"The Conscience of Israel": Yeshayahu Leibowitz Opposed Israeli Militarism

The following article appeared in the Jan. 18, 1995 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newsweekly, Downtown:

Prior to his death in August 1994 at the age of 91, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz never received as much publicity on the Big Media screen as past and present Israeli government officials (like Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon, Abba Eban, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin) have received.

Yet, as Noam Chomsky wrote in his 1983 book The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, Leibowitz was “one of Israel’s best-known scholars” who spoke out against both the Israeli government’s continued military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Chomsky also noted that after the September 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians in the West Beirut refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila, Leibowitz wrote in the Sept. 22, 1982 issue of the Israeli newspaper Haolam Hazeh:

“The massacre was done by us. The Phalangists are our mercenaries, exactly as the Ukranians and the Croatians and the Slovakians were the mercenaries of Hitler, who organized them as soldiers to do the work for him. Even so have we organized the assassins in Lebanon in order to murder the Palestinians.”

Leibowitz did not settle in Palestine until 1934, when he was 31-years-old. He was born in Riga, Latvia in 1903, but his family moved to Germany in 1919. Leibowitz spent the early 1920’s studying chemistry and philosophy at the University of Berlin, which awarded him a doctorate in 1924. Leibowitz then spent the next few years studying medicine at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute at Koln and Heidelberg. But because of the growth of anti-Semitism in Germany as Hitler’s Nazi party rose to power, Leibowitz ended up completing his medical studies in Basel, Switzerland.

After arriving in Palestine in the 1930’s, Professor Leibowitz began teaching chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He became active in the 1950’s and 1960’s in a committee of Israeli scientists and public figures who opposed Israel’s nuclear weapons development program at Dimona. Yet, unlike other dissident Israeli intellectuals, in the 1950’s Leibowitz apparently did not realize that the U.S. government’s espionage charges against Lower East Side residents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, prior to their execution, had been fabricated. In an essay titled “After Kibiyeh,” for instance, Leibowitz wrote that “some of our intellectuals, pretending to represent Jewish teaching of mercy and charity, addressed themselves to the ruler of another state and petitioned him to pardon spies who had threatened the security of the state.” (Judaism, Human Values, and The Jewish State by Yeshayahu Leibowitz) [Harvard University Press, 1992]

With regard to the June 1967 Middle East War, Israeli Professor Leibowitz wrote that “when in 1967 we launched a preventive war, we turned it into a war of conquest” and he argued within Israel that “we have no choice but to withdraw from the territories in which one-and-a-half-million Arabs live.” Leibowitz also argued that after 1967 “Israel ceased to be the state of the Jewish people and became an apparatus of coercive rule over another people” and “today is neither a democracy nor a state abiding by the rule of law, since it rules over a million-and-a-half people deprived of civil and political rights.” He also asserted that “the state of Israel…has earned contempt and hatred throughout the world” and he was one of the first prominent Israeli figures to call for direct talks with PLO representatives, long before it became fashionable to negotiate with the PLO. (Judaism, Human Values, and The Jewish State by Yeshayahu Leibowitz).

When the Israeli military invaded Lebanon in 1982, Leibowitz not only demanded the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon, but he also expressed support for Israeli soldiers who refused to serve in Lebanon or who resigned as military officers because they opposed the invasion. Israeli conscientious objectors, who refused to serve in the Occupied Territories and suppress expressions of Palestinian resistance to foreign occupation, were also supported by Leibowitz.

For taking such anti-militarist positions within Israel during his lifetime, Professor Leibowitz earned the nickname of “the conscience of Israel.” But he received little recognition for his moral integrity in U.S. Big Media circles. Leibowitz’s anti-militarism apparently stemmed from the particular philosophy of Orthodox Judaism which he had developed.

Although Leibowitz differed from most Orthodox Jews in the United States in his evaluation of Israeli foreign policy, he apparently shared some of their philosophical criticisms of Reform Judaism. In Leibowitz’s view, “Reform Judaism is the second historical distortion of the Jewish religion” and “empties Judaism of its religious content and reduces it to ethical humanism.” He did, however, realize that the status of women needed to be improved within Orthodox Judaism’s institutions, in order to provide equality of opportunity for Orthodox Jewish women to study the Torah. (Judaism, Human Values, and The Jewish State by Yeshayahu Leibowitz)

As the New York Times (8/19/94) noted in its obituary of him, Leibowitz “warned” that Israeli soldiers “risked becoming `Judeo-Nazis’” and “of a danger that the country would become a `fascist state’ that would imprison political dissidents like himself in concentration camps.” But he did not support the idea of a unified, democratic Palestinian secular state of Jews, Muslims, Christians and freethinkers in all of Palestine. In 1976, he argued that “the partition of the country between the two nations is the only feasible solution.” (Judaism, Human Values, and The Jewish State by Yeshayahu Leibowitz).

