THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Friday, March 18,1983 11

Hoag Levins Is Too Flowery and Biased in 'Arab Reach' Expose

By EZEKIEL LEIKIN

"Arab Reach: The Secret
War Against Israel" by
Hoag Levins (Doubleday)
was conceived as an expose
of an international conspi-
',racy unleashed by the Arab
oil-moguls with the aim of
transforming their vast oil
wealth into a political and
economic instrument to de-
stroy the Jewish state.
Reinforced by an exten-
sive compendium of refer-
ences and bibliography, the
book purports to reveal how
the "conspiracy" was
hatched and developed —
with the aid of high-priced
American surrogates and
hirelings — into a master-
plan for piece-meal acquisi-
tions and take-overs of
banks, coal mines, airlines,
skyscrapers and industrial
conglomerates in the
United States and other
parts of the world.
The book opens with an
elaborate description of a
victory-party, celebrat-
ing the defeat of the "in-
vincible" Israeli lobby
(AIPAC) in connection
with the AWACS deal
with Saudi Arabia, at the
opulent residence of the
Tunisian Ambassador to
the U.S. Ali Hedda. The
U.S. Senate was "repre-
sented" at the party by
John Tower, chairman of
the Senate Armed Serv-
ices Committee, and
Charles Percy, chairman
of the Senate Foreign Re-
lations Committee, each '
of whom played a ded-
sive role in steam rolling
the 52-48 vote in favor of
the Saudis.
The author recounts how
Tower and Percy "threw
their arms around each
other, as the Arab dig-
nitaries cheered." -
According to LeVins, the
AWACS vote was tan-
tamount to a "revolution"
on Capitol Hill, catapulting
the Arab lobby into a major
political force and marking
the eclipse and "continued
decline" of the Israel lobby-.
Levins waxes poetic in
describing the palatial set-
ting of the Arabs' trium-
phant bacchanal - —
"sprawling across the crest
of the highest hill, it resem-
bled nothing so much as a
Moorish castle perched
above the Mediterranean."
These irrelevant, yet vivid '
poetic lapses with which the
book abounds, presumably
designed to show off the
author's prowess as a fiction
writer rather than a dis-
passionate political analyst,
•seem glaringly out of place .
in a book bristling with cor-
roborative documentations
befitting a serious and fac-
tual study.
Levins traces the ac-
quisitions by the Moslem
oil-powers of massive
amounts of military
equipment, including
advanced, space-age
American and European
weapons systems. Awash
with petro-dollars, they
acquired "entire navies
and air forces as single
purchases" and estab-
lished domestic weapons
industries at different

sites in the Middle East.
The author discloses that
during the Carter Adminis-
tration the process of parity
with Israel with shipments
of similar systems. to the
Arabs. ,
Eventually, the Saudis
developed a "private in-
telligence network," reach-
ing into the highest levels of
the U.S. government, as a
subsidiary of the Insurance
Company of North America.
Its majorloperatives were
Robert Ellsworth, a former
Congressman- and Deputy
Secretary of Defense, and
Lowell Pumphrey, a former
official of the U.S. Treasury
Department.
Add to this coterie of Arab
surrogates such figures as
Frederick Dutton, formerly
a special assistant to
President Kennedy; Clark
Clifford, perennial adviser
to Presidents and former
Secretary of Defense; and
former Senator William J.
Fulbright, and one gains an
insight into the pervasive
power and influence of the
oil-powered Arab lobby.
President Reagan, in-
cidentally, continued the
policies of his predeces-
sore by providing the
Arabs with such
weapons systems as had-
not been given to Israel.
In a tendentious apprai-
sal of the power of the Is-
rael lobby the author
quotes from the
Economist of London to
the effect that !!one-third
of Democratic party
funds come from Jews."
Levins writes that more
than 700 of America's
largets corporations, doing
$35 billion worth of busi-
nes- s with Saudi Arabia,
were recruited to lobby for
the'kWACS sale to the
Saudis. The influence of the
Bechtel Corp., one of the
largest American contrac-
tors operating in Saudi
Arabia, looms large in Le-
vins' narrative as a leading
proponent of Arab causes.
The fact that Secretary of
State George Shultz, his
colleague Caspar Wein-
berger and Ambassador
Philip Habib had been
prominently associated
with Bechtel leads one to
the conclusion that our
country's foreign and de-
fense policies are not im-
mune from that firm's self-
serving "input."
The distaff side of the
Arab lobby was equally
active. The Arab Women's
Council of Washington,
headed by the wife of the
Saudi Ambassador, Nouha
Alhegelan, had engineered
a meeting with Mrs. Rea-
gan, which, the author be-
lieves, may have precipi-
tated the ouster of Secretary
of State Alexander Haig.
The encounter between the
First Lady and Mrs. Alhege-
lan had, indirectly, elicited
a "reassuring" statement
from National Security Ad-
viser William P. Clark that
"the U.S. would achieve an
Israeli withdrawal" from
Beirut and "will actively
seek to protect the Palesti-
nians from total defeat."
The author claims that

