Last laugh on Haig
Nicholas von Hoffman
Washington In the last weeks of Alexander Haig's public life he was his most frantically egomaniacal self. On the European trip he appears to have had a serious nervous reac- tion to being seated in the more plebeian middle section of Air Force One instead.of in the window seat right behind the Presi- dent's suite. Evidently Michael Deaver, the President's most intimate go-for, had come to take special pleasure in inflicting these minor humiliations on the general. There were others. Putting him in Helicopter Number Three was also whispered to have driven the Secretary of State crazy. By the time they got back gossip had it that Haig had threatened to resign something like half a dozen times, which would be par for the course for a man who was taught the duties of his office by Henry Kissinger, who made `I started at the bottom and saw It,: reason to move.' tantrums and resignations part of the daily office routine.
Back in the United States there was fur- ther evidence that Alexander Haig didn't know when to stop pushing his luck. There was the press briefing after Mrs Thatcher's departure in which lie made a series of double-entendre remarks about the Prime Minister and the President — all meant in fun, but not such a good idea for someone with too many enemies to dare try his hand at comedy. Haig, however, strikes one as a man who toadied his way through 40 years as a political body servant just so lie could indulge himself when, at length, he rose so high that people would have to laugh at his jokes.
Now it seems the laugh is on him again, the joke having been cracked by Caspar Weinberger who, in conjunction with the National Security Adviser, William Clark, is being given the credit and/or blame for getting the grand solecist kicked out of town. Enter George Shultz who, along with Gasp-ar Swineberger, as he is known by the young and irreverent, was a very high of- ficial of the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco, a construction and engineering company. Bechtel did about $11.5 billion worth of business last year. Since the com- pany is privately held and secretive, we have only a general idea who its customers are, but Saudi Arabia is one of the bigger of them. That is known and that is why it is thought that Shultz's arrival and his association with his former collaborator at the Pentagon will mean that the Israelis will be reined in.
So they may, but the bit won't be pulled too tight. The people who give knowing winks around here will tell you that the Pentagon is crawling with Israeli agents or representatives, that the US shares every sort of military information with them and that the climate within the five-sided House of War is such that the two nations' military organisations could be separated only with difficulty. That is not the only reason why an abrupt change in American foreign policy towards the Israelis may not materialise. The government is run by a group of politicians who believe that all Palestinians are PLO and all PLO are Bolshevik.
In American pop culture an Arab of whatever nationality has not been thought much above a cockroach or a beetle. The only thing we ever asked of the Israelis was that they trod on them far enough away so that we couldn't hear the shells crack. The Israelis, perhaps overly impressed by their martial arts, have been stamping on the lit- tle beetles in public.
For the first time Americans, millions of Americans have been seeing Israelis do to Lebanese what we used to enjoy doing in Vietnam. The television networks, NBC even more than' the others, have been put- ting on, night after night, a blood horror show and it is getting on some people's nerves. A public opinion poll, taken a week
or so ago, shows that for the first time we are divided about sending arms to Israel.
The Israelis have not helped themselves in their handling of the American television people. First they did unwise things like censoring an interview with Yasser Arafat. That upset ABC which started to scream about freedom of the press. At the same time the Israelis allowed the transmission of sickening film of children with their feet blown off, their faces burned, and of civilian types racing in panic through various Middle Eastern thoroughfares to escape American manufactured Israeli bombers. There have been nights when the television screens here have resembled an animated reconstruction of Picasso's Guer- nica. Of late, the Israelis have started to learn: they are now censoring pictures of their self-defence forces self-defencing against Lebanese grandmothers. The net- works are retaliating by running black screens with the words 'censored by the Israelis' displayed while the reporter's voice tells you what scenes of horror you would have seen. •
In short, the Israelis are spoiling their im- age. Where before it was difficult to print, or say something that was critical of Israeli policies and practices, the barriers are now coming down. Some writers used to believe — rightly or wrongly — that to expound a Palestinian point of view was to risk blacklisting. Now many have become em- boldened: where once heterodox books on the subject either were not reviewed or were reviewed unfairly, they now stand a better chance of being judged on their merits. Where once, among the daily press, only the Boston Globe could be counted on to print other points of view as a matter of consistent policy — from time to time some things would appear in a paper like the New York Times but not often — now other voices are becoming somewhat more audible.
Not, however, in Congress. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is reported to have had a rancorous meeting with Menachem Begin last week during which he was taxed with using cluster bombs (of American manufacture, of course) against civilians. After the meeting, the participants would say nothing in public. In the face of the money and organisation of pro-Israeli groups, literally not more than ten people in Congress have had the heart and courage necessary to protest at what we have been treated to every night on television.
Of no small importance is the effect on American Jews. All the big and important Jewish organisations side with their co- religionists in Israel. All the blame is shifted on to the terrorists who are accused of con- scripting 12-year-old children to attack the valiant and peace-loving 'defence forces from Israel. In like manner it is said that the PLO put ammunition dumps under hospitals and • orphanages so that the brilliant 'surgical' (that adjective is repeatedly used) and therefore humanitarian bombing by the Israelis is frustrated. These and like explanations come out of mouths which• would have hooted in cynical mirth had the Pentagon explained the bombing of Hanoi in similar fashion.
Nevertheless, many American Jews are deeply troubled. A television network like NBC, which was founded by the Sarnoff family, which is Jewish, and which con- tinues to employ many Jewish people in im- portant positions, has led the way in screen- ing what has happened in Lebanon. American Jewish journalists like I. F. Stone have been crying out for years about what is happening in the Middle East and now there are new voices, like the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff who published a powerful piece under the title of 'The Silence of American Jews'. In it he says, 'I write as a Jew, and as a Zionist ... I want the state of Israel to survive. Yet I am increasingly afraid of what it will become. But, like many Israelis, I do not believe Israel has to become the South Africa of the Middle East.'
Nevertheless, 'the war of the civilian deaths,' to use Mr Hentoff s phrase, may have ended the era of the liberal Jew in America. For 50 years Jews here have sup- plied vision, invention and money for one enlightened and humanitarian effort after another. Since the 1967 war the succession of ratio.nalisations used to defend Israeli policy has pushed the mainstream of American Judaism ever to the right. Unless George Shultz's coming means the Ad- ministration is going to swing over to a flat- footed pro-Arab stance, a highly im- probable supposition, that swing should continue. At the least, it will make for a more truculent' and testy America.
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