Is it because, as many U.S. commentators suggest, non-Americans envy our power, or our way of life, or our technology? Or perhaps they revile our culture as they see it filtered through our movies and television? John Zogby, president of the international polling firm of Zogby International, looks at all these possibilities and concludes that none of them is right. So what is the answer? While Zogby's polling results may surprise many Americans, they will not come as a surprise to the rest of the world, and certainly not to the people of the Middle East.

“Blowing up a bus, a train, a ship, a café, or a hotel; assassinating a diplomat or a peace negotiator; killing hostages, sending letter bombs; massacring defenseless villagers — this is terrorism, as we know it. In the modern Middle East it began with the Zionists who founded the Jewish state. “ Author Ronald Bleier’s meticulous documentation includes Livia Rokach’s “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” which is based in large part on former Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett’s diary.

AMEU Executive Director John Mahoney surveys political Zionism’s origins under Theodor Herzl, traces its evolution from the early 1900s, describes its successful strategy of finding a world power patron, and documents its influence over U.S. foreign policy. The issue is dedicated to Alfred Lilienthal and Fayez Sayegh, whose seminal writings have had a sustained influence on the literature of the Palestine-Israeli conflict.

Thirty-four times over the past 30 years the United States has vetoed United Nations Security Council resolutions critical of Israel. Efforts by the vast majority of the world’s nations to halt Israel’s occupation of Arab lands, expropriation of Palestinian property, and violation of the human rights of a civilian population under military rule have been repeatedly thwarted by Washington’s intervention. While U.S. dollars fuel Israel’s colonization, U.S. vetoes shield Israel from international censure. The history behind these vetoes is the topic of this issue. Our author, Phyllis Bennis, has been a Middle East affairs analyst for over 20 years.

Geoff Simons has written four books on Iraq, his most recent being “Targeting Iraq: Sanctions and Bombing in US Policy,” published this year. Denis Halliday, former U.N. Assistant Secretary-General and head of the U.N. Humanitarian Program in Iraq, says of this work, “There is no doubt this is an important book.” And The Times of London added: “Books either written or edited by Simons can be bought with confidence.” If ever Americans had a need to know the history of Iraq—“from Sumer to Saddam,” as the title of one of Geoff’s books puts it—that time is at hand. Two of Simons’ books on Iraq, along with other new entries, are available from our web site catalog.

If you look at the blueprint of a prison, it looks like the prisoners own the place. They have 95 percent of the territory. The prisoners have the living areas. They have the cafeteria, the visiting area, the exercise yard. All the prison authorities have is 5 percent: the surrounding walls, the cell bars, a few points of control, the keys to the door. When you consider Israeli Prime Minister’s “generous offer” to the Palestinians at Camp David, keep that prison blueprint in mind.

Crusading is a concept that applies to successive campaigns against the East and even against foes in the West during medieval times, as well as to actions of the imperial powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. A clear understanding of crusading reveals that it characterizes much that is occurring today, from U.S.-headed economic sanctions on Iraq to Israel’s expansionist settlement policy in Arab territory to Russia’s devastating campaign in Chechnya.

J. Martin Bailey has compiled and defined 117 terms whose use, misuse and non-use by the media contribute mightily to what newspaper readers, radio listeners and TV watchers perceive as “the truth” about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the religious, cultural and ethnic ingredients of that conflict. The AMEU web site has made the lexicon into a permanent feature (see Resources) so that it can be expanded and amended as needed.

Francis Boyle served as legal adviser to the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations from 1991-1993 and worked closely with the head of that delegation, Dr. Haider Abdel Shafi. Part of his responsibilities was to review all preceding peace proposals put forward by Israel with respect to the Palestinians, going back to the Camp David Accords. This is his account.

Post-911 commentaries by James M. Wall, Christian Century magazine; Dr. Ilan Pappe, Haifa University; Dr. Norman Finkelstein, DePaul University; Sen. James Abourezk; Muhammad Hallaj, political analyst; Rabbi Marc Ellis, Baylor University; and Ali Abunimah, media analyst.

The most populated West Bank city after Jerusalem, Hebron today is a city cut in two. In 1997, following 30 years of Israeli occupation, 80 percent of Hebron came under Palestinian control—though Israel still controls the main access routes. This is H1. H2, the remaining 20 percent, remains under Israeli military control. It counts an estimated 30,000-35,000 Palestinians and approximately 400 Jewish settlers, protected by 1,200 Israeli soldiers.

Forty-five thousand United States citizens of Palestinian origin are living in or visiting the West Bank, according to U.S. officials. Some of these citizens are imprisoned by Israel—without ever being charged with a crime; some have their U.S. passports taken from them—without ever being charged with a crime; all report that they were tortured. Jerri Bird profiles several cases in this issue, relying on the sworn affidavits of the tortured.

In Ed Dillon’s country parish in upstate New York, church members reenact the Stations of the Cross on the Friday before Holy Week. Tracing the Stations of the Cross has been a pious custom, especially for Latin Catholics, since the time of the Crusades. The Link asked Pastor Dillon to go to Jerusalem and to construct a modern parable while following the course of the original Via Dolorosa and reflecting on the figures who found themselves there 2,000 years ago. Who could be cast today as Jesus, Dillon asked himself. “For those who come to the Holy Land with eyes to see and ears to hear,” he writes, “the answer is the Palestinian people.”

Because they are the targets, Palestinian youngsters have become authorities of sorts on rubber-coated steel bullets. They collect them much like American kids collect baseball cards. And they’ve learned to discern what’s coming at them.

Is Yahweh the Great Ethnic-Cleanser? Did He not instruct the Israelites to rid their Promised Land of its indigenous people? Few biblical scholars want to wrestle with these questions. Rev. Michael Prior needs to wrestle with them. He’s been to today’s Holy Land and has seen today’s variation on biblically sanctioned genocide. Dr. Prior is Professor of Biblical Studies in the University of Surrey, England, and visiting professor in Bethlehem University, Palestine. He is a biblical scholar and author of “Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry” and “The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique.”