Professor Leibowitz should probably be remembered and respected most for his willingness to dissent from Israeli government policies which he found morally objectionable. But he also once wrote that “Ever since I reached maturity and became a Zionist, Zionism meant for me the endeavor to liberate Jews from being ruled by the Gentiles” and “the state of Israel completely satisfies the demand for freedom from domination by others.” (Judaism, Human Values, and The Jewish State by Yeshayahu Leibowitz)

This Jewish middle-class nationalist notion that the best way to respond to Gentile anti-Semitism in Europe before 1934 was to split from Europe and establish a Jewish-dominated settler-colonialist state in Palestine without the consent of the Palestinians, however, is debatable. The alternative Jewish radical assimilationist approach (of resisting anti-Semitism in Europe, classism and sexism within the Jewish community, and the special oppression of all religious, national and ethnic groups) can, perhaps, be more easily defended on democratic philosophical grounds.

But among the European settlers who sought their liberation at the expense of Palestinian self-determination rights during the 20th-century, Leibowitz was among those who realized earliest what a moral disaster the state of Israel was in danger of becoming, as a result of its militaristic foreign policy.

(Downtown 1/18/95)

Next: Columbia University Gave Honorary Degree To Shah of Iran After CIA Coup

`Marilyn Buck'

Way out in California
Is where they have her locked
For she is strong and beautiful
And her name is Marilyn Buck.

They sentenced her to eighty years
Because she is morally tough
Her rebel spirit they cannot break
And her name is Marilyn Buck.

From Texas to Chicago
The War she tried to stop
She fought alongside Black comrades
And her name is Marilyn Buck.

Assata Shakur, from prison freed,
Did give them all a shock
And another rebel they could not find
Her name was Marilyn Buck.

The Capitol bombed, where the Congress met
To finance CIA plots
And one of the resisters charged
Her name was Marilyn Buck.

Political prisoners still locked up
The list is very long
There’s Mutulu Shakur and Sekou Odinga
And each one deserves their own song.

There’s Sundiata Acoli and Mumia
And Herman Bell and Robert Seth Hayes
And Jamil Al-Amin and the Africas
And Jalil Muntaqim.

So if you feel discouraged
And wish you had more luck
Remember the freedom fighters
And the soulful Marilyn Buck.

Yes, way out in California
Was where they have her locked
For she was strong and beautiful
And her name was Marilyn Buck.


To listen to this protest folk song, you can go to the following music site link:
http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Biographical+Folk+Songs/Marilyn+Buck

The Marilyn Buck protest folk song is sung to the tune of the traditional folk song, “Mary Hamilton.” Marilyn Buck ( http://www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/marilynbuck/ is currently imprisoned in the Pleasanton federal prison in Dublin, California. [But shortly after finally being released in July 2010, Marilyn died of cancer in early August 2010]. For more information about the current situation of U.S. political prisoners like Mutulu Shakur, Sekou Odinga, Sundiata Acoli, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Herman Bell, Robert Seth Hayes, Jamil Al-Amin (f/k/a H.Rap Brown), the Africas and Carlos Alberto Torres, you can check out the Jericho Amnesty Movement site at http://www.thejerichomovement.com/ and the Prison Activist Resource Center at www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/ .

Next: “The Conscience of Israel”: Yeshayahu Leibowitz Opposed Israeli Militarism

A Review of `Enemies Of The State: Interviews with Marilyn Buck, David Gilbert and Laura Whitehorn

A Review of Enemies Of The State: Interviews with Marilyn Buck, David Gilbert and Laura Whitehorn
Brooklyn, NY (May 1999); 84 pgs.
Resistance in Brooklyn (RnB) publication

In her introduction to the Enemies Of The State pamphlet, Meg Starr notes that "the government and mainstream media have used their formidable power to prevent real information about political prisoners Marilyn Buck (http://www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/marilynbuck/ ), David Gilbert ( www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/davidgilbert/ ), Laura Whitehorn and others from getting out." She also accurately observes that "invisible in the social democratic or liberal histories of the 1960s is the logic of their progression from public to clandestine activism."

