Michael F. Brown, TomPaine.com, 20 February 2007
Michael F. Brown is a fellow at The Palestine Center and is on the board of Interfaith Peace-Builders. Previously, he was executive director of Partners for Peace and Washington correspondent for Middle East International. His views are his own.
Look, Howard Diamond, legislative director and deputy chief of staff for New York Democratic Rep. Gary Ackerman, basically told me, if you want your issues raised, get somebody to stand for office, get the candidate 25 years of seniority and the chairmanship of the subcommittee, and then you can get your concerns addressed.
His testy remark [to me] came immediately after the first hearing of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia chaired by Ackerman, a long-time backer of Israel, right or wrong. The loaded witness pool invited by the congressman suggested that Democrats in this 110th Congress are unlikely to be any better on Israel/Palestine than their Republican predecessors.
Witnesses invited to speak on “Next steps in Israeli-Palestinian peace process” were David Makovsky, Director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); the Honorable Martin Indyk, Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution; and Dr. Daniel Pipes, Director of the Middle East Forum (and a driving force behind the McCarthyist Campus Watch classroom monitoring organization), who was invited by the Republican minority.
For years these witnesses have obstructed Palestinian national aspirations, and they were at it again on February 14. In well over two hours of testimony the threesome said not one word about Israel’s expanding settlements, the devastating economic circumstances gripping Palestinians in Gaza or the illegal barrier steadily being erected inside the West Bank. When challenged after the hearing on the lack of diverse voices, staffers erupted in a fury rooted in hubris. They have the power. Those concerned with Palestinian rights do not, so back off.