In 1973, upon assuming the editorship of Christian Century, Jim Wall received an invitation from the American Jewish Committee to take an all-expenses paid trip to Israel. He began his journey a solid, pro-Israel supporter, a position his AJC host had hoped to reinforce. But, then—in a twist of fate not planned by his host—he met LeRoy Friesen, a Mennonite, who convinced him to spend a day with him in the Israeli-occupied, Palestinian West Bank. Now, 23 years later, the editor-politician-minister looks back upon an event that happened that day as a turning point in his understanding of Palestinians and their history.

On July 12 [1948] Ramle and Lydda were occupied by Zionist forces and a curfew was imposed. At 11:30 a.m., many Lydda inhabitants, shut up in their houses, took fright at the sudden outbreak of shooting outside.… Some rushed into the streets, only to be cut down by Israeli fire...In the confusion, many unarmed detainees in the detention areas in the center of town–in the mosque and church compounds – were shot and killed.… At 13:30 hours, July 12, before the shooting had completely died down, Operation Dani HQ issued the following order to Yiftah Brigade: “The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age.”—Israeli historian Benny Morris, “The Middle East Journal,” vol. 40, No. 1, Winter 1986, pp. 86-87

The author of this issue, Bashar Tarabieh, is a member of the Arab Academic Association for Development of the Golan. Bashar presently lives in Atlanta, Georgia. The story he tells in these pages is indeed the untold story of his people’s oppression under foreign occupation. Much has been reported in the U.S. media of what the 17,000 Israeli colonizers on the Golan might lose should negotiations with Syria succeed. But what of the 140,000 Syrians expelled by Israel in 1967, or the 17,000 who remain there today? What about their 33 years of lost freedoms. This is their story.

Between six and eight million Muslims live in the U.S. African-Americans represent 43%, Asian-Americans 26%, Arab-Americans 14%, Iranian-Americans 4%, Turkish-Americans 3%, European-Americans 3%, with 7% unspecified. Until recently, most lived in well defined Muslim communities. Today, however, Muslims are moving into the mainstream and, like minorities before them, many are facing discrimination, intolerance, even violence. To counter this bias, Nihad Awad helped to found CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In 1998, a delegation of Palestinians visited the Lakota Indians on their Pine Ridge Reservation. Soon after, a delegation of Native Americans visited Palestine. What they found is the subject of this issue.

Many — most? — Americans believe that while the effects of economic sanctions on the Iraqi people are cruel, “we” are not to blame. Time and again it is said: “Saddam could end it today if he wanted to.” When Geoff Simons agreed to write about the situation, we specifically asked him to address the question of culpability.

This issue focuses on a country whose Supreme Court recently ruled that its government, for political reasons, can target particular groups within its non-citizen population for deportation. While deportation is being pursued, the aliens can be jailed indefinitely on the basis of evidence that neither they nor their lawyers are permitted to see. It focuses on a university professor forcibly taken in handcuffs from his home where for years he had lived peaceably with his wife and three young daughters. There are two authors for this issue of The Link. John Sugg is a reporter in Florida, where a Palestinian professor is spending his third year in jail for no known reason. Kit Gage of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom monitors other cases of prisoners of Middle Eastern origin languishing in our prisons for reasons known neither to them nor to their lawyers.

What is it like to be on the receiving end of the longest military occupation in modern history? Muna Hamzeh-Muhaisen lived in Dheisheh, a refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem, for more than a decade, including the period of the first intifada. This is her account of the people who have lived in Dheisheh all of their lives. As she notes, there is hardly a refugee in The Camp, young or old, who doesn’t remember the names of the camp’s victims and even the years of their untimely deaths.

This is the story of one American playwright's willingness to question the world according to the U.S. media. And it is the story of a Palestinian-American’s search for a past that had eluded him. Central to both stories is a village in the Upper Galilee, where horses and cows now graze. “Sahmatah” is a one-act play for two actors. It debuted in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada in 1996. In 1998, it was produced in Arabic in the Masrah al-Midan theater in Haifa, and on the ruins of the village of Sahmatah in the Upper Galilee.

Ali Abunimah, widely known today for his association with the Electronic Intifada website, confronted National Public Radio in 1997-98 with a stream of e-mails about its Middle East coverage, using plain facts, humor and irony to call attention to historical inaccuracies, the use of Israeli euphemisms (i.e., “rubber bullets”), and failures to report on settlement growth, Palestinian deaths, home demolitions and collective punishments. Several of Abunimah’s most compelling letters to NPR are reprinted in this issue.

A cable TV programmer in Manhattan called me to ask if I’d like to see a documentary on the Bedouin of Israel. It’s rather extraordinary, he said. The day after viewing Ron Kelley’s documentary, I phoned him at his home in Michigan and invited him to tell his story to our Link readers. He agreed in the hope that “the article can draw a little attention to the problem at hand.” The problem at hand is the destruction of a people.

Rod Driver is running for the United States Congress from Rhode Island’s second district. No stranger to politics—he was elected four times to Rhode Island’s state legislature—Driver is now doing something no other candidate for federal office has ever done. He’s telling his constituents how their tax dollars are being used to dispossess and torture Palestinians. And he’s doing it by showing on television graphic film of Palestinian parents and their children being dragged kicking and screaming from their home as a bulldozer moves in to turn it all to rubble. (Channel 12 in Rhode Island prefaces Driver’s TV ad with the disclaimer: “The following political advertisement contains scenes which may be disturbing to children. Viewer discretion is advised.”) Why, at 65, spend thousands of your own dollars on behalf of Palestinians? That’s what we asked Professor Driver to explain in this issue.

This issue’s feature article by Ilan Pappe, an historian at Haifa University, challenges Israel’s official account of what happened 50 years ago in Palestine. Dr. Pappe is one of a growing number of Israeli historians whose analyses of newly released documents by the U. S., England and Israel have led them to conclude that what really happened back then is far closer to what Palestinians have been saying all along.

In our previous Link, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe looked at the hundreds of thousands of indigenous Palestinians whose lives were uprooted to make room for foreigners who would come to populate confiscated land. Most were Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. But over half a million other Jews came from Islamic lands. Zionist propagandists claim that Israel “rescued” these Jews from their anti-Jewish, Muslim neighbors. One of those “rescued” Jews—Naeim Giladi—knows otherwise.