.

EZEKIEL LEIKIN

during the 1973 Yom
Kippur War, the Saudi
-monarch vowed "to un-
sheath the sword of oil"
against Israel and Its
friends, and his solemn
pronouncement had a
profound impact upon
800 million Moslems in
Asia and Africa.
In the face . of resurgent
Moslem fundamentalism,
exemplified by Iran's
Ayatollah Khomeini, which
views the House of Saud as
"Moslem deviates," and the
proliferation of competing
tribal ideologies in the Arab
world, Levins' claim is open
to serious question.
The author's credibility
as an objective reporter and
analyst is undercut by . his
virulent anti-Israel bias.
Thus, his references to the
government of Israel as "the
European government in
Tel Aviv," his allusions to
"the Israeli occupational
garrisons" and the Gush
Emunim "land-raiders" and
his distorted description of
the Zionist movement as "a
new colonial movement
seeking to establish Euro-
pean control around Zion
Hill in Palestine" with the
help of the "European
petro-baron, Edmond
Rothschild," makes one
wonder whether much of his
corroborative "evidence"
was not culled from the

universally-discredited
forgery, "The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion," al-
though the latter "source" is
Conspicuously absent from
his bibliography.
The book is suffused with
an air of apocalyptic
urgency and impending
• doom as the author traces
the expanding web of the
newly-evolved oil im-
perialism, sustained by in-
exhaustible sources of
petro-dollars and designed
— so Levins speculates— to
control and dominate much
of the world's military-
industrial infrastructure.
ACcording to this
scenario, much of
Western civilized society,
including the U.S., is
mortgaged to the hilt to
the "enlightened"
statesmen of Saudi
Aiabia Kuwait, the Gulf
sheikdo
ms and Abu
Dhabi and subject to
their slightest whim._
Of course, if their current
"whim" happens to be the --
destruction of Israel, the
world-powers, led by the
ubiquitous and omnipotent
United Nations, will be
happy to oblige.

=Icy

Levins is obviously pos- author's references to
sessed of a fertile imagina- John Connally, a former
tion and his conclusions are U.S. Secretary of the
glaringly flawed. The Treasury and a
"Arab Reach" as profiled .Presidential aspirant,
by the author is not "the who played an-active role
secret war against Israel"; it in facilitating the Arabs'
is a war against the United power-grab in Houston
States and the West, in the and elsewhere.
first instance, with Israel
Equally significant is
serving only as an "attrac-
former President Gerald R.
tive" secondary target.
The current disarray Ford's Arab "connection" as
among the oil-producing director of a company solely
countries, brought about by owned and operated by the
a global oil glut, has re- governmen of Kuwait — the
vealed the inherent Weak- Santa Fe International
nesses of OPEC (or any car- Corp.
tel, for that matter) to
Much of the author's ac-
tinker with the laws of sup- cumulated data is a rehash
ply and demand. In view of of articles and studies prey-
the dramatic drop in oil in- iously published in a score
come, coupled with the vast of newspapers and maga-
financial outlays committed 'zines. The book's 292 pages
to expensive (and ambiti- of narrative plus 32 pages of
ous) domestic development bibliography could have
programs, the oil moguls been condensed into a
started to pull in their claws brochure for the uninitiated
and curb their appetite for in the complexities of
conspiratorial expansion on petro-dollar power:
a global scale.
The serious student of
With the Moslem Middle East affairs will
"menace" receding, Levins' have to look elsewhere for
ominous scenarios should authoritative and factual
be of interest only to those information on a _subject
addicted to science fiction. worthy of a more competent
Less illusory are the • treatment.

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"THE TREACHERY GAlviEr
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When your life's at stake,
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