The Enemies Of The State pamphlet that the Resistance in Brooklyn (RnB) affinity group has put together may help to reintroduce these three 60s radicals-turned 70s, 80s and 90s revolutionaries to 21st-century activists. It may also act as a corrective to some of the "looking back at the 60s" memoirs and histories written by certain U.S. academics. These memoirs and histories often caricature the late SDS white radical Movement political tendency whose perspective Buck, Gilbert and Whitehorn still reflected from within U.S. prison walls for most of the 1990s and early in the 21st century.

In the late 1990s, Whitehorn was released from the Pleasanton Federal Prison in Dublin, California after completing 15 years of her 23-year sentence for conspiracy to protest and alter government policies through the use of violence against government property. Yet this former Harvard University student activist's initial political involvement in radical left activism seemed to be triggered by the same 60s historical situation which sparked the involvement of many white radical left activists who didn't end up in prison for such a long period.

In her interview, Whitehorn recalls that she was inspired by the emergence of the Black Panther Party in the late 60s and her "participating in confrontation with the Chicago police department" in situations like the 1968 Democratic Convention. And "when the Chicago cops and FBI assassinated Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969," it made it clear to Whitehorn what she "had already accepted: that the fight of Black people would have to involve armed struggle." Whitehorn's conclusion "that armed struggle as well as mass struggle would be needed" was a strategic point of view shared by a significant proportion of hard-core white New Left/Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) activists, as well as by many African-American radicals/Black Panther Party activists, of that era.

Like a significant number of hard-core anti-war activists of that Vietnam War era, Whitehorn also came to feel "that armed struggle could be a way to speed up the victory" of the Vietnamese people over an immoral U.S. military machine; and thus "lessen a nation's suffering" at the hands of the Pentagon's military machine. Motivated by this political and moral perspective, Whitehorn first "took part in mass confrontation, in attacks on military think tanks and in building takeovers at big univeristies" and "later took part in armed action against targets like the NYC Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the Israeli Aircraft Industries and the U.S. War College and Capitol Building." In Whitehorn's view, her "desire to wage armed struggle against all aspects of this oppressive society" was also "fueled" by "her desire, as a woman and a lesbian…to fight against sexism and homophobia."

In her interview, Whitehorn also speculates on why some 60s revolutionaries might have ended-up retreating from their 60s militancy. Yet, as for herself, --despite all her years of imprisonment-- Whitehorn doesn't think that "armed struggle is ever an irrelevant form" and still maintains that her personal involvement in "bombing the U.S. Capitol and other political and military buildings after the invasion of Grenada (and while the U.S. was waging a counterrevolution in Central America) was fine and correct."

Still serving her 80-year sentence in the Pleasanton Federal prison for “conspiring” to free former Black Panther activist Assata Shakur and to protest and alter government policies “through the use of violence” and to raise funds for Black liberation organizations through robbing banks, Marilyn Buck jointly responds with Whitehorn in Enemies Of The State to a number of questions. Buck and Whitehorn's frank response to the question of what their political achievements and political mistakes were is a major reason why the pamphlet should be of interest to 21st century Movement activists.

The second interview contained in Enemies Of The State pamphlet is with a person who is no stranger to 1960's Movement activists who were involved in the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt. A founding member of Columbia University Students for A Democratic Society, David Gilbert is serving a 75-year-to-life sentence in Clinton State prison in Dannemora, New York on charges of participating as an anti-racist ally of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) in the 1981 Brink's robbery and shoot-out. But Gilbert states in his interview that although he hates being in prison, "the 17 [now 26 years] in prison have only deepend my awareness of the totally antihuman nature of the social system," and that "in terms of the basic principle and the broad commitment to the struggle, I have no regret," aside from not fighting imperialism more effectively.

In his interview, Gilbert defines what he means by the term "imperialism," recalls how he personally became politically aware and active in 1960's Movement politics, and explains why "after 7 years of activism and analysis" he "reluctantly concluded that there wasn't a chance against the forces of repression without developing a capacity for armed struggle." But Gilbert now expresses "regret that we weren't capable of expressing publicly a feeling of loss and pain for the families of the two officers and the guard who were killed" prior to his October 20, 1981 arrest. "Even in a battle for a just cause, we can't lose our feeling for the human element," says Gilbert.

