No One is Above Honest Criticism

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
 

Although I would consider the destruction of Israel an unparalleled tragedy, I don’t believe that its mistakes, intentional or otherwise, should go unreported. 

That’s bad, both for the writer and for the country. I have myself at times landed in hot water for criticizing what I considered to be bad decisions on Israel’s part.

Few people today remember the Iran-Contra affair, in which Israel played a part. I was a journalist in Washington, DC, at the time, the op-ed and book review editor of the Washington Jewish Week.

It started in 1985, when the Reagan administration secretly began supplying weapons, including missiles, to Iran, in hopes of securing the release of hostages held by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. 

While Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran had made a secret request to buy weapons from the United States. National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane sought President Ronald Reagan’s approval, in spite of the embargo against selling arms to Iran. 

McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East.

Israel was used as a go-between for the illegal sales. The millions of dollars received were then sent to the right-wing Contra guerrillas fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Battling the Cuban-backed Sandinistas, the Contras were, according to Reagan, “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.”

On Jan. 16, 1986, in an article entitled “Meir Rosenne: Cool Diplomat on a Hot Seat,” our newspaper broke the story of how then Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Meir Rosenne was being bypassed by the Israeli government in its dealings with the Reagan administration. (A colleague and I interviewed Rosenne at the Israeli embassy.)

The Israeli government had deliberately kept Rosenne out of the loop because they didn’t want to compromise the ambassador.

But it made Rosenne look bad; he protested and was “livid.” The paper received numerous complaints from various organizations, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

I came close to being fired – my co-author was, as was our managing editor, while our editor, a Harvard law school graduate, quit a few months later -- but I knew that a career in journalism was not for me and went on to academia.

By the time the missile sales were discovered, more than 1,500 missiles had been shipped to Iran, and most of the funds diverted to the Contras by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council.

Fourteen people were eventually charged with either operational or “cover-up” crimes. In the end, North’s conviction was overturned on a technicality, and President George H.W. Bush later issued six pardons, including one to McFarlane, who had already been convicted.

There were many at the time who believed Ronald Reagan should have been impeached for his role in the scandal, but he was allowed to serve out the rest of his term after maintaining that all of this happened without his knowledge – a dubious claim. 

Polls showed that only 14 per cent of Americans believed the president when he said he had not traded arms for hostages.

Today Republicans consider Reagan an icon, while the Iran-Contra affair has been pushed down the memory hole.