Filming the Israeli occupation is to risk death or serious injury, but then just try and get the resulting documentary on U. S. television. Filmmaker Tom Hayes tells both parts of the story in “People and the Land.”

The United States has leverage over Israel—annual grants and loans in the billions of dollars—if it ever chooses to exercise it. In addition to the familiar figure of $3 billion or so that is handed over every year to Israel, the true cost to the American taxpayer is far more. From 1949 through October, 1997, benefits to Israel from U.S. aid totaled nearly $85-billion, including grants, loans, “non-foreign aid,” and interest Israel accrued by receiving its foreign aid as a lump sum early in the fiscal year (rather than quarterly as is the case with all other foreign aid recipients). It cost American taxpayers $50-billion in interest costs to provide that aid. In that time period, Israelis received nearly $15,000 per citizen from the U.S. alone, and more than $20,000 when German assistance is included.

This issue includes a memorandum by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I have never believed that [Israel’s] attack on the USS Liberty was a case of mistaken identity,” Moorer writes. “[It was] a wanton sneak attack that left 34 American sailors dead and 171 seriously injured. . . . I have to conclude that it was Israel’s intent to sink the Liberty and leave as few survivors as possible.”

For the 30th anniversary issue of The Link, eight authors were invited to update readers on their earlier articles. Contributors are Lynda Brayer, Norman Finkelstein, James Graff, Grace Halsell, Rosina Hassoun, Kathleen Kern, Daniel McGowan, and Donald Wagner.

More Iraqi children have died as a result of our sanctions on Iraq than the combined toll of two atomic bombs on Japan and the recent scourge of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Kathy Kelly, it should be noted, is a pacifist She's against all wars. But her article is about these children. And the legitimate question for all peoples of good will, pacifist or not, American or not, is whether the preventable deaths of over 600,000 children under 5 years of age is an appropriate sanction to levy on any country, anywhere, any time?

Ever been to the Holy Land? Ever think of going? Chances are you’ll get on a tourist bus, get off at Manger Square, see the traditional site of Jesus’ birth, buy a few souvenirs, whisked back on the bus, and move on to the next holy place. In this issue, the authors suggest that, while you may see the site of Jesus’ birth, but you have not walked in the footsteps of Jesus.

For McGowan, a professor of economics, it was a matter of parity: If his college was going to pull its investments out of South Africa because of its apartheid, why not pull them out of Israel for the same reason? The question led him to Deir Yassin.

Linda Brayer was born in South Africa to a Jewish family. Her parents were from Palestine and her grandfather was one of the founders of the first Jewish modern settlement, Petah Tikvah. She went to Israel on “aliya” in 1965. After obtaining her liberal arts degree (cum laude) from the Hebrew University, she continued on for her law degree and entered private practice in 1986. The following year the first intifada broke out. “My world was shattered,” she writes. “I found myself facing the void of the lie of Zionism.”

The target was a school bus. Twenty-five children, returning from school, with flowers. It was Mother’s Day 1994. Had the explosion occurred in Israel, it would have made news. As it was, it happened in South Lebanon. Part of South Lebanon still bleeds under Israel’s military occupation, while 450,000 refugees in Lebanon, most of them clustered in 12 camps, struggle not to despair. As the world focuses on Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon, it seems, has been forgotten.

“ . . . some broke ranks and attacked a line of Christian women peace activists who regularly placed themselves between the Jews and Palestinians, knocking two of them down and dragging them by their hair” was how The New York Times described a group of Jews led by Yigal Amir, the confessed assassin of Prime Minister Rabin, as he swaggered into Hebron. We thought that the U.S. media would have descended upon these women to get their eyewitness account, the assassination being, after all, a major story. One of the women, Kathleen Kern, was even back in the country for a few weeks. But when we tracked her down, she said we were the only publication to ask for her story.

Donald Neff served as Time magazine’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief from 1975-78. He had never worked in the Middle East before going to Israel in 1975. “My attitude toward the region [at that time] reflected pretty much the pro-Israel biases of the media and of Americans in general, unleavened by history or sophistication about Zionism,” he writes in this issue. What he saw of the Israeli occupation began to change his attitude. His epiphany came at a two-story Palestinian middle school in Beit Jala in 1978.

Teachers, libraries and students comprise about 25 percent of our readership. The Link is also listed in various educational directories that offer teachers free and inexpensive curricular materials. And teachers do write to us. What we never could send them — because, as far as we know, none existed — was a concise up-to-date survey of the best resources available for teaching about the culture, history, and current events in the Middle East. Now we can, thanks to Elizabeth Barlow.

Since its military take-over of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has confiscated over 18,000 acres of Palestinian land. On it the Jewish State has built 38,500 housing units, all of which are exclusively for Jews. Prior to 1967, when the Holy City was divided, West Jerusalem was 100 percent Jewish while East Jerusalem was 100 percent Arab. Today West Jerusalem is still 100 percent Jewish while East Jerusalem is 48 percent Arab. Israel's plan to judaicize the Holy City is working. Dr. Dumper concludes that there will be little to negotiate if Israel continues in this fashion.

Israel Shahak is a Nazi concentration camp survivor, a renowned chemist, and Israeli citizen. He has been called a prophet, a Renaissance man, and a self-hating Jew. However, he’d rather be known for his thoughts on democracy, fascism, ethnicity and human rights — which is what he focuses on in this issue.

In this Link, Halsell explains the reasons for the precipitous decline in the proportion of Christians—the “Living Stones”—in the land of their origin. She also comments on how Christian visitors to the Holy Land are systematically routed around their co-religionists. As one of 630 Christians who flew to Israel in 1983 on a Holy Land tour sponsored by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Halsell observed that during her tour by bus, not one Christian guide was provided, nor was time allocated to meet Christian Palestinians or attend a Christian services. She writes: “On the day we approached Nazareth, where Jesus grew up and had his ministry, our guide said, ‘There is Nazareth.’ He added we would not stop. ‘No time,’ he said. Minutes later, he changed his mind, announcing: ‘We will stop in Nazareth. To use the toilet facilities.’” Thus, the only site the Christians saw in all of Nazareth were the toilets.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark once said that “The truest test of any individual’s commitment to human rights in our society...lies in the commitment to human rights for Palestinians.” This issue profiles eight Americans who embody that commitment.