Gilbert also recalls the historical conditions that led him to help build the Weather Underground Organization of the late 60s/early 70s, but now asserts that "armed struggle is not the primary question now: building a strong anti-imperialist Movement is."

Like Whitehorn and Buck, Gilbert frankly discusses both achievements and the errors of the political tendency with which he was involved. While asserting that the Weather Underground pierced "the myth of government invincibility by carrying out more than 20 bombings of government and corporate buildings without so much as injuring a single civilian" during the 70s Vietnam War Era, Gilbert also argues that the anti-imperialist white radical group of which he was a part still sometimes made political errors. Some of these political errors, in Gilbert's view, reflected both unconscious racist and militarist tendencies and unconscious ego problems.

Gilbert also provides readers with an intellectually sophisticated political analysis of how the world political situation has changed since 1979. He asserts that the current political challenge for Movement people is "to find ways to connect the range of different oppressions, against our common enemy, imperialism, and to find ways to synthesize grassroots activism with a global consciousness and solidarity."

In the final interview of Enemies Of The State, Marilyn Buck passionately asserts that "the enemy of humanity is not invincible," but warns of "a much more brutal fascist regime on the near horizon." She also recalls how she became politically aware and then politically active in the 60s and criticizes "too many, even in our political movement" who "would prefer to relegate us to museum pieces, objects of campaigns perhaps, but not political subjects and comrades in an ongoing political struggle against imperialism, oppression, and exploitation." To her political supporters outside of prison, Buck says: "Don't lock us into roles as objects or symbols."

Enemies Of The State also includes a glossary of terms which explain some of the political references made by Whitehorn, Gilbert and Buck, that may not be familiar to a new generation of U.S. Movement activists.

In Ireland, Palestine/Israel and Germany the political activists who were sentenced for political activities which resembled somewhat the political actions Whitehorn, Gilbert and Buck were jailed for in the 1980s have, in large number, been released from prison. The release of Whitehorn and 11 of the FALN/Puerto Rican nationalist political prisoners hopefully is an indication that the U.S. government will also finally release its remaining political prisoners.

Enemies Of The State provides a strong case for now releasing Gilbert and Buck from prison. They are imprisoned politically motivated activists who received excessive sentences because of their radical left/anti-imperialist political beliefs. They are not "terrorists" and they never were "terrorists."" Read Enemies Of The State and judge for yourself.

Next: Marilyn Buck protest folk song lyrics

`Old John Brown'

Old John Brown was a white man who lived long ago
And all the slave-owners called John Brown a foe
He went to Harper’s Ferry and there he took his stand
And word of his great deed did spread across the land.

And Jesus was a peasant who worked in the fields
And he sided with the poor and performed miracles
The powerful rich men, they ordered him dead
But words of his preachings did spread across the land.

Now Old John Brown he read from the Bible each day
And he acted according to what Jesus said
They hung him for working to set free some slaves
The law found him guilty and John Brown they killed.

Now all of the leaders of this brutal land
Are trying to make like they are righteous men
But people in bondage I know you can see
The folks who are righteous are as red as me.

So let’s push the process as fast as we can
And open the prisons and confront the wicked men
We’ll put them in hospitals, if they don’t resist
But if they attack us, we’ll use self-defense.


To listen to the Old John Brown biographical protest folk song, click on the following music site link:
http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/More+Biographical+Folk+Songs/Old+John+Brown

The Old John Brown protest folk song was written in the Spring of 1971, when I was living in a slum apartment in the Bronx, near Belmont Avenue (where Dion and the Belmonts used to hang out). Later in the 1970s, the now-deceased Hollywood screenwriter who wrote the screenplay for the classic Salt of the Earth movie, Michael Wilson, wrote a screenplay adaptation of Truman Nelson’s 1973 book, The Old Man: John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, which Wilson titled Raid On Harper’s Ferry. Unfortunately, none of the Democratic Party-oriented Hollywood liberals who often help determine which screenplays get produced and distributed by Hollywood were apparently eager to bring the Raid On Harper’s Ferry movie to the screen. In the early part of the 21st-century, however, I found a copy of Wilson’s great script for Raid On Harper’s Ferry among the now-deceased Truman Nelson’s papers; and I spent a day reading through the screenplay for what would be an exciting, emotionally moving and inspiring movie, if it could ever get produced.

