Pro-Israeli Zeal Harms Freedom of Speech
Source: The New York Times
Pro-Israeli Zeal Harms Freedom of Speech
by Anthony Lewis
The Reagan administration is attempting restrict the right of Americans to speak freely and receive information on ‘an acute issue of public policy. In that effort it has the support of Sens. Paul Simon, D-Ill., Arlen : Specter, R-Pa., and others who are usually sensitive to constitutional sights. How can that be?
It can be because the viewpoint being suppressed is Palestinian. Political zeal to side with what is claimed to be Israel’s .interest claimed quite wrongly, I think overwhelms many people’s usual commitment to freedom of speech.
Simon and Specter are among 49 co-sponsors of a Senate bill to force the closing of the Palestine Information Office in Washington. The State and Justice Departments were opposed. But on Sept. 15 the administration capitulated to heavy political pressure and ordered the office to shut down.
The office is registered as an agent of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and that is behind its troubles. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir urged its closing in 1986. This year the demand was taken up by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
In legal and constitutional terms the attempt to close the office is altogether strange. All the office does is give Palestinian views to Americans, in speeches and publications, It is run by an American citizen. It has violated no law.
Equally curious is the device used by the Reagan administration when it moved against the information Office. The State Department “designated” the office as a “foreign mission” and asserted that that brought it within State’s control. Yet the office has never had, or sought, diplomatic status.
What happened? Politics happened. Presidential candidates, among them Sens. Simon and Bob Dole and Rep. Jack Kemp, came out for the legislation. The bill would force closing of both the Washington information office and a PLO mission at the United Nations in New York. By moving against the first, State hoped to avoid action against the U.N. mission, which would violate international obligations.
Proponents; of closing the information office say it enhances the image of the PLO, which they call a terrorist organization. The PLO has been involved in terrorist actions, But it is also:a politie~ organization. U.S. policy has wisely tried to move the PLO into the path of negotiation. To write ‘it off this way would be to separate the United States from an important strand in-Middle East opinion.
The damage to free speech would be even greater. What the Reagan administration and the others are saying is that when officials do not like a foreign viewpoint, they can restrict the right of Americans to voice it and hear it.
Think what such a doctrine might have meant to the creation of Israel. Before the state was born 40 years ago its advocates had voices here. Suppose they had been shut down because of alleged connections with “terrorism.” The American Civil Liberties Union has, commendably, filed suit on behalf of the information office to challenge the closing order. Wednesday Federal District Judge Charles Richey dismissed the suit. Because the information office-was registered as an agent of the PLO, he said, the State Department could declare it a “foreign mission.” By that reasoning State could make many a Washington law firm into a “foreign mission.” The ACLU will appeal. One of its briefs in the case reminds us that freedom means freedom for unpopular causes.
It quotes a statement that Sen. Jesse Helms, who is now all for closing the Palestine office, made when there was a move to close the Rhodesian information office in 1977. He said then: “It is the American people who will be the losers, not the Rhodesians. It will be the American people who will lack the full and free debate that is guaranteed by the Constitution. It will be the American people who will have denied to them the information that is rightfully theirs.”
Anthony Lewis is a columnist for The New York Times.