Another attempt to educate an American “Everyman” on the basics behind the ongoing struggle in the Middle East.

Have the Israelis left Gaza? Have they stopped expropriating Palestinian lands? A year after “the” handshake on the White House Lawn, journalist Frank Collins looks at how the situation has changed for Palestinians on the ground.

She forded the Rio Grande with Mexican illegals, worked as a Navajo Indian in California, a black woman in Harlem and a speech writer for President Johnson. Now this veteran journalist — and AMEU board member — reports on the rape of some 50,000 Muslim women as part of the slaughter and expulsion of Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.

This was Dr. Berger’s last major writing before his death. For 26 years he served as president of American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism (AJAZ), and for over 50 years he lectured and wrote on Judaism and Jewish nationalism as a rabbi of American Reform Judaism. In this issue Dr. Berger lists three “problems” that must be faced before any meaningful peace will come to Palestinians and Israelis: the biblical account of the Hebrew/Israelitist tribes; the Balfour Declaration; and the 1948-49 Armistice.

Fifteen years ago, Ann Lesch, writing in the Journal of Palestine Studies, compiled a list of 1,151 Palestinians who had been deported by Israel between 1967 and 1978. Now, in this issue, Ms Lesch updates her list to include the names of 547 Palestinians expelled from their homeland between the years 1980 and 1992. The issue also includes a 1988 letter by Umar Abd al-Jawad describing the midnight arrest and deportation of his father, al-Birah mayor Abd al-Jawad Salem, 14 years earlier.

Rosina Hassoun delivered the first of four papers on “The State of Palestine,” a panel sponsored by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee at its National Convention, last April, in Alexandria, Virginia. The other three presenters talked about politics—everything from Israeli annexation of the Territories to Palestinian sovereignty over them. When the time came for questions, the 500-plus audience directed all their queries to the political analysts. Then something unexpected happened. The session ended and the three analysts gradually made their way out of the room. But not Rosina. She literally was surrounded by reporters and interviewers (one from the Arabic version of the BBC), as well as other participants just fascinated by what she had to say; they wanted to hear more.

On April 14, 1993, 19 people filed a class action suit against the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, et al. The plaintiffs, represented by former U.S. Congressman, Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey, are seeking damages for invasion of privacy. Colin Edwards is one of the class action plaintiffs. Here he writes about the law suit and about the wider issue of censorship of Middle East news in the United States.

Mrs. Clinton has voiced concern about the rights and well-being of children around the world. Now as First Lady she can accomplish even more on behalf of children. That’s what prompted James Graff to write to her about Palestinian children. He writes to ask her help in ending a foreign government’s practice of shooting, beating, terrorizing, and de-educating an entire generation of youngsters — a government, moreover, that is doing it with our tax money.

In its 1992 monograph entitled “Islam in America,” the American Jewish Committee acknowledges attempts by “some Western commentators” to stimulate what has been termed “the threat which Islam poses to western civilization.” What it fails to do, however, is to say who these commentators are, why they are turning Islam into a global villain, and how such a worldwide view affects U.S. national interests. For answers to these questions, we have turned to Professor Shaw Dallal of Utica College. He holds a degree in International Law from Cornell University, and is a frequent writer and lecturer on the Middle East.

As a graduate student at Princeton University Norman Finkelstein challenged the accuracy of Joan Peters’s “From Time Immemorial,” which claimed that the Palestinians never did constitute an indigenous majority in those areas of Palestine that became Israel in 1948. [See The Link, Jan.-March 1985.] Since then, at considerable detriment to his own career, Norman continues to challenge those myths that suggest that Palestinians deserve what they got and, moreover, are even blessed that they ended up with such benevolent occupiers.

Some Evangelical Christians believe that the return of Jews to the Promised Land is the sign of the imminent Second Coming of Christ, when ‘true’ Christians will be raptured into the upper air, and the rest of humankind will be slaughtered. 144,000 Jews will bow down before Christ and be saved, but the rest of Jewry will perish in this mother of all holocausts. This issue looks at who these Evangelicals are (some prominent TV personalities), why they are wooed by Israeli officials, and what their impact is on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. It also looks at a growing number of Evangelicals who are concerned about what happens to the indigenous Palestinians when hundreds of thousands of Jews colonize their land. The Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Steal, comes to mind.

U.S.-Israeli covert operations have sealed the fate of millions of people worldwide. This issue looks at some of these operations that range from selling illegal arms to Third World dictators, to training these dictators’ security forces, to cocaine trafficking, to multimillion dollar money laundering, to assassination squads.

In this 25th anniversary issue, authors of previous Links revisit their subjects, including Muhammad Hallaj, Grace Halsell, Edward Dillon, Cheryl Rubenberg, James Ennes, John Law, Jane Hunter, George Irani, John Quigley, Mohamed Rabie and L. Humphrey Walz.

In 1980, Paul Hopkins became the Presbyterian Church’s Overseas Mission Secretary to the Middle East. His first visit to the West Bank and Gaza brought him face to face with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees languishing under Israel’s military rule. When he came home to report what he had seen, his criticism of Israel brought him face to face with something else he didn’t expect: the charge of anti-Semitism. Paul’s experience is not unique. Nor is that of the Presbyterian Church. Many Americans, Protestants and Catholics, have sought justice for the Palestinians, as have Americans of no religious affiliation. And many Jews, risking the charges of “self-hating Jew” have also said No to Israel’s brutal occupation. This issue is dedicated to all those who have looked beyond the polls, beyond politics and, perhaps most difficult of all, beyond the fear of being smeared, to speak out on behalf of a people in pain.

Jack Shaheen, a Fulbright scholar, is Professor of Mass Communications at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. His 1980 Link issue, “The Arab Stereotype on Television,” became the basis for his book “The TV Arab.” In this issue Professor Shaheen presents his research into Arab stereotyping in comic books, a preview of his book, “The Comic Book Arab.”