Next Posting On 9/26/07: Review of Enemies Of The State: Interviews with Marilyn Buck, David Gilbert and Laura Whitehorn pamphlet

The Israeli Government Lobby's Media Connections

As The Power Peddlers: How Lobbyists Mold America’s Foreign Policy by Russell Howe and Sarah Trott noted in 1977, “today, the Israeli Air Force can bomb a more or less defenseless Lebanon in search of Palestinian guerrilla camps, immolating hapless civilians in its passage, with nary a word being said about the provisions of the Foreign Military Sales Act…” One reason for the Israeli government’s ability to apparently violate the provisions of the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Sales Act without getting its military aid cut-off by the U.S. government may be because its lobbying organizations in the U.S. have ties to the Big Media and also spend a lot of money on spreading propaganda in the U.S. As The Power Peddlers revealed:

“The 1963 Fulbright hearings into foreign lobbies probed the activities of the Jewish Agency, the United Israel Appeal, the United Jewish Appeal, the American Zionist Council [AZC] and AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. The AZC’s report for the previous year noted that it had supplied free lecturers and articles and sent `journalists and others’ on junkets to Israel. The report, without naming names, said its magazine committee was `chaired by a man who holds a key position on the editorial level in the magazine business. He knows everyone in the trade, has important contacts, and exploits them on behalf of Israel.’ The magazine committee was responsible for `the writing and placement of articles on Israel in some of America’s leading magazines.’ The TV-radio committee had been `fortunate in securing the services of the director of creative projects of an important TV chain.’ This would `expand the influence’ of the American Zionist Council on television…

“Gottlieb Hammer and Isidor Hamlin of the Jewish Agency testified that they had spent over $5 million between 1957 and 1962 on propaganda in the United States…In a 1974 article, Senator Abourezk accused the World Zionist Organization—an Israeli Government front—of spending `$5 million a year’ on “propaganda in the United States.’”

(Downtown 9/1/93)

Next: Old John Brown lyrics

25th Anniversary of Beirut Bombing and Massacre

Twenty-five years ago, on June 4, 1982, the now-deceased “Nobel Peace Prize” winner—Menachem Begin—ordered Israeli jets to start bombing Beirut. Two days later, Begin ordered 60,000 Israeli troops and 500 Israeli tanks to invade Lebanon. By invading Lebanon 25 years ago, “Israel broke a ceasefire along its 63-mile Lebanese border that had been in effect since July 1981,” according to former Israeli intelligence agency employee Victor Ostrovsky’s book, By Way Of Deception. The same book also noted that “months before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon,” the now-deceased PLO leader Yasir Arafat had “ordered a halt to the bombardment of Israeli villages.” But, according to By Way Of Deception, “Israel used” the attempted assassination in London of Israel’s Ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argove, “as an excuse to launch a full-scale war” and the Israeli government falsely blamed the shooting of Argove on PLO leader Arafat “even though he had nothing to do with it.”

As a result of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the bombing of Beirut, thousands of Arab civilians were killed in Lebanon during the next few years and 462 Israeli soldiers and 241 U.S. Marines were also killed in Lebanon. Around 3 ½ months after the beginning of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, a massacre of thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila was carried out by the Israeli military’s Lebanese allies.

The leader of the Lebanese right-wing force that slaughtered Palestinian civilians in the Shatila refugee camp, Elias Hobeika, was apparently connected to the Israeli intelligence apparatus; and the Israeli military passively watched the slaughter as it took place. According to By Way Of Deception, on Sept. 16, 1982:

“Israeli Major General Amir Drori, head of the Northern Command and several other top Israeli officers had guests at their command post: Lebanese Forces Chief of Staff Fady Frem, and their infamous intelligence chief, Elias Hobeika…For the Mossad [Israeli] intelligence agency…Hobeika had been an important contact. He had attended the Staff and Command College in Israel. He was the main leader of the force that went into the refugee camp and slaughtered the civilians…

“At 5 p.m. on September 16 [1982], Hobeika assembled his forces at Beirut International Airport and moved into the Shatila camp, with the help of flares and, later, tank and mortar fire from the Israeli Defense Force [IDF]…

“The next day, Hobeika received Israeli permission to bring two additional battalions into the camps. Israel knew the massacre was taking place. Israeli forces had even set up observation posts on top of several seven-story buildings at the Kuwaiti embassy traffic circle, giving them an unobstructed view of the carnage.”

