Nobody has ever erred by accusing Jesse Jackson of a surfeit of chutzpah, but many people won't grasp why his offer to mediate between the Palestinians and the Israelis is so outrageous as to beggar belief. It's like this: What if, during the Republican-Democrat battle royal in Florida, Alec Baldwin had presented himself as an honest broker able to bring both sides to mutual understanding? Jackson's offer makes as much sense.
Jesse's love affair with Yasser Arafat is well-documented by Kenneth Timmerman in "Shakedown" and will come as news to folks who think Jackson's only brush with Jew-bashing was his infamous "Hymietown" remark in 1984.
In August 1979, Carter sacked Andrew Young, his ambassador to the United Nations, after the black former mayor of Atlanta met privately with the Palestinian Liberation Organization's man at the United Nations. Jackson, a friend of Young's, publicly insinuated that Jews brought down Young and complained that Jews were false friends of blacks. A month later, Jackson announced he would go to Beirut to meet with Arafat, who was living in exile there.
Citing media reports at the time, Timmerman quotes Jackson as telling Arab-American supporters gathered at PUSH headquarters: "By Oct. 1, there will be no black leader left willing to come to the aid of the Palestinian cause if there is not an immediate infusion of funds into the black community from the Arab states."
Two weeks later, Jackson and his entourage took off for Israel on a junket paid for by Arab donors. When Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin failed to turn up at the airport, an insulted Jackson gave a news conference in which he intimated that racism might be behind the snub. Days later, Jackson visited Yad Vashem, the national memorial to Holocaust victims, where he equated the incineration of 6 million Jews to American slavery.
Newsweek quoted Jackson as saying that "a persecution complex . . . almost invariably makes Jews overreact to their own suffering."
Then Jackson lit out to visit Palestinians in the fetid Dheisheh refugee camp. "I know this camp," he preached. "When I smell the stench of the open sewers, this is nothing new to me. This is where I grew up." (Actually, he grew up in relative comfort in North Carolina.)
Two American Jews who had helped arrange for Jackson's trip quit in disgust. One of them, publisher Philip Blazer, said Jackson was piggybacking on the plight of the Palestinians to raise money for his own interests. Even the Rev. Harold Schomer, a left-wing cleric who accompanied Jackson, noted in his private journal that the Arab states were trying to use the Jackson fact-finding trip to weaken U.S. backing of Israel, and to legitimize the PLO.
When Jackson finally met Arafat in Lebanon, he gave him a big kiss and declared the terrorist "my friend and the friend of justice and humanity." Two years later, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon in an attempt to drive out PLO terrorists mounting attacks on Israel from Lebanese soil. The Israelis, commanded by Gen. Ariel Sharon, drove Arafat into exile.
Jackson arrived home and was greeted by a hailstorm of criticism for having succored the Soviet-proxy PLO and endangered domestic relations between blacks and Jews. The indignant Jackson blamed — who else? — Jews in the media.
Happily for Jackson, his pro-Arafat sojourn opened the floodgates of Arab money into PUSH coffers. A $10,000 check from a Libyan diplomat nearly earned him an FBI subpoena. In 1981, a fat donation from the Arab League made up 80 percent of the funds Jackson raised for his group that year; Jackson said he didn't know a thing about it.
Jackson's most notorious anti-Semitic comment came in 1984, when he made what he assumed was an off-the-record comment to a black reporter in which he called Jews "Hymies" and New York "Hymietown." He publicly apologized and has been largely excused by the media, even as he insists that whites like the recently defeated Charles Pickering are unfit for government office because of racist views they might have held 40 years ago.
Still, the record of this man who offers himself as a peacemaker between the Israelis and the Palestinians bears remembering. All things considered, Alec Baldwin would stand a better chance.
Rod Dreher is a senior writer for National Review.