This September the U.S. Congress will consider Israel’s request for an extra $10 billion for resettling hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews into Palestine. Pro-Israel supporters will profess the humanitarian need of ingathering persecuted Jews. But who will speak for the persecuted Palestinians as they face the threat of yet another displacement? Father James Burtchaell does in this issue.

Books are reviewed which over the years have become our “bestsellers” in addition to recent books that are popular with teachers and those which are often requested by church groups.

Marc Ellis is a Jewish theologian who direct the Justice and Peace Program at the Catholic School of Theology in Maryknoll, N.Y. In his writings and lectures Marc regularly proposes that Christians and Jews break their longstanding “gentlemen’s agreement” of not talking publicly about the one matter that has come to define their relationship: how each group views the Palestinian people.

Four weeks after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour featured an extensive interview with Rami Khouri, a highly regarded Jordanian journalist. The interview generated so many calls the NewsHour had to engage additional operators. Subsequently, the interview led to a book contract, an op-ed piece in The New York Times, and to this issue of The Link.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, hate crimes and threats against Arab-Americans were reported across the United States. “America’s DJ,” Casey Kasem, writes about how anti-Arab stereotypes on television and in movies create a climate for such violence.

Michael Palumbo is an American researcher who has spent much of his professional life poring over long classified documents dealing with the immediate post-World War II period. Many of these documents from American, British and United Nations archives deal with the Israeli/Palestinian war of 1948. In this issue Dr. Palumbo invites us to look more critically at what the Israeli revisionists are saying in light of the new facts that they either did not have at their disposal or else opted not to use.

In May of this year, Mayor Elias Freij of Bethlehem predicted that the military occupation of his land will continue as long as the U.S. Congress continues to finance Israel’s expansionist policies which, in turn, will continue until the churches in the United States exert their moral influence more vigorously — a prospect he did not anticipate.

Last time Humphrey visited John Law in the pages of The Link was back in December 1985. That issue proved popular, particularly with teachers. True to his threat, the inquisitive Humphrey has shown up again on John Law’s literary doorstep.

An alarming number of Americans visiting Israel and Palestine have had to contact the U.S. consulate because they have been harassed, illegally arrested, even tortured. When these Americans return home, they have filed affidavits describing their ordeals. Those affidavits form the basis of this feature article.

A young American woman in occupied Palestine shares her diary entries from October 24, 1988 to June 17, 1989, during the height of the first intifada.

This issue goes beyond Israel’s human rights violations to the more significant question: Are Israeli officials—specifically Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Shamir —guilty of war crimes against the Palestinian people?

Ellen Nassab gave this interview to Hisham Ahmed on Feb. 18, 1989. On June 9 she died of cancer. She was a wife, mother, nurse and, as this issue makes so poignantly clear, she was much, much more.

Reacting to the U.S. State Department’s 1988 Human Rights Report charging Israel with “a substantial increase in human rights violations,” both chairmen of the Congressional panels that appropriate foreign aid, Rep. David Obey of California and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, have advised Israel it could no longer count on the billions it receives each year if it continues to shoot at Palestinian demonstrators, deport them, detain them without trial, and blow up their houses. How many billions Israel gets each year is the subject of this issue.

When a government needs large sums of quick cash for questionable adventures, narcotrafficking offers a lucrative avenue. For this an ally is required, one who has the international networks of contacts and cutouts, i.e., a cover that can provide his or her government with public deniability, should the deal go sour. Israel, according to Jane Hunter, editor of Israeli Foreign Affairs, provides such service to various governments, including the United States.

For most Americans the emergence of Ayatollah Khomeini and the subsequent holding of U.S. hostages in Iran provided the first media exposure to Shi’i Muslims. This issue looks more closely at this religiously and politically important community.

n this 1988 issue, Ashmore describes in depth the mutual affinity and cooperation between Israel and South Africa, including production of nuclear weapons, the training by Israel of South African white soldiers, and the transfer by Israel to South Africa of U.S. technology for Israel’s Lavi aircraft. The latter issue was raised by Rep. George Crockett of the Congressional Black Caucus with Prime Minister Shamir on March 16, 1988. Crockett described the Lavi deal with South Africa as an “unconscionable” use of U.S. aid. He went on to question the Israeli Prime Minister on “his government’s brutal response to the Palestinian uprising” and asked when “the curfews, the closed military zones, the beatings, the house raids, the gunshots, the rubber bullets, the tear-gassing and mass deportations would end.”

Why are Palestinians revolting against the occupation? Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said it happened when a lone Palestinian from southern Lebanon, using a hang-glider, assaulted an Israeli army post and, single-handedly, killed several Israeli soldiers. He broke the barrier of fear, explained Shamir, adding that all Israel had to do to put down the uprising was to “reestablish the barrier of fear.” To that end, he warned that any Palestinian challenging Israel’s rule “will have his head smashed against the boulders and walls of these fortresses.” His quote prompted this Link issue.

George Weller is a prize-winning war correspondent whose professional work in the Middle East spans 45 years. Here he recounts events he covered and leaders he interviewed for the Chicago Daily News.

Mitch Kaidy worked 20 years as a reporter and editor of three daily newspapers and one television channel. He was part of a team of reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle. As an Arab American, Mitch is not always pleased with the way our media portrays Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. Yet, as a newspaper man, he’s not without a few suggestions.

A December 1986 article in The New York Times said that Israel has become one of the world’s top ten arms exporters. Bishara Bahbah is author of “Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection.” In this issue he looks at Israel’s worldwide arms industry.

Tom Dine, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said earlier this year that Secretary of State George Shultz privately had told him of a desire “to build institutional arrangements so that...if there is a [future] secretary of state who is not positive about Israel, he will not be able to overcome the bureaucratic relationship between Israel and the U.S. that we have established.” This issue suggests that that institutional arrangement is already well established.

Looks at U.S. public opinion in the aftermath of Israel’s 1982 of Lebanon and the Jonathan Pollard espionage case. Some of the findings are unexpected.

The recent Tower Commission Report, in analyzing causes of the Iran-Contra debacle, cited the failure by U.S. officials to realize that Israel’s foreign policy goals at times stand in direct opposition to those of the United States. As this issue points out, it’s a lesson we could have learned from the British.