(Downtown 6/10/92)

With regard to the Israeli government’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Israel in Lebanon stated the following:

“The Commission, having considered the evidence and the relevant rules of law, concludes:

“1. The Government of Israel has committed acts of aggression contrary to international law.

“2. The Israeli armed forces have made use of weapons or methods of warfare forbidden by international law, including the laws of war;

“3. Palestinian, Lebanese and prisoners of other nationalities have been subjected to treatment forbidden by international law, including inhuman and degrading treatment…

“4. There has been deliberate or indiscriminate or reckless bombardment of a civilian character, of hospitals, schools and other nonmilitary targets…

“5. There has been systematic bombardment and other destruction of towns, cities, villages and refugee camps.

“6. The acts of the Israeli armed forces have caused the dispersal, deportation and ill-treatment of populations, in violation of international law.

“7. The Government of Israel has no valid reasons under international law for its invasion of Lebanon, for the manner in which it conducted hostilities or for its actions as an occupying force.

“8. Israeli authorities or forces were involved, directly or indirectly, in the massacres and other killings that have been reported to have been carried out by Lebanese militiamen in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in Beirut area between 16 and 18 September [1982]…”

A possible motive for the Israeli government’s “ethnic cleansing” activity in Lebanon was also indicated in the 1983 Israel In Lebanon report:

“The Commission received evidence that Israel harbored certain territorial aspirations towards Lebanon, the most significant of which may have been its intention to obtain access or possibly control over the waters of the Litani River, the major sweet water source in Lebanon. The commission’s attention was drawn to Israel’s urgent need for access to water as its needs cannot be met even after appropriating the water resources of the Occupied Territories…

“Israel, since 1978, has in effect established a `security zone’ in South Lebanon…”

(Downtown 9/1/93)

Next: The Israeli Government Lobby’s Media Connections

More People Imprisoned Under Clintons Than Under Reagan

Both 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, Bill, claim to be against institutional racism. Yet during the Clintons’ first two terms in the White House, the number of African-Americans who were locked up in U.S. prisons increased dramatically. As Ralph Nader observed in a March 15, 2001 column, titled “The `Tough On Crime’ Party,” which was reprinted in Nader’s 2004 book, In Pursuit of Justice:

“…A report issued by the Justice Policy Institute finds it’s not the Republicans but the Democrats’ recently departed President Clinton who has title to what the Institute labels as the `most punitive platform on crime’ in the last two decades.

“Noting that President Clinton consistently supported increased penalties and additional prison construction, the report said that 225,000 more prison inmates were added during Clinton’s eight years than were added under President Reagan’s watch. And President Clinton also topped President George Bush [I]’s incarceration score, adding 34,000 more during his first term (1992-1996) than were added to the prison population in the four years of Bush [I]’s single term (1988-1992).

“…By the end of the Clinton administration, there were two million people in jails and prisons in the United States and 4.5 million others on probation and parole…

“African-Americans, in particular, have felt the effects of the `tough on crime’ politics of both major political parties. Between 1980 and 1999, the incarceration rate for African-Americans more than tripled from 1,156 per 100,000 to 3,620 per 100,000.”

Nader also noted that Hillary’s husband signed a law in 1994, for instance, which rejected a U.S. Sentencing Commission recommendation that African-Americans who distribute 5 grams of crack cocaine not be sentenced to longer prison sentences than white people who distribute 450 grams of powdered cocaine:

“Some of the growing prison population of African-Americans is the result of tougher sentencing laws enacted in 1986 and 1988, which made the punishment for distributing crack cocaine one hundred times greater than the punishment for powdered cocaine…A person convicted in federal court for distributing 5 grams of crack cocaine receives a mandatory 5-year minimum sentence while it takes 500 grams of powdered cocaine to trigger a 5-year mandatory sentence.

“In 1994, the U.S. Sentencing Commission…recommended that the sentencing be equalized so that the mandatory sentence would be triggered by the same amount of cocaine…in powdered…form. But Congress voted to reject the commission’s recommendation and President Clinton signed the rejection into law…”

Next: 25th Anniversary of Beirut Bombing and Massacre