In the Holy Land, where praying at a particular shrine can be construed as a political act and where disputes over ownership and control of land are supercharged with religious and nationalistic overtones, archaeologists are beset with problems that challenge the skill of the most tactful diplomat. Leslie Hoppe, author of “What Are They Saying About Biblical Archaeology?, explains.

What is the current and projected ratio of Jews leaving Israel to those migrating to Israel? What is the current and projected ratio of Palestinians born in historic Palestine to those who either die, emigrate, or are forcibly expelled? What role does the United States play in this demographic chess match? And, finally, what does all this mean for the political future of Arabs and Jews in the Middle East? The conclusion reached by Professor Abu-Lughod may surprise many for whom demography is the classical stratagem for checkmating the opponent. Suppose, however, the latest data suggests not checkmate but stalemate, what then? This issue looks at all these questions.

Writes author Cheryl A. Rubenberg: “The once open debate of the 1940s on whether the U.S. should support a state for the Jews in the Arab heartland has evolved into a political orthodoxy of the 1980s that considers the U.S.-Israel ties the most important— and unquestionable— cornerstone of American Middle East policy. How did the transformation occur?” This issue explores the question in depth.

Why has the Vatican never officially recognized the state of Israel? Why did Pope John Paul II agree to meet with P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat? Why do 81 percent of U.S. Catholics support an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza? George Irani, author of “The Papacy and the Middle East: The Role of the Holy See in the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” explains.

This issue is about a people without passports—four million people, dispossessed of their land, intimidated, tortured, massacred, facing an uncertain future. Sociologist Jan Abu Shakrah traces the dehumanization of the Palestinian and dissects with clinical precision the matter of their statelessness.

In March 1985, Denis Goldberg, a Jewish South African sentenced in 1964 to life imprisonment for “conspiring to overthrow the apartheid regime,” was released through the intercession of his daughter, an Israeli, and top Israeli officials, including Israel’s president. Arriving in Israel, Goldberg said that he saw “many similarities in the oppression of blacks in South Africa and of Palestinians,” and he called for a total economic boycott of South Africa, singling out Israel as a major ally of the apartheid regime. Pledging not to stay in a country that is a major supporter of South African apartheid, Dennis Goldberg moved to London. Just how big a supporter Israel is, is the subject of this issue.

Humphrey, a well-meaning but aggressively obtuse and monumentally uninformed fellow, drops by John Law’s office from time to time to pick his brains on the Middle East.

According to the author, a professor of psychology at Haifa University who wrote a book on Israel’s relations with the third world, “Only once, in 1981, has the United States admitted to a direct and explicit request to Israel to help a Central American country; that request came from Secretary of State Alexander Haig and the country in question was Guatemala. Otherwise, U.S. officials admit to 'a convergence of interests.”

The attachment between the United States and Israel has been described most often as a “special relationship.” As Rex Wingerter points out in this issue, that attachment has found expression in the United States courtroom.

The first Middle East study center in the U.S. was founded in 1946 at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. Since then, at least 17 major Middle East centers have been established, including centers at Princeton, Harvard and Columbia, with more than 115 colleges and universities now offering Middle East area courses. With growth, however — as Naseer Aruri points out — has come a disturbing awareness.

Last year an American writer, Joan Peters, produced a book that claimed that Palestinians never did constitute an indigenous majority in those areas of Palestine which became Israel in 1948. Ms. Peters recently promoted her book, cross country, on radio, television and in newspaper interviews. Dr. Muhammad Hallaj’s purpose in this issue is to locate the Peters book in the context of 20th century Zionist writings on the Arab-Israeli conflict. What does the Peters book add to previous Zionist claims? Hallaj’s conclusion may surprise Ms. Peters, who tells us it took her seven years to reach her new findings.

For historian Hassan Haddad this issue is not only a return to his childhood memories of Christmas in northern Lebanon as the son of a Protestant minister, it is also a return of 1,400 years to the Qu’ran and its beautiful retelling of the Annunciation and virgin birth, of 2,000 years to the Gospel stories of Matthew and Luke, of centuries earlier to the Sumerians and Egyptians, the Nabateans and Zoroastrians, and beyond the Middle East, to Asia and the birth of Buddha. Along the way, Professor Haddad, who teaches at St. Xavier College in Chicago, is not uncritical of the ways Christmas has been exploited by one group or another. Still, he finds in the Christmas story, a universal longing.

In October 1953, [then President] Eisenhower’s Science Advisory Committee responded to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s call for the settlement in Israel of an additional two million European Jews by warning that “this unrealistic approach can only lead to further economic and financial difficulties, and will probably result in additional pressure to expand Israel’s frontiers into the rich lands of the Tigris and Euphrates Valley, and northward into the settled lands of Syria.” Writes author Leslie Schmida in this 1984 issue: “Israel’s appropriation, time after time, of Arab property and water resources in abrogation of all commonly accepted international standards seems well on the way to realizing this dismal prospect.”

According to author Grace Halsell, efforts to rebuild the Jewish Temple on the site of the earliest remaining Islamic monument in the world are championed by a significant number of Christian Zionists in this country and by a well-organized group of Jewish Zionists in Israel, many of whom hold dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship. This issue tells who they are, how they are financed, what their motives are and how they have already attempted to realize their aims.

Survivors of Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, an unarmed intelligence ship sailing in international waters, wonder to this day why rescue planes from the Sixth Fleet were called back by Washington, why Congress has never investigated the incident, and why they were forbidden to discuss the attack—even with their own families. Thirty-four American servicemen were killed and 171 wounded—but it remains a miracle that there is even one survivor left to tell what happened that day.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States. Its Arab-American counterpart is the National Association of Arab-Americans. In addition to these registered lobbyist groups, there are, at last count, 33 pro-Israel Political Action Committees and two pro-Arab ones. How these and other pro-Arab and pro-Israel groups operate, how they influence our national elections and foreign policy decisions, and what their objectives are for 1984, are some of the questions examined here by Dr. Cheryl Rubenberg, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Florida International University.

In 1982, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GOA) began a study of U.S. aid to Israel. In March 1983, the completed study was submitted to Secretary of State George Shultz. Three months later a highly censored version was released to the public. Shortly thereafter, a copy of all but six pages of the GOA report was leaked to the press. This issue analyses that uncensored report.

Christian Zionism seeks the return of Jews to Palestine as a necessary prelude to the Second Coming of Christ and expects the wholesale conversion of Israel to belief in Jesus as the true Messiah. It is part of a movement begun in 17th-century England which Jewish historian Cecil Roth calls “philo-semitism.”

For the past 15 years, Father Edward Dillon has worked with prisoners in the Philadelphia area. In this issue, Fr. Dillon reports on the plight of prisoners inside Israeli-run prisons in south Lebanon and the Occupied Territories.

President Reagan’s recent call for a Palestinian “homeland” on the West Bank elicited from Moshe Arens, Israel’s Defense Minister, the response that “a Palestinian homeland and state exists — Jordan.” In this issue, former U.S. Ambassador to Jordan, L. Dean Brown, responds.

Individual commandeers of U.N. peacekeeping forces have written of their experiences in the Middle East. A compilation of their experiences has yet to appear in English, and practically all of the individual accounts are now out of print. William Mulligan, who has spent most of his 35 years in the Middle East in the area of Government Relations for the Arabian American Oil Company, was able to contact some of the major participants. Their reflections add relevancy to a history from which the United States and the multinational force now in Lebanon can learn a great deal.

Reassessment is one of those catchall words that implies anything from substantial change to a slight variation on an old theme. In the lexicon of U.S.-Middle East diplomacy, notes Allan Kellum, publisher of The Mideast Observer, it has lineage all its own.

Article is based on author’s eight years of research of Islamic literature, particularly that coming from the Arab world, and on numerous conversations with those who take their primary identity in Islamic nationalism.

Despite his worldwide recognition as Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, little is known of Yasser Arafat’s early life, his education, his politics, his religion, his living habits, etc. To fill in some of these blanks, Grace Halsell went twice to Beirut, once in December 1981, and again in April 1982. Halsell is the author of 11 books, including “A Biography of Charles Evers,” “Bessie Yellowhair,” “Soul Sister,” and “Journey to Jerusalem.”

Tourism is the world’s biggest industry. For many world capitals it represents over 40 percent of their total revenues. Far less appreciated, however, are the political and ethical dimensions of the industry. That is particularly true of tourism in the Holy Land.

In this issue, two questions which go to the core of Dr. Hallaj’s life are examined: how an indigenous Palestinian culture is faring today under Israeli occupation, and why Zionism is bent on erasing it.

The United Nations resolution to designate this year as the International Year for Disabled Persons was first put forth in 1976 by the Libyan Arab Republic out of concern for the world’s estimated 450 million physically and mentally disabled persons, most of whom live in developing countries. Audrey Shabbas looks at the situation of the disabled in the Arab World.

The United States in 1980 sold $15.3 billion worth of military equipment abroad, of which 53 percent or $8.1 billion went to the Middle East. Should we be concerned? The distinguished diplomat George Kennan gave his answer recently when he compared us to lemmings racing to the sea. Col. Yoram Hamuzrahi, Chief Officer of the Israeli Defense Forces, gave his answer when he told a group of visiting Americans, “We will not concede an inch to the Arabs, even if it means atomic flames in New York.” Greg Orfalea, editor of the National Association of Arab Americans political action report, explains why we should be concerned.

An estimated 4.4 million Palestinians now live in the diaspora that followed the 1947-48 and 1967 Middle East wars. Approximately 100,000 of these Palestinians are American citizens today. This issue look at how they view the situation in the Middle East.

When the Israel Teachers’ Union announced that it was organizing a November 1980 International Teachers Conference to Combat Racism, Anti-Semitism and Violations of Human Rights to be held in Tel Aviv, Michael Griffin applied to AMEU for a travel grant. We gave it to him. We also asked him to visit academic institutions on the West Bank to see how they were faring. Then we invited him to report his findings in this issue of The Link.

Traces the historical contacts between Europe and the Middle East and looks at how Europe’s independent dialogue with the Arab countries evolved and what effect it might have on U.S. foreign policy.

When the 266-member governing board of a national organization, representing 32 Christian denominations with more than 40 million members, reaches unanimous agreement on a policy statement pertaining to the Middle East, that statement at once becomes noteworthy, as this issue points out.

Examines Kuwait’s history, culture, economy, and political role in the Middle East landscape.

Allan Solomonow was the first Program Director for the Jewish Peace Fellowship, a national inter-religious effort to bring together resources and programs to stimulate a national dialogue on peaceful alternatives for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, all of which he describes in this issue.

Article is based on author’s research for an upcoming book intended to make television producers and executives more aware of the media’s responsibility to reflect a wide range of positive roles for all people.

A look at the men who would be president and what they say about the Middle East.

Draws upon the research of Dr. Ann Lesch, who was the Associate Middle East representative in Jerusalem for the American Friends Service Committee from 1974 to 1977.

Muslim contact with America occurred quite early. It was revealed at the quin-centennial celebration of Columbus’s birth in 1955 that the explorer’s private library contained a copy of the work of the Arab geographer, al-Idrisi. This book, which describes the East coast discovery of the “new continent” by eight Muslim explorers, is said to have inspired Columbus’s own expedition. Arab involvement in the discovery of America also rested with Columbus’s interpreter, Louis Torres, a Spaniard of Arab descent who had converted to Christianity after the reconquista. This issue goes on to discuss Islamic Centers in the United States, Islam and American blacks, Islamic practice in America, and Islam’s future in America.

Article examines the: history of Jordan; the West Bank’s annexation; Jordan’s Constitution; political parties; military; educational system; role of women; economic climate; and tourism.

Audrey Shabbas looks at roles in the Arab family: choosing a child’s name; early child care and development; educational patterns; styles of dress; simple toys; nursery rhymes and riddles; Arab songs; children’s games and stories. There is a special section on “Iraq: Pacesetter in Children’s Services.”

Issue includes interview with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Andrew Young on the need for a new Palestinian policy; an address by John Reddaway, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding on “International Recognition of Palestinian Nationhood,” and an article from The Arab Report, “Trauma and Triumph of a Nation in Exile.”

Issue focuses on the uprooted people of Lebanon and a list of donor organizations that are helping them.

This survey of the business environment in the Middle East is by Youssef Ibrahim, a business reporter for The New York Times, who has been covering the region since 1973.

Alan Klaum, an international consultant on the Middle East and Asia, looks at the history, culture, and politics of Yemen, and the problems it faces.

Presbyterian leader and AMEU director L. Humphrey Walz examines the new Israeli “Anti-Missionary Law” passed by the Israeli Parliament on December 27, 1977. It makes it an offense—punishable by five years in prison or a 50,000-pound fine—to offer material inducement to an Israeli to change his religion. (For those who convert under such circumstances, the penalty is three years imprisonment or a 30,000-pound fine.)

Includes: “A People Scattered, Bewildered and Divided,” by James Markham; “Looking at Reality,” by Anthony Lewis; “Palestinians Cling to a Vision of a Homeland,” by John Darnton, and “The P.L.O. Is Palestinians’ Only Voice.”

Author writes that Israel "is actively preparing to fight a war of annihilation against the Egyptian and Syrian armies if the Carter Administration’s new Middle East peace effort fails.”

Author describes the split in U.S. Administration over the proper handling of Israel’s flouting of the U.S. on the settlements question.

A critique of the Biblical arguments offered by Christians who believe that the reestablishment of Israel today is part of God’s apocalyptic plan.

A comprehensive look at the most current and relevant books and periodicals on the Middle East plus a brief look at films that are available.

A professor of history at Central Connecticut State College offers a scenario for changes in U.S. policy towards the Middle East that are anticipated in the incoming Carter Administration.

A profile of the seven states that comprise the United Arab Emirates.

On September 23, 1976, Lebanon’s sixth president was sworn in. This issue looks at Elias Sarkis and the decimated country he now heads.

A look at Egypt, its past, present and future.

A speech by AMEU director and former Commissioner General of UNRWA given at a Washington Islamic Center Symposium on February 5, 1976.

Summary of an international conference held in Tripoli in February 1976.

Title article by L. Humphrey Walz. Other articles and their authors include: “The UN, Zionism and Racism,” by Donald Will; “The Racist Nature of Zionism and of the Zionistic State of Israel,” by Prof. Israel Shahak; “A letter from an American Rabbi to an Arab Ambassador,” by Rabbi Elmer Berger; and a review of Jakob J. Petuchowski’s book, “Zion Reconsidered,” by Rabbi Berger.

Includes: history of Syria; social data; Syrian economy; government; foreign policy; Syrian Jews; education; and the women’s movement in Syria.

In the wake of the recent murder of King Faisal, Prof. Ray Cleveland, author of “The Middle East and South Asia,” looks at the foreign policy of the kingdom under King Khalid.

John Richardson, President of American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), focuses on the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967.

Author documents Israel’s increasing military intervention inside Lebanon and concludes that Lebanon has quietly turned the corner towards full involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Issue contains a chronology of the victims of Israeli attacks on Lebanon from 1968-1975.

Author traces the arms race between Israel and its neighbors and warns that, if diplomacy proves sterile, the race will presage an increase in both the tempo and the scale of armed violence.

Interviews with 28 Palestinians.

The official text of Pope Paul’s apostolic exhortation “concerning the increased needs of the Church in the Holy Land.”

One of the most frequent requests that AMEU receives is for a “brief history of the Middle East Conflict.” This article by Senator James Abourezk answers this need.

Analyzes how and why the Rogers Plan for peace in the Middle East failed, and why the Mobil Oil Company ad in The New York Times titled “The U.S. Stake in Middle East Peace” backfired.

In 1973, it was estimated that there were some 9-million Christians in the “Arab East.” Author Humphrey Walz noted: “To many Christians in the West ... it’s downright startling that [there is] so much as a single co-religionist left in the lands that cradled their faith and exported it to the world ... ”

Author traces American Jewry’s support for the Zionist Jewish State since 1948.

A survey of U.S. voluntary organizations involved in relief and rehabilitation for Palestinian refugees and other needy individuals in the Middle East.

Profile of Dr. Israel Shahak, founder of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights.

Examines present supply and demand for energy fuels; the challenge and opportunity for Arab economic development; and what this means for U.S. businesses.

Includes profiles of various sources of information on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Archbishop Ryan speaks on: The gravity of the present situation, the expansion of Zionism, the Vatican’s position.

Examines U.S. policy towards the Middle East: how it is determined and what forces influence it.

Includes reports on Gaza from American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) and United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA).

Summary of article by B. Shefi: “Israel: The Jewish Religion Abused.”

A look at ways computer-age techniques can speed the solving of problems even as complex as those in the Holy Land.

Religious factors affecting problems and hopes of Jerusalem.

A sequel to issue 3 (Why Visit the Middle East)

Suggested pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Palestinian refugee visits his family home in Jaffa that is now occupied by a Jewish family from Beirut.

UNWRA’s financial squeeze.

Frequently we confront the contention that the land belongs to the Jews “because God promised it to them.” The author sets forth his refutation of this claim.

Includes statements by Metropolitan Philip Saliba and Raymond Wilson of the American Friends.

Text of lecture by British Member of Parliament Christopher Mayhew given during his U.S. tour.

A review of upcoming conferences, U.N. reports, recent books, and church editorials.

Report on World Council of Churches determination to raise over $1-million for Palestinians. Lectures by Simha Flapan, Elmer Berger, John Davis and Ruth Knowles.

Report on World Council of Churches upcoming consultation between Christians and followers of other faiths next March in Beirut.

Analysis of report by UNRWA Commissioner-General Laurence Michelmore.

Summary of “Policy Statement on the Middle East” submitted to the General Board of the National Council of Churches at its meeting in New York City.

Announcement of new mosque in Manhattan.

Features excerpts from speech by past president of the World Bank, Eugene R. Black.

U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk's demands prompt action on U.N. Resolution of November 22, 1967 calling for withdrawal of Israeli troops from recently occupied territories, and justice for the refugees.

This, the first issue of The Link, sets forth its goals and programs.